by Isabel Wolff
Another chance? I stared at his empty plate.
‘So you want second helpings?’ I said with a quizzical smile.
‘Second helpings? Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I do.’
Sometimes people write to me complaining that although they don’t have any specific problems, at the same time they don’t feel happy, and they feel that they ought to feel happy. So they actually ask me how they can become happy. I usually write back saying that in my view happiness lies in being able to want the things that you’ve got, not the things you haven’t got—that’s always been my advice. Now I’m not so sure. For example, I’d wanted Ed back—I’d obsessed about him for months—and now, to my amazement, here he was, fairly pleading with me to give him another chance. But strangely, having the thing I’d so wanted didn’t leave me feeling happy—it left me feeling hollow and strange. If Ed had come after me last October, I’d have been putty in his hands. I’d have forgiven and forgotten and gone back to him—I mean, who wants to get divorced? But it was six months since we’d split up and my life had changed, and now I was completely confused.
‘He only wants second helpings because he hasn’t enjoyed his just desserts,’ said Bella contemptuously when I dropped in at the shop on the following Saturday. ‘I hope you’re not going to see him again?’
‘That’s a bit rich coming from you,’ I said. ‘You invited him to the party after all.’
‘I know,’ she cringed. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. Anyway, are you going to see him?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know. I told him I wanted to think about it and he gallantly left the ball in my court. He’s not being pushy about it or anything—he’s just planted the idea in my mind. His demeanour was gratifyingly contrite and he was very sympathetic and actually I’m wondering whether he isn’t right. I mean, his affair is over, and I’ve realised my mistakes, so maybe we could try again. Getting divorced makes one feel such a failure.’
‘Well I’d be very careful,’ said Bella, shaking her head. ‘He’s been unfaithful to you once, remember.’
‘But there were mitigating circumstances, Bella, viz, I was an absolutely useless wife.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘it’s your life, but I’ve always said there was something about Ed I didn’t like.’
And I was tempted to say, ‘But look at the fifth rate philandering pile of shite you’re dating.’ Instead I bit my lip.
‘So how’s it all going?’ I asked pleasantly.
‘Oh it’s fine. Bea’s out with clients at the moment—they want Latvian minimalist apparently so it’s quite a tricky commission—and I’m stuck here. But to be honest,’ she said, ‘it’s probably the best thing as we’re not getting on very well. Bea’s being rather…difficile,’ she enunciated delicately.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s making my life sheer bloody hell.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well…’ she lowered her voice as a customer came in and began looking at the tartan tea-cups ‘…Andrew and I went to the cinema last night. And Bea came along too.’
‘So?’ I murmured.
‘Well, it was a bit awkward.’
‘But she’s very lonely.’
‘I know. The soft furnishings are downstairs Madam if you’d like to take a look.’
‘And she’s still smarting about Henry,’ I pointed out, ‘so she wants a bit of distraction.’
‘Yes, and that’s fair enough. But then on Monday, Andrew and I went out to dinner at Quaglino’s and Bea turned up there too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Then we went to a premiere on Tuesday and she insisted on coming as well. Andrew really doesn’t like it.’
‘I see.’
‘I think she’s going slightly mad actually,’ Bella concluded airily. You’re one to talk, I thought. ‘Anyway, Rose, what do you think I should do?’ Oh why do I have to solve other people’s problems all the time I thought wearily. I feel like a walking C.A.B.
‘Well,’ I said, feeling my lips purse, ‘you’ll have to take a tough line. Or perhaps just don’t tell her where you’re off to every time you go out.’
‘But she always asks; or she rings me on my mobile and forces me to tell her. I don’t know what to do.’
‘It’s a tricky one. Hopefully she’ll become so engrossed in the business as it becomes more successful that she’ll feel less insecure. I mean, you’re each other’s anchors. Bea’s terrified that you’ll leave her.’
Bella winced. ‘I know. This was always going to be our biggest problem,’ she said regretfully. Yes, I thought, that’s right. The longer the twins have lived together the more difficult men find it, and the harder it is to break up. ‘I mean, if Andrew does want to live with me,’ Bella went on, ‘then I can imagine Bea trying to come too. And although I’d be perfectly happy about it in some ways, I know Andrew would never agree. I mean, he doesn’t actually like Bea that much,’ she confided. ‘Partly because he feels that she doesn’t like him.’
‘Doesn’t she?’I said disingenuously. I was amazed that he had the sensitivity to detect Bea’s distaste.
‘No. She doesn’t like him at all. So she says that the reason she wants to come out with us all the time is so that she can “keep an eye” on him.’
‘Hmmm…’
‘She said this awful thing about him actually.’
‘Really. What did she say?’
‘She implied that he might, well, let me down.’
‘By being unfaithful?’
She nodded. ‘But I know that he never would. Can I help you?’ she said politely to the customer as she came upstairs clutching a velvet cushion patterned with snapdragons and foxgloves.
‘Yes, I’d like this. It’s lovely,’ she breathed.
‘I know,’ said Bella, as she began to wrap it in tissue, ‘they’re gorgeous. Is it for you?’ she added pleasantly as she tore off some sticky tape.
The woman smiled. ‘No, it’s for my mum. I always try and get her something really special on Mother’s Day.’
When I got home two hours later there was a message on the answerphone from Henry.
‘Rose, I’m off to the Gulf tomorrow for six weeks. Sorry I haven’t seen you recently, I’ve been rather, well, involved. I hope Bea doesn’t hate me too much, and I’ll call you in May when I’m back.’
I hung up my coat, and looked at the house. It was a mess. There was dust all along the shelves and on the tops of the pictures, and the carpet needed a clean. The cushions were unplumped in the sitting room, and there were old coffee cups standing about. Several unread newspapers were waiting to be chucked and there was a pile of dishes in the sink.
Theo and I have become slobs, I realised. I don’t know why, but I’m far less tidy than I used to be. I knew I should hoover, for example, but I simply couldn’t be fagged. Instead I began to go through the box of old stuff that Ed had brought round. I put the records in the sitting room, then packed up the painting and the pot for Age Concern. Age Concern, I reflected ruefully. Yes, I’m very concerned about my age. Still I thought to myself, as I flicked through my old school files, there’s nothing I can do. There were three red ring binders, containing my ‘A’ level work on yellowing A4, my writing tiny and terribly neat. I’d done English, French and Art History and I’d spectacularly failed them all. It was June 1980 and I remember sitting in the school hall staring at the questions as non-comprehendingly as if they’d been written in Sanskrit or Japanese.
Comment on the use of symbolism in Madame Bovary… Can’t. What were the greatest achievements of the Renaissance? Don’t know. Why is Measure for Measure considered a ‘dark comedy’? What does the question mean? My mind was as blank as a television screen after closedown: it was featureless, humming and grey. And I just sat there and doodled, occasionally looking at the clock, unable to write anything other than my name. I didn’t need to read the official letter in August to know that I’d got three ‘U’s.
The twin
s thought I’d failed to revise the right questions but that wasn’t it at all. I’d worked very hard, and I was well prepared, but I’d made this awful mistake. I’d applied to see the registration of my birth and I’d been shown it the day before. If, as I was, you were adopted before 1975, then you have to speak to a social worker first. And they give you what’s called Section Fifty-One Counselling where they prepare you for what you might find. So I went to the Ashford social services place and met this woman, and she was very nice and very professional and she explained that what I was about to see might open up a can of worms for me, and was I one hundred percent sure that I really wanted to see it given that I was still very young? And I said yes, I was one hundred per cent sure. I’d waited for this moment all my life. Then she asked me if my adoptive parents knew what I was doing, and I said that they did. I’d told them that I wanted to see the registration because I was applying for a passport, but it wasn’t true. The real reason was that I just wanted, at long, long last, to read the names of my biological mother and father. But when the counsellor handed that piece of paper to me, and I saw what was on it, it was the most shocking experience of my life. And the following day I somehow got myself to school and sat my first ‘A’level and my dreams of university went up in smoke…
I heard the click of Theo’s key in the lock; he’d been next door helping Beverley with her VAT return.
‘Look at these old LPs,’ he exclaimed. ‘Are they yours? The Partridge Family. Who the hell are they?’ I suddenly felt very old. ‘And the Jackson Five. My God—Michael Jackson looks black. What have we got here? Mudd. The Bay City Rollers…and what’s this one? Marie Osmond! This stuff must be worth a fortune, Rose!’
‘Stop it. You’re making me feel like an antique.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled. ‘I used to tease my wife like that, it drove her mad.’
‘She’s almost as ancient as I am, isn’t she?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How was Beverley?’ I asked changing the subject.
‘Not too bad, a bit depressed.’
‘I suppose her bloke’s gone off?’ Theo looked at me. ‘That Scottish guy? The conductor.’
‘Oh yes. Hamish. That’s right. He’s gone abroad, so she’s rather, you know, down in the mouth, plus Trevor’s got a bit of a cold.’
‘Does she want to come round and eat with us? I could cook.’
‘I already asked her and she said no.’
I’ve noticed that Beverley always prefers to be left alone when she has these occasional dark moods. So Theo and I spent the evening playing Scrabble as we quite often do—and I was just thinking about my nuisance phone calls and how they seem to have stopped, when, by one of those strokes of telepathy or simple coincidence, I had another one. The phone rang at eleven, and I picked it up and it was the heavy breather again.
‘Who was that?’ Theo asked.
‘The Poison Panter.’
He pulled a face. ‘Oh dear. Again.’
‘Well they say it’s good to stalk.’
‘You don’t seem that worried about it, Rose.’
‘I’m not. It’s beginning to wash over me.’
‘And what was it like this time?’
‘It was quite heavy, and asthmatic: I almost felt sorry for him. You know,’ I said as I sat down again and stared at my rack of letters, ‘there’s something slightly odd about it all. With other silent calls they often ring several times in a row, to annoy you, but my caller always stops after one.’
‘Well he’s obviously a considerate nuisance.’
‘Or she is. I still don’t know.’
‘I thought you were going to bar the calls.’
‘I’ve tried, but the phone company’s always engaged. I hung on for twenty minutes yesterday listening to synthesised “Greensleeves”; in the end I had to give up. Anyway whose go is it? Mine. No, don’t look at the letters when you’re picking, Theo, that’s cheating.’
‘But I need some more vowels. Right, what have you got?’ I stared at my letters: I had two ‘e’s, then ‘p,’ ‘r,’ ‘a,’ ‘o,’ ‘h’—that would make ‘Oprah,’or ‘Harpo,’ but proper nouns aren’t allowed.
‘Okay, I’ve got…this.’ I put down ORPHA on top of Theo’s TENT.
‘Orphan. That gives you…twenty-four with the double word score.’
‘I’m an orphan,’ I said with a rueful smile.
‘Oh yeah. You should go into a children’s home. Anyway, you’re probably not an orphan,’ he said with another swig of beer. He picked up his letters and put ‘ARENTS’ across the P of ORPHAN. ‘Your natural mother’s probably still alive. And who knows, maybe your father is too.’ I looked at him. ‘They might not even be sixty yet. They’ve probably got another twenty years left.’ If anyone else had mentioned my natural parents to me I’d have given them the liquid nitrogen treatment but, coming from Theo, I didn’t mind. He picked up the Times magazine. How to do Mother’s Day in Style! it shouted in pink letters. The Strongest Link!
‘I always think of my mother at this time of year,’ Theo said as he flicked through it.
‘I always think of mine too.’
‘Your adoptive mother?’ I shook my head. ‘Do you mind if I ask you about your adoptive parents?’ he said with uncharacteristic diplomacy as I took some more letters out of the bag.
‘No, I don’t mind. Fire away.’
‘You don’t seem to have been very close to them.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘I knew that from the casual way you reacted when their photo was stolen.’ I shrugged. ‘Rose, what were they like?’
‘What were they like? Well,’I explained, as I put my letters on the wooden rack, ‘they were about a foot shorter than I am. And…they were very strait-laced, and extremely devout. We spent an awful lot of time in the Bethesda Baptist Chapel at weekends,’ I added. ‘Which is why I don’t go to church now. I’d say that they meant well and that they were decent people, but…’
‘But what?’
I sighed. ‘Well,’ I began chewing on my lower lip, as I always do when I’m stressed, ‘there were a number of things. For a start, and I’ve never told anyone else this, Theo—not even the twins—I suppose I simply never felt that I belonged with them. My father ran a shoe shop, semi-bespoke, and I’d watch him fitting someone with a pair of shoes, measuring their feet properly, widthways and lengthways, examining their arch and their instep—getting it just right. And I’d think that I didn’t fit with them.’
‘Because you didn’t look like them?’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t that. If there’d been a stronger bond that wouldn’t have mattered. It was because they weren’t very, well, parental, I suppose. I didn’t want for anything, and they weren’t unkind, but nor were they ever really…affectionate. I felt like their guest, not their daughter. I’d watch the twins’ mother hugging them when she came to fetch them from school and I’d feel the most terrible pang. And my parents didn’t really know how to play with me, so I had to amuse myself. They weren’t that tolerant of children really, I was always being told not to make a mess.’
‘That’s probably why you’re so tidy,’ he said. ‘Although…’ he looked around, ‘standards have been slipping a bit lately.’
‘Mm. I don’t know why.’
‘Because you’re relaxing, Rose.’ I realised that he was right. ‘Tell me more about your parents,’ he added softly.
‘Well I often used to wonder why they’d adopted me,’I went on, ‘and I found out the answer after they died.’
‘What did you find out?’
I kept my eyes fixed on the Scrabble board while I wondered whether or not to reply. ‘I found out that they’d adopted me for all the wrong reasons.’
‘Which were?’
‘Pity.’
He looked at me. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because after they’d died I was going through their things and in my dad’s desk I found a file with all sorts of stuff relating
to my adoption, none of which I’d ever seen. There were some letters from the social services and some family correspondence and some other bits and pieces. When I was little they told me that they’d really wanted to have a nice baby like me, and that they’d chosen me specially, but that was a lie. They did it out of Christian charity. That’s what they actually said. I found a copy of a letter my dad had written to the adoption people in which he said that he felt it was his “duty to take in this unfortunate child”.’
‘I still don’t understand,’ said Theo. ‘In order for them to adopt you they must have been registered with the adoption service for quite a long time first.’
‘No, they weren’t. This was in 1962, it wasn’t like it is now. These days there are less than five hundred babies a year available for adoption: then there were twenty-seven thousand a year—you could virtually hand-pick your baby, and there weren’t the endless waiting lists and interrogations that there are now. The abortion act of 1967 changed everything for obvious reasons and after that adoption became hard. Anyway, I’d always got on reasonably well with my parents, although I’d never have said we were close. But when I saw all that stuff I felt totally…different about them: it was as though that part of my life had closed.’
‘But didn’t you feel, with their deaths, that another part of your life might open?’
‘I—I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Didn’t it make you want to find your real mother?’ I looked at him. ‘Don’t you want to find her?’ Did I? ‘I think you do.’
‘Well—’
‘When are you forty?’
‘June the first. I think.’
‘You think?’
‘Well, I’m not totally sure. That’s what was on my birth registration anyway.’
Theo furrowed his brow. ‘I think your fortieth is the catalyst. You do want to find her, don’t you, Rose?’ I had another sip of beer. ‘I think you’ve wanted to find her for some time. That’s your problem. You do and at the same time you don’t. You’re such good fun, Rose, but you cast a long shadow and I believe that that’s the reason why.’
‘That’s not the reason at all,’ I said quietly. ‘And you’re wrong to assume that it is, Theo, because I’ve never told anyone the truth.’