by Anne Berry
That is my only terror, Lowrie discovering that before her there was a gift baby, that she was the consolation prize. It would be over for us if that happened. The tenuous structure of our scaffolding lives would collapse under the burden of truth. She would comprehend all of it in a minute, that she was a substitute baby, that she did not make the grade, that as far as I was concerned she was only an echo of the real thing, an echo of my firstborn, an echo of Lucilla. I would prefer to die than that she has to come to terms with this. It may not be much but I can give her some peace of mind. At least let her have the pretence of her family intact. I have determined to take my gift baby with me to my grave.
I fumble for my cigarettes, for the packet on the bedside table, for my lighter. ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ says Lowrie as if scripted. ‘It’s not good for your heart.’
‘But it’s good for my soul,’ I cackle in return, lighting up and inhaling deeply through dry lips. I have a bad heart by the way. When this was confirmed to me by some cardiac specialist in hospital, I’m afraid I laughed. He looked perplexed. ‘I thought you were making a moral judgement,’ I commented dryly. He didn’t even smile. I have come to the conclusion that a sense of humour is a rare commodity in hospitals.
After Lowrie has gone, I reread my letter, a mysterious letter from a lady called Rosemary Dixon. It is all laid out very formally so I’m pondering if she is a solicitor – though there is no heading on the writing paper. And of all the people to enter my head, comes little Tilley Draper, our evacuee. The prospect that she may get in touch, that we may resume our friendship after all these years, is almost as enticing as finding out that I have inherited an indecent fortune. She was as fortifying as a tablespoon of tonic.
The following day, however, brings another letter. I inspect the envelope, the postmark. It is definitely another missive from Rosemary Dixon. I open it seated in my chair by the fire. It is summer, early summer, one of those days that begins cool as autumn, with the temperature climbing in the afternoon until it feels like cricketing weather. But it is not the afternoon yet and, as I button up my cardigan, I am aware of a coldness that seems to penetrate the marrow of my bones. Instantaneously, I am dyslexic, the words coming apart like the carriages of a derailed train. But her name is whole as my lips move to speak it. ‘Lucilla!’ It is not Tilley who has tumbled from the ragbag of the past but Lucilla, my gift daughter.
It must be a full fifteen minutes before the gist of Rosemary Dixon’s manuscript penetrates. She is a private detective who has been seeking me out for her client, Lucilla Ryan. Ryan. Her married name I realise.
Lucilla, the daughter that you had in 1948, the baby who was adopted by Harriet and Merfyn Pritchard, and who grew up in London, has written to you. The letter is enclosed. I hope this will not be too much of a shock for you. But I assure you, Lucilla intends you nothing but goodwill.
It is nearly midnight when I drum up the courage to read it. I lock the front and back doors, the windows. I pull the curtains. I take pains to make sure that there aren’t any gaps that a neighbour might peep through. I disconnect the telephone and turn off all the lights. I have a torch. I climb into bed fully dressed with it and hide under the duvet. And still I am paranoid that someone is out there spying on me from the darkness. I turtle-neck out my head, and the hand gripping the torch snakes. Lines of light dissect my room. I am looking for a little girl with flat brown eyes and an empty stare, a little girl with a plain solemn face and a lonely acceptance in the set of her mouth.
‘Lowrie?’ I whisper. ‘Lowrie? Don’t be scared. I must look a sight with all this cream slathered over my face. But see here and here, I haven’t scratched. You’ll be pleased to know I haven’t scratched.’ There she is crouching in the corner. The torch catches the gleam of her eyes. ‘You mustn’t be frightened. She’s not coming. I won’t let her come. I won’t let her into our lives, your life. It’s only a letter. After I’ve read it I’m going to tear it up.’ But even as I say this I know I will not do it. These few words I shall salvage, hide them at the bottom of my jewellery box. She is humming to herself, my echo daughter, some Welsh ballad her father will have sung her. ‘You have my word on it.’ In the cone of light, her eyes gaze back challengingly. ‘But … but I have to hear what she has to say. I owe her that.’
I shift the bag of my bones under the cover again and spread the letter out on the mattress. The duvet capes me like a blanket of snow once did. I relive our lovemaking, the fire in my blood, her conception. Then Lucilla speaks to me.
Dear Bethan,
I shan’t call you mother, although that is how I think of you, as my mother. Please don’t be upset by my writing to you, by my wanting to know you. And please, please understand I mean you no harm. Over the years I have gathered information, papers, certificates, gradually building my history, your history. I have my birth certificate and copies of your birth and marriage certificates, and the letters exchanged between you and the Church Adoption Society. So many certificates, all testifying to who I am, where I came from. And so I know that my father was a German prisoner of war working on your farm, Thorston Engel. I’ve tried to imagine how it must have been, what you went through. But I like to think that you didn’t forget me.
The Pritchards, my adoptive parents, … well, we got by. And I have a family of my own now. My husband is a gardener. His name is Henry. We live in a cottage in the grounds of a large country estate outside Dorking, Brightmore Hall. We were married in 1969 and we have two children, Gina and Tim. All grown up now, and Gina is married with a daughter of her own, Lisa – your great-granddaughter. I’ve built a good life for myself.
I hope that you’ve been happy, that you weren’t scarred by events. I don’t want anything from you. It would mean so much to me if we could correspond, be like pen pals, get to know each other through letters, send photographs. It would be wonderful if we could just be friends.
But I am running before we have taken our first steps, our baby steps. Again I urge you not to be alarmed. Rosemary, my researcher, says that you may not have told your family about my existence, that this communication may cause you to be upset. Please believe me when I say I am not a threat to you. We can take this as slowly as you like, and you may trust me absolutely to keep our confidences. If there comes a day when we can be a part of each other’s lives, however tiny, then it will all have been worth it.
With warmth, your daughter, Lucilla
Then suddenly I am gasping for air, the stabbing in my chest feeling less like a penknife and more like a carving knife. My left arm is tingling and I feel as if someone is strangling me. I rest for a full minute. She has come, after all these years she has come. And in a second I know. I know that I do not want her. I do not want her rocking the foundations of my life, breaking the tenuous link I have with my Lowrie. A memory like a sudden drop in temperature freezes out all other thoughts. I am with my mam in the front room of Bedwyr Farm. Lowrie has gone to see the horses with my dad. The words she mouthed that day are carved on my consciousness. ‘She must never know. Never!’
All of my adult life I have hankered after the baby I gave to the Pritchards, rejecting the baby that came in her wake. Now I am prepared to do anything, anything, to maintain the brittle bridge that joins me to Lowrie, to the daughter I possess. And so … and so for the second time I scheme to give my gift baby away. I write back at midnight. I am becoming a nocturnal creature, one who would be at home with vampires, werewolves and unclean spirits.
Dear Ms Dixon,
I was extremely upset by your correspondence, your enclosure. Honestly I never dreamed the purpose of your writing to me.
Lucilla’s letter was a shock. As I suffer from a heart condition it has been quite an ordeal. I am pleased that she has a lovely husband and family. I have a grown-up daughter, Lowrie, and for many reasons our relationship has not been an easy one. She is ignorant of Lucilla’s existence, of my past. She would be devastated by such news. I cannot run the risk of her making such a d
iscovery. Unfortunately, however traumatic for Lucilla, I have to factor this in to my decision. It is too late. I wish neither of you to contact me ever again. It is vital that the finality of this is conveyed to your client. As an investigator, I expect that you have a professional code of conduct. I ask that you adhere to it in this volatile situation, and withdraw as I have requested.
Yours sincerely,
Bethan Sterry
I seal it and fumble in the drawer of the dressing table for a stamp. In the early hours, I steal from my bed, shrug on a coat and, while the residents in my road are still sleeping, I walk to the postbox and mail it. The following morning my skin has improved to such an extent you would think I had undergone a miraculous cure overnight.
Chapter 27
Laura, 2000
WHEN THE ROSE gardens at Brightmore Hall are in full bloom, Rosemary Dixon writes to Bethan again. The same reply, only more emphatic, wings back. In the light of it, she announces that she is closing her investigation.
‘Why didn’t you let Norcap deal with this?’ I shrill down the phone. ‘You knew how sensitive it was. You should have listened to what I wanted. After all, I’m paying the bloody bill for you to open doors, not slam them in my goddamn face.’
‘No need to resort to vulgar language, Lucilla. I have sympathy for you, really I do. But there is no call to take this out on me. I am certainly not being paid enough to swallow abuse.’ The angrier Rosemary Dixon becomes the commoner she sounds.
But I am not nearly done. I unleash a condemnatory onslaught, venting my pent-up rage at the injustice of it all. I close with a final surge, using every molecule of my reserve breath.
‘For you it’s just another job! For me it’s my life you’ve wrecked, you charlatan!’ There is a deafening silence at the end of the line into which tears of wretchedness shower from me. ‘Do you have the faintest notion of what you’ve done? Do you? Do you?’
‘Contemplating such disruption and … and possibly a bitter rejection from her legitimate daughter, Lowrie, must be very distressing for an elderly woman in fragile health,’ she advises me frostily, having recovered her faux refined intonation. ‘She is obviously upset at the prospect of meeting you. I will send all the papers and letters I have back to you. And although, understandably, this is not what you want to hear, Lucilla, you must respect her desire for anonymity and not –’
That is the instant I slam down the telephone. In two bounds, I am on the settee, where Lola gives canine consolation in the form of licks and snuffles. I relay all this to Henry in the evening. He listens, exuding solace from behind a veil of pipe smoke, and inclining his head discerningly. For the passage of an hour, we sit in repose, digesting our supper of lamb chops, arms entwined, my head resting on his chest. I can hear the beat of his heart, hear the reverberations and I imagine it rippling through every cell, every nerve, every fibre, the push of it behind the passage of his blood. I can feel the melancholy in the drag of his heart tonight, because it is my own. Then he clears his throat and says cryptically, ‘Dum spiro spero.’
I break free, wriggle to the edge of the sofa and gaze back at him. ‘Translation, if you will?’ I ask, suddenly needing very badly to know what it means.
‘Cicero,’ he growls, keeping me in suspense. ‘Roman. Almost as great an orator as I am.’
‘Ah! So tell me, Henry, what does the famous orator have to say that may be hawthorn to my bruised heart?’
‘While I breathe, I hope,’ Henry says.
I inhale a breath as if to test the dictum, and the lift of an involuntary smile tweaks my down-turned mouth.
‘Oh Henry!’
Lola gives a gargantuan vocal yawn in appreciation of the gift of philosophy, and sinks back into a deep, deep sleep.
I discuss my next move with my children. Gina, when she, Nathan and our adorable granddaughter come for lunch, is beside herself with anger at the tidings. Lisa complained of an earache when they arrived, causing me to worry that she has inherited my weakness. But Nathan seemed unconcerned, diverting her by taking her for a walk with Lola. This afforded me a chance to exchange confidences privately with Gina while preparing our meal. Having listened carefully she makes her pronouncement. She is all for us springing on a train and beating Bethan’s door down. ‘She’s my grandmother too,’ she stakes her claim. ‘Lisa’s great-grandmother. She can’t just ignore us.’ Gina is pregnant with her second child, and at the mercy of hormones appears at least as upset as I am. ‘She can’t pretend we’re not real. We’ll go together. I know you don’t feel you have the courage, but with me at your side you will have.’ There is muscle in her tone, but hurt as well. This is not what she has been hoping for either. This is not the history she dreamed of giving her children, that for Bethan Haverd her illegitimate daughter, her granddaughter and her great-granddaughter, all three amount to triple the embarrassment, triple the distaste. I have underestimated the impact of this upon Gina, and now that I fully comprehend how damaging it is for her, I want to protect her. She fixes her attention on the home-made vegetable soup she is stirring on the stove. Her shoulders are raised, tensed. I talk to her back, to her curved spine, knowing these sorrowful tidings have come as a blow her idealistic nature was unprepared for.
‘I don’t think we’ll go, Gina. If she doesn’t want to see us it would be futile.’ I trace the ridges of her spine over her clingy blue Lycra top, the pressure I exert so light I might as well not be touching her at all. ‘Too painful, yes?’ She gives the hint of a shrug, and her rigid shoulders gradually relax and drop.
Tim meets me for coffee in Guildford, his mind also elsewhere. He scowls, looking down at his steaming cup. ‘I did ask for a cappuccino not an espresso, didn’t I?’ I open my mouth. ‘Oh never mind.’ I close it again. ‘I had a premonition about this, you know. People can let you down, Mum. It doesn’t matter if you’ve spent a lifetime imagining a reunion between you and your real mother, how wonderful it could be, how healing. Because some people are really fucked up. You’ve got to let it go.’ So intense, raw and honest is the dialogue coming from my son, that I do not remark on the expletive. ‘They don’t know how to forgive themselves. Do you get it? They run away because the truth is too much for them.’ His eyes are cast down, unable to meet mine. He is not comfortable having this conversation with his mother. And yet he forges on, as if he has rehearsed this speech several times. ‘All you’ve done … trying to trace her, to put your past together, well … it’s not wasted. You’ve faced the truth, Mum, even if she can’t. And, as far as I am concerned, that makes you a better person than she’ll ever be.’ He draws a hand across his mouth, inhales, exhales, chest rising and falling with effort. Then, in one of those surreal role switches that most parents disconcertingly experience, he says, ‘And now, Mum, you’ve got to forgive her, to forgive your mother and get on with your life, our life!’ There is a tear in my eye as he finishes. But on a day when rules are broken there is another shock in store for me. ‘Mum, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’m going to Australia to work for a bit. The contract’s for a year but I might stay longer. I’ll see.’ Tidings that elicit a downpour of maternal tears. Am I about to lose the family I have, as well?
In the ensuing weeks, Henry strides up and down before the fireplace, wearing a groove in the floorboards. Intermittently, he rakes back his hair and shakes his head, while I sit hunched on the settee chewing a thumbnail. ‘The blackcurrants have been very disappointing this year,’ he informs me dejectedly and repeatedly. ‘Don’t know what’s up with them. Dug in loads of muck and they’ve had plenty of sunshine. A dud crop, blighted before they matured. I’m going to dig the bushes up and begin over next year. The only way.’ He comes across to me and kisses the top of my head.
I obsess for weeks before I pen another letter. It is a begging letter. I am grovelling in the gutter and acutely aware of it. If I had any pride, I misplaced it decades ago.
Please, please, please, will you just consider writing to me, Bethan? It does
n’t have to be often. When the mood takes you. Christmas? Birthdays? If you only scribble down a few thoughts, perhaps relate what it was like, why it had to be, why you gave me to the Pritchards. I don’t want to upset you. I don’t blame you. I understand that you must have had your reasons, good reasons, for what you did. I appreciate that. The road forked and we separated. You have your own family, as I do now, your daughter, Lowrie. Of course you are concerned at how she … she might react if she learned of me. But can’t we be pen pals to each other, no more than that? Pen pals who fill up scrapbooks with memories. Do this for me and I promise I won’t ask any more of you.
I am lying. I am driven to possess her utterly, as she dispossessed me. A month drags by before her reply is delivered. It is August, unbearably hot and humid. Bethan’s answer to my entreaty is as malignant as a curse.
Dear Lucilla,
I am sorry that we have both been inflicted with grievous and, I have to tell you I feel largely unnecessary, torments. You should not have toiled so hard to trace me. And I should have grasped that the past and the present are not to be spliced in two without a little bloodletting. I don’t want to see you or to have anything to do with you. I shan’t write to you. I shan’t send you birthday and Christmas cards. And I won’t inscribe stories of yesterday to you. I won’t rouse phantoms to enchant you. Leave them be, Lucilla. Don’t hold them to account. They were as innocent as you. I am sorry to kill your hope with such a cruel blow, but anything less and you may doubt my sincerity. That you are named my daughter on a birth certificate is meaningless. I am a sick old woman. My heart is too weak for this. I want to end my days in peace. I do not want to remember, I want to forget. I have a daughter and you have a mother. It will benefit neither of us to have another.