Runaways

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Do you think Max has any more of his work?” I asked, conscious that I had lived and visited this house many times over the years and David had been here only one day.

  “He has another, look over there. Very interesting…” We were just walking over to a darker corner of the hall when a loud voice interrupted us.

  “Hey, I need some coffee. Where’s breakfast?”

  “Good morning Graham, in the dining room I expect.” David and I had no choice but to follow my cousin and our conversation was ended. But perhaps David had realised what he had set out to achieve.

  “Where’s your brother?” Graham asked me pointedly as he sat down in Max’s seat at the head of the table. “And Max isn’t here either. Bloody rude if you ask me.” There was an unpleasant leer in his voice. He had made it obvious the afternoon before that he knew of the rumours about Max’s relationship with Charles. There had always been uninformed gossips in the town implying there was something unnatural about Charles living with an older man, they assumed there must be ‘something to it’. I just thought Charles saw living with Max as a way of not having to earn his own living.

  “He had to go out.” I said, giving as little of my emotions away as I could. I had heard Charles’ car drive away about an hour earlier. Despite all our history I felt I had to defend him against Graham’s insinuations, I suppose it was that I disliked the cousin I had only met two days before more than I disliked my half-brother. “He won’t be back before you’ve gone.” I tried to make my voice ooze sophisticated disdain but it didn’t work with Graham.

  “Shame, I’d have enjoyed winding up the queer little toe rag.”

  Before I could think of a suitable reply Maureen had joined us and slipped me a scrap of paper “Susannah, my dear. You will come to stay with me won’t you? One day you will need somewhere that is not filled with old men,” she looked at David and smiled, “and I may be useful to you. Here is my phone number. When you’re ready you will call me won’t you?”

  Maureen had been the only person who had helped me through the afternoon of the funeral when Charles had disappeared leaving me to deal with the many people who had come back to Max’s house to eat his food and drink his wine and take the rare opportunity to observe our family at close hand. I slipped the paper into my pocket with little intention of taking her up on her offer.

  Four months later the situation was very different.

  Charles didn’t return to Sandhey that day, or the next, and a week later there was a postcard from Cornwall saying he was staying away to have a look at his life. Monika seemed hurt and Max disappointed though the formal, inflexible routines of the household were undisturbed.

  Through those early months of 1972 Max never implied I should leave Sandhey and get on with my life. I spent most of my time in my room overlooking the Dee Estuary and Hilbre Islands, with the hills of Wales in the distance, reading romantic novels, meeting Max and Monika only at mealtimes. There was nothing about the books of Georgette Heyer I did not know. Dark, mysteriously rich and powerful men always fell for invariably beautiful yet unsuitable young women; they would charge about Regency England having improbable adventures before finally overcoming all misunderstandings, marrying and living happily ever after. I saw myself in every poor unfortunate, but ultimately successful, heroine and every romantic hero was Carl.

  I loved Carl more than anyone and always had. We had been inseparable through our childhood but I hadn’t seen him in the nine years since the day we had been told that we were half brother and sister. All my life since then had been spent waiting for Carl to realise that that didn’t matter, that caring for each other was the most important thing, that sharing a father didn’t mean we couldn’t share our lives. But Carl wasn’t going to come to my rescue and the formality of Max’s household quickly became oppressive. At Easter, more out of curiosity than expectation, I phoned the number Maureen had given me.

  “Well, my dear, I live in a small village where not much goes on, but we have a good library and I have plenty of time to spend with you.”

  “I would like that.” I hadn’t thought I meant it, the words were spoken more from an ingrained politeness than real expectation.

  “Just give me a day’s warning to get your room ready.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Perhaps I was being rude, ringing her and then not making a firm arrangement. Whatever the reason I rang Maureen again a week later.

  “Is it still OK?”

  “Of course it is dear, but only come when you’re good and ready. How are you getting on with Max and Monika? It must be very difficult.”

  During our third telephone conversation in as many weeks Maureen asked me whether I had done anything about going back to university. She knew about my ignominious academic career, how I had scraped a third because of my ridiculous marriage to Joe and the birth of my four children within five years. “It will be too late if you don’t apply soon. You don’t want to lose another year do you sweetie?” I liked Maureen, she asked me about myself, never mentioning my children who I had had nothing to do with since their father’s death and my breakdown.

  I admitted I had done nothing, throwing up problems. “It was so easy at school. They just presented you with all the forms. I’ve got no idea what to do now. And how am I going to pay for it? I won’t get another grant.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, dear, I’m sure something will turn up.” She sounded cheerful and confident. I began to look forward to our phone calls and fell into the routine of calling her every Sunday evening.

  Towards the end of May Max announced that Charles was at last coming home, he had tired of Cornwall. Monika was delighted. “Oh that is wonderful I have missed my Charles so much. When will he be home? I had worried he would miss his birthday dinner. It would have been so wrong for him not to be here, for Mister Ted not to be here for dinner for his birthday. It is an important one. Thirty years. Oh that is wonderful that he will be home.”

  I sat listening to Monika’s gushing about my brother feeling the familiar jealousy and anger. Monika had always cared for Charles more than she did for me, even when we had been small children and she was supposed to be looking after both of us. The feelings of resentment welled up as they always had and I knew I could not be in the house when the prodigal son returned. “Would you mind if I wasn’t here?” I asked.

  Max appeared to understand. “You seem so much better than you were but living in the same house as your brother may be one step too far. Perhaps you are ready to go back to your children?”

  “I am much better Max, thank you but I can’t cope with the children.”

  “You must not let them forget you. It is unnatural for a mother.” Monika’s disapproval hurt as she, more than anyone, knew the difficulties of my marriage.

  “I can’t. Not until I’ve done something for myself, done what I should have done before I had them.” I ignored the look on Monika’s face and found myself repeating words that Maureen had said when she had been trying to explain my behaviour to me. “I need to get a good degree, do myself justice, and then I will be able to face the years of not being me.”

  “You sound so like your mother.” Max’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “Alicia always said that she had never had a chance to be what she should have been.”

  “Well you understand then. Three, maybe four years, that’s all I need and then I’ll get to know them and I won’t resent them, I’ll be a far better mother when they really need one. They’re too young to miss me.”

  “Josie is seven now, Jack will be starting school soon. You will not be there for them? The poor children have no father and no mother. You are a very selfish young woman.” Monika’s accent was more pronounced when she was angry.

  “No. I’m not ready for them.” I could be firm when I wanted “I’ve got to do this for me first.”

  “You’re absolutely adamant about this Susannah?” Max had known my mother, perhaps he understood me b
etter because of that.

  “I am. Absolutely.”

  “Then I will give you every help I can.”

  Monika stood up and ostentatiously began to clear away the dishes, even though we had not finished, her disapproval made painfully clear.

  Max kept silent until she was out of the room and what he said amazed me, reeling off instructions as if reading from a list. “You will go to Maureen, she will be a friend to you as she was to your mother. I will make sure the children are looked after. I will pay your fees and an allowance. You may take the Humber as I have no need of it. In return you will work hard at your studies and when you get your First I will hold a party for you in the garden.”

  “You don’t have to do all that.”

  “I know I don’t have to, but I shall.” He smiled and I could see that years before he would have been an attractive man. “I shall because of your mother. It is what she would have wanted you to do. It’s what she would have done. Do not let us down. And one more thing Susannah.”

  I was surely going to agree with anything Max asked of me.

  “In the time it takes you to achieve what you have to achieve you will not come back here, you will not contact us in any way until you have done what you have to do and until you are ready to meet your children and take up your responsibilities.”

  That was going to be easy, it would have been exactly what I wanted anyway.

  “Agreed. And thank you Max. No wonder my mother loved you.”

  Monika returned with the coffee and sat frowning at the end of the table. I wondered what to say as we surely couldn’t talk about our arrangement in front of Monika.

  “You know that drawing in the hall?” I ventured.

  “Which one is that?” Max was relaxed in his answer “There are several.”

  “The Schiele.” He seemed surprised I knew the artist’s name. I had surprised myself by remembering.

  “You know Schiele’s work?”

  “David was telling me about it, in January, after the funeral. How sad the artist’s life was.”

  I was unprepared for the change in him.

  He stood up without speaking, wiped his mouth deliberately on his napkin and, having folded and rolled it, placed it carefully in the silver ring and left the room without another word.

  “What have I done? What have I said?” I asked Monika.

  “You always were a thoughtless little girl.” She said in her clipped, accented voice. “Can you not see that it disturbs him. The mention of that man.”

  ‘No’ I thought but did not say ‘How can I know if no one ever tells me anything?’ Perhaps there was some history between Max and David that neither had acknowledged in January. I hadn’t been entirely convinced that they had never met before.

  So in May 1972 I ran away to Maureen for the first time.

  Chapter Two

  I drove south to Surrey the next day, carefully keeping off the motorways as, although I had passed my test a few years before, I had rarely driven any distance and I was unfamiliar with Max’s old Humber. After trying, unsuccessfully, to get the radio to work I had time to think as I drove along the unfamiliar roads.

  I wondered what it would be like being in the village where my mother’s life had been after her divorce and I looked forward to seeing the places she had seen and learning more about her life. I had lived under the same roof as my mother for only three years of my life, my first two and her last one. She had left us soon after my second birthday party and I didn’t live with her again until we had both been given refuge by Ted, she dying of cancer and I recovering from a nervous breakdown.

  That last year we had not known how to act with each other, and I had begun by hating her. But Ted made us talk and, as we spent more time together, she had explained her reasons for leaving Charles and me to others to bring up. She had married the wrong man to escape her parents. She had had children too young. She had resented those children. She had not had enough time in her life to do the things she wanted to do. She was someone’s daughter, then she had become someone’s wife and too soon after someone’s mother. Towards the end she had asked me ‘when could I have been myself if I hadn’t run away?’. I could not answer as I realised that we had so much in common.

  Did my daughter Josie, feel as much anger towards me as I felt towards Alicia?

  My mother’s excuses were mine also.

  Maureen called her house ‘the cottage’ but it was really more substantial than that, having probably once been the rectory or vicarage of the small Surrey village. She showed me straight up to a surprisingly large bedroom saying this was my home for as long and as often as I needed it.

  I couldn’t possibly have known how many nights I would spend there over the next few years, in such varying circumstances, and how important that house was to my future.

  Maureen made me feel immediately at home and anything more different from the rigidity and formality of Sandhey would have been difficult to imagine as we sat in the garden that evening drinking wine and getting to know each other.

  “There’ll be five of us for supper tomorrow night. I hope you don’t mind. It has been long planned but is extremely fortuitous.” I’m not sure whether she expected me to believe her.

  “Five?” I repeated, “I’m not very good at dinner parties.”

  “Oh it’s not a dinner party, nothing formal like that. We’ll just sit in the garden, as we are now, with a few bottles of wine and talk. I don’t eat much and if you knew what an awful cook I was then you’d thank God I’m not producing any food! We will provide the wine and our guests will bring salads. There’s far more time to enjoy the company that way.” I noticed the ‘our guests’ and relaxed even more, remembering with horror Monika’s plans for Charles’s formal birthday dinner. “Who are the guests?”

  “That’s the wonderful coincidence, and you must believe that this was not a set up, two are David and Edie, your grandparents.”

  “Great!” And I meant it. I was intrigued by the idea of meeting David again, there were things I wanted to ask him. “And who else?”

  “A friend of mine who lives in the village, her name is Joy and she just happens to be in the History Department at Sussex University.”

  “Are you sure you hadn’t just planned this when you heard I was coming?”

  “And you think such people would be able to make plans at one day’s notice?”

  It was only later as I lay in bed unable to sleep, too excited by the difference a day can make, that I realised she hadn’t actually answered my question.

  I liked the look of Joy. Although she was far too old and plump for the tight denims and t-shirt that she wore she obviously had enough confidence in herself not to worry about what others thought. Her first action was to give me a hug.

  “Susannah. I am so pleased to meet Alicia’s daughter.”

  “You knew my mother?”

  “Of course, this is a small village so I saw quite a lot of her before she got so ill. I didn’t get to the funeral, Maureen said…”

  I never knew what she was going to say about Maureen and the funeral as we were disturbed by the arrival of my grandparents.

  “Susannah, my dear girl, it’s so good to see you again.”

  “You look so much better than you did in January. Then you were so strained, now you look wonderful. Doesn’t she David?”

  “You’re absolutely right Edie, she looks good as new. I gather we’re to sort…”

  “Now now… time enough for all that later.” Maureen interrupted. “We must sit down and work out what we’re all going to call each other.”

  “I refuse to be called ‘grandmother’.” Edie smiled broadly at me, reaching over to take my hand in hers and give it an encouraging squeeze.

  “And proud as I am to be your grandfather I refuse to be called Grandpa or any such like so you must call me David.”

  “I’ve always thought of you as David.” I ventured.

  “I’ve always hated ‘E
die’ but you may call me Edith.”

  “Edie is a perfectly respectable name.” David grinned at his wife.

  “But so ugly.” She grimaced. “I’ve always hated it. Alicia changed her name. Imagine if she had had to go through her life as Alberta.” Looking at me she added in explanation. “That was her given name you know.”

  I hadn’t known. It was a perfect illustration of our family circumstances that I hadn’t known my mother’s real Christian name.

  “What would you rather have been?” Her husband asked with a smile.

  “Ann, something that couldn’t be made ugly by abbreviation, I would like to have been Ann. I would have a completely different life if I had been called Ann.”

  “I’m rather happy that you are Edith.” David’s smile swept passed his wife and focussed on me.

  “Are you always ‘Susannah’ or do you ever shorten it? Susie perhaps?”

  “No.” I knew I had spoken too sharply. I realised I had been rude. “Sorry, it’s just that ‘Susie’ brings back all sorts of memories.”

  “I know. Carl called you that.” Maureen looked at me smiling mischievously. “You’ll have to face up to the fact that I knew that young man. He spent quite a bit of time here and he talked about you quite a lot.”

  “Carl, wasn’t he that beautiful young man…” Joy began only to be cut short by Maureen.

  “If we can’t use the ‘Sus..’ bit of your name how about the ‘..anna’ bit? Susannah’s such a mouthful. No, not Anna, that’s too formal, but how about Annie?”

  “I like the name Annie, a new name for my new life.” I wasn’t just saying that, I really did like the idea of changing my name.