32. A VILLAGE GREEN DISCO

Charles Snootnose meets his daughter for the first (and last) time

“I’m not so well,” Charles Snootnose told Jane over coffee in Ma Tate’s Cafe next to the church in Swanspottle. There were just the two of them in the cosy place that smelt of a mixture of coffee and frying doughnuts, with a hint of bacon left over from breakfast still wafting in the air.

“To tell you the truth, you don’t look it,” Jane told him. She had agreed to discuss their daughter with him on her own because, in all truth, it was nobody else’s business but hers and Charles’s.

“I look and feel like death warmed up, and that’s being kind to myself,” he told her with a wistful grin.

“What was it you wanted, then, Charles?” she asked.

“I want to see Susan,” he admitted, “I know she’s at school, but I want to see her before I, and I don’t want to sound melodramatic when I say this, but before I die.”

“Are you that ill?” asked Jane.

“Who can tell? I try to live a healthy life, but it’s been a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. I’ve not been so careful in the past and I dared say I’m paying for it now. Do you remember way back before the war…?”

“When you made me strip off and show you everything I’ve got?” asked Jane a little savagely.

“I didn’t touch you, though, just drew you because you were so … not beautiful, but exciting.”

“Thank you for nothing!”

“No, I don’t mean to insult you! You’re a beautiful woman and back then you were a beautiful girl, no doubt about it. But besides being beautiful you were exciting, and I couldn’t help myself.”

“When you raped me?”

“It wasn’t as bad as that! Be fair!”

“What was it? A girl, a young girl, younger than you, saying no and you, a man in his twenties, not understanding that simple word? And then you took your trousers off and I saw … I was scared.”

“I’m sorry, I really am, I’d do anything to wipe that day out of our lives ...”

“And fifteen years later you apologise, then? That’s how old your daughter is, Charles, fifteen, and for fifteen years she’s had problems. The cruel ones wanted to call her backward over the years and, yes, she’s had some difficulties learning things and thank goodness she’s had understanding teachers. And I had to bring her up, teach her slowly and patiently, and I loved doing it because, besides being slower than some children she is totally and utterly beautiful. Yes, beautiful!”

“Jane, I haven’t got long...”

“I’ve had fifteen years!”

“Listen to me, Jane. I’ve written a will. I’m worth quite a lot of money, being the very last of the Snootnoses, and I’ve earned quite a bit with my art, and not, let me emphasise, from that wretched etching I did of you back in the silliest of silly years. And in my will I’ve left it all to you and Susan except for a small bequest to Angela, the woman who drives the car for me and did for my mother before me. But except for that relatively small bequest you’re to get every last damned farthing, and I wish it brings you better luck than it brought me. All money’s done for me is give me the means by which to ruin myself, but then I guess I’ve always been a mental weakling.”

“You’re leaving… how ill are you, Charles?” stammered Jane.

“I don’t know, love. I really don’t. I might last a week, a month, a year, even a decade with luck … but my time’s more likely to be short than long.”

Jane looked at him and shook her head. By the look of you I’d say you could pass away at any moment, she thought sadly. Then she had an idea.

“Tonight the music shop from Brumpton is taking a mobile stage to the village green and a salesman is playing some of the latest records in the hope, no doubt, of encouraging the youngsters to spend their pocket money on them. Susan wants to go, and Primrose, Ursula’s lass, is going with her. If you want to do one fatherly thing then can I ask you to go with them? I don’t mean to jiggle and joggle around like the kids will, but to be with her? To do that one thing with your daughter, while you can?”

“Will you go with them as well?” asked Charles uncertainly.

“Yes. Me and Ursula and her husband will be there. We do quite a lot together. It would be nice if we could be two sets of parents, two mothers and two fathers, with their daughters...”

“Then I’ll do what I can, though I’ll need to take a stool to sit on. Don’t worry, I carry one in the car with me and Angela knows what to do. And, you know, I quite like a bit of Skiffle myself, and that’s all the rage these days, I believe.”

“And rock ‘n’ roll?” grinned Jane. “Bill Haley? That sort of thing?”

Charles smiled at her. “That sort of thing,” he agreed.

The rest of that day was spent with Jane at home with her mother and Charles looking up acquaintances from when he’d been a local son of the Squire and lived in the Manor. He’d not made many friends back then because in all truth he’d been a cross between a posh laughing-stock and a simpleton in the eyes of many who resented the way he could spend his days doing what they looked on as arty-farty stuff whilst contributing nothing of any worth to the life of the village. And of those who had acknowledged him back then, some had lost their lives in the war and others were married and too busy with their own lives to want to spend time with a shadow from the past, especially when that shadow looked as faded as did Charles.

But that evening he called on Jane at her home. Frowns and scowls from Mrs Smith didn’t upset him as much as he’d thought they might because there was Susan there, and she delighted him.

“Susan,” said Jane quietly, and without any preamble, “this is your father.”

“I know,” said Susan, and she smiled her usual warm smile at him. “Primrose told me she’d seen him. She showed me the picture with her in it that he painted, and I knew he’d come to me one day and say hello.”

“I’m so pleased...” he began, but the words stuck in his throat and he shook his head to dislodge uncomfortable thoughts.

“Everyone’s got a daddy,” Susan confided in him, “and now I’ve met mine...”

“Are we going to the Green to listen to music?” he asked, and she laughed.

“Of course,” she said.

There was a sizeable crowd on the village green and the evening was balmy with an atmosphere of expectation from a largely teenage audience, all chattering away as if suddenly the world had become perfect.

The stage set up was an open-sided caravan with bright lights and a battery of loud speakers. One day, and not so far in the future, there would be disc-jockeys capable of creating all manner of wonderful effects, but back in the grey decade of the fifties there were only turntables and a selection of the latest records and a man with few words.

“This is fantastic!” said Susan happily as Rock Island Line filled the air with its skiffle beat and Lonnie Donegan began This here’s the story of the rock island line…

And there were other songs played, lots of them, but only too soon the disc-jockey bid his goodbyes and told them all about the shop in Brumpton that stocked the records.

The silence afterwards was intense after what had barely been an hour of the latest tunes played to a generation looking forwards to a brighter tomorrow than their yesterday had been.

“We’ll go to Brumpton on Saturday,” Greendale promised Primrose as they walked home.

“I’ll need a record player first,” sighed Primrose.

“And me,” put in Susan.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Charles, “I’ll buy you both a record player from that shop in Brumpton if you’ll let me come on Saturday...”

“Yes please!” both teenagers chorused.

“Are you sure?” asked Greendale of Charles.

He nodded. He wanted to. For the first time ever he felt part of something bigger than himself, a family with its friends and the last echoes of music in the air.

But when Saturday came there was no trip by Susan into Brumpton, and no record player.

Her daddy had died the night before, and she was learning how to weep.

© Peter Rogerson 10.08.18