MARCH 29, PALM SUNDAY AFTERNOON. I have promised Mary I will attack her pumpkin pit. I lug grubby sacks of horse muck, spacing them apart. It is raining. The border trees shake in dramatic gusts of sudden wind. I wish I was wearing waterproofs, not corduroy. It is muddy gardening but there is comfort in the discomfort and I can’t stop now. There is a job Mary needs doing. It is why I am here. Soon enough I am soaked, but the pit is ready. I am satisfied. It’s too wet to sow, so I weave in more wood around the pond and watch more frogs. I stop in the Catholic priory across the road from home. The statues are shrouded for Holy Week. It’s the Desolate Church when God is dead. I pick up a few strands of palm and light a candle, I’m not sure why.
Celts and cooks and my mother: what was it with her? Christopher’s father appears in my Barnardo’s notes. His name is redacted – so she didn’t say Ray – but he was, it says, a navy cook, same as Frank and Ray. The first three fathers of her first three kids. There is a rule in journalism: three is a ‘thing’. One of the reasons Frank seems real is that he was connected with food. It’s the area I have built my later life around and a safe place when talking to my mother. But how did she meet them? How did she know? Did they have badges, like in the scouts? Was there a chefs’ corner in Union Street: a bar only cooks could drink in? I wonder what was the quality that attracted her. Was it nurture, was it appetite, were they good with their hands? I wonder if they knew each other.
1967. I discover French butter when I discover French kissing, in Isigny Sainte-Mère. It’s twinned with Kingsbridge. I am on a school exchange. It is the summer of love. Normandy butter is pale and sweet, not the New Zealand salty yellow brick we have at home. French cheese is ripe and runny. It smells of life and farms and shit. The kissing starts in the cinema. I am sat at the back. She lets me slip my hand in her shirt, clumsily stroking cupped lace, kneading her breasts like bread. She doesn’t slap it away as it runs up her thigh. This is a first for me. I don’t recall her name now but I remember tufts of hair, blue Gauloises and yellow Gitanes, Johnny Hallyday crooning Hendrix. I ache to be experienced. She is patient. She wears a girdle. There is no way in. She laughs and puts her urgent tongue in my mouth, my first taste of an unpasteurised life.
April
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T S Eliot, The Waste Land
APRIL 2. There are photos on the kitchen table. Three of Frank. The first as a young man in a group of grinning sailors. He is bossing the centre, his arms the only ones crossed. The other photos are much later. The confidence has faded. An older woman has her arm on his shoulder. She must be his mum. I like the look of him. I want him to look like me, like my dad, but he doesn’t. My hopes had been building. The useless need to belong. I am unsure what to do. The simple answer is DNA but I don’t know if it is what I want. After a lifetime of uncertainty I am comfortable with it now. DNA seems final. I am used to feeling my way. Christy O’Toole calls late in the evening. I tell him I can’t see Frank’s face in mine. He says his daughter has Googled me and I look like his father. I cling to that. He hasn’t told the rest of his family, he says. We are both taking small steps, edging towards something.
I think I want to visit Frank’s grave, talk more to this Christopher. There are tombs for unknown warriors, for those who lost their husbands, fathers, lovers, brothers, sons. Maybe Frank can be that for me: my unknown sailor father figure.
APRIL 5. Denmark. An Easter of sun and sea and spotted woodpeckers. We arrive at the summerhouse to see a pair of sparrows moving into the nesting box. Their beaks meet as though kissing through a window. We wait to get out of the car. We walk the long way round the house. They have arrived at the same time as us and are bound to be disturbed. We spend the next days going in and out by the back door.
A flock of chaffinches is combing the grass for seed. The primroses have spread through the border and clustered around the trees. Wood anemones are scattered at the back and south of the plot. The cowslips are coming. The hepatica are in full flower through three borders, migrating more than ever before. I lie a long time in the leaves to admire them. Spring is almost here. Hedge birds chorus from before 4am. I could watch them all day. A pair of spotted woodpeckers follow each other up trunk after trunk, hopping in search of hollow. The male stops and drums out a Morse signal. Four full days of sun, of walking the beach, of eating outside: smoked mackerel on rye, horseradished herrings, fish soup from the northern seas. The blackbird alerts me to leaves in the guttering. I add them to the compost pile. It is happy work. Perhaps because of Christopher, I’ve decided to add a bed of calendula, more domesticated than our usual wildflower planting: sentiment in sowing. The grass is growing again, dotted with daisies and yellow celandines. I spot pockets of white and blue violets. The place is perfect. I wake. I light a fire. I make tea. I stay away from the phone. We are outside all day after breakfast until the cool evening breeze drives us in. We wrap warm to watch the sunset: slow-moving cloud, magenta sea and sky.
APRIL 7. Allan O’Toole to add to my portfolio of personalities, other kids who were nearly me. Can’t help wondering who he’d be. Would he have been happy? Would my young mum and dad? Would Frank have felt trapped by a momentary mistake or would he have made the best of it? More importantly, would she? When and where did it go wrong for my mother? Was it the lure of men, a sort of revenge? Was it the miscarriage at 17, being spurned by Frank and Christopher’s father? After her third failure in three years, marriage to Ray would have to work. Perhaps it was chemistry, perhaps a Christian thing. Only Ray knows now and he’s my Howard Hughes. The answers he is looking for are eternal, he tells himself. Mine are more immediate. For now I will quietly try on Allan O’Toole like shiny new shoes and wonder what his life would have been. If he’d still be like me. Allan Beale, Alan Jenkins, Peter Drabble, Peter Jenkins all still swim in my memories. I get out Peter to talk to Lesley. He is a comfort to her and to me. Allan O’Toole feels like dressing up. I’ll wrap him in tissue paper and place him in the drawer with the others.
Barnardo’s notes
7.4.54. re Allan Peter Beale. The above mentioned little child has been accepted for admission for adoption and I have allocated him to come to your branch. I have asked that you are advised direct as to the date on which you may expect the infant to arrive and have mentioned to the applicant that if the journey is made via Oxford, you would be willing to send someone to meet the escort at Oxford Station if notified of the time of arrival there. As Allan is coming to us for adoption, he should in addition to the usual ration documents have with him a full copy of his birth certificate.
7.4.54. re Allan Peter Beale. With reference to my letter to you of the 18th February last, I am now pleased to tell you we have an immediate vacancy for this little child at our branch known as Oakley House … I cannot find that you have yet informed us of the type of food to which Allan has been weaned and I shall be glad if you will kindly ensure that a diet sheet accompanies him to our branch …
City of Plymouth
Maternity and Child Welfare
8th April 1954
Dear Mr Webber
re: Allan Beale
Thank you for your letter of 7th April and your kind promise to take this child into your Abingdon Home. I am arranging for the child to be sent on Tuesday next, 13th April and have notified Miss Talbot Rice accordingly.
Dr Barnardo’s Homes. Branch: Oakley House. Beale, Allan Peter, was admitted to this branch April 13th 1954. A cross should be placed under the name of any article missing and the form returned to Stepney immediately. Please examine ration documents and repost any defects and see whether the name on the identity card is the same as the one sent from HQ.
Name: Beale, Allan Peter. Age 15.1.54.
Admitted 13.4.54
Height 23 inches. Weight 13lbs 10oz
Appearance and demeanour:
contented.
Cleanliness and general care: fair
Marks of violence and injury: no
General condition: good
Muscle tone: good
Skin and hair: skin rough, thin, scurvy
Genitals: N
Nervous system: apparently N
Skeletal system: N
Three months old in an orphanage. Newly separated from my young mum.
Appearance: contented. Even this early, my saving grace.
Skin and hair: rough, thin, scurvy. A shame in one so young.
Skeletal system and genitals: N. Normal then and now, I am glad of that.
Nervous system: apparently N. Almost a title for a journal. Appears normal and still is. Apparently.
APRIL 9. Last visit to the plot before a two-week trip, the guilt kicks in. I tell myself I am going to sow a quick row of salad seed but really it is to ask permission, like from wife or priest or parent. Let’s call it absolution. The pond has failed. Holes have appeared in the lining. We will have to drain and start again but we try first to patch it like a bicycle tyre. Frogs are sitting in the thickening water. Ruth is muttering about sabotage. For the past two weeks I have been weeding sycamore seed, the terminator germinator. The rocket is up, most of the ‘leaf’ rows are showing too, the first calendula is in a clump, and at last the broad beans, hopeful leaves like rabbits’ ears thrusting from the ground. Spring is fast turning into early summer. A last furtive look over my shoulder and I sneak away.
The first time I really cried after my mother’s death was in India. A couple of months late. I was travelling through the north in search of temples and tigers, staying in a lodge inside a reserve. I couldn’t sleep so I sat by the Ram Ganga river. The moonlight was sharp, a deer was standing chest high in the running water and I found myself crying; for my mother’s loss, not mine. I wondered how the young wife in her wedding photo had morphed into the woman I met. I didn’t yet know the depth and darkness but I could see something essential had been lost. I sat on a stone on the edge of an Indian river and I cried, for the hopes she had, the life she might have lived and for the damage she had done. Now I am back in India, with my brother on my mind.
I hire a rickshaw to the city to buy jasmine for Henri and marigolds for Christopher. It is Vishu, the first day of the Keralan calendar, a good time to say goodbye and scatter flowers like ashes into the sea, the ceremony I missed. I stand on a large rock at sunset as waves suck the sand around me. I try not to slip. I throw handfuls of marigolds into the water. I tell him I love him and think of him often, that if the Indians are right and he has another chance of life I hope he has a mother who will never let him go, a father who is supportive and proud, and a brother who won’t turn his back. I watch the flowers swirl. Marigolds wash up on the sand, most are carried out. A message in a bottle: Christopher David Jenkins, born Beale, RIP.
13.4.54. Appearance and demeanour: contented.
From the baby days in Barnardo’s, so it appears, I was content. Blindly trusting, like a near-newborn kitten, I would be OK. Take me from my mother, my brother, I will make the best of it. Hold me occasionally. Feed me. I won’t cause a fuss. I will be quiet and loyal. Be yours.
14.4.59. Plymouth case conference. Boys to be divided to find foster homes.
24.4.59. Both are delightful little boys and have lovely little sayings and ways of expressing their pleasure. Both children are also well mannered and very fond of each other.
The decision is taken to divide us. To split us in two, though the notes talk of how we both cling to the brother we barely knew. It is one of the things I despise about Barnardo’s: how siblings were separated. It wasn’t enough they had ‘lost’ (as though mislaid) their parents and identity. The last link to their family was also snatched in the glory days of philanthropic gratitude. Christopher and I were too much of a handful for one family, the anonymous voice writes, two troubled small boys. I wonder now if Christopher would have been happier if I wasn’t there? Would he have been doted on or would he have been left alone in the children’s home? I think I leached his love, appropriated his lovability as though there wasn’t enough to go round – and in truth it was in short supply. I wonder what would have happened to me without having him. We were each other’s broken teddy bear. Would we have found each other later, would we have wanted to? Would I have looked and longed for my mother, found Lesley, Ray, my other sisters and brothers? Later Lilian and Dudley were to try to split the litter. No more room for the runt.
30.4.59. Replied to Mr Drabble’s letter, no definite assurances could be given regarding the children remaining in care but it would appear they were not wanted.
‘Not wanted’. Days after the dividing decision, Lilian and Dudley Drabble had a look at us, bought us on approval like I used to with stamps. Take us home and try us out, try your luck. Fairy-tale old folk in their fairy-tale thatched house who gave me back my brother.
Two weeks of sunsets over the Arabian Sea. Sleeping to the sound of crashing waves. Watching fishermen sing as they pull in nets. Walking holding hands with my wife. A fortnight mostly free from Christopher and Sheila and writing. My past parked in long-stay, while we get on with our lives. Old memories have been mostly happy: of walking beaches and rivers with Tessa, swimming in the sea. Chris, skinny-legged in shorts, with his big ginger grin, trying to avoid sunburn, being calamine lotioned, painted chalky pink. Perhaps there was an ice-cream wafer or a sandy sandwich with Sandwich Spread, maybe Dairylea. I’ve been reliving early days with the Drabbles: shooting with bows and arrows, trying on a happy family. I think I am letting Christopher go a little now. He’s mostly only been here when I have invited him in. I buy more temple marigolds for our last sunset, say a soft goodbye and watch them wash away.
APRIL 27, 7PM. It has been warm while I have been away and the plot feels impatient. There is a run of broad beans on the south side, green, with multiple leaves. The potatoes too have spread. The red mustard has spiked a foot in a fortnight and is flecked with yellow flowers. The chicories have doubled in size: full, fat, lush and ready to eat. The baby salad rows are prey to pigeon. Early summer is being born, though the forecast warns of frost. I soak it in like the sun to someone with SAD. I pull more sycamore seed. The site is closing in now with lime-green leaf on the border trees, shivering with life like newborn lambs. It is dotted with sweet-scented apple blossom, cloudy carpets of forget-me-not. I feel more like a boy here than anywhere. I sow a mixed row of peas, one for shoots, one for pods. It is good to get my hands grubby. A son of the soil. I leave with fennel fronds in my pocket. A kestrel shrieks goodbye at the gate.
APRIL 28. I have booked train tickets and a hotel in Liverpool. My heart in my mouth. I cannot admit even to myself how much I want Frank as my father and his grave as a resting place. It is tough to believe it might be true. Sheila couldn’t be trusted. I fear it’s another blind alley. There is no place left after this.
I am resolved to DNA. It feels unreasonable to appear without proofs. It is not that I need it. I don’t, I think. I would take it slowly. There is another responsibility, though: to them. For now, I’ll spend the day with Christy O’Toole, see if he recognises something in me and I see something in him. I will accept his hospitality. I will visit Frank’s grave but I will ask Christy if it is OK that we don’t rely on my mother. It’s not that I am looking for closure, I don’t think it exists. Some wounds scab over, then weep without warning. I am an Iceland of magma. I occasionally erupt.
In the difficult nights as a child I lulled myself to sleep by listening to my breathing. Christopher rocked back and forth, determined if slightly demented. Now I hold to Henriette. Even her hand seems to work.
1967. We practise kissing in circles, four on four, moving clockwise every two minutes. I am 13, learning secrets from a sexual world where people exchange spit. The first step is to learn how to breathe, no drowning, gurgling noises. We have five minutes with each to get a feel for each other and a taste of technique with ton
gues. Each subtly different, subdued, eager, impatient. I am besotted with S. She is adopted. Has already had sex. I obsess about her black underwear under her white school shirt. She has swagger. Her boyfriends have scooters or cars. They know how to unleash a bra. No way I can compete. She can’t be seen with me. I am sometimes allowed private lessons at her home while listening to the Monkees. We might be lying down. There might be wiry, sticky touch. She is an indulgent teacher. But I’m not old or dangerous enough. Our first sex is on someone’s kitchen floor next to the cat food. We’d met again at a rock concert. We’d smoked a couple of joints. She is wearing a maxi skirt, a floppy hat. She smiles as she opens her legs. I won’t see her again for 20 years. She is the only bright light in a class reunion. The early promise hasn’t worked out for most. There has been divorce and disappointment. Faces are stained with bitterness. S. is sporting silver hair. How are you, I ask. ‘I’ve got a Porsche,’ she smiles.
APRIL 30. The last day of April, the first morning of sowing before work. I am excited, up early after India. It is still a little cold. The hill is covered in bluebells, blazered children are being ferried to expensive schools. The shallot shoots have spread like green fingers; happy onions and garlic are lit by the morning sun. I am dressed for work so I take off my jacket. I spot a baby radish the size of a fingernail, a perfect gardening perk. There are a couple of clumps of autumn-sown chard, their scarlet stems showing well. I join them with a short row of candy-coloured beet. Flower, leaf, fruit and now root: the first spring sowing’s done. I pick mustard leaves and chive flowers, bronze fennel bushy like a foxtail.
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