by P. G. Glynn
“Didn’t you want him to come?”
Deciding honesty was the best policy, Marie responded: “No, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because … I prefer to do my own inviting.”
“What else?”
“I haven’t said there was anything else.”
“It didn’t need saying. I heard it in your silence.”
“Did you indeed?” Marie smiled. “Oh me, oh my, I’m going to have to watch my Ps and Qs with you, aren’t I?”
“You still haven’t told me … ”
“All right: I didn’t especially like him. He was arrogant and pushy, back then. Does that answer your question?”
Suzy reflected before asking: “Isn’t he arrogant and pushy now?”
“He didn’t seem to be, the last time I saw him – but of course there’d been a fair bit of water under the bridge since Kew.”
“So you liked him better, did you?”
“I suppose I did.”
“Then why does he live in Vienna, instead of with you in London?”
“Because … that’s how it is. Oh look, darling, with all our talking we’re missing things!”
Suzy turned her gaze to the window again and with wide eyes was soon seeing a whole kaleidoscope of amazing sights. Buckingham Palace was flying its Union Jack to show that the Queen and Prince Philip and Prince Charles and Princess Anne were at home. They drove along The Mall, past St James’s Palace and through beautiful St James’s Park to Admiralty Arch. Then she saw Lord Nelson, high on his column in Trafalgar Square, guarded by lions and with pigeons everywhere. As well as Nelson there were Teddy Boys! Suzy could hardly believe how they were dressed. She had seen some in Abergavenny, but nothing to compare with these in their long ‘drape’ jackets, velvet collars, drainpipe trousers and distinctive hairstyles. “Just imagine,” she said, “if Daddy saw Daniel and Robert with a duck’s arse on their heads!”
Knowing that she should censure Suzy for her language, Marie couldn’t help laughing instead. The cabbie, amused too, suggested: “Let’s take a butchers at where the Prime Minister lives.”
After visiting 10 Downing Street and Whitehall they moved on to the Abbey where Princess Elizabeth had been crowned Queen and the Palace of Westminster. There was so much to see that Suzy couldn’t sit still in her seat. First she was looking out through her window, then through Nama’s as new vistas were pointed out to her. She was acutely conscious of the past as well as of the present for it seemed that all history was here. How awesome to think of the people who had walked these streets and crossed this river before her! Kings, Prime Ministers, actresses, film-stars – they came to London just as she had come. Thinking about Brigitte Bardot, who she had been reading about yesterday, Suzy stated with conviction: “I shall be famous, like Brigitte, some day.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Marie said, gazing fondly at the excited child beside her. “Or more famous, even. She’s best known for her pout and her gingham and her French chic. You, I’m sure, could find better claims to fame if you wished.”
Suzy closed her eyes tight and sighed before saying: “I’d like to be known for my singing.”
“Give us a song, then,” said the cabbie.
Suzy unhesitatingly sang: “’Happy talking, talking, happy talk … talk about things you like to do. You’ve got to have a dream; if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to have a dream come true?’” The song was from SOUTH PACIFIC, a film she had seen in Abergavenny last week. Her sweet voice, in perfect pitch, gave it new meaning. Marie, incapable of saying anything else, said when Suzy had sung to the very end: “Well, I never!”
Their circuitous route took them up the Haymarket, where there was no sign of hay, to Piccadilly Circus where Suzy could see Eros but not a single elephant or clown or tightrope-artist. Deciding against questioning this, she peered at all the theatres along Shaftesbury Avenue and finally asked: “Are we going to the theatre while I’m here?”
“We certainly are!” answered Marie as they approached Bloomsbury. “We’re going everywhere.”
First they were calling in at 28 Dalmeny Avenue and it was not long before their taxi pulled up outside the house that Suzy had heard so much about. Despite Nama having told her that it was very big, she was still awed by the size of it. It was wide and tall and had an enormous front door … that was opening!
+++++
That had been the beginning of her next adventure. First the journey, then Nell emerging with a huge smile and hug of welcome. Suzy had taken to Nell immediately and also to Maggie, from whom she was learning signlanguage. And she was getting used to all the live cats as well as to the fact that there were so many dead ones. Out in the garden she had counted fifty-four graves altogether, each with a wooden cross and names such as Nickleby and Mr Pickwick and Oliver and Fagin. When Suzy had asked why so many cats were named after Dickens’s characters Nell had answered that between them the two Charles’s had made rather a lasting impression on her and Nama.
That was after Suzy had been introduced to Nama’s friend, Charles Brodie. Odd that Maggie could not hear or speak and Charles could not see. But whereas Maggie had been born deaf and dumb, Charles had gone blind comparatively recently. He had a nose like a Roman soldier and long white hair that curled over his collar and at first he seemed a bit stern: only until he smiled, though. Then he became gentler, especially when he was smiling at something Nama had said. When those two were together Suzy felt almost jealous. She couldn’t say quite why, except that they seemed kind of removed from everyone else. It was bewildering that their togetherness reminded her somehow of Grandpa and Grandma Gwyn’s.
So Suzy was glad whenever she had Nama all to herself, which she mostly did. She especially liked going upstairs with her to her den and meeting other residents on the different landings. It was exciting never knowing whom you were going to meet as you climbed stairs that Nama had climbed as a young actress. The people here were very old but told amazing tales about having been on the stage. Suzy liked listening to them as much as she disliked listening to the ghastly sounds she sometimes heard while lying with Nama’s arms around her in bed up in the den.
When she first heard the screams she believed these to be part of a dream, but then realised she was awake … as Nama explained that women were wailing in Holloway Prison, which was just beyond Nell’s garden wall. Terrible to think of their unhappiness, except that Nama said they wouldn’t be prisoners unless they had done bad things. Up here in London there was simply so much to take in. Suzy wished she could make time go slower and that she didn’t ever have to think in terms of leaving.
Already Nama had taken her to the Battersea Park Fun Fair, which was part of the Festival of Britain the year before last, and to London Zoo to meet Brumas the first polar bear cub to have been born in captivity. But they hadn’t been to the Tower yet, or on a boat on the Thames – where she was told Great-Great-Uncle John had drowned long ago - or to the theatre. That, Suzy knew, would be the best thing of all for there could be nothing better than being in a place where actors and actresses were playing parts on a real stage. She had asked Nama what it was like to be up there in front of an audience … and Nama had answered that it was like being properly alive. Suzy could swear that as she spoke there were tears in her eyes.
She was mystified as to why Nama had married Nandad and gone off to live in Czechoslovakia, leaving London and the theatre behind. Why would she have married him, when she didn’t even like – let alone love – him? More importantly, why would she have sacrificed having her name up there in lights? Nell and Charles had both told Suzy that as Marie Howard Nama had captivated audiences night after night and that her departure for foreign parts had marked the beginning of the end of the Tavistock. Cripes, imagine being so important to a theatre that it closed if you weren’t there! That was almost beyond imagining. But it was a fact … and Suzy planned to ask questions until she had satisfactory answers.
++
+++
Over breakfast next morning she queried casually: “When was it, Nama, that you got married?”
They were breakfasting as usual in the big kitchen as cats patrolled waiting for scraps and Maggie bustled about taking a trolley through the butler’s pantry to the dining room and trays up to the most elderly residents in their beds. Just Marie, Charles, Nell and Suzy were seated at the table, while outside it was raining heavily. Mealtimes, Marie had noticed, were always punctuated with questions from a girl who seemed to be insatiably curious about past events and their consequences. Suzy’s curiosity was endearing in one sense, disturbing in another. Marie was anxious that her beloved granddaughter should never think badly of her. “1919,” she answered, conscious of a tension in Charles and also in herself; they so seldom slept apart that – wonderful though it was to have Suzy here – they were currently missing each other. “That must seem to you, at your age, like ancient history.”
“No, it doesn’t!” Suzy finished putting marmalade on her last piece of toast before saying: “And even if it did, I love history – the stuff with real people in it, at least. You knew Nama back then, didn’t you, Mr Brodie? I mean, you must have known her, if you acted on the same stage together.”
“So you’ve answered your own question,” he said, aware of Marie’s gaze on him.
“I suppose I have,” Suzy said pensively. “But the question I haven’t answered is … didn’t you want to marry her yourself?”
“Yes, I did. Sadly I was already married.”
“There’s a pity!”
Charles smiled at her sentiment and at her Welshness, which reminded him starkly of Marie’s when she presented herself in his office before taking over from Dolly Martin. “Yes, indeed. It was a Pity with a capital ‘P’.”
“So would Nama have married you, instead of Nandad, if she could have?”
“That will do, Suzy,” Marie butted in. “There are some things best left unasked. Instead of dwelling in the past, let’s turn our attention to how we’re going to spend the present. Do you have any special requests for today?”
Suzy said without hesitation: “I’d like to go to Kew, if it stops raining. Can we go there – by boat from Westminster?”
Marie was beginning to wish she had never mentioned that boat-trip. She couldn’t think why she had mentioned it. Both Charles’s and Nell’s expressions reflected the mixed emotions she was experiencing at the prospect of revisiting that particular memory. To refuse Suzy’s request was beyond her, however. “We can,” she said, “except that even if the rain stops the Gardens will be rather soggy. Hampton Court might be a better bet. We’d still have the river trip, with plenty of history instead of wetness at the end of it.”
Suzy was enthusiastic, suggesting that Charles and Nell accompany them. But the rain was relentless and in the end Marie and Suzy went to Madame Tussaud’s instead. Next morning, though, the sun was shining and Suzy insisted on a boat-trip. Nell went too and all three agreed that despite the weather Hampton Court was preferable to Kew. Charles declined to go and Marie knew that his refusal had more to do with not wishing Suzy to see him needing to be helped on and off buses and boats than with any desire to stay at home alone. His decision saddened her both because it deprived her of his company and because she wanted him to have as much time as possible with Suzy, whom he had described as a tonic. Charles had recently seemed to be in need of a boost to his spirits. Prior to Suzy’s arrival Marie had been worried about him – had even wondered periodically whether he was ill. He had brightened, though, since she arrived and in one of their rare moments alone together had told Marie that he felt as if he had now at last met Carla.
Had he? She smiled to herself at the possibility.
“Why are you smiling, Nama?”
They had just boarded the Thames Belle and were pulling away from Westminster pier. “Because I’m so happy to have you here.”
“Are you happier than when you did this before – with Nell and Nandad?”
“I am. I can honestly say that I’m at my happiest.”
“Why is that?”
“Probably because I didn’t know you in 1919, whereas now I do.”
Suzy giggled. “You couldn’t know me so long before I was born, could you?”
Remembering that she would have been pregnant with Carla around then, Marie said: “No – not in any recognised sense. But I believe I was already hearing you whisper to me of your eventual advent.”
That silenced Suzy for a time, giving Nell the chance to comment: “It’s odd, isn’t it, to think back to when so much that was due to happen hadn’t yet happened? The Thames is flowing now just as it flowed then, seemingly the same as ever, while we are older and hopefully wiser. Rivers don’t age, do they?”
“No, because they don’t have birthdays,” Suzy earnestly explained. Then she asked Marie: “How far had you gone on your journey before Nandad saved you from the bee?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“About as far as we are from Westminster?”
“Possibly. Nell and I were too busy talking to pay much attention to where we were.”
“What were you talking about?”
“The Tavistock Theatre, I should think. That’s a fair bet, isn’t it, Nell?”
“It certainly is,” Nell said, their conversation as fresh in her head as if they’d held it yesterday. “Otto eavesdropped, as I recall, causing all sorts of complexities. He was a one, Marie, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” Marie agreed. “Still is, probably. People don’t change fundamentally.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t married him?” asked Suzy.
“No, I don’t. If I hadn’t married Otto I wouldn’t have had … Hugo, and now wouldn’t have you.”
“Who else wouldn’t you have had?” She saw Nama’s expression and added: “I thought there was another name you were about to say, before Daddy’s name.”
“Carla’s,” breathed Marie. “Before giving birth to your father, I bore a daughter called Carla.”
“Where is she?”
“My little girl died,” Marie answered, “which is another reason why I’m so glad that you decided to arrive.”
“Did I decide,” Suzy said after a while, “or was it the Angel who decided for me?”
“Which angel?” asked Nell, intrigued that the child had seemed to be speaking specifically.
Suzy closed her eyes. She then experienced a momentary sense of being protected by enormous wings that she had once been wrapped in. The moment passed, but left behind a faint memory of some other place … and of a half-forgotten name. “I think,” she said, “that he was called Raphael.”
+++++
Suzy could not decide which was the best bit of her visit so far. Hampton Court Palace was awesome, there on the banks of the Thames, but then so was the Tower of London. They were both so steeped in history that Suzy could hardly believe she was walking where Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I had walked and that she had actually seen the Crown Jewels and the room where Samuel Pepys was once imprisoned. Nama and she had had tea in Fortnum’s on Piccadilly and been to Claridge’s to meet the people Nama worked with. Suzy found it odd that she worked there, instead of in a theatre.
They had also been to see the Field of the Forty Footprints, which was exciting and disappointing all at the same time. It was exciting because they had stood where two brothers had fought a duel during the seventeenth century over a girl they both loved. But Suzy had hoped to see the forty footprints, belonging to the duellists, said still to be seen there periodically even after all these years and she had not found them. Nama had shown her, though, the spot where the girl sat to watch the brothers fight and ultimately kill each other. Nama knew where it was, because ever since the duel no grass had grown there.
Now they were about to go to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and Suzy could barely contain her excitement. She had never been in a theatre before. She went to the cinema in Abergavenny as of
ten as possible and had especially enjoyed seeing Margaret Lockwood and James Mason in THE MAN IN GREY and Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding in SPRING IN PARK LANE. But this was different. This was going to be alive, happening right in front of her eyes. And Nama had told her that the Theatre Royal was where Nell Gwyn made her debut in Dryden’s INDIAN QUEEN back in 1665, which was just before the theatre closed because of the Great Plague and the Great Fire.
As they boarded their bus a thought suddenly struck Suzy. She said: “Mummy’s name was Gwyn, before she married Daddy. So might she be descended from Nell?”
“That’s certainly a possibility. Would you like her to be?”
“I’d love it, because that would mean I had acting talent on both sides of my family! When will you tell me what we’re going to see?”
Marie smiled. “I booked our tickets months ago, and have managed to keep the secret until now – so let me keep it a little longer, until the theatre comes into view.”
Liking surprises, Suzy decided she could curb her curiosity for a few more minutes. She asked: “Is it true that there’s a ghost which sometimes appears up in the Circle? Charles told me there is, and that it usually appears during matinees.”
Glad to hear Suzy refer to him as Charles instead of Mr Brodie, Marie answered: “If he told you so, then I’m sure it’s true. He wouldn’t lie to you.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Yes, darling, I do.”
“Then I love him too!”
After walking hand-in-hand from their bus stop on the Strand they rounded a bend and suddenly the Theatre Royal was in front of them. As she saw the posters outside, Suzy gasped: “THE KING AND I! Golly, is that really the show we’re going to see? I’ve been joining in with its songs on HOUSEWIVES’ CHOICE for weeks!”
Lucy had written, telling Marie that Suzy was always singing ‘Hello, Young Lovers’ and humming ‘The March of the Siamese Children’. She smiled. “So I made the right choice, did I?”
