The Cuckoo's Child (2 page)

He was everything unorthodox my conventional soul longed for.

Here's a confession.

I was in those days given to sudden passions for men glimpsed in stores, on the other side of movie theatres, going in the opposite direction on buses. So strong were these sometimes that I would abandon all maidenly modesty, break off what I was doing, and go in pursuit. I would scour the vague general area where I had seen them, in the hope of running into them again and triggering a flash of recognition that might lead, well, somewhere. This was only on my more desperate days, you understand, when I was oppressed by my failure to measure up to the success of all those contemporaries sporting tiny diamonds on the third fingers of their left hands. I felt the pressure of advancing years eroding my chances in the marriage market that seemed, if the magazines and Mum were anything to go by, to be the only goal I should be pursuing. Don't forget, I was twenty-one, and feminism had not yet become militant.

I ran Neil to earth, though. I shucked off the friend who had introduced us with a shameless lie about suddenly remembering another appointment, not caring whether he believed me or not. I left him staring after me, reproachfully. I can't remember even his first name now.

Neil had ducked into a small hole-in-the-wall café on Granville Street. I don't think it's there any more. I saw his light hair floating in a disembodied way in front of the coffee machine and went in. All it took was to angle myself behind him at the counter and pretend to be studying the specials written up on the chalkboard over the hatch as he turned away with his cup of coffee.

“Hello again,” he said. “Following me?”

This was uncomfortable. The best course seemed to be to choke back the overemphatic denial that was springing to my lips and smile enigmatically instead.

“Want to share a table?”

Mutely, I nodded. My stomach was trembling. When I drew out the chair opposite his, I wrenched the table out of position with hideous sound effects, forcing him to snatch up his cup to avoid a mess.

There was a silence. I felt compelled to fill it.

“I was just looking the place over,” I lied. “They're advertising for help.”

Neil looked at my cup. Most of my coffee was slopping about the saucer. He handed me a napkin from the dispenser.

“Word of advice,” he said. “Don't ever go for a job as a waitress.”

Neil always was good at advice, you know. Handing it out, at least. Perhaps it's the result of shaking himself free of convention, of standing outside looking in for so long. Perhaps it's the discipline of the artist, always observing the familiar from a different vantage point. Both qualities overpowered me, but it was the oblique implication of his remark that impressed me most at the time. I don't take anything at face value, he was saying, you will never put one over on me.

So when, a few months later, he asked me to sit for a small portrait, I was filled with trepidation. Didn't tell you about that, did I? I was flattered, of course, but there was a nervous thrill attached. Perhaps I already recognized him as uncompromisingly honest and certain; what he might see and unflinchingly reveal scared me. He abandoned his usual abstraction—a relief, really, because I couldn't understand how he could convey anything about me in those huge, swooping shapes and wild colours—and seemed to offer a view of me that exactly coincided with my own chocolate box image of myself.

He is a formidable draughtsman. It was the kind of portrait Mum would sigh over, saying, “Isn't it wonderful how real it looks, you feel you could just reach out and touch that hair.” He had painted me with my head turned to look out of the frame as if someone had just called my name. The background was shadowed, indeterminate, with a hint of vertical folds. I was wearing a very simple high-necked white blouse under a dark sweater—the ones you said made me look like a Lutheran bishop—and my pale face and auburn hair glowed against the sombreness. I was surprised and said so. He smiled.

“Not finished yet,” he said.

When it was, he showed it to me, watching my face carefully as he did.

It was a shock. At first I couldn't make out what he had done. Then I saw that he had taken the original portrait and cut it into narrow strips vertically. These had been attached to another canvas, leaving gaps between the strips that he had filled with a wild miscellany of objects and paint. There were torn pages that I recognized as pieces of a text on
DNA
, bits of lace, white ankle socks, meticulously labelled diagrams of dissected frogs together with paintings of the same animals alive, feathers, butterfly wings, hair from a lurex wig braided and curled around the white bones of some small mammal, a weasel perhaps, candy wrappers, seed packets from my attempts to grow my own herbs, labels from 48s, scraps of cotton and wool, hair pins, a Barbie doll's decapitated head, a periodic table, the perfect rosy babies from old Pears soap adverts, even a tiny moss-lined bird's nest containing a few splinters of eggshell, all tumbling across the canvas, interwoven, sprawling and spilling in a tangled, intricate chaos. My fragmented self peered through it like a wary animal in a thicket of saplings. I had to say something.

“I'm not sure I like it,” I said.

He snorted. “What does that matter?”

“It doesn't even look like me now,” I objected.

“Are you sure? Things are not always what they
look
like.”

There was a gentle scorn in his voice for my simplicity. In that moment, I believe, dawned a realization that has coloured all my observations since. I stared bleakly at the muddles and contradictions that he saw milling about behind my unremarkable face and sensed the complexities of existence, paths crossing, wheels meshing, the tumult just beneath the surface as cause and effect churn on and on, unseen.

Recalling that moment when I saw the portrait, I also understand that I could dive at any point along the course of that river called my life and find in the depths something significant, some object, a look, a word, that makes nonsense of the scene at the surface, that calls into question everything I consider reality.

But plunging in at random won't help. Concentrate! What I really need to do is more like unravelling a sweater. I have to find the loose end and pull, gently, winding the freed yarn all the while into a neat ball. If I am to make sense of what has happened, I can only start, I think, by explaining why you are so important to me.

You never knew it, Stephen, but you were my liberator.

Hard to believe it now, with you lying there so still, so . . . detached. Who would think you could have such an effect? But then, you didn't look the part at first sight. Mum arrived home from the hospital, ferried by Dad in the pickup. Remember that old wreck? From the front window, I saw them pull into the driveway and watched as Dad clambered out and walked round to the passenger side, his boots squeaking in the snow. I waited until I saw Mum emerge, a bundle in her arms, and start to walk cautiously toward the house, Dad holding her close with a circling arm. Even as I ran to the front door and flung it wide I remember dimly noting how unusual that intimacy was. They never touched each other. Did they? They called each other “dear” and “love,” and they always agreed and never, ever had a fight or shouted at each other. But they never touched either. Did you notice that too?

I was eight years old and felt very grown up. Dad had left me alone in the house for the first time while he went to fetch Mum. Things were different back then; I don't suppose he felt a moment's concern.

“You get the tea things out while I'm gone,” he'd said as he left. “Mum'll want a nice cuppa when she gets home, it'll be the first she's had for a week. And you can get the Christmas cake out too. We might as well have a bit of that.”

Mum kept her best china and glass in a triangular cupboard that stood in the corner of the living room. I always thought of it as a sort of prison as the door had a tiny lock and key, and the cups and saucers only got out on parole when we were on our best behaviour. Normally I would never have been allowed to touch it, but bringing a new baby home seemed like a special occasion to me, so I dragged a chair up to the cupboard and carefully liberated three of the cups, saucers, and plates.

I arranged them on a tray in a row, the handles all pointing in the same direction. I loved the feel of the china, so thin and fragile and light, and the way you could see the shadow of your hand through it. It occurred to me that putting the bottle of milk and the usual everyday sugar bowl on the tray beside this refinement would be incongruous, so I returned to my precarious ladder and took out the milk jug with the curly handle and the matching sugar bowl with its tiny lid as well. That satisfied me, so I turned my attention to the cake.

I heaved the cake out of its tin and started to cut slices with the breadknife. It was resistant, and although I tried to make the slices dainty and equal in size, they contrived to turn themselves into unwieldy, ugly lumps. By the time I had hacked off enough for three, the cake looked as if it had been attacked by a blunt chainsaw. Mum, I knew, would not be pleased. You know how she thinks her cakes are works of art. As far as I'm concerned, though, the smell is the only enjoyable part; I know you like them, Stephen, but when it comes to eating them, I'll pass.

That Christmas I hadn't even had to pretend to enjoy cake or pudding. Mum had been rushed off to hospital on Christmas Day, leaving behind a half-raw turkey and giblets simmering on the stove. Everyone felt sorry for me, abandoned in the panic, but I had enjoyed the adventure of Christmas in the neighbours' house, eating at funny times, trying things like sweet potatoes that would never have appeared on our table, and stuffing myself with chocolates and peanuts Mum would have condemned as likely to spoil my appetite. I didn't notice any such effect.

I also had my first experience of organized religion in their company, for I was deposited in their house just before they went off to Holy Trinity on Christmas morning. There I breathed in the smell of old wood and paper dust and bellowed the chorus of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” with a will. Better yet I listened to the gospel for the day and fell in love with the mesmerizing power of words.

Remember our neighbour, Mrs. Harrington? She showed me the place in the Prayer Book, and I followed as it was read by a man in a black dress with a long white shirt over the top. All day after that I heard it in my head: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Incomprehensible but unforgettable, those capital letters audible even in memory.

You arrived very early on Boxing Day while I lay fast asleep in an unfamiliar narrow bed. Mrs. Harrington gave me the news as she put a boiled egg in front of me.

“You've got a little brother,” she said. “Now isn't that a wonderful Christmas present?”

I've got to tell you, I wasn't sure. It seemed important to deflect attention from my uncertainty. Adults didn't understand one's reservations about babies.

“It's not really Christmas any more, so he can't be a present, can he?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Harrington, looking amused, “it's Boxing Day. That's still Christmas. And besides,” she went on, “it
is
a special day. It's St. Stephen's Day.”

“Will he be called Stephen, then?”

“They could do worse,” said Mrs. Harrington.

I agreed. I'd heard Mum and Dad discussing this very issue. They'd lingered on Alfred because that had been the name of both our grandfathers, apparently. Both of yours, anyway. That didn't seem a good enough reason to me. I rather fancied Perry or Frankie, but Mum firmly vetoed my suggestions.

“Good Lord, no,” she'd said, “no child of mine is going to be called anything so common. A good old-fashioned name is what we want.”

Dad had come to tell me about the baby and arrange to take me to the hospital during visiting hours. He looked grey and bristly.

“What's his name?” I asked.

“Alfred,” said Dad.

“Oh, that's nice,” said Mrs. Harrington. “Unusual nowadays.” She didn't sound very convinced.

“It's St. Stephen's Day,” I said. “Couldn't we call him Stephen?”

Dad looked a bit startled. “We'll see,” he said at last. “Maybe that could be his middle name.”

And that's how it was. That's how you came to be Alfred Stephen Porter. And you can thank me for saving you from a lifetime of Fred, or Alfie, because I always called you Stephen, and went on even when Mum scolded and insisted your name was Alfred, and somehow my obstinacy wore them down until they caught themselves calling you Stephen and I knew I'd won.

I met you for the first time that afternoon, lying in Mum's arms as she leaned against the pillows on the high bed in the maternity ward. You didn't look very promising. You were red and blotchy and your tiny feet seemed totally inadequate to bear you through life. Your head turned blindly against Mum's breast, and spasms of acute distress crumpled your face like a piece of discarded paper, forcing astonishingly loud mews from a gaping, toothless mouth. But I stuck out a finger in the general direction of one flailing hand, and your tiny fist closed instantly about it and grappled my heart to yours.

“Can I hold him?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” said Mum instantly, “you wouldn't want to drop him, would you?”

“She won't,” said Dad. “You'll be careful, won't you, girlie? And I'll be right here.”

Reluctantly, Mum gave in. Slowly, with infinite caution, I took hold of you. You were heavier and more awkward than I expected. I looked down at you and your eyes opened, a strange, milky unseeing blue. I had to mark the significance of the occasion.

“In the Beginning was the Word,” I said. “Stephen.”

Mum and Dad looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. And it did seem as if that moment, and your arrival, had marked a watershed of sorts. It hit me forcefully during the rest of that day.