Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

  ‘I had to send you out to shut you up,’ said Susie. I look at her in amazement. I thought I had been completely silent. ‘Don't you remember what you said? It wasn't actually anything. It was just babble, the poor guy!’

  But I don't babble! And my mind is blank — not a bit blank, totally blank — I am obviously going insane again. I should stop this whole thing now. I hate being in Accrington. I don't want to remember any of this.

  I haven't been here since Dad's funeral.

  Throughout my mad time/bad time, I had driven up to Lancashire once a month to visit Dad and he had come to stay with me in the country. He was getting weaker all the time but he loved the visits, and in 2008 he was coming for Christmas.

  I arranged for Dad to be driven down and he sat in front of the fire looking out of the window. He had been advised by the doctor not to travel but he was determined to come and I was determined too, and I had spoken to his doctor who told me that Dad was hardly eating.

  When he arrived I asked him very gently if he wanted to die, and he smiled at me and said, ‘After Christmas.’

  It was and it wasn't a joke. On Christmas night I realised I would never get him into bed and so I made up the cushions in front of the fire and half pulled half pushed him from the chair onto this makeshift but comfortable bed, undressing him as I did so, and getting him into his pyjamas. He fell straight asleep in the dying firelight and I sat with him, talking to him, telling him I wished we could have got it right sooner, but that it was a good thing, a glad thing, that we had got it right at all.

  I went to bed and woke up bolt upright at around 4 a.m. and came downstairs. The cats were lying on Dad's bed, very calm, and Dad was breathing shallowly but he was breathing.

  The sky was full of stars and at that time of day/night they are lower and nearer. I opened the curtains to let in the stars, in case Dad woke, in this world or some other.

  He didn't die that night and two days later Steve from the church came to drive him back to Accrington. As they set off, I realised that in all the fuss of suitcases and mince pies and presents, I hadn't said goodbye, so I jumped into my Land Rover and chased after them, but as I came up behind them at the traffic light on the hill, the lights changed rapidly, and they were gone.

  The next day Dad died.

  I drove up to Accrington to the care home. Dad was laid out in his room, beautifully shaved and groomed. Nesta, the owner, had done it herself. ‘I like to do it,’ she said. ‘It's my way. Sit with him while I get you some tea.’

  There used to be a tradition in the north of England that if you wanted to show respect you served tea in tiny cups. Nesta, who is a giantess, came back with tea in a doll's house set including sugar tongs the size of eyebrow tweezers. She sat in the one chair and I sat on the divan with Dead Dad.

  ‘You'll have to see the coroner,’ she said. ‘You might have poisoned him.’

  ‘Poisoned my dad?’

  ‘Yes. With a mince pie. The doctor told him not to travel — he comes to you alive — he comes back here and drops dead. I blame Harold Shipman.’

  Harold Shipman was the most recent in a line of macabre doctors to have killed off a large number of elderly patients. But he hadn't killed off Dad.

  ‘I mean,’ said Nesta, ‘that they look at everything now. The coroner will have to release the body before we can bury your dad. I tell you that Harold Shipman has ruined it for us all.’

  She poured more tea and smiled at Dad. ‘Look at him. He's with us. You can tell.’

  The coroner did release the body but the moments of black comedy were not over. Dad had a burial plot, but after the funeral service, and when we had arrived at the cemetery, my cheque payment to open the grave had not arrived. The grave was ready but the cemetery wanted the cash. I went into the office and asked what to do. One of the men started explaining where I could find the nearest cashpoint. I said, ‘My father is outside in his coffin. I cannot go to the cashpoint.’

  ‘Well, we normally do insist on pre—payment because once somebody is buried you can't just dig them up if the relatives do a bunk.’

  I tried to assure them that I was not going to do a bunk. Fortunately I had a copy of Oranges in my handbag — I was going to put it in Dad's coffin but I changed my mind. They were quite impressed by the book and one of them had seen it on the telly, so ... after a bit of shuffling they agreed to take another cheque on the spot, and my father in his willow coffin was lowered down into the grave he shares with his second wife. That was his wish.

  Mrs Winterson lies further off. Alone.

  It was time to go back to the court. ‘Just keep your mouth shut,’ said Susie.

  The court manager was looking a lot more cheerful. He had been authorised by the judge to confirm my mother's age, though not her date of birth. She had been seventeen. So Mrs Winterson had told the truth about that.

  I took Susie to see my house, 200 Water Street, and the Elim Church on Blackburn Road, and the library, now shamefully stripped of so many of its books, including English Literature A—Z.

  Like most libraries in the UK, books are now less important than computer terminals and CD loans.

  Then we drove back to Manchester, passing Blackley, where my mother used to liv as she there now? Was that woman at the bus stop her?

  Mrs Winterson had told me she was dead. True? Not true?

  *

  The adoption society had long since vanished, and now there was yet another mouldering file to be found. I telephoned the new authority and, half stumbling, half babbling, gave my details.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Jeanette Winterson.’

  ‘No, your name at birth. That will be on our records not Winterson. Did you write that book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit?‘

  Nightmare nightmare nightmare.

  I leave them to deal with the archive and settle down to investigate the ancestry site.

  I am terminally uninterested in record—keeping. I burn my work in progress and I burn my diaries, and I destroy letters. I don't want to sell my working papers to Texas and I don't want my personal papers becoming doctoral theses. I don't understand the family tree obsession. But then I wouldn't, would I?

  My website explorations led me to believe that my mother had married after I was adopted. My father's name was not on my birth certificate so I had no idea whether the two of them began a new life together, a fresh start, or whether she was pushed into a life with someone else.

  Either way I took an instant and unjustified dislike to the man she married, praying that he is not my father. His name is not Pierre K. King but it is a name like that, in its Frenchified absurdity.

  Then to my relief, I found that he and my mother were divorced quite quickly, and that he died in 2009.

  But I discovered that I have a brother, or at least a half—brother, and had better not be too rude about the dad, who may or may not be my dad.

  What made them give me away? It had to be his fault because I couldn't let it be hers. I had to believe that my mother loved me. That was risky. That could be a fantasy. If I had been wanted why had I become unwanted six weeks later?

  And I wondered if a lot of my negativity towards men in general was tied up with these lost beginnings.

  I don't feel negative about men any more — that was something else that shifted decisively when I was going mad. The men I knew were kind to me, and I found I could rely on them. But my change of heart was more than specific; it was a larger compassion for all the suffering and inadequacies of human beings, male or female.

  But new JW or not — I was very angry with my mother's husband. I wanted to kill him even though he was dead.

  No word from the adoption society. I had to shout at myself before I could call again. Dialing the number makes me pace and it makes me breathless.

  They are all very nice — sorry — they lost my phone number. Oh, and I can't see the file, but my social worker can, providing she gives me no details about the Wintersons,
which is an odd rule I think, especially when they are both dead.

  Ria writes to ask for the file, and meanwhile it is my birthday, and meanwhile I have lost track of my mother, because women change their names. Has she married again? Is she alive?

  That worries me. All this effort and perhaps she is dead. I always believed she was dead ... A Mrs W story.

  Susie and I are flying to New York City on my birthday. Susie says, ‘I think you do know how to love.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I don't think you know how to be loved.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Most women can give — we're trained to it — but most women find it hard to receiv ou are generous and you are kind — I wouldn't want to be with you otherwise, no matter how brainy and impressive you are — but our conflicts and our difficulties revolve round love. You don't trust me to love you, do you?’

  No ... I am the wrong crib . . . this will go wrong like all the rest. In my heart of hearts I believe that.

  The love—work that I have to do now is to believe that life will be all right for me. I don't have to be alone. I don't have to fight for everything. I don't have to fight everything. I don't have to run away. I can stay because this is love that is offered, a sane steady stable love.

  ‘And if we have to part,’ says Susie, ‘you will know that you were in a good relationship.’

  You are wanted, do you understand that, Jeanette?

  Ria and I are meeting in Liverpool where she lives. She arrives at my hotel with yet another envelope and I feel that familiar dryness and heart race.

  We get a drink. Out comes another ancient form.

  ‘Well,’ says Ria, ‘full working—class credentials — your dad was a miner! And only five feet two inches tall — look, someone has written that in pencil on the back. He was keen on sport. He was twenty—one.

  Dark hair.’

  And he isn't Pierre K. King! Rejoice!

  I think about my own body. I am only five feet tall exactly — and the genetic rule is that girls are not taller than their fathers, so I have done all I can size—wise.

  I have a strong upper body — the kind bred to crawl in low tunnels and pull carts of coal around and work heavy hand—held kit. I can pick up Susie easily — partly because I go to the gym, but also because my power ratio is in my top half. And I always had a bad chest . . . the miner's inheritance.

  And I am thinking that in 1985, the year that I published Oranges, Margaret Thatcher was smashing the National Union of Mineworkers for ever. Was my dad on the picket lines?

  On the form is my mother's date of birth at last — she's a Sagittarius, and so is my dad.

  The form says Reason for Adoption. My mother has handwriten, Better for Janet to have a mother and a father.

  I know from my dives into the ancestry website that her own father died when she was eight. And I know that she was one of ten children.

  Better for Janet to have a mother and a father.

  So I was Janet — not so far from Jeanette — but Mrs Winterson was the one who Frenchified it. Yeah, she just would . . .

  ‘I am not allowed to tell you much about the Wintersons,’ said Ria, ‘The information here is confidential, but there are letters from Mrs Winterson saying that she hopes to be able to adopt a baby, and there is a note from the social worker who visited them reporting that the outside toilet is clean and in good order . . . and a little note that says of your future mum and dad, “not what one would call modern”.’

  Ria and I fall about laughing — that note was 1959. They were not modern then, how could they ever catch up when the 1960s happened?

  ‘And there's something else,’ said Ria. ‘Are you ready?’

  No. I am not ready for any of this. Let's have another drink. At that moment in comes a theatre director I know slightly — she is staying at the hotel — and soon we are all three having drinks and chatting away, and I wish I was one of those cartoon characters with a saw coming up through the floor in a big circle round my chair.

  Time passes.

  Are you ready?

  ‘There was another baby . . . before you ... a boy . . . Paul.’

  Paul? My saintly invisible brother Paul? The boy they could have had. The one who would never have drowned his doll in the pond, or filled his pyjama case with tomatoes. The Devil led us to the wrong crib. Are we back at the beginning? And was the birth certificate I found, in fact, Paul's?

  Ria doesn't know what happened to Paul, but there is a note from Mrs Winterson that I am not allowed to see, expressing great disappointment, and explaining that she had already bought Paul's baby clothes and wouldn't be able to afford a new set.

  I am just about beginning to take in that Mrs Winterson was expecting a boy, and that as she couldn't afford to waste the clothes, I would have been dressed as a boy ... So I started life not as Janet, not as Jeanette, but as Paul.

  Oh no oh no oh no, and I thought my life was all about sexual choice and feminism and and ... it turns out I began as a boy.

  Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

  There is such fierce humour in this absurd explanation for everything that my feelings for all my mothers and all my identities are suddenly joyful not fearful. Life is ridiculous. Chaotic crazy life. And I am reciting in my head the Anne Sexton poem — the last one in her collection The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975). It's the one called ‘The Rowing Endeth’. She sits down with God and . . .

  ’On with it!’ He says and thus

  we squat on the rocks by the sea

  and play — can it be true —

  a game of poker.

  He calls me.

  I win because I hold a royal straight flush.

  He wins because He holds five aces

  A wild card had been announced

  but I had not heard it

  being in such a state of awe

  when He took out the cards and dealt.

  As He plunks down His five aces

  and I sit grinning at my royal flush,

  He starts to laugh,

  the laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth

  and into mine,

  and such laughter that He doubles right over me

  laughing a Rejoice—Chorus at our two triumphs.

  Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs

  the sea laughs. The Island laughs.

  The Absurd laughs.

  Dearest dealer,

  I with my royal straight flush,

  love you so for your wild card,

  that untamable, eternal, gut—driven ha—ha

  and lucky love.

  And lucky love. Yes. Always.

  Susie tells me that mothers do everything with boy babies differently — they handle them differently and they talk to them differently. She believes that if Mrs W had psychologically prepared herself for a boy through the long process of waiting to adopt, she would not have been able to shift her internal gear when she got a girl. And I, sensitive to all signals, because I was trying to survive a loss, would be trying to negotiate what was being offered and what was being required.

  I want to say that I don't think identity or sexual identity is fixed in this way, but I think it makes sense to factor in what happened to me — especially as Mrs Winterson must have had enough confusion for both of us.

  She was always lamenting that I would not be parted from my shorts — but who put them on me in the first place?

  I felt freed by the new information but I was no nearer to finding my mother.

  I was lucky because a friend of mine has a cryptic crossword kind of mind, and he loves computers. He was determined to find me a family tree, and spent hours logged onto the ancestry site looking for clues. He targeted male relatives because men don't change their surnames.

  Eventually he made a direct hit — an uncle of mine. He used the Electoral Register to find the address. Then he tracked the phone number. For three weeks I rehearsed the call. I had to have a cover story.

/>   One Saturday morning, heart beating like a dying bird, I called. A man answered.

  I said, ‘Hello — you don't know me but your sister and my mother were very close at one time.’

  Well, that was true, wasn't it?

  ‘Which sister?’ he said. ‘Ann or Linda?’

  ‘Ann.’

  ‘Oh Ann. What did you say your name was? Are you trying to get in touch with her?’

  My mother was alive.

  My feelings as I put down the phone were a mixture of elation and fear. Mrs Winterson had lied; my mother wasn't dead. But that meant I had a mother. And my whole identity was built around being an orphan —and an only child. But now I had a selection of uncles and aunts . . . and who knew how many bits of brothers and sisters?

  I decided to write a letter to Ann and to send it care of the uncle.

  About a week later there was a text on my phone from an unidentified number. It was headed ‘Darling Girl’. I thought it was from a Russian escort agency and was about to delete it. A work colleague had had their computer stolen and ever since I had been receiving mad messages from Baltic lovelies looking for husbands.

  Susie grabbed the phone. ‘Suppose it's from Ann?’

  ‘Of course it's not from Ann!’ I opened it — the trouble is that the Baltic lovelies all began with things like ‘Can't believe it's you . . .’ and so did this.