The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  ‘And I can hear your heart, Thorston, hear it replying,’ I said.

  After the summer came and went, I said it again, feeling the ridges of his ribs against my cheek, letting my thoughts keep pace with its beat. But what I did not add is that sometimes when we lay like this I imagined I heard another heart, a minute heart flickering like the batting of a dragonfly’s wing deep inside me. My bump was starting to show. The sun was hot and Dad wanted to know why I kept my jacket on, buttoned up over my dungarees, sweat dewing my brow.

  ‘Get some air to your arms, Bethan,’ he grumbled. ‘What’s up with you? Are you sickening for something?’ And he took his hat off and scratched his scalp. I’d felt the babe quickening for some while by then. Such a weird sensation. Like a petal brushing inside you, and you having no control over it. With the arrival of autumn, I knew time was running out for me. It was like being propelled forwards and not being able to apply the brakes. And I wasn’t just moving forward, I was accelerating. I felt Mam’s eyes on me at the close of the day, at breakfast when I couldn’t stomach anything, at supper when I was so starving I was truly ready to eat our horse. She didn’t look at my thickening waist but at my face, as if she detected something in it that had not been there before.

  Some may find this hard to credit but I didn’t make an announcement to Thorston. It was as though it was happening to the three of us. He put his hand on the tiny dome of my bump one day, and when she moved wonder wiped his face. He told me that we would marry, very soon, that we could live in Germany or in Wales, either, that I could choose. And I smiled and said that I didn’t mind Alaska, not so long as we were together. He said we should start to make plans. And I begged him, not yet, not quite yet. I asked him to kiss me again, over and over again, because I knew I would have to commit to memory that sensation, to record it in its most minute detail. The weightlessness that came first. And the light, bright and radiant, a comb of fire making me crackle down to my toes. And then the pressure that was not like pressure, not like persuasion, but fusion. And, after that, the flowering of me, so that I became exquisite. I think if there is a heaven that is how it feels being there, as if from moment to moment you are flowering, always coming to glory, untarnished, immortal, perfection.

  We went together to tell my parents. I don’t know if Thorston really believed in his fables, if he thought my dad would frown for a moment, then take him into the front room to question him as to his intentions. I don’t know if he thought Mam and I would walk the kitchen floor, to and fro, to and fro. I don’t know if he thought they would re-emerge after an hour, Dad with a huge smile on his face and him looking sheepish. Then my mam would rummage in the dresser and bring out the dusty old bottle of sherry she keeps there, and we would all share a glass, musty and syrupy. And there would be lots of back slapping and chortling. Was this the happy ending he idealistically envisaged?

  ‘Mam,’ I said. And she spun round as if she was expecting this, spun round, interrupting her washing up at the sink, suds on her hands, studying the pair of us. We weren’t touching, only standing together shoulder to shoulder. I didn’t have to say no more. She gave a barely perceptible nod, and there was such a forlorn darkening of her eyes, such a withdrawal from me. My dad came in then, through the kitchen door. He’d taken his boots off in the porch. I remember spotting a hole in his knitted sock that one of his big toes was peeping through. He was frowning, but it was a black frown, a malignant frown, a dangerous frown. He didn’t like Thorston coming into the house even after all these years. He was bare-headed, his grey hair standing up. Then he drew his hands over the stubble on his chin, over his whole face, both hands as if he was scrubbing it clean.

  ‘What’s all this then?’ he said quietly. We’d swivelled round to face him. Slowly, I rolled up my baggy sweater and showed him my bump, my bump pushing against the print of my dress. First his face drained of colour, and after it went a ghastly yellowish grey. His eyes flashed, and the turquoise of his irises was the hue of dreams no more. They had transformed into the impenetrable hardness of nightmares. They looked, bulging as they did, as if they might fly from their sockets. He’s a stocky man and his muscles seemed to bunch up, making him even more solid, like stones under his skin. The dogs had come in with him and were lying by the range warming themselves. Now they seemed to sense the disturbance in their master’s mood, to smell his rage. They lifted their heads in quick succession and snarled, teeth bared.

  ‘Mr Haverd, please do not be angry. I love your daughter and I want to marry her. I shall –’ But Thorston didn’t get any further. My dad made a fist and slammed it into his face. I heard a crack, a terrible noise. Thorston’s spectacles fell to the floor, broken. His nose was like pulp, all bleeding and mashed up. He cannot see very well without his spectacles, and he dropped to his knees and began scrabbling on the floor trying to find them. Blood was dripping from his face. I stepped between him and my dad. I can’t recall what I said. Speech gushed out, pleas, pleas against all the injustices of this world that ever were. Mam was gasping and crying, arms bound around herself as if to ensure she remain upright, that she did not crumple. The dogs came growling and snapping at Thorston’s heels. My dad’s hand sang through the air and he landed me such a slap against my cheek that I nearly overbalanced. He hadn’t struck me before. He is a stern man, and he can speak to you in a tone that makes you shrivel with fear, but before this he had not once raised his hand to me. Thorston scrambled to his feet, the broken glasses hanging off one ear now, looking askew, almost comical.

  ‘There is no need for this. I beg you, Mr Haverd.’ And he began to comfort me. He tried to draw me into his arms, but my dad gave him an almighty shove and he fell down again. This time the lenses popped out of his spectacles. He made no attempt to retrieve them. The dogs were slathering and clacking their teeth. I pushed them back and told them to shut up. Dad stood there, legs astride, his barrel chest heaving. Thorston clambered shakily to his feet, stepping on the lenses as he did so, splintering them. He hauled up his head bravely, blinking like some nocturnal creature that has just crawled out from the safe shadows of its burrow into a blaze of boiling light. The dogs crept forwards and began to lick up the spatters of blood. He looked so vulnerable, a small slight boy. And then tears came to his eyes and began spilling down his cheeks. And the tears mixed with his blood so that they were red, streaking his pale face with red lines. And it was the most awful thing I had ever seen, each tear tugging on the sinews of my heart. I thought that it was going to stop, that my heart, the heart whose drumming had soothed him, would give up with a final squeeze.

  ‘Get out!’ my dad rasped. ‘Get out of my house, you Nazi scum!’ His voice was a millstone grinding the air. Thorston turned his tear-stained face to my mother in appeal but she repelled him, casting her eyes down at the floor. Then my dad issued his ultimatum: ‘I will give you fifteen minutes. If you are not off my property by then I will fetch my gun. I will load it. I will hunt you down with my dogs. And when I find you I will put a bullet in your head.’

  It was very quiet then. Even the dogs slunk off, tails between their legs. I felt as if I wasn’t quite there, as if I was invisible. Thorston and I exchanged a look. Not a long look, a second, perhaps two or three. I could smell his blood, and some stew bubbling on the stove, and the tarry scent of the soapy washing-up water. And I wanted to be sick. My dad stood back from the door, snorting in and out his breaths. And then the man I loved seemed to melt into the basalt black essence of the night.

  My dad’s eyes took me in, head to toe and back again, as if he did not recognise me, as if he was filled with revulsion at what he saw before him. ‘May God forgive you, Bethan, for what you have done because I never shall!’ he said.

  Without responding I went upstairs to my room. I did not switch on the light. I used the tip of a finger to draw a circle on the condensation that clung to the windowpane. I spied Thorston through its lens, a bent figure, crushed then swallowed by the night. And it came to me then,
with our baby banging on the door of me, that I would not love again. I would go through the motions of my life, and uncomplainingly I would do what was asked of me. I would submit. From this moment to the moment of my death I would make no fuss, cause no further disruption. I would make reparation. I sold my soul that day, not to the devil but to my father. Although there was nothing to choose between them.

  Over the next week my parents treated me as if I was a curse, as if being in the same room as me they risked eternal damnation. They looked away or dropped their gazes when I walked by. We ate our meals without a word. It was as if someone had died. I recalled when we heard that Brice was dead, and it was the same, like every day was a funeral, only this wasn’t grief it was blind hatred and bigotry and dogmatism. The hell of it was that I didn’t have death in my belly but life, a life made from love. I ached for my love, I ached all over the way I did when I had the mumps as a child. Dad didn’t want me working on the farm now that they knew about the baby, as if I was an abomination, an incarnation of evil, of original sin. He made me stay in the house all day. It felt like I was suffocating for want of fresh air and the feel of the wind buffeting my cheeks. Lying on my bed through those long hours, staring up the ceiling, I began to have wild thoughts of running away, of finding my love, of us escaping together. Only they wouldn’t let me out, not even for a walk. That was when the idea of writing to him came to me, writing a letter. He had been a prisoner of war staying in the camp in Llanmartin and I thought, well … I hoped, prayed actually, that he’d gone back there, and not left for Germany already. Of course it was no longer a POW camp but if he hadn’t returned there he might have left a forwarding address. Someone might recognise the name. They might remember him. They might know where to send it.

  I firmed up my plan in middle of the night. I would write, explain that I had made a dreadful mistake, that I should have left with him, that we were destined to spend our lives together, to marry and bring up our child. I realised as I lay there feeling our baby flutter inside me and imagining the little arms and legs paddling in the warm safe pool beneath my linked fingers that I was being irrational. Even if I wrote him a letter, how would I get it to him when I might as well be in prison? And if I did find a way of posting it, honestly what were the odds that he had gone back to Llanmartin, or that they had a record of his address? The war was over, and most probably he’d journeyed to his homeland by now, Germany. If not there, then I could take a pin, shut my eyes and stick it in a map of Europe. It was an unwinnable lottery. And if I was lucky and he was still in Britain he might be anywhere – Ireland, or Scotland or England. Only a miracle would put me where I belonged, with the man I love so much, so very much, that it hurts, physically hurts. But you know, my love was a fever, it was a fire raging through my body and I couldn’t be logical, practical. So I got up and wrote my letter by candlelight. I decided that if I switched on the light my mam and dad might be disturbed and come to investigate. I keep a candle by my bed to pray by at night. So I s’ppose it was apt because this would be a prayer, a prayer from the heart. The proper writing paper was downstairs and I didn’t dare fetch it. I made do with scribbling my letter to Thorston in a notebook I keep in the drawer by my bed.

  Dear Thorston,

  I miss you. I miss the feel of your body holding mine. I miss your kisses. I miss you inside me, part of me. I miss your eyes, so kind and loving behind the lenses of your spectacles. Only you don’t have spectacles now. They’re broken. But the day after you left I crept to the bins when Mam was busy, and I found some of pieces of glass, still with your blood on them, and the tiny wire frame all screwed up, and I kept them in my pocket. I have them hidden under my mattress now in a small box. Thorston, I believe I shall die if I can’t see you again. You’re the father of my baby. We are meant to be together. I am sending this to the camp at Llanmartin. I don’t know how yet but I’ll find a way. I must find a way. If you’re not there perhaps they know where you are, where you’ve gone to, perhaps they’ll forward it on. If this reaches you, get word to me, tell me where to go and when, and I promise I’ll be there. I don’t care about the rest, so long as when I wake up in the morning it’s your head on the pillow next to mine.

  I love you – always and forever.

  Bethan x.

  Next day I stole an envelope, from the drawer in Dad’s desk, and addressed it to Mr Thorston Engel, POW Camp Llanmartin, Newport, Wales. I’d nowhere else to turn and it was worth a try. I didn’t have a stamp either and that’s where I thought I was going to flounder, that the letter would stay tucked under a scrap of carpet in my bedroom. And then the most wonderful thing happened, and it was a miracle, a real miracle. Mr Powell the vet came to look at one of the cows that was in calf and very sickly. And I was peeping out of the window at his car when I saw his daughter Aeron climbing out from the back seat. Aeron – Aeron my friend! We used to sit together at the same desk in school. It was before the war and it felt like another lifetime, but if I remembered her then there was a good chance that she would remember me. When her father was on his rounds and called in, she’d never been with him before. Don’t you see? It was a sign. The miracle I needed. And then I heard her ask my dad where I was, if she could see me. Oh Lord, I held my breath until I was so light-headed I almost fainted. And I clutched my hands together and my eyes bored straight through the ceiling and the roof of the house and up into the sky where God sits. When my dad said yes, and nodded in the direction of the house, I fell to my knees. God be praised, I thought. God and all your angels be praised. I dashed to the carpet, lifted up a corner, grabbed the letter and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I smoothed out the wrinkles in the pile hurriedly so nobody would suspect.

  Next moment and Mam knocked on my door. She checked what I was wearing, a baggy jumper and trousers. You couldn’t see my bump. I didn’t show under all the folds of a green, orange and beige hand knit that she made for Brice. She didn’t meet my eye, just looked at the floor, at the scrap of carpet that only minutes ago was shielding my letter – ironic that.

  ‘You have a visitor,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Oh! And who might that be, Mam?’ I acted all surprised as if I couldn’t imagine who had come calling.

  ‘Aeron. Aeron Powell, the vet’s girl. You can see her for five minutes in the front room.’ I jumped up but Mam immediately barred the doorway, arms flung wide like a prison guard. ‘You’re not to tell her about … about …’ She broke off and nipped in a breath as if to fortify her. ‘About that,’ she whispered, indicating my belly with a nod.

  ‘No Mam, of course not,’ I retorted as if I was shocked that she should ever suggest such a thing. ‘It’s secret. I understand.’

  ‘Fine,’ she returned all clipped, her mouth paying the word out like a miser, a lifetime’s ration of disillusionment framing it with her bitter expression. ‘Five minutes mind, no more.’

  ‘I’ll watch the clock Mam. I promise,’ I vowed solemnly. I considered saying cross my heart and hope to die but thought better of it. If there was a hope that I would see my Thorston again then I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live.

  ‘I’ll come and fetch you,’ Mam called after me as I clattered downstairs, as if she couldn’t so much as trust me to tell the time.

  Aeron was standing by window and she swivelled as I came in. Her long red hair was plaited in one thick plait down her back, and she was wearing a plain Hunter green dress and a grey cardigan. She had grown a lot taller so that she had caught up with me. She used to be much shorter. She smiled shyly.

  ‘Hello, Bethan. I’ve been wondering how you were. So when Dad said he was coming over I asked if I could come along for the ride.’ She had grown up a lot, so that she seemed more of a woman than a girl, as I expected I did. And yet she had retained an external layer of finicky neatness, which served as an efficient deterrent to untidy emotional advances. ‘Your mam says you’re not well so I can only say hello. She says she’s frightened I could catch something.’ She scratched her sh
oulder with a delicate finger and took a precautionary step backwards. I glanced at the clock face, and saw that a whole minute had gone. I had to speed up, but I didn’t want her to sense that I was panicking either.

  ‘Hello, Aeron, how nice to see you,’ I greeted her, crossing to where she stood. She inspected me and the expression on her face was one of disparagement. ‘It’s a bit of a cold, that’s all.’

  She looked down her nose at me. I recognised I must look scruffy, my hair loose and tangled, my clothes more suited to a man. But anyone kept indoors for five days, pale, pregnant, sick with love and desperate, would have trouble putting on a happy face. Another swift glimpse at the clock. Oh why was the minute hand moving so fast? I lowered my voice. The door was open, but I could hear Mam banging the broom about in the kitchen so I felt safe. ‘Aeron, perhaps could you do me a small favour. We were such great friends at school and I know I can trust you,’ I started, my tone friendly, appealing to our childhood bond. I could feel the envelope in my pocket and I drew it out, trying as hard as I could to maintain a casual air, as if I was going to ask her to perform the most ordinary errand in Wales. ‘I have a letter.’

  ‘So I see,’ observed Aeron, a touch of asperity in her tone. I presented the back of the envelope to her, preventing her from reading the address.

  I had to dive in or I would be too late. My miracle would fade and be trampled into the dust. My letter would be good for nothing but the fire. ‘I want you to post this for me. It’s terribly important.’ Her green eyes lit with interest. She was intrigued, if not the ideal reaction then a close second. ‘But you have to swear that you won’t tell your parents, that you’ll keep this between us, for the sake of our friendship, for the sake of all the hours we shared, in the classroom and in the playground.’ A pause while I racked my brain for something that would tip the balance. ‘The skipping games. The daisy chains. The friendship bracelets we plaited from grass.’