Secret Sister: From Nazi-occupied Jersey to wartime London, one woman’s search for the truth

In the mid-sixties, late teens to early twenties was the normal age for girls to get married – leave it too late and people described you as being ‘on the shelf’ – and I thought I’d better not miss my chance. The landlady at my digs tried to talk me out of it. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ she asked. ‘He’s quite a lot older than you.’ But my mind was made up simply because, to me, marriage to Eric would mean security. It’s what girls my age did.

Pop came alone to the registry office ceremony in September 1964. I’d bought myself a blue dress, jacket, hat and a pair of shoes in a charity shop, all for three pounds, and my landlady took some photographs in which I look about fifty years old! Standing in front of the registrar, I got my first shock of married life when Eric was asked for his date of birth. As he gave it, I did the arithmetic in my head and realised that he was five years older than I’d thought: thirty-three rather than twenty-eight, making him twelve years my senior. I didn’t say anything, though. I looked at him open-mouthed but didn’t like to make a fuss.

We went for lunch in the Falstaff Hotel in Canterbury – Pop, his sister Blanche, Eric and me. Eric’s family lived in Doncaster and couldn’t travel down for the wedding. Immediately after lunch, Eric and I walked back up the road to strip wallpaper in a house we’d just bought and were doing up. There was no honeymoon; it was straight down to the business of being ‘a married couple’.

Ours was a typical 1950s marriage, a decade too late; although women across the nation were starting to burn their bras, there was certainly none of your Women’s Lib in our household! I did all the shopping, cooking and cleaning while carrying on with my radiography studies, and Eric worked in his chiropody practice during the day then played golf and cricket with his mates in the evening and at weekends.

My weak spot was that I desperately wanted a family, to find somewhere I belonged. When I visited friends’ families I used to analyse the dynamics, trying to figure out how they worked, because family life was something I hadn’t experienced since Mum died. I yearned for lots of children to make a big happy gang in which I was a core member, so I mucked in and cooked and cleaned and did my absolute best to make my marriage a success.

All the same, I remember one moment, a few weeks after the wedding, when I was in a little room at the hospital where I was training. There was a brown rug on the floor, and I stared at it and thought, ‘What have I done?’ Although I’d been dating Eric for two years, agreeing to marry him had been impulsive; it had seemed like something I should do rather than something I wanted to do, and now the reality of the decades stretching in front of me seemed daunting. There was nothing to be done about it, though, so I just snapped myself out of that introspective mood and got on with things.

Soon after the wedding, Pop came to visit, bringing with him a folder of papers. He handed them over, saying, ‘I thought it’s about time you should have these.’

I opened the folder and flicked through. There was a lengthy correspondence with Reginald Johnson & Co Solicitors in Hayes, Middlesex, regarding ‘The Adoption of Paulette’ – and I realised with a start that it was all about me. For some reason my heart started to pound.

It seemed that although I had been born in March 1943 and had gone to live with Mum and Pop (Dorothy and Ernest Vousden) six weeks later, I had not been officially adopted by them until March 1944 because my birth father had been in the army and they hadn’t been able to track him down to get his signature on the paperwork. There was a copy of a sad little letter on blue writing paper from my mum to my birth father, sent care of his unit: ‘We are anxious to adopt her but cannot do so without your written consent, would you kindly do this without further delay & so enable us to get the matters settled.’

It struck me immediately how heart-rending it must have been for Mum and Pop to bring me up for a whole year – doing the nappies and the night feeds, bathing and dressing me – while, at any time, my birth parents could have come to claim me back because the adoption was not formalised. That must have been very stressful for them. How could you let yourself love a baby you might not be able to keep? Yet there was no doubt that Mum and Pop had loved me without reservation from the minute they took me home with them.

‘We were pretty sure they wouldn’t come back for you,’ Pop agreed, ‘but it was certainly a relief when it was all finalised. Your mother and I had been trying for a long time for a baby – since our marriage in 1922 – so as you can imagine we couldn’t wait to have it all confirmed legally.’

‘Twenty-one years!’ I exclaimed. ‘That must have been so hard for you.’

‘It was a particular sorrow for your mother. I had my work but she just had her home to run, and I think she felt it very keenly when friends were talking about their children’s achievements. Thank God she had the nine years of looking after you. It made her so happy.’

I smiled, remembering what a wonderful mother she had been. I was very lucky in that sense … not so much in others.

Next I looked at the four-page certificate that legally made me the child of Dorothy and Ernest Vousden under the 1926 Adoption of Children Act. On the third page, in black and white, there were the names of my birth mother and father: Daisy Louise Noël of Shelburne Road, High Wycombe, and Henri Le Gresley Noël of Saighton Camp, near Chester. I got goosebumps on my arms looking at them.

‘Why do their names sound so foreign?’ I asked.

‘They were from Jersey,’ Pop explained. ‘Daisy was evacuated in 1940 when the Germans were about to invade the Channel Islands. Henri was in the army. I believe their marriage failed and she didn’t feel capable of raising a child on her own, especially during wartime.’

‘Poor Daisy,’ I said, trying to imagine what it must be like to give up your baby. I pictured her in floods of tears as she handed over the bundle swathed in a pristine white blanket.

The last page of the certificate was about wills; it explained that adopted children bore all the same rights as children born naturally to a couple, except that they would not automatically inherit any estate unless there was a will naming them as heirs.

‘Don’t worry; you are named as my heir,’ Pop said. ‘Not that there’s much to inherit.’

He looked tired, and I’d noticed he was getting forgetful. When I was younger I’d never minded having older parents, but now I was in my twenties, Dad was in his sixties and starting to succumb to the niggling ailments of old age.

‘Thanks for bringing these, Pop,’ I said. I couldn’t stop looking at those names – Daisy and Henri Le Gresley Noël. What ages would they be now and what were they doing with their lives?

And then a thought struck me: perhaps they had gone on to remarry and have more children. I might have half-brothers and sisters somewhere. Wouldn’t that be lovely! I daydreamed about discovering a big extended family of cousins and aunties, grandparents, nephews and nieces, who all met up for Christmases and birthdays and weddings. Then I snapped myself out of it. I still had a wonderful dad, and I’d once had the best mum in the world; lots of people couldn’t say as much. I should count myself lucky and not hanker after anything more.

5

Learning to Be a Mum

It was fascinating to learn that my birth parents came from Jersey, meaning that I had a connection with the Channel Islands. I knew very little about the wartime occupation there, but I went to the library and did some reading to try to understand what the people had been through. I read that after the Fall of France in June 1940 and its occupation by German troops, the British government decided they couldn’t spare the manpower to defend the islands, which were much closer to France than they were to Britain. Everyone was aware that it would give the Germans a propaganda coup to say they had conquered part of the British Isles, but there would be no particular strategic advantages for them in having a base there and the islands would simply be too tricky for the British Army to defend.

Each island had its own governing body, and in those rushed, chaotic days of mid-June 1940 they all adopted different policies towards evacuation. Alderney officials recommended that everyone be evacuated; Sark urged everyone to stay; on Guernsey they decided to evacuate all school-age children; on Jersey the advice was to stay, and most followed it, with only around a tenth of the population deciding to leave – including, I supposed, my birth mother. Boats left the islands for the UK mainland between 20 and 23 June 1940, and the Germans took possession on 1 July, so it was all a big rush. I looked at photographs of old women sobbing as they waved at departing boats, of little children perched on their fathers’ shoulders looking bewildered, of decks crammed with people looking fearful, unsure of what awaited them on the mainland. It must have been a terrifying choice: wait for the Germans or leap into the unknown and start a new life.

By the time I was born, my mother, Daisy, was in England and my father was off fighting somewhere. According to the adoption certificate her address was in Shelburne Road, High Wycombe. I knew High Wycombe because my Auntie Wyn (Mum’s sister) and Uncle Frank used to live there. I remembered their next-door neighbours kept chickens and goats in a big uncultivated garden, and I liked to climb over and play with them even though Aunt Wyn kept telling me not to.

‘Stay out, Cherry. You’ll annoy them,’ she chided. But I had always loved goats and I was straight over that fence whenever she wasn’t looking, even after one of the goats butted me and knocked me to the ground.

I wondered if an adoption agency had given me to my mum and dad – the adoption papers didn’t name one. Alternatively, perhaps Auntie Wyn had known Daisy and told her about this couple who couldn’t have children of their own and were desperate to adopt. Was that how it all happened?

For a brief moment I considered writing to the Shelburne Road address to ask if the current occupants had a forwarding address for Daisy, but then I changed my mind. I felt sure Pop would be upset if I tried to contact my birth parents. It was almost like saying that he wasn’t a good enough dad. I couldn’t do that to him, and I certainly didn’t want to do it behind his back, so I put the adoption papers away in a drawer.

Meanwhile, Eric and I were keen to start a family of our own. In the spring of 1965 I had a miscarriage, which was very distressing, but luckily by the end of the year I was pregnant again. I gave birth to my daughter Helen in April 1966, and it was then that I realised I knew absolutely nothing about babies! I’d had no contact with them, and while most girls could ask their mothers for help and advice, I had no one to ask and simply had to muddle through. For example, I didn’t know that your milk doesn’t come in for three days; I had no idea what to do when Helen was obviously hungry and I had hardly anything in my breasts to feed her. (I’d decided from the start that I wanted to breastfeed, even though it wasn’t the fashion at the time, because to me it felt more natural. That’s what we have breasts for, isn’t it?)

There was no one you could ask in those days. I’d met a few women at antenatal classes and we exchanged notes, but they were mostly young and clueless like me. I felt a complete amateur but somehow I managed to master breast-feeding, then weaning her on mashed bananas and stewed apples. There was endless hand-washing of terry towelling nappies in a sink down in the basement then struggling to get them dry because there was no heating in the house. When my son Graham came along in December 1967, I was an old hand at rearing babies and it all went more smoothly, although there were double the number of nappies to wash.

Our house in Canterbury was a Victorian building, four storeys tall. On the ground floor was the surgery and waiting room for Eric’s chiropody practice. I had to share the only bathroom, on the first floor, with all the old ladies who’d come in to have their feet done, and I hated that. The kitchen was on the same level as the surgery, and our sitting/dining room was on the top floor so if we sat down to dinner and I realised I’d forgotten the salt, it was a trek down four flights of stairs to retrieve it then another four flights back up again. It obviously wasn’t an ideal house in which to live with two babies; when I arrived home with a pram, several bags of shopping and the two of them wailing for a feed, there was many a time I could have done with an extra pair of arms.

I had loads of memories of my own mum – how warm and cuddly she had been, the feeling of safety when I was snuggling on her lap and the peacefulness of lying in bed, tucked under the covers, while she played the piano to lull me to sleep. I wasn’t very good at doing these things for my own children, though. I did all the physical, practical things – feeding, washing, clothing, nursing them when they were sick, taking them for dental check-ups and registering them for schools – but emotionally I felt shut off. I think it went back to the first time I returned to the house after Mum’s death, when I was sitting on Pop’s knee and he told me not to cry but to be a brave girl. In everything that had happened to me since then, I’d suppressed my emotions and simply coped, so when it came to my own children I found I was unable to be demonstrative and loving. We weren’t a cuddly family, although I loved them to pieces.

Apart from anything else, I was always short of time. Eric liked his routines: breakfast on the table at eight, lunch at twelve, supper at six, so looking after the kids had to fit around that. I had finished my radiography course before getting pregnant, but there was no part-time radiography work in our area, so instead I took odd jobs to make money. In summer I’d be out fruit-picking while the kids snoozed in their prams or toddled around trying to help; in winter I made teddy bears for a market stall, stuffing them, sewing them up and sticking in those eerie glass eyes.

Eric gave me housekeeping money (when we first married it was four shillings a week) but it was a struggle to feed and clothe all of us. I economised where I could, only buying my own clothes from charity shops. Once, Eric and I were invited to a posh do at the golf club and I bought a second-hand gold brocade dress, full-length and fitted, from Oxfam; I was quite pleased with it but he complained: ‘What if we get there and someone else recognises it as theirs?’ Fortunately they didn’t – or at least if they did, they were too polite to say.

Life was one big juggling act of housework, childcare, trying to earn money, and marriage to a man who had old-fashioned ideas about a woman’s role. Mostly I was too submissive to kick up a fuss.

6

Breaking Out of Domesticity

Little by little, bit by bit, I began to lift myself out of the role of domestic skivvy and stay-at-home mum. Once the children started school, I signed myself up for a correspondence course in chiropody. Eric approved, because it would mean I could help with some of the home visits needed in his practice, travelling out on my bicycle to see clients who were unable to attend the surgery.

When I’d qualified as a chiropodist and was earning some decent sums of money on my own account, I could supplement the housekeeping. Helen was doing dance classes, which she loved, and there were always extras she needed for the regular shows. Now I could buy these and I could pay for Graham to take riding lessons at the local stables. I began to put my foot down about certain things around the house as well. In particular, I’d always wanted a washing machine but Eric didn’t see the need: ‘My mother managed perfectly well without a washing machine so why can’t you?’

Instead of arguing I saved the money from my wages then slipped into the Co-op in town and chose a modest Indesit automatic, giving strict instructions that it was not to be delivered until the following day, which would give me enough time to prepare Eric for the arrival.

Imagine my horror when I arrived home to find some men already unloading the machine from the back of a van and trundling it noisily towards our front steps!

‘No, not that way!’ I cried. ‘Quick – come round the back.’

They installed the washing machine in the basement and, after a spot of grumbling, Eric accepted it once it was there. This gave me the idea of having a fitted kitchen installed while he was off on a golfing holiday. He could hardly rip it out again once it was in place, I reckoned (although he did complain that it was a shocking waste of money!).

These little bits of progress gave me confidence. With each tiny step forwards, my life was becoming a bit easier. With the children both at school, I had some hours free and my day wasn’t complete drudgery from morning to night. My next purchase was a huge secret, one I knew that Eric would never have consented to in a million years: I bought myself a horse.

It had been one of my childhood dreams to own a horse, and there was a field down by the river in Canterbury where I used to stop and pet the horses. I got talking to the old chap there and he told me he was looking to loan one of his horses, a thoroughbred named Ferica, for four pounds a week. Straight away I agreed to take it on, then a while later I bought a sorry-looking four-year-old called Copper at a horse fair in Ashford, only to find out later that it was a par-bred American quarter horse. I still don’t know how I got away with rushing out to groom, feed and ride the horses every day; I just got on my bike and went, and Eric never asked questions. It was a huge deception but I loved my horses to pieces and they brought me a lot of happy times. I finally had to confess to Eric a couple of years later, after I arrived home splattered from head to foot in mud, and he was utterly speechless, too gobsmacked even to protest.

Later still I took driving lessons. Eric didn’t drive and wasn’t keen on me learning, but I persevered and, after I passed the test, managed to buy myself a beat-up old car, a pale blue Singer Chamois, which cost £120. It was a lovely car with a walnut dashboard, but sadly it got written off a few years later when an uninsured student drove into me on a country road. I liked the independence driving brought, but for local journeys I’d always use my trusty old bike.

Still I found it difficult to show affection for my children. I’d have fought to the death to protect either of them, and I worked my socks off to buy whatever material things they needed, but I was such a squashed, bruised apple of a person that I was incapable of hugging them or telling them that I loved them. I’d do the chores instead of taking them to the park, accept extra bookings at work instead of having a day out at a fun fair, and I bitterly regret that now. You’d think losing my mum would have made me extra loving towards my own children, but with me it worked in quite the opposite way, making me cautious and reserved. It was a loss for them, and a loss for me too because I missed the chance to enjoy being a mum.

In 1975, I read a story in the newspapers that made me prick up my ears. Under a new law, adopted people had the right to apply for their birth certificates and seek information about the agency involved in their adoption, with a view to tracking down their birth parents. I still didn’t plan to track down Daisy and Henri Noël because I didn’t want to hurt Pop’s feelings, but I thought I should apply for a copy of my birth certificate. Apart from anything else, I thought I’d need it if I ever wanted to get a passport. You had to have counselling first, so I made an appointment and went along on the day to find a young, wet-behind-the-ears lad sitting behind a big desk, looking rather embarrassed by the role in which he found himself.

‘Do you think you are prepared for this?’ he asked, peering at a form in front of him.

‘Yes,’ I replied. My heart was pounding, but I didn’t want to tell this lad I was nervous and have to listen to him spouting counselling clichés he’d memorised from a textbook.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

He opened a file, pulled out the certificate and passed it over, saying, ‘Here you are, then.’ So much for counselling!

I don’t know why I’d been nervous. The long, horizontal sheet didn’t give me much information that I hadn’t already gleaned from my adoption certificate, but I did learn that my birth mother’s maiden name was Daisy Louise Banks and that she came from Bellozanne Valley in Jersey, that my father’s occupation was itinerant farm worker and that he’d grown up in Ville à l’Evêque, Jersey. I now had addresses where they had lived at some stage, and once again I vaguely considered sending out tentative letters to make contact. I did try writing to the army authorities, trying to find out about my birth father’s military career, but my letters got passed from one department to the next without bringing any solid information. I wanted to know about Daisy and Henri, but I decided it wasn’t fair on Pop to try to get in contact with them directly.

Pop and Billie had just moved up to Scarborough, her home town, and he was becoming increasingly forgetful. We wrote to each other but often his letters contained non sequiturs or things that simply didn’t make sense. When I phoned, it was always Billie who answered, and if she passed the phone to him he frequently seemed confused. Even if I’d felt I could ask him questions about my birth parents, he probably wouldn’t have been able to answer them now. I’d missed my chance to ask whether he ever met Daisy Banks Noël, and whether she had been introduced to them by Auntie Wyn and Uncle Frank.

One day, I remembered that Pop had once given me a Jersey half-sovereign and told me he had dug it up in the garden. It was gold and glittery, like buried pirate treasure, and I’d kept it in his collar stud box. Suddenly, I began to wonder if that had been a parting gift from either Daisy or Henri as they said goodbye to their baby daughter. (Actually, I wasn’t sure whether Henri had ever set eyes on me or if he was away at the front when I was born. That seems more likely, because had he been around he could have signed those adoption papers straight away and saved Mum and Pop a year of heartache and worry.)

I tried asking Pop about the half-sovereign but he just looked blank, his memory being stolen bit by bit by the ravages of what was later diagnosed as dementia.

7

Searching for My Birth Father

One morning in the early 1980s, I was browsing through the local paper at the kitchen table when my eye was caught by an article about how to trace your family. They had interviewed an amateur genealogist called John Stroud about methods he used to find missing relatives and draw up family trees. He used local history libraries, newspaper archives, church records and the official registers of births, marriages and deaths, and had achieved some notable successes in reuniting family members who hadn’t seen each other for years.

I tore the page out of the paper and slipped it in my pocket because I was rushing out to the horses and didn’t want to risk Eric throwing the paper away before I got back. Later on, I reread the article. Mr Stroud sounded very approachable and I decided to write to him, care of the paper, to see if he could find out anything about my birth family. Still, I just wanted information. In particular, I wondered if Daisy and Henri Noël had remarried and I might have half-brothers or sisters somewhere.

A week later I got a reply from Mr Stroud saying he would be happy to help me trace my birth parents. He asked for copies of my adoption documents and my birth certificate. I’d asked what fee he would charge for helping me, but he replied that he wouldn’t charge me anything. Genealogy was a hobby for him. I made the copies and sent them to him in the very next post, feeling both excited and nervous at the same time. I hadn’t thought through what I would do if he did find them, but I desperately hoped we would be able to form some kind of relationship. Pop’s health was declining and there was no need for him to find out what I was doing, so it couldn’t hurt him.