Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

11am. Time ticking away. Cases in the hall, hand luggage packed. The telephone never stops ringing; people wanting to say goodbye. Isaac’s gone out to take a video back. He loses track of time in video shops. I emphasised that we were leaving in an hour and his father would be most upset if he’s not back in time to say goodbye… He stared at the ground and said nothing. Possibly irritated, possibly sad, it’s so hard to know with teenagers, I normally don’t bother to analyse but leaving home makes me take them seriously, thank Christ you only have to do it once.

I’ve promised Chris to make time for a long talk with Susy. I don’t begrudge her it, though talks with Susanna always seem twice as long as they really are. Talking to sixteen-year-olds is never plain sailing. But today I grudge her nothing; impending freedom always makes me generous.

I hear her slopping around upstairs in Christopher’s slippers, which are much too big, though her feet are big enough. Slap, slap, an unharmonious sound, a nagging reminder that she’s there.

(While we’re away she’ll never bother to get up. She’ll answer the door in her dressing-gown. Must talk to her about that. Isaac will have to answer the door — for the vision of Susy, flushed from sleep, a pink and nubile teenage girl, clutching her dressing-gown half-heartedly round her as she answers the door to the goggling milkman, is not a calming one.)

11.45. Put down the phone. I’m travelling in the cream shantung which, despite appearances, does not crumple. And the cream silk blouse, and Chris’s pearls, the ones he gave me on our wedding day. Instead of going up to deal with Susy, I find myself polishing my beige kid shoes, which don’t need polishing. I put them on, and tap upstairs.

Even with those heels on I’m smaller than her. Sometimes she makes me feel flimsy.

‘Susy?’ I stand outside her door. No answer, just a shuffling, like an animal at bay.

‘Susy, I want to talk.’

‘Oh.’ The tone is heavily neutral. A few seconds pass before I hear her push back her chair and pad to the door. She opens it. She is a very large girl. Her yellow hair springs out like straw.

‘Do you want to come in? Or do you want me to come out?’ She implies she herself is eager for neither. And yet, she’s shy, as well. And perhaps there is a hint of wistfulness in the downcast eyes, briefly lifting, falling. And she’s got some clothes on, before twelve o’clock, on a day when she doesn’t have to go to school, as if she is making a last-ditch attempt to convince us of her maturity. Black mini-skirt and straining t-shirt — never mind, she’s dressed.

‘I’d thought perhaps we’d have a chat…’

The children never like it when we say things like that. I perch on the bed. She inspects my clothes. Those long green eyes can look very sharp.

‘You look terribly smart.’ Said like that, it’s an insult.

‘Susy, are you going to be all right? — with your work and everything? You know, all right?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be all right? You and Dad think I’m a cretin.’ She yawns elaborately, and fluffs her bright hair.

‘Of course we don’t. But your father worries…’

‘Maybe he could come and talk to me himself.’ Pain shows through; she bites her plump lips. She’s right of course, he can’t face her.

‘Of course he will, before we go. But he had to make one last trip to the office…’

‘He always has a good excuse.’

I rush on. ‘Look will you be all right for money? Up to a hundred and twenty pounds a week. Just draw it from the bank. The bills are all paid by standing order. Your father would hate you to be short of money.’

(You see, we haven’t been irresponsible; we’ve nothing to feel guilty about, yet it’s as if Susy can smell our guilt. Not my guilt, his guilt; I’m not their mother. Stepmothers aren’t supposed to feel guilt.)

‘Thanks.’

Silence. How to begin?

‘Are you getting on all right with Tim?’

Tim is Susy’s current boyfriend. There have been others worse than him. He’s smaller than her, but so are most people. He has a job. He doesn’t smell. He doesn’t appear to be a heroin addict.

‘Yeah. Thanks for asking.’

She’s not going to help me, that much is clear.

‘Susy. When we talked before…’

She doesn’t say a word. She stares at me, green eyes perfectly blank, then her full lips open, as if to speak, and I am just willing her to do so, quick, when I see it is turning into a yawn, another monstrous slow-motion yawn, glittering adenoids, a sexual tongue, rows of tiny regular teeth.

‘You remember… when we talked about babies.’

‘Yeah. Well we talked about it, didn’t we.’ She gets up from her slumped position on the bed with an uncharacteristically decisive movement and pretends to look out of the window, at the browned rhododendrons and the monkey-puzzle tree and the flaming hibiscus, my pride and joy, which I planted to make the garden less boring, flaunting its flowers like red silk birds by the gate through which I shall fly away… our view, our garden, which we’ll soon be leaving, no longer boring now it’s touched with nostalgia, the scattering of sparrows on the telephone wires, the distant silver of the Jennings’ poplars.

— Her front is voluptuous but her back is plain fat, the back of a fat sulky adolescent girl, the back of the sort of girl who’d get herself pregnant. I suddenly feel brisker, stronger, crosser.

‘What did you decide about contraception? If you are going to sleep with Tim.’

She talks to the window, not me. ‘It’s none of your business, is it? It’s horrible, your going on about the pill. My mother wouldn’t have gone on about the pill —’

Her mother is dead, and can’t help her, and I’m in a tearing hurry to be gone. ‘ — I just want to know if you went to the doctor.’

‘I asked her about the pill.’

‘And?’

‘She doesn’t advise it.’

‘Why the hell not? You’re very young. And it’s practically foolproof —’

‘— Meaning I’m a fool.’

‘Susy. I was on the pill myself till I was thirty-five or so. It didn’t do me any harm.’

‘It’s not very feminist to go on the pill.’

She’s the least feminist girl alive, but she likes to use it to needle me since she knows I am a feminist. I begin to lose my temper.

‘Forget the fucking pill. What else did she suggest?’

She stares at me levelly to show she hates swearing.

‘She was keen to know if I really loved Tim.’

‘I suppose you sneered at her for that.’ Too late, I try to pull myself back. We mustn’t have a row just before we leave.

‘Well you’re wrong. I like Dr Larch.’ (Clear implication: I don’t like you.)

She half-turns to deliver this deadly thrust, and as her mouth turns down and her round face flushes she suddenly looks so very young, a giant model of a six-year-old, that I soften; this scene is ridiculous; she’s innocent; she isn’t grown-up.

‘I like her too. I’m glad you went to see her. Whatever you decided is fine.’ I go over to where she is sitting on the edge of the table and put my arms round her broad shoulders and my cheek against her prolific hair. It doesn’t feel comfortable, but we hug. She doesn’t move away.

I want to tell her, let’s drop the subject. At least I’ve established that she’s been to the doctor, at least I have a crumb to offer Chris on the plane…

The plane. Chris will have to come back soon. He might have slipped in while I’ve been upstairs… and my heart starts to lift with happiness, for there we shall be, in the sky, side by side, with nothing to do but talk to each other, and laugh at the toytown food on trays, and be a little pissed, and a little romantic, and all this nonsense will be left behind.