The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  Lucilla is stupefied by the brutal power slapping her face, buffeting her body. She is weak-kneed at the glassy altitude, drawn ineluctably to the brink. She has been here before, poised on the chalky brim of her island home. Dreaming? Has she dreamed this place, wind-thrashed, grass-quashed, on high, the sky an arm’s reach, the sea beckoning at the foot of the turret? Coming under their radar, she shuffles ahead to the very edge. When there are no more than a few feet between her and nothingness, the flying dream becomes the master puppeteer. She feels the tug of the strings on her feet, her hands, her knees, between her shoulder blades. He yanks up the crown of her head then he croons lovingly into her whistling ears.

  ‘You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!’ And so … and so she tips her weight over the balls of her feet, angling herself into the resistant force of the wind. Further and further she goes, giving up her territory inch by inch. At the last, the moment of flight, another force hooks the collar of her coat and yanks her back.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Lucilla, are you insane? Anyone would think that you were trying to kill yourself. I can’t trust you for a second.’

  ‘But I was going to fly,’ wails Lucilla. ‘I was going to fly!’ They have retreated into the lee of Belle Tout, the mother and her adopted daughter. The lighthouse towers impassively over the struggling pair. The sun strikes the glass eye and it bounces back a white-gold ray. ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ screams the girl, wanting to race back and hurl herself off Beachy Head, knowing that the wind will catch her, that she will fly.

  ‘Now, Lucilla stop this,’ barks her father, sliding like a shark into looming shadow of Belle Tout.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ screeches Aunt Enid, hand on her askew hat, bumping into and out of the shade in a flap.

  ‘Lucilla, I’m warning you,’ bellows her mother, walloping at her gyrating form. But the strings are still attached. The puppeteer plucks them expertly, so that her arms windmill as she knees her mother in the stomach.

  ‘She’s crazed, a loony. She’s gone hopping mad, Aunt Harriet,’ is Frank’s verdict, skipping sideways outside the fighting ring, attempting to tackle his raving cousin if she makes a dash for the cliff face.

  ‘Don’t hurt her,’ implores Rachel, hands blindfolding her eyes, ghosting Frank.

  ‘Give me a hand, Frank,’ snarls her father, making a grab for her hair. ‘I’ve got her.’ But he hasn’t, only a fistful of wisps.

  ‘Righto, sir.’ Frank has his orders and needs no extra encouragement to pile into the fray. ‘Drat it, keep still will you, Lucilla!’

  ‘Somebody do something!’ Aunt Enid’s histrionics are muffled in her fox fur.

  ‘Ouch! She bit me, the little tyke,’ bellows her mother leaping backwards and toppling over, smack, onto her bottom, landing in an ungainly heap.

  ‘Harriet? Harriet? Has she killed you?’ This from Aunt Enid, rushing in, the both of them now gagged with the swinging fox pelt.

  Her father has wrestled her to the ground and pinned her flaying arms down, and Frank is sitting astride her still kicking legs. Her mother is jabbering something about bad blood, and Hitler, and how both her stockings have been laddered by the SS. Aunt Enid, the most unlikely of Florence Nightingales, realising that her sister-in-law has not sustained life-threatening injuries, dives with the aplomb of a tipsy ballet dancer onto the next patient. Her daughter is weeping inconsolably. She mops up Rachel’s tears with the fox’s tail, causing her to have a sneezing fit. Frank’s face is contorted as he tries to quell his laughter. Overhead, obscuring the sun like the undercarriage of a fighter plane, comes her father’s plum face. He is hollering uncontrollably, spittle flying from his mouth ‘LUCILLA, CALM DOWN! CALM DOWN!’ And impish Ariel, well seasoned with sea salt, is frisking them all, every atom of their lashing bodies. Then the strings are cut and Lucilla’s eyelids flicker and close. As if sedated, she goes suddenly limp.

  It is shortly after this incident that she comes home to the bowl of blood. And it is strange in a way, because she has been thinking about blood that very afternoon, and about her mother shouting about bad blood on Beachy Head, when all she wanted to do was fly, fly away. Perhaps some blood was dirty, though that seemed a rather stupid idea to her. Surely if it was dirty, dirty inside you, well … you’d get sick. For a moment she turned her hand palm upwards and traced the delicately raised veins she could see on her wrists. What, she pondered with real interest, about her blood? Was it good or bad? And how did people tell? Perhaps there was a test and doctors performed it when people were criminals, murderers and thieves. Perhaps that was what they told the judges in court. His blood is good and so he is innocent. But her blood, Lucilla Pritchard’s blood is very bad and she should be sent to prison for a long, long time, for her whole life in fact. Lucilla shivers.

  Lost in her meditations, she fumbles for her own key tied on a ribbon about her neck these days. The house receives her in reverential silence, save for Scamp whose tail thumps on the tiled floor of the hallway. She listens for upstairs noises. Mrs Fortinbrass opening a can of beans? Lifting a saucepan out of the cupboard? Boiling a kettle? Nothing. Downstairs is as still as a morgue as well, no sounds of her mother bashing and banging utensils like cymbals, no smoke fumes overcoming her. ‘Mother?’ she cries, hesitantly. ‘Mother?’ She cannot recall ever being alone with the house. The atmosphere is not hostile, only a fraction stunned, as if it is being roused after an all-night shindig.

  She creeps from room to room, feeling like a trespasser, Scamp on her heels. An investigation confirms that all are empty. Her mother may be resting? Unlikely, but possible, she deduces, hovering outside her parents’ bedroom door. She gives a faltering tap. Waits. Chews the left then the right side of her bottom lip. Taps again. The house holds its breath in suspense and, as she edges the door open slowly, sighs it out. A speedy scan shows that the curtains are drawn, the beds made up and empty.

  These beds were friends once, corner-to-corner mattresses, their sheets and blankets laundry buddies. Lucilla cannot pinpoint the exact day that she noticed a cooling in the temperature of their ticking, that there was a rift in their relationship, a trough forming between them. All she can recall is seeing them incrementally ease apart with the changing seasons. Had one developed bad mattress odour, or an infestation of bed mites? Or had they developed extreme dandruff due to decades of being bombarded by dead skin cells? Whatever, it seems implausible now that they ever tolerated their close proximity.

  She scans the floor for clues, a good detective’s strategy. For a moment she wonders if her mother has died, if she has expired in a paroxysm of zealous cleaning, Jeyes fluid pouring onto the lino from an upturned bottle. But no, it is clear. On closer scrutiny, however, as she expands her fingertip search, there is an odd object crying out to be investigated – a chipped white enamel bowl sitting incongruously on her mother’s dressing table, next to the tin of medicated talcum powder. She approaches it with caution as if it is alive. One, two, three steps and she peers inside, gasps, jumps back. The bowl is full of blood, gouts of blood, tissues sodden in blood. And look, there are more bloody tissues on the dressing table. Has an unfortunate person been massacred? But if so where is the body? For minutes, she stands and stares at the blood, at the wattle redness of it puddling in the bowl. The air smells like a butcher’s shop, fleshy and raw. Scamp butts her leg and snorts.

  When her father arrives home the explanation is forthcoming. Her mother has been admitted to Whittington Hospital in Highgate. ‘She has had a nosebleed, Lucilla. A severe nosebleed. Wouldn’t stop. Gushing out of her. Doctor said her blood pressure is far too high. They’re going to keep her in for a few days, so we’ll have to make do for supper. But not to worry, they’re going to fix her up.’

  Mrs Fortinbrass has arrived back with her shopping and condolences. She offers to make Welsh rarebit. Upstairs through and through, the crisis has lured her into nether regions of the house. While she is cooking, Lucilla’s father disappears into the garden she
d. Lucilla takes notice of this because it is not the first occasion on which he has done this. This is queer because her mother takes care of the garden, and her father seldom, if ever, goes near the shed. She has also detected subtle changes in his behaviour when he re-emerges from the gloomy interior. On the way in there is a purposeful expression on his frowning face, a determination in his heavy stride. On the way out, some half an hour later, he has adopted an ambling gait, and his face is a trifle flushed and set in a cheery mask. There is, as well, a faint but distinct odour on his breath. It is rather like petrol but different, thicker and sourer.

  Tonight he has grown garrulous too, walking in through the back door as though arriving at a party. They eat supper at the dining room table watching the Black and White Minstrel Show. Men with black faces, mini-moon eyes and smiling crescent-moon mouths, dressed in sparkling white suits. Beautiful women with complexions dazzling as new-fallen snow, swathed in fur-trimmed gowns. They link arms. They show their blinding pearly-white teeth. They sing ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’, and they wave their hands and dance. Lucilla bites into the savoury creamy cheese sauce, and dwells meditatively on the bowl of her mother’s blood that no one has dealt with yet.

  After she has gone to bed, but not to sleep, Lucilla hears the taxi pull up. She slips out from under the blankets, tweaks the curtains and spies Aunt Enid alighting from the black cab. She looks smart in a fitted suit in French navy, the collar trimmed with cream mink, a tiny scalloped hat sitting snug on her head like a mauve flower, petals open. The street lights shimmer on her black leather gloves and on her beaded clutch bag. Her high heels click on the pavement. She raps assertively on the front door, and Lucilla, treading softly on the upstairs landing, freezes as it is opened. Her father greets her aunt expansively and welcomes her in. His voice rising up the stairs is pitched much more loudly than usual. Together with the dressmaker’s dummy, Lucilla overhears their dialogue.

  Aunt Enid has been to the hospital to visit Mother. She reports that her condition is much improved, that the operation has gone well, but that they will be keeping her in for a few weeks of complete bed rest. Lucilla is somewhat baffled by the mention of surgery. To operate on a nosebleed seems a particularly drastic treatment for a condition that normally dries up of its own accord. Why in the hot weather at school she has had a nosebleed herself. The teacher sat with her in the medical room, while she swabbed it with cotton wool and in minutes it stopped of its own volition. She is pondering if the surgeon put something in her mother’s nose or took something out, as her father ushers Aunt Enid into the front room. He leaves the door ajar. They talk long into the night, mostly about Mother, and the stress she is under. ‘The child’s not without her problems,’ says Aunt Enid. ‘It’s wearing for Harriet at her age.’

  ‘Oh, things will settle down.’ Her father’s tone is insouciant, reassuring. ‘We must remember she’s only young.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. At eleven, she’s certainly old enough to know right from wrong,’ Aunt Enid rejoins with conviction. ‘After all, look at my Rachel.’ For a second, Lucilla wonders if Rachel, her cousin, is with her downstairs this second. And then she realises that her aunt is only speaking figuratively.

  ‘Aye, she’s a grand girl, Rachel is. There’s no denying that,’ her father says wishfully.

  ‘That day on Beachy Head, by the lighthouse, well, quite honestly, I thought Lucilla was going to throw herself off. She was so het up, I doubted we’d be able to prevent it either. I’m sorry to have to tell you there are times when I think she’s as barmy as a fruit bat. It’s the bad blood. No diluting it.’

  ‘No, Enid, no! You’re overreacting,’ her father mollifies. ‘She is hypersensitive, highly strung, but no more.’

  ‘I wish that was the extent of it, Merfyn. You thought you could manage it, but I’m not so sure these days. I told Harriet it’d reveal itself somehow.’

  They continue to converse in this wise for several minutes. Lucilla, confused by the oblique references, lets the sentences glide over her head like cartoon speech bubbles. If the headless dummy is unmindful, why, so can she be. Aunt Enid makes tea, and her father tells her he is going to bank up the fire. Lucilla, sitting on the floor, drifts off. Blinking in the gloaming, her hand clasping the dummy’s sole peg leg, she comes to with a start. She wonders if her aunt is still here, or if the taxi has come yet to take her home. Tiptoeing downstairs, skipping the two doddery steps that creak complainingly when you put your weight on them, she strains her ears. She can decipher their voices, though both are quelled now as if they have grown tired, intimate. The hall light is off. The front room standard lamp is on though. This and the glow from the hearth filter through the crack in the door. Holding her breath, she cranes her neck and peers around it.

  Aunt Enid is on her feet riddling the fire with the poker. Facing away from Lucilla, she has taken her jacket off and wears an ecru blouse with tiny pearl buttons down the back. Her bottom is squished into her tight skirt and seems to be straining to split the seams. Her hat is off, and firelight is playing on her loose brown hair, singling out golden strands. It all happens so fast. Her father rises and, with a cry, grabs Aunt Enid by the waist from behind. She drops the poker and yelps as it skids on the tiled hearth. She struggles manically in his embrace. All the while her father mutters all sorts of soppy things, tightening his hold on her. ‘Oh you glorious … your breasts … brbrbr … breasts are so, so … let me fondle your … your … oh, oh, the softness of … squa– squashy … the scent of your hair … like satin … I want to … to … to … Ooh!’ He is kissing her jerking head, her wavy golden-brown hair, and then her white neck. She manages to corkscrew her body in his arms. He is squeezing her like a tube of toothpaste, and Lucilla is sure she will come all squirting out any moment. Then he kisses her full on the mouth. There are some slobbery, wet, smooching noises. Next, an almighty grunt as Aunt Enid brings her knee up into her father’s groin. ‘Arrgh!’ He stumbles back, his steamed-up glasses slipping down his nose. She advances on him. Her hand with its manicured crimson fingernails flies through the air and strikes his cheek with a whack.

  ‘How dare you!’ hisses Aunt Enid. Her scarlet lipstick is all smeared over her swollen mouth. And it is smudged across Lucilla’s father’s lips and his huffing cheeks as well, so that he looks a bit like a black and white minstrel – only red. Her aunt seizes up the poker, shaking it at him and backing towards the door, behind which Lucilla is hiding. ‘If my Gethin was alive he’d show you what for. You were never a patch on your brother. He was worth ten of you. He’d teach you a lesson, Gethin would! You filthy sex maniac!’

  ‘I’m sorry. Oooh, Enid, I’m so sorry,’ moans her father, the breath coming out of him as if he has several punctures. He collapses into an armchair. His mouth and chin are slick with saliva, making the smudged lipstick gleam wetly. He groans, his chest pumping, his face suffused with blood. And his nose, brow and cheekbones are spotted with fat droplets of sweat. When he speaks again, lips quavering, he sounds as if he has a heavy cold, his words furred and blurring into each other. ‘But Enid, Eeenid! Oh, Enid, you must know that I need to … want to … your body … I thought it was … mutual. That you wanted … The way I feel about you, how much … much I need …’

  ‘You stay back you pervert or I’ll … I’ll tell Harriet, so help me I will,’ threatens Aunt Enid, poker held aloft like a magician’s staff. ‘How could you? How could you when your poor wife is recovering from a hysterectomy in hospital. She must have been suffering horribly with her womb riddled with fibroids. The agony of it and blowing up like a balloon. But did she complain? Did she complain? Hardly ever. She is a saint that woman, a veritable saint. And what do you do when she haemorrhages, collapses and nearly bleeds to death and they have to give her an emergency hysterectomy, poor darling, you try to seduce your sister in law. You are despicable.’ She slashes at the air with the poker and Lucilla’s father ducks, then jumps back out of reach. Lucilla does not know what a hyster
ectomy is, but there isn’t time to dwell on this conundrum. The action in the front room is commanding all her attention.

  ‘No, no, please don’t. I beseech you. Enid, we could have so … so much … I could bring you to an ec– ec– ecst– ecsta–. Oh, oh, oh, oh!’ Then spontaneously he bursts into noisy, snotty tears. ‘Forgive me. Please forgive me. I thought perhaps you … you – But no, no of course you don’t. How could you? It won’t happen again, Enid. You have to believe me. I don’t know –’

  Lucilla does not linger to learn more. In the semi-darkness, she climbs the stairs as she descended them, soft-stepping, avoiding the loose-tongued boards. She scurries back to her bedroom, hesitating only for an instant to sidestep the headless dummy.

  Chapter 18

  Harriet, 1959

  BARBARA IS STAYING for tea again. She is such a dear, dear girl. Eleven years old. The same age as Lucilla, but the two of them couldn’t be less alike. Barbara is contented, such a nice stay-at-home child, so content, whereas Lucilla is as restless as the wind. Barbara is tall, with the most lustrous wavy hair and comely eyes – both shades of polished walnut. Lucilla’s hair is so fine and straight. You can’t do anything with it. It hangs there looking like a limp shower curtain. She loathes me styling it. I’ve a good mind to perm it one day, get a bit of body into it. And Barbara likes her food, isn’t a picky eater either. As do I. A healthy lass, with a healthy appetite. Lucilla is so fussy, prodding and poking and chewing for ages. I think Barbara looks more my daughter than Lucilla ever will. Merfyn says the resemblance between us is uncanny.