The Step Child (5 page)

There was little love at Haldane House, only practicality. However, I now know that there was some contact from my family, about which I knew nothing at the time. It was from my maternal grandmother, who had only ever shown interest in my elder half-sister Frances. Maybe the fact that Frances had a more ‘respectable’ father appealed to my Granny (ignoring the fact that he was so much older than Breda and a family member who chose to do a runner after his daughter was born). Whatever the reason, Granny Curran contacted Barnardo’s in March 1963, just a few months before I was returned to my father.

The handwritten letter from her home in Chatham reads:

Dear Sir
–

I am writing on the interest of my daughters children as I have never heard or seen my daughter since you called on me during February 1961. I would like to know if they are still in the home. I would like you to let me know as for some time before they were put in the home Frances who is now seven year’s old was staying with me for some time. I would like a welfare officer to call and let me know something about her
.

Sincerely your’s
–

Mrs J. Curran

A letter was then sent from the Regional Executive Officer of
Barnardo’s to our caseworker, in which news of us all is requested. It is from this point that our ‘little family’, with its complicated history, generates a lot of correspondence. The Regional Executive Officer believed that ‘it would be helpful if we could have a little more news to send on to Mrs Curran … We should also be interested to know whether Mr Ford has continued to keep in touch with the children, and if so, whether his wife has shown any interest.’

Within two days, there is an answer from the Chief Executive Officer.

Re: Frances Cummings, Simon Robertson and Donna Ford – at Haldane House

Thank you for your letter … concerning these children
.

All the children are well and attractive little people, especially small Donna
.

The father is not keeping much in touch these days, and now that he is married to a very young wife, and they have a newly born baby of their own, I think it is really expecting rather too much to expect him to continue to take responsibility for these three
.

I am, therefore, proposing to board them out as soon as we can find a suitable home
.

Another letter, almost two weeks later tells her:

They say that little Donna is especially charming. Unfortunately, neither of their parents seems able to keep in very close touch with the children and we are therefore planning to find a suitable home where they can be fostered, so that this will give them the opportunity of growing up in the environment of a normal happy home, where they will receive every loving care and attention
.

My Granny was then sent a letter giving her the information that we were all at Haldane House and ‘quite settled’. She was also asked if she could write to us ‘as they would be delighted to have news from their own grannie’. To my knowledge, I never received any such letter or any cheery granny-news. In some ways, that doesn’t bother me – it seems unlikely that the woman who was so cold to Breda would have been much of a force for good in my life, and she was obviously only bothered about Frances. There is, however, a tiny voice which asks whether she would have seen through Helen if she had met her. Would she have stood up for me? Would she have prevented Helen from plunging me into hell? But that is all wishful thinking. No, I am much more drawn to the few phrases which give me the colour of my own being at that time.

The quotes which tell me that I was ‘attractive’ and ‘charming’ knock me for six. Who is this child? Who is this normal toddler? To have such phrases, such images, compounded by the never-realised promise of a foster home where I would receive ‘every loving care and attention’ is nothing short of fantasy. What would have become of me? Would I have fulfilled the promise implicit in those early Barnardo’s reports? Medical reports confirm the normality – I get measles, I get colds. I develop ‘normally’, I act ‘normally’, I am ‘normal for age’. I am a ‘likeable child developing well’.

Donna is the youngest and has not yet started school but is a bright wee girl
.

Her habits are clean
.

The health of the children has given no cause for concern
.

The children mix well with the staff and other members of our family and are well behaved. They are polite and very anxious to please
.

They are affectionate children
.

Within a few months of my grandmother’s enquiries, and the Barnardo’s reports that Helen was not showing much – if any – interest in us, things changed for some reason. By September 1963, Helen had become ‘very anxious’ to have us restored to her care. ‘She and Mr Ford have been visiting regularly and hope to visit every third Sunday which is Mr Ford’s Sunday off.’ By this time, Gordon had been born (in November 1962), and was a ‘great success with the children’. In retrospect, this seems perfectly natural. Children tend to like babies, and, on top of that, we were seeing the woman who would be our eventual ‘carer’ in a maternal role. As she sat there with a baby, dandling him on her lap, cuddling and kissing him, who could blame me – and presumably my two half-siblings – from dreaming that one day soon we would receive the same care, the same delayed surrogate mother’s attentions?

This image of Helen Gourlay, now Helen Ford, was attractive not just to me – to us – but to the authorities as well. The reports speak admiringly of the small basement flat in which she and my father lived, and the fact that some internal renovations and decorating were ongoing, as well as the way in which she was the one dealing with my mother’s debts. And, I admit, on paper it does look good.

Although she is only 20, she seems quite a remarkable girl – determined to keep a good home and make a happy home for the whole family. She has done wonders with the various debts and keeps her ‘books’ most methodically so that she knows exactly how she stands financially. She says she could not be happier and she and her husband get on well together
.

I wish that the Helen who seems so together in those reports had stayed. I wonder what happened? Knowing what was to become of me, what she was going to turn my life into – I think about whether she changed or whether she was putting on an act for the
authorities. It seems fanciful that she would make such an effort just to get me back, but what other options are there? Did it all get too much once I was there? Did she regret having us ‘restored’? Did something resurface from her past which made her – or turned her back into – the monster who ruined my childhood?

I don’t have the answers to these questions and I never will. However, that Helen is the one I was given to just a few months later. The reports stand – but so do the earlier ones in which concerns were raised about her lack of responsibility when we still lived with my father.

I was to be the first of my mother’s three children to return to Don and Helen Ford – naturally enough, given that I was the only one who had a blood link to the man taking us in. In preparation for this restoration, the official visits to, and reports about, the flat in Easter Road intensified. The request for restoration was made in March 1964, and the paper trail multiplies from that point. The same facts come out time and time again – the flat is tiny; there is a lot of debt; the authorities wish to keep a close eye on the situation. In one letter, of 12 March 1964, it is stated that:

The mother has been seen in Edinburgh on two occasions, but Mr Ford does not think she is still here. Since she left the children she has been sought by Family Allowance because she took the book. The RSSPCC tried to find her – also without success
.

Mr Ford is to consult X – a friend of the mother – either to ask X to see us, or to try and get word to the mother that we would like to see her
.

The thought that my mother might have been in Edinburgh twice, so close, chills me. Did she come back to try and find out what had happened to us, or was she just back to see friends
without any thought for the children she left behind? The fact that she kept the Family Allowance book also bothers me – it didn’t matter in terms of the money because another document confirms that my father was receiving the allowance (in fact, it paid for Frances, Simon and me to be kept by Barnardo’s). What bothers me is whether she kept it because it was one of the few official documents she had which may have allowed her to prove her claim to us if she did intend to come back. The elusive ‘X’ never did come through, as far as I know, and Breda never reappeared.

With no Breda, and no reason to keep us away from Easter Road, meetings and visits continued. On 19 June, our caseworker made a final trip to Edinburgh to see where I would be living. It had been agreed that all the stops would be pulled out to get me there before August when the Scottish school year starts. I was to begin school for the very first time – from my home. Barnardo’s had a few more requests – as well as trying to trace my mother, they were concerned about who owned the Easter Road property. Don Ford said that he would attempt to contact Frances’s father – Robert Cummings – to have the bond transferred to him as guardian. He doesn’t seem to have been traced at that point – and I have no idea how that ended.

On 8 July 1964, I was given my final progress report from Barnardo’s.

Donna is a very healthy little girl
.

Her habits are clean
.

She is a bright child, with I should think, a very good I.Q
.

Affectionate and kindly disposed to others she mixes well with adults and children
.

Her mental and physical progress has been satisfactory and I feel the future for Donna is bright. Strong foundations have been well and truly laid
.

When I arrived at Haldane House I had little more than my milk tokens, my vitamin token book and my medical card. And a promise. On my admission letter is one phrase that strikes me. Alongside ‘reason for removal’ is that one word which keeps coming back through reports and records and caseworker correspondence:
restoration
. I was not there indefinitely; I was there until my father found his feet. I would be restored to him, he would be restored to me, and my life would survive this little blip.

On one of the final documents I have are the words that haunt me to this day. As I made my world around Haldane House, as I played and laughed and grew, I was being watched. The conclusion? ‘
The youngest member of our family and the darling of all
.’

Not quite.

I WAS GOING HOME
. Home, home, home! To 31 Easter Road, a Victorian tenement block in Edinburgh. The whole Easter Road area was a community in itself. Although only a few minutes’ bus ride from the centre of the city, Princes Street, it was a completely different world. One phrase for Easter Road would be, I’m sure, ‘traditional’. In all honesty, it was run-down, working class and dirty.

Buses went up and down the main road to virtually everywhere in the city, and the shops lining either side of the thoroughfare sold absolutely everything. There was Rankin’s the fruiterers, where produce was always put in brown paper bags, twirled over at each corner before you paid. There was a stream of grocer’s shops where you could buy cheap booze, single fags and true-life crime magazines. There were second-hand shops, and shops with their own ‘savings club’ where clothes could be paid for on a weekly basis and no one would ask about the exorbitant prices, grateful to get anything on tick. There were tenements towering above every step you took. At the bottom of the road was the entrance to the Hibernian football ground, which made every other Saturday afternoon feel as if Easter Road were the centre of the universe.