Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘No,’ she’d said to all of them, ‘I’d like to go to bed – alone.’ And she’d padded across the landing to the spare room, locked the door, then crept beneath the covers, pulled the bedspread right across her head. She had cried, in fact, not slept, but it had still been cruel to Hadley.

  Trish was sitting tense and hunched, still pulling at her hangnail, her feet hooked round the chair-leg, her face expressionless. Jane cursed herself for prattling. She’d upset her friend, quite clearly – upset everyone. Relationships were like that – embittering, confusing. Perhaps Anne had only gone to bed with Adrian because she, too, was resentful; had found out about her husband and his mistress, and was determined to get even. Which meant that she herself had driven them together. ‘Oh, Trish,’ she groaned aloud.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything. Tell you what, let’s finish all this veggie muck, then buy ourselves a huge great steak for supper and a bottle of retsina, and pretend it’s Easter in Corfu instead of January in Railway Road.’

  ‘To Easter,’ Trish enthused, clinking her glass to Jane’s.

  ‘To Easter,’ Jane repeated, her thoughts leaping to the window – the Resurrection Angel defying death and winter. She had drawn the thin beige curtains, but was still aware of the soft-footed stealthy snow drifting down outside; the sense of bareness, barrenness, things hibernating, shrinking, in a sleepy sapless limbo. She grimaced at the taste of her Greek wine, tried to counter it with a mouthful of tournedos. ‘Fantastic steak!’ she said.

  ‘Fantastic wine!’ Trish echoed, splashing more into both glasses. ‘Let’s pig ourselves for once. We’ll probably be eating invalid food once Mum returns from hospital – steamed cod and Lucozade.’

  Jane put down her fork. ‘When’s she coming out?’

  ‘Pretty soon. The doctor said next week.’

  ‘Won’t she mind my being here?’

  ‘’Course not. She’ll enjoy it. I’ve told her all about you.’

  Jane said nothing, could hardly admit that she wasn’t looking forward to the return of Mrs Carter, who was still partially paralysed. Would she be expected to play nursemaid as well as vegetable cook? And would there be room enough for three in the dumpy little bungalow? She gulped her wine, determined not to spoil the evening. They’d worked hard enough for heaven’s sake, deserved a celebration. She sneaked a glance in the mirror over the sideboard, wished Christopher could see her in her low-necked black silk blouse, and with her hair in a French pleat. She and Trish had both dressed up, done each other’s hair, messed about with blusher, eye-gloss, lipstick; and now outclassed their drab surroundings – too soignée and sophisticated for the all-beige room with its fussy little ornaments marching down the mantelpiece, its fake-coal fire glowing garish-red. She was surprised that Trish hadn’t modernised the place, or at least added artistic touches of her own. It seemed very much the home of someone middle-aged and boring, who bought her curtains and her furniture from some cheap mail-order catalogue.

  She forked in more tournedos, looked across at Trish’s plate, empty now save for a parsley sprig and a smear of Madeira sauce. ‘Gosh! You walloped that lot down!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was ravenous. And I suppose I’ve got so used to bolting meals, I’ve forgotten how to eat at a normal leisurely pace. Who’s talking, though? You’ve almost finished yourself.’

  Jane laughed, mopping up her own sauce with a piece of crusty bread. ‘It’s because we had no vegetables.’

  ‘I couldn’t face them, could you?’

  ‘No, especially not aubergines. D’you realise, Trish, we’ve cooked aubergines, in some form or another, every single day since I’ve been here. They ought to call it Purple Cuisine, not Green.’

  ‘We’ve got a green pudding, by the way.’

  ‘What, lettuce mousse?’

  ‘No, avocado ice-cream. I made several gallons a month ago, for a rather swanky dinner party; kept back a jarful for myself, and stored it in the freezer.’

  ‘It sounds revolting.’ Jane screwed up her face. ‘And I don’t want pudding anyway. I’d like to sprawl out on that rug with a nice big cup of coffee and a bar of fruit and nut.’

  ‘Will wholenut do? I bought a bar this morning.’

  ‘Trish, you’re great! A mind-reader.’ She switched on the television, while Trish went to make the coffee, watched the tail-end of the News – a general strike in Bulgaria, a shooting in Armagh. She turned the sound to nothing; was more concerned with Christopher: had he heard any more about his Manchester commission? Was he missing her, annoyed with her? Why couldn’t he have written back, cajoled her address from Isobel and told her how he was?

  ‘Coffee up!’ Trish announced, returning with a tray. ‘Chocolate for you, ice-cream for me, and some Turkish Delight for both of us – left over from Christmas. I also brought you this,’ she said, passing Jane a loose-leafed folder with a stiff-backed orange cover.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My Life-Story Book. I thought you might be interested. A lot of adopted children make them with their parents. I kept mine up for years. Here, look at me at seven! Wasn’t I a podge?’

  Jane stretched out on the rug, staring at the photo of a smaller, fatter Trish – the same dark curly hair, the same engaging smile. She leafed back to the beginning of the book – more photographs, and drawings, childish scribbles, letters – Trish as wobbly toddler, Trish as babe-in-arms. ‘This is me with my first Mum’, was written underneath in a smudgy purple crayon. ‘She used to cuddle me.’ Jane met the wary eyes of the mother in the picture, a schoolgirl of sixteen or so, with a sullen mouth, a cascade of wavy hair. She wasn’t cuddling Trish, rather clutching her uncomfortably, as if frightened she might fall, or fall apart.

  ‘I grew in my Mum’s tummy’, Trish had printed boldly beside a picture of a baby in the womb – well, more a sort of froglet in a hollow Easter-egg. ‘When I was born, I weighed 8lbs 6oz, which is nearly as heavy as three big bags of flour’. The bags were crayoned in underneath, each neatly labelled ‘McDougall’s flour, self-raising’.

  ‘At two months old, I went to live with Pam and Eric Stokes. Pam got ill, so I moved to Elm Street Children’s Home, and stayed there for six months, then moved into The Lees.’

  Jane glanced across at Trish, who looked totally absorbed in her ice-cream, scooping it up with a wafer, rather than a spoon. ‘I didn’t know you’d been in children’s homes.’

  ‘Yes, four in eighteen months, then two more sets of foster parents – and all before I was three. It was quite a record, apparently.’

  Jane peered down at the book again, studying the photo of the ugly red-brick building which Trish had labelled ‘The Lees’; one bare tree standing guard outside it like a thin and shivering sentry. Had she herself been parked in institutions, or passed back and forth like a parcel to feckless foster parents? No. There wouldn’t have been time. She remembered her own photo on the mantelpiece at home – a tiny baby in Amy’s arms, just a few weeks old. Amy and Alec had saved her from the homes, from constant moves, upheavals.

  ‘What happened to your mother?’ she asked, trying to calm the surge of feeling which both photographs had roused.

  ‘Nothing much. I suppose she was too young to land up with a baby. Then she met an older man who wasn’t keen on threesomes, so …’ Trish shrugged. ‘It was either him or me. That’s partly why we made the book, to keep track of all the changes.’ Trish put her dish and wafer down, pointed out a photocopied map of Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, with two coloured lines meandering across it. ‘The social worker suggested that, so I’d understand all the different moves. The red line is my mother’s life. She moved eleven times herself, before she was sixteen, so I suppose I can’t complain. The blue line’s me. You can see I got around a bit.’ Trish abandoned her ice-cream, tore the wrappings from the box of Turkish Delight. ‘Don’t forget your coffee, Jane. It’s getting cold.’

  Jane ignored the coffee, waved away the sweets. She was magnetised
by Trish’s book, fighting a strange tangle of jealousy and pity. Trish had facts, however harsh – a family tree, a life-graph, a calendar, a map – all blazoned on these pages, with arrows, captions, pictures, dates. She even had a copy of her birth certificate pasted in the front, with her father’s name, her mother’s name, her own original surname. However insecure her early life, at least she had a sense of continuity. Trish had never known her father, but there were still solid facts about him, facts she’d written out herself, this time in leaky pen: ‘My Dad was tall and slim. His eyes were grey. His hair was dark, like mine. He liked dogs and cats and chocolate’. Jane slammed the book shut suddenly, bit into her own bar, crunching through a hazelnut, as if she was chewing up all mothers, fathers, foster-parents – reducing them to pulp.

  ‘You could make your own book,’ Trish was saying. ‘Oh, I don’t mean literally. It’s too late to be drawing pictures of your pet rabbit or your nursery-school. But you could try to get the facts, Jane, or even trace your mother.’

  ‘How can I?’ Jane retorted. ‘I don’t know anything about her. She might be dead for all I know, or in the outback of Australia.’ She remembered Angela – Isobel’s first child – completely lost, swallowed up in bureaucracy and mystery: no clues, no links at all. ‘Once your child’s adopted,’ Isobel had told her, ‘you, as the real mother, are legally erased, might as well be dead and buried.’

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ Trish observed, picking out a chunk of Turkish Delight. ‘There are agencies which help, and something called a National Contact Register. It’s much easier now than it used to be. You could see it as a challenge, a sort of New Year resolution. By next New Year, you might have tracked her down, or have just spent Christmas with her. And even if it takes much longer, I still think it’s worthwhile. I mean, it’s yourself you’re searching for – your whole origins and background. And it’s not as if you’re tied, Jane, by a houseful of young children, or some job which chains you down. You’re free to go wherever you want – well, maybe not to the outback of Australia, but I doubt your mother’s there.’

  Jane licked chocolate off her fingers, edged away a little from the fierce heat of the fire. She was tied in a way, tied to Christopher; should be back there, working on his window. She had watched it grow from initial sketch through cartooning, cutting, painting, and had now severed the relationship before it was completed. She envied Trish her sense of continuity, yet had chucked away her chance of something similar. Of course, a life was much more complex than a window, and she had only known the artist less than three brief months, but, all the same, if she hadn’t left the studio, she would have had the opportunity to work on other windows, see them through, right from their conception to their final dedication.

  ‘I had quite a bit of aggro myself,’ Trish admitted, brushing off the icing sugar which snowed her emerald skirt. ‘I hadn’t seen my ‘‘born-to mother’’, as the social workers call them, since I was an infant of eight weeks. She was single when she had me, but then she married twice, and divorced twice, and moved all over the place. It took me six months of detective work, before I met up with her last year.’

  ‘And did she welcome you with open arms?’

  ‘No.’ Trish paused a moment, to let a train roar past. ‘I turned up at this dingy pub in Basingstoke at ten to one instead of one o’clock, and she told me I was early. Early, after twenty years! Actually, I think I caught her out. She was smooching with some man, who slunk away immediately, as if he’d no right to be there. It was quite a shock to see her. I knew she was only thirty-six, and I’d always had that photo of her, so I imagined her as young and pretty, but she looked quite old and ill, in fact. Her hair had gone all stringy, and had started to turn grey already, and she chain-smoked the whole lunch-hour, which somehow seemed all wrong. Mum and Dad had never smoked, and had never gone to pubs, so I felt sort of torn between them, and terribly embarrassed, especially when I realised she had a slightly Cockney accent, so my own voice sounded rather posh and snobby, as if I was trying to show her up.’

  Trish wiped her sticky hands, took a sip of coffee. ‘And then she made it pretty clear she didn’t want to keep in touch. She’d just married number three – a man ten years younger this time – and I suppose it would have ruined things entirely for a daughter to turn up like a rabbit from a hat, only six years younger than her husband.’ Trish hunched her knees up, nursed them with her arms. ‘I wasn’t sure whether the man I’d seen was her husband or some boyfriend. But she told me if the guy came back, she’d introduce me as a new employee who’d just started at her office. That was almost the worst part. It really hurt, you know.’

  Jane crumpled up her chocolate wrapper, flung it in the bin. ‘And you’re trying to encourage me to go through all that aggro. No thanks! I’d rather live with my fantasies.’ Anne’s face was suddenly smiling in her head, as if she’d pasted it in her own Life-Story Book and labelled it ‘My first Mum’. She tried to shift the picture, blank it out, negate it.

  ‘It might not be as bad for you. And anyway, I’m still glad I went, in spite of everything.’

  ‘How can you be? It sounds quite vile. And it’s more or less asking for rejection. I mean, if they didn’t want us when we were born, why should they want us now?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. I’ve known people have these really great reunions, or find whole new families when they were thirty-five or forty – brothers, sisters, grandmas, aunts. It’s changed their life, transformed it.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t transform yours.’

  ‘No.’ Trish spread her hands, as if giving up her mother, her whole extended family, letting them go free. ‘But it still helped, you know, laid a lot of fears to rest. And it made my mother real, which is vitally important. After all, she …’

  Jane thrust the book into Trish’s arms, cutting off the sentence. Trish was so damned cheerful, so positive, accepting. All those treacly smiles beaming from the photographs, denying all the traumas of her babyhood. It was inhuman in a way to be so placid and unfeeling. She was still babbling on about that pathetic hopeless mother, who had kicked her out twice over.

  ‘You see, she told me about her own life, Jane, so I could sympathise much more. She’d had such a ghastly time herself, I couldn’t really blame her.’

  ‘Well, I would. I’d chop her into pieces.’

  ‘Don’t say that. It’s horrid.’

  ‘I’ll say what I like.’

  ‘Look, I still feel something for her. I don’t want you attacking her.’

  ‘She needs attacking. Stupid bitch! Fancy a mother disowning her own daughter.’

  ‘She’s not a bitch. I … love her, if you really want to know.’

  ‘Then you must be soft in the head. If she was my mother, I’d kill her.’

  Trish shot up from the rug, lashing out at Jane, pummelling her and kicking, clawing with her nails. Jane fought back, butting with her head until she had brought Trish to the floor, falling spreadeagled on top of her. She could smell the dirty carpet – a smell of cat and sweaty feet; feel its scratchy pile grazing her hot cheeks as Trish forced her over and sat astride her back. She bucked like a wild horse until she’d thrown Trish off, then clutched out at her skirt to prevent her from escaping. She heard the fabric tear, clung on doggedly, but Trish hit out again, then grabbed a fistful of her hair and almost pulled it from the roots.

  ‘Get off,’ yelled Jane. ‘You brute!’

  Trish suddenly let go, rocked back on her heels with her arms around her body, as if protecting it from any new attack. A bruise was already swelling on her leg, the skin puffing up around it, angry and inflamed. She was breathing very heavily, her voice shaky and accusing as she spewed out fractured words. ‘I’ve never shown my book to anyone before. I … I only let you see it because I thought it might help, but now you’ve ruined everything.’ She touched the hole in her green skirt, her fingers moving through it to the stockinged leg beneath. ‘Don’t think you’re the only one who … who’s �
�� I mean, just because I don’t go round wailing all the time … Oh, forget it. What’s the use? You’ll never understand.’ She seized her book, stumbled to the door, tripping on the carpet, staggering like a drunk. Jane followed, tried to stop her, but Trish shook her roughly off, bolted down the passage to her room.

  Jane listened to the door slam, the key turn in the lock, then limped back to the sitting-room, hid herself in the largest of the chairs, curling up to nothing like a foetus. The television was still playing to itself, a smiling man and woman sitting down to dinner in a restaurant. You couldn’t trust a smile. It might be fixed with Sellotape, to hide a running wound, or switched on for the grown-ups, to kid them all was fine. The Trish she’d called unfeeling and inhuman must have stockpiled smiles like gas-masks in a war.

  She should have done the same herself, worn a smiling mask, and never let it slip, whatever the provocation. She had taunted Trish and lost her as a friend, turned her into a dangerous snarling animal. There was hardly a relationship she hadn’t overturned. She’d walked out on her parents, walked out on the artist, messed up things with Hadley, and now picked a fight with someone who could have been a sister – and all because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She clutched the chair-arm, relieved to feel it firm beneath her hand. Nothing else was solid. There seemed to be a deep black hole in the centre of her body, as if all her organs and intestines had shrivelled up and atrophied, leaving only pain.

  She switched the lights off, locked the house up, then trailed along the passage to her room, pausing for a moment outside Trish’s door. Should she knock, try to have a word with her, tell her she was sorry, and did truly understand? No. The words might come out wrong, and she dared not face another brawl when she was still shaking from the first one. She slipped in to her own room, scrubbed her make-up off, exchanged her slinky skirt and blouse for a pair of old pyjamas; tugged the hairpins from her hair and brushed it straight and free. Safer to be a child, the sort of placid easy child mothers loved and wanted – the kind she’d never been.