The Adoption (20 page)

‘Shall I lay a place for Grandpa then?’ Lucilla asks, only to have her head bitten off by her mother.

‘Don’t be so stupid. He’s dead!’ she scorns, colander in one hand, saucepan lid in the other.

‘But I thought –’ Lucilla begins.

‘Oh do be quiet, Lucilla. You’re giving me one of my sick headaches,’ snaps her mother.

Frank rocks with laughter and draws a gun from the holster buckled on his hips. He fires off a cap, which feeds through from a roll in the barrel of his silver Colt. The report makes her wince and he yells delightedly. She can smell the burned powder and determines not to cry. ‘You’re as dead as Grandpa now,’ he guffaws.

‘Don’t be such brute, Frank.’ Rachel comes to her defence.

‘I’m not dead,’ insists Lucilla, picturing her grandpa laid out on his bed.

‘Of course you’re not,’ comforts Rachel.

Lucilla recalls that she could not be persuaded to kiss his waxy cheek, no matter how many times they entreated her. For a moment though she did clasp his hand, and the skin was like rubber to the touch, frigid and intractable. Now Rachel pats her arm and says that she shouldn’t listen to her brother, that he is just a show-off. A ceasefire is called by Aunt Enid as Mr and Mrs Friedman, their Jewish neighbours, arrive. They bring a big bowl of pretzels and some dips. Mrs Fortinbrass is the last guest, tiptoeing downstairs. It feels odd to have her in their midst. She is an upstairs resident who isn’t meant to venture to ground level, Lucilla worries. Her mother has incinerated a huge feast. Granny and Aunt Enid hurry to and fro from the kitchen to the dining room with smoking serving bowls and platters.

Then they all stand solemnly behind their chairs as her father switches on the television. While the valves are warming up, they take their seats as if at a theatre, and start eating. Her father spends a quarter of an hour adjusting the focus, fiddling with the knobs to get the sound and contrast exact. When he is content, he sidesteps like a matador, revealing an animated photograph. ‘Ta-rah!’ he cries with a flourish. Frank crows and, brandishing it high in the air, fires his cap gun, previously secreted under his napkin. Aunt Enid immediately chastises him and confiscates it.

‘Will you look at that,’ comments awestruck Mr Friedman, patting his paunch and nodding at the programme.

‘Such crowds all waving flags,’ admires Mrs Friedman impressed, shaking her brassy poodle curls.

‘I expect it was very expensive,’ Mrs Fortinbrass chirps up querulously, nibbling on a piece of bread and margarine.

Her father pauses in carving a cold joint of burned ham. ‘When it comes to royal occasions we lead the world, you know,’ he aggrandises. ‘British standards. Something for these coloured chaps to aspire to.’
He
looks pleased with himself, as if single-handedly he is co-ordinating the coronation ceremony. ‘Another slice of ham, Mother?’ Both his mother and his wife look up, the former assenting graciously with royal nod, the latter scowling blackly at the sobriquet. Granny chews carefully, mindful of her false teeth. Frank spears a boiled potato and rams it in his wide mouth, quick as a lizard licks up a fly. He seems unconcerned by the unappetising greyish hue the King Edwards have taken on, as a result of the pan boiling dry. ‘We have the Commonwealth to consider,’ her father continues. He hesitates, probing two prominent discoloured molars with his pinkie, platinum grey in hue, between which a treacle-brown stringy particle of ham has lodged. ‘Need to set an example, show them how to do things correctly.’

Lucilla is mesmerised by the footage of the state occasion. It is such a splendid sight, the very image she has of Cinderella’s fairy-tale carriage. The horses are all decorated in finery, tossing their manes and prancing. They pull the young queen in her coach all the way to Westminster Abbey. And she waves regally at the waiting crowds from the glittering window. Entranced, Lucilla makes acute observations of the monochrome spectacle, the thoroughbred horses particularly. She will sketch them later, she decides.

But once the young Elizabeth sweeps into the abbey, it all falls flat. There are lots of boring speeches that drone on for what seems like hours. Lucilla pushes a lump of cold lamb around her plate. It has veins of yellowy fat in it that make her feel queasy. If she had a dog, while they were all hypnotised by the television, she could conceal the meat in the palm of her hand, lower it discreetly to her lap and dispose of it. Lacking a real pet, she invents one, sausage-shaped and shaggy, with a wet black nose. She sneaks the fatty meat off her plate and drops it clandestinely onto the floor, and her make-believe dog woofs it down in a gulp. The grey screen seems tiresomely dreary now. If she could
instil
a bit of colour into it she would make Queen Elizabeth’s beautiful dress bright orange. And the horses would be purple with yellow manes and red tails. She would shade the carriage in hydrangea pink. She sighs quietly, her previous curiosity wholly dulled.

‘I’ve finished. Please may I get down?’ she pleads. Her mother looks annoyed at the interruption, but her father humours her, nodding in assent. So she climbs down, giving her imaginary dog a secretive wink. If you can’t hitch up your fancy wedding dress and vault into the saddle for a gallop on your horses, there doesn’t seem much advantage in being a queen. Suddenly, everyone at the table cheers. Then they clamber to their feet to sing the national anthem in hearty voices. And her father slaps Frank on the back, causing him to choke on the mouthful he is guzzling. Aunt Enid administers a glass of water with an annoyed frown.

‘Long live Queen Elizabeth the Second,’ bellows her father, and they all take up the shout. Now that she is crowned queen at last, Lucilla wonders if there will be another ride in the carriage, another opportunity to stare spellbound at those mystical white horses? If not, she will ask if she can go outside to play. She dearly wants to track the bumblebees crawling inside the yellow and pink thimbles of snapdragons.

Chapter 15

Bethan, 1953

WE DON’T HAVE
a television. They’re far too expensive. Only a wireless. But we listened to it on the wireless. What am I blathering on about? What is on everyone’s lips? Why the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, of course. In fact, I’m glad we didn’t see it on a television. No, honestly I am. Sometimes I think your sense of sight limits you. As it was, I could close my eyes and listen to the commentary, visualising the spectacle. Not camera shot by camera shot, but the whole thing, as if I was sitting in the sky gazing down over the edge of a cloud. The golden coach and horses, the radiant Queen’s face framed in the window, the joyful crowds lining the streets, her dress when she stepped out sparkling in the sunshine, the crown being solemnly lowered onto her head. Oooh, it makes me shiver now to replay the pageant of it.

Actually we have a lot in common, me and the Queen. Ah, you wouldn’t think it I know. Me, Welsh, a farmer’s wife, busy at milking cows and churning butter all day, my complexion boiled with all the steaming pots on my stove. And she, a queen of the realm, covered head to foot in jewels and rich gowns, and showered with presents. Everyone bowing and curtseying to her and calling her Your Majesty. Her days are spent ruling Britain. Mine are occupied running the farm, and feeding great hulking men with bottomless stomachs.

I’ve anticipated what you’re going to say. There’s chalk in Wales and cheese in England. Not that I’m suggesting the Queen is a wheel of cheese, you understand. But if you think there’s no comparison to be made, I suggest that you’re being premature. You’re ignoring some key similarities. For openers, we’re both mothers. And I hear tell Queen Elizabeth takes motherhood very seriously. Second, we both gave birth to our first child in 1948. Granted, my time was before hers, but it was in the same year, mind. She was delivered of a son, a prince, Prince Charles. And I was delivered of a daughter, a princess, who I called Lucilla for want of a better name – my gift baby. And now the coincidences become uncanny. They do, really. Serendipity, that’s what it’s called.

In 1950, she gave birth again, this time to a daughter, Anne. And barely a year later so did I. My second child. My echo baby, Lowrie. Of course, you would be right to highlight the significant departures in the way our fates are unravelling. See, I had to give my gift baby away. She is five now, Lucilla. Fancy that. She’ll be talking, walking, playing, laughing … crying. Calling another woman her mam. She’ll have had her first day at school. I wonder how it went? Did she take to it like an intrepid duckling splashing into a pond, or were her reactions similar to her mother’s, her true mother’s … to me. I was impatient to be gone, gasping for want of fresh air. Although you don’t get an abundance of that in London. A stew of smoke and smog and exhaust fumes there, if my remembrance serves me well.

The two tiny photographs of Lucilla that Valeria Mulholland, the secretary from the Church Adoption Society, sent me after the adoption are falling to pieces. I’ve kissed them so often, slept so many times with them under my pillow, or clutched to my heart, that it’s hardly surprising. But when they do, disintegrate entirely I mean, I’ll still treasure them. She was around six months in the pictures, lying
in
a cot and in a pram, gazing up at her. Of course by now she’d have changed so much. I spend hours trying to visualise her face, sculpting the alterations. Her strawberry-blonde hair growing long, her cheeks thinning down, shedding their chubbiness, the intelligence in her turquoise eyes deepening. I see it in the suds lying on the surface of the dishwater in the sink, in the crusty bark of an oak tree, in the ripples of a stream, in the wood grain of our dining table. Honestly, it’s as though her baby face is stamped on the table. And when I touch it, let my fingers trace the lines of the silky wood, it is as though I am touching her skin, her lips, her hair. Don’t laugh. It isn’t a joke. It’s a bit like one of those visions of Mary, Mother of Jesus, the ones that cause mass hysteria. You know, the way someone ordinary sees her features imprinted on a lump of stone, and the faithful flock for miles to glimpse it and pray for miracles. True, the circumstances differ, I suppose, because there’s only me. No other pilgrims staring at the apparition, astonished, mumbling under their breaths, ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you see her there in that line, and there in the curve. And look there, her eyes gazing out at you. That sunbeam striking the water. The luminous shade of turquoise. It’s her eyes, I swear it. I’d recognise them anywhere.’

I have established shrines now, places I go and pay my respects. Leslie is an atheist in this, blind to sightings of the blessed Lucilla. For him she is merely theoretical, a name on a certificate of adoption. He’s not a man with imagination. He doesn’t dissect the past, doesn’t fret about the future. The present is more than sufficient for him. Not for me though. He doesn’t ask questions either, and that suits me very well. So the other day when I encountered him in the barn chopping up the old dining table for firewood, when I got hysterical, he was genuinely confounded.

‘Whatever’s the matter, Bethan?’ I was yanking his arm, the one wielding the axe. I could feel his muscles bunched and unyielding,
could
see the pulsing raised veins. I thought about the blood pumping through them.

‘Just stop,’ I begged. ‘Stop what you’re doing. Don’t destroy the table! Don’t!’

‘But, love, I’ve bought you another one. It was going to be a surprise. It’s on the back of my truck. Solid yew. And a bit of carving on it too.’

‘I don’t want it. I tell you, I don’t want it.’ He’d only chipped a bit out of a sturdy leg, and now I threw myself over the table top, sobbing. ‘Please, Leslie, please. I want to keep this table. I’m used to it.’ I caressed the corner where her face was, fingered the imprint as if it was her supple skin I touched and not resisting wood.

‘If it means that much to you, I’ll repair it,’ he conceded. No fight, no argument, simply total bafflement.

‘Oh it does, it does, Leslie. Please can you mend it for me?’ I slid off the table and hugged him tight till my arms throbbed.

‘I’ll never fathom women,’ he muttered setting down the axe, his hand on my head, lifting a tress of my hair. ‘I’ll fix it so you won’t know it’s been hacked about by a farmer wanting to surprise his wife with a grand new dining table.’

I pulled back and studied his face. He was a kind man, a generous man. Some men beat their wives, I know. People talk. On market days you see the gaps, who isn’t there, and you hear gossip. Leslie doesn’t hit me. I don’t believe that he has it in him. ‘And it
was
a lovely thought,’ I said at last, remembering myself. ‘We will use it in the dining room. Let’s put this battered thing in the scullery. It may be wounded but it’s still useful.’ I forced a smile, attempted too late to conceal how much it mattered. He had the final word and so I waited.

‘Very well. Give me half an hour and I’ll bring it in.’

I kissed him on the cheek at that. It was late afternoon and he’d be wanting his tea any moment. So I hurried indoors and chopped and
sliced
and peeled and fried, counting off the minutes. On the dot of half past five he appeared with my table, and together we manoeuvred it through the back door and into the scullery.

‘No more tears now,
cariad
,’ he said, standing back to survey his handiwork. I shook my head. He stepped up to me and encircled me in his broad, strong embrace. He pulled me close. And it was a comfort, I won’t deny it. But in the way that a lesser comfort reminds you of what you really desire. With a nod of his head, he indicated a pile of tablecloths, freshly ironed, sitting in a wicker basket on the stone floor. ‘You put a pretty cloth on it and we’ll none of us know how scratched and chopped it is underneath.’

But I didn’t even want to do that. It would have been like covering her up, like a winding sheet, like … like an omen, like she was dead. When I began objecting again, he turned on his heels and went quietly outside. I saw him through the window striding manfully across the fields, his Welsh Springer, Red, at his heels. He wouldn’t give the dog a human name, said that was sentimental tosh.