by Anne Berry
While Lola is sleeping, I grab the opportunity to write to Childlink. It has been on my mind ever since Merlin died. My life is also passing, and so must my mother’s be. Haste is in order, haste or capitulation, I’m not sure which. I am stranded in purgatory, a crush of yesteryear’s ghosts and today’s demons. I tell Childlink everything. Well, not quite everything because I don’t know everything, not yet. Still, I notice that as I accumulate documents my story is gaining fresh chapters, developing more elaborate layers of plot, more kinks and loops. My tale is expanding. It is metamorphosing from a paragraph into a short story, from a short story into a novella, from a novella into a full-blown novel. Who knows, before I finish I may have an epic on my hands.
As I strike the keys of our antique computer, and it clucks and whirs like a broody hen, I am keenly aware of my upgraded status. Now I am a member of Norcap, officially a seeker of my identity. I tap out my number with satisfaction and then survey it with a smile. I like to think it attaches a certain gravitas to my missive.
I was adopted through the Church Adoption Society, 4a Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1. From the information I received from Norcap, I was delighted to learn that Childlink hold the records of this particular society. Hopefully they will go back to 1948 when I was born.
I enclose copies of all the documents I have managed to collect so far, then bike into Dorking and post my letter. I check the mail each day and after a week I am rewarded with a reply, a summons. They send me an appointment for Tuesday, 9 March at 2.30 pm. There is a map enclosed with it.
*
I have a near terminal case of the jitters on the train ride to Waterloo. My condition is aggravated when, after this, I am shaken up like a martini on the underground to Clapham Common.
It only takes a few minutes to walk to Childlink’s offices. I am ushered in by a kindly middle-aged woman, who introduces herself as Mrs Belfrage. Her woolly hair, a shade of antique gold, is caught up in a sort of sausage at the back of her neck. She has grey-blue eyes that rest on me inquisitively. Her black shirt is unbuttoned to reveal a lacy lemon camisole. And a dark-blue scarf is draped below her double chin. She invites me to take a seat, and we sit and face each other over an impersonal desk. On the desk is an A4-size envelope. I cannot tear my eyes from it. When Mrs Belfrage gives it to me, my hands are trembling as if I have the palsy.
‘We uncovered quite a lot actually, Mrs Ryan,’ Mrs Belfrage confides with satisfaction. ‘You never can tell with old records. Things get wrongly categorised. Misfiled. Even discarded. It’s a pity, but tragically it occurs.’ She is well spoken and has a self-possessed manner, someone who is used to being listened to and obeyed. ‘What I generally do is leave the client alone for a bit to absorb the information. And then if you like we can talk for a few minutes.’ I thank her and tell her that, yes, I would appreciate some solitude. She rises and walks quietly from the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Things get wrongly categorised, I reflect. They get misfiled. Even discarded. I didn’t have to be told this. I had been discarded. The sleuth in me comes to the fore as I slide the Church Adoption Society’s inquiry sheet from the envelope. The rain that had just started falling when I arrived, tip-taps at the window as if wanting to be let in. I ignore the distraction, and turn my attention to the paper in my hand. Here again is confirmation of the hospital I was delivered in. But to my astonishment, I discover that I have been baptised. Yes, baptised on 6 February 1948, at an address in West End Lane, Hampstead. Apparently I am C of E, part of the Church of England flock. It confirms what I gleaned from Cousin Frank’s letters, that my father was a farmhand. But now I have a name. ‘Thorston Engel.’ I speak it aloud and it meets with my approval. ‘Thorston Engel. My daddy.’ But that is all there is contained in this box, no address, no date of birth, no additional information. They do not mention the fact that he was a POW, a prisoner of war. So he is still an enigma.
However to my surprise my mother’s box is crammed with details. Bethan Modron Haverd lived on Bedwyr Farm, Newport, Pembrokeshire. And her date of birth is recorded too. I do the maths on my fingers. She would be seventy-one years old now. I was, it says, my mother’s first born.
Why was I offered up for adoption? I speed read ahead, my heart racing as I brace myself to discover the cause. ‘Mother unable to support baby.’ The phrase is devastating in its brevity, incomprehensibly so. It sounds as random as choosing whether to buy a tin of sardines or a tin of baked beans for your tea. Shall I keep my baby? Or shall I pack her up and give her away. No more than a whim. Why was she unable? I burn to know. I cannot abide the possibility that she cast me off so easily. My eyes are watering as they run down the page. ‘Can all the necessary consents be obtained to the adoption of the child?’ And there is my answer in the adjacent box. ‘Yes.’ Just like that. No dilemma. No scenes. A tick and I was gone. Now you see me, now you don’t. I glower at it, as if I have been short-changed by a shop assistant – and in manner of speaking I have. A lifetime pondering the question why. Why? Why? Why? To discover, ‘Mother unable to support the child.’ It is like one of those Japanese poems, haiku. A few choice lines. But oh so much, so very much squashed into them. You may say an entire life.
Next, I lift out a document of my medical particulars, which it specifies has to be filled in by a qualified doctor. It gives my name, my date of birth, my birth weight – 7lbs and 6oz. Then in brackets it says, ‘(normal)’. Normal! Well, well. I certainly do not feel normal. But now to more scientific observations made by the good physician …
‘What do you consider the state of nutrition?’ I score well here. ‘Good,’ says the doctor, no doubt looking at my chubby flailing limbs. There follows a list of questions to which the practitioner has almost without exception answered ‘no’. ‘Has the child any affection of bones, muscles or joints? Are there any evidences of paralysis? Are there any evidences of syphilis? Has the child had fits? Has the child any discharge from the ears, or any ear trouble, and is its hearing normal?’ He slips up here I’m sorry to say, recalling my protracted medical history of ear infections, infections that still lay me low for weeks at a time. But we’ll consider this a minor hiccup in an otherwise proficient assessment of my health. ‘Is there any evidence of tuberculosis? Has the child been vaccinated? If a boy, do you consider circumcision necessary?’ He deviates from the yes/no answers in this instance and scribbles ‘(girl)’. For which reprieve, envisioning what circumcision involves, I am awash with relief. ‘Has the child normal control of bladder and bowels for its age?’ He has given me a ‘yes’. ‘Has the child been immunised for diphtheria?’ It appears not.
Then something that does gives me pause. ‘What ailments, if any, has the child had?’ Gastro-enteritis is listed here, the sickness so extreme that I was admitted to hospital. Immediately, I am curious. Perhaps I nearly died. Or did someone try to kill me? Was it my mother at her wits’ end? Unable to support me and unable to locate adoptive parents who could support me, she ground up laburnum seeds like a witch and put them in my milk? Now I am just being self-indulgently macabre. Because she was unable to support me, because she gave me up for adoption, it does not mean that she wanted to murder me!
On the second and last page of this medical record, the relentless quizzing continues. ‘Is its behaviour and speech normal for its age?’ I imagine we broke off and had a brief conversation in this interlude, me in baby gaga, him in medical jargon, before he gave his affirmation that it was. ‘Is the child’s mental and physical condition normal for its age? Yes. If you cannot recommend the child for adoption now, do you consider that by good nursing and proper care, it would become suitable for adoption? Recommended.’ This at least is decisive, a gold star, the British stamp that makes me worthy to be adopted. Hurrah!
My eyes travel on and I see I may have spoken too soon. ‘Is the child British, or have you any reason to believe that there is an element of foreign heredity such as Latin, Jewish or any oriental race, or any other nationality?�
� I am prepared for this one. ‘Father is German.’ I am grateful that I cannot see the doctor glare while he fills in the blank. I am affiliated with the Third Reich. A Fräulein in the making. ‘Is there any birthmark, slight physical deformity, facial irregularity or anything else about the child not mentioned above, which the proposing adopters would wish to know about? Small birthmark at top of scalp, of no consequence.’ I reach up and comb my fingers through my hair feeling for the familiar tiny ridge. ‘Would you recommend the case for adoption?’ A resounding ‘Yes’ from the doctor. His signature is a bit tricky to read. I decipher it as Dr. F. V. Lawson of Finchley Road, Hampstead. It is dated 24 April 1948. I was three and half months old.
Next I draw from the psychic envelope a copy of my birth certificate, already provided me by Clarice Goss. I move on greedy for more. ‘Notice of Application For An Adoption Order’ follows. And then my adoptive parents and my birth mother’s names and addresses, alongside the Church Adoption Society’s. I guess the notice was served on the adoption society, that they kept the details confidential, only passing on to Bethan the facts she needed to know. All these years it has been hidden in some dusty file, eventually washing up in the archives of Childlink. This was the court appearance my mother had glossed over when she told me I was adopted, refusing to say more. Now with an audible intake of breath I process the record realising that they were all there that day, we were all there, my birth mother, my adoptive parents and me. Clause three of the notice states, ‘That the said application will be heard before the Juvenile Court sitting at Avenue House, Finchley, N.3. in the said county, on the 14th day of September 1948 at the hour of Ten in the Forenoon and that you are severally required to attend before the court (and in the case of Mr and Mrs Pritchard to produce the said infant before the court).’ By then I would have been eight months old, having spent four months with the Pritchards. How must it have been for Bethan to have to attend the court in person, to see her baby again, to see me, to witness the adoption being made law before the final parting.
This is trumped by a copy of the Adoption of Children Act 1926, in which I discover that I was bought by the Pritchards for the princely sum of ten shillings – the same amount as they paid for Scamp, our mongrel puppy. That is to say that the Applicants, my adoptive father, the ‘stock controller’, and adoptive mother, the ‘housewife’, were ordered to pay costs of ten shillings. Here, too, is the whisper of scandal revealing that the birth mother, Bethan Modron Haverd, was unmarried. And last of all comes the adoption certificate, given at the General Register Office, Somerset House, London. The date of entry is 24 September 1948.
So there it is. My mother has a name and an address, though of course it is highly unlikely that she still resides there. Included are also a series of fascinating letters. Some are handwritten passing between my birth mother and Valeria Mulholland, Secretary for the Church Adoption Society. She is arranging for Bethan to come to London to finalise the adoption in court. Bethan appears reluctant to attend and virtually has to be ordered. Though she does write, and this is a dart to my heart, the pain of it both bitter and sweet, ‘I only wish I could have kept her.’ It is the gaps between the words that I fall through, the emotions omitted in the arrangement of letters. Bethan stresses that it is harvest time and they are very busy. The secretary proposes that she travel there and back in a day. Her father intervenes confirming she will attend and requesting that his daughter’s expenses are covered. So my legal adoption was slotted into the harvest with barely a pause for thought. Peculiarly, it is fear and not joy that has me by throat.
Mrs Belfrage returns with a restorative cup of tea in her hands. She leans on the side of the desk while I sip it and we chat. Afterwards, I am unable to recall a single word we said. She sends me back to Norcap. They paw over my trove jealously, and tell me in hushed tones that it is time for me to lay claim to my past. They give me a list of researchers. And that is how I come to employ my very own private investigator, Rosemary Dixon.
Months later, I will recall Mrs Belfrage and her salutary augury, delivered like the fairy godmother waving Cinderella off to the ball. ‘If you are successful, if you reach the rainbow’s end where your mother currently lives, tell your researcher not to make contact. Return to Norcap and they will appoint an intermediary, an expert who will mediate on your behalf.’
All that registered on me at the time was the intoxicating prospect of a meeting with my real mother, the one who wished she could have kept me, the one who could tell me about my father, the one who had the power to gather up the pieces of my life and return them to me sewn together, a made-to-measure outfit. But the warning, like snippets of waste fabric, I binned.
Chapter 22
Lucilla, 1960
LUCILLA HAD BEEN shown around the grammar school where she had been destined to enrol. She took an instant dislike to the stuffy corseted Victorian building. She wanted more. She had viewed Hillside Secondary Modern, standing in all its glassy splendour towards Friern Barnet. She had fluffed her eleven-plus deliberately in order to be rejected by the former and accepted by the latter, becoming a Hillside girl. Mr Ireland was her art teacher, her mentor, her guru. He was a stout man with thinning black hair splayed on his skull like the teeth of a comb. His features – large Roman nose, close-set dark hazel eyes, thick-lipped small mouth – sat in a solid stern face. His glasses were similar to her father’s, Lucilla noticed, though the frames seemed more flattering. And, like him, he smoked a pipe, the fragrance of it exuding from his skin as he stood behind her and surveyed her work. His praise came seldom, but when it did she swooped on it like a ravenous seagull. All other lessons paled into insignificance beside his. Anything might be endured so long as she could retreat to the art room, a space crammed with light, in which the inviting odours of paint and paper wafted.
Hillside’s playground was a concrete country all of its own, with a dividing line marked in red, like the Berlin Wall, running through it. On one side the tribe of girls set up camp, while on the other the boys charged about romping rowdily, their eyes straying over the boundaries from whence the enticing aromas of feminine hormones emanated. Where the playground ended the fields began. Here sports, athletics, netball, rounders, football and cricket were fought to the death like medieval tournaments. Further exploration led to a singularly pungent destination – the sewage farms. In the winter, the frosty air deadened the miasma. But throughout the summer months, the stench overcame them until their eyes stung and welled with tears, and their breaths came shallowly like overheated dogs. The windows had to be secured no matter how sultry the day. While in September, Old-Testament style, a plague of leggy crane flies descended, until the atmosphere was choked with them. The boys caught the gangly insects in the palms of their hands, and the girls squealed as they pulled the spindly legs off and smeared them on their trousers.
Lucilla’s desire to blend in was thwarted from the outset. The school uniform, the very thing guaranteed to give her anonymity, became an immediate source of contention. At the school outfitters her mother was disgruntled at the price of the plain blue jumper. It was an indiscriminate shade of navy, V-necked. And Lucilla wanted it to be baggy, hiding her narrow waist.
‘I’m not paying that,’ her mother complained. ‘It’s ridiculous when I can knit you another exactly like it for half the money.’
‘But we’re supposed to buy it here, all wear identical jumpers,’ Lucilla attested, becoming increasingly upset.
‘A blue pullover – that’s all it says,’ her mother asserted, studying the list with a contemptuous snort. ‘No one will be able to tell the difference.’
But they could, all the children could. For a start the shade of blue was brighter, not really navy at all. And the stitches looked big in comparison to the neat machine stitching. As if this wasn’t humiliation enough, her mother embellished the collar with a fawn trim. ‘But you’re not permitted to do this,’ Lucilla imputed.
‘It’ll keep you snug and it looks smart
. What more do they want?’ came her mother’s dissent, stubbornly pinning the pieces together. She would have it so and no one, no, not even the headmaster at Hillside would stop her. ‘You’re my daughter and I should have a say in what clothes you wear to school.’
Was she? Was she really her daughter? Lucilla questioned, setting off on the trek across the seemingly endless grey of the playground. She had only managed a few yards before her progress was impeded. ‘That’s not school uniform,’ a girl with brown hair pulled into fat bunches heckled.
‘You’ll get in trouble coming to school in that,’ another at her side contributed, turning up her nose desparagingly.
‘Most probably you’ll be sent home,’ chimed in a third.
And so it went on as she trudged towards the main school doors.
It wasn’t the headmaster but her form teacher, Miss Merrall, who tackled the break with dress code after register was taken. While the rest of the class were busy with a piece of English comprehension, she beckoned Lucilla to the front. ‘Lucilla Pritchard, isn’t it?’ she asked evenly. Lucilla nodded uncomfortably. The wool of the jumper was irritating her neck, and she could hear a couple of girls whispering about her. ‘Yes, Miss Merrall,’ the teacher prompted her, adjusting glasses with lenses the shape of tulip petals.
‘Yes, Miss Merrall,’ Lucilla parroted, unable to quite believe that glasses, those sobering ugly aids to sight that her parents wore, could look so delicate and decorative.
‘That jumper …’ Miss Merrall opened thoughtfully and not unkindly, ‘it’s not school uniform.’
‘I know,’ said Lucilla, head hung low combating tears.
‘You’re at secondary school now. We insist on school uniform.’
‘I know,’ said Lucilla again, her cheeks roasting apples.