‘I’m just being realistic. We have to watch money now that both of us have stopped working, and the clinic’s sold,’ Helen said.
Both his parents were astute in matters of business, but his mother was the one who had dealt with the financial side of their profession, while his father had concentrated on keeping up to date with advances in optometry. She went over the investment of the sale money with him, and the other main family assets.
Naylor could see what a worthwhile distraction it was for her. She took evident satisfaction in the security she and Greg had built up while still having full lives. Naylor made himself ask questions and keep the topic alive. As the three of them talked, he realised that his mother’s concern wasn’t entirely that he himself was a beneficiary, but that money was a weapon against her death. Not in any futile effort to defeat that end, or even prolong it, but to preserve dignity and choice; to have the palliatives to avoid some coarse, ignominious farewell. He was ashamed to find he knew virtually nothing of her childhood in which such fear of poverty must have been grounded. ‘There’ll be money left for you when we’re gone,’ she told him with evident satisfaction. ‘We’ve always been determined on that.’ And Greg nodded, not at all offended by the assumption that his own death was near.
‘I don’t need any money,’ Naylor said. ‘I’m fine. My job’s fine.’ He didn’t have any student debt because they had supported him through varsity; he had a good job and even better prospects. ‘You and Dad should take every medical advantage, irrespective of cost.’
‘Oh, we’ve paid into insurance for years so at least that’s okay,’ she said. ‘Tell me about your university work. We haven’t congratulated you properly about the MSc yet.’
His mother had always had a pale and even complexion, but on her thin face and neck he noticed patches of pink, and the tendons of her neck were evident even though she lay propped and apparently relaxed. She’d had a hairdresser come the day before he arrived home, so that she could look her best.
Naylor told them of his course, his tutors, the New Zealand expat geographer who had befriended him, and whom he’d visited frequently in Bath on a borrowed Vespa scooter, avoiding the motorway. A large plane came up the bay as they talked, and from habit they paused their conversation for the brief time of maximum noise, then resumed quite naturally. His mother had a view across the water towards Miramar and took an interest in yachts and the occasional fuel ship that she’d been too busy to notice before.
‘I missed you both a lot,’ said Naylor. ‘Seeing things over there, the struggle some people have for a decent opportunity, I reckon I’ve been lucky. You’ve both made it easy for me.’ He had the inclination to say more, but the family wasn’t overtly demonstrative, and with both his parents unwell it didn’t seem a time to become emotional. He could feel his mother’s hand throbbing within the palm of his own. ‘By the way,’ he said, and stood, held up a finger for patience and mystery, then went to his room to fetch the Singaporean jade turtles. Turtle talk provided a release of sorts, even though death had joined them to make a foursome which wouldn’t be broken until Helen left with that new partner.
Naylor worked only mornings for what was left of the year. A nurse visited each day, soon twice each day. Naylor and his father encouraged friends to come in the mornings, because Helen tired quickly. For some time they had a drive in the afternoons to Makara perhaps, or Days Bay and Eastbourne, but that, too, was eventually a labour for her, so the afternoons became a time of rest for both parents: Helen propped in the arms of her encompassing pillow, Greg in his own room with a less exalted view of agapanthus and red hot pokers in the sloping garden. Both of them seemed to sleep more easily in the afternoons with the curtains drawn, than during the nights, when Naylor would hear his father pad clumsily to the lavatory, and not flush it in an unavailing effort to leave others undisturbed. And hear his mother’s plaintive, reduced cough, or wake when his own doorway was vaguely illuminated with the last reaches of the light from her room as she sought distraction.
Some of those afternoons he worked in the garden, although it was a task he disliked, because he knew Greg might attempt it himself if the section became unruly. Both his parents loathed neglect and untidiness. Some afternoons he went into the city to a wine bar, whether he had a friend to meet or not. Some afternoons he sat with his mother, who had lost all elegance, except that of her nature.
Several times when she was awake during those afternoons she at last wanted to talk about not being his birth mother, knowing that soon he would be on his own. She said they had hoped having an adopted child would lead to them conceiving one of their own, which happened often, but not in her case. That wasn’t the main reason for adopting him, she emphasised. He was wanted very much for himself. ‘For years I was afraid of any odd-looking letter which came, in case it was from your mother, or the adoption authorities, and you’d be taken away from us for some reason. I tried not to show that fear, but recently when we were talking about you, Greg said he had exactly the same apprehensions, especially just after the new adoption legislation came into effect in 1986.’
‘But I’d be ten then.’
‘But we always knew your birth parents would be somewhere, and surely they’d love you.’
‘Well, obviously they didn’t care enough to make the effort, and it’s never really bothered me. You know that.’
That particular afternoon the sky was very blue, and the sea of the bay also. Naylor wore shorts and his Bristol University T-shirt. He sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs that had become a fixture by his mother’s bed. Terminal illness seemed an anomaly on such a day, and his mother, though weak, wanted to talk rather than sleep. ‘You know it’s all quite straightforward now, finding birth parents. There’s a whole website on it. You must have done a search?’
‘I haven’t,’ Naylor said truthfully. ‘You and Dad never brought it up, and it never bothered me. What’s the point, after all?’
His mother thought there were several points, the most significant that she was dying and that Greg’s life was insecure, but she made only oblique reference to what was so self-evident, while the blue sea shimmered, and six or seven small yachts of the same class drew wakes upon it. She told him it could be important some day to have medical knowledge about his parents, and that the longer he put off trying to make contact the more difficult it would be.
‘We’ve got a copy of your birth certificate,’ she said. ‘We were given it when we adopted you. I don’t think many got that.’ She took it from a heavy, brown envelope on the bed and passed it to her son. The certificate gave his full name as Naylor Robin Coombes and his mother’s as Frances Emily Coombes. There was nothing in the space reserved for the father. ‘There’ll come a time when you’ll want to take it all further,’ his mother said. ‘I’m sorry now we didn’t do something earlier. The more people who love you the better.’
‘I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything at all,’ Naylor told his mother.
That evening Naylor and his father had a slow walk while the nurse gave Helen a bed wash. An easy walk was good for Greg’s heart, the doctors said. Unfortunately Hataitai was mostly up and down and they had only one route that didn’t involve exertion. Naylor was tall, but his father was even taller. They had always enjoyed the private joke when people referred to Greg having passed on that gene to his son. Greg had a habit of stooping to other people in conversation which some mistook for condescension but was consideration. Naylor watched his father’s tall, slender body sway as he walked, rather as a giraffe sways front to back, not side to side, so that the high body remains in balance. His father was an abstemious man who didn’t smoke, ate sparingly and drank good whisky when he drank at all. It certainly wasn’t lifestyle that gave him a dicky heart. Maybe it was the asthma that had troubled him, especially when he was younger. Despite himself, Naylor thought of what his mother had said regarding a medical history. He wasn’t aware of any particular weaknesses, but who knew what his g
enes had in store for him.
Naylor kept his pace down, and told his father about the birth certificate and Helen’s new-found enthusiasm for him to make some inquiries regarding his birth parents. Greg squeezed his eyes shut momentarily and compressed his lips, as he did when making some concession, some declaration, or coming upon emotion. ‘Your birth mother did get in touch,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t long after the new legislation and some counsellor or other approached me with a letter from her. That’s the way they do it evidently, or they did then. I accepted the letter, but didn’t tell Helen. You know how she feared just that. I accepted it, and replied saying I thought it best that contact wasn’t made. You were going off to secondary school and had enough to cope with.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Just that she didn’t wanted to poke in after all those years, but she’d never forgotten you and would appreciate any information. I told her I didn’t think it was the right time, and that was it. There weren’t any more letters. I don’t know what happened to that one, otherwise I’d give it to you even now.’
They stood on the corner that marked the turning point of their walk. The sun had gone beyond the hill and dusk was blurring the sharper demarcations of the day. A steady breeze came in from the sea, which was hidden from view. ‘I had to make a decision, and I hope it was the right one,’ his father said. ‘I admit it was as much for us as for you, especially Helen.’
‘You did it for the best — and it probably was.’
His mother almost stopped eating in the last weeks, and died earlier than the doctors, or her family, expected. She went on a morning she was being visited by a relative she’d never much liked, and while Greg was making coffee. He told Naylor maybe she chose to avoid the visitor in that way. It was a form of humour Helen would have enjoyed. The funeral was non-religious and well-attended, and both husband and son spoke, but Naylor felt a dissociation and lack of grief which arose not from any deficiency of love, but an inability to accept that someone so integral in his life was there no more. No reference was made to Naylor being adopted: most people wouldn’t have been aware of that.
Afterwards, though, he found himself thinking about it a good deal, and talking about it too with his father. It was not at all that he sought replacement for his mother, but for the first time he felt curiosity, which was partly the consequence of his mother’s death: a sense of permission when the inquiry she had encouraged could not possibly threaten her.
Greg was encouraging also, perhaps partly as a self-imposed penitence for stifling that approach by letter many years before. And the mystery of it was a mild intrigue. ‘Of course your birth mother may be dead, your father too for all we know, but I think you should consider them as well as yourself. Maybe your birth mother is all alone, or unhappy. Maybe she still wants to know about you. And there’s no obligation on either side: that’s the good thing, as I see it. Definitely no obligation. None at all.’
They were talking in the lounge on the evening of the day spent helping Helen’s sister pack up her things. In time, his father said, he’d move back into the main bedroom with its en suite and view over the sea, but not for a while. Helen’s presence was still strong there, and neither wished to diminish it. During the nights immediately after the funeral, Naylor had woken sometimes thinking his mother had turned on her light, thinking he heard her muffled cough. There would be nothing, though his father still padded to the lavatory, still left it unflushed — habit, or a transferred consideration, Naylor wondered. His aunt had suggested some of Helen’s jewellery be given to her female relations, nieces in particular, though no such bequests were in the will. Naylor was surprised at the vehemence with which his normally placid father refused to consider that. Naylor was to have it all, he said. They’d talked about it, he said, he and Helen, and just because Naylor was male didn’t mean the personal stuff shouldn’t be his. And just because he wasn’t theirs by blood didn’t mean that either, though neither Greg nor his sister-in-law spoke of that. ‘Give away the clothes and all that spare linen in any way you like,’ Greg had said. ‘And take what you like of the dinnerware sets. We’re indebted to you for your help.’
In the evening, though, he did talk of adoption and Naylor’s options. ‘It’s completely up to you,’ he said. ‘You’ve already got the birth certificate. You can look up the surname in the Telecom White Pages: it’s not a very common name. If she’s married since then you can check the marriage records. It’s up to you, though. Maybe something good could come of it for you and her, maybe not.’
Greg clearly saw the likelihood that he might soon follow Helen, and that Naylor would be left only relatives with whom he had legal connection. Although his father rarely talked of love, he was both sensitive and consistent in its application.
It was a distraction as much as anything else at first, the search for Frances Emily Coombes, and it had as well the element of detection. Naylor was surprised, however, by the comparative ease with which he was able to track his mother down. The changes to the law facilitated it, as did access to official records, and he soon knew Frances was still alive, that she had married and taken the surname of Hollister, and that she lived in Sydney by the zoo. The hard part was deciding if he wanted to make contact after leaving it so long. The satisfaction of his only recently aroused curiosity would be little compensation if any reunion turned out badly, and it wasn’t as if he felt any driving need to find Frances, even after Helen’s death.
It was a dream that made up his mind. Nothing apocalyptic, or even particularly surreal. He dreamt his father died in the same way as his mother and of the same disease, and that at the funeral, which was held in a very open, paddock-like space, a spiky-haired woman wearing an orange skivvy and grubby tracksuit pants stood up unbidden, and said that the loss of parents was sad but natural, while the loss of a child was unnatural and grievous. Naylor didn’t at all think the woman represented his birth mother — rather she reminded him of a mature student in his Bristol University study group whom he’d rather disliked — but the idea that his mother might have suffered in some significant way because she was denied knowledge of him, remained strong.
He said nothing to Greg about the dream. His father would be doubtful of such provenance for any contact with Frances Coombes, or Hollister. Naylor gave instead the rational, commonsense reasons his father had given him, and Greg was satisfied in this way with his own persuasion returned. He agreed, too, with the advice Naylor had been given by the Adult Adoption Central Registry, which was to write to his mother, but have a counsellor in Sydney approach her to see if she wished to receive the letter, and, if so, by what means. Who knew how she might react, or if the husband had been told of Naylor’s existence.
The letter said nothing of Helen’s death, and not a lot about Naylor and his life: just that he was now independent and wondered if Frances still wanted to make contact. The reply was prompt and came directly from Frances herself. She didn’t have any other children, she said, and made no reference to her husband. After such a long time, they should meet as soon as possible. She suggested, in what Naylor took to be a joke, that they toss for which of them should travel to see the other, ‘though maybe it would be awkward for your family if I came over. I don’t want that. Minimum expectation, no demands, but how I look forward to seeing you.’
Naylor wondered if his father was well enough to be left by himself, but Greg said he would be fine, and promised not to overdo things. ‘I think it’s better you go there,’ he said. ‘If it all gets a bit tricky, you can choose when to disengage. Not that there’s any particular reason to think it will, but there’s the potential for a great deal of emotion, isn’t there,’ and he squeezed his eyes closed at the thought of the heightened feelings a woman could be capable of in such a situation. ‘But she said minimum expectations and no demands, didn’t she. Good, good.’
So not long before Christmas, Naylor flew to Sydney, and then took the ferry across the harbour, and a taxi to his mother
’s house close to Taronga Zoo. The day was overcast and hot, the house was wooden and unexceptional, Naylor’s feelings were confused, and for a moment he considered turning back. Instead he looked at attractive treetops in the distance, and guessed they were in the zoo, then he used the wrought iron door knocker which was in the shape of a woodpecker.
What did he expect there in another country and unfamiliar surroundings? How, at twenty-six years of age, was he meant to greet his mother for the first time? At the very second the door opened there came a single, piercing wail from the zoo. ‘It’s the bloody howler monkeys,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Frances — give me a hug.’ She was short and he was tall, which added to the awkwardness of the brief embrace. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said in a consciously cheerful voice, and led him inside. ‘That too,’ she said, when he was about to leave his bag.
They walked right through the house and onto wooden decking at the back which looked out to a square of lawn, four rows of vigorous tomato plants, and neighbouring houses on slightly lower ground. In the centre of the lawn a spray hose attachment rotated with a faint protest, and the water made a soft hiss in the air, and a repetitious patter on the grateful grass. Naylor and Frances sat on wooden patio chairs and took stock of each other as they talked.
‘It’ll be strange for a while won’t it,’ she said. ‘I think we should aim to become friends first, and then let things happen naturally. My God but you’re tall. I know you’re Campbell now, but it means a lot to me that your first name’s still Naylor. I chose it because it was my dad’s name, and he never completely gave up on me.’
‘Mostly I come across it as a surname,’ he said.
Had he expected some genetic frisson on meeting his mother, an instinctive bond immediately apparent between them? Well, it didn’t happen, but there was pleasure and goodwill, and curiosity too, beneath the wariness which at least Naylor showed. Both of them were aware of the incongruity — a mother and son who were complete strangers to each other, making rather routine conversation in mundane surroundings. The unseen zoo was the only external sign of any peculiarity, and exotic hoots, shrieks and ambiguous cries occasionally punctuated their conversation. There was so much for each to find out about the other, and such sensitive care not to push interest into interrogation, that peripheral topics took hold. Naylor was told all about the tomatoes in the whispering spray, and their importance for Frances’s favourite pastas, long before learning that no longer was there a Mr Hollister on the scene, and Frances heard all about Bristol University in the first hour or so, but not that Helen was dead.
Owen Marshall Selected Stories Page 51
