Apple of My Eye (10 page)

The carols came to an end. The crowd began to disperse. The three of them stood together, looking up at the cold, dark sky. Her father told her that when he and her mother had first met they had stolen a rowing boat and sat together all night on the river watching the stars. Her mother told her that the owner of the boat had reported them to the police and that her parents had forbidden the two of them from ever meeting again.

‘You didn’t take any notice, though,’ said Susan’s father.

Susan’s mother shook her head.

‘More fool you.’

They kissed each other. Again her mother was laughing. She looked beautiful and happy. Not scared of anything.

As they moved through the crowds Susan saw Alice Wetherby standing with an elderly couple she didn’t recognize. Visiting relatives probably. Alice was tugging at the woman’s coat and pointing at Susan’s mother. The woman began to stare. Susan stuck her tongue out. Quickly the woman looked away. Alice made a face back. Susan mouthed a single ‘moo’ and Alice, scowling, looked away too.

Her mother, who was talking about the carols, didn’t notice. Her father, who was nodding in agreement, did. The two of them exchanged winks as they continued on their way.

April 1953.

It was a Saturday. Susan’s mother was spending the
day in Lyndham, a nearby village, visiting an old aunt. Susan and her father were going to the cinema.

There was no cinema in Kendleton so they had taken the bus to Oxford. The film they had chosen was
Singing in the Rain.
Susan’s parents had taken her to see it the previous weekend and she had loved it so much that she had begged to be taken again.

They sat together in the auditorium, waiting for the lights to dim and the film to start. Most of the seats were full. One of the few empty ones was next to Susan. ‘Smudge could have sat there,’ she told her father.

‘You’re obsessed with that cat!’

Smudge was a ginger tabby with a black patch around his nose. Auntie Emma had given him to Susan in January as a seventh birthday present. Her father had taken a photograph of her sitting on the sofa with Smudge on her knee and Auntie Emma and Uncle George on either side. All three were wearing party hats and grinning for the camera.

That had been the last time she had seen them. Two days later they had left England for Australia, where Uncle George had an important new job. Auntie Emma had assured her that it wouldn’t be for ever. That they would be back before she knew it. So far she had received three letters and a picture of a kangaroo which she had taken to school to show her friends. Mrs Young had pointed Australia out on the map. ‘It’s the other side of the world,’ she had told the class, and Susan had suddenly felt sure that in spite of all their
promises she would never see Auntie Emma and Uncle George again.

The feeling returned now, like a blow struck by an invisible fist. She lowered her head, staring down at her hands. On her wrist was a tiny bracelet. Another present from Auntie Emma, bought the previous summer while her mother was in hospital.

‘What is it, Susie?’

‘I hate it when people go away.’

‘But they come back. You just have to be patient.’ He took her chin in his hand, gently stretching her lips into a smile. It tickled and lifted her mood. He stroked her hair, telling her about when he was a boy and had come to this very cinema to see silent films just like the ones they were making at the start of
Singing in the Rain.

‘I wouldn’t have liked those films,’ she said.

‘Oh yes you would. An orchestra used to play and the audience would shout and cheer. The stars were wonderful then. Buster Keaton was my favourite but there was Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. Your grandfather used to say that none of the modern stars could hold a candle to them.’

‘Not even Elizabeth Taylor?’

He tweaked her nose. ‘Well, perhaps her.’

The lights dimmed. She felt happy to be with him, there in the dark, waiting to be swept up in the excitement on the screen.

The film was wonderful. Even better the second time. When Donald O’Connor sang ‘Make ’em Laugh’
and inadvertently leapt through a wall they laughed so hard that the woman in the row behind began to complain. During the interval he bought choc-ices from a girl with a tray. As they ate them she waved to a boy in her class who was sitting near by.

It was raining when the bus dropped them in Market Court.

‘How about a cream cake?’ he asked.

She thought of the supper waiting for them. ‘Mum will be cross.’

‘Not if we don’t tell her.’ He took her hand and began to hum ‘Singing in the Rain’. She did the same and they danced through the raindrops, drawing amused smiles from passers-by.

They sat in Hobson’s Tea Shop, he sipping coffee while she chose a custard slice from the trolley pushed by a uniformed waitress.

‘Have you enjoyed your day, Susie?’

‘Yes.
Singing in the Rain
is the best film ever!’ She bit into her cake. Sweet cream and flaky pastry merged in her mouth. A middle-aged couple at another table kept glancing over. She heard the woman whisper the word ‘beautiful’.

Her father heard too and smiled. ‘Perhaps you’ll be in films one day. You’ll live in Hollywood and your mother and I will go and see you at the cinema and tell everyone that the big star on the screen is our little Susie Sparkle and that we’re more proud of her than we can say.’

She carried on eating. He sat, watching her. A kind
man with untidy hair, twinkling eyes and a smile that could light up a whole room, just as it was doing now.

Then, suddenly, it faded.

She put down her fork. ‘Dad?’

His eyes widened as if in shock.

‘Dad?’

He put his hand to his chest, the colour draining from his face. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ …’

‘Dad!’

He slid sideways on his seat, his other hand grabbing at the tablecloth, pulling the contents of the table down with him as he fell to the floor.

The man from the nearby table crouched down beside him. She did the same but the woman who had called her beautiful pulled her away. ‘It’s all right, dear,’ she said soothingly. ‘My husband’s a doctor. He knows what to do.’

The owner of the shop ran over. ‘It’s a heart attack,’ said the man. ‘Phone an ambulance. Quick!’

Susan tried to break free from the woman. People moved between them and her father so she couldn’t see him any more. She told herself not to be frightened. That this was just one of his jokes. That he would soon appear and start teasing her for being such a baby.

But when the crowds parted he was still lying there. And this time she could no longer see his face. The owner of the shop had covered it with a towel.

In the days that followed it seemed as if the whole world had lost its voice. People spoke in whispers, their
faces exaggerated masks of sorrow, so that in her dazed state she began to believe that she was trapped in one of those silent films her father had loved so much.

His funeral was like a dream. A long, tiring ceremony that did nothing to make what had happened seem any more real. She sat next to her mother in the front row of Kendleton Church, listening to the vicar say that her father would never truly be dead as long as he lived on in their hearts. She tried to understand but her head felt as if it would burst with all the thoughts that jostled inside. Her father
was
dead, and that meant he was gone and would never come back. But if he never came back she would never see him again and that wasn’t possible. But if he did come back then he wouldn’t be dead and …

When it all grew too much she shut her eyes, hiding in self-imposed darkness and seeking comfort in the warmth of his remembered smile. But when she opened them again she was still in the church, the vicar was still speaking, her mother was crying and the pain in her head was so bad that it made her want to scream.

Mrs Young told the class that she was very brave and didn’t mind when she failed to pay attention during lessons. The other children made her a huge card and decorated it with wild flowers. All were kind to her, though some would stare at her warily as if her loss were an infection they could all catch.

She longed for Auntie Emma and Uncle George to come but they never did. Her mother said that Australia was too far away. Others came, though. An
endless stream of visitors eager to recite their platitudes and wallow in the drama. ‘Such a shock,’ they told her mother. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we heard. Only thirty-six, poor man. It’s always the good that die young, isn’t it? But life must go on.’

They fussed over Susan, praising her for being ‘such a grown-up girl’. ‘You keep it up, dear,’ said one neighbour whom she barely knew. ‘Your mother needs you to be brave.’ She had nodded and promised that she would.

But it was her mother who needed to be brave.

An early evening in June. The two of them sat on the living-room sofa while Smudge chased a ball of paper around their feet. From the house next door came the sound of singing. A party to celebrate the coronation. Her mother had tried to make her go but she had refused.

‘We’ll be all right, Mum.’

‘How can we be without money?’ Her mother stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. She had always been a light smoker but in recent weeks her consumption of tobacco had increased. As she smoked she twisted her wedding ring round and round her finger.

‘Mum …’

‘Your grandmother always said I was a fool to marry him. No practical sense. Just a dreamer with his head in the clouds. She was right too.’

‘No she wasn’t.’

The fingers continued to twist the ring. ‘And this is right? Leaving us with barely enough money to survive. What sort of man does that to his family? A weak, selfish man. That’s what he was.’

‘No he wasn’t! Don’t say that about him. Don’t!’

Her mother’s face was in shadow. For a moment the eyes looked as blank as on the day of the breakdown. Just a trick of the light but enough to fill Susan with terror. Next door, people were laughing as someone sang the national anthem. When her father had been alive their house had been full of laughter but now he had gone and taken all the joy with him.

‘Don’t be scared, Mum. Please don’t be scared.’

Silence. She stared into her mother’s face. A soft, nervous version of her own. ‘Susan has her mother’s looks but her father’s spirit.’ That was what people said. Perhaps they were right. All she knew was that she loved them both and having lost one could not survive losing the other.

‘Mum?’

‘I’m sorry, Susie. I didn’t mean that. Your father was a good man. I just miss him, that’s all.’

A lump came into her throat. She tried to swallow it down. If she cried it meant she wasn’t brave and that was something she had to be. For both of them.

‘We’ll be all right, Mum. I’ll look after you. I won’t let you get scared.’

They hugged each other. Her mother started to cry. In spite of her determination so did she, while next door the national anthem ended to a chorus of cheers.

*

A Saturday afternoon in August. Susan returned home from Charlotte’s house. She knocked on the door, then waited, watching Mrs Bruce from number 45 wage the usual battle of wills with Warner.

Her mother let her in. ‘Mr Bishop is here, Susie.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Bishop. Auntie Emma and Uncle George’s friend.’

She walked into the living room. Mr Bishop, or Uncle Andrew as she knew him, was sitting on a chair by the window, stroking Smudge, who was perched on his knee. He gave her a big smile. ‘Hello, Susie.’

‘Hello.’ On the coffee table was a huge doll’s house. ‘Whose is that?’

‘It’s yours.’

‘Mr Bishop brought it for you,’ said her mother. ‘Isn’t it a lovely present?’

‘Thank you, Uncle Andrew.’

‘Mr Bishop,’ her mother corrected.

‘Uncle Andrew is fine. We’re old friends, aren’t we, Susie?’

Smudge jumped off Uncle Andrew’s knee and scampered towards her. Picking him up she sat down on the sofa. ‘Uncle Andrew took me and Auntie Emma for a ride in his car,’ she told her mother.

The doll’s house had three floors and nine rooms. ‘It belonged to my grandmother,’ Uncle Andrew told her. ‘It’s one hundred years old.’

‘It’s so generous of you,’ said Susan’s mother. ‘Isn’t it, Susie?’

She nodded. Uncle Andrew looked pleased. He had a round face, dark hair and grey eyes like her father. His smile could not light up a room the way her father’s had but it was nice all the same.

Her mother cut her a slice of sponge cake. ‘So how is the world outside?’ Uncle Andrew asked. Susan told him about Mrs Bruce and Warner. Her mother shook her head. ‘It’s madness. She’s over sixty, less than five foot tall and the dog is an Alsatian! He’s always running off and causing trouble.’

‘Once,’ said Susan, ‘he jumped up on Mrs Wetherby in Market Court and she dropped all her shopping. It was really funny.’

Her mother frowned. ‘It wasn’t funny.’

‘It was. Mrs Wetherby’s horrid.’

‘Susie!’

‘Well, she is. She wanted to have Warner shot and he was only playing.’

‘Is that Mrs Wetherby who lives in The Avenue?’ asked Uncle Andrew.

‘Yes. Her daughter Alice is my class. She’s horrid too.’

‘Susan Ramsey!’

Uncle Andrew started to laugh. Eventually Susan’s mother followed suit. As Susan ate her cake she looked at the doll’s house. There were tiny dolls in each room, all dressed in Victorian costume, lounging on miniature chairs or cleaning miniature grates. She had never had much time for dolls except for the one her grandmother had given her but Uncle Andrew was watching her
anxiously so she made a show of playing with his gift while Smudge stretched out on her knee, purring contentedly.

Time passed. Uncle Andrew said that he had to go as he was expected at a dinner in Oxford. ‘With some of my fellow lawyers,’ he explained.

‘I’m sure that will be nice,’ said Susan’s mother.

‘Nothing of the sort, sadly. Three hours discussing the latest developments in drainage law. Hardly a prospect to fill the heart with joy.’

They all laughed. He rose to leave. ‘Thank you for the present,’ Susan told him.