‘I hadn’t forgotten your birthday,’ she said. ‘How could I? So on the twelfth of March last year I knew you’d turned eighteen, just as I knew you’d turned one and two and every year in-between. I had nothing of you except for the smallest picture, no bigger than a credit card, black and white. You were barely a week old when…’ She stopped again, threw her eyes to the ceiling, blinking fast. He placed the flat of his hand between her shoulder blades and told her it was OK, that there was no rush.
She nodded, closed and opened her eyes, passed her hand over her brow. ‘I’d registered with NORCAP on your birthday, and since then I’d been running for the morning post much like I used to run for my Bunty comic when I was eight. Except Bunty used to come regularly, on a Thursday I think it was. Whereas your letter never came.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Don’t be sorry, love. Nothing for you to be sorry about. It’s me that’s sorry.’
‘No. Don’t say that.’
‘Well I won’t if you won’t, eh? How about that?’ Her left eye closed again but only a little way – her tic or mannerism or whatever it was – and she laughed the small gasping laugh he now recognised as hers.
He laughed too, in a similar way, and again closed his left eyelid a little. ‘And then?’
‘Then? Then nothing. The months passed. Spring, summer, autumn, and before I knew it, it was Christmas. David said I should forget about it, but I couldn’t. I thought you must have decided to live your life without me, and that was fair enough.’
‘No!’ Christopher raised their tangled fingers to his lips and kissed the knot they had made. Odd, that he felt no strangeness in doing this. Just the opposite, in fact.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’d every right to make your choice, love. I couldn’t say I’d made mine back then, but that was my fate.’
‘What do you remember about me?’
‘Your smell,’ she said quickly, and smiled. ‘The way your head smelled, especially in the morning, the day after you were born. I inhaled it like it was Vicks, and I remember thinking, I could live off that smell. I wouldn’t need food or water or anything, just that. And your head was so soft and your eyes were so round and wise, as if you’d been here before and you were looking at me as if to say, What are you doing here? And then I suppose my most vivid memory after that is handing you over. Sister Lawrence. She had this placid smile and I wanted to punch her, punch that smile right off her face. Not that that would have solved anything. She was all right, one of the nice ones. And I was fifteen. I had no real idea of what I was doing – I couldn’t grasp the enormity of it. I put my baby into a stranger’s arms because that’s what I was told to do. But my hands had become hot and sticky with holding you and they got stuck under your head. Sister Lawrence had to slide her own hand between your head and my hand and kind of prise you away.’
‘Where was this?’
‘At the convent. We were in the mother superior’s office. Some girls had their whole pregnancy there, but I was allowed to stay at home. I wasn’t allowed out of the house once I started to show, but at least I wasn’t at the convent for the whole time. Bloody miserable place.’
‘Were you alone?’
‘No. If my memory serves, my parents took me there with you in my arms and brought me home alone. There was no conversation before, and when they drove me home, no conversation then either. The subject was never mentioned again. You were never mentioned again. Nothing, not a word, as if removing a whole human being from our lives was little more than the end of a chapter. It was all at best inconvenient, at worst unfortunate. Any attempt to speak of it beyond that day was to pay too much attention to something best forgotten.’ She stopped, rubbed her forehead, ran her hand over her eyes. ‘Different times.’
‘You don’t have to say any more.’ It cost him all his will to say it. He wanted more. He wanted all of it. Every detail played out, second by second.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘They know about you, Mum and Dad. Now, I mean. They’re looking forward to meeting you. Thing is, we’re not going to get anywhere looking backwards and blaming people, are we? It was a long time ago.’
How wise she was – how good, how kind.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.
‘Of course, love,’ she said, patting his hand. And then, after a moment, ‘Gerard, that was the mother superior’s name. This was at St Matthew’s. I missed my O levels. I took them a year later at college. I’m grateful to my parents for that. They were very particular about that, and I would never have become a teacher without them. I was bitter at them for years, of course, but now I think they were trying to do right by me, that’s all. I’d always been bright at school and they didn’t want to see me waste it.’ She breathed deeply, shook her head as if to clear it before continuing. ‘The mother superior’s office was a drab old place though. You should have seen it. Brown, everything brown, although that could just be how I remember it – maybe I’ve got it in sepia tones in my mind or something like those old photos. When I think of it, I can smell dust even though there wasn’t a speck. Incense, too, and something else, which I think now must have been carbolic soap or some such. None of your Shield there, I can tell you – none of your Impulse body spray or what have you. No smell, no colour. Even the books were brown – it’s a wonder I didn’t develop a hatred of them right there and then, a wonder that they, not God, became my salvation.’
‘Salvation?’
‘Yes, love. Education. Look at you, at university. It’s fabulous. You’ll get your degree and you’ll be able to get a decent job rather than stacking shelves or emptying bins like some of these poor souls. You’re going to have a good life, Christopher. There’s nothing stopping you.’
‘No,’ he said, feeling his chest loosen and swell. ‘Not now.’
‘I’m already proud of you and I’ve only known you five minutes.’ This time when she laughed, he laughed with her. He had known she was going to laugh, had seen her eyelid begin to quiver, so was able to meet her laugh with his own. As he laughed, he felt his left eyelid lower and wondered if he’d always done this and was only noticing it now.
‘And that was it really,’ she said. ‘I had to sign some papers, I remember, though I can’t remember any of the words. I just signed. Insidious duress, I’d call it now. I was fifteen, did I mention that? It outrages me even now. Signature! I didn’t have a signature! What fifteen-year-old has a signature? I didn’t even have a chequebook! I just wrote my name in my best handwriting, that was all. I consigned my Martin, you, to the arms of a nun not much older than me, and that was it.’ She began to cry. ‘Sorry, ignore me. I haven’t talked about it for a long time.’