Who Was Angela Zendalic (5 page)

Her face flushed, her heart thumped, and the old wall clock ticked as loudly as falling bombs. Her life was over. She placed her hands on her womb and clutched with tight fingers. There was no-one to tell, and who
could
she tell who would pat her hand, and find soothing words of the ‘everything will be all right' variety. It would never be alright. Any baby born out of wedlock mattered, tainted forever with the tag of bastard by the judgmental rules of respectable society, and the echo of a shotgun rang out loud and clear for many Jericho families. (‘She's not the first and she won't be the last' was the usual brave statement.) But any black baby born to a white woman, legitimate or not, mattered even more. You weren't just the normal tart or slut. You were reviled – the sort of girl of such loose morals that no white man would ever want you again. After the jaw-clutching shock had passed, the high and mighty Peggy Edwards would be a laughing stock. Grammar school girl, fancy posh job, do-gooder, and holy Josephine, no better than a common whore.

Even if she rose above the slander, how would she manage with two mouths to feed, rent to pay, and a house to run? A pariah, with debt and poverty her only attendants. Adoption was the only answer and she would have to go away before her scandalous secret was discovered. She'd say she was going on an important library school training course in London, but it would have to be to an unmarried mothers hostel that hid the afflicted away. Her precious baby would be given away to a so-called better home, to a good Christian family who could find it in their hearts to take in a coloured baby with selfless generosity. But wasn't
she
a good person and a Christian? Regular churchgoer, supporter of the parish needy, volunteer friend to the lonely, and an honest, hardworking citizen. She was, but she wouldn't be seen as one now. Had she not, at every Sunday service, prayed in piety for all weak and misguided souls? Where was her Lord now when she needed him? All she could see was a hypocritical frown, a wagging finger, and a shove into the gutter.

Early October 1953
Jericho

T
ed
was puzzled. It had been four months since Peggy's shock announcement that ‘she'd met her future husband', but apart from attending church on Sundays she was showing no signs of a social life. Not even with the Commonwealth Club. Maybe her big romance had fizzled out. He hoped so, but he needed an excuse to go round and find out. Loud sigh. He could think of nothing. But then, from his bedroom window, a solution presented itself.

‘Hello, Peg,' he beamed. ‘I've just popped round to tell you the felt's lifting on your shed roof. Needs fixing urgently. Can I take a look?'

‘That's nice of you, Ted. Come in for a cuppa.'

After a balancing act with a ladder, Ted rubbed his hands. ‘No sweat. I'll fix it one day when you're at work.'

‘And let me have the bill.'

‘Don't be daft. A favour for a friend.'

Once sitting over teacups he diffidently began his practiced piece. ‘Long time no see, Peg. How's life, then?'

‘Very good,' she said, adjusting a thick baggy cardigan over the top of a pinafore dress. ‘I'm off on a course soon. Six months secondment to Library School. Hope to get my own branch after that.'

‘That's good.' He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Peg, the thing is ...The thing is that when I asked you back in June, about us like, you said you'd met someone and was hoping to get married. Now you're off to do some training, and quite honestly there's no sign of him, is there.'

Peggy's face remained blank. ‘You're right. There's no sign of him. He went back to his own country and we called it off.'

‘Then might we ...Could you possibly reconsider?'

‘Ted, it would be so easy to say yes. Admit we're both lonely and try to make a good fist of it, but the answer's still got to be no. I'm really sorry.'

‘Alright. I won't ask again, but you can always look on me as a friend. If there's anything you need, just ask. I've no-one to spend my wages on and nothing to buy.' He stood up sharply. ‘Right. I'll get on with the roof as soon as I can. Stay where you are. I'll let myself out.' As he walked to the door he glanced back. Her face was turned away from him, and he thought she was crying, but there was no point in hanging around. He felt like crying himself.

Mid-November 1953
Jericho

T
he
minute Ted came in from work, Edie pounced. ‘Ah, there you are. I need an urgent job doing. That big rose bush by the fence blew down in the night. Tie it up for me, would you.'

‘But it's pitch black and everything's sodden. Can't it wait 'til the morning?'

‘No it can't. Every time I go out to get some coal I get it in the eye.'

‘Okey Dokey.'

Carrying a small stool, and a ball of string, he went out into the garden and stepped up to the sopping wet bush, fumbling to girdle it. But, as he wound the twine onto an old nail, he could see into Peggy's kitchen through a gap in the flimsy curtains. She was preparing her evening meal and she neither saw nor heard him. Jesus bloody Christ! He tried to convince himself he was seeing things, but she was stopped by the sink, resting her hand on the round swelling of her belly. Hardly able to breathe, he carefully descended, trying to be silent, but his legs had become weak and shaky. The stool suddenly slipped, skidding to the side with a scraping sound, and he fell off, landing heavily onto his hands.

Ted found he was numb with shock. The bastard had obviously got her up the spout and done a runner. Poor Peggy. A war widow, just about, so hardly a virgin, but women like Peg didn't pull up their skirts at the drop of a hat. She must, he concluded, have been forced into it. Dare he use the word rape? He washed and changed. ‘Just off round to Peg's, Edie.'

She opened the door wearing a pleated skirt, and the same thick baggy cardigan she'd worn of late. Obvious why now, and it was doing its job well. ‘Hello, Ted. Come in. I'll put the kettle on.'

‘You sit down. I'll make it.' He returned with a tray and poured the tea. ‘Any news about your big adventure?'

‘I'm off next weekend, and two Indian men from the Commonwealth Club are moving in to help pay the bills.'

‘But I think you
have
got some other news?'

She looked puzzled. ‘Nothing I can think of.'

‘Then your memory's failing. Stand up, Peg.' She looked alarmed and remained seated. ‘I said stand up, Peg.' His voice was quiet, but with the iron-hard intonation of PC Rawlings. She stood up. ‘Take that cardigan off.' Peggy dropped her eyes and didn't move. ‘Take it off before I do it for you. I know what's underneath.'

She slowly undid the buttons, and stood for a brief moment before sitting down again. ‘Happy now? I'm twenty-four weeks gone. Due the middle of February. Obviously no-one knows, not even Dr Peck.' She knitted her fingers and swallowed. ‘I went up to London to see a private doctor in Harley Street, just to make sure all was well, and it is, but ...I can hardly bear to talk about it. He offered to get rid of it for me. He thought that was why I'd come. How can these people act like criminals? How could I do that to my own flesh and blood? I was so disgusted I got up and walked out. Oh, Ted, please promise me it goes no further than these four walls?'

Sweating profusely, he loosened his tie and tried to compose himself. ‘Peg, I promise you faithfully on my police badge that I won't tell a soul, but I'd like to tear the bastard's eyes out. Tell me the truth. Were you raped?'

‘Oh, no, no. He didn't force himself on me. He loved me, and I loved him. I was willing.'

‘I just never thought…'

‘No. No-one would think that I was
that sort
of woman.'

‘Then where is he? If he was so in love with you why can't he come back and marry you.'

‘He doesn't know, and he never will. He's gone away forever and there's no hope of contacting him.' She moved to the kitchen dresser where Joseph's ring was placed in an eggcup. ‘He sent me this. We really
were
going to get married, but his family are very powerful and they've forbidden him to leave.'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Well, there's no training course, as you might have guessed. I've given in my notice – said I had to go down to Devon to nurse a sick old aunt. Adoption's the only answer, isn't it? I've got a place at a mother and baby home in London and I'm off at the end of the month. One of those the church arranges for what they call girls in trouble. I bet I'm the oldest one there.'

‘Can we write to each other?'

‘Yes, of course, but I'll send mine to you at the station. Just in case Edie gets a bit too nosey.'

‘How will you manage?'

‘I'll have the rent from the two students, and I've always saved my widow's pension for a nest egg.' She then began to quietly cry. ‘I want to keep it. I love it already. It's a tiny little person and it moves inside me as gently as a butterfly. It turns over and over ...'

There was a long silence while Ted cleared his throat and spread his large hands on the wooden tabletop. ‘Then I have a solution. I know you don't love me, Peg. Not in the way I want you to, but my offer's still open. We can get married. Quick-like. Everyone will count the months, and have a sly dig that we've been at it, but so what. I'll bring the baby up as mine. No-one will know. Please Peg.'

She drew in a shuddering breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You're a wonderful man, but we can't. It wouldn't work.'

‘It will. It will.'

‘Ted. Joseph is an African. You won't be able to pass a coloured baby off as yours, will you?'

Ted groaned, and visibly reddened. ‘No I won't, will I.'

April 2014
Monks Bottom

A
s
we calmed down, each of my sisters slowly read my birth certificate intently, as if they might find a hidden clue of explanation, but they
did
pick up on something I'd not registered in my shock; whilst Pa's address was listed as
Tavistock College, Oxford
, Angela's had been given as
Stable Cottage
,
Folly Farm, Fair Cross Green;
a village only three miles away where Carrie had lived for many years. The twins were all for jumping in the car, and driving over – might she or her family still live there? – but Carrie reminded us that the smallholding had been demolished yonks ago, and the land used to build the Health Centre.

I looked up at a framed photograph of us all that hung on the wall, professionally taken in 1988 for Pa's fiftieth birthday, when I was fifteen. ‘It was so obvious, really,' I said. ‘Why didn't I ever suspect? Look at you three. Small and pretty, clones of Mummy, and there's me at the front with a chubby face and brown curls.'

‘Ah, but you were always the real beauty,' said Carrie. ‘You still are. Catherine Zeta Jones the second.'

I exhaled slowly and my brow tightened. ‘Why didn't she keep me? Was I a secret she hid from her family? I must have been only days old when Mummy and Pa took me on together, so where did she go? Why did she go? How many people knew the truth at the time? It's only Mummy who can tell me and there's no hope of that.'

In an attempt to lighten our mood we picked aimlessly at some picnic food the girls had brought, trying to heartily break bread together, but we finished a couple of bottles of wine, and slowly turned the pages of the family photo albums. My sisters, commenting with overstated assurance (or perhaps surprise), of how much I looked like Pa, ‘from the side and round the chin', and ‘you've definitely got his eyebrows and ears'. What, I wondered, were the parts of me that came from the mysterious Angela?

In the middle of the afternoon a strong sun came out, and we took a long, arm-linked walk around the garden; the lasting monument to our dear destroyed mother, and soon, to our utter misery, to be sold to strangers. With spirits uplifted by its beauty we strolled down to the lower woodland, and just as we crossed the bridge the Scottish gardener suddenly appeared. He stopped when he saw us and I began to introduce him to my sisters. ‘Girls, this is ...' To my shame I'd forgotten his name.

‘Howie Sinclair,' he said.

‘This is Howie Sinclair, who helped me so kindly on the day Pa died.' To my further shame I'd not sought him out to thank him, although I'd seen him at the funeral, standing at the back of the church. With a full crush of invited guests, and the High Street lined with a long overflow of the press and village residents I remembered wondering how he'd got in, but it was obvious that dear Father Crowley had allocated him a place in recognition of his calm assistance. My sisters immediately launched into patronising speeches of overflowing gratitude, but he just nodded modestly.

‘How long do you think you can you stay on here?' asked Carrie. ‘We rather need someone to make sure the garden's kept in order while the house is on the market.'