At Last

“Secrets are hard to tell; particularly those held on to for so long and I’ve held onto this one for fifty years come February 8th.”  1

The drag of the tape in the recorder, as it wound slowly on, made Mary feel as though it was drawing the story from her like a poison.  Her heart tightened into an anxious knot and her chin quivered.  She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.2

“You must of only been a couple of weeks old,” Mary felt she had no breath left in her and gasped as if she was in cold water.  She breathed again and continued, “you were ever so tiny, all wrapped up in the layers of a pink crochet, your face all rosy against the grey drizzly morning and you had lots of white milk spots across your nose, as cute as freckles.  You couldn’t get a pram into a shop in those days, there where none of these buggies they have now and no wide supermarket aisles.”3

Mary’s hand’s squeezed together, clenching and unclenching, abruptly she leaned forward to switch off the machine and then quickly withdrew her hand again.  Again, she leaned forward, this time she reached over the tape recorder, picked up her darning and sighed.4

“Sorry, this is hard for me.  I need to do something with my hands; else I’ll turn off the tape.  They’re your Dad’s socks, it’s always the heel with him.” She shook her head slowly.  “It’s always been strange to me, calling Peter your Dad, but he has been and a very good one too.  I’ve some explaining to do to him too.  I’m so sorry.”5

She rounded the heel of the sock about the darning mushroom and wrapped a rubber band round it to hold it in place.6

“I was brought up in a small village, only a walk from Richmond in North Yorkshire.  The centre of our lives back then, was the Church and that’s where I met Daniel Baker.  It was in 1953 and the new vicar, his father, was so proud of him.  He’d tell everyone how Daniel was going to follow in his footsteps and like the last three generation’s and go to Nantwich Theological college, the same one as his father and his father before him.  I only remembered the name of the place because it seemed so funny to me back then, I thought it was so funny a theological college in a town with a witch in it! Then again, at fourteen you find things like that funny.  Daniel had other ideas though.”7

The wool was a darker grey and finer than the sock, Mary didn’t like ungainly mends, she liked everything neat and tidy.8

“Just like his father, I thought he was wonderful; far more sophisticated than the other boys I knew.” Mary huffed a laugh, “he was no angel; it was Daniel gave me my first cigarette.  I didn’t smoke for long.  As when I fell pregnant, and that happened quickly, they made me sick.  Daniel didn’t want to know of course, he was horrified and said that no-one would believe it was him.”9

Mary paused, rested her darning on the bed and looked about the hospital room.  On top of the cabinet was a collection of photographs, one stood out and she reached for it, it was her daughter, now grey haired like herself with her family sat around her. 10

“My mum was the first to notice,” Mary spoke to the picture, “you see I’d been having my monthlies as regular as the full moon.” With a deep sigh she put the picture back in it’s place and picked up the darning.  “I still miss her, my mum.”  11

“Neither of my parents said anything about the father, just talked of the shame and what others would think.  What I’d done to them, how selfish I was, how wicked I was to do this to them. I was selfish and wicked.  They were right.  They never knew how right they were.  So I stole some money and my grandmother’s wedding ring and ran away.”12

The thread had run out, she neatly tied it off and trimmed the end, took another length of fine grey wool.13

“The money wasn’t much, even at fifteen I knew that; first I took a bus to Darlington, there’s a big Victorian railway station there.  A boy at school had been bragging you could buy a ticket to a smaller station in Darlington, called North Road, and then once on the platform you could get on a train to anywhere.”  Mary laughed uncomfortably, “I actually thought he meant anywhere too.”14

Mary sat back in the high backed chair, more comfortable with what she had to say and began to weave the needle in and out of the threads.15

“I chose Hartlepool; the school took us to a Christmas pantomime there once, Dad complained why go all that way when there was a very good theatre in Darlington itself.  To me it was exciting; I’d never been so far away from home before.  It was like going to a different world.”16

“I needn’t of worried about being caught by a ticket inspector, I spent the whole time in the toilet being sick, you could hear me all down the carriage.  It was the fug of cigarette smoke, sickly and cloying, everyone smoked on trains in those days, and with the acrid black oil and thick grey dirt that coated everything.  I couldn’t stop myself.”17

“Hartlepool station was much smaller and I soon ended up on a wide road near the docks.  It was early afternoon and there was a woman with a thick brown coat on, she paced the other side of the road and glared at me.  She then opened her coat, put her hands on her hips of her nylon underslip and laughed; I thought she was insane. Terrified I almost ran all the way back to the railway station.  I stood outside and caught my breath for a while; it was only the smell of the station and thought of the train journey back that made me carry on up the road towards the town.  My legs ached as I wandered for miles; I had no idea where I was going.”18

Mary paused and gazed through the large aluminium framed window, without really seeing what was there; she turned back to her darning and started the careful weaving in and out again.  19

“The whole town was shades of grey; each road more dismal than the last.  Tall white buildings with the edges stained black or squat dark red houses with blank windows.  I ended up near the bottom of York Road, outside a row of shops.  It had started to rain sharp cold drops and I pulled my collar up as far as possible.  I stood on the very edge of a butcher’s awning, as far out the way of the bay window as I could.  It was here a short and heavy woman spoke to me; I was desperate by then.  She was the first person to speak kindly for what seemed so long and sobbing I collapsed into her arms.  Her name was Evelyn and she took me home.”20

“Evelyn was your Dads mum, Peter’s mum.  They lived in a terrace house, small, crowded and noisy;” Mary smiled, “against the backdrop of this chaos her husband sat and quietly read the paper.  I’d fallen into the arms of a woman who took in teenagers in trouble.  As well as her three children in the house, there were two other homeless teenagers.  I was very pale and too thin, I told her a story that I was 18 and my parents had died just a year before, that I married in too much of a hurry and my husband beat me, and I just needed to escape from him.  For the 1950’s this was better than the truth, but still not a good story.” 21

Mary paused in her darning as she remembered and she dropped her head sadly.22

“Everyone was kind to me and I became friends with her eldest daughter, your Aunt Katy, and of course Peter.  I’d been there for a month when Evelyn realised I was pregnant.  She was shocked when I told her I was nearly seven months.  We argued about a doctor, I cried and pleaded, more desperate than before.  She asked me if I knew what was going to happen, I must of seemed so young and naive.”23

“Each morning she would explain a little bit more, I think if she had told me everything at once I’d of been terrified.  During this time, I knew one thing.  I wanted my baby.”24

“It was Katy, who told me about the underage girl’s who had their baby taken away as soon as it was born and their heartache or relief.”25

“It’s strange, at the time I never once thought they hadn’t believed me.  26

Later when your Dad asked me to marry him, I told them some of the truth and most of that they’d guessed.  We even told them Peter had declared himself as your father when we registered the birth.”27

The thread had twisted and she slid it out of the thick curved needle, unpicked it, spun it through her hands, then with damp fingers flattened the end of the wool and re-threaded the needle and started again.28

“When the contractions started, fearful someone would take my baby, I told no-one.  I took the bus to Saint Hilders hospital on the Hartlepool Headland and sat on the sea front till I too frightened to go anywhere but the hospital.  As I went through the doors my waters broke, I was so embarrassed.  I made up an address but I gave them my real name, I never lied about that, I suppose I hoped my parents would come and find me.  29

Maybe that’s why I lied about my mum, saying she be arriving soon and to cover my shame I said my husband was away on National Service.  Then I was put in a room on the maternity ward, forgotten I was left alone for hours, for most of which I sobbed.  Either because of my tears or the labour, I was exhausted when the doctor eventually arrived; all I remember about him is warm bony fingers, I couldn’t look at him.  They all talked around me, like I was an object.  But at least then a nurse stayed with me, even though she treated me like a nuisance, just her being there was some comfort.  When the baby was born, the doctor immediately took her away; I fell asleep or passed out without even seeing her.”30

“When I woke I was on the maternity ward, mothers and babies all around me.  As I sat up dizzy, a nurse in a dark blue uniform came in and gave me a bit of paper and said that I needed it to register my baby’s birth and then in about a week, when I’m discharged I was to go to the coroner who would issue a death certificate.  Then she left.  Just like that, with no explanation.”31

“It must of been shock, because I fell fast asleep.  When I woke, got dressed, stuffed the bit of paper in my pocket and in a daze walked out.  I had nowhere else to go but Evelyn’s.  I got off the bus on York Road and there was a pram.  I only meant to look at you, you were so perfect that I just wanted to hold you, hold you like you where my baby, my baby that I abandoned. I didn’t mean to keep you. I’m so sorry.”32

Mary’s sobs slowly quietened and then she looked down at her lap.  At last, the darning was finished and she took the wool in two hands and with a loud snap, it broke.33