Christmas at the Farmhouse - Rebecca Boxall Page 0,46

at the telephone again. There was another number I knew by heart. I dialled it, my heart hammering, and listened to the ringtone. But there was nobody in. I’d known, really, that Robin would be at school, but there was something about listening to the telephone ringing out in his home that seemed to speak to me, as if it were saying: ‘Give up… just give up now.’

But there was still that part of me – that pig-headed side inherited from my father – that refused to give in just yet. As I’d said to Janet, there was, after all, still another month to go.

Chapter Twenty-six

December 1969

Susan

I don’t know how she did it, but Janet managed to sneak out of the maternity wing with her baby that blustery November night and make her way along the driveway where – presumably – Mr Wren was waiting for her. The first I knew that she’d succeeded was at breakfast when there were hushed whispers over the boiled eggs. Sister Veronica stood in the corner of the dining room looking even more severe and tight-lipped than normal.

‘What’s happened?’ I said to the girl next to me at the dining table.

‘Janet’s escaped!’ she whispered. ‘Taken the kid with her!’

I pretended to look shocked but of course, later in the morning, I was hauled into Matron’s office and asked lots of questions.

‘Did you know she was planning this?’ Matron asked.

‘I had no idea,’ I fibbed.

‘One of the midwives saw you talking in hushed tones with her yesterday.’

I gulped. ‘I was telling her it was all for the best; she was upset about the baby being taken to a Children’s Home if you couldn’t find adoptive parents for her.’

Matron eyed me suspiciously, but I kept my calm.

‘If I find out you had anything to do with this…’ she began, but she didn’t finish the sentence. Perhaps she wasn’t quite sure what she would do about it, even if she could prove my involvement. ‘Off you go!’ she said to me.

I wasn’t asked to do telephone duty again, so Matron clearly maintained her suspicions about me, but I wasn’t questioned further. It was a blow, though, not to be able to use the telephone again. I was desperate to try Robin one more time. Christmas was approaching and, with every paper-chain the other girls hung up in the rec room, I knew my time was running out.

In the week before Christmas there was carol singing in the rec room every afternoon. There was quite a sense of camaraderie, in fact, though I wasn’t feeling it myself. I missed Janet and Penny and Robin and I felt huge and uncomfortable. Just trying to walk up the back stairs took me forever and a day, as I had to stop every few steps to get my breath back.

On the day the baby was due – the 23rd – there was a huge amount of excitement in the rec room as Sister Rosa brought in a colour television, a gift from a local philanthropist. Everyone gathered around the box as the nun tuned it in, and after that the knitting everyone was meant to be doing seemed to take a backseat. My layette was ready, anyway, so I sat there by the fire gawping at the box to pass the time – watching The Black and White Minstrel Christmas Show and Terry Scott on ‘Xmas’.

It was halfway through Cilla on Christmas Eve that I began to get a nasty backache. Doris noticed me grimacing and went and got me a hot water bottle, which helped a bit, but I suffered an uncomfortable night and by Christmas morning I knew I must be in labour, though my waters hadn’t gone. I struggled down to breakfast but Sister Rosa took one look at me and ushered me along to the maternity wing where the midwife told me I was in advanced labour.

‘But my waters haven’t gone!’ I said, groaning as the back pain worsened.

‘Sometimes they don’t go until you’re quite far along,’ she told me officiously. I begged Sister Rosa to stay, terrified to be left alone with a midwife I didn’t know, but she told me kindly that she had to get back in time for chapel.

‘It’ll be a special one,’ she said to me before she left. ‘A Christmas baby – like our Lord. He’s with you, dear. You’re not alone.’

Her words were some comfort through the following painful hours. I reached a point of being utterly convinced I was