Message #5707

[Eugene66]

Geraldine Willson-Fraser

“It started when I was 22,” says Geraldine Willson-Fraser. She is now 67 and we’re in her garden flat in Kentish Town, north London. She is telling me of the early 1960s, when she had booked the “OE” - overseas experience. In those days it was a big deal to take off from Christchurch, New Zealand, to traipse around the world, the more momentous for Geraldine because she was planning to leave her boyfriend, too. Then she found she was pregnant. She was, in her words, “twenty-two-and-a-half going on 15″. “I didn’t say anything to anybody. I wasn’t going to scotch my big OE because of this mere inconvenience of pregnancy, so I shut up about it and kept on going.”

Geraldine came to England, started working. “All throughout the pregnancy I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep her, so I pretended she wasn’t happening.” Eventually, she couldn’t hide the changes. She put herself at the mercy of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square, and was sent to work as an au pair for a woman in Surrey. She was put in touch with an adoption agency, which found a South African couple ready to take on the newborn baby. But not before Geraldine had to care for her daughter for a week. It was painful. “I’m pretty good at shutting off things I don’t want to think about,” she says, “but obviously, if you’re with a small child day in, day out for a week, there’s a bond. I didn’t want to give her up. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. But by that time I had committed to these people. I couldn’t say, ‘Sorry, I’m keeping her.’ I couldn’t do that. So she went. And I just put it away, got on with my life.”

About 30 years ago, the woman in Surrey who had helped Geraldine when she was pregnant forwarded an article written by a South African journalist about her two daughters having a fight. The elder, who was adopted, was taunted by the younger. “Mummy’s my real mummy,” the younger girl said. The mother intervened and explained to the elder girl: “You’re very special. We went to England and chose you, and we could have chosen anyone. We chose you.” Geraldine recognised the name on the byline. It had been mentioned to her at the adoption agency. It had to be her daughter’s mother, but Geraldine felt she couldn’t interfere .

It was 41 years after giving birth - a couple of years ago - that Geraldine felt the urge to put her affairs in order. She was 65 and had led a fairly vagabond life. Now a few loose ends could be tied. Her thoughts went to her daughter, who could still be living in South Africa, who could be dead. She didn’t know why it was that moment, but she had to find her.

She had the magazine clipping and the byline. The phone books at the South African embassy offered two addresses. One letter was returned; the other recipient didn’t answer. The adoption agency had long since gone. “I suppose at the time I was coming to grips with the computer,” says Geraldine. “I suddenly thought: why don’t I use it?” The next step was to look up people-finding agencies on the net. Geraldine found Soul Search.

A month passed and the agency had dug up a few details. The internet had yielded “a widow … an ex-journalist” and an address. Geraldine carefully crafted a letter that she hoped would be friendly, but not encroaching. Then she got a letter from the mother, Angela. “It was terribly exciting. It consumed my every waking thought. My brothers didn’t know. Nobody knew - they know now and were staggered. Shocked, but not shock horror. Delighted to think they had another niece.”

After hearing from Angela, Geraldine received a tentative, formal email from Jacqui, her daughter. They began a correspondence. Jacqui worked as a producer for a South African television soap opera. She had a partner, a woman named Cleo. She had been a sporty child. She had a dry sense of humour. In September, two years ago, Geraldine and one of her twin daughters, born 10 years after Jacqui, were planning on flying out to see the other twin in New Zealand. Their flights included a five-day stop in South Africa, at Angela’s invitation. “On the flight I was nearly sick,” Geraldine says. “I couldn’t breathe properly … I was prepared for rejection: ‘How could you? You obviously didn’t love me.’ That sort of thing.”

At Johannesburg airport, the waiting crowd was standing in a ring. Angela squeaked, “Here they are.” They flung themselves at each other, and the laughing and crying began. “She was familiar,” says Geraldine. “And that’s how she felt about me.”

At one point Geraldine thanked Angela for sharing Jacqui with her in this generous, big-hearted way. “She said, ‘I’ve always shared her with you.’ ” And she had. In February 1987, Angela had written another article in a South African magazine and titled it Dear Geraldine. It was about their daughter on her 21st birthday - an open letter to celebrate this person they could both take responsibility for.

“I’m still telling people about my daughter,” Geraldine says. “It’s my ace card. People ask now how many daughters I have, and I tell them three.”