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Author Biography
Gabi Plumm, born and registered under a totally different name, grew up in the South East of England as an only child. Finding out aged 34 that she had been adopted was the biggest shock of her life. After spending several years in Europe and then immigrating to Australia, Gabi’s search for answers led her through many metaphysical and psychological paths. This first book of Gabi’s has been a target of hers for over 13 years. What are the infinite possibilities there might be more to come? Prologue
The grey-haired registrar leaned across the desk and to my surprise, took my hand in his and started stroking it ... slowly at first, soothingly. My alarm must have showed in my face, as he started stroking more quickly and huh-hummed. “Mrs Evans, had it ever occurred to you that you might have been registered under another name?” “What?” WHAT!!??? “Well,” I said, pretending a calm I didn’t really feel, “I think every child at some time in their life wonders if they might have been adopted but no, not really. Why?” The stroking got heavier and quicker as he clung on to my hand. I think he was worried I’d slip under the desk in shock at what I was about to hear! “Well, Mrs Evans we did a search for you at Somerset House and they couldn’t find you in the NORMAL children’s register, but they did find you in the Adopted Children’s Register.” The stroking and moral support ended very abruptly as he ushered me back out to the waiting room to wait while different forms were found for me to complete now that I was no longer ‘normal’. Already I was picturing the conversation that night with his wife. “Have a nice day dear?” “Oh yes, same, same except that today I dropped a bombshell on some poor woman’s head by telling her she was adopted. Other than that, same, same.”
~ Chapter One ~~~
Don’t you just hate those days? Nothing is where it’s supposed to be and everything else seems to look at you and say, “Well I’m here, what more could you ask for?” On this particular day, I was turning out every personal document file I had ever created and it just was NOT THERE! “I didn’t give my birth certificate to you to look after, darling did I?” I yelled (not-so) delicately from the other end of the house, at my husband Hugh. He was watching a taped Rugby match but decided to pause it as I yelled. “Isn’t it in the personal document folder with all our other certificates?” “No!” I told him with frustration. As if I wouldn’t have looked there already and gone through it with a fine tooth comb. Frustration was setting in big time. It had to be somewhere. Didn’t it? This particular Sunday was an important day. It was the day we were completing the forms for Hugh and I, and our two children Alex then aged 6 and Robbie aged 4, to immigrate to Australia. The only thing missing was my Birth Certificate. “Can you remember if I ever had one? Didn’t I need it for the Spanish working visa thingy?” I asked over the Rugby commentator’s screams of, “Try, Try, It’s a TRY!” You’re telling me it was a try! Very trying! I wracked my brain to remember when I’d last seen it. We had lived and worked in other countries for 8 years, and I know I must have had a working visa in those days. “You must have had one at some time because you have a passport,” Hugh wisely concluded at half time in his match, poking his head round the study door. Of course he was right. Although I had no recollection of ever seeing one, I would have needed one to get a British passport and the visas for Europe. “Maybe it got lost in one of our moves. I’ll nip into the Registry office in Guildford tomorrow and get a copy,” I mumbled, more to myself. Don’t ever think you can have a sensible conversation with a man watching his Rugby team lose yet again, even when (as in this instance) he already knew what the score was! For the first time in years, we were actually living in England … deep in the Surrey countryside where the garden beamed joyfully in its cloak of many colours and heady fragrance in the summer. In the winter sleepily dripping with dullness and earthy woodiness. Ah, those English winters, with snow that was always brilliant white and fun for about 5 minutes before car tyres and trudging boots turned it into a grey slushy mush. Unless of course it froze and became lethal ice. That, if nothing else, was enough to send us to Australia. Hugh and I had spent 8 years travelling through Europe working on boats and doing other fun jobs. I had worked as a dental nurse for a while, where the dentist I worked for, a Greek gentleman called Ajax Menekratis, had the most enormous hands and appeared to climb into peoples’ mouths to inspect their teeth. We used to do gengivectomies (gum cutting) in those days and one of the girls who worked there with me, who was a seasoned and experience dental nurse, fainted dead away on the floor in the surgery room one day as the smell of the infected gums reacted with her breakfast! I discovered what a strong stomach I have for that kind of thing, something I was sure would be useful one day! A glorious life full of fun and spontaneity and no responsibilities at all. By that time, however, we were based in the UK and living only 45 minutes from where I was born – Mt. Alvernia Hospital, Guildford, Surrey. It was a Catholic nursing hospital considered “the best for the birthing of babies” back in 1952. Little did I know it at that time, but given the events to follow, it was amazing that we lived so close to that hospital right then.
The next morning after Hugh had left for work, I bundled the boys in layers of warmth against the chilly early spring morning. The daffodils and the bluebells love it but little boys and pre-Australian climate mummies needed wrapping up! The garden was lush and colourful after recent rain but the sky looked like it hadn’t quite finished, so raincoats and umbrellas joined us in the car as we cheerfully headed for the village where Alex attended the little Primary School. Robbie sometimes went to the playgroup on the Village Green but not on a Monday, so on this day he was coming with me to the ‘big city’. It was like any other day – dropping Alex off with hugs and kisses aplenty (which was fine when he was 6 and not yet old enough to be embarrassed by Mummy’s cuddles), then jumping back in the car and heading off for Guildford Registry Office. I had no idea at all of how my life would change that day.
“I’d like a copy of my Birth Certificate please.” The Registry Office, a typically featureless red brick two-storey council building was quiet that morning so I was sure this simple request wouldn’t take long to fulfil. Maybe then we could go into Guildford town and look at the big bell in the High Street that had always been Guildford’s famous landmark, followed by a special slap-up lunch in Debenhams. Special chicken nuggets and chips for Robbie, no ketchup! “Fill this in,” I was ordered by a po-faced middle-aged lady as she shoved a form and pen unceremoniously in my direction. By her tone, it was obviously just another Monday morning and just another request from some other careless person who had lost a Birth Certificate. (Po-faced was my mother’s expression for those who look like they have just eaten something really sour and wish they hadn’t.) I dutifully completed the form and handed it back: Susan Georgina Curzon-Smith, Born: 5.9.1952, Mt. Alvernia Hospital, Guildford, Surrey. Ms Po-face took the form with a peremptory “Shouldn’t be long” and disappeared into the back room behind the reception desk. Sitting in the waiting rooms of those post-war council buildings presented the same scene the country over: mottled squares of linoleum with special spot-hiding features and a green paint on the wall that passes all understanding – a job lot for sure after the last do-over of the interiors of the British Navy’s fleet. I played ‘I spy with my little eye’ with an already-bored Robbie. The major problem was that everything was green so the answer was always “a green table” or “a green chair”! Good for his colour recognition of green but not terribly stimulating. I suppose most people never spent more than ten minutes or so in that room, so the council didn’t think it really mattered. We, however, were the exception. Half an hour quickly passed and another two ‘careless’ people had arrived and left with their replacement documents. There was still nothing for us. Ms Po-face was noticeable by her absence. Robbie by this time had started to run amok, racing under the green chairs, and then over the tops of them. At four years old, the attention span for ‘I spy’ wanes very quickly! Eventually we were interrupted by the strident tones of the reappeared Ms Po-face. “Mrs Evans!” (I could tell I was in trouble by the tone of that voice.) “Are you sure you filled these details out correctly?” “Er yes! Pretty sure. Let me check. Why?” I was a little bewildered to say the least. I checked but as far as I could see, all was correct on the form. After all, I hadn’t actually filled out anything more than my name, date and place of birth. There was not a lot of room for error in those few lines, even on a Monday morning. “Well, we are having some difficulty finding you, just thought you might have written something down wrong,” she replied, obviously annoyed yet baffled at the same time. In hindsight I suppose it was a new one for her. Even so, I checked again. “Yes, that’s right. That’s what’s on my passport except of course my surname is now Evans,” I said, trying to be helpful and friendly. She was not receptive, and inside I was beginning to wonder what was amiss. She disappeared out the back yet again, with puzzlement all over her face. Perhaps it was a reflection of mine.
Ten minutes and a dash to the toilet for Robbie later, then she was back and requesting my presence. “I think you’d better come in the back Mrs Evans. Something is not right here and you can give us a hand. Yes, bring the little boy too, what’s his name? Robbie? How sweet, isn’t he a good boy? What lovely eyes!” With these words, I KNEW something was going on. Ms Po-face had gone from total disinterest to thoughtful small talk in just 10 minutes. Her Monday morning was obviously getting more interesting by the minute. The backroom too was a stereotypical council ‘back office’ – four wooden desks covered in green baize and paperwork, four uncomfortable looking wooden chairs, and rows and rows of filing cabinets. Not a computer in sight. This was 1986 and the world was at least four years away from the days of the paperless office! For Robbie though it was a new playground. One of the other girls took him under her wing and introduced him to the delights of rubber stamps while I started on the filing cabinets. By this time, I was getting concerned. They just couldn’t find me. I didn’t appear to exist. I asked to borrow a phone and I called my father. My mother had died four years before from heart failure, something she had battled all her life. Rheumatic fever as a child had left her with a very dicey heart – and a pack of cigarettes a day had not helped. Whiskey had kept her arteries reasonably supple but aneurisms in her legs had killed her in the end. “Daddy, can I check something with you?” I asked my father when he answered the telephone. “I am in Guildford Registry office and they can’t seem to find me. Was I actually born at Mt. Alvernia on the 5th of September 1952?” He confirmed the details without missing a beat. I didn’t know until much later just how alarmed he was by my call. It had never occurred to him that if I moved to Australia, I would need a Birth Certificate. By this time the Registrar, a tall grey-haired rather frazzled-looking man had appeared and, seeing the turmoil in the back office, had announced that he would ring Somerset House to request a search. It was the United Kingdom’s main Registry Office of Births, Deaths and Marriages. There was nothing more that I or the girls could do so Robbie and I were banished back to the drab green walls and linoleum floors of the waiting room with the words, “Thank you Mrs Evans, I am sure there is a logical explanation.” It was difficult to pretend nothing unusual was going on but I tried.
Twenty minutes later, the Registrar reappeared looking even more frazzled. “Mrs Evans, um, would you care to come into my office for a minute? Um, leave the little boy with the girls will you, that’d be best,” he told me very kindly. He flapped his hands to usher me into his office and hurriedly directed me into a padded wooden chair opposite his own. He looked like a man who wished he had retired last year when he had the chance. He leaned across the desk and to my surprise, took my hand in his and started stroking it ... slowly at first, soothingly. My alarm must have shown in my face, as he started stroking more quickly. Then he huh-hummed. “Mrs Evans, had it ever occurred to you that you might have been registered under another name?” “What? WHAT? Well,” I replied, pretending a calm I didn’t really feel, “I think every child at some time in their life wonders if they might have been adopted but no, not really. Why?” The stroking got heavier and quicker as he clung on to my hand. I think he was worried I’d slip under the desk in shock at what I was about to hear! “Well, Mrs Evans we did a search for you at Somerset House and they couldn’t find you in the NORMAL children’s register, but they did find you in the Adopted Children’s Register.” The kind hand-stroking and moral support ended very abruptly as he quickly ushered me back out to the green room to await “one of the girls” with a different form to complete. Already I was picturing the conversation that night with his wife: “Have a nice day dear?” “Oh yes, same, same except that today I dropped a bombshell on some poor woman’s head by telling her she was adopted. Other than that, same, same.” I sat down, all the while thinking that the drab green now more closely resembled last night’s dinner revisited. Ms Po-face returned with a very strange look on her face – from Po to pitying, sympathetic, the “thank God it’s not me” sort of look. She then handed me both my form and my rather bemused son. The Registrar also walked back through on his way to his office. He was very obviously doing that ‘trying to hide’ thing that just makes you stand out even more! “Excuse me,” I interrupted his surreptitious movement behind the reception desk. “Could I ask you, was it my father with one of the au pair girls or something?” “No!” “Or maybe my mother with the gardener?” I was ever hopeful for some sort of reference point on which to hang my rather bedraggled hat. “No,” the Registrar replied, kindly but ever so glad his part in the whole thing was at an end. “If you just fill that in and send it off, they will send you your Birth Certificate.” As if that’s all there was to it. So I picked up Morgan and my handbag and left, still clutching the form that proved my whole life had just turned upside down. So many thoughts, emotions and questions were tumbling over each other in my mind. Mostly I was stunned – bewildered. Had my parents lied to me all these years? Really? Surely there must have been some mistake? By this time we had been there for more than five hours, and it was 4 o’clock. During the search, I had rung my friend Linda and asked her to collect Alex from school. Robbie was quiet on the way out of Guildford as if he knew something momentous had just occurred. I looked in the mirror to make sure he was okay. Fast asleep. I reflected that only a child could sleep so easily, after all that had happened that day. Still my mind was a whirl with questions. Surely, I thought, there had to be a mistake. I wasn’t a child. I was a woman – a married mother of two, aged 34. Surely my family couldn’t have kept it secret all that time? What sort of subterfuge had they all been operating under to never let anything slip? Had all my childhood friends known? My step brother Roy had always stuck up for me in family arguments, even though he was 21 years older than me, and didn’t actually live with us. Something I had never understood. I suddenly wondered whether he had stuck up for me because I was adopted. Did he feel sorry for me or something? Poor little adopted girl, not surprising she’s a bit difficult. Wow! This was mind boggling! Arriving at Linda’s house to collect Alex, she was intrigued. “So what did they say, don’t you exist?” She’d been joking but she wasn’t when she saw my face. “Not as the person I thought I was, no. Looks like I was adopted, so who knows where I came from,” I told her. “I’ll find out though. I wonder why they never told me, why at least my father didn’t tell me after Mummy died.” ~
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