Whitethorn Woods (24 page)

   James wouldn't consider surrogate parenting, so there was no point in discussing it. Nor adoption, even if there had been any children to adopt. And I didn't even want to think of Natasha's face on the subject of an overseas baby being brought to our home. A little African Harris! An Asiatic Harris! Don't make me laugh.

   No, Mercedes, you are very kind but I'm not upsetting myself, no, not at all. I know that you are always sensitive to my getting upset, especially when Grace's David keeps interrogating me about things. But this is not like that. I'm just trying to explain it all to you. You see, I want to tell you this, I need to tell you. Can you think of it as if I am writing you a letter? A letter to Mercedes from Helen.

   Yes, I will have a sip of tea, thank you so much, my dear, you are always there when people need you.

   So, as I was saying, I had to think what to do next.

   Now this was twenty-three years ago, you were only a little toddler then, running around in the sunshine in the Philippines. It is sunny there, isn't it? But I was here in London, worried out of my mind.

   I had always been good at finding a solution; I would not be beaten by this. One of the girls at work had been on a holiday in Dublin, over in Ireland, and when they were there they had gone to this place, Rossmore. It was a small town but was very beautiful, it had an old castle and a forest called Whitethorn Woods, and even a wishing well. A saint's well it was, actually. You'd know about that, being Catholic, Mercedes. People went to pray to a saint and they got their wishes answered. They left things there to thank her.

   What did they wish for? I wondered.

   Everything, apparently, the saint had a big job on her hands. People prayed for husbands and for cures from illness. And a lot for babies. There were lots of little baby bootees and things tied to the thorny bushes from people wanting a baby of their own. Imagine!

   Well, I did imagine. Day and night I imagined. That is where I would find our child.

   These people wouldn't have gone on praying unless there had been some results. So next time James went away on a business trip, I took a couple of days off from my office and sneaked over to Ireland and took a bus to this place Rossmore.

   It was extraordinary, the whole thing. It was really very strange. Quite a modern town with nice shops and good restaurants, I even got my hair done in a smart salon. But just a mile out on the road there was this real scene of Third World superstition. Sorry, Mercedes, no offense, but you know what I mean.

   There were dozens of people, each one with their own story. There was this old woman praying to St. Ann. That's who it was, St. Ann, the mother of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, but you'd know all that. We used to have a statue of her back in the Home.

   Anyway this woman was asking that her son, who was a drug addict, would get cured, and then there was a girl praying that her boyfriend would not hear that she had had a stupid fling with another man. A boy saying he simply had to pass this exam, as the whole family were depending on him. A fourteen-year-old girl was asking that her father would go off the drink.

   So I closed my eyes and I spoke to this saint and I said I'd go straight back to my religion, which I had sort of forgotten about since I met James and Natasha, if she would arrange for me to get pregnant.

   It was very peaceful there, and anything seemed possible. And I was so sure she would arrange it. Until the afternoon bus came I spent the day looking around Rossmore. There wasn't much traffic back then, you could walk about easily. I believe it's changed utterly now. Everyone seemed to know each other, greeting half the people in Castle Street, which was the main street. They were all families, I noticed. But, I thought, when I came back to this place with my child one day, I would be part of a family too. I would come back to Rossmore and thank St. Ann for her help.

   A lot of these people left their children sort of parked outside shops since the prams were too big and bulky to bring in. Passersby would pause to admire the chubby babies in prams. Dozens of them. Soon I would have our baby in a pram, James's and my baby. Natasha's grandchild. And when we did, we would never leave the child out of our sight.

   But the months went on and on, with no sign of any intervention on St. Ann's part. I looked back with great rage at my useless trip over to her well and I got very annoyed. I kept thinking of that town, where the women just left their babies for all to see in the main street without anyone to mind them. They just left their babies out in the street so casually while so many of the rest of us were aching for a child.

   That's when I got the idea.

   I would go to Ireland, find a pram and bring our baby home. It didn't matter if it was a boy or a girl. If it were our own child we couldn't choose anyway so this made it all the more natural somehow.

   It needed a lot of planning.

   You didn't need passports to go to Ireland or anything but still

there was more chance of being spotted on a plane or at an airport than on a ferry. So I made my plans to go by sea.

   I told James that I was pregnant, and that I had gone not to his and Natasha's family doctor but to an all-women-doctors' clinic and that I preferred it this way. He was totally understanding, and gentle with me. And of course utterly delighted with my great news.

   I begged him not to tell his mother yet. Said that I needed time. He agreed that it should be our secret until we were sure that everything was on course. After three months I said that I now preferred to sleep alone. He agreed reluctantly.

   I read all the symptoms of pregnancy and acted accordingly. I went to a theatrical costumier and got a special mold made to simulate a pregnant stomach. I explained that it had to look good under a nightdress for my stage part. They were very interested in it and I had to be more and more vague about the whole thing in case they wanted to come to the theater and see me act!

   Natasha was overjoyed. When she came to lunch every Sunday she even helped me clear the dishes instead of sitting there like a stone.

   "Helen, my dear, dear girl, you have no idea how happy this makes me," she said, laying her hand on my stomach. "When will we feel the baby kick, do you think?"

   I said I would ask them at the clinic.

   I realized that I would have to go away around the time of the so-called birth of the baby. This would be a problem but I solved it. I told James and Natasha that there was something about approaching motherhood that made me nostalgic for the orphanage, the only home I remembered. James wanted to come with me but I said that this was a journey I wanted to make on my own. And this was a busy time in his antiques business, he needed to be in London. I would be back in a week, long, long before the birth was due. It took a lot of persuasion but they let me go.

   I had already begun my maternity leave from the office. I was in charge, I could do what I liked.

   I did go to the orphanage, where they were delighted with my pregnancy. They were particularly delighted with the timing because apparently my birth mother was in a hospital dying and she wanted desperately to see me just once. To explain.

   I said I wanted no explanation.

   She had given me life, that was fine. I needed no more. I had just got on with it.

   The Sisters and staff were shocked at me. Here was I, with a good job, a wealthy husband, a beautiful home and now expecting my own child. Why could I not open my heart to a poor woman who had not been so lucky in life?

   But I would not be moved. I had too much on my own mind. I was about to go to another country, steal a baby for myself, a child for James, an heir for Natasha Harris. Why should I get involved with the ramblings and remorse of some stranger, which had come far, far too late?

   Then I drove on and left my car near the ferry terminal. I wore a wig and whipped out my false tummy and put it in the boot of the car. I had bought a cheap raincoat, a blanket and a lifelike doll and then I was ready. They didn't have closed-circuit TV so much in those days but I wanted to make sure that if there was a hue and cry nobody would be able to call attention to a woman with a baby boarding a boat for the U.K.—someone else would be sure to mention having seen her going in the other direction. I sat out in the open air cuddling the doll.

   One or two other mothers approached me to have a look at the baby but I said apologetically that she didn't like strangers. You see, I was already thinking of her as my daughter.

   Then I got the bus to Rossmore, cuddling the doll very close to me. It was a busy Saturday in the town—I walked the length of Castle Street until my feet were sore.

   I did some shopping as well, talcum powder, napkins, soothing creams. There were indeed many prams outside stores on this visit also. Innocent, trusting people in a safe town, some might say. I didn't say that. Criminally careless, neglectful parents who didn't deserve children, was what I said.

   I had to be careful.

   The bus that I must get would leave at three. It would be two hours to the ferry. I must take the child just before the bus left, not earlier, no point in giving the authorities time to search.

   It's strange. I could almost draw a picture of the people in that crowded street that day. There was an old priest, you know, wearing a soutane, the sort of black dress they used to wear, right down to the feet. And he was shaking everyone's hand. Half the population seemed to be out shopping, and greeting each other. I was standing on the steps of the Rossmore Hotel when I saw a little baby in a pram. Just lying there asleep and with a small Yorkshire terrier tied by his lead to the handle of the pram. I crossed the road and it was over in seconds, the doll was in a litter bin and the baby was in my arms wrapped in my blanket. The eyes were tightly closed but I could hear a little heart beating close to mine. It all felt totally right as if it was meant to happen. As if in some curious way St. Ann had led me to this child.

   I got on the bus and looked back for a last time at Rossmore. The bus bumped across the country to the ferry and then I moved with my daughter onto the boat. I must have been well away long before the alarm was raised. And who would have thought to search the ferries at once anyway? I was settled in my car by the time they realized that this was a full-blown child abduction.

   I had done what I set out to do: I had got my child.

   A little girl who would be called Grace Natasha. She had to be between two and four weeks old. It was despicable, leaving a child that age to fare for herself, I told myself. It was better off by far that I had come along to claim her, to give her a better life. No one could find me now, I told myself, as I prepared her first formula bottle on a portable stove at the back of the car.

   And the wonderful thing, Mercedes, was that nobody ever did.

   I had it all very well sorted out, you see.

   I reinstated my false tummy, and left the baby in the car while I checked into a shabby guesthouse. During the middle of the night I pretended to wake with labor pains and insisted on driving myself to the hospital. In fact I drove back to my orphanage.

   I told them that I had delivered the baby myself and needed them to look after me for a couple of days until I recovered from the shock.

   One of the staff said that I couldn't possibly have had this baby since I was there a couple of days ago. This was a baby who was two weeks old, not three days. Another wanted to get me a doctor. But these were people I had lived with for seventeen years of my life. I could manage them. And they loved me, don't forget. I had been no trouble all those years there. I had remembered them and come back to visit. I had even sent contributions to their building fund. They weren't going to question poor little orphan Helen, whose own mother was dying.

   They knew—of course they knew. These were women who lived with children all day and all night. Maybe they should have reported it, I suppose you could say that. But then they thought that I must have bought the baby. And they knew I was hiding it from my rather grand husband and mother-in-law. So they went along with the fiction.

   I burned the false stomach and the wig and the cheap raincoat in their incinerator when nobody was looking. They called James to tell him he had a daughter, and he called Natasha to tell her she had a granddaughter. They even registered the birth. James cried on the telephone. He told me that he loved me more than ever and he would look after us both for the rest of his life. And Grace slept on, delighted with herself and everyone, and never caused anyone any trouble for twenty-three years.

   She is so like me, not physically, I know, but the way she behaves. You've seen that for yourself. She is my daughter in every sense of the word.

   She is a strong girl with a forceful character. She is just like her mother.

Just like me.

   No, Mercedes, I did not inquire about the family who lost her in Ireland. You see, they have different newspapers and everything over there, so I didn't have to read about it.

   They all have so many children over there anyway. I don't think about that side of things at all.

   No, of course I would never tell Grace, never in a million years.

   She's got a boyfriend now, David, of course you know. James isn't crazy about the boy, he doesn't say it but I know. I don't like him very much but he's Grace's choice and so I say nothing, I just smile.

   David is Irish, as it happens. Extraordinary, isn't it! And Grace has never been over there. Since. Not yet anyway. But I had a real scare yesterday when suddenly out of the blue David started saying that there is this big drama going on in Ireland about a roadway that's going to bypass Rossmore. Huge protests about it, apparently.