by S. E. Lynes
… NORCAP… colleague… pleased to inform you a Mrs Phyllis Griffiths, née Curtiss…
Dear God! He read the letter again, made himself do it properly this time, one hand clapped over his mouth. His mother had registered her details on his birthday, 12 March. One Phyllis Griffiths, aged thirty-three. Samantha looked forward to hearing from him. He folded the letter and headed up to his room. He sat on his bed, the letter still in his hand.
She, Phyllis, had searched for him.
A strange and lovely warmth filled him. It spread to his bones, his stomach, his heart. His skin felt ticklish, his hair lifted on its follicles. His mother. His mother, Phyllis, was waiting for news. She was waiting for him. If all went well, if he could keep his cool, next year, 1978, would be the year he would finally meet her. In his chest, the rope untangled, tied up anew in what he imagined as a bow. A bow around a gift. He laughed. Had he not imagined the rope tied to the harbour, ready to pull him in? Ah yes, he had envisaged it in all sorts of ways, but a mooring was the better image. A mooring post and a rope – yes, perfect. He could feel the water beneath him, guiding him towards her.
* * *
Only days later did he remember the letter from Margaret. He was studying at his desk (no sign of Adam as usual) when he saw the corner of the white envelope protruding from his books.
With a feeling of tiredness laced with guilt, he drew it out and opened it, but at the sight of his own address in the top right-hand corner, he smiled despite himself. Margaret had worked in a typing pool for years before leaving to get married – such an old-fashioned idea, now he thought about it. And so sad, actually, holding beneath it as it did the assumption that she would soon be in the family way, which of course she was not. And here, writing to the boy she had taken in when her body failed her, she had not forgotten the rigours of official correspondence. The address present and correct even when writing to her own son, who, after all, lived there. Underneath she had written:
Dear Christopher,
I hope you’re well. Me and your father are muddling along. Your father had sciatica last week but it’s easing up now.
Louise and Jack are both in the juniors’ nativity play. Jack is the narrator and Louise is a horse in the stable. Me and your father are looking forward to seeing it.
Your father is looking forward to some days off at Christmas, provided no pipes burst in this cold weather. I hope you’re wrapping up warm.
Can you ring sometime and tell us when you’re coming home for the holidays?
From,
Mum
Still with this persistent feeling of tiredness, Christopher urged himself from his desk and went to the payphone to call Margaret. He had mountains of work to catch up on, he told her. Ignoring her silent disappointment, he added that he planned to be with them on 23 December.
‘But that’s almost Christmas Day,’ she said, and tutted before brightening as best she could. ‘You’ll be with us for Christmas Eve Mass, I suppose. That’s something.’
He did not tell her about his birth certificate, his birth mother, or about the appointment with Samantha Jackson. He told me this was not out of a need for secrecy, nor because he was dishonest. It was because he could not find the words to say it. And it strikes me now, years later, that not finding the words to say what we need to say is one of life’s biggest tragedies.
The day of his second appointment with Samantha Jackson came. A late-December snow flurry threatened the Liverpool train with cancellation, but no, it went ahead, thank goodness. And so, instead of taking the coach to his home in Morecambe on the last day of term, he slid instead through the sleet-slashed Liverpool pavements, to the council offices in Henry Street.
This time in a navy suit with matching navy shoes, Samantha Jackson led him up the stairs to her office.
‘Done your Christmas shopping?’ she asked him.
‘Not yet.’
‘Me neither. Probably do it on Christmas Eve like I always do. Have you many to buy for?’
‘Just my family. My adoptive family, I mean. Just four.’
‘Never know what to get, do you? I don’t anyway. Whole thing is a consumerist farce, really.’
She gestured towards the same chair as the time before. He sat, pressed his back to the chair, then leant forward, flattened his foot to the floor to stop his leg from jiggling.
‘Now,’ Samantha said, pulling out his file and slipping her half-moon spectacles onto her narrow ski-jump nose. She looked up, over the top of her specs. ‘You all right, love? Do you want some water?’
He nodded, coughed. ‘No thank you, I’m fine. A little nervous.’
‘Of course, that’s normal. You will be.’ She pulled out a sheet and scanned it, making little clicking noises with her tongue. ‘So, as I said in the letter, your birth mother did approach NORCAP. March the twelfth… ah, I see, that’s your birthday, so in principle that’s a good sign. She couldn’t have done it any sooner, to be honest, not legally; she’d have had to wait until you were eighteen. It means she desires contact. Sometimes they don’t, and we have to respect that.’ She laid the paper on her lap and fixed Christopher with her clear blue eyes. ‘What we recommend, Christopher, is that you write a letter first of all. In our experience, it’s best to go slowly, try and build a relationship through some correspondence before you arrange to meet, if that’s the way it pans out. Tell her about yourself – ask her about herself. How does that sound?’ She drew the glasses from her nose and held them by the arm. ‘It really is better not to rush these things.’
She had sought him out the moment the law had allowed it! On his very birthday! He wanted to go to her now, now this minute, and take her in his arms and cover her face with kisses and say, Mum, Mummy, it’s me, your son, Martin.
He coughed into his fist. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A letter. It sounds like the right thing to do.’
‘Good. In that case, the next thing is to talk about your expectations. How do you feel about that?’
‘Whatever you think.’
Samantha Jackson spoke for a long time, kindly, looking at him all the while as if checking he were still there. These things could and did sometimes go badly, she told him. Sometimes the child or the parent was not happy – sometimes they could not connect. Was that something he was ready for, should it be the case?
‘Rejection’s a tough thing to deal with,’ she said, ‘in anyone’s book, especially in these circumstances.’
She had said this in their first meeting. Little did she know that he had experienced rejection every day from the moment Jack Junior was born. Nor could she possibly realise that he, Christopher, had an ability to know things before they happened. He almost said, Don’t worry – I already know the meeting will go well. I can feel it the way others can feel a change in the weather. I can feel my mother, her light, inside my chest. But he did not, since that would not have been a normal thing to say.
‘I expect nothing,’ he said once Samantha had finished. ‘She doesn’t know me, after all.’
But she would know him the moment she saw him, and she would take him in her arms and cry sweet tears into his hair. Martin, she would say, my darling Martin, at last I have found you. He knew this.
Samantha was smiling at him. ‘She’s an English teacher, I believe, in a secondary school. She’s got two kids, twin boys, I think.’ She handed him a document, in which details about his mother had been typed. He imagined someone taking notes from her during a phone call. Or perhaps she had presented herself in person. He envied whoever had met her that day – envied the proximity they had enjoyed while she answered their questions, shy, abashed, but determined.
He scanned the document. ‘Her address is in Runcorn. That’s on my birth certificate.’
Samantha took the document from him and held it up against his birth certificate. She frowned and said, ‘Yes, that’s right. Not the same address though. Looks like she settled near her parents. That’s good too, potentially, means they managed to wo
rk it out. When it comes to having babies adopted, often these girls don’t have much choice in the matter.’ She frowned at the page. ‘It’s the outskirts of Liverpool, bit further than outskirts actually. Mersey estuary. There’s a big chemical works, ICI – I know someone who works there.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Not making it sound very glamorous, am I? Anyway, when you write, do make sure and put your contact address on your letter; that way she can reply if she wishes to. I know I sound like I’m stating the obvious, but you’d be amazed how many don’t. Is that clear enough?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Very clear. Extremely clear. Clear as day! Sorry, yes, thank you. Thank you so much.’
* * *
He walked from the offices in wonder, he said. He had the impression that he, his very self, was coming into focus, his outline defining like a figure stepping out towards him from the fog. So it had been when he had wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror as a boy: himself, quite simply there, except this time he was wiping away the fog of his life and claiming his place not in a house but in the world.
‘Phyllis.’ He said her name over and over as he walked, laughing like a child at his own footprints in the snow, his jacket flying open. He paid no heed to the cold. He jumped over a puddle where the snow had melted to slush. ‘Phyllis Curtiss.’
She taught English, which meant she liked to read, as he did. They could talk about books! They would have so much in common! How clear it all was. How right he was. Hadn’t he known he was adopted before Margaret had told him, before he had found the note in the case? And now… now he knew his mother and he would be friends, more than friends – family, once again. Phyllis Griffiths, who was still so young – only thirty-three. She must have been younger than him when she… why, yes, she would have been no more than fifteen. A child. A poor child in a terrible predicament.
Samantha had told him that Phyllis had two sons now with her husband, whose name was David Griffiths. But things had been different for her when she had given birth to these other sons, his half-brothers. She had been settled, older. Happy. But she had not forgotten him. She had not forgotten him.
* * *
Back in Leeds, the halls were deserted already for the Christmas break. Although from the state of Adam’s half of the room, it looked as though he was still here. Perhaps he, like Christopher, was delaying his return home. This seemed unlikely, for such a happy-go-lucky chap. Adam seemed the very embodiment of Christmas cheer, of family gatherings and merriment. He hadn’t mentioned his family, Christopher realised, but he imagined them, Adam and his father, their hair flame red, their cheeks bright pink, drinking pints of bitter and singing carols down at their local on Christmas Eve. He imagined Adam surrounded by friends and relatives, the life and soul, his homecoming something everyone looked forward to.
Whatever, Adam wasn’t there right at this moment, so Christopher threw off his coat, took his writing paper and his fountain pen from his desk drawer. He would write the kind of letter that someone at the council, someone like Samantha Jackson, might advise him to write. After a moment, he bent to his task:
Dear Mrs Griffiths,
I have been advised by my adoption counsellor at Liverpool Council, Samantha Jackson, to contact you by letter first of all. I would have contacted you long ago, but my adoptive parents only told me the truth of my situation in October of this year, the day I left for Leeds University, which is where I am now. My name is Martin Curtiss. I am your son. I was born on 12 March 1959 in St Matthew’s Convent.
I will be for a brief time at my adoptive parents’ home in Morecambe for the Christmas holidays, but you can contact me here at the halls of residence, as I will return in early January. I will include my halls address in this letter.
I must confess I am nervous at the thought of contacting you.
He stopped – bit the end of his pen. He sounded formal, too formal. Stiff. But that was better, wasn’t it? Familiarity at this point would be too much – she might become suspicious, doubt his intentions. He should keep his feelings in check. Goodness, if he were to write what he felt! My adoptive parents only told me the truth of my situation in October of this year, he had written, when what he wanted to say was: I have always known about you, all my life! I feel you in my heart as I feel the very pulse of life! But he did not. He had to keep close rein on himself. He could not possibly say even half the words that ran around his head, nor admit to the myriad scenarios that had begun to infiltrate his thoughts: he and his birth mother sitting beside one another in some pink-hued room, sometimes laughing, sometimes heads bent together, deep in conversation, sometimes even lying side by side on a large apricot-coloured bed, addressing their deepest desires, fears, insecurities to the ceiling. Their hands would clasp, the light would fall on these conversations without end. She would stroke his hair.
Martin, she would whisper. My darling boy.
But such images were not for this letter. Not yet, perhaps not ever. Better to tread with cautious steps. He continued:
I almost took English for my degree, but plumped for history in the end. I read in my spare time though – I love reading. I have just finished The Shining, by Stephen King. I like thrillers especially. Honestly, if you were to ask me if I prefer a night out on the town or a quiet night in with a novel, it would be the second choice all the way!
He stopped, looked at the exclamation mark with disapproval. Keep a tight rein, Christopher. Hold yourself back. Don’t frighten her away.
He squeezed a full stop after the y and made the exclamation mark into an I.
I have a room-mate here in Leeds. His name is Adam. I enclose a picture of us taken last week in Leeds town centre. It isn’t very sensible but I hope you find something familiar in it. It was taken last Saturday so it is recent. You can’t see in black and white but I am the one with the darker hair because mine is black. The other idiot is Adam.
Out of his wallet he dug two photo-booth snaps. In his desk drawer he found the Swiss army knife his father had given him as a boy (when he still hoped for a Swiss-army-knife kind of son) and used the scissor gadget to cut free a single snap. It had been Adam, of course, who had persuaded him to have his photo taken in the booth in WHSmith.
‘Come on, man,’ he had said, already feeding coins into the machine. ‘It’ll be a right laugh. We can have two each. I’ll give one to Alison – help her survive Christmas without me. You can keep yours in your wallet or… or give them to your ma or something.’
Christopher had acquiesced, as he always did. And here he was, staring at himself staring into the camera while Adam appeared to be growling into his right ear. Adam’s hair was beyond shoulder length now. The faintest trace of a smile on Christopher’s own lips gave away that he was in fact trying not to laugh, and he thought Phyllis would like that. She would see that he knew how to muck about, that he had a friend, but that he wasn’t an out-and-out Jack the Lad.
Jack: that name again, how peculiar.
He read the letter back, but worried he’d come across as harsh, calling Adam an idiot. What if she didn’t know he was joking? Adam isn’t really an idiot, he added. He is tremendous fun actually. You would like him. She might like him more than she liked Christopher. He pushed the thought aside.
I am Adam’s ‘project’. He is teaching me how to dress more fashionably and how to talk to women. He has the gift of the gab but I don’t, not in that way. Although I’m sure I would enjoy talking to the right person. Adam says I should let my hair grow, which I have done, a little. It does save on barber’s fees, I suppose, which is an advantage on the maintenance grant. Not that I’m complaining. I like it very much here.
He regretted mentioning money. He copied the letter out again, missing out the reference to his grant but keeping Adam. He did not mention that Adam had taught him to smoke, made him try marijuana, which he had hated, nor did he write about his adoptive family other than to say he had been well looked after and that he was grateful for the opportunities they had given him.
When he had finished, he signed off:
I look forward to hearing from you, if you wish to have further correspondence with me. I very much hope you do.
Your son, Christopher, né Martin Curtiss
The risk he took, sending that letter. It took courage, I’ll say that even now. But it’s always a risk, isn’t it, reaching out to someone? Simply telling a person you love them, in whatever context, is to expose yourself to any damage they might wish to do to you, should they so choose. I guess all we can ever do is reach out anyway and hope to God they do us no harm. That’s what I did. That’s all I did: reach out, little knowing that I, that both of us, would come to such terrible, terrible harm.
Chapter Nine
Morecambe, Friday, 23 December. Margaret and Jack met him from the station, their faces set in anxiety. Christopher could see no reason for this beyond a certain nervousness around trains, travel, change of any kind. But seeing them, so diminished, on the platform, their eyes darting so that they might catch the earliest possible glance of him as the train ran past, he felt a pain in his gut. He had acted in secret, behind their backs. There was no getting around it. He should have told them he had initiated contact with his birth mother, but he hadn’t. The wrongness of that struck him with full force only now, seeing them in all their bewilderment on the cold railway platform. They deserved better. And here they were to welcome him home from his first life’s adventure. Just like normal parents.
The train whined and shuddered to a halt. He jumped down and ran to them, writing silent apology into the energy of his actions: See how I run! See how pleased I am to see you again!
‘Well, lad, that’s a pair of trousers all right.’ Jack’s first words and he, Christopher, had barely said hello. His father was shaking his head. ‘Loon pants, is that what they’re called?’