Читать книгу None Shall Divide Us - Michael Stone - Страница 8

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MARY AND CYRIL

I CAME INTO THE WORLD ON 2 APRIL 1955 IN LORDSWOOD HOSPITAL, HARBORNE, BIRMINGHAM, THE FIRST-BORN CHILD OF MARY BRIDGET AND CYRIL STONE. I am a British citizen and proud to be one. I have always cherished my nationality. My family history is complex, but it forms the backbone of my identity. I have two sets of parents: my biological mother and father, Mary Bridget O’Sullivan and her husband Cyril Alfred Stone, and the parents who raised me as their own, Margaret and John Gregg.

I know very little about my biological mother. Mary Bridget O’Sullivan is an Irish name but I do not know if she was an Irish citizen. All I do know is that she spoke with a strong English accent. Mary Bridget was the eldest child in a very large family. Her own mother died when she was very young and she was charged with raising her younger brothers and sisters. My biological father was born in the United Kingdom but spoke with an accent straight from the Shankill Road. He lived in England all his life yet his accent was as strong as if he lived in the heart of West Belfast.

Mary Bridget and Cyril met in the UK and were married at Caxton Hall registry office, London, in 1953. She was just eighteen and he just twenty-one when they exchanged vows. The union lasted only two years, enough time for Mary Bridget to decide motherhood and marriage weren’t for her. She walked out on her husband and new baby in September 1955, when I was just five months old. Mary Bridget never again saw the baby boy she left in Cyril’s arms. A restless Jack the Lad, Cyril took just minutes to plan his next move: the boat to Belfast to his only sister, Margaret, and her new husband, John, who lived in Ballyhalbert, on the shores of Belfast Lough. He handed his son into the care of the young couple, who raised me as their own, turned on his heels and joined the Merchant Navy.

Margaret and John are the only parents I have ever known. Margaret was the best mother a young boy could wish for. She died in 2001 from heart complications. My father John spent his final years in a nursing home surrounded by ladies who want to marry him. He died in April 2003.

I have just the one photograph of Cyril and Mary Bridget together. It is a symbol of who I am and a poignant reminder that two people brought me into the world but played no part in my upbringing. Yet I am still drawn to them like a nail to a magnet. I am curious about Mary Bridget. I want to know what went on in 1955 when she called time on our little family. The photograph shows a beautiful young girl with dark curls framing her delicate features and wearing smart clothes. She is linking arms with a swarthy man in an overcoat. They look happy. Both are smiling at the camera but I wonder what was going on beneath the surface. When they met, Cyril was a member of the Forces, a full-time reservist in the RAF. By the time I was born, he was driving lorries for a chemical firm, a job which took him all over the UK.

My mother had sparse details about their relationship. She told me Cyril was quick-tempered and possessive and Mary Bridget liked her freedom. It was a stormy marriage and destined to fail. Just a few years before my mother died she told me she met Mary Bridget once. Mum described her as a beautiful and gentle girl who was like a little bird – she just wanted to fly away. That is the memory I carry of the woman who brought me into the world: a little bird who saw her chance of freedom and grabbed it.

I have searched all my adult life for Mary Bridget O’Sullivan, but she has vanished off the face of the earth. I have tried everywhere to find her. Even the Red Cross couldn’t help me. Nothing exists after 1955, when my birth was registered. I do regret that I never got to meet Mary Bridget and she knows nothing about the man I became. I do not know what happened to her. She could be dead, she could have remarried or she could have emigrated to America or Australia. I still would like to see her and ask her about her life. I would like to tell her about my own life and would be happier doing this now my own mother is dead. I wouldn’t feel that I was betraying my own mother by speaking to Mary Bridget.

My entry into the world was rarely talked about at home. My mother resented Mary Bridget for abandoning her baby and walking out on her family. Mum was old-fashioned. She believed a woman’s place was with her children and in the home. From a very young age I was aware that I had a different surname from my brother and sisters, but there was no question of Mum allowing me to change my name from Stone to Gregg. I would ask tentative questions about why my name was different, but the only answer I got was: ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ I never probed. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or unfaithful because I loved her.

My mother was proud of her maiden name and she constantly said to me, ‘Be proud of your name because your married parents gave it to you.’

I am not interested in Mary Bridget’s religion, and religious persuasion is not an issue for me. She may have been a Roman Catholic or she may not have been. It doesn’t matter. Mary Bridget gave birth to me but she didn’t bring me up. Margaret Gregg raised me as her son and within days of my arrival in Northern Ireland had me baptised into the Anglican faith.

When I first put those tentative questions about my biological father, Mum told me that he ‘lived far away’. I know she did that to protect me and to make it sound like I hadn’t been dumped as a newborn child. Cyril Stone was my mother’s only brother and he kept in constant contact over the years, making regular enquiries about his first-born’s development. Years later, when I was a grown man, I discovered my mother even sent the odd school photograph to Cyril, who was now living in Birmingham, and he kept all those pictures and placed them side by side with photos of his second family.

I was eleven when my mother decided it was time I knew about my background. She had the perfect opportunity. I was enrolling at secondary school and she feared that if I didn’t know the facts I would be bullied and ridiculed in the playground. My elder sisters, Rosemary and Colleen, and elder brother, John, were already pupils there. Just days before I was due to enrol I was handed an old shoebox. Inside there was a bundle of letters and telegrams. They were all addressed to me, had postmarks stretching over an eleven-year period and were stamped with various exotic addresses such as ‘Gibraltar Port’. At first I was bewildered. My mother said one thing: ‘These letters are from Cyril Stone, who is your father. He is an officer in the Merchant Navy.’ The letters are dog-eared and torn around the folds. It proved to me that Cyril Alfred Stone felt something in his heart for the little boy he handed into the care of his sister in the autumn of 1955.

I met Cyril Stone just the once, when I was already a father myself. It was a very strange experience but also a moving one. The meeting answered an unasked question: ‘What am I missing out on?’ When I met Cyril I realised, with a great sense of relief, that I was missing out on absolutely nothing. I was twenty-eight and it was 1983, the year my grandmother died. Margaret Stone had kept a diary given to me by my mother on the day of my grandmother’s funeral. She told me to read it because there are ‘things in it you will want to read’. Inside was an address and telephone number for Cyril. He was still living in the Midlands. I rang the number and when he answered I was surprised at the strength of his Belfast accent. I can still hear the conversation we had. I said his name and he answered with, ‘Is that you, Michael?’

I told him I was coming to England to see him. He didn’t resist, put me off, hang up or refuse to see me. I booked a hotel and my ferry ticket and made my journey to Birmingham. I found his home and with a shaky hand rang the doorbell. He answered the door and there we were – two Stones looking at each other on his doorstep. It was a warm, friendly meeting and I am glad I met him, but I knew he would never take the place of John Gregg, who raised me. Cyril had remarried and had two other children, twins Tracey and Terence. Terence is now a Buddhist monk living in south-east Asia. The whole family welcomed me with open arms. I noticed my school photos sitting alongside pictures of his new family. I was happy to leave Cyril’s home and go back to Belfast to the only mother and father I have ever known and loved. The only missing piece in the jigsaw of my early life was Mary Bridget O’Sullivan and I accepted, with great sadness, that I would probably never find her.