Creativity can be key to recovery.
Family support volunteer Rachel is an inspiring writer who has recently had her work published. Rachel has very kindly shared the book with us, and we I would like to share the story she wrote with you.
But first, we just wanted to share a little bit about Rachel who works within her service and her journey:
In essence, my childhood was impacted by substance misuse. When I was just over a year old, due to debt, my parents made a hazardous midnight journey, leaving our family home behind. We then stepped into an even more dangerous situation than the one we had left. I remember it vividly.
Like Francis' Flag, my stories and poetry often include trauma, journeys and overcoming adversity.
I work as a volunteer (Women’s Group) in Gravesend.
I also work as an M-PACT Facilitator.
Through the M-PACT programme, we support children growing up with substance misuse, to find their voice and express themselves. I gain great satisfaction from being a part of M-PACT.
Rachel O’Connor-d’Andel
Francis’ Flag
I am the voice of rage.
For women who have lost their liberty, their dignity, and their freedom. For women who have been compelled to silence. Although, I died long ago, my longing never died nor my desire to escape. My rage is born of trauma. The same trauma of my mother, and of all women, be their rage silent, be their rage loud; our rage is against the injustice of women.
This story begins with my mother.
Just as livestock and women are viewed as property, so too was my orphaned mother. She was a gift, exchanged between a tribal king and the queen of an empire. Taken from her clan and country and given a different name, my mother was sent overseas to please the curiosities of an indolent queen.
During a period of convalescence in a warmer country, my mother’s care was entrusted to a missionary school. There under the watchful eye of their god, she was raped by an errant priest, whereupon she became pregnant with me.
Afraid, alone and deemed a temptress by the missionaries, my mother’s only means of redemption was to give away her new-born infant and bury her secret forever.
Nursed briefly by my mother, thereafter I was taken by the missionaries and placed in the care of an elderly nurse who travelled with me on a ship bound for Chatham. Upon my receipt at the Ragged school, monies were exchanged, my name erased, and my birth papers falsified. All that was left to me, was the bible that my mother had stitched inside my sucking cloth along with a note secreted in its pages. I was to never see my mother again.
By all accounts, duty bound to follow the wishes of her patron the queen, my mother went on to live a prosperous life.
I was named Ellen, after my elderly nurse. From age eleven, the Ragged school sent me to work at the docks. There I would sweep the ropery floor, lift spindles or climb underneath machines to clean them. Later I sewed in the Sail and Colour loft. Although my pleasures were few, I would decorate the Chapel alter and collect flowers for pressing between the pages of my bible. I would sew the flowers with the finest strands of rope to make pieces of embroidery.
As promised to my mother, before her death, the elderly nurse returned. She shared with me the secrets of my birth and handed me the note that she had removed from my mother’s bible. It read,
‘My darling Adama,
Yes, this is your REAL name, say it over and over, at the start and finish of each day. Never forget it.
For what I did I am truly sorry.
Please forgive me. I did not want to give you up and begged with the missionaries to keep you. They forced my hand. Too survive I had to make an impossible choice. The pain and secret of my loss, of our loss will die with me. I give you my strength in all its forms to live in you, now and beyond the grave. My longing for you will never end.
Your loving mother. ‘
I died childless and alone and my young body was buried with my mother’s bible in an unmarked corner, beneath the fronds and poisonous berries of the yew.
The world of longing lives on in the unconscious shadow of memory. And the essence of memory is truth. Truth can be found in every cell, every sinew, every muscle, and every bone. And as a truth, trauma is also passed through the body of the mother to the body of the unborn child.
Although I lost my mother, her truth, her trauma lived on in me. Patiently, I have waited. Waited for my longing and my rage to live again, to be felt in the heart of another.
Outside, the storm grew in strength. The waves hammered at the basin walls and the wooden supports of the ships creaked and shuddered. It was as if the slow, wide river was rising up to reclaim its waters and to set free the ships housed within.
Inside, in the half-light of the Colour and Sail loft, twenty-five women, oblivious to the storm, attentively worked on.
Each scrutinised the thread as it darted its way along the material that ran flat between their fingers and the sewing foot. As they did, their bodies rose, crested and then fell in unison with the waves of the river beyond. Each woman was industrious in her pursuit. Whilst the spools of their machines turned, their lives passively turned also. All except one.
Looking out at the storm was the face of Francis Adare.
Although I was taught to know my place, I never believed in it. From the start, I was out of alignment with the hinge of my life.
At my birth, my mother’s consumptive body gave all she had and then shut down. A loss keenly felt by Nan who was left to raise me. It left me with an emptiness. Felt, but little understood.
What I can remember, is how from the age of three, Nan would tuck me into the folds of her woollen cloak and carry me to the Sail and Colour loft.
Under the table of her machine, I would sit obediently, listening to the women’s chatter and their machines. I played with discarded cotton reels, paper patterns and coloured remnants and would create an imaginary world. A world that was beyond the concrete belt of the docks.
Being the best seamstress in the Colour loft earnt Nan certain privileges. Bringing her granddaughter to work was one of them. I thrived in that place. Thrived among the sewing women who watched over me. They loved me and I them. Their example of resilience and kindness taught me far more than any classroom could.
After fifteen, I joined Nan and the other women at the machines. I tried my hardest at flag making and to ‘keep the Adare family name flying high’. I soon realised that the emblems we sewed onto the flags were like many emblems, a reminder of where power lies. A show of wealth and its protection.
None of this ever changed how I felt whenever I sewed ‘FA’ on the back of every finished flag. I imagined my initials were a climbing rose, its pink dog flowers encircling and tumbling over the yellow lions, over the arched lady and the harp and creating an impenetrable briar which ensnared the royal flag. My family name would fly above the helm of the royal fleet.
As Nan grew older, our workload increased but the pay didn’t. Her attitude hardened towards the company. She started to say, ‘I ask myself, why on earth should we bother lass?’.
Newlywed and pregnant, at first Nan and her husband had come to the docks with hope. They had left Ireland having heard about there being better pay and security.
Ten years later, Nan buried her husband after he died in an accident. The company paid for a catholic burial. They also gave Nan work in the loft, grandpa’s pension and let us remain in the tied cottage owned by the company. It nearly finished her. If it weren’t for St Michaels, I’m not sure where Nan would be, where we would be. They were hard times.
Our days at the machines swept by like miniature storms. Our hands busy. Our backs bent over thread and flag. Our muscles taught and our eyes tired as the bobbins clicked and the machines hummed. The foreman watched us, and the governors watched him.
By nineteen I’d grown impatient of life in the Loft. From the windows I would watch the physicality of the men’s work outside, watch the changing ships that came and went and wished to be in their place.
That was until, I met Elsa.
Like a moth drawn to moonlight on a summers evening, I was drawn to the light of Elsa Charles.
We couldn’t name it, but we felt it. Both motherless from birth, our bodies yearned but our emptiness unmet. Unspeakable differences brought us together.
It all started when Elsa, who was thirteen years my senior, offered me ‘reading’ lessons. Nan was grateful. Elsa was educated, was known for her books.
But up the narrow stairwell and behind the squat attic door of her room in Watts St, no reading ever took place. Instead, Elsa showed me the real meaning of longing. Once I gave myself to it, I experienced a strength unknown to me. As if, my true voice emerged from the depths. We would lie on her mattress and search each other, our soft contours casting shadows from the gas lamp outside. It was our passion. Our secret. Belonging to no one but us.
Like me, Elsa’s history set her apart. Orphaned by colonial upheaval and raised by an English couple who ran a missionary hospital, Elsa grew up believing her good fortune and that of her people, depended on an English king and a Christian god.
At thirteen, Elsa was set to work, looking after the couple’s young children in exchange for board and a small allowance. But Elsa wanted more.
Month after month, she pooled her meagre resources, stitched farthings and dried food into her clothes, and after much planning set off as a stowaway on a merchant ship to England.
During the long days and nights, Elsa survived on meagre rations and drank the rainwater that dripped from the deck above. Elsa’s dreams were haunted by the cries of her ancestors; captured, then taken from their people and their land and shipped across the Atlantic.
When the ship anchored, Elsa who was weak with hunger, was discovered by the ships cook who took pity on her, hiding her whereabouts and giving her shelter. Eventually Elsa secured work in the Sail and Colour loft. Her evenings spent reading seafaring books and dreaming of London.
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I see the storm inside their hearts. Know their longing and see their dreams. I am urging them on. To go with them on the ships with their flags flying high, out of the Medway and toward London.
It was October 1940 and across the country enemy bombs were falling. We continued to work. Inside the Colour loft but the foreman was distracted by increasing orders and watched us less.
To escape the sewing floor, I would carry crates of flags over to the loading bays. On one such trip, I stumbled across a trapdoor, its catch undone. I stepped down a cavernous basement no longer in use. It was there, that I made my discovery.
The walls of the tunnelled room seemed wet, water shone in the dull light, its ceiling narrowing at the furthest point. What spurned me on, I cannot say. At its final corner, musty and rotten, was a mattress and some books. Hanging on the nearby wall, were the embroidered letters of ‘A’ and ‘E’. Each made from the finest strands of rope and intertwined with tiny, pressed flowers. As I unhooked it gently, an object fell. It was a note.
It read,
“It’s me, it’s me! At last, you’ve found me! I’ve been waiting for you. This corner is the only place that I ever felt joy. Today will be my final visit. On countless nights, unknown to anyone, I have sat with my needlework. This now belongs to you. Whoever you are, grant me this last wish. Take the embroidery. It possesses all of my joy. Give it back to the sea. She brought me here. May our mothers, and their mothers, protect you. I wish you safe passage on your next journey.
Adama (Ellen).
Adama’s secret corner would provide me with a hiding place. When it was time for me to leave, Elsa’s had showed me how to ‘disappear’. To hide between the crates, the flags, ropes and cargo. She described how my heart would pound, I would feel nausea and my throat would close. How beneath the hull, I would hear the sound of the waves crashing. But no matter how hard, with my chest bound flat, my head shaven under my cap, I must be still and wait.
I had sewed dried fish and nuts into the Royal Standards snarling lions and ample lady and harp. The flag would give me food and warmth. If I remained undetected, I would arrive at Deptford. There Elsa would meet me.
But on the 4th of October, five days before my intended journey, something unimaginable happened.
Enemy bombs fell on the docks, on Ordnance Street and the surrounding area.
Houses were destroyed and their occupants killed. The police, firemen, home guards, dockers and their families all helped in the search. The community mourned the lives lost. Nobody saw myself or Elsa again. No other explanation could be given. Eventually, it was assumed we were among the dead.
Anyone reading this would rightly ask; did I warn Francis against leaving?
Of course, I did. Hundreds of times. Not for a minute did I ever believe she would do it. Oh yes, I could see she was restless. I never understood it. But I hoped, once married, she would settle. I saw something of her mother’s unhappiness in her. And if I am truthful, I also saw my own.
After my daughter died, I vowed to protect Francis. She was a scrawny thing. Born too early. I’d feed her milk, warmed on a spoon. The milk came from a neighbour who was nursing her own her baby.
I taught Francis to face hard truths. I’d say ‘Don’t go wanting something that cannot have. We Adare’s are proud but dreamers we are not.’
I wanted to protect Francis from the cruel world. But the more I warned her the less she listened. Then, on the night of October 4th, everything changed. As with my husband, events happened faster than I could draw breath.
It was a cold dark evening; Francis and I had finished a thirteen-hour shift. We huddled together and walked home arm in arm. As we made our way up Ordnance Street Francis suddenly announced she’d left her gloves at Elsa’s. Before I knew it, she’d turned back to Watts Street.
Next thing I knew, I woke to the sound of sirens and shouting. Overhead torches flashed through blacked-out windows. I could hear low flying aircraft in the distance. We were told to run. Myself and my neighbours sped downhill towards the crypt at St John’s.
When I heard the bombs fall, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t seen Francis. We waited for the all clear to sound. I didn’t see Francis again. I had my suspicions but never spoke of them. Either way I’d lost the one person that I’d fought to protect. I blamed myself. The following year I moved to Devon to spend my last working days on my brother’s farm.
Ten years passed when Francis’ letter arrived.
‘Dearest Nan,
I know your heart will be heaving and your tears falling as you read this.
Sorry for the shock. Sorry for not saying goodbye. But your fears are over Nan. I am alive and well.
I know you did everything you could to provide for me. You had lost so much, with grandpa, then ma. I know why my wanting to leave angered you so. I wanted what you couldn’t have. We both knew I was different, but we never spoke of it. Meeting Elsa changed all that. We understood each other and wanted so much to be together. But we knew our way of loving would never be accepted by you or by St Michaels.
I should have told you. I meant to. Events overtook.
I have a new life now in London with Elsa. We’ve worked hard and now run a drapers shop in Convent Garden. We live above our shop. I thought you’d be pleased that we have named it ‘Adare and Daughters’ after you. Everything I learnt at the Sail and Colour loft I’ve put into the shop.
I can’t wait to see you again.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. Please send word that you have received my letter. It took a lot of asking and a long time to find you. Please don’t turn away from me now.
Your ever-loving Francis.
Francis’ letter made me realise so many things.
Like my mother before me, I had endured hardship and loss. Each time it happened I buried my rage and instead became fearful. When Francis was born, I saw only misfortune ahead. I resented that Francis longed for change. The change that I could never have. Had she not fled Francis would still be with me at the docks. Francis found her strength and flew her flag to freedom.
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And so, their story is told. The lives of Francis, Elsa and Nan and how they found their truth and in doing so found each other. Their healing begun. But my story though, is without end.
Be there longing, be there suffering, be there silence, there I will follow. There you will find me.
The End