More Than Just Coincidence

by Julie Wassmer

  While working on these episodes, I did some research on current attitudes to adoption. Nowadays, if birth parents wanted their child to be able to contact them once he or she had reached eighteen, they had the right to register that wish with an intermediary agency, such as a local authority or adoption agency. Detailed information about the birth family and the baby would in any case be kept on file for the child to access later. Apart from anything else, it was important for adopted children to be able to find out about any medical history that might affect them, such as inherited illnesses.

  The emotional and psychological impact of adoption had been recognised and was better understood, too. Increasingly, secrecy was being viewed as unhealthy. Parents were now actively encouraged to provide diaries and albums containing photographs, documents and letters to accompany their children to their new homes. These could be used by adoptive parents to help explain to children where they came from or saved so that the child could learn about his history at a later date.

  In one episode of this EastEnders storyline, I decided that Sonia would compile an album like this for her lost child, including photographs and stories and information about her family, so that baby Chloe would never have to wonder about her roots or question whether she had been loved by her mother.

  Writing such scenes seemed to make up in some small way for what I had been unable to do for Sara. Chloe would have her family album while for my own daughter, two names on a birth certificate and some baby clothes had had to suffice. I began to recognise why, on a hot summer’s day in a corridor of the Mother’s Hospital, the sight of a nurse hurrying away with a ruched dress and a shawl had unleashed the pent-up sorrow I had tried so hard to contain. I had grieved that day, not just for myself, but for my baby girl, understanding viscerally that these few pitiful items, bought from a market with saved pocket money, were the only evidence she would ever have that I loved her. If she were never to receive them, how could she ever know that?

  Even the scant official record of our relationship hadn’t been enough for Sara to find me. It had taken my script to do that. Michelle always said she felt I had been constantly struggling to lead another life; to escape the confines of the East End and my family expectations. Writing was a big part of that and it was writing, ultimately, that had led me back to my daughter. Funnily enough, in a way I couldn’t possibly have predicted, it had also brought me back to the East End—professionally, if not physically.

  When an envelope dropped through my door containing an invitation to an EastEnders anniversary party in London, I didn’t need to think too hard about who to take as my ‘plus one’. Sara and I travelled by cab from Glengall Road to Kensington High Street, drawing up outside the art-deco façade of the old Derry & Toms building that had, for a few brief, heady years in the early 1970s, been home to the famous Biba store.

  A doorman took our invitations and directed us past the jostling paparazzi eager to snap members of the cast. I remembered how I had once wandered the lower floors of this building, a troubled teenager searching for a new identity among the Biba clothes and smoky eye shadows. Now I was stepping out of a lift on to its roof, my daughter beside me, and we were being guided towards the acre and a half of palms and exotic greenery that made up Kensington Roof Gardens, the largest roof gardens in Europe. A waiter offered us glasses of champagne. This was no soap opera—this was for real.

  I was later to write for other drama shows, too. In Manchester I worked on a Granada hospital series called Medics, starring Jimmi Harkishin (now Dev in Coronation Street), former Dr Who Tom Baker and Sue Johnston from The Royle Family and Waking the Dead. I also wrote for the LWT series London’s Burning, based on an original TV drama by Jack Rosenthal. A big budget gave writers the chance to go to town with spectacular disasters requiring expensive special effects, which was very liberating for someone accustomed to writing scenes for characters who spent most of their lives in hospital wards or pubs. I was still working on original projects, too. The wolf was a long way from my door and I reminded myself on almost a daily basis that I had Mark to thank for that, offering him a silent message of gratitude from my heart.

  Seb had been pleased when I started writing for EastEnders. He tried to catch all my episodes and pumped me for stories about the production and cast. By the end of 1993, however, his illness was taking hold and that Christmas, I wasn’t in the mood for celebrating.

  I felt that doing something useful with people who had more sadness in their lives than I had might put things in perspective, so I rang up the Elephant and Castle branch of the Salvation Army and asked if they needed any help over the festive season. Since giving birth to Sara at the Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital, I’d always felt an affinity with Salvationists and often put money in their collecting tins. I was grateful for the kindness I had been shown at the hospital and admired the officers for the quiet way they demonstrated their faith through action.

  I ended up helping to cook Christmas lunch for a crowd of mainly homeless and elderly guests and brought with me small stocking-filler presents wrapped in multiple layers of paper for a game of pass-theparcel. Most of the officers helping out seemed very shy. When the time came for a visit from Santa nobody wanted the role so they asked me to do it. The outfit was somewhat on the baggy side, reminding me of the hideous orange red devil costume I had tried on all those years ago in the pursuit of ‘easy money’. I smiled, missing the way Mark would have been reacting as I adjusted Santa’s white moustache-and-beard combo. A mother and now Mother Christmas: who’d have thought it?

  My star possibly waned a little when it came to pass-the-parcel, however. The music stopped while the parcel was in the hands of a Salvation Army sergeant. He removed a layer of paper and promptly blushed furiously. I’d used old newspapers and magazines to wrap the package and he had revealed a glossy colour photograph of a man posing in his underpants, muscles rippling. It was only an ad for aftershave, but from the look on the sergeant’s face you’d have thought I’d exposed him to a page from Hustler.

  Having got through Christmas I visited Seb, who was entertained by the story of my Salvation Army festivities. He was not in good shape. I had hoped to be looking forward to a brighter year in 1994 but before long my dear friend was seriously ill and by August he was dead. Again my world was turned upside down.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Full Circle

  Several months after Seb’s death a memorial gathering was held at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington. He’d had so many friends, and most of them were here. The first person I saw on arriving was the singer Kirsty MacColl, who I’d got to know when Seb made the pop promo for her single ‘New England’. We chatted, recalling an evening on which the three of us had sat together in the recording studio of Kirsty’s Ealing home, drinking wine and listening to her new album, Kite. One track on it had stayed with me, a Ray Davies song called ‘Days’—a simple, beautiful melody that Kirsty had sung so effortlessly in her distinctive folksy voice. The lyrics seemed especially poignant now.

  …I bless the light

  I bless the light that lights on you, believe me,

  And though you’re gone,

  You’re with me every single day, believe me.

  Kirsty had heard on the grapevine about how I had found my daughter but didn’t know I was now writing for TV. She was intrigued by all the changes in my life and invited me to come for lunch some time soon with her brother Hamish and her children.

  As we talked my eyes were drawn to a man standing nearby. He was wearing a familiar leather jacket. Suddenly he turned, as though he had become aware that I was watching him. Tall, dark, caramelcoloured eyes…I recognised him now from photographs I had seen in Seb’s albums. In fact, I had even met him once, very briefly, at a birthday party. ‘Kas’ Kasparian.

  ‘I know that jacket,’ I said to him.

  Kas glanced reflexively down at it. ‘Seb gave it to me. It came with the badges so I left them on.’ Two tiny buttons were
still pinned to the lapel, one promoting the dance group Kissing the Pink, the other the reggae artist Gregory Isaacs—small but aching reminders of our lost friend.

  I learned that Kas had flown over from Los Angeles for the memorial. Although he had been living in California for the past twenty years, he had remained in touch with many old friends from Notting Hill, friends we had in common like Adam, the builder who had been living at the Westy when I first moved in.

  Adam was here, too, having flown over from France, but, before I had a chance to speak to him properly, the memorial was over and we were all spilling out on to the dark street, lost and somewhat bewildered, until somebody suggested it seemed only fitting that we should repair, as we had always done to round off an evening, to the Westy for ‘one last drink’.

  An hour or so later, I found myself looking around the living room of my former home at a mix of Seb’s Bohemian friends talking, drinking, crying or dancing to his old records, which were playing on without him on his stereo. I had lost track of Kas but then the doorbell rang and he was back again, unwrapping steaming paper on the table to reveal mountains of warm fish and chips.

  ‘I thought people might be hungry,’ he smiled.

  The party continued on for a while but without our beloved host it was losing momentum and I was soon outside on Ledbury Road, waiting to hail a cab to take me home, for the very last time, from the Westy. Others were trickling out of the front door having decided to go on to an Indian restaurant. It was difficult for anyone to say goodbye. I knew Adam would be flying back to his wife and children in Toulouse the following evening so I asked if he would like to come over to Glengall Road the next day for Sunday lunch before he left. He said he’d love to.

  Back at the flat, a thought that was niggling me prompted me to dig out the old address book I’d used when I first went sailing. Its cover was battered, held in place by an elastic band, the pages bleached by sunlight and splashes of salt water. Flicking through it, I found what I was after. I was right. Years ago, the Captain had scribbled down a name and telephone number in this book for someone he thought he might look up if ever he took the boat to California. The name was there in the Captain’s fading handwriting. Kas Kasparian.

  The next day, Adam arrived for lunch, slightly late, apologetic, and with a surprise guest in tow. It was Kas Kasparian again. This time on my doorstep.

  At that stage I didn’t possess a proper oven in which to cook a Sunday roast, so I went Italian and made a spaghetti dish. We spent a relaxed afternoon together, chatting and reminiscing, but there was an undercurrent to our conversation. The shock of Seb’s untimely death was causing us all to take stock of our lives.

  I discovered that Kas had visited London while I was sailing and had been accommodated for a few days by Seb in my unoccupied room at the Westy. He admitted now that he had looked around at all my photographs and books on the shelves, which had made him curious about me. I learned that his grown-up son, Gabriel, worked with him in the States but that his teenage daughter, Moon, lived here in London with her mother. She visited Kas in America but work prevented him from spending very long in London. The only way he could see more of her was to move back to England.

  Adam pressed me to tell my own story, the extraordinary tale of how Sara had re-entered my life. Sitting in Mark’s flat that day, I was conscious of how many connections there seemed to be between us all—Mark, Seb, Adam, the Captain, Kas and me—so many strands running through our lives, sometimes crossing, sometimes interweaving, sometimes looping off for a while. Now they were all being gathered together in the vivid memories we shared of the two friends we had lost.

  Kas had only one more day in London before his flight back to the States but he returned the following evening to say thank you for lunch by taking me for supper. He arrived on my doorstep bearing flowers, and we decided to go for a walk, calling in at the bustling Pizzeria Castello on the Walworth Road for two quattro formaggi pizzas to take with us to eat on the Thames Embankment. At Cleopatra’s Needle, he confided that although he had just finished building a large house for himself in Los Angeles, he felt, in some ways, rootless.

  Kas had been born in Nicosia in 1945 to Armenian parents, but the family had fled Cyprus for Devon in England in 1956, worried about the escalating conflict over independence that would indeed go on to result in civil war. The Kasparians had finally settled in Ealing, where Kas had completed his schooling. Like the guy in the old Dusty Springfield song, he was ‘the son of a preacher man’; like me he was a rebel, too, and had chosen an alternative path. As Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson had done before him, in the late 1960s, he headed off on the hippy trail to California, ending up at Big Sur.

  As we sat together on a bench overlooking the river I imagined what an amazing time this must have been. Eight years younger than Kas, I would still have been at school, getting only as far as Tottenham Court Road to buy hippy bells to wear around my neck, while Kas was doing the real thing: travelling to California to be right at the beating heart of the ‘peace and love’ movement.

  He told me how he had lived in a cabin perched high above the Pacific Ocean on land belonging to the photographer and explorer Giles Healey, one of the first non-Mayans to lay eyes on the Bonampak temples in Chiapas, Mexico, where he had been taken in 1946 by local tribesmen to see one of the ancient murals. Healey owned 150 acres on Partington Ridge on Big Sur and had himself once lived in this cabin, which he’d bought for ‘the price of a small refrigerator’. Now he allowed Kas to have it rent-free in return for taking care of the land and the house he now occupied with his artist wife Sheila and their family.

  This was a community that had long welcomed free thinkers. The writer Henry Miller had said of his own discovery of Big Sur in 1947: ‘It was the beginning of something more than a friendship. It was an initiation into a new way of life.’ When Kas had arrived twentyodd years later, he felt exactly the same way. He would work on the upkeep of Giles’s land during the day and in the evenings drive down the Pacific Coast highway to the Nepenthe bar, where local writers and artists would congregate (and where Henry Miller himself had played ping-pong).

  A few years later Kas settled into his own home on Point Dume. One afternoon, having just picked up his son from school and parked up his car, he noticed a man walking over to him, wearing a red bandana and a donkey jacket with the sleeves cut off. As the man tapped on Kas’s car window Gabriel recognised him as the father of one of his schoolfriends. Kas recognised him, too. He wound down his window.

  ‘Nice car,’ the man said, running his eyes over Kas’s red 1953 Buick convertible. ‘Care to sell it?’

  ‘I only just got it,’ Kas replied.

  ‘Well, man, if you ever change your mind, I live on Point Dume and my name’s Bob.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kas. He had recognised the man as Bob Dylan.

  I smiled at this, remembering a boy I had once loved, many years before, who had worn his hair just like Dylan wore his on the cover of the Blonde on Blonde album.

  Ten years later Kas was living in Malibu, where he set up a successful design and construction company, but clearly money was far from being his god: in the 1980s he’d made several trips to Nicaragua as part of a voluntary organisation building houses for people displaced by the conflict between the populist Sandinista government and the US-funded Contras. As he talked of his experiences I saw that, in many ways, Kas’s religion was, like my father’s, political consciousness. I was beginning to regret that he would be returning to Los Angeles the next morning.

  As soon as Kas arrived back in LA, however, I had a phone call from him.

  ‘I’m coming back to London to visit you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next weekend!’

  Kas was as good as his word. In fact he returned for three weekends in succession, spending a small fortune on air fares and suffering appalling jet lag. Everyone said it had to be love. Sara was introduced to Kas in the course of these visits. There we
re drinks evenings and dinner parties at the flat, or we’d all go to a Greek restaurant to eat dolmas and moussaka and listen to Kas’s tales of growing up in Cyprus. Sara was charmed. ‘I approve!’ she beamed. The nature of the unique relationship between Sara and me tended to shift according to the situation: sometimes we were like sisters, other times best friends, often the daughter and mother we actually were. In these weeks, with me caught up in excitement and romance like a besotted teenager, it was as if Sara were the mother and I were the daughter.

  She was convinced that it was only a matter of time before Kas would propose. She was spot on. At the end of his third weekend in London, he popped the question. ‘Shall we get married?’ How would I respond? I was forty-two years old and had lived an independent life for years. This had all happened so quickly and, with the distance between us, so far it had all been a bit like an ongoing holiday romance. Had I finally met the right man? Or was it that the right man had finally come along once everything was else was in place?

  Before long Kas had sold his house in the States, moved back to London permanently and, having already fallen in love, we had the time and space to get to know each other better. I took Kirsty MacColl up on her invitation to lunch, bringing Kas with me. She realised she could almost claim credit for having brought us together, since it was her I’d been talking to at the very moment Kas and I had first noticed each other at Seb’s memorial. Another moment of serendipity.