In the summer of 2011, my daughter, Evie, and I decided to make a pilgrimage to the source of the Severn. We had started following watercourses upstream towards their source as a holiday project two years earlier. We had planned to recreate a journey made by the Scottish writer Neil M Gunn and follow the Dunbeath Water in Scotland to its source. But our intention was interrupted when I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Months of treatment slowed our walks, modified and pared them, sometimes, to a few hundred metres. The cancer brought with it other challenges. I felt a need to put together a medical history of my family and yet I had been adopted as a very small child. So now, prompted by this new and unexpected turn of events, I set about discovering my birth family. My friend Caradoc, who was also an adoptee, suggested I talk to Ariel Bruce, an independent social worker who specialised in reuniting families. During the long summer holiday, Ariel traced my birth mother to a town in mid-Wales and wrote to her. Ariel explained that she was researching the genealogy of a client and had reason to believe that we were related.
Evie and I were on our way home from our holiday cottage on the Llyn peninsula. Ariel had still not had a reply to the letter she had sent, but I noticed that our route back to London passed very close to my birth mother’s village, which in turn was near the source of the Severn.
No longer just a reason for a journey, the rivers had evolved into a metaphor. When viewed on a map of Britain and Ireland these ropes formed a net or a ladder. Each body of water plaited with the next, twisting first into a bubbling thread and then into a silver rope. When we were out walking, the waters became our guide, companion and teacher. They marked a border between different states of being: solid, liquid, air. And they kept moving, were – quite literally – defined by their movement. Wherever we went, we sought them out and it seemed fitting that the longest river in Britain should rise just a few miles from my birth mother’s house.
We had booked into a pub in the village of Montgomery. We would visit the source of the Severn the following day. But when we passed the sign for my birth mother’s village we giggled, wondered if we should take a look, decided against it, drove twice around a roundabout and then up and down the same stretch of dual carriageway, before finally pulling into a layby and doubling back on ourselves. We decided to make the detour. Her house was at the outer edge of the village. The door was at the side, which meant we couldn’t see it. A ticking anxiety circled inside me as finely calibrated as a Hornby train set. She was in there, behind the door that we couldn’t see. I was sure of it. Three generations of women were within a few yards of one another. But one of them didn’t know it.
No one went in or out. Evie and I couldn’t stop laughing, although I don’t know why. Nerves, I suppose. We discussed what we would do if my birth mother appeared, wondered if we should come back with flowers, and chocolates, and pretend to be Interflora. I was conscious of my boyish hair, only just returning after months of chemotherapy. I made myself imagine the possibility that, before the end of the week, we might be returning to this very place and being welcomed into the house as guests.
Alice Oswald had written a poem called A Sleepwalk on the Severn. A part of it was called “mother”, and two lines kept recurring to me as I looked at the silent house:
I am waiting for an old frayed queen
To walk to that window:
So was I. The Severn (Welsh: Hafren, Latin: Sabrina) takes its name from the ghost of a little girl, murdered by a bitter queen who killed her husband and then drowned both his mistress and their love child in the river. The child’s name was Hafren. After the drowning, the queen permitted the little girl’s name to be given to the river. When the Romans came they Latinised it – Sabrina – and honoured the child as a goddess.
The next morning, we set off for the source of the Severn. We drove past a dammed-up lake through soft green land, which grew greener, and greyer, as it rose. After a while, we came to a wooded area with a circular car park and a Portakabin loo. Plastic containers indicated the place where leaflets or maps had been stored. Wooden stairs descended into woodland and there was a slipway for wheelchair users and pushchair access. A number of wooden posts, with different-coloured collars, indicated the choice of footpath one might take.
One of them showed a drawing of a young woman with flowing hair and a medieval gown. Stars encircled her head. “Look, Evie,” I said, “that must be Sabrina.” I had told her the story of the jealous queen and the drowned child immortalised by the river. How the Romans made little Hafren into a goddess. “That’s like trying to make something good out of something horrible,” Evie said.
The Severn appeared, a flash through the trees, quite wide and flowing fast, amber water over slabs of rock. In a short space of time, it became very straight, with coppiced woodland along the opposite bank, and it felt vulnerable, exposed, naked in its canal-like straightness. There was very little sound; low cloud cover muted the river. What birdsong there was seemed to come from far away. A plastic chain-link footpath, brightly coloured, of the sort found on golf courses, paved the bank on our side. Every so often there were benches. The land began to rise, through deeper woodland, quite quickly, and the river narrowed suddenly. It meandered and so did we.
In the past, when we had walked, Evie had been the one to slow down, to reach for my hand to help her. But it was me, now, who followed slowly, me who fought to catch my breath. I had been weakened by chemotherapy, my heart had been affected and I had had extensive surgery just a few weeks before the summer holidays began, designed to reduce my risk of developing further primary breast cancers. Every so often, I had to stop and rest while Evie ran ahead. She stood on a boulder and waved down at me, threw two sticks into the current, one for each of us, and then raced downriver after them. After a while, she found a longer branch and this she gave me to use as a walking stick.
We came to a dirt road. On the other side the river narrowed sharply. The waymarked footpath became a well-trodden track next to the stream. White mist drifted like dragon’s breath. As the land rose and the source of the river grew closer, the footpath became boggy and wet. Great stone slabs had been set along the path and for once I didn’t complain at the intervention. I wouldn’t want to walk out across this moor without very concrete guidance. Suddenly, the stream opened out into a high-sided, bean-shaped black lagoon. A post next to the footpath announced the source of the Severn. We found ourselves staring into a hole the size of a swimming pool. The river flowed quickly, even from this place. I was amazed that it began with such strong purpose.
The following morning, as we were leaving the pub, Ariel called to say she had received a letter from my birth mother.
I love you. There has not been one day when I have not thought of you. I have been searching for you from the moment we were separated.
The fantasy evaporated, even before Ariel started to read to me. Her tone of voice had given it away. Ariel read words to the effect of: I have been deeply shocked to receive this correspondence. I do not wish to hear anything else about this matter. Do not pass any information about me to your client. I am sorry she wants to know her family but I grew up without knowing my own father and I am certain your client can survive without knowing her ancestry. This really is the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me and I trust I will hear nothing more on this subject. All I will say is I was in Australia at the time, trying to avoid difficulties of my own.
Yours sincerely,
And her name. Let us call her, for the sake of this history, Mrs Thomas.
Ariel wrote again. She told Mrs Thomas that I was not searching for her out of idle curiosity but because I had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer and that I had a daughter. In order to make the best possible decision for my daughter’s future I would like a full medical history of the family.
The reply came quickly. Mrs Thomas said that she would tell us “what was required”. She told how she had become engaged to a wonderful man just before going to Australia. She had hitchhiked down the length of the east coast picking up work where she could find it. She said that just before leaving Sydney she had had a “quickie” at a party with someone who belonged to a group of people she hung around with. She said she didn’t know that she was pregnant until her mother realised her condition after her return to the United Kingdom. She said she had given birth under anaesthetic and never saw the baby. “They told me later that it was a girl.” She did provide a thin medical history and I was happy to find, for Evie’s sake, that there had been few deaths through cancer, although several due to acute alcoholism. She ended by saying that everyone had rights and that she wanted to be left alone.
I was struck by her lack of interest, of curiosity. She accepted no social or moral responsibility for her actions. She clearly didn’t believe that she had any. And yet I felt for her. This woman was, technically, my mother. The tie that had been broken between us is generally regarded as the most powerful bond there is. I tried to tell myself that it was not me that Mrs Thomas was rejecting, but a circumstance that had been traumatic for her. I drafted a reply: I told her that I wanted to meet her. No one need know. I would come to her. If she was unhappy, I would leave at once and she need never see me again. I hoped with all my heart she could agree to this. A month later she sent her reply. Certain phrases caught. This was “the worst kind of emotional bullying”. “You had parents.” “You are not mine.”
The next day I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. I stood beneath the shower. I reached for a razor, tested the blades. I shaved my legs, my pubis, my armpits and, finally, my head. The lovely new conker-coloured hair that was just beginning to grow clogged up the plughole, choking it. I turned off the shower and walked over to the mirror before starting on my eyebrows. But when I saw my face in the misted glass, the water running off my nose, a wriggle of diluted blood where I had nicked the skin above my ear, I put down the razor and reached for a towel.
I wrote to Mrs Thomas saying that I would never write to her again, unless she wrote to me first. I hoped, every day, that she would change her mind.
Three months later, Evie and I were in a car wash in mid-Wales.
“Why are we washing the car?” she asked.
“So we don’t draw attention to ourselves.” I drove out of the car wash and reversed into a bollard.
“Mum!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Calm down,” Evie said. “It’ll be fine.”
We had driven from London to Wales to watch my half-brother, Robert, play rugby. After giving Mrs Thomas my word that I would not contact her, I had started to think seriously about my half-brothers. I had promised Mrs Thomas that I wouldn’t tell a soul if she would agree to meet me. But she had declined. I had let three months pass by. Three months, in which she might have changed her mind. But there was nothing. So one Friday evening in March, I sat down at our computer, and typed in my half-brothers’ names. I added the village where I believed they had grown up, then pressed Enter. But there was another word in the search box. My husband, Rupert, had been looking up something to do with rugby and I had failed to delete this one last word. I was about to repeat the search when my eye was caught by the first entry. It was the history of the local rugby club.
“During the 90s brothers Robert and Ioan Thomas went on to play for the league.” I started looking for a rugby player called Ioan Thomas. I found a reference to one in a club record, but it was years ago and he had retired. I turned my attention to Robert. Instead of looking at clubs I searched through images of rugby players called Robert Thomas. Dozens of faces flashed on the screen, and in the middle of the first page, as the pictures stilled, my eye was caught by a passport-style image. A kind-looking, good-looking, smiling man, who had my daughter’s eyes. Evie came over and stood behind me. “That’s him,” she said.
He was still playing for a Welsh rugby union club. I clicked on the image, brought up the website, studied the upcoming fixtures. There was an away match the following evening. Evie and I packed our overnight bags, got into the car and drove. We got to the ground early. “This is awful!” said Evie. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I looked at her, chastened. I hadn’t stopped to think how she might be feeling. I parked carefully, close to the exit, with the car facing towards the road.
“Do you want to wait in the car?”
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
We took up a position in the grandstand. There were 17 people, including us. There was a training session in progress for the second team. At the edge of the floodlighting, beyond the boundary fence, a horse ran up and down, dipping its head. And then the players came out. “That’s him!” Evie pointed. “Number 8.” He was at the other side of the pitch, overexposed in the milky lights, the turf glowing emerald beneath his feet. His hair was longer than in the picture and he looked stronger than I had imagined.
At half-time, we bought milky tea in polystyrene cups. Evie’s hands were shaking, though with cold or anticipation she couldn’t say. For the first time, I began to see how much this secret uncle might mean to her. She had lost the hope of having a brother or a sister. As a result of the treatment I was as barren as the snow. Mum was the only grandparent Evie knew and she was as frail as apple blossom. Dad had died when she was one. We were not what one might call a dynasty.
We moved over to the centre line and waited for the players to come back. When they filed on to the pitch the man in front of Robert stopped. He chatted for a few moments to a farmer in a flat tweed cap. The farmer was standing next to us. Robert looked beyond the hold-up, saw there was no virtue in passing, and waited. Then he looked from one to the other of us. He was close enough to touch. I could feel Evie standing next to me. Neither of us seemed able to move. Robert lifted his eyebrows, as though about to speak, and then he grinned at us. It is impossible for me to articulate how I felt.
When the match resumed, Robert kept glancing back in our direction. I watched him shake hands with the referee, the opposing captain, the linesmen and then, as he approached the edge of the pitch, I took Evie by the hand and we flowed down the steps of the stand. Robert glanced briefly in our direction, but he was still talking and we left the ground.
I had seen my half-brother and he had smiled at me. I was indescribably happy. But he had smiled without knowing who I was. This knowledge munched at my equilibrium like a caterpillar inside an apple. In the weeks that followed I veered over what to do. The last match of the season coincided with Evie’s half-term. We decided to go back. On the Saturday morning before we left I wrote a letter.
Dear Robert Thomas,
I wonder if you remember, at the match against Llangennech, a woman with short hair wearing a long green coat and a young blonde girl with a ponytail. You smiled at us as you walked on to the pitch. We had driven from London to see if the Robert Thomas who played for Llanbeuno might not be the same Robert Thomas we had been seeking. Your smile confirmed it.
I am aware that this letter will come as a surprise to you. I am a member of your family who was given up at birth. Eighteen months ago I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. It was for this reason that I wanted to locate my birth family. In part it was because I knew that a family medical history would be invaluable to my daughter. But, in truth, I ached to set eyes on a blood relative. I have approached the older generation of the family and been told, in no uncertain terms, the past is the past. I have had no way of knowing if you were the “right” Robert Thomas. When I saw you across the pitch, though, I knew in an instant it was you. So did my daughter. We have come back now to give you this, having no postal address.
I hope and pray with all my heart that you will view this letter positively. I pray that we can meet as friends. Whatever happens, your smile will sustain me for the rest of my life.
With my very best wishes,
Kate Norbury
PS. I am staying tonight at the Dragon Inn in Montgomery.
And I added my mobile phone number.
The last match was another away game, in a quiet village, where the afon Rhiw, a tributary of the Severn, was intersected by an aqueduct. We parked next to the aqueduct, among a strip of trees between the canal and the river, and made our way to the ground. We arrived just a few minutes before full time. When the whistle blew the players walked into the tunnel below the stand. Robert walked past me, but I was transfixed. Evie said: “Mum!” and I handed the letter to one of the players.
“Could you give this to Robert Thomas, please?”
He looked at the envelope. “Yeah, all right.”
“Thanks.”
And I walked away from him. Evie caught up with me; I could sense that she wanted to run. We went back to the place where we had left the car, among the trees between the river and the canal, and we climbed the bank on to the aqueduct. And then suddenly Robert was there, walking down the lane towards the aqueduct, relaxed, in conversation with another man. He was wearing jeans and a shirt, no sign of a letter, either in his hand or in his pocket. He didn’t look like a man who had just been told he had a long-lost relative.
“Mum! You must have given it to the wrong man! What shall we do?” wailed Evie, her hands on either side of her face.
And then my mobile rang. Unknown caller.
“Hello?”
“Hi Kate, this is Robert. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Robert. Thank you for ringing me.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re in the car park.”
“Well, I’m in the pub, and I would ask you to join me, but there are 30 players in here and you’ve clearly gone to a great deal of trouble. Do you know where the bridge is? Meet me there in five minutes?”
I stared at the phone. Stared at Evie.
“Come on.” I reached for her hand. We clambered down the embankment.
As we neared the bridge, Robert was talking on the telephone. When he saw us approaching he finished his call, turned towards us, nodding, smiling, then lifted both arms in greeting. We all shook hands.
“Evie, this is Mr Thomas.”
He laughed, “It’s Robert… Please. I am your brother.”
I looked at him. That wasn’t what it said in the letter. He raised his hand, stilled the unasked question. “You don’t have to tell me who you are,” he said. “You are the image of her.”
© Katharine Norbury. Extracted from The Fish Ladder, published by Bloomsbury on 12 February (£16.99). To order a copy for £13.59 click here
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