A man out on the street calls for ‘Dasheep’ but it sounds like Dasheep is not going to show up. There’s the slam of a door, a blast of heavy rap music from a car whizzing past, a fox knocking over a wheelie bin: the sounds of the streets of London. My lullaby – now accompanied by the strange and new sensation of me missing Angela.
I get Dad a beer. I sip at mine. At twenty past ten the doorbell goes.
‘Who on earth’s that?’ asks Dad. We are about to start on some honey-roast peanuts.
‘God knows,’ I say, but my heart is suddenly thumping in my chest and hoping against hope that it’s Salvi. That he is at my door, as laid-back and unrepentant as ever and ready to sweep away the ignored-presumed-dumped melancholy he so casually unloaded on me.
‘Prue, hi.’ He’s leaning casually on the door frame, one elbow propped against it. Sometimes you get what you wish for. ‘I wanted to see if you were free on Saturday night.’
Salvi stares from my face to my chest, to my face again. No mention of him running out on me at the end of Blondie. The radio silence. He couldn’t look more relaxed, while I am ramrod straight, heart yammering. Fingers rigid on the other side of the door frame.
‘I might be.’ I know I am blushing, the redness sweeping into my birthmark and making it inflamed. There’s no point trying to hide it. I know, at the sight of him, that I instantly forgive him. That I want him. I am grateful. I am forty-eight years old; there are limited chances for me left, in this life, and I want to live it. I want to live it on the edge – his edge – standing on a precipice at the top of a tall building, my arms outstretched over a winking night skyline, vulnerable and precarious but knowing I won’t fall, as he is standing next to me. I’m so happy he is on my doorstep. That he has come back.
‘The fair’s on, at Finsbury Park. I’d like to take you.’
‘Oh, right.’ I’m on that edge already, then. Shaking. Looking down.
‘I know you said you don’t like fairs, but you’ll be going with me.’ He shrugs merrily. ‘It’ll be fun!’
I gulp nervously and hope he doesn’t notice. The Finsbury Park fair. I had vowed never to go back there again. The bright lights, the smell, the music. The grip of that man … But he won’t be there, will he? I’ll be with Salvi, like he said, if I agree to go. I’ll be safe, won’t I? And maybe I can erase that night from my past. Do it over, somehow, with him by my side.
‘Yes. Fancy it? Your local fair? Shame to miss it.’ He’s grinning at me. The running out on me, the ghosting – none of it has touched him. He’s back again, asking me out, not a care in the world … Saturday night? Isn’t that when Dad and Kemp are going to that stupid reservoir?
I have one final chance to say ‘no’. Call his bluff and say, ‘No, thank you,’ to his picking me up and putting me down. His mind games and escapology. And all the fun of the fair. No, thank you, Salvi.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Sounds great.’
‘Fabulous. I’ll meet you by the Ferris wheel at six thirty.’
‘Yes, OK.’
‘See you then, Prue.’
‘Bye, Salvi.’
I close the door. As I come back into the living room, Dad looks up from his podcast and removes his headphones.
‘Who was that?’
‘Salvi.’
He nods.
‘I’m seeing him on Saturday night. The fair at Finsbury Park. While you and Kemp are messing around at that reservoir, sitting in hatches, I’ll be on the Ferris wheel.’ Better to be out in the open, I think. No secrets. For once. Although I can’t really see me on the Ferris wheel …
‘Sounds good.’
‘I know you don’t like him, Dad, but tough cheese. You know?’
Dad smiles. It was an expression I used when I was young. Tough cheese. It went nicely with ‘bog off’ and ‘wotcha’ … the lingo of seventies and eighties kids.
‘You’re a grown-up, you can see whoever you like.’
I sit down in my chair. Reach for the packet of peanuts. ‘Thanks. So, the last place on your list, Albert Bridge?’ I say, feeling relieved, charitable; wanting to appease. Dad had mentioned Albert Bridge earlier in the week but such was my Salvi slump, I hadn’t wanted to go. ‘When shall we take a trip there?’
‘Saturday? Might as well make a day of it, gallivanting around?’
‘Albert Bridge in the afternoon and Finsbury Park in the evening?’ I suggest.
‘Why not?’
‘OK, that’s a date,’ I say. ‘Saturday it is.’
CHAPTER 41
‘The Albert Bridge was built in 1873,’ Dad tells me, ‘as a cable-stayed bridge that turned out to be structurally unsound, so it was modified with suspension bridge elements by Sir Joseph Bazalgette between 1874 and 1888.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And, in 1973, two concrete piers were added, transforming the central span into a single-beam bridge and making it an unusual hybrid of three different styles. Am I boring you yet?’
‘No, Dad.’ His touch on my arm is light. My steps, sandals on pavement, are satisfying. ‘But I had no idea there was so much to be said about bridges.’
‘There’s always a lot to be said about bridges.’
Dad and I are walking up Chelsea Embankment, on approach to Albert Bridge; the sun is blazing above us. The air is perfectly still; there is no breeze this early afternoon to disturb the languid heat. There’s no birdsong either. London’s flocks are quiet, choosing to keep counsel on the world, and summer itself seems suspended, hanging on its own blistering falsehood that it is endless. That days like this are simply all there is.
‘Albert Bridge is possibly my favourite,’ continues Dad. We got the bus here; Dad fancied it. We manged it without any problems. ‘Although Tower Bridge comes close. Funny that Angela lives in her very own Albert Bridge.’
‘Albert Bridge, Nova Scotia, Canada …’ I say. ‘How very far away that seems.’
She’s probably waking up about now, I think, jumped on by her daughters, brought tea and toast by Warren, in the life she moulded for herself when she ran towards life – a whole and happy one. Can Dad and I join her there? Can we make the trip to Nova Scotia? Could we wake up in Albert Bridge, too, wander down to the quay, eat pancakes at Missy’s Diner (I’ve been googling) and sip afternoon tea on the swing chair on the veranda while the nieces I’ve shamefully ignored play at our feet? Could we sit and talk to Angela on that veranda until dusk falls and everything we want to say has been said? Maybe we could. Maybe we could re-create the little family we once knew and wrap our arms around its new members. I also wonder if Angela’s going to sit on that veranda later today and make a call to the British Embassy in Stockholm, looking for our mother.
‘Is the sign still there?’ asks Dad.
‘What sign?’
‘The sign about soldiers breaking their step. You’ll see it on the tollbooth.’
We are almost at the bridge. The river is busy – boats and barges and a couple of pleasure cruisers, their windows glinting in the unblinking sun, glide under the bridge in both directions. We arrive at the left tollbooth of an octagonal pair standing sentry at the gateway to the bridge. There’s a Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea sign on one of the panels, in pink and purple.
‘Albert Bridge Notice,’ I read out. ‘All troops must break step when marching over this bridge. Why was that, then, Dad?’
‘Bad vibrations.’
‘Eh?’
‘Walkers have a natural tendency to match their steps to each other, and when they all walk in unison it causes vibrations. It happened at the Millennium Bridge, when it opened – remember? Pedestrians fell spontaneously into step – thousands of them – and everything got a bit wobbly.’
‘Yes, I remember. Oh, that’s interesting.’
What did the troops do instead of marching? I wonder. Saunter, hands in pockets? A little light whistling? Did it unnerve them not to march in time with each other?
We’re on the bridge now.
&n
bsp; ‘Let me tell you about all the boats on the Thames this afternoon,’ I say to Dad.
‘Go for it.’
‘Well, they’re mostly barges – low, flat-bottomed affairs; a couple of tourist cruisers – blue and white, with lots of windows, the sun reflecting off them; some small motorboats; the river police … a big brown dog on the back of some sort of dinghy …’ I’m reminded yet again of Kemp’s houseboat, how many of my emotions were contained in that thing. ‘There’s also an old-fashioned tugboat, red and black, complete with a seagull perched on its cabin and a man in a woolly hat.’
‘Good, good. It does sound really beautiful,’ Dad says, but I worry he doesn’t remember what a seagull looks like, or a tugboat, or anything else I am talking about.
‘Sorry, am I describing too many things at once?’
‘No,’ says Dad, smiling, ‘not at all. I get the overall picture.’
I hope I really am painting pictures for him, in my flawed clumsy way. We are closer now, Angela is right. The corner has definitely been turned this London summer: these trips out have given us the chance to talk, really talk again, and try to walk in each other’s shoes … to a point. We have stopped short, though. I have stopped short. There are confessions, just like Angela’s last night, that still lie dormant, locked away. Things that need to be said. Will I ever be able to describe the hidden corners of my heart to my father? Can I ever turn that rusty key and let them spill out?
‘Oh, lamp-post coming up.’ I steer Dad away from it. ‘How long is the bridge, Dad?’
‘Seven hundred and ten feet.’
Dad’s touch at my arm is now feather-light. He’ll be able to go further on his own soon. There’ll be no stopping him; no breaking step. I hope he has a good time with Kemp tonight, nosing at the reservoir. Sitting in the hatch or whatever he plans to do. And I’m looking forward to meeting Salvi tonight. My outfit is planned, the butterflies in my stomach are all lined up. He wants to see me again! Life truly is full of small miracles.
‘I had an interesting chat with Angela before you spoke to her the other night,’ I say. If I am not quite ready to make confessions of my own, I can start with my sister’s.
‘When you shut yourself in your bedroom? I knew that wasn’t PPI!’
‘Yes. She told me something. She said she left London because it was so dark and depressing at home. With us two.’ I laugh, but I feel incredibly sad. ‘I think it was, though, don’t you? It was dark. She was struggling. She had to go. Mum came to visit from Sweden once, in nineteen ninety – when Angela was at home by herself. She said Mum looked worse than ever. That she was quite abusive, asking for money. It was another reason Angela went to Canada … because she knew however many visits there were, or how long she waited around, Mum was never going to change.’
‘Oh. She came back again,’ says Dad, frowning. ‘I wish I’d known that. Poor Angela. Your mother …’ He doesn’t finish his sentence. He looks so downcast. We keep in step, his hand weightier again on the back of my arm. My eyes are on the bridge as it extends into the distance. ‘And yes, those were dark days. I never considered how dark they were for Angela. That she was struggling. I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t need to say anything, Dad. You can’t change how things were, or what happened. But I do feel … better now she’s told me. I thought all this time she left because of what she wanted – a husband, a certain lifestyle, an adventure – not because of how she felt.’
Dad nods. ‘All these years,’ he says. ‘All these years. So many things have remained unspoken!’ He sounds angry suddenly. Should I not have told him? He exhales – an enormous sigh that carries into the still air and over the water. ‘I’ve never been able to reach Angela,’ he adds quietly, ‘despite all those phone calls, although the last couple have seemed a little lighter, somehow. Do you feel you have?’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Do you think it’s too late for us to reach her now?’
He squeezes my arm; there is a real entreaty in that touch. I feel pain in it.
‘No, I don’t think it’s too late. She made a start on reaching out to us. Maybe we could go out there one day, to visit her? Her and Warren and the kids? What do you say?’
‘Well,’ says Dad, ‘it would be a big step. I mean, I’ve only been to a few places in London, with you. A trip to Canada! But maybe we could.’
‘We can think about it.’ I’m glad I’ve told him, despite the pain of the utterance. We could go to Canada. We could go to Angela. When I dream of holidays, I dream of something tropical, but I would like to see my sister. ‘Shall we think about it?’
He nods. ‘Let’s do that.’
The bridge is busy. A baby in a red pushchair is coming towards us – snug under a bar of swinging cuddly toys; bare feet kicking upwards – and she has a perfect face, the softest pinkish skin and a turned-up nose and big, wondering eyes. She fixes those huge eyes on me and she grins, and I smile back.
‘Single file, for a minute, Dad,’ I say and Dad drops behind me.
‘Angela didn’t hear back from Mum,’ I say to him, over my shoulder. ‘She’s going to keep trying. She’s going to ring up the consulate, or something. I get the impression she’s not going to give up.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Dad’s frown is back. I don’t know if he’s sorry about Mum not getting in touch, or that Angela is going to continue to try. The baby glides past us up the bridge in her red cocoon, waving a pudgy pink foot at me. Dad returns to my side and we fall into step. He sighs again. ‘I just wanted to keep you girls close to me, you know,’ he says. ‘Safe. Protected. Because in the end you were all I ever needed. And I ended up driving you both away.’
‘I didn’t go away, Dad! I’ve always been here.’
‘You did go away, Prue! And so did I. Even though we’ve sat in that same room together, year after year, the space between us could not have been wider. We closed off from each other and the world, you know we did!’
‘I know,’ I agree. ‘I know.’ That wide space. Between us. Between Angela and us. The things we should have said. The secrets we could have told. And I was not safe; I was not protected. But he never knew.
A boat clanks under the bridge. Its horn sounds. A child stops on the bridge and waves at it happily. Life on the river goes on. Life in London goes on. The world keeps spinning round and all my secrets stay hidden, unless I decide it’s time.
I look at Dad. At his face, with a thousand different emotions flickering across it. I want to be in the same room as him, father and daughter, and not two strangers, who were never brave enough to tell their stories. He has told me some of his, while we’ve been out this summer, walking around London. I have told him nothing of mine.
I think it might be time. I don’t want there to be a wide blank space between my father and me. I don’t want there to be long-kept secrets. I would like to tell him my truth, like Angela has finally done. I would like to tell him who I am.
‘I want to tell you something, Dad,’ I say. ‘Two things, actually.’
Our feet are walking in time, not enough to make the bridge wobble but I do feel wobbly.
‘Go on,’ says Dad.
‘It’s bad things. And the first thing brought about the second thing, I believe. It brought everything since.’
‘I’m a little confused, but I can take it.’ Dad looks uneasy, concerned. ‘Go on, love.’
I take a deep breath. Then another one. Dad waits. ‘OK. Firstly, when I was fourteen, a man working at Finsbury Park fair … abused me.’ The words rush out of me, a torrent. ‘He … he grabbed me where he shouldn’t have done and he pinned me to a generator and didn’t let me go. You were there, Dad. You came round to look for me.’
Dad stops walking. ‘What do you mean, grabbed you where he shouldn’t have done?’ he asks. Pain flashes across his face. ‘Was this when I had Milly? When I came to the fair and your friend Georgina sent me round to you?’ It’s his turn now to take a deep breath
. It’s almost a gulp. ‘I remember … I thought I heard you shouting, but you appeared a couple of minutes later and said it hadn’t been you?’
‘Yes, that was then, Dad. It was me.’
‘Well, what did this man do to you? Tell me!’
‘Oh Dad, I can’t go into detail, but … but his hand was sort of like a vice, on my … knickers, on the outside. It wasn’t that bad but …’
‘It was bad!’ exclaims Dad, his voice raised. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? How could you have pretended everything was OK? I could have done something!’
‘You couldn’t have done anything, Dad. And I was fine, really, except for being very angry, for a time and maybe for ever.’ I grin sardonically, but of course he cannot see it.
‘I could have done something,’ repeats Dad. His face is red and the hand on his cane is clenched, knuckles straining. ‘I could have done something, Prue.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It was all down to me. I … I was so happy that someone was interested in me. I shouldn’t have gone round the back with him. I thought he liked me. But he made me a victim. I made myself a victim – or that’s how I’ve always seen it. And when the second thing happened, I felt that “victim” was a label I wore, a sign above my head – that I was marked out …’
‘I’m afraid to hear it. This second thing.’ I can see tears threatening at the corner of Dad’s eyes. I may regret telling him these things. The first and the second. But he has revealed the layers of his heart to me – about his blindness, the guide dogs, his love for Angela and me. He has stepped out into the world. He has listened to a talk at Central Hall Westminster. He has danced to Blondie. If we are to truly know each other again, I must tell him.
‘Can we stop a minute?’
We both put our hands on the railing and feel the breeze from the river caress our faces. A party cruise is going under the bridge; people are whooping and raising plastic champagne flutes in the air.
Summer in the City Page 29