The Adoption by Anne Berry Read Free Book Online

altogether,’ Merfyn says. He has resumed his previous job working as a stock manager for the Ever Ready Company. He remains, I observe, in his work suit trousers, though not his jacket. In place of it, he is wearing a pullover I knitted for him. It is a Fair Isle design in cobalt blue and cream and seal grey. It looks rather fetching, though I say so myself. It was a devil to get hold of the wool though. He turns the page meditatively. It has been a bitterly cold winter. When the heavy snows started to melt it led to widespread flooding. They have cut down radio broadcasts, and suspended television altogether to conserve energy supplies. And morale, as we struggle through to the spring, is desperately low. I am beginning to feel as if rationing will persist to eternity. I miss my slab toffee as an injured soldier might miss a limb. An exaggeration? Not really. These years are proving a trial to us all.
    When the war was won everyone was jubilant. Street parties, bonfires, and so forth. Spontaneous celebrations erupting like miniature volcanoes. The mood was ebullient. And then? Well, you logically assumed things would quickly get back to normal, to how they were prior to the years of hellish nights pierced with air-raid sirens, and dawns of discovered mayhem. But they didn’t. The shops still look empty . Rationing drags on. And day-to-day life, particularly with these arctic conditions, this interminable winter, seems worse than ever. It is the rolls of fabric I pine for most, after the toffee that is. Georgette, organdie, voile, tulle, bombazine, crepe, taffeta, chambray, lawn, seersucker or even just plain cotton. Just plain cotton will do. It will do very well. The day I choose a new pattern, buy yards of fabric, and get my treadle machine going, then and only then will I believe the war is truly over and done with.
    Merfyn interrupts my reverie. ‘Have you thought about us adopting, Harriet?’
    I admit I haven’t. The idea has not occurred to me before. In a way, I ruminate, as the mantelpiece clock strikes eight, it is not utterly repellent. No discomfort for me, no morning sickness, no pounds to gain. I own that there is something vaguely distasteful about the notion of something growing inside you. And I am, with my fondness for sugar, prone to putting on weight. I progress my thoughts. No labour, no painful childbirth. No risk of congenital abnormalities. We will know that the baby is perfect in advance. After all, it will have been previously checked over, literally top to bottom. Besides, being that much older, thirty-five to be accurate, I have to accept there is a chance of me having one of those … those mongol children, or a kiddy who is retarded, or disabled. And that would be horrible. When you consider it, there are no guarantees after such an ordeal that you will produce a normal baby. And it is worth remembering that you can’t send it back. You’ll be lumbered with it for year after year until you are old, and perhaps even beyond to the very limits of decrepitude. Oh! I acknowledge that most get away with it and are perfectly content with the result. But … well, you’d be foolish not to open your eyes wide to the possibilities.
    The Cossor radio Papa bought me as a wedding gift bursts into song with a Judy Garland number, making us both start. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. There is static. The rainbow must indeed be far off. I lay my knitting aside and get up to twiddle the knob and adjust it. Once I am satisfied with Judy’s dulcet notes, I stand and stare at it for a bit, daring it to misbehave. A ready-made baby, I muse, tapping an index finger over my mouth. A memory surfaces, a rare fossil of Papa escorting me around a toy shop in the build-up to Christmas. He instructed me to point at the doll I wanted. There were so many, all of them dressed in beautiful outfits complete with accessories, all of them competing for my attention. Lacy parasols, brocade purses, leather handbags,