The Adoption (5 page)

Besides these attributes, he possessed a trump card, his rigorous adherence to punctuality. Papa venerated punctuality in others. Living his creed, he referred constantly to the silver pocket watch tucked into his waistcoat. ‘If you say you will arrive at seven o’clock in the evening, then it behoves you to do precisely that. Indeed should you be either premature or tardy, you are less of a man in my opinion, for you have given your bond and failed in the expectation of it.’ Merfyn did not have a pocket watch, he had a wristwatch. Nevertheless he consulted it quite as much as my father did, if not more. They were also of one mind regarding the importance of temperance. ‘To imbibe,’ Merfyn told my papa before taking me to a tea dance, ‘is to descend the stairway to damnation.’

I am no wavering daisy, more of the hollyhock in build and stature. I have my father’s firm chin, his pointed nose. And if I am the hollyhock, then Merfyn is the sturdy oak. With rumours of war flying about, I needed a crutch to prop me up. It may not sound romantic to you but then I am a realist. Regarding me through his horn-rimmed spectacles, Merfyn also appeared content. He saw a tall woman, a woman who did not baulk at physical toil, a woman with an honest open face, brown eyes and curly ebony hair, a woman who valued modesty over vanity in dress. The curls are my one indulgence – curling irons. Through my own round lenses, I perceived a man an inch or so shorter than myself, a man who, in suit and tie, his frizzed hair oiled down, did not offend the eye. He’ll do, I thought. And no doubt he thought, she’ll do, and the match was made.

Merfyn is originally from Wales, Pembrokeshire, a Buster Keaton lookalike, though somewhat heavier set. If he had an accent once all but the barest trace of it is gone. He’s prudent with money. So between him and Papa, our wedding was an exercise in economy. I made the dress, arranged the flowers in margarine tubs, and the tea, sausage rolls and fruitcake were provided by my mother-in-law. Afterwards, we moved into our small house in Stroud Green. In truth, it felt rather like going home when we returned there after the ceremony. At night, I continue to fall to my knees, but now Merfyn heads up the prayers for temperance, sobriety and abstinence. He does not beat me. But once a week on Saturday nights, with the lights off and the curtains pulled tight, we have sexual intercourse.

Apparently my mother was a gifted seamstress. My father encouraged me to work at my needlecraft, to emanate her skill. He said I had inherited her aptitude for it, even went so far as to praise my efforts. Merfyn is also proud of me, and I like to think pleased with the way I manage our home. In wartime he remarked that I was wonderfully inventive, unpicking worn jumpers and making them
anew
, fashioning dresses from curtains, faded tablecloths and the like. And, as for my cooking, he told me that he didn’t know how I put dinner on the table with the paucity of our weekly ration.

‘You do not slack, Harriet. You are a plough horse. I admire that,’ he said.

Merfyn has angina. So instead of fighting overseas he did his bit at home, working as an air-raid warden. When he went out at night, I worried that he might be buried under a mountain of bricks the way my mother was, the way I was. But, like a homing pigeon, he always returned. Then we would sit sharing a pot of tea companionably, undeniably weak and stewed from recycled leaves, but a comfort all the same. He would complain about the people he had rousted on his rounds, windows bare, lights on. ‘Can’t afford the curtains, a woman cheeked me tonight. Then turn the light off, I hollered back. Will they ever learn? Do they want to give Jerry an illuminated map showing the blighters where to drop their blessed bombs?’ The general malaise regarding the gas-mask drill was another of his niggles. ‘Hardly anyone has the vision to carry their masks with them. I’ve told them that it’s essential, even demonstrated how to put it on in seconds. But I wear glasses, they moan. And here, what about my hat? So I quote verbatim from the radio broadcasts: “If you are wearing spectacles take them off first. If you are wearing a hat, take it off calmly but quickly. Always hold your breath so that you don’t take gas into your lungs.” They look at me as if I’m touched. Still, I’ve done my job. If Hitler gases the lot of them it won’t be my fault.’

By then we had already signed the pledge of lifelong abstinence from drink, and I am proud to say are venerable members of the increasingly popular Sons of Temperance. The organisation was founded in the nineteenth century to battle an epidemic of drunkenness, and to offer an alternative to the dissolute lifestyles rife in Britain. The Band of Hope that started up in Leeds in the 1840s was all part of
it
. Our members live entirely without intoxicating substances, vowing for evermore to refresh minds and bodies in the way God intended, with health-giving recreation, fresh air and non-alcoholic cordials and beverages. And I am happy to say that Brothers and Sisters join us and take up the good cause every day.

‘With the war on and the stuff being so difficult to get hold of it’s not so bad. But you mark my words, Harriet, once it’s all over the rot will speedily set back in,’ Merfyn predicted, his face clouded with pessimism. And he was correct. We are kept busy spreading the word, converting the fallen. People are so easily led astray. Though I have to confess that Merfyn and myself do have a mutual weakness of the flesh, one neither of us feels able to deny. I blush when I reflect on the condemnation Papa would most certainly have rained down on us for this shared defect. I confess it. We both have a sweet tooth. There is nothing more soothing I find than sharing a quarter-pound of barley sugars of an evening, or crunching on a bit of slab toffee. It was one of the few treats we permitted ourselves before the war. And we all need something sweet to take the bitter edge off these bleak days now it’s finished.

I had seen quite enough of death when the Second World War was finally over. So had we all. These days everyone you meet has lost a relative, a son, a brother, a husband. Here countless homes have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands are dead, Papa among them. I don’t like to contemplate how many of our brave boys are buried under foreign soil. The Germans have much to atone for. Hitler is gone. They say he took the coward’s route committing suicide at the last. The Nazis are obliterated. But it will take decades for the wounds to heal. I suppose I should count myself lucky. I am one of the few who still has her husband by her side. But I do not have a baby in my arms.

We have been trying for some years now, letting nothing disrupt our routine. During the war, Merfyn became so keen on having a baby,
on
becoming a father, that I gave my consent. He duly abandoned the use of prophylactics. However I have not conceived. Unlike many women, I do not have the excuse that my husband has been away either. Merfyn thought that frequency, or rather the lack of it, might be the culprit. So we followed a twice-weekly schedule for in excess of six months – but to no avail. My menses come like clockwork.

I dislike being thwarted. Besides, it is vinegar to me to see my sister-in-law, Enid, with her two children, Frank and Rachel, my nephew and niece. She doesn’t seem to appreciate how fortunate she is. And Rachel is such a darling. True, it must have been tough for her with Gethin invalided at Dunkirk. Gethin was Merfyn’s younger brother. He hobbled home more a burden than a boon and, despite Enid’s constant nursing, eventually caught influenza and died. Widowhood, and with so few men returned home no hope of a second husband … awful! Still, I’m sure her children are a comfort to her.

I want a child, a daughter. I have been mulling it over. A son would be too messy. Muddy boots and cricket bats. Dirty kit. Meccano all over the floor, tripping me up. Matchbox toys and rowdy cowboy and Indian games? What a headache! But a daughter? A pretty girl who I can dress up in the clothes I make, dress up like a dear little doll, me teaching her sewing, knitting, crochet, cooking, housework. I have had myself checked out. It seemed common sense. As far as the doctors can tell there is nothing amiss, which leads me to conclude that the fault lies with Merfyn. But how to tackle the subject?

An evening while Britain is busy throwing off the millstone of war, and a Labour government is getting into its stride, I approach Merfyn. ‘Are you planning to go to the doctor,’ I enquire delicately. ‘To see if … if any problems you might be unaware of are holding us back from having a … a family?’ My cheeks flame and quiver with shame. Head down, I peer through my glasses at an intricate bit of pearl stitching around the snowy toe of a hopeful baby’s bootie. We are listening to
Gracie
Fields singing ‘Now is the Hour’ on the radio.

‘No, I don’t think I am, Harriet,’ Merfyn, rejoins, rolling the pipe clenched between his teeth to allow his words through passage. Like me his head is bowed as if he is intent on his paper.

I unwind a bit of two-ply, and moisten my lips with the tip of my tongue. Haven’t I undergone an examination, embarrassing and intrusive as it was? From beyond the grave my papa’s chill grey eyes bore into me. Outside our front door they are constructing a new city from London’s rubble, and I want our daughter to be a part of it. My knitting needles click in irritation. ‘So that’s that,’ I mutter.

A pause that I take for my answer abruptly and unexpectedly ends. ‘Not altogether,’ Merfyn says. He has resumed his previous job working as a stock manager for the Ever Ready Company. He remains, I observe, in his work suit trousers, though not his jacket. In place of it, he is wearing a pullover I knitted for him. It is a Fair Isle design in cobalt blue and cream and seal grey. It looks rather fetching, though I say so myself. It was a devil to get hold of the wool though. He turns the page meditatively. It has been a bitterly cold winter. When the heavy snows started to melt it led to widespread flooding. They have cut down radio broadcasts, and suspended television altogether to conserve energy supplies. And morale, as we struggle through to the spring, is desperately low. I am beginning to feel as if rationing will persist to eternity. I miss my slab toffee as an injured soldier might miss a limb. An exaggeration? Not really. These years are proving a trial to us all.

When the war was won everyone was jubilant. Street parties, bonfires, and so forth. Spontaneous celebrations erupting like miniature volcanoes. The mood was ebullient. And then? Well, you logically assumed things would quickly get back to normal, to how they were prior to the years of hellish nights pierced with air-raid sirens, and dawns of discovered mayhem. But they didn’t. The shops still look
empty
. Rationing drags on. And day-to-day life, particularly with these arctic conditions, this interminable winter, seems worse than ever. It is the rolls of fabric I pine for most, after the toffee that is. Georgette, organdie, voile, tulle, bombazine, crepe, taffeta, chambray, lawn, seersucker or even just plain cotton. Just plain cotton will do. It will do very well. The day I choose a new pattern, buy yards of fabric, and get my treadle machine going, then and only then will I believe the war is truly over and done with.

Merfyn interrupts my reverie. ‘Have you thought about us adopting, Harriet?’

I admit I haven’t. The idea has not occurred to me before. In a way, I ruminate, as the mantelpiece clock strikes eight, it is not utterly repellent. No discomfort for me, no morning sickness, no pounds to gain. I own that there is something vaguely distasteful about the notion of something growing inside you. And I am, with my fondness for sugar, prone to putting on weight. I progress my thoughts. No labour, no painful childbirth. No risk of congenital abnormalities. We will know that the baby is perfect in advance. After all, it will have been previously checked over, literally top to bottom. Besides, being that much older, thirty-five to be accurate, I have to accept there is a chance of me having one of those … those mongol children, or a kiddy who is retarded, or disabled. And that would be horrible. When you consider it, there are no guarantees after such an ordeal that you will produce a normal baby. And it is worth remembering that you can’t send it back. You’ll be lumbered with it for year after year until you are old, and perhaps even beyond to the very limits of decrepitude. Oh! I acknowledge that most get away with it and are perfectly content with the result. But … well, you’d be foolish not to open your eyes wide to the possibilities.

The Cossor radio Papa bought me as a wedding gift bursts into song with a Judy Garland number, making us both start. ‘Somewhere Over
the
Rainbow’. There is static. The rainbow must indeed be far off. I lay my knitting aside and get up to twiddle the knob and adjust it. Once I am satisfied with Judy’s dulcet notes, I stand and stare at it for a bit, daring it to misbehave. A ready-made baby, I muse, tapping an index finger over my mouth. A memory surfaces, a rare fossil of Papa escorting me around a toy shop in the build-up to Christmas. He instructed me to point at the doll I wanted. There were so many, all of them dressed in beautiful outfits complete with accessories, all of them competing for my attention. Lacy parasols, brocade purses, leather handbags, bouquets of silk flowers, buckets and spades, satin scarves, velvet bonnets, straw hats, tooled belts, tiaras and jewels. Painted and glass eyes followed me from under fringed lashes. I counted tiny shoes with silver and brass buckles, and boots with laces fine as embroidery thread.

I directed Papa’s gaze behind the counter, flapping my hand excitedly in the direction of a doll propped at a far end of a low shelf. I must have her. She had skin of light peach porcelain, crimped hair of the finest gold and a pair of glass eyes, sky blue and iridescent. And I could glimpse pearl-white teeth, minute as rice grains between parted smiling sugar-pink lips. The shopkeeper lifted her down for me to touch her silky dress. He said her name was Francesca. But when I unwrapped my present on Christmas morning after church, it was not Francesca I discovered but an inferior cloth doll with a printed face and straggly wool hair. Her dress had not even been properly hemmed.

Now Merfyn is offering me an opportunity to pick again. Surely this time with Papa at rest no one can prevent me from having my Francesca. But still a doubt nags. What about the things you can’t see, the things the doctors can’t detect, the qualities that are inbred, the character traits that might emerge gradually? What if the birth parents are simpletons? Or immoral? The unwise union of a thief and a murderer say? What if the infant is the fruit of an alcoholic father?
Imagine
this! Now here really is a dilemma. Some of the brethren in our temperance group believe that alcoholism, a proclivity for drink, can be inherited, passed on from a mother or a father to their child. Or am I being paranoid? It is training that counts. Any taint of evil can soon be eradicated. It is a bit like buying a length of fabric. It doesn’t matter what the design is, because you can make it up into any style you like.