Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking

At around the same time as my mother was recovering from her accident, she began dating a local man called Harry Dawson, who was an inspector on the buses. I knew his two daughters Pat and Shirley from my dancing days. Harry was a widower and a lovely man. Although it had been not much more than a year since my father had died, I was happy that she had someone to share her life with, especially during such a difficult time. After all, she was only in her late thirties.

Everyone else around me seemed to have new interests too. Once Peter was discharged from the sanatorium after eighteen months, he was transferred to the Wrenbury Hall Rehabilitation Centre near Nantwich. Under the care of the Red Cross, he gradually gathered his strength although the TB had weakened him terribly and he would spend another thirteen months recovering. He was placed on the Disabled Persons Register until he was twenty-one.

Joyce, my childhood friend, got engaged to her future husband Peter and moved to Ellesmere Port and we lost touch for a while. I became friendlier with her sister Barbara, but then she found herself a regular boyfriend as well. I didn’t realize it at the time but my loneliness and the feeling that life was happening to everyone else but me made me vulnerable.

At least I had my job, which I loved, although most of the girls at work had busy social lives too. The other juniors especially became like a second family to me. From day one, we were ‘the Quaintways Girls’ and I became known to all as ‘Tilly’ Tilston, a nickname which stuck for life.

Quaintways soon became the place to go in Chester and ours was the premier salon. With a food shop, restaurant and nightclub, it felt more like a luxurious social club than a place of work. We even put on little modelling shows after hours for customers with each of us wearing a new outfit chosen from the store. The Quaintways restaurant was very popular, as was the Wall City Jazz Club run by a man called Gordon Vickers, who became a lifelong friend. He booked acts like the clarinettist Monty Sunshine and the Chris Barber Band. When one new group from Liverpool asked if they could play at the club, Gordon told them they could only if they cut their hair. The Beatles refused.

Several of the senior hairdressers who’d been brought into Quaintways from all over the country had famous clients like the singers Alma Cogan, Rosemary Squires, and Dickie Valentine, who’d come to Chester to sing at the Plantation Inn on the Liverpool Road. Through them, the hairdressers were often invited to the Oulton Park race circuit to attend parties with Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn and other famous drivers. There was even glamour among some of my fellow juniors too. One called Trish Fields had a fabulous voice and was a part-time singer at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, taking her turn between bands like the Swinging Blue Jeans and those rebellious kids who wouldn’t cut their hair.

The older women in the salon seemed so grown up and worldly-wise to me. They dated everyone from sporting heroes to servicemen; they drank, smoked and stayed out late. I used to listen to some of their whispered conversations and wonder what on earth they were giggling about. My mother had never spoken to me about being intimate with a boy and there had never been any sex education at school. Because Peter had been in hospital throughout my teenage years I’d not had a big brother to advise me and I’d never even had a boyfriend, apart from one nice lad who lived across the street and who sometimes took me to the church hall dance. I’d had a silly crush on another boy at school who sometimes let me ride on the crossbar of his bicycle but it had never gone beyond holding hands.

One hairdresser in particular often spoke to me about the airmen she dated from the USAF bases nearby at Sealand, Queensferry and Warrington. ‘The Americans are great company,’ she’d tell me during breaks. ‘They love to dance and they really know how to treat a girl. Why don’t I fix you up on a blind date, Tilly?’

I resisted at first, feeling shy and awkward, but the more she spoke about her ‘lovely Americans’ the more I thought back to the party I’d attended that first Christmas after Dad died. The airmen there had been so charming and kind. Where would be the harm? Eventually, I plucked up the courage to ask Mum if she thought it would be all right.

‘OK,’ she said as she was getting ready to go out with Harry one night, ‘but make sure you’re back by ten.’

My friend originally set me up with an airman called Joe but he was sent back to the States so I ended up with someone I’ll call ‘Jim’. He’d just turned twenty-one and I was not quite sixteen when we first met. He knew how old I was but what he probably didn’t realize was that I’d never even been kissed. He took me to the Odeon in Chester to see a film called Johnny Dark in which Tony Curtis played an engineer who’d designed a racing car. I don’t remember much about the film because I was too excited by the company I was keeping. At six feet two inches tall with smouldering good looks, Jim was quiet, courteous and kind. Better still, he was a singer of country and western songs and he played in the clubs and bars on the American bases. He sang to me on the way home and had a really lovely voice, a bit like Jim Reeves. I was convinced my music-loving father would have approved.

For the next six months I was in a whirl. My lonely days were at an end. Jim was just like a film star, and he was mine. I thought about him night and day and the feeling appeared to be mutual. When we weren’t together he’d call me up on the telephone and sing to me down the line, which made my knees buckle. He took me to a dance at one of the bases to meet some of his friends. They were all much older and more sophisticated than me but with Jim on my arm I felt invincible. I wasn’t ‘Tilly’ to Jim, I was his ‘Paula’ – the name he always used for me – and I suddenly felt so grown up.

He’d meet me in Chester after work and walk me home. More often than not, my mother would be out working or courting Harry so we’d have the place to ourselves. I’d play house – cooking him a meal and making him tea and imagining what life would be like if this was how it always was. I even presented him with my most precious possession – my bronze medal for tap dancing. He said he was thrilled. When he held me in his arms and told me he wanted to marry me, I believed him completely and gave him all that he asked. In my heart, I was still a little girl and he was my first love. I barely knew what I was doing, although I did know it was naughty and that if my mother ever found out she’d be furious. Nobody had ever told me about taking precautions and Jim never said anything, so I carried on obliviously.

All I could think about was that Jim was going to marry me. Excitedly, I blurted out the news to my mother. She was my best friend in the world and I couldn’t wait for her to share my joy. Her reaction wasn’t at all what I expected. ‘You’re far too young to think about marriage yet!’ she told me, horrified. Although I was disappointed, I was too blind to take any notice.

Then one day she sat me down after work. ‘I think you should know: Jim’s married already,’ she said. I looked up at her in disbelief. ‘Harry’s sister-in-law works at the base. She found out.’

I was shattered. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me, although I knew she’d never lie. A day or two later, my mother summoned Jim to the house to confront him. I had never seen her so angry. All five feet of her stood up to his lanky frame and she dominated the room. I just sat there, crying and trying to take it all in.

His response relieved me enormously. ‘Yes, I have a wife, ma’am,’ he told her, looking genuinely contrite, ‘but I’m getting a divorce.’ He pulled out a photograph of a baby daughter he’d also never mentioned. My head was in a spin. I didn’t know what to think, but then he told my mother, ‘I love Paula, Mrs Tilston, and I want to marry her. I’m going home to arrange the divorce and then I’ll send for her.’

Having veered from shock to despair, I was on cloud nine once more.

Mum wasn’t at all happy but she knew how strongly I felt about Jim so she reluctantly agreed that I could carry on seeing him until he left for America. I pined for the end of each day when I’d be seeing him after work. Although I dreaded him leaving the country, I couldn’t wait to join him and would lie awake at night imagining what our life together would be like across the Atlantic. He told me that we’d be living on a military airbase to begin with and he tried to prepare me for what to expect. He said I’d have to go to a special school to learn about American culture for my citizenship exams. I told the girls in the salon all about it and we chattered excitedly about me moving abroad. Secretly, I was terrified by the idea. I’d never lived anywhere but Chester; I’d not even been to London, and I hadn’t ever flown in an aeroplane. But as long as Jim was waiting for me, I knew I could do it – even if it meant leaving everything and everyone that I’d ever known.

I planned our romantic farewell over and over in my mind. I imagined myself tearfully waving him off at the train station or kissing him goodbye at the gates to the airbase. The fairytale ending I’d dreamed of crumbled to dust when he called me late one night to tell me he’d be flying home early the following morning.

‘My leave’s been cancelled,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no time to say goodbye.’ He gave me the forwarding address of his new base and promised to write soon.

I placed the telephone back in its cradle and burst into shuddering tears. At least he had my tap-dancing medal as his talisman but it was all so sudden. I could hardly believe that in a few hours’ time my Jim, the love of my life, would be flying away from me.

Three (#ulink_a8e1a2a1-778a-55ee-82f1-49d195fbf3ad)

I’D HAD SUCH AN EMOTIONAL FEW MONTHS THAT I FELT PHYSICALLY AND mentally drained. It seemed that everything that could have happened to me in my life had happened in that very short space of time. Well, almost everything.

When my period was late that month, I honestly didn’t think anything about it. I’d not been eating well and I’d hardly been sleeping. I told myself the distress I’d been suffering was bound to have an effect on my body. But as the days passed and nothing happened, I began to grow more fearful, terrified of what this might really mean.

Four months after my sixteenth birthday in February 1955, I finally summoned up the courage to blurt out the news to my mother. The look on her face will remain with me for ever. ‘But, Pauline!’ she cried. ‘What are you telling me? My God, you’re just a child yourself. Your body isn’t even fully developed yet!’

I sat at the kitchen table, my arms wrapped around me as she scolded me, her voice rising with shock and anger. By the end of that night she was too upset for me and too angry at Jim to fight any more and we were both too exhausted to try. The following morning, she hugged me and took me to the doctor’s surgery where I’m certain she hoped he’d tell her I was mistaken. When he confirmed her worst fears, I’m sure she secretly hoped he’d tell me how to get rid of the baby I was carrying, but doctors didn’t do that sort of thing back then.

The thought of an abortion never even crossed my mind. This was my baby. I loved its father with all my teenage heart. He was going to marry me and we’d live happily ever after in America. Of course I was going to keep it. I was so shocked when, on the way home from the surgery, Mum turned to me on the bus and said, ‘You won’t be able to bring the baby home, you know. I’m working. You’re working. Peter’s in hospital. There’s no one to look after it. How can we possibly give this baby the home it deserves?’

I knew she was upset and decided that she just needed time to get used to the idea. As far as I was concerned I had little reason to worry. The minute Jim found out I was pregnant, I was certain he’d hurry through his divorce, send for me, and we’d be wed before the baby was born. Even if there was a delay, it wasn’t unheard of for women to become pregnant out of wedlock in Chester. There had been a couple of examples very close to home. A girl across the road from where we lived had a baby by a local boy when she was young and had married the father so they could raise the child together. My next-door neighbour became pregnant in her early twenties by an American long before I’d even met Jim. She didn’t marry her airman or move to the States, but she kept her daughter nonetheless.

I wrote to Jim straight away at the address he’d given me, telling him my momentous news. I’m going to have our baby, I wrote, choosing my words carefully. I hope you’re as happy as I am. Every morning in the days and weeks that followed, I watched and waited for the postman to bring me a blue airmail envelope, a postcard, anything…but nothing came. The daily disappointment made me feel even sicker to my stomach.

After a while, my mother decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking Harry along for moral support, she made an appointment with one of the senior officers at the airbase where Jim had taken me to the dance and demanded to know his whereabouts.

‘We have no airman here by that name,’ the officer told her blankly. ‘We never have had.’ Even my indomitable little mother could do nothing against the immovable might of the United States Air Force.

I refused to lose heart and continued to believe that Jim would write any day or, better still, turn up on my mother’s doorstep, his cap pushed to the back of his head the way it always was, with that huge grin on his face. There must have been a problem with his wife, I convinced myself. Maybe she was making things difficult? Maybe the USAF was? After all, they’d pretended he didn’t even exist.

I’d lie on my bed in my room, playing the number one hit ‘Unchained Melody’ by Jimmy Young over and over on my little gramophone, hoping that somewhere across the Atlantic Jim might be listening to it too. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still mine? The words seemed to have been written specially for us.

The hardest part was going to work at the salon each day, my baby growing secretly inside me. The girls stopped asking if I’d heard from Jim. They could tell from my puffy eyes that I hadn’t. They were kind and supportive but they left me alone. There was no more happy chatter about my new life in America or what sort of wedding dress might best suit my beanpole frame. I told no one about the baby and fortunately didn’t really suffer from morning sickness so no one suspected. I covered myself up well, despite the fact that I was suddenly not quite so skinny any more.

Then one day, when I was about five months’ pregnant and still holding myself in, Doreen ‘Dors’ Jones, my manageress, told me that the boss of Quaintways, Mr Guifreda, wanted to see me in his office. I’d never been summoned to see him before and I couldn’t imagine what he might want. A Sicilian in charge of the restaurant, salon and just about every aspect of the enterprise, he was a kind and friendly man so I wasn’t afraid, but I was a little nervous. When Miss Jones came into the office with me, closed the door and stood behind me, I felt my knees begin to tremble.

Mr Guifreda told me to take a seat. ‘So, Tilly,’ he began. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’ He gave me a gentle smile.

I looked at him.

I looked up at Miss Jones.

Then I looked down at my hands.

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

His statement wasn’t really a question and I began to cry.

Miss Jones placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and passed me a handkerchief. Mr Guifreda looked almost as upset as I was. ‘Now, now, don’t cry,’ he soothed, patting my hand. ‘We’ll take care of you. Everyone will.’

He was true to his word. From that day on, they all did. Within the hour, everyone knew about ‘Tilly’s baby’ or ‘the Quaintways’ baby’ as it was sometimes known. Bowls of nourishing soup were sent to me with the compliments of the chefs in the restaurant. Clearly, they thought I needed fattening up. The other girls in the salon made sure I didn’t do too much or strain myself lifting anything. Most of the regular customers soon suspected and started to give me extra tips to buy ‘something nice for the baby’. Everyone was so kind and took such special care of me. I couldn’t have been in better hands.

Back home, the atmosphere was far more strained. My mother, who was a very proud woman and worried about the prying eyes of the neighbours, had been summoned to Quaintways by Mr Guifreda, who reassured her that my job would remain open for me. She thanked him but told me not to tell anyone else. Insisting that she was doing what was best for the baby, she contacted social services and the Church of England Children’s Society. Between them, they arranged that when I was seven months’ pregnant I would go to St Bridget’s House of Mercy in Lache Park, beyond Handbridge.

I adored my mother but I pleaded with her to allow me to stay at home. ‘Can’t I have it here?’ I begged. ‘Then we can just look after it ourselves.’

‘How?’ she’d cry, shaking her head. ‘Who’ll look after it when we’re both out at work all day? There’s nobody but us here now and neither of us can afford to give up our jobs. You have to be sensible, Pauline. It would be cruel to the baby to do anything but this and they’ll take better care of your baby than we could.’

There were no crèches in those days and, even if there had been, we couldn’t have afforded one. I earned just over three pounds a week with tips and, although my mother earned a little more, every penny was spoken for. We had few relatives nearby and those we had were working too. Peter knew nothing of my pregnancy and was still at the rehabilitation centre. Nobody could help us.

I was assigned a social worker, a middle-aged Dutch lady called Mrs Cotter, who visited me regularly as the pregnancy progressed. ‘You’ll stay in the mother and baby home for three months after the birth and then the baby will be put up for adoption,’ she told me. ‘If suitable parents can’t be found, it will be placed in a state nursery until they can.’

I watched the words fall from her mouth but I never really thought they would apply to me. Jim would be back by then, I kept telling myself, or, if for some terrible reason he wasn’t, my mother would change her mind at the last minute and let me keep the baby. I was certain of it.