The English American

by Alison Larkin

  “Mum says she wasn’t shy at all! She was really bossy! She used to refuse to dole out pudding to people who didn’t kowtow to her.”

  “Prince Charles will make a fabulous king,” Fiona says. “He’s sooooo funny. I heard him give a speech once, at school. He flew down onto the games field in his red helicopter—very glam. And his opening line—wait for it, Fiona—was ‘I hope you infants enjoy your infancy as much as we adults enjoy our adultery.’ We all thought it was very daring, considering Camilla and everything.”

  Aching with boredom, I leave as soon as I can and run home to eat chocolate, have a bath, and read my book.

  Everyone knows that law, don’t they? It applies to the job you’ve been waiting to hear about, the phone call you’ve been waiting for from the boy you’re obsessed by. Apparently it applies to the letter from the adoption agency you came from too. The moment you stop thinking about it,plop , there it comes.

  It’s been five long weeks since I made the phone call, and I’ve just finished savoring the chocolate sludge at the bottom of a glass of Nesquik—when I pick up the pile of mail and see the airmail envelope from America.

  Inside is a letter, yellow with age, dated April 25, 1978, the day before I was born. My heart leaps when I see the handwriting, which slopes energetically to the right, with thef ’s and thep ’s curling down past the next line and back up again. Some people might have trouble deciphering it. But I won’t. The handwriting that covers the paper looks very like mine.

  All identifying information has been deleted, but, in my trembling hands, I hold my first ever communication from the woman who gave me life.

  April 25 1978

  Dear ,

  You’re not due for another three weeks, but they’ve put me in the hospital anyway and they’re making me lie down. Generally I hate to stay still, but I don’t really mind today because my feet have been aching so. I’ve swollen everywhere, and I look like a ball.

  I hope you get my skin, because I’m famous for having soft, smooth white skin. That’s because I’ve never been in the sun without a hat. Not ever. Today my skin feels like leather, but that’s just water retention. As far as my feet are concerned, well, Mother says her feet grew a size with each child. Mine feel like they’ve grown to a size ten.

  They keep talking in hushed voices, and I don’t know why. They just brought me a tray and a pen and a paper and said they wanted some information about me to give to you after you’re born.

  Mother insisted on getting me a private room. She said she thought it would be easier than sharing a room with a woman who’s keeping her child.

  I need to try and stick to the facts because they say it’s important for you to know the facts. They say they’re going to black out any information that will enable you to identify me.

  It’s hard to concentrate because the nurse keeps coming in and taking my blood pressure, but I’ll do my best.

  Let me try to tell you a bit about myself. My name is . I was born in . You’re a direct descendent of , honey, so you’re descended from , who, as you may know, played an important part in forming . Daddy’s a very successful businessman, and Mother came from a highly cultured, musical family. She’s very creative and beautiful, but not an organized person. Daddy always used to say, “Honey, you can’t walk across a room without leaving a trail of litter behind you.”

  I have lots of interests. Most of all I love music, writing and art. Mother is a painter, and her mother was a wonderful piano player and the daughter of a composer.

  My dream is to work with artists in some way. I’d like to maybe own my own art gallery one day. I’m interested in a lot of things and don’t see why I should do just one.

  I always thought that I’d marry when I was about thirty, and then have children and write or paint from home. Then I met your father.

  Ours has been the kind of love you read about in books. The kind of love that is far too powerful to resist. He’s asked me to marry him. And there’s nothing I’d like more. I’ve told him that I will marry him but only if, first of all, he tries to make things work with his wife.

  And we can’t start a marriage with the handicap of a child.

  The next two paragraphs have been blacked out.

  One week later.

  You started to come as I was writing. They put me under, so I didn’t feel anything at all. When I came round they told me they nearly lost me. And you.

  Something achingly sad happened when you were born, my sweet baby. They won’t let me tell you about it here. I hope to be able to tell you about it in person one day.

  Even though your father and I could not be together, we love each other as much as it is possible for one human being to love another. There isn’t time to tell you everything. I have to give this to them before I sign the papers. But know, always know, you were the product of a great love.

  came to the hospital and I saw him through the glass standing in the corridor, holding you in his arms so tight. He was crying and telling you something I couldn’t hear. And it looked like you were listening to him closely.

  Then they brought you to me and they had to hold me up so I could hold you. I’d lost a lot of blood and I was still weak. And you were tiny. And fierce. And you had red hair, all spiky, standing up straight, like a little baby bird.

  I believe that the most important thing for a woman is to be engaged in work she loves, surrounded by people she loves. Please know there will always be room in my heart for you.

  They tell me a couple who cannot have children of their own are coming for you now. This brings me peace.

  I stare down at the paper and then up at the reflection of myself in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I see a young woman with a pale face, large green eyes, and long, wet, unbrushed copper hair. She is naked—apart from a towel wrapped around her bottom half.

  She’s holding a letter. Her cheeks are wet with tears, and her body is shaking. We stand there, the young woman and I, staring at each other, for what seems like an age.

  Then the young woman and I smile ever so slightly, still shaking, still rooted to the spot, and speak together, in perfect unison.

  “Blimey,” we say, at exactly the same time.

  Chapter Seven

  IREAD THE LETTER OVER AND OVER AGAIN.Even though she wrote most of it before I was born, and she doesn’t even know me, I feel understood. Connected. To my own kind. “I believe that the most important thing for a woman is to be engaged in work she loves. I believe that the most important thing…”

  I haven’t done work I love in seven years, since I was twenty-one, just out of university, when I tried to write a play. The moment I had written a rough first draft, I rushed home to Little Tew and, over a Sunday lunch of roast lamb, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, rhubarb crumble, and custard, I told Mum and Dad that I had found my true vocation. I just knew it. I was going to be a writer.

  “What have you actually written?” Dad said, eyebrows raised, cutting into a piece of Brie with military precision.

  “Loads of things, Dad. Poems, plays, music. I’m writing a play at the moment,” I said.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, it’s a two-handed comedy-drama, set in a womb,” I said, thrilled that he’d asked. “I’ve got all sorts of ideas for the next draft. It’s going to include a lot of satire. About politics.”

  Despite—or perhaps because of—his top-notch education, Dad has never been a supporter of the Conservative Party in England. He’s not really a Labour Party supporter either. He thinks all politicians are crooks and says so whenever a politician appears on the telly, regardless of whether or not there’s anyone else in the room.

  “Lots of people want to be artists,” Dad said. “They end up disillusioned and broke. Even the talented ones. Look at poor Van Gogh!”

  Sometimes I really wonder.

  “I haven’t shown it to anybody yet,” I said, taking my play out of a plastic blue and white Tesco’s bag and handing i
t to Dad. “You will be the first.”

  I knew that when Mum and Dad read the play later that night, they would understand that playwriting was something I was meant to do.

  The next morning I went downstairs to the kitchen at 10:05. Time for Mum and Dad to take their milky coffees out of the microwave.Ping went the microwave. Up Mum got. I waited for her to put a spoon of Nescafé into each mug, one with sugar, one without. Then I came to the point.

  “I’ve decided to go on the dole, so I can devote myself to my writing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Dad said, not looking up from his crossword.

  “I’m not being ridiculous!” I said. “If I go on the dole for a month I can take the time I need to finish the play. Then I can submit it to the BBC.”

  Dad stopped doing his crossword and looked up at me, utterly perplexed.

  “But your play is set in someone’s tummy!”

  “It’s set in a womb, Dad. Not a tummy.”

  “No one’s going to want to pay good money to sit in a theater for an hour and a half looking at someone’s tummy!”

  “It probably won’t have a set.”

  “No set!”

  Mum and Dad looked at each other.

  “What would the BBC pay, anyway? If they did accept something like this.”

  I had no idea. “Two thousand pounds,” I said, plucking a figure out of the air. “And that’s just to develop it! If it becomes a television play I’d get much more.”

  “And how long could you live on that?”

  It was the end of the conversation. Or it was supposed to be. Dad picked up thePeaseminster Post and started reading. Mum started putting the dishes away. I got up to help.

  “Oh, Pip,” Mum said, “how many times do I have to tell you? Scrape the remains of the Weetabix into the bin before putting the bowl in the dishwasher.”

  Mum sounded tired. Of me.

  Dad’s favorite hobby—after Scottish dancing, crosswords, and Sudoku—is writing letters to the newspaper, complaining about various things. At the time, he was on a crusade against litter.

  “They’ve put up the littering fines in Fenhurst,” Dad said. “About time too.”

  “I wonder if they got your letter?” Mum said.

  “Must have done. Now that’s the kind of writing that makes a difference,” Dad said, looking at me pointedly from behind his half-moon glasses.

  I wasn’t going to give up. Not this time.

  “But did you like the play?” I said. “Did you?”

  Mum stifled a sigh. Dad didn’t look up from his crossword. Mum turned to me with candor in her pale blue eyes.

  “No,” Mum said.

  “Not really our sort of thing,” Dad said. Then he looked up at me impatiently and said, “I like playing golf, but I don’t delude myself that I can make a living at it. I spent years doing a job I hated in order to earn the money to do what I wanted to do. It’s calledwork! ”

  I wanted to shout, You don’t understand! I’d rather be broke for the rest of my life and spend my life doing something I love than spend my life trapped in a job I hate! It’s part of who I am!

  But I couldn’t. We don’t shout in our family. It’s just not done. So I picked the blue and white striped milk jug off the breakfast table and filled with a sudden, irrepressible fury, poured the milk onto the kitchen table. It splashed off Mum’s blue and white checked tablecloth and onto the floor.

  All was quiet, apart from the sound of the dripping milk.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, finally. Utterly ashamed. “But I just—well—I just. We just…We’re so different. Who we are. What we’re like in every way…Everything…everything’s different. I’m different. We just don’t like doing the same things.”

  Mum and Dad were completely still.

  “What do you mean?” Dad said finally. “What don’t you like doing?” He looked like he really wanted to know.

  “Scottish dancing, Dad,” I said, unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “I don’t like the dancing, or the music. I especially hate the bagpipes.”

  “You hate the bagpipes?” Dad said, astonished. To the Scots the bagpipes are sacred. But the truth was on its way out.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d—I’d rather listen to fingernails scraped against a blackboard!”

  Shocked, Dad and I stared at each other from either side of the kitchen. Charlotte had come down the stairs and was standing stock still, watching Dad and me. She looked utterly stricken. She followed me to the car.

  “You okay, Pip?”

  “No,” I said, my face crumbling.

  “Just go,” she said. “I’ll talk to them.”

  And nobody said anything more about it.

  But Dad’s words about not deluding myself kept ringing louder and louder in my head until I could no longer hear the voice inside me that had been urging me to write.

  So finally I put my play back in the Tesco’s bag and put it in a box under my bed. And the next day I got a job selling advertising space over the telephone.

  The night I get the letter from my mother, I take the Tesco’s bag out from under the bed again and take the coffee-stained script out for the first time in seven years. After I have read the letter from my mother ten more times, I read my play all the way through.

  My mother loved writing too.

  With the first flicker of confidence I’ve felt in years, I start the rewrite I’d planned to make seven years earlier.

  When I’m concentrating on something I’m interested in, a bomb could go off in my bedroom and I wouldn’t notice.

  I stop work at six o’clock in the morning when I fall asleep at my desk, cradling the script in my arms. Not because it’s particularly good. But because it’s a part of me.

  Chapter Eight

  IT’S BEEN A MONTHsince I got the letter from my mother and told Judy I’d love to meet her, and I have heard nothing. All sorts of unwelcome thoughts have been crashing violently through my brain.

  Perhaps my mother called the agency and told them she changed her mind and doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Perhaps she died in a sudden, tragic accident? What if all the papers and files in the agency burned in a fire, before they had the chance to contact her, meaning that I will never, ever find out who she is? Ever?

  In my mind she goes from being the most successful businesswoman in New York, to being a brilliant playwright, to being a drunk, obese, one-eared artist, disillusioned and broke, lank hair plastered to the side of her face, rolling around in a pile of empty beer bottles, muttering incoherently about how much promise she had in her youth. If only she’d known she would never make it as a writer, she’d have pursued a sensible career selling advertising over the telephone.

  I’ve been going through the motions at work, but my sales figures are at an all-time low, and my boss is less charmed than usual by the origami elephants I make out of yellow Post-it stickers and place in rows along the top of my cubicle.

  I make just enough sales to justify my presence there. When my boss is in the other part of the room, I sit in my cubicle, furtively working on my play and dreaming about my mother.

  The invisible Judy is the only person in the world who can grant me the key to my identity. Even though my mind is churning and I’m feeling desperate, I know I must be careful not to piss her off. And so, on Friday mornings, when the sales manager meets with the managing director, I call New York, casually, just for a chat, to keep her up to date with what is going on with me.

  “Pippa,” she says again, rather sternly, “there are only two of us here at post-adoption services, and we’re getting more and more requests like yours every day. We will inform your birth mother of your interest in meeting her by letter, as protocol dictates, and we will write that letter as soon as we have time.”

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” I say. “I’m sorry…well, in general. I do appreciate your help.”

  My heart hurts and I stop eating and shake a lot as I wa
it for Judy to write to the mother who gave me birth.

  It’s odd how the mind works. Memory, I mean. When you’re feeling utterly desperate, and you can’t think of what do to, sometimes you remember someone you haven’t thought about in ages. And if you’re desperate enough, or religious in some way, you’ll half-believe that person has come into your head for a reason. And, so, on impulse, you’ll get in touch with them again. Which is why I decide to contact Nick.

  Nick and I only met a handful of times, when I was twenty-one, but Nick is not the kind of man you forget. Particularly when you connect in the way we did.

  But it’s not just the memory of our intense mutual attraction that’s pulling me to find Nick again now. Or the fact that he’s been visiting me in my dreams at night. It’s the fact that we share something I’ve never shared with anyone before.

  Now that I might be about to find my mother—well, Nick could be the one person I know who will truly understand.

  I google “Bank Global” and learn that Nick’s still with them. Nick’s a high-flying international banker. He works in India and the Middle East mostly—and is rarely in one place. But, thanks to the Internet, time differences and schedules no longer stop people reaching out to each other from across the world.

  DATE: June 6

  TO: NickDevang@bankglobal.net

  FROM: pippa-dunn@hotmail.com

  Dear Nick,

  Hallo. Pippa Dunn here. I know. It’s been seven years. How are you? How’s the banking business?

  I don’t know if you remember that I was adopted? Well I’ve set the ball rolling and am hoping to meet my birth parents. I haven’t met anyone else who has done anything like this—apart from you—so thought I’d drop you a line.

  I think you met your father soon after you left Oxford. I think meeting your father changed your life. Is that true? Do I remember it right?