The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  Her mother has given her a description of the devil. It is so detailed that she knows she can capture his likeness from memory. He has bull’s horns and a crocodile’s tail, and his skin is all red and covered in pus-filled boils. He can fly. He doesn’t have any doubts. He skulks in the corners of her ceiling like an inkblot. When the light is switched off, he swoops, a great bat diving so close that his leathery wings flap against her head. She wants to be good so much. She wants to please her mother, to make her say kind things. But every day she sins and lets her down. She will have to try harder or the devil bat will get her.

  They have moved to East Finchley. Mostly there is only her and Mother in their new home. Father is out at work counting batteries, and generally he doesn’t return till nightfall. Oh! There is the lodger, Mrs Fortinbrass. She is grey-haired and teeny-weeny, as though she has shrunk in the wash. And she moves in a flurry like the busy wren Lucilla watches in the garden. She came with the house. Not the wren. She’s free to make her nest anywhere – but Mrs Fortinbrass. She lives upstairs with Lucilla. They both have their own bedrooms, but the lodger has a sitting room and a cupboard kitchen. When her parents go to the temperance meetings, which is often, Mrs Fortinbrass cares for her. She gives her hot Ribena and Rich Tea biscuits spread with butter and sprinkled with crunchy sugar – delicious.

  Downstairs is another bedroom where her mother and father sleep, and a living room with a piano in it and a desk. The desk is where her father does his paperwork for the Sons of Temperance. There is also a dining room, a kitchen and a lean-to greenhouse and a garden shed. They have their very own train, which huffs steamily by on tracks running along a high bank at the rear of the garden. If it slows down, if a day comes when it screeches to a halt, Lucilla thinks that she will buy a ticket and clamber aboard.

  A morning dawns when her mother takes her firmly by the hand and leads her to the mouth of a maze. She drags her into it and deserts her. Lucilla is surrounded by dozens of corridors and rooms the size of church halls. There are so many children all crowding her in. She is unsure if she will manage to escape. She squints into a kaleidoscope of changing faces. A farmyard cacophony makes her ears tingle. Will her mother ever collect her? She feels like next door’s canary locked in its cage. She doesn’t like birds in cages, hopping aimlessly from perch to perch. Birds should be in trees or whizzing through the air. She is having another of her earaches. She gets them regularly, these attacks. Her mother says that it is a weakness of hers, an inherited infirmity. When they are severe it is like having an insect burrowing in her head, eating through her brain. At home she rests her head on the settee arm, and prays that the stabbing sensation will go away. She visits the doctor. He puts a pipette in her ears and he squeezes medicine into them. She shivers as the freezing drops trickle in. Afterwards, they itch and it is as though she is underwater. Voices quiver.

  The teacher has been telling them things all day. She is called Mrs Dean. There is so much to remember besides this. Which desk is hers. Where her peg is. The correct way to line up. Not to run in the corridors. How to find the room they have lunch in. When you are forbidden to talk. The names of all the grown-ups and the children. The place to change for games. The corner where you go to read. The corner where you are sent if you misbehave. She studies this corner for several minutes – because she is frequently bad. The whereabouts of the toilets. Lucilla needs the toilet now; she needs it very urgently. But she is too scared to ask, to raise her arm and ask if she can have permission to leave the class. Her mother says that she was such a perfect baby, but that she has developed into a wicked, wayward girl. She hits her often, and calls her a liar. It make her ears buzz when her mother slaps her head. Suddenly the teacher picks up a bell on her desk and swings it enthusiastically. The clanging startles Lucilla and inside her something loosens. She feels the mess slip out of her into her pants, while the din of the bell makes her ears ring.

  ‘Children, it is the end of school now. Go and fetch your coats and satchels from their pegs, put them on and line up outside the classroom. And no pushing.’ Lucilla steals unheeded through the turmoil. Mrs Dean guides them out into the playground where their mothers are waiting to pick them up. Lucilla moves in slow motion. Luckily no one seems to bother with her. They are all too excited at seeing their own mothers and hurrying home. She is the only child dreading the reunion.

  Her mother stands apart from the others. The large furry turban on her head makes her look even taller. From a distance it could be a dozing cat. There is a gaudy brooch pinned to it that flashes in the sunshine like a third eye, winking purple and green. With tortoise steps, Lucilla approaches her. Frustration brimming over at her daughter’s dawdling, her mother strides forwards, stoops and presses her powdery cheek to Lucilla’s. ‘Hello, Lucilla. Did you have a nice time at school?’ she demands briskly. ‘And were you a good girl?’

  Lucilla is still deciding on her reply when her mother grasps her hand in exasperation. With her in tow, she marches towards the bus stop. ‘We’re going to have tea with Granny in Archway,’ she announces as they board a bus. Usually Lucilla enjoys riding on buses, spotting all the buildings and people going by. The game that is the greatest fun is counting the dogs and pretending that they are hers, her very own to stroke and cuddle. But today she would prefer to drive straight home, then she could run upstairs and closet her shame in the toilet.

  ‘Miss Mousey, Miss Mousey. You haven’t told me anything about school yet, Miss Mousey? What’s the matter Miss Mousey?’ her mother goads. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  ‘No. Nothing happened,’ Lucilla rejoins softly, her head tipping forwards.

  ‘Oh, you are a peculiar child. Don’t you want to tell me what it was like?’ she badgers, dissatisfied.

  ‘No,’ says Lucilla in a vanishing voice.

  At this her mother gives a pained sigh. ‘Did you make any new friends?’ She raises her eyebrows in an exaggerated way.

  ‘No,’ repeats Lucilla.

  ‘Shan’t tell, won’t tell, Miss Mousey, eh? Very well. You keep your mouth zipped, Miss Mousey. Not a squeak.’

  As they walk up the front path of the Archway house, Granny’s cheerful face peeps out veiled in net curtains like an ancient bride. She ducks out of sight. Before they reach the doorstep the front door swings open. Despite her predicament, Lucilla’s heart lifts at the sight of the rounded back, the wooden stick, the crimped salt-white hair. Her grandmother looks as if she has been wrapped in an omelette in her yellow dress. Normally, Lucilla yearns for her all-enveloping hugs. But today she quickly wriggles free. In the front room, Granny has set the tea table with a starched snowy cloth and the best bone china. This tea set only comes out of the cupboard to mark special events.

  It is quite a spread, so that Lucilla regrets her lack of appetite. Miserably she ogles the plates of meat paste sandwiches, the lemon curd tarts, her especial favourites, and the macaroons with glacé cherries glistening like navels in the centre of their sugared tummies. A Victoria sponge on a lacy doily has place of honour. The golden-brown top is sprinkled with a mouth-watering dusting of icing sugar. Her Aunt Enid and her cousins, Frank and Rachel, who all live with Granny, materialise.

  Frank is eight and Rachel is seven. Frank is bossy and boorish, but she is very fond of Rachel. They have all put on their best clothes, which makes it more frightful. Aunt Enid wears a silvery-green dress with a pleated skirt, an appliqué lace flower to the side of her square collar. Rachel has put on her navy and white sailor dress, and her hazelnut-brown hair is tied in a ponytail with a spotted ribbon. Frank has charcoal shorts on and a white shirt, and his nearly grown-up tie with the elastic neckband.

  Lucilla scurries under the table with Rachel, their usual refuge when the adults are conversing. Terrified that she will be detected, she begs God to make the evidence of her accident vanish. But even as her desperation surfaces, Rachel wrinkles her pert nose. She flashes her little cousin a questioning look in the gloom under the tablecloth. The china
chinks overhead. And Frank can be heard making zooming noises for his toy aeroplane, which he says is a Lancaster bomber. Staring out through the lace-trimmed hem, feeling as if she is inhabiting a cloth fishbowl, Lucilla spots his sturdy legs, kneecaps scabbed, circling the room. Zoom, zoom! She envisions her granddad upstairs dying, his skin nearly the same yellow as her granny’s dress. She thinks that she might like to die now – only not slowly like him, but in the blink of an eye.

  ‘What’s that terrible smell?’ exclaims her mother.

  ‘Oh dear me, yes,’ Aunt Enid affirms. ‘How very nasty. What can it be?’

  ‘I can’t think.’ This last is Granny’s kind, crumbly tones. They sniff like a trio of bloodhounds. ‘It’s been unseasonably warm. Perhaps it’s the bins.’

  ‘Pooh, it stinks!’ Frank squeals, bending down to stare at them through his splayed legs. His upside-down face, growing a deeper scarlet by the second, dangles into view.

  After this comes an unbearable silence. Rachel’s pale green eyes resting on hers are sympathetic, as if she would like to come to her aid but is helpless. Lucilla’s heart rattles in her chest, going faster and faster. Then her mother hikes up the tablecloth and hauls her out by the scruff of her neck. She shouts at her, and Frank cups his mouth, jabs his finger and yawps crudely. Rachel scrambles after her, shooting her a pitying look. Nevertheless, she backs away from her cousin, until she is standing by the windows that overlook the garden. She wants to distance herself from the uproar, Lucilla discerns sadly.

  ‘You mucky beggar! When did you do this?’ her mother demands, wrenching her arm so that it feels as if it will pop out of its socket, like her doll’s is prone to do.

  ‘Don’t be so hard on her, Harriet,’ her grandmother chips in, climbing to her feet. ‘She’s only a child after all.’

  ‘When did you do this?’ her mother shrieks again, her accusatory tone if anything becoming more piercing.

  ‘At school,’ Lucilla whispers remembering the devil, and lies, and what a dreadful fate awaits children who tell them. ‘I couldn’t help … help it.’

  But the truth seems to incite her mother into still more of a frenzy. ‘Of course you could help it. Your first day and you dirty your knickers.’

  Frank roars with mirth at the rude word, and his sticking out ears redden. ‘Dirty knickers! Dirty knickers!’ he sputters through his claps of laughter.

  ‘That’s quite enough, Frank,’ her aunt Enid chides, rising and halfheartedly attempting to swat her son with a napkin.

  ‘How dare you show me up like this? What the teacher must have thought of me, I don’t know. Get upstairs to the bathroom right now, missy,’ her mother orders.

  At the door, Lucilla wheels back, to see Frank stuff a whole lemon tart into his mouth when no one is looking. He pulls a face at her and a dribble of lemon curd snakes down his pointed chin.

  ‘Rachel can lend her a clean pair of pants,’ her aunt Enid offers with a superior smile. ‘No real harm done.’

  ‘Thank you, Enid, but really I shouldn’t be having to cope with this sort of pantomime,’ her mother carps. ‘She’s five years old! Five! After all the trouble you’ve been to, Mother, with the preparations for tea. I am so humiliated. She’s such a naughty girl.’ Then, under her breath, ‘Goodness knows where she gets it from.’ She exchanges a meaningful look with her sister-in-law, a look that is not lost on Lucilla.

  ‘Gracious, Harriet, what a fuss about nothing.’ Her grandmother is dismissive. ‘You’ll give the girl a complex if you keep on at her. It was all new to her today and she was probably nervous. It’s understandable that she’s had a small mishap.’

  ‘You don’t know what I have to contend with,’ her mother rejoins tetchily, her eyes, magnified eerily by their lenses, fastening on her adopted daughter with distaste.

  Frank, pastry crumbs around his mouth, pinches his nose. ‘Stinky Lucilla! Stinky Lucilla!’ he taunts. ‘Only babies pooh their pants.’

  ‘Frank, stop that this minute!’ Aunt Enid reprimands him in a tone of well-diluted vexation, sliding her hairband off and on again.

  ‘He’s telling the truth, Enid. This sort of disgusting behaviour should be long gone,’ her mother interjects.

  ‘Don’t go upsetting yourself, Harriet. If you’ve tried your best with her it’s not worth it.’ Aunt Enid turns to Frank and Rachel. ‘Go and play in the garden, there’s good children,’ she says, surveying her own wholesome brood. Frank runs off, his aeroplane in full flight again, his lips flapping as he reproduces the ‘broom’ of the engine. Rachel, resigned, follows obediently.

  ‘Get upstairs, Lucilla,’ her mother commands again, hat off and head down like a mad rhino, her timbre vitriolic. And, as she charges after Lucilla, she adds in a vicious hiss, audible to all, including the dying man overhead, ‘You ruin everything.’

  In time, Lucilla learns to negotiate the school maze, and nicest of all, an art teacher, Mr Westwell, is appointed. Meanwhile, at home a bewitching object is installed – a television! And it is so thrilling because barely anyone in their road possesses the amazing modern invention. Her grandmother, her aunt Enid, her cousins Frank and Rachel, and their neighbours the Friedmans, are all invited to their house to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on their brand-new television. Her grandfather has finally passed, so he cannot join them. Fraught and expectant, her mother keeps dashing to the front windows, snatching at the curtains and saying, ‘When will all the folks come. I hope they’re not late. We’ll miss it if they’re late.’ But thankfully they are not delayed, the relations descending first.

  ‘What a shame Grandpa can’t be with us,’ Lucilla’s granny says, wet-eyed behind her spectacle lenses.

  ‘But he is here in spirit,’ consoles Aunt Enid, raking the ceiling with her shrewd blue eyes.

  ‘Shall I lay a place for Grandpa then?’ Lucilla asks, only to have her head bitten off by her mother.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. He’s dead!’ she scorns, colander in one hand, saucepan lid in the other.

  ‘But I thought –’ Lucilla begins.

  ‘Oh do be quiet, Lucilla. You’re giving me one of my sick headaches,’ snaps her mother.

  Frank rocks with laughter and draws a gun from the holster buckled on his hips. He fires off a cap, which feeds through from a roll in the barrel of his silver Colt. The report makes her wince and he yells delightedly. She can smell the burned powder and determines not to cry. ‘You’re as dead as Grandpa now,’ he guffaws.

  ‘Don’t be such brute, Frank.’ Rachel comes to her defence.

  ‘I’m not dead,’ insists Lucilla, picturing her grandpa laid out on his bed.

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ comforts Rachel.

  Lucilla recalls that she could not be persuaded to kiss his waxy cheek, no matter how many times they entreated her. For a moment though she did clasp his hand, and the skin was like rubber to the touch, frigid and intractable. Now Rachel pats her arm and says that she shouldn’t listen to her brother, that he is just a show-off. A ceasefire is called by Aunt Enid as Mr and Mrs Friedman, their Jewish neighbours, arrive. They bring a big bowl of pretzels and some dips. Mrs Fortinbrass is the last guest, tiptoeing downstairs. It feels odd to have her in their midst. She is an upstairs resident who isn’t meant to venture to ground level, Lucilla worries. Her mother has incinerated a huge feast. Granny and Aunt Enid hurry to and fro from the kitchen to the dining room with smoking serving bowls and platters.

  Then they all stand solemnly behind their chairs as her father switches on the television. While the valves are warming up, they take their seats as if at a theatre, and start eating. Her father spends a quarter of an hour adjusting the focus, fiddling with the knobs to get the sound and contrast exact. When he is content, he sidesteps like a matador, revealing an animated photograph. ‘Ta-rah!’ he cries with a flourish. Frank crows and, brandishing it high in the air, fires his cap gun, previously secreted under his napkin. Aunt Enid immediately chastises him and confiscates it.

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bsp; ‘Will you look at that,’ comments awestruck Mr Friedman, patting his paunch and nodding at the programme.

  ‘Such crowds all waving flags,’ admires Mrs Friedman impressed, shaking her brassy poodle curls.

  ‘I expect it was very expensive,’ Mrs Fortinbrass chirps up querulously, nibbling on a piece of bread and margarine.

  Her father pauses in carving a cold joint of burned ham. ‘When it comes to royal occasions we lead the world, you know,’ he aggrandises. ‘British standards. Something for these coloured chaps to aspire to.’ He looks pleased with himself, as if single-handedly he is co-ordinating the coronation ceremony. ‘Another slice of ham, Mother?’ Both his mother and his wife look up, the former assenting graciously with royal nod, the latter scowling blackly at the sobriquet. Granny chews carefully, mindful of her false teeth. Frank spears a boiled potato and rams it in his wide mouth, quick as a lizard licks up a fly. He seems unconcerned by the unappetising greyish hue the King Edwards have taken on, as a result of the pan boiling dry. ‘We have the Commonwealth to consider,’ her father continues. He hesitates, probing two prominent discoloured molars with his pinkie, platinum grey in hue, between which a treacle-brown stringy particle of ham has lodged. ‘Need to set an example, show them how to do things correctly.’

  Lucilla is mesmerised by the footage of the state occasion. It is such a splendid sight, the very image she has of Cinderella’s fairy-tale carriage. The horses are all decorated in finery, tossing their manes and prancing. They pull the young queen in her coach all the way to Westminster Abbey. And she waves regally at the waiting crowds from the glittering window. Entranced, Lucilla makes acute observations of the monochrome spectacle, the thoroughbred horses particularly. She will sketch them later, she decides.