response relieved me enormously. ‘Yes, I have a wife, ma’am,’ he told her, looking genuinely contrite, ‘but I’m getting a divorce.’ He pulled out a photograph of a baby daughter he’d also never mentioned. My head was in a spin. I didn’t know what to think, but then he told my mother, ‘I love Paula, Mrs Tilston, and I want to marry her. I’m going home to arrange the divorce and then I’ll send for her.’
Having veered from shock to despair, I was on cloud nine once more.
Mum wasn’t at all happy but she knew how strongly I felt about Jim so she reluctantly agreed that I could carry on seeing him until he left for America. I pined for the end of each day when I’d be seeing him after work. Although I dreaded him leaving the country, I couldn’t wait to join him and would lie awake at night imagining what our life together would be like across the Atlantic. He told me that we’d be living on a military airbase to begin with and he tried to prepare me for what to expect. He said I’d have to go to a special school to learn about American culture for my citizenship exams. I told the girls in the salon all about it and we chattered excitedly about me moving abroad. Secretly, I was terrified by the idea. I’d never lived anywhere but Chester; I’d not even been to London, and I hadn’t ever flown in an aeroplane. But as long as Jim was waiting for me, I knew I could do it – even if it meant leaving everything and everyone that I’d ever known.
I planned our romantic farewell over and over in my mind. I imagined myself tearfully waving him off at the train station or kissing him goodbye at the gates to the airbase. The fairytale ending I’d dreamed of crumbled to dust when he called me late one night to tell me he’d be flying home early the following morning.
‘My leave’s been cancelled,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no time to say goodbye.’ He gave me the forwarding address of his new base and promised to write soon.
I placed the telephone back in its cradle and burst into shuddering tears. At least he had my tap-dancing medal as his talisman but it was all so sudden. I could hardly believe that in a few hours’ time my Jim, the love of my life, would be flying away from me.
I’D HAD SUCH AN EMOTIONAL FEW MONTHS THAT I FELT PHYSICALLY AND mentally drained. It seemed that everything that could have happened to me in my life had happened in that very short space of time. Well, almost everything.
When my period was late that month, I honestly didn’t think anything about it. I’d not been eating well and I’d hardly been sleeping. I told myself the distress I’d been suffering was bound to have an effect on my body. But as the days passed and nothing happened, I began to grow more fearful, terrified of what this might really mean.
Four months after my sixteenth birthday in February 1955, I finally summoned up the courage to blurt out the news to my mother. The look on her face will remain with me for ever. ‘But, Pauline!’ she cried. ‘What are you telling me? My God, you’re just a child yourself. Your body isn’t even fully developed yet!’
I sat at the kitchen table, my arms wrapped around me as she scolded me, her voice rising with shock and anger. By the end of that night she was too upset for me and too angry at Jim to fight any more and we were both too exhausted to try. The following morning, she hugged me and took me to the doctor’s surgery where I’m certain she hoped he’d tell her I was mistaken. When he confirmed her worst fears, I’m sure she secretly hoped he’d tell me how to get rid of the baby I was carrying, but doctors didn’t do that sort of thing back then.
The thought of an abortion never even crossed my mind. This was my baby. I loved its father with all my teenage heart. He was going to marry me and we’d live happily ever after in America. Of course I was going to keep it. I was so shocked when, on the way home from the surgery, Mum turned to me on the bus and said, ‘You won’t be able to bring the baby home, you know. I’m working. You’re working. Peter’s in hospital. There’s no one to look after it. How can we possibly give this baby the home it deserves?’
I knew she was upset and decided that she just needed time to get used to the idea. As far as I was concerned I had little reason to worry. The minute Jim found out I was pregnant, I was certain he’d hurry through his divorce, send for me, and we’d be wed before the baby was born. Even if there was a delay, it wasn’t unheard of for women to become pregnant out of wedlock in Chester. There had been a couple of examples very close to home. A girl across the road from where we lived had a baby by a local boy when she was young and had married the father so they could raise the child together. My next-door neighbour became pregnant in her early twenties by an American long before I’d even met Jim. She didn’t marry her airman or move to the States, but she kept her daughter nonetheless.
I wrote to Jim straight away at the address he’d given me, telling him my momentous news. I’m going to have our baby, I wrote, choosing my words carefully. I hope you’re as happy as I am. Every morning in the days and weeks that followed, I watched and waited for the postman to bring me a blue airmail envelope, a postcard, anything…but nothing came. The daily disappointment made me feel even sicker to my stomach.
After a while, my mother decided to take matters into her own hands. Taking Harry along for moral support, she made an appointment with one of the senior officers at the airbase where Jim had taken me to the dance and demanded to know his whereabouts.
‘We have no airman here by that name,’ the officer told her blankly. ‘We never have had.’ Even my indomitable little mother could do nothing against the immovable might of the United States Air Force.
I refused to lose heart and continued to believe that Jim would write any day or, better still, turn up on my mother’s doorstep, his cap pushed to the back of his head the way it always was, with that huge grin on his face. There must have been a problem with his wife, I convinced myself. Maybe she was making things difficult? Maybe the USAF was? After all, they’d pretended he didn’t even exist.
I’d lie on my bed in my room, playing the number one hit ‘Unchained Melody’ by Jimmy Young over and over on my little gramophone, hoping that somewhere across the Atlantic Jim might be listening to it too. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still mine? The words seemed to have been written specially for us.
The hardest part was going to work at the salon each day, my baby growing secretly inside me. The girls stopped asking if I’d heard from Jim. They could tell from my puffy eyes that I hadn’t. They were kind and supportive but they left me alone. There was no more happy chatter about my new life in America or what sort of wedding dress might best suit my beanpole frame. I told no one about the baby and fortunately didn’t really suffer from morning sickness so no one suspected. I covered myself up well, despite the fact that I was suddenly not quite so skinny any more.
Then one day, when I was about five months’ pregnant and still holding myself in, Doreen ‘Dors’ Jones, my manageress, told me that the boss of Quaintways, Mr Guifreda, wanted to see me in his office. I’d never been summoned to see him before and I couldn’t imagine what he might want. A Sicilian in charge of the restaurant, salon and just about every aspect of the enterprise, he was a kind and friendly man so I wasn’t afraid, but I was a little nervous. When Miss Jones came into the office with me, closed the door and stood behind me, I felt my knees begin to tremble.
Mr Guifreda told me to take a seat. ‘So, Tilly,’ he began. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’ He gave me a gentle smile.
I looked at him.
I looked up at Miss Jones.
Then I looked down at my hands.
‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’
His statement wasn’t really a question and I began to cry.
Miss Jones placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and passed me a handkerchief. Mr Guifreda looked almost as upset as I was. ‘Now, now, don’t cry,’ he soothed, patting my hand. ‘We’ll take