Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking. Pauline Prescott

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СКАЧАТЬ thought back to the party I’d attended that first Christmas after Dad died. The airmen there had been so charming and kind. Where would be the harm? Eventually, I plucked up the courage to ask Mum if she thought it would be all right.

      ‘OK,’ she said as she was getting ready to go out with Harry one night, ‘but make sure you’re back by ten.’

      My friend originally set me up with an airman called Joe but he was sent back to the States so I ended up with someone I’ll call ‘Jim’. He’d just turned twenty-one and I was not quite sixteen when we first met. He knew how old I was but what he probably didn’t realize was that I’d never even been kissed. He took me to the Odeon in Chester to see a film called Johnny Dark in which Tony Curtis played an engineer who’d designed a racing car. I don’t remember much about the film because I was too excited by the company I was keeping. At six feet two inches tall with smouldering good looks, Jim was quiet, courteous and kind. Better still, he was a singer of country and western songs and he played in the clubs and bars on the American bases. He sang to me on the way home and had a really lovely voice, a bit like Jim Reeves. I was convinced my music-loving father would have approved.

      For the next six months I was in a whirl. My lonely days were at an end. Jim was just like a film star, and he was mine. I thought about him night and day and the feeling appeared to be mutual. When we weren’t together he’d call me up on the telephone and sing to me down the line, which made my knees buckle. He took me to a dance at one of the bases to meet some of his friends. They were all much older and more sophisticated than me but with Jim on my arm I felt invincible. I wasn’t ‘Tilly’ to Jim, I was his ‘Paula’ – the name he always used for me – and I suddenly felt so grown up.

      He’d meet me in Chester after work and walk me home. More often than not, my mother would be out working or courting Harry so we’d have the place to ourselves. I’d play house – cooking him a meal and making him tea and imagining what life would be like if this was how it always was. I even presented him with my most precious possession – my bronze medal for tap dancing. He said he was thrilled. When he held me in his arms and told me he wanted to marry me, I believed him completely and gave him all that he asked. In my heart, I was still a little girl and he was my first love. I barely knew what I was doing, although I did know it was naughty and that if my mother ever found out she’d be furious. Nobody had ever told me about taking precautions and Jim never said anything, so I carried on obliviously.

      All I could think about was that Jim was going to marry me. Excitedly, I blurted out the news to my mother. She was my best friend in the world and I couldn’t wait for her to share my joy. Her reaction wasn’t at all what I expected. ‘You’re far too young to think about marriage yet!’ she told me, horrified. Although I was disappointed, I was too blind to take any notice.

      Then one day she sat me down after work. ‘I think you should know: Jim’s married already,’ she said. I looked up at her in disbelief. ‘Harry’s sister-in-law works at the base. She found out.’

      I was shattered. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me, although I knew she’d never lie. A day or two later, my mother summoned Jim to the house to confront him. I had never seen her so angry. All five feet of her stood up to his lanky frame and she dominated the room. I just sat there, crying and trying to take it all in.

      His response relieved me enormously. ‘Yes, I have a wife, ma’am,’ he told her, looking genuinely contrite, ‘but I’m getting a divorce.’ He pulled out a photograph of a baby daughter he’d also never mentioned. My head was in a spin. I didn’t know what to think, but then he told my mother, ‘I love Paula, Mrs Tilston, and I want to marry her. I’m going home to arrange the divorce and then I’ll send for her.’

      Having veered from shock to despair, I was on cloud nine once more.

      Mum wasn’t at all happy but she knew how strongly I felt about Jim so she reluctantly agreed that I could carry on seeing him until he left for America. I pined for the end of each day when I’d be seeing him after work. Although I dreaded him leaving the country, I couldn’t wait to join him and would lie awake at night imagining what our life together would be like across the Atlantic. He told me that we’d be living on a military airbase to begin with and he tried to prepare me for what to expect. He said I’d have to go to a special school to learn about American culture for my citizenship exams. I told the girls in the salon all about it and we chattered excitedly about me moving abroad. Secretly, I was terrified by the idea. I’d never lived anywhere but Chester; I’d not even been to London, and I hadn’t ever flown in an aeroplane. But as long as Jim was waiting for me, I knew I could do it – even if it meant leaving everything and everyone that I’d ever known.

      I planned our romantic farewell over and over in my mind. I imagined myself tearfully waving him off at the train station or kissing him goodbye at the gates to the airbase. The fairytale ending I’d dreamed of crumbled to dust when he called me late one night to tell me he’d be flying home early the following morning.

      ‘My leave’s been cancelled,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no time to say goodbye.’ He gave me the forwarding address of his new base and promised to write soon.

      I placed the telephone back in its cradle and burst into shuddering tears. At least he had my tap-dancing medal as his talisman but it was all so sudden. I could hardly believe that in a few hours’ time my Jim, the love of my life, would be flying away from me.

       Three

      I’D HAD SUCH AN EMOTIONAL FEW MONTHS THAT I FELT PHYSICALLY AND mentally drained. It seemed that everything that could have happened to me in my life had happened in that very short space of time. Well, almost everything.

      When my period was late that month, I honestly didn’t think anything about it. I’d not been eating well and I’d hardly been sleeping. I told myself the distress I’d been suffering was bound to have an effect on my body. But as the days passed and nothing happened, I began to grow more fearful, terrified of what this might really mean.

      Four months after my sixteenth birthday in February 1955, I finally summoned up the courage to blurt out the news to my mother. The look on her face will remain with me for ever. ‘But, Pauline!’ she cried. ‘What are you telling me? My God, you’re just a child yourself. Your body isn’t even fully developed yet!’

      I sat at the kitchen table, my arms wrapped around me as she scolded me, her voice rising with shock and anger. By the end of that night she was too upset for me and too angry at Jim to fight any more and we were both too exhausted to try. The following morning, she hugged me and took me to the doctor’s surgery where I’m certain she hoped he’d tell her I was mistaken. When he confirmed her worst fears, I’m sure she secretly hoped he’d tell me how to get rid of the baby I was carrying, but doctors didn’t do that sort of thing back then.

      The thought of an abortion never even crossed my mind. This was my baby. I loved its father with all my teenage heart. He was going to marry me and we’d live happily ever after in America. Of course I was going to keep it. I was so shocked when, on the way home from the surgery, Mum turned to me on the bus and said, ‘You won’t be able to bring the baby home, you know. I’m working. You’re working. Peter’s in hospital. There’s no one to look after it. How can we possibly give this baby the home it deserves?’

      I knew she was upset and decided that she just needed time to get used to the idea. As far as I was concerned I had little reason to worry. The minute Jim found out I was pregnant, I was certain he’d hurry through his divorce, send for me, and we’d be wed before the baby was born. Even if there СКАЧАТЬ