Pandora (27 page)

When his widowed mother had married a second time, the three-year-old Zac had taken his goy stepfather’s name of Anderson. But on leaving home in his late teens, he had changed his name from Anderson to Ansteig, which means ‘ascent’ in Austrian. This was to symbolize his escape from the poverty of his childhood and the brutality of his stepfather, who drank and beat up both him and his mother.

Now aged twenty-nine, Zac prowled the world, scouting for rich American collectors and writing pieces for art magazines. Eternally questioning like a psychiatrist, he seldom volunteered information about himself. His tigerish-yellow eyes, wonderful gym-and judo-honed body and deceptive cool made him wildly exciting to women. Zac, however, was more interested in unravelling his past and avenging himself on those who’d destroyed it. Hard on the outside, he refused to admit how much he missed the warmth and sympathetic closeness of the Jewish community he’d left behind in New York. When he allowed himself, he could be kind and wryly funny, but at heart he was angry and desolate, identifying with Schubert’s Wanderer. ‘Wherever I am, happiness is not.’

Next day, as promised, Zac applied for a form from the Adoption Contact Register in Southport. This was where parents who’d given children up for adoption left their names and addresses, in the hope that if these children came searching for them, they would know they’d receive a warm welcome.

‘If both sides register,’ explained Zac, ‘a reunion after counselling can be arranged.’

‘Can I give your Lancaster Gate address?’ asked Emerald as she filled in the form. ‘I don’t want Mummy and Daddy to know what I’m up to.’

‘I’m going away,’ said Zac.

‘You can’t leave me! At least let me stay in the flat and keep it nice for you, or give me a key in case a letter arrives.’

‘No,’ said Zac firmly. ‘The form’ll take time to process, you won’t hear from them for a few weeks, I’ll be back by then.’

Although she was livid with Zac for abandoning her, Emerald couldn’t resist working herself up into a fever of excitement.

‘Imagine my real mother thinking of me every birthday and Christmas and at the beginning of every term. Every day she must wonder if I’ve met Mr Right.’ Emerald looked up under her lashes at Zac. ‘A woman on LBC yesterday said not a day passed, since her daughter was eighteen and officially allowed to search for her, that she didn’t expect a knock on the door, or the telephone to ring and a voice to say, “Hi, Mum”.’

Instead, three weeks later at the beginning of April, a kind letter arrived from Southport, saying they regretted that no Anthea Rookhope had registered but if, and when, she did she would find Emerald’s, or rather Charlene’s, name waiting for her.

Emerald, with predictable mood swings, had right up to the last moment been wondering whether she really wanted to meet her birth mother. Denied the opportunity, she was shattered. Zac, back from America, was wonderfully reassuring and patient. The Adoption Contact Register wasn’t widely publicized, he kept telling her. Emerald’s birth mother probably didn’t know it existed.

‘You must remember, times were very different when you were born. Young moms gave up their babies expecting never to see or hear from them again. They were forced to make a fresh start. Often they moved abroad to start a new life.’

‘I ought to have counselling,’ wailed Emerald, ‘I need a support group.’

‘You’ve got me,’ said Zac.

The next step in the search was to go to the Public Record Office near the Angel, Islington.

‘All marriages and births are listed there in year and alphabetical order,’ Zac told Emerald. ‘You’ve seen your original birth certificate, which told you your mom worked in a gallery. So this time, try looking for her marriage certificate. Start from July 1973, when she gave you up for adoption, and troll through the relevant volumes till you come to Rookhope, Anthea. If she was a quarter as pretty as you, she’ll have been snapped up quickly, and it shouldn’t take long.

‘This entry,’ he continued, ‘will give you the date and place where she married and the name of her husband. Then you can apply for the marriage certificate, which will give an address you can follow up, and the husband’s profession. If he’s a lawyer or a doctor, it’ll be easy to trace him. Once you know your birth mom’s married name you can also check through the births while you’re there and find out if you’ve got any siblings.’

‘It all sounds fearfully complicated,’ grumbled Emerald, ‘I’ll never understand it, unless you come with me.’

‘I’m busy, Moaner Lisa,’ said Zac firmly, ‘you can do it yourself.’

Sulkily, Emerald took a bus to the Angel. How dare Zac accuse her of moaning? She wouldn’t if he made love to her more often and allowed her to stay over in his flat which he kept so private.

It was a very warm spring afternoon, daffodils nodded approval in the parks, blossom danced in all the squares, but Emerald’s teeth were chattering frantically as she arrived at the Public Record Office. She allowed the men on the door to search her handbag, but ignored the sign telling her to switch off her mobile. In a big light room, below huge signs saying ‘Deaths’, ‘Births’, ‘Marriages’, with ‘Adoptions’, typically, sidelined round the corner, were shelves and shelves filled with huge leather-bound books. Everything – walls, carpets, a mass of potted plants, big armchairs – was green; that traditionally restful colour to soothe those making earth-shattering discoveries.

Green linoleum even covered the reading table on which Emerald laid the big sap-green book which said: ‘Marriages registered in England and Wales in the months August, September, October 1973’ in gold lettering on the spine. Inside the names had been listed on an old-fashioned typewriter, with the occasional correction in ink.

‘Rainsworth, Ralph, Ramm,’ read Emerald, ‘Reed, Rees, Roberts, Rookes,’ but no Rookhope. Her hands were clammy and trembling, as she moved to the next volume, and then the next – still with no luck.

Perhaps art students of the future would one day come here to look up her marriage to Zac: Sculptor and Wanderer, thought Emerald dreamily as she took down February to May 1974. She adored Zac so much, she’d happily convert to Judaism. Next door a man with a beard was purposefully working his way through a volume of recent births. Perhaps his wife had been up to no good.

‘Ramsey, Ralton, Reading, Rollinson,’ read Emerald, then jumped as the hallowed silence was broken by desperate weeping.

‘My mother confessed on her deathbed that in 1949 she gave up a daughter for adoption,’ a distraught grey-haired woman was telling two kindly officials over at the reception desk. ‘Her dying wish was that this child should know how loved she’d been,’ she sobbed. ‘The social workers in Wales know where she is, but they won’t tell me.’

‘That’s a bloody disgrace.’ Dropping February to May with a crash, Emerald rushed across the room. ‘You get a lawyer onto it at once,’ she said, putting her arm round the woman’s heaving shoulders.

‘She’s my sister,’ cried the woman. ‘Now that Mother’s passed away, she’s the only family I’ve got.’

It was a few seconds before Emerald realized the disapproval on the faces of the kindly officials was not entirely directed at Welsh social workers, and that her mobile was ringing.

‘So sorry,’ she mumbled, then seeing
call
on the blank screen of her mobile, which must be the unlisted Zac ringing, she scuttled off past a sign saying ‘Marine and Consular Births’ to answer it.

‘You can stop hunting, baby,’ said a deep jubilant voice, ‘I’ve found your mom.’

‘Omigod, where is she?’

‘Get in a taxi, I’ll tell you.’

‘I haven’t any money.’

‘I’ll pay the other end.’

‘Where are you?’

It was the first time he’d given her his Lancaster Gate address.

‘Don’t forget to get yourself a lawyer,’ Emerald yelled to the distraught grey-haired woman as she ran out into the sunshine.

Emerald felt she’d ascended to heaven as she stepped out of the lift into such a beautiful penthouse flat. Zac was waiting with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé.

‘Who is she? Tell me,
tell me
.’

For a minute Zac teased her like the Nurse in
Romeo and Juliet
. First he couldn’t find the corkscrew, then there were smears on the glasses. Then he laughed.

‘You are not going to believe this. Adrian Campbell-Black called me at lunchtime wanting info on Galena Borochova.’

‘What’s she got to do with it? She’s not my mother. For Christ’s sake, Zac.’

‘I know, but I knew she was married to Raymond Belvedon, so I picked up
Who’s Who
to find out the year she died, and guess who was his second wife?’

‘Who, who?’

‘Anthea Rookhope.’

Emerald sat down very suddenly on a black leather sofa.

‘I am certain,’ Zac told her, ‘that your mom is living in Limesbridge, one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, and she is now Anthea Belvedon, the wife of Sir Raymond Belvedon.’

‘I don’t believe it!’ screamed Emerald. ‘It must be fate. And I even spoke to Raymond, my real father, at Rupert Campbell-Black’s. He’s such a darling. And, my God, that means Jonathan and Sienna Belvedon are my brother and sister. Christ! I mean they are the two great monster superbrats of the art world. Jonathan is so gorgeous, students stretch his canvasses for nothing, he’s got a loft off Hoxton Square and a barn in the country. Hardly starving in a garret and Sienna was shortlisted for the Turner, no wonder I’m so arty. What a lovely man to have as my father, if he’s a Sir does that make me an Hon.?’

Emerald was hysterical with excitement, flying round the room like a fairy, knocking back gulps of wine, facts spilling out of her like a fax machine. Zac brought her down to earth.

‘Anthea’s your mother, but I don’t figure Raymond’s your pop. I’ve been digging around. It seems Anthea went to work at the Belvedon in the early Seventies. Raymond was married to Borochova then, who died in October 1973. Anthea didn’t marry Raymond until May 1974, a quiet register office wedding, ten months after you were born.’

Zac chucked a pile of photostats down on the table.

‘So the four elder Belvedon kids,’ he continued, ‘probably aren’t your blood relatives, but you’ve got a young half-brother and -sister, Dicky and Dora. It’s a bit blurred on that stat, but they must be about eight and awfully cute. Also I bought this round the corner.’

It was a feature on Anthea in April’s
Good Housekeeping
. ‘Little woman, good wife’, said the headline.

‘Omigod, I recognize her.’ Emerald’s tears spattered the pages as she pored over the pictures, frantic for likenesses. ‘Of course, Lady Belvedon! She’s always in
Hello
and
Tatler
. God, she’s pretty, and tiny like me, look how much smaller she is than Raymond. I wonder who my father was. If Raymond had been my dad, they’d surely have gone to court and got me back. Shall we drive down and give her the thrill of her life?’

Then, catching a glimpse of her reflection in a huge mirror, Emerald decided she first needed a haircut. Far down below, she could see the crimson blur on the trees in Hyde Park turning to buff and green. As an omen, the clouds suddenly stopped going east, and surged westwards towards Limesbridge.

‘I guess we ought to take things slowly,’ said Zac, topping up Emerald’s glass. ‘I know it’s hard, but let Anthea get used to the idea.’

‘But she’ll be over the moon.’

Zac shook his head.

‘It was only in 1976 that adopted kids were given the right to have access to their records. You were born in 1973, that puts Anthea in the frame of women who would never expect to be contacted. She may not have told Raymond about you.’

‘In a happy marriage, that’s lasted nearly twenty-five years?’ scoffed Emerald, who was back studying the
Good Housekeeping
photographs. ‘Of course he must know about me.’

In the end Zac agreed to write Anthea a private and confidential letter.

‘I’ll make it kind of neutral. Just saying “I know of a young woman called Charlene Rookhope, who was born on 7 July 1973, who thinks she might be related to you. It may not be your branch of the family, but if it is, she’d love to get in touch.” I’ll give your mobile as a contact number. If she calls at an awkward moment, you can always say you’ll call her back.’