‘So why’ve they changed things?’ demanded Dover, scowling horribly.
‘Some adopted children want to know who their real parents were,’ said Mrs Vincent simply. ‘Not all of them, but some. Occasionally the desire becomes obsessive. This new law was designed to help them. However, in recognizing the undoubted rights of the adopted child to information about himself, the rights of the natural mother to anonymity have been sacrificed. Girls who offer their babies for adoption today know what they’re in for. Pearl Wallace’s mother eighteen years ago was, on the other hand, given every assurance by the courts, by society and by us that she would never see or hear of her child again.’
Dover grasped the implications. ‘Some women,’ he sniggered, ‘are in for a nasty shock when their little bastards come waltzing up the garden path shouting, “Mummie!” Well’ – he sat back and folded his arms in instant judgement – ‘serves ’em bloody well right! They should have behaved themselves in the first place.’
Mrs Vincent very sensibly decided not to get involved in a slanging match with Dover. Their views on unmarried mothers were poles apart, and no expenditure of logic or emotion was
likely to bring them any closer. She turned back to MacGregor who did, of course, tend to look better and better the more one saw of Dover. ‘From our point of view, then, Pearl Wallace was just one of many. We’ve dealt with dozens of these cases. Children who were adopted through this Society and who apply to us for any information we may have about their real parentage.’
‘Information,’ queried MacGregor, who was anxious to get the situation absolutely clear in his own mind, ‘which you are required by law to give?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Mrs Vincent. ‘Roughly, what happens is this. The adopted child now has the right to see his original birth certificate but, before even this is allowed, he has to have an interview with a social worker first. This is necessary because some of these adopted children are going through a real crisis of identity. They think that finding their real mother will solve all their problems and usher in the Golden Age. The social worker’s job is to point out that such an encounter will produce problems of its own and there is, of course, always the danger that there will be a second rejection by the natural mother which could be even more hurtful than the first. Now, this whole process may take as long as a couple of months and may not, as far as hard facts are concerned, be all that helpful. Any information will be at least eighteen years old and trying to trace the mother from that . . . Well, it’s usually at this stage that they come to us.’
MacGregor nodded. ‘But you are not legally required to help?’
‘No, but in practice we do. Some of us are not altogether happy about the situation but I feel that, in today’s climate of opinion, we must help if we can. After all, if there is any guilty party in an adoption – which I would dispute – it is certainly not the child.’
Dover was getting restless. MacGregor quickly gave him a cigarette but even this wasn’t enough to stop his loud mouth. ‘I thought,’ he said in an aside which was probably heard quite clearly in Wolverhampton, ‘we’d come to find something out about this dead girl, not listen to a blooming lecture. Can’t you get her to belt up? She’s making my bloody head ache!’
MacGregor twinkled quite hard at Mrs Vincent after this but, somehow, the magic seemed to have gone. This time Mrs Vincent definitely did not twinkle back.
She sat very stiff and upright behind her desk and made her next statement with a certain amount of curtness.‘Pearl Wallace came here for information about her natural mother. I gave her what we had.’
MacGregor wiggled his pencil by way of an interrogative.
‘Her mother was a young, unmarried woman of twenty-six,’ stated Mrs Vincent, still cold and unbending. ‘She either didn’t know or wouldn’t say who the father was. It appears she wasn’t a local girl. She was staying with an aunt and appeared to have come to this part of the world, where she wasn’t known, to have the baby.’
MacGregor, realizing that he wasn’t going to get the aunt’s address without actually asking for it, meekly asked.
Mrs Vincent stared right past him. ‘Do you have to have it?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ MacGregor wrote the address down carefully at Mrs Vincent’s dictation. ‘And the aunt’s name?’
‘Kincardine. Mrs Kincardine.’
Dover broke into the exchanges. ‘We’ll need the name of the blooming mother, too,’ he pointed out.
‘Jones,’ said Mrs Vincent, her lips puckering disdainfully. ‘Muriel Jones.’
‘Jones?’ Dover was not one for mincing matters. ‘Now pull the other one!’ he invited with heavy humour.
Mrs Vincent shuddered. ‘That was the name she gave.’
‘And you lot accepted it?’ asked Dover incredulously.
‘Why not? It’s a perfectly reasonable name. Why should you assume that it’s not genuine?’
Dover sniffed to indicate that he wasn’t there to answer questions, thank you very much! ‘And what was the girl going to do with all this information of yours? Try and follow it up?’
‘One would imagine so.’ Mrs Vincent’s helpful nature got the better of her and she became fractionally more co-operative. ‘She was extremely keen to find her mother, but I was puzzled by her attitude.’
‘In what way, madam?’ MacGregor got in quickly before Dover could start putting everybody’s back up again.
Mrs
