Nazis were in league with Lucifer,’ Henry continues my train of thought, the two of us only just starting to grasp the far-reaching effects of my paternal origin. ‘She lived through the Second World War, slept in air-raid shelters, listened to the British propaganda, probably sang the anti-German songs. There must have been more than a few people she was acquainted with who had lost their loved ones.’
I felt suddenly uncomfortable with my mother’s deep-seated prejudice . All around us were the colours of hope, the harlequin green of virgin grass pricking the wakening ground, a tub of pansies, their heads wavering in a tumult of lavender blues, thistle and plum purples, and creamy yellows. The sky was a jubilant shout of blue that made you want to kick off your shoes, throw yourself down on the earth, lock your hands behind your head and let the aerial show hypnotise you. But there was an adjustment to be made in my perception that currently handicapped me, preventing such freedom of expression. Another ghost from the past, my father, had arrived to perplex me. ‘She would have monitored me closely for any indication that the blackness was in me, my German blood. In her twisted way, she would have seen it as inherited evil.’
Henry drinks his coffee and we both contemplate the letter in my lap. ‘It’s the casual, offhand style of writing that bothers me,’ he says when he has finished. ‘It’s as if you were a commodity, a model baby to be viewed and judged as either appealing enough to take home, or a disappointment to window-shopping prospective parents. Actually we wanted one who was a bit more … a bit less … she isn’t really what we … we’d prefer it if she wasn’t so … you can’t help but notice …’ He sighs and strokes his beard sagely.
‘But I was a baby, a living breathing human being. Not a puppy who might have desirable traits bred into me, and who could be bludgeoned into obedience.’ I offer Henry another cup of coffee and he declines.
‘I must get back.’ His tone is apologetic, as if he would like stay the afternoon and tend to me and not his plants. He stoops to kiss my cheek, his whiskers tickling me. ‘You’re not to brood,’ he commands, remembering that I have the afternoon off. ‘Go and work on your painting.’
I nod and rise as if I mean to act on his advice. But as soon as he is gone I sink back down into my rattan sun chair. Some of the weave is unravelling on the arm, and I pick at a strip until it is also at a loose end. I paint. I am an amateur artist. I should like to have been professional, but like so many other things it wasn’t to be. But today had I the skill of Michelangelo all I could manage would be a coat of emulsion on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I ignore Henry’s appeal and give myself up to a storm of memories.
I was fourteen when I found out that
Mum
was not my mother, that
Dad
was not my father, that the genetic imprint in me came from neither of them. I returned home from school one day, and Mother said that she needed to speak to me.
Sit down, Lucilla. I have something to say, she announced. And I did. I sat down at the dining table. She stood opposite me and I stared up at her. I breathed in a rotten sulphurous smell. She had burned the eggs again. She frequently dished up peeled hard-boiled eggs with salad for tea, the whites discoloured to a disconcerting pebble grey or even a witchy green, or burned sausages, which were marginally tastier. Burned sausages with burned chips: a makeshift supper. Or burned toast that was like eating charcoal dust. She was more pyromaniac than cook. And then she told me – just like that, and I forgot about the stink-bomb smell.
‘I’m afraid … I’m afraid that you’re not our little girl. The truth is that you are adopted.’
And what I felt was not shock or grief, but the most enormous sense of relief. This woman was not my mother. At a subconscious level I had always known it. I
I felt suddenly uncomfortable with my mother’s deep-seated prejudice . All around us were the colours of hope, the harlequin green of virgin grass pricking the wakening ground, a tub of pansies, their heads wavering in a tumult of lavender blues, thistle and plum purples, and creamy yellows. The sky was a jubilant shout of blue that made you want to kick off your shoes, throw yourself down on the earth, lock your hands behind your head and let the aerial show hypnotise you. But there was an adjustment to be made in my perception that currently handicapped me, preventing such freedom of expression. Another ghost from the past, my father, had arrived to perplex me. ‘She would have monitored me closely for any indication that the blackness was in me, my German blood. In her twisted way, she would have seen it as inherited evil.’
Henry drinks his coffee and we both contemplate the letter in my lap. ‘It’s the casual, offhand style of writing that bothers me,’ he says when he has finished. ‘It’s as if you were a commodity, a model baby to be viewed and judged as either appealing enough to take home, or a disappointment to window-shopping prospective parents. Actually we wanted one who was a bit more … a bit less … she isn’t really what we … we’d prefer it if she wasn’t so … you can’t help but notice …’ He sighs and strokes his beard sagely.
‘But I was a baby, a living breathing human being. Not a puppy who might have desirable traits bred into me, and who could be bludgeoned into obedience.’ I offer Henry another cup of coffee and he declines.
‘I must get back.’ His tone is apologetic, as if he would like stay the afternoon and tend to me and not his plants. He stoops to kiss my cheek, his whiskers tickling me. ‘You’re not to brood,’ he commands, remembering that I have the afternoon off. ‘Go and work on your painting.’
I nod and rise as if I mean to act on his advice. But as soon as he is gone I sink back down into my rattan sun chair. Some of the weave is unravelling on the arm, and I pick at a strip until it is also at a loose end. I paint. I am an amateur artist. I should like to have been professional, but like so many other things it wasn’t to be. But today had I the skill of Michelangelo all I could manage would be a coat of emulsion on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I ignore Henry’s appeal and give myself up to a storm of memories.
I was fourteen when I found out that
Mum
was not my mother, that
Dad
was not my father, that the genetic imprint in me came from neither of them. I returned home from school one day, and Mother said that she needed to speak to me.
Sit down, Lucilla. I have something to say, she announced. And I did. I sat down at the dining table. She stood opposite me and I stared up at her. I breathed in a rotten sulphurous smell. She had burned the eggs again. She frequently dished up peeled hard-boiled eggs with salad for tea, the whites discoloured to a disconcerting pebble grey or even a witchy green, or burned sausages, which were marginally tastier. Burned sausages with burned chips: a makeshift supper. Or burned toast that was like eating charcoal dust. She was more pyromaniac than cook. And then she told me – just like that, and I forgot about the stink-bomb smell.
‘I’m afraid … I’m afraid that you’re not our little girl. The truth is that you are adopted.’
And what I felt was not shock or grief, but the most enormous sense of relief. This woman was not my mother. At a subconscious level I had always known it. I
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