Sons and discoveries

Listing page content here

‘Who are we? Where are we going? Has public provision been a success?’ These are the kind of ‘weighty, unanswerable’ questions, Jeremy Harding asks himself as he mooches around west London housing estates in search of the mother who gave him up for adoption 50-odd years ago. The questions in Jonathan Maitland’s head are more personal, and considerably more promising as opening lines for a narrative. Was his mother genuinely mistaken when she announced, via the local paper and without preparing her family, that she had inoperable cancer? Or was she brazenly faking to win public sympathy prior to opening England’s first all-gay hotel? Why had the old people’s homes she had previously run been closed down? How could she afford to drive a new red Mercedes and send Maitland’s stepfather off to Harrods to buy suits by the dozen? Had she ever contemplated, or even possibly committed, murder?

Harding knew from the age of five that he had been adopted. His personal myth of origin was one of social elevation. The unmarried Irish girl who surrendered him was one of the poor. His adoptive mother Maureen and her husband Colin were of the mostly idle, fairly rich. Colin did rather well out of playing contract bridge for money with the slightly richer (Lord Lucan among them). Maureen ran a flower shop in Knightsbridge for a while, but spent most of her life getting drunk in a ladylike way (‘How can I cook the lunch without a little pick-me-up?’).   

When Harding began to make enquiries about his biological parents he uncovered the hidden story of his adoptive ones.   Maureen adored My Fair Lady: it turned out that her posh manners had been as hard worked-for as Eliza Doolittle’s.