In Her Mothers' Shoes (39 page)

I didn’t put a veto on my name because I didn’t think you would want to find me, but I suppose I subconsciously wanted to know what had happened to you anyway.

I lost contact with your father when he discovered I was pregnant. It’s not that he was a bad person but he wasn’t ready to carry the responsibility of a family. I don’t know what became of him. He was tall and good looking.

In a very strange coincidence, the day your letter arrived, in the same post I received a copy of “North and South” magazine with two articles by Katharine Stewart in it. I imagine that must be you?

It is all right for you to write to me here - my husband Steven knows about you. However, I have never told my children. I have a son and a daughter, who were born two and four years after you were, but I ask you to please respect my privacy as I’m not ready to tell them yet.

Do you come to Wellington sometimes? I would like to meet you but can’t really leave town without questions being asked.

Liz’.

‘Goodness, Kate, she wants to meet you.’ Rose handed the letter back and smiled at her daughter, feigning enthusiasm. She knew how badly Kate had wanted to meet her birth mother, had wanted to discover her true origins, but Rose felt only dread.

‘Do you think I should?’ Kate took the letter and held it in front of her, as if finding it hard to believe it real.

‘You’ve wanted to meet her all your life. Surely . . .’

‘I know. But now it might be about to happen, I’m scared.’

She put her arm round her daughter, trying to muster the support she didn’t feel she could give. ‘She’s got two other children now. You’ve got siblings.’

Kate returned a wry smile. ‘I’ve got a brother and a sister. Just what I’ve always wanted – but they don’t even know I exist.’

‘I dare say you’ll get to meet them eventually, when Liz is ready to tell them.’

Kate looked doubtful. ‘She doesn’t sound too keen.’

‘Put yourself in her shoes for a minute, Kate. She’s had a huge shock, hearing from you after all these years. She needs time now to work it through.’

‘Do you think I should tell Dad?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t you?’

Kate looked down at the carrycot where James was still fast asleep and didn’t answer.

‘Come on then.’ Rose couldn’t understand Kate’s reluctance to tell her father. He was a complete softie where his daughter was concerned. She took Kate’s arm and led her to the study.

George couldn’t find his reading glasses and then took an eternity to read the letter while Kate stood fidgeting and Rose perched on the side of his chair, helping interpret the handwriting.

‘I see,’ was all he said when he finished.

Kate stood there expectantly, clearly waiting for him to continue.

Rose said nothing.

It was James who broke the silence, starting to whimper from his carrycot in the spare room.

‘I’ll have to go,’ Kate said quickly, glancing out the door then back at her father. ‘What do you think of the letter Dad? Isn’t it exciting?’

George looked thoughtful. ‘It may be exciting for you. I know you’ve wanted this for a long time, Katie. But you must spare a thought for your mother. You can be sure that she will be terrified of losing you now.’

‘But Mum,’ Kate turned to her. ‘I would never do that. You’ll always be my Mum.’

Rose tried to manage a smile.

‘Honestly, Mum.’

James’ whimper had turned into a full-throated wail.

‘I’ll have to take him home for a feed.’ She looked torn, as if she didn’t know whether to comfort her baby or her mother first.

Rose could have helped her, could have said ‘Don’t worry, dear, I’ll be fine’, and Kate could have left reassured. But she couldn’t do that. She felt unusually lifeless; not even James’ piercing cries could rouse her.

Kate disappeared out the door and the wailing abated. Moments later she stood in the doorway holding the carrycot and its whimpering, wriggling baby.

‘I’m sorry, Mum. But I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Okay?’

‘Yes, you’d better go.’

‘Bye, Dad.’ Kate put the carrycot down for a moment and kissed her father.

Rose stood and followed her to the front door.

‘Bye, Kate.’ She let Kate kiss her without responding, not because she didn’t love her – she loved her daughter beyond reason – but because she simply couldn’t. If she said anything, she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold back tears of the rejection she felt so keenly.

She watched her daughter splash through the puddles on the drive, which was littered with rose petals scattered ahead of the earlier southerly blast. As soon as she heard the car engine start, she closed the door. The cowbells clanged mournfully.

Part 3: Kate

Chapter 1.

Christchurch.  February, 1987

The peach palette of the obstetrician’s waiting room was getting on Kate’s nerves almost as much as the crying baby in the nearby pram. In a half-hearted attempt to bring peace, the mother gently pushed the pram to and fro. The crying reached a crescendo.

Amelia put
The Hungry Caterpillar
book on the floor and looked up at her mother. ‘What’s the matter with the baby?’ The question came out just as the baby gathered breath for its next burst, so everyone in the waiting room could hear.

The room was full, all the chairs occupied by women with babies, women without, heavily pregnant women and women probably wishing they were heavily pregnant, plus a couple of uncomfortable-looking husbands. One smiled at Amelia. The mother of the crying baby looked even more harried.

‘Maybe he wants a feed,’ Kate said quietly in response.

‘Are we going to have a baby too?’

‘I hope so. One day. Now go back to your book. I think we’re in for a long wait.’

Amelia picked up
The Hungry Caterpillar
and turned the pages. She had yet to learn to read but Kate had read it to her so often Amelia knew the words off by heart.

The woman next to her continued to rock the pram gently. The baby continued to cry. Kate caught a glimpse of a red screwed-up face.

She picked up a magazine and thumbed through it, barely seeing the pages of skimpy summer fashions as the baby’s cry pierced through her conscience, unearthing memories of the last time she’d seen this specialist. She’d been in hospital, her legs spread wide on the narrow steel operating table, the unmistakeable darkened blood pooling between her thighs. Another baby lost.

Mr Sissons’ fertility drugs had worked only too well: two pregnancies in two years, followed by two miscarriages. She could get pregnant, but she couldn’t keep them. And now she was waiting for her six-monthly check-up so he could see if she was fully recovered and should continue trying.

What was wrong with her that she couldn’t have babies as easily as most women? It wasn’t David’s fault; the doctor had soon determined he was, as David had proudly put it, ‘as fertile as a ram at rutting time’. He’d also determined her egg production was erratic and had speeded it up with drugs. But the babies weren’t hanging in there for much more than the first trimester before ejecting themselves from her womb. And nobody knew why.

‘It just happens, sometimes,’ the doctor had said six months ago in the recovery ward. ‘To some women more than others. I’m sure you will carry to full term soon.’

But David was as dispirited as she was. The fun in ‘practising for a baby’ had evaporated, the twinkle in his eye had disappeared. And she could hardly blame him. Who could be expected to fancy a wife whose sole interest in sex was procreation? He’d endured the temperature-taking and the silly rituals she went through to try to conceive. He’d put up with the cries of rage when she got her period. He’d had enough, and had said so.

Why was it so hard? It didn’t used to be.

She remembered the 1970s, when she and David had been going out together for just over two years, when Great Aunt Doris first cut her out of the will because David was Catholic and that was apparently tantamount to him having horns and a forked tail. About that time, she realised her period was long overdue, her breasts felt sore, her symptoms mirrored those in the medical books lining the Women’s Page library at work: she suspected she was pregnant.

David Price, she knew, was ‘the one’. They worked together at The Press, they socialised together at the pub at tea time and later at the Media Club until the wee small hours, they slept together in David’s grungy bedroom in his grungy flat. He was clever, he was funny, he was tall and attractive – even with his thinning long hair and thick gold-rimmed glasses – he had a photographic memory for facts if not for appointments, he seemed to know everyone, and he was an intrepid reporter, never scared to ask the difficult questions, much more fearless than she was when faced with reluctance or a downright refusal to answer questions.

The trouble was David didn’t know he was the one, and didn’t seem to think she was the one for him. He broke up with her once. She winkled her way back with him again. He broke up a second time. A third time. She got the message.

That was when she realised she was pregnant.

That was also when she realised she wasn’t ready to be a mother, especially not on her own. She had not long made it into the reporters’ room at The Press, having served an apprenticeship writing captions and filing photos in the Illustrations Department. She still had to complete her MA thesis. And, when that was done, a friend who worked on the Women’s Page had asked her to travel overseas next year to take the traditional OE working holiday in London.

A baby was out of the question, especially a baby whose father wasn’t ready for commitment. She didn’t even feel she could tell David she was pregnant, not now that they’d finally, finally, finally broken up. She was ashamed of herself for being so foolish thinking it didn’t matter that she’d only just started back on the Pill. The packet had warned her it didn’t work straight away. She was also ashamed at proving Great Aunt Doris right: she
was
no better than her mother. History had repeated itself. Despite the Pill, Kate had fallen into the same pregnancy trap her mother had twenty years earlier and there was no escape. Abortion was illegal. If she had the money, she could fly to Australia and have an abortion there. But forty-six-dollars-a-week wages made no room for an airfare across the Tasman, let alone an expensive private procedure.

She’d gone back through the books in the Women’s library. But there was nothing there. She’d found references to what the books called old wives’ tales, like drink a quart of gin while sitting in a hot bath. So she’d tried it. Or at least as much gin as she could swallow before becoming so maudlin she’d flooded the bath with her tears then so nauseous she’d had to climb out of the bath and throw up into the toilet.