Christmas at the Farmhouse - Rebecca Boxall Page 0,53
always been particularly nice to me. He and his son had just moved to Silverhurst from a nearby seaside town and he came into the shop to buy some bread. He started trying to befriend me and dangled a possible outing to see the Beatles perform live as a carrot so that I’d be won round by him. I had a funny feeling about him – my friend Penny, who lived on a farm up the road, said there’d been rumours about him at school.’
I cast a glance at Magnus and saw him looking worried, perhaps concerned that this Mr Jenners might be his father.
‘Mr Jenners had a son called Robin,’ Susan continued. ‘He was terribly grumpy and I didn’t take to him at all at first. He was very studious – he wanted to become a doctor – and seemed to spend all his time studying for his A levels at the library. One day he warned me about his father. Told me about a couple of incidents that had happened involving young women. I was rather flattered that Robin wanted, reluctantly, to protect me. But when Mr Jenners’ offer to see the Beatles came off, I couldn’t resist, so my friend Penny and I went with him and his brother to London to see them play. It was their last public performance.’
‘Your parents let you go?’ I asked, thinking they’d sounded rather strict.
‘Oh gosh, no. I pretended to be unwell and the band were playing at lunchtime so it all worked out. It was the best day of my life until the journey home when Mr Jenners tried it on with me. I pretended to feel sick and then swapped seats with Penny, so it didn’t go any further, but the day was tainted after that. And Robin was furious when he found out I’d gone to the performance. Mr Jenners became very frosty with me after I’d rejected him, but Robin and I started to become friends. And then, before long, we became more than friends. We were so naïve, both of us, and let’s just say that one night – when Mr Jenners had gone to his mother’s funeral and I’d snuck out of my house – we went a little too far. A month later I discovered I was pregnant.’
I looked at Magnus again and this time saw an expression of relief on his face.
‘Robin proposed to me and we planned to marry and bring you up together. He came with me to my house and asked my father for my hand in marriage. Only my father refused to give his consent and, as I was only seventeen, Robin and I couldn’t marry without it.’
‘Could you not have waited until you were old enough to get married without his permission?’ Freja asked, agog with curiosity.
Susan shook her head sadly. ‘The law had recently changed so that you only needed parental consent up to the age of eighteen, rather than twenty-one, but the baby was going to be born before my birthday. And if there was one thing my father was certain of, it was that I wasn’t going to stay in Silverhurst and have the child – sullying his good name.’
‘So what happened?’ Astrid asked.
‘I was sent to a Home for Unmarried Mothers. There were lots of them around back then, such was the stigma of getting pregnant out of wedlock. My parents told everyone they knew that I’d gone to France for a few months to stay with family, but actually I was at the Home, getting fatter by the day and becoming more and more attached to my unborn baby.’
Magnus frowned. ‘I can’t imagine it,’ he said. ‘What was it like?’
‘A vast Victorian mansion run by a terrifying Matron and various nuns, most of whom were equally terrifying. There was one nice one, I remember: Sister Rosa. But most of them ruled the place with a rod of iron. We had to do domestic chores every morning – we were like unpaid servants, really – and we all had to attend chapel every Sunday whether we were Catholic or not. Afternoons were better – we were able to rest and chat to the other girls. I made one very special friend – an Eastender called Janet Clarke. She was wonderful. Got me through those awful months.’
‘And Robin?’ Magnus asked.
‘I kept thinking he’d get me out of the place. I was sure we’d find a way to make it work. His father came to