net. If I was to make this potentially life-changing phone call anywhere, sure wasn’t this just the perfect place to do it.
I keyed in the numbers, checked them carefully against the salty numbers fading on the canoe, and I cautiously pressed the ‘Call’ button.
I watched the display, waiting for it to tell me when I was connected.
What was I going to say? What was I going to say? What the blue bloody blazes am I doing?
‘Connected’ Dang.
What was I doing? And why was I doing it? I still haven’t really figured that out.
Why did I send the letter? I think I did it for Hilary. Sure I’m curious, but I think it’s because Hilary believes she needs a connection to this other reality. Is that putting it too strong? (Maybe not strong enough.) She says it’s because they’re our natural birth-family, as if it’s our right, and their right to know. I dunno; but at that moment in time it didn’t feel right, or very natural.
I’ve always been very comfortable as a Bailie. And I’ve no intention of switching family loyalties, or adopting new ones. (Oh, that’s an odd thought: Adopting my birth-family.) I am Brian Bailie. I was an Adair for maybe the first nine months of my existence in some Belfast hospital nursery, or wherever (I don’t remember any of it). I may be their half-brother-half-uncle. But I’m not one of them, and I don’t yet know if I’ll ever want to be. Of course I’m related by blood, (almost full-strength), but I feel like they’re foreigners.
Being adopted is just like being married. It’s a legally binding arrangement where a person becomes a full member of another family, in name, in loyalty, inheritance and everything. You never hear about an adopted person getting divorced from their family. It works. It’s an ancient accepted way of family life that even makes the headlines in the Bible, (notably Moses, and Jesus). So I’m in pretty good company.
Drifting in the serene silky peacefulness of Castleward Bay, my heart was pounding like I’d just been wrestling that damned bull again. “Hello. Graham? Brian here. Hilary’s brother.”
His soft voice replied, “Welcome.” same as he’d begun with Hilary.
Welcome.
Thinking back, at the time that word was a good choice; it was nice and familiar and welcoming. But thinking about it now, it makes me feel like a long-lost relation returning to the family, seeking acceptance. That’s definitely not what I was after. I’m no prodigal son. I’m not returning; exploring, perhaps.
We chatted easily, like old friends.
It was surreal.
There was a strange and immediate familiarity, a true connection.
To be sure, Graham did most of the talking. He spoke about growing up near the Mournes, moving to Newcastle, boarding schools, and moving to the Isle of Man, and aunts and uncles, and his mother and father, and his grandfather.
Strange, because although he was talking about places and people significant to my very existence, it meant very little to me at the time; my mind was focussed on the significance of the phone call, not its content. It was like listening to a stranger talk about their life. (I get that a lot. Either I look like I’m interested, look like I can help, or look like I’ve got sucker written across my head. Or perhaps it’s because I’m a listener, and everyone wants someone to listen.)
Graham was phoning me from his home in Bournemouth. He was the only surviving sibling not living on the Isle of Man. Ewan (his brother whom I’d sent my letter to) presumably couldn’t contain himself long enough to wait for Hilary’s missing correspondence with their mother, and had shown my letter to his brother and sisters on the island, and then read it over the phone to Graham.
I’d put my full name on the letter, and my full address, so it didn’t take a lot of investigation to find my phone number, or Hilary’s. But Graham was the one who grasped the nettle and phoned. He’d tried me first (but I was out, paddling about), so without hesitation he’d phoned Hilary. Why wait, I suppose?
There was just one question I needed to ask.
I’ve always had a fear that my birth-mother was dominated by her father-in-law. I wanted them to be lovers; I wanted to be the unexpected result of a loving respect for each other. I knew I was a mistake, but I didn’t want to be the consequence of abuse. That would trouble me. It would trouble me to think that the man who fathered me was cruel and had forced his vulnerable and desperate daughter-in-law to have sex.
Graham assured me that the relationship between his mother and grandfather was a very special one, a loving and caring and respectful relationship. And he went on to say that my letter had made sense of a lot of things for him.
Graham spoke until my phone battery died. I paddled back across the bay to find Claire and tell her what had just happened.
My Claire reads too many novels, sometimes two a week, sometimes one a day if it’s particularly gruesome. Now she was witnessing a real-life drama, so she was wide-eyed and buzzing with excitement when I told her who I’d been talking to on the phone. Of course, she wanted to know everything. And of course (being a man), I could only remember enough of the conversation to make her livid with curiosity, and irritated that I could be so vague about something so dramatic. But Graham’s conversation just seemed unreal to me, like I was having a daydream. And he’d talked so long and told me so much that I couldn’t sort it all out in my head to tell Claire anything other than snippets and headlines. I said I’d phone Hilary when we got home, she’d remember, Hilary would’ve taken notes.
The tide was now running fast and full outside the safety of the bay. We’d have to cross a lot of turbulence to get back to the peninsula side of the lough. And once we’d started across the narrows I realised I hadn’t planned our route very well. We were well away from the whirlpool (that beastie would’ve swallowed us up and spat us out in bits), but I didn’t realise how fast the tide was shifting until we were deep into 9-knots of boiling water. We paddled through great bulges of smooth turbulence where the water is forced up by underwater rock formations, and our little canoe spun this way and that like a crazy compass needle, nearly tipping us out time and again.
“Just keep low and paddle hard. Don’t try to correct our course. Just keep paddling.”
Bowen was enjoying the ride. Claire was scared, but she remained calm so as not to panic Bowen. I’d have enjoyed it if I was on my own, but I knew that Claire was going to give me a serious case of earache and a paddle-shaped face if we all ended up swimming for it.
There was no going back on the course of events I’d started by sending that letter. Whether I was riding an angry bull, riding the tidal rapids, or writing to my birth-family, I knew there was no going back. I’d started something I was going to have to see through, and whatever they might be, I was going to have to live with the consequences.
THE BACKGROUND
After Graham had broken the ice with his impulsive phone call, his siblings began to get in touch by phone, letters and emails. And there was a flurry of new friend activity on Facebook from their extended families. There seemed to be a lot of them. It was daunting. What had I started?
I know I’d shocked them all with the proof that their mother had produced a couple of extra children, but the real gob-smacker for them was that my father was their father’s
