by Anne Berry
I expend unusual effort readying myself for the occasion. I wash my hair and, with it turbaned on my head run a scented bath, jasmine essence. I shave my legs and pumice the soles of my feet, pleased that they are still within reach. Getting out, I towel dry, then apply deodorant, body lotion, talc and, finally, perfume, the simple scent of a rose. If the examination is on smell alone, the officer’s olfactory receptors will be quivering, and I shall pass with distinction. I dress in a white blouse, a fawn skirt, a navy jacket and suede court shoes. Corporate. Classic. I fuss with my hair attempting to pin it up, but as it keeps sliding free I resort to tying it back in a short ponytail. I put on my oval topaz earrings set in silver, and my locket with a curl of Merlin’s hair tucked in it for luck. Even as I go through this ritual I feel absurd, like a bride trying in vain to beautify herself, although she knows she is destined to be jilted at the altar.
I put my life, my letters, my certificates, my few childhood photographs and the one or two I possess of my adoptive parents into a plastic sleeve.
A friend from the estate’s gift shop runs me to the station. The weather when I arrive at Victoria can be classed without fear of exaggeration as not just raining cats and dogs, but lions and tigers as well. I trudge along, the envelope tucked under my jacket, my umbrella open, obscuring the dismal drenched streets, my suede shoes sodden and squelching.
We are a brother and sisterhood of sorts, sitting in the waiting room of the London Passport Interview Offices. Our various ancestry is written large over our faces: Indian, Jamaican, African, Chinese, South American, Asian … German? From all the corners of the globe we have come, we nomads seeking a land to pitch our tents, to raise our children, a country we can call our own, an identity, a sense of belonging. A squabble of languages buzz in my restricted but still functional good ear; however the cadence, the intonation, the inflexions are all gobbledegook. But fear, insecurity and vulnerability – this tongue is universal. When the bell rings and my number flashes, flesh turns to stone. It takes a supreme effort for me to hoist myself up and out of my chair. With damp, squishing steps, I make my way to the inset compartment where my interrogator awaits. The gentleman sits behind a desk scowling at my paperwork. He looks Indian.
‘Mrs Ryan, please take a seat.’ I have to concentrate on the process involved in accomplishing this instruction. I am dripping onto the floor, as if gradually melting. Sitting has suddenly become an Olympic sport. I flounder, tip, subside, wibble-wobble into a kind of erect posture. My interviewer introduces himself as Mr Gajarin. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind, Mrs Ryan,’ he begins, assessing me shrewdly with darting beady eyes. I half expect him to switch on a lamp and direct the beam straight into my face. And then he is off.
‘I beg your pardon?’ I say. Then, ‘Could you say that again, please?’ His voice is soft, his accent treacly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that?’ Still straining my stuffed ears, ‘Could you run that by me again?’ His eyes pierce me, dark as wet peat. Does he think I am mocking him, feigning deafness deliberately in a wilful attempt at antagonising him? I consider telling him about my ear infections, that I am prone to them, that often when they are healing I am hard of hearing, but that the impairment is only temporary. On second thoughts, he may take this infirmity into consideration. It may cause him to consider whether I will tax the resources of the NHS. I lick parched lips and perform, with an intelligent judder of my chin, a pretence of having heard him. ‘What was that? Perhaps you could rephrase that last sentence? A thousand apologies but I was distracted by the bell. If you would only repeat the question more slowly?’
My documents, my certificates and my photographs are strewn all over the desk. Without intending to, I have embarked on my history. I am telling my disjointed story. Granted it is an abridged version, though complete with all the pertinent facts. I gabble frantically, in my excess hoping to include whatever this powerful servant of Her Majesty is listening for, whatever dates may sway him in my petition. Glancing at me now and again, he makes copious notes. When I pause for breath, like a cat that up till now has only been toying with a mouse, he pounces.
‘You changed your first name very recently by deed poll from Lucilla to Laura. Why was that?’
I gulp. This man, with his face as closed as a sealed can, has no receptive chink in the set of his features. How can I possibly communicate to him the reason a mature woman in her fifties, married with children of her own, casts off her name of half a century to adopt another. ‘I … I … I …’ I tail off weakly, eyes curtained.
‘You?’ prompts Mr Gajarin after a few seconds’ hesitation. Mrs Ryan, Mrs Laura Ryan, you?
‘I … I didn’t like it.’ And there it is, the card trick extraordinaire, climax of the magician’s repertoire, belly-flopping painfully before her one-man audience.
A pause so long it must be reclassified as a silence. ‘Ah!’ I am unsure how to categorise this exclamation.
I lift my eyes to his and, guessing that he requires more detail, sally on. ‘Actually, if you want to know, I’ve always hated it. My birth mother gave me the name. I was baptised Lucilla before the Pritchards adopted me. I was three and half months old when she handed me over. She didn’t really know me at all, what I was like, my personality. I wasn’t girly. I was more of a tomboy. Lucilla’s a girly name. It didn’t feel like me. Besides it sounds like a scream. Then I decided to travel, to visit my son in Australia. For that a passport is a required. I’ve never been abroad before, so up until now I coped without one. The moment had come to change it, because I couldn’t stand to see that name in my passport. It would have been a lie. Because … because a passport is going to announce to the world who I really am. And I’m not Lucilla. I never have been. I’m Laura, you see.’
Mr Gajarin has stopped making notes and is looking up, jaw slack, his dark eyes stretched in amazement. Perhaps he has deduced that applicant number sixty-eight is barking mad. But it is of no consequence. I am Laura, legally Laura. Not even the Queen can take that from me. Mr Gajarin flips to a fresh page in his pad. He means business. He flexes the muscles of his down-turned lips. ‘What is the date of your mother’s birth?’ he fires at me, a birth certificate held close to his chest like an answer card in Trivial Pursuit, except that this pursuit is anything but trivial.
Sweat pricks my armpits. My pumping heart seems to rise, blocking my throat. ‘Which … which one?’ I quaver.
Mr Gajarin lifts his impressive eyebrows and brushes a speck of dust from his grey suit. ‘Which one?’ he queries, alert for my reaction.
‘Which … which … which mother?’ I stammer, my film of decorum rupturing in one, two, three tears. Casually, I flick them off my cheek as if they are insects that have randomly alighted there. ‘My … my real mother? Do you mean her? My birth mother? Bethan Haverd? Well, Bethan Sterry after she married. The one in Wales. Or my adoptive mother? Harriet Pritchard? The one in England.’
His brows relax marginally. ‘Bethan Haverd, your Welsh birth mother,’ he qualifies after a second’s pause.
And suddenly put on the spot, my brain cells are rinsed to a dazzling whiteness, far beyond the realms of biological science. Recalling the names of my children, my husband, let alone my real mother’s date of birth, taxes me far beyond my current limited faculties. Distantly, a bell sounds. I spare a charitable thought for the other anxiety-ridden applicants, lives in tow, trouping into the compartments to beg, borrow or steal that most elusive of treasures – a British passport! Now was it the eighth or the ninth? The ninth or the eighth? For the love of God I do not know. I screw up my forehead and slam shut my eyes, prompting my photographic memory. But the certificate that forms there is undeveloped. Mr Gajarin’s eyes vacillate from the actual document in his grasp to my anguished face then back again.
‘The eighth. No, no, I mean the ninth. No wait a second, it was the eighth. The eighth of August nineteen twenty-seven. Or was it nineteen twenty-eight? No, it was nineteen twenty-seven. Yes that’s it
. I’m certain of it now.’
The tribulation of the black chair in Mastermind does not compare to the agony I am undergoing, toe-curling, thigh-rubbing, buttock-clenching agony.
‘The eighth you say?’ confirms the crafty Mr Gajarin, eyes locked on mine. I nod desperately. He makes an entry on the pad by his side. ‘Do you have a bank account, Mrs Ryan?’
I have to focus. A beat, then, I answer, ‘Mmm … yes, yes I do. With Barclays.’ I give a cardboard smile, a losing smile. ‘I’ve had it for years,’ I add, a dash more assertively.
‘For years?’ Mr Gajarin sits forwards with renewed interest. ‘And precisely how many years would that be, Mrs Ryan?’ His words ping out, gaining speed, momentum. My tongue is as dry as an airing cupboard. Oh for God’s sake, as if it matters. Mr Gajarin’s relentless gaze says that it does. How many? How many years have I held the damn thing? I pluck at my watchstrap. Either my wrist has swollen on the instant, or I have fastened it too tightly. ‘Mrs Ryan?’
‘Twenty-five.’ The number bursts from me, as good as any other. ‘About … well, roughly twenty-five. I can’t be quite sure, but it’s approximately that. I mean it’s an estimate, but probably close. Close enough anyway.’ I squirt out a giggle. Mr Gajarin’s face says that he is as amused as a gravedigger who has dug himself into a hole he cannot clamber out of.
But he is only teasing me. Now he lets fly his killing thrust. ‘Your father, Mrs Ryan, your German father, have you been to see him?’
‘No.’
‘Never. Not once?’
‘No!’ I shriek, and then hurriedly collect myself and cough loose my clenched throat. ‘Sorry. I’m feeling the strain a bit.’ Re-entry at a lower, more sedate pitch. ‘I … I haven’t made any attempt to trace him. None at all.’
The tinned face registers nothing but another entry is made on the pad. ‘So you have not communicated at all with your German relations?’ says the persistent Mr Gajarin, after a hiatus in which we eye each other like sworn enemies.
‘No, no! I didn’t see the point. I was going to find my mother initially and then …’ I sigh as if about expire. ‘Well, when that didn’t work out, not the way I expected it to, I didn’t want to risk it.’
He gives an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Thank you, Mrs Ryan. I think we’ll leave it there,’ he says suddenly, drawing the interview to an abrupt close.
And in trice I am filled with dismay. I have failed, failed the exam. You can see it in his conquering eyes. I have the losing hand. I am not Bethan Haverd’s daughter. I am not Thorston Engel’s daughter. I am not Harriet and Merfyn Pritchard’s daughter. I am not German. And if my own country is disowning me, then who the hell am I? I compress my lips firmly to stop from crying out. Mr Gajarin is rising to his feet, signifying that now the interview really is over and done with. My eyes rove up his smart suit, over his clashing pink and orange tie, and hold his. ‘If there is anything else, anything at all you want to know, please ask,’ I implore, with impressive vibrato, blinking fast.
‘We’re finished,’ comes Mr Gajarin’s clipped tones, as if he is ending a passionate love affair, as if I am a woman irremediably scorned.
‘Are you certain?’ I ask, fumbling with my certificates, attempting to bundle them together into some kind of order.
Mr Gajarin speaks brusquely. ‘If you could leave all these with me, please, Mrs Ryan. We will send them back to you.’
‘Oh! But they’re the only –’
‘Don’t worry. We understand that these are the originals. We will look after them, return them to you by registered post,’ he informs me, his face impartial.
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ I rise in stages, my legs all flesh and no bone. ‘Would you like the plastic sleeve?’ I offer.
‘No, you may take that.’ Mr Gajarin is impatient, adjusting his tie and then glancing at his watch. I give a forlorn look at my life scattered over this man’s desk, this man who seems impervious to my sorrow. ‘You need not concern yourself about your documents, Mrs Ryan. Please. We do this every day. You should hear from us very soon.’ He extends a hand to me and I shake it, dazedly. Then it is concluded and I am stumbling out of the passport office into the rain.
Descending to the tube train, I pause to fumble in my handbag for my pocket diary. The previous night I revised like a schoolgirl. I went through all my papers and jotted down the figures I ought to recall if asked. Running a finger down the page, I find my mother, my biological mother, Bethan Haverd’s date of birth. It is 9 August 1928. I gave the incorrect date to Mr Gajarin. If it was an exam, and that is what it felt like, I had failed.
I was ill conceived in 1947 in the uneasy quiet of the still primed guns. My father scampered away like a beaten dog. My mother exported me in utero to London to find a couple, any would do, who would import me. The Pritchards had sought a baby the way you might some ambitious plan for improving your home, an extension, or the latest model cooker, fridge or vacuum cleaner. But when the years revealed that I was the wrong specification, their resentments towards me bred like the files of temperance accounts. If they could have exchanged me for a more efficient design, one better adapted for their purposes, say a Barbara, they would have. Now, I have been offered to my country. And they too have inspected me and found me wanting. Self-pity threatens to swamp me. I am on verge of going home to broadcast to Henry that Her Majesty’s passport officer has seen fit to deny me a British passport. Consequently, I am going to have to throw myself on the mercy of the German government, and how does he like the idea of settling in the Black Forest, when I apply the brakes. I am going to claw back some of this unholy day, I resolve.
Alighting at Covent Garden, I cross Waterloo Bridge and then make my way to the Royal Festival Hall. As I walk along the embankment the rain, which has eased off to a sparkling mizzle, evaporates. The sun, scurrilous wench that she is, immodestly sheds satin grey scarves of cloud. By and by, I come to the London Eye. The clear pods suspended from the circular frame glitter in the burst of afternoon sunshine, like mouth-watering alien fruits, ripe and waiting to be picked. The River Thames is a pewter lizard slithering by. The tang of silt and refuse hits the back of my throat. As it does so the years keel over like skittles.
A girl and her father sit companionably on a bench and peruse river life. She swallows a mouthful of spam sandwich, washing it down with squash brighter than a ripe tangerine. She sniffs sewage, rubbish and oil, all embedded in the muddy sediment of the riverbank. And she reflects, she reflects on Guy, Guy the gorilla at London zoo, who arrived there as a baby in 1947 clutching a tin hot-water bottle, on Guy the adult male who was reputedly said to be so gentle that he caught a fluttering bird in his hand and let it go unharmed.
No longer a little girl, at some invisible stop sign I halt. As I stare up at the wheel it occurs to me that I haven’t ridden on it. The showers have dried up. The sky is a glass paperweight. What is the sensation like of standing in the highest pod, at the very tip-top of the great Ferris wheel? North, south, east and west, all of London, the city and the suburbs and the country, must lie at your feet like a map. I crave that altitude for some inexplicable reason. I am officially nobody, an ageing woman without a passport, without an identity. But damn it, I have a right to ride the London Eye, to survey the city I grew up in.
My mind made up, I go and buy a ticket. There is a queue but the minutes seem to glide by. The bubbles are constantly in motion, dipping and rising, but slowly, gracefully, so that I can climb aboard with dignity. Among my fellow passengers are the ubiquitous Japanese tourists, a group all busy clicking their cameras. There is a trio of men in business suits, deep in conference, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. I guess they have hightailed it out of the London Stock Exchange to clinch a deal in the sky. Two elderly ladies are sharing a bar of chocolate. They munch and look, and look and munch. And there is a mother with her small daughter. They are holding hands, the child and the woman, and pointing in awe.
I am in awe too. I position myself
at one of the tapered ends of the pod and drink in the monumental panorama. Distantly, I can make out Leith Hill, the tower, and majestic Windsor Castle. And to the north, Alexandra Palace. Eastwards, I can see all the way to Gravesend. And there is the Greenwich Observatory. I exhale in wonder at the dome of St Paul’s, remembering tiptoeing around the Whispering Gallery with my adoptive father, my legs bowing under me, the banging of my heart in my ears. And now I am poised in heaven sailing above that dome. I am high as a bird in free flight. I am flying, not off Beachy Head but over London, the city where I grew up. I think I spot Bowes Park where I lived with Henry and his family and Aunt Ethel. And Primrose Hill. Moving outwards, my eyes sweeping in concentric circles, the tall buildings have thinned to rows of terraced houses. And roaming further there is a patchwork of browns and purples and greens, and the long silver runner of the Thames idling by. The great river with its source in the Cotswolds, meandering through Oxford and Windsor before flowing on to London, and from thence to Dartford, Tilbury and Gravesend, before entering the Thames Estuary, near Southend-on-Sea, coming finally to the North Sea. I look in the direction of Surrey. It strikes me in my pod in heaven what a superfluity of countryside there is. Fields and trees and hedgerows. It is my home, I think. I may not have a passport or a name, but it is where I belong.
Our revolution through 360 degrees of spectacular views ends. I become one of the ant people strolling along the embankment. I ring Henry on my mobile phone.
‘How did it go? I was worried,’ he says.
‘I don’t think I got it,’ I tell him, resigned.
‘Laura, don’t be silly. The interview was protocol, that’s all. They had to tick a box. It’s what they do.’
‘But I gave some wrong answers,’ I tell him, feeling dejected.
‘Wrong answers! Laura, it wasn’t a test.’
