More Than Just Coincidence
Page 20
In May a street party was organised in Glengall Road to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day. It was an extraordinary street on which to live owing to its eclectic mix of residents. There were artists, two doctors, a banker and a philosopher, all of whom had arrived with the gentrification of the area, not to isolate themselves in a middle-class ghetto but to integrate with the people who had lived there for years, like Marjorie, the redoubtable lady across the road from me who had spent the war there, dodging the bombs, even while pregnant. My lovely neighbours were surprised but enchanted by the new romance in their midst that had apparently come out of the blue. On that May afternoon we all dressed up in keeping with the occasion. I was Betty Grable and Kas, being an ‘American’, was a GI. Sara was there, too, with a couple of her friends, all looking gorgeous in forties-style frocks.
It was a blisteringly hot summer and we spent most of our free time having picnics in Holland Park and barbecues in the garden. On the Saturday morning of August Bank Holiday weekend, Sara and I were together in a hotel in West London. It seemed as though this was the day the weather might finally break. She zipped me into a pale lilac dress. Our hands were shaking slightly as we put on lipstick and primped our hair as we had done so many times before a party. But today the party was special. It was my wedding day.
A car arrived to take us to Glengall Road. There, over two hundred people were congregated in my garden—Mark’s garden—extended for the day by my kindly next-door neighbours, who had temporarily taken down the fence between us. Among them were Kas’s children Gabriel and Moon; Michelle and her husband, David; Jools and her partner, Richard, Debbie and Vicky, my assistant on The Knowledge; Adam and his family, all the way from France. The novelist Jon Fink, who had once written Michelle’s name and number in my address book, was in attendance; Kirsty MacColl arrived with a girlfriend. Aunt Bett, my cousin Danny and their family, Seb’s mum and Mark’s parents and friends were all there, too. The only person who couldn’t make it was Tina, who was abroad with her husband. The ceremony was presided over by Father Tim, the same Irish priest who had conducted Seb’s funeral. As I walked down an aisle created by longstemmed flowers strewn on the lawn, Sara joined her two best friends, who waited for her in the front row of the ‘congregation’. We exchanged a smile as I walked on to join my husband-to-be.
After the ceremony, looking beautiful in a white linen suit, holding down her hat in the summer breeze, Sara rose from her chair and came forward to read aloud a piece by Kahlil Gibran. She trembled a little as she held tightly to the piece of paper in her hand.
You were born together and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Music played—‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken’ by the Staple Singers—and the sun shone on as we posed for the camera: a family photograph at long last.
Kas and I started our married life at Glengall Road, and I continued writing for television while he set up in London as a designer and builder, working on properties all over the city. Sara had started up her own actors’ agency, with an office close to Oxford Street.
In April 1999, Kas and I bought a ramshackle little house in Whitstable on the east Kent coast. He did a lot of work on it, made it very comfortable and we began to base ourselves there, increasingly using the London flat as a pied-à-terre for visits and meetings. Sara would come down to see us in Whitstable, often bringing a friend along, but her work and relationships frequently kept her in London so sometimes it was easier for me to travel up and have lunch with her at a favourite small restaurant just around the corner from the BBC in Langham Street. By this time she was in her thirties and I, in my late forties, felt positively middle-aged.
The way in which my daughter and I had found each other seemed no less miraculous, but with the passage of time our relationship had found its own level.
I recognised now how all our lives are pierced with loss. In my case the greatest loss had been one of my own making. Yet in all the years since our meeting, Sara had never once reproached me for abandoning her as a baby. As I sat one day eating crêpes in that busy London restaurant, my daughter smiled at me across the table and I knew in that instant that, for all my youthful mistakes, I had been redeemed by love.
The years seemed to gallop by at a dizzying speed. On my fiftieth birthday Kas threw a party for me at Whitstable Castle. Sara wasn’t able to come but I consoled myself for her absence with the words of the Gibran piece she had read at our wedding: ‘Let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of heaven dance between you’. Within a few years, she had given up her agency and changed direction, moving house to Middlesex. One evening she called to tell us that she had met someone, a man to whom she had become very close. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was happy. That she was in love.
Life was busy for all of us. I was writing for two television drama series while Kas now had a workshop in Whitstable and never seemed to have a gap between jobs. But when we couldn’t meet we kept in touch by phone and email. In no time at all, it seemed, it was 2007 and my daughter was calling with more dramatic news. ‘Sit down,’ she said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. ‘I’ve got something to tell you both.’ She paused. ‘I’m pregnant.’
I was over the moon for her. At thirty-seven, Sara was now the same age as I had been when she’d seen my name on a script at Hatton & Baker. My grown-up baby was going to have a baby herself. Could it possibly be true that, after spending such a large part of my life as a childless mother, I was now going to become a grandmother?
The pregnancy was problem-free—no morning sickness, no hypertension, no complications associated with Sara’s age. She came to visit when she was six months’ pregnant and didn’t look very big at all. I remembered the kaftans I’d worn to hide my own small bump, transported back once more to the long months of denial, the mounting pressure of keeping my secret hidden. This pregnancy couldn’t have been more different. Sara carried her unborn child with pride, and I gently laid my hands upon her belly, something my own mother had never had the chance to do with me. Although apprehensive about the labour itself, Sara was looking forward to the birth of her baby. She couldn’t have been happier. For far too long she had mothered a brood of four cats—Charlie, Taz, Tommy Lee and Buster—just as I had done with Tiddles. Now it was time for her to make the shift from being an animal person to a children person.
On the morning of 28 February 2008, Sara went into labour. It was a leap year, and the next day would be a date that occurred only once every four years. Perhaps my daughter’s baby would grow up disappointed not to have a proper birthday every year like everybody else, but I wasn’t too bothered about that then. My mind was completely focused on Sara’s welfare. It was a time to keep a respectful distance—her partner told us he would stay in touch throughout the labour and keep us fully informed—but I remained wide-eyed in bed that night, becoming a scared teenager again, alone in a hospital room, hearing the sounds of other women’s screams around me. During my own labour, I had told myself that everything I felt was natural. I wasn’t ill; I was going through a process. Everything would be all right and I would survive. Now I tried to send the same message to my daughter.
In the early hours of the morning, our telephone rang. Simultaneously a photograph suddenly sprang to life on Kas’s mobile phone: a tiny, scrunched face stared back at us, tufty brown hair like a question-mark above his head. Caden Joseph had been born safe and well, and had escaped the leap year by just an hour.
The labour, however, had been difficult and Sara was kept in hospital, where she developed an infection. When Kas and I travelled up to London to see her, we found her looking jaundiced and weary. My heart went out to her, so much so that the baby to whom she had given birth remained secondary to my concerns for his moth
er. He lay quietly in her arms, sleeping, as though still exhausted from the sheer effort of being born. Sara moved slightly, opening her arms so that I could see his face.
Countless women had made this gesture to me over the years, proudly exhibiting a new member of their family. I knew only too well what usually came next: the invitation to hold another woman’s baby. Many times I had managed to sidestep the offer. When obliged to comply, I had cradled the infant awkwardly, still wrenched by conflicted emotions. It was almost forty years since I had held my own baby daughter for the very last time before settling her into a nurse’s arms. I had no idea how I would feel now having my daughter’s child—my own grandson—placed into mine. Sara smiled tentatively.
‘Would you like to hold him?’
I moved in closer. Caden, light as a feather, was suddenly in my embrace. He didn’t cry; he didn’t even wriggle. He lay quite still, as though trying to co-operate. Then his eyes suddenly opened, two bright blue buttons. Perhaps he was missing the smell of his mother because he blinked suspiciously before staring, unfocused, into the eyes of the stranger before him. I lowered my face towards him, breathing in the smell of my daughter’s milk on his soft skin. All the years seemed suddenly to concertina into one moment. ‘Welcome to the world,’ I whispered to my grandson.
Since that day, I have thought many times of the crossroads that faced me as a young mother. Would it really have been impossible to have kept my baby and brought her up myself? Even with the wisdom of hindsight, I shall never know. The reality is, as little more than a child myself, I turned away from motherhood and chose instead another path. At times it was frightening and lonely, but I was blessed with friends, and I learned that, after a while, we grow tired of being scared. Yet I have also come to understand that we are all tied by blood and roots no matter how far we think we may have left them behind. Ultimately, we are the sum of all that came before us.
As a rebellious teenager I took a road less travelled but by some miracle, or some preordination, that road was to lead me to where I stand today, where I know I was always meant to be: with my daughter once again my life.
That has made all the difference.
Epilogue
In November 2010 it will be twenty years since my daughter handed me a cup of coffee without either of us knowing who the other was. Throughout that time I have written many dramatic plotlines, but none so extraordinary as the one that forever changed my own life that day.
I was often asked why I had never written my story. Until now, I never felt the time was right. I have always been careful not to infringe the ‘copyright’ of my daughter’s life and feared that, if I were to choose the wrong moment or the wrong medium, I would be running the risk of exploiting what I have always considered to be a small miracle.
In January 2010 I was throwing out the Christmas newspapers when I came across an article entitled ‘My Story’. It caught my attention, and I paused to read it. I learned that the BBC and the publishers HarperCollins were searching for special stories from ordinary people. I finally felt I had found the perfect way to tell this tale.
I discussed it with Sara, and she agreed that the time felt right. The only problem was that I now had only twenty-four hours to submit a proposal before the deadline for entries.
I sat down at my computer and words began to fill the screen. Given the severe weather and the backlog of Christmas mail, it was touch and go whether my submission would arrive in time. Somehow it did. Perhaps that, too, was a sign that it was meant to be.
Often in life we have to fight so hard against the flow to make things happen. We are told that nothing is won without effort, that we have to struggle for what we desire. But from my experience of finding Sara I have learned that, sometimes, things can work out by themselves. They just happen—and often for the best.
Over the years I have met other women who have been traumatised by the adoption process. I have been saddened, but not surprised, that many have been unable to share their experiences even with their own partners. Some have tried hard to be reconciled with their lost children and failed. A lot of them have gone on to have families at a later date, desperate to fill a vacuum too great to bear. I was never able to do that, but somehow I always knew that my daughter and I would meet again.
Now Sara is the mother of two children. Following an auspicious meeting in a not-so-far-flung pavilion, I feel blessed to have been granted a second chance: the opportunity to know and to love not only my lost daughter, but her own beautiful children, Caden and Tallulah.
May they all live happily ever after.
Acknowledgements
It would not have been possible for me to have written this book without the help, support and, indeed, the continuing presence in my life of some very special people. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them.
I am extremely grateful to Kate Mosse, Feargal Keane, Jenny Colgan and Kelly Webb-Lamb for choosing my story from among so many and for giving me the opportunity to tell it to a wider audience.
I am also indebted to Carole Tonkinson, Vicky McGeown and Helen Hawksfield at HarperCollins for their enthusiasm and their faultless judgement in putting me in contact with Caroline North, who employed buckets of talent, professionalism and sheer determination to ensure that this book was completed, miraculously, on time.
I will always be grateful to Adrian Hodges and Jon Fink for sending me on a path to Michelle Kass, who has not only supported me professionally for twenty years but was, indeed, the ‘agent’ in reuniting me with my long-lost daughter all those years ago. Michelle, you will always be our fairy godmother.
A big thank you to ‘the girls’: Julie Field, Tina Jamieson and Debbie Ellis, who were there at the crossroads, at just the right time, waiting to point me in a new direction.
Loving thanks go always to my ‘pretend’ family, Maureen and Sally Kjeldsen.
And to my husband, Kas, the love of my life, I give thanks for all your devotion to me, for your unfailing support—and for rushing off to the post box for me with more chapters.
Finally, I send love and gratitude to my absent friends, forever present in my heart: Maria Fernanda Celestina da Silva, Kay Peters, Mark Kjeldsen, ‘Moes’ Kjeldsen, Seb Harris, Kirsty MacColl, Theresa Wells, my ‘Captain’, Eric, and my dear old schoolfriend, June.
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