Broken Places (12 page)

Knotting a towel around his waist, he went to find her in the kitchen, unable to be parted from her for more than fifty seconds.

‘Too hungry to wait?’

‘Hungry for
you
.’

‘What, still?’

‘Yes, still.’

‘Won’t be long. Why not park yourself on the sofa.’

Banished to the sitting-room, he examined all the photographs; envious of her parents and her sisters, who had known her so much longer. The sisters were all redheads; one of them a carrot-top, so he was beginning to feel a definite sense of belonging. He even knew their names now: Karen, Angela and Prue.

‘Were you christened Mandy?’ he called, ‘or Amanda?’

‘Amanda Sophia, actually – a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? It was shortened to Mandy pretty quick!’

How extraordinary, he thought, that she should share the name with the woman in
Tom Jones
– the entrancing, virtuous, well-born girl Tom had eventually married after a thousand dizzying vicissitudes. Perhaps it meant their relationship was blessed; that he, too, would win his Sophia; achieve his happy ending.

All at once, he knew, at some deep level, that he ought to tell her –
now
– about his origins; that it would constitute betrayal to conceal them any longer. Instantly, he panicked, remembering past occasions when coming clean had landed him in trouble. Even when he’d confided in his wife, she had been concerned about her family’s reaction and what her friends might think. But since he and Mandy were one spirit and one flesh, he yearned to strip himself bare – as he had just done physically – so she could get to know the real Eric and not the man in the mask. Yet, there he was, cocooned in a woolly tunic (top half) and a luridly patterned purple towel (bottom half) – hardly the appropriate gear for broaching such a delicate subject. Too bad. If he didn’t take the plunge now, he knew he’d lose his nerve.

Fastening the towel more securely, he went to join her in the kitchen. ‘You know
Tom Jones
,’ he said.

‘’Course I do. I can sing all those old favourites – “It’s Not Unusual”, “The Green, Green Grass of Home”.’

‘No, I mean the book.’

‘I didn’t know he’d written a book.’

‘I’m not talking about the singer – the Tom Jones in Fielding’s novel.’

She looked completely blank; seemed more concerned, in any case, with grating cheese into the omelette pan.

‘It was written in 1749, by this famous—’

‘Eric, it’s all I can do to keep up with modern books, let alone dusty old historical things.’

It had been a struggle for him, too – 900 close-packed pages, when he was only seventeen. But the subject matter had kept him reading right until the gratifying end, when Tom had not only wed his true love but was proved to be of noble birth and thus heir to a great fortune. ‘It’s not the book itself. It’s what it’s about. You see …’ The words faltered to a stop. He was going far too fast; should have waited till they knew each other better; introduced the subject more obliquely; seen how she reacted, then instantly backpedalled if she showed the slightest distaste. He could still do that, in fact. Best to move on to another topic – fast. ‘It … it doesn’t matter. Forget it.’

‘Of course it matters if it’s important to you. I want to know everything about you.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes. I feel we belong together.’

‘Oh, Mandy, that’s just …’ All the words were inadequate: wonderful, incredible, bordering on miraculous. ‘Do you really mean it?’

‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. But, look, the omelette’s almost ready now. Why don’t we eat it in the sitting-room, then you can tell me all about this book. Though I have to confess I’m not the world’s greatest reader, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance.’

Never mind her ignorance – what mattered was his ‘confession’. If he waited till she served the meal, he knew he’d change his mind – again. ‘Why it meant so much to me,’ he blurted out, top-speed, ‘is that it’s the story of a foundling, and
I’m
a foundling, too.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mandy looked startled; all but dropped her spatula.

‘What I said. My mother left me in a recreation ground. I presume she couldn’t cope, so she had to simply dump me.’

‘But, Eric, that’s quite awful!’

Quickly he studied her face. ‘Awful’ in the sense of unacceptable, or a sympathetic ‘awful’? The latter, thank the Lord.

And he was aware of the concern in her voice as she asked, ‘What happened then?’

‘I was discovered by the park-keeper, who called the police, and they, in turn, called an ambulance. Apparently, I was on the small side and pretty close to starving, so they rushed me straight to hospital.’

Mandy turned off the gas and came over to embrace him, stroking his hair, his cheek. It was all he could do not to blub. This was the mother he had imagined twenty-thousand times, reunited with him, at last – at last – and holding him with just such tenderness. He had always done his damnedest to make himself believe that she had abandoned him against her will and against her natural instincts; forced by some quite desperate plight beyond her own control. She was penniless and jobless; had strict, religious parents who had banished her from home; been seduced by her rough brute of a boss and was thus acting out of panic. The alternative was callous
rejection
– an act too cruel to countenance.

‘Come and sit down.’ Mandy led him to the sofa and sat holding both his hands. There was no trace of disgust on her face, only deep compassion. ‘But who brought you up? Were you adopted or—?’

‘I was meant to be, but it all fell through – and twice, would you believe? – despite the fact I was said to be the ideal candidate. You see, there’s a huge demand for babies, rather than older children, especially babies who are white and not disabled. Sad as it may sound, people tend to shun kids with any sort of handicap, or those from ethnic minorities.’

‘So why did it go wrong?’

‘Well, it didn’t until the very end of the process. All the checks were done – both times – and home visits and what-have-you, which take an age, in any case. But then my first adoptive mother fell pregnant with her own child, which apparently was quite a shock, since she’d been trying to conceive for years and had given up all hope. Eventually, she decided she didn’t want two babies, so they had to start again from scratch, with another local couple. This time, it was the guy who lost his nerve, right at the last minute, and talked his wife out of it. I was in foster-care already, of course. Abandoned babies are always fostered for at least the first few months, to give the birth-mother a chance to change her mind and show up. Sadly, that didn’t happen for me. So they moved me into long-term
foster-care
– except it wasn’t very long-term. My foster-parents’ marriage broke up, so I was sent on somewhere else, to—’

‘But, Eric, this is absolutely outrageous! Three moves already and you were still a tiny scrap.’

‘No, I was nearly a year old by then – although there were a lot more moves to come, I’m afraid.’ He wouldn’t tell her that, in the end, he’d stopped bothering to unpack his things; simply left them in black bin-liners, ready for the next upheaval. ‘I suppose it was just unfortunate. It shouldn’t really happen like that – and doesn’t in most cases.’

‘But how did you survive? I mean, you seem so normal, not screwed up or bitter or—’

He forced a laugh; had no intention of revealing all his insecurities – not yet, in any case. One thing at a time.

Mandy released his hands and sat back on the sofa, gazing at him wonderingly. ‘I so admire you, Eric! Most people who’d endured all that would see themselves as victims and never stop going on about how unfair it was. Well, it
is
unfair – it’s appalling. But I still think you’re quite fantastic just to shrug it off.’

She didn’t understand. It was impossible to shrug it off: the endless round of different ‘mums’ and ‘dads’; different houses, different beds; followed by the children’s home; then a second institution because the first was forced to close. It was proving quite a strain, in fact, reliving all this trauma, when his normal way of coping was to dam things up; pretend they’d never happened; escape through books and fantasies to a better, brighter world. He could feel the dreaded darkness choking through his mind; not helped by the fact that the room itself was dim; the curtains still undrawn; the black night pressing in; only one small lamp on, too weak to dispel the gloom. But it was imperative to adopt a cheery manner; otherwise he’d lose Mandy’s admiration, and such admiration was precious beyond words. She had spoken almost disparagingly of ‘victims’, so no way would he become one.

‘In some ways, I was lucky, you know,’ he said, with determined
optimism
.

‘Lucky?’ Mandy looked aghast.

‘Yes, some of the boys had such appalling parents, they’d have been better off as foundlings. I remember one kid, Jordan, who shared a room with me. His mum was an alcoholic and always threatening to kill herself – when she wasn’t collapsing in a drunken stupor. She neglected him so
badly, he’d been hospitalized a dozen times before the age of three. And she suffocated his baby brother when he was only four months old. She had seven kids in total – all illegitimate, all by different fathers, and all of whom landed up in care. Jordan was allowed home now and then, and he said it was a total nightmare, and he much preferred being in Grove End.’

‘It makes my blood boil, Eric, that some poor innocent kid should be stuck with a mother like that.’

‘Can you really blame her, though? She’d been abused and beaten up herself. The whole cycle just perpetuates itself.’

‘But what about
your
mother? Did they ever trace her?’

He gave another casual laugh. ‘Sadly, no. And they even went and lost my Precious Box, which was all that I had left of her.’

‘Your what?’

‘My first foster-parents made it for me, so I would have a record of everything that happened. They put in all the press-cuttings about my being found, and the old cardigan my mother wrapped me in. And there was a photo of the nurses at the hospital, and one of the guy who rescued me – Eric, he was called. He gave me his own name and the surname Parkhill, because that was where I was found: Park Hill recreation ground. And one of the ambulance crew gave me my second name – Victor, because they saw it as a victory that they’d rescued me in time. So that’s me in all my borrowed glory – Eric Victor Parkhill.’ He’d often wondered if his mother had already chosen a name for him – maybe something with a regal air, like George or Harold or Edward – but perhaps that, too had been swept away.

Mandy was still staring at him. ‘It sounds like … like a fairytale.’

‘Not many fairies, unfortunately! I have to say I’m still pretty gutted about losing all that early stuff.’ The old cardi most of all. His mother might have worn it right against her skin; it would have borne her touch, her smell, maybe even a stray auburn hair. Inestimable treasure. ‘And there were other important things in the box. A later set of foster-parents put in my first baby-tooth and a curl from my first haircut and, later still, someone else added all my childish drawings and poems.’

‘But how on earth was it lost? The very fact it’s called a Precious Box surely means it’s precious, so it should have been guarded with great care.’

‘Oh, everything went missing. With so many moves from place to place, it’s more or less inevitable. They even lost my original records – the ones made by the child-care officer who registered my birth. Some of the
information
was written out again – which is why I know about the recreation
ground and how I got my names. But a lot of the detail was left out, so I’ve no idea exactly where I was found. I mean, it could have been in the bushes, or on a bench, or’ – he shrugged – ‘who knows? And I haven’t a clue which hospital I went to, let alone what I looked like as a baby. I suppose they only had time to jot down a rough outline, or perhaps they couldn’t remember much beyond the basic facts.’

‘But couldn’t you have asked your various foster-parents – later on, I mean, when you were old enough to understand?
They’d
have remembered, surely?’

‘No, I lost all contact with them. The first set moved away and my second foster-mother had a sort of breakdown, so I wasn’t allowed to see her any more. I also had a lot of different social workers, so there wasn’t just one person to ensure my records were properly looked after.’

‘It sounds as if you were messed around in a quite atrocious way.’

‘No, it was more a chapter of accidents, with no one person specifically to blame. OK, I admit it was rather a shambles and there were several major cock-ups along the way, but that’s just the fault of the system. People always seem to have it in for social workers, but sometimes they’re too young to cope, or have such a massive caseload, they get swamped in paperwork and tend to lose the plot. And their lives aren’t exactly easy. I mean, people slam the door in their face, or threaten them at knifepoint, or even send them parcels of poo through the post.’

‘Maybe so, but I still reckon you’re exceptionally forgiving. God, if it was
me
, I’d be beside myself with rage!’

As a child, he
had
been angry, but mainly because his social workers never seemed to listen; discussed him at review meetings as if he wasn’t there; made him feel he was just a ‘case’, a number. They’d fired questions at him when he didn’t have the answers, and always sided with the staff at the home, so that even if he had reason to complain – a slap, a punch, or having to stand and face the wall in silence for two hours at a stretch – they’d say, ‘Now, come on, Eric, you’re probably just exaggerating.’ And half the time, they were strangers, anyway, because, just as he had got to know one, he or she would disappear and he would be assigned to someone new. And he’d often had the feeling they resented him for adding to their work. In fact, he hated the word ‘caseload’, which turned him into a burden; a sort of heavy rucksack strapped to their long-suffering backs.

He gave a sudden grin. ‘You won’t believe this, Mandy, but once, I even had another boy’s records in my file – instead of mine, I mean. He was
called Eric Parks, so I can understand the confusion. His circumstances were entirely different from mine, but it took a while for anyone to twig, so it caused no end of problems.’