The Adoption (48 page)

He draws up the deed, as I look on mesmerised, overcome with the solemnity of the proceedings. He does not intrude into my affairs, waving them away with his pudgy pale hand. His client is desirous of a new name. That is all the information he requires, he says. When he has finished tapping away at his computer keys, he prints the document and, handing it to me, invites inspection with a flourish of his stubby fingers.

‘Read it through carefully at least a couple of times, Mrs Ryan. And then I’ll call in Mrs Billings, my secretary, as a witness and you can sign it.’

I give it my undivided attention. I want no mistakes this time, no accidents of birth. Laura is on purpose, meant. I am naming me for no one but myself.

THIS DEED OF NAME CHANGE is made on the 21st day of December 2000 by me, Lucilla Ryan, of Pear Tree Cottage, Brightmore Hall, Dorking, a married woman and British Citizen under the British Nationality Act 1981, Section 1, WITNESSES AND DECLARES as follows:

IN WITNESS whereof I have hereunto set my hand the day and
year first above written

Signed as a deed by the said

Laura Ryan
.

In the presence of:

I glance up and nod portentously. I am ready. Mrs Billings is summoned. I sign. She signs. Mr Arnold Hawkins, senior partner of Messrs Hawkins and Cowley, solicitors at law, signs. The deed is done. Several photocopies of the document are printed. Mrs Billings withdraws. As my assassin blows smoke from the barrel of his gun, he has these words of sagacity for me: ‘You must waste no time in informing the bank, the medical practice where you are registered, your dentist, the tax office, national insurance, not to mention relations and friends.’ He presses his hands together as if in supplication. ‘You can help the process, Mrs Ryan. Henceforth you are to be addressed as Laura by those you are on first-name terms with. If they fail to comply by using your legal name in addressing you, then you must give no reaction.’ He leans close and drops his voice a notch.
‘Remember
, Lucilla is no more. You cannot talk with the deceased, not in reality.’

I trace my name on the documents, the script that spells out Laura, Laura Ryan. These papers are entrusted with the task of acquainting all and sundry with my new identity. Smiling hugely, I gather up my deeds of name change and hug them to me. Mr Hawkins raises a finger in caution. ‘Naturally, you cannot alter the name on your birth certificate or your wedding certificate.’

‘But I can on my passport?’ I quiz, anxiously. If Lucilla endures there, if I am trapped by her at every border crossing, then all this has been futile.

‘Oh most assuredly yes,’ vouchsafes Mr Hawkins, getting to his feet. ‘I suggest you tackle the passport office without delay.’

My accomplice assists me filling out the forms for such, which I have precipitously collected from the post office in Dorking. He double-checks that all the facts are correct. I write an accompanying letter explaining that I was adopted Lucilla Pritchard, but that I have now changed my name by deed poll. Following post office guidance, I also include copies of all my certificates. The lady at the counter, with the Union Jack transfers on her fingernails, reviews my papers, pencilled eyebrows almost colliding, replying in answer to my query that I should hear in about a week.

The New Year, 2001. Every day I expect to take delivery of a bulky package containing my passport. I have stacks of Australian travel brochures by my bed, and drop off leafing through them at night. I wonder what it will be like boarding an aeroplane, for I have never been airborne – except in my dream, the dream that still comes to me, the dream where I fly off a chalky Empire State Building – Beachy Head. The letter from the passport office and the letter from Tim arrive together. The passport office wishes to see me in person, to examine all my documentation, the originals, and interview me. Tim writes that
he
is very excited about my forthcoming visit, and that as soon as my dates are confirmed I must tell him so that he can book time off.

My elation at the prospect of such an adventure and a reunion with my son is tempered by irrational misgivings. Born to a Welsh farming girl, reared by the Pritchards, a Welsh man and an English woman, I have only one home. I know no other. For fifty-three years I have resided on this island. I am British, a loyal subject to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Almost an old age pensioner, I have been summoned to the passport office at in London for interview. Henry maintains this is merely a formality but I am not so sure.

Whatever Henry evinces, the authorities have the clout to say no
. No, Laura Ryan, we are not issuing you with a British passport
. As I near my February appointment, my dread expands until worry beads a mile in length will not mollify me. ‘Forsaken by two mothers, now my own country wants to deport me – but to where? Who will take me in? Will I wash up on the streets of Berlin, a pavement chalk artist, scanning faces for my father?’

Henry tunes in placidly to my melodramatic histrionics. ‘It’ll be a simple process, Laura,’ he soothes.

But I spit out this comforter, contemptuous of his faith, waking on the day of my interview nerves jangling. I have had a prolonged ear infection. My right ear is totally deaf, my left whispers sibilantly. There is no discomfort merely an acute sense of isolation, as if my head is boarded up. The weather is filthy, sheeting down with rain, a synonymous climatic backdrop to my emotional desolation. Henry offers for the sixth time to come with me. But I want to go by myself. A bit like dying, I reflect, if that is not endowing the situation with too much pathos. You can’t really die with anyone else, can you? So, I reason, that you cannot be reborn with anyone else either. And I know I shall only truly inhabit Laura, when I see her name printed in my passport. So I patch together a faint smile and say, in mimicry of Greta
Garbo
, ‘I want to be alone.’ It doesn’t sound anywhere near as sexy, only feeble and bleak. But he nods affably and offers to make the tea.

I expend unusual effort readying myself for the occasion. I wash my hair and, with it turbaned on my head run a scented bath, jasmine essence. I shave my legs and pumice the soles of my feet, pleased that they are still within reach. Getting out, I towel dry, then apply deodorant, body lotion, talc and, finally, perfume, the simple scent of a rose. If the examination is on smell alone, the officer’s olfactory receptors will be quivering, and I shall pass with distinction. I dress in a white blouse, a fawn skirt, a navy jacket and suede court shoes. Corporate. Classic. I fuss with my hair attempting to pin it up, but as it keeps sliding free I resort to tying it back in a short ponytail. I put on my oval topaz earrings set in silver, and my locket with a curl of Merlin’s hair tucked in it for luck. Even as I go through this ritual I feel absurd, like a bride trying in vain to beautify herself, although she knows she is destined to be jilted at the altar.

I put my life, my letters, my certificates, my few childhood photographs and the one or two I possess of my adoptive parents into a plastic sleeve.

A friend from the estate’s gift shop runs me to the station. The weather when I arrive at Victoria can be classed without fear of exaggeration as not just raining cats and dogs, but lions and tigers as well. I trudge along, the envelope tucked under my jacket, my umbrella open, obscuring the dismal drenched streets, my suede shoes sodden and squelching.

We are a brother and sisterhood of sorts, sitting in the waiting room of the London Passport Interview Offices. Our various ancestry is written large over our faces: Indian, Jamaican, African, Chinese, South American, Asian … German? From all the corners of the globe we have come, we nomads seeking a land to pitch our tents, to raise our children, a country we can call our own, an identity, a sense of
belonging
. A squabble of languages buzz in my restricted but still functional good ear; however the cadence, the intonation, the inflexions are all gobbledegook. But fear, insecurity and vulnerability – this tongue is universal. When the bell rings and my number flashes, flesh turns to stone. It takes a supreme effort for me to hoist myself up and out of my chair. With damp, squishing steps, I make my way to the inset compartment where my interrogator awaits. The gentleman sits behind a desk scowling at my paperwork. He looks Indian.

‘Mrs Ryan, please take a seat.’ I have to concentrate on the process involved in accomplishing this instruction. I am dripping onto the floor, as if gradually melting. Sitting has suddenly become an Olympic sport. I flounder, tip, subside, wibble-wobble into a kind of erect posture. My interviewer introduces himself as Mr Gajarin. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind, Mrs Ryan,’ he begins, assessing me shrewdly with darting beady eyes. I half expect him to switch on a lamp and direct the beam straight into my face. And then he is off.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I say. Then, ‘Could you say that again, please?’ His voice is soft, his accent treacly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that?’ Still straining my stuffed ears, ‘Could you run that by me again?’ His eyes pierce me, dark as wet peat. Does he think I am mocking him, feigning deafness deliberately in a wilful attempt at antagonising him? I consider telling him about my ear infections, that I am prone to them, that often when they are healing I am hard of hearing, but that the impairment is only temporary. On second thoughts, he may take this infirmity into consideration. It may cause him to consider whether I will tax the resources of the NHS. I lick parched lips and perform, with an intelligent judder of my chin, a pretence of having heard him. ‘What was that? Perhaps you could rephrase that last sentence? A thousand apologies but I was distracted by the bell. If you would only repeat the question more slowly?’

My documents, my certificates and my photographs are strewn all over the desk. Without intending to, I have embarked on my history. I am telling my disjointed story. Granted it is an abridged version, though complete with all the pertinent facts. I gabble frantically, in my excess hoping to include whatever this powerful servant of Her Majesty is listening for, whatever dates may sway him in my petition. Glancing at me now and again, he makes copious notes. When I pause for breath, like a cat that up till now has only been toying with a mouse, he pounces.

‘You changed your first name very recently by deed poll from Lucilla to Laura. Why was that?’

I gulp. This man, with his face as closed as a sealed can, has no receptive chink in the set of his features. How can I possibly communicate to him the reason a mature woman in her fifties, married with children of her own, casts off her name of half a century to adopt another. ‘I … I … I …’ I tail off weakly, eyes curtained.

‘You?’ prompts Mr Gajarin after a few seconds’ hesitation. Mrs Ryan, Mrs Laura Ryan, you?

‘I … I didn’t like it.’ And there it is, the card trick extraordinaire, climax of the magician’s repertoire, belly-flopping painfully before her one-man audience.

A pause so long it must be reclassified as a silence. ‘Ah!’ I am unsure how to categorise this exclamation.

I lift my eyes to his and, guessing that he requires more detail, sally on. ‘Actually, if you want to know, I’ve always hated it. My birth mother gave me the name. I was baptised Lucilla before the Pritchards adopted me. I was three and half months old when she handed me over. She didn’t really know me at all, what I was like, my personality. I wasn’t girly. I was more of a tomboy. Lucilla’s a girly name. It didn’t feel like me. Besides it sounds like a scream. Then I decided to travel, to visit my son in Australia. For that a passport is a required. I’ve never
been
abroad before, so up until now I coped without one. The moment had come to change it, because I couldn’t stand to see that name in my passport. It would have been a lie. Because … because a passport is going to announce to the world who I really am. And I’m not Lucilla. I never have been. I’m Laura, you see.’

Mr Gajarin has stopped making notes and is looking up, jaw slack, his dark eyes stretched in amazement. Perhaps he has deduced that applicant number sixty-eight is barking mad. But it is of no consequence. I am Laura, legally Laura. Not even the Queen can take that from me. Mr Gajarin flips to a fresh page in his pad. He means business. He flexes the muscles of his down-turned lips. ‘What is the date of your mother’s birth?’ he fires at me, a birth certificate held close to his chest like an answer card in Trivial Pursuit, except that this pursuit is anything but trivial.

Sweat pricks my armpits. My pumping heart seems to rise, blocking my throat. ‘Which … which one?’ I quaver.

Mr Gajarin lifts his impressive eyebrows and brushes a speck of dust from his grey suit. ‘Which one?’ he queries, alert for my reaction.

‘Which … which … which mother?’ I stammer, my film of decorum rupturing in one, two, three tears. Casually, I flick them off my cheek as if they are insects that have randomly alighted there. ‘My … my real mother? Do you mean her? My birth mother? Bethan Haverd? Well, Bethan Sterry after she married. The one in Wales. Or my adoptive mother? Harriet Pritchard? The one in England.’

His brows relax marginally. ‘Bethan Haverd, your Welsh birth mother,’ he qualifies after a second’s pause.

And suddenly put on the spot, my brain cells are rinsed to a dazzling whiteness, far beyond the realms of biological science. Recalling the names of my children, my husband, let alone my real mother’s date of birth, taxes me far beyond my current limited faculties. Distantly, a bell sounds. I spare a charitable thought for the
other
anxiety-ridden applicants, lives in tow, trouping into the compartments to beg, borrow or steal that most elusive of treasures – a British passport! Now was it the eighth or the ninth? The ninth or the eighth? For the love of God I do not know. I screw up my forehead and slam shut my eyes, prompting my photographic memory. But the certificate that forms there is undeveloped. Mr Gajarin’s eyes vacillate from the actual document in his grasp to my anguished face then back again.