Authors: Priscilla Masters
I was lying on my bed, in my cottage in Horton, watching a spider’s web float in the breeze. The curtains were drawn. I did not know whether it was night or day and I did not care.
Way below someone was knocking on my door. Banging. Hammering.
‘For he suddenly smote on the door, even louder and lifted his head
“Tell them I came and no one answered, That I kept my word,” he said.
I continued watching the spider weaving his web. Sooner or later it would catch his prey. A fly was crawling towards it even now. Very slowly. Soon he would be stuck. He might struggle but what did it
matter? A spider, a fly? We are all either spiders weaving webs or flies waiting to be caught.
I closed my eyes.
Knock knock knock. I wished it would go away.
‘Susie!’ A voice, shouting through the letter box. ‘I know you’re there. Open the door. NOW!’
I sighed. It was my sister and she would not go away.
Bang bang bang.
‘Open this bloody door!’
I went downstairs and pulled it open.
She stared at me. ‘Why haven’t you answered the phone?’
I felt my face tighten.
She scrutinised me, her face twisted with concern. ‘Susie. Oh Susie. Look at you.’ She hugged me but I stood away from her, rigid.
Sara came inside and closed the door behind her. ‘Oh, Susie,’ she said again, her face creased with pain. ‘How could you have let yourself come to this? Richard wouldn’t have wanted this.’ She hugged me tighter then moved back, still frowning. ‘How much weight have you lost?’
I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I simply shrugged. It didn’t matter to me.
She peered at me again. ‘When did you last eat?’
I shrugged again. I didn’t know. And I didn’t care either.
She stepped back. ‘John said we should leave you alone to have some time here alone in the cottage to
readjust.’ Her frown deepened. ‘But he was wrong.’ She hugged me again. ‘I should have stuck to my guns, followed my instinct. I should have come before. You’re my sister. I’m sorry.’
I shrugged. ‘What difference would it have made?’
She sighed loudly. ‘Come on,’ she said suddenly. ‘Get something decent on and I’ll take you out to lunch.’
‘No.’ I didn’t want to run the gauntlet of curious stares.
‘Susie,’ she said, her face loaded with concern. ‘You’ve got to face the world again some time. Bury your ghosts. Move on.’
It was pointless arguing with her.
I came back down in some dark trousers and a white shirt and again she gave me a concerned look. ‘How much weight have you lost, little sister?’
I didn’t know and I didn’t care either. Life was something to be endured. Not to enjoy any more.
Wisely she avoided the city but drove out towards Leek and the Mermaid Inn, a pub set high in the Moorlands, far away from civilisation, where it was wild and raw, yet quiet, peaceful, isolated – and private.
We ordered food and I played with mine while she scolded me.
Sara had very blonde hair – almost white – a throwback to our mother’s Icelandic origins and today she had pinned it up in a French plait. She was a classic beauty with small, regular features and blue-grey eyes, unlike her swarthy little sister. But one strand of pale hair
had escaped her severe hairstyle and as she talked and moved her head I focused on it. It bobbed and danced around, free and random. I concentrated on that bouncing curl. It had more spirit than I did. I might have had some once but now I had lost it. It had gone.
We finished our meal. I had eaten little of mine. Sara located the strand of hair and tucked it in with the others. I felt some sympathy for it. We ordered coffee and she took my hand. ‘Susie,’ she said, very gently, and I knew I was about to learn the true purpose of her visit. ‘Susie.’
I stopped concentrating on her hair and met her eyes instead.
‘Michael asked me to come.’ She spoke very softly, her voice heavy with sympathy.
Michael and Linda had married quietly in 1971, two months after I had been sent to prison. While I had been allowed to attend my husband’s funeral, flanked by two prison officers, I had not even asked to attend their wedding. My request would probably have been refused anyway. Michael was not a relative in the eyes of the law. I had lost even my ‘brother’.
Both Michael and Linda had written to me frequently while I had been ‘inside’ but I had neither read the letters nor responded to them. I was not sure whether I wanted any contact with them again particularly now they lived in Hall o’th’Wood. I could never go back there. It was better that they carried on with their lives and forgot me, better for them to pretend that I did not exist, had never
existed. In the three weeks since I had been released I had not picked up the phone nor, until now, answered the door.
I watched my sister warily.
‘Linda’s just had a baby.’
She waited for me to absorb this fact.
Then took a deep breath and ploughed on.
‘They asked me to ask you if you would be the child’s godmother.’
I stared at her and swallowed, feeling tears roll down my cheeks. I did not even try to brush them away. They were a relief. A baby? Richard’s grandson? A child who would be a few years younger than my own would have been. The children might have played together in the Long Room, rocking the horses, spinning the tops, winding up the clockwork trains. The pain was as physical as a knife stuck between the ribs.
I sat motionless. They could not have asked anything harder from me.
Sara tried again. ‘I think,’ she said gently, ‘that Richard would have wanted it.’ And I knew this was the truth. He would have wanted it.
I nodded, then wiped the tears away with a handkerchief. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
I would do it for Michael whom I had always loved – and for Richard too. He would have wanted it. I knew that. He would have smiled that tender, soft smile and asked me, knowing I would do it. I would have done anything for him. I had done anything for him.
I squeezed the tears away.
I chose a silk suit for my role as godmother. Cinnamon with grey piping and a grey hat with a net veil which covered my face. It was a convenient veil to hide me from prying eyes. They had chosen the local church at Balterley for the ceremony. It was the same church where Richard was buried and I drove myself – alone – to spend a few minutes communing with him at his graveside before seeing Michael, Linda and their son. I bent over the grey-stone headstone and traced the words with my fingers:
Here lies Richard Oliver 1916–1970 of Hall o’th’Wood
Beloved husband of Susanna, father of Michael
Thy will be done
‘Oh, Richard,’ I said softly. ‘If only you could have confided in me, treated me as a woman rather than a child who needs a treat.’ I touched the rough stone and knew I still loved him as I had on that first day when I had met him six years ago. I ached to have him back, to see that tender smile he reserved for me. I felt a terrible anguish that I would never see him again, never touch him, never speak to him. Then I stood up. I had a duty to perform.
I had not seen Michael or Linda since the night before we had set out for Hong Kong. At my request Michael had not attended any of the court hearings. They had taken up residence at Hall o’th’Wood immediately after Richard’s death.
I tried to slip into the church incognito but they must have been watching out for me. Linda stepped towards me, a tiny, silk bundle in her arms. ‘Meet Richard,’ she said, her dark eyes speaking volumes, ‘and take your vows seriously. You are his godmother and you will be his legal guardian. Remember this, Susie.’
I stared down at the tiny face and the child opened his eyes and stared back at me. I had a shock because they were Richard’s eyes. My Richard. I stared at the baby and felt a yearning for the child I should have had, for the life that would have been mine, for the past that had never been and the future that seemed to open out into a desert expanse.
I felt a great swell of love for the child and met his parents’ eyes. Michael was standing, motionless, behind his wife and baby son, watching me, gauging my reaction. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you.’ It was the best thing they could have done for me.
The christening was a brief affair and afterwards we travelled in a long, slow cavalcade back to Hall o’th’Wood. It was a dull day, cool too and the crooked walls seemed almost forbidding as I made my way up the drive and studied it. It seemed different now that Richard was not here. Less of a dream; more of a reality. It was still a majestic house but less a shrine and more a home.
Inside the house was festooned with flowers. They were everywhere, lilies and roses, the scent wafting from room to room. As the day was cool Maria had lit fires
and put candles on the long, oak table. I breathed in the scent of beeswax polish and missed the scent of a cigar. Unlike his father Michael never touched them. I wandered from room to room, remembering – vignettes of our lives, a word spoken here, a touch there, an event in this place or that. A kiss, a hug. I eyed the rug in front of the fire in the dining room and remembered. I looked up at the people who peered down at me from the walls and saw with fresh eyes this flaw in their character. I had not been here since I had been mistress of the house but I still looked at it with a mistress’s eyes, noted objects in other places, new books, an up-to-date television set. The scent of baby powder and washing. I moved on to stand in the doorway of the dining room. The table groaned with a buffet meal – sausage rolls, quiche, olives, bread rolls, cheese, a joint of ham. In the centre was the cake, topped by a tiny porcelain child in a crib. I moved forward, reached out and touched it. It seemed to represent all that I had lost. It was almost cruel. I studied the porcelain baby in the crib, its plump, rosy cheeks. Pink lips, chubby limbs. What would my child have been like? I could not know, only dream.
Most of the guests had clustered in the two main rooms but I let myself into what I still considered Richard’s study and I was touched. On the mantelpiece, in a silver frame, was the photograph taken of us on the night of our third wedding anniversary. I picked it up and studied it in great detail, seeing now all I had not seen then, everything, the black sheen of my satin dress,
my happy expression and full breasts, Richard’s tender face as he stared down at me, but I saw too the lines of anxiety criss-crossing his forehead and I felt overwhelmed with grief. I wanted him to walk in, brush my shoulders with his hands, speak to me. ‘Hello, Susie.’
I knew then, it had been a mistake to come back here. It made me too conscious of it all, my love, my life, this house. I leant against the mantelpiece and covered my face with my hands, overwhelmed by grief. I could not believe that I would never hold him again, never speak to him, never touch him, never see him. We would never again make love. He would never kiss me. I could never look up and see that tender expression on his face. I gave a cry.
‘You must be Susie.’ A brisk voice.
I turned around. A short, slim, middle-aged woman in a coral suit was watching me from the doorway. I didn’t know her.
‘I’m Julia,’ she said, holding out a gloved hand.
Julia. Of course. Richard’s first wife. The child’s grandmother. What more natural than that she would be here for her grandson’s christening?
I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.
‘I hadn’t thought you would be so young,’ she said frankly and perfectly at ease. ‘My dear,’ she said – not without kindness. ‘I’m so sorry about everything that happened.’ She looked around her. ‘I blame this bloody place,’ she said with sudden viciousness. ‘Gloomy and forbidding. Never liked it. I’m a glass-and-plastics girl
myself. But then there’s no accounting for taste, is there? I always said it would be the death of him, you know. And I was right.’
I said nothing. I could not imagine her with Richard.
‘Anyway,’ she said, moving away with a smile. ‘I’m so glad I’ve met you.’
People move in and out of our lives. Some become part of it – but others are a fleeting contact. Nothing more.
I was more than ever glad of that net veil which hid my face.
I knew I must leave then but before I could I must see Maria. I found her in the kitchen, busily spooning tiny amounts of caviar onto small, round biscuits.
‘Maria,’ I said.
She turned around with a cry, dropping the spoon on the floor.
‘I did not think you would come,’ she said. ‘They said you would but I did not believe them. I thought you would never come here again – not back to the place where you were so happy. So happy,’ she repeated. ‘But for all that it is good to see you.’ She hugged me tightly then, as my sister had done, and peered into my face. ‘He is dead,’ she said. ‘You are a young woman. You must move on. Don’t forget that. Please,’ she said, releasing me, ‘come again.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
She wiped her hands on her apron and gave a sly smile. ‘But you have a duty here now. You are his godmother. You must care for him. The new child.’
I nodded, hardly knowing what the role would mean.
I left quietly then, slipping away after saying goodbye to Michael and Linda. I knew Maria was probably right, that I would be back soon now I had a responsibility there.
Maybe it was fate that on that very day, when I returned to my cottage, a letter was lying on the mat with a foreign stamp. Airmail. It was from America, from someone in Long Island, New York, called Wernier-King IV who claimed to have a ‘unique and extensive’ collection of Staffordshire figures which he wanted cataloguing, photographing and valuing. He had heard that I might be willing to do the work for him. He estimated the work would take roughly three months and he named a sum which seemed exorbitant for a mere three months’ work. I read through the letter twice, noticing the gold coronet heading and decided that if he could afford to pay the money then I would go.
What else did I have to do?
Without changing out of my christening suit I sat down at the table and penned out my reply to Mr Wernier-King of Tacoma, East Hampton, Long Island, New York.