Chapter 22

Vivian collected me at the airport in her green station wagon, the smell of which reminded me of my visit to Los Angeles several lifetimes before. We drove to where Tina lived in El Cajon.

I was very, very apprehensive. Where were my babies? By UK standards, it was a reasonable area with only the presence of a couple of ‘Immigration Police’ cars opposite Tina’s block suggesting a darker side to the community. The apartment was small and cheek-by-jowl with others sharing communal paths and a small grassy area. It was a warm March evening. All the windows were open with a different TV station emanating from each. Two cots and a pram took over most of Tina’s living room. The rest was occupied by a sybaritic couch that snaked round the room and provided the family’s life-support centre with hinged flaps concealing the TV controls. The TV remained on constantly. It dominated life there. All conversation was to its background. Its huge screen demanded to be acknowledged with a glance every few seconds.

I was presented with a birthday cake. What a kind thought. I had forgotten what the day was.

And there they were. Three little people held by three other people I hardly knew. I took one of them in my arms and looked from one to the other. They appeared the same. They were—babies. I could see a few differences when they were pointed out, but if their order were changed, I had to look for Lars’s bald spot where the feed tube had rubbed away his hair, had to compare Ian’s eyes with his brothers’. The one remaining was Piers by default. I felt I had created three little people, but after such a time at such a distance, they did not seem to be mine. Under Tina’s roof, they were Tina’s. Her sons told me what to do. I was the outsider who had come to take them away. I felt curiously detached. I recollected the pot in Santa Monica.

‘Yup! Haven’t they grown?’ said Vivian. The tension broken, we laughed.

I cuddled each small bundle and held the bottle at his lips. There was a small suction from each, their only reaction to me. Their only reaction to anything. They were tiny, fragile and utterly vulnerable not least to the vagaries of the legal system I was about to challenge.

'I think I love you,' I said to each and kissed his forehead. I wasn't sure if I should - yet. They were warm, soft and infintely adorable. How, though, could I adore them when all the advice I had was that they were in imminent danger of being taken away from me. For the time being, I pushed these dark thoughts to one side and let the babies sink into my arms. I fed, burped, changed, cuddled, looked into their little faces to see who they might look like, felt their hands close around my finger.

My Goddaughter, Josie, came down from Sacramento with her mother. I hadn’t seen them for years. We went out for lunch. Without thinking it through, I had left the babies with Tina. She found it thoughtless, although was too considerate to tell me so. She was quite right. I had a family. I had responsibilities. I did not have the freedom of a single man. I needed to learn a lesson or two. I would have to do better. Josie, her mother and I sat in the shade of a palm tree out of the fierce March sun and took photos. I looked at the babies. They were out of context. I was out of context. It was all so incongruous. Exhaustion took over.

The hotel reeked of American plastic. Memories again. I collapsed into bed at 19.00 and was up at 01.00 each morning of my stay. By the time Vivian’s husband, Claude, came to collect me to bring me to Tina’s, I had already watched three movies and was ready for lunch. I sat with the babies and changed them, fed them and burped them. It was all so different. Unlike my father, they wanted to be nurtured, touched, cuddled. I observed Tina’s sons’ pet snake in its glass case make small writhing movements. I empathised. In spite of the bright sunshine, I felt depressed. I was jet-lagged in a foreign land and just wanted to get them safely home.

A telephone conference with my solicitor London at 5 in the morning while I was in the San Diego hotel provided me with last-minute instructions. I was to organise my papers into sections, each in a plastic wallet. I was to keep copies. I was to be prepared to defend my right to my own children in front of an Immigration Officer at Gatwick Airport. It was an encounter I was not relishing.

There was another complication. All the passports had arrived, bar one. Lars’s passport was missing. Vivian phoned the passport agency at 6.30 on the morning before the return flight. There had been an error and Lars’s passport would be sent. Not wishing to take a chance, we asked to collect it and were told it would be waiting in the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Claude drove me. Three hours later in the carpool lane for two or more we were sailing past queues of motorised monsters containing one person. I dwelt briefly on the waste of resources, but had to concentrate on finding 11,000 Wilshire. Again that boulevard with the missing letter loomed into my life.

At 9.00 we were in front of the massive building, inside which, a few yards away, lay an envelope for me. I had only to pick it up. ‘Can I speak to someone? I just need to collect an envelope.’

‘Not without an appointment,’

‘Can I speak to someone to arrange an appointment?’

‘No, you have to phone for one. Here’s the number.’ I went to a payphone outside the building to phone to get in. It was an automated system. After pressing buttons according to instructions, I was allocated an appointment the following day, too late to travel. The armed guard told me to come back for the appointment. Further requests to speak to someone led to my being given a card with a phone number on it for enquiries. I tried the number from a call box. ‘You can’t call enquiries from a pay phone’, the guard informed me when I told him of my lack of success. Vivian volunteered help from her office phone, but the promised return calls to my mobile did not materialise.

Corralled round the building without protection from the wind or sun snaked a queue of jaded would-be travellers. All had tales to tell of delays and expense. I found myself trembling with rage, impotent in the face of a blind bureaucracy that looked likely to frustrate all my plans. I joined the queue. Four and a half hours later, seemingly on a whim, the guard let in a few without asking for an appointment number. I tagged along. A notice board inside the hall invited comments and suggestions on the service provided by the Passport Agency to its Director, Tom Reid. Five hours after arriving, I left clutching the passport. I spent that night advising Mr Reid by letter on the apology for a service his Agency provided. His eventual response was to agree to pay Tina $105.