Strays and Relations

by Dizzy Greenfield

  Ellis was the first to speak. ‘Very good Mum, but there are five of us.’

  Dad smiled to himself, winked at Ellis, and went immediately back to his chair, where he spent the rest of the day quietly humming and playing his guitar. Nan, mouth set in tight disappointment, reached for a crinkled hanky from the pocket of her house coat and blew her nose.

  ‘Must get back to my pastry,’ she said.

  She turned on her slippered heels and shuffled back to the kitchen.

  Phase three brought an easel and a selection of oil paints. These could be transported, so sadly they decided to come on holiday with us to Scotland. Unfortunately for me, my sixteen-year-old brother, who was trying desperately hard to leave home, had more sense than to accompany us. So, with no brother to annoy, one parent off fly-fishing and one painting happily away by the river bank, my six-year-old self and I had the dullest holiday that side of Gretna.

  Phase four was gardening. Let’s just say that, even now, as proper grown-up adults, if Ellis and I must visit a garden centre we need to be given medication.

  Amid the GCM, somewhere between the kiln and the loom, the paintings and the plants, my past got lost.

  Finding out about my adoption didn’t happen until I was six years old, just after that holiday – there had been no earlier revelation. Such a life-changing event should surely have been the defining moment in my childhood, but we were too busy being a family. The subject wasn’t treated as trivial, but there were no dramatic scenes or hysteria.

  One evening, my parents, Ellis, Nan and our springer spaniel all came into the bathroom. They perched on the toilet lid, on the bathmat, and ever so casually, at the back bit of the bath where the leftover brown tiles had been used to make a shelf.

  My dad crossed one leg over the other in a casual 1970’s magazine pose. He balanced a glass of whisky on his knee, Dave Allen-style, swilling the Bells around the glass so that the smooth mahogany liquid caressed the sides. He held the glass gently and, with the other hand, smoked a Players No.6. He had even brought his ash tray in with him.

  They all peered over the edge of the bath at me. I knew that something was going to be announced, because the dog never peered unless it was serious, so I fretted with the hot tap and allowed more warmth to run into the bath by way of a distraction.

  I pretended to understand the news they delivered – something about there being a lovely Irish lady called Marie who was my ‘real’ mum. Marie hadn’t been able to keep me, so she had given me to them to take care of. It all sounded delightfully simple. Marie was very sad to have had to do this, they said, and it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t that she didn’t love me. In fact, she loved me so much that she had found a home for me where I would be taken care of and loved. They explained that she hadn’t wanted her baby to go away.

  ‘It was the saddest thing in the world for her,’ Mum said. ‘But we are ever so pleased to have you and to be your mummy and daddy.’

  ‘We didn’t have to have you,’ Dad said, ‘we chose you.’ He grinned at me and had a swig of his whisky.

  ‘Where did you get me from?’ I asked.

  ‘From the foster carer,’ he said. ‘But you’re ours now, we love you.’

  ‘And what would our life be like without you?’ Mum carried on. ‘Your being adopted doesn’t mean we love you less.’

  I was loved as much as my brother Ellis but, from then on, I knew I was a fake. My brother on the other hand, was the real thing.

  I patted bubbles onto my pale, freckly knees and squeezed the foam through my fingers wishing their truth was a lie. Sodden plaits made my auburn hair appear darker; they hung uncomfortably across my wet shoulders. I couldn’t look my parents in the eye – brown unlike my own green ones.

  ‘Can I call you Paula and Terry then please, not Mummy and Daddy?’

  They gulped and smiled. The birthday card they gave me a few weeks later had that same uneasy sentiment.

  It read, “Happy Birthday darling, all our love always, Paula and Terry (Mummy and Daddy)” followed by the predicted xxx.

  But, although I had lost my own Marie, my birth mother, someone, somewhere must have been trying to make it up to me. Now I was a very real part of the family that adopted me, not only one Mum, Paula, but two – the second in the disguise of Nan, to fuss over me. I was blessed with “Mother Overload”.

  I had fallen on my feet, and landed, somehow, in a terrific home. I didn’t know how lucky I was to have ended up with such a family. I had the luck of the Irish. “We aren’t your actual birth parents”, was a saying that was sometimes repeated over the years. Other than these odd occasions, though, the subject was never given much attention – it was something I just accepted. But my ears always pricked up when I heard the phrase ‘up for adoption’ spoken by adults around me or on the TV. It made adoption sound like the adoptees had chosen their situation and were up for a bit of an adventure. But which adopted family you ended up with seemed to me to be a bit like the game of Monopoly that we played at Christmas. A game where you can land on the wrong number in an instant, but change your future chances forever.

  You could “Go to jail”, with no “Get out of jail free card”. Or you could end up with “Water Works” when you were secretly praying for “Mayfair”.

  We all got on with our lives – Ellis got married to Mags and moved down the road. And then my dad, Terry, came home in the middle of the night and said that he was leaving.

  The Great Craft Movement ended abruptly; it took my mother years to paint another picture.

  Chapter 5

  Ireland

  It wasn’t all Will’s fault though – what happened next was my best friend, Sugar’s responsibility.

  We had become friends at the Wildlife Park, where we both spent our days pretending to be working; in the main, though, it was acting the fool that we managed best, rather than any actual productive activity. The silliness cemented our friendship.

  Although we saw each other daily, it was normal for Sugar and me to phone each other every time there was something wrong in our lives. I made an emergency call to her. Our phone conversation consisted of two lines. It went something like this.

  ‘I’ve got the birth file,’ I said.

  ‘I’m bringing wine. Be with you in an hour,’ she replied.

  Real friends know exactly what to do. It had taken me years to pluck up the courage to access my adoption records. Sugar had been keeping watch; she knew how important this was.

  So, late that evening, long after Will had gone to sleep, Sugar arrived. It took her twenty-nine minutes, even though it was, on average, a forty-five-minute drive from her house to ours. The dogs heard her first, drawn from their slumbers even before her car screeched to a standstill. Her wheels scattering the gravel on the driveway drove them into a frenzy. But after this dramatic arrival, Sugar’s tap on the front door was gentle – as if she really was trying not to disturb anyone.

  The figure I let in was wearing a black beanie hat, clasping a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and looking worried. The dogs crowded round, relieved that this wasn’t a burglar, but a familiar friend. She greeted them through the wagging tails and canine kisses. We tiptoed through the house to the kitchen and I got out two glasses while Sugar stood by the Rayburn watching me, cautious, assessing the situation.

  ‘Oh, Dizzy…’ she said, finally.

  ‘It’s all right, missus. You know, it’s all right.’ Sugar and I had a habit of calling each other missus – it has been a bit of a joke at first and now it was a mark of our friendship.

  Throughout that night, we scanned the birth file for hidden clues. We lay the family secrets bare. But, even after several hours of searching, we were still unable to find any definite information about Marie’s Irish family, or where they had lived. It became obvious that the search was fruitless. The tentative link with Killarney was from information that
had been given to my adoptive parents by the social worker nearly thirty years ago. Sugar finally closed the file and made an announcement.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing for it, we’ll have to go to Ireland and find them ourselves. Let’s book the ferry now.’

  So a month later we boarded the Fishguard to Rosslare night ferry. We set sail, unaware that the adventure ahead was to be the bumpiest two weeks of my life so far.

  It was all calm to begin with on the crossing, but with several hours to spare before bedtime, we took up our normal default position for any tricky situation; in other words, we went to the bar. Our imaginations full of promise and intrigue, we finished our second bottle of dry boat-white before heading back down to the cabins.

  Unable to grasp whether it was the boat or Sugar lurching from side to side, I clutched the narrow corridor walls and followed her along dimly-lit passageways in search of our accommodation. After half an hour of being unable to find the cabin, she brought us back up the stairs, out into the safety of the bar. We had another drink.

  We were somewhat surprised to eventually find the cabin, whereupon I fell through the door into the small toilet cubicle. The toilet was positioned directly in line with the bathroom door. I adopted the sitting position just as a huge wave passed under the boat. The door was flung open, revealing me peeing for Ireland.

  Sugar went into a kind of frenzy. She laughed for three hours, and so we ended up only having twenty-two minutes of sleep before the ferry docked.

  In Rosslare, we found a single café that was open. Here, to our relief, we were presented with huge mugs of dark liquid by a rather little woman. Unfortunately, the tea bags were still floating in the brew. It was barely seven o’clock in the morning and I could hardly open my eyelids.

  ‘Get this down you now, girls,’ twittered our waitress in a strong Irish accent. She crashed the plates down in front of us. We nicknamed her Mrs Birdlike, because of how she chirped her way around the café.

  I prodded at the breakfast. The black-and-white pudding clung to the sides of the dish as though fighting for its life. Somewhere underneath lurked the bacon, next to the soggy hash browns. Everything was drowning in a sea of lard.

  Mrs Birdlike watched us battle to eat, her beady eyes making sure we didn’t attempt to leave anything. With the breakfasts served, her work was over. She could now set about her true calling in life, to find out gossip about holiday makers. She was determined in her task. Her method, it seemed, was to ask one hundred searching questions of us. She was expert. She should have joined the police service, cooking up information instead of cooking up breakfasts. After only a few carefully-planned, but leading initial questions she effortlessly secured sufficient information about us to begin her interrogation. Before we knew it, we had confessed the area where we lived. Mrs Birdlike was off.

  ‘Do you know my cousin, Kitty O’Brien? She lives in the West Country, near Bristol,’ she chirped.

  We imagined she thought the West Country very small indeed, as if there was probably only the one village. Sugar pretended to rack her brain. Her actions became more animated as she scratched her head, bit her bottom lip and looked ever so interested. Her concern had her asking Mrs B for a full description of Kitty. Sugar surprised all three of us.

  ‘I think I probably have met your Kitty. It was on a night out for St Patrick’s.’ Sugar hesitated. ‘But of course, I can’t be sure.’

  I glared at her as she finished off her baked beans.

  ‘What did she look like?’ asked Mrs Birdlike, warming to the idea.

  Sugar stared at our waitress, taking in her features, her stature, her colouring.

  ‘Well, she had dark hair, um… blue eyes, she was quite short, she looked a lot like you.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Birdlike, clasping her hands in front of her housecoat in delight. ‘It sounds like her. Did she say much? Did she mention me at all?’

  ‘She talked a lot, she was very friendly,’ said Sugar.

  ‘Did she have a wonky eye? Our Kitty has a wonky eye.’ Mrs. Birdlike peered closer at Sugar, squinting up her own eyes in disbelief.

  ‘It was dark in the club, but I thought I detected a slight squint,’ said Sugar.

  ‘It’s her! I just know it for sure. I will ring her tonight.’

  Mrs Birdlike got out the pen and notebook that she kept in the front of her apron pocket, the one she used for taking down orders.

  ‘Now, tell me again, when was this, and where?’

  ‘Best be getting on the road, Diz,’ said Sugar.

  The Irish have a rare ability. They are accomplished at being able to squeeze out every last drop of information from a stranger, even if it is a lie. After confessing our full medical history, inside leg measurements and our birth weights to Mrs B, we set off again. Mrs Birdlike stood on the café steps, waving.

  ‘What a small world it really is after all,’ she called after us.

  Back in the car, Sugar regained some of her previous vigour. Her face looked fresh, if not a little guilty.

  ‘I still feel a bit sick,’ she told me. ‘I’ll have to have my window open.’

  ‘Serves you right! Oh, Mrs Birdlike, I know your Kitty personally. Yes, Mrs Birdlike. No, Mrs Birdlike. Three bags full of shite, Mrs Birdlike. I sometimes find it hard to believe that you went to a convent.’

  Sitting in the passenger seat, with the map spread out on her lap, Sugar ignored me. She was busy attempting to navigate us safely and without incident to our first destination, Killarney.

  Chapter 6

  Emerald strikes again

  I had been on a driving holiday before (to America, with Will, where the weather was sunny), but never have I laughed so much as on that road trip with Sugar – despite the rain. Our first driving challenge was on that very morning, when the motorway ran out of road. This happened with no warning sign, or at least not one that we noticed, so obviously we couldn’t prepare for the fact that the road hadn’t yet been built. We were travelling in the middle lane when it came to a rude end in front of a grey breeze block wall.

  Sugar let out a peal of laughter. Her eyes filled with tears. She was absolutely no bloody help as we sat in front of the wall in Emerald, my newly acquired, lurid, green Mini.

  With no choice, Emerald and I decided to navigate through the road works in the closed lane to the left of us. We nipped in between the “Road Closed” sign and the wall so we could get on our way. Not in the least bit worried that we were attempting something illegal, the fearless Emerald weaved her way through the bollards.

  As we passed over the closed road, we found ourselves in the middle of a real life motorway maintenance team. We narrowly missed the tarmac roller, complete with a horrified looking driver. We tucked in behind him; a stone lorry took up our rear. We convoyed in unison with the work vehicles for three miles.

  Our terrific manoeuvring skills roused a gang of men from their tea break by the side of the road. They didn’t expect two girls in a Mini Clubman to be undertaking vital road resurfacing. One of the men scrambled to his feet. Still managing to hold his mug of tea, he pointed in our direction.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, would you look at those two, Declan.’

  Declan looked up from his newspaper. Then, throwing it down to the side of him, he also rose, disbelieving, to his feet.

  ‘You silly feckers!’ he shouted.

  We merely laughed and waved our way out of danger, relieved at last to have found the exit.

  ‘Do you want me to drive, Dizzy?’ asked Sugar, now with the map across her face.

  ‘I’d love it, but you’re not insured. Now shut up and read the map.’ I didn’t tell her I’d promised Will I wouldn’t let her drive.

  No harm done, we carried on with our journey. We drove on happily. It was the first day of our holiday, we didn’t have a worry in the world. We screeched into Killarney by
lunchtime, whereupon we did what was expected and went straight into a pub for a half pint of the black stuff, and to ask directions to the bed and breakfast.

  The front of the pub had a huge window, so we could make out the mountains in the distance. Their enticing outline, framed like a picture, offered the promise of a far-off place, one that was just waiting to be discovered. I was loving Ireland already; it felt just a tiny bit like I’d gone home.

  The pub seemed surprisingly crowded for a lunchtime, filled mainly by men in overalls who sat on worn red, velvet-covered bar stools, busy nursing their pints. As we walked in, all the men turned to stare at Sugar and me. Clearly, they weren’t used to seeing women in a pub in the daytime.

  In the main bar, the carpet was so grubby that it looked like this particular pub had been housing cattle overwinter. A pungent mid-morning smell lingered from the night before, a mix of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Quiet chat rumbled in the background.

  We made our way up to the bar. The men in the pub seemed stuck in a time warp, outwardly friendly perhaps, but with a definite hint of misogyny. Luckily, we didn’t have time to find out. We had to find our bed and breakfast. Sugar took control.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the barman. ‘Do you know where the Looneys live?’ She asked this in all innocence, waving our bed and breakfast guidebook under his nose.

  The barman cast his eyes up thoughtfully, looking through the window to the mountains in the distance.

  ‘I couldn’t say for sure, there’s a lot of Looneys up in them hills,’ he said.

  We prayed he was referring to the surname, rather than the possible psychopathic tendencies of the local residents.

  The Looneys lived a fair way away, by the sound of it, so we set off again. This time, we had the barman’s somewhat vague directions, scribbled on the back of a beermat. As we drove higher into the hills, the lanes got narrower, and we got more and more lost. The only other life forms we witnessed were those of sheep. Sugar got quieter. We melded into the green. We became part of the scenery, our car, Emerald, now an almost invisible dot in the middle of the mountain. This was a landscape that only Heidi would find acceptable.