Christmas at the Farmhouse - Rebecca Boxall Page 0,43

Sister Veronica would consider her to be unfit as a mother. The child should therefore be removed from the birth mother regardless of her wishes, for its own safety.

Chapter Twenty-four

November 1969

Susan

In the middle of the night one stormy Saturday in November, I was woken by the sound of groaning. After a minute, I realised it was coming from Janet’s bed. I got up and wrapped my dressing gown round me, kneeling down next to her. I felt her head and found it hot and clammy.

‘You alright?’ I whispered.

‘Do I sound like I’m alright?’ Janet replied, huffing and puffing.

‘Are you ill?’ I asked.

‘Course I’m not bleeding ill,’ she told me, laughing through her pain. ‘I’m having a bloody baby!’

‘What should I do?’ I asked her, panic-stricken.

‘Go and wake up one of the nuns, tell them what’s happening.’

‘Of course,’ I said, heaving myself up, but Janet grabbed hold of my hand.

‘Susan, I can’t do this on my own. Will you come with me? To the maternity wing? Please?’

I hesitated. ‘I don’t know if they’ll let me…’

‘But if they will let you? I can’t be on my own!’ she wailed and there were various grumbles from the other girls.

‘Okay, okay,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll ask if I’m allowed. I’ll be back in a tick.’

I ran off down the corridor towards Sister Rosa’s room and knocked on her door. Eventually the nun opened it, looking composed. She was fully dressed.

‘Is it Janet?’ she asked.

‘How did you know?’ I replied.

‘You work here long enough and you start to notice the signs,’ she told me. She started to walk calmly along the corridor.

‘Can I go with her?’ I asked. ‘To the maternity wing?’

Sister Rosa stopped and turned to face me. ‘It wouldn’t be usual.’

‘It’s just that Janet’s terrified, Sister, and I’d like to be there. To offer some moral support.’

Sister Rosa sighed. ‘You can stay with her for a couple of hours,’ she agreed. Though twelve hours later I was still there as my friend – pale and sweating – gripped my hand through another excruciating contraction.

‘Can’t you give her anything?’ I asked the midwife. It had been agonising to watch, knowing as I did that I’d be going through the same thing in a month’s time.

‘She’s just making a big song and dance,’ the woman said unkindly. ‘It’ll all be over with soon enough.’

I wondered if the penance we were supposed to pay for getting pregnant while unmarried extended to being made to suffer through labour, as well. There was such a feeling of judgement, even from the midwives. I was just glad for Janet that she was able to have the baby at the Home and not at some hospital where there’d be rows and rows of married women looking down their noses at her.

Finally, at seven o’clock on Sunday evening, Janet gave birth to a little girl. The midwife cleaned the baby up and swaddled her, then brought her over to Janet, planting her in her arms.

‘Good luck finding a couple to adopt that one,’ she said, brusquely. I didn’t know what she meant until I took a good look at her and realised she was dark – mixed race.

‘You never said,’ I whispered to Janet, who looked as though the labour was already a distant memory. She was gazing dreamily at her baby’s face.

‘I didn’t know,’ she answered and I wondered briefly at the circumstances of the child’s conception, before deciding that it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Janet had got through the gruelling labour and delivered a healthy baby.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.

‘Tired,’ she smiled. ‘Sore. Over the moon that she’s coloured!’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Cause I’ll get to keep her, won’t I? If no-one wants to adopt her!’

‘Oh, Janet,’ I laughed. ‘So it’s all worked out in the end.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ she said and I squeezed her hand.

***

By the time I got back to the dorm it was nine o’clock and I could tell immediately there was an atmosphere of excitement in the room.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked Doris, the girl whose bed was next to mine.

‘A right hoo-ha, there was, this afternoon,’ the girl said, as she plaited her long fair hair. ‘Some man turned up at the Home insisting on seeing his girlfriend, so Esme said. She saw it all happen. One of the nuns was telling him he wasn’t wanted and there was a great big row! Esme reckons it was Janet’s chap. That he’d got wind of the fact that she was in labour and turned up