The Adoption

by Anne Berry

  ‘Hello,’ returns Barbara. Her tone is neutral, her rectangular-shaped face devoid of any expression.

  ‘Don’t you look pretty in that charming frock, Barbara?’ This is her mother, eyeing the creation the girl is dressed in with undisguised approbation.

  ‘Thank you.’ Barbara beams, twirling a bit so that her skirt and petticoat swish out.

  ‘Did you put it on specially?’ asks her father, his eyes round and glistening with veneration behind his smudged lenses.

  ‘Yes,’ says Barbara still twirling. ‘I wanted to dress up for you.’

  ‘How thoughtful,’ her mother says with a nod. ‘Appearances are most important. I might have a length of ribbon long enough to trim the hem. How about that?’ she entices.

  ‘Oh, that is frightfully kind of you,’ says Barbara, her voice sugary and sticky as strawberry jam. Lucilla is of the opinion that if any more decoration is put on the frock, the guest will look as though she really is a birthday cake.

  ‘Why don’t you two go into the garden and play while I’m making the tea?’ suggests her mother.

  ‘But Crackerjack is on,’ protests Lucilla. Her tone is full of entreaty. Her own shift in a plain teal cotton is cinched in at her slender waist with a thin cream belt. Up and down goes her mother’s chest, indignant heave after indignant heave. Her father pulls on his ear lobe, then waggles a finger in his ear.

  ‘You can see your programme another day,’ her mother says, stoutly. She deliberately blocks the television screen as Eamonn Andrews fades away.

  ‘Now don’t be rude, Lucilla,’ her father rebukes. ‘Off you go into the garden, and Mother will call you when tea is served.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need any help preparing the meal?’ asks Barbara, currying favour in the most sickly of fashions in Lucilla’s view. Nevertheless she hopes that her mother does. But no, she says that it is quite all right. Another day. But how well mannered of Barbara to offer.

  They go out into the garden. It is a fresh spring day, the sunshine filtering down through streaks of feathery grey cloud, providing pleasing intermittent warmth. They walk along the crazy-paving path her mother laid, the path that seems to meander but lead nowhere. ‘Do you like Crackerjack?’ Lucilla canvasses, still feeling the smart of deprivation.

  ‘I don’t watch much television,’ Barbara returns primly.

  ‘Oh!’ Lucilla is stumped for a second, but then she recovers, sure they will root out a common enthusiasm. ‘I love Champion the Wonder Horse and The Lone Ranger. When he shouts “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” and when that magnificent horse rears up it gives me goosebumps.’

  ‘Does it?’ says Barbara, as if rearing horses are awfully boring. She yawns so that Lucilla can see a shiny metal filling in her teeth.

  ‘Also Tenderfoot and Bronco.’ Lucilla is feeling awkward. Besides, she doesn’t really want to talk to this intruder. ‘Did you see the film Smiley?’ A look from Barbara that signifies she does not watch films either. Lucilla carries on staunchly. ‘It’s all about a man who buys a bike for his grandson. And he has these adventures on it, running up against criminals, selling drugs and things. It’s very exciting.’

  Barbara gives her a disdainful sidelong look. Lucilla squats down to examine a caterpillar making its way along a rose stem, having gorged itself on new mint-green leaves. ‘You could come to the Saturday morning pictures with me if you fancy it,’ Lucilla offers, her attention riveted on the rhythmic propulsion of the caterpillar. The creamy fat segments concertina and then expand. It is like a letter on the run from the alphabet, making a break for it. ‘I could ask my cousins to come along too. Their names are Rachel, she’s thirteen, and Frank, he’s fourteen. You’ll like Rachel. She’s kind. Frank can be rather mean sometimes but I ignore him. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ says Barbara, neutrally, walking toe to heel down the path.

  Her mother is delighted when Lucilla announces that they have made plans to go the pictures together the following Saturday, that she will ask the cousins to join them.

  ‘Oh, splendid. Getting to know the extended family. That’s right,’ she says.

  There are three cinemas close by, the Rex in East Finchley, known as the Flea Pit, the Gaumont in North Finchley and the Odeon in Muswell Hill. They settle on the Odeon. Right up until the last minute Frank threatens to go trainspotting instead of joining them. This is fine with Lucilla who would prefer he didn’t come. But thanks to her mother’s appeals, to her insistence that she wants her nephew to meet super-duper Barbara, he is persuaded. Now she comes to think of it, Frank and her mother have been conspiring a lot recently. She has no idea what all their whispering is about, but she has felt her cousin’s cold eyes lingering on her a lot of late. It as if he has a secret, that her mother has shared a secret with him.

  They meet Barbara there. On the way, Lucilla generously uses all her pocket money to buy them sweets. And she pays for their tickets with the allowance her father has given her. They cost a staggering nine pence each. She shudders as she pays out the grand total of three shillings and sixpence to the box-office attendant. She is relieved to see that Barbara doesn’t look quite so frilly today, trotting up to them in a serviceable blue dress with a russet-brown collar and cuffs. Frank stands apart from the party as they make their introductions, giving Barbara a lofty nod when she shyly glances his way. The cousins notice her blushing, and immediately start chuckling and casting lovesick looks at one another.

  They sit in a middle row. Frank, then Barbara, who nips between him and Rachel, and lastly Lucilla, plumped in the end seat before the aisle. She divides up the sweets as they settle themselves into the worn velvet seats. They are surrounded by countless other munching children as the Saturday morning shows are popular. When the lights go down an expectant hush falls. The curtains draw back as the eerie glowing funnel finds the screen. In Lucilla’s lap is her bag of sugary delights: sherbet dabs, pineapple cubes, rhubarb and custard sweets, chews and toffees. She has splashed out and they all have Tizer to drink, ensuring they have a hyped-up edge to their appreciation of the entertainment.

  As the main feature, a Western, opens with some atmospheric twanging guitar chords, Lucilla wriggles her shoulders. She is quite overcome with the thrill of it all. She inhales the stale-tobacco air, tainted with the hundreds of thousands of cigarettes smoked by adults at the evening showings. It is almost too much for her, this intimate nebulous setting and the euphoria it induces, this glimpse into fabulous America in the days when men built railways and warred with Indians. She glances to her right at the blur of Rachel’s profile. Her cousin’s wide eyes are fixed on the silvery screen, her jaw rotating with the determination of a cement mixer. Beyond her, Barbara is an ice maiden, looking braced rather than wide-eyed with heady anticipation, as if she is about to undergo the extraction of a deep splinter with tweezers and a needle.

  Throughout the film the youthful audience are spellbound, their sparkling eyes held by the giant flickering screen. Hands move from paper bags to mouths, from mouths to paper bags with a good deal of rustling. Ears prick to the tantalising hissy crackle of the spinning film reel. Galloping horses, their hammering hooves churning up the dust, cloudy snakes whittling out a passage across vast wastelands, prickly cactus rising from the desert like alien beings, cowboys’ hats pulled low against the blistering sun, gravelly voices thrumming in dry parched throats, frolicking saloon girls with plunging cleavages and feathers woven in their bouffant hairdos, chairs kicked back in a moment of tension, gunfighters’ arms akimbo itching to draw, the slide of metal from leather – too fast to see. And bang-bang! A man keels over, dead. Lucilla revels in the thrill of it, the life and death drama. It is, she decides, chomping busily, sublime.

  But now there is an interval in which the operator must change the reel. The spell is broken and the children grow restive. They start to boo and call out. Someone blows a loud raspberry. Cackles of laughter ensue. ‘Why are we waiting,’ belts out one bold boy and o
thers sing along, the chant swelling. Feet begin stamping, only a few to start with, and then more until the auditorium echoes with the human stampede.

  ‘They’re taking ages,’ grumbles Lucilla, drumming her own feet.

  ‘Don’t be so impatient,’ Frank reproves, his teenage voice breaking in the darkness.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Barbara is spooked, as if they have found a log’s worth of splinters running the length of her arm and amputation is the only cure.

  And while Frank launches into a detailed breakdown of what precisely is involved in changing a film reel, Rachel leans over Lucilla. Lips tickling her ear, she whispers, ‘Barbara loves Frank.’ The two cousins collapse into each other, helpless with mirth. The lights suddenly come up and the manager, Mr Babbage, materialises through the red velvet curtains of the main auditorium entrance. A short sweaty man in a creased suit, he trots down the aisle to face the troublemakers. Rays from the lamps reflects off his shining bald pate, and off the metallic grey polyester of his jacket.

  Centre stage, he briskly claps his hands. ‘Now just settle down. Do you hear me, settle down. We’ll have none of this tomfoolery at the Odeon. I won’t stand for it, d’you hear,’ he remonstrates in high nasal notes, nose in the air. ‘I’m the manager of this establishment and I won’t put up with it.’

  Who pitches the first sweet, a pineapple cube? Who has the sheer pluck? Who is the anarchist? It is Lucilla, who else. She is halfway up in her seat. There are hot spices in her blood and soldier ants on the march in her toes. In the arc of her arm is the energy of a flying cannonball. All that William Tell archery practice on cousin Rachel has paid off. Her aim is true. Plick! The sugar pellet strikes the baldhead and rebounds. The children hack out their laughs between wolf whistles. More boisterous singing. The manager gesticulates wildly. His short arms karate-chop the dimly lit, stifling air of cavernous theatre. The giant shadows of his stubby limbs leap on the ornately moulded walls.

  ‘Pipe down. That’s quite enough. You put a stop to this racket right now. Do you hear me, settle down. I am not having this sort of vandalism in the Odeon.’ The children are hyenas, hacking with laughter. More missiles adroitly aimed by other rebels ping off him. He raises an arm to shield his face. He is being stoned with lumps of sugar. Lucilla feels a restraining hand on her elbow.

  ‘Sit down and behave!’ rasps Frank, on his feet and louring over her, gusting aniseed breath. ‘You’re a disgrace!’ She wrenches herself away. ‘Your parents will have something to say about this.’

  ‘Not if you don’t tell them,’ Lucilla yells back.

  ‘Oh but I shall,’ he menaces.

  ‘Telltale tit! Your tongue will split! And all the little birdies shall have a little bit!’ taunts Lucilla, brazenly.

  ‘Ouch! That’s my toe, Frank,’ squeaks Rachel. ‘You stepped on me. Sit back down.’

  Muttering angrily that he would rather be on the platform of Clapham Junction jotting down train numbers, Frank returns to his seat.

  ‘I don’t like this, really I don’t,’ whimpers Barbara, her remark ignored by all three of her companions.

  ‘Now pay attention children,’ Mr Babbage continues, plucky under fire. ‘There will be no second half, no cartoons, no Mickey Mouse if you carry on like this. The show will finish right now.’ More screams of hilarity and brandishing of fists in the air, peppered liberally with a few rude signs.

  ‘Frank, I want to go home,’ Barbara bleats. ‘Take me home!’

  ‘You don’t have a home,’ hoots Lucilla, gaily.

  ‘Oh dry up you stupid cow!’ Frank rebuffs, ungallantly, talking over Lucilla, his forbearance at an end.

  ‘Oh how could you? How rude. I’m so … so miserable!’ mewls Barbara, clinging tenaciously to his arm.

  ‘I’m not having a ball either – so what!’ snarls Frank, trying to shake her loose. ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Oh, oh, and you were so nice!’ snivels Barbara. Though unused to callous teenage boys, she adheres to him as a shoreline limpet does to a rock.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Rachel, having lost track, distracted by the growing turmoil around her.

  ‘There. Have my sweets and put a sock in it!’ belts out Frank, thrusting his bag into Barbara’s lap, and disentangling himself from her with a less than chivalrous shove.

  Lucilla, the spirit of the revolution flowing through her blood, shouts at her guest. ‘Don’t be such a baby, Barbara!’ Barbara crumples in a gush of ungainly tears. But Lucilla doesn’t have time for sympathy. She is on a mission, off racing down the aisle, a sherbet fountain grasped threateningly in her hand. All around her come cries of encouragement. ‘Go to it.’ ‘You get the stuck-up prig.’ ‘Give it to him.’ Only yards from her prey, she crouches down. For a pin she pulls out the stick of liquorice, and carefully teases apart the paper seam of her sherbet grenade. She takes aim then hurls it with all her strength at Mr Babbage. She scores a direct hit. His mouth is open. The words flying from it are sent scurrying back on a flurry of lemon powder, generating a fit of fizzy coughing. It adheres to his sweat-slicked features, and it coats his suit jacket and his tie, as though he has been dipped in flour.

  Amidst the uproar, he blinks, sights his attacker and gives chase. They circle the seats, their shoes pounding the carpet. He stumbles. She dashes down one of the rows. He clambers after her, over hurdles of instantly straightened legs. She thunders along paths rapidly cleared of obstructive limbs. Lucilla is panting, alive with the high voltage of pure adrenalin coursing through her. But he is closing on his quarry fast. When she is caught up by her collar and frog-marched out of the theatre she is not in the least cowed. She puffs her chest out, her ears burning with the many echoes of exuberant praise. She is a heroine to her fellow cinema-goers. She gulps in a breath, winded by the lightning speed of her rise to fame. Mr Babbage, flushed with his exertion and wheezing asthmatically, deposits her unceremoniously outside the doors of his establishment.

  ‘You’re banned from the Odeon,’ he decrees. Arms up, he indicates that like Adam and Eve she is banished forever from the cinematic Eden, for she has tasted of the forbidden fruits of insubordination. ‘Banned, you little thug. Banned! Got that, squirt,’ he hollers, whisking hands dusting the sherbet off his clothes. He turns his back on the vagabond and pushes the heavy swing doors open. He is about to stride through them in belated and albeit sherbet-dusted victory, when the perpetrator of this dastardly crime jeers back.

  ‘Don’t care if I am! Don’t care a jot! I’ll go to the Rex instead. It’s better than this crummy dump any day.’

  He is robbed of speech, gaping at the insult as he wheels back on her. But, fleet of foot, she has scampered down the street. She mooches about for ten minutes, before she finds Rachel and Barbara taking cover in the sheltered doorway of a jeweller’s. Her cousin is trying unsuccessfully to pacify Barbara. The orphan’s cheeks are smudged with tears, and yellow pineapple and rosy rhubarb dribble.

  ‘There you are, Lucilla,’ says Rachel, thankfully. ‘We came after you but you’d gone. You were brilliant. That odious manager looked a riot all covered in sherbet. Did the rotter do anything to you?’

  ‘Nah, I was too quick for him,’ Lucilla assures, cockily, outlaw blood still pumping in her veins. Then as an afterthought she adds with pride, ‘Banned me from the Odeon.’

  ‘Oh what bad luck!’ says Rachel offering her a Black Jack from the few sweets she has left in her pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Lucilla, aglow with pride. She unwraps it and pops it in her mouth.

  ‘Frank’s going to snitch,’ Rachel adds dejectedly. ‘I told him not to, but he said Aunt Harriet should know.’ A pause while this blow sinks in. Barbara gives a dry sob. Temporarily forgotten they both glance at her, as does the jeweller shooing them away through the display window.

  Lucilla gives him a Black and White Minstrel wave. ‘Frightfully pretty rings,’ she mouths through the glass. ‘When I get engaged I’ll come back.’ She mimes putting one on her fing
er and admiring it, before returning her attention to her cousin. ‘Oh well,’ she sighs philosophically, ‘Barbara would have blabbed anyway. Still, I’m in no hurry to go home,’ she adds, grinning.

  ‘What d’you … d’you have to go and do it for,’ stutters shell-shocked Barbara, her breathing still rapid, her shoulders rocking with ugly emotions she has not previously experienced, closeted in the safe disciplined confines of Saint Teresa’s.

  ‘Aw, it was only a bit of fun,’ yips Lucilla, giving her a mock punch. Barbara flinches. But Lucilla shrugs it off good-humouredly. Her heart is still throbbing with the delirious empowering joy of it. ‘Did you see his face? Wow! He was steaming he was so mad.’

  Barbara casts a mournful eye over a display of watches and wilts. ‘But he threw you out. We didn’t get to watch the cartoons. And that was the only bit I really wanted to see.’

  ‘Didn’t you enjoy the Western?’ Lucilla wants to know, her cup definitely half full, her indomitable spirit busting to bestride this petty world. Her tongue by this time is stained from the Black Jack, and her lips are coated with dark saliva, giving her a gothic attraction.

  ‘No, I was really fed up actually. Nothing but horses and guns.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ exclaims Lucilla, incredulous that anyone could not be a fan of Westerns. Horses and guns! And those incredible cactus, tall as prickly people. Could you honestly ask for more, she ruminates. ‘Did either of you throw any of your sweets at him?’ she inquires innocently, hoping to have led by example.

  ‘Three Parma violets,’ Rachel confesses shyly. ‘And … and I’m almost certain one hit him.’

  ‘Oh brilliant,’ congratulates Lucilla, reflecting if she only achieved one convert then all is not in vain.

  Barbara shakes the brown paper bag she is clutching by the neck. ‘Of course not. It was a dreadful thing to do. And I’ve had a perfectly horrid morning.’

  ‘Oh don’t start up again, Barbara,’ says Lucilla, her tone defiantly unrepentant, the bright sides of this unlooked for day revealing themselves to her like a many-faceted diamond. ‘Because I had a blast. Though I’m still hungry. Typical, I dropped my sweets in the rush.’ She has finished the Black Jack and wouldn’t mind a second.