In Her Mothers' Shoes (52 page)

Originally, Dad had kept the deed box in the vault of his employer, the Union Bank. When it was taken over by the ANZ Bank, he switched the deed box over to the ANZ vault. By the time Kate retrieved it from the small suburban branch where her parents had transferred their accounts there was no vault, just a back room with a complicated double-key system that only the manager knew how to unlock.

It took a very long time – while the counter queue grew increasingly longer – for the teller to retrieve the box. She arrived through the code-locked door with a large, dented and heavily scratched metal box and hefted it onto the counter with a dull thud. On the lid above a wire handle was written her father’s name: Geo. E. Stewart. She turned the key and lifted the lid. On the underside were etched the words ‘Union Bank’ and inside was a heavy brown manila envelope.

She picked it up and opened the flap. Sheaves of paper seemed to be all it contained. She tugged at them, holding the envelope sideways. Along with the papers, several metal objects fell out, scattering across the counter – a gold and onyx seal for stamping hot wax on the back of envelopes, and several gold and silver fob watches and chains, some in cases, some open-faced, with a dial of roman numerals.

‘Will that be all?’ The teller looked questioningly at her and Kate realised she was holding everyone up.

‘I think I’d like to take these home and go through them.’

‘Whatever you want. You’re welcome to look at them here. I can give you a room.’ She indicated towards a row of offices on the far side of the room.

Kate didn’t want to sort through her parents’ treasures in a glass-fronted office where everyone could see her. ‘Thank you, but no. I’ll take everything home.’ She signed on several dotted lines and the teller took the deed box away.

What would Dad say? All these decades he’d kept his precious belongings locked away in a bank strong-room and here she was casually planning to take them home with no security at all. He’d be horrified.

As she walked out of the bank with her envelope of treasures, she found herself mentally explaining to her father that she was going to be home all weekend, she wouldn’t let them out of her sight, and she’d sleep with them under her pillow – even the pocket watches. 

There was no time to go through everything that evening, with guests for dinner and a messy house to be cleaned first. But, true to her word, Kate buried the envelope under her pillow, flattening the collection of watches so she could get a good night’s sleep. The next morning, she forgot all about it.

As soon as David departed for the races, she started to sort through the boxes of her mother’s things, methodically making piles – things to keep, things to give to someone who would appreciate them, things for the hospice shop, things to throw away. But every new box held a treasure of memories, papers to be scanned, a pile of diaries too tempting to put down, photos that held meaning, books she recalled from her childhood that couldn’t be parted with.

The apricotty-green cover of
The Chosen Baby
appeared in the middle of a pile; she had to put down all the other books and read it. ‘Once upon a time …’ and she remembered Peter and Mary who held their arms out to be taken home and loved by Mr and Mrs Brown. If only it were that simple. She could see Dad pulling her up on his lap and reading it to her beside the fire and how she clamoured to hear it again and again. It had made her feel safe, somehow; it had made her feel wanted.
The Chosen Baby
went into the ‘things to keep’ pile.

It was only when she stopped for a late lunch that Kate remembered the manila envelope under her pillow. Dad would have been dismayed. How could she forget something he’d set so much store on? It was, of course, still there.

She sat on the duvet cover and tipped the contents of the envelope out, scattering them across her side of the bed, papers falling in a lop-sided semi-circle, watches, seals, brooches and bracelets dropping in the middle of the papery arch like a golden anchor. Kate gasped. Treasure indeed. She picked up a chain bracelet, feeling the silky slipperiness of the gold links; a child’s solid gold bangle, broken at the join; a baby’s gold name brooch engraved ‘Rose’; a Masonic seal; a gold and another silver fob chain; a pearl ring; a cameo brooch; a piece of polished greenstone set in a gold brooch mounting. She’d had no inkling about the jewellery.

Then she noticed a dark embossed case still in the bottom of the deed box. It must have been lying under the envelope. She pulled it out, opened the clasp, and smiled. Lying on a bed of white satin were six gleaming antique silver, bone-handled fish knives and forks – the ones Great Aunt Doris had refused to give her at her wedding and Kate had refused to accept from her mother after Doris had died.

Kate gently closed the lid, carried the cutlery case into the dining room and placed it in the top drawer of the chiffonier next to the other silverware where it belonged. Mum would be smiling.

Returning to the bedroom, with the jewellery still scattered across the counterpane, Kate started to sift through the papers. To her surprise, she found several documents from a Masonic Lodge. At the bottom of several pages was her father’s signature above his official title: secretary. They were dated 1948. There was a family tree compiled by her father in 1992 to mark the 150
^th
anniversary of his grandfather’s arrival in Nelson Bay. And there was a pile of marriage and birth certificates dating back to 1818 with the names of people – presumably her ancestors – she’d never heard of.

Right at the bottom was a cream envelope, marked with age.

She opened it and extracted a pale blue legal document.

‘New Zealand to wit,’ it said. ‘In the Matter of Part III of the Infants Act 1908: Order of Adoption under Section 16.’

It was her adoption papers certifying that her parents had ‘fulfilled all the conditions and requirements of the said Act and the rules made thereunder relating to the adoption of children’, and that the Stipendiary Magistrate, whose signature was unreadable, was ‘satisfied of the several matters of which by the said Act’ he was required to be satisfied.

There was still something in the envelope. She pulled out a thin piece of paper, brittle and browned at the edges, so thin it was almost transparent.

There was an official stamp on the bottom right corner and the initials DSS – Department of Social Security.

Kate let it drop on the bed next to the other papers and rubbed her forehead with her hand. She had to sit down. She found a space on David’s side of the bed and fingered her original birth certificate – such a small and insubstantial piece of paper to be carrying such significance.

It had taken sixty years for it to come to light.

Even though Rose had been prepared to pass on the names on the certificate to Kate when she’d asked twenty years ago, she had kept her word to the Government department.

From the time Rose and George had promised that Stipendiary Magistrate not to tell, they had kept the Adoption Order and her birth certificate locked away in the far reaches of a bank vault where nobody would ever see them, not even the person whose arrival into the world the birth certificate announced.

Kate stared at the small scrap of paper. She had arrived, she thought. This is me.

Chapter 5.

Christchurch. 2011

There is an email from Shakespeare in my inbox.

I click on it. The other emails can wait.
[email protected]
has news. 

‘It’s for aspirational purposes, you understand,’ my brother Rick explained when I asked him why he chose such a pseudonym online. ‘I’m sure if the Bard were alive today, he’d have been a huge fan of all that technology can offer.’

I still smile when his emails arrive, and not just because of the tagline. I still find it hard to believe– a new brother and sister, a new family I only met a few months ago yet feel like I’ve known all my life.

Rick’s email is reporting on his search through birth and marriage records for my birth father – a search I would have had to travel to Wellington to make.

‘I’ve just had an email from Shakespeare,’ I call out to David, who is changing out of his work clothes in our bedroom across the hallway.

‘So how’s your new bro?’ David appears at the door to the spare room where we share a computer and a desk in jumbled disorder.

I look up from my laptop and smile. ‘Rick’s been to the Wellington library. He says he’s got writer’s block and decided to go sleuthing to see if he could find out anything about my father. He said it might give him an idea for a play.’

David grins. ‘
Much Ado About Nothing
perhaps.’

‘More like
Love’s Labours Lost
.’ Turning back to the screen, I show him the email. ‘He’s scrolled through the Wellington papers and found the birth records of my father. Now I know he’s for real.’

‘What? Did you think he was a fabrication? What would that make you? A changeling?’ David’s eyes are smiling at the joke.

‘Sometimes I wonder.’ Taking my hands off the keyboard for a moment, I look up at David. ‘Of course he must have existed, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s just that, with tracking down my birth mother and her family, my birth father was pushed into the background. I never gave him much thought once I knew Liz’s story. He seemed like the bad guy who ran off on her. But since I’ve met the rest of Liz’s family, I’m curious to solve the other mystery – my birth father.’

‘I often wondered if you would do that. No matter what he was like once, he’s probably quite different now. Could be even more brothers and sisters for you to find.’

‘Could be.’ I look up at him. ‘Can you handle any more family?’

‘Can you?’ He grins and a questioning eyebrow shoots up.

‘Good question.’ I open two pdf attachments and settle on the first, which lists births. ‘Here it is. Peter Raymond Williams. Born July the twenty-first in 1928 in Wellington. That means if he’s still alive, he’d be eighty-three. I wonder if he is.’ Further down the page, there’s a scanned marriage record. ‘In February 1953 he married Margaret Jean Symonds. That means he got married the same year as my birth mother. How about that? A couple of years after they created me, they’d each moved on enough to marry someone else.’

‘No looking back. Can’t say I blame them.’ David studies the screen. ‘Rick is doing a great job of sleuthing for you. You’re very lucky.’

I flick up and down the page, studying the lines of names. ‘He says he loves doing this sort of thing. It’s like a detective story.’