Daddy's Little Earner (26 page)

In my youthful arrogance I was certain I knew what I
was doing and I basically told social services I didn’t need
their help any more because I had a man to look after me
– my man. They must have been relieved to see the back
of me although I wonder if they ever really believed we
had any chance of making it, especially if I was planning
to have a baby. It was probably obvious to everyone but
me that Brian was not going to find the responsibilities of
fatherhood easy, but when you are young and know nothing
you think you can do anything you want as long as
other people just stop interfering.

Brian got a council flat, I moved in with him and I fell
pregnant again almost immediately. I was ecstatic to be having
another chance at a baby, but it wasn’t long before I
began to worry that maybe Brian wasn’t going to be the
most reliable family provider. When it was just him and me
to think about and provide for it hadn’t been so important
because I always knew I could go out and earn a few pounds
on the game if I had to, even if I didn’t want to. But there
was no way I was going to be doing that while I was carrying
my precious baby and that made me feel vulnerable.

Although Brian did get a job as a decorator, he was
already in debt to the council for not paying his rent, having
preferred to spend all his money on drink and drugs.

His drinking was getting much worse, soaking up every
penny he earned, just as Dad’s had. The gas had been disconnected
and the electricity supplier had installed a
meter because of the problem with unpaid bills. Without
gas I had to boil water in saucepans and kettles if I wanted
to take a bath, which made everything a hundred
times more difficult.

Quite often we would run out of coins for the meter
halfway through the week and I would have to sit alone
in the dark and the cold until Brian was paid at the end
of the week. Even when he was paid he would stop off at
the pub on the way home and spend most of his earnings.
I couldn’t get my head round the thought of getting some
dead-end job myself and Brian took exception to having
to support me just to sit around at home. He told me I had
to contribute to the household budget if I wanted food
and I knew he was right. I just couldn’t muster the
strength to get out there and do something about it. I
must have been really winding him up because when he’d
had a few drinks he started to get a bit violent with me,
something that he would never have done in the past.

Although I was obsessed with my baby I didn’t have
much ready for the birth, not even a bottle or a babygro,
and I was becoming increasingly worried about how I
was ever going to manage to get all the things I needed. I
had been so excited at the prospect of having a baby of my
own that I had been letting it blind me to the reality of the situation, but gradually it was dawning on me that we
both had to get our acts together. Whenever I felt panicked
I would start going on at Brian again, putting pressure
on him to get all the things I needed. Rather than
being the cheerful, carefree fellow traveller that he had
fallen in love with I must have been beginning to seem
like a burden to him and a handicap to his previously
freewheeling hippy-like existence. Before I got pregnant
we had been two irresponsible children together, but now
at least one of us was going to have to grow up quickly.

‘Get a job,’ he said when I protested that I had no
money for all the things I needed.

‘Like what?’ I challenged him.

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Get a paper round or
something.’

I could see that he had a point but my confidence had
sunk to an all-time low and I don’t think anyone would
have given me a job even if I could have plucked up the
courage and energy to go asking for one. All I cared about
was my baby but I wasn’t making any sensible decisions
about that either, just worrying and panicking all the
time. I know I became a permanent nag to Brian, always
going on at him about the eviction letters that kept arriving
from the council and wondering out loud what would
become of me and my baby if we were made homeless
and thrown out onto the street. I could envisage the two
of us huddled in some doorway, begging for spare change or, worse still, social services taking the baby away from
me and giving it to someone who was doing a better job
of getting their life in order.

I could see that Brian had gone too far off the rails to
be able to be a support for me and although I still loved
him I was coming to realize that he was unlikely to be
able to turn his life round now, certainly not in time for
the baby’s arrival, but I didn’t know what to do about it
or who to turn to for help. I could hardly go back to Mum
after being rebuffed so many times, and even if Dad had
provided any sort of option he was still in prison.

By the time the council eventually evicted Brian from
the flat I was six or seven months pregnant and winter
was approaching. I hadn’t been eating properly for weeks
and I fainted one day on the bus into the city. I wanted so
much to be a great mother but already I knew I wasn’t
doing my baby any favours by becoming so stressed and
run down. The more I worried about it the worse the
situation got.

As my delivery date drew closer I had to accept that
being independent wasn’t going to work. I was going to
have to face the fact that I couldn’t cope and throw myself
on the mercy of others. I felt like a complete failure. With
a heavy heart but unable to see any other way forward, I
left Brian and made myself homeless. I hated the idea of
social services seeing me as a failure again and I was terrified
they would insist on taking my baby away from me but in the end I realized I was more frightened that I was
putting my baby’s life in danger than anything else and I
plucked up the courage to go to them. Having boasted to
them a few months before that I could manage without
them I had to slink back with my tail between my legs
and admit that I needed their help.

They responded to my pleas graciously, probably not
very surprised to find me back on their doorstep, and put
me into a women’s refuge called Little Portion while they
looked for other accommodation for me. It was ironic,
but probably not surprising, that I should end up in the
same home where my mother had been years before.

Little Portion was run by nuns and I would love to be
able to say that it was a sympathetic, caring environment
but it wasn’t. Maybe it was my own sense of feeling like
a useless failure that prejudiced their opinion of me but I
was certainly made to feel like a scarlet woman. It was a
very strict regime. No men were allowed, which was
obviously a good thing, and we had to be in bed at certain
times. The food was sparse and the whole environment
was stifled, cold and intimidating. The nuns were never
openly unkind to us but it was not a warm, supportive
experience.

While I was there I met a girl called Lisa who had a
small child called Jessica and we became friends. Social
services found me my own flat shortly before the baby
was due, and I moved in and spent Christmas there on my own before I managed to persuade Lisa to come and
share with me, bringing Jessica too. This meant I didn’t
have to face the approaching birth on my own and I had
someone there to give me moral support whenever I felt
panicky. Social services didn’t like the idea, saying Lisa
was trouble because she had a violent ex-boyfriend, but I
really liked her and it gave me company at a time when I
was feeling very alone and low.

By this stage I felt I had lost my whole family. Dad was
still in jail but anyway he was so pissed off with me
for going off with Brian that he had let me know he
wanted nothing more to do with me, and I felt a real sense
of loss about that despite everything we’d been through. I
hardly ever got to see Terry any more and Chris and
Glen were leading completely separate lives and I wasn’t
allowed to make contact with them. I didn’t want my
baby to come into the world with no relatives at all so I
wrote to Mum, resenting the fact that yet again it was me
who was making the effort to make contact and not her,
to tell her she was going to be a grandmother. I asked her
if she wanted to get in touch, and to my surprise she did.
We saw each other a couple of times, trying our best to
repair our poor relationship. She was with a new man by
then, who had taken on my new baby half-brother,
Adam, as his own. Although he had been willing to do
that he made it clear there was no way he was willing to
take on any of her four other children. He said that she could speak to us on the phone and we could go round to
see her when he was out at work, but he didn’t want anything
to do with us himself. Given our history I suppose I
can understand his attitude although it could hardly have
been described as charitable, either to us or to Mum
and Adam.

Brian came to the hospital to be with me during the
birth, although I later found out that the night before he
had been out with another woman, not in a restaurant
with friends as he had told me. He was completely drunk
when he arrived and fell fast asleep in the waiting room,
which didn’t exactly show him up in a good light. The
nurse had to wake him up to tell him his baby was on the
way. Once I was in labour I lost interest in such petty matters.
Everything that was happening in that delivery room
was between me and my new baby boy. This was my
chance to start all over again with a new life to care for.

He was just gorgeous when he came out. I didn’t sleep
at all during the first night after the birth, just lying there
staring at him, marvelling at how tiny and perfect he was,
talking to him, promising that I would do everything I
possibly could to give him a decent life and that I would
make sure he didn’t have to endure the sort of upbringing
I’d been given. It was love at first sight and I was overwhelmed
with the strength of the emotion I felt for this
little creature. I called him Brendan after a lovely bloke
I’d worked with in the disabled home – a big, ginger- haired, freckled Irish chap who had a real presence and
who had been a good friend to me during the time I
worked there.

One of the first people to come and visit Brendan and
me in hospital was Mrs Mcquarrie, along with Renee, the
housekeeper from Bramerton. Kathy came too, bringing
all sorts of bits and pieces that I needed. Brian arrived
with a big bouquet of flowers and a card signed by everyone
at the pub, making me feel like I belonged to a little
community, even if they were a pretty hopeless bunch of
deadbeats. Even Brian’s mum and sister came to see us.

When I’d recovered from the birth, they sent me to a
mother and baby unit for ten days so they could teach me
everything they thought I needed to know about looking
after him. I was determined to be the best mother I could
but I struggled terribly for the first few days. I was trying
to breastfeed him but it was so painful I would cry sometimes,
although I wouldn’t give up. Eventually it became
easier and I had so much milk that the midwives suggested
I expressed some to be used for the tiny babies in the
special care unit. I also remember them giving Brendan
an injection in his heel and I couldn’t stay in the room
when I heard his screams. Every instinct in me wanted to
protect him and shield him from pain.

Lisa gave me a book on childrearing by Miriam Stop
pard, which became my bible as I struggled to get everything
exactly right for him. I went to a few parentcraft classes to try to learn more but all the other mothers were
there with their husbands or partners and I felt embarrassed
that I was having to attend on my own.

The day Brendan was born, when I was eighteen years
old, my life changed and everything that happened from
then on was no longer about me. It was the day I grew up.
Having a new baby of my own made me remember Chris
and Glen and the way they were treated in their early
years. Mum and Dad’s neglect of them seemed even more
incomprehensible to me now that I was a mother myself
than it had at the time. Every natural instinct I possessed
made me want to protect my child, no matter where he
had come from or who his father might be. I couldn’t
understand how my parents had been able to treat their
own children the way they had.

By the time I was allowed to take Brendan back to the
flat, Lisa and Jessica had already moved on but Brian
started coming round to visit, saying he wanted to spend
time with us. A few weeks before I would have been
touched by that, but now I had a responsibility, a new
focus for my life. I knew I had to be practical and I realized
that Brian was just sponging off me, eating my
food, soaking up money that should have been used to
buy things for Brendan. He didn’t provide anything – all
I possessed was the bits and pieces that other people
were giving me – and I knew I had to move on with my
life. But at least he was a friendly face and a bit of adult company now and again, even if he was usually high or
drunk when he turned up at the door.

All the reports from Doris, the social worker who was
handling my case by then, bear out how completely Brendan
changed my behaviour. She wrote glowingly about
how I was coping and what a brilliant mother I was.
Reading her notes now it’s like she was writing about a
completely different person to the one described in all the
previous social services reports, but in reality I was still
the same worried little girl who didn’t think she was good
enough for anything. I was struggling to stay afloat. I
started shoplifting clothes for Brendan because I couldn’t
bear for him to have to go without and I was spending
almost all my benefits on fuel in order to keep the flat
warm enough for him.

I didn’t have a washing machine or a spin dryer and
although many people were using disposable nappies at
the time I would use the terry towelling ones to save money.
I would have to hand wash them every day and the
smell of urine plus the wet nappies hanging around the
flat contributed to the cold and damp, and to my growing
feelings of misery and despair. At one stage the
midwife gave me a real dressing down for not having the
temperature high enough for a baby and it broke my
heart to think I was trying so hard and still wasn’t able
to give Brendan the most basic things that he needed. I
remembered how cold it had been in our house when we were children and I didn’t want my baby to have to suffer
anything like that.