Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (25 page)

For years Marie had continually written to the Salvation Army asking if her mother had agreed to her adoption, but the replies were always the same: ‘By law we cannot reveal any details of your adoption.’

Marie had been adopted in 1947, when ten years old, by a couple in their fifties who had changed her name from Elizabeth. David weaved his legal magic at the court that had approved the adoption and unravelled the red tape that bound up Marie’s file. The Clerk of the Court eventually agreed to let me look at the records.

This was to be the day of days. I could see from Harold’s and Marie’s eyes that they imagined all would be revealed, although I refused to let my hopes be raised too high. We knew there should be records on Marie’s adoption and that the Salvation Army, which arranged her adoption, would have to have supplied the court with details of Marie’s mother and father.

At the very least the Salvation Army would have had to submit a report to the court to give the circumstances and reasons for the adoption. My biggest worry was that these records would no longer exist. It was outside the time period for them to be kept.

The day I made the trip to the court, Harold was desperate to come with me but I told him no, I needed to go on my own. As it turned out he went to St Catherine’s House that day and I asked Yvonne to keep an eye on him. By chance we met on the same train from London back to Nottingham.

I had already said to him that morning, ‘Now look, Harold, if you happen to be on the same train, I don’t want you asking any questions, because I’m not saying anything without Marie being there. This relates to both of you.’

Harold’s whole body just about exploded out of frustration. He sat opposite me, muttering dark thoughts and contemplating darker deeds, with his head pressed against the train window.

I got home at about seven, had a bath, changed, and arranged to meet them. It was important to remember every detail, because I knew they would want to know everything. I described how I met the Clerk of the Court in her office. She was extremely helpful. She arranged for me to sit in a small room and then brought in the file which contained only a few sheets of paper. I had a notebook in which I had written down every word. I had clung to the book all the way home, terrified that I might lose it. Information, however little, takes on this priceless significance when dealing with child migrants.

I went through all the information slowly, leaving time for Marie and Harold to ask questions.

The file contained quite a lot more about Harold’s and Marie’s mother, but it didn’t tell us where she was now, or why Harold went into care.

Elizabeth Ellen Johnson had been living in a place called Ventnor Villas in Hove, East Sussex when Harold was three years old and Marie four.

There were very few details that could help us now, but at least with a new address, I could begin searching the electoral rolls, looking for people who had lived in Ventnor Villas in the early 1940s. Over the next three months, I actually found every person who had lived there, including the owner’s daughter who now lives in Northern Ireland.

I flew to Belfast with Marie to meet her. She couldn’t help us very much, but she did remember a couple living on the ground floor who had two children including a little girl who went away with the Salvation Army.

It had been four years since we began the search for Harold’s and Marie’s mother. Four of the most complicated and painful years of Harold’s life. During this time he’d become a virtual founder member of the Trust, spending long periods in England, watching our workload increase and many other migrant children successfully reunited with their families.

Each time another migrant heard the good or bad news, Harold became more disconsolate. He wondered if it would ever happen to him.

I sat down with him, trying hard to sound confident, and we talked about the early days and what we’d been through together. He said to me, ‘You taught me how to live. You showed me how to relate to people. Before I met you, I just lived in despair. There was no time sequence to my life. Nothing concrete. There’s not even a piece of paper to say I arrived in Australia – I’m not even on the shipping list of the boat that took me.’

Since the break-up of his marriage, Harold had drifted away from his three children. They didn’t know he was a child migrant. His daughters, both in their twenties, saw him on a television chat show with me and one of them rang me up and said, ‘That was my dad. My dad was on telly with you.’ She was shocked.

I had to spend a lot of time helping Harold understand that he was important to his children. Even though he realized he’d abandoned them, he had to face up to his own hurt before he could begin to understand how they felt.

After so many blind alleys and wasted months, St Catherine, the patron saint of all child migrants, finally yielded a first marriage for Harold’s mother.

We waited three days for the certificate, although I don’t know how Harold contained himself.

There were two daughters from that marriage, both born in Oldham, near Manchester. Neither of them was Marie.

Harold and Marie had two half-sisters, and I hoped that if we could find them, they’d know the answers to our questions.

Elizabeth’s husband had died, but I found an address for the house they had shared in Oldham. That weekend, Harold and I decided to drive to Manchester to have a look. Bricks and mortar are a poor substitute to finding a mother, but at least they provide something tangible.

When we got into Oldham, Harold had the map across his knees, directing me. I remember driving up to an intersection and saying, ‘This is the road, Harold! This is the road!’

And he said to me, ‘Don’t get excited.’

‘Why?’

‘You see where the road goes straight over, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s where my mother’s house used to be.’

I don’t know how Harold held himself together. This was the umpteenth time we’d set out full of hope and found only disappointment. Harold had a look of total desolation as he stared at the four lanes of Tarmac and concrete. I wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. I parked the car at the side of the road.

‘Right! You sit here,’ I told Harold. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but just sit here.’

And I began knocking on every door in the road while Harold sat in the car or paced up and down the gutter. Northerners are very welcoming and over the next four hours many people said, ‘Oh yes, come in, come on in, dear. How can we help?’

Eventually I found an elderly lady who vaguely remembered the family. She was sure that one of the two girls was called Barbara and still lived somewhere in the area but couldn’t say where. I didn’t find her that day but each time I returned, Harold would wait in the car, while I went from door to door. It probably seemed insane but I was prepared to check every house in Oldham.

Finally, in January 1990, I found Barbara living in a bungalow not far from where she’d grown up. After writing her a letter, she agreed to meet with me and listened, wide-eyed as I told her she had a half-brother and half-sister.

Sadly she knew as little about her mother as Harold and Marie. Barbara had been brought up by her father and had been absolutely devoted to him, so much so that she had never once considered searching for her missing mother. She didn’t even have a photograph of her.

Harold’s other half-sister – his mother’s first child – had emigrated to South Africa. I started searching for her, hoping she might know where her mother had gone. I was prepared to fly to Johannesburg, if necessary, when I discovered that she’d died two years earlier.

Again, after so much hard work and heartache, Harold and Marie were no closer to finding their mother.

It was time to make some new assumptions. I suddenly wondered if Elizabeth Ellen Johnson had married again. Maybe that was why I couldn’t find any trace of her.

I guessed correctly, although immediately wished I hadn’t. She did marry again – much later. She wed a curate’s son, Lionel Maulever Worsop Smith, on 21 June 1948, in Brighton. Geographically, at least, I was back where I started, only five minutes from where Harold had been taken into care as a small boy.

Elizabeth had married a ‘Smith’ – the worst surname of all from my point of view. She had suddenly disappeared within the biggest genealogical family in Britain.

The marriage certificate had an address, a block of flats in Worthing, so I began checking the electoral rolls all over again, trying to find somebody who might remember her. The owner of the flats was in London and suggested I contact a woman who had lived in the block for about thirty years.

At first she couldn’t remember a thing about Lionel Smith or his new wife, but when pressed further she said, ‘I wonder if it’s the man that died? There was a man who died on his own.’

I began searching for the death certificate and discovered that the dead man was indeed a curate’s son.

Someone must have been responsible for sorting out his estate and the local council would have a record. Perhaps his personal effects had been kept in storage? Again, it was a blind alley.

Then came the saddest cut – and one that I had feared from the very beginning. While trying to find members of Lionel’s family who might have known Harold’s mother, I stumbled across a death certificate for Elizabeth Ellen Smith. She died in Worthing in 1973.

There would be no tearful reunion on a doorstep, or hugs at an airport, or long walks of discovery. Harold’s and Marie’s mother was dead. This is what I fear for all child migrants when I begin a search, and it’s their fear as well. It was still, however, essential to find out what had happened to her.

I rang every funeral director in Worthing and Brighton, trying to discover who might have buried her. Eventually I found the right one and asked, ‘Who arranged the funeral? Was it a relative? Was it a lawyer?’

After a string of questions that they couldn’t answer, I said, ‘Surely you must know who paid the bill?’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ I was told.

‘Who’s in charge?’ I asked.

‘The boss is on holiday.’

‘Where is he on holiday? Please, can you get your boss on the phone? I need to talk to him. We either do this on the phone or I’ll be down tomorrow morning.’

Fifteen minutes later, I was put through to the funeral director at his home. He told me the burial was paid for by two spinsters who lived in a large house in Worthing. He gave me their names but there was no listing in the phone book and, the next day, the electoral roll showed they no longer lived at that address.

They were both elderly and I feared they may have died in the interim. If they were still alive, I had to find them quickly.

I found the name of the new owners of the house they’d owned in Worthing but not their telephone number.

‘Ex-directory!’ said the operator. I should have guessed it. Taking a deep breath, I wrote a letter asking the occupant to please, please ring me, hoping he could sense the urgency and would not dismiss me as a crank. Two nights later, the telephone rang at home.

‘You sent me a letter – what can I do for you?’ he asked.

‘Did you buy the house from Miss Marjorie and Miss Grace Stephens?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you know where they are now?’

‘Marjorie died and I bought it off her sister.’

‘Oh, and where’s her sister?’

‘In a home for the elderly. She’s quite sick. I don’t know where it is precisely.’

I was being incredibly polite, but inside I was screaming questions. Where is this home? Give me all the names, for God’s sake!

This man, a wonderful person, thought I was absolutely mad, but still agreed to help. He told me to hold fire while he went round the neighbours asking for more information. He rang back and gave me the name of the nursing home.

‘Is she still alive?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. But promise me one thing: one day will you tell me what this is all about?’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, hanging up.

I called the home and spoke to the matron.

‘Do you have a Miss Grace Stephens staying there?’

‘Yes. Are you a relative?’

‘No! I’m a social worker. Can I come and see her?’

‘Well, I’m afraid she is on medication right now and she doesn’t take visitors.’

‘I’ll be there on Monday,’ I told her. ‘I’ll explain to you when I get there.’

It meant catching another early-morning train from Nottingham. I changed trains in London and arrived at the nursing home shortly before midday.

Grace sat opposite me, pleased to have a visitor but looking slightly bemused.

I said, ‘Did you know Elizabeth Smith?’

‘Yes, dear. She was a lovely lady. I knew her for a long while.’

‘Did you pay the bill for her funeral?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please tell me how you knew her?’

‘She married my nephew who was a real no-gooder. A terrible, terrible man. We managed, my sister and I, to get Betty away from him and helped her live independently in a flat. We felt sorry for her.’

‘What was she like?’ I asked.

‘She was a quiet lady, who kept to herself. I think there was something in her past that made her very, very sad.’

‘Did she have any children?’

‘I remember she talked about having a little boy.’

‘And what happened to her boy?’

‘She said he died when he was ten.’

‘Did you ever see the boy?’

‘No. We didn’t know her then. That’s all she said about him. He was a little boy who died when he was ten.’

By now, Harold was back in Australia. I’d always told him that whenever I found his mother, whether she was alive or dead, I would never write or telephone. I would come to see him.

On my next planned visit to Australia I arranged to meet him in the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. Because of what I had to say, I chose a room with a nice view and filled it with flowers; white carnations and pink roses. I knew Harold would remember every detail of that day as if he were painting it on one of his canvases.

I’d always prepared Harold for the possibility of such a sad outcome. But I also knew that he lived in hope. I guess he realized what I was going to say. He admired the view of the city but he was preoccupied.