She sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by half-full bin liners, to examine them. A letter from a Sister Monica wishing them every happiness. She shrugged, her mother had friends connected with the Church but she didn’t know the name. A scrap of paper with Sat – 10.30 – Girl scrawled on it. Her mother’s writing. And a birth certificate belonging to someone called Marion, mother’s name Joan Hawes. The same birthday as hers. She felt a rush of confusion. Had she had a twin? Don’t be stupid, different mothers. Why had Lilian got someone else’s birth certificate? She looked again and as comprehension dawned she felt a wave of confusion and horror. Oh, my God, the truth slapped at her, it’s me!
‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Pamela, still pale with shock and sick with the upset, demanded of her aunt. She had driven straight round there.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think she ever set out to keep it from you. When you were very small I remember she and Peter talking about explaining to you when you were older. Then, with your father dying.’
Except he wasn’t even my father, she thought bitterly.
‘It must have got harder as time went on,’ Sally said.
‘You knew. Who else?’
‘Just close family.’
‘I can’t believe it!’ Her face stretched with indignation, her indigo eyes glinted. ‘You should have told me, she should have. I’m almost thirty-one years old. Can you imagine what it’s like to suddenly find it’s all been a sham?’
Sally looked worried, her brow creased. She caught her lip between her teeth. ‘She was a mother to you, that wasn’t a sham.’
‘But she let me go through my whole life thinking I was theirs, and I wasn’t.’
‘You were all she wanted. She’d been to hell and back before they got you.’
‘What do you mean?’
Her aunt sighed. ‘She lost three babies, miscarriages. The last was very late on.’
‘Oh, God!’ Pamela put her face in her hands.
‘They said if she fell pregnant again it could kill her.’
‘Tell me about it, everything you can remember, please, all of it.’
Joan
The clinic was crowded and far too hot. Joan craved some fresh air but was worried that if she left she might miss her name being called. There were women of every age, shape, size and colour. All here to see Mr Pickford. She no longer pretended to read the magazine on her lap but rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, imagining the bay, the way it looked, not yesterday with a summer blue sky and white caps on the waves, but on a calm November day, a sea fret curling from the water, the gulls arced like nail marks in the sky. Visualisation, they called it in the support group. It was supposed to help in the healing process; a calm place to take yourself. Along with raw food and aromatherapy and the more toxic treatments that Mr Pickford provided. But was she healing, or dying?
She steered her thoughts away, to work. Good news. There was a chance that ‘Walk My Way’ would be used for a new television drama series; the ’60s were back in fashion. Her agent was cautiously optimistic but these things took forever, it seemed. Even if that didn’t come off, Paramount – well a company who worked for Paramount – had commissioned an original slow ballad for a bittersweet romantic comedy. She’d read the treatment and put a few ideas down on tape. They’d liked two of them and asked her to develop them. Plus she’d sold several recent songs to the pop market.
‘Joan Hawes.’
She put the magazine on the low table and followed the nurse along the corridor. She suspended her thoughts, focused on the carpet, the paintings hung on the wall.
Mr Pickford shook her hand warmly and gestured that she should sit. He took a moment to check her notes. He drew a small breath and looked across at her and she knew. A flutter of compassion in his eyes told her everything. She blinked hard and pressed her knuckles to her lips as he spoke. The words bumped past her – secondary, extensive, chemotherapy, hard to say.
She didn’t need the words anyway, the message was clear. She was dying. They could poison her and chop at her and hook her up to pumps and tubes but they would only be prolonging her illness.
‘I want to go home,’ she said when he had finished. ‘I don’t want any more treatment. I want to be at home from now on.’
He nodded. ‘You have support?’
‘Yes. What about medication . . . if . . . when . . .’
‘Your GP will be able to prescribe. I can write.’
‘Yes.’
She was relieved he offered no opposition to her quick decision, that he had no desire to push desperate last treatments on her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She bit her tongue and nodded. Sniffed. ‘Thank you.’
The nurse knew or else he’d sent some sort of signal to her. She asked Joan if she would like to make an appointment to see the counsellor. She shook her head, her eyes swimming over all the women in the waiting room: the young girl with the dreadlocks and her mother, the one with the wig, the woman in the sari whose little boy had fallen asleep on her lap, the very old woman with skin like crêpe, the business woman concentrating on her laptop. All the women. ‘Can you call me a taxi? To the station.’
‘You’ve come on your own?’
She nodded. Penny came when she could but today’s appointment clashed with her school inspection. She had considered ringing in sick but Joan had persuaded her to go. ‘If I need more treatment I’d rather you took the time then.’ And if I’m dying.
‘Yes, my friend couldn’t come today.’
‘I’ll get you that taxi.’
It ran in families. They’d talked about that in the group, fearful for their daughters and grand-daughters. They implied she was lucky, no children to worry about. She had thought about owning up but it didn’t seem fair. Their children were real, they had names and faces, they came to the hospital and saw their mothers, they shared their lives, they heard them throwing up after radiation treatments, saw the clumps of hair in the bathroom bin, heard the talk of biopsies and percentages, prosthetics and remission. They loved them. Her daughter was barely fact, someone else’s daughter now.
Pamela
The waiting room was decorated in pastel colours. The walls held a display about adoption – clippings from recent newspaper articles, child’s drawings, poems. A leaflet rack had caught her attention on her first visit. Tracing Your Family, Sibling Attraction (oh God!), How To Search.
She had found out about the adoption charity in a leaflet from the library. She had spent most of the first session in tears and inarticulate, and when she had managed to talk it had been about the deaths of her father and mother rather than about discovering she was adopted. The second session had been just as harrowing, though she’d talked more about the adoption.
Today she would see her adoption records. They had been easy to get hold of. The counsellor, Donna, had been surprised that Lilian had Pamela’s original birth certificate.
‘It’s most unusual. Someone must have given it to your parents. Anyway, it means we have the details we need if you decide to send for your records.’
Donna had talked about tracing too but Pamela would never do that. It would be like a betrayal.
‘Pamela.’ Donna invited her through to the room. There were couches and easy chairs, a box of tissues prominent on the low table. Her hands felt clammy as Donna talked about having the records and drew them from a folder.
Pamela read the details.
Joan Hawes, shorthand typist, aged nineteen. Father unknown. Baby expected April, possibly later. Family don’t know she is pregnant. Plans to move away after baby is born. Baby girl born May twenty-fourth. Baptised Marion. Sixth July, baby placed for adoption with Mr and Mrs Gough, 8 Skinner Lane, Chorlton.
‘What’s this –’ Pamela pointed to a sum: two figures added up to make £4.10s.6d – ‘her bill?’
‘Yes. There would be a charge for the nights she stayed there and the smaller figure would be for the ba
by.’
Me. Sudden tears blinded her. She pulled out a tissue. Donna said nothing. Pamela wiped her eyes and read on.
Discharged, July tenth. Four days later.
‘I can’t imagine it.’ She blew her nose. ‘I know I’ve never had a baby but walking away . . .’ She blew her nose.
‘It’s very difficult. We see birth mothers who tell us it’s affected their whole lives.’
‘There were so many lies,’ she said. ‘I asked her, my mum, Lilian – I asked her once what time of day I was born, for a chart, astrology thing, and she told me, made it up. She even told me what my birth was like.’
‘What did she say?’
‘“Straightforward.” She’d had three miscarriages before they got me and she never told me about any of that. I thought we were close. I thought we had a really good relationship.’ She stopped talking and put her hand to her mouth. It hurt too much. After a minute she began to talk again, haltingly trying to pick her way through muddled thoughts, around feelings that caught at her like brambles.
‘I’ve never really had a serious relationship. I’ve never been close to settling down or getting married or having children. I used to think it was work, putting everything into that and . . . it didn’t seem all that unusual, lots of single women, modern times, but now . . .’ She paused. Donna listened. ‘First Joan, then my father, now Mum. They’ve all left me.’ She turned to the other woman, her face creasing, eyes hot with pain, lips stretching with grief. ‘They’ve all left me,’ she cried, ‘and they all lied, it’s no wonder I can’t trust anyone.’
Joan
‘It’s all coming to you, there’s no one else. Tommy’s no need of anything. There’s just George. I’d like him to have the platinum discs, for ‘Walk My Way’ and ‘Swing Me’.
Penny nodded. Joan knew she was fighting not to cry. But what did it matter? What were a few more tears between friends. More than friends. Lovers, soul mates.
‘I want to be cremated,’ she said. Penny made a small choking noise. ‘And my ashes scattered on the sea out there. I’ve written it all down. It’s in the blue box with the will. Oh, Penny, come here!’
She gathered the weeping woman into her arms, stroking her coarse hair. The texture had changed over time as Penny’s straw-coloured hair had gone grey.
Joan rested her chin lightly on Penny’s head, felt Penny’s hot, damp tears on her neck. She looked out through the window to the horizon. Almost noon and a strange brilliance, bright as neon, stretched the width of the skyline. Above it storm clouds hovered and solitary seagulls were tossed by mercurial winds.
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she said quietly when Penny had calmed down. ‘You know that. I haven’t given up. I still love you, I still want to share my life with you, stay here . . .’
And there were all the other things too. All the tunes in her head, the verses, the phrases and words waiting to be found and shaped and completed. All the songs she wanted to write. Would never write.
‘Joan—’
‘Sshhh. But if it is time, if I have to go, then I want it to be here, to be with you, to make the best of it. A good death.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t. Don’t be sorry. No regrets.’
‘No.’ The women clasped hands.
‘God, I must look ghastly,’ Penny said.
Joan surveyed the bloated red nose, the watery eyes and blotchy skin. ‘Yep.’
Penny laughed and fought not to cry again.
Joan laid her head back against the headboard. ‘Get me a drink?’
‘Tea?’
‘I was thinking Pernod.’
‘Pernod? Do we have Pernod?’
‘No, don’t think so. It used to be my special drink, for celebrations, years back.’
Penny raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re celebrating?’
Every moment, Joan thought. She shook her head. ‘A glass of red.’ It might make her nauseous, sometimes it did but she loved to savour the taste. And she might manage another couple of hours before her next medication.
Penny went and returned with two glasses of wine. She climbed on to the bed beside Joan and they sat peaceably for a while. Penny spoke first; Joan caught the nervous edge in her voice before she made sense of the words.
‘Joan, the baby you had, the one that was adopted. Do you want to do anything? Try and contact her?’
Joan stiffened. ‘No.’ Definitely not. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. I’m dying. I couldn’t expect . . . I’ve never considered it before and it wouldn’t be right now. And I think if she’d wanted to find me, well, she’d have done it by now.’
‘Would you have liked that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s difficult to think about. It was a very unhappy time. Having a baby was the last thing on earth I wanted. I know I did the right thing and I’ve tried as much as I could to put it behind me. If she’d come looking, it would have brought it all back. I think that was part of why I moved to London, to create some distance.’
‘You’ve never really talked about it.’
‘I don’t think I can.’
There was a pause but Joan sensed Penny needed to hear more. She took a breath, sipped her wine.
‘What did you call her?’
‘Marion. I liked the name at the time, that’s all. No other reason.’
She had a giddy surge of memory. Little Megan, the one with red hair, talking about names and initials and Joan not wanting to pick a name, not wanting to choose clothes, not wanting any of it. ‘It was awful, Penny. There was another girl there at the time, Caroline she was called, very young – only sixteen – and her Grandma died and they wouldn’t let her go to the funeral.’
‘Oh, god.’
‘Would have let the cat out of the bag you see.’
‘Thank god times have changed.’
Joan drank some more and felt a wave of fatigue flood her limbs and up her spine.
‘I think I’ll rest a bit.’ She put her glass down.
‘Shall I leave the curtains?’
‘Yes.’
‘Penny?’
‘Yes?’
‘Love you.’
Penny nodded and kissed her softly on the lips.
Joan lay, facing the sea, eyes drifting open now and then. Noting the slow progress of the storm clouds, seeing how the sea changed from silver to lead. She could feel the electricity on the air, hear the snap of the wind in the eaves of the house. She shut her eyes and watched lightning sizzle and heard the low rumble of thunder leading to the crack at its heart. And she prayed that wherever Marion was, whoever she had become, that she was happy and healthy and loved.
Pamela
After getting her records and a couple more sessions crying to the counsellor Pamela had put it all on one side and got on with her life. Work was frantic. There were mergers going on with the Netherlands and Portugal. She spent four months in Lisbon and considered emigrating but there never seemed to be time to look into the pros and cons. When she did return to her cottage it felt just like home and she knew that she would have to keep it, and had she the energy to keep two homes? There was no time for anything. She still missed her mother, still caught herself wanting to ring and tell her good news, ring and say she was home, and then found herself hurting afresh as she remembered that she was dead, still dead. Would always be dead.
Curiosity about her background emerged very gradually, in fits and starts. She would go for weeks without giving it a thought then a chance conversation or news item would catch her unawares. I’m adopted too, she would think. She began to wonder more about Joan. Who had been the father? It still hurt to think that Peter, her beloved father, was not her natural parent. They had been so close. She remembered how he would play with her, football and snakes and ladders. Almost like a child himself, except he also told her about the wider world, injustice and the need to fight it. He’d talked about apartheid and human rights – to a six year old. They’d released N
elson Mandela this year; there would be a new South Africa but only last week they’d seen pictures of the Serbian death camps. Was the world any more humane since he had died? It didn’t seem so.
And her natural father, what would he be like? What if she was the result of rape or of incest? What had happened to Joan afterwards? If she tried to trace her what might she find? An alcoholic, a derelict; she might be in prison or on the streets. She could be happily married with grandchildren by now. Did she ever think of the baby she had given up?
Her curiosity grew but she resisted it. Then Sally died. Ed was already in a home, his mind had gone and Sally had not been able to care for him herself. ‘I can cope with the feeding and changing and all, it’s the fact that he’s not there, that he doesn’t love me anymore that’s getting me down so,’ she had told Pamela the last time they’d spoken.
As she stood in Southern Cemetery, one of a handful of mourners, she realised that her past was gone. There was no family any more, no one to tell her how it was, no one who remembered her father or could remind her of her childhood. Ian, Sally’s son, was there, but he didn’t remember Peter and he lived down in Cornwall. They’d probably never see each other again. There was no past and as she looked ahead there was no future either, no children, not even any nephews or nieces. The sense of being completely alone and unattached shook her to the core.
Two weeks later she wrote to the National Organisation for the Counselling of Adoptees and Parents
and applied to go on their register. If Joan had ever done the same they would find a match.
NORCAP wrote to tell her there was no match. She was bitterly disappointed. In-between business trips she tried to trace the Hawes family from the electoral records. But although she was able to find the parents resident in Manchester until 1978 there was no mention of Joan. Where had she gone afterwards? It took hours to get nowhere and she gave up for several months but then resumed her search. This time she searched the records for a marriage. She found several Joan Hawes and spent time and money contacting the relevant registrar’s departments only to find that each was a false lead.
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