Apple of My Eye (8 page)

Mabel Cooper stood in her corner shop, listening to Emily Hopkins talk about her brother Harry’s newborn son, John. ‘Such a beautiful baby! And clever too. Do you know …’ Mabel nodded politely, while wondering whether Emily was actually going to buy anything.

Ronnie Sidney entered the shop, dressed in his school uniform. In his hand was a white envelope.

‘Hello, Ronnie, dear. What a nice surprise.’

‘How are you, Auntie Mabel?’

‘All the better for seeing you.’

He approached the counter. Emily’s mouth tightened. She looked him up and down as if trying to find fault with his appearance. ‘How’s your mother getting on?’ she asked curtly.

‘Fine, thank you.’

‘Well, I must be off. Next time, Mabel, I’ll bring a photograph of John.’

‘And a shopping list,’ muttered Mabel as Emily left. Then she smiled at Ronnie. ‘Is that letter for your mother?’

‘Yes.’ He held out a shilling. ‘Can I have a stamp, please?’

She gave him one. ‘Did you send her our love?’

He nodded, while fixing the stamp to the envelope.

‘And how are
you
getting on, Ronnie?’

His head remained lowered. ‘All right.’

‘Really?’

He looked up. Managed a smile. ‘Really.’

She gave him a chocolate bar. The biggest one they had. ‘Have this too.’

‘Thanks, Auntie Mabel.’

‘Have tea with us soon. Bring some of your pictures. We’d love to see them.’

‘I will. Goodbye, Auntie Mabel. Say hello to Uncle Bill for me.’

She watched him make his way out of the shop. His second-hand uniform was too big but he would grow into it in time. A group of boys were playing football on the street outside, making the most of the last few minutes of daylight. One of them called for him to
join them but he shook his head and carried on his way.

Once, years ago, she had heard a psychiatrist talking on the wireless, saying that often creative people needed solitude to truly hear the music inside themselves. Ronnie was something of a loner and he was artistic. Her husband, Bill, had a hunch that Ronnie would be famous one day. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps, twenty years from now, people would be asking her about
the
Ronnie Sidney and she would tell them: ‘He was always contained. Solitary. But that was how he needed to be. Couldn’t waste energy on the mundane. Not if he was to hear the music inside himself.’

Little Ronnie Sidney. A great man of the future? She hoped so. But only time would tell.

Another customer entered. She prepared to make a sale.

All the lights were off in 41 Moreton Street. Ronnie, wrapped in his dressing gown and using the moon for illumination, sat on the window ledge of his bedroom drawing a picture for his mother.

It was a copy of his favourite painting. Ophelia drowning with flowers in her hair. It wasn’t as perfect as the original. He wasn’t as skilled as Millais. Not yet. But one day he would be a famous artist and everyone in the world would know his name. It was what his mother wanted for him. He wanted it for her.

Her bed was stripped bare now. Uncle Stan had told him that he could sleep in it if he wanted. A change
from the camp bed, which was almost too small for him. But he had refused. It was his mother’s bed. He didn’t want it to be used by anyone else, not even himself.

The moon was full. A great white orb high in the cold night sky. He stopped his work and gazed up at it, imagining as he had so many times before that he could see his father’s plane flying across its face. In spite of his mother’s pleas he refused to give up hope. One day his father
would
come and then the three of them would be together. He and his mother would finally be members of a proper family rather than just unwanted attachments to the family of others.

It would happen one day. He knew it would.

A train rattled past in the darkness, filling the room with noise and light. In the world behind his eyes he was walking towards a beautiful mansion by a river where his parents stood waiting while the train came off its rails, careering down the bank, smashing into the house he had left behind, wiping out the lives of those who slept there like a careless hand crushing a family of insects.

The drawing was finished. Good, but not good enough. Tearing it up, he began again, focusing all his energies upon the page, shutting out all background noise to better hear the music inside himself. Bundles of jumbled notes that in time would swell and grow into concertos and on into symphonies. And where those melodies would lead him only time would tell.

Little Ronnie Sunshine, a pocket full of rye.

Little Ronnie Sunshine, slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.

Little Ronnie Sunshine, a Mozart in the making.

Little Ronnie Sunshine …

Osborne Row. A quiet street of terraced houses on the west side of Kendleton. Susan Ramsey lived at number 37 with her parents and a million photographs.

Every available surface was covered in framed images. Faded portraits of the grandparents she had never really known. Pictures of her father as an impish schoolboy or handsome in the uniform he had worn during the war. Pictures of her mother on childhood holidays or outside the church on her wedding day. But most of all there were pictures of Susan herself. Dozens of them. Every one of her six years lovingly chronicled for all to see.

Sometimes, when visitors were expected, her father would remove her pictures from the hallway and living room while her mother smiled and shook her head. When the visitors arrived Susan would hide on the stairs, looking at one of her books and waiting to be called down.

And as she entered the room, gazing curiously at the strange faces around her, the adult conversation simply died away.

Then it began, just as it always did. The talk of
actresses known to all except herself. Vivien Leigh. Gene Tierney. Jean Simmons. Ava Gardner. Most were usually mentioned. But the one always discussed was Elizabeth Taylor. Susan knew nothing about Elizabeth Taylor except that she had once owned a beautiful collie dog called Lassie but then given it to a boy called Roddy McDowall. This meant that Elizabeth Taylor must be stupid, as if Susan had owned a dog she would not have given it to anyone. A dog was the thing she wanted most in the world.

Well, second most.

She would sit beside her mother on the sofa, eating sponge cake and telling the visitors about the things she was learning at school and Charlotte Harris who was in her class and lived in the same street and was her best friend. The visitors would smile and nod while her mother stroked her hair and her father, unnoticed, pulled faces so that eventually she would burst out laughing, spraying crumbs everywhere. Her father would then adopt a serious expression, remarking on how quickly poisons took effect and making her laugh even harder.

Sometimes, after being excused, she would sit in front of her mother’s dressing-table mirror, studying the face that caused such excitement in others. It was heart shaped, framed by thick, dark hair. Blue-black, her father said. The skin was pale, lips red and full, nose slim and elegant. Huge eyes, rimmed by dark lashes, were so blue as to be almost purple. Violet, her mother said. The sort of face, said others, that men would one day die for.

But for now it was just her face. Quickly she would become bored and return to her own room with the bedspread decorated with moons and stars, the shelves full of books and toys and the conch shell her father had bought her while on holiday in Cornwall and which she had only to press to her ear to hear the sound of the sea.

In the centre of the room was a wooden crib that her paternal grandfather had made. Inside it, covered in a blanket, was a china doll that had been a present from her paternal grandmother. Both had died before her second birthday. She had no recollection of either but still she missed them. Her father talked about them often, keeping both alive in her mind.

She would kneel beside the crib, rocking it gently, singing the songs she had learned at school and feeling suddenly sad because the thing she wanted more than anything in the world was a brother or sister. A real-life doll that she could love and protect, just as her parents loved and protected her.

There would never be a baby. That was what her father had said. ‘Why would we want another child,’ he had gone on to ask, ‘when we have the perfect one in you?’ Though he was smiling his eyes had been sad and she had known that this was all part of some strange adult mystery that she did not yet understand and could only accept.

But still the longing remained, and as she sang to the doll she would stare into its painted eyes, willing it to live and make her dreams come true.

*

Kendleton, like most small towns, had its exclusive addresses.

The most prestigious was The Avenue: a collective description for the grand houses to the south-east of the town centre, all with huge gardens that backed on to the Thames. Susan’s parents were not friends with any of the residents of The Avenue, but one of Susan’s classmates, Alice Wetherby, lived there, and Susan and her friend Charlotte had been to Alice’s house for a party. During the party Alice’s elder brother Edward had thrown Charlotte’s glasses into the river and made her cry, so Susan had punched Edward in the mouth and made him cry, immediately being sent home in disgrace and so bringing to an end her association with Kendleton’s elite.

But she still had connections. The next most desirable address was Queen Anne Square; a quadrangle of beautiful red-brick houses in the shadow of Kendleton Church and home to Susan’s godmother Auntie Emma and her husband Uncle George. The two of them had married the previous summer and Susan had been bridesmaid, sharing the honours with a girl called Helen, who had thrown a tantrum because she didn’t like her dress and then been spectacularly sick when they were halfway down the aisle.

The heart of Kendleton was Market Court: a huge oval space at the centre of the town with streets running off it like the strands of a spider’s web. The wealthier members of town lived on the east side,
where houses were larger and streets wider, and ‘crossing the Court’ was something that many a west-side resident longed to do.

Market Court was full of shops, including Ramsey’s Studio, which belonged to Susan’s father. He was a photographer, specializing in portraits. Two years earlier a local newspaper had run a competition to find ‘Little Miss Sparkle’ and Susan’s father had submitted her portrait. She had won and received ten shillings, a book of fairy tales and the honour of having her picture in the paper under the heading ‘Little Susan Ramsey sparkles like a star’. Her father had had the article framed and hung on the wall of his shop so that everyone could see.

And from that day on she was always his little Susie Sparkle.

July 1952.

Until it happened, Susan had no idea that her mother was ill.

There were no obvious signs. Though her mother had complained of tiredness she often had trouble sleeping. And if she was quieter than usual, it was Susan’s father who had always been the exuberant one.

It happened on a Wednesday afternoon. A hot, sticky afternoon two days before the start of the school holidays. Susan and Charlotte walked home with Charlotte’s mother, whose turn it was to collect them, their satchels bouncing against their thighs as they made plans for the summer. Charlotte’s cousins from
Norfolk were coming to stay and Susan said that they should build a den in the woods to the west of the town. Her father had built dens there when he was a boy and had promised to show them a good place.

They reached number 22: Charlotte’s house. Charlotte’s mother asked Susan whether she wanted to come in and play but Susan said that she had promised to be home promptly. After saying goodbye she ran on to number 37 and knocked on the door.

She waited but the door remained closed. After counting to twenty she knocked again. Still nothing. She opened the letterbox. ‘Mum, it’s me. Let me in.’ The wireless was playing in the background. Her mother must be there. Why wasn’t she opening the door?

She stood on the doorstep, unsure what to do. Mrs Bruce from number 45 passed by, carrying her shopping basket and battling with her dog, Warner, who was pulling in the other direction. She gave Susan a wave. Susan waved back while wondering whether to call Charlotte’s mother.

Then the door did open. But only an inch. From behind it she heard footsteps moving away. Slow and heavy. Like those of an old person. Not like her mother at all.

For a moment she hesitated. The first pricklings of fear starting within her.

Then, pushing the door open, she walked in. From the living room came the sound of movement, so she entered it.

Her mother was sitting on the sofa, wearing a dressing gown. Both her feet were bare. A hand kept tugging at a lock of hair. On the coffee table was a teapot and two cups, a huge plate of sandwiches and an apple with a candle burning in its centre.

‘Mum?’

No answer. The wireless was broadcasting a play about sailors.

Susan began to approach. Her mother turned. For a moment her eyes were so blank it was as if she didn’t know her daughter at all. Then the light of recognition. But faint. Like a flickering bulb that could blow at any moment.

‘Sit down. Eat your tea.’ The voice was flat. Empty. Not like her mother’s voice at all. The hand continued to pull at the lock of hair.

Susan looked at the table. The sandwiches, neatly cut and trimmed, were empty. Just pieces of bread curling in the heat of the room. Wax from the candle slid over the apple and down to the table beneath.

The fear kept growing inside her. She didn’t understand. What was happening? Why was her mother acting like this?

Her mother pointed to the apple. ‘Make a wish.’

‘Mum?’

‘Make a wish. Wish for something nice. Wish …’

The voice faded away. The hair was so frayed it was starting to break. The wireless played on regardless while outside boys rode past on their bicycles, ringing their bells and laughing.