Sun Child

by Angela Huth

  ‘Stupid! Once she was a relation she could go on typing for no money. Come on. We’ll have to get in through the study window and put newspapers under the door so’s they won’t hear the typing.’ He started to climb down the ladder. Emily followed him.

  ‘It’s quite safe,’ she said. ‘Papa’s gone out somewhere and Marcia Burrows is upstairs washing her cardigans.’

  Easter Sunday, to Emily’s amazement, Idle agreed to go to church with Marcia Burrows. To please him, Emily said she would go too. Marcia wore her marigold hat again, and navy gloves. Idle wore his London coat and looked very handsome. Emily walked down the road between them. Above her head they talked about the Prime Minister, shouting their remarks several times over against the pealing bells. At the three rough steps that led up to the wooden porch Idle moved closer to Marcia Burrows and put his hand beneath her elbow, helping her, although she looked as if she could have managed the climb quite well on her own. Then he left his hand on her arm all the way up the church path.

  Inside, the church was lit with white April sun and huge bunches of daffodils, whose heads trumpeted against the multi-coloured Biblical scenes in the windows. On the altar the two copper urns had been polished to a white glare and the organ played quietly. Emily thought if church was always like this she wouldn’t be so against it. She knelt down in the pew, the red hassock scratchy beneath her bare knees. Covering her eyes with her hands, she made a cavern of blackness that was shot through with dancing lights. O God, please bless Mama and Papa, she said into the darkness, feeling her lips move against her hands. Then she made a crack in her fingers and peered through. Papa wasn’t kneeling, but sitting, his forehead resting in one hand, eyes hidden, mouth a peaceful and unmoving line. Beyond him, Marcia Burrows rested her chin on her navy hands. Sandy eyelashes lay short and straight on her cheeks and her marigold hat, dazzled by a ray of sun, had turned into a golden halo. O God, please bless Mama and Papa, Emily repeated, eyes open this time, and make them be married for ever and ever, Amen.

  A thunderous chord and the congregation stood. The six choirboys, washed and ironed, began to move up the aisle with one gliding motion, all together like a small boat. At their helm came the old vicar holding up a cream silk sail, embroidered with a gold cross, his eyes fixed on the horizon of the altar.

  Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!

  Everybody sang. Marcia Burrows knew the words by heart. She didn’t even bother to open her hymn book. Emily, looking up at her, saw that she glanced about with some kind of private exultation, just as she had the day she had been searching for God in the trees. Finally her eyes came to rest on Idle’s white head, and a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. Idle was unaware of her attention. Bass voice ringing out, he concentrated on his hymn book. His free hand lay on the pew in front of them, as if to steady himself. Emily put her own hand next to his, so gently he didn’t notice. Alleluia … she sang with all her might.

  A few days later Idle formally took Marcia Burrows’ arm again. This time they were climbing a slope in the Cumnor hills, looking for a picnic place. This time Emily did not let the gesture go unobserved.

  ‘Papa, really! Miss Burrows isn’t an old woman, you know.’

  ‘Marcia, Emily, please,’ said Miss Burrows, blushing.

  ‘Marcia’s wearing slippery shoes,’ said Idle.

  ‘Silly me, I didn’t bring any proper ones,’ said Marcia.

  Emily said no more, but gave Wolf a look. He returned it knowingly.

  Those chose a place about half way up the hill and spread out two rugs. The children sat a couple of yards from the grown-ups. It was a warm, breezy day, intermittent sun among the clouds. Marcia Burrows was especially appreciative of the view. She sat, legs straight out in front of her, upright with admiration. She had tucked her hair under her angora beret, so that it looked like a bathing cap, and her face was flushed from the climb.

  ‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘It’s wonderful up here.’

  Emily thought that sometimes Miss Burrows wanted to say quite clever or interesting things about what she saw and felt, but was incapable of producing anything but the most ordinary observations. Sometimes she looked as if she was annoyed by her own inadequate words, and snapped her mouth shut after they had come out, too late, quite crossly. Emily watched her now, carefully. Nobody responded to Miss Burrows’ remark about the view, and she lowered her head over the picnic basket in shame. She began to unpack the plastic picnic boxes. Emily saw to her dismay that they were full of matching sandwiches: sardine, tomato, egg. Crisps, cheese biscuits, orange juice. Not at all the sort of food she liked. She was used to Fen’s picnics – a wild mass of impractical things, chickens that leaked mayonnaise through the foil paper, ice cream that had melted, quiches crushed beneath careless bottles. Hopeless and delicious. Picnic-wise, Fen never learnt from her mistakes and Emily was glad. Far rather … than these boring sandwiches. She chewed one without relish, her day suddenly destroyed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Wolf was lying on his back, his knees in the air.

  ‘Nothing really.’

  ‘When’s your mother coming back ?’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Who said it was?’

  ‘She’s coming back soon.’

  Wolf didn’t seem to mind the sandwiches. He had a pile of them by his side and ate them one after the other. Emily turned away from him. She looked up at her father, on the rug beside Marcia Burrows a little higher up the hill. Their heads were inclined together, Idle’s hands cupped over hers, one thumb stabbing at his lighter. Suddenly, he drew back, and a thin line of smoke (which didn’t smell even indoors) petered up from Miss Burrows’ small, thin, tipped cigarette. A cloud rolled up behind Idle’s head, white as his hair, so that for a moment it became part of his head – an enormous, cartoon bulb of hair.

  ‘Right, Em. Time to fly the kite?’ Emily shook her head. ‘But it’ll be perfect higher up. There’s just the right amount of wind.’

  ‘Don’t feel like it.’

  ‘Wolf, how about you?’ Idle’s eyes were frowning.

  Wolf agreed. He and Idle began to climb, Idle with the large dragon-fly kite beneath his arm. Marcia Burrows started to clear up the picnic things.

  ‘What’s come over you, dear? I thought it was your idea to fly the kite in the first place?’

  ‘Changed my mind.’ Emily sat with her back to Miss Burrows.

  ‘Well, we’re all at liberty to change our minds.’ Her voice was bewildered. She looked a little desperately at Emily’s hunched shoulders. ‘Would you like us to play a game of I-Spy, or noughts and crosses, or anything?’

  ‘No thank you. Not if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t expect I can make picnics as well as your Mummy, but then I’m not so used to them, you see. I haven’t been on one for as many years as I can remember.’

  ‘Oh, it was very nice. Really.’ Emily stood up. ‘I think I’ll run down the hill and wait in the car.’

  ‘You run on down, then, and enjoy yourself. It’s getting quite chilly up here. I hope your father and Wolf won’t be too long. I worry about your father, sometimes. He takes so little care of himself.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about Papa,’ said Emily. ‘He’s very strong.’

  ‘So it seems. And he enjoys himself, at least. I like to see a man enjoy himself despite …’ She paused. ‘Despite his work.’ Marcia Burrows, surrounded by the empty plastic boxes and screwed-up paper napkins, gave a small shiver and a friendly smile. Emily felt quite sorry for her.

  She ran down the hill without looking back. She would have liked instead to have been flying the kite with Papa and Wolf. But somehow she hadn’t been able to, not after the disappointment of the sandwiches. It wasn’t Marcia Burrows’ fault, of course: she was doing her best. But from time to time, moments like these, the very fact that she was there, not Mama, was so horrible that running like this, fastest ever, so that the earth spun and tumbled under
her legs, was the only thing to make the horrible thoughts go away.

  Emily sat on the edge of the bath while her father shaved. This had become her daily habit since Fen had been away, and the ritual had become a long, comforting one. Idle had kept to his word: there was no typing, little work, and consequently no hurry.

  ‘Papa, have you ever been to the north?’

  ‘Not often. Why?’

  ‘I wondered if you liked it.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I wonder if Mama likes it.’

  Idle grimaced slowly into his magnifying mirror, distorting his face into shapes of soap and reddish skin.

  ‘I think she probably does.’

  ‘I thought it was horrible.’

  ‘You had bad weather up there.’

  ‘Even if it’d been sunny I would have thought it was horrible. Kevin’s flat was about the nastiest flat I’ve ever been in.’ It was the first time she had mentioned Kevin’s name to Idle since Fen had been away. ‘Is Mama staying there?’

  ‘I’m not too sure of her plans. Perhaps she’s gone to a nice hotel.’

  ‘I wonder why she wanted to go when she could have been here with us?’

  Idle’s mouth, half disguised by a froth of soap, turned down.

  ‘Sometimes people need to get away for a while, even from their families.’

  Emily listened to the scraping of his razor for a while.

  ‘Only two days till Mama comes back, anyway,’ she said. ‘What will happen then?’

  ‘How do you mean, what will happen then? She’ll be here for the rest of the holidays.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to do some work, won’t I? We’ve been having a lovely time this week, haven’t we, but I haven’t done a stroke. So I’ll have to go to Brussels for a while, where I should be at this very moment.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Well, that’s reasonable, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so. But won’t you be here at all together? I like it best when everyone’s here at the same time.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can. I’ll be here most weekends, I dare say.’

  Emily slid from the bath on to the floor. She leant up against the bath. The steam from the hot water made bubbles on the ceiling. It was very warm. Sun outside.

  ‘Papa, shall I tell you something? A few weeks ago on the top of the church tower I told Wolf I thought you and Mama might be getting divorced. Wolf said it wouldn’t matter all that much because people got divorced all the time-he’d like his father to divorce his horrid old stepmother. But I think it would matter.’

  Idle turned to her, one half of his face freshly rinsed, shining.

  ‘Whatever put such ideas into your head, darling?’

  Emily shrugged. Papa looked so amazed that comfort, warm and thick as treacle, flowed through her limbs.

  ‘Don’t know, really.’

  Idle put down his razor and came and sat on the edge of the bath. He ruffled his fingers through Emily’s hair. Sighed.

  ‘When you grow up, Em, you’ll discover all marriages are different. Some married couples like being together all the time and never get bored. Others like parting for a little while, then having all the excitement of coming back together again and swopping their news. One way suits some people, the other way suits others. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s nicer for the children if they’re the people who like being together all the time.’

  ‘Could be, could be not. If they’re together all the time just for the children’s sake, but wishing they could get away sometimes for their own sake, then they might become bad tempered and resentful and irritable, and the children would suffer.’

  ‘But which kind of couple are you and Mama?’

  Idle paused.

  ‘To be quite honest, in the beginning we were together most of the time, and we loved it. For two years, I think it was, we never spent a night apart. Then you were born, and my work changed and because of that I had to keep going away. But funnily enough we found that suited us, too. We were sad about the partings, of course, but looking forward to meeting again was terribly exciting. Mama always used to come and fetch me at the airport or station, no matter how late at night or early in the morning, and each time, for years, it was always exciting. Marvellous.’

  ‘Is it still?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And it always will be.’

  ‘But I wish Kevin didn’t seem to love Mama. It makes it so complicated, when she’s really ours, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Kevin’s just a friend, darling. Mama has lots of friends. She’s so lovable. It’d be surprising if people didn’t love her.’

  ‘Do girls love you like Kevin and men love Mama?’

  Idle smiled.

  ‘According to Mama’s theory, there are hundreds of girls about desperate for a man on almost any terms. I’d say she’s probably right. Some of them are remarkably pretty. Even intelligent.’

  ‘Do they love you, some of them ?’

  ‘What funny ideas you have! I don’t know. There’s been no need to find out. There is no need.’

  ‘But it’s nice to know they would if you let them, isn’t it? Say Mama got run over or something. I mean, Wolf’s father, I bet not even the most spinstery girl would love him. He’s so silent, compared with you. Kind, though. Do you love Marcia Burrows?’

  ‘Marcia Burrows? You’ve got a long way to go in understanding grown-up love, Em. It isn’t something you just cast over anyone who happens to be good to you. It’s a thing that catches you out, like a cold, at the most inconvenient and unlikely times. And if it goes wrong, after a good spell – well, you wrap yourself up well against it, if you see what I mean, so that you’re not so likely to catch the disease so easily again.’

  ‘Marcia Burrows ought to be loved by more people, I think. Then she’d be gayer and prettier. What do you think of her?’

  ‘She’s very nice, and very kind. She’s looked after us very well’

  ‘That’s what I think, too. And I think that banana custard was the best thing she’s cooked.’

  ‘It was lovely. Just like I remember it at school on Sundays.’

  Emily looked up at her father and laughed. The shaving soap on one half of his face had dried, an unbroken white skin. She put up a finger to feel it, touching gently.

  ‘You look so funny, Papa, You’ve got a funny clown’s face.’

  Idle smiled, and the dried up soap cracked across his cheek.

  The morning Fen was due home Marcia Burrows insisted on leaving early for London. Idle tried to persuade her to stay and drive up with him in the afternoon, but she was adamant.

  ‘You’ve been very good to me and I’ve enjoyed my week no end,’ she said. ‘But I’m not part of the family, and families should be together on their own.’

  Emily went up to her room to help her pack. Predictably, everything was laid in neat piles on the bed. Emily sensed – something in the way Miss Burrows put the clothes into the case very slowly – that she was a bit sad to be leaving. She wondered what her life would be like back in London.

  ‘I mean, what will you be doing tonight?’

  Marcia Burrows slipped trees into a pair of hightly polished shoes and put them in an embroidered bag.

  ‘I shall be tidying up my little house. It’ll need a good going over after a week away.’

  ‘Poor you.’

  ‘Not at all. I enjoy getting things straight again. And then tomorrow there’ll be a lot of work for your father after all this holidaying.’

  ‘Where do you work for Papa?’

  ‘In his office. It’s a nice room overlooking the Park. You must come there one day. Sometimes, if I know I will be late finishing something, I take it home, and he comes round to fetch it so that he’ll have it first thing next morning. I think he’s quite fond of my house, although his head almost touches the sitting room ceiling.’ She smiled to herself.
‘One night, he was so tired, he fell asleep in the armchair watching television. I was typing upstairs so as not to disturb him. I came down and there he was – sound asleep. I hardly liked to wake him.’ She shut her case, pressing down upon it with small white hands. ‘This week I’ve got to get through a report in record time. I worry a little about it. I wonder if I can manage it? Anyhow, your father he said to me, he said: “Marcia, if you get through that by Friday night I’ll take you to the opera.” Well! I must get through it, mustn’t I? With that invitation dangling. I love the opera. I haven’t been for years.’

  ‘Mama hates the opera,’ said Emily. ‘She says she can’t like it however hard she tries, so Papa’s given up taking her.’

  ‘So I hear,’ said Miss Burrows.

  She left very quietly, waving a gloved hand. The excitement of Fen’s arrival, soon after, banished further thoughts of Marcia Burrows from Emily’s mind.

  Fen was less pale but no fatter. She seemed very pleased to see both Emily and Idle, and to be home. But she hadn’t been in the house long when she noticed that the flowers – the bowls of narcissi she had arranged all over the house before leaving-were dead, and had not been thrown away. This made her inexplicably cross.

  ‘You know how I hate dead flowers,’ she said to Idle. ‘They’re so depressing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s entirely our fault, isn’t it, Em? We simply didn’t notice.’

  ‘I should have thought Marcia Burrows would have noticed.’

  ‘She had a lot to do,’ said Idle.

  ‘Throwing away flowers doesn’t take long.’ Fen pulled a bunch of brown daffodils from a vase on the dresser. She seemed really cross, and upset. Her uncontrolled irritation provoked unusual lack of sympathy in Idle. He spoke angrily.

  ‘For God’s sake, the bloody flowers aren’t that important.’

  ‘But supporting Marcia Burrows seems to be.’

  ‘What on earth can you mean? You can’t mind her coming here if you go away?’

  ‘I suppose I mind less than if some of your more flamboyant admirers had mucked about in my house. But if her greatest quality is housekeeping, then she should have noticed the flowers.’