Are You My Mother?

by Louise Voss

  About halfway through the show, by which time I’d given up all hope of Gavin arriving, there was a hiatus in the proceedings. The doctor who founded the Teenage Cancer Trust came on stage to be presented with a cheque for a million pounds by the band. He gave a little speech of thanks, and when he announced that ‘some of his cancer sufferers are in the audience tonight,’ a couple of the group of teenagers leaped up and punched the air in recognition. The well meaning, middle-class crowd didn’t know what to do – wanting to applaud their bravery, but cognisant of the fact that it wasn’t at all appropriate to cheer somebody just because they had cancer.

  I couldn’t stop wondering what these kids were thinking; how they felt. Were they gazing at the thousands and thousands of healthy adults surrounding them, in seats and stalls and boxes: boxes of people all stacked on top of one another like battery hens, only a tiny percentage of them as unlucky as they were, and thinking it’s not fair? Were they wondering if they too would ever get old enough to come to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in celebration of a band whose records they adored thirty years ago?

  Suddenly my own gripes seemed unutterably trivial in comparison. Hormones – I was lucky that they were at least predictable. Missing Mum and Dad – well, yes, that was a loss. But it was nearly ten years ago, and I had my whole life in front of me. As for Gavin – I needed to stop moaning about him and decide whether to accept him, warts and all, or not. I knew he was unreliable, always late, dodgy – but hell, no-one was perfect. Stella was always trying to make out that the reason I didn’t ditch him was down to my own lack of self-esteem – but she read too many teen magazines. She had no idea, yet, how much you had to compromise in life; she was still young and beautiful enough to believe that she should have the best of everything, all the time. And as a matter of fact, I thought Gavin was good for me, on the whole. He was often sweet, generous, fun and, as far as I knew, faithful.

  Pulling myself together, I resolved henceforward to give him more of a break. He would almost certainly have had a reason for not showing up at the gig – after all, he loved The Who as well. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me and surely, if I met him halfway, then he’d be less cavalier about standing me up in future. He was a true original, and I was lucky to have him.

  So after the final encore, I bounded out of the Albert Hall, my ears ringing, on an adrenaline high from being at a great concert, thankful that Stella and I were both fortunate enough to be alive, healthy, housed, happy enough, and that I had a bloke who loved me. As I delved in my bag to get some money to throw into the Teenage Cancer Trust collection buckets, I noticed that there was a message on my phone. I dialled in to retrieve it, and it was Gavin.

  ‘Yeah, Emma, listen. I’m sick of this. My bloody car got towed away and I’ve had to go and get it from the bloody pound, and it’s been a nightmare. The battery on my mobile ran down after your message so I couldn’t call you back. But you never cut me any slack, do you? I can’t always be there at your beck and call. I was looking forward to the gig too… Anyway, what with one thing and another, I’ve had enough. I think we should call it a day. I don’t need this kind of aggro. I’m sorry, babes. We had a good time but we both knew it wasn’t going to last for ever. I’ll ring you next week and we can sort out our stuff. I mean it; it’s over. Sorry. Bye.’

  Breathless with shock, I hailed a black cab and went straight round to his house, letting myself in with my spare key, where I found him spliffed up in front of a video of The Sweeney. Despite his socked feet resting on the coffee table in a manner indicating extreme relaxation, his resolve was even stronger than in his phone message. I made a fool of myself; crying and begging, practically, but he was unmoved.

  ‘I can’t handle this any more,’ he said. ‘We’re a habit, babe. You can do better than me.’

  Did he mean that he could do better than me, too? My less-than-robust sense of self-worth crumbled even further as, with more than a few tears, I waited for a minicab to take me home.

  ‘Can’t I stay? Just tonight?’

  ‘I think it’s better this way, honestly, babes.’

  He hugged me, and his smell was still delicious: spliff, aftershave, warm skin, taking me right back to the smell of his palm at that party where we first met. I felt shocked, battered by the day’s events, devastated at the sight of Gavin’s socks and the knowledge that I might never feel his arms around me again, or the rub of stubbly skin underneath his chin. The Sweeney’s car raced down an alleyway, chasing a criminal who scrambled away over some dustbins and I watched, dully, with a fog over my eyes and my heart.

  Later, as my cab pulled away from the kerb at an only slightly more sedate speed than The Sweeney’s, I realised that I hadn’t even told Gavin what had happened with the man on the train, let alone the decision the encounter had inspired in me. A good story left untold, I thought, staring out at the slick streets of a drizzly Thursday night. I wondered if I would really go for it; if I would really ever try to trace my birthmother. I could certainly have done with a mother right then and there, next to me on the dirt-faded and torn tartan upholstery of that geriatric minicab, enveloping me in unconditional love and reassurance. Hugging me. Telling me that it was all going to be all right.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Some adopted people believe that they have no identity, no place in the world. Did you ever feel that way? If so, can you pinpoint what prompted it?’

  Being adopted always gave me stabs of sadness, especially on my birthdays. The thought that the person who’d given birth to me had just moved on, and possibly even forgotten about me. But it was a self-indulgent sadness, really – I had parents who loved me.

  It was never any great secret. I had always known I was adopted, although I didn’t have any recollection of when or how Mum and Dad had first told me. It was just something I grew up with, like the dusty smell of orang-utan hair, or the omnipresent flakes of tobacco from Dad’s pipe. Mum had always let me know that my birth parents were very young, not married to each other, and simply unable to give me the kind of life they felt I deserved; and this knowledge did take some of the sting out of being given away; but only some of it. It felt like a real sting; a bee sting - tweezers easing it out a little way until it snapped off and stuck obdurately in my flesh.

  But I couldn’t have asked for better parents than Mum and Dad; I mean, I really liked them, most of the time. As a kid, they gave me as much of a sense of identity as they possibly could have done. And I’d certainly much rather have had Dad and Mum as adoptive parents than my friend Esther’s real but miserable and uptight kin, who’d slap her round the legs for even thinking about cheeking them, and only gave her half the pocket money I got.

  Plus, if being given away at birth was part of the Grand Scheme of Things for me, I was relieved that I hadn’t ended up in some sad, badly funded children’s home; too many kids crowding round a television trying to get a sense of stability from the Saturday morning cartoons. Wetting the bed, crying at night, underperforming at school; never having money for new clothes or records.

  Yes, I’d been one of the lucky children. I never felt that I had no place in the world, not even when Stella came along and I no longer had Mum and Dad to myself. I’d thought I’d feel excluded, but my parents’ joy was infectious. Stella’s birth became the most unexpectedly wonderful thing that had ever happened to our family.

  She arrived slightly prematurely, quite unusually for a first child, and – as usual – took us all by surprise. On that particular rainy Wednesday Dad had, as a rare treat, taken me on a shoot with him. In her late-pregnancy befuddlement Mum had copied down Dad’s contact number at the studio with a 7 where an 8 should have been. She couldn't remember the name of the company who'd hired him for the shoot, or the location of the studio, or even when he'd said he'd be home. Consequently, she ended up enduring the intense eight hour labour alone.

  Meanwhile Dad, to his eternal remorse, had not bothered to check in with Mum from a payphone t
hat day - he'd thought about it at lunchtime, but hadn't been able to locate any two or ten-pence pieces amongst the fluff of his trouser pockets, and I’d searched equally fruitlessly along the vinyl seams at the bottom of my Holly Hobby purse. The baby wasn't expected for another ten days, so he had carried on with the business of photographing a lissome lady clad in pink legwarmers, ballet shoes and a selection of up-to-the-minute dancewear for the brochure of a west London dance studio.

  I sat patiently on a stool just outside the brightly lit enclave of big umbrellas, wide shiny screens and jumble of black cables snaking around the edges, and watched my father as he called out 'Lovely, super, smile darling, chin up, head down, a tiny bit to the left - beautiful!' all the while clicking, clicking, clicking away with his big camera, deftly twisting it in every angle.

  The model smiled continuously, which did quite impress me. Later that day, when I’d begun to get bored, I surreptitiously tried it, and discovered for myself that it wasn't easy. I held my lips up and apart in a rictus of bared teeth and appled cheeks, and timed myself on the second hand of my Snoopy watch; but my smile only lasted one minute and eleven seconds before I had to relax my aching cheek muscles.

  At that point I had to go outside and have a pee. The model’s make-up bag was spilling open on the edge of the sink in the tiny bathroom, and my fingers twitched with the effort of not trying her sticky bright pink lip gloss and the brick red blusher. I managed to resist, instead contenting myself with stroking my cheek with her huge soft brush. It felt like the velvety inside of a foxglove.

  When I returned to my stool, I passed the by-now thoroughly dragging time by absorbing myself in a mental exercise to award points to the different styles and colours of leotard worn by the model. Top marks went to a black-and-coffee striped number, with a V-neck and quite low-cut over the model's narrow hips. The stripes themselves were V-shaped too, fitting neatly and strikingly together in a pattern that reminded me of the parquet floor in our living room.

  Dad loved getting this kind of job. He was quite new to fashion photography, as most of his work up to that point had been for a local solicitors' firm, by whom he was employed to photograph skid marks on roads after car crashes, scars left by industrial accidents or slipshod surgeons, or - his least favourite - uneven bits of pavement over which old ladies stumbled and injured themselves. This was all supplemental income for his other business, of selling ‘make your own camera’ kits. He had designed two models, the Victortec and the Victortilt, and a factory in Birmingham manufactured the parts, which he then sold in kit form to camera enthusiasts via small ads in the back of The Amateur Photographer. Unfortunately there were not an awful lot of people with the time or the inclination to make their own cameras, so Dad was beginning to concentrate more on the freelance photography work. His regular appointments with cracked pavements helped pay the bills, but to be in a real studio with a real model was his idea of heaven.

  ‘It’s just so much more creative,' he said to Mum on many occasions.

  That particular shoot had ended at six o'clock. I was weary from sitting still for so long, and my eyes were scratchy from the bright lights and the flash gun; but I felt so proud of my father and his important, glamorous job.

  I was bursting full of stories to tell Mum about the day, but we had returned to a cold, empty house and a note shoved through the letterbox from Mrs. Polkinghorne, the arthritis-ridden elderly lady next door:

  'Barbara in Labour, ambulance has took her. I'd of gone too only me knees is playing up again. She says please hurry up when you get back. Florence .'

  The next thing I remember was rushing down long hospital corridors, the thwack of the thick plastic doors echoing behind us, and my hand sweatily clutching Dad's. Dad was in such a state that he had forgotten the original plan, which was to leave me next door at Mrs. P’s, eating Battenburg and listening to descriptions of her operations for the duration of the labour; and just to present me with my new brother or sister once he/she was a neatly-swaddled fait accompli. There was no way that I was going to remind him. This was a momentous day, and I didn't want to miss a second of it. Dad had, however, remembered to bring his camera, and its heavy black case bumped against my side as we ran.

  We were lost in the hospital labyrinth within minutes, Dad too phased to read the signposts, and me too young and flustered to follow them. We began frantically asking everyone who passed by: 'Maternity?' 'Maternity?' 'Maternity?' until a porter who looked exactly like my headmaster frowningly directed us, and we set off again at a trot, too fast for my short legs. I remember the swish swish of my marigold-yellow elephant cords rubbing together at the thighs, and the mingled tones of exasperation and excitement in Dad’s voice: 'Keep up, Emma! The baby could be here at any moment!'

  But by the time we reached the Maternity wing, Stella had already arrived, and was lying pinkly and complacently alone in a huge bassinet next to an empty bed. Dad actually grabbed hold of a nurse, leaving a small crumpled damp mark on the sleeve of her immaculate uniform.

  'Where is she? Where's my wife - Barbara Victor? My wife. Is everything all right?'

  The nurse fixed a smile to her face, although far less enthusiastically than the leotard model had earlier, and gave Dad a look that even I could easily interpret as 'oh no, another panicking daddy. That's all I need.'

  'Everything's fine, Mr. Victor. Mother and baby are both doing well. We just had to pop your wife up to theatre for a few stitches, that's all. Nothing to worry about, she'll be back in a tick. Would you like to see your daughter?'

  I had already identified Baby Victor, as confirmed by the words on the plastic shackle around her tiny little ankle and, while Dad was talking to the nurse, lifted my sister out of the bassinet, scrutinising her minuscule toenails and reverently touching the sprout of pale hair on her crown.

  'You were in, and now you're out,' I whispered. After all those months of watching my mother's belly lift and distort, sudden violent punches and karate chops, I had half-expected the baby to emerge looking like Hong Kong Phooey.

  Actually I hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this beady-eyed little person not much bigger than a Tiny Tears.

  'I'm sorry,' said the nurse, striding over, lifting Stella out of my arms and placing her into Dad's instead, giving me, I thought, an unnecessarily hard stare. 'It's immediate family only until visiting hours. This young lady will have to wait in the visitor's reception.'

  Dad didn't even hear her at first. Tears were rolling down his face, riding bumpily over his stubbly cheeks. 'This is her? This is my baby girl? Oh God, she's incredible. Oh Emma, isn't she wonderful?'

  'Yeah,' I muttered, glaring back at the nurse.

  'Immediate family only, please,' the nurse repeated, her arms crossed across her chest.

  I looked defiantly past her and up at a TV on the opposite wall. The sound was turned down, but the picture showed Toyah mutely performing, her flat carroty hair bouncing horizontally along with her manic posturing.

  'Can we call the baby Toyah?'

  Dad ignored me, still unable to tear his eyes away from the bundle in his arms. The nurse looked twice at the time on the upside-down watch pinned to her apron.

  'Mr. Victor, I hate to be a spoilsport, but I must ask that this young lady comes back at the designated visiting hour. Immediate fam -'

  Dad looked up briefly from his in-depth examination of Stella's fingers. 'Emma is immediate family. She's our daughter. This is her new sister.'

  The nurse looked confused. 'I'm sorry. I wouldn’t have been so insistent, it’s just that I understood that Dr. Victor was a first-time mother.'

  After another long pause, Dad grinned at me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Dr. Victor was already a mother.’

  I beamed back at him, and at my little sister in his arms, her conker-sized fists punching the air. The nurse arranged her features into an apologetic expression. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You might as well sit down and wait, then. She should be back any time now.’

/>   The three of us sat and waited. I could hardly breathe, terrified that I might be wafting germs into the baby’s face. Meanwhile, in his simultaneous elation about Stella and anxiety about Mum’s wellbeing, Dad’s expression was changing so frequently that he reminded me of the toby jug we had sitting on a high shelf at home. When it was a good day in the Victor household, the jug was placed smiley-side out, but if there had been bad news, Mum turned it around so that its droopy pottery lips formed a mournful frown. If someone had put that jug on a potter’s wheel and spun it around, it would have resembled Dad’s face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I kept saying, patting his arm. ‘She’ll be fine, the nurse said so.’ She must have tripped and fallen, I thought to myself, to need stitches. I’d had stitches once, when I went flying over a low chain-link barrier in the Tesco’s carpark. I’d been so preoccupied at the time, trying to decide if I wanted a Curly Wurly or a tube of Smarties, that I hadn’t even seen the barrier until it smacked me in the shins and catapulted me head first onto the concrete.

  The lines at the corners of Dad’s eyes were rigid with tension - until Stella opened her pink mouth and yawned noisily, and then the same lines relaxed into joyous creases. ‘Would you look at that?’ he said, with as much awe in his voice as if the newborn Stella had just recited the first two verses of The Ancient Mariner.

  I could not keep my hands off the velvety skin on Stella’s pliant skull. It was the softest thing I had ever touched – even the dancewear model’s make-up brush seemed like a Brillo pad compared to this.