Who Was Angela Zendalic (9 page)

If you agree to go ahead, the Zendalics will have to go through the interview process required by the appropriate adoption board, but I feel sure it will only be a formality. Once approval is granted her original birth certificate and file will be kept
ad infinitum,
by the Children's Department of Harrow District Council. A new birth certificate will be issued with the surname Zendalic, and their own choice of Christian names, dated and recorded on the final day of the legal completion.

Please might I have your views on this matter as soon as possible, so I can liaise with Mr and Mrs Zendalic's solicitor?

Yours sincerely,

Sidney Sanderson

Peggy passed the letter to Ted, and he read it slowly without comment. ‘It's the first I've heard of it. I've been in and out all week and there wasn't even a hint of anything going on.'

She exhaled slowly and paused diffidently. ‘I suppose you might say I've got two choices. Say yes, and give her a stable future, or tell the truth and take her back myself. And I can't, can I? No matter how much I want to, I just can't. I think it's what they call Hobson's choice. I've tried to believe that Joseph's going to come back, but I know deep down he's not going to.'

Ted looked up with an expression of deep compassion, and his obvious enduring love. ‘Offer's still open, Peg. I can sell up and get a transfer.' She covered his hand and shook her head.

When Ted had gone she stood in the kitchen, hearing the faint sound of Angela's whimpering cry coming through the party wall. Not to signal the child's misery, but the usual last throes of over-tiredness before she was carried upstairs to bed. To be lain down carefully into her soft, cosy cot and kissed goodnight; to sleep peacefully in the pink-painted bedroom and waking up to the smile of the kind, bonny-faced woman she knew to be her mother.

‘We're keeping her name the same,' Edie announced. ‘It really suits her. Our little angel, like. The other two are going to be after the Queen, and after me. Well, why not? I'm her real mother now.'

And so, when Peggy, as chief Godmother, was asked by Father Reynolds to ‘name this child' she'd been forced to answer,
Angela Elizabeth Edith
.

April 2014
Monks Bottom

W
ith
the boys sound asleep I lit a log fire in the inglenook, and with the smell of pine filling the room I opened a bottle of fridge-cold Chardonnay, poured out a decent slug and sank down on the sofa. Maybe I drank too much. I'd certainly finish the bottle, but did I care? Yes, I cared every morning when I woke up with a dull throb to my temple, but it quickly cleared, and by this time in the evening I was far too keen on a glass to remember any sort of hangover.

Having downed the first welcome slurp I now planned to start my on-line search for Angela, but first I checked my mobile. A text from Mark outlining the proposed Sunday outing with the boys, but I was thrown again into cursing my rotten, sodding ex. Fuck, fuck, fuck him. Fuck him for bypassing our strict agreement to clear any outings with me before he told the boys. And fuck him for fucking elsewhere as soon as life became too noisy, and tiring, and expensive, and untidy, and socially restricting and sex-starved due to the demands of parenthood. But I was determined to show him I didn't need him, and I'd certainly done that.

In a fit of independence I turned my back on Sunday-supplement Highgate to start a new life in the pin-drop village I'd grown up in. To have my dear Pa five minutes up the road, Carrie and my mother's nursing home in the next village, the boys attending the top-ranked village primary school, and myself with a (short-lived) appointment with the Oxfordshire Education Department. The cottage bought for a bargain recession price with the larger share of our joint assets my brilliant lawyer had fought for, underlined with a legal proviso that I'd receive fair financial maintenance from the bastard I'd once loved.

Everyone said that life would be tough alone – tell me about it – but I was now gloating that Mark's selfish idyll had recently been blown to buggery. The stick insect had dumped him and there'd been a bitter bust up of
The Renaissance Men
. Ha, ha bloody ha. Poor old fading glamour boy. Early forties and too old for a solo singing career, now (according to the grapevine) trying to bluff his way into some sort of media job. With no success. Excellent news! And if he thought he was worming his way back into
my
life he could hang himself. My sisters reminded me today that I could give Catherine-sodding-Zetasodding-Jones a good run for her money, and despite the mess I looked tonight, I still could. And one day I would.

It was a pity I didn't have a man in my life to throw at him, but it was the last thing I wanted. In my single days I'd always been stampeded after; a desirable woman with bucket loads of vanity. Only six relationships (or was it seven), all finished by me getting bored, until I met Mark Monahan at an Albert Hall Christmas Concert gig when I was thirty. He, enjoying the first flush of success with
The Renaissance Men
, and me performing a set of Pa's most loved Carols. Love and lust at first sight? Too right. In those days the quartet all wore tight Toreador pants, floaty blouse-like shirts, and wore their hair mediaeval long. Oh, man, was he a magnet, and we moved in together within a week. No talk of marriage but we committed, bought a flat together, and wanted a family. I sacrificed a successful career, had two adorable little boys, and now, ten years down the line, I was frozen and furious. But even if I could unfreeze myself how could I fit a full-sized man in the shoebox of Farthing Cottage? Even the boys would soon be tall enough to knock their heads on the beams.

Growling internally, I now prepared to sign up for all the ‘find your ancestors' websites, and I'd just logged on when the door quietly opened. Shea stood there, with tears running down his cheeks, and his ‘blonky', the tatty remnant of his baby blanket, in his hand.

‘Did Daddy ring you about Sunday?' he slurred sleepily.

‘No, but he left me text.'

‘Have you said yes?'

‘Not yet, but I will. I promise. I'm just trying to have a little bit of quiet time.'

‘Can I have a sip of wine?'

‘You won't like it.' He tasted it, made a face, and buried his tearful head on my shoulder. Poor Shea. Wrenched from his happy home, having to put up with a loving, but often grumpy mother, and his beloved Grandpa cruelly wrenched away. Now, at nine years old, I think he was trying to behave as ‘the little man', and was quite unable to do so.

I hugged him tightly. ‘We all miss Grandpa so much, don't we?' He nodded. ‘I miss him too, darling. Lots and lots. And I get really tired without Daddy to help us. That's why I'm a bit cross sometimes.' I stood up, and held out my arms so he could jump up and wind his legs round my waist. ‘Come on soldier. Up the wooden hill. I promise I'll talk to Daddy about Sunday.'

‘Do you still love him?'

‘Not in the way I used to,' I said carefully, ‘but I promise I'll try to be much nicer to him.'

‘He still loves you,' he mumbled. ‘He told me.'

Oh, God. How I wish things hadn't been destroyed. How much I wanted my boys to have the secure loving home I'd enjoyed with my dear devoted parents. And they truly had been. The words of the old Doris Day song,
‘no two people have ever been so in love',
had never applied so strongly.

So, as I carried my drowsy little son upstairs I continued to puzzle that the Angela part of the equation was just too bizarre to believe.

P
ART
T
HREE

June 1959
Jericho

M
iss
Glover had been very firm. ‘Mrs Zendalic. Angela's well over five now, and you should have done it long ago. She knows she's the only brown girl in her class, and her mummy and daddy aren't. The kiddies of Jericho are delightful, and they don't seem to notice or care, but one day someone's going to comment and bells of confusion will start to chime. The sooner you get it over with, the better. Make it as simple as possible and she'll understand enough.'

So Edie had tried many times, sitting the child down and starting a well-rehearsed spiel, but she got no further than opening her mouth before walking out of the room to sniff back tears. She'd have to talk it over with Peggy, whom she admired as ‘educated', and rather leaned on as an adviser. ‘How can we cope, Peg. Miss Glover insists she's got to be told, and went on about her psycho-what-not being damaged. Why do we have to be lumbered with all this stuff? She's our little girl and that's that.'

Peggy listened patiently and actress-played an understanding face, agreeing to find out about ‘the right way forward', but once alone she'd broken down sobbing at the kitchen table, gulping and shuddering, her stomach churning with despair. ‘But she's not
your
little girl, Edie,' she wanted to shout. ‘She's mine. My baby.'

Every single day she re-lived the kicks and turns in her womb, and the breathless moment when her darling was first placed in her arms. Sometimes a sort of madness overtook her. That she'd rush round next door, and snatch her up, and tell everyone, ‘She's mine, she's mine, and I don't care how shocked you all are. I'm proud of her, and I love her with more passion that any of you'. But she wouldn't. Of course, she wouldn't. All she could do was to try and make the process of ‘telling her' as gentle as possible.

She'd discovered a book called, ‘
The Very Special Little Girl
(also available for a boy) and handed it to Edie, but after a brief flick through, it was handed back. ‘No thanks, Peg,' she sniffed. ‘That Sunday school tone sounds like Father Reynolds waffling on. No offence meant, duck. I think I'll have to ask Ted to do it. He dotes on her, and now he's a sergeant he deals with all sorts in his line of work.'

Thus, Ted had been lumbered. ‘I'm sorry, Peg, but all I can do is my best.' After many deep sighs and practiced scripts they both agreed that whatever he said would probably end up as a right dog's breakfast. But come Sunday they would take ‘their girl' for a picnic in the University Parks, and he'd have a go.

Peggy laid out a tartan rug and to the sound of leather thwacking on willow she unpacked the picnic; cheese sandwiches, a pork pie, Smiths crisps with a little blue twist of salt, Edie's homemade cake, a flask of tea, and a bottle of Corona fizzy pop for the bouncy little girl who was dancing daintily on the grass. As ever she was overflowing with joyful energy, wearing a white broderie anglaise dress, a pink bunny-wool bolero, and white canvas shoes. A coffee coloured beauty, with two bunches of shiny-black corkscrew ringlets hanging either side of her ears. Her high brow, heart-shaped face, wide cheekbones, and the rare pale blue of her eyes. Her father's aquiline nose and full, wide mouth, her top lip resembling a seagull in flight, and a sweet dimple in her chin. She was taller and leaner than the average five-year-old Anglo-Saxon child, but with her long limbs, so much more graceful. And how could a brown child have rosy cheeks, but Angela Zendalic did, and an infectious happiness exuded from her.

She now began to gyrate her arms and begin to sing
The Tennessee Wig-Wog;
an American country song that was never off the radio. ‘Just listen to her,' said Ted. ‘She's got a cracking voice for a lit'lun. Right loud and in tune. And she's got that drawly accent right off pat.'

‘I play it on the piano and she sings it,' Peggy replied. ‘It's such fun. I play it faster and faster, and we end up nearly falling off the stool.'

‘How's her own piano playing coming on?'

‘Ever so well.
Jingle Bells
and
Ba Ba Black Sheep
with two hands, and a very light touch. She's got a real feel for music.'

Ted winked. ‘I wonder where she gets it from.'

Peggy smiled. ‘Me and the drums of Africa, Ted. Actually, I wanted to sound you out about something. There's a little theatre school just opened up at St. Paul's Church hall. We had some posters sent to put up in the library. Singing, dancing, acting, and music lessons with professional teachers. Do you think Edie would let her go? I'd pay, of course.'

‘You can only ask. She'll either say yes or no. Remember there was a right royal row about that fancy nursery you suggested, The Squirrel School.'

‘She'd have been really happy there. It was a lovely place. I just want the best for her.'

‘We all do, but maybe the best is what Stan and Edie, and you and me, can give her. Safe with her own people. Who knows what problems she might have to come?'

‘None I hope, and none so far.'

‘I'll kill anyone who makes one day of misery for her,' Ted pronounced, with a face as stiff as granite. He then sniffed and groaned. ‘And that brings us neatly to today's issue. Oh, well. Here goes.' He waved his hand and called out to the child who was now crouched down, patting a Cairn Terrier. ‘Come here, love. Grub's up.'

The child skipped over, and flopped down to sit cross-legged. ‘Auntie Peggy. Can I have a dog for Christmas?'