The Adoption (18 page)

I eat next to nothing at dinner. When I get up and reach for their plates, scraped clean with chunks of bread, my dad stops me. ‘I’ll clear, Dad. Mam and I will wash up together.’

My dad shakes his head. ‘No, not this afternoon. I want you to join us, Leslie and myself. We’re going to take a tour of the farm.’ I know the farm the way I know my own face. Why on earth does Dad want me to trail about after them? But I can see that there’s no gain to be had in refusing, that I’ll only enrage him if I argue it. And so I go, meek as if I am a cow and have a halter round my neck.

Mr Sterry – can’t get used to calling him Leslie – Mr Sterry, he visits twice more before my dad tells me what’s to be done. On the third occasion after he goes, my dad calls me into the front room. Mam comes too. We all sit on the high-back chairs facing one another. It feels very formal.

‘I have some splendid news for you, Bethan,’ my dad announces, rubbing his large hands together as if he’s cold. My eyes veer between my mam and my dad, while under my skin it’s like a landslide, like nowhere’s safe, like I can’t anchor myself to the spot. I go to wet my lips but there is no spit in my mouth. ‘Leslie has asked me for your hand in marriage,’ Dad continues, nodding. I take a breath to speak, but he growls at me to hold my peace. ‘I know, I know what you’re going to say.’

Mam smiles weakly. I stare at Brice’s portrait photograph on the mantelpiece. He’s in his uniform. The fabric was like thick cardboard and scratchy, I remember. He hardly got to wear it in at all. My dad clears his throat and then scrubs at his face with his hands – like he did the night he came into the kitchen and saw me and Thorston, side by side, and the round belly on me. I wonder at him knowing what I am going to say before I do. I haven’t a clue what sentences my lips might form.

‘I
know
what you’re going to say,’ Dad reiterates. I want to utter, you do, in an amazed tone. But I let him give me the script. ‘You don’t want to deceive him into thinking you are virginal,’ he astonishes me by saying. And suddenly I do know what I was going to say, the words are stacking up there on the tip of my tongue. I was going to say, only my hand? He only wants my hand in marriage? I can keep the rest? Oh well, that’s not too bad then is it? ‘Bethan? Bethan?’

I am staring down at my hands in my lap. I am considering which one I should give him, which one I can manage without. You probably reason that this is hardly a complex dilemma. If you are right-handed
give
him the left one. If you are left-handed give him the right one. The problem is that I am ambidextrous. I can use either of them equally well. My teacher didn’t really like that in school. She made me copy my letters down and do my sums with my right hand. But nevertheless my left hand served just as well. ‘Bethan? Bethan, are you listening to me?’

I lift my head and meet my dad’s eyes. I’d forgotten how similar to mine they are, similar to his granddaughter’s. ‘Yes, yes I am, Dad. I’m sorry. I … I’m taking it all in.’

‘Well now,’ says my dad appeased, pushing himself forwards on his seat, ‘that’s understandable. You’ve had a surprise. But look you, Bethan, he knows about … about your degradation. He knows about the … the baby. He knows you’ve been spoiled.’ Sounds like he’s swapped roles with Mam, because she talks about dishes spoiling, food going off, curdling and souring and rotting and so forth. Am I decaying inwardly? It’s a spooky notion. He rubs the wooden arms of his chair, as if he’s a shoeshine boy giving a pair of boots a polish. I look to my mam and she confirms what Dad’s said with a bob of her head. Her fingernails peck at the fabric of her skirt. She has lost more pounds and so have I. They’ll be nothing of the pair of us if we go on like this. The wind will blow us away with the chaff.

‘Does he? Does he now? He knows about my … my degradation,’ I parrot.

My dad springs up and struts proudly before the grate, where a fire has died down to its embers. It’ll soon be out if it’s not raked. I think of my letters, our words of love come to ashes. ‘Yes, yes, he does. He, Leslie, expressed an interest in you. And after mulling things over for a stretch, I came to the conclusion that if he was in earnest, we had to be truthful with him. To tell him everything. The whole shameful secret. So I did. It was a gamble. But your dad’s an astute judge of character. And I’m pleased to say that I had the measure of him aright.
He
was staggered when he heard, but after a few days he adjusted to it. “She’s young. She made a mistake. I expect this German forced himself on her,” he said generously. “She’s paid her dues. I believe I can forgive her and we can start over fresh.”’ My dad smacks the mantelpiece with the flat of his hand, making me flinch, and nearly knocking over Brice’s photograph.

My mam leans across to me and squeezes my hand. The corners of her eyes crinkle encouragingly. ‘It’s going to be OK, you’ll see,’ she says.

It is late afternoon on a changeable spring day. There’s been rain but it let up about an hour ago. Bales of cloud tumble away then and it’s like the sun’s been peeled. Segments of citrus light rock into the room, as if these tidings are cause for gaiety.

‘“I believe I can forgive her and we can start over fresh,”’ my dad says again in wonderment, but more to himself than to my mam or me. ‘It’s God’s grace. God is merciful.’ Forgetting he is still in his suit, he feels for braces that aren’t there. ‘He’s a fine man. A few years older than you, but that’s no bad thing. Mature, reliable, a stable influence. Thirty-three, still young by my reckoning. Owns his own farm. Has his own business. He’ll provide a fitting home for you. I’ve met his father, Dafydd Sterry, and he’s given his consent. But before I did, I chatted it over with Leslie, and we decided no one else should know about … about what occurred.’ His drops his braying to hushed tones. ‘Only your husband. That’s proper, fitting. It’ll be your secret, yours and ours. Not everyone will have Leslie’s charity.’ He stares at me, expectancy lighting his eyes, as if readying himself for my rapturous reaction, a show of teary gratitude. ‘Well?’ he nudges, the brusqueness stealing back into his speech. ‘Well, Bethan Modrun? Isn’t this an excellent turn of events?’

My ears are popping. The room is closing in, the walls sliding towards each other. ‘It’s … it’s tip-top, Dad. I’m … I’m …’ I run out of fuel and slump in my chair.

‘You’re overwhelmed. Happiness has that effect sometimes,’ my dad observes blindly.

I lever myself up as if in a trance. ‘Shall I change my clothes, get on with my chores.’

‘Oh, I think we can let you have one afternoon off,’ my dad decrees magnanimously. ‘We’ve set a date for the wedding, by the way. Soon as the banns have been read. The thirteenth of May. Nevern Parish Church. You and mam will have lots to plan, so I’ll leave you to get on with it.’ He presents his cheek and I kiss it dutifully. The stubble is rough on my lips. He has the air of a man who has set down his load.

When we are alone, Mam and me, she gets up and takes my hands in hers. ‘They’re so cold,’ she says, trying to glove my frigid fingers with hers. ‘Now you can do it all decently, be respectable. I’m going to go and fetch my notebook. We can draw up a list of things to do before the special day comes. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ I try to nod but I can’t. She hesitates at the door. Lowering her voice to a frail whisper she tweezers out her words. ‘Next time … next time you have a … a baby, you won’t have to … to give it away,
cariad
. Think … think on that.’

It isn’t so abominable really. The marriage went ahead. The wedding night was tolerable. He was considerate, in no rush. Though actually I wanted him to get it over with. It didn’t hurt anyhow. Well, I wasn’t a virgin, was I? What happened between me and Thorston was another act altogether though. It was … paradise, a piece of paradise on earth. I don’t compare the invasion of Leslie to that. Carwyn Farm is OK, not dissimilar from Bedwyr Farm. In fact, some days I have to remind myself I’ve moved, become Mrs Sterry. And it’s not as if Leslie ever brings it up, my other life, my sordid past. He genuinely doesn’t seem troubled by it.

On our wedding night, I began confiding in him. Couldn’t help myself. But he waved it away. ‘It’s gone, Bethan. You’re my wife now
and
all of that is behind you. We need to focus on our future, look ahead at what’s coming up.’

Six weeks later, my head down the toilet, I can tell you what’s coming up – my breakfast! ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ I croak into the toilet bowl. ‘Another baby. And it’ll be like Mam said, I won’t have to give it up this time. I can keep it.’ I wait for the rush of elation to come. But it doesn’t. I contemplate this baby and then my gift baby. My gift baby populates my head, an image for every day I’ve missed. She’s two and half now, my gift baby. Tottering about all over the place she’ll be, and running her adoptive mam ragged, I’ve no doubt. The truth has a nasty habit of ambushing you. A few months later and ‘Boo!’ there it is. ‘I’d swap this baby in the blink of an eye to have my gift baby back,’ I admit to myself as I watch my husband striding out to the yard. In my belly the second baby, the echo baby, chooses that moment to make its presence felt, quickening within me.

Chapter 14

Lucilla, 1953

DAWN SILVERS STRANDS
of the little girl’s hair, a fan against the pillow. A single tress, like a flower, is pressed into the book of her damp cheek. She is flushed with the opiate of slumber, in the throes of a dreamscape that is as native to her as it is alien. She is perched on the cliff’s edge. All there is looms above her in the infinite carousel of blue. Clouds scud. The sun smoulders. And although they are extinguished in the fierce daylight, there is the certainty of treasure, the stars, the moon, an expanding universe buried in the China-blue sands. She totters on the brink of the steep chalky precipice, skyscraper high. The frill of broken waves, the gold bar of the beach, the dark uncut diamonds of rock, all hurtle up at her from the giddying depths below. Gusts of salty wind pummel at her, make her cheeks tingle and her eyes water. They sing their secret in her small ears.

‘You can fly. You can fly. You can fly,’ they keen.

She wills herself to lift off from the top rung of her chalk ladder, to let the strength of the wind overcome her, let it kidnap her. They are at her back, the mother and the father. They loom over her and the lighthouse looms over them. She leans out and feels aerial muscles flex, braced to take her sparrow’s weight. Further and further out into the kick of the current. Further and further … But her wings have been clipped so that she cannot soar. Her faith is moth-eaten. She does not
believe
. She has doubts. She will fall. A shaving of a second – all that is left to her before the rocks racket up her tiny body. Suddenly the hand, the giant’s hand, hooks her and reels her in. She jerks involuntarily. Her eyelids flicker open.

Now, as with most mornings, she lies gazing up out of the skylight above her bed. Rachel, her cousin, comes into her head, her last visit with her. She had to be quieter than in church, not make a peep. If Rachel heard her, the game of hide-and-seek would be over. She was having such fun that she wanted it to go on all afternoon. She had been very clever picking her hiding place. No one would ever find her there, unless she gave herself away with a tinkle of laughter. And so even though it almost hurt, she trapped the giggle in her chest.

‘Lucilla? Lucilla? I know you’re in here somewhere.’ Rachel’s inflexion sang up and down musically as she pulled open the wardrobe doors. The hinges creaked, then the hangers skidded on the pole while she searched among Aunt Enid’s dresses for her cousin. But Lucilla was not just under the bed. If she had been, then when Rachel had bent down and lifted a corner of the bedspread, she would have spotted her. No, Lucilla was hanging like a spider from the bedsprings. She had dead men’s fingers, and her spine ached from holding herself at such a difficult angle on the rock face of iron coils. But it was worth it because her cousin couldn’t find her.

‘Don’t think I’ve given up. I’ve got a trick to play on you. Back in a moment,’ Rachel trilled. Lucilla’s heart was pounding so loudly she thought that it might betray her hidey-hole. After a minute, her cousin was back and a glug-glug, slopping, farting chorus reached Lucilla’s ears. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. She tried to keep a cushion pressed down on her giggles, but they started to hiccup out of her. And a second later Rachel was on her knees, and then crawling under the bed. ‘There! Got you, you mischievous monkey,’ she cried jubilantly, as Lucilla dropped down onto the floor. There was more
farting
and glugging and slip-slopping, from the hot water bottle Rachel was holding and shaking by the neck. She slapped it on the floor and tickled Lucilla with her free hand. In the gloom under the bed, the pair were seized by a fit of hysteria, flopping about like landed fish.

Now Rachel disappears and, as she does so, Lucilla yawns and smiles all in one. These are lovely minutes spent bumbling from flower to flower, overloaded with the nectar of her imagination. Let us suppose … oh, let us suppose that the sky is a pale-blue sheet of paper. Let us suppose she can draw clouds on it with a cream crayon big as a lamppost. Drawing is magic. She is a witch, with witch’s hands, and a pencil for a wand. The pictures she creates, although they aren’t of her, somehow contain more of
her
than anything else in her life. She often feels as if the rest has been borrowed, the home, the bedroom, the toys, the clothes, and even … yes, even the mother and the father. Though she doesn’t talk about this. She keeps it to herself, keeps it hush-hush. But the ‘not belonging’ is with her constantly. The clattering and knocking jars on her ears. It is her mother on the stairs slamming about with a dustpan and brush. Thump, bang, crash, wallop, and then her door flies open.

‘Lucilla! Lucilla, didn’t you hear me calling you? Why aren’t you up yet?’ And Lucilla leaps up from her bed guiltily, her momentary reprieve over. As the hands revolve on the face of the mantelpiece clock, as it upbraids her with its ticking, chiming soliloquy, she is reminded that there are chores to be done. Every minute is bagged. ‘You mustn’t sit idle, Lucilla,’ her mother berates her. ‘You don’t know when the devil is lurking, on the lookout for a suitable apprentice, ready to purloin you for his evil deeds.’ She doesn’t know what
purloin
means but it has a nasty slimy ring to it. ‘“By slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. Ecclesiastes 10:18.” If the devil espies a lazy girl he will roost on her soul, and work her hands as though she is his creature. Do you
want
to be the devil’s creature, Lucilla?’ That’s what her mother says. Lucilla shakes her head. But her enchanted hands are already possessed by pencil, crayon, paint and paper.