‘Well, you can’t go back to Ted, that’s for sure. He was in a right old tizzy when he rang me up. Said he was amazed he hadn’t had the police round, what with the racket you were making.’
Maggie sighs. ‘I don’t know what he must have thought of me.’
‘Ted’s a good man, not a crook like most of them,’ Vanda says, rummaging in her bag. She takes out an envelope and hands it to Maggie.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s your twenty-five guineas – he wouldn’t take a penny.’
And sure enough, the envelope contains all the notes and even the two half-crowns. Part of her doesn’t want to look at the money or think about it; it was intended as blood money, after all. Briefly, she’s tempted to tell Vanda to give it back to the doctor, but she knows that would be stupid. ‘Tell him . . . tell him thanks. And I’m sorry for . . . tell him I hope I haven’t caused him any trouble.’
Vanda nods. ‘I will. So,’ she lights her cigarette, then Maggie’s. ‘What now?’
‘I don’t know.’ Maggie sighs. ‘I suppose I’ll have to . . .’ Her stomach shifts at the enormity of it all. ‘I suppose I’ll have to have it, then have it adopted. Dr Sarka gave me some addresses – nursing homes, he said. But whatever happens, I can’t go through with an abortion.’
‘It would have been all right, you know, with Ted.’
Maggie nods. ‘I know. But I just can’t.’ She draws deeply on her cigarette. ‘Do you think Clive’ll sack me?’
‘Not until it shows, so you’ll be all right for a while. Those homes aren’t much fun from what I’ve heard.’
‘I know.’ Maggie sighs. ‘I knew a girl who was in one. The nuns made her clean the parquet floor with a toothbrush. Still, it’ll only be for a couple of months, I suppose.’
‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. You need somewhere to live, right? I’ve got a spare room – I used to have a lodger but since he went I haven’t bothered to look for anyone else – and I could do with some help with the rent. If I were to let you have it really cheap, perhaps you could do some bits and pieces for me when you can’t work any more – you know, cooking, cleaning, mending my costumes; that sort thing.’
Maggie is doubtful.
‘Go on,’ Vanda says. ‘It’ll help us both out and we’ll be company for one another. I get fed up only having Boris to talk to of an evening.’
Boris; she’d forgotten about Boris. ‘Where do you keep it?’
‘Come and meet him.’ Vanda grabs her hand and leads her upstairs into the little back bedroom, where a tank, more of an enclosure, really, stretches across the entire wall and almost to the ceiling. Inside is a large, coiled snake, asleep under one of the lamps. Its body, which is as thick as Maggie’s wrist, is chestnut brown with a rich pattern of greyish, diamond-shaped patches and deeper brown saddle shapes. The chestnut brown becomes brighter towards the tail, turning almost brick red. It is, Maggie has to admit, a handsome creature.
‘He’s a Columbian Red Tail. Very good-natured. He’s nearly twenty, so he’s getting on a bit. I’ve had him for sixteen years – bought him off an exotic dancer called Lola in Eastbourne just after the war.’
‘What were you doing in Eastbourne?’ Maggie doesn’t take her eyes from the snake. If it moves, she wants a head start out of the room.
‘That’s where I’m from. Well, near there anyway. My mum’s still there.’
‘I’m from Hastings.’
‘Never! We’re neighbours! Do you miss the sea? I do.’
‘A bit. And I miss my brother.’
‘I envy you, having a brother. There’s only ever been me and Mum.’
‘At least your mum’s still alive.’
‘Yes, well. So anyway, what d’you say? Eighteen bob a week and you help out here. Then you’ll only have to go in for a couple of weeks. Maybe you could even come back afterwards – you’ll get a job easily enough once it’s all over.’
Maggie is still doubtful about sharing a house with Boris, but she needs to move out of Dot’s by Saturday, so she agrees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After pouring him a brandy ‘for the shock’, his mother places a shoebox on the table in front of him. ‘It contains all the papers and so forth. And also, I always thought you might like to, well, I assumed . . .’ She rests her hand on the lid. ‘I kept the clothes you were wearing when you came to us.’
He drinks the brandy in two gulps, hoping its medicating qualities will kick in quickly. The lid of the shoebox bears remnants of the discoloured, brittle sticky tape that once secured it, and in the centre, written in his mother’s flawless copperplate, is his name in faded violet ink. He lifts the lid. Inside is a pile of clothing and a large, fat envelope. He shakes out the contents. There are official-looking letters, county court documents and medical records referring to blood tests and vaccinations, but he can’t keep his hands still enough to read them properly. He rests his head in his palms for a moment, but he’s aware of his mother hovering anxiously behind him. He needs to keep it together. He takes a breath and clears his throat before returning to the things on the table in front of him. On top of the pile is a little woollen cardigan, navy blue, quite thick, with five yellow wooden buttons shaped like ducklings. He runs his thumb over one of the buttons, then lifts the cardigan out of the box. Underneath is a pair of heavy cotton dungarees, blue with white stripes, and a thin white jersey. His mother is looking at him.
‘Jonathan?’
He’s never seen her look so worried. He wants to say something but he can’t.
‘It’s all there, darling. All the paperwork, your clothes, and the few things they sent with you.’
He picks up the wad of papers again. We are pleased to inform you that your application has been accepted. In due course, we hope to place a baby in your care . . . He shuffles the letters. Baby will be ready for collection at twelve noon. Ready for collection, like a pair of patched-up old boots. Baby will be dressed and have food for a journey. We ask our adopters for a voluntary financial contribution. The cost to the society of each adoption is currently estimated at £10. So he’d been bought for a tenner. The words shimmer in front of him; these documents are all dated 1964, but he was born in 1962. He picks up the dungarees, folds back the tag and reads: To fit age 12-18 months. He looks again, but there’s no mistake. Gerald and Daphne Robson took him into their care on 27 February 1964, not as a newborn, but when he was almost sixteen months old.
During the thirteen-week probationary period, he reads, the mother may change her mind. Why thirteen weeks, he wonders? Fiona would say it was unlucky. He flicks through the sheaf of papers again, pulls out one headed Matter of the Adoption Act. It’s the formal adoption order, showing that the application was heard in Hastings County Court, although he doesn’t notice that immediately, only that it’s dated 28 May 1964. The adoption had gone through unimpeded.
Thirteen weeks; so she could have changed her mind. At any point during those thirteen weeks, she could have just picked up the phone and said she wanted him back. He thinks about Poppy, Malcolm and Cassie’s seventeen-month-old who, when they’d visited just before Christmas, had delighted everyone by toddling around the room picking up micro-scraps of wrapping paper and saying ‘hare-wah’ as she handed each one to Cassie. The dates, the facts, are beginning to organise themselves in his mind. His biological mother hadn’t been a weeping teenager, forced to hand over her newborn by an unforgiving family or a stern-faced nun; she had given away a child who could walk and talk, who had probably waved goodbye.
He stands and takes his coat from the back of the chair. ‘I need some air,’ he says. ‘I can’t . . . I mean, I need some time to . . . to take all this in.’
*
This morning’s rain has turned to sleet, so it’s wet and freezing; the worst of both worlds. But he’s got to get out; the air in his mother’s kitchen is thick and heavy with revelation and he fears what he’s just been told will crush him if he doesn’t give it room to expa
nd and take shape. He walks quickly along Lee Terrace and turns into Blackheath Village. The sleet is icy on his scalp, wetter than rain. He can feel the wetness trickling down the back of his neck inside his collar. As people around him scurry into doorways, he breaks into a run. At first he doesn’t seem out of place because so many people are sprinting to the shelter of a shop’s awning or a bus stop, but Jonathan is picking up speed. Shoppers move out of his way. He is breathing hard now, and getting hot; he unbuttons his coat and it billows out behind him. He can feel his feet slamming against the pavement and water splashing up over his ankles as he runs through puddles. He begins to move his arms for momentum, but the coat is restricting him so he shrugs it off, bundles it over his arm and, after trying to carry it for a while, gives up and throws it over a wall. Sweat breaks out on his back, neck and forehead. The icy drops are almost welcome now, soothing his overheated body as he pounds on through the wet streets and up through the village towards the heath. His jeans are soaked through, and the flapping wetness slaps raw against his legs as he runs and runs, stopping only when the ground becomes soft underfoot and his feet begin to squelch on the boggy grass.
Still panting, he stops to rest under the shelter of an ancient oak tree. He stands there for a while, leaning against its rain-blacked bark, looking out across the greyness and listening to the white noise of heavy rain. He’s trying – really trying – to properly absorb what he’s just been told, but his mother’s words are still tumbling around in his head. His instinct is to call Fiona, but he hesitates. He feels like an imposter, as though he’d somehow got her – if indeed he still has her – under false pretences. He knows it’s ridiculous – he is the deceived, not the deceiver. But seeing those clothes, those papers; tangible evidence that’s real and solid, whereas he seems to be fading: not quite a teacher, not quite a father, not quite a son.
Her mobile’s switched off, and there’s no reply from Nick and Jean’s landline. He tries Malcolm, but his phone is off as well. Things have been pretty cool between him and Malcolm since the panto, but at least they’re still speaking.
His breathing has slowed now, and he tries to gather his thoughts as he watches the sleet jumping and spitting off the pond. As a boy, he’d often spent long, sunny days squatting at the edge of this pond, net poised, trying to see past his reflection to the tiny fish that darted back and forth beneath. Whose was the face that would look back at him now? This time yesterday, despite everything that was going on, he’d known who he was. He kicks a mudcaked twig into the water. After the initial shock of his mother’s bombshell, he’d actually been relieved that it couldn’t be Gerald the police were looking for; but that only lasted for about thirty seconds, and then it dawned on him that his DNA was still linked with – with whoever it was.
The temperature is falling by the minute; his nose, ears and even the surface of his eyes feel cold. Iron-grey clouds tinged with yellow crouch above him as he stands looking out across the black water. The sleet suddenly eases, and now barely pierces the surface, but the sky seems to be gathering itself, filling up with snow ready to smother him. He should make a move. But still he stands there. He reaches into his pocket for his wallet, takes out his driving licence and looks at it. The photo was taken five years ago; he’s smiling. Robson, it says next to the photo. Jonathan Hugo. Ha. Still holding the photocard, he lifts his arm, curls his wrist around, and flicks. The licence goes spinning out across the pond, then slices through the surface in a flash and disappears down into the sludge.
He is walking slowly back towards his mother’s, soaked through but barely noticing the discomfort, when his phone rings. ‘Fi, thank God—’
‘What is it, Jonathan?’ Her voice is colourless. ‘You promised you wouldn’t call—’
‘I know. Look, I’m sorry, but I need to tell you . . .’ He stops. She’d wanted a break from all this, and now he’s going to burden her again. He takes a breath, then speaks more steadily. ‘I don’t see how I can not tell you about this.’
He hears her sigh. ‘Go on then,’ she says.
‘Well, it turns out I’m . . .’ But he finds he can’t say it straight out. ‘I’ve just come from my mum’s. She told me more about what happened after that first baby died. It seems she did get pregnant again, four more times, in fact. But she lost them all; miscarriages. All boys, apparently.’
‘But . . .’
‘Hang on. There’s more. She said part of her wanted to keep on trying, but by that time she was becoming convinced that she and my . . . that she and Gerald were somehow “biologically mismatched” and that they’d never produce a live child. So she started thinking about adoption.’
Fiona doesn’t say anything but he can tell that she’s listening closely now.
‘He was against the idea at first. But she was in such a state. She begged him to consider it, and eventually he agreed.’ He waits. ‘Fi?’
There’s a pause before she says, ‘I’m still here.’
‘Say something.’
‘I . . . I don’t know what to say.’ She speaks slowly. ‘So let me get this straight. You’re saying that Daphne and Gerald . . .’
‘Yes. They’re not my real parents.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Maggie is only five months gone when Clive tells her she must leave. He’s very nice about it, but her condition is now so obvious that he really can’t keep her on any longer, so she takes up her role as Vanda’s housekeepercum-wardrobe mistress. Monday to Wednesday, Vanda works shifts at the pub on the corner, and from Thursday to Sunday, she plays the clubs and theatres in Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester. Sometimes, Maggie goes along to watch. On stage, Vanda sparkles like the sequins on her costumes. Even Boris livens up under the powerful stage lighting, slinking around Vanda’s shoulders, waist and legs, then drawing his head back as though about to strike, eyes fixed, tongue flicking menacingly. Vanda buys dead things from a greasy little man who comes to the door once a month and looks shifty as he hands them over, packed tightly together in a plastic bag. She dangles them in front of Boris, who widens his jaw and swallows them whole. To her own amazement, Maggie has overcome her fear of Boris. She’s even become rather fond of him, and spends many an evening with the dozing snake draped around her shoulders and resting his head on the warm boulder of her belly.
The baby – she is forced to think of it as a baby now – must be huge, because she is like a fat, round pod about to burst. According to Dr Sarka, the child’s size means there’s not much room for manoeuvre within Maggie’s womb. On the mercifully few occasions when there is movement, Maggie flinches, but bears it; after all, considering she is going to give the child away without even looking at it, she feels it’s entitled to give her the odd kick.
*
Two weeks before her due date, Maggie feels a band of pain tighten around her middle as she heaves herself out of bed. It isn’t much, but it’s enough to trap her breath in her lungs. After it subsides, she makes her way slowly downstairs.
‘Morning, Fatso,’ Vanda smiles, pulling out a chair for her.
Maggie butters a slice of bread, spoons pale amber honey onto it and is just biting into it when another pain flings its steely arms around her and grips until she is forced to let out a low moan.
Vanda’s eyes widen. ‘What is it? It’s not starting already, is it?’
When Maggie is able to speak again, she lets out her breath. ‘It’s probably just practice contractions.’
But then her waters break, and Vanda’s back-room floor is awash. Maggie wedges a tea towel between her legs while Vanda calls the ambulance, her voice rising in panic and settling again in response to the operator’s words.
Maggie tries to relax. She’d asked the midwife how much it would hurt. ‘Worse than having a tooth filled, not as bad as having a leg cut off,’ the midwife said without looking at her. ‘Maybe tha should have thought about that before tha jumped into bed.’
The pain is monstrous. It rises up and swamps her, then retre
ats, leaving a tidemark of fear. Just as Vanda says she’s going to call 999 again to find out what the bloody hell in the name of Jesus H. Christ is going on with this sodding ambulance, two ambulance men walk past the kitchen window.
The men fill the room; they are big, smiley and capable-looking. The older one rubs his hands together and says not long now, an early Christmas present and where’s the proud dad then?
‘There isn’t one,’ Maggie says quietly. ‘And the baby’s being adopted, so I won’t be bringing it home.’
His smile only falters for a second. ‘Right you are, duck,’ he says. ‘We’d better have a look at you, see how you’re going on.’
‘It’s not due for another two weeks.’
‘Well, you’re definitely on’t way, love. Better get you into hospital to be on’t safe side.’
Maggie nods; the sooner she goes in, the sooner this will be over. And when they take the baby away, everything will be back to normal.
*
Maggie labours for two days. When she was first admitted a lifetime ago, she thought she would be strong enough to get through this. Pain tears through every cell and nerve ending, but it comes from outside of her, opening its cavernous jaws and clamping down, carrying her off to another place. She has her eyes closed against the harsh light of the delivery room, but she can hear them talking.
‘This one should have been straightforward,’ the doctor mutters, sliding his stethoscope over Maggie’s enormous belly. ‘Heartbeat’s there, but it’s feeble.’
He hands the stethoscope to his colleague, who listens intently, then nods. ‘Bit echoey; I don’t think we can wait.’
From up on the ceiling, Maggie looks down at the woman and the people around her. There’s something familiar about that great bloated body, but that is all.
‘Wait!’ the midwife shouts. ‘It’s crowning!’
Maggie lands back in her body; someone is trying to suffocate her and she fights the mask, which smells of hot rubber. Then she hears bumble bees, senses them buzzing in her nose and begins to feel a little calmer. That’s it, a voice says, good girl, deep breaths, ready for the next one. Next what, Maggie thinks. Then the pain rips through her again. Bear down now, a voice says. You can do it!
The Things We Never Said Page 16