Mannie apologises at once. ‘Sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean to be patronising. Or pushy. And you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to, but—’ she lets the pause run on significantly.
‘I’ll think about it, Mannie.’ Susie can see Karen waving at her, tapping her watch and holding up seven fingers. Seven minutes till the vote. She will have to run.
‘Come on, Mum,’ Mannie pleads.
Despite her daughter’s attempts to pretend Susie is the person in control here, she’s clearly not going to let this go. Susie is amused despite herself. No wonder her daughter is such a successful saleswoman.
Mannie presses on. ‘I can’t do this for you. You have to be the one to get the birth certificate.’
‘Oh Mannie,’ she sighs tiredly, ‘I’m due in the Chamber in a minute, there’s a late debate after that, then I’m hosting a reception and my email backlog has topped three thousand. I don’t know, darling. I really don’t. Can we talk about this later? In a week or two?’
‘Mu-um. It’s important.’
Susie sighs. ‘Mannie, important is making sure that schoolchildren still have music lessons. Important is securing funding so that remote communities can still have visits from touring theatre companies. Important is enabling health care to reach people who need it and—’
‘Spare me the politics, Mum, just say yes.’
‘Sweetheart, I’ve got to go—’
But Mannie has never been a child to let go once she set her heart on something. ‘All right, Mum. Just put me on to Karen, will you?’ She says it sweetly, but there is no mistaking the determination in her voice. ‘Then you can whisk off to press those buttons or whatever it is you do for the vote. I won’t be a bother, honest.’
Maybe it is the wimp’s way out but with only four minutes to go, Susie simply hands the phone to Karen and runs.
They’re standing on the broad stone steps of the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh’s east end.
It’s just a building. I’ll just get a bit of paper. That’s all. A piece of paper can’t hurt me.
She is trembling.
‘Okay, Mum?’
Mannie is looking at her anxiously. Susie takes her hand and squeezes it, as much to get reassurance as to give it. ‘Fine. Let’s do it.’
A piece of paper, that’s all.
They walk inside together.
‘Have you ever used another name?’ The woman at the desk asks the question diffidently.
‘My maiden name, of course.’
‘Other than that?’
Mannie nudges her.
‘Oh – you mean – yes I, well I—’ Now that it comes to it, nerves are threatening to overwhelm her.
‘Mum knows she was adopted,’ Mannie says smoothly.
‘That’s a relief.’ The soft brown eyes flicker upwards, the jaw loosens, the hands visibly relax. ‘Sometimes people aren’t aware, you know,’ the clerk goes on, leaning forward confidentially. ‘It can be quite a shock.’
For the first time in weeks, Susie begins to think she has been lucky after all. At least she isn’t standing here in this room, being landed with that bombshell.
A phone call. A wait. Another room, a stack of documents, a large ledger, another woman. ‘I’m going to show you the Court Order for your adoption,’ she says, her voice friendly.
It’s going to tell me my name.
A hot hand slips into hers. ‘It’s okay, Mum.’
Christ, it’s stifling in here.
She gathers her thick mane of hair with her right hand and scoops it back to allow what air there is to cool the back of her neck. Mannie is looking at her, excitement bubbling in her eyes. She has wound herself up over this thing like a tightly coiled spring. The energy stored in that coil is explosive, she’s scarcely able to contain her feverish anticipation. Just like she used to be before a big treat, Susie thinks, remembering her daughter at five years old, at seven, at nine, sleepless with suspense, almost sick with excitement before a trip to the zoo, the theatre, a sleepover.
The woman opens the ledger. At the top are her parent’s names – Robert and Mary MacPherson. So far, so familiar. She can feel the sweat on her forehead, on her neck. Her nerves are strung as tight as on opening night in the West End.
On the next line, for the first time, she sees the name she was given at birth.
The woman points at the first column. ‘This is your birth name.’ Susie squints at the name. Brenda Miles. My name, Susie realises with a jolt. Brenda? I’m Brenda?
‘This is your date and place of birth.’ The handwriting is rounded and loopy, the ‘R’ stylised, as though the person writing the form has been bored, has wanted to fill their days with something more exciting than filling boxes on a form. ‘Rottenrow’ it says. She studies the word. Place of birth, Rottenrow Maternity Hospital, Glasgow.
‘This is your mother’s name.’
Joyce Miles, mother.
‘And this is her signature, here.’
Susie stares at the page in the ledger, then wonderingly, she reaches out a finger and touches the signature. Her mother wrote this. Her real mother. Joyce Miles went to the Registrar to give this information. Was she there at the time, a tiny infant, wrapped in a shawl perhaps, peeking up at her mother, trustingly? Did Joyce intend to keep her at that moment, or was the decision already made to give her up for adoption? Who was with her? Joyce’s own parents, perhaps, irate because of their daughter’s illegitimate offspring? Or was she on her own, frightened and defensive? What were the circumstances that had made her give her daughter away?
A million questions teem in Susie’s brain; all unanswerable. How could you give away a daughter?
She feels ill at the idea. When Mannie was in her arms, nothing could have separated them. She remembers the anxiety she felt at leaving her daughter for a few minutes, just to go to the toilet or make a cup of tea. Would she stop breathing before she could return? What if she put her little face into the mattress and suffocated? Or just reached out for her mother and found her gone? The complicated anxieties of motherhood, rooted in a need to protect. A primal urge.
Did my mother want to keep me? Was I torn from her arms while she wept – or could she not bear the sight of me, the cause of her shame?
Brenda Miles. The oddness of it shakes her. I am Brenda. I have a mother named Joyce. And I need to know why she gave me away. The need becomes a yearning, the yearning a fundamental necessity. And yet ... it frightens her. Susie feels overcome by an emotion so profound she cannot look it in the face. She is floating, falling, like an autumn leaf on the wind. Will she hit the ground lightly or fracture with the impact? So many unknowns, too many to contemplate. Her head is bursting with imponderables.
‘Wow! You were called Brenda! How weird is that?’ Mannie giggles. ‘What else is there? No father. Bother. I hoped—’
‘There was never likely to be a father’s name, we knew that.’
‘Yeah, I know, but still. Anyway, we’ve got Glasgow. That’s something. I mean, you could have been born anywhere, I suppose.’
I could have been born anywhere.
A sense of identity, it comes to Susie, is fundamental to one’s understanding of self. She already has a new set of parents and a new name – if she had discovered she was a different nationality as well, what might that have done to her psyche? If she’d been French, perhaps, or Irish? Is it possible to feel any more insecure than she does already?
She glances at her watch and smiles at the official. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’
‘You can order a full certificate if you like.’
‘Yes. Thank you. I expect I will, but I’m afraid I’ve got to go. I’ve got a Committee shortly.’
‘Oh.’ Mannie looks crestfallen. ‘I hoped we’d have time for lunch. There’s so much to talk about. I mean, we’ve got to decide what to do next.’
‘Right now, nothing,’ Susie says firmly, making for the door.
‘Nothing? But we need to find out
if Joyce Miles is still alive. Then we can find out your real story.’
‘Suppose I don’t want to know?’
‘Of course you want to know!’
She is striding out briskly now, whirling through the building with fiendish energy, bestowing smiles and thanks on the security staff at the door, checking the time, desperate to just not think about it any more. On the steps outside she pauses, envelopes Mannie in a hug, then turns briskly and says, ‘We’ll talk soon, Mannie, I promise. Only not now, okay?’
She sets off briskly, striding across the junction and up South Bridge as if a horde of demons is after her and leaving Mannie staring after her and biting her lip.
The show must go on.
An old cliché, perhaps, but the adage is one that actors live by and now she is drifting like a twig in a fast-flowing current, Susie is able to draw upon the discipline of years of professionalism in order to get through the days – and not just edge through on a whisper of a prayer. By pulling on her skills, she is able to give performances that dazzle almost more now than at any time since her election.
It’s a febrile beauty, like a last flare from a firework before it fizzles out and dies. In the days following the discovery of her identity, she delivers a blistering speech from the floor of the Chamber, attacking the generally disliked Shadow Culture Minister; she appears on Question Time, where her responses are greeted with warm applause; and she speaks at a School conference where she seems to be idolised. It’s heady stuff.
At home, the story is a very different one. Far from being brilliant, her relationship with Archie has deteriorated into a series of sullen silences punctuated by the kind of humdrum exchanges necessary for the smooth continuation of everyday life.
‘Have you got any washing?’
‘Did you pay the electricity bill yet?’
‘What day do they come for the plastic recycling?’
Other than that, their paths seem to cross less and less. Susie is putting in ever longer hours at work, caught up in a whirlwind largely of her own making, and Archie is spending more and more time in his studio.
‘Do you want to shower first?’ Archie asks when they retire one night, unexpectedly, around the same time.
‘No, no, you go,’ Susie says, thinking back on the times when they would have squeezed in deliciously under the hot jet of water.
‘It’s okay, I’ll wait,’ Archie counters, coldly polite.
So she sighs and gives in. When he joins her in bed, the weird courtesy continues across the five feet of mattress. He climbs in, turns out his light and rolls on his side with a grunt, facing away from her. After half an hour of listening to his breathing and trying to work out whether he is awake, she reaches a hand out tentatively towards his shoulder. It’s only half way there when she retracts it again, awkwardly, as the now familiar sense of betrayal overwhelms her.
Discussing the adoption has become deeply difficult, with Archie turning defensive if she raises the subject. His wariness piles up wretchedness and it has become easier not to talk about it at all.
One Sunday morning a few weeks after the visit to New Register House, Susie is sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown, jotting notes for a speech. Archie, who had gone into Hailesbank early to pick up the papers, pushes open the kitchen door and tosses a heavy bundle onto the scrubbed pine surface.
‘Everyone’s talking about you.’ The papers land with a thump, the draught lifting her notes.
She sighs at the disruption and reorganises the papers into a neat pile. ‘Dare I ask why?’
He extracts one of the magazine supplements and holds it out to her. On the front cover, she sees her own face staring back, her dark gold eyes unfathomable, her creamy skin shining against a cloud of brown-gold hair. The photographer has made her look like a pre-Raphaelite angel. It’s an oddly fey look.
‘Where Her Heart Is: Susie Wallace on Life, Love and Politics’.
She snorts. ‘“Life, Love and Politics’”? What do I know about such things? That interview was done ten weeks ago’
‘Great photograph.’
Susie is overcome by irritation. She snaps back at him, ‘Great photograph of the actress known as Susie Wallace. I don’t think it reflects anything at all about the person called Brenda Miles.’ She bends to her notes again, her hair falling forward so that it masks the deep lines etched on her forehead and the troubled look in the notorious golden eyes.
‘Oh come on, Susie.’
Something cracks. ‘Come on?’ She seizes the magazine and shakes it at him. ‘What do you think I feel like, Archie? Hmm? Seeing this? This—’ she searches for the word, ‘—this arrogant nonsense?’
She opens the magazine, thumbs through the pages until she gets to the feature, scans down the columns, begins to read. ‘“I like nothing better than to sit round a table with my husband Archie and my two fabulous children. Family means everything to me.” Ironic don’t you think? Or this – “In Susie Wallace’s sweet little cottage home, there are treasured mementoes of her parents, who sadly did not live to see her become a Parliamentarian. Her heritage, she says, is of huge importance to her. She likes to think of her past, and where she has come from, and what she, in turn, is handing on to the generations to come.”’
She tosses the magazine onto the table. ‘Jesus, Archie. Such crap. What does it all mean? What does anything mean any more?’
‘There are plenty of things that haven’t changed, Susie. We’re still all here – your family.’
‘You? My trusted husband, you mean?’ Her voice is rising with mounting hysteria and she is ready for a row. A big blow-out might serve to clear the air. Until now, her way of dealing with the situation has been to hide behind activity, lots of it. She has thrown herself into the role of politician, has hidden – as she does with such practised ease on stage – behind a mask of contrivance. No point in concealment from Archie. He knows her too well. But does she know him? Has she ever really known him?
Archie sighs resignedly. ‘Susie, we’ve discussed this. What was I to do? I was caught in a trap—’
She doesn’t want to hear the voice of reason. She doesn’t want explanation, excuses, common sense. She wants an argument. She raises her fist and thumps it down on the table so hard that the mugs and teaspoons jump and rattle.
‘You lied to me.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘You lied by omission, Archie, for Christ’s sake let’s not split hairs.’
Archie stands perfectly immobile. She knows him of old, he is about to turn and leave. He hates arguments, he will walk away every time. Exasperated, she starts to move towards him, meaning to force him to stay and engage with her, when another voice brings her up short.
‘Mum? Dad? what’s up?’
Jonathan is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his hair rumpled, his face flushed from sleep. Susie stops on the spot, her bubble of anger popped as she takes in the anxiety on his face. He’s a small boy again, six years old and fresh from a nightmare, needing cuddles and reassurance. She wavers uncertainly. Her need is for exorcism through confrontation, but her men cannot bear this.
While she hesitates, Archie turns to the door. ‘I’m going to the studio.’
Jon looks from one parent to the other, distraught.
‘It’s all right, Jonno,’ Susie says heavily. ‘Just a spat, that’s all. You want some tea?’
But her son shakes his head and swings away. ‘I don’t think tea’s going to help.’
Susie slumps back onto her chair and tries to focus her attention on her work, but she’d dropped the magazine across her papers and has to move it. She glances at the offending cover, then flicks to the inside again. It’s not just about her, she realises, it runs across a number of pages and is a broader feature about Scottish actors headed ‘Six of the best’. The journalist’s choice starts with an actor called Jimmy Scirocco, the Irish-born madcap who made Scotland his home and whose once dazzling career was blighted by dri
nk and womanising. A charmer, a wit, an actor of scintillating talent – and a wasted soul. The corners of her mouth lift a little, because being linked with this man is a real tribute. Ewan McGregor features, naturally, alongside Sean Connery and Alan Cumming. Who is the sixth? She turns the page.
Maitland Forbes.
At once she is back in time. It’s twenty-nine years ago. She has been married to Archie for only a year and she’s away from him, filming. It’s her chance for a breakthrough – this film has the potential to make her a star. It’s a costume drama about the Highland Clearances and they’re on the island of Mull, on a beautiful beach, its sands pure white in the summer sun. She hasn't yet met her co-star, though she knows who Maitland is. His face is for ever in the press because of some mad escapade, a drunken night out with the boys or – more recently – the news that shattered his army of fans: his wedding.
He’ll be fresh from his honeymoon. Will the glorious Serafina be with him? Susie anticipates arrogance and is prepared to dislike him. She expects disdain. She is prepared for pretty much anything – except for falling wildly, crazily in love.
She slaps the magazine shut and tosses it onto the recycling pile.
Has Archie seen the article, or did he only look at her photograph on the cover?
She pulls her work towards her determinedly. It was a long time ago and anyway, Archie never knew.
The angry exchange that day marks the beginning of a further decline in her relationship with Archie. In a lifetime of being close, Susie finds the growing estrangement between them difficult to live with, but she has no idea how to bridge it.
Archie takes a duvet and some bedding from the spare room and decamps to the studio.
‘The worst thing is,’ she confides to Karen over a coffee in the Garden Lobby of the Parliament, ‘I hate sleeping on my own. We’ve never been apart for more than a few days when he’s been away on a gig, and I hated that. I feel bereft.’
They’re snatching a brief break between meetings. Karen stops burrowing through the stack of files she has piled onto the low coffee table and gazes at her, the cool grey eyes appraising. ‘Can’t you talk to him?’ she asks sensibly.
Loving Susie: The Heartlands series Page 9
