by Isabel Wolff
So that’s what happened that day. Perhaps I abandoned you, in a way, because I felt that I’d been abandoned—by Ian and by my mum and dad. That doesn’t excuse it, but all I’m saying is that I didn’t set out to do it in the way that I did. I meant only to hand you over to the authorities, who I believed would look after you, because I knew there was no other way. Instead, I was panicked into leaving you in a shopping trolley in a car park. How unbelievably callous that must have seemed.
I was aware of Theo sitting quietly at the end of the table. I could hear his gentle, regulated breathing as I read on.
I was so terrified that I might have been seen that I decided it would be best to get out of Kent altogether. So when the bus stopped at Gravesend I got the ferry across the Thames to Tilbury. It was getting dark by then, so I found a boarding house, and it seemed all right so I just stayed there, laying low for a few days, never leaving my room. But I knew my dad’s money wouldn’t last more than three or four weeks and that I’d have to get some sort of job. But I had no training for anything. I didn’t want to go to the employment office in case they’d find out my name, and what I’d done. Anyway, I was walking past a café one day and there was a sign in the window saying that they needed a waitress, so I went inside. I hadn’t a clue how to do waitressing but they showed me how to set the tables properly, and how to take the orders, so that’s what I did. All I needed was breathing space—I was too distressed to make any plans. It was very hard work, but I was glad about that because it gave me no time to think. I wrote to my parents—without giving them my address—telling them that I’d given you up for adoption, that I was safe, and had a job, but that I didn’t want to come home. I told them that I couldn’t face seeing Ian’s parents—which was quite true. And I told them I’d write to them again when I was ‘settled’ somewhere, and not to worry about me. I was functioning on automatic pilot, just working my shifts, and sleeping—hardly eating—and trying not to go mad.
One day, about a month later, I was bringing this man the bill—he seemed to me so much older than I was, but he was only twenty-three. Anyway, he struck up a bit of a conversation with me, and he asked me if I’d go to the pictures with him sometime. And although I was wary, I was also so lonely, and sad, and he seemed very nice. So something made me say yes. I just wanted to have someone to talk to, as much as anything, as I felt so unhappy and alone. He said his name was Dennis Thornton. I didn’t tell him what had happened to me—I didn’t even tell him about Ian—and he had the decency not to ask. He told me, much later, that he’d thought my sadness was because I’d been disappointed, or maybe jilted. He’d also wondered whether I’d had a backstreet abortion. It’s only recently that he’s learned the truth. Anyway, Dennis told me that he’d just finished his National Service, and that he’d done some odd jobbing but that he was sailing to Australia, from Tilbury, in six weeks’ time. He said that there were wonderful opportunities ‘down under’ and that the passages over there were very cheap. Over the next month or so he asked me out a few more times, and he was always very considerate and gentlemanly and I was beginning to feel quite sad that he was leaving. He’d been a very nice friend. And we were sitting on the harbour in late September, watching the boats sailing in and out when he suddenly asked me whether I’d consider going to Australia with him. It gave me an almighty shock. He said he’d pay for my ticket, and we could see what we thought of it out there, and if we didn’t like it, we could always come back.
I thought of all the terrible things that happened to me. I had lost my fiancé and my baby and my future; I was also still worried that I’d be arrested for abandoning you if the authorities ever found out. The idea of starting my life over in a new, warm country, far away suddenly seemed very, very appealing. So I took a deep breath, and said yes. We sailed on the S.S. Ormonde—it took nearly seven weeks, and was far from luxurious—in fact at times, in rough seas, it was hell. But on December first we sailed into Adelaide—I felt as though I was being reborn—and that’s where we’ve been ever since.
We’ve had a good life here, Rose, and Dennis has been, well, just the most wonderful man. He’s blushing now as I dictate those words, but it’s true, and I want you to know. I often used to think that he’d rescued me. We got married in 1965, and he’d worked in a hardware shop to start with, and then he got into the travel agency business which was just starting up then, and he’s done very well. He’s ended up with his own travel agency, New Horizons, and I did secretarial training and helped him out. And no-one, not even Dennis, ever knew what had happened, and what I’d done nearly forty years before.
I’m so sorry, Rose. I never meant to abandon you in the way that I did. I never told Mrs Wilson the truth—although we kept in touch—and nor did my parents ever know. As far as they were concerned, the matter was closed. You’d been ‘given up for adoption,’ and, unable to face living in Kemsley again, I’d run away to the other side of the world.
I have just one other thing to tell you, Rose, and I hope you won’t be hurt, but I have another child. She’s a lovely girl, and her name is Laura…
I felt my eyes suddenly fill with unshed tears, which made my mother’s words bend and blur. I’ve got a sister, I thought, my throat constricting. I have a sister. Her name is Laura.
Laura is 32 now, married to a nice man called Alan, who works with Dennis, and they have a sweet little girl, Alice, who’s six.
I’ve got a niece too! I’m an aunt! To my amazement I realised that I felt only happiness, not resentment. I pressed a tissue to my eyes then read on.
We adopted Laura in 1971. Adopted? I’m sure you’ll find that very strange. But you see, Rose, I couldn’t have any more children. They knew it wasn’t Dennis’s ‘fault,’ so then they investigated me. Of course the doctor could tell that I’d had a child already—although I swore him to secrecy—and he said that my infertility was ‘unexplained’. But I could explain it perfectly well—though I couldn’t tell Dennis. I felt that I’d been punished for abandoning you. I had done something wicked and unnatural and so Nature had struck back. That’s how I saw it. And Dennis was keen to be a father, so he suggested we adopted, and as he’d done so much for me how could I say ‘no’? And in a strange way I felt that adopting an unwanted baby girl would atone, in some small measure, for what I had done to you.
Anyway, Rose, there it is. That’s the story of what happened, and of why I did what I did. I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. And I’m sorry above all, that we shall never meet. But I’m so glad to have taken this chance to talk to you in this way. And although I have no way of knowing whether you will ever read this, I pray with all my heart that you do. With loving thoughts, your mother, Rachel.
I looked at the clock—it was ten past twelve. Then I picked up Dennis’s letter again.
Rose, I am so glad that you have searched for your mum, and so desperately sorry that the trail has ended in this way. But I know how very, very happy it would have made Rachel for you to meet us—your family. We are waiting for you. Please come.
Epilogue
Brancaster Beach, North Norfolk,
Two months later, August 1st
‘Lost and found,’ said Theo gently. ‘Then lost again.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘She was. She was lost for forty years. And so was I.’
‘But you’re not lost to each other any more.’
‘No, although in one way, we still are. But maybe we’ll meet again. In some other universe.’
‘Yes. Maybe you will.’
Theo and I lay on our backs, in the sand dunes, gazing at the sky, a vast, curving hollow, stretching to infinity. It was as black as anthracite and dense with stars, like gems flung upwards by some unseen hand.
‘You must feel so different now, Rose.’
I listened to the distant waves breaking over the sand with a long, sad Shhhhhhh… ‘I do. I feel…complete. I know where I come from now.’
‘You come from Camberwell.’
I sm
iled and dug my fingers into the cool sand.
‘It’s funny to think of my origins being there—it’s as though I’d gone back to my source. But at long last I feel as though I actually belong to someone.’
He reached out his hand.
‘You do. You belong to me.’
‘And I belong to Rachel’s family—her family in Australia, and her family here. I’ve got so many relations,’ I said. I shook my head in wonderment. ‘So many.’
‘You have.’
‘I’ve got a stepfather, and a sister.’
‘Half-sister,’ he corrected me.
‘That’s true. And I’ve a niece.’ I thought of the daisy-strewn letter I’d had from Alice last week, and the poem she’d enclosed. I’ve got a new auntie called Rose, I’ve never met her. But when I do, I know my life will be better. Not bad for six and a half.
‘Alice,’ I said with a smile. ‘And Laura. My sister, Laura. And my stepfather, Dennis. They’re my family. Not a shared gene among us, but you know, Theo, it doesn’t matter—it just doesn’t matter—because they’re my folks.’ For water can be just as thick as blood, I’d discovered. And blood can be as thin as water—I mean, look at Ed.
‘And Susan’s family were great,’ Theo said.
‘Yes,’ I murmured. ‘They were.’ I thought of our visit to Susan, her husband and three kids, and of how overcome she’d been. She’d smiled at me politely at first, then her face had suddenly crumpled and she’d hugged me, crying, and just wouldn’t let go.
‘I’ve wanted to meet you for so long,’ she’d wept.
Susan had always known that I’d been born of course, but, like her parents, she believed I’d been adopted, in the normal way, after Ian’s death. After Rachel had died she’d even done a search to try and find me, and couldn’t work out why she’d drawn a complete blank. Now she understood.
‘How terrible to think of Rachel being driven to do something so desperate,’ she’d said as we sat in her garden looking at her family photographs. ‘I suppose she must have felt that she’d been abandoned—which she had really—so that’s probably why she abandoned you. It’s awful to think of what she went through. But she never, ever spoke of it to me, Rose, on any of my visits, until I went for the very last time. It was a month before the end, and she mentioned you, and I nodded. Then she told me that she’d “spoken to you”. But she was so ill by then that I thought she might be delirious.’
‘No, she had spoken to me. It’s just that I didn’t get to hear what she’d said for eighteen months.’ I thought of my mother’s words, coming steadily towards me, like light travelling across the space from some distant star.
Susan had shown me photos of my father as well. There was one of him and Rachel, when they were teenagers, standing by his motorbike, looking into each other’s faces and laughing uproariously, as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Less than a year after that photo was taken he would be dead, and she’d be a self-exile, parted forever from her child. How tragic, I thought. How absolutely tragic; but at long last I had an image of him. My dad. I’ve got his brow, his chin, and his height. My pronounced clavicles I get from Rachel, evidently. There was one photo of her in her first evening dress.
‘Will you want to get in touch with Ian’s brothers?’ Susan had asked. ‘The Penningtons moved up to Scotland not long after he was killed, but I know someone who’s got their address.’
‘I’d like to write to them, and ask them if they’d like to meet me. It would be nice to think that they would.’ And they do want to meet me, so Theo and I are going to see them in the Autumn. When we’re back from Oz.
I’ve been to see the house in Kemsley, and the one next door where my father lived, and the paper mill where my grandfathers worked. I’ve seen my grandparents’ graves too, in Sittingbourne. Strangely, I felt as though I was going to meet them. I brought them red roses. I’ve paid my respects. Susan gave me a copy of the family tree she’d done. She’d put me on it, with my correct date of birth, next to Laura, my sister.
‘You’ll have to add to it soon,’ I’d said…
‘Ooh, meteor,’ I said to Theo. ‘No, sorry, it’s a satellite.’ My charm bracelet jingled at my left wrist as I shifted slightly. On it are the star, and my Aladdin’s lamp, and a tiny telescope charm we found in an antique jeweller’s yesterday.
‘I love this,’ I heard Theo say, as we shifted on the sand. ‘This reminds me of being a boy, standing on this beach, staring at the sky with my granddad. Looking up… Things are looking up aren’t they?’
‘Oh they are. Things are really…’ I sighed. ‘Pretty grand.’
‘Yes. Grand,’ he echoed as we strained our necks upwards. ‘What a nice way to spend my birthday. And your founders day,’ he added.
‘Hmm. I like August the first now,’ I said. ‘I used to hate it. I don’t any more.’ I felt the sand trickle through my fingers. ‘Do you think we’re alone?’
Theo looked around. ‘Yes. Why? What do you want to do?’
‘No, I mean, do you think we’re alone—in the universe?’
‘Oh. Almost certainly not. When you think how many other solar systems there must be, I doubt that a planet like the earth is unique.’
‘I wonder what the aliens would make of us?’
‘Well, they’d know quite a bit about us already, from our radio and television broadcasts.’
‘Oh yes. Of course.’
‘Imagine, every single broadcast that’s ever been made, just whizzing through space, for ever and ever. Hitler’s opening address to the Berlin Olympics for example.’
‘That’s bad PR for us earthlings, isn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid it is. The death of President Kennedy. The aliens must be wondering who the hell shot him. It’s probably driving them crazy.’
‘It probably is.’
‘President Clinton—“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”.’
‘Ha! Bet they didn’t believe that!’
‘All your radio broadcasts on London FM.’
‘Oh yes.’ I imagined my voice floating through the galaxy.
‘They’ve probably got as far as Mars by now.’
‘I wonder if the Martians think I gave my listeners good advice.’
Hhmm. I wonder. They’re probably arguing about whether Tracey from Tottenham should take her husband back, or whether Vince from Vauxhall really is gay. Or perhaps they have their own Martian agony aunts, or inter-galactic agony aunts.
‘Yes, they probably do.’
‘You don’t miss it do you?’ Theo added, turning to me.
‘Not in the slightest. I don’t need it any more. I’m not in agony,’ I said happily.
‘No, you’re not. You’re the Post’s star feature writer.’
‘Correction. I’m their animal correspondent.’ I thought of my current commission—an exposé on the ‘Turkeys Tortured for Christmas’ scandal, which is why we’re in Norfolk. I’ve got to infiltrate a farm and do an investigative piece on the conditions there. Next week it’s Heathrow and the trade in smuggled tortoises, and then I’ve got to write a piece about a retriever who can do advanced calculus—we’re going to call it ‘Sum Dog!’. So it’s not exactly what you’d call ‘cutting edge’ journalism, but I really don’t mind. It’s better than nasty neighbours and hair loss, and Ricky’s kindly paying me what I got before. In any case, I have other priorities now. My perspective has changed. In so many ways.
‘What’s the time, Theo?’
‘It’s half eleven. Why—are you hungry again?’
‘Yeah. Have you got the sandwich bag?’
He leaned over then grabbed a Co-Op carrier. ‘Anchovy and strawberry jam?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Bacon and marmalade?’
‘Nope.’
‘Smoked salmon and banana.’
‘Pass.’
‘Apricot and Marmite?’ Apricot and Marmite. Now that sounded good.
‘Yeah.’ He passed on
e to me and I took a big bite. ‘Oh yum.’
‘How long do you think this phase will last?’ he asked.
‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘I look forward to you eating proper food again, cooked by me.’
‘This’ll do me for now.’
‘And are you feeling okay, Rose?’
‘Yes,’ I said happily. ‘I feel absolutely fine. I get the odd palpitation and peculiar pains in my wrists. But the nurse said that’s normal at thirteen weeks. Thanks, darling, that was delish.’ I lay back again and studied the firmament. ‘We’ll have to think about names won’t we?’ I said.
‘Bollocks.’
‘No we will, Theo. The time will fly.’
‘No Pollux. Castor and Pollux—how about that? The heavenly twins.’
‘Well that’s a bit outré, in any case they might not be boys.’
‘That’s true. Calypso and Ganymede then.’
‘Hmm. Now you’re talking. But what if they’re both girls?’
‘Thelma and Louise? Bella and Bea?’
‘Rachel and Anna,’ I said slowly. ‘After both our mothers.’
‘Rachel and Anna,’ he repeated. ‘That’s really nice. I hope they won’t mind the long flight to Oz.’
‘No the doctor said they’ll be fine. Anyway we’ve got to go now before I get too big. Three weeks down under,’ I said with a happy sigh. ‘It’ll be so lovely. Meeting the family. And you’ll get some good stuff for your radio series.’
‘Yes I’ll be able to get all my material about the southern sky. I’m looking forward to seeing the Anglo-Australian observatory. And we might even get to see the southern lights. We’ve got so much to look forward to haven’t we, Rose?’ he added.
‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘we have.’
He suddenly stood up. ‘I think the tide’s going out. Shall we go for a walk along the water’s edge? A little midnight paddle, Rose? Are you up for it?’