One of my friends at primary school was born to a single mother and she always,when asked about her father,said he was killed in the war. She sadly died about 15 years ago and remembering the date of her birthday and knowing that her mother was still living in the same house,I sent her some flowers and contact was re-established.
DH and I visited her when we were up north visiting my parents and K always wanted to talk about her daughter. She had been a good friend of mine and I had been on holiday with them as a teenager.
K said that J never asked anything about who her father was and must have made up her own history. She told us that her father was the farmer on whose farm she worked in the Land Army who offered to financially support the baby.
When she told her parents who she lived with and asked what she should do,he immediately said that this was her home and she and the baby could live there…which they did very happily. It meant that K was able to continue to work as a secretary after the war and support J.
In spite of this,she said that she felt throughout her life,and she lived to 91, that she wasn’t a ‘proper’ mother. She felt she couldn’t join the Mothers’ Union and,although a devout Anglican, couldn’t go to church on Mothering Sunday. She said she always felt that she was disapproved of as a mother. What a burden she carried most of her long adult life.
