Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking. Pauline Prescott

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СКАЧАТЬ had a baby by a local boy when she was young and had married the father so they could raise the child together. My next-door neighbour became pregnant in her early twenties by an American long before I’d even met Jim. She didn’t marry her airman or move to the States, but she kept her daughter nonetheless.

      I wrote to Jim straight away at the address he’d given me, telling him my momentous news. I’m going to have our baby, I wrote, choosing my words carefully. I hope you’re as happy as I am. Every morning in the days and weeks that followed, I watched and waited for the postman to bring me a blue airmail envelope, a postcard, anything…but nothing came. The daily disappointment made me feel even sicker to my stomach.

      After a while, my mother decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking Harry along for moral support, she made an appointment with one of the senior officers at the airbase where Jim had taken me to the dance and demanded to know his whereabouts.

      ‘We have no airman here by that name,’ the officer told her blankly. ‘We never have had.’ Even my indomitable little mother could do nothing against the immovable might of the United States Air Force.

      I refused to lose heart and continued to believe that Jim would write any day or, better still, turn up on my mother’s doorstep, his cap pushed to the back of his head the way it always was, with that huge grin on his face. There must have been a problem with his wife, I convinced myself. Maybe she was making things difficult? Maybe the USAF was? After all, they’d pretended he didn’t even exist.

      I’d lie on my bed in my room, playing the number one hit ‘Unchained Melody’ by Jimmy Young over and over on my little gramophone, hoping that somewhere across the Atlantic Jim might be listening to it too. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still mine? The words seemed to have been written specially for us.

      The hardest part was going to work at the salon each day, my baby growing secretly inside me. The girls stopped asking if I’d heard from Jim. They could tell from my puffy eyes that I hadn’t. They were kind and supportive but they left me alone. There was no more happy chatter about my new life in America or what sort of wedding dress might best suit my beanpole frame. I told no one about the baby and fortunately didn’t really suffer from morning sickness so no one suspected. I covered myself up well, despite the fact that I was suddenly not quite so skinny any more.

      Then one day, when I was about five months’ pregnant and still holding myself in, Doreen ‘Dors’ Jones, my manageress, told me that the boss of Quaintways, Mr Guifreda, wanted to see me in his office. I’d never been summoned to see him before and I couldn’t imagine what he might want. A Sicilian in charge of the restaurant, salon and just about every aspect of the enterprise, he was a kind and friendly man so I wasn’t afraid, but I was a little nervous. When Miss Jones came into the office with me, closed the door and stood behind me, I felt my knees begin to tremble.

      Mr Guifreda told me to take a seat. ‘So, Tilly,’ he began. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’ He gave me a gentle smile.

      I looked at him.

      I looked up at Miss Jones.

      Then I looked down at my hands.

      ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

      His statement wasn’t really a question and I began to cry.

      Miss Jones placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and passed me a handkerchief. Mr Guifreda looked almost as upset as I was. ‘Now, now, don’t cry,’ he soothed, patting my hand. ‘We’ll take care of you. Everyone will.’

      He was true to his word. From that day on, they all did. Within the hour, everyone knew about ‘Tilly’s baby’ or ‘the Quaintways’ baby’ as it was sometimes known. Bowls of nourishing soup were sent to me with the compliments of the chefs in the restaurant. Clearly, they thought I needed fattening up. The other girls in the salon made sure I didn’t do too much or strain myself lifting anything. Most of the regular customers soon suspected and started to give me extra tips to buy ‘something nice for the baby’. Everyone was so kind and took such special care of me. I couldn’t have been in better hands.

      Back home, the atmosphere was far more strained. My mother, who was a very proud woman and worried about the prying eyes of the neighbours, had been summoned to Quaintways by Mr Guifreda, who reassured her that my job would remain open for me. She thanked him but told me not to tell anyone else. Insisting that she was doing what was best for the baby, she contacted social services and the Church of England Children’s Society. Between them, they arranged that when I was seven months’ pregnant I would go to St Bridget’s House of Mercy in Lache Park, beyond Handbridge.

      I adored my mother but I pleaded with her to allow me to stay at home. ‘Can’t I have it here?’ I begged. ‘Then we can just look after it ourselves.’

      ‘How?’ she’d cry, shaking her head. ‘Who’ll look after it when we’re both out at work all day? There’s nobody but us here now and neither of us can afford to give up our jobs. You have to be sensible, Pauline. It would be cruel to the baby to do anything but this and they’ll take better care of your baby than we could.’

      There were no crèches in those days and, even if there had been, we couldn’t have afforded one. I earned just over three pounds a week with tips and, although my mother earned a little more, every penny was spoken for. We had few relatives nearby and those we had were working too. Peter knew nothing of my pregnancy and was still at the rehabilitation centre. Nobody could help us.

      I was assigned a social worker, a middle-aged Dutch lady called Mrs Cotter, who visited me regularly as the pregnancy progressed. ‘You’ll stay in the mother and baby home for three months after the birth and then the baby will be put up for adoption,’ she told me. ‘If suitable parents can’t be found, it will be placed in a state nursery until they can.’

      I watched the words fall from her mouth but I never really thought they would apply to me. Jim would be back by then, I kept telling myself, or, if for some terrible reason he wasn’t, my mother would change her mind at the last minute and let me keep the baby. I was certain of it.

      Still in denial, I didn’t tell any of the girls at work what was happening. Nor did they ask. All they knew was that I was going away to a special home for the final months of my pregnancy. The worst part was telling Peter. He was finally well enough to come home for a weekend from the rehabilitation centre and Mum, who’d kept it all from him until then, broke the news. He was very upset and worried for me. I guess when he’d last been around I’d been a child. It was a shock for him to accept that I was old enough to have a child of my own. Happily, once he’d calmed down he finally became the big brother I’d always wanted, protective and kind whenever he was home from hospital. We have been close ever since.

      As my time drew near the girls at work grew more and more excited. They clubbed together and raised enough money to buy me some maternity clothes. Miss Jones took me shopping to the posh department store Brown’s of Chester and helped me choose three beautiful outfits, a pencil skirt that expanded at the top and some smock tops. ‘You’ll be the best-dressed girl there,’ she told me with a hug.

      The closer the date came to me going into St Bridget’s, the more nervous I grew. I’d heard stories about those sorts of places: former convents where unmarried mothers were regarded as bad girls. Up until now I had been treated with nothing but kindness. There had been little stigma to what I had done mainly because everyone knew I was a good girl. The story had gone round that the man who’d ‘got me into trouble’ was married and had then ‘run away’, which I guess protected me in many ways.

      Having СКАЧАТЬ