Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking

Five

I WAS STANDING AT THE BUS STOP UNDER THE FAMOUS EASTGATE CLOCK IN Chester waiting to go home after a long day working at Quaintways. Having progressed to an improver in the salon by then, I’d been on my feet all day cutting and setting hair.

It was a fine evening and I checked my watch. The bus was late and so was I. Mum expected me home for supper at six. It was shepherd’s pie. I was always amazed how she could eke out a pound of mince until the end of each week.

A voice at my elbow startled me. ‘Hi there. It’s Pauline, isn’t it?’

I turned and found myself face to face with a man I knew only as the ex-boyfriend of a girl I worked with at Quaintways called Barbara Hill. He was a steward on the Cunard and White Star shipping lines, one of the young men known at the time as ‘the Hollywood waiters’ because they were all so well dressed and suntanned. To my surprise, Barbara, who looked like Kim Novak, had dumped him recently for an American airman called Harry.

I smiled shyly. I’d always thought this chap of Barbara’s was rather nice. He was certainly very handsome and, although not very tall, he had the strong physique of a sportsman. I learned later that he was a prizewining boxer among fellow stewards on the ships. It didn’t surprise me. He reminded me of Dirk Bogarde in Doctor at Sea. He had the same pleasant smile and gentle way about him.

Having recently dated a steward called Chris I knew that he and the boy at the bus stop had both just returned from a three-month voyage to New Zealand. As I turned to say hello I remembered his name. It was John – John Prescott.

‘Hi, John,’ I said brightly. ‘You’re back then?’

‘Yes, we docked a few days ago.’ He smiled and his suntan made his teeth look really white.

There was an awkward pause.

‘I was so sorry to hear about you and Barbara,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘Oh, thanks, but that didn’t matter,’ he replied, stoically. ‘I had another girlfriend in New Zealand anyway.’ He paused. ‘Are you still seeing Chris?’

‘No. He found another girl. They’re getting married.’

‘So is Barbara. She’s moving to the States.’

‘Oh.’ I stared down at my shoes, trying not to think what might have been.

‘Do you fancy going to the pictures one night, then?’

I looked up. My mind raced ahead of itself. If John knew Barbara and he also knew Chris, whom I’d been introduced to through my cousin, then he probably knew my history and yet he was still asking me out. He was certainly smiling warmly enough.

‘Yes, OK,’ I replied, on a whim. My bus pulled up just as I spoke, so I opened my handbag and fumbled with my purse. Stepping on to the bottom step, I turned and smiled back at him.

‘See you outside the Regal on Saturday night,’ he called out as the bus pulled away. ‘Seven o’clock?’

I gave him a little wave. His hand came up in a sort of salute and I couldn’t help but laugh. All the way home, I hoped that he did know about Paul so that I wouldn’t have to tell him. Not that I was ashamed – I was never ashamed of my son – but it was always a little awkward telling someone for the first time. John seemed a nice enough chap, though. I smiled at the thought of an evening in his company. I was eighteen years old. It would do me good to have a boyfriend again.

I’d always liked men in uniform, which probably stemmed back to seeing my dad in khaki during the war. The Cunard and White Star stewards not only had smart uniforms, they were especially sought after by all the girls in Liverpool and Chester for other reasons. Having experienced the finest luxury the world’s greatest cruise ships had to offer, they knew just how to treat a girl. They earned good money, especially on their longer voyages, and there was something terribly romantic about a man in a navy jacket and black bow tie sending you postcards and messages from around the world.

A few days later, John took me to the Regal to see a film I don’t now recall a single thing about. My uncle Wilf, the husband of my father’s sister Jane, was probably playing the organ as usual, rising out of the floor on the Wurlitzer, but I don’t remember what he played. We sat quite near the front but after a few minutes he suggested we move to the back row. ‘You’re talking too loudly,’ he said, which I’m sure was just a ruse.

I liked John right from the start. He was funny and he made me laugh. ‘You remind me of someone famous, now who is it…?’ he said.

‘Elizabeth Taylor?’ I asked hopefully, always flattered when the comparison was made.

‘No – Joyce Grenfell!’ he replied with a grin.

Chatting over a drink afterwards, I discovered quite a lot about him and what life was like at sea. He told me about one steward on their last voyage who’d kept them awake playing the guitar and singing all the time. His name was Tommy Steele. I learned of John’s strong political convictions and his dedication to improving conditions at sea, even if it made him unpopular with his employers.

I was surprised to discover that John’s father, a disabled railway signalman from Liverpool known as ‘Bert’, was a friend of my boss Mr Guifreda. John’s mother Phyllis was a Quaintways client. I wondered if I knew her and that – if I did – whether she knew about Paul, too.

I found out soon enough because John took me home to meet her a week or so later. I recognized her straight away. She was a striking, terribly smart lady who was also a professional dressmaker and always wore the most beautiful clothes. I thought she was quite posh. Like my mother, she’d been in service. Like my parents, she and Bert had met by chance, although he’d spotted her on a railway platform instead of across a rooftop. We should have got on like a house on fire because of our common interests but straight away I picked up that Phyllis Prescott wasn’t very keen on me. I could guess why. A short time afterwards, my fears were confirmed. Chatting to a neighbour of hers, Phyllis complained, ‘My John’s taken up with a young girl who’s had a baby, you know. I’m sure he could do a lot better.’

‘Oh, what’s the girl’s name?’ the neighbour asked suspiciously.

‘Pauline Tilston.’

Unbeknown to John’s mum, the neighbour was my auntie Jane and she leapt to my defence. ‘Pauline Tilston is my brother Ernie’s daughter and she was brought up extremely well,’ she told her, bristling. ‘She’s a good girl and John’s lucky to have her.’

Despite once being a maid, Pbyllis was always a bit of a snob, although she was proud of her social aspirations. She’d happily recount the story that her neighbours in Rotherham called her ‘Lady Muck’ because she had the cleanest house and the finest clothes. She had a Royal Albert tea service and wore Chanel perfume. It used to embarrass John how his mother would dress – or ‘overdress’, he’d say. He had a special aversion to her hats, especially the frothy ‘jelly bag’ ones that sat on top of her hair. ‘She came to meet me one time with what looked like a pair of knickers on her head,’ he complained. He’s never liked hats since.

Having learned flower arranging, cake decorating and dressmaking to the best of her considerable ability, Phyllis entered her family into a national newspaper competition as the ‘Most Typical Family in Britain’. Much to her indignation, they came second. Soon afterwards, Bert, who’d lost a leg at Dunkirk, received a grant from the British Legion to buy a new semi-detached house in Upton, which – once again – became the smartest in the street. A staunch socialist, a keen fundraiser for the Labour Party and a huge influence on John politically, Phyllis was a force of nature. Nobody would ever be good enough for her eldest son John. She hadn’t dragged her family from Prestatyn via a Rotherham terrace with a lav in the yard and coal dumped in the alleyway for him to take up with a girl who’d had a baby out of wedlock.

Fortunately, John didn’t share her view and after a while – perhaps because of Mr Guifreda singing my praises as well – his mother began to soften towards me. She offered to run me up a couple of nice outfits and was perfectly pleasant to me, even when her own marriage was in trouble.

As well as working on the railways, John’s father Bert was a magistrate, Labour councillor and loveable rogue who’d had several affairs. When John was just a lad, he’d spotted his father on the Chester Walls kissing a woman and was so shocked that he ran to the police station to report him. ‘I want you to arrest my dad!’ he told a sergeant on duty.

‘Go home, son, and don’t tell your mother,’ the sergeant replied, ruffling the hair on his head. John always laughed when he told that story but he felt terribly let down and still does to this day.

Bert was a big man with a big personality; everyone knew him, this gigolo who never paid for anything and only ever took his family on holidays to places like Bridlington and Scarborough to a trade union conference or to bluff his way into the Labour Party conferences and get a free drink. Phyllis didn’t seem to mind at first. Coming from a Welsh mining background, she was highly political too, hosting local Labour meetings in her home and delivering pamphlets all around the neighbourhood. In the end, though, politics was all they had in common.

Not long after we’d started dating, John’s parents announced that they were getting divorced after twenty-five years of marriage, which was quite something in those days. After years of trying to keep the peace between them, John was the head of the family now and Phyllis came to rely on him ever more. She even asked him to be a witness in the divorce case between her and Bert, but he refused, not wanting to be disloyal to either parent. Maybe because she and I now shared a social stigma, we seemed to get on better after that, even if she was always rather controlling and extremely protective of her son to the end of her days.

My visits to see my son became more and more infrequent owing to my long working hours, my shortage of money and the time I was now spending with John. I found myself speaking of Paul less and less, which felt like a betrayal, but I never stopped thinking of him, and I repeatedly refused to sign him over to the state. Perhaps having cropped my hair for a more sophisticated gamine look gave me the courage to stand firm.

My widowed mother, who was still courting Harry, never stopped working and couldn’t have helped me care for Paul even if she’d had the time or the energy. Harry worked full-time too and, even though he was a kind and generous man, wisely never tried to intervene. My brother Peter had emerged from his years in hospital and returned to work at BICC but had since moved to London to work in their overseas sales department. He’d write sometimes and send birthday presents but he’d never even set eyes on his nephew and Paul was never spoken about. I found myself thinking back to my father and wondering if things might have been different if he’d still been alive. Surely Dad would have found a way for us to keep his only grandchild?

Not long after I’d met John, I’d saved up enough money to go to Matlock again but my mother said she couldn’t go with me. To be honest, I don’t think she had the heart any more. She found it as upsetting as I did. I didn’t want to go alone but couldn’t think whom else to ask. Then I thought of John. The eldest of five children, John had a brother Ray, sisters Dawn and Vivian, and a little brother called Adrian who was born with a harelip and a cleft palate. I’d seen how kind and thoughtful he was with Adrian. He protected him and played with him so sweetly and that gladdened my heart. Nervously, I told John that I was going to see Paul and asked if he’d come along.

He didn’t even flinch. ‘We could make an outing of it,’ he replied. ‘There’s some pretty countryside round Matlock.’ He’d never once asked me about Paul’s father or what had happened between us. He just said he knew all that he needed to know. Part of me would have dearly liked him to have bombarded me with questions. My time with Jim, the lonely pregnancy, being at St Bridget’s, Paul’s birth and everything that had happened afterwards had been virtually erased from my life. John’s family certainly never brought it up. My mother rarely spoke of it and if I raised the subject, it only gave her an opportunity to tell me what I should do next. The girls at work no longer asked after Paul or what my plans for him were.

And so my innocent young son remained the elephant in the room that nobody dared discuss. Yet he was always on my mind and everywhere I looked there seemed to be reminders. John and I would often spend days off at Chester Zoo, and I’d see a mother and son wandering along holding hands and wonder why that couldn’t be Paul and me. I’d flick through racks of clothes in the children’s department of Brown’s and wish I could afford to buy some of them for him. I marked each anniversary privately in my heart: the day I first met Jim; the day I found out I was pregnant; Paul’s birthday on 2 January; the date I had to take him to Matlock and then leave.

There were times when I wanted to scream Paul’s name from the bottom of my lungs and tell everyone who’d listen how much I loved and missed him and thought about him night and day. ‘He’s my son and I want to keep him!’ I longed to shriek but instead I confined the screaming to inside my head.

Going to see Paul with John would be quite different from going with my mother. Ours was a new relationship and I knew I couldn’t blub all the way there and back as I normally did. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: hold myself together when I walked into the nursery and realized that Paul didn’t know who I was any more. At two years old, he was wearing clothes I hadn’t chosen for him and was playing with friends I’d never met. He was clearly very attached to one particular nursery nurse, and was calling her ‘Mummy’. That broke my heart anew.

John must have picked up on how I was feeling because he was marvellous with Paul. He picked him up and cuddled him and cheerily suggested that we take him out for a walk. He bought Paul a lollipop from a sweetshop and didn’t flinch when my happy-go-lucky, gorgeous little boy tried to force it into his mouth. He brought his camera and took lots of photographs, which are among my most cherished possessions: images of me and Paul, of John kissing Paul, and a few of Paul on his own, gurgling and laughing happily at these two kind strangers who had come to make a fuss of him for a few hours.

Travelling home on the train, I pressed my head against the cold glass of the window and fought back the tears. John sat next to me saying nothing. I was growing increasingly fond of this kind young man who seemed to accept me for who I was, regardless. I couldn’t believe how gentle he’d been with my son. We were a long way off making a commitment to each other; we were both still young, John was away travelling much of the time, and I wasn’t in a hurry to rush into anything again the way I had with Jim.

But could I – dare I – even dream that there might be a brighter future for Paul and me after all? That he and John and I might end up together as a family in the sort of happy home I’d grown up in, the kind I’d always dreamed of providing for my son? Turning and resting my head on John’s shoulder, I squeezed his hand and let out a sigh.

Not long after that journey to Matlock, Mr Guifreda called me into his office and asked me to sit down. ‘Dors’ Jones had left Quaintways by then, to be replaced by Val Pyeman, who was just as nice and who sat in on the meeting too.

‘Our managing director has heard of your problems…er, you know, with Paul,’ Mr Guifreda told me hesitantly. ‘He’d like to help.’

Like Mr Guifreda, the managing director of Lewis’s was a real gentleman who cared for his staff and always took an interest in their welfare. I wondered what he could possibly do to help. A pay rise perhaps? A word with social services to get them to move Paul closer to Chester? I hardly dared hope.

‘He’d like to adopt Paul,’ Mr Guifreda said, as my heart skipped a beat.

‘No!’ I gave my knee-jerk reaction.

Mr Guifreda pressed on. ‘He has three daughters and would love a son. He knows you want what’s best for your boy, and he wants you to know that he and his wife would give Paul a marvellous life in the bosom of a loving and wealthy family.’

I shook my head. I didn’t know what else to say. My mind was in turmoil. I’d resisted adoption for so long, why would I relent now? And why had the managing director waited all this time to ask? Had John’s parents orchestrated this to get my Paul out of the way? After all, Nick Guifreda was a close friend of John’s father. Then I had to remind myself that the managing director was a good man. For a moment, I allowed myself to speculate that if he did adopt Paul, he might let me stay in touch. I might even get to see more of him, being that much closer. Realizing that would be impractical and feeling like a rabbit caught in the headlights, I told Mr Guifreda that the answer was still no.