The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  ‘Do sit down,’ she invites and we both oblige. Tall windows front on to the street, light flooding through them making me feel exposed somehow. I glance about expectantly. She rightly interprets my inspection and smiles sympathetically. ‘I can tell you’re eager to see the baby,’ she says on an upwards inflexion. ‘Well, Miss Haverd is here with her own mother, and Lucilla naturally. We want to make sure that the handover is as relaxed as possible. I’m sure you will realise that the potential for the birth mother to become anxious is ever present. The calmer the atmosphere, I believe, the more beneficial for both parties. Above all we want to make this pleasant.’

  We nod. Merfyn mumbles something about how perceptive Miss Mulholland is, that we will trust entirely to her experience in matters such as ours. She offers tea, and although neither of us really feels like it we accept. A tray is brought, the beverage is sipped, biscuits are nibbled. I determine not to let my impatience show. Miss Mulholland keeps disappearing. She gives no explanation of these frequent absences, only reiterating that she will be back in a moment. But I have the distinct feeling that she is a go-between, scurrying down the corridor to another room where Miss Haverd, her mother and our soon-to-be daughter, Lucilla, are huddled. They are also probably drinking tea they don’t want and eating biscuits they have no appetite for. An hour limps by. We are entertained with tapping feet approaching and departing outside the closed door of the room we are in, distant phones ringing, typewriter keys rat-tatting, when Miss Mulholland reappears wearing a positive smile.

  ‘They are saying their final goodbyes now. It’s preferable that they do this by themselves, don’t you think?’ She clasps and unclasps her hands in a gesture resembling a slow-motion clap, as if applauding the stage we have finally reached.

  ‘Oh yes, no doubt about it,’ agrees Merfyn, fearing an outpouring of embarrassing womanish sentiment, I hazard inwardly.

  I suppress a sigh and incline my head. There follows a briefing as if we are about to go over the trenches. ‘What’s going to happen is this. Miss Haverd will bring Baby in. Somewhat unusual but she has insisted. She will put Baby –’ She breaks off in a self-deprecatory titter. ‘She will put Lucilla in your arms, Mrs Pritchard, and then without dawdling she will go. I have taken the liberty of applying a condition to this personal delivery. I have told her that there is to be no conversation. That’s safest, I think. We don’t want this to be a drawn-out process, do we?’

  I resist the temptation of commenting that it has already been more drawn out than Neville Chamberlain’s unsuccessful peace negotiations with the tyrant Hitler, and can we please get it over with. ‘Like pulling off a plaster. So much less painful if you’re quick,’ approves Merfyn with unwarranted joviality.

  ‘So, Mrs Pritchard, if you’re ready?’ Miss Mulholland checks, pencilled eyebrows rising quizzically.

  I am not terribly sure what the apposite response to this should be, so I improvise. ‘Oh yes, quite ready,’ I respond putting down my teacup and making a cradle of my arms in preparation.

  Merfyn looks as if he has suddenly been seized with a fit of stage fright and, hands on knees, rumples up the fabric of his trousers. But oddly I am not averse to the idea of seeing her, the birth mother, giving her a surreptitious appraisal. Who knows what clues she may hold as to the kind of butterfly that will in due course hatch from the pupa we are collecting. In fact, in that instant I am more curious about her than I am about the baby. ‘Well then, if we are all content I will go and fetch Miss Haverd, and … and Lucilla.’

  We nod yet again. It is another ten minutes before the door opens hesitantly and in she comes, gripping on to a woolly bundle like a lifesaver it seems. She is shepherded by Miss Mulholland. It goes without a hitch. No civilities are exchanged, for we are all struck dumb. The girl, she appears no more than that, eyes modestly downcast, approaches me. I give her an encouraging smile, but I’m not sure if she sees it. Her focus is riveted on the baby swathed in knitted blankets – garter stitch. And I trace the woolly worms of two runs. I take stock furtively. We will not meet again, and I decide that I want to take a mental photograph of her … for … for posterity?

  She looks absurdly young, making me feel somewhat staid, like a maiden aunt. I have to grant though that she is tolerably pretty, with the most unusual turquoise eyes. Her hair is a light shade, I think they call it strawberry-blonde. She has on, of all get-ups, trousers cut in some coarse cloth – as if her farm is only five minutes from us and she has just left off minding her sheep. And really they look most unattractive on her slender frame. Her blouse is buttoned to the neck, and over it she wears a scruffy beige cardigan, stockinette stitch. There are two holes in the elbows. She is transparently ill equipped to raise a child. Why she is no more than a child herself. I restrain a sneer. In advance of today I am gratified to see that I summed her up correctly. She is a simple, ill-educated creature in whom the baser appetites of woman hold sway.

  As she is putting Lucilla into my arms our eyes do meet and lock for several seconds. I know what you are, is the thought at the forefront of my mind. What does she think, if the chit is capable of cognitive reasoning? I honestly couldn’t say. If she has any common sense she should be feeling thankful that Merfyn and I have come to her rescue. After all, we have been willing to put aside the less than savoury aspects of her unmarried liaison, to shoulder the responsibility of its inevitable outcome. We are giving her back her life and taking the by-blow of her sin off her hands. She very nearly runs from the room. Miss Mulholland hastens after her. Merfyn stands and, hands quivering, bends from the waist and brushes a crooked finger over Lucilla’s round cheek. The baby blinks up at us with her birth mother’s unsettling turquoise eyes, and gives an involuntary start.

  ‘Hello, Lucilla,’ says Merfyn in a funny voice I have not heard before, twee as Annette Mills joshing with Muffin the Mule. ‘We’re your new mother and father.’

  Later, riding home on the bus with the baby on my lap, Merfyn tucks an arm about my waist. ‘Oh, Mother,’ he says beaming down at Lucilla, ‘isn’t she grand?’ Like a schooner in the doldrums my sails sag. I realise suddenly that he is addressing me.

  Chapter 10

  Bethan, 1948

  6th August, 1948

  Dear Miss Haverd,

  We are enclosing herewith the ‘Consent to Adoption’ form for you to complete and return to us, if possible, by Wednesday, 11th August, so that the case may be heard in the next session of court. It will be necessary for your signature to be witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, and you should complete the Declaration at the foot of the page in his presence.

  We are happy to say that Lucilla is progressing very well indeed, and thriving with her adoptive parents who are devoted to her.

  With best wishes.

  Yours sincerely,

  Valeria Mulholland

  Secretary

  10th Aug, 1948

  Dear Madam,

  I am very pleased to hear that Lucilla is getting on well, and that her parents dote on her. I only wish that I could have kept her. But I am happy to know that she is definitely in a very good home. I am afraid it is not possible for me to attend court in London for the adoption. But I have signed the form and enclosed it.

  Thanking you for your great kindness,

  Yours sincerely,

  Bethan Modron Haverd.

  18th August, 1948

  Dear Miss Haverd,

  I am afraid the form you sent will not do. It is necessary for you to attend the court hearing personally for the Adoption of your baby. Will you let me know by return if there are any days on which you could not be present? We will give you good notice of the date settled on.

  If you have nowhere to stay in London overnight, I will try to make arrangements for accommodation for you. Are you in a position to pay your own expenses?

  Yours sincerely,

  Valeria Mulholland

  Secretary

  20th Aug, 1948

  Dear Madam,

 
Received your letter this morning. I was surprised in reading it. It is impossible for me to journey to London as I am a land worker on the farm. I could not have leave for an hour because the corn harvest has just commenced. I am at my work from 6 am in the morning till nine o’clock in the evening. Every person here’s the same and each one at different jobs.

  So I hope you will quite understand my position.

  Yours truly,

  B. M. Haverd

  2nd September, 1948

  Dear Miss Haverd,

  Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry to inform you that the adoption cannot proceed unless you attend the court in person. The Justices are adamant in this regard, and they will not make any exceptions. The court is being held on 14th September, 10 am at Highgate. You will be kept there no longer than 12 noon. It would be possible for you to catch the night train from Newport and return the day of the hearing. Mr Johnston, who is acting for the Justices, is writing to you to explain these conditions. The Justices will not dispense with your attendance.

  We shall be only too pleased to meet you and accompany you to the court, as well as booking your accommodation should that be necessary.

  Please write by return,

  Yours sincerely,

  Valeria Mulholland

  Secretary

  6th Sept, 1948

  Dear Madam,

  Thank you for yours of the 2nd Sept with instructions. I trust that my daughter will be able to carry them out. She understands punctuality is of the utmost importance. Once again I would be grateful if you could see that her expenses are covered, as we are not in a position to pay for her.

  Faithfully yours,

  Ifan Havard

  THORSTON DIDN’T ANSWER my letter, so there wasn’t a miracle after all. I have to believe that he didn’t receive it, that it’s at the bottom of a sack in the sorting office with all the other undelivered letters. I can’t live with the possibility that he did get it. But by then, what with the scene and my father punching him, and the dogs, he may have made the decision that I wasn’t worth it, worth the suffering our relationship would inevitably entail. No, I won’t have that. My letter has gone astray, the way we did, diverting from paths that our heritage had laid down for us. So please have some compassion for me, some forgiveness. The doors were slammed behind me, and not merely slammed but locked and bolted. I had no other option. God of mercy I had no other option.

  I set off on a train rattling through the night, the beginning of what seems an unending journey. Stiff as a rake I am, in my seat in the carriage. My spine feels as if I couldn’t bend it if I wanted to. I am by the window but there is no advantage to it. The lights reflect on the glass making it extremely difficult to see anything at all. Exhaustion overwhelms me, bodily exhaustion. But I can’t sleep. It’s a weird sensation, my head spinning with tiredness, and me riding in a pod rocketing through space. Outside is nothing. Inside is nothing too, so they match. There is a man, a middle-aged man I’d guess, with a briefcase, sitting by the compartment door. He has a drooping moustache and I think it must be tickling his nose because he keeps wiggling it, then blowing it noisily into a big white hanky.

  Opposite me is an elderly woman with a worn face. Her hair is thin and grey, and tidied into a bun that looks like a hedgehog there are so many hairpins sticking out of it. Her skin looks grey too, like elastic with the twang gone out of it. Her eyes are dull as juniper berries, and the whites don’t look white at all but tinted blue. She has whiskers like a man’s growing from her chin and her nose. She’s wearing a tweed skirt and jacket. And there’s a silver brooch of a sailing boat pinned at her neck. Both her and the man start their journey reading, him, papers from his briefcase, her, a journal. Then after an hour or so the lady nods off, her mouth dropping open so that I can see the few yellow teeth she has left. Minutes pass and the man falls asleep as well. But he’s very tidy about it, crossing his arms over his briefcase, and pushing the hat he is wearing down over his eyes. It’s weird but when I stare at the lady it’s like looking at myself. I’m being dotty, I know. I’m young and she’s old. All the same, it’s my reflection.

  I am altered. I can’t really say how because I’m no longer sure of the way I was before. The girl who went to London and stayed in a flat in Rochester Row, growing fat as a beer barrel day by day until she burst open, well … she’s someone else. And this is healthy really, this division. No, it is. So don’t feel pity for me. I have no feelings any more. Honestly, if you took a hatpin and pushed it into me, my leg, my arm … I don’t believe I would feel a thing. I am anaesthetised. As for my heart, I am as certain as I can be that it stopped beating months ago.

  That other Bethan – you might like to know that she gave birth in New End Hospital, Hampstead, in January of this year, the 14th. She was very frightened. The pains began on one of her walks. They weren’t bad at the outset, something like chronic period pains, and she was so relieved. If it continued at this level she thought that she would breeze through it. She would be like the sheep that dropped their lambs in the field and then went on grazing. But it didn’t stay like this. Rapidly it doubled, then trebled, then quadrupled, until it was as though the agony was a masochist within her. And it had its own rhythm as it bit into her. Then, when she was on the brink of fainting, when she wanted to die it was so excruciating, it paused in a kind of menacing manner. And even those pauses were horrid because she knew they would end soon, and that those teeth would again become fangs locked on her innards. They weren’t very charitable to her at the hospital. They knew that the baby she was giving birth to was not like the others, that it was illegitimate. Her mam was kind to her when it came to it. She stayed with her all through that endless hard labour, held her hand, spoke about how she was as a little girl, skipping around outdoors all weathers, a wild child.

  What she did not expect, what she had not figured into this equation, was how the birth would turn her anguish into exultation. It was magic. If the love she felt for Thorston had been forbidden, then she knew the savage immediate love that possessed her for his baby, for their daughter, was outlawed. Over the next three months she starred in the theatre of the absurd. The baby must be fed, but not breastfed. Her mam was adamant about this. The infant would be given the bottle, formula milk. The less contact Bethan had with the baby the safer for all of them. So her breasts were swollen and sore. When she heard the baby whimper, they leaked milk. Weeks it took for the supply to finally dry up. Her mam dictated that she would be the baby’s carer, changing and feeding her, getting up to her in the night, rocking and cuddling her. They should take every precaution to prevent a maternal bond developing, she told her. So Bethan left her mam with the baby and ambled the streets alone, out nearly all day sometimes.

  But when the baby became sick, very sick with gastro-enteritis, they were both frantic. They forgot about who should have a bond and who should not. She was treated in the hospital. Bethan was petrified that she might die. The thought of living in a world robbed of her baby made her lose her balance and fall to the floor. As her mam helped her up, a look passed between them. In that instant their limitless love was seen for what it was, an indelible brand on both their lives. Her mam owned her treachery and prayed that Brice would forgive her. Bethan owned the betrayal of her baby, and prayed that one day she would have absolution for the premeditated act she was going to commit. They did not share with each other their deep-rooted suspicions that Eira Heppell had in some devilish way doctored the baby’s feed, that she had tried to poison it. From then on the baby was never left unattended.

  During the pregnancy they had both avoided giving the baby a name. They knew the power a name would bestow, the undeniable sorcery of it. A name would transform their fairy child, their changeling into a human girl knitted not of angel dust, but flesh and blood, skin and bone, with a tiny pumping heart in the jewel box of her chest. In the event a café supplied it. It served fruit buns, teacakes and jam tarts, tea and coffee, and it was called Lucilla’s.
They all frequented it, all three of them.

  ‘If it’s a girl shall we call her Lucilla then?’ Bethan suggested as they paid their bill one afternoon, only days before her confinement.

  Her mam nodded. ‘Mmm … why not?’ she said. ‘Lucilla will do.’ They both felt indifferent to the name. They did not consider what to call the baby if it was a boy.

  ‘It’s quite pretty really,’ they muttered in overlapping voices and the deal was done. Bethan had a moment of weakness in the Registry Office in Hampstead. Asked to provide the baby’s name, she threw her head back and gazed at the ceiling. She didn’t actually like it. It was too elaborate, too complicated. Saying it made her feel all breathless, as if she was suffocating. But like everything else it seemed a bit too late by then. So on 16 January her daughter’s name was registered as Lucilla Haverd.

  Her mam rang the Church Adoption Society and spoke to their contact, a Miss Mulholland, Valeria Mulholland. She said that the baby had been born, that it was a healthy girl, that they had called her Lucilla. Miss Mulholland gave effusive assurances that they were on the lookout for the ideal home for Lucilla. They realised how pressing the situation was, that it was a race to remedy their plight and locate a secure home with excellent adoptive parents.

  They asked Bethan to fill out a form, to sign a certificate. She had stared at it for nearly a quarter of an hour. Phrases had leaped out at her and tolled in her head like the church bells had done at funerals: ‘Adoption of Children (Regulation) Act (1939). To be furnished by a registered Adoption Society to every parent or guardian who proposes to place a child at the disposition of the Society. If an adoption order is made in respect of your child, all your rights and duties with regard to the child will be transferred permanently to the adopter.’ She had been sitting in the Church Adoption Society’s office, the office where the secretary, Miss Mulholland, typed letters to suicidal young women. It was the office where she answered the telephone and arranged for the babies to be collected, like undelivered parcels that were returned to the post office.