Children in Her Shadow (35 page)

Ruth’s evenings were spent sitting on the benches on the promenade people watching, looking for the figure of a teenager who might be one of hers or an adult she may recognise. The person she didn’t seek out was cousin Moira who through her research she discovered still lived in the same house. Somehow, whilst Ruth was here to discover she was not prepared to confront the ghosts of the past.

There were many names she recognised in the register and to pay a call upon them might have dug up too many painful memories or might have placed Ruth too close to people who might still be in touch with Edward.

On her last evening Ruth made her all too familiar journey back to the guest house. She was a lonely figure on the busy pavement as she saw again the sign for the gypsy she had visited with Mary Morgan during the war years. She recalled the now prophetic words of the palmist:
“In your life you will have the blessing of many children but you will endure lifelong sadness.”
She remembered the hushed tones in which the gypsy said, “
Your name is Ruth … and I can see the life you have yet to live and I warn you now that you will go through your life seeing children in your shadow
.” And she shivered as she recalled the final warning: “
Ruth, you will walk many paths in your life but before the sun sets every day, you will see those children in your shadow
.”

As Ruth drew level with the entrance to the gypsy, resisting the inner temptation to go in she heard someone call, “Ruth come on let’s go in.” She turned and looked around but there was no one there, just the distant memory of a youthful Mary.

As the years rolled by, Ruth made the same journey on many, many occasions, searching and not finding, hoping and having those hopes dashed. These journeys were certainly not cathartic but they fulfilled what to Ruth became a pilgrimage of hope and a chance, perhaps a last chance to become as close as she could to, Charlotte, Maria and her beloved Michael. As each visit ended and she returned to her home in south Wales, a home in which few of her children now lived, her hopes of one day seeing her three children from her past was fading.

Throughout the eighty’s and nineties, her family met their own soul mates and married. They moved out of the house, some to live locally, and others to live in places throughout England and Wales. Each left a piece of themselves behind in that house and each would rush home at the very mention that their mother needed something or that she was unwell.

And sadly, Ruth’s health was deteriorating, the result of years of smoking, raising her many children and running the business. She concealed the news for many weeks but the cancer was aggressive and it became clear to those of her children who lived nearby that their mother was very poorly.

It was in December nineteen ninety three when the devastating news that Ruth was suffering from lung cancer descended upon the family. The ripple started when one of her children was told the news by Ruth in confidence and in confidence she told another a sister and brother and by the Christmas of that year the whole family, children and grandchildren knew that Ruth was dying. All of Ruth’s children along with their spouses and their children descended upon Bridgend to celebrate Christmas all knowing but not saying that this might be Ruth’s last.

In the comings and goings over the Christmas and January and February each of her children who were taking their turn to stay at the house to care for Ruth, pursued the same line of questions, begging their mother to open the book of her life and tell them more of the snippets she had revealed when they were small. But Ruth jealously guarded those facts that might enable the fragments of her life to be pieced together to create a fuller and more revealing picture.

She spoke of being a post mistress but failed to mention her heroics in Cardiff during the war. She mentioned her ‘bit for the war effort’ but omitted to reveal that she held down a responsible job as an aircraft inspector on the Wellington Bomber production line. She spoke of dear friends she had lost touch with and she spoke of her love in her youth of dancing. But her greatest secret her marriage and her three other children, sisters and a brother to these children was kept locked in her own memory.

Throughout February and March Ruth’s health deteriorated with her doctor simply providing palliative care and medication. The family was alerted that Ruth had little time left and one by one they gathered at her bedside, a vigil that was to last three weeks. During that time she drifted in and out of lucidness mumbling often incomprehensible words and names. But the names she repeated the most were Charlotte, Maria and Michael. Time and again she would cry out their names to the confusion and surprise of the gathered children.

Ruth’s torment continued day after day as her body weakened. As the morphine eased the physical symptoms so the mental pain became worse enabling Ruth to relive her life over and over again. She pictured Charlotte, Maria and Michael as children and her question that was never answered was, “What became of my children have they forgiven me?”

Ruth would never hear the answer to her own question but to complete Ruth’s story in the hours before her death, it is necessary to return to October nineteen forty eight when Ruth last saw Edward.

Having travelled to south Wales and warned Ruth never to return to the north of England or to ever try to contact him or the family, Edward returned to Eastbrook Farm. His children were with foster families placed there in the May of that year following the death of Ellen their grandmother.

Edward and his father were both preparing to leave the farm house and find homes away from the memories. The conspiracy of silence entered into by the Carmichael family had withstood its greatest test following Aunt Dorothy’s discovery that Ruth had given birth to Edward’s fourth child. But relationships between Edward and his family were never going to be the same again.

Edward rented a small flat in Preston and by December nineteen forty eight he had moved there. His new home in the Deepdale area of Preston meant that he was now living a matter of minutes from where Sarah lived. Their relationship had gone from strength to strength and their long range plans to marry were getting much nearer.

Edward had filed for divorce in April nineteen forty seven on the grounds of the desertion of his wife Ruth and needed to wait the statutory three years before a divorce could be granted. The illusion that he had not seen his wife in that time was one that Sarah and the authorities had bought into, but Edward and his family knew different and were steadfastly holding the line of secrecy with Edward.

Edward’s children were still in the care of foster families, Charlotte and Maria were with a loving and caring couple in Inglewhite and Michael, whose name had been changed to Robert by Sarah and Edward, was with a Catholic foster family in Preston. Edward had not seen his children since they were taken into care but maintained an understanding of their wellbeing through the social services department’s regular contact with him.

Edward had left Vickers in Blackpool and had taken a position with a local entrepreneur as Chief Designer in the development and early local production of a small family car. The enterprise was run on a shoe string but produced employment for a handful of committed and dedicated engineers and fabricators. As the car went into pre-production, Sarah spent many hours with Edward helping with the design and sewing of the upholstery of the car seats. To the world around Edward and Sarah they were the perfect couple, deeply in love, young and without a care in the world.

Those who knew them rather better and were aware that Edward’s children were in the care of social services were seen less frequently and ultimately were abandoned. For those who were closer friends there was a great championing of their planned wedding and Sarah was continually portrayed as the saint who would enable Edward to bring his family back together once they were married. Indeed, Sarah herself began to see her pre-destiny to save the children as one shaped by God himself. But her inner secret was that she disliked children and simply saw Charlotte, Maria and Robert as part of the baggage she would need to take on if she was to marry Edward.

In the April of nineteen forty nine, at the age of two Robert was removed from foster care and placed into the care of a Catholic run children’s home in Preston. In the May of the same year the foster parents who were caring for Charlotte and Maria informed the social services office that they were finding it difficult to cope with the two girls who were by now five and approaching four years of age. The couple offered to adopt Charlotte something that Edward could not agree. He was however prepared to agree to them adopting Maria but it was always Charlotte that they wanted. This precipitated the removal of both the girls and their placement into separate Catholic run children’s homes in the June of nineteen forty nine.

Charlotte was sent to an orphanage in Preston and Maria to one in Lancaster. It was Edward that influenced the separation of the children and the recommendation that they too should be placed in the care of Catholic priests and nuns, very much influenced by their recent baptism into the Catholic faith.

Edward was obsessed by keeping secret his past life with Ruth and was convinced that if Charlotte and Maria were placed together they would openly talk about their mother who they had been told was dead. The social services department and the children’s homes were very much aware that Ruth was certainly not dead but had never been given the information they needed to trace her.

Once placed into the children’s homes Edward and Sarah would visit each child separately about once every two months. There were the rare occasions when Charlotte and Robert were taken out together but these were extremely infrequent. The children were becoming strangers to each other and for Charlotte the sibling relationship she had begun to establish with Maria was slowly fading as they both adapted to their new circumstances and their new surroundings.

By the April of nineteen fifty, Edward was on course to receive the Decree Nisi, the preliminary to the dissolution of his marriage to Ruth. Well prepared plans for his marriage to Sarah in the June were being dusted off and invitations to the wedding were prepared.

On Monday seventeenth of April Edward received the Decree Nisi meaning that barring a complete catastrophe he would be granted the Decree Absolute on Wednesday thirty first of May.

Wedding invitations were sent to family and friends and as planned, the Decree Absolute, issued in the High Court of Justice was received on thirty first of May. The grounds for the divorce were that since the celebration of their marriage in nineteen forty three Ruth had ‘
deserted
‘ Edward,
‘without cause for a period of at least three years preceding the presentation of the petition’.
This would have required Edward to have had no contact with Ruth in that period, which, with the conception of Huw in December nineteen forty seven, and his trip to south Wales in nineteen forty eight was a betrayal of Ruth, Sarah and himself.