by Anne Peile
When I reached Jack’s doorstep in Oakley Street I cried with relief; although there was no sensation in my face to feel the course of the tears as they fell I saw them dropping and splashing on the stone. All afternoon I sat there; someone had not picked up their newspaper and whenever a passerby looked at me curiously I pretended to be reading it; I could see nothing but a grey mass, the colour of egg boxes. Once or twice I folded back the hem of my jeans to see that the red markings on my legs were more intense. I did not dare to look at my face in the mirror from my bag. I had parted my hair at the neck of my blouse and pulled it forward to hide as much as I could.
I may have slept or I may not have been fully conscious. Suddenly I saw that Jack’s car was there where it had not been before. At first he did not notice me. He leant in to take a VG carrier bag from the back seat. It was filled with windfall apples. When he found me on the step he raised me up by the elbows. ‘My dear child, what have you done?’
I was more frightened by his reaction than anything that had gone before. ‘I’m not sure, but it’s okay, I think. Really, it’s okay.’
‘I don’t think it is, Susie.’ Until that moment I had not realised that he might insist upon me going home. ‘Let’s get you inside.’
He made me sit down on the bed; the room, closed up all weekend, smelled of sun-warmed air and fabrics. ‘Stay there, I’m going to ask Eunice to take a look at you. She nursed during the war.’
I knew that more tears of relief were issuing from my eyes but the nerve endings in my face were still not working. I wiped it with handfuls of my hair.
Jack was saying, ‘She’s here… if you wouldn’t mind just taking a look… I’m not sure what can be wrong… ’
I was conscious of disliking myself again, this time because I was causing my father to look lost and old and grey and anxious. Towards Eunice I felt gratitude because she was brisk and business-like and her face gave nothing away. ‘Are you allergic to anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘When did this start, can you remember?’ From her tone of voice and the way she sought my concentration I knew that she thought that I was losing consciousness. I did feel that I was sliding away but it was no longer frightening, in Jack’s room; now the sensation seemed amusing. I remembered the 1962 and 1963 winter of heavy snow when I would deliberately throw myself down on the white heaped drifts because I knew that it would not hurt me.
‘Try and remember, Susie,’ she had hold of one of my hands and she was tapping on it quite rhythmically. She reminded me either of the maths teacher or the music teacher, I knew that both of them thought I was a dunce, and again I wanted to laugh; the feeling of sliding backwards was really very funny.
Then Jack leant down by my shoulder and spoke close to my ear. ‘Listen, Susie, you must try to remember, try to remember and then you can tell me, can’t you, you can tell Jack. Come on Susie, try, for me, won’t you, please try, Susie.’
I was used to doing what he coaxed me to do. ‘After I started the pills. I was getting better.’
Eunice again, ‘What pills was it, Susie, were they penicillin?’
‘Yes, that’s what I always have.’
‘Jack, I think St George’s might be a good idea.’ I saw the way she looked at him.
‘Could you… would you mind?’
‘Of course I will.’
I was glad to see that she was being so kind to my father.
It was the only time that I ever travelled in the old Citroën. St George’s Hospital was in the process of its long remove from Hyde Park Corner to Tooting Bec. In the Casualty department a number of the bays had already been stripped, you could see where curtain rails and lockers had been dismantled. So that I would not forget and give something away I tried to keep my concentration by determining whether it was every alternate bay that had been removed but the white geometry continued to dance in my eyes and sometimes my sight shut down altogether. There were pins and needles in my hands and, periodically, up and down my arms, as though the sensation was thrown over me in bucketfuls. I felt as if my fingers were made of lint rolls so that no matter how tightly I bent them there was no sensation of holding on to anything. I must have gripped Jack’s arm very hard when we walked from the car because days later bruises remained, yet he seemed as insubstantial as air and shadow.
I kept catching at the thought that I must weight down certain lies in my head for when they asked me questions; when I had revised in the Clapham County garden on breezy days I had anchored the pages of my notes with stones and bits of stick. An immature woodlouse had scurried out on to Salisbury’s speech: ‘… with the eyes of heavy mind, I see thy glory like a shooting star… ’ Facts needed to be altered, where I was born, where I lived, my family name. I must remember. ‘Fall to the base earth from the firmament. Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west …’ The brickwork of the corridor walls was painted grey-green. With the colour and the pipes and the dials it was reminiscent of a film set for the inside of a submarine.
A blue nurse said, ‘Bring her through, mother,’ and for a moment none of us understood what she meant.
Then Jack half rose from one of the canvas and metal chairs and spoke to Eunice. ‘Is that all right… will you go in with her?’
‘It’s probably simpler if I do.’
The nurse handed her a clipboard with a form to fill in my details. I tried hard to fix upon Eunice’s face but she did not look at me. She showed no hesitation over completing the task. ‘She’s been taking penicillin, Nurse.’
As the nurse leant to take my pulse Eunice edged the clipboard within my wavering vision. She had given me the Oakley Street address and the day of my birth as the first of March. Jack must have told her that, he was so pleased and inordinately proud about it being, as he believed, St David’s Day. The year tallied with my being eighteen. And for that one night only I was, after all, Susanna Rhys Owen. I began to slide again.
A tousled registrar had appeared, ‘Well you’re a sight for sore eyes, young lady, aren’t you? You did right to bring her in, mother. Severe allergic reaction to penicillin.’ He lifted the clothing from my back and I sensed the heat rising from the blotches. As he stuck an injection in above my hip he turned to Eunice and said, ‘Nick of time, to be frank. We’d keep her in but we’re rather stretched. So long as there’ll be someone with her all the time to keep an eye on things. It should settle down now but any worries, just bring her straight back.’
Out in the corridor Jack stood up and looked old. Eunice nodded to reassure him.
‘Right, I’ll go and bring the car round then.’
When he had gone I said, ‘I need to make a phone call.’
‘Don’t worry about it now, we can do it later.’
‘No, I have to make it when Jack’s not here.’
She looked at me and formed her face as if to speak but then did not. She supported me to the telephone on the wall and found me a sixpence. She held my arm while I dialled but turned her face away to indicate that she was not trying to listen. I thanked God that it was Ron that answered because he was too stupid to ask for details, and anyway, he did not care enough to question anything that I told him.
‘I’m going to stay at my friend’s, at Alison’s for a few days, can you tell… ’
‘Righty ho. Do you want to speak to your mum at all?’
‘No, that’s okay, if you could just say… ’I put the receiver down and swayed back on Eunice with relief.
‘Is that it, have you done all that you need to do?’
Jack returned, ‘Listen, Susie, I never thought to ask… would you rather we just took you home?’
‘No, we can’t do that,’ said Eunice, ‘they’re all away, Susie was just telling me, weren’t you, Susie?’
On the way back to Chelsea the car seemed to be moving through a tank of water or across the bottom of the sea. When I thought that it was travelling down Kings Road I very much wanted to see the familiar yellow lit bar through the big
window of the Chelsea Potter but I was unable to move my head at the right time.
Back in the room Jack put me to bed. He changed my clothes for the shirt of grey stripes which he often wore. It must have been washed and ironed in Suffolk. It smelled of drying out of doors. Eunice came in wearing a man’s dressing gown of brown plaid, she carried a pillow and blanket for Jack’s chair. I heard her say, ‘Doesn’t matter what time it is, Jack, anything you need.’ At the door she turned to me, ‘Sleep well, Susie, you’re going to be all right now.’
Jack sat up in the chair all night long. I saw the outline of him in the dark each time I woke. I did feel very ill but nothing frightened me with my father being there, a hand’s reach away. I tested out the thoughts that I used to have about dying when I was ill and I found that there was no fear there anymore. From time to time I heard him move in the chair, trying to shift his long body into a more comfortable position. When I felt sleep taking me over it was like deliberately falling in the snow again.
Somewhere near dawn I must have gone into a deeper sleep. When I woke again it was the day and on the landing the telephone was ringing. As he passed the bed Jack touched the cover with his hand and gently said, ‘It’s all right, little one, go back to sleep now.’
He answered the telephone, stretching the wire so that he could stand just on the threshold of the room with it. I knew it was going to be Olive. I listened to him talking to her in that matter of fact way that people have when they are used to communicating with each other and dealing with everyday life together. They expect nothing unexpected. I knew that from time to time he would look over at the bed and so I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep again.
‘No, no, I won’t be able to do that, I have a job that I must finish. It’s the Housman thing, I told you about it, that’s on top of the lecture notes for Saturday, I haven’t finished those yet.’
Her voice was merely a signal of sound, I could not distinguish words, but the tone was deeper and also livelier than I had expected it to be.
‘Yes, I appreciate that, it would be pleasant to go together, but it simply can’t be done, I’m too busy.’
There was her sound again and he just repeated a ‘Yuh, yes, I know’ response once or twice, and abstractedly he worried at a patch of paintwork on the doorframe with the side of his thumbnail, then, ‘What about Mr Mitchell, has he been to look at the boiler yet?’
She must have retorted quite snappily.
‘Look, Liv, I know you’re put out and cross, I know you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry for that, truly I am, but what I’ve got on has to take precedence… ’
I listened to the tone of this woman’s disappointment down the line from Suffolk, irritable and discarded, somewhere in her rural morning, I smiled; and then, in her husband’s bed, I curled and stretched and curled again like a cat before I slipped back into sleep.
Jack had pink roses sent.
‘The house where I grew up, in Treorchy, which is a town in Wales, was called Rosemount, and for years I thought it must be because there were always roses. Everywhere you looked, there were bowls and vases of roses. My mother loved them. It smelt wonderful. As you came into the dining room, the French windows were always slightly ajar and there were long white muslin curtains that lifted in the breeze, there was always a coal fire in the grate, no matter what time of year, and there, in the middle of this big long polished table would be a mass of roses, a great bowlful of them, in the centre.’ I watched him, seeing into the room in his memory. ‘Anyway, I thought if anyone should have roses today it was you, so here we are.’
The roses were fat sugar pink confectionery coloured buds on long dark stems. I wish that I had pressed one to keep.
‘The scent will come, when they open a bit.’
He put them on the bedside table.
‘I have never had flowers before, thank you.’
I knew why his mother must have moved through the house, placing the roses; it was in order to remember her dead child. Ora’s middle name was Rose.
In the morning Jack was wearing the navy blue jersey without a shirt underneath. It made his neck look older, the skin seemed coarser and redder. ‘I’ll need to go out today, there are things you should have, and I need another shirt. Eunice says she will take a few hours off this morning, she’ll come and keep you company. I don’t want you left alone.’
Haddock insinuated himself through Jack’s legs in the half open doorway. ‘Not you, you bastard, you’re unhygienic.’ Jack made to grab him but the cat rippled away from his grasp.
‘Can he stay, actually?’
I thought that it might be awkward, alone with Eunice, and that Haddock would prove a diversion. The cat sprang onto the pillow behind me. Eunice came in but Jack seemed reluctant to leave. He said, ‘Susie seems much better this morning, but I’ll hurry back.’
‘We’ll be fine, Jack, take your time,’ Eunice assured him. Being alone with her did not seem awkward; she had brought a pack of cards.
‘Do you play rummy? No? Well, I’ll show you.’
Jack appeared again, ‘Forgot my car keys.’ He stood looking undecided while Eunice dealt cards expertly onto one of his painting boards which she had set on the bedcover.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right then?’ he asked.
‘Of course we’ll be all right, Jack. Bugger off do and get your groceries.’
For a time we spoke only about the game, concisely she explained the rules to me. ‘For the first game, I’ll explain to you as we go along, and help you score. After that, you’re on your own, kid.’
She was a determined opponent and therefore it was the more pleasurable when I did win a hand.
‘Your deal, Susie. Did you get it all squared, with your telephone call?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘I’ve known Jack for years, he’s the best.’
‘I know he is.’
‘He is a good friend of mine, a dear friend.’ She did not look up from the seven cards in her hand as she spoke.
I had never had the chance to be so honest with an adult before, I said, ‘You are testing me, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Susie, I am. You are not always truthful, are you?’
‘No, I’m not, because I can’t be. But you must believe that I’m never going to leave him, not ever. I can’t bear being away from him.’
She did look up then. ‘That’s all right, there’s no need to upset yourself. I did think that you were serious. I just wanted to make sure, for Jack’s sake. Come on, off you go, deal.’
Jack returned with carrier bags. He was so relieved to find us as he had left us that he affected to be semi-seriously indignant and curmudgeonly. ‘I’ve just bought a shirt from that benighted Jean Machine place you go to, Susie. It’s absolute daylight robbery, for God’s sake, outrageous… they’re only secondhand clothes when all’s said and done. Stone the bloody crows… ’
He had gone in behind the kitchen curtain to change into the purchased shirt of washed out denim, muttering still. Eunice snorted and we both began to laugh; he emerged from behind the curtain, buttoning the cuffs. ‘It’s a very nice shirt, Jack,’ she said.
‘Bloody well ought to be, at that price.’
He had bought orange juice in a big glass jar which he insisted that I drink. Then he came and sat on the end of the bed and joined in the card game with us. He had to lounge his long body at an angle and Haddock stalked across the played out cards to climb and lie upon his hip, kneading it with his claws so that Jack swore. We sat all together for the rest of the morning. Eunice was exceptionally skilled at a number of card tricks and sleight of hand. I felt regret when it came time for her to leave for Peter Jones. Jack was busy in the kitchen when she leant over the bed to tidy away the cards.
I said, ‘Thank you, for everything – you know… ’
‘Don’t mention it. And if ever there’s anything you want to talk about, you know where I am, Susie. Jack, I’m off now, you mind you don�
��t spill anything on your nice shirt.’
Jack said that I must eat and he made me lunch which was sections of different fruits and foods cut small and arranged in segments on a large white plate. One of the sections was loganberries; two leaves had been left on in the punnet so he had placed them, soft and grey green, on the rim of the plate beside the piled berries.
We listened to the William Hardcastle news programme on the radio. When it was over he set out the notes and slides for the lecture he was to give for the festival in Suffolk but he did not begin any work. He kept the chair turned towards the bed and sat watching me. ‘You know, I can’t help staring at you, when you have no makeup on… I mean, I look at you a lot as it is, but when… ’ He made the movement of a downward stroke across his face, a mime artist’s gesture, ‘It’s absolutely fascinating, I can see things there that usually you try to hide… ’
I began to feel uneasy, anxious at what it was that he might be able to see in my face. I feared lest it could be a resemblance to my mother; she would never have worn make-up, except for Pond’s face powder and an occasional gash of lipstick, its consistency congealed. Eye make-up she considered was for tarts. Or perhaps, I thought, he might see traces of Ora, the dead sister, her likeness taken by the portrait photographer, summoned hurriedly from Pontypridd, so that her stricken mother could look upon the likeness and try to pretend that her child was only sleeping. I felt it imperative to divert him. ‘Can you come to bed now?’
‘No, no I can’t, you’re not well enough for that sort of thing.’
‘I think I am. The blotches have pretty much gone.’ I knelt up on the bed and unbuttoned the grey-striped shirt and let it fall back from my shoulders. ‘Look, see, they’ve almost disappeared,’ twisting so that I might survey my back.
