Page 16 of Days You Were Mine

‘Oh me too. All of it. Shall I tell you what I thought when I saw you at the Marquee for the first time? I thought you werethe most beautiful girl I’d ever seen and that whatever happened that night I must make sure I talked to you. And then you disappeared. Not to say that the album cover project is a ruse, but I had to find you.’

He sketches an outline of my features with his finger, stroking my eyelids, nose, mouth, chin.

‘You’re so lovely,’ he says, manoeuvring himself so that somehow we are both lying down on the sofa, Jake on top of me, his hips pressing against mine, bony and a little painful. But his touch is so light, hardly there, as he strokes a pathway from my neck to my chest, veering outwards, exactly, expertly sliding back and forth across my T-shirted breasts, as though he is touching my nipples. The T-shirt needs to go, that’s all. I sit up and begin to peel it off, but he stops me, taking hold of my hand.

‘Let’s take it slowly.’

He presses his mouth lightly on top of my breasts, first one, then the other, then moves his hand inside my T-shirt, seeking each nipple in turn.

‘I’m not sure I want to take it slowly,’ I say, and though his face is buried against my chest, I know he is smiling.

‘You will want to, Alice Garland.’

I love the way he says my name, all the time, almost every sentence. On his lips it seems to transcend into something else, something poetic, majestic. He lifts his head again and stays there, not touching, not kissing, but the way he looks at me, the gravity of his dark-eyed stare, is more intensely sexual than anything that has come before.

‘The waiting is the thing. The wanting is the thing. You’ll see.’

Now

Luke

Adoptive parents often feel as if there’s a chapter missing from the instruction manual. They can’t understand the child’s anxiety and feelings of shame, don’t recognise the pervasive layer that runs right through them, the sense that ‘I am flawed’.

Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Traumaby Joel Harris

We are on our way to have lunch with my father. My real, actual father, who just happens to be the renowned artist Richard Fields. Fields the artist is public property. His paintings sell for millions and hang in the world’s most famous galleries – MOMA in New York, the Tate Modern, the Pompidou. We had to wait weeks to get tickets for last year’s exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. And yet little is known about the man himself, which is why Hannah is hoping to get an interview with him. He’s gay, apparently, though never seen out with a lover. Alice says he is married to his art. And to her, of course, a couple throughout all these years it would seem, just without the sex. Or the baby.

In the missing years – twenty-seven of them – I have always been focused on my longing to know more about the womanwho carried me in her womb and who must, I figured, have felt some connection to unborn me. Now I am about to come face to face with my biological father, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Do I want a relationship with him, this man who supposedly nurtured me through the first weeks of life? If you’d asked me this before I knew my father was Richard Fields, I suspect I wouldn’t have cared too much either way. Now it’s impossible to get beyond the fact that my flesh-and-blood father has two whole pages dedicated to him inWho’s Who.

Richard lives in a converted warehouse on the edge of Smithfield Market, its walls painted blue-black like the old factory buildings in downtown New York. I press the bell. While we wait for him to answer, Hannah says, ‘I’m nervous,’ and I nod my agreement.

But it’s Alice who opens the door, in a white shirt and dark jeans, her feet bare, toenails painted a surprising cobalt blue. Again, that strange, tilting feeling just to see her.

‘Hello, little family,’ she says, instantly putting us at ease.

We follow her along a dark corridor, navy walls hung with Richard’s distinctive portraits. If I were to describe them, I’d say they combined the wide-eyed psychological intensity of Lucian Freud with the angularity of Francis Bacon, the crudeness of Beryl Cook.

The corridor leads into an open-plan space painted entirely white – walls, floor, ceiling – and here at the other end of the room is Richard, coming towards us gripping a bottle of champagne by its neck. He is taller than I thought and almost boyish-looking with his blonde hair and tanned, handsome face. I feel suddenly, excruciatingly shy and I force myself to meet his gaze while my stomach lurches with unease. But Richard puts down the bottle and opens his arms wide.

‘Surely this is one of those moments when we have to hug?’he says, and his smile is so warm and friendly I feel myself beginning to relax.

‘My goodness,’ he says once he has released me. ‘Let me look at you. Do you know, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I once tried to draw you as an adult, or rather how I imagined you would look as an adult. A bit like a police photofit. It was terrible and I see now that I got it completely wrong. You’re far more handsome. You look … well, you look just like … your mother.’

For him, like me, it’s clearly a difficult word.

‘Wait till Samuel wakes up,’ Alice says. ‘He’s exactly like Luke, you will be amazed.’

Samuel is in his papoose, face buried in Hannah’s chest, only his fine covering of dark hair visible.

‘Let’s get stuck into this champagne,’ Rick says, leading the way to a pair of sofas at the far end of the room.

I notice a tremor in his hands as he eases the cork from the bottle, and I am glad. I think perhaps he feels the same as me. It is entirely overwhelming meeting him, on two counts. First, most incontrovertibly, for the fact that he is my real, actual father. But also his fame. I’ve never met anyone as well known as Richard Fields; it’s a shock just to see him up close.

A word about the apartment, quite the coolest, most lavish space I have ever been in – what you’d expect from a famous artist, only more so. The walls are hung with paintings – not just the portraits he is known for, but abstract landscapes too, with his well-documented fetishising of colour: hills in burnt orange, trees that are neither purple nor silver but somewhere between the two. Above our heads is a chandelier, a waterfall of glass baubles suspended from thin wires. Even the sofas, low, leather and segmented to make up two corners, feel like they belong in a design museum.

Rick walks over to the record player and puts onBlood on the Tracks, my favourite Bob Dylan album if I had to choose. We talk about music and they marvel at the fact that we like all the same bands.

For the first ten minutes or so I’m happy to sit back and watch. Hannah is used to talking to artists, and the three of them run through a précis of the biggest names, some of whom – Freud and Hockney – Richard actually knows. They are engrossed in their world and it is the perfect foil for my observation. Surreptitiously, I’m looking at Richard whenever I can. I’m noticing his physique, slim and fine-boned like mine, though he is a good few inches shorter than I am. His blondeness, his fair skin, his blue eyes are all his own; there’s no doubt that I take after Alice. Personality-wise, he’s funny, warm and absurdly talented. I’d be happy to inherit any of that.

---