Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking. Pauline Prescott

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       Four

      THE FIRST TIME MY MOTHER SET EYES ON TIMOTHY PAUL, HER REACTION was exactly what I’d hoped it would be. ‘Oh, he’s beautiful!’ she cried when she came to visit. ‘Here, I bought these for him.’ From out of her handbag came a lovely little set of clothes. ‘I’ve been saving in a club. I got them from that shop at the end of the road.’

      I could have cried with relief. She’d said her grandson was beautiful and she’d saved for some baby clothes. I knew it: she was going to let me bring him home after all. I didn’t dare ask her there and then but the indications were good. Now that I’d had Timothy Paul, now that I’d held him and nursed my beautiful boy, I couldn’t possibly give him up.

      Mum came to see me when she could after work in the week I remained in hospital with Timothy Paul but she was often delayed. Every night at visiting time, I used to slide down the bed and pretend to be asleep until she got there. I was the youngest in a ward of twenty women and the only one who wasn’t married. Through half-closed eyes, I’d spy husbands fussing over their wives and couldn’t help but feel sad. I wished with all my sixteen-year-old heart that Jim would stroll into the ward just like the other men, laden with flowers and beaming with pride. I wrote to him again to tell him that he had a son. My mother contacted his base with the same news, but still there was no word. When she registered my son’s birth for me at the council offices, her voice must have wavered as she told the registrar to put down his father as ‘US airman’ but Timothy Paul’s surname as ‘Tilston’.

      After a week, I was returned to St Bridget’s. It was good to be back in what felt like my safe haven and to show off my gorgeous baby to the other girls. Thrilled at having beaten the two who’d had their babies after mine, I couldn’t wait to be presented with the beautiful new Silver Cross pram Sister Joan Augustine had promised. That gleaming buggy had been the one goal my childish mind had focused on. It was all my missed Christmas and birthday presents rolled into one. Whatever the future held for me and my baby—and I knew it would be a struggle—I wanted him to have that pram at least.

      Sister Joan Augustine told me then that she’d given the pram to someone else: a tall girl called Mary who’d given birth a day after me but who’d come back to St Bridget’s earlier. ‘Hers was the first baby back from hospital,’ she said. Instead she presented me with a shabby little second-hand pram with wobbly wheels and dodgy brakes. I wept buckets over her decision. I immediately hated the horrid pram I was given; I loathed it even more when I came out to where I’d parked Timothy Paul in it one afternoon only to find the wind had blown it down a slope in the garden. One more inch and my precious baby boy might have been tipped over a verge.

      My happiest times in those first few months were those spent with my son. As was the routine, all new mothers would wash our babies together and then sit in a row to feed them. Timothy Paul, dressed in the clothes my mother bought for him, clearly loved that moment best because he’d be so contented at my breast that he’d fall asleep and take longer to finish than the rest.

      ‘Tilly, you’re always the last,’ Sister Joan Augustine would complain. I certainly made a fuss of my baby, and my fussing seemed to upset her routine, but I didn’t care. I was growing increasingly attached to Timothy Paul and was determined to squeeze in every extra minute with him that I could. My stubborn streak cut in and I’d insist that he be allowed to finish at his own pace.

      Every week I’d be summoned to Mother Superior’s office to discuss the future of my baby. ‘Now, Pauline, have you decided for adoption or will you be taking your baby home?’ she’d ask, peering at me over her spectacles.

      Mrs Cotter, my social worker, would often be there, along with Sister Joan Augustine. ‘Your mother says neither of you can look after the baby,’ my social worker would remind me. ‘There are plenty of childless couples who’d give him a better life.’

      Sister Joan Augustine would add, ‘You must make the decision now before he gets too old.’

      I’d sit on my hands and shake my head. ‘I just need more time,’ I’d tell them. ‘You said I’d have three months. After that, we can look at other options. He can go into a nursery somewhere close by maybe? I could visit him every day until I’ve worked out what to do.’

      They were clearly frustrated with me and did their best to persuade me otherwise but I stuck to my guns. Every time my mother came to visit it was the same story. I’d plead with her to help me find a solution but she’d just repeat that it would be cruel to Timothy Paul to try to keep him. ‘Adoption is the only option,’ she’d say firmly. There seemed to be no way to make her change her mind.

      I was dreading the day when our three months would be up. I kept trying to put the date to the back of my mind. I hoped beyond hope that something would happen or that someone would save us. There was still no word from Jim. My mother was sick of me asking if there had been a letter or a call. ‘You have to forget about him, Pauline,’ she told me testily. ‘He’ll never send for you now.’

      I had Timothy Paul christened in the chapel at St Bridget’s, with my mother at my side. ‘I name this child…’ the vicar said, marking his forehead with the sign of the cross. Bless my tiny son, he didn’t even cry. He just lay in my arms looking up at me with that placid expression of his, the one that said he trusted me to take care of him. I could have wept.

      Three weeks before my deadline was up, Sister Joan Augustine suddenly announced that I had to stop breastfeeding and wean my baby on to bottles of formula milk. I looked at her in shock. ‘B-but he’s too little!’ I protested.

      ‘He’ll be just as happy with a bottle, Tilly. Now, don’t make a fuss.’

      I wept as I fed him that bottle for the first time. It was a horrible day. This was one step closer to the time when I knew I wouldn’t be able to see him every day, to change him and wash him, to cuddle him and feed him myself. He took to the bottle quite well but I never did. The next three weeks were a living agony.

      As the date approached when I was due to leave St Bridget’s and Timothy Paul would be sent to a nursery, I became increasingly anxious. Mrs Cotter came to see me one morning to tell me what arrangements had been made. ‘The state will help you pay the nursery fees but the rest will have to come out of your wages, I’m afraid. We’ve found him a place. I’ll come with you to settle him in tomorrow. We’ll have to leave early to make the journey.’

      ‘Journey? Why, where are you sending him?’

      ‘The Ernest Bailey Residential Nursery for Boys. It’s in Matlock.’

      ‘Matlock?’ I asked, my panic rising. ‘Where’s that?’

      ‘Derbyshire.’

      ‘But how far away is that?’

      ‘About eighty miles.’ Registering the look of shock on my face she added, more softly, ‘It was the only place that could take him.’

      ‘E-eighty miles?’ I could hardly get my words out. ‘That’s too far! It’ll take me a day to get there and how much will it cost each time?’

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