Peter May - Runaway

Then they sat at the table again, as they had done all those years before, their shadows dancing around the walls to remembered music. Jack recalled all those faces, pale and drawn, many of them bearded, eyes lit by madness, a fug of cigarette smoke and marijuana hanging over them in a cloud. And JP tipped back in his chair at the head of the table, bare feet crossed in front of him, regaling them with tales of insanity and miracle cures, his charm and charisma the single factor that bound and kept the residents of the hall together.

Dust settled around them, along with their silence, and they waited in the flickering darkness with the ghosts of the past, and Jack could almost imagine that Alice was still dancing out there in the hall, slashing the air with her brush, painting their ordinary lives with extraordinary colours. And for just a moment he believed he could actually hear the distant echo of the Kinks playing on that scratchy old Dansette. They had been so tired of waiting back then.

Jack, too, was tired of waiting. He had spent a lifetime wondering what had become of Rachel, and still Maurie was giving nothing away.

‘What the hell was it with you and Rachel?’ he said suddenly.

And Maurie’s eyes flickered towards him.

Although his focus was on Maurie, Jack could feel the tension among the others around the table, like a fist clenching.

‘And don’t tell me it’s none of my business, or that you don’t owe me anything. Not after all these years. Not after everything I’ve been through to get you here.’

Maurie’s expression was bleak. His eyes held Jack’s for only an instant before they slipped away to stare off into some long-buried past. Or perhaps towards a dwindling future that promised nothing but pain and death. Whichever, it brought him little comfort, and Jack saw how his hands bunched into fists on the table in front of him, turning his knuckles white. A physical manifestation of what they all felt.

‘You always wanted us to go to Leeds, didn’t you?’ Jack said. ‘That’s why you had her letter with you. One way or another you’d have talked us into going there and getting her out of that place.’ Jack’s thoughts raked through old coals and found that there was still a glow among the embers. ‘Maybe that’s the only reason you came with us in the first place.’

It was a thought he had never entertained before, and hadn’t seen coming until now. But he saw how it affected the wreck of a man sitting opposite him. Like a physical blow, bringing a hint of pale colour to a dead-white face. Maurie unbunched his fingers and laid them on the table in front of him.

‘I was eleven years old when I found the letter from the Beth Din.’ His voice was thin and reedy, and not much more than a whisper, but somehow it filled the room. ‘I don’t know what my parents had it out for. Maybe the rabbi had asked to see it, I don’t know. But my father had left it on his bedside cabinet. I used to sneak into their bedroom sometimes when they were out, to look at the soft porn magazines he kept hidden under the bed. Which is when I saw it.’

He dragged his eyes away from their focus on his hands, and he looked around the faces silently watching him. And in spite of himself he smiled at their consternation.

‘The Beth Din’s a Jewish court that rules on matters of Judaic law. The letter was marked “Confidential” and addressed to both my parents. The Clerk of the Court was writing to advise them that the Beth Din had established that Maurice Stephen, their adopted son, was of Jewish birth, and that an entry had been made accordingly in the Proceedings Book.’

‘You were adopted?’ Dave said.

Maurie nodded.

‘And you never knew till then?’

‘Nope.’ A sad smile attempted to animate his face but somehow failed. ‘It’s quite a feeling when everything you thought you were and knew falls away from beneath your feet. There were only two things in my head. The first was that they had lied to me. My parents. By omission, perhaps, but it was something they should have told me. I had a right to know.’ He paused, and they all heard his breath rattling in his windpipe. ‘The second was a question. Who the hell was I?’

Jack closed his eyes. There was a sudden clarity in his mind about where this was going, and his thoughts went reeling back through time, like the tumblers in a slot machine, making sense of so much that had made none at the time.

‘What did you do?’

‘I went through all the deed boxes in my father’s study till I found a folder marked “Adoption”. And there it all was. A receipt from Renfrew County Council children’s department for payment of fees due in the legal adoption of Maurice Stephen Cohen. Five pounds and five shillings. Or five guineas. That’s what it cost them to buy me. Cheap at the price, wouldn’t you say?’

His bitter little laugh turned into a cough, and it took almost a full minute for him to bring it under control.

Finally he said, ‘But there was other stuff. Personal correspondence between my father and a woman who ran a hotel and restaurant in the Gorbals. Smith’s Hotel. Though I guess the Smith was probably a corruption of Schmitt. It was famous in the years after the war, a gathering point for the Jewish community. Any Jew arriving in Glasgow would end up there. And Isa Smith was a sort of godmother to the whole community. My mother, my adoptive mother, worked there as a bookkeeper. It was Isa who arranged the adoption.’

His eyes wandered off again to some distant past.

‘I knew the place. My mother took me often, and I would eat in the kitchen. There was an older woman who worked there. Always made such a fuss of me. Serving me little treats, kissing me on the forehead. Always with a gift for me on my birthday. Turned out she was my grandmother. My blood grandmother. Her daughter had got herself pregnant. Unmarried. Just a teenager. And in those days it was common for unmarried mothers to give up their babies for adoption. Only she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep that baby. Me.’

And for a moment it seemed as if Maurie would be overwhelmed by emotion.

He swallowed hard. ‘But she’d never have managed to keep it without the help of her mother. And then the stupid girl gets herself pregnant again, almost immediately. Not even by the same man. And her mother tells her she can’t look after two babies, and that the second one will have to be adopted.’ He shook his head. ‘But before she even got the choice she went and died in childbirth, and there was no way her mother could cope. It was Isa’s idea to put us both up for adoption.’ He refocused to meet the gaze of his old friends. ‘Me and Rachel.’

Luke’s voice was hushed. ‘She was your half-sister.’

Maurie nodded. ‘My adoptive mother and her sister were both older women. Neither of them had been able to conceive. Something genetic, probably. So I went to one, and Rachel to the other. The perfect solution. Kept us both in the same family. Except that my aunt had wanted me, a boy, but drew the short straw and got Rachel.’

‘Did Rachel know?’ Jack’s voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible. ‘I mean, about being adopted.’

‘Not until I told her. And then it was our secret. One we swore to keep always. Just the two of us. Our parents never knew that we knew. I had confronted the woman who worked in the kitchen at Smith’s. My real grandmother. She couldn’t deny me anything. Least of all the truth. And I think, in the end, she wanted me to know. She broke down and told me the whole sordid tale, but made me swear never to tell a soul. Which, apart from Rachel, I haven’t until now.’

Maurie’s eyes dipped to the table, then rose slowly to seek Jack’s. ‘She had too much of her mother in her. I was scared—’