Life Worth Living (34 page)

As soon as I arrived back in the UK, I organised my mission to Russia, and at the end of June 1993, I boarded an Aeroflot flight for St Petersburg. I was met by my driver, a biochemist on a sabbatical from his job so that he could supplement his tiny income to the tune of US$20 a day, a not inconsiderable sum in Russia then. I nicknamed him Volodia Helicopter, for I was always
asking him to fly, and he somehow managed to do so through the streams of traffic that were now clogging the roads of that beautiful Baltic city.

When Volodia took me to Eugenie’s flat in Peter’s District, I had not one stitch of baby clothes, nor had I bought a cot or any other equipment before leaving London. Although not superstitious by nature, I was nervous about ‘setting a goal mouth’, as the Jamaicans would put it, on the enterprise. I had left bottles, disposable nappies and baby food, which I had brought over from England, with Maria Theresa in Moscow the last time I had been there. Having left empty-handed then, I didn’t want to buy anything for the baby until I had him safely in my arms.

When I arrived, Eugenie said, ‘If you’d like, we can go and look at your son at the orphanage tomorrow.’

‘Will they allow me to?’ I said, concerned not to put a foot wrong with the unknown personages who had such power over the future of me and my baby. No British or Jamaican citizen had ever tried to adopt a child from St Petersburg, and in breaking new ground I could not be assured of a successful outcome until the process was completed.

‘The doctors in charge of the orphanage are looking forward to meeting you,’ Eugenie said.

The positive note pleased me no end.

On the last Sunday afternoon of June 1993, Eugenie and I piled into Volodia Helicopter’s lovingly tended Lada and headed across town, over the Neva River and up past the Tauride Palace, home of Catherine the Great’s lover Prince Potemkin, to the other side of town, where the orphanage was situated. It was in a stark, well-tended two-storey building near a subway station, wings shooting off wings in a reflection of necessary expansion rather than architectural purpose.

As Eugenie pressed the bell and waited for what seemed like an eternity for a nurse to open the front door, my heart was beating fiercely. This was the moment of truth. A hundred thoughts passed through my mind, an equal number of emotions through my heart. My greatest hope was that I would like the baby; my greatest dread that I would not. I knew of mothers who had not taken even to their natural children – an antipathy that in some lasted a lifetime. What if that happened to me? My innate optimism quickly shoved that fear aside as ever-increasing waves of anticipation engulfed me.

By the time the nurse opened the door, I was like a horse at the starting gate. Fortunately, Eugenie is a fast walker. I followed her down the corridor to the doctors’ office, where they greeted us and we exchanged pleasantries for about five minutes while I quelled my desire to bolt off and see my baby.

‘We’re sure you’d like to see the baby,’ said the two doctors at last. ‘Would you follow us, please?’

Eugenie and I followed Valentina and Yelena to one of the infants’ wards. They opened the door to reveal a spacious, airy room with a huge, brightly coloured playpen and two nurses in attendance. On one of the two nappy-changing tables lay a baby, naked except for a yellow bonnet.

‘Come,’ Yelena said and Eugenie translated, ‘come and look at your son. He’s a beautiful little boy.’

The baby on the table had huge blue eyes. He was kicking his feet in pleasure.

‘Would you like me to be your Mummy?’ I asked him.

The baby looked me straight in the eye, which is very unusual for three-month-olds, as all mothers will know. He gurgled delightedly, broke into a big smile, and said, ‘Gaa.’

I was gobsmacked, and so was everyone else.

From that moment on, Misha, as I named him, had my heart.

‘He likes you,’ Valentina said delightedly through Eugenie.

‘You see?’ Eugenie added. ‘I told you he was a beauty.’

‘Go on, pick him up,’ Yelena encouraged, seeing that I wanted to hold him.

For an hour I held my little bundle of joy in my arms. Eugenie and I took him for a walk in the grounds of the orphanage. Already I loved him as only a mother can love her child, though intermingled with my joy was the knowledge that someone had had to give up this magnificent, adorable little boy.

When it was time to return Misha to his cot, I steeled myself and handed him over to the nurse with a minimum of fuss. I understood that the nurses and doctors did not have time to tend to more than children’s basic needs, but I wanted for Misha what every mother wants for her baby: to see him surrounded by unlimited love and care.

I was also curious to see the baby that had been earmarked for me before Misha. Eugenie asked the nurse to show him to me. I followed her into one of the rooms off the central ward where there were fourteen babies asleep in individual cots. ‘There he is,’ said Eugenie, who had already seen him. ‘He’s sweet, isn’t he?’

I looked down at an angelic bundle asleep in his cot overlooking the window. He was far less Western European-looking than Misha with the broad face and slanting eyes of a Russian with Tartar blood. I bent down, kissed his forehead and said, ‘Have a good life, darling boy. I’m sorry I’m not going to be your Mummy, but I understand you’re due to get one soon.’

The following afternoon, Eugenie and I went to see the official at the Ministry of Education without whose approval the adoption could not proceed. The Russian system of dropping in
on officials without an appointment, and being seen by them if they were available or coming back if they were not, was novel, to say the least, but I was not about to tell Romans how to behave in Rome, or Russians in St Petersburg. When we were finally called in to this official’s ‘study room’, I was encouraged by the hospitable way she greeted us.

Everything was going swimmingly until she learned the identity of the baby selected for me. ‘You can’t adopt him until November next year,’ she said through Eugenie. ‘I can understand why no one has picked this up for his papers don’t make it clear unless you’re familiar with the minutiae of the law. But the law is definite on this point. He can’t be adopted till then.’

I nearly passed out from the shock. I could hardly grasp what I was hearing, though of course I understood the ramifications immediately. ‘Have another baby,’ the official suggested. ‘There are so many lovely babies you could have.’

‘But I love him,’ I said, nearly breaking down at the thought of leaving my little Misha in an orphanage for another seventeen months. What would happen to him in the interval? What effects would the deprivation of a mother’s love have upon him, in both the short and long term? Both Eugenie and the official did what they could to console me, but to no avail. Already Misha was my baby, if only in my heart.

‘Have the baby originally earmarked for you,’ the official suggested. ‘He’s a beautiful little boy, and his name means gift of God in Russian. Maybe he’s God’s gift to you, and this is God’s way of bringing you together.’

This was absolutely the right thing to say to me. Believing in God as strongly as I do, I saw exactly what she meant, and, having seen him the day before and found him adorable, I said, ‘OK, I’ll take him. But can’t you find some way of letting me have Misha as well? It will break my heart to leave him in the orphanage.’

She picked up the telephone and made a series of calls. Eugenie later told me that she had telephoned the doctors at the orphanage and an important medical official. While she did this I prayed harder than I have ever prayed in my life that God would give her a way to get me Misha as well.

‘What we can do for you,’ she eventually said through Eugenie, ‘is allow you to take the baby out of the country for medical treatment. Then you can keep him with you until next November, when we will process the adoption. Would you like that?’

‘Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

The following day, when I went to the orphanage to see the children, I understood how desirable it was for Misha to receive medical treatment in London. Although the Russians love children and the authorities do everything in their power to ensure that the orphans receive as high a standard of care as
possible, the state’s finances are such that specialised medical treatment is not readily available to every child who needs it.

When I took off Misha’s bonnet, which I had not done the first time I had seen him, I noticed that his head and one side of his face were covered in carbuncles. ‘He has an allergy,’ the doctors said, but I wondered whether it might not be something more serious. AIDS did cross my mind as a possibility, but I resolved to have him no matter what was or was not wrong with him. Fortunately, when I did get him back to England I discovered that his condition was non-infectious, though more serious than an ordinary allergy. It was eminently treatable, however, and he is now cured.

Back in St Petersburg, I spent three weeks in a haze of meetings. Volodia Helicopter ferried us between the various ‘study rooms’ of a plethora of officials, to whom we had to extend the courtesy of punctuality, but who invariably seemed to reside on opposite sides of the city.

In the evenings, I sometimes went to the ballet, to concerts and to the opera, but often I was so wrung out that I curled up in bed with a book. It was a fraught period, as I knew I must not count my chickens before they were hatched. So I could not breathe easily until the adoption papers for the first baby were on their way to the Smolny Palace, where the official concerned signs the decree to authorise the adoption certificate to be issued. The decree was due to be signed on Friday 9 July 1993.

‘Pick it up at five o’clock,’ the official’s assistant advised Eugenie.

‘Nothing can go wrong now,’ Eugenie said. ‘The baby is yours.’

Only then did I allow her to take me to GKN, the massive department store off the Nevsky Prospect, to buy blankets and all the baby clothes I could lay my hands on. Afterwards we headed for the Smolny Palace to pick up the adoption decree. When we got there, we were informed that it had not been signed yet. The official who was obliged by law to sign all adoption decrees had been abroad and had not had time to sign it since his return. ‘He will sign it on Monday,’ the assistant solemnly promised us after Eugenie explained that I had irrevocable travel plans for the following Monday evening.

That Monday, 12 July, Volodia certainly put his helicoptering skills to use as we zipped from one part of town to another, picking up the adoption decree and taking it to obtain an adoption certificate and a birth certificate for my son. I named him Dmitri in honour of the land of his birth, Jonathan because it means gift of God in English, Victor after his godfather Sheikh Victor el Khazen, and Jesús for his godfather Jesús Mora. His surnames were my maiden name, Ziadie, and Campbell, to connect him with the name by which I am known.

Eugenie and I then headed across town to pick up Dima’s Russian passport, which was stamped with an exit visa stating that he was leaving the country permanently. Afterwards, we returned to her flat for my clothes and grabbed a sandwich which we ate in the car as we hurtled across town to the
orphanage to collect the kids. I already had Misha’s passport and papers, which had been prepared the week before.

We were now horribly late and in danger of missing the overnight train to Moscow. This I had to catch, as I had to be there the following day to get Misha’s visa for England and Dima’s Jamaican passport, without which he would not be granted entry into Britain. I had planned to take photographs of the orphanage for the children to see when they are older, but when push came to shove there simply wasn’t time. We made it without a second to spare. I thanked Volodia for his help and kissed Eugenie. I was a Mummy at last.

When I returned home to England, the first person I telephoned was my brother. He had not been in favour of me adopting, asking, as he had done when I had first got Tum-Tum, ‘Why do you want to tie yourself down with so much responsibility?’

‘How did it go?’ he asked.

‘Rather better than I thought it would. I’ve got two beautiful little boys.’

‘You what?’ he said.

‘Well, they more or less gave me the option of taking one or two, and since I wasn’t about to leave either, I took both.’

‘Only you could go for one baby which you don’t need, and come back with two,’ he said, ever the big brother. ‘I’ll come and see you on my way from work.’

The rest of my family had been as fretful as Mickey before the adoption in case I saddled myself with a ‘lemon’, and reacted with equal consternation afterwards.

‘Can you believe what Georgie has gone and done?’ Daddy asked my oldest friend, Judy Ann MacMillan. ‘She goes to Russia for one baby and comes back with two.’

‘I know,’ Judy Ann said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ my father retorted, ‘but at least it shows she has a big heart.’

My family’s worries did not perturb me in the least. Life offers no guarantees, however you come by your children. Is adoption actually any more of a shot in the dark than birth by more conventional means? Does one really have any more control over the destiny of one’s progeny if one produces them oneself? Of course not.

You only had to look at me to see that I was hardly the sort of child my own father would have wished for. Because of the accident of birth which had so affected my life, I took a very relaxed view of what is and isn’t acceptable where children are concerned. So what if the babies turned out to be flawed in some way? Why should that make me love them less?

Every mother knows how tiring infants are, and mine were no exception. Although Misha gave no more trouble than the average good baby, Dima had discovered in Moscow, thanks to the attentions of the four Trofaier children, Maria Theresa and me, that if he cried he got a response. For the next six months he did little else unless he was snuggled firmly in my bosom. There were times when I wanted to tear my hair out, but never once did I regret having taken him. He was my baby, and I was prepared to endure the process of deinstitutionalising him, no matter how long it took.