Don't You Love Your Daddy? (16 page)

After he had gone I lay shaking, feeling numb and sick. Dolly crept on to the bed and I clung to her as I sobbed. Once I heard his snores I went to the bathroom to clean my teeth and rinse my mouth furiously. The taste and smell still remained, and in desperation I chewed the edge of the soap until I retched. But nothing I did that night or on subsequent ones made me feel clean.

Sue started to become a regular visitor to our house, just brief visits that never lasted more than an hour or so, but always long enough for me to see how much she wanted to be in control. Each time she and my father sat down for tea, my grandmother fussed over them and I found myself comparing Sue unfavourably to my mother.

While my mother had been vulnerable, Sue was brittle and assured. My mother’s laugh had been melodic, but Sue’s was high and tinkling. My mother always smiled at me with eyes softened by love, but Sue’s remained hard and indifferent. She might have said that she knew we would be friends, but I saw no effort on her part to put those words into action. When she thought I wasn’t looking I saw her push Dolly roughly away, and wrinkle her nose when she saw the little dog jump up against my legs for attention. Every time I sat down for tea she checked that my hands had been washed. I envied Billy his apparent indifference to her remarks, but he had learnt to save his energy for getting what he really wanted: more juice or sweets, which earned whoever gave them to him a beatific smile.

My anger with her for having taken my mother’s place left me glowering, and I wished that she would go away and leave us alone. I resented her comments and disliked how often I heard her saying that animals shouldn’t be allowed into the kitchen when food was being prepared or eaten. In fact, she suggested they should be outside, where I knew Dolly would be for the duration of Sue’s visit, if she had her way.

‘Just thinking of you, Sally,’ she said, on more than one occasion. ‘Your father told me you’re delicate and we don’t want you catching anything from the dirt she brings in, do we?’

Apart from her comments about Dolly, her conversation, which was interspersed with her shallow laugh, was entirely about her wedding plans. The first time the wedding was mentioned I had frozen and stared, bewildered, at Nana and then at my father. Receiving no denial or reassurance, I ran out into the garden with Dolly hot on my heels. I sat on the step hugging her and crying into her fur. Her cold nose pressed against my cheek and her little pink tongue licked away the tears. I didn’t want a new mother, certainly not Sue, I wanted my old daddy all to myself – but if he married then maybe, just maybe, the visits to my bedroom would stop.

My grandmother came outdoors and gently closed the door behind her. She tried to comfort me, and when I asked if it was true, she said, ‘Your daddy did tell you and Pete you were to have a new mother, didn’t he, Sally?’ I nodded slowly. He had been telling us he was planning to get married. ‘You must be excited for your daddy, Sally. You and Billy need a mother and I’m getting too old to cope with Billy as much as I have to do. Come back inside, Sally, and don’t be a baby.’

I returned silently to the table and sat miserably as Sue held court about the wedding plans, oblivious to my suffering.

It was to be in the town where her parents lived, the same town, she said, where my father would soon be working. This statement was dropped carelessly into the conversation and I looked at my grandmother to see if this was news to her. She made no comment and didn’t even look surprised, so I took no notice of it. I was still trying to process the idea that the wedding between them was now a reality.

‘Sally, you’re going to be one of my bridesmaids,’ she told me blithely, then went on to describe the dress I would be wearing. A long turquoise one with frills around the hem. ‘And Billy will just look adorable in the little turquoise suit I’m going to have made especially for him.’ Casting a smile in his direction, she added, ‘And I’m getting him a bow-tie as well. He’ll be the only little boy there. He’ll look a proper little man.’ Another high-pitched tinkling laugh rang out.

Finally the wedding date was set for late September. I was to be the only bridesmaid from our side of the family and the other four, whom I had never met before, were the daughters of Sue’s friends. Three weeks before the wedding I was taken to the dressmaker for my first fitting. I had to stand still as seams and hem were pinned, and although I found it boring I had mixed emotions: every little girl wants to be a bridesmaid, but not necessarily to their father’s new wife.

‘One more dress check the day before the wedding. You and Billy can get ready at your granny’s house,’ she told me, ‘and come to my house just before we leave for the church. You’ll meet the other bridesmaids then.’

I had hoped I would be taken there earlier. My schoolmates had described their own bridesmaid experiences and the fun of all the bridesmaids dressing together, photographs being posed for and helping the bride before setting off. I dreaded going into the church surrounded by strangers, but it was clear that that was not Sue’s plan. I was disappointed but I knew better than to say anything.

A week before the wedding, Sue told me that we were going to have a ‘girls’ day out’ before she left us to have an early night. ‘The future bride needs her beauty sleep before her big day.

‘Last-minute shopping, Sally,’ she said, with one of those lipstick and teeth-filled smiles that never seemed to reach her eyes. ‘Then a trip to the hairdresser.’ She picked up some of my long tresses and examined them critically. ‘Don’t think you’ve ever been, have you?’

I shook my head and told her indignantly that my mother hadn’t wanted it cut.

‘Well, that was when you were younger,’ she replied, with a note of barely concealed exasperation in her voice at what she saw as my lack of gratitude. ‘You want it to look nice for my wedding, don’t you? I’m going to treat you to a pretty new hairstyle so you look as nice as all the other little girls who are bridesmaids,’ she finished brightly.

Surprised at this act of togetherness and generosity, I got up early on the morning she was coming. My father was still asleep, and although for the week before the wedding, maybe not wanting dark shadows under my eyes on the great day, he had left me alone, I was wary of waking him. I tiptoed to the bathroom to wash and clean my teeth, then put on my best dress. I sat in the lounge to make sure I was ready for her when she arrived.

She gave me a quick inspection, then said I still had tangles in the back of my hair. Grudgingly, she picked up my brush and ran it through the offending section. ‘That’s the last time I’ll have to do that,’ she said. I didn’t know what she meant.

The moment she was satisfied I looked tidy, she bundled me into her purple Mini and drove us into the nearby big town. She was a much faster driver than my father and my hands clutched at the seat as we flew round the corners on the narrow country roads.

When we arrived, she parked in front of one of the town’s large department stores. ‘Come along, Sally, we have things to do!’ We went for her last-minute shopping, which mainly consisted of her trying out different shades of makeup. Perfume, blusher, eye shadows and lipsticks, along with a stick of pale foundation and an assortment of bottles and jars of the latest in skin care, were parcelled up and paid for before we made our way to the hairdresser. I was amazed to see her purse was brimming with money and she laughed as she handed over a fistful of cash. ‘My daddy’s treat to his favourite only daughter!’

In the bright lights of the chrome-and-glass-filled hairdresser’s I was seated in a huge white leather chair and a bright pink towel was draped around my shoulders. The music was turned up really loud and ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’ blared out of the speakers. Sue sat alongside me and sang along to the music as the manicurist prepared to file her long nails. ‘So what are we doing for you today, little lady?’ asked the stylist.

Before I could open my mouth to say I didn’t want it changed much, Sue whisked a page from a magazine out of her handbag and proceeded to show the hairdresser a picture of something I couldn’t see. ‘That’s how I want my future stepdaughter’s hair cut,’ she instructed, and the hairdresser lifted and examined my waist-length white-blonde hair.

It wasn’t until I saw the large silver scissors in her hand that I realized what was going to happen.

Snip, snip, they went, and lock after lock of my treasured hair fell to the floor. I shrieked with horror as I saw how much was being cut off. The one thing my mother had loved above all else was my hair. I pictured myself sitting on her knee and her saying, ‘One hundred strokes, Sally,’ then slowly brushing it as her hand rested on my shoulder.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t be such a baby, Sally!’ Sue scolded, but nothing was going to stop the tears running down my face.

The hairdresser stopped cutting when it was just below my ears.

‘That looks nice now, doesn’t it? Much easier for you to look after,’ Sue said, as the hairdresser held up a mirror so I could see the back of my head reflected. I didn’t think it looked nicer and decided that she’d meant it would be easier for her. At that moment I realized she was going to try to replace my mother in every way.

The second stop was the dressmaker, and I had my last fitting for my dress. ‘You look so lovely, dear,’ the seamstress said kindly, but when I looked in the mirror all I could see was a pale face still childishly round, topped by ugly short hair.

The Indian summer that we had been enjoying throughout September ended on the day of the wedding. Instead of waking up to sunlight filtering through my curtains, there was a dull grey light. Crawling out of bed I looked out of the window at thick, heavy clouds that promised rain. ‘Come on, Sally. Time to get you off to your grandmother’s house for her to get you ready,’ my father said, flashing me one of his rare ‘old-daddy’ smiles.

After a breakfast of toast and Marmite with a glass of milk, he dropped me at Nana’s house where Billy and I were to be dressed in our new outfits. As soon as I walked through the front door I saw the look of shock on my aunt and grandmother’s faces. ‘What’s happened to your beautiful hair?’ asked my aunt, as soon as my father had closed the door behind him.

‘Sue took me to the hairdresser’s yesterday,’ I said glumly. ‘She said it would look nice for the wedding and be easier for me to manage afterwards.’

‘Ump, easier for her, more like,’ I heard my aunt say, in a tone I had heard many months before: she had used it when she had criticized my mother. I knew instantly that she was the one person in the family that Sue had not managed to win over.

‘Well, it’s too short to plait, but I know what we’ll do.’ She disappeared into her bedroom and came back with a strip of turquoise velvet ribbon and a length of elastic. A needle appeared and she stitched busily until, within a few minutes, she was holding a hairband. ‘This will go with your pretty dress,’ she said, bestowing a smile on me. ‘We’ll soon have you looking nice.’

A bath was run for me, with bubbles for a treat, and once I was dry, I dressed myself in the clothes that were laid out. My aunt combed my hair and put on the velvet band to keep it in place, then declared I was ready.

My grandmother brought Billy downstairs. Wearing a miniature version of a grown-up’s suit and the bow-tie, he did look very cute. Then, warning us not to move a muscle, she and my aunt went to change into their outfits of smart dresses and matching jackets. My nana’s was in navy blue Crimplene, my aunt’s pale yellow, and their heads were adorned with the matching floppy hats they had found on an outing to Littlewoods. When the rest of my father’s family arrived, the small house seemed to be bursting with relatives of all ages. The younger girls, taking little notice that the weather had changed, wore pretty dresses. I looked enviously at my cousins in the latest Laura Ashley prints – I hated my bridesmaid attire. The boys, like their fathers, wore suits while my two other aunts were dressed in a similar fashion to my grandmother and her unmarried daughter.

My grandfather, who refused to wear anything but the dark grey suit he had worn to church for as long as I could remember, appeared from the kitchen. He had been getting some peace and quiet, he said, to read the newspaper. He was to drive my father’s car and drop Billy and me at Sue’s house before going to the church with Nana and my aunt. My father was to go directly to the church with my uncle, who was his best man. The rest of the family were following them in a motley assortment of cars.

My father was the last to arrive back at the house and I gasped at how smart he and his brother were looking. Both wore pale grey suits with wide lapels and fashionably flared trousers. Their shirts were purple, their wide kipper ties pale pink, and on their feet they wore gleaming black shoes. I noticed that instead of buttons my father’s shirt cuffs were held together with gold links. ‘A present from Sue,’ he told my grandmother, when he noticed her admiring them. He looked especially striking that day, with his dark brown hair falling almost to his shoulders and his eyes sparkling in anticipation of his second marriage.

My grandmother clearly thought so too. ‘Oh, Dave, you do look handsome,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t he, Dad?’

‘He looks well enough,’ was the only answer she received from my grandfather.

My aunt tucked her arm into my father’s and looked up at him adoringly. ‘I hope Sue knows how lucky she is,’ she said.

‘Of course she does,’ he replied laughingly, then complimented her and my grandmother effusively on their appearance.