Chapter Ten
They made me walk around the yard earlier. Nurse linked my arm, said I was doing grand.
‘This’ll give you an appetite,’ she said. I wonder at her indefatigable hope. It is like a plant that blooms again no matter how many times you cut off its flower. And I am a weed, I suppose, killing it by stealthier means.
She stands over me while I eat, urging me on as if I’m running a marathon. Chicken broth. God only knows what’s supposed to be floating in it – they look like fridge magnets. I manage half and push my bowl away.
‘Another mouthful, come on, my darling.’ She picks up the spoon and scoops up the thin soup. ‘Come on, for me.’
I watch myself from above: opening my mouth, being fed like a baby. I know that if I let her feed me, she will leave me alone. Then I can get back to Christopher. Ironically, it is Christopher who is keeping me alive.
Christopher returned to Leeds on Friday, 6 January, as a compromise. His parents took him to the station, and as he waved them off, he found himself wondering when he would return, then if he would return. It wasn’t that he no longer wanted to see them; only that, since the only meaningful conversation possible between them was the one they could never have, he wasn’t sure what there was left to say.
At Devonshire Hall, he found the longed-for letter from Phyllis in his pigeonhole. He told me he’d known it would be there before he saw it; it was why he had come back early. He rushed up to his room, threw down his case and tore open the envelope.
Morecambe, 26 December 1977
Dear Christopher,
Well stop calling me Mrs Griffiths for a start! I’m Phyllis – please call me Phyllis from now on. Promise?
I prayed this day would come! You have no idea. I’ve waited for it for so long, and since I gave my details to NORCAP, not a day has gone by that I haven’t checked the post in case there was something from you. So you can imagine how excited I was to receive and read your marvellous letter. I have read it many times since then, I can tell you. So many I think I must know it off by heart! I’m guessing the adoption counsellor told you I’d registered with NORCAP – did you know I did it the very day of your eighteenth birthday? I prayed you would look for me – I lit candles for you at St Edward’s at the end of our road, and lo and behold, you did look for me! I should pray more often because now here you are and here’s me, sitting in my bedroom, where I can be in peace away from the rabble, so that I can write back to you. Only now I’ve started, I hardly know where to begin!
I never wanted to give you away, that is the first thing I must say to you, something I have wanted to say to you all your life. You were my flesh and blood. You are my flesh and blood. I have felt the loss of you all these years as if I had lost my own foot. But, you see, I still felt the itch in my toes all that time, and that’s because you were out there, alive, and I could feel it. If I tell you nothing else besides, if you know at least that, then I will have at least a small comfort. The thought of you thinking I’d abandoned you has just about killed me these last eighteen years. I was fifteen when I fell pregnant, you see, and I had no choice but to give you up. My parents would not have supported me and your father was long gone. He was a sailor, he was Polish and his name was Mikael Dabrowski, but you know all that by now, I think. You didn’t ask about him so I’ve assumed that is so. I’m afraid I have no idea where he is. I don’t even have a photograph of him. I wish I could tell you he was the love of my life, but he was not. He was very handsome and I was very sheltered. Parents think they should protect their children, and of course they should. I would have protected you had you been allowed into my care. But too much protection results in greater danger sometimes. At least it did for me, and I paid a terrible price.
But all that is in the past. Here you are and here I am and it strikes me that forward might be a good way to go. What do you say, Christopher? After eighteen years, we’re maybe a few letters, maybe a couple of months away from one another! And it’s funny, because now we are so close to finally meeting, the months we have to wait seem almost longer than all those years. Do you feel like that? Although I suppose you have only known about me for such a short time, whereas I’ve known about you your whole life.
I have been told we should go slowly too, but now that I have found you, I am so impatient to see you. I wish to get to know you, Christopher. I wish to meet you, if not immediately, then at some point. Please write and tell me we can. I have to hope, please let me. I want to know every little thing about you – how you take your tea, what television programmes you like, all about your childhood. I hope that doesn’t scare you. I would not want to frighten you, but the truth is, Christopher, I’m frightened too.
I am married to a good man called David. He is happy I have found you and is really supportive of my wish to be reconciled. We have two boys, twins. Their names are Darren and Craig, and they are eight years old. I have not told them about you yet, but I will, should you decide you wish to take things further. My mum and dad don’t know about all this yet, but when they find out, I’m sure they’ll be delighted, and that means you’ll have grandparents to meet too. When you were taken from me, I did not speak to them for a long time, but that is all in the past now. I also have a sister, Miriam, so she would be your auntie! I’m sorry, I’m saying too much. Don’t worry if you’re not ready for any of that – we can take our time. I could write to you all day, all week, and never stop. I feel like I could burst with all I want to tell you.
It is, of course, up to you. I cannot lay claim to anything at all – I know that. I will take my lead from you. I’m sorry if I’ve said too much already. I can’t help myself!
I’m asking for you to give me a chance. What do you say? I used to kiss your baby photo each night. Now I have the one you sent. You are so handsome! I carry the picture in my purse. One day I hope to be able to take it out and show people and say, there, that’s my boy, that’s my son.
To be reunited has been my dream for more than half my life. None of what I have written in this letter can convey the strength of my feelings. My feelings are stronger than words.
Yours,
Phyllis
He pressed the letter to his chest. The radiator gave a loud bang, which made him jump. The wind blew outside, rattled the loose sash windows in their frames.
He had worried about the power of his feelings, so much so he had not dared to reveal them. But she, Phyllis, had dared to write her feelings – all of them. She had not been able to, perhaps not even wanted to, rein herself in. It had not occurred to her to try. She loved him as he loved her. It was as he had thought. As he had known! They were connected, in tune, as one, before they’d even met. This, this was his gift and his curse – his knowledge of how things would be before they had come to pass. She wanted to see him every bit as much as he wanted to see her. He had not doubted it. He had known it.
With his coat still on, he took up his fountain pen and wrote:
6 January 1978
Dear Phyllis,
I have just this moment returned to Leeds and to your wonderful letter.
The page swam. He touched his cheek and found it to be wet. He sat back from his desk, unable to continue. This was preposterous. He did not cry. He had not cried since he was a child, and only then it would have been after scuffing his knees on the paving stones in the back garden. But he wasn’t in pain. It wasn’t that. Yet here were tears just the same – hot and streaming down his face, girlish, shameful.
There was no one there to see him, so he pressed his fists to his eyes and let it happen, let himself sob and shake, slump and slacken. The surprise of it gave way to something he could not name but which was not unpleasant. Relief, something like that, a draining down of his very blood – like when his father, Jack, bled the heating and as a boy he would watch and hear the hiss of the air as it blew out of the radiators, the softening of the hiss as the pressure fell, until, with a gurgle, the brown water came and his father would wind the T-shaped key and stop it. She had said her feelings were stronger than words – how right she was. How could anyone contain such feelings? It was not possible. They were too big. Only now, in the release of this strange weeping fit, did it occur to him what a strain it had been within the walls of his family home to feel his every word scrutinised and censored, to be watched for signs of change as one watches for a malevolent outsider. He was the outsider. Had been even before he had left. University had changed him, but it was knowledge – knowledge that had pushed him out of his home, possibly forever.
Was it wrong to have changed? Was it wrong not to belong? The wrong here, perhaps, was neither of those things themselves but the secrecy of them. Why had he kept hidden his search for his birth mother? That did not mean he was seeking to replace the mother and father, the brother and sister he already had, did it?
Not necessarily.
But by saying nothing to his parents, he had lied to them. And no matter how you looked at it, that was a sin. But the sin had been committed, the air had been bled out, and it could not be forced back in now.
He wrote:
You have been braver than I in expressing your true feelings. Your bravery has given me the courage to share my feelings, although in these matters I am by no means an expert. My adoptive family are good people, but when I look at them I do not see myself – no browline, no jaw, no eye or hair colour. That is no one’s fault.
Mrs Samantha Jackson at Liverpool Council did indeed give me your details, and yes, I knew you had registered with NORCAP. I knew you’d had me when you were very young and that my father was called Mikael and a sailor. I knew that you taught English and that you were married with twin boys. Samantha urged caution but I think she meant where there was hesitation on the part of the parent or child. There is no hesitation here. Far from it! I would be agreeable to a meeting as soon as February if that is all right with you. Oh my, I am aware of sounding formal! I keep making mistakes. Forgive me – I can’t help it. I am rather quiet, you see. I am studious by my room-mate’s standards and I hope that is OK. I was not brought up in a family that laughed very often. I don’t mean that critically, it is just the way we were. But I have laughed a lot with my friends here at the university and find that I understand more easily now when people are pulling my leg. Adam pulls my leg all the time.
Adam came into his mind, standing at the door of their room one evening before Christmas on his way out to meet Alison, or Sophie, or some other woman.
‘You need to get laid, man,’ he’d said. ‘That’s your trouble.’
Christopher dismissed the thought and returned to his letter.
Do you have a photograph you could send? I would love to have a picture of you, if that is not too forward. Did you feel like you recognised me at all from my picture? What I mean is, did you recognise yourself or perhaps my father? I suppose the picture was too small to tell.
I await your reply. Please write soon. It doesn’t need to be a long letter. We can tell each other everything if and when you decide you would like to meet, if you still do. For my part, I would like to. I vote we write not one or two long letters but many short letters and aim to meet next month but not if you have changed your mind. I don’t want to rush you.
With love,
Your son,
Christopher
8 January 1978
Dear Christopher,
My darling boy. Your letter came this morning. Of course I recognised you in the picture! I’m sorry, I should have said. You have your father’s nose, I think. And he had dark hair too. My hair is brown – nothing special, I’m afraid, what you’d call mousy. Typical English rose, I suppose you’d say. I don’t tan and I go red in the heat. I can’t see much of me in your photo, but then I can’t see much of me in the twins. Everyone says they are the spitting image of David. My genes are obviously weak.
And don’t you be apologising for yourself – I won’t allow it! You sound perfect just as you are. You mustn’t feel like you need to be any other thing than yourself, do you hear me? No more apologies. I can’t be doing with fake people anyway. I get enough of airs and graces from David’s colleagues’ wives at the estate agent’s. They drive me bonkers with their holidays to Spain and their Mateus Rosé. Stuck-up lot. As if putting wine in a basket makes it a big deal, honestly. Listen to me. Now it’s me who is writing nonsense!
I think writing short and sweet letters is ideal. But let’s write lots! And yes, a meeting in February would be fabulous. The sooner the better, I say. I don’t see what’s to be gained by waiting. I’ve waited long enough! How does Saturday the 11th sound? If that’s too soon, don’t worry. We can make it later – it’s just a starting point. Let me know anyway. I will write again.
The thought of seeing you at last is too much to think about. Your photo is in a frame on my bedside table. I kiss it every night, but then I can’t get to sleep for thinking about you. I have imaginary conversations with you all the time – I can’t tell David for fear he’ll think I’m barmy. I lit another candle for you at the weekend. Our church is at the end of our road, St Edward’s – I think I told you that already. I try to go most Sundays if I can. Do you still practise?
I’ve enclosed a picture of me. It’s not very clear, but it’ll give you a rough idea. It was taken last year in Conway. As I said, I’m nothing special, just an ordinary human being – or human bean, as the twins say sometimes when they’re mucking about. And yes, we laugh in this house. I am glad to say that David brought laughter to my life a long time ago and that’s exactly why I married him. Don’t tell him I said that – it’ll go right to his head!
All my love, until we meet,
Phyllis xxx
Christopher wrote back by return of post, agreeing to the date. He kept his letter light, avoided the subjects that troubled him – his adoptive parents, his love life, sex. He could not tell her about Angie, nor about the only other girl he had ever touched – from the girls’ school one time at the youth club. He couldn’t even remember her name, only that he had spent a long slow dance to Chicago’s ‘If You Leave Me Now’ staring up at the cornicing in the church hall to avoid the smell of her greasy hair. He worried these things would make him sound weird, and with that monster on the loose – and in Yorkshire – she might think it was him. The idea filled him with a cold, sick feeling. The Ripper’s victims: bodies mutilated and abandoned in wasteland, behind cemeteries or left to rot in parks. When he thought of these women, these murders, these bodies, something dark niggled away at any peace, however short-lived, he might feel. He thought he knew what they meant by ‘bodies’, the fathomless dark the term concealed. All around him, he could sense the terror that still permeated the female student population, judging by the frenzied conversations he had overheard in the shuffle of the lecture halls, the squash of the corridors and the clatter of the university canteen. Normal women had been murdered. Normal women, just like them.
And if the victims included normal women, he wondered, was the Ripper a normal man, a man as normal or as troubled as any other – a man like him?
Sometimes, when Christopher thought of the killer referred to increasingly simply as him, he found himself unable to stop imagining how the circumstances had progressed from transaction, in the case of the prostitutes at least, to terror. The mere word – prostitute – provoked in him a strange mix of excitement and revulsion. He thought of dark streets, of the smell of rain and rotting rubbish, the whirr of refuse trucks in the small hours of the night. When he thought of the five-pound note the police had found in that handbag, he thought of other banknotes, grubby, crumpled, dug out from pockets and handed over, stuffed into cheap purses in haste. He thought, could not help but think, of a faceless woman in a damp alleyway, underwear yanked down and away, the monster’s trousers dropped, hairy white legs bent, knuckles bleached by the weight of buttocks, paler legs wrapped around the thrusting hips of a shadow man, the glint of teeth and eye all that was visible of his murderous grimace.
And then, what then? The climax, the aftermath – sensations he had (if he didn’t count Angie) only ever experienced alone, by his own hand. He knew at least the rush, what the French called the little death, and the melancholy that followed. But at what point did it turn for him, the Ripper? Or was there no such preamble? Did he attack them from behind, send them falling before they even knew he was there? Did he confront them and bare his yellow teeth? Or did he talk to them, flatter them, walk with them a while before turning, horribly, the knife raised in his sweating hand? Did he kiss them? Did they touch him? Did they caress him, the Ripper, as Angie had caressed him, Christopher?
At the thought of that business with Angie, he felt a fresh sting of humiliation. Her kindness had been worse than cruelty. Women had that power. They made you lose control. Maybe that was why the Ripper killed them – revenge for reducing him to his basest, animal self. Women were the authors and the witnesses of his shame and as such had to be terminated.
Something along those lines, perhaps, though Christopher was no expert in these matters. Adam was an expert. He appeared to have no problem with issues of the body, talked openly, proudly even, of his bowel movements and his sexual conquests as if they were no more embarrassing than eating a sandwich. He had finished with Alison now and had taken up with a language student called Rosemary, a very tall woman who made him look like some sort of garden gnome. These disparities didn’t faze him. He wore his charm as if it were the most comfortable old cardigan and took what came to him as his right. He was lucky. Like the first man on earth he often joked about, he had claimed his place in the world. His name fitted him perfectly.
Christopher sighed, locked in his private, interior world where such thoughts looped, dived and dissolved – looped again infinitely. There were things he would never tell anyone, not even Phyllis. For her, he would be everything she was hoping for in a son. He would be a boy she could not refuse. For Phyllis, he would be normal.