Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue (20 page)

Once or twice a year, there were other visitors: Eva's sisters,
Kitty and Margaret. After some twelve years at the Industrial School, they were delivered into the world of work. I don't know if they started out as domestic servants or if they escaped that particular fate altogether, but by the 1920s they were Manchester mill workers, sharing digs and working at full pelt to satisfy their ramping looms. Neither sister married; after the childhood they'd endured, Kitty and Margaret were pleased to look after one another.

Another welcome visitor was George. George came through the war unscathed and with pips on his shoulders: his wounds were of a different order. Within a few months of hearing of Annie's marriage, he found a bride – I'm sure there were plenty of takers for a charming young man and a brave one at that, who was making the best of his disappointment. Though he no longer lived in Derbyshire, George visited Betsy and Dick when he could – and still called them Mam and Dad – and sometimes brought his wife and small daughter. Mostly, though, he came alone, a Sunday-afternoon caller, catching the train and alighting at Wheeldon Mill. Sunday was the only day available to a busy school teacher, but it was also the day Annie was there.

Seeing George now was comforting and chafing, a reminder of something whose value Annie had always understood but could not help rejecting in favour of Willie. In idle moments, walking up to the Mill on the Sundays she knew George would be visiting, she contemplated life as a teacher's wife: their quiet conversations of an evening and the poetry they'd read together. Even as Annie laughed at herself for inventing such scenes, she wondered which verses of Longfellow she'd choose. George would have liked nothing better than to return from the war to a home that was ready and waiting, whereas Willie barely seemed to notice the
bedroom suite and the silver you could see your face in. Annie was beginning to wonder if she'd made a mistake in providing Willie with a ready-made home. Not knowing the striving that went into its preparation, he seemed unable to appreciate its worth.

George wrote to Annie, care of the shop; she could reply via his school. Even in the late 1920s, George was still paying court, scribbling a pencilled note on paper torn from an exercise book; the pencil both less permanent and more secretive than ink, his casual scrawl belying thoughts he'd obviously shaped beforehand. His affectionate words accompanied a medal won for some amateur sport, a game of tennis or cricket (George was made for cricket whites).

‘My dear,' his note begins, ‘Will you accept this?' George was sending a love token, a knight wooing his distant lady. His friendly greeting is full of warmth, but, more telling to me, is the way his letter closes: ‘Ecrit, si'il vous plait.' Equally telling, is the fact my grandma kept it.

Annie always said how hard Willie worked at the bakery. This was not something he minded. He was happy to start early and work late into the night if this helped further establish the business. But though Willie was working hard, he was not always well. The malaria he developed in Palestine kept on at him and frequently returned to rough him up. Each time it struck was like a bad dose of 'flu; it took Willie days to recover. He thought a tonic might be the answer: the newspapers were full of advertisements and tales of their beneficial effects.

‘A spot of Phosferine always puts us right,' said Mr Frank Gray, who had driven 3,000 miles across Africa. There was Gray and his fellow driver, in pith helmets, sitting on the bonnet of their car.
‘When we were in bad patches in Africa, and were worn out and had lost heart and faith, we said: “Let's have another spot of Phosferine. It always put us right…”' Phosferine: the Greatest of all Tonics for Influenza, Debility, Weak digestion, Lassitude, Neuritis, Brain Fag, Anaemia – the list went on and on – but there, near the bottom, was the word Willie was looking for: Malaria.

You could buy a bottle of Phosferine from the chemist, but Willie was used to combining ingredients and so set about preparing his own mixture. Somewhere among the recipes for drop scones and Victoria sponges is the following: 18 grains of quinine; 3 drops of tincture of steel, 1oz phosphoric acid. Take 10 drops in water 3 times a day.

Around this time, the bakehouse moved to larger premises on Whittington Hill, though the cake shop remained where it was. Willie now had a half-hour walk to work, but he used the journey to plan how things would be when he had a share in the firm. One of the things Willie most wanted was a car. He had never shaken off the excitement of seeing his first car as an impressionable lad: he had wanted to drive for as long as he could remember. His enthusiasm had reached fever pitch in America and showed no signs of abating on his return. Though Willie spent far more time baking than making deliveries in his early years at the bake-house, he'd defined himself as a driver on his marriage certificate. Back in 1916, the word sounded more up-to-the-minute than his regular, old-fashioned trade. Perhaps Willie also hoped that by describing himself thus, he'd have a better chance of keeping out of the trenches. (And if so, he was correct.)

Willie had fallen in love with a world in which you could make something of yourself and gain respect, a world in which everyone had a shining chance and it was fine to want things,
unlike during his parsimonious upbringing in which everyone had to be stripped down to size. He had not forgotten his father chopping up Jim's new shoes. The feeling Willie had on the day Jim hired the tram was the kind of feeling he wanted: not a seat on the district council, he'd no political ambition, but a simple pride in a job well done and hats raised in greeting, and a good suit, a nice linen suit with fine detailing, and an elegant pin to fix his tie, and Annie in a silk hat and gloves. And a car, of course. Not forgetting the car.

There were now many more cars on the road. Jim drove a car, as did their brother Bernard, courtesy of a generous father-in-law. Cars were coming within reach of a much wider audience, albeit predominantly middle- and upper-class. Chesterfield's first Ford saleroom, opened in 1923, had garaging for 500 vehicles, plus a repair depot and a shop selling spares.

Mostly, Willie favoured a saloon car: a Ford, an Austin, a Riley, a Singer or perhaps a Morris Cowley. ‘You Can Buy a Morris on Terms to Suit Yourself: a two-seater Morris Cowley could be yours for £40 12s 8d, plus 12 monthly payments of £10 17s 4d.' (A baker's average weekly wage, around this time, was £3 3s 5d.) Occasionally, Willie fancied something racy with a dickey seat. But a car, at any rate. Jotted beneath the ingredients for almond paste and almond tarts in his bakery book is a different kind of list altogether: ‘Ford Com Wires: Green Blue Red Black'. Each time Willie scrubbed the bakery table, his dream came that little bit closer.

M
Y GRANDMA WAS BEGINNING TO REALISE THAT FIERCE DESIRE
was not enough. No matter how much she and Willie longed for a baby, longing was not making it happen. They were past reassuring one another that all would come right and they would have their own child. Annie was in her late thirties now, and any desire between them long since strained when, month after month (year after year), there was no baby.

In recent years, the law had changed. The 1926 Adoption of Children Act enabled you to adopt a child with the sanction of the courts. And a baby too. Annie very much wanted a baby; she still ached to hold that warm bundle. An orphanage child was not the same as a baby you could bring up from scratch. And the Adoption Act meant the baby was yours for keeps. There was no chance of the mother reclaiming her child, as had sometimes happened in the past. There was talk in the press of ‘Bought Babies' and the dangers of taking on someone else's child, but the latter held no fears for Annie. How could it? Her whole family was founded on doing that very thing.

Willie was every bit as keen as she was; he was pleased as punch at the thought of adopting a child. Annie's doctor told them about the National Children Adoption Association, based in London and highly regarded; the NCAA had been established to help people just like them. Its annual report doubled as a promotional booklet with photographs on glossy paper and details of the Association and its hostel, Tower Cressy, where young women training to be nursery nurses helped to look after the babies. They were nearly all babies in the NCAA's care; every single bed was occupied and every vacancy filled straightaway.

You only had to open the report to see the whole thing was top drawer. Chairman: Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn; Vice-Chairman: The Lady Violet Brassey; President: HRH The Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone; Lady-this; Viscountess-that – the list of Vice-Presidents was almost overwhelming, and included Right Reverends and prime ministers' wives: Mrs Stanley Baldwin and Dame Margaret Lloyd George. Even when you turned the page, the list of Honourables kept coming and, some pages later, there was HM the Queen, dripping fox fur, photographed with the NCAA's founder, and Princess Alice, who was wearing the most extraordinary hat.

The Foreword emanated sunshine: ‘Peace and happiness are the order of the day in the beautiful nursery and new sun balconies… It must be jolly to be a babe at Tower Cressy.' The hostel's nurses wore the whitest of white uniforms to hold the white-draped babies. Chubby toddlers played in a nursery whose cots had pristine canopies, lace-edged sheets and bows. There was a picture of the toddlers' bathroom – lucky toddlers – Annie and Willie made do with a zinc tub that hung from a nail when not in use. It was a real-life sunny story.

Grateful mothers had written to the NCAA expressing thanks: ‘I am very glad that Baby has been adopted by such nice people. I feel sure she will have a good home. I am thankful to you for all you have done for me.' New adopters sent reassuring messages: ‘Will you write and tell Michael's mother that I will do my very best for him and she need never worry about him at all…' Some adopters brought their children back to the hostel to see its Christmas tree, or returned to adopt more children. You could choose a child from a photograph or go to the hostel yourself. This one small biscuit-coloured booklet was a rich gift.

Annie's doctor assisted with their application. There was a form to fill in, photographs to send, and two referees to provide: Dr Duthie, of course, and, possibly, Jim, though not in a brotherly role, but as businessman and respected councillor. The procedure required a local associate or health visitor to assess prospective parents if they lived too far away to be interviewed by the NCAA Case Committee or one of its Branch Committees.

I picture the health visitor coming into the living room behind the cake shop and asking questions over tea and one of Willie's cakes, her eyes flickering all the while over Annie's best cloth and the shine on her silver teapot. Her glance takes in a home-made picture glinting with sweet-paper foils and observes how the nap of the velvet chaise longue has been brushed so it all stands the same way.

Before she comes to the house, Annie takes all the basins from the scullery shelves and washes them in the hottest soapy water she can stand, even the glassware on the topmost shelf, lest their visitor glance skywards. Though her stomach clenches in knots that would challenge Houdini, Annie hears herself sounding persuasively calm as she speaks of her days teaching little ones,
and Willie, though equally nervous, does not offer to smoke until both upstairs rooms have been inspected, his cake complimented and small talk exchanged on how to make the perfect sponge.

It was one short visit and, at the end of it all – they were told to be patient; enquiries generally took a few weeks – they and
their home were approved and, I assume, pronounced satisfactory: those pithy syllables that recur again and again, and are as mean as they are inadequate, but which, in this one extremely special instance, held out enormous promise for Annie and Willie.

The National Children Adoption Association (NCAA) was one of the two key adoption agencies of the day. Unlike the children's charities, Dr Barnardo's and the National Children's Home and Orphanage, which regarded themselves as adopters, with most of their charges brought up in residential care, the NCAA acted as an intermediary to bring together prospective parents and children in need of homes. Like the National Adoption Society (NAS), established on similar lines, the NCAA evolved in the changing climate of the Great War.

Its founder and director was Miss Clara Andrew, whose work with Belgian refugees and munition workers convinced her of the need for the organisation. Described at her death as ‘the spiritual mother of all little children' by a somewhat gushing Viscountess Snowden, and photographed in an almost beatific pose in an NCAA report, she was a redoubtable committee member, vocal supporter of adoption and the rights of adoptive parents, and firmly behind the 1926 Act.