by Annie Murray
‘You’re not working then?’ Hayley says as we pack up our things.
‘Not at the moment,’ I say, rolling my mat. ‘We’ve just moved in and I’m getting sorted out. I suppose I’ll have to look for a job round here soon.’
‘That must be nice.’ Hayley looks wistful. ‘Just not having to work for a bit.’
‘Why – where do you work?’
‘Oh, I’ve got a bar job in the evening at the moment. It suits me – I can help Nan out in the day, and do things like this class.’
As I walk home in the freezing wind, promising to go to Sheila’s on Thursday, I find myself thinking about work. I feel bad that Ian is having to carry all the burden of our income even though he says he doesn’t mind.
‘I’m not ready to go back into the classroom,’ I said to him, just before we moved here. We were lying in bed together, a Sunday morning and the one day Ian doesn’t rush out to work. He’s devoted to his business but he doesn’t hold with opening seven days a week.
‘One day maybe, but not yet.’
The very thought of work fills me with panic, as if all my inner resources have drained away. ‘Maybe I should just get a little job in a shop or something.’
‘We’ll be all right,’ he said. He had his hands behind his head. I missed us snuggling up, putting our arms round each other like we always would have done before, just lying there nattering for ages. But Ian stayed where he was, distant again. ‘We’ll have enough money coming in. And to be honest at the moment I’d rather you were around for Mom –’specially after what’s happened. She doesn’t want to go into a home – it’ll make all the difference you popping in.’
I really can’t face work yet and I’m grateful to him. For Ian, the opposite seems to be true. Work has been his way of coping. Since Paul, and that night, he seems to have done almost nothing but work. There always seems to be a rush job, someone off sick, setting up the new business, needing to take on more staff . . . But what it feels like is him avoiding me, avoiding feeling anything about Paul, and avoiding what I’m feeling and my way of grieving. He doesn’t want to know. He won’t even look me in the eye, as if he’s afraid of what he’ll see there.
Sheila’s house is about a mile from ours. As I turn into the street, a cul-de-sac, I see a dumpy little figure trundling along ahead of me in crimson trousers, a brown coat and a pale blue woolly hat, topped with a jaunty pom-pom. When we both arrive, almost the same time, at the door of Sheila’s neat, modern semi I realize it’s Sunita.
‘Oh, hello!’ She smiles at me, dragging her hat off so that some of her shoulder-length hair lifts with it, drawn by static. She rubs vaguely at her hair to settle it. ‘How are you?’ she asks, so cheerfully that it does not feel like a loaded question.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
Sunita presses the doorbell. ‘Fine is all very well.’ She turns and looks very directly at me. Her face is round, dimply, good-natured. ‘Not easy for you, though. You poor girl, terrible – terrible.’
My throat aches, but I like her matter-of-fact way of speaking. I swallow and try to smile. ‘Thanks.’
Sheila opens the door, dressed once again in jeans and her big red sweater.
‘Hello. Come in.’ She does have a bossy manner and it makes me wonder if she has been a teacher. (I can be bossy too – it becomes a habit.) ‘There – hang up your coats.’ She points at a row of hooks along the hall. ‘Pat’s here already. I’ve got the kettle on.’
The living room, like ours, runs from front to back of the house. On each side of the front section, there is a chocolate-brown sofa along the wall opposite the fireplace, a gas fire encased in a stone surround. At the back end, under the window, is a round table on which there are already cups and saucers.
I say hello to Pat, who gives her big-toothed, friendly smile. Sunita pulls the table out further and squeezes herself round and on to a chair. Passing through the room to join them, I catch a glimpse of photographs on the mantel: one or two portraits and groups of young people in some sort of uniform – Guides, I think. And on the rug in front of it, head raised to look blearily up at me, is an old, white-muzzled black Labrador.
‘Oh!’ Warmed by the sight I squat down to give him a stroke. He settles his head again, making appreciative little noises. ‘It’s nice to see you. You like a bit of fuss, don’t you? What’s your name then?’
‘I think he’s called Herbert,’ Pat says. ‘But she calls him Herbie.’
Pat and Sunita chat a bit though I sense they are shy of each other. After a minute I get up to join them at the table.
‘No husband?’ I ask Pat, though I’m quite glad that endlessly chirpy Fred is not here.
‘Oh, no,’ Sheila says, before Pat can reply, as she carries a large teapot to the table, swaddled in a padded cosy with country cottages on it. ‘We’re golf widows on a Thursday – Roy and Fred play together.’
Hayley arrives then and everyone makes a fuss of her, the baby of the group. I can see why. She’s so gorgeous-looking of course, but as well as that there’s something about her that makes you want to protect her. She looks very tired, with dark circles under eyes, despite her loveliness.
‘Oh, dear – look at that,’ Sunita says, as Sheila brings in a big sponge cake, oozing jam. She runs her hands up and down over her hips. ‘Looks lovely – but I’m getting fat, isn’t it?’
‘You’re all right,’ Sheila says, pouring tea. ‘Anyway, you get enough exercise running around after those grandchildren.’
We sit round the table, the five of us, and it’s nice – more than nice. I feel so grateful to be invited because I realize how much I have isolated myself. We stay mostly on the surface of things, but it’s cosy, with the flames of Sheila’s gas fire flickering away when the day outside is so cold and raw.
‘This is really our core yoga group,’ Sheila says, as we all start on the cake. ‘With Kim, obviously. There are a few others who come and go but they don’t often come round on a Thursday. Kim makes it sometimes, but she has kids to pick up from school. We’ve become quite a little huddle, haven’t we?’
‘A coven,’ Hayley says, and we laugh.
‘You don’t look much like a witch to me,’ Pat says.
‘As for the rest of us . . .’ Sheila adds, in her wry way. She stands again to top up everyone’s cup.
We drink several cups of tea and eat Sheila’s cake – Sunita accepting a slice with a shrug and a chuckle, despite her protests, and then another one. They ask me harmless questions and I say we have come to live near my mother-in-law, who is not well. They do not ask about Paul and I know they will one day and that they care but that this is not the time.
And they tell me things about the neighbourhood, the best doctor, a reliable plumber, the good shops, that it’s a lovely neighbourhood, very caring. That I should come to them if I need to know anything.
I learn a sprinkling of other things that afternoon: that Sunita’s husband is a solicitor and they have two daughters, each with a daughter of her own, and that one of the families is living in Canada. That Pat works as a receptionist in a busy medical practice. She and Fred married as teenagers and seem to have been joined like Siamese twins ever since. They have two sons. Pat’s conversation is sprinkled with the words ‘Fred says . . .’ at which I occasionally see Sheila roll her eyes. Sheila makes us laugh with stories about ‘my Roy’, who seems to be a bit accident prone – even getting a lawnmower out of the garage is an activity fraught with danger and don’t get her started on his DIY . . . Hayley giggles and everyone talks about day-to-day things – plans for Christmas, a broken-down washing machine, the disappearing window-cleaner. And I am warmed and grateful that they do not starting interrogating me. I am glad just to be included.
The person who surprises me is Pat. I had pigeonholed her, I suppose, as someone a bit dull, a housewife who always has her husband’s tea on the table at six. But whenever she says anything, although she is quiet, she has a gentle sort of authority. And there�
�s that lovely fresh-faced smile. I realize I am starting to warm to her.
Hayley is the first to look at her watch and get to her feet.
‘That was lovely, Sheila – thank you. I’d better go. Got to get to work.’
We all start to make a move.
‘Where do you live, Jo?’ Pat asks me. ‘Do you need a lift?’
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks – but it’s not far. And I need to go and see my mother-in-law on the way.’
There is nothing dramatic about the afternoon, nothing much happens, but afterwards I walk home in the dying light, the red tail-lights of the crawling rush-hour cars glowing in the winter gloom. The wind is icy against my cheeks, but inside I feel just a little defrosted. I feel included, and I have received kindness. It makes all the difference.
Nine
Is this what normal parents feel?
I used to wonder that, all the time. ‘Normal’ parents by blood, not adoptive parents. How does that bond feel? Does it give you an absolute, instinctive insight into this child who you have carried for nine months, have felt moving inside you, have spoken to, sung to and dreamed of? I suppose I thought it did and I struggled with the difference, the mystery that was Paul.
All we knew about Paul’s birth mother was that she was young – sixteen – and had not been able to cope. Had she felt that bond, though? How had she managed to sever it and let herself part with him? Had she not known him through and through?
When I asked Rachel, one of the other moms I knew when Paul was small, she said, ‘Oh, no. I don’t think it’s quite like that.’ She was watching her four-year-old, Emily, clambering over a frame in the playground as she said it and her eyes never left the child. ‘I mean, I may be her mother, but I’ve no idea what’s going on in her head – she’s a funny little thing.’
But she said it in that confident, casual tone which belongs only to the very secure. She had the bond, it seemed to me – she knew it without question. The bond of a positive pregnancy test, of vomiting for weeks, of backache and indigestion, of feeling the little one stirring inside like a simmering pot, of their first acquaintance face to face in the delivery room. She didn’t know what it was to question it, the way I did constantly.
I never was sure of anything – all the way through, never felt quite good enough. But it was not as if I had no bond with Paul. When I first saw him, there was a rightness. I liked the look of him, quite literally. I liked his dark, bouncy curls and solemn brown eyes; liked him all over, even though his second foster mother Elaine (the first had fallen sick), who had had him for about nine months, had held him back. She had been keeping him in his cot a bit too much and not encouraging him to stand, so that whoever adopted him might feel they were getting a baby. He was moon-faced and still only just getting to his feet at fourteen months. And (though it was mentioned that he found transitions difficult) we were not there to see his heartbroken wails when he had to be parted from Elaine. But both of us – Ian just as much, I think – liked Paul from the start and very quickly grew to love him.
There was the amazing feeling of taking him home for good, just before Christmas, the tree already up to welcome him to a pretty, magical home. When we stepped, that day, into our little terrace in Moseley and shut the door behind us, parents for the first time, we were like children ourselves with a new gift, a gift so long waited for that we were fizzy with excitement. All we could think of was him. I didn’t want to dwell on Paul’s birth mother. I just wanted to pretend she never existed, that we were all there was.
We wheeled his buggy into the front room and saw his eyes widen at the sight of the tree. He made a sound and reached out his hand towards it and we both laughed, enchanted.
And then we looked at each other almost in horror.
‘Oh, my God,’ I said. ‘What have we done?’
Ian pulled me into his arms and we stood for a few moments, awed and close, so close.
‘Come on,’ Ian said, as Paul started squeaking. ‘We’ve got a family to look after.’ I’ll never forget his voice as he said that, how proud he was, how right and happy. We were both ready to bathe Paul in love and attention. ‘Let’s let the little guy out.’
On Paul’s first day at school, he clung to me so persistently – first my cardigan, then my leg – that it took both the teacher and the teaching assistant to separate us. His screams filled the room so that the other children quietened and watched with sober expressions.
‘Maybe I should take him home again?’ I said, utterly chewed up by the sound of my little boy’s desolate grief. Ian and I had agreed that I would not go back to work full-time before Paul was doing a full day at school himself. I had been doing bits of supply teaching, leaving him at home with Dorrie for a few hours here and there and taking him to playgroup myself. He and Dorrie hit it off from the start. She was wonderful with him. But I had never been apart from him for long.
‘No,’ Miss Akhtar, the class teacher, said. She was young, gentle but firm, though she was having to raise her voice over Paul’s howls, his hurling himself about trying to get away from her. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea. I know it’s hard, but the best thing is for you to say goodbye and leave. You’ll come back – and he’ll see that you come back. I promise, if there’s any real problem, we’ll give you a call.’
Miss Tennant, the young, plump assistant, was nodding away as well. They looked pretty desperate for me to leave, so I did as requested, feeling like the most terrible traitor. I never did receive a call, even though I spent the morning hovering near the phone, not daring to go out. What I didn’t realize then was that this was how it was going to be for weeks and weeks.
Paul was content enough with us at home. In fact, he would have been happiest if he had never had to leave the house at all.
He grew, slimmed down, and his curls relaxed to waves of dark chestnut. Later, his moods darkened, became mysterious, but as a young child he was a cheerful, funny little lad when he felt secure and we had so many lovely times. We took him on as many trips and holidays as we could manage. There were winter afternoons after school, snuggled by the telly with tea, friends round. Paul was not terribly sociable but there were a couple of kids he hit it off with all right. And he was a bright little boy, quietly did well at school. At weekends, Ian sometimes took him out, lads together, or the two of them sat side by side doing Lego or watching TV.
We were always honest with him about his having been adopted. Every year, on 18 December, we had a celebration day, as well as his birthday in October. ‘The best day of our lives’, I always told him. ‘The day you came to us. It’s a bit like your royal birthday!’
He asked questions. It was only as he grew older that the questions became more painful to answer. But why did she have to give me away? Questions I could never give answers to that would repair that rupture in him. What turned out to be worse was when he stopped asking.
Ten
2005
‘Paul, love? Dinner’s ready.’
As I said it I tapped on the door and walked in. For a frozen second I stared at the figure stretched out, prone on the bed. Afterwards, I asked myself why I had been so frightened. Paul was lying there, dressed, still wearing his trainers. His hair was all scruffy, head tilted to one side. His face was pale and he was lying so still . . .
‘Paul?’ I could hear how shrill I sounded.
‘Uh?’ His eyes opened, registered me standing there. He sat up, the bed, its dark blue sheets and duvet cover, wrinkled about him. The room, painted steel grey, was a messy cavern of books, graphic-art comics and CDs which had long ago left Blondie behind. Bands with names like Aborted, Meshuggah, Apocalyptica. There was a stale, shut-in smell, tinged with sweat.
He put his hands over his face and rubbed them up and down, yawning.
‘I thought you were doing your homework?’ I didn’t mean this as a reproach but it sounded like one. GCSEs in a few weeks. He’d be lucky to scrape through any of them, the way things were.
‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry.’
He was never rude, not to us. He was still my boy. But he had retreated somewhere even harder to reach. Rudeness and stroppiness might have been easier. All the things I worried about – dope-smoking, drug-taking, bunking off school, trouble and crime – none of these were in evidence. But trouble – sadness, self-loathing, disappointment? – hung about him like a kind of body odour. And I did not know what to do.
‘Coming down for dinner?’ I was turning into one of those mothers who resorts to being all bright and breezy. ‘It’s sausage casserole.’ His favourite, as if sausages could heal the primal wound of having been given away, which, whatever I said in the way of love and acceptance, of having chosen and wanted him, was deep and unhealed, perhaps unhealable. I felt ridiculous.
‘Yeah. Coming.’ He got slowly to his feet, rubbing at the chaos of his hair, which I did not dare suggest he go and get cut.
His grades slipped year on year in secondary school. I tried to get to the bottom of it. I knew he was bright. Was he being bullied? No, it seemed not. Classmates liked him, or at least left him alone. He was not completely friendless, because he was nice-looking and amiable, could be funny at times. He did not bunk off school, set cars on fire, burgle houses. Nothing like that.
But it was as if he was being eaten away from the inside.
I read all the books about adopted kids, and their feelings of not being the child that was really wanted, being second best; even being chosen by us was second best because it implied being rejected before that by the one who mattered most. The anger and sadness, and the feeling that you never belonged anywhere, not really. The rupture of separation from the woman who had birthed you, however unprepared or unable she was to mother you, the sound of her voice, her smell, the rhythms of her body. This woman about whom I knew next to nothing.
It was heartbreaking, helpless-making to read. I loved Paul as my own – or as close to that as I ever could, because I could never be sure exactly how loving ‘your own’ would be. Would I have given my own life to save him? Yes, without a doubt. He was my boy. But I had not been able to give him the launch-pad of my own body, the safety of a continuous thread within and without a mother’s physical being.