Somewhat melodramatic perhaps but she was her mother’s daughter.
When she opened her eyes she saw a man’s back.
The shirt was dirty, the hair was long and blond, the shoulders were strong, the arms with shirtsleeves rolled untidily up to the elbows, were taut against straining muscles.
She saw that she was strongly and competently being rowed back to shore.
It didn’t take long.
The man ran the dinghy up onto the slipway and turned for the first time, so that she saw his face. It was not good looking like Carl’s, but it was pleasant enough. The nose was too large, the nostrils very wide and rather dirty, but the blue eyes seemed considerate, part hidden with long curling eyelashes. Not the same blue as Carl – not the deep almost violet colour she loved – more pale almost grey.
She must stop thinking of Carl. He was history now.
When he spoke she noticed his teeth, how dirty and yellow they were. Almost like an old man’s. Though they were even enough.
“That was a bit too close for comfort.”
“I suppose I should thank you...?”
“Joe. My name is Joe. You are...?”
“Susannah” Only Carl had ever called her Susie. She would never be Susie again.
“Hello Susannah. Welcome back. I take it you didn’t mean to get caught out there.”
“Of course not. I just forgot the time and the tide. I do. Thank you I mean.”
“Are you OK now? Can I take you somewhere – you have had quite a bit of a shock.”
“It’s OK, I’ve got.... friends.... here.”
They had come ashore at the Sandhey slipway and the house that she had left barely half an hour before was very close.
Joe rang the bell and it was Max who answered, he weighed up the situation in a glance – the drenched girl, the unkempt boy, both dripping wet.
“Come on in. Both of you. You must both dry out. It’s not so warm now and you’ll catch your death. Come in, you must get out of those wet clothes, bathe, warm up. I’ll get Monika she will take charge.”
Monika came running down the stairs holding out her arms to Susannah. “My little girl. What has happened to you?”
Charles, following, thought he knew.
Susannah was taken by Monika to a spare room and put into a bath. “Like old times my dear little girl. Let me look after you. You have had a shock. Get warm and clean and come down to tell us what has happened. Charles will let your family know you are safe.”
“Don’t call anyone. Please. I need to explain. Just don’t call them. Please.” There was no trace of the wine, no hint of the belligerent drunkenness she had felt when she had approached the house a little while before.
Charles took Joe up to his room.
“Have a bath, warm up, you are drenched. Use the dressing gown on the door, I’ll get your clothes washed and dried. You know, we can’t thank you enough. That was obviously a close run thing. We’ve just got in and I was going to do a bit of bird-watching” he gesticulated towards the binoculars on the window seat “and saw the girl getting further and further from safety. I’d pretty much written her off as drowned. I had no idea it was Susannah, she’s my sister, you know. I should have known it was her.”
He was shocked at thinking that he had nearly watched her die. His shock made him keep talking.
Joe didn’t seem to take much notice of Charles. He was looking around the room trying not to be overwhelmed. He looked at the large bed, the dressing table and the silver hair brushes carefully laid out, his bare feet registered the thickness of the carpets, he stared through the open door to the bathroom and the size of the bath with the hot and cold taps, and he looked at the space that this boy had for his room. This man had his own bathroom. He had more space in his bedroom and bathroom than was in the entire Parry household and there were nine of them. Even though he was nearly 25 years old he had never had a bath in anything other than a tub by the range in the kitchen with people going in and out as he washed.
The Parrys lived in the one remaining end of what had been a terrace of houses. The rest of the houses had fallen apart, damaged by stray bombs in the war and finished off by the elements. He lived with his seven brothers and sisters, and his mother – his father long gone – in less space than this man had for his bedroom.
All eight worked, one way or another, either at the shipyard in Birkenhead or in the local shops and pubs whilst fishing or working the market gardens in the summer. They cycled or walked to work each day, each week they brought back their wage packets for their mum and each week she gave them a little back for their own use.
Jimmy, Joe’s eldest brother, owned a boat. He kept this boat immaculate and went fishing night after night. It was the skiff from this boat that Joe had ‘borrowed’ without his brother’s knowledge, to go for a small trip of his own – to get away from the crowds in the house – and it was on that trip that he had spotted Susannah.
He had watched her as she realised she had no escape and had waited, as he knew he must, until the water was deep enough to reduce the impact of the separate channels, then he had rowed as hard as he could to get to her in time. He and his brothers had picked up bodies from the sea most years, from their fishing boat or from the lifeboat – death and drowning did not frighten him – but he hadn’t wanted to do that unless he had really had to.
He lay in the bath and scrubbed at the ingrained dirt on his arms and legs. He did the best with his face and hands but he could not remove in one scrub the grime of a hard life. His hair, treated to the luxury of soap and hot water, was almost white in its blondness.
After as long as seemed reasonable he stepped out of the bath, put on the dressing gown and felt the soft towelling dry him far more efficiently than any of the towels he normally used. He walked out into the bedroom and saw Charles sitting at a desk in the bow window looking through binoculars over the estuary. Charles only noticed him when he sat down on the window seat in front of him.
“It doesn’t look so lethal from here does it?” Charles said without taking the glasses from his eyes. He was not sure he liked the way this stranger had been eating in every detail of his room.
“It is always beautiful and always dangerous.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Joe, Joe Parry”
“Well Joe Parry. I must thank you for saving my sister’s life. I am sure she will herself when we get downstairs.”
“She was lucky I was there, I couldn’t really leave her could I?”
“Come on. You’d better get dressed. I don’t think my clothes will fit you, but you’re welcome to try.”
The trousers fitted. Joe felt odd, he had never worn anything but jeans since he had first been allowed out of the grey shorts that had been his uniform for the first ten years of his life. These were green cord trousers. He liked the feel of them. But he was too broad and muscular in the chest for any of Charles’ shirts. “Here, try this.” Charles threw him a cricket sweater, very loose, with the large V at the front exposing most of Joe’s chest, tanned even though the summer had hardly started.
Had Charles thought about it he might have wondered what effect Joe’s appearance would have on his sister.
He had realised when he had phoned Ted that morning that he was changing his sister’s life. He knew she would be very unhappy, and probably that unhappiness would be targeted as anger at him. He had been worrying about her all through the afternoon as he had sat, unable to concentrate, at the match.
But he hadn’t imagined that she would try to kill herself.
When he had been watching the unknown girl walk leaping the first donga he had thought she was foolhardy in the extreme. He had followed her movements and what should have been her last minutes through his powerful binoculars. He had not realised it was Susannah. He should have done, but he had seen so little of her in recent years and she had changed. It was five years since he had seen much of her. She was a woman now, 17. He was a
shamed that he hadn’t recognised her.
He had watched the small boat coming towards her and had decided there was no need to call the lifeboat – either she would be rescued or the man in the boat would pick up the body.
As he looked out of the window, with Joe was in his bathroom, he had wondered how she was going to cope with losing the one person who had ever been able to bring out the best in her, the one person she had ever listened to, the only person who had ever been able to talk her into acting sensibly.
He suspected she would just head off in the opposite direction. Move on, not look back.
It is what their mother would have done.
As Joe followed Charles down to the kitchen where the others had gathered he realised how out of place he was in this grand house but he was confident that he would not be thrown out, whatever he did. The family were class. Whatever he did or said he reckoned they would be polite, grateful and friendly because he had saved the girl’s life.
There was not much conversation in the kitchen, the initial freedom from social constraint in the immediate wake of the rescue had gone. Everyone was more self-conscious.
What did the richest man in the area, who owned and was senior partner of the most successful legal firm in the district say to the youngest son of a family of scroungers, a part time fisherman?
What did the brother say to his sister he hadn’t seen for five years who had just nearly died in front of his eyes probably because he had discovered her relationship and knew that that relationship was forbidden?
What could Monika say to the girl she had brought up from a baby but who now blamed her for ruining her life.
They drank their tea and had their own thoughts and made their own plans.
Joe looked at Susannah. He had only to watch her for a minute, and he knew she would be his life line. She was wearing a white towelling robe, like the one he had been wearing in Charles’ room but shorter, her legs and feet were bare, her hair was drawn up in a white towelling turban. He looked at her and knew what his reward was going to be.
For her part Susannah judged Joe.
There was such a contrast with Carl. Where Carl was still in many ways only a boy, Joe was definitely a man. It seemed to her now that Carl had been skinny and undeveloped when compared with the muscular, hard working and hard worked body that she could see Joe had.
But more than his physical appearance she saw something else. Carl was open and confident, she had never seen him at a loss for words or in a position where he didn’t know what to do – whoever he was with or wherever he was. Joe appeared to be out of his depth. He was embarrassed, self-conscious and tongue-tied. At least that is how she interpreted his silence and his quick glances around the room.
She was too genuine a person, too naïve and with too little experience of people other than her small circle of family and friends to recognise that Joe, who had depended on cleverness of a different sort, who had needed a certain selfish cunning to survive in his family, was sizing up the situation to see what he could get out of it.
Joe was weighing up the fact that the girl he had rescued came from a very well off family, that the girl – and her family – would be very grateful to him. He intended to find out just how grateful.
He had a feeling they would be very grateful indeed.
There seemed to be a collective relaxation of tension when the phone rang and Max left the room to answer it, as if he were expecting a call. He returned after only a few moments.
“That was your father, Susannah. He is concerned about you. He says you ran out of the house without saying where you were going.”
She didn’t reply.
“He wanted to know if we had seen you or Carl.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him you were here and he should not worry. I told him you would stay here for a while and we would talk about it when everyone has calmed down. You’ll stay here, at least until after Charles’ birthday.”
“What about Carl?”
“I told him we hadn’t seen him.”
Joe listened to the undercurrents of family conflict, aware that he did not know the details but equally aware that they gave him an advantage when working on Susannah. He was picking up clues. He knew from experience and not because anyone had taught him, that knowledge was power and the best sort of knowledge was that which people didn’t know they were giving you. The more he knew about this family the more he could get from them, but he didn’t want to appear too anxious.
“I’ll be off. I’ll come back with the clothes tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you out. You’ll be wanting to get home.” Charles had seen something in Joe’s eyes that he didn’t like, an ambition, a cunning, a calculating view, a plot being hatched. He wanted him out of the house.
Joe saw himself dismissed but was quite happy to leave things as they were for a day or so. There would be plenty of time. They wouldn’t forget what he had done.
He wouldn’t let them.
“Can I leave my boat here. I don’t want to mess up your nice clothes. Can I come back for it in the morning?” Time now to be deferential, accepting his place. Time enough later to rub their noses in it.
“Of course.” Charles was not totally convinced that would be a good idea but what else could he do? “Can I drive you back?” “No, thanks, I’ll walk.”
As she tried to sleep that night, Susannah found herself engulfed in misery. She missed Carl so much and – how long was it since she had seen him? – five hours?
She lay in bed that night staring out of the window at the moon reflecting on the sea. When would she see Carl again? Where was he? Could he see the moon? Was he looking at the moon now thinking of her? He must know where she had gone. He would call her. They would be together tomorrow.
She spent the next day staring out of the window. How could she fill the time, make the time pass more quickly, until she would see him again? She knew she shouldn’t have run away, but how could she have stayed? What will Carl do? Where will he go? How can she find him? She loved him. He loved her. They had to be together. She tried to switch off everything she felt for him but she couldn’t.
It was half term so she didn’t even have school to keep her mind occupied. Where was Carl? Why didn’t he call her? Who was he with? It was hours before there would be anything on the television which would make the time go more quickly. What could she do? She sat, waiting for the phone to ring until Monika, determined to get Susannah out of her mood, tried to give her something to do.
“You can help me clean the house, spring cleaning. That will clear your head, you can’t be moping around if you’re cleaning.”
So Susannah was set to clean the stair carpet. It didn’t help as everything she did revolved around Carl. She started at the top, brushing the fluff off the carpet with her fingers, pressing harder and harder until the tips of her fingers seemed singed and her fingerprints were worn flat. If I fill my hand with fluff from this step he’ll call’. She brushed the beige pile of the carpet to the left and to the right, trying to concentrate on the different colours, one dark, one light. She played noughts and crosses on one step. If X wins this one he will call.’ ‘He will call before I’ve got to the bottom step.’ ‘He’ll call if I hold my breath while I brush this step.’ She managed to make cleaning the thirty steps last all afternoon.
But he still hadn’t called.
Monika sat her down at the kitchen table for tea. She had to talk to Susannah, she had been watching her through the afternoon and she knew she had to help her. She knew that Susannah blamed her and Charles for all her problems but she was the only one who could talk to her. So she began by telling Susannah of the times in her life when she had felt alone and that life had seemed too difficult to live. Susannah had listened, perhaps aware for the first time that her problems weren’t as enormous as some people’s. But she still felt so much pain. She said that the easy way was to let life do to her what it would, and she shouldn’
t fight it. Monika said that that was what she had done.
There had been a time, at the end of the war, when Monika had decided that the old Monika was dead and that the new Monika was born. She had become a different person, separated from the person she had been. Only then could she look forward. In that conversation Monika told Susannah things about herself she had only ever told Charles before, to try to get Susannah’s trust.
She told her how she had ended the war a refugee, she hadn’t been able to speak English, she had only one friend in the world, she had spent five years being a piece of driftwood afloat in a troubled sea. But then, through circumstances beyond her control her life had changed, the day before she had one life – the day after a completely different one.
“Now you are feeling alone and adrift. You must make a new life. Now. You mustn’t wait until the old life has made you bitter. You must become a new person now. You must learn to depend on yourself. You will never forget Carl but you must learn not to live only for time spent with him, or any other person. Learn to live for yourself, be independent, you must live your own life.”
“Like my mother did? As soon as things got difficult she ran off. She probably ‘became another person’ as soon as she’d walked out on us. Well I can’t do that. I love Carl, I want to be with Carl, he wants to be with me.”
But as she spoke the words she realised that if he really did want to be with her where was he now?
The days seemed very long, spent listening for the telephone every minute of the day, saying ‘if I walk from here to there in an even number of steps he will call today’ or ‘if the third car to come down the road is red Carl will phone today’ or ‘if the sun stays behind that cloud for ten seconds Carl will call me’. He must know where she was, he would get in touch.
Her ‘ifs’ became longer term. ‘If I get all my A levels it will all end up right in the end.’ If I’m nice to people and never tell a lie it will work out all right in the end.’
The Last Dance Page 19