The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  Upstairs is another room, equally drab. It is here that the children’s activities are held. The building is damp and musty, with a rash of mildew patches on the walls and ceilings. The plug-in heaters hardly take the edge off the invasive chill. On arrival, her parents don velvet robes trimmed with gold braid. These are stored on hangers in a locked cupboard, the floor of its broad mouth stuffed with mothballs. Smelling as if they are preserved mummies, they process, then take their thrones at the centre of a wide trestle table standing to the rear of the hall. Special girls and boys, temperance monitors who have earned the privilege, are nominated each week to take down the minutes of the meeting.

  Like knights of the round table, except that it is rectangular, the adults deliberate in loud monotones. As well as the night ahead, they discuss forthcoming socials, scheduled marches, section meetings and intergroup conventions. All the children who attend are saving their pocket money, including Lucilla, Frank and Rachel. Her father says that his nephew, who has to date saved more than any of the youngsters, is a wonderful example to them all of what may be accomplished if they are thrifty. Lucilla, who has seen her mother slipping Frank a silver coin every so often, doubts his parsimonious reputation. They line up when the meeting ends, and when their name is called they each step forwards and present her father with their money. He stows it in a metal cash box, and jots all the transactions down in their savings books and in another much larger book, his accountant’s ledger.

  When he has gathered in all the money, the children are given permission to withdraw upstairs with their group leaders. They play games, or sing hymns, or have craft workshops. But Lucilla spends the largest portion of these evenings freezing on the doorstep outside the hall. It is to here she is banished like clockwork for her unruliness. It doesn’t really bother her, apart from her fingers and toes growing steadily more numb. In fact she rather enjoys watching the men drinking in the pub next door. She can spy on them through a window illuminated like a Christmas scene by golden-yellow light.

  The intergroup Temperance Music Festival is held in Bermondsey, in an even vaster hall than their own. There are different categories for the various instruments children can play. Lucilla’s parents enter her in the piano section. Trembling with nerves, head thrust down the toilet, she spews up the brick of steak and kidney pie they had for supper, with only minutes to go before it commences. The hall is crammed with children and their parents, all come to perform and watch. Frank is in the front row with Rachel and Aunt Enid and her mother. Later Rachel will be playing the tragic ballad ‘Barbara Allen’ on her recorder in the wind section. Lucilla knows that stage fright will not overcome her, and that her performance will proceed without a hitch. Her father is supervising from the side, and the four adjudicators are seated in a row behind a desk, set stage left on the rostrum.

  Lucilla has been having piano lessons for some years now with Miss Garside, who lives at the end of their road. She knows her mother harbours reservations about her tutor’s appearance though, having overheard her parents confer on the subject. But her father’s only retort was that her rates were very reasonable. And it is true that Miss Garside wears evening dresses in the daytime and lots of jewellery. Yet she also has bristles shadowing her jaw, bristles that Lucilla suspects will grow into a beard if left untended. And she has hairy legs and hairy arms and huge hairy hands, and a bass foghorn voice. But amazingly she also has a light touch on the piano keys. Although her pupil finds it pleasant playing to the potted aspidistra in Miss Garside’s front room, the prospect of performing in the Temperance Music Festival is about as appealing to her as tightrope walking between the spires of the Houses of Parliament.

  ‘Lucilla Pritchard. Number nine.’

  Cowering in her seat in the depths of the darkened hall, Lucilla cringes when she hears her name and number called out. Her heart gives a drum roll, and her ears have the sigh of the sea in them. Heads swing round. Eyes home in on her. The clop of her shoes on the parquet flooring is deafening. It seems to take years to reach the rostrum. Stepping into the floodlit space is like having all her clothes fall off in school. Seated on the stool, she stares straight ahead at her music. But there is no music! She glimpses downwards. Her lap is empty. With horror her thoughts condense into a single, incontrovertible fact – sitting on her music book, she has neglected to carry it with her. Now she is as rigid as if rigor mortis has set in. Breath whistles brokenly in and out of her. The clock on the wall ticks like a metronome.

  ‘When you’re ready, Miss Pritchard,’ prompts one of the adjudicators. But she is not ready. How can she be without her music? Heads bump. Whispers sizzle like frying bacon along the rows. At the back of the hall, someone holds a music book aloft and waves it. The pages flap as though it is a white flag of surrender. The whispers swell to titters, the titters become giggles, and the giggles shrieks of laughter rebounding off the high walls and ceiling. Then close by, so close she is sure she can feel his breath on her, Frank begins honking like a goose. Others join in until there is a gaggle of them. Her name is banded about, the punchline of the joke. She springs up and sprints down the hall, grabbing the manuscript from a steward who has retrieved it. When next she slides onto the piano stool, her fingers feel as if they have been crudely carved out of wood. The adjudicator who spoke previously is going full throttle to restore order.

  ‘Can we please have quiet! This competition will be cancelled unless the entrants can behave themselves.’ Her father is strutting about in his velvet cape, gold chain flashing, calling for order like an irate schoolmaster. A brittle silence returns. She inhales deeply, sending a rush of blood to her head, fingers poised. She is certain that they will stay stiff as pipe cleaners, unable to strike the keys. But Miss Garside has been too good a teacher. In seconds the music has claimed her, Czerny’s Studies, Opus 261, No. 22.

  ‘This piece is all about rhythm and clarity,’ Miss Garside’s granulated man-voice resounds in her ear. ‘You need to let it filter through to your fingertips.’ Her whole body pulses with the beat, the recollected waft of her tutor’s tobacco breath quelling her whirlpool of adrenalin. Her relief when it is over is palpable. No one is more astonished than her to find she has won the top prize, a book token for three shillings for the most accomplished pianist in her age group. Her father is ecstatic at this unlooked-for success and propels her about afterwards, showing her off to the Brothers and Sisters of Temperance like a polished trophy. Even her mother seems passably pleased, patting her on the head and muttering sotto voce, ‘Thank the Lord you redeemed yourself.’ Aunt Enid seconds this, raising her eyes to the rafters.

  Frank pulls her hair and, when she spins around to see who did it, says, ‘I’d part with some of my savings to see you mess up again. Nincompoop!’

  ‘Well done, Lucilla,’ congratulates Rachel, pushing her brother aside. She did not win, but she did play very prettily when it came to it and was commended by the judges. ‘I knew you could do it.’

  ‘Musical fingers, see,’ her father says, seizing Lucilla’s wooden-spoon hands and holding them up for all to ogle. ‘She has a gift. Of course we have done all that we can to nurture it. She has private lessons with a very exclusive teacher.’

  Lucilla summons a mental image of Miss Garside, with her five o’clock shadow, her hairy hands and a smile as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s. But her parents’ praise does not act like a drug on her, making her crave more. She relays the grim details to her music teacher at her next lesson. ‘I hated it. I don’t ever want to play the piano in public again.’ Miss Garside nods and lights up one of her cigars. She sucks on it thoughtfully. Lounging on the windowsill, her white cat suddenly springs down and arches its back. It rubs itself against Lucilla’s legs, then picks its way haughtily across the piano pedals. Lucilla plays a note and they both cock an ear while it reverberates.

  Miss Garside places her cigar in an ashtray on the piano lid and plays a stirring piece of music. When she finishes, she keeps her fingers resting on the
keys for seconds before withdrawing them. ‘That sounded like lots of thunderstorms coming one after the other.’ Lucilla gives her appraisal.

  ‘Beethoven. His “Appassionata” sonata in F minor,’ grinds out Miss Garside from her flat broad chest. ‘Drowns out the white noise.’

  Dawdling on the way home, a simple solution to her problem offers itself. If she plays badly, if she makes mistakes on purpose, but adroitly so no one guesses, then she will not qualify for future temperance music festivals. And if she does not qualify, she will not have to take that dreadful walk up to the rostrum with all those eyes trained on her. Her slide from winner to loser fills her parents with rancour. Her father stuffs the envelopes with Miss Garside’s fee more and more resentfully. Then comes the decree that for the present at least her musicianship must take a back seat to her schoolwork. Lucilla greets it with equanimity. She will not miss the loathed piano. But Miss Garside, with her hairy hands and her bristly chin, and the Appassionata sonata that drowns out the white noise – oh, these she will pine for.

  A rare treat for Lucilla are days out with her father. Her mother does not accompany them on these trips. ‘I’m far too busy in the house to go off gadding about London,’ she says, flicking her duster like the ruffled skirt of a flamenco dancer. ‘Do you imagine the house looks after itself?’

  Lucilla does. She imagines this very thing. She assumes that when they shut the front door and stroll down the road, the house heaves a sort of dusty sigh and relaxes into itself. She suspects that the house wearies of being scrubbed and wiped and swept and washed, that it probably delights in its own lethargic company. Most likely it relishes a spate of slovenliness. Lucilla would, given half the chance. ‘Tea will be at five o’clock on the dot,’ her mother decrees as they depart, hinting at dire consequences if they are so much as a minute late. If Lucilla asks about the menu, her mother’s reply is invariably the same. ‘Windy pie and airy pudding! Windy pie and airy pudding! That’s what we’re having.’ Though Lucilla has yet to witness a dish as light as air, come floating out of her mother’s kitchen.

  Lucilla visits the bank with her father, weighed down with the savings from the Sons of Temperance. She likes the polished marble floors, the vaulted ceilings, the cool money-tainted air. She stares fascinated at the decorative mosaics. They go by bus, and walk along the Embankment when they arrive. She is fond of the mingled strong odours of silt and rubbish, of oil and smoke. ‘Thames mud,’ her father says, inhaling a lung full and smacking his lips together. ‘Clay and sewage. Muck and the river.’ They inspect the boats, and amble over bridges watching the sluggish eel of grey green swilling on by. They go to St Paul’s and, panting, climb up to the Whispering Gallery. They visit Tower Bridge and ascend the carpeted steps, passing windows inset on each landing. Once, in Hampton Court maze she got lost. She would still have been running up and down green corridors at nightfall if she hadn’t been rescued by a kind attendant. They take trips on the river all the way to Gravesend. They picnic on spam sandwiches and drink orange squash, then buy ice creams for afters.

  She feels at home in the parks. St James’s Park is the loveliest, she thinks. And, oh, how she adores London Zoo. She is enraptured by all of the animals. But it is Guy the gorilla who has her heart – those eyes of his, those melting brown eyes, so intense, so full of wisdom. The skin of his hands and face is like the leatherette material her Robin Hood outfit is cut from, only black, with a dull metallic sheen. Oh, to have those powerful arms wrapped round her, to feel the thud of his great ape heart through the dark shaggy hairs of his keg chest.

  Now the tigers have another effect on her altogether. Their dangerous stripes make her tremble with dread. There is a savage magnetic beauty in those lithe giant cats. But the small pens they are caged in bother her. ‘Why is it that my Scamp can run around woods, and all the tigers have is that small cage?’ she needs to know.

  They settle their gazes on the pacing tigers. ‘Dogs are domesticated,’ her father says to himself. Then to her, he says, ‘These are deadly wild animals, Lucilla. If they opened the cages, if they were set free to roam in the woods they’d go on a rampage, a killing spree.’ She feasts on the colours, the golden orange, the black, the magnificent markings. Her father fumbles in a pocket for his handkerchief and blows his nose with an elephant’s trumpet. ‘They may look like pussy cats but trust me, they’re man-eaters.’

  Lucilla imagines a keeper letting them all out, the entire zooful spilling onto the streets of London, zebras stopping the traffic crossing at zebra crossings, flamingos in the fountains at Trafalgar Square, buffalo grazing Buckingham Palace Gardens, toucans in the leafy branches of the trees bordering the Thames, monkeys rioting in the Houses of Parliament and swinging off the chandeliers. And she imagines the tigers hunting prey, their stomachs achingly empty, juices running over their glistening ivory fangs. She imagines a streak of them stalking cousin Frank, when he sets off from the house in Archway to go trainspotting. Shutting her eyes, she sees them ducking behind privet hedges when, sensing he is being followed, he darts a look over his hunched bony shoulders. And then, caught off guard as he turns a corner, they pounce, and set about bolting down his scrawny hide. When they are replete, they saunter off down the Mall to find a sunny spot for a snooze. An untidy heap of clawed stamp albums, book matchboxes and trainspotting notebooks fit for nothing but a bonfire – all that would be left of cousin Frank! She gives an ear-to-ear grin. London, she decides, glancing back at the tigers as they slink by, would be vastly improved with a zooful of beasts prowling the city jungle.

  They travel in coaches all over England attending temperance conventions. Aunt Enid and her cousins come as well. Often they visit the seaside and stay in bed and breakfasts, or at inexpensive hotels. Lucilla hates the coach trips. Almost as soon as they depart she starts missing Scamp. And she is plagued by travel sickness. The boiled sweets her mother keeps plugging her salivating mouth with merely aggravate it. She slumps against the prickly upholstery of her seat staring glumly into brown paper bags, while her tummy does pancake flips, and a burning sourness ebbs up her throat. And sometimes the coach has to squeal to a halt in a lay-by, the motor turning over, while she rushes out to retch in the bushes. All the other passengers peer at her from their telly screen windows, and tap the glass, and clap their hands over their gaping mouths. And when it is over and she climbs back in feeling like a twisted tube, they all mumble to each other the way they did during the temperance music festival. When Frank accompanies them, the teasing about these queasy episodes is merciless.

  ‘You smell worse than a stink bomb, cousin Lucilla. You’re making the whole coach pong, stink bomb,’ comes his pernicious undertone as he leers over her.

  On route to Brighton they stop at Beachy Head for this very purpose. While Lucilla is vomiting, the driver, lighting up a Woodbine, suggests they all get out and stretch their legs. The lighthouse is Frank’s idea. He is the one who wants to see it, the Belle Tout Lighthouse. ‘The name means “beautiful headland”. Did you know that?’ says Frank. Her father perks up instantly. He shares his nephew’s mania for acquiring information. ‘Building began in eighteen thirty-two after fleets of ships were wrecked and thousands of sailors were drowned.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about shipwrecks but this wind is playing havoc with my hairdo,’ Aunt Enid remarks needled, anchoring her black straw breton with an extra hatpin she removes from the brim. She buttons up her jacket and rearranges her fox fur..

  ‘The light from the thirty Argand lamps was thrown over twenty miles out to sea. That put a stop to it,’ Frank says.

  ‘Twenty miles, eh?’ Her father is nodding. ‘Nearly all the way to France then.’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that, Frank,’ says her mother in admiration. ‘You are a clever boy.’

  Frank responds to this flattery with a courtly bow and another fact. ‘I read about it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The chalk cliffs are five hundred and thirty feet at their highest point. That’s nearly on
e hundred and eighty yards.’

  ‘Near enough a tenth of a mile then,’ her father adds, determined not to be outdone, consulting the conversion table in his own head.

  ‘And did you know it was evacuated during the Second World War? Canadian troops used it for target practice. Or at least they hit it by mistake. But it’s still standing.’ Frank seems to be building up a head of steam.

  ‘Well I never,’ comments Aunt Enid, not listening to a word. She is examining the stiletto heel of one of her shoes, perturbed that she may have stepped in something unsavoury.

  ‘I think we should take a look,’ Frank proposes.

  ‘Might as well as we’re here,’ her father agrees. They splinter off from the main party, her parents, Aunt Enid, Frank and Rachel. Lucilla is nearly left behind, but Rachel, remembering her, turns back.

  ‘You don’t still feel dodgy?’ she calls out. Lucilla shakes her head, though she can taste the bile. ‘Come on then. We are going to the lighthouse, the Belle Tout Lighthouse.’ Her thin voice is lacerated by the wind, her long brown hair like an elaborate headdress torn this way and that. ‘Hurry up, Lucilla.’ She is wearing a greyish-blue gabardine coat with a shoulder cape. The cape keeps blowing up and covering her face, and she peels it off giggling. It is a blustery day, the wind sweeping inland off the sea. Lucilla drinks down the bracing salty moisture, letting it rinse her mouth. She catches up with them circling Belle Tout. Heads thrown back they stare at the monument, their shouts stolen from their open mouths.

  ‘Uncle Merfyn, let’s take a look at the view!’ This is Frank, nearly as tall as her father now, his face battered by the wind looking more middle-aged than teen.

  Her father, her mother on one arm and Aunt Enid on the other, yells back, ‘OK, but do be careful.’ And they set themselves into the teeth of the blast, trudging up the steep gradient, making for the cliff edge. None of them, not even Rachel, seems aware of Lucilla any more, tussling after them. When they are no more than a couple of yards from the sheer chalky drop, her father lifts a hand and, as if at a signal from their commander, they all halt. Legs akimbo they pit themselves against the onslaught, digging out divots in the scrubby grass. They huddle shoulder to shoulder. Their trappings, flannel and herringbone, corduroy and dimity, worsted and nylon, in blues and russets and greens and creams, fan out like an inflating parachute. At a distance, her mother’s black cloche hat looks like a full stop. Their voices, indiscernible, scribble on the whirling scrolls of the wind.