Page 47 of A Family Affair
Finally I was in the hall and after I slammed the door shut I leant against the wood and tried to control my breathing and waited for the shaking to stop. When it did, I left Ernie sleeping in the pram and made myself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, sipping, numb to the core as I tried to process it all.
By the time I heard the familiar cries of my hungry boy, I’d more or less worked it out. There was no turning back the clock, no chance of redemption. The fear of prosecution, persecution and public shame was too much so I resigned myself to what I knew would be my future and I suppose in some ways, my punishment.
I would have to look over my shoulder always, and live the life of a criminal avoiding justice. Because that’s what I was. Me, Molly McCarthy. I was a baby thief.
CHAPTER35
Inever went into Manchester again. I told Mam that it made me upset and reminded me of the night in the hospital and the blitz. I suspect she thought I was being a bit mard because we didn’t have words like post-traumatic stress in those days. We just got on with it.
I was a nervous wreck inside but put on a front, stiff upper lip and all that. If I did have a wobble I blamed it on worry, that I was scared for Walter and by the news on the radio. I told myself that all I had to do was stay on our street, keep Ernie by my side and we’d be fine. And I also had a plan that I put into practice as soon as Walter came home from the war.
I’d decided that we needed to keep moving and get away from Ancoats and the city where Nora was. She could be anywhere. Lurking. Living in the next street, working in a shop. And all it would take was for us to bump into each other and I couldn’t take that chance. What if I had Ernie with me? What if she saw some family resemblance?
I comforted myself with the assurance that she can’t have known what I’d done and must have been unconscious, maybe close to death when I swapped the babies. If she had seen, or even worked it out somehow, surely she’d have alerted the authorities who could have easily tracked me down. Perhaps her memory of that night was blurred. Facts and conversations lost in a haze of pain and fear. Or as result of losing so much blood that was quietly seeping from her, draining away her life force. If they were going to come for me, they’d have done so by then.
Walter came home, thank God, and he was overjoyed to see his son; they bonded immediately, and Ernie seemed to glow and gurgle more in the presence of his dad than he did with anyone.
Seeing this only made me more resolute. Or was it simply my way of justifying my actions? Probably.
Imagine how I felt when his hair started to grow. Auburn locks of baby hair sprouting from his head and a constant reminder of the woman at the shop window. Nora and her beautiful red hair. Thankfully, everyone wore rose tinted glasses and the family were overjoyed that the Irish genes had filtered through. Enniskillen Ernie was a great hit on St Patrick’s Day down at the Hat and Feathers and had he been older wouldn’t have had to buy his own drinks, I can tell you.
It took a while before I could put my self-preservation plan into action because after the war everything seemed to move at an interminably slow rate, and I had to bide my time. And inevitably, what I’d done, the fear I constantly lived with, sensing the spectre of Nora everywhere, changed me. Mam said so often enough yet again, I batted away her concerns and told her the war had changed everyone and I was no different.
Eventually we moved away from Ancoats, to Openshaw, which felt like a step in the right direction, although with a logical mind and hindsight I know I was kidding myself. No matter how far I ran, the law of averages, coincidence, bad luck, or fate meant that at any time Nora could step into my world.
But my fearful heart always ruled my head. I’d brainwashed myself into believing that the further away from Manchester I was, from that shop window where in my nightmares, Nora would always be waiting for me, the better.
So I became that wife, the one who always wanted more. Who pushed her husband to do better. I developed a protective shell, took control in order to keep all of us safe. It wasn’t about possessions, but nobody seemed to notice that. Family had me down as a pain in the arse, that’s what my dad used to call me. Our Linda said I had ideas above my station and Mam, well she just felt sorry for Walter who worked all the hours God sent and was lumbered with a nagging wife called Molly.
That’s how I was perceived. The thing is, they were wrong. It wasn’t that I wanted to be better than the family in the next-door terrace and actually, my kids were no worse dressed or fed than the next one. All I wanted was to be safe.
And there was something else. I had to make it right by giving Ernie the best life because I couldn’t bear the thought that he’d have been better off with Nora, so I had to try harder.
And to achieve that, we needed savings and someone with a vision. Me. I did my fair share too. Taking part-time jobs and scrimping to put money in our savings account, which was also my secret escape fund.
It wasn’t long though, before I realised that running away was actually the least of my problems. There’s a phrase, nature or nurture, and looking back, that’s what came to bite me on the bottom and punished me in a way I’d not imagined or prepared for. Because no matter how much I loved Ernie, how hard I tried in my own way to make up for what I’d done, to give him a good life, there was always something missing between us.
I’ll never know whether something in his genes made him the way he was, that nature shone through no matter what, or his upbringing, me to be precise, had an adverse effect on him. It hurts to think it was that. And I suppose what’s worse from my point of view is that whoever Nora was, whatever made her tick, something in her personality, the blood that swam through her veins, that swam in his, made Ernie who he was.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved him with all my heart, and nobody would dare think or say that I wasn’t a good mother. Dear Lord, I put everything I had into it. If there’d been the time and I’d have been clever enough, I could’ve written a book on how to be perfect. Run the house, prepare the meals, starch shirts, work at the bakers, shine shoes, bleach the nets, scrub the step, back in the yard with a smile on my face for home time. It didn’t make Ernie love me though.
I saw it more clearly when our Beryl was born because it was there from the start. A bond that went both ways. And it shone a light on what was missing between me and Ernie.
As he got older, he came to resent me even more. It was like I could feel it and so could he. We didn’t fit or match and because I knew why, I overcompensated and in doing so, pushed him away little by little.
If I said black, he’d swear it was white. Even from an early age there was this inherent streak of stubbornness in him. So strong willed. Often belligerent. If Ernie made up his mind about something thennothingwould change his mind. He’d cut off his nose to spite his face if you let him.
He also had a propensity to buck trends, stand up for other people’s rights, be a bit of a rebel. I worried he’d do something stupid, become a hippy and live on a commune, shun society or become a troublemaker, or, God forbid, join the Labour party.
I think it was his stubborn streak that saved him from all that, or the desire to escape me which was why he was determined to start his own life, on his own terms. I’ll always regret not supporting him when he wanted to go to university. We said we couldn’t afford it, but I think we could. I just didn’t want to let him go and, once again, had to stay in control. Manage him from the side lines because the ‘what ifs’ ruled my world. No wonder he grew to despise me.
His dad had moved up the ladder a bit at the railway company and was a supervisor, so he got Ernie a job working on the lines. It was how we did it in them days. Left school on a Friday and started work on a Monday. Ernie hated it, but in his own stubborn way he got on with it.
It was as though he knew deep down, by some invisible but finely tuned sense, that he didn’t belong with me, and that makes me so sad. That he was loved so much but it wasn’t enough. I’m sure that the father–son bond he clearly had with Walter was the only thing that anchored him, settled his soul. Even now it baffles me how he could have loved his dad unequivocally yet where I was concerned there may as well have been a concrete barrier and barbed wire between us.
But what could I do? I’d made my choice, or choices, and had to get on with it the only way I knew how. Guardedly, for a start. Always fearful of walking into a room, or a restaurant, or, God forbid, a schoolyard and her being there. And then there was the overthinking. What if, by some cursed quirk of fate, one day Ernie would bring home a girlfriend, with auburn hair and it’d come out in the wash her mother’s name was Nora…
That was how my mind worked. Always on overdrive. Always on alert. Because I never knew where Nora was, if she’d married, had more children. I was tempted to search for Joseph though. Go into Manchester to the town hall and see if I could find out where he was buried. I had visions of going to his grave and laying some flowers. Telling him that I was sorry he didn’t make it and that I thought of him and would never ever forget that I held him in my arms. But I was too scared, and truthfully didn’t have much clue where to start.
