7. 4 The kids

‘Think of the poor children!’

Those words haunted me for years afterwards. However, it was not until about eighteen months after our marriage that any ‘poor children’ showed signs of being on their way.

Then it happened. In the beginning, we didn’t realise what it was. I was convinced that there must be something seriously wrong with Angie. At first we thought it must be food poisoning, but after more than a week of sickness, we realised that it must be more than that, and I feared the worst. It never occurred to us that it could be morning sickness, because it lasted all day – and even got her up in the night on a few occasions. You can imagine how surprised and delighted we were when our GP suggested a pregnancy test.

As the weeks wore on, however, and Angie seemed no better, I started to feel quite guilty for what she was going through, and privately vowed that one baby was quite enough and I would insist that we remained as a family of three. I also felt guilty that Angie was so far from home at a time when she might quite reasonably want the support of her mother. With her usual good nature and optimistic outlook, she pooh-poohed all my misgivings and declared herself quite content with her lot.

Nonetheless, I was very relieved when the sickness eased off in the second trimester and Angie appeared the picture of good health. It did not seem long, however before the heat of the summer started to take its toll and, as she entered the final weeks of pregnancy, Angie was very tired and languid. I well remember those long, hot August nights when she would be lying next to me in bed, fidgeting in an attempt to get comfortable, while at the same time trying not to disturb me. To make matters worse, Hannah arrived nearly two weeks late, extending the long wait. During that time, we were very grateful for Bernie, who came in most days, while I was out at work, to help with the housework so that Angie could put her feet up.

Knowing no better, I always assumed that the swollen ankles and exhaustion that Angie endured in those last two months before Hannah finally made her debut were the inevitable consequences of pregnancy. It came as quite a shock to me when Bernie was expecting, to find her still as energetic as ever right up to the day of Lucy’s birth. She claims never to have experienced the slightest hint of morning sickness either. It just goes to show that everyone is different and you can never know how someone else will react to any situation.

Hannah finally made her entrance into the world in the early hours of a Monday morning, which was quite convenient, since it meant that I could be there at the birth and still go into work that day. (I’m not sure how much use I was, what with being tired out from being up all night and with my mind very much on other things than policing!) Hannah was, and is, very beautiful. She inherited Angie’s lovely almond-shaped dark brown eyes and high cheek bones. Her skin was a gorgeous caramel shade, which darkened as she got older, but remains paler than Angie’s delightful rich chocolate complexion. It always goes darker in the sunshine too, which surprises a lot of people. As far as I can make out, that is my sole contribution to my daughter’s looks – but then she’s better off without my inflammatory red hair and troublesome pale skin.

Although we might have liked Angie to give up work and become a full-time mum, the state of our family finances simply wouldn’t allow it. Maternity leave and maternity pay was less generous then and there was no right for those with caring responsibilities to request part-time or flexible working. However, with us both working shifts, we did manage to arrange things so that we could share the job of looking after Hannah and reduce the amount of childcare that we needed. Once more, I realised how much we were losing out by being so far away from Angie’s family. While friends and colleagues with young children relied on grandparents to look after them while they were at work, we either had to pay or to fall back on our friends. Some of the women that Angie had met at the antenatal classes were willing help out, but mostly we relied on Bernie to fill in the gaps.

Looking back, I’m surprised how little I saw of Bernie in those days. I know that she put in far more hours than was reasonable, covering the times between Angie setting off for her shift and me getting home from mine, or vice versa, but she always hurried off as soon as I arrived, s if she didn’t want to be in the house with me unless Angie was there too. I suppose she didn’t want to intrude or come between me and my daughter. Whatever the reason, she remained very much Angie’s friend and not mine, and I didn’t really get to know her.

Luckily for us, Hannah was a very placid baby – she came into her own in the driving-her-parents-up-the-wall stakes as a teenager – and we started to think that parenthood was basically very easy. We didn’t have nearly as many sleepless nights as most parents seem to complain of – which was just as well seeing as our jobs both often required us to be up early and always demanded our full attention.

I loved the times when I was off duty and could spend the whole day playing with Hannah or taking her out. I even enjoyed shopping, which had never before been one of my favourite activities. Wherever we went and whatever we were doing, she found something to get excited about – whether it was a big yellow digger mending the road or a sparrow picking up crumbs.

I did get some funny looks sometimes, though. Sometimes it was comical and sometimes annoying and sometimes I was hard-pressed to keep my temper. In those days, it was still fairly unusual for a man to have responsibility for a young child – dads mostly only got involved when their offspring were old enough to go with them to the match or learn to ride a bike. So that was another reason why Hannah and I got stares when I took her out with me in her pushchair or fed her when we were out for the day or – most unexpected of all – changed her nappy!

Young mothers especially often congratulated me on my efforts – with a tone in their voices that suggested that they were surprised that a mere man could cope with something as difficult as spooning baby food into an infant’s mouth. That wasn’t too bad and I tried not to let it irritate me. What was much worse were the people who assumed that Hannah was adopted and congratulated me on my generosity in taking on someone else’s offspring. It never seemed to occur to them that Hannah might be my own daughter.

Worst of all were the people who went on to say how much they admired me for begin prepared to adopt a black child – as if that made Hannah less desirable. Usually, if I explained the real state of affairs to them, they looked suitable embarrassed and apologised. But there were those who looked disapproving and even a few who said openly that they thought I had made a mistake in entering a mixed-race marriage. They always said that it was because the children were bound to suffer through being neither one thing nor the other, but I always wondered if they really meant that they didn’t approve of white people mixing with other races.

I think things have improved a lot now. I certainly hope so.

I ought to add that disapproval of mixed-race marriages wasn’t confined to the white community. I didn’t get any flack at that stage – probably because there weren’t as many black families around in Oxford as white ones – but as I’ll explain later, it was black disapproval of Angie marrying a policeman that turned out (literally) to be the real killer. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was telling you about life as a young couple with their first baby.

Although I loved Hannah to bits and enjoyed every minute of the time I spent with her, after the traumatic hours of labour, I was even more determined than before that one child was quite enough. However, Angie had other ideas. Since my main objections to a larger family were to spare her the discomfort, pain and risk, I found it difficult to argue with her clear desire for another baby. Thus it was that, almost exactly two years after Hannah’s arrival, our son, Edward, was born.

We’d been hoping for a spring baby – at least that had been my plan, mindful of Angie’s discomfort during the hot summer months leading up to Hannah’s arrival – but in the event it took Angie several months to conceive and so she had to go through the whole ordeal again. And once again we were very grateful for Bernie and some of Angie’s other friends for helping out.

With Eddie, we suddenly started to realise how lucky we had been with Hannah, who, we now recognised, had been an exceptionally placid and well-adjusted baby. Eddie soon saw to it that we had enough sleepless nights to bring us up to the normal average for young parents. At the same time, Hannah was going through the terrible twos and would throw tantrums completely at random. Well, I say at random but it always seemed as if she waited to pick the most embarrassing possible moments or else the times when we were in the greatest hurry and could not afford to spend time arguing with or cajoling her.

Of course we got through it somehow. Angie was a wonderful mum. She’d had some practice, I suppose, helping to bring up her younger sisters and brother, but I think it was mainly her good nature and unfailing patience that was most important. I did my best, but maybe it’s always harder for a dad to get close to his kids, or maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Looking back, I realise that I could have made a bigger effort not to let the job get in the way of family life, but I was always nervous of asking for time off unless I absolutely had to. And, of course, my boss didn’t have any family, so naturally he didn’t think to suggest it.

I don’t know whether I managed to get to more of Hannah’s sports days and school concerts and things, or whether it always seemed worse when I let Eddie down because he was a boy and wanted his dad to be involved more than Hannah did; but it certainly felt to me as if I kept on making promises to him and then not keeping them. It must have felt like that to him too, because that’s what he thought about when he wrote a piece for Bernie’s book of memories about Richard[i]. He wrote about the time that Bernie managed to get FA cup final tickets for the three of us to go to Wembley, and I pulled out because Richard called me into work at the last minute; and he went on to describe his disappointment that I missed seeing him win his race at the school sports day a few weeks later. What I didn’t know about until Eddie wrote it down, was Richard meeting him from school after that and apologising. I suppose that means I must have complained to him about it, although I don’t remember doing so.

I suppose my never spending enough time with Eddie may have been one of the factors that contributed to the problems that we had with him after he transferred to secondary school. I think there was bullying too, but he never spoke about it to Angie or me[ii]. We only realised that there was anything wrong when the school called us in to tell us about his truancy. I was mortified! A policeman’s kids ought to know how to behave. And I couldn’t understand why Eddie had done it – or, more to the point, why he hadn’t told us that he was unhappy at school.

Angie and I both tried reasoning with him, but he just wouldn’t talk. We decided that we’d have to accompany him to the school gates every morning to make sure that he got there. That was easier said than done, but we managed to organise our shifts so that we could do it. His school attendance improved, but he took to going off after school and hanging round street corners with some of his mates; so we started waiting for him after school and walking him home as well.

Then we discovered that he was bunking off at lunch time; so we tried to arrange to meet him and bring him home for lunch as well. All the time, we knew that keeping him more and more under our thumbs wasn’t the answer, but we really didn’t know what else to do.

We were at our wits’ end. As children, neither of us had ever felt any reluctance to go to school and we didn’t understand why Eddie did. I was worried that it might be something to do with being one of very few black children in a predominantly white school, but Eddie always fiercely denied it if I raised the question of teasing or bullying. Angie tried talking to him about it too, but he insisted that had nothing to do with it. It was just that school was boring, he told us.

Bernie helped out when we couldn’t organise our working patterns around getting Eddie to and from school. He seemed to find it easier to talk to her. Maybe this was because she knew more about some of the things that he was interested in – computers, for instance. In those days home computers were just starting to become, not common exactly, but more accepted than they had been. In other words, it was no longer only a few nerds who had them. Eddie had asked for one for his birthday, but we weren’t keen on him having something that we didn’t really understand – not to mention the price, which was say more than we usually spent on the kids for their birthdays!

I don’t know whether Eddie complained about it to Bernie or if she just got talking with him about his interest in computers. However it happened, she realised that this was something that she could turn to our advantage by giving Eddie something positive to do with his spare time and showing him how important attending school and getting through his exams was going to be if he wanted to continue to pursue his interest.

She got hold of a second-hand computer for him, from the university. I don’t know whether it cost her anything. She made out that it was being thrown out and she was doing them a favour taking it away, but that may just have been to make us feel better about accepting it. I remember her bringing it round one evening and setting it up in his bedroom. We didn’t see either of them for the rest of the day. I was very sceptical about it all at the time, but at least now he was staying at home instead of wandering the streets and perhaps getting into trouble with gangs and drugs.

To cut a long story short, Bernie managed to convince Eddie that he had a future in the computer business – but only if he knuckled down and got some decent GCSEs and then A’ levels and a Computer Science degree. We’d been telling him how important his education was for years, but of course he wasn’t going to listen to us – we were only his parents, after all! Bernie could speak with more authority because she was in the higher education game herself and was able to tell him about the sorts of things that her students had gone on to do after leaving university. She could also tell him how difficult it was going to be for him to get a decent job if he failed all his exams!

Looking back at what I’ve just written, I seem to be getting a bit off track with this chapter, which was supposed to be all about what a great mother Angie was. Some of what I’ve just been talking about ought to have gone in the piece I wrote about Our Bernie. And maybe I should have written separate sections for each of the kids. Or perhaps they could have written about what Angie was like as a mother better than I can. Just take it from me – she was good at it, really good. And I know that the kids would agree with me on that.

Now, where was I?

Hannah decided to follow her mother into nursing. We were both delighted about that. Hannah has a naturally empathetic disposition, which makes her ideal for reassuring nervous patients. From a purely practical point of view, nursing is also one of the safest careers to choose – there are never enough nurses to go round! I was taken aback, and a bit disappointed when she decided to go away to train. Angie, however, pointed out that it was understandable that she wouldn’t want to be working at the same hospital as her mother. I think I can understand that, but I didn’t see why she had to go all the way up to Leeds. There were plenty of places much closer to Oxford that she could have chosen.

I was even more disappointed when she got her first job up there and appeared all set to make her permanent home 175 miles away from us. Once again, Angie seemed understand, but I was quite at a loss. I wanted her back close to us, and I felt rather hurt that she didn’t seem to want us as much as we wanted her. I’ve never had any parents, so I suppose I’m in no position to pass judgement. Maybe I’d have been the same in her position.

After a while, we became aware that she had a boyfriend. She didn’t tell us about it right away – I expect she was afraid we’d make too much of a big thing of it, or maybe she wanted to wait until she was sure it was going to last before she introduced him to us. Whatever the reason it did create a rather funny situation.[iii] Laurence got to know that she hadn’t told us about him and he jumped to the conclusion that it must be because he was white. You see, he hadn’t realised that Hannah’s parents weren’t both black; so he imagined that we might be worried about her embarking on a mixed-race relationship. We all laughed rather a lot when we found out about it. Luckily Laurence could also see the funny side and didn’t get offended.

Laurence is a paramedic, whom Hannah met during the course of her work. I’m not sure how he washed up in Leeds. He comes from Walsall, or is it Wolverhampton – somewhere in the West Midlands, anyhow. No! I remember now – it’s Wednesbury. I think it’s quite racially-mixed there, so he didn’t think twice about asking Hannah out, but he must have known that not all parents are overjoyed at the idea of their kids marrying out of their own community.

One of the enduring sadnesses of my life – and Hannah’s too, I think – is that Angie didn’t live to see them married or to see her grandchildren. Bernie says that she’s still watching over us, but I just can’t have that sort of confidence. It seems much more likely to me that life on Earth is all there is and there isn’t anything beyond the grave. In any case, however wonderful heaven – or whatever you like to call it – might be, looking down and seeing little Emily and Amber can’t possibly compare with holding them in your arms and seeing their perfect little fingers grasping one of yours, or hearing them trying to say granddad, or catching them as they toddle towards you for the first time.

I try not to have favourites, but I have to admit to a soft spot for Emily, Hannah’s firstborn. This is because she is the only member of the family to have inherited my red hair. Lucy tells me that there must be red hair on Laurence’s side of the family too, but he isn’t aware of any. Apparently the genes can get passed down for generation after generation and then red hair appears unexpectedly when a baby inherits it from both sides.

Now it’s Hannah’s turn to be the odd-one-out in her family and to get the surprised stares and enquiries from strangers as to whether her children are adopted. Amber is darker than Emily, but she still looks white, rather than black, and her hair is a lovely warm brown colour – darker than her dad’s but not much darker. Hannah’s also having to learn about keeping redheads out of the sun to stop them burning – just as I had to find out about managing afro-style hair and dry skin. Laurence is very laid-back about everything and seems to rejoice in the challenges. He likes to describe it as the rich tapestry of life!

Eddie emigrated to Jamaica after his mum died. I’ll talk more about that in the next chapter. He’s married to a Jamaican nurse called Crystal. So you can see how both of the kids wanted to keep up the nursing tradition that Angie started. It was a long time before they had any children. In fact, I think they were starting to think that it wasn’t going to happen for them. However, after seven years, they now have a little boy. Bernie was very touched that they chose to call him Richard, after her Richard. It shows that Eddie must have forgiven him in the end for keeping me at work when I should have been watching him win races or play in the school band.

[i] See Despise not thy Mother, chapter 13.

[ii] Actually, I found out much, much later, that he did tell Angie that there had been some boys making racist remarks, but he swore her to secrecy because he was afraid that if I got to hear about it I’d go off the deep end and cause a scene.

[iii] You can read all about it in chapter 15 of Two Little Dickie Birds.

Go back Next chapter