Living In Perhaps

by Julia Widdows

  It all sounded a bit too close to home.

  And one day, when Dr Travis wasn't with us, she said, 'Do you have any feelings about your real mother? Do you ever think of her? Are you angry with her?'

  Although what I normally did in response to her questions was refuse to reply, or talk at length about something else, this time I was surprised into saying, 'What!?' because I really couldn't see what this had to do with anything.

  Because, honestly, I never thought about my real mother. Even all those lunchtimes when I went round to Gloria's in search of a friendly face, a source of information, the one thing we never talked about was my real mother. She was of no interest to me. The idea of her did not cross my mind. I had enough on my plate as it was.

  Lorna began to tell me about some changes in the law that were being considered, that would allow adopted children, once they were adult, to search for their real parents. If the new law went ahead, adopted children would have the right of access to their records so that they could trace, or have traced for them, their real mother. The term she used was biological mother, which sounded rather disgusting to me. A bit of my adoptive mother coming out in me, I thought, and felt a smirk flit across my face.

  Lorna glanced sharply at me. You have to watch them all the time. They are watching you.

  'Of course,' she said, 'this will only apply to those adopted children who want to find out about their origins. Who choose to seek the information. And it will have to be carried out very carefully, with a lot of counselling and so on beforehand.' She's very keen on the value of counselling. Well, it keeps her in paid employment. 'And the biological mothers, they won't have any rights to trace their children. It won't be a two-way thing.'

  'Bit of a shock, I should think,' I said, pausing for a lengthy yawn, 'to find the baby you cast off twenty years ago standing on your doorstep.'

  'That's why the legislation has got to be well thought out,' Lorna said. 'These things could potentially be very traumatic.'

  I wish Dr Travis could have been there. I would have valued his silent opinion.

  'I'm really not interested in my biological mother,' I said, pronouncing the words in a way that showed her what I thought of them. What I thought of Lorna and her crowd, and their revolting jargon. 'I'm not interested in mothers at all.'

  'Well, it's interesting that you should say that, Cora,' she replied, 'because that's what I think is at the root of all your trouble.'

  I'm sure she would not have said that if Dr Travis had been there. I have a feeling that she's overstepped some invisible mark. Perhaps I've made her go too far. Perhaps I've driven her to it.

  The time came when Brian was sixteen and my mother must have told him. Or perhaps she delegated the job to Dad, to keep this private matter in the appropriate purdah of the sexes. I don't know.

  I don't know because no one ever mentioned it.

  I said to Gloria, the week after his birthday, 'Have they told Brian yet? Do you know if he's been told?' And she said, 'Oh yes, he's been informed.' So they had mentioned it to her.

  I went home and kept a watch on them all. Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed from before his birthday to after his birthday to the time when Gloria told me, 'Oh yes, he's been informed.' I looked at their bland impassive faces and found nothing. Except that they were so stiff and impassive and bland that anything at all might have been going on behind them. Absolutely anything at all.

  I thought they were ridiculous, the whole pack of them.

  It's funny how your parents go from being the centre and limits of your world to being almost irrelevant. When you are little they are everything. They control the world and inform everything that you do or is done to you. You know nothing beyond them, and everything you do know comes through and by way of them. Even things they know nothing about they have an opinion on and their opinion is your opinion. This must be true of all parents. They don't have to be megalomaniacs to achieve this – it just comes about through raising small children, who will unerringly tumble out of windows, wander under cars and fall into water if left to their own devices. They cannot even feed themselves, or reach a light switch or a door handle. They need fresh air, regular naps and everything sterilized.

  And then you turn twelve or thirteen and these lordly beings, the sun and the moon, are eclipsed. Or just shouldered out of the way. Your world extends to places they have never gone, people they don't know and will never know. Their wisdom is shown up for the sham it is. They get their information out of newspapers, for God's sake. Might as well come off the backs of cereal packets. You get yours from the real world. You do things you know they've never done, and never will do. You become a denizen and then an expert in a world completely unfamiliar to them.

  It's like the reflection in the convex mirror on our chimneypiece. They are the people crowded to the edges. They're still in the room but they are small and hopeless, and you loom big, bigger, biggest, the centre of the universe.

  Lunchtime, at the dry cleaner's. Not strictly lunchtime, more like eleven fifteen, because that's when I'm allocated my lunch break. The other assistant, Lois, who has ankles the same width as her calves and has to wear special shoes which her feet melt over the sides of, is holding the fort. Her lunch break is from two to three. I sidle forth into the high street, not hungry yet. Whoever is hungry at eleven fifteen? These are the choices: a windy walk along the prom, a gentle stroll through hosiery and handbags in one of the department stores. Coffee in a thick cup in the Wimpy (they had closed the Woolworth's tea bar by this time).Window-shopping, wandering along pavements pocked with chewing gum, pink and grey and black, like all the stages in a nastily deteriorating skin condition. It was all right for a day, but not for every day.

  I go into the big stationer's. There's a blast of warm air at the doors, and ahead of me a rack of ornate, pinky, primrose, silvery greetings cards proclaims, 'Don't forget Mother's Day!' Daffodils and bows and smirking kittens. Beyond are the shelves of notebooks, address books, account books, hanging packs of pens and pencils, ink cartridges, fluffy pencil cases in lurid colours. I stop and survey them. I don't want anything here, but it wastes a minute, two, three. I turn aside and read the 'funny' birthday cards, which aren't funny at all. They're obsessed with sex and ageing. I'm obsessed with youth and life. One of the sales assistants, who is kneeling, slipping sheets of wrapping paper over separate wire slats, glances sideways at me. Perhaps she thinks I've got dirty fingers. Perhaps she thinks I'm soiling the goods.

  Gloria once bought a candlewick bedspread. 'Shop-soiled, it said,' she proclaimed proudly, unfolding it for us. 'Half price!' The rose-pink fringing was fluffy with dust, an insubstantial, fine-textured dust, a shop sort of dust, and a dusty-coloured panel lay diagonally across the spread. 'It'll come out in the wash,' Gloria said, the enthusiasm in her voice already draining away under the steady examination of my mother's eagle – you might say professional – eye.

  'You wouldn't catch me buying anything that was shop-soiled,' my mother said. 'I like to have everything new.'

  'Oh, I like to have everything new,' Gloria replied, catching the wind in her sails again, 'but want can't always have.'

  'It is new,' I wanted to defend her. 'It's just shop-soiled new.' But I didn't say anything.

  Want can't always have. I dabbled along the magazine shelves, came to the books, paused. I never wanted those jammy jars of coloured lip gloss, those bottles of nail varnish round and glowing like Christmas tree lights. But these, slippery orange Penguins, mind-provoking Pelicans with swimming-pool-blue backs. Lovely little hardbacks, just the size of a one-person box of chocs – what a treat! When selecting a gift for a friend, would you choose (a) the latest Edna O'Brien with soft-focus cover? (b) a fusty fawn Evelyn Waugh with jazzy jacket design? (c) an Agatha Christie drawing-room comedy? or (d) any old thing that would fit in your pocket without a fuss, or a giveaway bulge?

  You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but old tricks, now that's quite an
other thing. My sleight-of-hand amazes me, when the motivation's there. Look, girls! Look, Jillian! Watch me, Gaynor! My quicksilver fingers dipping and delving, my casual expression as, instead of turning tail and guiltily, flush-faced, hurrying off down the aisle, I slowly flick the pages of a dictionary of quotations, peruse the index, make a mild mental note of the price. And put it back. I am a customer, entitled to stand here with a wasp-jacketed copy of Teach Yourself Greek in my unpersuaded hand. I catch the eye of the assistant, who looks enquiring, but no, I am decided now: not Greek, not this year. I slide the book back into its proper place in the shelf, and walk slowly away. Barbara, you would be proud of me.

  I am not proud of myself. At home, in my bedroom bookcase, I have a growing number of volumes, including a dictionary of quotations, pocket-size edition, of course. My mother thinks I buy them with what's left of my weekly pay after board and lodgings have been deducted. I could. I could. But I don't. A little voice at the back of my mind tells me I am entitled. Those responsible for my parlous education whisper to me that I am a deserving case. And anyway, I have read everything the Hennessys have to offer. And I have a lot of time on my hands.

  I know what it was that Barbara and her friends were after, too. Not the stuff itself, not the things. But the lift, the buzz, the high. I feel it. All dreadful words. Uncle Bob's thesaurus would be ashamed of me. The excitement, then, the exhilaration, the fizzy intoxication of that moment when an object of desire slips into your hand, liberates itself, surrenders itself to the other side. The sheer bloody thrill of it.

  It was hot in the gardens this afternoon, thundery and overcast. There was a brittle roar in the distance. More staff came hurrying outside. I could see Mike trying to herd people indoors, glancing up at the sky and making hopeless, beckoning movements with his arms.

  I said to Hanny, 'There's going to be a law to let adopted children trace their mothers. Their biological mothers.'

  'Oh yes?' Hanny wasn't paying much attention. She was too busy watching Moira getting nearer to us, rounding up the sheep. She fanned her face with a sprig of leaves she had torn off a bush. 'I do hope it storms,' she said. 'I love watching the lightning.'

  'Lorna told me.'

  'Lorna?'

  I'd meant her to say, 'Told you what?' I wanted her to say, 'What was it Lorna told you?' and 'Why was that?' But she didn't. So I didn't prompt her, push her. She wasn't really interested in what I had to say, and I wasn't about to humiliate myself. I'm too proud for that. And you have to look after yourself in here.

  I'd forgotten. Lorna doesn't mean anything to Hanny. Hanny doesn't see Lorna, has never had an interview with Lorna. All Hanny's individual time is with Dr Travis. Now that's what I call unfair.

  'Look at them. What are they trying to do?' she said, letting out a laugh, indicating Mike and the confusion of people hurrying for the doors.

  Hot, heavy spatters of rain fell on us, on our bare faces and our knees.

  'Here it comes!' sighed Hanny.

  Moira stood before us. We were the last. 'It's raining. You have to come in now,' she said.

  'We like the rain,' said Hanny, smiling at her.

  Moira was unmoved. Her tiny mouth – no bottom lip at all – was a single cynical straight line.

  'Too bad. Besides, Hanny Gombrich, you're wanted, inside.'

  Hanny rose, and Moira turned away to go back up the path, missing as she did so Hanny's little gesture, supplicating, lifting her hands and putting her injured wrists together, ready for the handcuffs.

  Lorna asks me, 'What do you see in the future, Cora?'

  Well, there's fun and love and life for starters, I could say.

  She's got her sympathetic, syrupy voice on today, which always puts my back up. I don't need her sympathy, thank you very much. She's gazing at me with her head on one side, like a friendly robin on a Christmas card.

  'Cora?'

  I live from day to day. I don't make plans. Plans only lead to disappointment. I grub through earth and rocks just to keep my head, as they say, above water.

  If I were a Carolyn sort of girl, even now, even here, I'd have things to look forward to. Because a Carolyn sort of girl would be cherished whatever she'd done, would be forgiven, because a Carolyn sort of mother would love her come-what-may. Would feel that bond, that protective bond, from the very first moment she saw her newborn baby's head, or, way back, when she was first aware of that kicking inside her swelling body.

  But let's be frank, I'm not a Carolyn sort of girl, and where you'd find a Carolyn sort of mother is beyond even my powers of imagination.

  'There is a future for you, Cora. You'd better start believing in it. It will be here sooner than you think.' What does she mean by that? 'I think that would really help, Cora, if you started believing in something.'

  42

  Scissors, Paper, Stone

  We didn't have clay in Activity today. We had paper.

  Trudy was taking Activity. I imagine it is a better job than taking Group, in that the staff don't have to get anybody to talk, even if they do have to sweep up all the mess afterwards. Trudy seems even more plump. She wears an outsize T-shirt and her baggy tie-dyed trousers clasp her thighs. Her circulation is less than good and her red toes stick out of her Jesus sandals like a row of radishes. Her cheeks turn bright pink and she breathes hard, just going round giving out the paper. I wait for her to fall on the floor unconscious due to some kind of aortic spasm. Then what would we do? Scramble to escape? Or sit there looking dumbly at each other? I'm afraid the latter's more likely.

  We are each given a square of black sugar-paper, which is not really black but a sort of anthracite. It looks matte and dusty, like cheap coal. On top of this Trudy lets float down a square of crimson tissue paper and then another of deep lipstick-pink. I hear her wheezing breath coming round for a fourth time behind our chairs, handing out circles of raspberry-coloured tissue. I hear the rasp of her thighs in their tie-and-dye. When everyone has her ration, Trudy subsides into her own chair and pauses there a moment. Then she lifts her heavy shoulders with a sudden deep breath and shows us how to tear the red tissue paper into strips and fringes and how to stick it on to the black sugar-paper in layers. Of course, we have no scissors. In the middle of the table is a white two-pint kitchen basin filled with innocuous flour-and-water paste. Each of us has a plastic spatula, with rounded ends and a soft, flexible handle. We'd be hard-pressed to do any harm with one of these. Except maybe stick them down our throats.

  I can't see the therapeutic point of pasting fringes on to sugar-paper but around me everyone is having a go. Marsupial frowns, sweats and sighs. Rose tears her tissue into fingernail-sized pieces and lets them flutter to the ground. At least with clay we are allowed to make what we want. And personally, I would not have chosen all these reds, not with Marsupial and her phantom pregnancy, Rose the putative infanticide, Hanny and her crisscrossed wrists, and Lord-knows-what other dubious female problems there are in our group. The crimson, the deep pink, the crushed raspberry, are all too indicative. Or maybe that's the point.

  Either that, or it was all that was left in the store cupboard.

  Hanny is late. Hanny is very late. We have all started tearing and sticking and she still hasn't arrived. The woman with the long earlobes is murmuring to herself, Marsupial and the fair-haired girl next to her begin to talk, some nonsense about the weather and how it gets you down. Outside the sun blares through big windows and a true-blue sky flies like a flag. Trudy lets flow cheerful comments and compliments all round the group, like a successful party hostess, making us feel embarrassed if we don't join in. I have no one to talk to. Hanny isn't coming. I notice, at last, that Trudy hasn't laid a place for her at this female dinner table with its black mats and red red plates. I pull the crimson, then the pink tissue paper into strips. I stick them on to the black background. But I take the little circle of raspberry and pleat it into a flower.

  The quality of careers advice on offer at other schools must have be
en far superior to mine. Also the parental expectations, the family ability for map-reading round the highways and byways of life. In the second autumn after I left school, Tom went away. He had managed to improve his A-level grades and got a place at university in London. And Barbara had crammed her five Os, and embarked on a foundation year at the art school where Patrick taught. I was astonished. She'd shown no particular talent or desire for this area of operations before. And here was I, still behind the counter at the dry cleaner's.

  If my parents were schooled in the University of Life, it must have been one of the smaller and quieter departments, some kind of distant extra-mural forcing house. A mushroom shed, maybe. Dim and quiet and undisturbed.

  'Think yourself lucky you've got a job,' my mother kept telling me. 'And not just one that's seasonal, either. You could've been selling ice creams. Then what would you do come September?'

  And Brian, Brian had started at Gough Electricals. He went off with Dad every morning in the car. My nightmare of a line full of dancing blue overalls was coming to pass. They both took a packed lunch, which my mother prepared, because they didn't like the canteen food. Didn't trust it. I don't suppose Brian even got the chance to try it. So he was launched in life. Weirdly enough, they were both very proud of him. He was keeping up the family tradition, you might say.

  'Is that really what you want to do?' I asked him, when I found out where he was going to work.

  I stared at him, into his hazel eyes, light and flecky like fried bread which the yolk of an egg has run into. He didn't look anything like me, never had. When Mum told me that I was adopted, was there a split second when I'd thought: so that explains everything!? I don't think she gave me time – she followed up so quickly with But you are brother and sister. She didn't even give me a second in which to think.

  Brian still had his schoolboy haircut and those pinpoint freckles spattered over his nose, but his skin had coarsened with the oily explosion of adolescence. His expression was surly and blank.