Pagan and her parents

by Michael Arditti

  ‘Let me assure you that Pagan is my number one priority. If there’s ever any conflict …’

  ‘But you shouldn’t be in that position,’ your mother returns to the fray. ‘You’re a young man, a single man.’ … How I wish that you had agreed to marry me. I was never sure if you felt that the institution was second-rate and we would be bowing to the bourgeois or that the ideal was sacred and we would be making it a sham. It would have been a true marriage of convenience … not ours but Pagan’s. I fear that your scruples may cost her dear.

  ‘You might want to marry.’

  ‘I have quite enough with Pagan.’

  ‘You must admit it’s an odd set-up: a grown man and a young girl.’

  ‘We didn’t plan on Candida dying.’

  ‘What experience do you have of bringing up a child?’

  ‘What experience does anyone have? You learn as you go along.’

  ‘Trial and error?’

  ‘No, trial and success. It’s only three months since Candida died. Pagan had difficulties at first; we both did. It’s just that I didn’t start pulling my friends’ hair at lunch or tearing the pages out of schoolbooks or wetting my pants. But I found ways of helping her accept it … that book for one, as we sit and talk and write and paste and remember. Then she has her ballet and her riding and her piano.’

  ‘She doesn’t get that from Candida.’ … All this emphasis on blood is a kind of butchery.

  ‘No, she gets it from me.’

  ‘That’s all to the good, but, as she grows up, there’ll be problems you can’t handle. Girl problems –’ he corrects himself; ‘girl’s problems.’

  ‘There’s Susan. They’re devoted to each other.’

  ‘She’s a young woman; she’ll want to marry.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘I was a school bursar for more than thirty years; there’s very little I don’t know about young women.’

  ‘Really?’ I raise my eyebrows and remember his strictures.

  ‘As employees. They’re never reliable.’

  ‘That’s insulting.’

  ‘They’re all full of good intentions; but at the first whiff of man –’

  ‘There are other nannies.’

  ‘She needs stability: the security of a family; not a succession of second-best.’

  ‘We are a family, she and I: a one-parent –’

  ‘Non-parent –’

  ‘Family.’

  ‘What about lavatories?’ your mother interjects. I am lost. ‘When you’re out and about. She’s a young girl with a weak bladder, as you’ve just admitted. When she needs to pay a visit, what will you do?’

  ‘I’ll find a lavatory. I don’t understand.’ I don’t; I really don’t.

  ‘And then? You can hardly go into the ladies or take her into the gents.’

  ‘I’ll ask someone to take her in; I’ll wait outside.’

  ‘With the world as it is, you’ll allow her to go into a public lavatory with a perfect stranger?’

  ‘While you lurk outside.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re reducing her whole upbringing to a question of lavatories.’

  ‘It has to be faced.’

  ‘So I’ll make her carry a whistle. What else would you suggest?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve thought it over very carefully –’

  ‘We haven’t reached our decision lightly.’

  ‘And Father and I think it would be best if she came to live with us.’

  ‘You think! What gives you the right to think? Candida entrusted Pagan to me. It’s in her will: black and white, signed and sealed, legal and binding. I’ve lived with her all her life; you’re passers-by.’

  ‘Whose fault is that? We begged to see her.’

  ‘I’ve let you see her, against my better judgement, against Candida’s express desire. I only hope that she’ll forgive me.’ Please forgive me. Put not your trust in parents: I should have heeded your advice.

  ‘She may not have been of sound mind; what with illness eating away at her brain.’

  ‘She may not have been of sound muscles, but there was nothing wrong with her mind.’

  ‘That’s where you’re mistaken. The rot set in very young. I’m her mother, I should know.’

  ‘That’s not what she would have said.’

  ‘Why? Because she was adopted? She made it sound like abducted. We took her in; we gave her a home. We may not have been up to her standards; we may not have been rich –’

  ‘She said that you told her her real parents were too poor to look after her. She was always terrified that you’d lose all your money and send her away.’

  ‘From the way that she talked, you’d have thought she’d have been glad.’

  ‘For better or worse, it was still her home.’

  ‘It’s our own fault. We were warned against her. Bad blood: it always comes out in the end.’

  ‘You never understood her; you gave her no space. You adopted a daughter; you should have bought a doll.’

  ‘Every word you speak convinces me you are quite unfit to bring up a young girl.’

  ‘I intend to bring up Pagan.’

  ‘That name: it pains me every time I hear it.’

  ‘Easy, Mother.’

  ‘There’s a simple solution; don’t stay. I’d hate to cause you distress.’

  ‘May we at least say goodbye to our granddaughter?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll fetch her.’ I bound up the stairs, two at a time, to stress my energy and defiance. I shake my head free of static. Pagan is playing with Raisa and Gorby and wants me to send them on another adventure. I promise one before dinner in return for a quick goodbye to her grandparents, with the coda that she will never have to see them again.

  ‘Can I take the bears?’

  ‘Just as long as you don’t tell them their names.’ I remember how you accused me of indoctrinating your daughter with Soviet propaganda. Your parents would probably name me as the fifth man.

  ‘Of course not, silly. Names are special. They might try to steal them.’

  We go down to the hall. Your parents are standing by the door; your father’s face as grey as his mackintosh, your mother’s as buttoned up as her coat. ‘It’s made us so happy to meet you,’ she tells Pagan. ‘Grandpa and I have been waiting for so long.’

  ‘We look forward to seeing you again soon.’

  ‘But you said …’ Pagan turns to me in anguish. I mime a sh-sh.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to stay with us in the Easter holidays?’

  ‘We’re going away in the holidays, aren’t we, Daddy?’

  ‘Yes.’ I blush.

  ‘She calls you Daddy?’ Your mother’s buttons burst.

  ‘She knows that she’s not supposed to.’ It feels like taking advantage. She is hardly spoilt for choice. If you were the only girl in the world … how could I tell loneliness from love?

  ‘Where are you taking her?’

  ‘It’s under discussion. I fancy Corsica; she fancies Butlins.’ I catch the grimace on your mother’s face. ‘She saw a programme on TV and thought that it looked fun.’

  ‘It’s fun for grown-ups too. They have lots of little houses and ladies in red coats who walk around at night. So you could go out and leave me.’

  ‘But I don’t want to leave you.’

  ‘All grown-ups want to leave children,’ she says, and her eyes suffuse with sadness. Is she thinking of you?

  ‘Grandpa and I don’t want to leave you; we want to see more of you. We live in a little house by the seaside.’

  ‘Bigger than Butlins,’ he adds.

  ‘You could come and stay with us.’

  ‘Does your house have a name?’ Pagan asks.

  ‘Yes –’

  ‘So does mine.’

  ‘Really? What’s that?’

  ‘Home.’

  The kiss freezes on your mother’s lips as Pagan stands defiantly behind me.
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  ‘Don’t think we’ll leave it at this; you’ll hear from us again.’ The effect of her exit is marred when her handbag slips open and spills its contents on the step. She and your father rescue them, while Pagan and I stand aloof.

  ‘I disliked you on first meeting,’ he tells me. ‘And I see that my instinct was right. Don’t worry,’ he turns to Pagan, ‘your grandparents won’t let you down.’

  I close the door. The air is suddenly still. Pagan starts to cry. To diffuse the tension, I fetch an air-freshener from the loo and spray the hall like an exorcist. Pagan grabs it from me and runs up to the drawing room, squirting and giggling and shouting ‘all gone’. The synthetic scent of woodland pine dispels every trace of malevolence.

  ‘Story, story,’ she shouts, flinging herself on the sofa.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I insist, knowing that my reluctance is as predictable a prelude as ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘Very well.’ She buries her head in my lap.

  ‘It was a sweltering summer’s day, so Raisa and Gorby decided to give a tea party for their forest friends. She wanted to make some orange juice, but there were no oranges in any of the shops. “Oh dear,” she said. “How can I make orange juice without any oranges? I know; I’ll ask my friend Andropov.”’

  ‘That’s a silly name.’

  ‘Are you telling this story, or am I?’

  ‘You, you!’

  ‘So she left a note for Gorby –’

  ‘But a bit me. Like when we do a drawing. You do the lines and I do the colours.’

  ‘So I get the difficult part?’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Andropov worked in a marmalade factory.’

  ‘Was he all sticky?’

  ‘Yes, all his paws and his fur and his whiskers.’ I tickle her.

  ‘Stop it,’ she reproaches me. ‘You’re spoiling the story.’

  ‘“Do you have any oranges you can lend me?” she asked.’

  ‘You won’t make me, will you?’ she asks.

  ‘Make you what?’

  ‘Go and stay with them.’ She juts out her lip in scorn like a labret.

  ‘Don’t worry. I promised Mummy that I’d look after you. And we must always keep our promises.’

  ‘Not if we have our fingers crossed.’

  I spread mine out for inspection; she clasps them and nestles against my knees.

  ‘“What sort of oranges?” he asked. “There are Seville oranges and sour oranges and blood oranges –”’

  ‘Urgh … Ow!’ She jumps up as a red spot appears on her leg almost on cue. She looks at it in confusion. I find the cause. It’s your mother’s St John Ambulance badge; she must have dropped it. For the faith, for the service of mankind. I fling it at the grate.

  4

  I advocate a change in the postal system. From now on, no mail is to be delivered before noon; so postmen can spend longer in bed and the rest of us enjoy a few hours’ grace. Even a fool’s paradise is a paradise of sorts.

  Your parents have applied for a residence order for Pagan. I tear open the envelope to find a form as impersonal as a tax demand … There is a child’s life at stake! They had to fill in the relevant boxes. Self-employment; capital allowance; cars and car fuel … The full name of the child is … the child is a … the child was born on the … Expenses for which you wish to claim; expenses from work abroad; pensions … The child lives with … the child is also cared for by … the carer is the child’s … Mother’s friend: they make me sound so marginal. You and Pagan are my family; you are where I come from and where I come back to. You are my home.

  I am … the child; the child’s mother or father; a guardian of the child; a person with parental responsibility (see part 4 of the form); none of the above … That’s true. I am the one with parental responsibility; I am Pagan’s testamentary guardian. So put a big tick in box five … I am the child’s grandmother; I am the child’s grandfather … Leave to make the application has been given by the Brighton County Court on the 27th February 1992.

  I demand a rebate – a retake – a retraction. I am standing behind police lines watching my house explode. I want to remake my programme on IRA victims. It gained our lowest ever ratings. Bring back Sylvester Stallone! One of the men had seen his daughter murdered and yet he forgave her killers; he was a saint. But I should rake up rancour like the ashes they have made of my heart. Bring back Albert Pierrepoint …! We are making this application because it is our belief that Pagan will be best served by a traditional family structure with two loving grandparents, rather than the ad hoc arrangement occasioned by her mother’s death.

  They state their case in an affidavit … flat vowels may be erased, but not flat words. They interpret Pagan’s antagonism towards them as a symptom of general maladjustment. They view the two nude portraits in the hall as the decor of a bordello. And they seize on a five-year-old’s verbal confusion about my cooking on a spit to make me sound like the wicked sister in the Grimm fairy tale, the demon expectorator with a mouthful of toads. It would be laughable if it were not so threatening. I can rebut their argument point by point, but I fear for the overall tenor … spit sticks.

  As I leave Pagan at school, I feel an aching sense of loss. I tell myself that it is my morbid imagination, when I know that it is a premonition. How did such fatuity ever become fate? I wish that I understood the nature of time; I am locked in the past with Isaac Newton. And yet, if all life exists in a permanent present, then the future is a definite force and the psychic as reliable as the historian. My brain consigns the truth to the pit of my stomach. I feel sick.

  I repress the urge to drive to Brighton and, instead, pick up the phone. I am prepared to be conciliatory. If this is your parents’ idea of revenge, it has worked. I am amply repaid for any hurt to their pride. Your father feigns a diplomatic deafness. I elocute in icy fury; they have no right to punish Pagan in their vendetta against me. He disclaims any such intention and says, with a deal of satisfaction, that they have been instructed not to speak to me. Any further communication should be addressed to their solicitors. The details are on the form.

  I ring Max Barrowman. He is all affability and advice. But then he has his daughter’s picture propped on his desk like a talisman; no witch or ogre threatens to steal her away. If the guardianship is as watertight as he says, why are they allowed to bring the case? Surely one should be brought against them for wasting the Court’s time? But he mutters some cant about ‘the best interests of the child’. In any case, the next step is the Directions Hearing in Brighton on March 21st, which will allow for the application to be answered. There is no point in fretting until then.

  I fret; I sweat. I wake up in the greyness of the night with a tropical sheen on my skin. How can I ever give her up? I may be over-anxious, but ideas are insidious. I love her so much. At first I just loved the thought of her. I always wanted a child; my favourite services were baptisms. I even wondered whether you and I might revisit Venice … but I was afraid that you would feel compromised. Besides, I knew that I was never parental material. My son-of-the-soil stock might serve to spite your mother, but not to father your child.

  I fantasise. Since you never named the father, I am as likely a candidate as any. Perhaps I was drunk one night and, when putting me to bed, you were overcome by passion, to which I responded as though in a dream: a delayed adolescence at thirty. Or, to adapt the lavatory-seat theory of sexuality – that convenient receptacle of all our misadventures – while using the shared facilities I let drop some sperm which swiftly impregnated you. It might be the equivalent of swimming the Channel blindfold, but the possibility remains. So I may be Pagan’s father; who is to say without a blood test? I destroy my own case; there is more to fatherhood than blood.

  You, of course, disagree. Your own parents supply the argument. They never loved you; you and William were part of their domestic ideal: the furniture of mortgage-land. You filled the void like an old lady�
�s budgie. Until your vocabulary grew. Clever Joey … silly bitch! Cover the cage … go to your room; I won’t have language in this house! The peace was shattered and the ideal exposed. And yet you admit that it was not their fault; all love is selfish … you wave away my protest … The love of child for parent is self-protection, the love of parent for child self-preservation. And, in the constant clash of wills that constitutes family life, nature provides symbols to prevent complete carnage: her father’s nose, her mother’s chin … fleshy intimations of immortality. But, with adoptive parents, such symbols do not exist; blood is lacking and bloodshed takes its place.

  I hope that I state your case fairly; one of my great fears is of misrepresenting you, even to myself, now that you are no longer here to set me right. The truth is that you did not believe in idealism. All love was suspect; even a saint’s was just deferred self-interest. And it was impossible to argue without sounding either sentimental or naive. Cynicism has all the smart words on its side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary. And you studied quickly to disguise your childhood pain. But it is not universal; I know because of what I feel for Pagan. I love her as much as if she were my own … more; I love her with a love uncompromised by personal pride or proprietary instinct. I am not listening for my voice or looking for my mother’s colouring. I love her for what she is herself.

  I admit that I also love her as your daughter; but that is a bonus. In the past months, I have scanned her face for your expression like an explorer with an incomplete map. I delight in her idiosyncracies, while taking heart in their association. It may be heresy, but she reminds me of you far more than any photograph. When she smiles, your face flushes; when she rubs her ankle, you cross your legs.

  There are other resemblances, as I discover at the opening of your memorial exhibition. Helena has filled the gallery with nearly two hundred of your photographs; and I have invited a similar number of guests. We arrive far too early; so, to calm my nerves and to prevent Pagan gorging all the canapés, I take her next door to inspect the opposition. ‘Where are the pictures?’ she asks in an audible whisper. The only exhibit is Wall Street, in which a pinstriped artist paces up and down a paper-strewn compound. While the adult visitors strive for meaning, she strips off his new clothes.