Motherlove (6 page)

This new truth hung before her, blocking her vision. Everything she'd been through hadn't been inescapable fate. It should never have happened. She should never have been there, with Gillian and Joan. She should have been with another mother. Her first thought, that Gillian had been an evil child-snatcher, had made it easy. But no. She hadn't been lying about adoption. The lie had been in the tale of baby-snatching. A lie told by a woman who had wanted Vicky dead twenty-two years ago and who now slammed the door in her face.

She was just a piece of flotsam for them to discard and pick up at will, a toy for their evil games. How could she just get over it? She was hurt, she wanted to hurt back, to give voice to this sharp bright hatred that almost smothered the pain.

Almost.

The bus moved off.

Gillian stood there, remembering her daughter's face twisting in loathing: ‘That evil bitch Joan.'

She turned, barely aware of what she was doing until she was almost back at the gate. Then she marched into the house. Upstairs, to the big room that should have been Vicky's. The room that needed fumigating and cleansing. Scent bottles. A porcelain figurine holding rings. Photos of Joan in younger days, with grinning men lost in the fog of time. The lewd glass clown Bill had given her. Silk scarves and fake fur. Apricot wig on its stand. Clutter that had no right to be here.

One by one, Gillian picked them up and threw them. She picked up a brass pot and thrashed at the glass, china, mirrors. Anything that wouldn't smash she ripped.

Then she sank down in the mayhem and sobbed.

CHAPTER 2

i

Gillian

20
th
November, 1989.

Gillian could see the date on the letter, clasped in the curate's hands, but his thick, strong fingers concealed the rest.

20
th
November 1989. Two days ago. Another wave of panic seized her. Had she got it wrong? Had she wilfully refused to see the word ‘Rejected'? She read it five, six, seven times and still she was terrified she had it wrong.

But it couldn't be wrong, could it, or Philip would have said so when he'd read it? Perhaps he was praying that she accept her disappointment with grace. No. She must stop doubting. And she really ought to be listening to the curate, not itching to snatch the letter back, while he was addressing the Almighty. Giving thanks, he said. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

‘Jesus, we thank you for seeing into our hearts and for your care of Gillian through this time of worry, of hopes and fears.'

He was always on such cosy conversational terms with his God. Her God too, she supposed, though she wasn't sure she believed in Him. This was absurd, celebrating her momentous news with this embarrassing chat with Jesus.

But she'd had to tell someone. As soon as she'd ripped open the envelope and seen the words Adoption Agency, scanned down and read the verdict – Approved – she'd needed someone to tell her that she wasn't dreaming. But who could she go to? Not her mother, not yet at least. And not Terry, until he came home from the car plant. With the constant threat of redundancies she couldn't risk phoning him there. But she could tell Philip. He had, after all, been one of her referees for the agency.

‘And we know that you will be with us, always, Jesus, holding us in your hand…'

This was the price for her hypocritical conniving. She had never been a churchgoer. Occasional visits to Sunday School at the corrugated Gospel Hall in Oswald Street maybe, when she was a child, so that Joan could get her brats from under her feet, but she had come away without any religious conviction, just some lurid imagery of lion's dens, loaves and fishes and flaming heads. She had, of course, dutifully sailed down St. Mark's aisle to marry Terry in her white polyester and her sprouting chrysanthemum of nylon netting, but she hadn't been near the church again until adoption had taken over her life. Then she'd started going to St. Mark's in earnest, even dragging Terry with her sometimes.

It would look good on the application, she had thought shamelessly. But it was plain superstition too. If some all-powerful God really was up there, she wanted Him on her side.

She wasn't the only newcomer to the congregation. The ugly brick St. Mark's, in the middle of Marley Farm, had moved in an Evangelical direction under Philip's enthusiastic guidance. Guitars and dance and drama, and impromptu shouts of ‘Praise Him', from the congregation, which had tripled in recent years. Out with unctuous solemnity and in with loud born-again certainties.

‘You know, Lord Jesus, what is best for each and every one of us. Give us your grace to believe and to trust. If it is your will that a child should be given into Gillian's care, we know you will guide all and give wisdom where it is needed, to the mother in her hour of doubt and distress, and to the authorities and to Gillian herself.'

Head bowed, perched on the edge of the sofa, Gillian found herself squirming. This wasn't what she wanted, to be told that they were all puppets of a God who might, if he chose, wrench a child from its mother for Gillian. She understood that her dream required some other woman to die, or be pushed to breaking point, or have her child snatched away by police and social workers, but just for now, she wanted to see the matter in less specific terms. She wanted to be told that all manner of things would be well. She wanted the mysterious quiet of an old church and a statue of the Virgin, eternal mother, holding out a child to her. Not Philip asking his chum Jesus to sort out the bureaucracy.

She waited for him to finish. ‘…and we put our complete faith in you, Lord Jesus, Amen.'

He was on his feet again, beaming down on her. ‘You know that I don't encourage child baptisms, but when the time comes, I'll be delighted to hold a—'

She raised a hand in alarm. Superstition again. Bad luck to speak of it as fixed. ‘Terry and I have just been accepted as potential adopters. It might be months before they match us to a child. It might never happen.' She forced herself to say it bravely. Merely to be accepted, after all those interviews and visits, all that desperate waiting, was a triumph in itself, but in reality she was still today what she had been yesterday – a childless woman, growing older, year in, year out, with nothing but desperate hope to see her through each day.

‘Of course, Gillian, of course. But I have complete faith in the guiding mercy of Jesus and I know you have too. I'll pray for you, Gillian, and so will many others. We'll see you and Terry on Sunday?'

‘Oh, yes. Yes of course.' There would be a special loud smug prayer for them, she knew, and many ‘hallelujahs', and she would have to smile and endure. She would have to persuade Terry to come and share the embarrassment.

‘And I'm sure your mother, Mrs Summers, is delighted for you.'

Gillian stared across the room at the cork-board over his desk. Church notices, a calendar, a wax crayon drawing of a camel. Done by one of his kids at the Jesus Club? ‘I haven't had a chance to tell her yet.' Thinking: please, please God, give me a child to scribble camels with wax crayons.

And then she pictured Joan. She would have to tell her. Knowing that Joan would skilfully poison all the joy out of the day.

She went with Philip's blessing. And with the even greater blessing of that letter. Approved, accepted, approved, accepted. She repeated it over and over as she walked. Gillian Wendle had been accepted as a potential adopter. Neither Joan nor the malignant forces of the Marley Farm estate had destroyed her chances. That was the real miracle and she earnestly thanked God. For months now, she had lived in dread of the mistimed visit, the interview when Joan would show her worst, when the estate would erupt with drunken racist yobs and police sirens, or when Terry would walk in to say he'd been made redundant. But divine providence had been with her.

It seemed that the house in Drover's Way had worked for her, not against. It had been Gillian's home since the age of three, when Joan Summers, with a crippled husband, two small children and a third imminent, had triumphantly claimed the brand new council house on the muddy building site that was hatching into Marley Farm Estate. Drover's Way was still extending along the hill, closes and crescents blossoming in the post-war drive to house the nation. Marley Primary Schools were rising from the mire, bright brick and glass and shiny tiles, amidst green playing fields. Parades of shops with maisonettes were springing up along Marley Ring. The sun was rising on a glorious new world.

Twenty-seven years later, when she and Terry moved back in with widowed Joan, to help buy the council house, the Marley estate had sunk into weary hopeless disrepute. Graffiti festooned the unkempt Marley Junior School, with its leaking Portakabins. On the Parade, barred windows protected seedy off-licences and video rental shops. Two houses had gone up in flames in the '81 wave of rioting. Shady deals were done on every littered corner.

Gillian simmered with quiet resentment about the house. Her wedding had been the most wonderful day of her life, not because she felt so beautiful or because Terry was the Romeo of her dreams, but because it meant escape from Drover's Way and from Joan. Now she was back, and trapped once more, because they had no choice. Council accommodation was no longer being allotted except to the most desperate, and with their savings all gone and rents rising, helping Joan with the mortgage was the only way they could keep a roof over their heads. If it meant living with Joan, then she'd just have to deal with it. Somehow. It was bad enough that the address would never impress an adoption agency. Joan's presence was a far worse blight, though Gillian had remorselessly painted it as a blessing, to anyone who'd listen.

She turned off Drover's Way into Ashley Close. Number 7. Sid Walker's house. Two cars parked up on the concrete, neither of them roadworthy. Gillian automatically went round the back. Only the police entered through front doors round here.

‘Hello?' she called, into the cluttered, grease-smeared kitchen.

‘Eh?' Sid appeared, unshaven and bleary-eyed, in string vest, a copy of the
Sun
in his hand. ‘Oh, er, Gill, right.' He leaned back to call up the stairs. ‘Joanie!'

An irritated, gravelly reply.

‘Your girl's here.' He turned back to Gillian. ‘Best come in then. She'll be down. Want a cuppa?'

‘No thanks. I've just had one.' She was parched, but she wasn't going to sit drinking tea with Sid and her mother among the detritus of last night.

Flop, flop, down the stairs. Joan, hair on end, last night's heavy make-up smudged, her bony frame wrapped in a flowered dressing gown. ‘Oh. It's you. Are you going to the shops? Get us some fags, will you?'

‘I came to tell you we've had the letter. We've been approved.'

‘Approved? Approved for what?' Joan was busy lighting her last cigarette, coughing over it. Deliberately obtuse.

‘Approved for adoption. Terry and me.'

‘Fucking hell, another bleeding brat around the house.' Joan opened the fridge and took out a bottle of sour milk. ‘You got the kettle on then, Sid?' No love, of course, but no outburst of irate complaint either. It was as good as Gillian was going to get.

‘Philip thought you'd be delighted for us.' When had she learned sarcasm?

‘Oh the God Botherer, tell him before you tell your own mother, do you? But then that's you all through. Always thinking of yourself first. Must have a baby. Never mind what anyone else wants. It's Terry I feel sorry for.'

Gillian took a deep breath. All her life she had been taking deep breaths. Gillian the appeaser, holding her tongue, not snarling back.

Joan slopped tea into a mug and shuffled back towards the stairs. ‘Don't forget the fags.'

Sid scratched his belly. ‘Well, it's good news, right?' He was never going to win prizes for charm – or cleaniness or grooming or humour – but he did have a grain of humanity in him. Not the worst of the men Joan had semi-permanently shacked up with since her husband's death.

Gillian forced a smile. ‘Yes, it is good news. For me and Terry at least. I hope Mum will see it that way.'

‘Oh she's all right,' rumbled Sid.

How exactly was she all right? wondered Gillian, walking home. What had Joan Summers ever done that was right?

She had come through the interviews with Claire, came the reply. What miracle had made Joan come across as a good-humoured rough diamond of a granny, offering all the support that Gillian would need? It must have been the hand of God, because it couldn't possibly have been intentional on Joan's part.

‘My mother lives with us,' Gillian had explained, trying to sound positive. ‘That's not a problem, is it?'

‘It could be a big plus,' Claire had assured her. ‘She's in good health?'

‘Oh yes,' Gillian was able to say, quite truthfully. Not a hope in hell that some kindly plague would carry her mother off.

‘If you were looking after an elderly invalid, someone housebound maybe…'

‘Oh no, she's fighting fit.'

Claire had beamed. ‘That's excellent. As long as she's enthusiastic about an adopted baby arriving in the household, of course.'