30 MAY 1941
In the seven days since her shocking discovery, Flossy had felt every emotion it was possible to experience for the woman she now regarded as her guardian angel. Regret, heartache, confusion, but the emotion that sang out purest of all was love. She had scarcely slept for analysing every conversation she had had this past year with Dolly, and it all came back to one indisputable fact: Dolly had treated her like a mother would a child. Why, the very last thing she did on earth was to bake Flossy a cake for her birthday, hug her and tell her how proud she was. She might not have been a mother in name, but in her everyday actions, she had more than fulfilled the role.
The contents of the letter had not been the bombshell Flossy had feared, but something altogether more poignant, but then the truth always was stranger than fiction. Flossy intended to fulfil every single one of Dolly’s last requests and find the love and family that had so cruelly been denied her. She did not intend to waste so much as a precious drop of her life, but live it in a way that would make Dolly proud.
There was, however, just one request by which Flossy felt she could never abide. To leave the trail of discovering the identity of her real mother would be impossible. She would sooner cut off a limb than abandon her search now. Dolly had revealed a tantalizing glimpse of the woman who had brought her into this world and, for whatever tragic reason, felt she had no choice but to abandon into the care of a stranger.
Flossy ached to discover the truth and yet all she had to go on was the pitiful keepsake. Why go to the trouble of embroidering such beautifully intricate birds and butterflies but leave so few words to reveal why she had left? Her mother was clearly a skilled needleworker, and with a pang Flossy realized this was where she had inherited her talent with a needle. But what other traits did she share with her? Just who was this woman whose blood flowed through her veins? Endless unanswered questions jostled through her mind. Where did her mother go to after she walked away from Victoria Park? What of her father?
Her mother had told Dolly she was widowed, unless she had been lying, but where would she have got the wedding ring she was wearing? None of it made sense, and until she uncovered the truth, Flossy would never truly feel whole.
In the past week, she had already pounded the bomb-shattered cobbles to visit every mother-and-baby home in the district, clutching her fabric heart and matinee jacket in the hope that someone might recognize it. Not only that but she had visited the local library, trawled the public records and visited an organization that had opened up two years previously, called the Citizens Advice Bureau. The lady at the CAB office, sitting under a huge banner announcing, We’re all in it together, had been very sympathetic to Flossy’s plight, but explained she was far too busy trying to rehouse folk made homeless by the Blitz and told her to come back when the war was over. In growing desperation, Flossy had even placed a small advert in the East London Advertiser, but so far nothing.
‘You’ll be lucky,’ the lady at the public records office had told her unhelpfully. ‘Half the records in Bethnal Green went up in flames or are buried in bombsites.’ The only lead that held out any glimmer of hope had been the last mother-and-baby home she had visited yesterday on her dinner break. The lady on duty had told her she couldn’t help, but that if she came back that very evening, their older midwife would be on duty. The lady didn’t seem to hold out any hope that she would be of assistance, but Flossy knew she would not rest until every last avenue had been explored.
As the high walls of the factory hove into sight, pride swelled in her heart. It had been nineteen days and nights now since the bombs had stopped and the old building was still standing. A little battle-scarred, its high walls scorched black, a forlorn piece of tarpaulin draped over the hole in the roof, and a tatty Union Jack fluttering from the window, but it was still in one piece. Just. More than could be said for the poor factory a few doors up, which was now nothing but a jagged, twisted pile of bricks, sealed off behind a Keep out! sign.
Flossy stopped outside the gates to Trout’s. The world turns on tiny things. Had that bomb dropped a split second earlier . . . Had her welfare officer visited that factory to find her employment, instead of Trout’s . . .
As she allowed her gaze to travel up the brickwork, peppered with pieces of shrapnel and jagged with cracks, Flossy squinted into the grimy air. Coincidence? Of course, but Flossy preferred to think that fate might well have had a hand in it.
‘You worried it’s all gonna come tumbling down?’ called out a deep male voice.
Flossy whirled round and her grey eyes lit up.
Coming from the other direction were Lucky and Peggy, with her stick, her loyal fiancé tenderly helping her. They made an unusual couple: he was as broad and strong as she slender and willowy, yet they fitted together like two halves.
‘What, Trout’s?’ Flossy replied. ‘Never. I was just thinking, actually, it’s a bit of a cliché, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ said Peggy, coming to a halt and leaning breathlessly on her stick.
‘How is your leg feeling?’ Flossy enquired.
‘The same really,’ she replied. ‘But on the plus side, I have so much more feeling now in my hands. The doctor’s really pleased with my progress, seems to think all the sewing I’m doing is helping.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Flossy said. ‘Look here, could I beg a favour of you both? I have an appointment at a mother-and-baby home after work. Would you come with me? I’m hopeful it may be the one my mother gave birth in.’
Peggy and Lucky were the only people who knew about Dolly’s connection to her and they had decided to keep the truth to themselves for now. The girls had had enough shocks to cope with of late, and besides, where did one even begin to start explaining that?
She saw Peggy shoot Lucky a concerned look.
‘Look here, Flossy. Do you really think you ought to? I mean, isn’t it best left? What good is it raking over the past? Remember what Dolly said in her letter to you? Besides,’ she added, ‘the woman left you to the mercy of a complete stranger in the park. What kind of mother would do such a thing?’
‘Peggy,’ admonished Lucky.
‘It’s all right, Lucky,’ soothed Flossy, knowing Peggy hadn’t meant to be unkind.
‘I think, Peggy, only a desperate mother,’ she replied.
Flossy could have said more, of course. So much more. She could have described the exquisite agony of lying on her cold iron bed at the children’s home, night after night, silently sobbing into her starched white pillow, praying each morning that today would be the day that her mother would come and claim her. That there was an empty space in her heart that ached for the love and affection that only a mother could provide. That all she had ever prayed for was to belong to someone, in the way Peggy did.
Instead, she swung open the wrought-iron gate.
‘Come on, we better clock in.’
Lucky placed his hand in the small of her back. ‘Course we will come with you, Flossy.’
Inside, the factory was subdued and as silent as the grave. In fact, one week on from the funeral, the floor was a sea of black and not one note had been sung. Without the accompaniment of laughter, song and good-natured teasing, even the humming of the machines sounded strangely flat.
Three days ago, news had broken on the wireless that Germany’s most famous battleship, the Bismarck, had been sunk, a decisive victory for the Allies, and even that hadn’t elicited the chorus of cheers it would have under normal circumstances. It was as if Dolly’s death had broken the spirit of Trout’s.
The morning crawled by, and by tea break, the workers downed tools and sat about quietly drinking their tea and reading letters.
It was Archie who cracked first. ‘I can’t stand this,’ he said, putting his mug down with a thump. ‘I can hear myself think. I must be certifiable, but I miss your singing, even your squabbling and your jokes. How long is this going to go on for?’
‘Thought you’d be pleased to have a bit of peace and quiet, Mr G?’ piped up Sal.
‘Not when it’s like this,’ he replied, standing and rubbing a hand wearily over the crown of his bald head. The piece of shrapnel he had caught on his forearm that first night of the bombings had left a jagged scar, and his pockmarked face was grey with exhaustion, but the foreman still had fight in his voice.
‘Look, girls. I know we will never get over losing Dolly. Quite simply, she is irreplaceable. We have been dealt some cruel losses this past eight months, but life has to go on. The bombs seem to have stopped, God willing, and we must soldier on.’
He cast his hand about the floor. ‘Dolly would never have wanted to see Trout’s like this . . . like . . . like some sort of mausoleum. I think the time for respectful silence has passed.’
Vera stepped forward. ‘I agree – Dolly would have hated to see us like this.’
‘They’re right,’ sighed Pat, turning to the rest of the workers. ‘All our Doll wanted was to see people happy and smiling.’ With that she started to sing the first few bars of a song all the women knew had been a firm favourite of Dolly’s.
‘You Are My Sunshine’ was entirely appropriate, and one by one the women started to join in, the lyrics wrapping them in the golden warmth of nostalgia. There was much comfort and solace to be found in a shared song, and united, their voices drifted out of the open window. With Dolly gone, their sunshine had gone away, but if they sang loudly enough, perhaps, just perhaps, she would hear how much they had all truly loved her.
When the final bell sounded at the end of that emotional day, Flossy was beat. The Scouts had just installed five thousand triple bunks down the Tube, and now that the shelter welfare hall had opened, her home below ground was even more appealing. There mightn’t have been nightly bombardments anymore, but it didn’t stop Flossy, along with hundreds more, still heading to the sanctuary of the Underground to sleep.
Now that she had a precious shelter ticket for a bunk, she longed to head below ground, perhaps take in a concert in the hall that had been built in the westbound tunnel, before curling up in her cosy bunk with a borrowed book from the shelter library. A wood-panelled library, right there underground! Flossy had scarcely been able to believe it when she had seen it being built. It was such a joy to browse through their volumes, and she had even asked the shelter librarian to reserve a copy of Black Beauty when it was returned. A feeling of triumph surfaced inside Flossy. There was absolutely nothing Matron could do about that! She would never abandon the Bible, but now, thanks to the Underground shelter library, Flossy could finally allow her imagination free rein.
‘Cooee, earth calling Flossy,’ sang Peggy.
‘Sorry, I was miles away. What were you saying?’ she said.
‘I was saying, are you quite sure you won’t change your mind?’ asked Peggy, as she pinned on her hat.
‘You have to ask?’ Flossy replied.
Together, the threesome slowly threaded their way through the narrow streets in the direction of the mother-and-baby home.
When at last they reached the large old Victorian home housed a few streets back from the park, Peggy wrinkled her nose. It looked dark and forbidding, its soot-stained window frames sagging and the roof buckling, as if the old house was sinking into the ground under the weight of its secrets.
‘Are you sure it hasn’t been evacuated? It looks all boarded up. Who in their right mind would want to give birth here?’
‘You’d be surprised, Peggy,’ Lucky replied. ‘Some people have no choice. Babies don’t stop being born just because there’s a war on, you know.’
In silence they climbed the stone steps and rapped on the tarnished brass knocker.
They waited what to Flossy felt like an age.
‘What is this place?’ Peggy asked.
‘A charitable institution for unmarried mothers having illegitimate children,’ Lucky replied. ‘I’m not sure who runs it, either the East End Mission or London County Council. Either way, you come here if you ain’t got no place else to turn.’
With that, the door swung open and a lady who looked as old and battle-worn as the building itself peered out from behind the heavy wooden door.
‘May I be of assistance?’ she asked.
‘Er, yes. I spoke with another lady here who said you may be able to help me,’ Flossy started, finding herself suddenly tongue-tied. ‘I have some, er, questions.’
Without saying a word, the woman held open the door and they all trooped in over the doorstep.
Once inside the darkened hallway, Flossy looked about her. She wasn’t sure whether the heavily shuttered and bolted windows were to prevent prying eyes looking in or women getting out. The reception was lit by a solitary low-watt bulb, and the place was sparsely furnished, save for a leaden crucifix hanging on the distempered walls. It was, however, broom-clean, and the parquet flooring smelt of Mansion Polish.
A heavy mahogany stairwell dominated the space, and Flossy felt her eyes travel up the steps. At the top sat a young woman, scarcely older than Flossy, clutching a duster in one hand and a swollen belly in the other. She regarded them suspiciously through the gloom. One look from the elderly midwife and she turned and scurried back up the stairs, out of sight.
‘We are keen to observe the privacy of the girls,’ said the midwife. ‘Please state your business here.’
‘Please, ma’am,’ said Flossy. ‘I am trying to find my mother. I believe she gave birth to me, here. Sometime in May 1922.’
The midwife raised an eyebrow a fraction. ‘My dear, do you know how many women have passed through these doors over the course of the past nineteen years?’ she replied. ‘I really do not think that I can be of any assistance to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have duties to tend to.’ With that, she gestured to the door.
‘We are terribly sorry to have bothered you,’ said Peggy, obviously relieved to make her escape from the stultifying atmosphere.
‘Please, ma’am,’ Flossy blurted, more abruptly than she had intended. This couldn’t be it. This was her last hope. ‘It’s important. You see, she abandoned me and I have to find her. My mother had red hair; she was Irish.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that, but I am not in the business of identifying girls who have made mistakes simply through the colour of their hair or their nationality.’
‘But that’s just it. I don’t believe she had made a mistake, nor was she a girl. You see, I believe my mother was widowed. Do you only admit single women?’
A shadow of irritation flashed across the woman’s face. ‘This particular home mainly admits young unmarried mothers bearing illegitimate offspring. But in exceptional cases, we do admit married women, mainly destitute women. We teach them to care for their babies, carefully monitor their health and well-being, and that of their children, in the hope that we can avoid the child being given up for adoption and put the mother back on the road to respectability.’
The emotion of the previous month surged through Flossy and she was embarrassed to find herself crying. A solitary hot tear slid down her cheek and she looked down at the polished floor in disgrace. The action caused a bolt of pain to slice through her neck. In that moment, a thought came to Flossy. In Dolly’s letter, she had remarked that her mother had been hunched over. What if the problems she was experiencing with her neck had been inherited from her mother? What if she too suffered with scoliosis, or whatever the doctor at the children’s home had called the neck problems that had cursed her all her life?
‘She may have had a problem with her neck that caused her to have a stoop,’ she said in desperation.
The midwife regarded her curiously and seemed to be thinking carefully. The impatient look of moments earlier had softened into compassion.
‘My dear, upon reflection, I do remember an Irish lady who was admitted that year, in the spring, I think.’
Buoyed by her reaction, Flossy tore her mother’s fabric heart and the matinee jacket from her bag. ‘I have these too,’ she added, breathlessly holding the ageing fabric and the wool garment up to the light so the midwife could see. ‘My mother made the heart. She left it tucked inside this jacket pocket. Just in case you re—’ Flossy stopped, for the midwife’s entire expression had changed. Her gaze remained fixed on the matinee jacket, but her face was wrung with despair.
‘It took her weeks to make that,’ she said at last, her voice haunted. ‘I remember thinking how pretty the pink trim was. I even found her the length of pink ribbon to make the bow. Dear Genevieve.’
‘So . . . so you do know her, my mother . . . Please, I beg of you, ma’am, tell me what you know,’ Flossy pleaded. ‘Genevieve . . .’ The name . . . her mother’s name sounded clunky on her lips.
‘Of course I will, but please, my dear, let us retire somewhere more comfortable, to my office, where we might speak with more privacy.’
Seated in a chair opposite the midwife in an even sparser room, flanked by Peggy and Lucky, Flossy felt as if her entire life had been leading up to this moment. She had felt it in her bones when they crossed the threshold, that this was where she had entered the world.
Flossy laid the embroidered heart down on the desk. ‘Please don’t leave anything out. I need to hear the truth.’
‘I can well imagine,’ replied the midwife, taking a shaky sip of water. ‘Genevieve’s story, well . . . it is not an easy one to relay, but I shall try my best. Many years have passed and well, some memories take flight over time . . .’ She fluttered her long, bony fingers like tiny birds into the air.
‘Please think,’ said Flossy with a degree more sharpness than she had intended.
‘Flossy, let’s remember we are guests here,’ urged Lucky, under his breath.
‘Forgive me,’ said Flossy, feeling humbled as the realization hit her that this elderly lady had helped bring her into the world. ‘Please take your time.’
‘Genevieve Connor – that was your mother’s name – arrived here one fine spring morning in 1922. I remember it well, in fact, as it was the same year they finally pulled down the notorious tenement slums around Brady Street, an admirable intent, as those premises weren’t fit for a dog, except it left many, Genevieve included, displaced.’
The midwife shook her head and took another sip of water. ‘A shock of vivid red hair she had – you’d never miss her, not even in the blackout. She arrived heavily with child and homeless. Not a penny to her name, poor woman, and her condition exacerbated by a problem with her neck.’
Flossy’s body stilled, but her heart was pounding furiously in her chest.
‘She was recently widowed, poor soul, about to give birth too and in a terrible state. Imagine losing your husband and your home when you’re with child. Could there be a harsher fate?
‘If my memory serves me right, I have a feeling he’d been gassed in the first war. Poor man. That war was a disgrace. Have we learned nothing?’ she tutted. ‘The war that was supposed to end all wars and yet here we are again—’
‘But Genevieve . . .’ interrupted Flossy gently, desperate to get the midwife back on track.
‘My apologies,’ she said, shaking herself. ‘Yes, Genevieve. She stood out to me as we don’t admit that many married women, truth be told, mainly young girls who’ve got themselves in trouble. She didn’t have a farthing to her name. That’s why she came to us, threw herself upon our mercy. She had nowhere else to turn. Poor soul was in bits, scared witless, in pain and grieving for her husband.’ Her gaze flickered to the crucifix on the wall.
‘We looked after her here while she laboured, showed her how to care for a newborn infant; then when the baby was seven or eight weeks old, we had no choice but to discharge her from our care. I knew she was vulnerable and unwell, but that was the longest she could stay. The poor soul, she begged and pleaded with us to stay, but my hands were tied. We have a desperate shortage of beds. We did manage to arrange her a job making matchboxes and a bunk at a homeless-and-hapless lodgings. She would have done anything to avoid the fate of the workhouse.’
‘Where?’ blurted Flossy, through a storm of tears. She felt Peggy’s arm slip through hers, but she was so close now – she had to know the whole truth, no matter how painful. ‘Please tell me where this job was, or the address. I have to find her. I mean her no harm, I assure you.’
The midwife’s face fell and her hand flew to her heart. ‘Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry, really I am, but there is little point . . .’
‘But why? Surely it’s worth me trying at the very least,’ Flossy protested.
‘No, you see, it’s too late.’ The elderly lady’s careworn face was shot through with distress. ‘Of this I am quite certain. Genevieve died soon after she was discharged. Our efforts amounted to nothing. Phthisis, or “self-neglect”, they called it, which is just an archaic way of saying tuberculosis. It was particularly rife in the tenements that year.’
Flossy felt paralysed by the pitiful story, unable to utter so much as a word.
‘I do not know the details, my dear,’ the midwife continued in a soft voice, ‘but that was what was reported to us. Your mother was not in her right mind when she left here. Life had not been kind to her and it broke her, mentally and physically. She loved the bones of the child she bore, that much was obvious, but sometimes love just isn’t enough, is it?’ she added sadly. ‘I wish I could have done more for her, for all the women who pass through these doors, in fact.’
‘Is there a grave that I can visit?’ Flossy heard herself ask in a tiny voice.
The midwife shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. She’d have been buried in a pauper’s grave.’
Flossy looked upon her mother’s embroidered heart, lying on the desk between her and the midwife, and felt her own heart shatter.
Go gentle, babe.
I must now depart, but I leave you my heart.
‘She must have known all along she was going to abandon me, even before she left here,’ Flossy whispered.
‘We can never know what was going through her mind,’ replied the midwife. ‘But she clearly wanted a better life for you than the one she could provide. She appeared devoted to you, and while you slept, she spent hours knitting this matinee jacket and embroidering. If only I had known . . .’
As she spoke, her long fingers, covered in skin as thin as paper, traced the fine embroidered butterflies and birds. ‘Perhaps she hoped you too would fly free?’
Her words crashed down around Flossy like daggers of ice and she gulped deep in her throat.
‘Perhaps,’ she replied at last. ‘Well, I thank you for your time.’
‘I’m so sorry to be the one to impart such sad news. Won’t you stay a while, let me have the housekeeper fix you a cup of tea?’
Flossy took in the three concerned faces staring at her and suddenly felt waves of panic. She had come here today seeking the truth, the answers she had searched for all her life, but this . . . This was simply too much to bear.
‘No . . . no, thank you, ma’am,’ she whispered, backing up towards the door and accidentally colliding with a slightly limp aspidistra perched on a stand, which then smashed down onto the parquet floor. As earth and tangled, exposed roots skidded across the floor of the office, Flossy stifled a sob.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whimpered, turning and fleeing from the building. She had to get away, escape from the crushing sense of disappointment that was threatening to engulf her.
Outside, the skies overhead were leaden and grey, matching the torment that tore at her heart, and Flossy pounded along the street. She didn’t know where she was going, just that she had to get away as fast as she could. In the space of five minutes, her dreams had crumbled to dust.
Flossy kept on running until she reached the grey waters of the boating lake in nearby Victoria Park and only then did she come skidding to a stop. Sinking down onto a bench, she put her head in her hands and surrendered to her pain.
‘Flossy!’ rang out a voice. She looked up and through her tears saw Lucky and Peggy. ‘Budge up, there’s a good girl,’ said Lucky.
‘You left these at the home,’ he said, producing the embroidered heart and baby jacket.
‘Keep them. I don’t want them,’ she replied.
He folded them carefully and placed them back inside his jacket, and together the three of them stared out bleakly at the water’s edge.
Flossy broke the silence. ‘All my days, because of the parcels, I’ve clung to the hope that I was illegitimate. I know illegitimacy is considered a sin, but for me, it at least provided me with a reason why she gave me up. Stupid, isn’t it? To actually long to be a bastard child, but I believed, rather I dreamed, that my mother couldn’t keep me and only gave me away to save a scandal, when in reality she gave me away the first chance she got, and to a perfect stranger too. She was hopeless – either that or I really must have been terribly hard to love after all.’
She sniffed derisively. ‘What a fool I am. I should have listened to Dolly and never come here today.’
Flossy shook her head bitterly and closed her eyes against the cutting wind. When at last she opened them again, Lucky had crouched down beside her, and he tenderly took her hands in his. Raindrops streaked his handsome features and Flossy had never seen such compassion etched on a man’s face.
‘Can you imagine how tormented she must have felt to have abandoned you here?’ he said, in a voice of infinite tenderness. ‘It must have gone against every instinct in her body. I wonder how long it was before the TB claimed her. Not long, I hope.’
‘Lucky’s right,’ Peggy said, breaking her silence. ‘She must have known she was dying and needed to know that at least her daughter would be taken in and fed and clothed. It was the last act of a desperate mother, surely? She must have gone to her grave tortured with guilt.’
Her mother really was dead, buried in an unmarked grave, her fragile remains pressed in together with so many other unfortunate souls, as anonymous in death as she had been in life. An explosion of grief and regret flooded through Flossy and she stood abruptly.
‘Well, I can’t forgive her either,’ Flossy said, her voice as prickly as the barbed wire that edged the park. ‘What kind of woman abandons her child? She was a weak and selfish coward. Nature has fashioned our sex for endurance and ingenuity – haven’t we ourselves proved that these past eight months? She simply didn’t try hard enough.’ Flossy spat out the bitter accusation, before turning and walking from the park. This time, Peggy and Lucky let her go.
There was only one person she longed to see now, one man who could help her make sense of this mess, and his boat was docking in just two days’ time.