by Kate Riordan
She puts her head on one side, thinking back. ‘Mainly tired. Sometimes I couldn’t think straight I was so tired. And I was always crying at nothing, like a tap.’ She shakes her head and smiles. ‘Your father was at his wits’ end.’
I open my mouth and shut it again. I want to believe that what I’ve begun to feel is what my mother felt; what so many new mothers feel. But this doesn’t ring quite true to me. The unease that began as little more than a whisper is transforming into a black kernel of fear that has taken up residence inside me. I’d thought it would get easier as the months passed, not harder. I’d thought that it would begin to feel more natural, more normal between me and my child.
Perhaps it’s all mixed up with grief for my father. One day last week, I forgot he was dead. I went to the field behind the house to scan for his slight figure bent over the vines, meaning to ask him if he wanted a cold drink, but there was no one. The truth winded me: the field sold to Laurent, and Papa lost for ever.
My brain slides away from that hurt. I go back to what I’ve been thinking about over and over since it first occurred to me: I can’t remember Élodie ever laughing, though she’s a year old now. And although she can already say a few words, she’s mainly silent. The other day I had the strange notion that if she wasn’t a baby – if she was a man, a lover – I would assume she had no feelings, that the reason I feel so foolish is because I’m simply not worth the effort.
I watch my mother deftly straighten the bottles and brushes on my dressing table. With just a little more pushing from her, I would admit it all. She turns back to me and I think she’s going to say something but instead she leans over to kiss my forehead.
‘I’ll see to Élodie,’ she says. ‘You get dressed.’
I nod, and the greater part of me is relieved. While I can hide my fears – and the guilt that is their shadow – there is still a chance I am wrong. That I do have some delayed version of the baby blues, rather than what it feels like, which is that there is something missing between us. Missing in me.
But a darker question keeps surfacing, however much I push it down. It whispers so the guilt doesn’t hear: is something missing in her?
*
My mother returns to Toulouse and Greg is still away in London. It’s just Élodie and me again.
These days, I’m finding it harder and harder to perform under my child’s cool gaze. I lay her on the soft rug to change her nappy and begin to feel hot as I fumble to put the clean one on her. Its folds won’t lie smoothly and in my frustration I accidentally prick the poreless flesh of her inside leg with the safety pin.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I cry, though she hasn’t flinched, only the tiniest flaring of her nostrils to indicate she’s noticed at all. I bend to kiss the pink mark I’ve made.
‘I’m stupid,’ I whisper. ‘Stupid and clumsy.’
I shake out a muslin square and hold it in front of my face. I haven’t tried playing this game for a few months, but I make myself do it now: a peculiar punishment for the safety pin.
‘Coucou!’ I say, lowering it suddenly.
She doesn’t move, let alone smile, but I do it again, and then a third time. She doesn’t even blink and it occurs to me that those seconds when I’m holding up the muslin are a relief … the curtain coming down on a foolish act.
She stares expressionlessly at me and I wonder if tiny children are capable of contempt. This is such a horrible thought that I gather her up and hold her close, stroking the dandelion fuzz of hair at the back of her head, determinedly ignoring how limp she remains, how her little arms slide away from my neck to hang at her sides.
I love Élodie desperately, and perhaps there’s a clue in that word. The closest I can come to it is not with words but an image: a pocket tucked away beside all the love I feel for her, invisible from the outside but there nonetheless. Every time she turns away from me, every time she screams, dry-eyed, for minutes on end, a new stone is dropped into it. The pocket bangs against my leg, heavier and heavier.
1993
The phone wakes me the next morning, after a broken sleep filled with dreams of leaving, the whirr of the old electric fan I’d left on transformed into the roar of jet engines at take-off. I blunder down the stairs and snatch up the receiver.
‘Sylvie? C’est Olivier Lagarde.’ His voice cuts through my morning haziness.
‘I have a couple of papers I need you to sign. Are you free this afternoon, if I come round with them? It’s no trouble.’
I hear the smile in his voice and find myself smiling too. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll be here. We’ll be here.’
I pause at the phone when he’s gone, then dial Camille’s work number.
‘You’re there now, are you?’ she says, when I explain. ‘I didn’t think you’d actually go. Is Emma with Greg?’
‘No, I had to bring her with me. He couldn’t take her.’
‘What a surprise. So, I gather you’ve finally told her?’
I don’t say anything.
‘Zut, Sylvie. You haven’t, have you?’
‘I’ll talk to her properly about everything when the time’s right, but –’
‘I think you’re crazy,’ she says over me. ‘Look, I’ve got to go into a meeting now. Tell her, will you? She’s growing up.’
‘Do you think you’ll come and see us?’ I say, but she’s already gone.
I put the phone down, wishing I hadn’t rung her. It’s an old habit, ringing Camille for reassurance, for her particularly breezy brand of advice, but she hasn’t played the game this time.
I make myself a coffee and take it out to the garden where the heat and brilliance of the day are like a physical blow. A pair of unseen birds are scuffling in the thick of the oleander tree and there’s splashing coming from the pool. I walk slowly, dismissing a ridiculous urge to check you’re fine. My heart clutches when I see something red move behind the pines, a memory packed away for so long lighting like a flare, but it’s only your beach towel, slipping off one of the loungers to the ground.
You’re busy swimming laps and I watch you for a while, the path you’re carving straight and clean. I go and lie down on a lounger and stretch out my limbs, eyes closed against the climbing sun, and feel the heat begin to unknit the tension in my muscles.
‘Morning,’ you call.
I sit up. Your elbows are propped on the lip of the pool, the water-darkened tails of your hair streaming over your shoulders.
‘Hello, darling. Did you sleep well?’
You shrug one shoulder. ‘Not really. It’s so hot. I had a weird dream.’
I pause, draining my coffee while I decide whether to ask what it was about, but then, as if you don’t want to answer, you abruptly push yourself below the surface of the water, nothing left of you but your splayed fingers on the stone lip and a series of bubbles rising to the surface.
‘I’ll time you,’ I say, when you rise up again. You used to do this in the bath when you were younger.
‘Okay,’ you say, humouring me, and take a deep breath in, one hand clamping your nose shut and the other grasping the side as you descend again. I make up how long you stay under, though you don’t seem to notice. Perhaps you know I’m not feeling good this morning, that this is for me, not you: the comfort of an old ritual.
The squabbling birds have gone and the garden is quiet again. I try to focus on your submerged body, a distorted, wavering blur, but she’s suddenly everywhere – thrumming in the air around me and flickering in the jade water around you. Élodie. Élodie. Élodie.
*
Olivier turns up later than I expect, just before six, when the shadows in the garden are stretched and turning blue. Because we’re meeting for the second time, we faisons la bise on the doorstep, kissing the customary three times, and though this is simply what the French do, there’s an undeniable frisson as our cheeks brush. His fingers touch the small of my back as we pull away, so lightly it might have been an accident, only I don’t think it was. As I le
ad him through the house and out onto the terrace, my hands go automatically to my face where we made contact. It’s hot.
I pour the wine he’s brought, pale and still frosted with cold. Above us, the swallows have begun their daily exhibition, skimming effortless loops between the house and the trees.
‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d show up,’ I say, smiling so he knows I’m not annoyed.
‘Yes, I’m sorry. It’s been one of those days. I saved this for last – something to look forward to.’ He leans forward with a slow smile and we clink glasses. I catch his eyes flicking across my bare shoulders and shift in my seat.
‘I rang the police again today,’ he continues, ‘to see if they’d talked to the Gattaz boys about the fire. Apparently, they were elsewhere that night. One of them was arrested for being over the limit on the A7 near Montélimar. Miles away.’
‘So, if it wasn’t them, do they have any other ideas who it was?’
‘They did say there was a call that night. A lorry driver who had pulled up to rest on the main road between here and the village reported a gang of boys. They were racing up and down on their mopeds. They woke him up.’
I swallow, remembering the night of the storm, and reach for my glass just as a hot needle of pain sears through my foot, the flaring agony of it making me cry out. I wrench off my sandal and a wasp crawls out from where it’s stung the tender skin of the arch. It flies off, towards the side of the house where Élodie’s slipped shutter has unfastened itself again. I’d been aware of it creaking when I was hacking at the lavender earlier.
Olivier kneels in front of me and lifts my foot to inspect it. Then he presses the curve of the cold wine bottle into the arch, his other hand firmly gripping my ankle. I can smell his cologne, lemon and something spicier, like cracked pepper. Slowly, the pain dulls to a throb.
He looks up, his face close to mine. ‘Ça va mieux?’
I nod, his proximity making me self-conscious now the pain is lessening. ‘Let’s go inside. We’ll get eaten alive if we stay out here.’
Limping, I show him into the salon through the double doors. As I close them to keep out the insects, in the split second before I turn back to Olivier, I see something pale move in the gloom beyond the glass. I peer harder but there’s nothing.
1971
For the last few weeks, Élodie has refused to eat anything I prepare for her. She is only two and a half but her willpower is astonishing, pushing away food even as her stomach grumbles with hunger.
‘So she’s a fussy eater,’ says Camille. I can almost hear her shrug down the line. ‘You were too, when you were little. God, the fuss about the grease at the top of Maman’s cassoulet.’
I smile briefly at the memory. ‘I know it’s common. I know children dig their heels in at this age. It’s just …’
‘What?’
‘She doesn’t do it with Greg. Only me. And I worry about her because when he’s away on one of his buying trips she doesn’t really eat at all. I’d have to force her and I can’t hurt her like that.’
‘She’ll get over it,’ says Camille, and I can tell from the slight pause before speaking that her attention has wandered. I wonder what she’s going to do with her afternoon, all of Paris waiting beyond her apartment door.
*
When Camille comes to visit – I’ve counted down the days to her arrival, though I would never admit it: Camille hates neediness – Élodie has not got over it. In fact, I’m convinced she’s lost weight. I’m terrified of what it says about my skills as a mother that I can’t even manage the basic task of feeding my child.
Camille arrives just before noon, and by the time we sit down to lunch on the terrace, I’m ironically too anxious to eat myself. I silently will Camille to watch Élodie, but instead my sister is appraising Greg in her cool way.
‘Sounds like you’ve been away from home a lot lately,’ she begins, one eyebrow arched. ‘The antiques business must be booming.’
I pour myself more wine as he smiles thinly. ‘It’s not bad. I’d rather be here, of course,’ he reaches out to stroke Élodie’s hair, ‘but we need the money.’
Camille pushes her half-eaten quiche to the side of her plate.
‘You on one of your diets?’ asks Greg.
Camille doesn’t respond. She turns to Élodie instead. ‘What about you, ma petite? You won’t grow big and strong if you don’t finish your lunch.’
Élodie hasn’t touched her food and I was hoping Camille would notice.
‘Actually, she’s a very good little eater,’ says Greg, pulling Élodie into his lap. He spears a piece of quiche and pops it into her mouth, forgetting she won’t eat anything with egg in it. She pauses and I wait – we all wait – and then she begins to chew. Another three mouthfuls follow and then Greg goes inside to fetch more wine.
Camille stands away from the table to light a cigarette as Élodie opens her mouth and lets the food inside it fall out. It lands, wetly, on the front of her dress. She’s eyeing me, head to one side, as she begins to smear the half-chewed mush of quiche into the cotton, not realizing Camille has turned back.
‘Arrête, Élodie! Arrête’ She pulls Élodie’s hand away. ‘What a thing to do.’ I meet Camille’s eye and this acknowledgement briefly releases the pressure that’s been building inside me lately, like the paint on the shutters that bubbles and cracks on the hottest days.
Greg is back on the terrace, clutching a bottle of red. ‘What’s going on?’
Élodie begins to wail. ‘She hurt me!’ she cries, holding up the hand Camille had pulled away. He sweeps her up into his arms and kisses her cheeks. He doesn’t seem to notice that they’re dry, but I don’t care.
‘I certainly did not hurt her,’ Camille scoffs. ‘All I did was tell her not to spoil her dress.’ She stubs out her cigarette and pours some wine. ‘Children need to be told they can’t behave like that, playing with their food and wasting it.’
‘And you’re the parenting expert, I suppose?’ says Greg.
I look from one to the other. I should intervene, like I normally do when the two of them start sparring, but this is not about politics for once.
‘I may not have children but I know they need boundaries,’ she says easily, lighting another cigarette. She offers Greg the packet but he ignores her. ‘French children are brought up in the cadre –’
‘Oh, yes, the cadre,’ he interrupts, rolling his eyes. ‘That old authoritarian nonsense. It’s nothing but a cage for children. How can she be creative if she’s being corrected and disciplined every five minutes? Children find their own way if they’re left to their own devices.’
Camille laughs. ‘You’re such a hippie. Imagine what she’ll be doing at fifteen. She’s running rings around you now.’
Greg’s face darkens, but she’s right. Though he would deny this vehemently, he treats Élodie as an extension of his politics: an experiment he hopes will prove him right about personal liberty and a life lived without constraints. He wants for her the kind of bohemian upbringing his arty friends in Hampstead are giving their children. He’s desperate not to recreate for Élodie something as stifling and dull and deeply uncool as his own childhood in Surrey.
I can’t help it. It’s thrilling to hear Camille say what I never do, because I love him. Because I don’t want us to fight over the daughter we’ve created together.
I look at Élodie now, in Greg’s lap once more, staring back at me without expression, her face a beautiful blank. It’s as if the storm never happened. She swivels round so she can lean against Greg’s chest, and when she falls asleep, the instant slumber of the guiltless, long lashes casting delicate shadows on her almond milk skin, it’s a relief. It’s a relief to love her simply again. As her breathing deepens, the air loosens. My shoulders drop. Greg takes one of Camille’s cigarettes.
When Camille goes inside for a nap – she and Greg have got through two bottles of wine between them – he turns to me.
‘She’s still goi
ng tomorrow, isn’t she?’ He smiles to soften it. ‘We’ll drive each other insane otherwise. Lucky for me, I got the easy sister.’ He reaches across the table and as I fold my hand into his larger one, Élodie wakes, her eyes instantly wide and alert, like those dolls whose eyelids snap open when you sit them up. She shows me her small white teeth, just for a second, then stretches out to sweep Camille’s forgotten reading glasses to the ground.
I pick them up. One of the lenses has cracked. I show Greg and, to my surprise, he lifts Élodie out of his lap and stands her on her feet quite roughly.
‘What did you do that for?’
She pulls in her breath and begins to shriek. He kneels in front of her, smoothing her hair because there are still no tears to dry.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he croons. ‘She shouldn’t have left them there, should she? Silly Camille.’
And because I want Greg on my side, because I want us all to be on the same side, because Camille will leave tomorrow, I say nothing. I let it go and it curls into nothing, burnt away by the heat of the afternoon.
1993
The weather changes overnight. The clouds that tend to cling solicitously to the distant hills have rolled out across the whole plain, shrouding the gas-blue sky and turning it pearled and spectral. There’s something comforting about it, something of England in its moderation. I open the shutters and remember that I’ve been dreaming of your sister. It’s the old dream, the rare one that I always hoped would happen in real life: Élodie, sunshine behind her like a halo, hair sparking, her small hands reaching for mine.
Outside, the ferocious sun is wrapped in the same thick gauze, all the light and shade in the garden flattened. You lie dozing in the salon in your swimsuit and an oversized black Soundgarden T-shirt, a yellowed, translated paperback copy of Bonjour Tristesse splayed upside-down on your stomach. I resist the urge to replace it with something more innocent. At least when I lean over to kiss you good morning you smell like you again: not of chlorine or suntan lotion but simply my London girl.