Loving Susie (9 page)

‘Everyone’s talking about you.’ The papers land with a thump, the draught lifting her notes.

She sighs at the disruption and reorganises the papers into a neat pile. ‘Dare I ask why?’

He extracts one of the magazine supplements and holds it out to her. On the front cover, she sees her own face staring back, her dark gold eyes unfathomable, her creamy skin shining against a cloud of brown-gold hair. The photographer has made her look like a pre-Raphaelite angel. It’s an oddly fey look.

‘Where Her Heart Is: Susie Wallace on Life, Love and Politics’.

She snorts. ‘“Life, Love and Politics’”? What do I know about such things? That interview was done ten weeks ago’

‘Great photograph.’

Susie is overcome by irritation. She snaps back at him, ‘Great photograph of the actress known as Susie Wallace. I don’t think it reflects anything at all about the person called Brenda Miles.’ She bends to her notes again, her hair falling forward so that it masks the deep lines etched on her forehead and the troubled look in the notorious golden eyes.

‘Oh come on, Susie.’

Something cracks. ‘Come on?’ She seizes the magazine and shakes it at him. ‘What do you think I feel like, Archie? Hmm? Seeing this? This—’ she searches for the word, ‘—this arrogant nonsense?’

She opens the magazine, thumbs through the pages until she gets to the feature, scans down the columns, begins to read. ‘“I like nothing better than to sit round a table with my husband Archie and my two fabulous children. Family means everything to me.” Ironic don’t you think? Or this – “In Susie Wallace’s sweet little cottage home, there are treasured mementoes of her parents, who sadly did not live to see her become a Parliamentarian. Her heritage, she says, is of huge importance to her. She likes to think of her past, and where she has come from, and what she, in turn, is handing on to the generations to come.”’

She tosses the magazine onto the table. ‘Jesus, Archie. Such crap. What does it all mean? What does anything mean any more?’

‘There are plenty of things that haven’t changed, Susie. We’re still all here – your family.’

‘You? My trusted husband, you mean?’ Her voice is rising with mounting hysteria and she is ready for a row. A big blow-out might serve to clear the air. Until now, her way of dealing with the situation has been to hide behind activity, lots of it. She has thrown herself into the role of politician, has hidden – as she does with such practised ease on stage – behind a mask of contrivance. No point in concealment from Archie. He knows her too well. But does she know him? Has she ever really known him?

Archie sighs resignedly. ‘Susie, we’ve discussed this. What was I to do? I was caught in a trap—’

She doesn’t want to hear the voice of reason. She doesn’t want explanation, excuses, common sense. She wants an argument. She raises her fist and thumps it down on the table so hard that the mugs and teaspoons jump and rattle.

‘You
lied
to me.’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘You lied by omission, Archie, for Christ’s sake let’s not split hairs.’

Archie stands perfectly immobile. She knows him of old, he is about to turn and leave. He hates arguments, he will walk away every time. Exasperated, she starts to move towards him, meaning to force him to stay and engage with her, when another voice brings her up short.

‘Mum? Dad? what’s up?’

Jonathan is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his hair rumpled, his face flushed from sleep. Susie stops on the spot, her bubble of anger popped as she takes in the anxiety on his face. He’s a small boy again, six years old and fresh from a nightmare, needing cuddles and reassurance. She wavers uncertainly. Her need is for exorcism through confrontation, but her men cannot bear this.

While she hesitates, Archie turns to the door. ‘I’m going to the studio.’

Jon looks from one parent to the other, distraught.

‘It’s all right, Jonno,’ Susie says heavily. ‘Just a spat, that’s all. You want some tea?’

But her son shakes his head and swings away. ‘I don’t think tea’s going to help.’

Susie slumps back onto her chair and tries to focus her attention on her work, but she’d dropped the magazine across her papers and has to move it. She glances at the offending cover, then flicks to the inside again. It’s not just about her, she realises, it runs across a number of pages and is a broader feature about Scottish actors headed ‘Six of the best’. The journalist’s choice starts with an actor called Jimmy Scirocco, the Irish-born madcap who made Scotland his home and whose once dazzling career was blighted by drink and womanising. A charmer, a wit, an actor of scintillating talent – and a wasted soul. The corners of her mouth lift a little, because being linked with this man is a real tribute. Ewan McGregor features, naturally, alongside Sean Connery and Alan Cumming. Who is the sixth? She turns the page.

Maitland Forbes.

At once she is back in time. It’s twenty-nine years ago. She has been married to Archie for only a year and she’s away from him, filming. It’s her chance for a breakthrough – this film has the potential to make her a star. It’s a costume drama about the Highland Clearances and they’re on the island of Mull, on a beautiful beach, its sands pure white in the summer sun. She hasn't yet met her co-star, though she knows who Maitland is. His face is for ever in the press because of some mad escapade, a drunken night out with the boys or – more recently – the news that shattered his army of fans: his wedding.

He’ll be fresh from his honeymoon. Will the glorious Serafina be with him? Susie anticipates arrogance and is prepared to dislike him. She expects disdain. She is prepared for pretty much anything – except for falling wildly, crazily in love.

She slaps the magazine shut and tosses it onto the recycling pile.

Has Archie seen the article, or did he only look at her photograph on the cover?

She pulls her work towards her determinedly. It was a long time ago and anyway, Archie never knew.

The angry exchange that day marks the beginning of a further decline in her relationship with Archie. In a lifetime of being close, Susie finds the growing estrangement between them difficult to live with, but she has no idea how to bridge it.

Archie takes a duvet and some bedding from the spare room and decamps to the studio.

‘The worst thing is,’ she confides to Karen over a coffee in the Garden Lobby of the Parliament, ‘I hate sleeping on my own. We’ve never been apart for more than a few days when he’s been away on a gig, and I hated that. I feel bereft.’

They’re snatching a brief break between meetings. Karen stops burrowing through the stack of files she has piled onto the low coffee table and gazes at her, the cool grey eyes appraising. ‘Can’t you talk to him?’ she asks sensibly.

But good sense doesn’t come into it. ‘No,’ Susie says flatly. ‘Sadly, I can’t.’

‘Talking about it really seems the only way forward. I know you feel he kept something really important from you, Susie, but I’m sure Archie sees it differently. I mean,’ she rocks back in her seat and holds Susie’s gaze, ‘Archie’s the straightest man I know. He must have had good reasons for keeping it from you, don’t you think?’

‘Oh sure. But they all seem to weigh on the side of my parents – my adoptive parents, I mean. And rest on the glib assumption that if I didn’t know...’ her voice trails away.

Karen glances at her watch. ‘We’ve got ten minutes before your Cross-Party Group meeting. Can we talk about this later? I need to go over these papers with you.’

‘Of course.’ Susie takes another gulp of coffee, tries to focus on the job.

Maybe Archie was right. 

Chapter Ten

Jonathan has a headache. It feels like the beginnings of a migraine, but it could be a side effect of the ill-tempered atmosphere in the house.

He wanders into the bathroom and opens the cabinet, searching for his migraine pills. If the thing blows up, he’ll have to call off work tonight, and that will be bad news, because if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid. Not that there’s much to spend cash on at the moment, since he split with Claire he hasn’t had another girlfriend.

There have been a couple of parties where he managed to hook up for a one-nighter. Good for the ego to know he can still pull when he exerts enough effort to charm, but hardly satisfying.

My fault, he thinks. How can I even begin to care for someone else when I can’t stand myself?

He dismisses the thought. It’s not down to me: it’s all down to my circumstances.

He swallows a couple of pills and prays he’s taken them in time. Most of his friends, he reflects, have jobs already, some have moved away, others are in long term relationships. He’s left with itinerant Aussies and the odd student. Not that he’s desperate for a girlfriend, but a bit of congenial company would be nice.

He closes the cabinet door and scowls at his reflection in its mirrored front. Like his father, he analyses what he sees with logic and reason.

a) I look a bit like Mum.

b) I think more like Dad.

c) I thought I inherited my caring side from Grandma MacPherson, Mum’s mother – but it turns out she wasn’t her mother after all.

So d) who was? And e) what was my real grandmother like?

Fuck it.

He turns away. His first instinct was right. What does it matter anyway? What is, is. We are who we are.

Outside, the weather has changed and what looked to be a wet morning has transformed itself into a sunny one. Jonno grabs a paperback and decides to sit in the sun. Perhaps a little warmth on his face will burn off the migraine. He’ll give it twenty minutes and see if the pills work.

On the bench outside the kitchen door, he can’t concentrate on reading. Instead, he ponders the question of inheritance. He isn’t much given to talking about his thoughts or feelings, but this stuff has been subtly eating away at him ever since the great revelation.

It’s been affecting them all in some way or other. Take Mannie, for instance – she’s gone absolutely mental, pushing Mum to find out about her birth mother with typical Mannie impatience. Mum’s refusing to do anything at all and worst of all, she seems to have fallen out completely with Dad.

Jon swishes at a fly that’s buzzing irritatingly round his head. Being jobless is bad enough, but having his parents at war with each other is much worse. Not even at war – if they’d just shout at each other and make up, it’d be a lot better. But that isn’t their way, and never has been. His mother has a temper. It can flare suddenly and magnificently, and is a thing to be feared, but it’ll die just as quickly, and hugs and tears and declarations of love will follow. You know where you are with that kind of temper.

But his father is different. His father hates arguments. He would rather put on his jacket and head off for a long walk than face confrontation of any kind. With his father, temper turns inward and morphs into moroseness.

Just like me.

Jon closes his eyes. Half an hour and he’ll have to set off for his shift. Bar work doesn’t faze him, but he doesn’t get much out of it either. He wants to put into practice all the technical expertise he learned at college and he yearns to find an outlet for all the ideas that buzz round his head. Even though he sits at his computer for hours, he’s frightened he’ll lose his hard-earned Photoshop skills or forget the intricacies of Illustrator and Dreamweaver.

He wants a challenge, not mindless pint pulling. And how can he even think of looking for a new girlfriend until he has some self respect?

A light toot of a car horn rouses him from his reverie. He opens his eyes, squints into the sun and prays the pills will take their effect soon. The postie’s van is coming up the drive.

‘Hi, Jon!’ Mike, the postman, is a cheerful guy who is for ever trying to persuade Jon to give up bar work in favour of the postal service. He steps out of his van with a bundle of mail and leans on the roof to watch Jon sift through it. Any break from tedium. ‘Saw the letter there. Franked by the Bank.’

His curiosity is evident as Jon lifts the envelope in question out of the pile.

Jon slits it open and scans the letter, tosses it aside. ‘Shit,’ he mutters.

‘Another rejection?’ Mike guesses sympathetically. ‘Give up that lark, Jon, I keep telling you. Join the Royal Mail. Good hours, pay’s okay, no worries to take home with you. And you won’t be stuck in an office. What more could you want?’

‘I’ll think about it, Mike,’ he promises.

Right now, it sounds like a good option.

He gives up on the idea of going to work and flops into bed with a blinding headache. By the time his mother comes in much later, he has managed to emerge from his pit and curl up on the sofa.

‘Hello, Jon,’ he hears her call, her voice surprised. ‘Not working tonight?’

He’s channel-hopping, holding the remote out in his right fist and flicking randomly up and down the air waves, not settling long enough on any one programme to assess whether it might be of interest.

‘Jonathan?’ her voice goes up a notch, clearly unsure whether he has heard her.

He grunts briefly to acknowledge her presence. His migraine has lifted, but has left a ghost of discomfort which is eased by minimising movement. He hears his mother drop her briefcase on the kitchen table and come into the living room. ‘I said, aren’t you working?’

It has been a long day. Somewhere about six his migraine receded but it left him deeply pissed off in every way – health-wise, job-wise, financially and romantically. Weakened with the pain, he abandoned all efforts at fortitude and resorted to the bottle. Not the best answer, but hey—

He has a beer in his left hand and there are three empties lying messily on the carpet. He watches a trifle groggily as his mother stoops to pick them up, then perches on the arm of the sofa.

‘—built with typical German precision—’ comes the unmistakeable voice of Jeremy Clarkson, before Jon flicks the remote again and some gem-shopping channel appears.

‘Nope.’ He doesn’t mean to be so curt, but it’s all he can manage.

‘Not on the rota?’

‘Didn’t feel like going in.’

‘Are you unwell?’ He sees her eye the empties.

All he can manage is a grunt. He is dimly aware of her walking to the kitchen and putting the bottles in the recycling box, then coming back in. God, he thinks fuzzily, she’s going to quiz me.

Apparently he is right, because she crosses to the television and switches it off at the set, then turns to face him.

‘Hey!’ he grunts crossly, propping his body up onto his elbow so that he isn’t completely supine.

‘And don’t tell me you were watching it, because quite clearly you weren’t,’ she says. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s up?’

How does she do that? Put her finger on things so accurately. Is it a thing all mothers do – or just his mother? He says, ‘Nothing,’ not meaning to be surly, just unable to find the right words.

‘Did you hear back about the job at the bank?’

‘Yeah.’ He’d dismissed things lightly to Mike the postie, but the rejection has cut more deeply than he cares to admit. On another day, he might have tried to discuss it with his mother, but today that’s beyond him.

‘I take it they didn’t offer it to you.’

‘They said I didn’t have enough experience.’ He turns his face towards her, aggrieved. ‘How am I meant to get experience if no-one will give me a job?’

His mother sighs. ‘You’ll get something, love. You just have to believe it.’

He purses his lips, turns his head away from her, says nothing.

‘Jonathan. Is that it? Is that all that’s troubling you?’

‘I’m bloody tired of the atmosphere in this house.’ The words come out in a rush, with a greater vehemence than he expected. ‘You and dad – what the hell’s wrong with the two of you? Can’t you just, I dunno, kiss and make up, for fuck’s sake?’ He feels like a petulant child, wanting everything to be perfect between the two people he loves most in the world, knowing that life isn’t like that.

‘Oh sweetheart,’ she sighs, sinking down beside him and enfolding him in her arms, ‘There’s nothing I’d like better.’

Grown man though he is, Jon allows himself to be hugged. His solidity feels like a deception: flesh and bones covering a fragile soul.

‘Saw you last night on the box, Mrs Wallace.’ Danny Robertson, one of the security guards, grins at Susie as she comes into the Garden Lobby. ‘Great stuff. Irene was in floods.’

‘Thank you, Danny.’ Susie stops to acknowledge the compliment.

‘That bit where you were thrown out by your family – shocking. How could they do that to you?’

‘Home, Where My Heart Is’ is based on a book of that name, set in the 1930s, about a young woman from a slavishly respectable middle class family who was thrown out when she found herself pregnant. It was dramatised as a series of five episodes, filmed more than twenty years ago. Susie played the role of the young mother, Jessica Playfair. After a lengthy wrangle over repeat fees, the drama is finally being rescreened.

‘Changed days,’ Susie smiles. ‘Doubtful if it would happen now but—’ She’s desperate to go. Danny means well, but the last thing she wants to do is talk about the series. ‘Home’ is proving too close to home by a long way. She can feel emotion welling up in her as she speaks and she turns away from Danny and resumes her brisk stride. ‘Give my best to Irene,’ she calls over her shoulder.

How many people today will mention the drama? And how can she school herself not to react emotionally?

 Upstairs, Karen smiles as she turned into her office. ‘Morning, Susie.’

‘Have you been here all night?’ Susie asks dryly. ‘What’s new?’

‘Four invitations to receptions, half a dozen magazines for info, a note from the Presiding Officer about conduct in the Chamber and a couple of nice thank you cards for the launches you did last week. Oh – and a reminder from Facilities about the unseasonably cold weather. All on your desk.’

‘What’s Facilities saying?’

Karen laughs. ‘The usual. Reminding us to use the temperature controls properly. Are you remembering your meeting with the Theatre Trust people at nine?’

‘Yup. What else mustn’t I forget?’

Karen reels off the list of her appointments for the day. ‘Oh, and I’ve already taken a call from Hugh Porteus at Rivo.’

‘About?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

Susie sighs. ‘I guess I’d better find out what he wants.’ If there’s one good thing about her job it is that it takes her mind off everything that is happening at home. She has to keep concentrating on what she’s doing, because slips and trips can be horribly public.

‘Hugh? It’s Susie. How can I help?’

The chairman’s voice coming down the line is a little less relaxed than normal. ‘I’m calling all the Board, Susie. It’s not great news, I’m afraid. I was concerned about things after our last meeting—’

‘Yes, there’s been a few rumblings in the media. I’m afraid I didn’t handle them perhaps as well as I should have.’

‘—no, no, you’ve been a model of discretion, as ever. But I know you were concerned about this second change of auditors, as were some other Board members. Possibly we should have pursued it a bit more vigorously at the time, but of course, Ricky was so reassuring.’

‘What’s the problem? Don’t tell me the grant isn’t going to come through?’

‘I think it will, though it’s not through yet. No, I’m afraid there seem to have been some irregularities. I had a friend of mine look through the accounts, I do hope you don’t mind, but as I said, I was a little uneasy. We had something similar, one time, hmm, with a verger, I recall.’

Hugh Porteous is a decent enough Chair, Susie thinks, but liable to tell long stories that have no clear ending. She tries to get him to focus. ‘Irregularities?’

‘Yes, indeed, as I was saying. Of course, my friend has no locus on this, we’ll have to take the matter through the auditors, but he did flag something up. It rather looks as though some funds have been, shall we say, hmm, diverted.’

‘Diverted? What does that mean?’

‘We’re not entirely sure yet. We think that the money given to us for the Youth Literacy Project was switched to do that roof repair. It may have been done with the best of intentions, of course, but it’s quite irregular and there’s now a possibility that we may be asked to return the grant.’

‘How on earth could that have happened?’

She can almost hear him shrug. ‘Truths, half-truths and lies. We were told an officer had been appointed and had started, but it seems that’s not the case. I had a long session with June Mackintosh—’

‘I thought she’d been made redundant?’

‘Indeed. But she came to me in great distress, with some tales that I should have listened to much earlier. June’s a very loyal person, but it does look, hmm, as if the redundancy was perhaps the result of her threat to expose mismanagement.’

‘Goodness. How dreadful. This is Ricky’s fault?

‘Possibly. We need to do a lot more work, I’m afraid. I’m just flagging it up. It was June who has been dropping hints to the media, apparently.’

‘Really?’ It seems her instincts might have been right.

‘Hmm, yes. She feels she wasn’t being listened to. However, rather than go any further, she decided to try to get my ear again and I’m very thankful she did. There may be a chance we can rectify the situation. It will mean a lot of meetings with the new auditors, I’m afraid, and probably some rather difficult meetings with Ricky.’

‘Oh how dreadful. Do you want me to do anything?’

‘Not for the moment, I’ll keep you informed, of course. But I’m afraid there’s one more thing. And it’s not good.’

‘Oh?’

‘It seems that the Trustee Indemnity Insurance policy has not been paid up.’

‘What?’ Susie is appalled.

‘There may be some exposure to the debt.’