One Day at a Time

by Susan Lewis

  ‘I’ll be up next Sunday,’ Dad tells me. ‘I’ll bring Gary to the church with me and we’ll see you after.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to church,’ I reply. ‘I don’t believe in God.’

  ‘Now, now. You won’t go to heaven if you say things like that.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to heaven, I want to go home.’

  ‘Try to be a good girl,’ Auntie Nance says.

  I want to tell her to bugger off, the way my mum did once, but I don’t have the guts. So I look at Daddy and say, ‘Please let me come with you.’

  He takes both my hands in his and says, ‘All you have to do is take one day at a time and everything will be fine.’

  He said that after Mummy died and it wasn’t, and now it never will be again.

  He plonks a kiss on my head and gives me a great big hug, then I stand next to my bed watching him walking away. I keep staring at his back, willing him to give in and come back to get me. I know he will. He won’t be able to leave me on my own, because he’s too kind and always gives me everything I want – well, most of the time anyway. Anything could happen to me in a place like this, so he must be scared too. I wasn’t supposed to be a boarder. I was supposed to be a day girl, and I would be if my mum hadn’t died. It’s all her fault really and now there’s nothing I can do to change it.

  Daddy goes out through the double doors at the end of the dormitory and disappears with Auntie Nance. I’m still standing next to my bed. I don’t know what to do. I’m so full up with unhappiness that I can hardly move.

  I clench my hands really tightly. I don’t care that he doesn’t love me. I always knew he was just pretending, like everyone else. I expect him and Gary would rather be on their own, without me. They might not even write me letters, or come to see me, or let me go home for holidays.

  Why doesn’t anyone want me?

  I’m all on my own now, like an orphan in an orphanage.

  I have to try and be brave, like Oliver Twist.

  Keeping my head down, I go into my cubicle and close the curtain before anyone can tell I’m crying. I can hear them all talking out there, but I’m too afraid to go and join in. They all seem to know one another and no one’s interested in me. Why would they be when they’re all posh and I’m stupid and common?

  I wish I was dead with Mummy, but knowing her she’d only send me back again and tell me to go and make Daddy proud.

  I don’t want to make anyone proud. I just want my mummy back so we can go home.

  Eddie

  Dear oh dear oh dear, this hasn’t been an easy day, getting our Susan out of the house and then having to leave her like that. I kept wondering if Eddress could see us, motoring along in our blue Ford Consul, chugging up the drive of that school to those gloomy old front doors. Our Susan was sitting in the back, hardly saying a word, which isn’t like her at all, because she’s always had a lot to say for herself. Too much, our Nance reckons. The cat definitely had her tongue today, though.

  I’m back home again now, and I don’t mind admitting it broke my heart leaving her there. I couldn’t let it show, or it would have upset her even more, and she was already crying when Nance and I walked away. It must have been terrible for her, watching our backs. Maybe I should have turned around and given her a wave, but I was afraid it might make it harder for us both if I did.

  It’s a blinking irony, isn’t it? Her mother dying goes and gets her a place as a boarder at the school. She passed the scholarship to become a day girl, but then I was told that the founder, John Whitson, set aside funds to educate two girls every year whose mothers have passed on. So we’ve got a boarding grant, which brings the fees down to two hundred and eighty-eight quid a year. Still a lot, but I’m going to do me best to manage it, because it’s what her mother would want, and so do I.

  Blimey, the house feels empty without my girl. I keep thinking she’s going to come thundering up the stairs any minute and fly into my room the way she does. It still upsets me to think of it as my room, when it always used to be ‘ours’ – mine and Eddress’s – Eddie and Ed get wed. Where are you, Eddress? Can you see us now? Do you know what I’m thinking? It’s been over a year since you went, and I’m no closer to getting used to it now than I ever was. I miss you, my love, more and more as the days pass. The world’s a colourless place now you’ve gone. My only joy is in our children, but watching them growing up without you is every bit as hard as losing you. Our Susan gets more like you every day, little minx that she is. They both look like you, with their red hair and fiery freckles. I didn’t know love could be so fierce until we had them, and now it’s fiercer than ever, because they’re yours and I know how much you love them too.

  Your wardrobe’s still here, with most of your clothes in it, and your dressing table, full of all your petticoats and smalls, and our photograph albums and other knick-knacks you collected over the years. There’s a book of Green Shield stamps that I keep meaning to give to your mam. I’ll get round to clearing it all out sooner or later, no rush though, I don’t need the space, and I like having your things around me.

  Back to our Susan. I can hardly bear to picture her face when I left her today. You should have seen her, Ed. Maybe you did, because for all we know you were with us, in your own dimension, trying to guide us through the right thing to do. I know you agree with me that it’ll be good for her to have women taking care of her now you can’t be here any more. People like that lot up there, the teachers and matrons and whatnot, they know much more than I do about showing a girl how to get on in the world, and it’s what we always wanted for our Susan, isn’t it, that she should do well?

  Dear little soul, she’s had her mind set on being my housekeeper ever since you went, but between us, she’s a bloody nuisance when she starts up with the vacuum and dusters. And as for cooking, she’s worse than me and that’s really saying something. Our poor Gary, no wonder he looks forward to going up your mother’s or round our Nance’s a couple of times a week, at least then he gets some decent food on his plate.

  He’ll be going to boarding school too when the time comes, if I can get him in, that is. It’s only right that he should have a good start in life too. I might be earning a bit more by then, with any luck. Shan’t like it much without either of them around, won’t like it one bit, as a matter of fact, but I keep reminding myself it’ll be for the best.

  It’s funny how things happen, isn’t it. There we were, the four of us, happy as can be, like any normal family, then before we know it you’ve gone, leaving us all out of balance, like a table with three legs. We can’t seem to hold on to anything now, and I feel as though it’s my fault. I ought to be propping us up better than I am, and I try, but I’m not daft enough to think I can ever take your place. I just don’t have the love and common sense and magic that was you.

  Do you know, Ed, that we have a home help these days who comes in the morning to get the kids off to school, and again in the afternoons for when they come home? Our Susan didn’t want to know about her at first. A right little madam she was, saying she was old enough to look after herself, but luckily she took to her all right in the end. Gary loves her to bits. Mrs Jewell’s her name. She wants them to call her Auntie Kath, which I don’t think is right, when she’s not a relative, but they’re doing it anyway. I can hear you telling me I’m too much of a stickler for using proper titles, but I suppose that’s the way I am. I get the feeling she thinks I’m cruel for sending Susan to Red Maids, and you should have seen the state our Susan got herself into when she had to say cheerio to her last Friday. I had to practically drag her off, and poor Mrs Jewell was crying too. I offered her a lift home, but she said no, it was best she made her own way so I could stay and try to settle our Susan. She’s a kind woman. The salt-of-the-earth type, with a fag always hanging out the corner of her mouth, and a laugh that could grate cheese. She does a good job with the kids, and around the house. She’s keeping your front door knocker nice and polished, and the doorstep spotle
ss too.

  Oh, there’s our Gary shouting for me downstairs, so watch me putting on a smile before I go to see what he wants. Can you see me in the mirror? I’m looking around the room. Where are you then, Ed? Where can we find you, my old love?

  ‘Dad! Dad! Oh, there you are. Shall we have a fight?’ Gary’s dear little face with his cornflake freckles and missing front teeth is looking up at me with all the eagerness his seven-year-old heart can muster.

  ‘But you always beat me up,’ I complain.

  He beams with delight. ‘I know, that’s because you’re a weed, and I’m the champion. Come on, Dad, please, let’s have a fight. You said we could when you got back.’

  ‘All right then. You were a good boy for Mrs Williams, were you?’

  ‘Yep.’ He’s already lunging at me, grabbing me round the middle and trying to force me to my knees.

  Down I go, yielding to the champ.

  ‘Yeah!’ he cries, and next thing I’m in a headlock with his legs wrapped round my waist, and his growls filling up my ears.

  Suddenly I wrench him over my shoulder and catch him just before he hits the floor.

  He looks up at me with astonished eyes. ‘Cor! That was a good move, Dad.’

  ‘Submit?’ I demand, holding him down.

  ‘Never!’ He can’t move an inch.

  ‘Submit?’

  ‘No, cos you cheated so I’m the winner.’

  ‘No, I’m the winner.’

  ‘Grrmph!’ and he’s up. He’s on my back and I’m in a headlock again.

  ‘Submit?’ he shouts.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, you’ve got to submit.’

  ‘Oh. All right. I submit.’

  ‘Hooray! I’m the champion of the world and you’re my slave from now on. You have to do everything I say, and I say I want four pieces of beans on toast for tea please.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Yep, because I have to build up my muscles. You should have four too, then you might not be a weed any more.’

  Laughing, I ruffle his ginger crew cut and haul myself up. Beans on toast it is – at least I can’t go far wrong with that.

  ‘Dad?’ he says, following me into the kitchen a few minutes later. ‘Where’s our Susan?’

  I look down at his puzzled face and want to scoop him up for a cuddle. He won’t like it though, because he’s a big boy now and cuddles have become soppy lately. ‘Do you remember I told you, she’s at school?’

  ‘But it’s Sunday.’

  ‘I know, but she’s going to be what’s called a boarder,’ I explain again. ‘That means she’ll be sleeping there as well as having lessons.’

  This seems to be a problem his little brain’s having some difficulty solving. ‘She’ll be coming back though, won’t she?’

  ‘Oh yes, on Sundays when they have exeats … ’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘An exeat is like a day off. So she’ll be coming home then, and for school holidays. And we’ll be able to see her every Sunday after church.’

  He’s starting to look increasingly worried. ‘What about her bedroom? Won’t she be sleeping there any more?’

  ‘When she’s here, of course she will.’

  He falls quiet for a while. It seems all the explaining I’ve done up to now hasn’t meant very much, but with Susan no longer here it’s starting to sink in. ‘Does that mean she’ll be doing lessons every single day and never have any time off?’ he asks, apparently appalled.

  I give a little laugh. ‘No. She’ll do her lessons the same as you, but when she’s finished she’ll stay at school with the other girls.’

  ‘What about her tea?’

  ‘She’ll have it there.’

  He takes some more time to absorb this, while I open a large tin of beans and empty it into a pan. ‘Doesn’t she want to be with us any more?’ he asks in the end.

  Seeing how troubled he is, I hike him up on to the draining board so we’re at the same level. ‘It’s not that she doesn’t want to be with us,’ I tell him gently, ‘it’s just not right for a girl to be in a house where there’s only a daddy to look after her. That’s why she’s gone away to school, so she can be with other girls and teachers who are women, not because she doesn’t want to be with us – especially you, because you’re the best brother in the whole wide world.’

  His eyes grow round with amazement. ‘Is that what she says?’

  ‘Only to me, and it’s supposed to be a secret, so don’t tell her I told you.’

  He’s downcast again. ‘I know she’s really bossy,’ he says dismally, ‘but I wish she’d come back.’

  I do too, but I can’t tell him that, so I put him back on the floor, suggesting that he goes and lays the table. Funny how he never asks about his mother now. He used to, at first, always wanting to know when she was coming back, going to sit out on the doorstep to wait, asking if we could go to the hospital to pick her up. I suppose he must be getting used to her not being here now, which I’m glad about, but sorry too, because it’s not right for a little boy to grow up without his mother. I expect he’s starting to wonder why everyone seems to be leaving, but he’ll come to understand one of these days that sometimes things happen that we can’t do anything about.

  Susan hardly ever mentions her mother either, and though that used to upset me at first, I’ve come to realise that I probably don’t help matters because I don’t know if I can talk about her without breaking down, and I wouldn’t want our Susan seeing that. Besides, it doesn’t do any good to dwell on these things. I know I do in my head, but all the talking in the world is never going to bring Eddress back, so best to do as I told our Susan, take one day at a time and sooner or later we’ll get used to being without her.

  I wonder what our Susan’s doing now? Is she all right? Has she had her tea yet? I hope she’s not crying.

  Dear God in heaven, please bless her and keep her safe.

  Have I done the right thing? I know I have, but it’s breaking my heart all the same.

  Susan

  ‘Right, all of you first-formers come and stand in a line. Susan, you go in the middle. Laura and Glenys, either side of her. That’s right. Stand up straight, you pathetic creatures. Don’t slouch.’

  Laura and Glenys are the other two new girls in our dorm. Our beds are the last three in the row on the right-hand side, with Laura’s on the end, next to the piano, then mine, then Glenys’s. Laura’s about the same height as me, with mousy-coloured hair and glasses. Glenys is much taller, with dark hair that looks like it’s been cut round a pudding bowl.

  I don’t know who the girl is who’s bossing us around. Someone said she’s third form which means whatever is about to happen is serious, because according to Laura only second form normally speak to new girls. (Laura would know from her sister, Cheryl.)

  We finished our tea, downstairs in the dining hall, about an hour ago – cauliflower cheese and something black, or dark brown, and slimy, that I’d never seen before, so I didn’t eat it. Someone said it was called orange bean, which I’ve never heard of and I hope we never get again. We had to say grace first, in Latin. I don’t know what’s wrong with English, especially when our Bibles are written in it. If you ask me it’s just showing off, saying grace in another language.

  Anyway, God doesn’t listen to anything I say, because if He did I wouldn’t be here, so who cares which language I speak to Him in? (I hope He didn’t hear that thought, because it was a bit rude and if I make Him cross he might never do anything to get me out of here.)

  We’re standing in a line now, Laura, me and Glenys, at the foot of my bed. Our dormitory is called Speedwell, after one of John Whitson’s ships (he’s the school’s founder and apparently he had a wooden leg). Everything in our dorm is dark blue, a bit like the sea I suppose. The beds, the walls, the hot-water pipes, the doors, everything. If you go through the bathrooms at the far end you get to the next dorm which is called Discoverer (another John Whitson ship), where every
thing’s yellow, maybe like the sun coming out when he spotted dry land. On the floor below are two more dorms called Maryflowre, which is light blue, like the sky, and Seabreake, which is green, again like the sea. (I reckon one of them should be red, but I suppose they can’t do that because that’s the colour of our uniforms and the girls might blend in like cherries in a bowl of fresh blood.)

  A group of older girls are staring at us. There are about six of them, and they’re looking all snooty and menacing. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, but they’re making me feel as though I have. We only arrived a few hours ago, so how are we supposed to know all the rules yet? I wish my dad was here, because he knows everything, and he’d probably be able to stop them looking as though they want to hit me. I wonder what Gary’s doing now. I bet he had something lush for tea, like fishcakes, peas and mash, or beans on toast.

  ‘Susan, are you really going to sleep in those pyjamas?’

  Everyone starts to laugh.

  I feel my face go all hot and red and I want to hit Auntie Nance, because I hate these pyjamas and didn’t want to bring them in the first place. They’re all quilted like an anorak and covered in big yellow roses. She bought them in Jones’s downtown, and made me pack them, because, she said, it’s what posh people wear, so I should too, now I’m going to be posh. I don’t want to be posh. I want to be common and normal and get out of here!

  ‘Answer,’ someone shouts at me.

  I’m getting all flustered. I don’t know what to say.

  ‘My name is Nina Lowe,’ she tells me.

  My heart does a jump as I look at her. She’s got black hair and a bit of a hairy face. She’s definitely one of the third-formers, because everyone else is too young to grow a moustache, whereas hers is coming along nicely.

  ‘There are the written rules of the school,’ Nina Lowe declares, ‘and there are the unwritten. I’m here to tell you about the unwritten. Are you listening?’

  I nod, very fast. Yes, I’m definitely listening.