2. 7 An unhappy story
I said that I would tell you Valerie’s story, so here goes! I suppose in some ways it’s very much the sort of thing I’d expected it to be.
Valerie Johns lived with her parents in Croxteth, which is a suburb of Liverpool. I could see Bernie’s ears pricking up when Valerie told us where she had come from, but she refrained from saying anything – which was unusual for her. She’s normally delighted to have an excuse to talk about her native city, but she knew I didn’t want to do anything to encourage Valerie to think that we were going to form a long-term friendship or had anything whatever in common.
When she was twelve, Valerie started learning to play the piano, under the tuition of a Mr Lewis. She used to call at his house after school for her lessons. He was in his late thirties and unmarried. They got on very well together and after a few months, it wasn’t just piano-playing that he was teaching her. She was still only thirteen when she fell pregnant.
This was all way before the Abortion Act – and in any case, she was so young and inexperienced that it was too late by the time she realised what was happening to her – so she had no choice but to have the baby. Her parents were horrified when they found out and they packed her off to stay with an aunt in Hoylake in an attempt to avoid a scandal. Valerie stayed there until after the birth. Meanwhile, her parents decided to up sticks and move the whole family down the East Lancashire Road to Manchester, where no one would know them and there would be no awkward questions asked about their wayward daughter.
Lewis appears to have got away scot-free. When I asked Valerie whether they had reported him to the police, she seemed quite taken aback, as if she had never thought about the fact that he had committed an offence. I suppose she was too young to understand such things and her parents were afraid of drawing attention to something that they clearly saw as shameful.
Valerie pleaded to be allowed to keep her baby, but she was overruled by her family and forced to hand me over to the care of the National Children’s home. She said
that she always intended to go back and claim me when she was old enough, and she was full of remorse that she never did.
She claimed that she was in love with Peter Lewis – although exactly what sort of love a thirteen-year-old child might have for a mature man is questionable – and that he loved her. Most likely, she felt she owed it to herself – or to me – to have been in love with the father of her child. Although, I suppose her choice of name for me must be of some significance.
Anyway, that’s how things were. Valerie’s parents arranged for me to be placed in a home well away from where they were living, to make it more difficult for her to attempt to visit. They wanted me to be put up for adoption – which they saw as a way of drawing a line under the unfortunate incident once and for all – but Valerie held out against that, with surprising strength of will under the circumstances. She kept telling me that she worried that this might have been wrong, because if she hadn’t clung on to the idea that she would reclaim me eventually, I might have had a normal family life. I hope I managed to convince her that no damage was done and my childhood was every bit as happy as the majority of families.
Valerie finished school and started work in a department store. Her parents kept her on a very short rein so she didn’t get to meet many people of her own age socially, but a young man from the menswear department took a fancy to her and asked her out. A few months later, he asked her to marry him. Seeing a way of getting out from under her parents control and establishing a home of her own, she accepted and they moved into a house in Wythenshawe.
To her parents’ horror, Valerie was completely open with Jack Harris about her previous liaison and her desire to look after her child – now seven years old – herself. Jack, who probably comes out of all this better than anyone else, was willing to go along with the idea.
However, before they could act they were overtaken by events. Valerie found herself pregnant again and it looked as if they would have their own family to worry about. They agreed to put off finding and claiming her first born until the new baby was settled.
Valerie suffered a miscarriage, which put her into a state of depression for quite some time. The verdict of the doctors was that her having previously given birth at such a young age had caused some permanent damage and it was unlikely that she would ever carry another child to full term. Valerie was distraught at the idea that she might not have any more children.
After five more miscarriages, she finally gave birth to Jane.
‘But afterwards,’ she told us tearfully, ‘I had everything taken away. They said it would be too dangerous for me to try for any more children.’
By now, the idea of adopting Valerie’s first baby was almost forgotten, in the emotional upheaval of the repeated hopes and disappointments and the final blow to her hopes of a large family. Additionally, she realised that her “baby” was by now a young man, who could even have embarked on setting up his own home and starting a family. (Indeed, my “sister” Jane is closer in age to my kids than to me.) So, fortunately, Valerie and Jack decided not to attempt to track me down after all.
Jane was the apple of her parents’ eye – unsurprisingly after the trouble they had bringing her into the world. They were proud when she went to college and trained as a teacher, and delighted when she married a fellow-teacher, Brendan Carrington. Valerie started looking forward eagerly for the arrival of grandchildren.
According to Jane, Brendan was also keen for the patter of tiny feet; but after six years, it began to look as if this was not going to happen. Brendan started to look elsewhere.
‘I suppose men always need to prove themselves,’ Jane told us. ‘He needed to demonstrate to himself that he was capable of fathering a child. And then, of course, once he’d got Daphne pregnant, it was inevitable that he’d leave me and go off with her.’ The whole business makes a very sad story and I can’t help feeling sorry for both Valerie and Jane. I just wish Valerie hadn’t been relying on me to restore her status with the Women’s Institute and the Knitting Club by enabling her to compete in the grandmother stakes! I suppose that her frustration at there being no likelihood of any grandchildren, coupled with her husband’s death at the age of sixty-eight, made it inevitable that she should start thinking again of the baby that she’d given up fifty-odd years previously. It’s no wonder she saw it as some sort of miracle when she heard my name on the television and managed to convince herself that I looked like the man who had fathered that child all those years ago.