Children in Her Shadow (20 page)

That evening Edward arrived at about eight o’clock expecting to be met by a hostile reception. Instead, Ruth who was dressed in a pretty summer dress had deliberately left her hair down knowing that Edward always liked her hair like this. Ruth warmly welcomed Edward into the house embracing him as he slipped by her and into the kitchen. Ruth had created a scenario in her mind that she would be able to draw Edward back into her life by making herself so irresistible that he would abandon any thoughts of leaving her. Ruth, this naive young woman thought that she could seduce Edward and in one night resolve everything that was wrong with their marriage.

Ruth had prepared a supper of cold meat and salad which was already on the table along with a bottle of stout and two glasses. The mood of the evening was flirtatious and reflective as Ruth moved the discussion towards their courtship and their first night of love together. Edward, on the other hand retained a sense of focus upon Ruth’s plans to stay at Bowland Moss Farm as he put it “for a week or so” before either moving to live with Moira or moving back to south Wales. Ruth recognised that Edward was seeing this evening as a last night together but he was also suggesting that they could remain good friends and meet occasionally. Ruth leapt upon the possibility that away from the influence of the family and without the pressure of the children she and Edward might start again through nights of fun and love.

With that Ruth invited Edward to stay for the night and, at least for that night, love returned again to their relationship as they made love and reflected upon their good times together. By the following morning though, Edward’s mood had changed and he was eager to leave the house saying that Ruth could stay at Bowland Moss Farm no more than a week but that she must not disturb the equilibrium that had been established for the children by visiting them without firstly asking him.

As Edward slipped out of the house, without even a backward glance, Ruth acknowledged the truth of what she was doing. She was about to leave her two young children. She was planning to continue to deny their existence to her parents and to those who were closest to her and she was about to try to ultimately find happiness for herself in a place and with someone where this part of her life would remain locked away forever. Thus a deceit that had begun with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy was to be given a new and ever more complex dimension as a whole portion of her life was to be expunged or at best embellished so as not to reveal the self made web of deceit that Ruth was now so trapped in.

Ruth spent the next few days deciding how she was to approach her decision to leave Edward and to slowly let go of her children. She had considered an immediate move to south Wales but needed both time and a job. She left Bowland Moss Farm and moved back into Moira’s home. But Moira was blunt and uncompromising in her condemnation of Ruth’s decision to leave her children, no matter what the circumstances. Her only concession to Ruth was to swear that she would not divulge any of what had occurred to anyone in the family. However, Ruth read the signals and knew that Moira had washed her hands of her and she concluded that she should quickly look for other accommodation. Ruth had also decided to make a clean break from her association with Vickers and grasped the opportunity to take up a job she had been interviewed for as a post office manager at the Fulwood post office.

Fulwood, which lies between Preston to the south and Garstang to the north, sits on the busy A6 trunk road and was a large suburb of Preston though seen by many of its middle class residents more as a distinct suburban village. The attraction of the job, aside from the obvious one that it took Ruth back into post office work which she so enjoyed, was that the job came with accommodation. Ruth would be given the small flat above the post office and would run the sub-post office on a day to day basis on behalf of the elderly owners who owned the premises and had run the shop and business for more than three decades.

Ruth moved into the flat in the mid August and in so doing severed her relationship with Moira and Jack who had become such friends to her. The atmosphere on the day Ruth moved out of Moira’s home was frosty and a far cry from the warmth and friendship that embraced her when she moved there in nineteen forty one. To Moira, Ruth was unrecognisable and had become someone that had lost her sense of what was right and wrong and had personally lost that charming vitality that so characterised the first years of her stay.

As Ruth left that home Moira knew that the young woman who was leaving would never again cross her threshold. She knew that Ruth was attempting to rewrite her own history and that before long there would be no place in that history for someone who knew as much about Ruth and her children as she did.

Ruth’s first weeks at the post office were overseen by the owners Albert and Maud Elliot a couple in their mid sixties who were kind and considerate and keen to ensure that Ruth was settled into both the job and the flat. Ruth was quick to adjust into the work. She was friendly and chatty to Albert and Maud and very soon customers were remarking on how nice Ruth was.

But Ruth was guarded when she was asked personal questions about her family and her connections locally and this troubled Albert and Maud, not because of suspicion of dishonesty rather they speculated that she was troubled personally and they were anxious to help. Ruth’s response would always be that she had served at Vickers and lived with a cousin who she had fallen out with. She would reflect the horrors of what she saw in Cardiff during the bombings but questions about her family were always met with the same response that they were ‘living in Ireland’ and any suggestion that a young pretty woman like her should be marred was always dismissed by the comment that she preferred her work and her own company. Indeed, as the weeks passed by Ruth was seen to be the model employee in that she never went out at night, didn’t seem to entertain the company of young men and was always eager to be around the business.

This cloistered life was in contrast to the Ruth who previously enjoyed friends, dancing and company and yet it seemed to suit Ruth’s current mood. Her thoughts in the loneliness of her rooms above the post office would only be for her two children. Ruth knew the enormity of what she had done and was wracked with the pain of guilt and the fear of being found out. Ruth considered how she might slip into Goosnargh village on a day when she knew that Ellen would be there with the children and secretly snatch the chance to see them.

But as these plans were formulating in her mind, Ruth was also carefully examining her diary and was noticing that she had missed her period and she was beginning to fear that she might be pregnant. Ruth counted the weeks back to the night, the last night that she slept with Edward and that was mid July. It was now early September and as each day passed by Ruth knew that there was now no doubt that she was indeed pregnant.

In the long nights alone in her flat, Ruth’s mood changed. She became melancholy and tearful as she counted the days since she last saw her children, days that had become weeks and weeks that had now become months. Ruth was fearful that if Edward were to know that she was again pregnant he would demand that this child should also be taken from her. But she also so desperately wanted to see Charlotte and Maria.

Despite her fears Ruth decided that she must write to Edward and at least establish how the children were coping without her. Her letter was short, without revealing where she was living, she made clear to Edward that she had not returned to south Wales. She said of the children; ‘
I pine for my babies every night and as their mother I must be allowed to see them, even if you simply bring them to a park or the beach so that they can see me and so that I can hold them….please agree’
. Ruth explained in the letter the subterfuge of using a post office box number by saying that she was attempting to get on with her life and didn’t want him or the Carmichaels’ to turn up on her door step and ruin her chances of regaining a life of her own. Ruth remained in the grip of the Carmichaels even now.

The hold the Carmichael family had over Ruth was enormous and despite the evidence of Ruth now having written to Edward, as the months passed by it strengthened the case for them that Ruth was uncaring and had abandoned her children. The selective amnesia on the part of the Carmichael family that they were the innocent victims of Ruth’s voluntary departure had become a reality for them. When asked by neighbours and friends about the whereabouts of Ruth, their mantra was to say that she had suddenly, and without warning, walked out on them and her children. Ellen was cast in the role of a saint and Edward the grieving husband. The letter was never replied to by Edward though he had received it and read it.

These long nights of reflection were taking their toll on Ruth’s health and on her erstwhile friendly and pleasing demeanour. It was noticeable that Ruth was looking tired with dark rings beneath her eyes. Albert and Maud had discussed this with her and asked if she needed assistance in the shop or the post office and whenever this subject was discussed it was followed by a period when Ruth seemed happier, more attentive and eager to please.

As the weeks passed by and autumn turned to winter, Ruth was able to conceal her growing body under large frumpy winter clothes. Customers and Albert and Maud saw the small changes but most would put this down to a woman who had let herself go a little and was more interested in her work than in her personal appearance. Ruth spent her days concealing her changing shape from her employer and her customers and her nights slowly formulating her thoughts and plans for her future.

Ruth’s letter writing was now limited in the first instance to a simple change of address to her mother, Auntie Lottie and Uncle Arthur and to Mary Morgan explaining that she was pleased to have left Vickers and that what she now needed was to get back to the work she so enjoyed in the post office. Ruth maintained the illusion of a contented marriage and tried hard to conceal her mood of depression. But her mother was not to be fooled.

Ruth received a short curt and damming letter from her mother in late November explaining that she had finally managed to get the truth out of Moira who she had been corresponding with for some time worried about the evident tone of Ruth’s letters. Ruth was shocked by what her mother had to say in the letter. She wrote: ‘
You have wilfully concealed the fact that you are a mother of two children from me and your father… this will kill him. I know that you think badly of your father but in all the bad things he has ever done he would never have abandoned his children. And for me you have broken my heart, you are not the daughter I said goodbye to in England and I now disown you. You will not be welcome at my door and you will never be discussed again in my presence. God may ultimately forgive you but I cannot’.
She ended by saying
, ‘I will go to the priest tomorrow and I will confess my sin of disowning you before him and God but I will not ask for forgiveness… you are no longer my daughter’.

Ruth wept the whole day and needed to be relieved of her duties by Maud who had been summoned by an anxious customer concerned for Ruth’s wellbeing. At the close of that day, Maud went to Ruth’s flat to talk with her. As she entered the flat that had once been her home for many years Maud was immediately struck by the sparseness. The flat had been offered fully furnished but there were no personal items such as ornaments or photographs. The flat was spotlessly clean and tidy and even the kitchen had nothing out of place.

Maud sat Ruth down and asked what had upset her so much that she could not stop crying. Ruth had difficulty speaking but explained that she had received a letter from her mother that was dreadfully upsetting. Maud asked if there had been a death in the family and at that Ruth broke down completely. All she would say was that there were problems in Ireland and no more. Maud suggested that she might take some time away from her work to visit her mother but this was immediately turned down and Ruth smiled towards Maud and said, “I’m being silly and probably making too much of what I read… I will be fine tomorrow so please don’t worry.” Maud was encouraged by this and left saying to Ruth that she should feel free to talk to her at any time.

Ruth had by now accepted that Charlotte and Maria were lost to her, never quite making the connection that if she really wanted her children, even now, she would need to fight for them. Despite her mother’s letter, Ruth had convinced herself that she had not walked away from her children, rather they had been kept from her and it was this complex perception of what in part was true that allowed her to see herself as a victim rather than someone who had effectively but for reasons that were in part understandable, walked away from her children.

The further Ruth’s pregnancy progressed, the more reclusive and isolated she became. She was an exemplary employee but Albert and Maud were becoming concerned that Ruth was too lonely and too isolated. Ruth had turned down several invitations for Sunday lunch with Albert and Maud but they were determined that they would get her out of the flat into their home where they might begin to get to know this person who was becoming an indispensible part of their lives. Hearing that Ruth planned to stay alone in the flat for Christmas, they insisted that she join them at their home on Christmas Day. Ruth tried to prevaricate for several days but on discovering that it would just be the three of them at lunch, she reluctantly agreed.

Christmas Eve was a day of great pain for Ruth. She spent much of the evening and many hours of the night recalling Christmases in her childhood. She remembered that despite hardships as she was growing up, and the family’s terrible shortage of money the children would always go to bed excited at what the following day might bring. She recalled the Christmas eve of her thirteenth birthday when, after being sent to their beds the children lay awake speculating what ‘Father Christmas’ would bring. The older children protected the myth by playing along with the image of a Father Christmas who slipped down the chimney. Ruth remembered how even at the age of thirteen, she wanted to retain the magic of Christmas and so she was as excited and as drawn into the charade as anyone.