Children in Her Shadow

Sir Keith Pearson is in all senses British. He has spent more than thirty years working in the health sector in England, Europe and the Far East. Keith received a Knighthood in Her Majesty the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in June 2010 for services to healthcare.

Keith has a portfolio career that spans many sectors including healthcare but now he has realised a lifelong ambition to write. His vivid dialogue and a writing style that draws in the reader, allows him to tell a challenging story in his first novel,
Children In Her Shadow
.

A second novel, Rebecca’s Diary is well advanced and should be in print within months.

To my wife Chris, thank you for your encouragement and support

I would like to acknowledge and thank the many people from south Wales and Blackpool who responded to my requests for assistance with research. Their many anecdotes and insights have helped me to bring first hand experiences and knowledge to the book.

I would also like to thank my fellow Tanglin Club members for their insistence that the reading room should remain a quiet place for reading and in my case writing. More than half the book was written at a small writing desk in this peaceful setting in that wonderful city-state of Singapore.

the end of a journey…. and now you are at peace

There can be few sadder sights than those of people gathered around a graveside consumed by grief and in tears. This early October morning in the millennium year of two thousand, beside a church on a hill side in South Wales was no different. Almost as though to complete the sad picture of mourners comforting each other, a fine misty drizzle fell and a light breeze chilled the air. This small piece of earth with its simple headstone and touching words written six years earlier was the final resting place of Ruth Dervla O’Connor. It was also to be the end of a journey to find her for three of her children who she had not seen for more than fifty years.

As, Charlotte, Maria and Robert, touched the black granite headstone, with its simple words encapsulating both a life of great love and a parting that brought such sorrow to a family, they felt they touched again the mother they had never known.

What they had discovered along their journey to this graveside rested heavy on their minds, as did the realisation that they would never look into the eyes of their mother or feel the comfort of her embrace. Maria laid a small simple wreath on the grave, stood, and without a word said, put her arms around Robert, and Charlotte. Their private thoughts were of what might have been had they found their mother earlier and been able to be a part of her life.

The story of this complex woman, whose life was given to children and equally was hidden from them, will be seen by some as shocking and by others as a tragedy.

Ruth Dervla O’Connor was soon to be born at the family home in Senghenydd, south Wales on this ninth day of August in the year nineteen twenty three. Ruth’s mother and father were Irish and had moved to Wales at the end of the First World War in search of work. Her mother, Maeve an old looking twenty three year old was a fearsome woman of large build whose looks gave ample warning to the brave that they should not trifle.

Darragh her father, a colliery worker from the age of fourteen was the same age as Maeve, but the years of mining had ground the black dust into the lines of his face making him look older than his years. He was stereotypical with the build of a jockey, small, slim, and in so far as Maeve was concerned, he was understanding and knew when to speak which was rarely. When it came to the children and any task around the home, he did nothing. He regarded child bearing and child upbringing in the same way, that they were matters that only women could manage always falling back on his favourite phrase “that’s women’s work.”

Darragh had an unpredictable and violent temper which coupled with a love of the drink was a potent mix. For Darragh, fighting and drinking were two things he did exceptionally well and these were generally combined talents.

Darragh’s home was owned by the colliery company and was provided for miners who worked at the nearby mines. The two-up-two-down terraced
tied
cottage perched on the side of a hill, though small, was no better or worse than the homes of hundreds of other similar miners who lived locally. “A roof over your head, that’s what I work for” Darragh O’Connor would tell his family, and how true that was. Miner’s wages were pitifully low providing enough to feed the family and little more.

The small valley village of Senghenydd was a sad place for Ruth to be brought into the world. The people of the village had learnt to live with disaster and death on a biblical scale in the coalfields of the Welsh valleys over many years, and had also lost many on the battlefields of France in the First World War.

Death descended upon this valley in May nineteen hundred and one, when an explosion deep below ground rocked the village of Senghenydd and in a single moment, eighty one miners, some children, some fathers, others grandfathers lost their lives below ground in what became a precursor to a much greater disaster twelve years later. In that disaster, in nineteen thirteen, four hundred and thirty six men died in an explosion at the Universal Colliery Senghenydd, one of the worst mining disasters in the history of the British coalfield.

Mining ended in the village though some of the mining families remained, those whose husbands or sons were not on shift that day, but in nineteen twenty three when Ruth was to enter the world, many of the Senghenydd families provided men for mines several miles away. The nineteen hundred and thirteen tragedy left a profound sense of loss in the village, which was a mining village with no mine and a community with no heart.

The cottage where Maeve was to give birth was already home to two children, John who was four and Michael thirteen months. Maeve knew that another mouth to feed would stretch what little the family had and to augment the weekly wage, she would take in washing and sewing, working long hours for a pittance. This was a competitive business and throughout her pregnancy she continued the backbreaking work, fearing that if she stopped her few loyal customers would never come back. And, when the labour pains became so regular that Maeve feared giving birth in the back kitchen of her cottage, she simply asked a neighbour to call the midwife.

Motherhood, in these small communities was a rite of passage for the newly married, a mark of achievement bestowed upon those of child bearing age by the matriarchs: Your first-born would earn you the novice award; the second child merited a distinction and the third onwards, the Empire award for outstanding achievement. With each child came the right to move up the hierarchy of experienced and distinguished mothers. A
novice
with only one child could not even hope to enter the street corner conversation when advice was being given to a nervous first time mother-to-be. It was only when a woman had given birth to three or more children that she became an automatic entrant into the inner circle of
real mothers
. Such mothers had earned the right to tell of the horrors of childbirth, to relive every second, minute and hour of labour and to describe with chilling clarity the use of unimaginable devices with which to deliver a mother of her stubborn child. And so it was that Maeve was to enter the higher ranks of motherhood, that is, once she had completed this small matter in hand.

Childbirth had little dignity; it involved a midwife if you were lucky, and generally required at least two of the neighbours whose role was deliverance with the greatest speed and the minimum of fuss. These same women, often well into their sixties and seventies would one day bring a life into the world and the next be called upon to lay-out a neighbour who had died. This
was
woman’s work and there was little or no place for sentimentality.

Ruth’s arrival brought joy into the heart of Darragh her father. Though she was the third child, she was a girl and Darragh saw that as a demonstration of his manhood, a matter to be very proud of and, of course, a reason for a drink. Drink was to feature greatly in the life of Ruth and her other siblings both as a mark of great celebration and of drunken and often violent domestic incidents.

But today was a happy day. Darragh, still black with coal dust from his shift below ground simply looked at the child and marvelled at her beauty. The contrast could hardly be more marked, the whites of his eyes, his glistening white teeth and his coal dust blackened features set against Ruth’s ivory white skin and dark brown eyes.

“So what’s she to be called?” he shouted to his wife Maeve who by now was stoically back at her dolly tub in the back yard attempting to wash clothes that should have been washed and dried hours ago. “Ruth Dervla” she said and that was that. No discussion, no options, and certainly, no debate. Darragh often mused upon the origin of the names but never thought to question, that was not his place and my goodness he knew his place.

Ruth spent the first weeks of her life close to her mother, often wrapped in a shawl secured tightly to her chest
Welsh fashion
as it was known locally. Her bed for the first few months was the second drawer of a large chest of drawers that stood against the bedroom wall in her parent’s room. Ruth’s few months in this snug secure little makeshift bed was to be the only time until her late teens when she didn’t share a bed with one or more members of the family. Life was hard for her parents even though there were two sources of income, miner’s wages were low. Growing up in an ever-growing family became an increasing strain as each year Ruth’s mother gave birth to yet another child.

In all, Ruth became one of nine children. Each was unplanned but always loved in that matter-of-fact way that so characterised the ways of hard working families here in the valleys.

Maeve rarely touched or embraced her children other than when they were obviously distressed and then she would simply say, “Come to Mam and have a cwtch.” That affection lasted until the next child cried or the next chore needed doing. Never would affection of any kind be visible in front of Darragh nor would he invite or respond to the children’s need for attention or love. But to Ruth this seemed to be the conduct of all families she knew and so to her became the norm.

Words were few in the O’Connor family and conversation seemed limited to short meaningful and oft repeated phrases. Neither Darragh nor Maeve was well educated so it was no surprise that the English language was rarely searched for words with additional meaning to enrich a sentence. Darragh seldom spoke to his children but when he did, he relished the attention given to his few words. He always raised his voice when speaking to any of his children seeming to believe that this gave authority and status. Sadly, it did neither.

It was rare for Darragh to call his children by name and Ruth often wondered if he actually remembered them. Occasionally, he would attempt a name but after reeling off two or three incorrect names, he simply gave up. “You” he would bellow, “you, get my shirt”, and dutifully the child upon whom his eyes had fallen at that time would rush away and fetch the warm shirt from the drying rail by the fire. But then came round two of his ever more cruel games with his children. “The bloody thing isn’t aired,” he would bellow and with that, his hand would strike whatever part of the child’s body was still in range.