Till We Meet Again (11 page)

She could remember standing with her back warm against the Aga, just watching him as he talked about gardening. She was thirty-four then, and she guessed he was around the same age. He was about five feet nine and slim, but judging by the way his thighs filled up his worn jeans he was very muscular. Yet although he was very attractive in a rugged sort of way, it was his passion for gardening that appealed to her most that day.

Gardens and nature were about the only subjects aside from household chores that Susan could really talk about with any confidence. She felt she was dull, she knew she looked old-fashioned because the clothes she bought had to be practical, and until that day she hadn’t really cared.

‘Take Liam to see trees,’ Mother said with difficulty. ‘Father never has time for anything.’

‘Was that a note of bitterness I heard in your mother’s voice?’ Liam asked as they walked down the garden together. ‘Sorry if I’m being nosy.’

Susan thought he was very intuitive to pick up on something like that when her mother’s speech was so impaired. She didn’t find it nosy, just caring.

‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she admitted. ‘My father doesn’t spend much time here with us, though to be fair to him he’s getting a bit past cutting down trees.’

Susan had never thought of her father as old, for he had remained the way she remembered when she was small, straight-backed and slender, and even if his hair had turned white, it made him look more distinguished still. He didn’t retire until he was seventy, and even now at seventy-six he was still out almost every day either shooting or playing golf. Not to mention seeing Gerda.

‘So do you look after your mother full-time?’ Liam asked, looking curiously at Susan.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was sixteen when she had her stroke and my father asked me to look after her.’

‘That’s no life for a young woman,’ he exclaimed in horror. ‘Your father must have a few bob to live in such a big house, can’t he get a nurse for her?’

‘He’s got other things to spend his money on,’ Susan said lightly. She didn’t want to sound bitter too. ‘I’ve only got myself to blame, I should have put my foot down a long time ago.’

She showed him the dead trees and they talked for a while about the work involved and what could be planted in their place.

‘A magnolia would be nice in place of the one by the house, and I think a willow down by the river,’ he said. ‘Or will your dad object to spending his money on trees too?’

There was a delightful note of impudence in his voice, and Susan had a feeling he’d already worked out a great deal more about her family than he’d been told.

‘I shall make sure he coughs up,’ she said, giggling a little. ‘So just tell me how much it will cost, along with pruning and generally tidying up. I do my best to look after it, but it’s too much for me alone.’

He perched on a stone bench and rolled up a cigarette, all the while looking around him thoughtfully. ‘It’s a lovely garden,’ he said at length, his dark eyes sweeping over the swathes of daffodils just coming into flower. ‘It will be a pleasure to work in it, so let’s say fifteen quid a day. I could do two days a week until September. Your dad will get his money’s worth.’

Father was apoplectic when Susan told him that she’d hired Liam. He was warming his backside at the fire in the sitting room, having arrived home at nine when the dinner Susan had saved for him was nearly dried up.

‘How dare you agree to such a thing without asking me!’ he raged. ‘As though I care if there’s a couple of dead trees in the garden. I’ve got better things to do with my money than waste it on a garden.’

Susan looked at him coldly. He might still be a handsome man, but over the years he’d lost what she had once loved about him, his sense of humour and his caring nature.

‘Like spending it on keeping that woman I suppose?’ she said, surprised at herself for being so brave. ‘Don’t deny it. I know it’s Gerda.’

He took a step towards her, his hand raised.

‘Don’t you dare hit me or I’ll leave right now,’ she said quickly. ‘You wouldn’t want to have to look after Mother yourself, would you? Or pay for her to go in a nursing home?’

‘How dare you speak to your father like that!’ he roared at her.

‘Because you’ve ruined my life by compelling me to stay here and take on your responsibilities,’ she snapped back, so angry now she didn’t care what she said. ‘What kind of a father would ask a sixteen-year-old to nurse a stroke victim? If it wasn’t for you and the moral blackmail you’ve kept me here with, I might have been married with a home of my own and children by now. Seeing as I have to be here, the least you can do is pay for Liam to do the garden. It’s the one bit of pleasure Mother and I get.’

He stalked off then, stamping up the stairs to his room, not even going in to see Mother and say goodnight. After that he stayed out more than ever, sometimes not coming home at all. Susan often found Mother crying about it, and that hurt worse than anything, for she too was a blackmail victim – she knew where she’d end up if she made a fuss. All Susan could do to get back at her father was to stop saving him meals, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He did leave money for Liam, though, and Liam came twice a week from then on to work in the garden.

All through that spring and summer Susan found herself living for the days Liam was there. While her mother took her naps in the afternoons, she would go out into the garden and work alongside him, and she told him things she’d never told anyone before. Like the two brief relationships she’d had with men. The first was when she was twenty-three, with a builder who’d come to retile the roof. The second, when she was thirty, was with someone from an organization that helped elderly housebound people.

‘I thought I was in love with both of them,’ she admitted shyly. ‘But I suppose it was just the excitement of doing something I shouldn’t be doing. It didn’t amount to much anyway, just kissing and cuddling, but then I didn’t get any opportunity for anything more.’

‘Your father’s a selfish old bugger keeping you tucked away like this,’ he said with feeling. ‘You’re a pretty woman, Suzie, and it’s terrible you’ve seen nothing of the world, and had no fun. You should make a break from it, tell him you can’t do it any more.’

‘How can I do that, Liam?’ she shrugged. ‘He’ll put Mother in a home, probably move the other woman in here. I couldn’t do that to Mother, I love her.’

‘But she’s selfish too,’ he argued. ‘She’s got a keen mind, Suzie. She knows it isn’t right to keep you here forever. Christ, she could live to be ninety and how old will you be then?’

‘Over fifty,’ she said glumly.

‘Too old to have babies then,’ he said, and he patted her cheek. ‘And that sweet face will be lined with bitterness too. Get out now while you can change things for yourself.’

Liam’s work finished in September and he kissed her tenderly on his last day. ‘I’ll be back to see how you are in December,’ he said, holding her tightly as if aware she was quivering all over. ‘If you feel brave enough to take a chance on a new life then, I’ll help you to do it.’

He held her face between his two rough hands and just looked at her, his dark eyes smouldering. ‘You’re like a budding rose,’ he said eventually. ‘I’d like to see those petals open, to share your sweetness and beauty.’

She stood in front of her mirror that night and looked long and hard at herself and for the first time in her life she did see a pretty woman looking back at her. Maybe she was a bit plump, but her complexion glowed, her eyes sparkled and her hair shone. She wanted to run off with Liam, she wanted more of his kisses, to lie naked in his arms and discover all the mysteries of sex. She didn’t care if he didn’t want to marry her and settle down in one place, just to be with him would be enough.

Her mother died on the last day of September, just three weeks after Liam had left. She was sitting in her wheelchair by the Aga as Susan washed up the lunch things, and when Susan turned around her mother had fallen asleep.

About half an hour passed, and Susan noticed Mother’s nose was running, and she went over to wipe it. It was then that she suspected she was dead, for she didn’t move irritably, and when Susan felt for her pulse there was none.

Of course Susan cried, yet it didn’t feel so very terrible – after all, she’d died in her sleep, her daughter right there with her. She couldn’t have felt even the slightest pain or she would have made some sound.

It was odd that her father came back early that afternoon. The doctor had not long left, saying it was a heart attack, and there would be no need for a post mortem as he’d seen her several times in the past weeks. Susan had been mentally debating whether or not to call her father at the number she’d found some two or three years earlier in his diary. She was very glad that hadn’t proved necessary.

He looked stunned when Susan told him, and disbelieving too when he saw his wife was still in the wheelchair, though Susan had wheeled her into her bedroom. Perhaps he felt guilty then for all the years he’d been so callous to her, for he stayed in the bedroom with her, right up until the undertaker called to take his wife away.

Susan began to wonder a week or two after her mother’s funeral if the reason her father came home so early that day was because his relationship with Gerda had ended – he hadn’t gone out again. At first she thought this was a mark of respect, but as the days passed, he still stayed in. The only time he left the house was to go to the bank or to drive Susan to the supermarket. He got up at his usual time, washed, shaved and dressed just as carefully as he always had, ate the food she put in front of him, but hardly spoke. Yet it didn’t seem as if he was angry about something Susan had done or said, he was just withdrawn and nothing broke through it.

It turned cold in mid-October, and he took to lighting the fire in Mother’s room, that had once been his study, and staying in there, sitting in the big leather armchair, staring at the fire.

In her own way Susan was every bit as confused about the future as her father appeared to be. She had gone from being constantly rushed off her feet to finding time hanging on her hands. She was free in one respect, to go off with Liam if he did come back for her, or to get a job, but each time she looked at her father she wondered how he would manage if she wasn’t there, the way she always had been.

One evening she tried to make him talk to her. She planned to tell him she wanted to get a job, and if he didn’t get alarmed about that, maybe she could suggest he sold the house and moved somewhere smaller. But as she felt unable to launch into that straightaway, she asked him what was wrong and if he was cross with her about something.

He looked up at her blankly. ‘Why would I be cross with you?’ he asked.

‘I thought maybe about me getting Liam to do the garden,’ she said. ‘And the things we said to one another that day.’

He just sighed in a dismissive way. ‘We had her mother here for all those years, spoiling our lives,’ he said. ‘Martin cleared off because of her, and then I thought everything was going to be good again once Granny died. But Margaret turned into her mother before we even had a chance. It wasn’t fair.’

Susan just sat there, the only sound in the room the crackling of the fire. Her initial reaction to that strange explanation, if that was what it was supposed to be, was acute disappointment that her father couldn’t have found it in him to thank her for all she’d done to ease his burden over the years. Yet despite her disappointment, she saw he was quite right – her mother had become like Granny. Maybe not really difficult or demented, but the presence and the problems were much the same.

He didn’t speak again for some minutes, and when he finally did, it was to say that it was Martin he felt for.

‘I should have been able to do more with my son,’ he said, his voice crackling with emotion. ‘He was like a stranger when he came home for the funeral.’

‘He made himself a stranger,’ Susan retorted, remembering how Martin had arrived just the night before the funeral, and gone to bed as soon as he’d eaten some supper, with barely a word to either of them. ‘He hadn’t been home once in five years. He hardly ever wrote or phoned. He didn’t even remember Mother’s birthday,’ she added. She wanted to remind her father how mean Martin had always been to her, of the insults and constant sarcasm she’d had to put up with. But she didn’t voice that, her father was in low enough spirits without her adding to it.

Martin had driven home just a couple of hours after the funeral. The last thing he’d said to her was, ‘Get yourself a proper job now and stop sponging off Dad.’

‘Poor Martin,’ her father sighed.

That was too much for Susan. ‘Poor Martin! He didn’t even care enough to ask if there was anything he could do for you, before he shot off,’ Susan blurted out bitterly.

‘I don’t blame him for that. It was my own fault,’ Father insisted, looking at Susan with mournful eyes. ‘I let Granny drive him away. I should have thought of him first and put her into a home.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference,’ Susan snapped, angry that he didn’t remember it was she who bore the brunt of the bad times with Granny. ‘He’d left for university long before Granny even got bad, as you very well know. The truth is, he always cared more about himself and his career than us.’

‘I shall have to make it up to him,’ Father said sadly, as if he hadn’t heard what she said.

Her father had a massive heart attack on 6 November, while in Stratford, just six weeks after his wife’s death. He was in a bookshop when he keeled over, and he died on the way to hospital in the ambulance.

Martin was quick to come home then, Susan telephoned him at his office in London soon after the policeman had called to tell her what had happened. It was half past four when she rang. Martin was at the house by eight-thirty, and if she imagined his haste to get there was out of concern for her, that was soon dashed.

Martin was very like their father, tall and slender with the same dark hair and thick eyebrows, but he’d always had a kind of sullen downturn to his mouth that stopped him from being handsome, and his eyes were cold. He had never married, and if there were women in his life he had never spoken of them. Susan knew less about him than she did of many of the men in the village.