Sun Child

by Angela Huth

  Emily ran from the room. When she opened the front door sharp crystal air stung her face. Her first breath made a white balloon. She tried to catch it, to hold it for a moment like a bubble. But it quivered into nothingness as she raised her hand. Behind her, she could hear the telephone. It rang only twice. Then, her mother’s laugh. It was infectious, somehow, that laughter. Smiling to herself, Emily ran across the frosty lawn to where Sandra Buckle’s mother (a fat old thing she was, in a mink coat) hooted impatiently in her steamed-up car.

  The only kind of magic Emily believed in was the magic of change. The transformation of normality to strangeness, due to a mood, or an addition of unfamiliar people, or a day of peculiarly violent weather, was an inexplicable phenomena. The kitchen, for instance (the room more than anywhere she liked to be), was a strangely magic place, vulnerable to disturbing changes. At its best, at its most normal, it was full of winter sun and firelight, cooking smells, an untidy jumble of brilliant colours. Fen would be its only other inhabitant, a vibrant thing whose sense of vitality gave life to the inanimate things around her. Sometimes, she would flop into the armchair, eyes shut, long flowery skirts swinging between her parted legs, and listen to Emily chatter about her day. Or they would listen to music. But even in Fen’s tiredness there was vivacity. After a moment’s relaxation some new thought would re-invigorate her. She’d be up instantly to chop or peel or mash, stoke the fire, or dance if the music was right, swirling about the room, an onion in her hand, laughing at her own exuberance.

  Alone with Fen like that, the kitchen was normal. Should Idle appear, it shifted a little. The change was almost imperceptible, but quite definite. Then, it was Idle who occupied the dominant place in Fen’s territory. For all the attention they extended to Emily, she was forced to see them through transparent bars. It was their kitchen, then. And for Emily all the colours dimmed, so privately it would have been impossible for anyone else to recognise or understand the fading of their tones.

  On mercifully rare occasions the room became totally unrecognisable : as on the day Uncle Tom and Kevin arrived unexpectedly, spiriting away the familiar peace and quiet, and leaving restless signs of moved chairs and filled ashtrays behind them when they went. Last night, when Kevin had sat at Idle’s place at the table, an instant reaction within her told Emily the magic had been at work. The kitchen was a sharper place, temporarily not hers: she resented its desertion.

  But it never went for long. One thing she could rely upon was that its natural atmosphere would always be reconjured by Fen. It would always return. Her constant hope, the thing she looked forward to all day, was that when she arrived back from school no unforeseen spell should have changed the place, that normality was unshaken. The day that she received the postcard from her father was a good day at school, but she arrived home to be disappointed.

  Fen’s car was not there. Irritation. Why wasn’t she there? Fear. Where was she ?

  Emily ran into the house. It was dusk, but no lights were on. In the kitchen the fire was almost out, the table was strangely tidy. Emily called out to Fen, her voice shrill. She was rewarded with the sound of footsteps overhead. Then an unfamiliar tread on the stairs. It was Mrs Charles, who came to clean the house three days a week. A middle-aged woman whose skin, in the greenish light, shone like gristle. Emily hardly knew her.

  ‘Oh, there you are, dear,’ said Mrs Charles. ‘Don’t look like that. Your mother’s had to go to London. On business,’ she added, in a mean voice, and lumbered her way into the room.

  Mrs Charles was by nature an unhappy woman. Convinced she was a lifetime victim of bad luck (rather than actual hardship) she was full of constant wrath on this score. Indeed a kind of permanent indignation had settled upon her (you could tell this – something about her very stance – from a range of fifty yards) which she had not the slightest wish to abandon. It had become a habit. Extending into areas which in no way affected her own life – skinheads, Watergate, pornography – it richened her responses to almost any news. The fact that Mrs Harris had called upon her with a suggestion that was thoroughly inconvenient had ripened her afternoon. She had fortunately found the chance to get some of it off her chest to her next-door neighbour, and had muttered a good deal more to herself, which she wouldn’t like to repeat, on the fifty-yard bicycle ride to the house. However, where children were concerned, nobody could accuse Mrs Charles of being anything but cooperative, no matter how great the inconvenience. If Mrs Harris had to go to London for the day (and Mrs Charles had always secretly judged her employer to be a flighty woman) then of course she would baby-sit. But it did seem to her, and her reactions to injustice were more spontaneous than most, that one of the great unfairnesses of the world was the way in which the stolid lower classes so often found themselves suffering from the irresponsible acts of the middle classes. So thinking, she swerved her sturdy jaw from side to side, indignation lending an impressive violence to the movement. Emily, slouched on a chair, thought she looked like a man in disguise.

  ‘When’s Mama coming back?’ she asked.

  ‘Later,’ she said.

  ‘But why’s she gone to London?’

  ‘Don’t look to me for any answers, dear. I don’t know what people do in London, do I? Now, come along. Take off your things, and I’ll get you something to eat.’

  Emily didn’t move. Her arms and legs were heavy. She watched Mrs Charles turn on the light, then poke unskilfully at the fire. At her touch, the scarlet embers frizzled into grey.

  ‘You could put on a log,’ said Emily, dully.

  Mrs Charles obediently threw on some wood, muttering.

  ‘I don’t know what they put in the coal, these days. Nothing burns. When I was a child, we had blazing fires. I remember, we always had a blazing fire in the grate. No trouble with the coal then. But it’s like everything else, I suppose. Slipping standards. There’s no quality for money any more. Even the elm trees have all got this disease, haven’t they? Couldn’t use them for logs, I wouldn’t be surprised. It gets me down.’

  ‘What do you think Mama might have gone to London for?’ Emily persisted. Mrs Charles, upright in front of the fire now, lifted her skirt a little so that the backs of her knees should benefit from the pallid flame that began to hover round the logs. Here was a situation she’d have something to say about, later. It made her blood boil the way some people just came and went as they pleased, without a thought for their children. But it was up to her to be heroic. Otherwise, it might have a nasty effect on the child. For life.

  ‘Don’t you go worrying your head about your mother,’ she said, ‘She’s got some very good reason for going, I shouldn’t be surprised. The dentist, perhaps. Perhaps she had trouble with her teeth.’ When put to the test, Mrs Charles could be quite imaginative. ‘Or the bank. I know of a lot of people who have to go and see their bank managers.’ This was something Mrs Charles had never been summoned to do herself -in her imagination such an interview was socially almost as exclusive as an invitation to Buckingham Palace. And as such important events outside her own experience inspired an uncontrollable envy, her voice took on the blighted tone common to those who consider themselves to be underprivileged in interesting ways. She hitched her skirts higher. ‘Although they do say that getting too close to your bank manager can be a mixed blessing,’ she added. When stricken with envy she was not without resources of consolation. Emily, watching her angry, working face, hated Mrs Charles. She hated her ugly body absorbing all the heat from the struggling fire: she hated her being there instead of her mother.

  They spent a desolate evening. It remained cold. Mrs Charles finally inspired flames, but no warmth from the fire. Emily, having refused tea (Mrs Charles saw this to be a sign of stupidity rather than protest), struggled to read a chapter on William the Conqueror, and learnt by heart two new French verbs. It would have been a help to have repeated them out loud, but there was plainly no point in asking Mrs Charles to listen. For her part, having made the unselfish gesture of comi
ng to the house, Mrs Charles decided against any further effort to enliven the hours. She was suffering from outrage about the quality of television. All three channels had conspired to put on programmes that held no appeal for her, and she switched impatiently from one to another. The noise of the ever-changing buttons, accompanied by threats of fury to the heads of each television station, made it difficult for Emily to concentrate on King William.

  At eight the telephone rang. Its noise irritated Mrs Charles by interrupting a good commercial (the only decent things on the box, the ads). To her mind telephones should be kept for emergencies only. Crossly she stumped over to it, unsure what her telephone manner should be. The fact that it was Mrs Harris, not a strange voice – people mumbled so, on the telephone, that was another thing – gave her courage. She was determined to put up a good show. She knew what children could be, with their tales.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Harris. All’s well. Lovely. Yes, as good as gold. Well, we haven’t had our supper yet, but we’re going to. Would you like a little word?’ She paused. ‘Very well. I won’t say a thing. I’ll leave it to you to tell her.’

  As soon as she reached the telephone Emily knew something was wrong. The brightness in her mother’s voice was alarming.

  ‘Sorry about today, Em. I had to rush up unexpectedly. I didn’t know till after you’d left.’

  ‘Why? What did you have to do in London?’

  ‘Oh, a lot of boring things. You’re all right, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Still in London.’

  ‘When are you coming back?’ Pause. Emily felt her heart thumping very fast.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. Look, it’s like this, darling. I was asked to a party, and I said yes. I hoped you wouldn’t mind. I thought you’d understand. I mean, I haven’t been to a party or up to London for ages, have I ?’

  ‘No.’ The word was stricken.

  ‘And in fact it’s good news for you in a way. It means you can go and spend the night with Wolf.’

  ‘With Wolf?’ That was quite a thought. A midnight feast, perhaps. But then she didn’t know Coral or his father. Suddenly she didn’t want to meet them.

  ‘I’ve already rung Mrs Beasly and it’s all arranged. She’s coming to fetch you any minute. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Emily had no desire to disappoint her mother. She supposed it would have been mean to say no, I don’t want to go. Not at all, not at all.

  Fen chattered on then, relief in her voice, gay. She would be home in the morning, would fetch Emily from school herself. She might even bring her some small thing from London. She was longing to see her and hoped she really was happy with the plan, wasn’t she? Yes, said Emily, she really was happy with the plan.

  The conversation over, Mrs Charles grumbled for a while about having to pack Emily’s night things. But Emily scarcely listened. Her heart was back to its normal rhythm, but her limbs felt dreary. She sat at the table turning the pages of her history book backwards and forwards, counting them. Where was her mother now? Why hadn’t she asked? She liked to be able to imagine her at all times: she disliked the idea of knowing only that she was somewhere in the black void of London. Had she taken a special dress with her? Who would take care of her, at the party, if Papa wasn’t there? A vision of Fen’s face came to her, horribly clear: it was a laughing, happy face, smart London hair, piled up in curls; a filmy London dress that ended vaguely like a mermaid’s tail. She spun around, dancing, and yet not seeming to move. Her eyes searched for someone. She wasn’t really all right, in spite of the laughing.

  The front door bell rang. Coral Beasly, neat in stiff tweeds, smelling of a sweet, cloying scent, was noisily cheerful. Wolf, she assured Emily, was delighted by the idea of the visit, and they were all going to have a lovely time. On the way down the black frosty path her gloved hand squeezed Emily’s shoulder.

  ‘Now cheer up,’ she said. ‘You know what Mummies are. You see, they do have to go away sometimes, don’t they?’ She sounded both smug and accusing. Emily tweaked her shoulder till the hand went away. Fen’s face, still laughing, was still searching for Papa, at the beastly old party somewhere a million miles away in London. Emily didn’t answer.

  The Beaslys’ house could not have been more different from the Harrises’. Its tidy precision was claustrophobic. Detail had been thought out to the point of ridicule: picture frames the same blue as the sofa, the colour of the curtains reflected in the suburban arrangements of dried flowers. Magazines and newspapers laid out on a table were mere patterns, unread. The cat wasn’t allowed on the rug in front of the fire. It was a house in which you could only feel at ease on tiptoe, in which appearances mattered, not life.

  Its air of oppressive contrivance had its effect on Wolf. He was subdued as Emily had never seen him – embarrassed, it appeared, by his stepmother who made a hollow fuss of him, and at the same time asked him questions which she then answered herself for fear he should contradict her. Contrary to Coral’s predictions, the evening did not turn out to be a lively one. Side by side at the clinical kitchen table, Wolf and Emily had a supper of nicely balanced proteins, then escaped to Wolf’s room as soon as they could. There, for the first time with Wolf, Emily felt shy. They had been told by Coral to undress and get into bed, but they sat on the floor, surrounded by a swirl of electric trains, ill at ease. Wolf fiddled with them: they made quiet, buzzing noises, darted forward in short spurts, then stopped.

  ‘Coral gave them to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve often told her I wasn’t interested in trains, but she just said all boys like trains. Silly old cow. If I don’t pretend to play with them at least once a week she gets tears in her eyes. One day I shall kick the whole lot to pieces and let her really cry.’ Emily smiled.

  ‘She doesn’t seem too bad,’ she said, ‘but I think she smells funny.’

  ‘That’s nothing to what she smells like when people are coming to lunch or dinner. Everywhere she goes she leaves this awful stink behind her. You can’t go into any room she’s been into for at least an hour afterwards without feeling sick. I stay up here. I don’t know how Dad stands it.’ He kicked at a large train, derailing it. ‘Anyway, what’s your mother gone to London for?’

  ‘Just a party.’

  ‘I wish Coral would go up to London to parties and leave me and Dad in peace. You’re lucky having such a nice young-looking mother who gets asked to parties. You’re lucky having a real mother at all, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I know,’ said Emily.

  ‘In fact,’ said Wolf, ‘I’ll tell you a secret, if you like. Only swear on your heart not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Swear on my heart not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t at all mind if Coral and my father got a divorce.’

  Emily gasped.

  ‘But how would that make it any better?’ she asked. ‘Just you and your father on your own? You sort of need a mother person around to cook and things.’

  ‘Well, Dad could find another one, easy as anything. I bet you he could. And anyhow if he couldn’t we’d be fine. Whenever Coral has been away we’ve had a smashing time, cooking sausages on the fire at tea-time for lunch, and not having any baths. That sort of thing. He’s quite different when she’s not there.’

  Emily pulled her knees up under her chin, warmed by Wolf’s confidences. She supposed, really, compared with him, she was quite lucky, even though Papa did have to go away so often. She could afford to be generous.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said, ‘but perhaps she’ll get better.’

  ‘Oh no, not likely,’ replied Wolf. ‘She’s getting much worse.’ His face was very solemn, his voice quiet. Emily felt a great urge to help him.

  ‘We could make her an apple pie bed, one day,’ she said. ‘And serve her right.’

  Wolf’s face revived. He laughed. It was an appealing idea. Also, an idea which wouldn’t affect hi
s father, as they slept in single beds. Happily, they began to plot, kicking at the trains as they did so, gently bashing them up, but not quite badly enough for Coral to notice.

  Later, when they were both in bunk beds, Mr Beasly came to say goodnight – a pale, shaggy man with tired sandy eyes and narrow shoulders. He was friendly to Emily, affectionate to Wolf.

  ‘Well, don’t talk quite all night long, will you, old man?’ He ruffled his son’s hair.

  ‘Won’t you tell us a story, Dad?-Dad tells smashing stories about when he was a Japanese prisoner of war, don’t you, Dad?’ Wolf was proud.

  ‘Not tonight, he doesn’t, Wolfie.’ Coral had slipped into the room. ‘Daddy’s got to have his supper, hasn’t he? He’s had a long day.’ She was all over the place, tweaking the curtains across the window, retucking immaculately tucked beds.

  ‘Another night,’ said Mr Beasly, quietly.

  ‘My father tells marvellous stories, too,’ said Emily.

  ‘Does he, dear?’ Coral kissed Emily on the forehead.

  Emily tried to control her grimace at the smell of the repulsive scent. ‘Well, sleep tight. Mind the fleas don’t bite.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Come along, Gavin, or your soup will be cold.’

  When they had gone Emily curled down into the narrow bed. The sheets were stiff and smelt of the laundry. She had forgotten the two Patricks: the bed felt naked without them. She looked round the room, lit clearly by the moon. The curtains were covered with pictures of trees with their names printed underneath. She thought they were the nicest things in the room. She didn’t like the pictures of racing cars and old aeroplanes on the walls, and it was cold.

  ‘You all right?’ Wolf’s voice came from the top bunk.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily. There was nothing precisely wrong. Nothing she could tell Wolf about.

  ‘She never lets Dad tell me stories at night. You’d think she was jealous or something.’ Emily could hear him turning over in bed. ‘If Dad married your mother, that would be quite good,’ he said.