The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  Chapter 58

  ART

  Masha

  Today’s pool temperature is 12.7 degrees and it is a beautiful spring morning. The sun is shining brightly with the promise of real warmth later in the day, and the flower pots outside the café are golden with daffodils. These days it is not only the Olympian who scythes through the water. I regularly swim fifty lengths, and in the water I feel free and invincible. It has become my friend. And so has the Olympian. Gideon is now my official, bona fide, publicly accredited boyfriend, and has been for six months now. It is a ridiculous word to use – I am not a girl and he is certainly not a boy – but it makes me smile. Edward still calls him my paramour of the pool, Kitty Muriel, of course, calls him my lover, and Epiphany calls him Daniel Craig. But to me he will always be the Olympian.

  He is waiting for me in the café, and Flo has once again abandoned her counter and is standing chatting to him at the table where he is sitting with two coffees and two slices of carrot cake. As I join them, she winks at me and grins.

  ‘I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it, then. Enjoy your cake.’

  Gideon pushes my coffee towards me. ‘How was your swim?’

  I help myself to a slice of cake. ‘Exhilarating.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you on Monday?’ he asks, taking a sip of his coffee.

  Monday is the day of Dad’s court case.

  ‘I’d love you to come with me, but to be honest, I don’t know if it would be the best thing for Dad.’

  Dad had liked Gideon as soon as they met. ‘About time you got yourself a good man!’ he said to me as they shook hands. But tomorrow is going to be a difficult day, and I’m not sure how Dad is going to handle it.

  I try to explain my fears. ‘Dad will be full of bravado, of course, but I know he’ll be worried and maybe the fewer people he has to pretend in front of, the better.’

  The truth is that he stubbornly clings on to his alpha-male pride, despite the impediments of his age and physical decline. Gideon is a stark reflection of what he no longer has – a body and brain in peak condition to buttress his dignity and bolster his self-respect. Dad is not a man who is comfortable with old age, but instead fights it at every turn. Monday will not be a good day for him to face such a potent reminder that it is a battle he is already inevitably losing. Gideon places his hand over mine and threads our fingers together. Joined like this, our hands always remind me of the keys of a piano. I can almost hear Flo clucking with delight.

  ‘Okay, that’s cool. I’ll meet you all in the pub afterwards with Haizum. I’ll get the drinks lined up on the bar.’

  I smile gratefully and steal the last piece of his carrot cake.

  ‘We’ll probably need them.’

  That I trust Gideon with Haizum is probably the strongest testament to my feelings for him. Until now, Mum and Dad and Edward were the only people in this world to whom I would entrust the care of my precious canine. The fact that Haizum is besotted with Gideon and attempts to wrestle him to the ground each time he sees him, and that Gideon finds this both amusing and endearing, is all the reassurance that I needed. Haizum, like most dogs, is an excellent judge of character.

  There is a commotion at the counter and we both turn to see Kitty Muriel and Elvis greeting Flo enthusiastically. True to her word, Kitty Muriel is now a regular swimmer at the lido, but she has yet to persuade Elvis to enter the water. He is, however, happy to watch his wife from the comfort of the café on a Saturday morning if he’s not working, and have tea and toast waiting for her after her swim. When Kitty Muriel sees us, she leaves Elvis to place their order and hurries over to our table. She kisses each of us in turn and asks if they can join us.

  ‘We’d be offended if you didn’t!’

  Gideon pulls back a chair for her and makes room on the table for the tray that Elvis is now carrying. Kitty Muriel is her usually glamorous self in a black trouser suit, white silk blouse with a huge bow at the neck and a black fedora. It is clear that she has not been swimming today.

  ‘No time today, dear. We’re on our way to auditions for the latest show, but we thought we’d have a quick cup of tea and a muffin to keep our strength up. Actually, I’m rather nervous. I should really like this part, but the director and I don’t always see eye to eye and I don’t think I’ll be his first choice.’

  ‘There is no other choice, my darling girl,’ Elvis assures her as he arrives at the table with their tray. ‘The part was made for you, and there’s nobody else who’ll be able to carry it off with your unique élan.’

  Kitty Muriel takes his hand and kisses it.

  ‘Bless you for saying that, but I think you might be slightly partisan.’

  They have been married for seven months now and are clearly more in love with one another than ever. The old Masha might have found it embarrassing, but now I think it’s rather wonderful.

  ‘So, Elvis, are you auditioning too?’

  He shakes his head in mock horror at my question.

  ‘God forbid! I’m just going along as a good luck charm.’

  Kitty Muriel immediately starts singing the first lines of the song of the same title that the other Elvis made famous and Gideon nearly chokes on his coffee with laughter. But that is the effect they have. When Kitty Muriel and Elvis walk into the room it’s like the Blackpool Illuminations being switched on. They are a dazzling duo, exuding life, love and a healthy shot of bonkers. They just make people smile, and that’s a real gift.

  ‘My husband has a wonderful singing voice,’ Kitty Muriel proclaims, ‘but he is too modest to perform in public. I, on the other hand, am an inveterate show-off!’

  Elvis smiles at her proudly. ‘You, my darling, are an absolute star.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope the director agrees with you!’

  Kitty Muriel checks her watch, and hastily finishes her tea.

  ‘We must be off. It wouldn’t do at all to be late.’

  Elvis gathers their tea things back onto the tray, ready to return to Flo.

  ‘What’s the show?’ I ask.

  But my question is lost in the flurry of hugs and kisses that accompany their farewells.

  ‘Break a leg!’

  Chapter 59

  ART

  ‘If they send me to prison, I’m going on hunger strike.’

  Dad is wearing his best suit – charcoal grey, because it does for both weddings and funerals, which are pretty much the only occasions these days when he has to endure a suit. And court appearances. We are sitting in the dark, cavernous entrance hall of the Magistrates’ Court, whose architect was obviously determined that all who enter here should feel the full gravitas, might and splendour of the English legal system embodied in both the design and construction of the building. The windows are all small, very high up, and are glazed in rich, jewel-coloured glass that allows very little daylight to filter through. There are yards of polished mahogany panelling and each of the splendid staircases that lead to the courtrooms has sweeping marble steps and mahogany balustrades. The acoustics are such that the softest of voices is amplified tenfold, and each footstep echoes sonorously throughout the hall. This secular cathedral was intended to be a place where secrets could not be kept. Every lie, every whisper, every movement would be witnessed and given up by the fabric of the building.

  These days, however, the congregation do not appear to be remotely repentant for their sins, and demonstrate no reverence whatsoever for their hallowed surroundings. Dad is conspicuously overdressed. Low-slung ripped jeans, football shirts, trainers and baseball caps are evidently the new ‘Sunday best’. One young woman has made an attempt at more formal attire, but the effect of the cheap brown skirt and jacket is somewhat marred by the fact that the skirt is several sizes too small, and the gold-coloured necklace she is wearing spells the word ‘bitch’.

  The witness for the prosecution and his parents are waiting on the opposite side of the hall to us in the seating area near the drinks vending machine. There is a woman w
ith them whom I’m guessing is a solicitor for the Crown Prosecution Service. She is in her mid-thirties and wearing a navy suit and pearl stud earrings. Her hair is dark and glossy, and pulled back into an immaculate, no-nonsence ponytail. The woman has shot us a couple of curious glances and is now in animated consultation with her client and his loud-mouthed father. But there is something about the youth that unsettles me. It is an ominous familiarity that I am not yet able to comprehend because I can’t see his face, which is almost totally obscured by his hoodie.

  Dad’s solicitor has been recommended to him by a friend at his bowls club, Eric, who is here today to act as a character witness for Dad. Eric is wearing navy slacks with a dark sports jacket, dazzling white shirt, and a tastefully patterned silk tie. His cheery, round face is scrubbed, and he smells of aftershave and toothpaste. He is doing his best to distract Dad with a detailed report of last night’s bowls club committee meeting. Mum’s hands flit up and down to check that her wig is in place and her silent lips are moving furiously as she concentrates on counting the number of people in the hall. Dad’s solicitor is called Justin Case and looks about twelve years old.

  Finally the case is called and as I look across to where the enemy is mobilising, I realise, as he stands up, that the youth is Deliverance Boy – bully and duckling murderer. Dad and his solicitor lead the way into the courtroom, closely followed by the lacrosse team captain, and then Mum and I. The witnesses, Eric and the youth (who is still being audibly coached by his father on what to say) take their seats in the corridor outside, where they must pass the time until they are called to give evidence. Eric swiftly engages the father in a hard stare-out with the confidence and composure of a man who was doing his National Service fighting in Egypt whilst the other was still in nappies.

  The youth smirks cockily at us as we pass him, and I resist the temptation to kick him in the shins. But only just. The youth’s mother shuffles into the courtroom and sits as far away from us as possible. She is thin and bony, and her skin is the texture of leatherette from too much sun and too many cigarettes. She looks hollowed out and exhausted, as though all the life has been sucked out of her. Her eyes dart backwards and forwards between the door and the courtroom, and she is nervously twiddling the zip on her handbag. I can’t decide whether she is watching for the arrival of the magistrates, or planning to make a run for it. I shouldn’t blame her if she did. She would have been pretty once, but somehow I doubt that anyone ever told her. Her eyes meet mine briefly as she catches me studying her, and then she quickly looks away. It is hard not to feel any sympathy for her.

  Dad looks very smart in his suit, but perhaps for the first time I see him as a stranger might; an elderly man, active and upright with bright blue eyes, but physically diminishing, wary of the twinges in his joints as he sits down, and reliant on his wire-framed glasses to show him where he is. I feel as though I have returned, after an absence of many years, to a favourite childhood seaside resort to find that everything is smaller and a little more dilapidated than I remember. And for the first time I am afraid. I am afraid that this proud, decent, hardworking, honest (and admittedly sometimes obstreperous) man who is my dad will be let down by the law he has lived by all his life, and which is meant to protect him.

  The clerk of the court announces the entrance of the magistrates, and the two women and a man take their places on the bench. The chairwoman sits in the centre and scans the room with a purposeful air. Her eyes rest on me for only a fraction longer than anyone else, but it is long enough for me to know that everything is going to be all right.

  Chapter 60

  ART

  Mrs Rosamund Lewis and her colleagues on the bench took just ten minutes to return a verdict of ‘not guilty’. Dad’s solicitor was an absolute revelation. He may have looked like a twelve-year-old, but he had a deep, booming voice and the confidence of a leading man on the West End stage. He swashbuckled his way round the courtroom, commanding everyone’s attention, and extracted testimonies from the witnesses like the conductor of an orchestra drawing performances from his soloists. He was indeed a virtuoso. For Dad, giving evidence was easy. He is a man who couldn’t tell a lie if someone wrote him instructions. The lacrosse captain tried her best to trip him up, but her efforts were fruitless because he only had the truth to tell. Eric said his piece clearly and politely, and with a certain avuncular charm that seemed to disconcert her a little. Deliverance Boy, however, had a rather unreliable recollection of events, and his memories seemed to ebb and flow like drawings on an Etch A Sketch.

  In her summing-up, Mrs Lewis described Dad as a decent and honourable man who had clearly made a useful contribution to society and continued to do so, even though he was now retired. She said that he had attempted to prevent an act of wilful vandalism that could have resulted in the loss of someone’s life, without a second thought for his personal safety. She added that the tragic drowning of his own grandson, which had been alluded to by Dad’s solicitor, lent a particular poignancy to the case and that, given the circumstances, Dad had acted with commendable restraint. She told the youth he should consider himself lucky that he was not appearing as the defendant himself on this occasion (whilst perhaps thinking to herself that it was only a matter of time before he did).

  As we step outside, squinting in the bright sunshine of an early April afternoon, Dad looks an inch or two taller, and several years younger. His relief is palpable. Mum is holding his arm and smiling uncertainly, like someone who has just got off a particularly stomach-churning roller-coaster ride and might still throw up. Dad hugs her close with unaccustomed tenderness and declares, ‘You look like you need a stiff drink, my girl.’

  We thank Dad’s solicitor, who blushes furiously and regretfully declines our invitation to join us in the pub. Gideon meets us there with Haizum, Edward and Lord Byron, and we toast Dad’s vindication, the triumph of British justice, and the resounding defeat of the lacrosse captain. However, I warn Dad that today is his only day of grace. He may boast about his virtue, quoting Mrs Lewis’s words of fulsome praise for one day only. After today, if he continues with such swaggering, I shall be forced to pinch his ears and confiscate his DVD of Bridge Over the River Kwai.

  Haizum is allowed to share a packet of his favourite cheese and onion crisps with Lord Byron as a special treat.

  After her gin and tonic, Mum says to me, ‘I know it sounds silly, but that magistrate looked awfully like the woman we saw in Brighton who was holding hands with the man in the dress.’

  As she gets up and makes her way to the Ladies, Dad whispers to me, ‘Your mother never could hold her drink.’

  Chapter 61

  ART

  Alice

  Away with us he’s going,

  The solemn-eyed:

  He’ll hear no more the lowing

  Of the calves on the warm hillside

  Or the kettle on the hob

  Sing peace into his breast,

  Or see the brown mice bob

  Round and round the oatmeal chest.

  For he comes, the human child,

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

  From ‘The Stolen Child’ – W. B. Yeats

  Alice had decided that a letter would be the best way. She couldn’t bear to meet the woman face to face, or even speak to her on the phone. An email seemed too impersonal and yet, at the same time, too casual. Alice had sat for a long time, pen in hand, wondering how to begin. She didn’t want to make excuses for herself, but she wanted the woman to know everything, so that she could at least try to understand. Before Mattie, Alice had never truly felt how annihilative it was to lose a child. All her babies had died, but she had barely known them. She had never fed them, felt their breath on her cheek or rocked them to sleep. She had loved them; of course she had loved them, but instead of allowing herself the time to grieve, she had replaced each death with a pregna
ncy. Until Mattie. And it was only now, with the prospect of her own death, that she faced the exquisite irony and agony of losing her precious boy. Alice would finally experience the grief that the other woman had endured for so long, even though her own child had never died.

  Alice had called him Matthew because it meant ‘gift from God’. When he was born, safe and well, she had truly felt blessed. It was hard at first, caring for him alone and in a new place, but he was always such a good boy, always so happy. And healthy; strong. The other babies were never forgotten, but the sorrow was papered over again and again by Mattie’s first word, his first steps and his beautiful face. Every day, when she woke, she would hear him chattering to himself before she went into his room. He would press the button on the musical mobile attached to the side of his cot and sing along to the tune it played.

  And then there was a morning when the music ended.

  At first she thought that he was sleeping late. He was just one year and five months old. She couldn’t let him go. He looked so perfect and God wouldn’t do that to her; He wouldn’t be so cruel. She had always wondered about her first-born son and what had happened to him. What if he hadn’t really been dead? What if he had woken up alone and afraid? They had taken him away so quickly, too quickly for her to be really sure that he was dead.

  It wasn’t going to happen again.

  She bathed Mattie and changed his clothes, talking to him all the time. She kissed his marbled cheek and stroked his soft curls with her fingers. She spent the day cradling him in her arms and singing to him. And the next day, and the next, and the next. This time she would keep him with her until he woke up. The days grew warmer and Mattie began to look and feel wrong, but still she couldn’t let him go. It was too warm for him in the house, so she wrapped him in a cool, cotton sheet and took him down to the shed at the bottom of the garden, shaded by the woods beyond. She laid him down gently inside where he could sleep in the cool quiet until he was ready to wake up and then she locked the door to make sure that he would be safe and undisturbed.