The Foreigner

by P. G. Glynn

  The warmth of Suzy’s hug and the width of her grin said everything. Then they were in the foyer, with people milling on all sides, and Suzy didn’t think she had ever been more excited.

  Their seats were up in the Dress Circle – right at the front, so she could look over the brass rail and see all the people below and some above. Two thousand two hundred and forty-five people altogether, Nama had told her, for every ticket had been sold long ago. There was an orchestra playing tunes from the show and there was a red velvet curtain waiting to rise on THE KING AND I. Imagine being Valerie Hobson, about to go on as Anna – or Herbert Lom, or any of the cast for that matter! No, not just any of the cast: Suzy knew in that moment that she was only interested in being the star.

  She asked: “How did it feel, Nama?”

  “To be waiting in the wings with the curtain about to rise?” Marie queried, a dreamy look in her eyes. “It’s the best – and the worst – feeling in the world.”

  “Why is it the worst?”

  “Because nerves make your heart beat faster and your head start to spin. It can also happen that you forget your lines. I forgot mine on the First Night of OLIVER TWIST. That was terrifying.”

  “Did you remember them in time?”

  “Yes, I did – with the heaven-sent help of Charles’s son, Guy, who was playing Oliver. Gosh, he would have been ten – the same age as you, Suzy!”

  “And he was an actor already?”

  “Yes, but then acting ran in his family.”

  “As it does in mine,” Suzy smiled happily. “How did Guy help?”

  “By telling me my cue and then my opening lines. Once he had done that I was fine.”

  “Supposing he hadn’t done it?”

  “I think it’s best just to remember that he did.”

  “Do you regret marrying Nandad and leaving the theatre behind?”

  “I try not to have regrets.”

  “Yes, but if you had any, would you regret that?”

  “The theatre was my life-blood,” Marie replied, her eyes perilously bright, as the curtain began to rise on THE KING AND I.

  +++++

  Last night had been the best of Suzy’s whole life and today was her last day with Nama. She didn’t think she could bear to leave tomorrow. How could she go back to Gilchrist after so much happiness? She simply didn’t know how.

  Charles asked over breakfast: “Didn’t it come up to expectations? You’re looking so glum that I suppose it can’t have done.”

  “Oh, but it did! It was much better than brilliant. I didn’t think there could be such a smashing show. I just wish … that I didn’t have to go home.”

  “You don’t have to, today,” he said, “so make the most of the moment. It’s all too easy to live in the past or the future and forget that we have the present to savour. Living in the present is an art it has taken me most of my life to acquire. The sooner you acquire it, the sooner you will truly live.”

  Suzy asked him: “Are you saying that I shouldn’t look forward to my party tonight?”

  “No. We’re all looking forward to it, while at the same time refusing to think beyond it to tomorrow. We have today, Suzy, which in itself is a gift. Don’t wait till you’re my age to appreciate just how much of a gift each new day is.”

  “I won’t,” she told him. Then she announced to everyone at the table: “While I was watching THE KING AND I, I decided something.”

  “What was that?” asked Nell.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but last night I knew that the thing I have to do is follow in Nama’s footsteps and be a star. I simply have to.”

  “You do?” Tears spilled from Charles’s sightless eyes. “I believe you … and if you have half your mother’s talent, plus some part of your father, you will take the Brodie name back to the heights.”

  There was an awkward silence. Then Marie said gently: “We need to remember, don’t we, that Suzy is Hugo’s and Helena’s daughter?”

  “Of course!” Now Charles was looking bewildered. “I apologise, Suzy. But, you see, I had a daughter just like you once … and lost her.”

  The child responded in awe: “So did Nama.”

  +++++

  Marie had coaxed Suzy’s long hair into ringlets using the handle of a wooden spoon and plenty of Bay Rum. She had also permitted her to take the shine from her nose with a big swansdown powder puff. And Suzy was wearing the cream party dress they had bought that morning in Selfridge’s. “You look good enough to eat,” Marie told her.

  “Shall I do a twirl?” In the process Suzy also showed off her new patent leather shoes. Then she said: “Can I come and stay with you again soon?”

  “You certainly can – as long as you keep your Daddy happy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Marie was careful with her phraseology. “He wouldn’t want to think you preferred being with me to being with him.”

  “But I do prefer it!”

  “No, you don’t,” Marie said, trying to steer Suzy in the right direction. “You just think you do, because London’s so new to you.”

  “It isn’t that. It’s … oh, I don’t know what it is. I just feel as if I belong with you and not in Gilchrist.”

  Marie’s heart soared, but she warned: “Don’t tell Daddy that, or he’ll be unhappy.”

  “Is he my Daddy?”

  “Of course he is!”

  “But Charles talked at breakfast as if … I might be your daughter and his.”

  “Suzy, my darling, we’d love you to be ours, but … ”

  Suddenly insightful into the mystery she had been determined to solve, Suzy urgently queried: “What was Charles’s daughter called?”

  Marie blushed as she answered: “Carla.”

  +++++

  Guy’s sons were attending the party under duress. James and Edward at seventeen and sixteen respectively could think of plenty of better things to be doing on a Friday night than visit their grandfather and watch a lot of old fogies kidding themselves they were still entertainers. But Father had been adamant that they must accompany him and feign enjoyment and Father’s word was law. So here they were, wishing they were elsewhere, and hoping that their endurance test would soon be over.

  Then everything changed as Grandpapa took the makeshift stage to say: “Ladies and gentlemen, that almost concludes our little entertainment. However, we now have a treat in store. Whereas many of us here tonight are, if we’re honest, past our prime, there is one among us whose star is rising. Her grandmother was once my leading lady and I doubt it is especially prophetic of me to suggest that some day Suzy Berger will make the same indelible impression on audiences that Marie Howard made. Bring your hands together for her, pray, as Suzy starts along her path to greatness!”

  Suzy now knew how nerves could make hearts beat faster and heads spin. Her head felt as if it belonged to somebody else. But she remembered the words of the song she had rehearsed … and as Grace Budd, a new resident, played the opening bars on the grand piano Suzy forgot her nervousness. In her extraordinarily melodic voice she sang:

  “I touch your hand and my arms grow strong

  Like a pair of birds that burst with song;

  My eyes look down at your lovely face

  And I hold the world in my embrace.

  Younger than springtime are you

  Softer than starlight are you,

  Warmer than winds of June are the gentle lips you gave me.

  Gayer than laughter are you

  Sweeter than music are you

  Angel and lover, heaven and earth are you to me.

  And when your youth and joy invade my arms and fill my heart as now they do –

  Then younger than springtime,

  Gayer than laughter am I,

  Angel and lover, heaven and earth am I with you.

  Younger than springtime am I

  Gayer than laughter am I

  Angel and lover, heaven and earth am I with you.”

>   Her voice was quite untrained but as the last pure note faded away there was astonishment in the room, along with a sense of wonders to come. Charles Brodie had undoubtedly been correct: Suzy was destined to make an indelible impression. Why, she had made one already at the tender age of ten!

  As she curtsied they clapped ecstatically and called for an encore. Clapping and calling loudest were James and Edward Brodie …

  57

  Hugo had had enough of it. He should never have permitted Suzy’s trip. Ever since her return from London her head had been filled with rubbish about wanting to be an actress and about her wonderful Nama. Even worse, she kept on and on about Charles Brodie almost as if he, not Papa, were her grandfather. Hugo should have known that letting her be alone with Mama was something to be avoided at all costs.

  The galling aspect was, he had known, but had still not stopped Suzy going. Well, he must see that she never went to Mama’s again. Which wouldn’t be easy, because she kept pleading to go back to London and he found it so hard to refuse her anything. The solution suddenly hit him.

  “We’ll take a trip to Vienna,” he said over breakfast. “It’s high time you three met Nandad and became acquainted with your European heritage.”

  “When?” asked Helena, placing a plate of eggs and bacon on the table in front of him. “I didn’t know you were even considering such a thing.”

  “Visiting one’s father doesn’t have to be considered,” Hugo told her bossily. “It simply needs to be funded in this instance, there being five of us and with flights so costly. But I think we can run to it.”

  “Will we be running all the way to Vienna?” asked Daniel, egg yoke dripping on to his chin.

  “O’course we won’t!” Robert said scornfully. “We’ll be flying, Daddy, won’t we?”

  “Yes,” responded Hugo. “These days, flying makes more sense than going by train. I’ll ring London Airport later and see what they have to say. Then it will just be a question of starting saving.”

  “If we’re going to London Airport,” Suzy said eagerly, “as I’ve already met Nandad, you could perhaps leave me with Nama when you all fly to Vienna. That would save money – and I’d much sooner stay with her than do anything!”

  “You’ve been making that abundantly apparent,” her father snapped. “Ever since your return home you’ve shown that you’re dissatisfied with life in Gilchrist. You can talk about nothing but how marvellous your precious Nama is, and how the light shines out of Charles. Well, I can tell you this: the light doesn’t shine out of him. He and she – they’re living in sin, while the man Nama married is all alone over there in Vienna. As for her – she might seem to be the perfect grandmother, but you don’t know her like I know her. She isn’t as she seems – and was the world’s worst mother. So take off your rose-tinted spectacles and see her as she really is. When I was a small boy, being brought up in my dead sister’s shadow, I truly thought her heart must be made of stone. Where do you think you’re going?”

  Suzy had scraped her chair back and, as tears cascaded down her cheeks, ran to the door. After throwing it open, she turned and told him: “To my room so that I don’t have to stay here with you. I hate you, Daddy. I’ll always hate you for saying those terrible things to me.”

  He watched her go, his heart heavier than lead, as Helena reproved: “Oh, Hugo!”

  “I know,” he responded numbly. “I’ve blundered, I know.”

  +++++

  Charles had begun to feel old. He didn’t much care for the feeling. It was sometimes frightening to forget things and to wander in the fog he periodically wandered in. Having always prided himself on his memory and on the ease with which he could learn lines, he had never dreamed that his mind would one day grow muddled – or that he would become a burden for the woman he loved.

  Fortunately Marie did not see him as a burden. She continued to see him as the man he had once been. Thank God for Marie! Thank God for the fact that she had come back to him!

  Because she was back he now had a daughter – the daughter he thought he had lost. It was confusing that Suzy used to be called Carla but often he forgot that she did. Forgetfulness was helpful in some things. God, that child had talent! Everyone who saw her perform and heard her sing agreed that she had. There was a spark in her that dispersed his blindness and caused his heart to soar. She was her mother all over again, with the addition of a singing voice that – when trained – could take her in any direction she chose and right to the heights. Suzy was the future and the future was unbelievably bright.

  Charles was the past and felt terribly tired. He had once heard the phrase that someone’s get up and go had ‘got up and went’ and that was exactly how he felt. During Suzy’s visit he had managed to push the feeling from him, chiefly because her youthful exuberance had somehow seemed to permeate his limbs. But after she left, along with a sense of loss, he had reverted to where he was. The tiredness meant, among other things, that he could not be the husband to Marie he wanted to be. This troubled him and he was also troubled by the fact that they were still not legally married. If he could give nothing else to his beloved he could give her his name – except that Otto would not agree to a divorce.

  Perhaps he would, if asked yet again. “Do you think,” Charles queried, “it might be worth tackling Otto one last time?”

  Marie, safe in his arms as they lay in bed together awakening to a new day, answered: “I don’t honestly believe he’ll ever divorce me but we could try writing to him, if you like.”

  “Only if you like, too. We’ve always been married in the truest sense but as, legally, we have different names, when I die you wouldn’t be entitled … ”

  “You aren’t thinking of dying?” she butted in

  “Not actively,” he smiled. “I’m more and more conscious, though, of my mortality.”

  “None of us are getting younger, my darling, despite everyone feeling young while Suzy was here. Speaking of Suzy, she hasn’t written recently, has she?”

  “Not since she wrote that Hugo intends taking them all to Vienna,” he mused. “We need her back here. He should be rebuked for monopolising her. Who does he think he is, carting our daughter off with him?”

  Marie had begun to wish she had kept her reincarnation theories to herself. She felt that these had caused Charles extra confusion. “Hugo’s a cold fish at times,” she said. “He seems to have been especially cold since Suzy’s visit. I hope she didn’t say anything amiss. His jealousy could have spilled over if she did.”

  “I expect she’s simply busy,” he said. “She’d never neglect you intentionally.”

  “I don’t feel neglected … just a bit bewildered. Where were we?”

  The ensuing hugs and kisses relaxed them both so that Marie forgot her bewilderment and Charles his tiredness for a time. Eventually he said: “Will you write to Otto, then?”

  “Yes, I will,” she responded, tenderly stroking his face, “as long as you promise not to speak of leaving me.”

  Holding her tight he said: “I could never leave you, except physically, my Marie. You are my world, my universe, and we’re bonded together for eternity. The love we feel can’t die. Remember that, wherever I may be. It is an evolving entity that transcends obsolete flesh … physical death. Mine for you will one day be in the air you breathe, in the wind disturbing the trees. You’ve taught me so much! Through your love you’ve shown me that God lives in us and we in Him. I so needed showing! Thanks to you I now also know that love simply is and that without it there would be nothing. I realise that I would be nothing without you and the love you’ve given me so freely, so generously. But for your existence and your generosity of spirit, I’d have lived a life that was virtually empty. Oh, I had my art, but that was all I had until you came along to lift me from my emptiness to a land of plenty! Once lifted, having glimpsed the abundance you were willing to share with me, there could be no return to aridity. I must thank you, my Marie, for all you’ve given … all you’ve tau
ght me.”

  She said heavy-heartedly: “Thanks, between us, have never been necessary. Had they been, I’d need …”

  “No.” He kissed her lips, tasting the salt of tears on them. “You wouldn’t. You see, you’re the giver and I – to my eternal shame – have been the taker. But now I’d like finally to give something for a change … even if it’s only my name.”

  “Only?” she echoed. “You know how I long for the piece of paper proclaiming to the world that I’m Mrs Brodie! I’ll write to Otto today.”

  +++++

  Marie sensed Charles slipping away from her and was powerless to prevent it. Her powerlessness seared her heart, as did his increasing withdrawal to a place where she could not reach him. There were still moments of clarity but these were followed by periods when his poor mind was so muddled that he became anxious and behaved strangely. Being blind didn’t help matters. The day was fast approaching when Marie must leave Claridge’s and devote herself totally to his needs.

  She had long wanted to do so and had been stopped solely by financial considerations. She could not impose on Nell to the extent of living rent-free, though that had been her friend’s suggestion. Now, though, she was imposing in the sense of giving Nell and Maggie extra responsibilities. So she needed to make a decision …

  That established, she returned home after a tiring day to find Otto’s response awaiting her. Slitting the envelope open before removing her coat or going in to see Charles, she withdrew a flimsy sheet of notepaper and read in the familiar spidery script:

  ‘My dearest wife

  I have received your letter and noted its request. So, you have still not come to your senses! It is obvious to me that you are not meant for Charles Brodie and yet you persist in thinking otherwise.

  While I’d like to accommodate you both in your repeated wish to be man and wife, I cannot in good conscience do so. As a Catholic I am married to you for life. I made my marriage vows knowing that we were destined for each other and that nothing short of death could ever separate us in any real sense.