Susan's Silence

To my knowledge Susan and I never spent one night at "Bridge Court"

She was hesitant, nervous about it.. obviously not really wishing to commit herself to a place so far removed from the comfort and sanctuary of Bishops Stortford and Sixty Nine.. Really, no worse, much better than many Inner City homes... I had doubts because it being on the ground floor.. although she did have the choice of going up... refused ..something about getting the pusher down the stairs.

Again, there is now a blank as to the sequence of events, so much has happened since then.. so much to overshadow this sad story of two people and their child. Also now in a far greater hurry, time firmly against me. Last night wrote over eight hundred words, a record. Such an amount would take me several days, maybe stretched over weeks. There is a sense of urgency in my life now.. so very much too do, working harder than ever before at existing. Yes, I am living to work, at sixty six. Please yourself.

The precise, exact moment of our long descent, however, is known to me. A Sunday lunch time at the pub, five hundred yards down Lea Bridge road from the flat. Very busy, Susan apparently quite happy.. we talked about the sticks of furniture she was getting together. All fixed very clearly in my head, such a grotty place.. the pub.. money flowing freely over the Bar.. the usual loud whispers.. beer spilled on rickety tables, the occasional ribald shout...the cigarette smoke.. conglomerate music from the machine..

In fact, a pub anywhere in England.

We were standing in the back bar, began to notice a almost imperceptible change in Susan.. like a old, wynd up gramophone player running down.. she was running down, her words blurring one into the other, until they stopped. My thought initially being it was little more than my own neurosis, my own imagination playing me up, a right 'Win Double' Susan and I. Time hesitated, stood quite still. We became broken away from life about us, as if in a glass bowl, looking out. Could still hear the murmurs... the undertow of noise, yet, separate from us.. Susan no longer saying anything at all, could see no handle with which to wynd her back up. She simply stood, motionless, holding her glass.. thick black curly hair surrounding her small white expressionless face ....a rag doll in a toy shop.

Took the glass from her hand.. put it down. She was gone, no longer in my World, had made her exit, as had done on other occasions when life became more than she could or wanted to handle. This I was to discover some considerable time afterwards. Susan had given no warning, no message, simply left me.

Peter, alone again..

I simply "knew" what had happened, what she had done...Knew it no good shaking her, shouting at her.. She could be propelled along anywhere, in any direction, stand her up or sit her down, do whatever was indicated for her to do. Speak.. never.

Looking back to that day is not doing me any good.

Why should I, with a new Wife.. a new Life, put myself through it all again?. .not a matter of being a masochist.. not "Therapeutic" as some nutters have remarked.. it is something that has to be written.. do not know why, another equation without an answer.


Gathered up her few bits and pieces, the shoes I had bought her, that summer so long ago, the long white dress. "I love life" emblazoned on it. She had been so "happy", in the Sunlight, in the Street, so acquiescent, "Yes Peter" .."No Peter".. "If you like Peter". Now, now only this wreck of a woman remained.

The M.11 stretched out tight before the old Cab. As always, went into deep thought while the wheels wound their way North, Susan upright, unmoved in the middle of the back seat. Looking directly at her through the mirror evoked no response, the very many women I had done this to over the long years had always reacted in which ever direction suited.


No reaction from Susan, just another bag of wheat.

The Mother unimpressed with her daughter, sitting silent, motionless, impassive, cigarette hanging from between her fingers in front of her son. A child that bounced and wanted his mother to play, to no avail. The boy also needed feeding, looking after.. a twenty four hour procedure.. Her Mother looked to me, I looked out of the window onto the garden, having had some quite happy moments there with the child, with Susan, in the Sunlight, on the small lawn.. "The tea, the cakes, the ices." Yes.. the moment now "forced to a crisis" inevitable I should come up with that line.

The Mother appeared to have shrunk back into herself with this repeat drama in her daughter's life. No longer dominating the situation, no longer expecting the Queen to any moment to knock on the door. Agitated, twisting her hands, felt sorry for her, for the whole fiasco. She, happy with her Grandson. Now, an impasse, everything crumbled so suddenly, to nothing.


Living in the Country, in the Middle Class belt of England.. a simple procedure for the Mother to pick up the phone.. a few words.. help arriving. Unlike Hackney, where people fade, die, alone, isolated, perhaps weeks before their emaciated bodies are found.

Help arrived, a Social worker quite quickly on the scene. She knew Susan of old, knew her form.. her exits from Society.. her uncertain, wavering history.

Whispered words while I bounced the boy.

Vague as to the immediate outcome of this conversation. The first consideration being the child. I, as always, as ever, completely overlooked.. nothing said to or asked of ..will not go strong and say, ignored. A Rank Outsider, then I have always been simply, that.

Vague, long journeys to Broadstairs where Susan had a Aunt in a huge rambling house beside the Seaside. Not sure of the combination, whether we left Susan down there or the child. Feel it was the Mother and I would attempt to mind the child jointly. Whichever way, it hardly worked, Susan showed not the slightest improvement with the passage of time. Next thing, Susan and child in a Psychiatric Hospital, Shenley... just up from Mill Hill. Not quite so far as Broadstairs. Thank God !


A daily occurrence, my ride up the A.1. Visit mother and child, winter approaching. Other mothers there with their child. Evidently quite a common malfunction on the part of females to collapse out of Society. Other mothers talked to their children, to each other, Susan said nothing to no one. Simply sat bent, crouched, staring into space, inevitably a cigarette dangling from her fingers. I, starting to crack up with this performance ... wanted to so much put my clock back .... to not have stepped, so rashly in ... fed up with myself, my attraction to cripples and the disenchanted.

After a month, the staff turned to me. Called into one of their meetings "Did I have a solution for Susan?" They certainly did not. Reminiscent of so very long ago. Finola, another one no one had a solution for... To them she was deaf, blind and stupid, a easy way to dispose of her. Given to me, the first thing I did, to throw her hearing aid in the sea, out beyond the waves washing languidly on the warm, soft, sandy shore ... total consternation from them all. Next had her sight tested.. not blind, not deaf. She too had opted out ... for her own reasons ... far from stupid. Finally she could read and write, a pleasant girl of fourteen... the process, along with all the other children and their problems sucked me dry. Had no intention of being sucked dry again.

The group round the table waited uncertainly for my answer to the poised question. Another Sunny morning, light streaming through windows, bright light on white faces. Could hardly help it.... simply slipped out, so much as I tried to stop it, so much knowing it could be put more softly, more appropriately ... more gently. But at the end, tired ... "She needs a good kick up the arse"...true , then the truth, always unpalatable, brutal. I have always been guilty of it.

Winter gripped tight the trees, the sorrow, silence and desolation surrounding the encampment at Shenley. Only the children, smiling, laughing, oblivious to the strange behaviour of their Mothers. Children cared for by anxious, large nursing ladies, who looked at me with some uncertainty. By now, Susan and I meeting alone, she always standing expressionless, still silent in the centre of the small room, arms at her sides, early evening darkness creeping down long, polished corridors.

Had given up trying to say anything at all to her, given up shouting as if attempting, in desperation, to wake the dead. She on a downhill slope, becoming increasingly apparent that nothing was going to save her this time. Talk of adoption for the boy, incarceration for her. Again myself, unmentioned, no consideration ...out of question ... only the Father, someone to do the running, to try to hold it together, best able.

Xmas approached. English Xmas ... silent, White shrouded, country lanes, softness stretched over the landscape. Someone, somewhere once wrote "... and leaves the World to darkness and to me" which about summed up my feelings.