The Fish Ladder (30 page)

I never looked at the baby.

They told me later it was a girl.

She who shines like the Moon,

But shits on the walls,

She whose house has no books in it

Or bath.

A secret well there was

from which gushed forth every kind of mysterious evil.

There was none that would look to its bottom

But his two bright eyes would burst:

Every way the woman went

The cold white water followed

From the Sid to the sea (not weak it was),

So that thence it is called Boand.

That night I tried to laugh it off. Mrs Thomas as the Evil Queen. Or maybe it was me. I could no longer tell. I wanted my parent to acknowledge me, my primal scream stuck in my throat. It was never going to happen. But why should it? She’d given up a baby that she didn’t want on the understanding that she’d never hear of it again. Why should she cooperate now? Why was what I wanted more important than what she wanted? She had gone into an operating theatre pregnant, and had recovered from the anaesthetic no longer so. At some level, her pregnancy had been aborted. She had never looked at the outcome. The next day I couldn’t get out of bed. Rupert must have got Evie to school, and then gone to work himself. I drifted in and out of sleep. At lunchtime I awoke from a dream. In the dream I had been a child again, and I was standing in front of a door, as though waiting for someone to come for me. The door was made of red wooden boards and had been built into the side of a hill. Water seeped constantly from under it. I watched my dream-self stamp in the mud. Later I splashed my arms in it and made palm prints on the chipped red paint, before banging on the door with both my hands. I was certain that behind the door was
the source
. I could hear it, like a waterfall, my origin. But the door was locked and had no handle. All I had was the mud on my feet and hands, now drying in pale flakes on the wooden door. I realised, dimly, that the mud was clay, and that something might yet be made of it, although I couldn’t see what.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. I stood beneath the shower. Some time went by, I don’t know how long, and then I reached for a razor, tested the blades. I shaved my legs, my pubis, my armpits and, finally, my head. The lovely new conker-coloured hair that was just beginning to grow clogged up the plughole, choking it. I turned off the shower and walked over to the mirror before starting on my eyebrows. But when I saw my face in the misted glass, the water running off my nose, a wriggle of diluted blood where I had nicked the skin above my ear, I put down the razor, and reached for a towel.

Notes on
Severn

Afon Rhiw

What is existence

but standing patiently for a while

amid flux? Mostly the fish

nibbled out of my reach.

The fly soared, drying its wings

in the March wind before redoubling

its temptations, offering like life itself

a hook hidden among feathers.

R. S. Thomas

Mrs Thomas had addressed the last letter she wrote to me to
Mrs Kate Connelly
. At first I assumed that she had forgotten my name. Later, I began to wonder if this was her father’s name. She had told Ariel, when she provided the medical history, that her father was buried in the Beach Head Cemetery at Anzio, in Italy. The Battle of Anzio, in January 1944, was one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. Over thirty thousand men lost their lives on the beaches, in the successful attempt to break through the enemy’s defences. This awful fact explained the apparent contradiction between Mrs Thomas knowing her father’s medical history, yet claiming not to have known the man himself. He had died when she was a baby. I looked up the war records from the Second World War, searched for soldiers called Connelly who’d died at Anzio. I found one. Thomas John Connelly, a member of the Royal Fusiliers. There was a photograph of his white, slightly crooked tombstone. He was buried in the Beach Head Cemetery.

I wrote back to Mrs Thomas, one last note, on a postcard, with a picture of a lion on it. I mentioned the name on her letter to me,
Mrs Kate Connelly
, and I thanked her – if this was my name – for sharing it. I gave her my word that I would never write to her, unsolicited, ever again. I sent her a copy of ‘Ash Wednesday’ by T.S. Eliot, because she had turned every word that I wrote to her, had prised out a meaning that I had not intended, and I was no longer confident using words of my own. Let her interpret the poet how she will. After posting the letter I lit a candle. I started a novena for the soul of Thomas John Connelly, who died of his wounds at Anzio. Later, Evie and I researched the name. I bought her a Claddagh ring, with a tiny emerald set in the heart, and we laughed that we were descended from the High Kings of Ireland, of whom the Dagda was one.

Three months later Evie and I were in a carwash halfway between Shrewsbury and Newtown.

‘Why are we washing the car?’ she asked.

‘So we don’t draw attention to ourselves.’ I drove out of the carwash and reversed into a bollard.

‘Mum!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Calm down,’ Evie said. ‘It’ll be fine.’ When I had been putting the petrol into the car I had noticed that everything added up to eight. Forty-four pounds’ worth of fuel. Four and four is eight. The day of the week and the month and the year came to eight; the clock on the dashboard read:
18:08
which, as well as having two eights in it, also added up to eight as did the cost of unleaded petrol at 134.9 pence per litre. I got out of the car to inspect the damage but there was just a faint yellow streak of plastic melded onto the bumper. There was a 1, a 7, and a 4 in our licence plate, which didn’t add up to eight but two of the numbers equalled it and another was half of it.

‘Mum?’

I got back into the car. We had driven from London to Wales to watch my half-brother, Robert, play rugby.

After giving Mrs Thomas my word that I would not contact her, I had started to think seriously about my half-brothers. Ariel had not seemed keen to trace them, and I had let the correspondence drift. I had promised Mrs Thomas that I wouldn’t tell a soul if she would agree to meet me. But she had declined. I had let three months pass by. Three months, in which she might have changed her mind. But there was nothing. So one Friday evening in March, I sat down at our computer, and typed in my half-brothers’ names. I added the village where I believed they had grown up, then pressed
Enter
. But there was another word in the search box. Rupert had been looking up something to do with rugby, and I had failed to delete this one last word. I was about to repeat the search when my eye was caught by the first entry. It was the history of the local rugby club.

‘During the ’90s brothers Robert and Ioan Thomas went on to play for the league.’

I started looking for a rugby player called Ioan Thomas. I found a reference to one in a club record, but it was years ago and he had retired. I turned my attention to Robert. Instead of looking at clubs I searched through images of rugby players called Robert Thomas. Dozens of faces flashed on the screen, and in the middle of the first page, as the pictures stilled, my eye was caught by a postage-stamp-sized, passport-style image. A kind-looking, good-looking, smiling man, who had my daughter’s eyes. Evie came over and stood behind me.

‘That’s him,’ she said.

He was still playing for a Welsh Rugby Union club. I clicked on the image, brought up the website, studied the upcoming fixtures. There was an away match the following evening. Evie and I packed our overnight bags, got into the car, and drove.

We got to the ground early. There was hardly anyone there. A young man came over and tapped on the window of the car. I glanced over at Evie. She was white with apprehension.

‘Is it OK to park here?’ I asked. ‘We’ve come for the rugby.’

‘Over there,’ he said, and he pointed. I had driven into the car park of a building supplier next door to the ground, and the man wanted to lock the gate. The floodlights had still not been turned on.

‘This is awful!’ said Evie. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ I looked at her, chastened. I hadn’t stopped to think how she might be feeling. Although I couldn’t have imagined it had I tried. There was no emotional signpost by which we might orientate ourselves, although that wasn’t an excuse. I had once again walked off the edge of a map, to a place that was completely unknown. I couldn’t articulate my feelings. I had little hope of comprehending hers. I parked carefully, close to the exit, with the car facing towards the road.

‘We haven’t got the right clothes,’ Evie said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Look at us!’ Evie was wearing jeans and a brown leather jacket. I was wearing a green plaid duster coat, cut on the bias. It was three months since I had shaved my head. We didn’t look as though we were going to a rugby match.

‘We look all right. No one is going to be interested in what we are wearing . . . Would you like to go back home?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and my heart folded like a shot bird. ‘No. I want to stay.’ I held out my hand, avoiding her gaze.

‘Do you want to wait in the car?’

‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. We squeezed each other’s fingers tightly.

We took up a position in the grandstand. There were seventeen people, including us. One young man opened a sports holdall and removed a club flag, and then another, Welsh, flag, and secured them to the back wall of the stand. A young lad with a 1950s cut to his bright red hair ducked in front of us. The man with the flags took out a radio, and began to tune it. A farmer type with flannel trousers tapped a blackthorn walking stick, as though searching for a hidden panel. They all seemed to know one another. I hoped they would assume that we were supporting the visiting team.

There was a training session in progress for the second team. At the edge of the floodlighting, beyond the boundary fence, a horse ran up and down, dipping its head. And then the players came out. I had read the match reports for the previous games and Robert usually wore 6 or 7. I looked for the numbers. Two men, dark-haired, in their twenties.

‘He isn’t here.’

‘That’s him!’ Evie pointed. ‘Number 8.’ He was at the other side of the pitch, overexposed in the milky lights, the turf glowing emerald beneath his feet. His hair was longer than in the picture, and he looked stronger than I had imagined; he talked a lot.

‘Ah Re
f
!’

‘If I hear one more word from you, Tommo, it’s a yellow card!’

‘He is
exactly
like you!’ Evie said, and giggled. ‘Only a boy!’

After that came a tackle which threw him onto his shoulder. He bounced up, tweaked his sleeve, and ran on.

‘But, Evie, they’re calling him
Tommo
.’

‘It’s short for Thomas. There’s probably another Robert.’ I was astonished and delighted by her acumen and detective skills.

Half time came.

We bought milky tea in polystyrene cups. Evie’s hands were shaking, though with cold or anticipation she couldn’t say. For the first time I began to see how much this secret uncle might mean to her. I had been so caught up in the journey. But Evie had travelled with me. She had lost the hope of having a brother or a sister, at any rate through me. As a result of the treatment I was as barren as the snow. Chemotherapy had damaged my ovaries. Tamoxifen ensured they didn’t recover. I had been caught in an early frost. Mum was the only grandparent Evie knew, and she was as frail as apple blossom. Dad had died when she was one. Rupert’s parents died long ago. Although there were cousins on both sides of our family, we were not what one might call a dynasty. We moved over to the centre line, and waited for the players to come back. When they filed onto the pitch the man in front of Robert stopped. He chatted for a few moments to the farmer in the flat tweed cap, now leaning on his blackthorn walking stick. The farmer was standing next to us. Robert looked beyond the hold-up, saw there was no virtue in passing, and waited. Then he looked from one to the other of us. He was close enough to touch. I could feel Evie standing next to me. Neither of us seemed able to move. Robert lifted his eyebrows, as though about to speak, and then he grinned at us. It is impossible for me to articulate how I felt.