orang-utans. I think I was as much hurt by Stella’s lack of respect for our mother’s research as by the insulting nature of her comment about me.
Mum had based her research project at London Zoo, over time becoming friendly enough with the zoo-keepers to obtain permission for me, aged four, to play with a baby orang-utan called Betsey, so she could observe Betsey's reactions. Thus was the start of a beautiful friendship - although Mum used to joke that the PhD should have been about me rather than Betsey, as I’d learnt to swing on an old car tyre tied to a tree, and deftly peel bark from branches.
Nobody, not even Mum, ever really understood my relationship with Betsey. It went much deeper than the novelty of being allowed in the orang-utan enclosure, with the general public standing outside; the divorced fathers laughing and pointing me out to their enthralled toddlers; kids’ noses pressed enviously up against the thick glass, while Betsey and I climbed on dead tree branches together and fed each other bananas.
For almost five years, until Stella was born, Betsey really was my best friend, my most loyal companion. She showed me unconditional, straightforward devotion, unswerving in its constancy, never prey to the fickle fluctuations marking the relationships of the other little girls in my primary school. Betsey never cared about stunt kites or Mousetrap or Wonder Woman, or that you couldn’t join the most popular club in the third year unless you owned Voulez-Vous or looked like Anni-Frid or Agnetha. And even with Mum and Dad long gone, it was Betsey I remembered with crystal clarity, not my parents. The hairy gentleness of her long sinewy arm around my neck, the sweet acrid smell of orang-utan pee on the straw in the cage; her liquid brown eyes and tender rubbery nostrils.
I couldn’t even remember what Mum smelled like. Not even a hint; not perfume, not skin, not even the heavy scent of sleep after all the countless nights I spent cocooned in bed between her and Dad, in those years when I was still an only child; Dad grumbling and fidgeting in his sleep, Mum’s arm flung protectively around me as I lay stretched out in a contented, mattress-hogging sleep. Even their faces had faded, apart from as pictured in the one-dimensional reminders framed on the mantlepiece.
No, when I dreamed of my losses, they were almost always personified by the ugly beauty of big yellow teeth and thick pinky-orange eyelids; gentle long black horny-nailed fingers, like a simian pianist.
What was more, I’m almost sure I wouldn’t have become an aromatherapist if it weren’t for Betsey. Although she couldn’t speak to me, she responded by touch. If I’d had a bad week at school, or felt poorly, Betsey seemed to know before I even told her. I would sit cross legged and talk to her about it, sometimes sniffing as I relayed my current tale of woe - Patricia Jackson hadn’t let me have one of her Blackjacks when she’d given everyone else one, or, I had to have a filling at the dentist, or, Dad had shouted at me for writing my letter to Father Christmas on the back of his passport application form. Betsey would put her head on one side and then she would stroke my arm, or my shoulders, searching for non-existent fleas, grooming me firmly, but with what felt like such love that my childhood grievances or pains would gradually dissipate into a wonderful relaxed catharsis of security.
It felt exactly the same as when Mum used to stroke my forehead when I had a headache, except that Betsey could keep going for ages. The first time Mum saw me, keeled over, fast asleep in the straw, with Betsey still petting me, she thought something terrible had happened, and rushed into the cage to rescue me. I’d woken up in her arms with a bleary, blissed-out smile on my face.
Outside the bar, I heard Stella's stricken voice behind me, reedy in the cold night air. 'Don't be cross, Emma, I only mentioned you were adopted because Lawrence
Mum had based her research project at London Zoo, over time becoming friendly enough with the zoo-keepers to obtain permission for me, aged four, to play with a baby orang-utan called Betsey, so she could observe Betsey's reactions. Thus was the start of a beautiful friendship - although Mum used to joke that the PhD should have been about me rather than Betsey, as I’d learnt to swing on an old car tyre tied to a tree, and deftly peel bark from branches.
Nobody, not even Mum, ever really understood my relationship with Betsey. It went much deeper than the novelty of being allowed in the orang-utan enclosure, with the general public standing outside; the divorced fathers laughing and pointing me out to their enthralled toddlers; kids’ noses pressed enviously up against the thick glass, while Betsey and I climbed on dead tree branches together and fed each other bananas.
For almost five years, until Stella was born, Betsey really was my best friend, my most loyal companion. She showed me unconditional, straightforward devotion, unswerving in its constancy, never prey to the fickle fluctuations marking the relationships of the other little girls in my primary school. Betsey never cared about stunt kites or Mousetrap or Wonder Woman, or that you couldn’t join the most popular club in the third year unless you owned Voulez-Vous or looked like Anni-Frid or Agnetha. And even with Mum and Dad long gone, it was Betsey I remembered with crystal clarity, not my parents. The hairy gentleness of her long sinewy arm around my neck, the sweet acrid smell of orang-utan pee on the straw in the cage; her liquid brown eyes and tender rubbery nostrils.
I couldn’t even remember what Mum smelled like. Not even a hint; not perfume, not skin, not even the heavy scent of sleep after all the countless nights I spent cocooned in bed between her and Dad, in those years when I was still an only child; Dad grumbling and fidgeting in his sleep, Mum’s arm flung protectively around me as I lay stretched out in a contented, mattress-hogging sleep. Even their faces had faded, apart from as pictured in the one-dimensional reminders framed on the mantlepiece.
No, when I dreamed of my losses, they were almost always personified by the ugly beauty of big yellow teeth and thick pinky-orange eyelids; gentle long black horny-nailed fingers, like a simian pianist.
What was more, I’m almost sure I wouldn’t have become an aromatherapist if it weren’t for Betsey. Although she couldn’t speak to me, she responded by touch. If I’d had a bad week at school, or felt poorly, Betsey seemed to know before I even told her. I would sit cross legged and talk to her about it, sometimes sniffing as I relayed my current tale of woe - Patricia Jackson hadn’t let me have one of her Blackjacks when she’d given everyone else one, or, I had to have a filling at the dentist, or, Dad had shouted at me for writing my letter to Father Christmas on the back of his passport application form. Betsey would put her head on one side and then she would stroke my arm, or my shoulders, searching for non-existent fleas, grooming me firmly, but with what felt like such love that my childhood grievances or pains would gradually dissipate into a wonderful relaxed catharsis of security.
It felt exactly the same as when Mum used to stroke my forehead when I had a headache, except that Betsey could keep going for ages. The first time Mum saw me, keeled over, fast asleep in the straw, with Betsey still petting me, she thought something terrible had happened, and rushed into the cage to rescue me. I’d woken up in her arms with a bleary, blissed-out smile on my face.
Outside the bar, I heard Stella's stricken voice behind me, reedy in the cold night air. 'Don't be cross, Emma, I only mentioned you were adopted because Lawrence
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