The Adoption (49 page)

‘The eighth. No, no, I mean the ninth. No wait a second, it was the eighth. The eighth of August nineteen twenty-seven. Or was it nineteen twenty-eight? No, it was nineteen twenty-seven. Yes that’s it. I’m certain of it now.’

The tribulation of the black chair in
Mastermind
does not compare to the agony I am undergoing, toe-curling, thigh-rubbing, buttock-clenching agony.

‘The eighth you say?’ confirms the crafty Mr Gajarin, eyes locked on mine. I nod desperately. He makes an entry on the pad by his side. ‘Do you have a bank account, Mrs Ryan?’

I have to focus. A beat, then, I answer, ‘Mmm … yes, yes I do. With Barclays.’ I give a cardboard smile, a losing smile. ‘I’ve had it for years,’ I add, a dash more assertively.

‘For years?’ Mr Gajarin sits forwards with renewed interest. ‘And precisely how many years would that be, Mrs Ryan?’ His words ping out, gaining speed, momentum. My tongue is as dry as an airing cupboard. Oh for God’s sake, as if it matters. Mr Gajarin’s relentless gaze says that it does. How many? How many years have I held the damn thing? I pluck at my watchstrap. Either my wrist has swollen on the instant, or I have fastened it too tightly. ‘Mrs Ryan?’

‘Twenty-five.’ The number bursts from me, as good as any other. ‘About … well, roughly twenty-five. I can’t be quite sure, but it’s approximately that. I mean it’s an estimate, but probably close. Close
enough
anyway.’ I squirt out a giggle. Mr Gajarin’s face says that he is as amused as a gravedigger who has dug himself into a hole he cannot clamber out of.

But he is only teasing me. Now he lets fly his killing thrust. ‘Your father, Mrs Ryan, your German father, have you been to see him?’

‘No.’

‘Never. Not once?’

‘No!’ I shriek, and then hurriedly collect myself and cough loose my clenched throat. ‘Sorry. I’m feeling the strain a bit.’ Re-entry at a lower, more sedate pitch. ‘I … I haven’t made any attempt to trace him. None at all.’

The tinned face registers nothing but another entry is made on the pad. ‘So you have not communicated at all with your German relations?’ says the persistent Mr Gajarin, after a hiatus in which we eye each other like sworn enemies.

‘No, no! I didn’t see the point. I was going to find my mother initially and then …’ I sigh as if about expire. ‘Well, when that didn’t work out, not the way I expected it to, I didn’t want to risk it.’

He gives an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Thank you, Mrs Ryan. I think we’ll leave it there,’ he says suddenly, drawing the interview to an abrupt close.

And in trice I am filled with dismay. I have failed, failed the exam. You can see it in his conquering eyes. I have the losing hand. I am not Bethan Haverd’s daughter. I am not Thorston Engel’s daughter. I am not Harriet and Merfyn Pritchard’s daughter. I am not German. And if my own country is disowning me, then who the hell am I? I compress my lips firmly to stop from crying out. Mr Gajarin is rising to his feet, signifying that now the interview really is over and done with. My eyes rove up his smart suit, over his clashing pink and orange tie, and hold his. ‘If there is anything else, anything at all you want to know, please ask,’ I implore, with impressive vibrato, blinking fast.

‘We’re finished,’ comes Mr Gajarin’s clipped tones, as if he is ending a passionate love affair, as if I am a woman irremediably scorned.

‘Are you certain?’ I ask, fumbling with my certificates, attempting to bundle them together into some kind of order.

Mr Gajarin speaks brusquely. ‘If you could leave all these with me, please, Mrs Ryan. We will send them back to you.’

‘Oh! But they’re the only –’

‘Don’t worry. We understand that these are the originals. We will look after them, return them to you by registered post,’ he informs me, his face impartial.

‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ I rise in stages, my legs all flesh and no bone. ‘Would you like the plastic sleeve?’ I offer.

‘No, you may take that.’ Mr Gajarin is impatient, adjusting his tie and then glancing at his watch. I give a forlorn look at my life scattered over this man’s desk, this man who seems impervious to my sorrow. ‘You need not concern yourself about your documents, Mrs Ryan. Please. We do this every day. You should hear from us very soon.’ He extends a hand to me and I shake it, dazedly. Then it is concluded and I am stumbling out of the passport office into the rain.

Descending to the tube train, I pause to fumble in my handbag for my pocket diary. The previous night I revised like a schoolgirl. I went through all my papers and jotted down the figures I ought to recall if asked. Running a finger down the page, I find my mother, my biological mother, Bethan Haverd’s date of birth. It is 9 August 1928. I gave the incorrect date to Mr Gajarin. If it was an exam, and that is what it felt like, I had failed.

I was ill conceived in 1947 in the uneasy quiet of the still primed guns. My father scampered away like a beaten dog. My mother exported me in utero to London to find a couple, any would do, who would import me. The Pritchards had sought a baby the way you might some ambitious plan for improving your home, an extension, or the
latest
model cooker, fridge or vacuum cleaner. But when the years revealed that I was the wrong specification, their resentments towards me bred like the files of temperance accounts. If they could have exchanged me for a more efficient design, one better adapted for their purposes, say a
Barbara
, they would have. Now, I have been offered to my country. And they too have inspected me and found me wanting. Self-pity threatens to swamp me. I am on verge of going home to broadcast to Henry that Her Majesty’s passport officer has seen fit to deny me a British passport. Consequently, I am going to have to throw myself on the mercy of the German government, and how does he like the idea of settling in the Black Forest, when I apply the brakes. I am going to claw back some of this unholy day, I resolve.

Alighting at Covent Garden, I cross Waterloo Bridge and then make my way to the Royal Festival Hall. As I walk along the embankment the rain, which has eased off to a sparkling mizzle, evaporates. The sun, scurrilous wench that she is, immodestly sheds satin grey scarves of cloud. By and by, I come to the London Eye. The clear pods suspended from the circular frame glitter in the burst of afternoon sunshine, like mouth-watering alien fruits, ripe and waiting to be picked. The River Thames is a pewter lizard slithering by. The tang of silt and refuse hits the back of my throat. As it does so the years keel over like skittles.

A girl and her father sit companionably on a bench and peruse river life. She swallows a mouthful of spam sandwich, washing it down with squash brighter than a ripe tangerine. She sniffs sewage, rubbish and oil, all embedded in the muddy sediment of the riverbank. And she reflects, she reflects on Guy, Guy the gorilla at London zoo, who arrived there as a baby in 1947 clutching a tin hot-water bottle, on Guy the adult male who was reputedly said to be so gentle that he caught a fluttering bird in his hand and let it go unharmed.

No longer a little girl, at some invisible stop sign I halt. As I stare up at the wheel it occurs to me that I haven’t ridden on it. The showers
have
dried up. The sky is a glass paperweight. What is the sensation like of standing in the highest pod, at the very tip-top of the great Ferris wheel? North, south, east and west, all of London, the city and the suburbs and the country, must lie at your feet like a map. I crave that altitude for some inexplicable reason. I am officially nobody, an ageing woman without a passport, without an identity. But damn it, I have a right to ride the London Eye, to survey the city I grew up in.

My mind made up, I go and buy a ticket. There is a queue but the minutes seem to glide by. The bubbles are constantly in motion, dipping and rising, but slowly, gracefully, so that I can climb aboard with dignity. Among my fellow passengers are the ubiquitous Japanese tourists, a group all busy clicking their cameras. There is a trio of men in business suits, deep in conference, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. I guess they have hightailed it out of the London Stock Exchange to clinch a deal in the sky. Two elderly ladies are sharing a bar of chocolate. They munch and look, and look and munch. And there is a mother with her small daughter. They are holding hands, the child and the woman, and pointing in awe.

I am in awe too. I position myself at one of the tapered ends of the pod and drink in the monumental panorama. Distantly, I can make out Leith Hill, the tower, and majestic Windsor Castle. And to the north, Alexandra Palace. Eastwards, I can see all the way to Gravesend. And there is the Greenwich Observatory. I exhale in wonder at the dome of St Paul’s, remembering tiptoeing around the Whispering Gallery with my adoptive father, my legs bowing under me, the banging of my heart in my ears. And now I am poised in heaven sailing above that dome. I am high as a bird in free flight. I am flying, not off Beachy Head but over London, the city where I grew up. I think I spot Bowes Park where I lived with Henry and his family and Aunt Ethel. And Primrose Hill. Moving outwards, my eyes sweeping in concentric circles, the tall buildings have thinned to rows of terraced houses. And roaming further
there
is a patchwork of browns and purples and greens, and the long silver runner of the Thames idling by. The great river with its source in the Cotswolds, meandering through Oxford and Windsor before flowing on to London, and from thence to Dartford, Tilbury and Gravesend, before entering the Thames Estuary, near Southend-on-Sea, coming finally to the North Sea. I look in the direction of Surrey. It strikes me in my pod in heaven what a superfluity of countryside there is. Fields and trees and hedgerows. It is my home, I think. I may not have a passport or a name, but it is where I belong.

Our revolution through 360 degrees of spectacular views ends. I become one of the ant people strolling along the embankment. I ring Henry on my mobile phone.

‘How did it go? I was worried,’ he says.

‘I don’t think I got it,’ I tell him, resigned.

‘Laura, don’t be silly. The interview was protocol, that’s all. They had to tick a box. It’s what they do.’

‘But I gave some wrong answers,’ I tell him, feeling dejected.

‘Wrong answers! Laura, it wasn’t a test.’

‘It felt like one.’

‘There are no wrong answers. Anyway, they saw the paperwork, the proof.’

‘Henry, they kept it, all of it. My originals. All I have of my history.’

‘That’s normal.’

‘What happens if they lose them?’

‘They won’t. They’ll send them to you with your passport. Are you coming home, love?’ my husband wants to know.

‘I’m five minutes from Waterloo. I’ll ring you when I’m on the train. And Henry?’

‘Yes?’

‘I am coming
home
.’

Each day I wait for the post, shuffling through the letters and bills
disconsolately
to see if there is something from the passport office. A week goes by with no communication, a fortnight. My imagination runs amuck. Henry senses that I do not want to discuss my lack of status. I am a non-entity, a vaporous being, a violin without strings. If it were not for my family, my dog, I would not function at all. I have become an insomniac. The hours after midnight, I occupy sitting in our bedroom by the closed window pulling the mantle of dark about me. I listen to the owls’ hoots and the strangled cry of foxes.

Will a letter come couched in official jargon informing me that they have flipped a coin? Heads and I am British, tails and I am German. Perhaps for the remainder of my days I will be batted like a ping-pong ball between Germany and England, as they thrash out which court is mine. Will Henry and the children come to visit me in a refugee camp? And what about my dog, what about Lola? If they see fit to turf me out, maybe the solution will be to sneak back in. An illegal immigrant in my own country? I can harvest fruit, work in restaurant kitchens, pluck chickens, wash cars, sell my body. I strike this last from my list of possibilities. Glancing down at myself in my brushed cotton pyjamas, I decide that at fifty-three there may be no takers. And besides, Henry will not be overly thrilled at the prospect of his wife, illegal immigrant or not, pounding the streets of Soho in her brogues.

Next morning there comes a knock on the door of Pear Tree Cottage. The postman has a bulky envelope for me. Recorded delivery for Laura Ryan. I must sign for it. My signature is an indecipherable scrawl, but he seems content with it. Henry is out assisting a tree surgeon in taking down an ancient oak ridden with honey fungus. It is an hour before I muster the courage to open it, sitting on the settee. When I do, upturning it over the seat, the first thing it disgorges is maroon-coloured, something the size of a compact notebook, something that would fit comfortably into the palm of your hand. As if reading Braille, my quaking fingers tremble over the gold lettering.

EUROPEAN UNION

UNITED KINGDOM OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Below it is the gold coat of arms, the lion and the unicorn with the crown sandwiched between them. And beneath that: ‘PASSPORT’.

I fan the pages daringly, like a gambler shuffling her deck. And now I stop, jam a finger in, open it, my eye caressing the words in italics:

Her Britannic Majesty’s

Secretary of State

Requests and requires in the

Name of Her Majesty

all those whom it may concern

to allow the bearer to pass freely

without let or hindrance
,

and to afford the bearer

such assistance and protection

as may be necessary
.

A hot toddy is spreading through me. Another shuffle and I cut. On this page is an appalling portrait photograph of my face, my thin strawberry-blonde hair, my turquoise eyes. It is, I know, a prerequisite of passports that the photographs of their bearers are uniformly ghastly. I am transfixed by it, as if falling in love with the image at first sight. I dyed my hair to rid it of the encroaching grey, and had it cut shorter for the picture. As if that would improve it! I had two goes as well. Propped on the chair in the tiny curtained booth, I neglected to take off the linen scarf coiled about my neck. In my second sitting, told under no circumstances to smile, my blank expression was inane. There was something of the zombie about the glassy eyes and taut wire
mouth
. But now as I moon over it, I blink in astonishment, for surely I have more pizzazz than a Bond girl. And adjacent to it the words leap out at me. ‘Surname: Ryan. Given names: Laura. Nationality: British Citizen.’ I crow with exultation, then rifle in my handbag, grab a pen, bend my head to my passport and sign. I fish out my compact, flip it open and regard my reflection.