Child on the Doorstep

‘That’s not that far away,’ Daniel said. ‘He could have come to visit me if he’d cared enough.’

‘Betty forbade him to,’ Angela said. ‘I think Betty wanted to pretend you were all hers and Roger’s, their own child, and Stan popping up now and then would have spoilt that.’

‘So he just left them to it. I call that spineless.’

‘Betty said if he was going to keep a stake in your life then she would refuse to look after you and he would have to find someone else,’ Angela said. ‘My husband always said your father should have called her bluff. He said Betty loved you too much for that and he should have carried on visiting you and letting you know you had a father who cared.’

‘But he didn’t do that,’ Daniel almost spat out. ‘You can say what you like, but as far as I’m concerned he just bowed out of my life and let me think the only father I had was Roger Swanage. He didn’t want me in his life and that’s that.’

‘Why are you here then?’ Connie asked from the hearth where she was making tea for them all as the kettle had begun to sing. ‘If you really don’t care as much as you say you do, why did you come here asking questions about him?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘D’you know, I’m not totally sure,’ he said to Connie and then asked, ‘Did you ever meet my father?’

It was Angela who answered. ‘Connie did, but won’t remember. She was very young when he enlisted. And you too were just a child. I am sorry that you didn’t get to know him, but regardless of how he seemed to neglect you, he was a good and honourable man. I think his insecurity with you stemmed from the time he took you home for the weekend.’

‘When was this?’

‘You were very young,’ Angela said and she remembered the heartfelt story Stan had told them that Christmas Day years ago that he had spent with them all. ‘Stan wanted to spend the weekend with you and collected you from Betty after booking the time off from work. But you loathed everything – his house, the area, him – and became so distressed he eventually took you back to the only home you knew. You said you hated him and didn’t want to see him any more and that broke Stan’s heart.’

‘I don’t even remember that.’

‘Why would you?’ Angela said. ‘You were a small boy and you hadn’t really got to know Stan. Stan didn’t know you either and took the words you threw at him at face value for it was at a time when he was hurt and vulnerable. He told me he felt he had failed miserably as a father and then Betty issued the ultimatum to shut Stan out of your life in exchange for them adopting you. He had to sign to say he’d have no contact with you and he did it because he knew Betty and Roger loved you and you loved them. And added to that they had a fine house, where you would have your own room, and there were gardens back and front to play in. He knew you would never want for anything and your happiness and security mattered far more than his own. And so he signed away all rights to you.’

Connie handed around the tea and Daniel stared down at it while he stirred his spoon in his cup and it was the only sound in the room.

Eventually the silence went on so long Angela felt prompted to say, ‘Daniel, I’m sorry if I have upset you by casting Betty in such a bad light. That was not my intention though – I believed you needed to learn the truth of what happened at the time. Having said that, Betty and Roger have done a good job raising you for you are a fine young man.’

‘I’m not offended by anything you said,’ Daniel said, raising his head at last. Though his voice was firm enough, his eyes were very bright. ‘I know that you spoke the truth and perhaps it explains why my mother, especially, was the way she was.’

‘In what way?’

‘I grew up knowing I was somehow precious to my mother. She barely let the wind blow on me. I grew up only a short distance from Sutton Park. Have you ever been there?’

‘Only once and it was in the winter,’ Angela said. ‘I was impressed even so and always intended going back when the weather might be more clement.’

‘What a pity you didn’t.’

‘Circumstances dictated otherwise,’ Angela said. ‘Once war was declared the park wasn’t the same. Some of the army training camps were there. I mean, certainly Barry and possibly your father did their basic training there and later a POW camp was set up there too. It meant much of the park was commandeered and out of bounds and Barry said it was ruined and we must wait for peacetime when we’d be able to take Connie. I couldn’t have taken Connie during the war anyway. I was working making shells six and a half days a week with no time off and on Sunday, the only day I was free, I was too tired to think of going on such a jaunt. And after the war I seldom thought of it, and now I work Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtime at the Swan pub on the corner of the road. We should go up one Saturday though, Connie. As I don’t work till the evening we could have the whole day. Sutton Park is well worth a visit.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Connie said enthusiastically.

Angela looked at Daniel and said, ‘You were lucky growing up near a park like that. I bet you lived in there in the holidays.’

‘That’s just it,’ Daniel said. ‘I seldom went there and never without at least one of my parents, usually my mother. Other children from school would go, but I wasn’t allowed.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘My mother seemed jealous a lot of the time, even of my friends,’ Daniel said. ‘My father brought me up to know that the very worst thing I could do in the world was upset my mother, so when she said she didn’t want me running wild in Sutton Park with my friends, which was the one thing I wanted to do, I didn’t go. Instead I would be taken on a sedate walk, where I was expected to talk of sensible things with my father in particular.’

‘Ugh,’ said Connie, for it was the worst thing she could think of. ‘Didn’t you mind?’

‘Course I minded,’ Daniel said. ‘But I minded more being called namby pamby and a mummy’s boy. I didn’t have many friends. Most, I suppose, thought me a bit wet.’

Angela suddenly sorry for this young man, for she could imagine how sterile his life had been, but he caught the look and said, ‘I was better off than many, I know that. I never have known hunger and I always had shoes on my feet and a warm coat in the winter and gloves and a hat. The house was always warm and I had a fire lit in my bedroom through the winter months.’

Connie’s mouth dropped open, for a fire in the bedroom was luxury indeed. The bedroom in the attic that she shared with her granny hadn’t even a light except the candle balanced in a saucer.

‘Lucky you.’

‘I know,’ Daniel agreed. ‘That’s why even now maybe I shouldn’t complain so much. At the time I didn’t really think my life narrow or strange because, though I hated the teasing, I accepted life the way it was. I knew my parents loved me and, if I had been in any doubt, my mother told me often and would hug and kiss me as long as I would stand it. They had no friends either. Their life was me and that too I was told often and so it was the three of us all the time.’

‘No grandparents?’ Connie asked.

Daniel shook his head. ‘Both dead and after my real mother died there were no uncles or aunts either.’

‘Well, we are a small household too,’ Connie said.

‘But I bet you all have friends.’

Connie thought about it and thought really they were friendly with all the street and certainly the yard – and some, like Nancy Webster, closer still. Her grandmother was liked by all, but her particular friend was Norah Doherty who had moved to Birmingham before the McCluskys and helped them so much when they were newly arrived. And her mother had a special friend she called Auntie Maggie who had married Michael Malone even though he only had one leg. And because she was a special friend of Sarah Maguire, her mother was friendly with her mother Maeve and at Mass they seemed surrounded by friends.

‘Yes, I suppose we have,’ she admitted. ‘But surely your parents made friends at church?’

‘They could have done if they’d wanted,’ Daniel said. ‘We went to Mass every Sunday certainly and they would greet people but that was all. They had a manner that wasn’t exactly unfriendly but told people they definitely didn’t want to take the conversation any further. So, in the end, people just greeted them then left them alone. I didn’t find this odd at the time, it was later looking back on it that I thought it was a peculiar way to go on. But still, looking at the suffering others were enduring after the Great War and all the hardships many were enduring, these things were minor.’

‘I see what you’re saying,’ Angela said. ‘It’s hard not to feel immense sympathy when some people can’t heat their house or feed their barefoot children adequately. And yet to be friendless too is a lonely place to be, don’t you think, Mammy?’

There was no answer, for Mary was fast asleep. Angela smiled sadly, for Mary was dropping off to sleep more and more of late. She knew it was more than likely that one day Mary would not wake from one of these naps; she would slip into the ultimate deep sleep and Angela dreaded that day.

Daniel, however, hadn’t followed Angela’s train of thought and shrugged as he said, ‘University saved me.’

‘Golly, you must be clever.’

Daniel smiled as he said, ‘It’s easier to work when you have no friends to distract you and parents and a school that expect you to work hard. My parents did all they could to make study as pleasurable as possible. I was doing what they wanted so a desk and bookshelves were put in my bedroom. The shelves of the bookcase were filled with books recommended by the school and often a merry little fire burned in the grate.’

Connie said nothing, but she knew her life would be a lot harder than Daniel’s if she took the route her mother wanted her to take. Between October and April she went into the attic only to sleep, for it was far too cold to linger in. And she had no desk or bookshelves, let alone recommended books to put on them.

‘How do you mean, it saved you?’ Angela was saying.

‘I saw how other chaps lived,’ Daniel said. ‘I saw my upbringing was not the same as most of theirs and for the first time I made friends. My parents would not permit me to leave home to attend a university further afield so I got a place in Birmingham University.’

‘Where’s that?’ Angela asked.

‘Edgbaston.’

‘Hardly easy to get to from Sutton Coldfield, I wouldn’t have said.’

‘It isn’t,’ Daniel agreed. ‘I had to take a train to New Street Station, cross the city and get a bus out. It was hellishly difficult to get there in time for morning lectures, so one of the others would often put me up. I slept on a great many sofas, armchairs, even a bath a time or two, and some floors.’