‘Ben Bradbury.’ He shook her hand. His left, her right: awkward, more like a step at a barn dance than a greeting. But he held on anyway.
After graduation, he asked her to move in with him and felt his life start. She felt it too, he thought – there was a new seriousness about her, a desire to put the madness of college behind them and find something more substantial. She applied to train as an elementary-school teacher, and he resolved to find work in design: something good, something impressive. Martha was proud of his commitment. She said it came from love. But he wondered later, looking back, whether it came from nothing more noble than a desire to prove George and Dorothy wrong – about art, about politics, about everything. And when George pulled in a contact and found Ben a job at a reputable design company back in DC, a fact communicated to Ben via Dorothy, he said thank you, he was real grateful, but he preferred to stay with Martha in California.
The gamble paid off. An impressive portfolio and a certain relaxed charm that can only be acquired by misspending at least some of your youth on marijuana, girls and good times soon found Ben a job at United Graphics, a company specialising in corporate-identity branding. The open-plan office in downtown San Francisco came complete with fashionable red chairs and desks of black-stained wood. His job title was Junior Illustrator, apprentice to a creative manager called Darko, whose glasses were pieces of electric-blue plastic with lenses dropping onto each cheek and whose designer sneakers Ben was determined to fill once Darko became senior creative director. By ’82 – that’s his aim.
He feels Martha stir beside him.
‘My shoulders are cold,’ she says. She sits up, her long back lean and strong, the hint of a tan line at the bottom. ‘I’m thirsty, do you want some water?’
‘Sure.’
She reaches to the end of the bed and rifles through the clothes they threw there. Pulls out his black T-shirt and puts it on. He watches her walk out into the light from the hallway. His T-shirt reaches the top of her thighs, and at the sight of her he feels himself stir.
She comes back with two glasses and hands one to him, climbs back into bed and pushes her feet under the quilt.
‘So did you do that thing?’
‘Not yet.’
She drinks her water. ‘What’ve you got to lose? Maybe they could put you in touch. I know they like to go slowly with these things. You have to write them.’
‘I’m not doing it that way. I’ve decided. These people are bureaucrats. Doing things the proper way takes way too long, man. Trust me.’
In his mother’s purse all those years ago had been a small black-and-white photo of a baby in the arms of a nun. On the back was the date, and the name of the convent. He had pocketed the photo and, with the passion of an eight-year-old child, resolved to set off that very evening. He packed a bag with some clothes, some sandwiches and the card for his Child Saver bank account. Figured he’d hitch a ride across America then stow away on a boat. After that, it could not be far to the convent. He had looked on a map and Liverpool was right there on the coast – on the near side of England! He would simply show up and ask to look at their records. But that evening Dorothy made chicken casserole with dough balls and it smelled good, so he put the photo in his tin safe and locked the padlock and kept it safe for the following day.
Week.
Month.
Year.
‘I know where the convent is,’ he says now, to the love of his life, a woman so unlike Dorothy, who cares no more for cocktail parties than for a trip to the moon, a woman who is happy if you so much as smile and lay your hand against her cheek. ‘I have a photo. All I need to do is rock up there and ask. They’ll have records, they must do. I just need to find the time is all.’
Looking at Martha now, her strawberry-blonde hair mussed up from the activities of the last hour, he thinks that if he leaves it much longer to find out who he really is, he might be halfway to being a father himself.
He lays his head on her lap. She takes his head in her hands and brings her face down to his to kiss.
‘I love you,’ he says.
‘However you want to do this thing, you should do it now,’ she says.
‘I should. Then we can get married.’
‘Then we can get married.’
The day after the Oakland deal is finalised, he books the flight: an open return to London. From there he’ll hire a car. He’s going to need the flexibility. He’ll need his own steam.
Chapter Thirteen
It was the first Saturday in March. Phyllis had asked Christopher to come and stay for the weekend. I can picture him, standing outside the front door, palms sweating around the cellophane wrap of carnations he told me he’d picked up from the garage. For each of the twins he had bought a Marathon bar, a packet of Chewits and one of Spangles. He was generous, was Christopher. That’s something you should know about him. He only ever wanted to please.
Since his first visit, a few weeks ago now, he and Phyllis had agreed that he would phone her every Sunday evening. No such arrangement with Jack and Margaret; Christopher saved all his coppers for Phyllis, for the moment he would head down to the payphone and queue behind the other students waiting to call their families.
The sound of her voice down the line was a drug, the days between calls cold turkey, the shakes coming in the form of vivid dreams in which nothing more happened than the two of them talking in the soft pink light he always imagined, her head on his chest. He could still feel the small square bone of her shoulder in the cup of his hand, could still watch her laugh in his mind’s eye whenever he wanted, replay and replay the way her left eye half-closed when she heard or said something funny or peculiar or embarrassing or suspicious. When she spoke on the telephone, he pictured her in this way, her face, the way she smiled. He thought of her hair against his lips, the soap fragrance, the silence in the warm living room.
The two of them sitting together on the sofa while she told him the story of his birth had been exactly as he had imagined.
In-between calls he wrote to her with the kind of news he could never share with Jack and Margaret:
Another night out with Adam and the electronic-engineering boys last night. Siouxsie and the Banshees were playing at the Union. I lost count of how many pints I drank – those boys are a bad influence all right! Back to the library with a sore head for me today… I shall do well not to fall asleep at my desk.
He said to me once that it was as if he had found in Phyllis a personality for himself that had been his all along, as if she had been its custodian these past eighteen years, and now that they had finally met, she had handed it over to him. Her lightness took away his weight, he said. Her love untangled the rope.
Newsflash! I have grown a beard. All Adam’s idea, of course, part of his Christopher project, but he says it suits me. You shall have to tell me what you think when you see me. I’m not at all sure.