The Adoption (35 page)

‘I want to go art school!’ she bellowed, stamping both feet alternately.

‘Well, you can’t and that’s that,’ her mother barked crossly.

‘Temper, temper! Lucilla, I will not have –’ But quite what her father would not have remained unuttered. The ants marched up through her ankles, her calves, her thighs. They marched in fury around the menstruating core of her, and up through her aching stomach. They made her nipples stand erect through her cotton starter bra and the fine wool of her blouse. They marched down her arms and caused her hands to lift from her sides, to lift and seize the joint of lamb. By now dried out to the texture of a fibre mat, the skin and toughened meat parched to the charred bone, it was not actually scalding, only hot. Her parents, stunned into immobility, their mouths falling open to reveal rows of teeth ruined by slab toffee, among other sugary sins, stared in appalled fascination at their adopted daughter. She had it in both hands, a firm grip. Raising it above her
head
like a discus thrower, she circled twice with perfect poise and then let it fly.

It belted through the air and slammed into the French windows. There came a
crump
as the teeth of glass made a meal of it. Then it slouched on the floor leaving a stain behind on the broken pane, like a greasy exclamation mark. Seconds ticked by. No one had the gumption to break the impasse. Mongrel eyes swivelled from one human to another. Then Scamp took the initiative. He crept over to the battered joint, deftly took the bone in his mouth, and made as swift an exit as his limp afforded him.

The turquoise seas of Lucilla’s eyes boiled. Her cheeks stained damson. ‘Say something, Merfyn,’ gasped her mother, falling back to fan herself with her handkerchief.

Her father made fish mouths.

‘I’m not sorry,’ spat out Lucilla, vengefully. ‘Some things are more important than lousy legs of lamb and damn mint sauce.’ Her father jumped in his seat and her mother emitted a squeak. ‘And does it matter if your horrible meals are a minute late? It’s not as if they’ll spoil. You’re a rotten cook anyway, and I hate your food. I wish I lived next door at the Friedmans’ and ate pretzels every day. I wish that I lived anywhere but here!’

‘Now, Lucilla,’ began her father heaving himself out of his chair and trying to regain some vestige of control, ‘you –’

‘And you needn’t tell me to go to my room because I’m on my way.’ She strode to the door, the uncomfortable pad on the move inside her pants. Yanking the door open, she whirled back. With a jut of her chin and a smirk, she dared her mother to dash over and strike her. If you try it, she thought, I shall empty the dish of soggy sprouts over your head. I shall squash them into your nest of tired hair. But her parents’ condition of semi-paralysis continued, so she strode off and left them to it. The incident was not mentioned again. However, when Lucilla
arrived
home from school on Monday, her mother ambushed her on the stairs.

‘I’d like you to step into the dining room. I want a word with you if you don’t mind,’ she said, untying her apron. Lucilla shrugged listlessly and followed her. Nothing seemed to matter any more. ‘Sit down, Lucilla,’ her mother continued, gesturing towards a dining chair. The table was not yet laid. The polished oak surface looked like a glossy mirror. Lucilla didn’t argue. She was fed up. All she wanted was to get this confrontation over with, so that she could go upstairs and read her library book,
Lord of the Flies
. She sat herself down, folded her arms and waited. Her mother stayed standing, transferring her weight from foot to foot. And now that Lucilla appraised her, her eyes skittering up and down, she became aware of her dishevelled appearance, her crumpled clothes, her unkempt hair, her bleary glasses. Something was awry, she sensed. Immediately her thoughts hopped to Scamp.

She sprang up. ‘Is Scamp OK? Has he been ill?’

‘No, no, he’s fine.’ Her mother sounded peeved that she had been upstaged by the dog. ‘For goodness’ sake do sit down.’ Lucilla lowered herself once more into her seat, as gingerly as if she were a pilot about to be ejected without a parachute. ‘The dog’s perfectly well. This is about you, Lucilla.’

Several thoughts chased each other in her head. She was going to be punished for the other night, for being a discus hurler and chucking the joint of lamb against the windowpane. It was taped up now with cardboard, as if a huge sticking plaster had been applied to a cut. She sniffed the air tentatively and a rotten sulphurous odour invaded her nostrils. Eggs again, their whites cauterised to an unappetising slime green. Perhaps they had reconsidered the scholarship and done a U-turn? But this seemed unlikely, her heavy heart told her. Perhaps they had decided to send her to boarding school after all? She was too
much
trouble at home. Oh, she did hope so. Perhaps she could go to Switzerland and be a Chalet School girl? Or perhaps someone had died? Her mother broke into her reverie.

‘Lucilla, I’ve something to tell you, something that really you ought to have known by now.’ Her mother was wringing her hands and she was not clock-watching, counting down to the exact second that tea must be thumped onto the table. ‘Your father promised that he would undertake this, but the years have slid by and … and … well, he just hasn’t.’ She harrumphed out a breath and stalled. Then she spread her hands on the table and braced her arms. She fixed Lucilla, her brown eyes stretched and bulging behind their round lenses. ‘I’m afraid … I’m afraid that you’re not our little girl. The truth is that you are adopted.’

Adopted. Adopted. Adopted. The word shrilled like a police siren. She stared up into the face of the woman she had instinctively known was not her mother. Her spontaneous reaction was immense relief. Exultant thoughts collided. Oh thank God, thank God! You are not my mother. There is no biological connection between us. That I am here in this house in East Finchley was not meant to be. Understanding that her spreading smile was not an appropriate reaction to this devastating announcement, she buried her face in her crooked arms, the smooth wood of the table cushioning her warm cheeks. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, and I turned out to be so … so wicked!’ came her muffled manufactured sobs. After what she estimated was a credible gap, she lifted her head, registering as she did so the reflection of her face in the table’s polished wood grain. ‘So you are not my mother?’ she could not prevent herself from saying, dry-eyed, her tone fizzing like champagne. In reply, her adoptive mother drew out a chair and fell into it. Lucilla waited for an excruciating half-minute. Then, her impatience brimming over, she asked, ‘Who were my real parents?’

‘Your birth mother was Welsh,’ her mother revealed tonelessly.

‘Welsh?’ Lucilla was gripped. Wasn’t Wales the land of legends, of the myths of Arthur and his true love Guinevere?

‘Yes, Welsh. But that’s all I know.’ The tone was churlish. Lucilla felt overwhelmed with disappointment. Surely there was more. She shot her mother, her adoptive mother, an imploring look. ‘I did see her, once, at the Church Adoption Society when she gave you to us. Oh and we caught a brief glimpse of her in court when the adoption was made legal.’ A disapproving chord thrummed in her speech. ‘She seemed a … a pleasant young woman.’ She picked over the adjective as if it was something nasty she had trodden in on the pavement. For her closing coda, she produced her hanky from a pocket and wiped her nose.

‘But why did she give me away?’ So soft was Lucilla’s voice that it barely qualified as a whisper. They were shut in by wintry darkness. She threw a glance beyond the reflected light of the dining room windows, beyond the gaping injury in the French doors, beyond the bottom of the garden. There she saw the lights of other lives. She wondered what was occurring in their back rooms, what melodramas were being enacted. The windows of other houses similar to theirs blinked their yellow eyes at her dispassionately. ‘She gave me away. Why would she do that?’ Her mother proffered nothing further. ‘Surely you were told more facts?’ Lucilla persisted. ‘My father – what about him? Was he Welsh?’ Her mother shook her head and gave her a funny look. ‘Well then, what was he? English?’

‘I’ve explained it to you. They kept the rest from me.’

‘But didn’t you –’

‘No, that’s all! They don’t like to tell the adoptive parents too much. Well, now you know.’ She sighed as if the tedium of Lucilla’s origin was beginning to pall on her. ‘It’s fact. Can’t be changed. But we’ve done our best by you.’ Had they? Had they really? Was this their best, this pitiful show of meagre pettiness, this barracks that substituted as a home. ‘Off you go and wash up for dinner.’

She did not move. Her voice when she spoke faltered. ‘You … you might recall more … more things about them that you’ve forgotten today.’

‘No, I won’t.’ Harriet Pritchard flung the words at her.

‘Oh! Do you have any … any papers, anything they gave you?’

‘No, I told you. No, I don’t. Sorry. Actually, now we’ve had this talk I think we should let it be. Make the most of it. Don’t you agree?’ She could dredge up no counterpoint to this. ‘Well, if you don’t now, I expect you’ll see the sense of it in a few days when you’re more yourself.’

More herself! The irony of this remark was inescapable. Lucilla heard the clock in the front room start to chime. That’s all it took, five chimes, for the transformation to take place. The years of trying to make herself belong trooped before her like a cavalcade of circus acts. She had been grafted from another plant onto this one. She was a hybrid. Who am I? she asked herself. She had no idea. But I do know who I am
not
. She clung to this. I am not Lucilla Pritchard. From the cloudy sediment of non-being an ‘I’ surfaced.

Chapter 23

Lucilla, 1963

THE SNOW IS
very deep, reaching above my knees as I tramp through it. A severe winter, that everyone is talking about. The houses all wear snowy periwigs. And the snow doesn’t look white but blue, a blinding blue, like the sea shot through with sunlight. If you look at it for more than a minute your eyes start to hurt, and pinkish stars blot your vision. I’m wearing my school uniform. I shan’t be wearing it for much longer now. Overall Hillside has been OK. Yes, OK. History was good. How things used to be. The wars that have altered the maps. The past is the future in the making. That’s what I believe anyhow, the pattern from which tomorrows are shaped. Quite a challenge to unpick it and set about radically remaking it.

We had a stabbing in the school last summer. No one died, but we were all confined to our classrooms while the police investigated. The head made a speech about it in assembly. He said we had to crack down on this kind of antisocial behaviour. He said that young people today had no discipline, that they were running riot. He said that we must preserve family values at all costs. Sometimes I think I’d like to stab someone, take a stand, join a protest.

The chemistry teacher, Mr Wright, went on a Ban the Bomb march last year, 1962. He set out at Aldermaston and wound up in London. Ironic really, because chemistry is probably where all this split the atom
business
had its nativity. But we all thought it was fabulous. ‘Nuclear War is an evil that will obliterate all of us and this beautiful planet besides.’ It’s so cool! That’s what he told us before he went. I bought a badge, which I only put on outside the house, as a concession to my stuffy parents. It’s black with a white peace sign on it. Mr Wright got into a skirmish and had to go to prison for a week, so overnight he became a celebrity.

Living without my art is like being the victim of a hit and run, suffering a blunt trauma that won’t heal. I have an imaginary twin who is attending the Royal Academy, painting her days all the colours of her life. She is doing extremely well, thank you very much. Her name, the name she will sign all her masterpieces with, is Laura – simply Laura. I’ve kept up my pen and ink drawings. I like doing galleons especially. The rigging, the sails, the hull, the figures on the deck, the tossing seas. What it must have been for the sailors back then to go exploring, not knowing what was out there, or where they would end up, not knowing if they would plunge in a torrent of foaming waves off the world’s rim.

My back is in agony. I’m shouldering a rucksack loaded down with newspapers, the
Daily Sketch
,
The Times
, the
Daily Mirror
, the
Telegraph
, the
Radio Times
– and a few comics besides, the
Dandy
and the
Beano
. I can feel the straps cutting into my shoulders. My shoes are frozen. So are my socks. And my kneecaps are like discs of ice. This is my paper round. A 6 am start at the newsagent’s down the road, marking the papers up with the names and the addresses. I deliver to the shops on the High Street as well. I work every day and I pick up extra money for Sundays. Hampstead Garden Suburb. Bishops Avenue. Millionaires’ Row. You should see those houses, like palaces they are.

I’ve gained something of a reputation at school for being a rebel. I’m in detention most afternoons. I skive when I fancy it, or don’t fancy
it
rather. In my last report I was described as a problem student, unmanageable, aggressive. I told a teacher to get stuffed the other day. He stopped me in my tracks as I was charging down a flight of steps, late as always.

‘You know not to run indoors, Lucilla.’ Mr Pratley is his name. He has bad breath and spotty, cratered skin. And I’ve seen him picking his nose when he thinks no one is looking. He teaches maths. He gripped me by the arm as I tried to get my breath. All the kids stopped and stared at me, even though he told them to get to class. Calling me Lucilla pissed me off. I’m known to most, teachers included, as LP. LP. My initials. Isn’t that wild? Like a long-playing record. I’ve grown fond of the nickname. I wrenched free of his grasp.

‘Get stuffed, Prat!’ I said, my volume up full for the benefit of my entourage. There were gasps and wolf whistles. I was infamous.

‘What did you say?’ snarled Pratley, smoking like the biscuits Mother makes.

‘I said,’ I repeated enunciating each syllable carefully, ‘get stuffed, Prat!’