Was this what being a couple was like?
She wondered if Jeanette felt like this every day. Probably she did.
She was telling Bill about finding out that she was adopted.
‘What did you feel?’ he asked.
She thought hard, because she wanted to give him a true answer.
‘It was the day of my dad’s funeral. That was why Elaine and Jackie were there. It was very bad, because it seemed
to cut me off more from him. As if I didn’t quite have the same right as Jeanette and Mum to be sad, to miss him so badly, because I wasn’t his and he wasn’t really mine. I felt as if I’d been cut out of another picture, a completely different one, and I couldn’t blend back into the Echo Street family photograph any longer. It made me realise I probably never had done. In a way, after a while, that was a relief because it explained a lot of things that had bothered me and I’d never understood. Then I started wondering who I really was – Hilda didn’t tell me very much – and I made up for the loss of Constance Thorne
and
my dad by making up all kinds of fantasies for myself. Pretty childish ones. You know. Princesses and great tragedies and stupid stuff like that.’
She took a big swallow of wine. Bill was watching her face, and the sympathetic way he bent towards her made it suddenly seem vital that he shouldn’t feel any sorrier for her.
She added brightly, ‘I don’t do that any more. I’m fine about it. It’s probably quite an ordinary story.’
She almost said that the rest of the episode was the strange part. That she was taken into Echo Street, where Jeanette’s deafness at the centre of the house sent ripples of silence spreading outwards. Like one absence balancing another, nothing that mattered in the Thorne family was ever openly spoken about, not anger or death or disability or the vast mystery of her adoption. Outbursts of any kind were forbidden. Furniture was dusted, exams were passed, and funerals and weddings were done properly. Hilda saw to that, and Connie recognised with a flash of adult understanding that she maintained her rigid ways because she was afraid of the mess of exposure. The only time she had almost collapsed was when Tony died, and with Jeanette’s help she had fought her way back from that.
It was fear that made Hilda afraid. A sudden faint
sympathy for her mother buckled and creaked under the skin of Connie’s antipathy.
Connie had opened her mouth to talk about Jeanette and her deafness, and the effect that it had had on both their childhoods. But she closed it again, like a fish. It was the one subject she found she couldn’t talk about to Bill, because, because…
I do love her very much.
Another silence. Ironic, that’s what it was.
Connie wanted to laugh again but she suppressed the urge because she could already hear the crazy note it might contain. She was definitely drunk now. The room was blurred at the edges and her head felt as if it might float off her shoulders. Luckily she had had quite a lot of practice lately at dealing with these symptoms. She sat up straighter in her chair, took several deep breaths, and pinched the flesh of her thighs under the tablecloth to the point at which the pain became too much to bear.
Bill said, ‘Have you ever thought about finding your natural mother? It might be easier to know the story than to speculate about it. I think I read somewhere that adopted children can trace their original families now.’
‘I could. Maybe I will.’
He touched her wrist. ‘If you don’t want to do it on your own, and you might not want to involve Hilda or Jeanette, I’ll help you.’
She took these words inside her, wrapping them up with the knowledge that she could come back to them whenever she needed to.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I mean, thank you. I’d like to. It’s just, I haven’t decided anything yet. I’m at GreenLeaf and I go to the pub or a gig afterwards and then I get home and go to sleep and then it’s another day. I’m quite busy.’ A bubble of laughter did escape her now, like a breath of relief. Bill laughed too.
‘I see. I know. That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
She wasn’t waiting, she realised.
Now
was what counted, a perfectly crystalline moment, in this restaurant with Bill.
Her glass was empty, and so was her plate. Time had telescoped and the dinner was paid for and they were standing up with the table wobbling between them. They walked outside into the fine rain and hesitated, pulling up their coat collars under the shelter of the restaurant awning. Droplets glimmered on the scallops of canvas. Connie knew from past experience that fresh air was likely to affect her in one of two ways. Luckily, tonight her head cleared.
‘I’ll walk you to the tube,’ Bill murmured. They fell into step and without thinking about it Connie slipped her hand into his. Their fingers interlaced. She felt as if she had grown a million new nerve endings. Heat ran up her arm and radiated through her body. They were moving as if they were one person. She could feel his breathing in her chest, his words in her head before he uttered them.
‘Connie…’
They stopped walking. The small side street was deserted. Raindrops slanted into the puddles, splintering the reflected lights. She turned her face up to his and they kissed. The electric shock of it passed through them both and Connie heard his sharp intake of breath. They pressed their bodies closer, fitting shoulder and hip together, arms winding as they kissed more deeply.
‘
Connie.
’
With the greatest difficulty Bill stepped back and broke the circuit. He lifted his hands to cup her face, and Connie remembered the contrast between cold rain on her skin and the warmth in his fingers.
‘Don’t,’ he whispered. ‘We can’t do this.’
She crowded herself against him imploringly, but all
he did was drop his hands to her shoulders and gently hold her at arm’s length.
‘This is not what you want,’ he insisted.
‘It is. It
is.
’
It was what he wanted too, she knew that whatever he might say to try to convince them both otherwise, and out here in the rain in the street emptied by the downpour – in this deserted world in which they seemed to be the only two living things – nothing and no one else mattered.
‘No. With somebody, yes. But not me. You’re seventeen, Con. Everything has still got to happen to you. And it will, I know that.’ He tried to inject conviction into the words.
Enough has happened already, Connie thought sadly. There were raindrops on her eyelids and lashes. She blinked quickly, and his face blurred. Bill’s thumbs smoothed the corners of her mouth and when he came into focus once more he was smiling down at her. Somehow he had made sure of himself again. He was Jeanette’s fiancé.
‘Come on, or we’ll get soaked. Let’s go for the tube,’ he said. He kissed her forehead, then took her arm and linked it beneath his, drawing her after him. From somewhere beyond herself Connie could see what they looked like. Like a Victorian brother and sister walking to church.
She was cold, and then hot, and then angry. She tramped through the puddles, careless of the icy water filling her shoes.
They turned a corner and a crowded bus churned past them. At the end of the street was the mouth of Oxford Circus tube station. When they reached it the fuggy, familiar smell rose up the steps and they were caught up in the crowd of people hurrying for shelter.
The lights in the ticket hall were very bright. Connie winced and ducked her head, not wanting Bill to see the confusion of her anger, nor that she was close to tears.
‘Have you got a ticket?’ he was asking.
‘I’m not
twelve.
’
‘I know that, Con. I really do.’
She took a breath and lifted her head. ‘I’m going home now. Thanks for dinner.’
Their eyes met then, and reflected shock and uncertainty and a glimmer of pure madness. Bill blinked.
‘What happened back there was my fault,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry.’
Connie marshalled herself. ‘It was just a
kiss
,’ she said precisely. ‘Nothing to worry about.’ Then she flicked him a smile. ‘See you,’ she said, and turned to the ticket barrier.
She was in love with Bill Bunting.
She had no option but to be nonchalant now. She would have to be nonchalant and sisterly around him for the rest of eternity; her pride depended on it. As she descended into the depths she searched inside herself for the vestiges of anger. Anger was good; better than despair. Anger was cauterising.
Bill stood and watched her go. Her dark head and thin, square shoulders floated down the Central Line escalator and sank out of his sight. It was as if a part of himself had just been torn away.
He wanted to call her back. He wanted to leap over the barrier and chase after her, but he denied the impulse.
Where could it lead, but into pain?
The wedding was predictable, or slightly worse than Connie might have predicted. Her dress was too tight, and the gold satin turned out to be much shinier than it had appeared in the sample. Jeanette was ravishing – happiness transformed her china prettiness into serious beauty. Uncle Geoff walked her up the aisle, and at the altar she turned to Bill and her smile lit up the church. Bill looked proud and
pleased. In his speech at the reception he praised Jeanette’s lovely bridesmaid and thanked Hilda for her generosity in the same sentence.
After the reception, exactly on schedule, Jeanette changed into her jade-green going-away coat and came out on Bill’s arm. The wedding car was waiting for them; some of the technicians from Jeanette’s lab had scrawled lipstick messages over the windows and Bill’s friends had tied the usual assortment of junk to the rear bumper.
The door of the car was held open for her. With Bill’s arm circling her shoulders Jeanette searched the crowd of guests for Connie. Catching sight of her, she held up her bouquet and threw it.
Connie’s arms stayed stuck at her sides. To catch her sister’s bouquet was her last obligation of the day but she couldn’t make herself dive for the tumble of petals that would promise her a husband, not Bill. Instead there was a pecking of high heels on the gravel and Elaine’s hand shot out. She swung the bouquet upwards, then pressed her flushed face into the flowers.
A laughing Jeanette blew a kiss to Connie, who returned a small wave. She saw Bill as a dark shape but she would not let herself look directly at him. She gazed at the car instead and kept her smile fixed in a final blizzard of confetti as the newlyweds stepped into the back. She smiled all the time, as the doors slammed and people shouted and the car trailed its cargo of tin cans over the gravel and away.
There was a party to go to almost every night of the week – the music business took Christmas seriously – but for the first time Connie felt seriously out of key with her new world. The Soho streets seemed full of laughing, drunken people and the pubs overflowed, but however much she drank and danced Connie couldn’t capture the Christmas
spirit. From being pleased with her independence she found herself longing to be loved: a proper, intimate love, not the kind that seemed to be all that was on offer for her, involving a lot of drink or dope and a sexual encounter under a pile of coats at a party.
Everyone else in the world seemed to have a lover, a family, a child.
The window of Liberty’s that fronted onto Regent Street featured a nativity scene. Mary and the infant Jesus were surrounded by life-sized sheep and a patient donkey.
Connie wondered where her real mother was this Christmas, and whether she ever thought about her baby.
One Saturday morning Connie went out to the local library. She looked up Adoption Services and wrote down the information she found there.
During her lunch hour on the following Monday she walked through the crowds of Christmas shoppers and found her way to the General Records Office at St Catherine’s House. It was a big building with a municipal feel to the interior. Hurrying feet clicked over the stone floors, names and numbers were called out to waiting lines of people. A Christmas tree decorated with blobs of cotton wool and bulbous lanterns blinked in a corner. It was strange to be standing in a queue of coughing people in overcoats, waiting to find out the name of the woman who had given birth to her. Connie wondered if there would be an address. Maybe even a telephone number. How did you begin such a conversation?
When her turn came, she found herself across a wooden counter from a clerk with a red birthmark spreading across her neck. Almost relieved to have a different point to focus on, Connie concentrated on not staring at the mark while she explained what she wanted. The woman sneezed and whipped a tissue from a box at her elbow. She blew her nose
and Connie waited until she was ready to speak. She was imagining a ledger, somewhere close at hand. A finger running down the columns of names and stopping at her own, written under another name.
Your mother is…
My natural mother
, she practised.
The clerk said, ‘I am afraid we cannot give you access to your file.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Adopted people born prior to 1975 may only access their records through an intermediary, a counsellor nominated by the Registrar General.’
Connie frowned, trying to make sense of this. The clerk said that she could make an appointment to talk to the approved social worker, if she wished, but there was a waiting list. In the meantime she could apply to receive a copy of her birth certificate but it would only be a shortened version, revealing no details of her original parentage.
‘I see,’ Connie said. There were several people waiting in the queue behind her. ‘I…thank you. I’ll think about it.’ She turned away from the counter, and fled.
Although it was only two o’clock, the light was already fading. Connie trudged back to the studio.
In June, she turned eighteen. By the end of the year, Connie was learning the new musical digital technology as rapidly as GreenLeaf took it up. She began mixing and sampling tracks, working up her own compositions after-hours on the eight-track in the studio.
Jeanette announced that she was pregnant.