‘Well, it’s one that’ll leave a lasting a memory, that’s for sure,’ he replied.
Eventually, though, when the house was quiet, when the floorboards had creaked and groaned a last protest, I sighed with relief and scrambled into bed and lay snuggled up between Will and the hounds. I thought about my nan and wished that she could be still alive, to have spent one more Christmas with us. I thought about all the missing people whom we loved.
The last thing I did that Christmas night was to think about my birth mother, Marie. I thought about her every birthday and every Christmas. Now that I was settled, despite Daphne and the mayhem, I had started to get the feeling that I would like to know more about her.
The law had recently changed. According to Jenny Murray and Woman’s Hour, adopted children who had reached eighteen were now able to put their names onto a contact register. They were also able to have access to their birth file. That first Christmas night I decided: when the lambing was over in the late spring, I would investigate the contact register further. I tried to think about my plans, but sleep danced tantalisingly before me until I could no longer resist her charms.
Even so, without Will and the non-stop support, I might not have gone to see the social worker… let alone been on this ruddy train.
Chapter 3
Fifty shades of beige
Beige, I decided, is the default colour option for elderly people, school semolina, and rooms where you meet social workers.
‘Dervla?’
Lyn, the social worker, handed me a blue cardboard covered file. Since 1968, its thin frame had been held precariously together with treasury tags. The two pieces of green string with metal ends bound the secrets of the past. I will always remember the excitement of being on the edge of finding out. Finding out my birth parents’ full names, addresses of where they had lived, the reasons why they had given me away. Perhaps, hidden inside the folder would be the answer as to why I wasn’t good enough. I will also never forget the feeling of thirty years of not knowing.
‘Take your time.’
Lyn sat with her hands on her knees. She was wearing neatly pressed white linen trousers and a black tunic top. I was glad she wasn’t doing “the face” that I’d seen some welfare types adopt, pretending to care. This one was far too professional. Her poker straight dark hair was parted, unimaginatively, in the middle, making curtains around her long pale face. Her eyes gave nothing away. It must be very difficult to know where to look in these situations.
She reached forward and sifted quietly through her handbag that lay between us on the small grey table. I stared at the wall above her head; looking at a picture. I knew it was a print of a Constable because of the wooden wagon in the river, the little liver-and-white spaniel on the bank, and because my nan used to have the same print on her sitting-room wall. It was a picture from my childhood, when all was warm and secure. It was familiar, but in the wrong place.
The silence was uncomfortable; it was reminiscent of sitting in the school headmistress’s office, waiting for bad marks, and I’d certainly had my fair share of those. I stared at the file, then carefully opened it and flicked through the aged sheaves of paper like I was looking for a guilty secret. Some of the sheets were photocopied. It felt as though I wasn’t important enough to have the originals, even though this was my story.
Among the typed A4 sheets were a few handwritten letters, slipped in between like an afterthought. Worn thin, like tracing paper, with scribbled notes in the margins, now faded. It was all a bit of a mess. I rummaged amongst the papers, not knowing where to begin. Eventually, I caught sight of a copy of the letter that was sent to my adoptive parents in 1969.
Dear Mr and Mrs Greenfield,
Now that the adoption order has been made, I am sure that you would like to have some written details about your adopted daughter;
One of twin girls, her birth weight was 4lbs. Her twin sister died shortly after birth.
Because of her low birth weight your baby spent some weeks in the special care unit at the hospital where she was born.
Her Mother is aged 18. Auburn hair, green eyes, 5’5” tall, attractive. She has a pleasant friendly manner.
The baby’s Father, aged 22, is a signalman in Her Majesty’s Forces. He attended secondary modern school and went into the army at the age of 15 on a long term 12-year engagement. He enjoys sport, including skiing, dancing and football.
And that’s all my adoptive parents were sent. They hadn’t been allowed to view the file that lay in my hands now. Nobody had seen this letter since 1969. I thought how poorly informed they had been, how I got more information than this when I rescued a dog from the RSPCA.
Every piece of information about my birth father was on British Army headed paper. There were many other forms in the file, although my twin’s medical history had been shielded from view. Someone had thought to place a blank sheet over her before they photocopied the form that we shared.
The documents reeked of a time when the state, and in this case the Roman Catholic Church, bullied people into decisions, “for their own good”. The forms betrayed this. The other information about my parents came from the following notes from the social worker who dealt with my adoption at the time:
Mother. Estimated level of intelligence:
Average.
An assessment of the mother’s personality, temperament and maturity. Her motivation for adoption and attitude towards the baby. Is she articulate and readily available to discuss her difficulties?
I had a long interview with the mother. Attractive, vivacious girl. She has quite a strong character but is not very intelligent.
At this interview the natural mother (now Mrs Kennedy), actually brought the baby with her! She had taken her for a walk from the foster mother’s. There were a lot of interruptions while she tried to deal with the baby who was upset, missing her carer.
Father. Estimated level of intelligence: The social worker hadn’t even bothered to write anything for my father, but she had noted down that apparently my paternal grandmother was married to a nurse who was employed, in a mental hospital (her language).
Well, I thought, that could come in handy.
Physical appearance of baby:
Very attractive looking, pretty, small features, turned up nose. Nicely proportioned. Foster carer says baby sleeps well at night but has a pronounced temper!!
Mrs Kennedy has vacillated and is still perhaps rather confused.
Father… free from any disease (VD).
Neither my adoptive or birth parents would have been privy to this information, which until this moment had been a heavily- protected secret. The patronising tone of the sixties-social worker and the awful attitude towards my birth mother at the time of the adoption made its impact. Baby girls were at a premium on the adoption circuit in the 1960s.
I absorbed the longed-for pages, including a brown envelope with confidential stamped across the top left-hand corner. The envelope was addressed to Mrs Kennedy but, on closer inspection, it was empty. This letter had clearly been back and forth through the postal system. As well as bearing three different addresses, there was a typed message on the front, written in purple.
Gone Away 255.
Lyn interrupted me. I sensed that my allotted time was up.
‘You could put your name forward on the contact register. If any members of your family are already on it you will be contacted.’
‘I’m not sure how to do that,’ I said.
She carried on, regardless. ‘Or you could do a search at the library… there are organisations that could help you. The Salvation Army or NORCAP for instance.’
For now, holding the birth file was enough. I stood up to make my move.
‘Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you need any support,’ she said.
I thought, I might need support if what L
yn had told me came true. During the compulsory hour-long counselling session, she had been careful to point out the pitfalls.
‘There are cases where the mother became pregnant as a result of rape,’ she explained. ‘You may not have thought about these things. Adoptions do occur because of abuse in families, or neglect. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but until you find out more these are things you need to bear in mind.’
One size must fit all. How can these people reel off their scripts, making them sound genuine? But Lyn hadn’t finished with me yet.
‘Be careful, proceed with grace. Even if you do find family members, remember they may be remarried. They may have new partners and children who know nothing about their past.’
In other words, my “family” may not want to meet me. I just couldn’t tolerate another rejection. It was too much of a risk.
On my way out, I thanked the sagging receptionist ensconced in her sterile booth. She didn’t lift her head. It looked like abuse from dysfunctional families had taken its toll on her. What an unforgiving place that social work building was, its foundation built from family disaster, its walls shielding the secrets of people’s lives, its locked clandestine cabinets hiding away all that information. This is what happens when the state takes control. I thought; emotion can’t be permitted to creep through.
I clasped the birth file to my chest. The receptionist finally looked up as I struggled with one hand to open the heavy front door. Old and huge, it was cloaked in thick black layers. Paint flaked from its hinges, jarring under my nails as I turned the handle.
‘Can you manage?’ she asked.
I squeezed myself through a tiny gap, wedging the door open with my foot.
‘I can,’ I replied.
The door thudded shut behind me, protecting other people’s secrets, keeping them safe.
Glad to be back out in the spring sunshine, I hurried to my mum’s house, clasping my roots now held in a white carrier bag. Back out into the real world again, after the shock of it all. I wasn’t prepared. The bubble hadn’t burst.
A car horn blasted. I was standing at the start of the zebra crossing, not watching, not even paying attention to the cars that had stopped to let me cross. The sound of that horn made me cry; that one action was my final awakening.
‘Silly cow! Think I’ve got all day?’ the driver yelled. Wheels spinning, he drove off, pushing his fist out of the window, sticking up his middle finger. I walked quickly, then ran a few steps. I couldn’t cope with this on my own. Mum would make sense of it all.
Home smelled of porridge oats, warm milk and safety. My mother, although once a home-economics teacher, had in later years become a big fan of the microwave. The milk was heated to within an inch of its life, scalding the porridge oats into a rude morning awakening. Porridge was accompanied by breakfast TV with Wincey Willis and the Green Goddess.
Unfortunately, since the decorator had been in, my always-in-residence beige mother had become doubly difficult to spot.
Today, she was almost completely camouflaged from view. Her new ecru sofa and matching walls, along with her off-white cardigan and trousers meant it was hard to make her out. My mother was only visible because of her blue socks. She sat on her new sofa, legs dangling over the edge – her feet didn’t reach the floor – like a little girl. Even her shoes were taupe.
I expected mum to be in her normal place in the kitchen, instead of languishing in her light-tan interior. So, I was at a disadvantage from the start. I stomped in, slamming the birth file down onto the kitchen table for maximum effect, hating its contents.
‘Here it is, my bloody birth file. It’s all here, have a look if you want.’
It was all a bit embarrassing as I was talking to myself. And, of course, I wanted her to fall upon it immediately, intrigued as I was about every detail – once I’d retrieved her from the sofa, she didn’t disappoint me.
First, though, Mum made tea. She stood next to the kettle waiting. It took an age, like it does when you boil it in the middle of the night, or when you’ve had bad news. Whilst the kettle boiled, she eyed me warily, watching for hints of an imminent meltdown. But she did seem excited that at least we finally had some information. We sat side by side at our comforting kitchen table and peered into the blue folder, which was already precious to me. We came across a letter from my birth mother giving permission for me to be adopted. At last, we could see her first name.
‘I was right about your mother’s name being Marie then? That’s all we knew,’ said Mum.
‘She’s not my mother.’ I spat the words out.
‘Well, you know what I mean.’
‘You’re my mother.’
She carried on. ‘And your father was in the Forces. Well, we were told that… oh, but I didn’t know your mother had been so young’. She hung her head slightly, biting her bottom lip.
‘This isn’t about me needing anyone else to be my mum, it’s just I need to know why it happened. To know what they’re like. I love you. You’re my mum,’ I told her.
She put her arm around my shoulders and I felt the tears trying to sting through. I wouldn’t let them, though. I swallowed, pushing back my emotions, and lay my head on her shoulder.
‘Gosh, it must be difficult for you to see this, love,’ she said, rubbing my arm.
We sipped tea. Its syrupy liquid warmed us, seeping through the stark, new reality until it brought us back to a place of familiarity.
We spent one hour… three hours… who knows?… going through the file, piecing together the fragmented life of Marie. The horror of her situation hit us both.
*
It wasn’t that I wanted to meet my birth mother – not then. I just wanted to know who she was and that she was okay – that she’d survived. I’d wanted this ever since I’d been a child and first found out about being adopted, back in the times of my mother and The Great Craft Movement.
Chapter 4
The Great Craft Movement
My first memory wasn’t being told I was adopted. There were many other memories before that day. Besides, the subject was never given much attention, barely interrupting The Great Craft Movement (GCM) that was going on in our house at the time – it was this that made up my earliest memories and absorbed us all throughout my childhood.
During that period in our family’s history, my mum was centre stage, mid way through one of her obsessions and gripped by the artistic muse. It would have been fine if we had lived up a Welsh mountain, or on Bodmin Moor. A bleak location would have suited all our personalities, and somewhere spacious would have been more apt, but no, we had a modern bungalow in a narrow-minded street, where our neighbours didn’t go in for creativity in the main.
Mum’s crafts spanned many mediums. First, there was the pottery phase. A kiln was installed in the garage. Mum would tie a red-and-white spotted headscarf over her curls, don some brown corduroy flares and disappear for hours. She would re-appear with pottery dragons, unusually-shaped pots and generally-unidentifiable clay objects, all lovingly constructed in the name of art.
She had been an art student, so it wasn’t a surprise that she enjoyed herself in the garage. But over time, unchecked, the GCM took over our lives. It flounced in under the front door one day when we weren’t paying attention and, before long, started to seriously encroach on our living space.
The pottery phase hadn’t been too bad; the dragon that mum produced was her favourite. My brother, Ellis, and Dad, Terry, probably weren’t that bothered about it, but Nan dusted him weekly, giving him the once over with her feather duster.
Nan unimaginatively called him Puff. He had pride of place next to the electric bar fire in our “lounge”. This room had been carefully decorated in orange and brown, with black undertones. It was completed by our mum’s pride and joy, a cream shag-pile carpet – which Ellis and I took turns to rake on a Saturday mor
ning.
Other lesser mortals on our street only had a “front room”. We obviously thought we were a cut above, as reflected in our home furnishings. According to Ellis we were the first family to have continental quilts, not eiderdowns and blankets, the high-maintenance shag-pile, and a Moulinex electric cheese grater (also in a shameless shade of orange).
Ellis was especially pleased to receive his continental quilt, because he could ditch the bri-nylon bed covers. For years he had been manufacturing an electrical spark by rubbing his legs together very quickly under the top bed sheet. By wearing pyjamas that were also from the same unforgiving Brentford bri-nylon material and turning all the lights off, he managed to carry out his very own electrical experiment at No. 12, St. Normal Street, Midsummer Boring.
Our high street was the most tedious one in the world; we didn’t even have a Woolworths. Even so, when Mum met her teacher friends as she walked through town, she liked to use her “Posh Voice”, the same dulcet tones as when she met Mrs Pomfrit, the vicar’s wife, or when she answered the telephone. Ellis said she’d obviously been practising.
The second phase of the GCM was weaving. The table-top loom was a real pain in the arse as it had to sit on the dining room table; it resided there for months. My brother and I still managed to eat our tea, but every time we viewed each other it was through lines of thread, making our faces look slightly distorted. Still, we pressed on with our fish and chips, pausing only to remove the odd dollop of splattered ketchup from the latest garment being created. Ellis and I grumbled until finally the loom went back out to the garage.
Mum was meant to be making a rug, but really, she preferred macramé to the loom. She produced plant holders that collapsed and owls with shiny brown beads for eyes. And so, after months of effort with the rug making, she emerged triumphant from the garage only having managed to produce four small brown woven table mats. We all gathered round as Mum put the mats on the table and stared silently at the pathetic result of her months of hard labour.
Strays and Relations Page 2