Free Rosa's Child by Jeremy Josephs Page B

might not be beside her in church, proud to be giving her away. Peter was dropped. The Reverend had imposed his will on Grace once again. But when would she wake to the truth that he had not the slightest intention of relinquishing her to another man; that he would never do so - not if he could help it.
    Indeed, the Reverend was harbouring a strange fantasy of possession which had played on his mind for some time. He had a habit of using car journeys to talk openly with Grace about any one of a variety of intimate subjects. Often the topic was the deep pain he felt at not having had a child of his own - 'the greatest tragedy of my life,' as he invariably described it. But he had something else on his mind one day as he was driving twenty-four-year-old Grace from his curate's house in the Croydon diocese to Farnborough Hospital in Kent, where she was being trained in midwifery.
    'Grace,' the reverend said rather tentatively. 'You know, I would love it if we could be together.'
    'Yes, Daddy,' replied Grace, desperate to be back in the safety of the nurses' home.
    'You know. I mean married. Why don't we just drive off somewhere now?'
    'But you know that's impossible, Daddy.'
    That matter-of-fact response may or may not have dispelled the bizarre fantasy from the Reverend's mind altogether, but Grace received no such proposals of marriage again.
    As Grace approached her thirties, trapped as she was, she was becoming desperately tired of colluding in her father's tricks. Aware that their geographical separation had made no difference at all to his ability to control her, she resolved that in future she would try a different tack. If only she could keep her relationships secret, she reasoned, then he would have nothing to be upset about. His ignorance would be her bliss. And so began a gradual process of alienation from her parents that would come to characterize their relationship for many years. Birthdays and anniversaries were remembered, and there would be a polite exchange of cards and presents at Christmas. Underneath this semblance of normality there was no longer any real contact.
    So when in 1964 Grace, who was now working as a health visitor in the Birmingham suburb of Erdington, met Alan Stocken, an engineer, at a party in the city, she decided not to announce the news to her parents for the time being. In fact, Grace was to hold her tongue much longer than she expected, but for quite another reason. The courtship went on so long that she began to wonder whether Alan had any intention of ever proposing to her. When finally he did so, Grace gladly accepted and presented the couple's decision to the Manns as a fait accompli. For the first time in her life Grace had outwitted her father. The Reverend, realizing this, telephoned his daughter some six weeks before the wedding to make just one enquiry. It seemed as if he was already reconciled to her loss.
    'You really are going to go through with this then, Grace? Then you really do want me to phone the Bishop?' he asked. Rather than a promise to engage the cleric's services, the question concealed a threat. The Reverend only had to tell the Bishop that as a non-practising Christian the young man was unsuitable as a husband for Grace to make it impossible for them to marry in that diocese.
    Alarmed as she was by this possibility, Grace nevertheless replied in the affirmative. Indeed, so undaunted must she have sounded that at last the Reverend realized he was wasting his time contesting the match. In truth he was rather relieved that she had chosen someone well removed from Church circles, even though this was counter to everything that he had preached about the value of a shared religion. Even so, he decided to play one last desperate card. Aware of his daughter's medical history and of the surgeon's remarks after removing an ovarian cyst from her, he turned his attention to his prospective son-in-law. 'You do know,' he informed him, 'that Grace will never be able to have any