Not that Kinda Girl. Lisa Maxwell

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      Somehow, Mum heard about a mother and baby home in Streatham and she got herself booked in there. But she didn’t like it when she went to see the people in charge: she sensed their disapproval and they made her feel there was a lot of shame involved in going there – which, of course, in those days there was. This is not the place to go into the conditions of homes for unmarried girls, but I don’t think many who went there in the fifties and sixties would describe them as happy, caring places. Mum was at her wit’s end and had no idea what else to do: she was supposed to move into the home six weeks before the birth, give the baby (me) up for adoption as soon as it was born and then stay for six weeks afterwards. She packed her bag and even wrote some letters, which she was going to send to Uncle Jim in Jersey for him to post one back to Nan and Grandad each week as if she was working out there.

      ‘I don’t think I ever said the word “adopted”, even to myself,’ she later told me. ‘I was in denial about what would happen to my baby. I didn’t think about it.’ I can hardly imagine how scared and alone she must have felt as she made these elaborate plans. In the end, it was clearly too much: Mum couldn’t keep it a secret from Nan any more and confessed she was pregnant. Nan was upset at the news but even more concerned about the idea of Mum going into the home and having to give the baby away. She told her not to go and said they would face Grandad together.

      Mum says she would not have gone through with it. She didn’t really want to, but she needed someone to say the words ‘Don’t go’, and when they did it was a terrific relief. Mum and Nan had a cry together, unpacked her bag and threw away the letters. Meanwhile, Nan was just as scared of Grandad’s reaction as Mum was, so they put off telling him, but at least Nan helped her daughter to face up to the reality of the situation. She insisted she saw a doctor and about six months into her pregnancy Mum attended antenatal classes at Guy’s Hospital.

      In the end Grandad heard the news in the worst possible way. Word must have got round because one night in the pub great-Uncle Dick (Grandad’s brother) asked, ‘Has our Val had the baby yet?’

      Grandad went ballistic, not just because she was pregnant but because he’d been kept in the dark. He stormed home from the pub. Mum was cowering under the sheets while he shouted and swore and banged on the bedroom door. He called her a slag and worse, then yelled: ‘Why didn’t nobody tell me? We could have done something. Now it’s too late!’ It was the worst rage any of them could remember hearing from him, and Mum was sobbing, clutching her pillow over her head to drown out the noise. I think the whole of Stephenson House knew about it that night.

      Meanwhile, Nan was trying to soothe him. He’d never laid a finger on her or any of the children, but he was very strict and absolutely furious, so it could have been a whole lot worse. As it was, it was all shouting and swearing. The next day, when things had calmed down a bit, Nan said to Mum: ‘We’re going up to Johnny Murphy’s to sort this out. Can we have his address?’

      By this point John had left his wife and was living back home in Streatham. Mum had already visited him there a couple of months earlier, after his wife (also pregnant at the same time) had confronted her. ‘Are you Val Maxwell?’ she asked. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble – Johnny has left me and gone back to his mother’s. Will you come there with me? I want to front up to him with this business that you and me are both pregnant.’ Mum had heard that John was a real player, but she was so desperate to be with him that she naively went along with it, hoping she might convince him to choose her.

      Anyway, after they found out, Nan and Grandad went to see John at his mum’s house and he looked very uncomfortable, so they arranged for him to come round to their flat the next day, but when they saw him again all he said was: ‘I can’t do anything – I’m married. But I’ll help out financially.’ Mum felt she didn’t want his money, but at least it was finally clear to her.

      Mum says Grandad was kind to her after that, but I’m not sure she’s telling the whole truth. I think he gave her a hard time, because years later, when she was very drunk one Christmas, she started to knock him: she said he may have been a good grandfather to me but he wasn’t a good father. I was very upset at the time because my memories of him were good and I felt she was taking that away from me, but I didn’t have any idea of what she went through. Grandad felt the shame bitterly and I’m sure he let Mum know on every occasion he could.

      I was born three weeks early. Mum was washing and setting Nan’s hair (she always did this every Saturday, like clockwork) when the labour began. I was born three minutes after 8 p.m. on Sunday, 24 November 1963, two days after President Kennedy was shot. Mum has often told me she remembers hearing about the assassination just before she went into hospital.

      I weighed 5lb 13oz, small but not worryingly so, and had jaundice. Mum stayed in hospital for 10 days, like they did in those days. She admits she had no idea what having a baby entailed – all the sleepless nights, endless washing and feeding – she thought she would just get on with her life. She also hoped that when John Murphy saw me he’d want to be with her, but once again she had her head in the clouds and he never saw his new baby daughter.

      Looking back, Mum says she never doubted she did the right thing in keeping me – women who give their babies up for adoption are often tortured souls. But that’s not to say it was easy. In those days the damage was also profound for those who went through with keeping an illegitimate baby, and she would not be free of the shame of my birth for many years, if ever. In reality this was just the beginning: the beginning of my life and the beginning of a struggle that would exist between us for the next 40 years.

      When we came back home from hospital, Nan was in charge. Mum liked dressing me up, but Nan did most of the other stuff – the bottles and the nappy changing. Apparently Grandad said to Mum at one stage: ‘It’s about time you did something for your baby – it’s yours, not hers.’ Mum says she regrets not doing more but at the time she was more than happy to hand me over. Whatever he felt about the way I was conceived, from the moment I arrived home Grandad adored me, though. I won him over straight away and any doubts he might have had before I was born were gone: I was the apple of his eye.

      It has made my life very awkward having three parents: Mum, Nan and Grandad. I’ve always had to be careful – I could never say how much I loved Nan for fear of upsetting Mum. It was a strange upbringing in that way. And now, with hindsight, Mum thinks it was a mistake to stay at home with her parents all her life and she should have found a place for the two of us. But living at home meant she could go back to work after 10 months off on maternity benefit. ‘I don’t mind looking after her all week, but at the weekends you have to stay in,’ Nan told her. She and Grandad liked to go down the pub every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

      For Mum, living at home with her parents meant that she never found out about running a home. She never had to cook because Nan did it all, but she did her share of the washing, putting my terry nappies in the old boiler in the washhouse next door to the flat. Because Nan was always there, Mum didn’t have the confidence to break out on her own. She tried to take responsibility for me – ‘She’s my daughter,’ I remember her saying to Nan. ‘Well, stop fucking having a go at her then!’ Nan would say.

      Now I can see that Nan was undermining Mum, but as a child I thought she was just taking care of me. Nan was a strong personality and you’d need a hell of a backbone to go against her wishes. Mum never could, and I can see why not: she was formidable. Both had big mouths and big voices, and they’d go at it hammer and tongs – lots of door slamming, lots of swearing. But Nan always had the last word and it was always the women making the noise: Grandad never took part.

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