I popped in one such afternoon and there she was, with a big smile on her face, glad to see me. ‘Red, how’s it going?’ and all that.
I acted like nothing was untoward. ‘Gemma, how’s it going?’ There was something different about her though. Ted Lyle hit me with it weeks later, and I told him he was imagining things. Anyway, I was in the office when she came in for a new till roll.
‘I meant to ask you, Gemma.’
‘Yes?’ sprang out of her like a big exclamation mark, which she checked, realising she was coming across a bit eager. A flattened down version of ‘Yes?’ followed.
‘How’d you get on with that support group? Any luck?’
She lit up, yet looked nervous at the same time. ‘I found out who my mother is.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No. Honest.’
I didn’t care. I was hoping for news of what Lucille was up to.
‘Sit down,’ I said, ‘and tell me all about it. If you want to now. I don’t want you to think I’m prying. Just interested, hoping things are working out for you.’
‘Sure if it hadn’t been for you, Red, I might never have found out.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ I pulled up a chair. We were both sitting on what you might call the visitor’s side of the desk. ‘Hang on a minute and I’ll close this door,’ I said, as if we were in for a heart-to-heart. ‘Don’t want everybody hearing your business.’
I won’t say she lit up again from then on in, but everything about her definitely sparkled. Her nice blonde tit-length hair was making me feel like having another poke at her. I say blonde, but it was more white-blonde than the yellow kind. Nice eyebrows. Great mouth. She leaned forward in her chair a lot, emphasising.
‘I’m going to write my mother a letter,’ she told me. ‘She lives in Allens, County Longford.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Angela Reading.’
The Connemara orphanage must’ve used a different system than the Dublin one I was in.
‘Her name was Smart when she had me.’
Ah, same system. As Smart starts with ‘SM’, the ‘AL’ was for Allens with the final ‘L’ for Longford. That’s how they’d come up with ‘Small’. If I’d thought about it long enough I’d probably have come up with it myself, plus a few more possibilities.
‘The trouble is, Red, I don’t know what to say to her.’
‘Why not just say you’ve been thinking about her and would like to have a chat? That you’d travel up – in case she might find it difficult to get away, y’know, save her maybe making up yarns to her family. One meeting. Then take it from there. Tell her you’re working and taking good care of yourself – mothers like to hear stuff like that – and it’ll also tell her that you won’t be a burden to her; just in case she’d be worried. You don’t know her circumstances. Make it sound like you’re your own girl. That’s how I’d run with it. That you’re initially hoping to strike up a no-strings friendship.’
‘Oh, Red, you’re so understanding.’
‘Just older than you, Gemma. Age gives you a common-sense perspective, that’s all. Want me to type it up for you? Longhand’s OK, but it might strike of intimacy. Just an idea.’
‘Oh, would you?’
‘Sure.’ I pulled the keypad and the monitor round. ‘Fire away.’ I then came across as if I’d been acting the know-all. ‘Listen to me. This is your private business. What right have I to be taken into your confidence like this? I wasn’t thinking, Gemma, I’m sorry. Why don’t you write what your flatmate wrote to hers? What’s her name again?’
‘Lucille. But no, listen – I want you to write it. Your idea’s good. Anyway, Lucille’s not writing to her mother.’
‘Oh?’
‘She doesn’t look at it the same as me.’
Fuck it. Lucille wasn’t going to contact Anne Donavan. That’s all I could think of as I typed Gemma’s letter. That’s the trouble with this game: you can never predict how it’ll turn out. Some kids want fuck all to do with the person who gave them up. I’d had it in mind that she’d contact Anne, who’d of course deny she was her mother. It wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t be the first to deny she’d given her kid into care. Lucille wouldn’t believe her. Official documents, birth certificates, don’t lie. Lucille would come away believing she’d been rejected all over again, which, it could be argued, would add to her sense of grievance. For the revenge angle I was working on, y’see, I needed her to confront her mother.
There was nothing else for it. I’d have to force Lucille to go out to Clonkeelin, and to do that I’d have to up the emotional pressure on her.
Some of the kids I’d grown up with had sought out their birth mothers for no other reason than the fact that they had no one else in the world. They came out of the home and were alone. Adopted kids are different in that sense. They have their adoptive families. They’re part of something. That’s why some of them never trace their roots, I believe. They’re emotionally shored up.
In that sense, Lucille had someone: Gemma. They were close. Without Gemma, Lucille would be alone. Bereaved, she might then begin taking steps into her past.
‘You’ll have to sign this.’
‘OK. What do you think I should write?’
‘How about “Love, Gemma”?’
‘OK.’
‘“Love, Gemma” it is.’
And that’s what she
