One Day at a Time

by Susan Lewis

  ‘You’re not going to split, are you?’ Laura gasps. ‘You can’t do that, or everyone’ll hate you.’

  ‘I’m not a splitter.’

  ‘We’ve been told,’ someone says, ‘that we’ve got to be especially nice to you because your mum died, is that true?’

  I can feel my throat going tight as I look at her. I don’t think she’s laughing, but it’s hard to tell.

  ‘What did she die of?’ Peg Jones asks. She looks a bit sad, and not at all mean, so maybe they aren’t trying to trick me. I want to tell them that Mummy’s really a famous actress who has to spend a lot of time in Hollywood, but they’ll only want to know her name and then they’ll say they’ve never heard of her. I could always make out she’s an air hostess or a doctor who helps people in Africa. They wouldn’t look down their noses so much if they thought I was the daughter of someone important instead of someone who’s dead.

  ‘Ssh, here’s Seaweed!’ Laura hisses.

  We all fall back, like petals falling off a flower, and try to look innocent as the senior housemistress comes towards us. She’s as thin as a stick and has short bobbed grey hair, big glasses and a reedy voice. ‘What are you girls doing there?’ she wants to know. ‘Come along, shoo, shoo, time you were in your evening uniforms, especially those who have offices. Does anyone here?’

  Along with three others I put up my hand.

  ‘Off you go then,’ she says, ‘and don’t run.’

  After skirting round the dining hall and cutting across the end of the sixth-form corridor to the back stairs, we all go thundering up to our dorms to change into another one of the five uniforms we have to wear. This one is a dark red shirtwaister dress with a white detachable collar that has to go in the laundry once a week (the dress itself only gets washed at the end of term). It comes right down to the knee, which is miles too long, and there’s no way to tuck it up the way we can with our kilts so everyone hates it. We’re not allowed miniskirts in this school, even though the whole world is wearing them now. Goes to show what a horrible place it is, all Victorian and old-fashioned and revoltingly smelly.

  I’m just about ready for duty when the office bell rings at ten past four, but when I reach the nursery landing I see my name chalked up on the matron’s blackboard. What have I done now?

  ‘Yes, miss?’ I say to Cluttie, who’s in the nursery.

  She looks up from what she’s doing. ‘Who are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Susan Lewis. My name’s on the board.’

  ‘Ah, yes. You had a letter in the second post,’ she says, and taking it down from the shelf she hands it over.

  I recognise Daddy’s handwriting straight away and I can hardly wait to tear it open, but if I don’t hurry up I’ll be late for laying the tables and then I’ll be in trouble again.

  Actually, I don’t care if I am, because I definitely think I’ll be leaving here on Sunday.

  But I go and lay the tables anyway, and wait till I’m in bed later to read Dad’s letter which I just manage to finish before lights out.

  Daft old thing, he doesn’t realise I don’t have any stamps, so he thinks I’m not bothering to write. I feel a bit upset about that, because I don’t want him to think I don’t love him or he might not take me home with him on Sunday. Please God, please, please make Daddy take me away from here. The box Auntie Nance is sending sounds nice, and I like all the kisses at the end of the letter and the fact that they’re taking care of Sixpence. As I tuck the letter under my pillow I feel as if I’ve heard Daddy’s voice and I wish harder than ever that I was all tucked up in my own bed with him next door in his, and Sixpence running round on her wheel downstairs, and Gary in his boxroom with his Beatles wallpaper and Thunderbirds posters, and his little voice calling out to ask if he can come in with me so I can tell him a story.

  Chapter Three

  Eddie

  I’M ENJOYING SITTING here in this church, knowing our Susan’s up the front amongst all the Red Maids in their smart black hats and claret-coloured capes. I calculated that it probably took them about a quarter of an hour to walk here from the school, whereas it took Gary and me an hour and twenty minutes on two buses. Lucky the Consul broke down yesterday and not today, or we might not have got here at all.

  We’re standing up now to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. I like to have a good sing, and it seems lots of the other parents do too, because they’re putting their hearts and souls into it, the same way I am. It’s lovely knowing Susan’s amongst good Christian people who take their faith and church-going seriously. Not that they don’t at Holy Trinity in Kingswood, because they do, but since my girl developed a mind of her own I haven’t been able to get her through the door very often, I’m afraid. Luckily she doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter now. She’ll be glad of it in the years to come, and to tell the truth, she’s a long way short of being heathen, because she didn’t mind joining the Salvation Army about a year back when I decided to give it a go. Turned out she was a bit of a dab hand with the tambourine, all happy bangs and flying ribbons, which, fortunately, drowned out her singing, because, love her as I do, it makes me wince when she strikes up a song.

  I shall miss Holy Trinity and Canon Radford. He married me and Eddress and christened both the children. He buried our mam too, and our Bob, my brother, and he says as soon as I’m ready to bury Ed’s ashes I only have to let him know. One of these days I’ll have to pluck up the courage to admit that I had them scattered at Arnos Vale. Can’t think what got into me now, doing that, but I suppose I wasn’t thinking straight at all at the time. I’m still not sure I always do now, but I’m trying me best with things, and as long as I don’t dwell too much on how much I miss her I seem to get by. I reckon it would be a good deal easier if I had our Bob to chat to, but I haven’t.

  Funny how you spend your whole life growing up with someone, hardly ever apart (our Bob was only a year older than me), and then suddenly one day they’re not there any more. It was a terrible shock him dying like that, about eight months before Eddress went. I suppose with her being ill I didn’t have much time for it to sink in that he’d actually gone, but it seems to be hitting me a lot lately. I miss him almost as much as I do Eddress and I can’t stop asking myself why they both had to die so young, and if I’m being punished in the worst possible way for the sins I’ve never confessed. We’re not Catholics any more – our mam never was, only our dad went in for it, and since we moved up from Wales, over twenty-five years ago, he’s hardly set foot in a church of any sort. He didn’t mind about burying our mam at Holy Trinity when a heart attack took her about six months before our Susan was born, because it was where she used to go of a Sunday, while he waited for her up the Legion. I don’t know if he ever goes to see the grave – having lost my own wife now I understand how difficult that can be, so I’m not so hard on him any more. Our Nance takes care of things though – she takes flowers every week to our mam and our Bob, and if she had somewhere to put them for Eddress I expect she’d do that too.

  Thirty-seven our Bob was when he died, four years older than Eddress was when she went. He was a driver on the buses, a really popular bloke, more outgoing than me, the life and soul was what they always said about him, and he was. He left two little ones behind, our Julie and Karen, the dearest, prettiest little girls, and his wife, of course, Flo. She has a real struggle making ends meet now. I wish I earned more so I could help her with the bills, but I can barely pay my own these days, never mind anyone else’s. I try to help out in other ways though, like the odd repair job, or clearing the garden, but I don’t want to overdo it in case she gets the wrong end of the stick and thinks I’m trying to take our Bob’s place.

  I don’t ever want to get married again, I know that, and I don’t think Flo does either. I told the doctor after Eddress went that I’d live long enough to make sure my children were all right, and then I’d go to join her. I’m still of that mind and I can’t see it changing.

  We’re just sitting
down for the sermon to begin when I catch our Susan turning round to make sure I’m here. I give her a wave and feel very pleased when I see her eyes light up. Then Gary says, ‘Who are you waving at, Dad?’

  ‘Ssh,’ I say. ‘Sit down, there’s a good boy.’

  ‘Have you seen our Susan? Is she wearing one of those funny hats? Can I have one?’

  The people around us have a little chuckle, and I put a finger over his lips before he can disgrace us even more. Lucky we left his trumpet on the bus, I’m thinking. Luckier still that he doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.

  I’m interested in the sermon, not only for its subject, which is all about gratitude, but because the vicar will have written it himself, and I’m intrigued – and impressed – by the words he’s chosen and how cleverly he uses them. Language is the most fascinating tool of communication. It can be shattered by incorrect usage, moulded into all kinds of shapes by imaginative minds, drilled into listeners with utmost precision, or painted every conceivable colour by our celebrated poets and authors. I’m fascinated by the vicar’s vocabulary, and wish I could take out my notebook to jot down some of the words that seem to be rising up from all the others like the tallest flowers in a field of green. Joyous. Clarity. Newness. Honourable. Robust. I particularly like words that I’ve never heard before, but he hasn’t used any yet. I found a few in the books I brought home from War on Want the other day. Logorrhoea – uncontrollable flow of words. I especially liked that one and could imagine Eddress teasing me with it. Barbula – a small tuft of hair below the lower lip. Paedotrophy – art of rearing children. Ha, ha! A good one for me. There was only one book amongst those Mrs Beach donated that I decided to buy – Astrophel and Other Poems by Algernon Swinburne. I haven’t started it yet, but a quick glance through suggested I’m in for a treat.

  I used to write poetry myself, but not any more. They called me a pansy when I was young and working down the mines in Wales. Poets were queers, not real men. What did I want to be getting involved with all that nancy stuff for? It turned out to be a good question, because nothing ever came of it, and it won’t now because I burned it all just after Eddress went.

  It shames me now to think of the state I got into that day. The anger was terrible, the frustration and grief. I don’t know who I was trying to get back at – myself, I suppose, for not being able to keep her alive. And God for taking her. And the publishers who’d rejected the novel I wrote in secret while she was ill. Dear Mr Lewis, thank you for sending us your manuscript Onward Socialist Soldiers, which we are returning. Unfortunately it does not conform to the type of novel we are interested in publishing. So curt and pompous, or that was how it read to me. ‘Bloody capitalists the lot of ’em,’ I could hear Eddress saying. ‘They’ll regret it one day when you’re top of the best-sellers. They’ll come grovelling to you then.’ Except she wasn’t there to say it any more, and because she was the only one who’d ever really believed in me, I’d burned the lot. All I had left was the publisher’s letter as a reminder for me not to get too above myself again.

  There’s lovely. We’ve now sung the last hymn, said a final prayer and the girls with their bonny smiles and mischievous twinkles are following the vicar down the aisle, taking crafty peeks at their parents, while the organist excels himself with something jolly I’ve not heard before, and the campanologists ring all the bats from the belfry.

  When I walk outside, holding tight to Gary’s hand to stop him getting carried off in the jostle, I search around for Susan, and there she is, over by a lopsided gravestone, waving out so I can see her. I make my way through the crowd, careful to be friendly and polite as I go, and … Oh, it does my heart good to see her, in spite of her frown.

  ‘I was afraid you weren’t coming,’ she tells me, as I give her one of my biggest hugs. ‘When I got to church I couldn’t see you …’

  ‘The car broke down,’ Gary interrupts. ‘We had to get the bus.’

  Susan looks panicked. ‘You’ve got to have the car. Oh Dad, please! You have to take me home. I can’t stay here any more. Please don’t make me.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ I say as tears roll down her cheeks. ‘Come on now, you don’t want to be making a spectacle of yourself with all these people around.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she mutters, but I’m sure she does or knowing her as I do, she’d have shouted it. ‘That blinking car,’ she seethes. ‘I hate it, and I hate you for making me come here.’

  ‘Ssh,’ I say, putting an arm round her.

  ‘Don’t do that, I’m not a baby.’

  ‘Yes you are, you’re crying,’ Gary helpfully informs her.

  Catching her hand before she belts him, I say, in my best jolly voice, ‘Wasn’t that a lovely sermon the vicar gave? I hope you were listening and taking it in.’

  ‘Dad, please, you’ve got to take me home,’ she begs. ‘I’ll kill myself if you make me stay here.’

  ‘Don’t talk silly, there’s a good girl. Shall we start walking back now?’

  ‘No! I’m not going. If you make me I’ll run away.’

  I look at her mutinous face and have to stop myself trying to hug her again, because seeing her unhappy like this is upsetting me too. Quite a lot, in fact, and while I dare not let it show I’m trying desperately to think what her mother would do in my shoes. Eddress was always so much better at handling the kids than I am. I don’t understand why God didn’t take me. If He had to take someone, and I still don’t know why He did, it would have been better all round if it had been me.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Susan mutters. ‘Everyone’s looking.’

  Not sure what I’m supposed to do now, I watch her turn and start towards the gates where some of the other girls are milling about with their parents. ‘I think we’re supposed to follow,’ I whisper to Gary.

  Apparently thinking a whisper calls for tiptoe, he starts after her. She turns round suddenly and almost bumps into him.

  ‘Don’t let anyone hear you speak,’ she growls.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘Just don’t.’

  He looks up at me.

  Susan looks at me too, and realising what must be happening I put on my best posh voice and say, ‘Righty-oh young lady, I’d like to know why we haven’t had a letter from you, telling us all you’ve been up to.’

  ‘Dad, don’t,’ she pleads, looking as though she might cry again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t think anyone heard and I was only trying to make you laugh.’

  ‘Well you’re not very funny.’

  ‘All right, but I’d still like to know why we haven’t had a letter from you.’

  ‘I don’t have any stamps,’ she cries. ‘Or any money.’

  I give a groan of dismay. What a chump I am, why didn’t I think of that? ‘I’ll send you some first thing tomorrow,’ I promise, ‘and I didn’t know you were allowed to have money.’

  ‘Well we are, but Seaweed has to keep it and she gives it out every Saturday morning, but we have to tell her what we want it for, and if she doesn’t think we’re spending it right she won’t let us have it, which everyone thinks is really mean, because it’s our money and she shouldn’t have a say.’

  ‘What would you spend it on? Is there a shop at school?’

  ‘No, silly. The shops are down in the village. We’re not allowed out of the grounds, ever, but the sixth form can go down on Saturday mornings and they’ll bring stuff back for us if we ask them.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘All kinds. Yoghurts …’

  ‘What’s that?’ Gary chips in.

  Susan’s cheeks go pink, showing that she’s not too sure either. ‘It’s like a cream with fruit in,’ she says, waiting for me to correct her.

  ‘Yum, yum,’ from Gary.

  ‘Anyway, yoghurts and liquorice and writing paper and records,’ she goes on. ‘Sadie, who’s in our dormitory – she’s second form, so a year above me – well, she let me have a dip o
f her bilberry yoghurt yesterday, and it’s the best thing I ever tasted, and she bought “All You Need is Love” by The Beatles and …’

  ‘That’s really good,’ Gary informs me.

  ‘… Cheryl, she’s Laura’s sister, she’s in the second form too, and Sadie’s best friend, she bought “The Day I Met Marie” because she’s got a crush on Cliff. And we all danced to the records yesterday afternoon in the hall, because it’s allowed on Saturdays. I want to get “Flowers in the Rain”, by the Move, but I can’t because I don’t have any money, and everyone said they’d really like it if I did get it, so can I have ten shillings, please Dad?’

  I try not to gulp. ‘Records only cost sixpence,’ I remind her, taking a moment to realise that this desire to please everyone must mean that she’s not as convinced I’ll take her home as she’d like to be.

  This could be what they call a small mercy. Ten bob!

  ‘Yeah, but it has to last me all term,’ she says, apparently forgetting she’s giving herself away.

  ‘Well, how about half a crown to be going on with?’

  ‘All right. Did you bring the parcel from Auntie Nance?’

  ‘I gave it to Mr and Mrs Beach when we got here. They’re going to take it over to school in their car.’

  She looks downcast again and I can tell her mind’s not on the parcel, or records, any more. ‘When will the car be mended?’ she asks miserably.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I answer.

  ‘We came on two buses,’ Gary tells her. ‘Are we going back on two, Dad?’

  Sorry that he’s mentioned our return journey, I’m still fishing about for an answer when Susan exclaims, ‘I know! We can carry all my stuff between us so I can come on the bus too.’ Apparently pleased with the solution, she says, ‘Shall we go now? The way back to school’s dead easy, and other people are walking, so we won’t look silly being the only ones.’

  She links my arm and takes hold of Gary’s hand, while I give a little wave to Mr and Mrs Beach who are getting into their car with Glenys. ‘So let’s hear all about the friends you’ve made,’ I say encouragingly, as we leave the churchyard to start the walk back. We should have about an hour together, before she has to go in for dinner – lunch – and I’ve already got an uneasy feeling about how the time’s going to pass.