The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers by Angela Patrick Read Free Book Online

the things she hadn’t been
able to do and seize all the opportunities she’d missed. At the same time, she came from a religious background and a generation for whom the notion of having ‘boyfriends’ simply
didn’t exist. While my brothers were free to do what they wanted, I was constantly reminded that, as a girl, I could not. As she frequently pointed out to me, marrying as a virgin was
non-negotiable. She didn’t step out with a man until she was twenty-one.
    Though sometimes uncertain of my mother’s affection for me, as she was never demonstrative, I did feel loved and cared for growing up. If she couldn’t show her love physically, she
showed it in practical ways, and would give generously to us all, even if it meant going without herself.
    But I cherished my relationship with my father. When I received the news that he had cancer and had less than a year to live, I felt my world collapse around me. The months that followed are
indelibly etched in my memory: palliative care in the 1950s was pitifully basic and the pain and suffering he endured as he was dying was shocking. To see this kind and lovely man reduced to the
physical condition of a Belsen victim was heartbreaking for us all. He died at home, aged fifty-three, in April 1958, with my mother, my brothers and me by his side. I was fourteen years old and I
was devastated.
    It’s telling, as I looked back during those first days I spent in Loreto Convent, that my overwhelming feeling was a sense of shame about how badly I’d let my
mother down. I might have railed against her; perhaps, if I’d been born two decades later, I would have. But for all the pity I felt for my own situation, I worried far more about the effect
all this was having on her. It would take me a long time to understand it, because our relationship was complex, but after my father died – making her a widow at fifty-one – I’d
taken on the emotional burden, either wittingly or not, of being the strong one for her.
    I had had to grow up extremely quickly. Within a year of my father’s death, my mother and I were alone. My brothers, both of whom were engaged when he died, had left to start new lives
elsewhere: John to begin two years’ national service, and Raymond and his wife to sail for a new life in South Africa.
    My mother struggled to cope, emotionally, physically and financially. We were now penniless. Apart from a small insurance policy, which barely paid for his funeral, my poor father had been
unable to leave us anything. For me, personally, the cruellest blow after his death was leaving my school, the Ursuline High School in Ilford, where I was enjoying a good education. My mother could
simply no longer afford to pay the fees, and the whole thing was humiliating and distressing.
    I’d been about to embark on my GCEs that summer, but when I had to leave school, aged only 14, it seemed a bleak future lay ahead. Subsequently, I was enrolled in a secretarial college and
a new course was set for my life.
    I’d brought a wedding ring with me to Loreto Convent, a cheap thing I’d bought when I moved to June’s house. During most of my pregnancy I had no need to lie
about my marital status. I went to work in my new job as an audio typist at a firm of wood preservative manufacturers in Dagenham, called Solignum, only after squeezing myself, increasingly
painfully, into torturous foundation garments. Like Mary, I had to fashion a story: I told them that June’s house was my real home and that I lived there with my parents. But at least no one
knew I was pregnant.
    Now at the convent and hugely pregnant, it was impossible to hide, so the ring was to cover my shame and embarrassment when I went to my antenatal appointments. To go without it – for
people to know the truth – would be unimaginable.
    It was a Friday afternoon, several days after my arrival. A few of us had finished our duties for the day (though mine would continue later, when I made up the