Grey-haired academics lectured from dog-eared stacks of paper at the front of vast halls, radiating a bored air of wanting to be elsewhere. In another century, perhaps, he thought.
Christopher took rigorous notes, borrowed books from the Brotherton Library – a reading list as long as a phone directory – and bought more hardback tomes second-hand in the union shop. His best distraction from the terrible anticipation of his meeting with Mrs Jackson from the Adoption Records Office, he told me, was to begin research for his first assignments. Adam scarcely to be seen in the evenings and over that first weekend, Christopher found himself alone with his books. On the Sunday, he found a church – Our Lady of Lourdes in Cardigan Road. There he attended Mass and lit candles for the mother he longed to bring from the shadows of his imaginings. He prayed for her to be delivered to him as he had prayed as a child on Christmas Eve, guiltily requesting toys for himself when he knew he should be thinking about the poor and the sick. Though Friday’s appointment with Mrs Jackson never left his mind entirely, once back in his room in halls, he took up his books. As he had for much of his life, he took his refuge there.
* * *
Friday came around at a speed, I remember Christopher saying, that made Edwin Moses look like a sloth with a bad leg. It later transpired that this was one of Adam’s catchphrases; Christopher did like to try them out for himself sometimes, and if anyone laughed, his face would break open in surprise.
That morning, the cold air met him at the exit to Liverpool Lime Street station. Not that this bothered him. He was above all delighted to have made it through the week, and besides, it had been colder and windier back in Leeds. He walked in what he hoped was the direction of the council offices, he said, head bowed, map pressed to his chest, heat building in his belly. All the way to Liverpool, he had thought – had not been able to stop thinking – of the infant taken in by his parents eighteen years earlier. He had tried to picture that baby in the shawl he had found in the case – washing it in his mind from grey to white. His mother had wrapped Jack Junior and Louise in soft white wool she herself had crocheted, but when he tried to put himself in such a blanket, Christopher could only conjure the image of Jesus in the manger. Not even Jesus, but the time-yellowed plastic doll they used in St Stephen’s for Christmas Mass.
Of course the baby his birth mother had wrapped in swaddling bands and laid in a manger was not Christopher at all.
‘That child was but a baby,’ he said to me once, ‘a being yet to form.’
His birth mother had not left him at the convent, no, not at all. She had left an unformed being, no one she knew. In fact, that baby had nothing to do with the person he was now. Nothing whatsoever! His birth mother didn’t know him. Not the boy, not the man, not the name. If she could see him now, that would be different; she would know him as soon as her eyes met his. He hoped he would know her in return, felt sure he would. He might love her – why not? And she might love him. Was that so impossible? It would be in a different way perhaps than had she raised him, but all the same… there would be a lifeline connecting them, linking one to the other. What else was this coil in his chest if not that very lifeline, his silken rope to throw out to her and say: ‘Here. Grasp this. Rescue me.’
I’ll admit that when he told me, my heart tightened for him, poor boy. I find it’s often the way that the hopes of someone you love are heavier to bear than your own.
He reached the council buildings in Henry Street, gave his name at reception and a few minutes later, a woman came to collect him. She was very small. She wore a burgundy skirt suit and high spike heels. Her hair was short and grey.
‘Mr Harris?’
He nodded and stood, dwarfing her.
She shook his hand. Her pale blue eyes looked up into his. ‘Samantha Jackson,’ she said. ‘We spoke on the phone. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘Great stuff. Now, if you’d like to follow me. Can’t abide the lift, so we’ll take the stairs, all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
She went ahead and he followed, kept his head down for fear of finding himself staring directly at her small but round rear as it swung from left to right in its tight pencil skirt.
‘How was your journey?’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’s Christopher, isn’t it? Are you all right with Christopher, or do you prefer Chris?’
‘Christopher please. Thank you.’
‘You came from Leeds.’ This she added as a statement before turning and heading up the next flight. Her steps echoed against the hard institutional flooring. ‘So do you like football? Do you have a team?’
‘Ah, yes. Yes I do. Liverpool in fact.’
‘Good man. And what do you think about Dalglish, eh?’
‘I…’
‘Four hundred and odd thousand they paid for him. Obscene, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot of money.’
‘It is for kicking a leather bladder round a field with twenty-one other blokes.’ She stopped and placed her hand to her chest, rolled her eyes and puffed. After this brief performance of tiredness, she pushed open her office door. ‘Now. Come in and have a seat.’
Inside was a desk, a bookshelf, two easy chairs facing each other and a G-plan-style coffee table on top of which lay a faded red cardboard folder.
‘Go on in, take a seat, Christopher, you’re all right.’
When he told me this, I could just imagine him standing there, not knowing whether to go in, whether to sit down. He’d been uprooted – of course he felt that way. The confidence he eventually found came much, much later.
Seeing Christopher hesitate, Samantha gestured to the chairs. Without saying anything more, Christopher sat on the smaller, apparently less comfortable of the two. It was hot in the office and the air smelled of heating, of cigarettes. Samantha Jackson sat in the other chair. Behind her, a low winter sun shone through the dusty window – through the gap where the blinds did not reach She picked up the file and held it, closed, against her chest.
‘So, Christopher,’ she began, and smiled as if in afterthought. ‘I’m what’s called an adoption counsellor. I’m basically a social worker specialising in adoption, if you like. In cases like this, the council provides someone to help you through the process should you decide to go ahead. Is that clear?’
He nodded.
She plucked some half-moon glasses Christopher had not noticed until that moment from a chain on her chest and slid them onto her nose. She peered at him over the top of them. ‘So as a starting point, Christopher, it might be best if you tell me what you’re hoping for today.’
‘Hoping for,’ he repeated, suddenly with no idea why he had come or how to put what he wanted into words.