Punished: A mother’s cruelty. A daughter’s survival. A secret that couldn’t be told. (23 page)

T
he wedding day was not over yet. Far from it.

I didn’t enjoy the meal in the restaurant. I hardly had any appetite in the last couple of months of pregnancy – my stomach appeared to have shrunk as the size of my womb increased. I’d also had a strange burning sensation in my gullet all day, like indigestion or maybe a gas pain. While the others tucked in to melon with a glace cherry on top, then chicken and chips followed by chocolate gateaux, washed down with Blue Nun white wine – the irony of which didn’t escape me – I just sipped some water and moved the food around my plate.

It had been agreed that John and I would come back to stay in Shernal Green for a few months after the baby was born, just until we found our feet. Dad could drive him to college in the morning and he’d get a late bus home at the end of his shift at the metal casting works. With the money saved in rent, we hoped to save up a deposit to get a place of our own. This plan was one of the topics discussed over my wedding dinner, while Mum didn’t miss a chance to boast to Nelly about her modelling career.

‘I modelled hats for the
Daily Mirror
, you know. The photographer said I had the best profile he’d ever seen.’

I’d heard it all before. How old was that story now? I realized how it strange it was that I was now an adult, a married woman expecting a baby, with the experience of bringing her up awaiting me. For my mother, it was all over. And how much joy had it brought her? It certainly hadn’t been a joyful experience for me. But I still had a chance to make things better. Her chances were all gone.

It was quite early when we drove home but I went straight upstairs to lie down, feeling unwell. An additional single bed had been carried into my room to give John somewhere to sleep. I was curled on my side on my bed, trying to quell the nausea I was feeling when John came in and sat beside me. He leant down to kiss me and I recoiled from the smell of the wine on his breath.

‘What’s the matter?’ he slurred, and I realized he was drunk. ‘You’re my wife now. Surely I’m allowed my conjugal rights on my wedding night?’

With great effort I hauled myself up to a sitting position. ‘I’m sorry, John, I’m feeling terrible this evening. I’m just not up to it.’ I felt bad saying this. I’d almost invariably snubbed his attempts to have sex with me ever since that first time in the car.

‘What’s the bloody point of being married then, if you can’t have sex when you want it?’ I’d never heard him swear before.

‘I thought it was about making our baby legitimate.’

‘I never wanted to marry you,’ he said. ‘I could have done much better than you.’

If I hadn’t been feeling so dreadful I might have handled the situation with more tact, but instead I said, ‘Tough luck. You’ve got me now.’

‘Only because you trapped me into it. I think it was your plan all along and if I’m right, then you’re a bitch for doing it. I’m getting out of here.’ He ran out of the room and down the stairs and moments later I heard the front door slamming.

Mum came up and popped her head round the door to find me sitting crying on the side of the bed. ‘What’s going on? Where has John gone?’

‘He’s run off,’ I sobbed. ‘On our wedding night. It’s hardly a great start, is it?’

Mum folded her arms self-righteously. ‘You’ve made your bed; now you can lie in it. It’s up to you to make your marriage work and that means giving your husband what he wants so he doesn’t run off like that. Your father’s never raised his voice to me in twenty-six years of married life.’ That familiar spiteful look flashed in her eyes. ‘Of course, he loves me and John obviously doesn’t love you. You trapped him into marriage, which is not a good start. You’re going to have to shape up if you want to keep him, my girl.’

I barely slept a wink that night. John didn’t come back and I wondered if our marriage might be over before it had started. I suppose in a sense it was true that I’d trapped him into becoming a father but it took two to make a baby. If he hadn’t wanted a child he should have got himself a rubber johnny before he started messing around with me. Besides, I was fond of him in a way, fonder than I’d been of anyone else, and I hoped we could
make our marriage work. Once we had a beautiful little baby, surely we would be happy.

The Clown came to see me. ‘Be calm, child, and gather your strength. Your time is drawing near. Put all other thoughts from your head now and prepare for the physical challenge ahead.’

I was still getting painful twinges in my abdomen and a burning sensation in my gullet but it was only after the Clown’s words that I realized I was actually going into labour.

I had a certain detached curiosity as the contractions got gradually stronger and then a huge one shook my abdomen, making me feel as though my spine was going to snap. I started timing the gaps between the big contractions and found they were roughly ten minutes apart. It was only five in the morning so I didn’t like to wake Mum and Dad to ask for help. I whispered to the baby, trying to explain to her what was happening and telling her not to worry.

At half past seven I heard Dad getting up to go to the toilet and I shouted to him.

‘What is it?’ He put his head round the door.

‘I need to go to hospital,’ I said.

‘Oh my goodness!’ He disappeared and soon Mum came in to help me get dressed. ‘There’s an ambulance on the way. You be good, now. Don’t embarrass us by yelling your head off.’

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ I asked, then gasped and bent double as a contraction took hold.

‘Good grief, no. You’ll be hanging round for ages. First babies never come quickly. Just give us a call when you’re done.’

‘Will you let John know? He’s probably gone to Nelly’s.’

‘I will,’ she said, almost kindly. ‘Here, let’s get you downstairs between contractions.’

Nigel came down to wish me luck and then I was driven off on my own to Ronkswood maternity hospital. I was examined on arrival and the doctor told me I had a while to wait. I was put to bed with a jug of water on the table beside me, the curtain was pulled around, and I was pretty much left alone all day. I realized this was how I wanted it though. My little girl and I had a journey to go on together and it felt right that it was just the two of us.

The contractions continued all day, still growing in intensity, and I learned to pace myself and rest between them so that I was ready for the next one. Sometimes I managed to snooze for a few minutes but mostly I whispered to my baby and talked to the spirits, who were coming in to offer encouragement.

The doctor came to examine me about seven in the evening and gave his opinion that the baby wouldn’t be born till the following morning.

‘Try to get some sleep,’ he advised.

How on earth was I supposed to do that? I wondered. Only a man could say that to someone who was now being racked by agonizing contractions every five or six minutes.

I watched the clock and timed my contractions right through the night. At six-thirty in the morning I could feel something change internally. I felt shaky and hot and for the first time I felt an irresistible urge to push. I could feel the baby’s head pressing hard against my pelvis and I wanted to help her all I could.

‘Come on, little one,’ I whispered. ‘I’m here. Come to Mummy.’

A nurse looked in to check on me just after seven and gasped: ‘Oh my God! The baby’s on the way!’ She rushed off and returned with a doctor.

‘Why didn’t you call for help?’ he said crossly. ‘You were about to give birth on your own.’

I couldn’t speak because I was concentrating hard on moving exactly the right muscles that would help my baby into the world. Through the pain, I could somehow feel what I should be doing. All my life, I’d been developing ways of coping with pain by distancing myself from it and focusing on something else, and now my skills came into their own.

‘It’s crowning,’ the doctor said, and I felt a sharp, tearing sensation and then the feeling of the baby slipping out of me.

‘It’s a girl,’ said the nurse.

‘Samantha Anne,’ I whispered, and propped myself on my elbows to look at her. She was pink and wrinkly and her eyes were screwed tight shut so that there was a worried-looking crease in the middle of her forehead. She made a mewling noise like a little kitten. ‘Can I hold her?’

They handed her to me and I examined the wisps of blonde hair, the ears the size of cockleshells and each one of her tiny fingers and toes. I kissed her eyelids and her lips and cheeks and the crown of her head, and I held her close to my heart with our faces next to each other, breathing each other’s breath. In my head I promised to love and protect her for the rest of my life. I would cook and clean and look after her and buy her presents and do everything that was in my power to make her happy. It
was an overwhelming sensation of pure, altruistic, primal love, more powerful than anything I could have imagined. I knew in that instant that I would lay down my life to protect her if need be. She and I were going to be a unit. Together, we would make each other whole.

A
s I followed the ambulance taking my mother to hospital, I felt a mixture of shock and fear. What would happen if she died? She had lived alone for years now, and she and I were the only members of our immediate family left.

Our relationship had mellowed a little over the years, but she still took every opportunity to thwart me and denigrate me. It seemed to give her great pleasure to hurt me, even after all this time. She was no longer able to beat me or use her superior strength, so she used her sharp, malicious tongue instead.

I had grown accustomed to it, even though it still stung when she called me names and told me how ugly and useless I was. Something kept me attached to her, though. After all, she was the only mother I’d ever had, and the little child in me still craved affection from her, even if my adult self felt a mixture of anger and pity towards her. If my mother had made my childhood a torment, she herself had been constantly miserable and tormented. It was more than likely that her father had subjected her to the kind of abuse he put me through – perhaps that was why she was
not able to have children of her own. If what I suspected about her childhood and the difficulties in her marriage were true, then she had also suffered. The difference was that I had had a chance to experience happiness in my later life and she never had.

It was this pity for her total lack of understanding of the good to be found in human relationships and in love that kept me visiting her and looking after her when she became frail. Hers was a wasted, ruined life. She had tried to ruin mine, but she hadn’t succeeded.

In the years since I had left my parents’ home, my life had been transformed. There was my little daughter, Samantha, for a start. Being a mother was everything I’d dreamed it might be. I adored my perfect little baby and relished every moment of her childhood, even when she screamed all night and needed constant care and attention. I realized that I’d had love packed up tight inside me for years, with nowhere for it to go. Now I had someone who needed me completely, and I poured the love out unconditionally. I wanted her to have what I’d been deprived of. I could not have stood looking at her baby pictures and seeing Samantha gazing out, looking like I had done – worried, uncomfortable, scared and unwanted.

The birth of my daughter marked the end of my childhood. After that, I knew real happiness for the first time in my life. I was able to shut away the things that had happened to me and concentrate on the future, where life would surely be better. I had little to do with Mum – I was so busy and so bound up in my own life, a life that finally seemed worth living.

My marriage to John was, sadly, not to last. We tried hard to make it work but after four years, we realized that
we could not overcome our problems. Our marriage had not been based on mutual love and trust and even though we did our best, it was the right thing to part. We divorced with a sense of sadness but with no regrets.

The spirits were right when they said that something wonderful was about to come into my life. I was twenty-two when I met a fantastic man named Bob. We fell in love and had two children together – Natalie, born in 1979, and Richard, born in 1980. He had three kids already, so my twenties and early thirties were dominated by being a mum to six children altogether.

One day in 1974, I had the phone call I had been dreading. My wonderful big brother, Nigel, had died in his sleep from an epileptic fit during the night, just as the spirits had predicted he would. Over the years, I had tried to forget what the spirits had said about his death and hoped against hope that they were wrong – but they had told the truth. Nigel’s entire life had been marred by his severe epilepsy. He was never able to leave home, and although he continued to work at Dad’s electro-plating company, he never had girlfriends or a social life. He was a wonderful uncle to Samantha, though – he adored her and visited once a week to play silly games and laugh with her. He was just twenty-four years old when he died and I was desolate. Life was never the same again without Nigel in it and I missed my brother dreadfully.

Losing Nigel made me think again about where I came from and who my true family were. In 1980, I decided to try and trace my birth mother, the woman who had given me
up thirty years before. Without a birth or adoption certificate, I didn’t know where to start. All I had was a piece of paper saying that Mum and Dad had changed my name to Vanessa Annette Casey when I was six months old. Then, one day, the name Susan Langman came to me. I had seen it on a certificate in Mum’s room once and had asked her about it, but she just snatched the paper away and told me to keep my nose out of things that didn’t concern me.

I went to the Birmingham Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths and requested a birth certificate for Susan Langman, born on 3 March 1950. Sure enough, one was duly delivered. So that was my birth name. The mother’s name shown on it was José Olmen Langman and she lived at an address just round the corner from our old home in Bentley Heath.

Several things struck me as odd about this. Would Mum and Dad really have been allowed to adopt from someone who lived so close to home? Did they know her? Wasn’t it more usual for adoptions to be from some distance away so there was no possibility of the child and its real mother meeting? Besides that, I had always thought of José as a Spanish man’s name. Lastly, there was no father identified, although presumably this was not uncommon for babies born out of wedlock.

I went to visit the address on the certificate but there was no answer. A next-door neighbour told me that José Langman had died several years before. When I asked if José had ever had any child who had been adopted, the neighbour was mystified. ‘I never heard of any children,’ she said, ‘but I can give you her married name if you like.’

With José’s married name, I tracked down her husband and managed to arrange a meeting. He was startled when
I showed him my birth certificate – it was certainly his wife who was named on it, but to his certain knowledge, she couldn’t have been pregnant at the time indicated. ‘José didn’t have a baby in March 1950. We were engaged then, we’d been courting for two years and we got married in May 1950. I would certainly have noticed if she’d been pregnant.’

I came away convinced he’d told me the truth.

That evening I phoned Dad, but he was extremely unforthcoming when I asked about my real mother, telling me he didn’t remember her name. I could hear my mother in the background, saying that I should stop poking around in things that didn’t concern me. There was no point in dragging up the past.

I seemed to have reached a dead end.

Gradually the people who linked me to my childhood began to disappear. In 1993 Aunt Gilly, my rescuing angel who had listened to me when I most needed help and stopped Grandpa Pittam’s abuse, died. Then, to my great grief, Dad was diagnosed with cancer in 1994. His battle with it was short but brave. I did everything I could to help him through it, visiting him at the hospital every day, sitting by his bedside to chat to him and cheer him up as best I could. He died in my arms. In my adult years, we’d become close friends, putting the past and our disagreements behind us. By mutual consent, we didn’t discuss what had happened in my childhood – some things were too painful for either of us to admit to the other or to talk about openly. I was just happy that we had a chance to
enjoy something of the normal father-and-daughter relationship that had been denied us for so long. When he died, I was devastated.

It was very hard to come to terms with Dad’s death. I felt so alone without him, despite Bob and the children. It was as though my safety net had been snatched from beneath me. I missed our chats and his vast general knowledge and his good-natured view of the universe. More than that, I realized that I had to admit to myself how culpable he had been for the things that had happened to me, and to forgive him for it. He had been wilfully blind to my situation for many years and so, in a way, he had acquiesced to it. He was never able to talk to me about what I’d gone through or why. He couldn’t explain why he’d left me alone with the person who most wanted to harm me.

I knew that he must have tried to protect himself from the truth about the woman he’d married – but it was hard to understand how he could have removed himself from her orbit and left me in it. I needed to make my peace with Dad, and I tried to do that after he’d died, wishing we had been able to talk openly and honestly while he was still here on earth. It was a comfort that he visited me in spirit many times to guide me – he always asked me to find forgiveness in my heart, saying ‘Better to forgive than to hate’.

Dad also took with him the answers to the many questions I had wanted to ask him about where I came from and what lay behind the events in his marriage. It was then that I realized that if I wanted answers, I would have to find them myself.

In 1997 I travelled to Canada to visit Dad’s big sister Audrey, who had emigrated there in the late 1940s after getting married to a Canadian airman. His brother, Graham, had followed a few years later, and both were still living out there.

It was a strange experience that answered some questions and revealed yet more unexplained mysteries.

Uncle Graham greeted me with a bear hug and the same amiable twinkle and warm smile as Dad’s. During the course of our meeting, he said something that unsettled me.

We were talking about Gilly and Dad and how much we missed them, when I mentioned that Mum seemed to be doing well since Dad died: her health was still good and she enjoyed reading magazines to pass the time. Graham didn’t comment, so I asked, ‘Are you in touch with her?’

‘In touch with her!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wouldn’t piss on the woman if she caught fire. I was only aware of some of what she put you through but I heard tales from Audrey and Gilly that made me physically sick. The woman should have been locked up.’

I was shocked. ‘I didn’t realize you knew.’

‘We all knew things weren’t right and we feel guilty that we didn’t do more, but it’s hard to interfere in your brother’s family without causing a huge rift. In retrospect we should have done.’

So the family had known after all. Did that make it better, or worse?

Then I visited Aunt Audrey, who was eighty-four and the spitting image of Nan Casey, with silver hair, glasses and a kindly face. Once again, several strange things emerged from our meeting.

Audrey hadn’t seen me for well over forty years and she exclaimed loudly when she saw me, ‘Oh my goodness! Just look at you!’

‘What is it?’ I asked, slightly alarmed by her tone.

She seemed genuinely stunned. ‘I don’t believe it. Who would have thought?’

‘What?’ I asked again, but she wouldn’t explain.

As we chatted, I helped Audrey to prepare some tea and, as I arranged cups and saucers on a tray, she exclaimed again, ‘Where on earth did you get that ring?’

I was wearing a pretty ring with an emerald surrounded by tiny diamonds. ‘Mum gave it to me just after Dad died,’ I explained.

‘Did she say where it came from?’

‘No. Just that it was a family ring.’ It occurred to me that I’d never seen Mum wearing it. I vaguely remembered her saying that it was an unlucky ring.

‘That was Margery’s. Did you know that Derrick was engaged to a woman called Margery when he met your mum? Well, this was her engagement ring. Muriel bowled him over and he broke it off with Margery, so she gave the ring back.’

‘Margery Wyatt?’ I asked, startled, and Audrey nodded.

‘I didn’t know she had been engaged to Dad. I met her a few times at the Pear Tree Lodge when Dad and I stopped for a drink during our walks. She was very kind to me.’

‘Did you indeed?’ Audrey kept staring at me, as if trying to figure me out. ‘Her father was the publican there. I’m surprised you met her, though.’

‘Don’t tell Mum, will you? Dad always said not to mention it.’

‘I bet he did,’ Audrey muttered. I assumed she meant that Mum would have been upset about Dad having a drink with his ex-fiancée.

I carried the tea tray through to the sitting room and the conversation turned to other matters, but I sensed that there were many things that weren’t being said.

At five o’clock, there was a visitor: Audrey’s daughter Deanne arrived. I’d never met my cousin before and as we laid eyes on each other, I gasped and she stopped dead in her tracks. I was looking at a woman just four months younger than me who was almost my mirror image: the blue eyes, the nose, the shape of the face, our height and build were all identical. When she smiled, I recognized my own smile. We had similar hairstyles and, in a bizarre coincidence, she was even wearing the same white anorak with yellow stripes on the sleeves that I had. Only her Canadian accent was different.

‘Hello, cousin.’ Deanne spoke first. ‘You look familiar!’

‘You too,’ I said as we hugged. ‘Isn’t that peculiar?’

We looked round at Audrey, who said nothing.

When Deanne took her anorak off, I saw that she had the same curvy figure as me.

‘How is it possible that we look so alike when we’re not blood relatives?’ I asked, but Audrey wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. She seemed uncomfortable whenever family matters came up in conversation.

‘Tell me more about Margery,’ I asked over dinner. ‘What did she do after Dad broke up with her? Did she find someone else?’

‘No, she never married as far as I know. Derrick broke her heart, I’m afraid. She worked as a postmistress and lived on her own near her father’s pub and wouldn’t have
anything to do with other men who might have been interested in her. She was a lovely, gentle soul.’

‘Why did Dad choose Mum instead of her all those years ago?’

‘Who knows? In my opinion he made a huge mistake, but you know how men are – their heads are easily turned by a pretty face, and your mother was a great beauty.’

‘I thought Mum was a friend of yours.’

‘Yes, she was. Still is, in a way. We write to each other every couple of months. But I wish I’d never introduced her to Derrick because she didn’t make him happy. He’d have been better off …’ Her voice trailed away and she was lost in thought for a minute.