‘What do you think you are doing, girl?’
The shock of that voice made Madeleine swing round so abruptly that, still weak, she would have lost her balance had the nurse not sprung forward to catch and steady her.
‘How did you get in here?’ came the demand. Madeleine blinked.
‘The door was open.’
A sudden aghast expression flitting across the woman’s face made her realize that the nursery should have been locked when unattended, the nurse already aware that she had forgotten to do so. Now she was in trouble.
‘You shouldn’t be in here, girl!’ she hissed, panic in her tone. ‘I’ll take the baby. You get back to your room.’ Hardly waiting for it to be handed over she practically snatched it away. ‘Now, go! GO!’
As she made her way back to the delivery room with its lingering taint of stale blood, Madeleine’s arms felt strangely empty. It was almost as if they ached and in that short while she realized that she’d become one with her child – something no unmarried mother was allowed to do prior to the baby being taken for adoption. Bad for the mother. This way, in a short while the mother would forget all about the baby and get on with her life. So went the belief. But in these few short moments of holding it close to her she had become one with her baby and that brief experience would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Today, a week after having given birth, she was now out on her own, alone in a cold, hostile world, the home for unmarried mothers having done their job. Yet still that sense of emptiness persisted. And questions too: where was her child now? Who were the people who’d taken it away? Would they be kind to her or had they in mind to make her work hard for her keep as she grew up?
Turning from that devastating thought, she prayed they would love her. But brought up as their child, she’d never know her own mother. That one thing kept drumming in her head – she would never see her again.
Madeleine stifled a dry sob at the thought, clearing her throat against it as she emerged from Paddington railway station on to a street filled with all the noise and racket of London. After the peace of village life and the quietness of the nursing home, the rattle of taxicabs, the red enormity of buses and the stink of motor exhaust was a shock. She had almost forgotten the last time she was taken to London, as a seven-year-old child. That would have been in 1903, when most vehicles were horse-drawn.
Suitcase in one hand, a leather handbag in the other, in that handbag the recommended address of somewhere to stay, she made her way through the chilly April wind beyond the station towards a line of taxicabs – best to spend out on a taxi fare rather than some unfamiliar bus route or to risk venturing on to the underground.
She did have a little money with her, sent to the nursing home by her father until she could get to the bank where he’d at least opened a tiny account for her. But she felt no reason to be grateful. It was no more than any father should do for his daughter and had been such a small amount as to be an insult, not even accompanied by any note. Also, he had stopped the generous allowance she had always enjoyed, making it clear that she would have to somehow earn her own living from now on. The message couldn’t have been clearer and her hatred for him began to mount as she fearfully approached one of the taxicabs.
She had begun to feel utterly out of her depth here. Assailed by an odorous smell of cooking coming from a nearby restaurant, she hurried past the raucous, tinny noise being played by an organ grinder at the kerbside, feeling herself under the gaze of a couple of uniformed soldiers who seemed in her imagination to be eyeing her as they passed – she was glad to escape into the taxi.
Aware of the restriction of her hobble skirt about her ankles after the loose clothing she had worn in the nursing home, she suddenly became aware of how out of date that skirt appeared against the bell-shaped hems of several women who had passed her; a drastic new fashion had exploded in these last eight or nine months since the outbreak of war.
Even her hat, a high toque, the fashion of a few months ago, now looked stupid against the harder crowned, larger brimmed creations she saw around her. Fresh from finishing school and suffering that home for unmarried mothers, she’d had no cause to follow fashion.
Telling the taxicab driver the address she had been given, she sat in the seclusion of the rear seat and once more gave herself up to her thoughts. Never to see her baby ever again left her in danger of breaking down afresh, giving way to a spasm of dry, hollow sobs, giving no comfort, no relief.
Recovering with an effort she took a deep breath, resolving to cast these thoughts out. But she knew without question that time and time again she would find herself repeating this agony, maybe a day later, maybe several days, but it would never go. There now came a silent resolve – she would spend the rest of her life if necessary looking for her
