Loving Susie (14 page)
‘Oh no,’ Susie says. ‘No, I don’t see how it could be.’
They part affectionately. Meeting him has been good, she has laid to rest one ghost. Now she knows she must face another spectre.
At Cairn Cottage, Archie takes time out to fetch the newspapers from Hailesbank. He’s exhausted with the strain of composing, but particularly drained because he still has no inspiration for the words to his tune. He pours coffee and sits at the kitchen table, determined to enjoy half an hour’s tranquillity before Sandie arrives.
A headline on page five catches his eye. Creative Scotland strategy launch boosted by presence of star. Susie will have been at that launch, it’s square in the middle of her territory. He scans the story with scant enthusiasm, then his eye stops dead, arrested by two words.
Maitland Forbes.
So Maitland is back.
‘Scots-born Hollywood star Maitland Forbes created a sensation last night by appearing at the launch in the Scottish Parliament of the new Creative Scotland strategy. Forbes, who is in Edinburgh only until Wednesday evening—’
Today is Wednesday. Hating himself, Archie thinks of a pretext and dials Susie’s number in the Parliament. It’s Karen who answers. ‘Hi Archie, good to hear you. How’s the album coming along?’
‘Not bad, Karen, thank you. Is Susie there by any chance? I wanted to check whether she’s remembered she has a dental appointment this afternoon?’
Karen sounds puzzled. ‘This afternoon? I don’t think— oh I see it, Archie, it’s next Wednesday. Just as well, because she’s gone out to lunch with someone.’
‘Oh really?’ His heart sinks, but he is compelled to probe further. ‘Business or pleasure?’
‘I haven’t a clue, Archie. Sorry. She didn’t say.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
But it does matter. To Archie, it matters very much.
Susie edges towards the meeting with her mother with caution. There are more letters, more doubts, more urgings from Mannie. The Easter recess comes and goes and this year there’s no quick trip with Archie to Prague or Nice or to a cottage in the Highlands, because their relationship has dwindled to the politeness of strangers.
Susie sometimes feels as though she’s fighting on all fronts. She’s at war with her Party on funding cuts, she’s struggling to help Rivo Trust to find a way out of its mess and she’s drowning in the sheer number of emails that require her daily attention.
Eventually, she decides that her apprehension about meeting her mother is like a festering wound – it has to be dealt with. Once it has been swabbed clean, she’ll be able to tick it off her Things To Do list and get on with her life. So a few weeks after lunching with Maitland, Susie finds herself standing in her bedroom in an agony of indecision.
Business suit or jeans? The neat green knee-length
broderie anglaise
skirt teamed with a cream cardi and pearls? Or perhaps just black trousers and the white linen jacket with the tiny flowers embroidered on it? What is most appropriate?
Meeting your mother for the first time, she reflects with a growing sense of panic, must surely be the most important day in your life. For most people it happens on Day One: your birthday. And then you spend the rest of your life learning to love her or loathe her; testing the boundaries of her love; vowing never to grow into the person you think she is; making your own mistakes with her but, above all, whether she’s a rock, a yardstick, an irritant or your best friend, in the safe and secure knowledge that she is your mother. But this is not so for her. She has so many things to learn, and to unlearn. So many lost years to recapture. So many secrets to uncover.
The pile of discarded clothing on the bed grows while Susie struggles to work out how to present herself to this new mother of hers. She settles in the end for the black trousers and white linen jacket, adding a simple black tee and the pearls. Easy dressing. Presentable but not over the top. Neutral. Because the truth of the matter is that she has absolutely no idea what kind of person her mother is, what she looks like, what her tastes are, her background, her life – nothing.
‘Are you certain you’re ready for this?’ Helen at Birthlink asked when they made the arrangements. ‘We do suggest not meeting if you are in any way stressed about anything in your life.’
Stressed? Susie just laughed.
In her mind, her hopes are well defined – that this meeting will in some magical way resolve all her emotional turbulence.
She takes a last look at herself in the bedroom mirror, sees the billowing caramel-gold hair, the amber eyes so many people described as ‘extraordinary’, the heart-shaped face, still presentably pretty even in middle age. Will she look like her mother? As the reality of the imminent meeting takes hold, her nerves ratchet up a gear. She has enlisted Mannie’s support, but it’s Archie she longs to confide in. She even hopes, as she runs downstairs, that he might be in the kitchen and that she can bridge the ridiculous gulf between them, that he’ll hold her and kiss her and tell her everything is going to be all right.
But he isn’t in the kitchen. Instead, a note is propped against the kettle:
‘Sandie’s here. We’re composing today. Please do not disturb.’
The surge of disappointment almost swamps her.
The café on the first floor of the bookshop at the west end of Princes Street has stunning views over the Gardens and south towards the Castle. It’s a pleasant and popular spot for a break from browsing and buying. Mannie has settled at a table right by the window and Susie spots her daughter’s dark hair and pale, perfect face right away.
‘Hello, darling.’
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Thanks for coming. Was it difficult? Taking the time, I mean.’
‘No problem.’ Mannie indicates her laptop and the ever-present mobile. ‘I can work while you’re meeting her. Joys of modern technology. There’s no such thing as escape.’
Susie grimaces. ‘Don’t I know it.’
‘How long do you think you’ll be?’
‘Not long, I shouldn’t think. It’ll be—’ she pauses, overtaken by uncharacteristic anxiety, ‘—a little difficult. Best to keep it short.’
Mannie says, ‘It’ll be brilliant. I’m sure it will,’ and places a reassuring hand over her mother’s.
‘Yes. Thank you. You will wait for me? Afterwards?’
‘Of course I’ll wait. That’s what I’m here for. ’
Susie glances at her watch. ‘Thanks. Well. Better go, I suppose.’
‘It’s not the dentist, Mum. It’s a joyous occasion.’
She manages a smile. ‘I know. I’m really looking forward to it.’ In a way this is true, but her apprehension is great nevertheless. ‘Back soon, then.’
‘Don’t worry, Mum.’
Birthlink’s modest premises are in an unlikely spot above the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant in Castle Street. There are a few stone steps, a white painted door in need of some attention, then a winding staircase that leads up a narrow entryway to the first floor offices. In these humble rooms, Susie thinks as she mounts the scrubbed stone stairway of the interior with ever-increasing apprehension, dreams are realised or broken, lives mended or ruined for ever.
‘We’ll ask your mother to come a little early,’ Helen has told her. ‘We’ll get her settled comfortably. We’ve found that it’s not a great idea to meet for the first time by bumping into each other on the stair.’
Susie senses years of experience, deep sensitivity, calmness and perception. The staff have been so good to her. Everything has been done just as it should be – the careful beginnings, the letters delivered through their mediation, the painstaking arrangements for this meeting. Still, the apprehension is indescribable. Only one thing mitigates the sense of mounting panic – the understanding that her mother, waiting inside the room at the back of the office, must be feeling something very similar.
‘Hello, Susie.’ Helen is smiling, calm, reassuring. ‘Ready for this?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sure?’
‘Let’s do it.’
Her mother is looking out of the window. She’s fidgeting with the cord of the blind, twisting it between her fingers, and her back is rigid with tension. What kind of being has Susie imagined? The eighteen-year-old who gave her away? Some little old woman, twisted by regret and bitterness? Some aged reflection of herself? Her mother turns, and Susie realises that she’s none of these things. She is small-boned and slight, a little shorter than Susie, her hair a glorious silver, her eyes the colour of sage and bright as shiny buttons. She has an impression of tidiness and a blur of aubergine before she finds herself locked in a fierce embrace. She is filled with hope and confusion – but not love, not the overwhelming visceral feeling she has longed for and feared in almost equal measure.
There are tears – a few – and hankies, and anxious laughter and at some point, Susie realises, Helen has discreetly withdrawn so that she is alone with her mother.
‘I knew you must be Susie Wallace,’ Joyce says when they break apart at last.
Susie has kept her full name private until now, fearful that knowledge of her celebrity might influence her mother’s decisions and feelings.
‘Really? What made you think that?’
She studies her mother, looking for something familiar that might tie her to this person. There’s something about the way she carries her head, perhaps, upright and a little defiant? Maybe the way her mouth curls and moves as she speaks is a bit like her own?
‘You’re so like— I can see—’ Her voice tails off and she shakes her head. ‘You’re my daughter, that’s all that matters to me.’ She repeats the word with a kind of wonderment. ‘My daughter.’ Her eyes are still bright; tears near the surface, pride holding them back. ‘All these years. Every day, thinking about you, thinking about my baby, not knowing – not daring to believe – that I would ever see you again. And here you are. Here you are.’
She sits down gingerly on a low chair, her back straight as a pencil and her body just as slim. The suit, Susie now sees, is a classic, nicely cut and neither old-fashioned nor trendy. Her mother has a sense of occasion. Susie takes a moment about her choice of seat. To face each other or sit side by side? To be close enough to touch, or a little further removed while they each make their assessment? Space and time to examine, with care, the tender surfaces of exposed emotion?
She settles back, just out of reach. For her part there’s caution, certainly. Curiosity, perhaps. Maybe there’s love in the mix, maybe there’s still anger – a deep-seated fury at what this woman has done to her, how some moment of irresponsibility has caused her to be brought into the world, then given away for fate to treat as it would.
‘I need to know things,’ she says.
‘Of course. Where do you want me to start?’
Susie draws a deep breath. ‘Tell me about my father.’
There’s a pause. It’s so long that she wonders if Joyce might, even now, baulk at giving her the information she craves. At last she says, ‘You’ve got his hair. When you walked in the door, my breath was taken away by that.’
‘Did you love him?’
Joyce gives a short laugh. ‘It was fifty years ago and the world was a very different place. I was seventeen years old and I was working in a tea room near the theatre in Glasgow as a waitress. It was a summer holiday job with long hours and poor pay, but I was happy because the money gave me some small kind of freedom.
‘And I liked the actors. They came in for their tea before the show quite often. High tea, we served in those days. Poached egg on toast followed by bread and jam, pancakes and scones, with a big pot of tea to wash it down. Fish and chips on a Friday. Mutton pie and beans instead of poached eggs some days.
‘There was one of the actors took a shine to me, a young lad. Jimmy, his name was. He had glorious red-gold hair and honey coloured eyes and he was quick and funny and teasing. All the girls were a bit in love with him, but it was me he fancied. I was proud as punch when he asked me out.’
Susie finds she hasn’t been breathing. Her father was an actor? Maybe one bit of her life is about to make sense. As Joyce pauses reflectively, she inhales deeply. Her story is about to unravel.
‘He had difficult hours, of course, being in the theatre and all, but I used to wait for him at the stage door and then we’d be off out, to the dancing, to a party at some friend’s flat, then eventually to his own room.’
She glances across at Susie. ‘It was very different then. To go with a boy like that was chancy. I relied on Jimmy ... We thought we were being careful. We had such fun. What a boy he was! He made me feel like a queen, even though we had no money. He had the gift of the Irish for talking. Oh, he was a charmer. Did I love him? Yes, at the time, I thought I did, I was besotted with him.’
She stops talking for so long that Susie has to prompt her.
‘And then?’
‘He moved on. The season came to an end, he was out of work and he went back to his family until he found another job. I didn’t know I was pregnant then, but I’m not sure what he’d have done if I’d known. He was a sweet talker, all right, but commitment was not a word he knew.’
‘So you—’
‘When I found out, my parents went mad. I’d brought shame on them, I’d brought disgrace to my family, I’d ruined my own life. They wanted him to marry me, but I knew he wouldn’t. And I didn’t want to mar the perfect happiness we had enjoyed with an endless future of argument and disillusionment and probably poverty. Marriage wouldn’t have worked, not with Jimmy. I knew that. I wouldn’t even tell them his name. So they sent me away, to a place on the other side of Glasgow, a hostel.’
‘You were only seventeen!’ Susie is appalled.
‘Eighteen by the time you were born. Yes. And it was a difficult birth. The hostel had to send me to the hospital.’
‘Rottenrow.’
‘That’s right. Rottenrow. I wouldn’t let you out of my sight, you know. When they came to take you a few days later, I screamed and screamed, but in the end, I had no choice.’
Telling her story seems to have lent Joyce some semblance of calmness; it has been a part of her for years, nothing is new, except the telling of it. For Susie, living it for the first time, the picture is bleak. Her cheeks feel wet. She puts a hand up, touches them, is forced to rummage for a hankie, all determination to remain calm undermined. ‘You wanted to keep me?’ she whispers, the need to know greater than anything.
‘Brenda – Susie – my daughter.’ At last the veneer of composure cracks and the look of fathomless anguish in Joyce’s eyes tells Susie everything.
Susie reaches out her hand and grasps her mother’s. And this time, the touch feels like some kind of answer to the multitude of questions that have weighed her down for so many weeks. They sit in silence, their clasped hands forging a primal link after half a century.
At length Susie speaks. ‘You didn’t say his name. My father’s. Jimmy ...?’
But before Joyce can answer, there’s a discreet tap on the door and Helen pokes her head round. ‘Everything all right?’ she asks brightly, then comes into the room. ‘I can see you two are getting on well, but we do suggest that perhaps the first meeting is kept quite short. There’s so much to tell, so much to learn, so many feelings to be explored, that we find it can all be a bit overpowering. How are you feeling?’
She looks inquiringly at Susie. ‘A bit odd,’ she admits with candour, ‘but I feel happy to have made this move.’
‘And you, Joyce?’
‘Overwhelmed,’ she admits. ‘It’s all happened quite quickly. But I’m overjoyed. I can’t begin to put it into words.’
‘Could I suggest,’ Helen says diffidently, ‘that perhaps the two of you make another arrangement to meet? Now that you’ve made a start, you can think about everything for a bit, maybe make a list of all the questions you still need answered. How do you feel about that?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Susie says. It’s true – her reservoir of energy has been drained by emotion.
Joyce, too, is looking exhausted. ‘I think it’s a good plan.’
