“Dinner? Hyena on toast.”
But it was salad. Anne had, for about eighteen months, been leaving her book-keeping job in central London at three-thirty, to beat the rush hour. “I’m indispensable, I’ve got another raise, too. No one can add up nowadays. Not even you.” This was true enough. Susan was sometimes impressively literate, but nearly innumerate, and had failed maths without a backward glance.
“You don’t want to go back this new term, do you?” Anne had said.
“No.”
“Do you want to try Silverguilds?”
They had looked at each other. When Susan didn’t reply, Anne said, “Art college is fine, Susan. Your Miss Whatsit said Silverguilds would certainly take you, and you could get a grant.”
Susan shrugged. She was secretly afraid, at sixteen, of the enormous adult world she had always, until recently, hankered after. Its seeming freedoms having gradually, by her own observation, been revealed to her as slavery, a condition of grim responsibility and personal onus childhood had not equipped her for. And she must Work, have a Job. But what? For Susan, she existed. That was the Job. But it wasn’t enough. You had to earn money and take your Place. And surely she was fairly ungifted? You can speak French, they said. It could be got to a higher standard, and you could teach. (This thought was withering.) Susan began to stammer whenever she spoke French in class. Otherwise the art mistress, a long, pear-shaped woman with a wet nose, told Susan she might make a career in commercial art, and so the phantom of Silverguilds had swum into sight. “I won’t get in,” Susan said. Even if she did, art college was just another kind of school. The child’s, if not the adult’s slavery, would go on. Getting up at the crack of dawn in winter, told what to do, given homework, bored, frustrated. Not inarticulate, yet she did not say, could not sort it out to say, only look sullen. Would not enthuse. True to form, Anne ignored her. By August there had been a successful interview, the grant promised, everything settled.
When the salad was eaten, Susan made coffee. They went on to the balcony to drink it, for this was not the flat of four years previously. Six weeks after the old woman died, they had moved nearer to inner London, and a couple of years after that, moved again, here, an upmarket, three-roomed apartment, with clean white walls and a view.
It was Friday, and Susan knew Anne was going out again tonight. Then Anne surprised her by saying, “What will you do this evening?”
“Oh, I’ll play records.”
“Or,” Anne paused, “why don’t you come with me?”
“But you’re going out.”
“Yes.”
Susan looked at Anne. “But you’re going out with a man.”
“Yes. And the same one I’ve been seeing for quite a long time.”
“Oh good.” Embarrassed, accustomed to total exclusion in this quarter, and happy by now with that, Susan felt a prickly unease creep through her body. “So…”
“So, why not come and meet him.”
This was unheard of. Unheard of for anyone. One’s mother’s boyfriend.
“Why?” said Susan. She felt frightened. She often did, now. The fright was never coherent, yet vaguely everywhere, lurking.
“Why not?”
“No thanks.”
“All right.” Anne gazed across at the trees of the common, divided from them only by the wide and noisy, fuming main road, the ashes of the day. “But you’ll be meeting him anyway, Susan. He’s coming to lunch tomorrow.”
“Well, I can go out. Jo and I were going to look for some shoes –”
“No, I don’t want you to go out. I want you to stay in. Doll yourself up and make yourself a pretty girl, and meet Wizz.”
Susan’s mouth opened. A laugh leapt fluttering and cackling out like a demented hen.
“Yes, it’s a funny name, isn’t it? A nickname. Glad you like it. He calls us Wizz and Wilde, the Unbeatable Duo. Alliteration, the thing you like such a lot.”
Anne, at nearly forty-six, still kept her pure, scarcely-lined skin, was svelte and glamorous. Her hair was nowadays a shoulder-length, lustrous copper. On her good days, which were many, she looked forty or less. Only first thing in the morning, sometimes last thing at night, did she seem her age, or any real age at all.
But Susan had still not become herself, and intuitively knew it. She was not pretty. Heavy, and inclined to acne, she hid in her own long fair hair, like a pig in grass. She hated, of course, to be inspected. Preferred to forget her outer case, waiting, in the hope of miraculous change, some science fiction invention that might save her.
She had never, herself, essayed a boyfriend. No one had been ‘interested’. She had had ‘crushes’ on unattainable beings glimpsed on buses and trains, in films and on TV.
Her mother was quite another animal, and lived in another world.
“I can’t make myself pretty.”
“Yes you can. Wear your blue dress.”
“I spilled something on it.”
“Oh for God’s sake. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you, Susan. Listen to me. Things have become serious, between Wizz and me.”
“Wizz –”
“Yes, Wizz. Wizz. His real name is Derek. He prefers Wizz. Wouldn’t you?”
“No.”
“You have to meet him.”
“Why? He’s yours not mine.”
“You’re jealous?”
“Of course I’m not –” Incestuously affronted, Susan felt her face go scarlet.
“Listen, Susan. No more arguments. You’re going to meet him. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to live with him, you stupid child. Are you really so dumb? And there is a chance – a wonderful chance – we may be going to America.”
“Wh –”
“Yes, the States. Now what do you say?”
Told to open the door, Susan stood behind it for as long as she could. Then of course he rang again. So she opened it wide and tried to smile confidently and in the correct hostess manner. But the smile stuck, keeping her face pulled open in a rictus, like the door. Wizz had amazed her.
“You must be Sue.”
“Yes, I’m Susan.”
“Hi, Sue.”
He was not
