A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I hoped they weren’t expecting thanks. I glanced at their faces and saw that they weren’t. They looked as if they were being eaten alive by ants. Possibly, they feared that I was devastated at their news and was going to exhibit some extreme form of reaction, which they would be required to address. Luckily for them, as parents they were distinctly average, and it was a relief – actually gratifying – to realise that we weren’t related. Now I had a chance of being born again. To a superior sort of parent. The only part of the drama that I didn’t like was that as a baby – me, precious me! – I’d been passed about like a handful of beans. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it to the point that I decided not to think about it. If a thought was not going to lead anywhere good, I would block it.

  ‘Does Lizbet know?’ I said.

  They shook their heads. Daddy took a small step back into the room and said, ‘We thought that you should be the one to tell her. That is, if you want to.’

  My chest felt hot and tight. I was thirteen and cast-iron selfish, but even I could see that the news would be a loss to Lizbet. It would make her feel alone. They had no idea. They didn’t understand her. They hadn’t taken the trouble to get to know their own child. Instead, they’d spent all these years kissing up to me, because I was the one who was meant not to feel special. They didn’t understand me either. Now I knew they weren’t my real parents I felt very special indeed.

  And yet. What did it mean for me and Lizbet? For a second it felt like we were forcibly being torn apart, and I was drowning in rage, before I realised that for me, nothing would change how I felt about her. But it was other people – with their prying ways and their pathetic need for concrete definition – that you had to worry about. I could imagine it. ‘Oh, so you’re not actually sisters . . . so what is she . . . your . . . half . . . No! Your . . . step? No . . . your adopted . . . ah, she’s their real child . . . yes, that’s right, I do have the emotional intellect of a gnat . . .’ I couldn’t give a toss what other people said, but Lizbet would.

  ‘I’m not going to say a word,’ I said. ‘I want it to stay a secret.’

  Daddy cleared his throat. ‘Cassie, if you want to trace your original parents, we will support you. I have a number of documents in my possession. Or rather, in the bank’s possession. I can retrieve them at any time.’

  Mummy assumed a sad face.

  I looked at my new pink Casio digital. ‘It’s four oh-six, and seventeen seconds. The bank shuts at four thirty. So, if you break the speed limit you should make it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Daddy. ‘Right then. Absolutely. Okidoke.’

  He got the box and gave it to me. I snatched it from his trembling hands without a word, raced upstairs, and placed it on my bedspread. I stared at it, my heart beating fast. And then, in a fast, fierce movement, I shoved it under the bed, pushing it far away from me, into the furthest, darkest corner, until you wouldn’t know it was there. Perhaps I thought about that box every day. But I didn’t touch it again for years and years. Because what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Or the people you love. I could comfort myself with my secret when Daddy or Mummy were infuriating, and then when the moment passed, brush it off as if it were a dream. As long as my origin remained a glorious figment of my imagination, I was in charge. I had the power. But once I let the facts into my head, they would control me. It was impossible for this to be otherwise, as they pertained to the body, the soul, the very start of me. The details in that box might rip out my heart. Curiosity was a mild irritant, but nothing in the face of fear like this. By doing nothing, I determined that nothing would change, and it didn’t. People moan about ‘being in limbo’, but actually, I found limbo the safest place to be.

  I might have kept the past at bay for ever, but eight years later, I met George. Well, not George himself – George’s parents. Then I began to wonder what I’d been deprived of. Ivan Hershlag had a thick Russian accent, despite living nearly all his life in the East End, and remained at odds with the modern world when it suited him. Sheila Hershlag ran the house around him. She was a refined version of the Jewish mother cliché. She was desperate for you to eat, but this wasn’t necessarily a bother, because her food was delicious. (I’m not saying I ate it. I can eat a whole ball of mozzarella, same as the next woman, but I can’t always eat under pressure.)

  They idolised George.

  ‘Isn’t he so handsome!’ Mrs Hershlag would cry, cupping his face in her hands. ‘This is my baby!’

  ‘Mm,’ I’d say. And then, because it wasn’t enough for her: ‘Yes, he is handsome.’

  Not that I wasn’t one of George’s biggest fans. He was difficult, with a high intellect, an even higher self-opinion and a nasty sense of humour. I loved that. He reminded me of myself. And he was tall, with an artistic frame, and dashing eyebrows. The role of the eyebrow in a man’s general attraction has been severely underrated. So Mrs Hershlag was right, her son was handsome. I just don’t like to have my emotions choked out of me.

  Out of thin air, Mrs Hershlag could recall the time of day that George took his first step (after lunch, at eleven and a half months). The first thing he ate (puréed rusk and milk ‘with a dot of sugar’, in his blue spotted bowl), the age at which he caught chicken pox (three weeks after his first birthday, leaving him with two scars, one on his right ankle and one above left of his belly button), his favourite toy (his Soo panda puppet, from The Sooty Show, the nose fell off and he sewed on a new one, in green), his first word (addressed to a yellow rose in the garden – ‘fower’), the midwife’s comment when he popped out (‘What a lovely round head!’).

  Mr Hershlag might not have his wife’s Terminator-like instant recall for events of over thirty years ago, but he was an expert on the minutiae of George’s daily life. George worked at the BBC Radio Four Drama Department as a broadcast assistant (another term for ‘secretary’). To hear Mr Hershlag talk, you’d have thought George was in fact the director general. You’d have also thought that Mr Hershlag worked on the next desk.

  Actually, Mr Hershlag was a tailor. I could never step in the house in my vintage Donna Karan raw silk evening coat without him crying, ‘Why are you wearing a schmutter? Let me make you up a proper coat!’ George would shout, ‘Dad! She doesn’t want you to make her a coat!’ and Mrs Hershlag would echo, ‘Leave her alone, she doesn’t want a coat!’ The conversation would persist for quite a while before Mr Hershlag sadly pocketed his tape measure and left the room. Thirty seconds later he’d bounce back in with, ‘Your jacket’s no good – let me make you a jacket!’

  When he wasn’t threatening heavy linings, he was discussing office politics with George. No detail was too mundane for his attention.

  ‘So I’m the one who has to stand on the street to welcome Sir Ian out of the taxi . . .’

  ‘What was he wearing, on top, like?’

  ‘A bomber jacket.’

  ‘He doesn’t trust their security? . . . Did you get a feel of the lining?’

  Mr Hershlag had an intimate knowledge of the eating habits of George’s colleagues. (‘Josie had a Twix? Since when does she eat a Twix? She has a Galaxy bar, every day she has a Galaxy bar, what’s with the Twix all of a sudden?’)

  He knew every link in the creative process, from the writers, the lazy good-for-nothing freelance writers – ‘This is the fourth, fifth draft! What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she listen? You should write the play, yes, you could write a very good play, you have a great imagination, ah, so Josie doesn’t think you can write, what does she know? You give her the play, you say it’s by someone else, she says she loves it, you surprise her, I’m the writer, so there, bang!’

  – to listener preferences – ‘He suggested a murder, for the afternoon play? There was swearing? What is he, mad? This is Radio Four! He doesn’t know a thing!’

  – to the flighty nature of actors – ‘He dropped out the day before recording? Bloody chutzpah. Don’t tell me! He got the movie offer! Thes
e actors, they want to do the wireless, the radio, they can’t wait to do radio, they kill to do radio, but the minute they get the movie offer or the TV – radio? Who cares about radio? They disappear, you don’t see them again!’

  – to the tricks of the trade – ‘It was too long? So you put it through the time scratch! You lose two minutes, who knows the difference!’

  Meanwhile, Mrs Hershlag noticed if George was going to be ill, up to two days in advance. ‘He gets a touch of redness around his mouth. I think it’s lack of iron.’ Then, in a hushed voice, ‘You could always put fresh chicken stock in a pilaf.’

  If George was ill, it was defcon 1. ‘When he’s poorly, he likes to lie on the sofa, underneath a nice thick duvet, watch anything starring Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis, drink Ribena, and eat plain crisps. Walkers are fine. He won’t eat home-made.’

  It was like she was in a time warp and George was still twelve. However, although she was giving me this information for a reason, I think she knew that I wasn’t going to follow up on any of it. And yet, she hoped. It irritated me, at first, the way they adored him, and how he took it as a given. My reaction, when George was malingering on the sofa, was to say, ‘You wouldn’t cut it in the SAS.’

  ‘I might not ring every day,’ said Mrs Hershlag to me, once. ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance. But George, and you, are always –’ tapping her head – ‘in here.’

  They were the most warm-hearted, generous people I knew, and it took my breath away. While the fiercest rays fell on George, I felt myself thaw in the sunshine of their love – they weren’t mean with their affection. It was a revelation that parents could be this wonderful. Lizbet and I were absurdly fond of Mummy and Daddy. If pressed we might even admit to the L word. But it was a frustrating, disgruntled, rolly-eyed sort of affection because – apart from once living in the same house – we had little in common with our parents, we didn’t always respect their choices. Time spent with them felt like a duty.

  But Sheila and Ivan astounded me with the selflessness of their love. With George and me, they deferred their needs instinctively. If their son behaved towards them in a way that was less than ideal, they bore their disappointment in a truly adult way. No sulks, no anger, no petty retribution, they merely absorbed it. It made me realise how much of a child Vivica was in her parenting. She had been the baby of her family, cloyingly close to her mother (dead, of cancer, six months before Lizbet was born). I now saw Mummy’s unconscious wish to remain a daughter for ever.

  Sheila and George were parental prototypes, and their pure unfiltered love made me realise how much, as a child, I had missed. Now I better understood Vivica, but I wasn’t sure I forgave her. I didn’t really care about her pathological desires. My feeling was, you have a kid, you become a parent: you put your babies first. I’d bet that Sheila had needs – she just ignored them because she felt that George was more important. I know that’s not ideal from a feminist perspective, but, fuck it, I’m speaking as the child here.

  I worshipped Mrs Hershlag, as the ideal mother. Her love was addictive. The more I got, the more I wanted. It made me wonder. It made me hope. I was twenty-six and a half years old. I had graduated from Cambridge with a first in Law. I was making tracks as a family barrister at a prestigious chambers. I was a married woman approaching her fifth anniversary. And for the first time in my life, the truth hit me: inside I was still a child and I wanted my mummy – my true and natural mother, who was surely somewhere out there desperate to show that kind of love to me.

  I dragged out the box from under the bed and opened it.

  Chapter 8

  There was a brown envelope inside the box, stuffed with old papers. I pulled them out with clumsy fingers. There was a pounding in my head, but if it was excitement I crushed it like a king crushing a peasants’ revolt. I skimmed the various headings – ‘National Health Service INNER LONDON EXECUTIVE COUNCIL’, ‘National Children Adoption Association’, whipping through the pages, scattering them over the kitchen counter. It was covered in buttery rye toast crumbs, where George had eaten breakfast, but it was important that I didn’t care.

  A sentence typed on a manual typewriter caught my eye.

  No Affiliation Order has been made against the alleged father; he cannot, therefore, in law be named.

  Mick Jagger! I knew it!

  I recognised the spidery handwriting of my father-to-be, on the back of a white sheet. ‘Mother Sarah Paula Blatt 24 Latimer Road Edgware’. Mother? My mother? Sarah Paula Blatt! Sarah Paula Blatt. Wow. She was from Edgware. Crazy. I squinted. The next line read ‘Baked Bean’. I looked again. Ah. ‘Baby Born’ and my birth date. ‘New name Cassandra Gabriella’. I riffled through dry yellowing papers until I found the one headed ‘NATIONAL CHILDREN ADOPTION ASSOCIATION’.

  Dear Mr and Mrs Montgomery,

  We are pleased . . . blah blah . . . two forms . . . completed . . . signed . . . consent . . . mother . . . birth certificate for Jane Susan Blatt born on the . . .

  Excuse me? Jane Susan? Jane Susan Blatt! Good Lord. Save yourself the bother – name me ‘Human Being Number One’. You might as well! Thank God I was adopted! I mean, at least act like you care! Jane Susan. I was Jane Susan. I tried to imagine myself as her, going through life, quiet and dull. She was a different person entirely. I thought of Mummy and Daddy, renaming me Cassandra Gabriella, probably the most glamorous and elaborate name that Mummy could think of – probably she’d read it in Vogue – and I felt a flash of gratitude. She and Daddy had done their best. They really had.

  I rang home before I could change my mind. Daddy picked up. This was rare, for him. He spent all day, every day at work, answering the phone, and he point-blank refused to answer it at home. It was the one job our mother couldn’t force him to do.

  ‘I opened the box,’ I said.

  ‘Did you indeed. Did you indeed. The time was right, was it? Well, we all need to know where we came from. I don’t blame you one bit. Quite right! Good for you, Cassie!’

  My heart squished. Daddy was king of the perfect pleasantry, the gentle affirmation. It was part of why he was such a great concierge – he was courteous, kindly, without being over-familiar. He made the hotel guests feel comfortable, and cared for. The trouble was, the perfect pleasantry wasn’t entirely appropriate for a father–daughter relationship, as it made Lizbet and me feel uncared for. As if he were maintaining a cautious distance. But a pleasantry is also a tactic to mask emotion, and I knew that Daddy’s professionalism was furiously battling against his private sadness and regret. How did I know? Because he was a plain old human being who’d brought me up as his own, and at that moment, the most rational man in the world would have felt abandoned and betrayed.

  ‘Jane Susan!’ I said, to make a joke of my treachery. ‘Jane Susan? What the hell sort of name is that? Just call me Bore Bore Blatt – I don’t care!’

  He laughed – a valiant effort, even if he did sound like a cat coughing up a hairball. ‘You were probably named after someone, Cassie.’

  ‘Really.’ I knew I sounded petulant, but if I took the juvenile stance, they were obliged to be grown up about it.

  ‘One second, dear. Mummy wants to speak with you.’

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Bore Bore Blatt here.’

  ‘Oh, darling!’ The tone was sympathetic but I thought I detected a smile in her voice.

  I tore through the rest of the papers. ‘Is . . . is everything here?’

  Mummy coughed. ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. Why? Do you think that something is . . . missing?’

  I paused. ‘If she . . . my . . . Sarah Paula had written to me . . . to the adoption agency . . . afterwards – would they have passed it on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But, there’s nothing here. No . . . notes or anything.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right. Ok. That’s fine. I just, you know, wondered.’

  There was an intake of breath, then Mummy spoke in a rush. ‘Cassie, darling, we do know that
your mother was very young when she had you. Twelve. What? What, Geoffrey? Eighteen. And divorce then was a disgrace, but getting pregnant when you were unmarried . . . my golly, it was all we thought about, it was our greatest fear, I don’t know how she could have been so stupid as to let it happen! The shame of it, I can’t tell you. You must have caused – well, not you – but your mother falling pregnant, it must have caused a great deal of sadness and trauma. Yes, she gave you up but she was probably just doing as she was told. In those days, you didn’t argue. Her parents probably convinced her to get on with her life.’ Mummy paused, sighed. Then she said, ‘She must look around now, at all these single mothers, and kick herself. She probably thinks of you a lot.’

  Mummy never spoke like this. It must have cost her. I replied, ‘I think of Sarah Paula aged eighteen and I want to smack her round the face.’

  Mummy laughed with a slight hysterical edge. ‘I could never understand a woman who would give away her baby. But,’ she added, ‘her loss was our gain.’

  I nodded. Yikes! Any indication of a mushy emotion scared the life out of me. In a perverse way I hankered for it, but it was always a struggle to accept when it came. Once, I was washing up my favourite bone-china coffee can, wearing my white Splendid top – a favourite of Teri Hatcher in Desperate Housewives, since you ask – and Mrs Hershlag came up behind me and rolled up my sleeves. I stiffened, as it felt like a criticism. Then I realised – she was being maternal! Not patronising, loving. Not invading my space, helping. If I was to find my real mother, I’d better get used to all that stuff.

  ‘I’ll speak to you later,’ I told Vivica. ‘Thanks.’

  Then I ran upstairs and hit Google. I typed in ‘Trace birth mother’ and a million references jumped on-screen. I clicked on adoptionfamilynetwork.com. ‘WANT TO BE REUNITED ON TV?’ I clicked back. There was a British website called helpmefind and I called it up and saw line after line after line, page after page after page, of people looking for family members.