In Her Mothers' Shoes (13 page)

‘But that’s not fair!’ Her stomach was lurching. For a moment, she thought she might pass out; she gripped the wooden arm of the chair.

‘What do you mean?’

She didn’t know what to say. She recalled the moment with absolute clarity now. Her father had produced the form, already filled in with her name and address, and told her it was her application for admission to Fitzgibbon House; she’d signed without bothering to read it. What a fool!

‘I . . . I didn’t realise. . .’

‘No? Are you saying that’s not your signature?’

‘Yes, it’s my signature.’

She handed the piece of paper back to Matron and stood to go.

‘I think you’ll find you’ve made the right decision,’ Matron said, indicating Lizzie’s signature under the agreement to give her baby up. ‘It always works out for the best this way.’ She looked up at Lizzie over her glasses. ‘You might not feel that way now, but you’ll be glad in the end. You’ll see.’

Lizzie fled without looking back, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. How could she have been so stupid? She was furious with herself. How could she give in so easily? You always do that, she scolded herself. You come up with all these clever ideas but as soon as someone pours cold water on them, you capitulate and give in. You’re just spineless and a pushover. Like with Peter. Putty in his hands. A pushover.

‘You poor thing,’ Christine said, holding out her arms for Lizzie as she burst through the door. ‘They always win.’

‘I went in there absolutely determined, but somehow she took all the fight out of me.’ She let Christine put her arms round her, hardly feeling her touch.

‘It’s like the stakes are loaded against you the minute you walk in the door of Bleak House.’

‘They were certainly loaded against Pearl,’ Lizzie said grimly.

They both looked across at the empty bed. It had remained empty since Pearl’s miscarriage just over two months ago. Lizzie had retrieved the knitting needles from the laundry the following day and buried them in the big rubbish drum out the back; she hadn’t told anyone about them, not even Jessie, though she seemed to have guessed anyway.

No one had arrived at the maternity home of a similar gestation to replace Pearl. This had been a relief – it would have been impossible to admit anyone else to their tight-knit dormitory group, no matter how accommodating they were.

Lizzie went over to Pearl’s bed and picked up the pillow, stripped of its cover, bared to its ticking, and thought back to that awful afternoon when Pearl had hidden herself away in the warmth of the laundry.

She’d never forget the look on Pearl’s face. She’d expected despair at the loss of her baby, but instead, mixed with the obvious pain and exhaustion, there was something approaching relief, as if she were glad it was over. Pearl had been trying to say something, but Lizzie hadn’t been able to decipher it.

Christine had told them how she’d helped carry Pearl across to the hospital, and how nice Matron had been to her afterwards, kindly even, offering her a hot chocolate with as much sugar as she wanted and explaining that Pearl would go home in a few days to her family up north.

‘Her father is coming down to get her. So good of him to look after his daughter like that,’ Matron had said to Christine.

‘Yes, I bet,’ Jessie snorted when Christine relayed this.

Lizzie didn’t say anything; she knew exactly what Jessie meant, had eventually worked it out for herself. She was doing her best to block it from her mind.

Matron’s kindness had evaporated by Christmas morning: she insisted they get up at dawn as usual and herded them off to chapel. It was cold and bleak.

At home, there had always been a little tableau near the altar of the baby Jesus in his crib with Mary and Joseph behind him and fluffy white sheep nearby in the straw. She’d always taken it for granted, thought it was a bit babyish even. Now she missed it.

When her mother rang later on Christmas Day, she didn’t say a word about Pearl’s miscarriage: her parents wouldn’t want to know.

And she certainly hadn’t told her mother in her weekly phone call that she’d tried to persuade Matron to let her keep the baby.

Lizzie picked up the pillow on Pearl’s empty bed. ‘I probably would have been a lousy mother anyway,’ she said resignedly.

‘One day, you’ll make a wonderful mother,’ Meg said.

‘One day, maybe,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t want to go through this again for a long time.’

‘I’m going to find a husband and have another baby as soon as I can,’ Christine said. ‘I’ve loved being pregnant and I know I’d be a good mother. I feel as if I’m cut out for it.’

‘You wait ‘til you have it. You might not be so keen after you’ve been through the birth.’

‘You always say that, Jessie. I don’t think it will be nearly as bad as you make out.’

‘You wait and see.’

‘What are you going to do, Lizzie? You’ve never said.’

Lizzie thought for a moment. She pictured going back home, the awful boat journey, her mother meeting her off the ferry. Would her father be there? Would Penny? Perhaps it would be a joyous reunion. She could live at home, help around the house for a bit, but then what? She couldn’t go back to school – all the girls would have left and gone onto Teachers’ College and Secretarial College, some even to the university. She would be too late for this year’s intake.

What
could
she do? Not much. She’d wanted to be an architect, but without finishing her final year at school that would be out of the question. Her mother had suggested working in an architect’s office, learning the ropes, perhaps being a draughtswoman one day. A bit of a come-down from her hopes and dreams of creating the most beautiful homes the town had ever seen, homes on stilts, homes that blended into their natural surroundings like the ones she’d seen in a library book about Frank Lloyd Wright, or designing offices and government buildings that people would be proud to work in.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Work in an office I suppose.’

‘You should go back to school and finish your exams.’ Jessie came round her side of the bed and stood facing her squarely, her arms folded. ‘You could get a degree if you were prepared to start over.’

‘I don’t think I’ve the courage to go back to school. I’d be a year older than everyone else. They’d all know why, for sure.’

‘Go to a different school then. You don’t have to go to a posh school, you know, to get a good education.’ Anahira grinned at her. She’d teased her many times about going to a private school, having been sent to board at one herself for a year. At the end of that year, she’d refused to return.

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ She managed a weak smile.

She couldn’t wait to get out of this place and start her life again, she would rather be anywhere else than here, but she’d never had such close friends. Julia didn’t know half as much about her as these girls. Yet after she’d had her baby, she’d never see them again.

‘You’ve been so good to me. I’m going to miss you when this is over.’

‘We can keep in touch.’ Jessie sat on the end of the bed.

‘We can write,’ Meg said. ‘I’m good at letters. There’s not much else to do in the backblocks of Geraldine.’

‘There’s not much to do here in the evenings either,’ Jessie said.

‘It’s like our lives have been put on hold for five months, like time has stood still while back home, our families have been carrying on as usual without us.’ Lizzie picked up her photo frame and studied her family. Penny would be seven by the time she got home, Jerry would be in the upper sixth, his last year at school, and her mother would be the same as ever, busy with her meetings, busy in the kitchen. Life had gone on without her. What if they’d stopped noticing she wasn’t around? Would they care if she never came home again?

‘We
must
write. I will if you will.’

They promised. They swapped addresses.

As Lizzie wrote down hers, it occurred to her that her father might not want her staying at home, at least not for long. Where would she go then?

Christine was the first of the five of them to be due, but she was not the first to be delivered. Anahira was, her waters breaking just as she was getting out of the communal shower.

Her squeals were soon echoed by the others.

‘You lucky thing.’ Lizzie was standing in the next shower and paid close attention to the water as it flowed towards the drain, expecting it to be different. But the puddles of water all looked the same – clear, with a slight soap scum. ‘How can you tell your waters have broken? Where have they gone?’

‘You’ll know when it happens.’ Anahira pulled a face. ‘It’s like going to the toilet standing up.’

Lizzie winced at the thought. ‘Eew.’

‘I’d give anything for it to happen to me,’ Christine said. ‘I was supposed to be first.’

‘Good timing, Anahira,’ Meg joked. ‘It’s a lot easier to clean up in the shower– and a lot more private.’

‘I’m glad it didn’t happen in the dining hall. It would be so embarrassing.’

‘Or in chapel. Imagine what Miss Mayhew would say!’ Lizzie added.

‘I suppose I’d better go and tell her,’ Anahira said.

‘Yes, you’d better. But you haven’t had any contractions yet, so I wouldn’t hurry,’ Jessie said.

‘Do they start soon?’

‘They should. But there’s no guarantee,’ Christine said. ‘The books were a bit vague about that.’

‘She’s right,’ Jessie said. ‘That’s the thing about babies - you never can be sure when they’re coming.’

Anahira’s contractions started at breakfast, but with the rush to clear up the kitchen and prepare the midday meal, they didn’t notice she wasn’t there any more. She just slipped away to have her baby without telling them.

Lizzie didn’t see Anahira again until she came up to the dormitory to collect her things. For five days, the girls had spoken of little else and they besieged her with questions as soon as she came through the door. But Anahira didn’t want to talk about it. 

‘It’s awful,’ was all she’d say.

Lizzie felt a flutter in her stomach, like she imagined a contraction might be – a gripping, sickening feeling. But it wasn’t a contraction. She recognised it as fear.

‘Did they let you see the baby?’

‘Yes. I saw him.’ There was no life behind her eyes; her expression was unreadable. She turned away and started to pack.

Lizzie started to say something; she wanted to ask what it was like, seeing your own baby after all this time waiting. Was he beautiful? What colour was his hair? And what was it like giving birth? Was it as painful as Jessie made out? But the constriction in the pit of her stomach warned her not to speak. Anahira was struggling not to show any emotion but Lizzie could see she was close to tears; she couldn’t bear looking at her any longer and turned away towards the others. They were pretending to be occupied with something else: Jessie started to pull hairs out of her brush; Christine returned to the book she’d been reading; Jessie fiddled with her nightgown; Meg crossed to the window and pulled at the blind tassel. Defeated, Lizzie sat on her bed and picked up the photograph of her family, staring unseeingly at the figures inside the frame.