I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  ‘Sacred Heart.’

  With trembling fingers Rosaleen slotted in her coins.

  ‘How can we help you?’

  She swallowed.

  ‘Hello? Who is this?’

  ‘I was advised . . .’ The call was costing her three shillings. ‘Father Gogarty suggested that I call . . .’

  ‘Do you find yourself in trouble?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘How far along, would you say?’

  ‘Six . . .’ She swallowed again. She mustn’t cry. ‘Seven months.’

  ‘And where is it that you’re calling from?’

  Rosaleen looked out through the glass panes of the phone box, at the people rushing to their homes: men with umbrellas; girls in rain macs, chattering and scattering along the street. ‘London.’

  ‘Can you get yourself here to us in Cork?’

  Dread twisted inside her, but what else was she to do? ‘I can.’

  ‘So you’ll write and say when it is you’ll be arriving, and we’ll send a car to meet you from the ferry. After that you’ll not have to worry. We’ll take care of it all.’

  ‘I will.’ Tears ran into the receiver. ‘I’ll be there soon.’

  ‘Bessborough, Blackrock. Ask for Sister Ignatius . . .’ The shrieking demand for money drowned out the voice. She scrabbled for another shilling, but the line went dead.

  THE NEXT MORNING Rosaleen bound her corset as tightly as she dared and, forgoing breakfast – she’d come downstairs in her coat – she took the early train to Liverpool Street. She felt like an impostor, pressed against the hordes of real workers, but there was a travel agent she’d used before in Holborn, and she didn’t want word spreading back to Auntie Mavis. Small, nosy place that Ilford was.

  ‘Will that be a single journey?’ The man glanced up from writing out her ticket. Rosaleen started. Was he expecting her to stay? ‘It’s a return I’m after,’ but all she could see was the white swell of the waves as the ferry headed back across the Irish Sea without her.

  Rosaleen said nothing to Mavis until the night before the boat, and then, coming in, as if from work, she explained that one of the girls at the paper was looking for someone to share digs. The place was in Chelsea, and so as not to lose the chance of it, she might as well go over there tomorrow, take her things, and move in.

  Mavis frowned. ‘You couldn’t wait till the weekend?’

  ‘If she wants to go . . .’ Bob surprised them. ‘Let her have some fun. Sharing a bed with her nana. It’s no life for a young girl.’ He smiled at her, and she thought of the warm coins pressed against her palm.

  That night, while Nana Isabelle knelt beside the bed, Rosaleen sent up a prayer of her own. Please God they are good people at the Sacred Heart, that they’ll deliver my baby safely, and keep us from harm, and she realised it had been some time since she’d allowed herself to believe there was a baby, and not a bomb that had the power to derail her life.

  ‘Amen.’ Her nana creaked to her feet. She blew out the candle and stood there looking at her in the gloom. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She began tugging at her knuckle.

  ‘Get in,’ Rosaleen urged, ‘you’ll catch your death,’ but she kept working at her finger until the ring she wore came off.

  ‘Take this.’ She sank on to the bed.

  ‘I couldn’t. It’s all you—’

  Her grandmother took her hand and slid the gold disc on to her finger. ‘You’ll need it more than me now,’ and with a determined pat she arranged the covers round them both.

  Rosaleen lay with her feet on their shared hot-water bottle, the ring warming on her hand, and too fearful to sleep, she waited for dawn.

  Kate

  WE’VE BEEN DRINKING WINE ON THE BENCH BY THE BACK DOOR, watching our girls as they parade in fancy dress. I examine them, escalating praise, but Krissie, whose daughter Freya has befriended, tells them in her American drawl to get the hell out of here and play. It works. Now we have the garden to ourselves. We discuss the school, the distractingly handsome father of the boy in Year 1 who carries him in each morning on his shoulders, Krissie’s husband, who she’s known since high school – how smart he is, how kind – how twenty years is enough!

  I laugh. I’m not in the habit of discussing Matt. ‘When I’m away from you,’ he used to sing to me down the warm line of the phone, our missing disproportionate to the time we spent apart, ‘I dream my dreams for two . . .’ But in recent years the searching for what we had, for what we do still sometimes have, it is a full-time job.

  ‘What?’ Krissie nudges, but I only shake my head.

  ‘The thing is,’ she confides, ‘I’d like another child, but I can’t face it – all the . . . trying. It’s not the same for you,’ she insists. ‘I’ve seen your man, he’s dreamy.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I concede. Where is Matt anyway?

  ‘I guess I should just close my eyes and think of them.’ She looks up at the ceiling from where we hear the muted sounds of bickering. ‘A sibling. Then they can gang up on us.’

  It’s almost seven thirty when Krissie and Mia leave, navigating the cracked tiles of the path, and as soon as I can politely shut the door I run through to the kitchen to check the phone. I would have heard Matt if he’d called, the answerphone would have noisily clicked on, but even so I listen for a message. Nothing. A chill settles over me, and I drag myself upstairs.

  Freya is sitting amongst her dolls, her mermaid dress trailing out around her. ‘I told you,’ she says, violence barely contained, ‘sit there and don’t move. Don’t move, I said!’ I put a hand on her shoulder and she jumps. ‘Time for bed.’ Too tired to protest, she lets me tug the multicoloured outfit over her head.

  I make a start on her story. ‘Once upon a time there was a small gorilla . . .’

  ‘Mum! “Baby Day”.’ And so, for possibly the hundredth time, I tell her the story of a school that asks the children to bring their baby siblings in on a certain day each month. ‘Freya’s baby was called Max. As soon as Freya settled him with the other babies he started to roll away over the carpet . . .’ What will I do, I wonder, when term ends and the six weeks of summer holidays begin? ‘Max rolled fast across—’

  ‘No, Mum, “fast and faster . . .”’

  ‘Fast and faster across the carpet until he had rolled out through the door, and when he was in the playground he remembered that although he was only newborn, he could crawl.’

  ‘Mum,’ Freya says when ‘Baby Day’ is mercifully over. ‘When will I get one?’

  ‘Get what?’ I look into my daughter’s eyes, the rim of black encircling the blue.

  ‘Mia says she’s getting a baby.’

  ‘It’s nice like this though, isn’t it, just us?’

  Freya looks unconvinced. ‘Do you know that when you die you get smaller? It’s to make room for all the others, waiting.’

  I kiss her, and hold her hand for the agreed number of minutes, and then slowly, carefully, back out of the room.

  ‘Mum?’ She’s caught me on the threshold.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to make a bear with orange paws.’

  ‘Not tonight.’ I hold my breath.

  ‘When, then?’

  ‘I don’t know! Tomorrow. On the weekend. Any time, just not right now!’

  There’s silence, then she starts to whimper. It’s another half an hour before I’m downstairs.

  I check the answerphone again, although I know it’s pointless. Fuck it. I clear away the children’s supper, pour out the warm dregs of the wine, and, forcing myself to eat a bowl of cereal, I sit on the sofa in oddly formal silence until it occurs to me to switch on the TV. Murder, She Wrote has just begun, and despite the knowledge that almost anyone who crosses this lady detective’s path is sure to meet their end, I’m drawn in by the sparky glamour of Angela Lansbury herself. I gaze into her discerning eyes and, on the search as ever for my mother, guess at her age, count back the years, and decide it’s unlikely, but not impossible, she may have had
her reasons for giving up a child. A love child. Did she even marry? Or perhaps a baby would have interfered with her career. I’ve played this game before, I play it often, although by the time the crime is solved, the perpetrator taken off in shackles, I’ve dismissed Angela Lansbury as any kind of relative, and in the same breath I’ve decided Matt must have a work thing – it’s possible I forgot – and relieved he’s not still drinking, I flick through the channels.

  I’m watching a late-night talk show when I catch the splash of keys. There’s the slur of Matt’s cursing, and before I’ve even risen, the door flies open and I hear the thud of a body as it hits the floor.

  Matt lies face down in the hall. ‘Christ.’ I’m beside him, testing, checking, rolling him on to his side. His skin is clammy, his breath brewed. I run into the kitchen, dash back with water which I hold against his mouth, and when he doesn’t stir I fling it fast across his face. ‘Wake up!’ His breathing quickens and then slows. I pick up the phone. My fingers hover over the 9, but I can see the look on the paramedic’s face. You wasted my time on this?

  I drag the Yellow Pages from a cupboard, look down the line of A. There is an emergency number, Alcoholics Anonymous, and although Matt has said it, how can he be an alcoholic – he goes to work, he’s not lying in a ditch – I can’t think who else to call. A soft-voiced man is at the other end.

  ‘Sorry.’ I’m struggling to speak.

  ‘It’s all right.’ I can see him in a yellow mac, shining his light into a storm. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  I gulp, and swat away my tears, and after half an hour which may have been five minutes, I put down the phone.

  IT’S MORNING BEFORE MATT STIRS, and although I’ve pleaded for it, bargaining through the night, I’m dangerous with rage. ‘Why do you do it when you’ve stopped? Why be such an idiot!’

  ‘Sorry.’ He attempts a smile. ‘I thought I’d have one small . . . you know, with the boys . . .’ He is saved from my assault by the alarm of Freya calling.

  I bend down so he can put an arm around my shoulder, and we walk, three-legged, to the sofa, where he falls into the dent made by my worrying weight. ‘Hey.’ He tries to tug me down.

  ‘Coming!’ I’m enveloped in the steam cloud of his breath. ‘Let go!’ But Matt grips harder, searching for a kiss.

  ‘Muuuuum!’

  Freya has tears of fury on her face. ‘Why weren’t you here!’

  ‘Daddy isn’t well.’

  ‘Sick?’ She narrows her eyes.

  ‘He’s sleeping, on the sofa.’ We both know what this means. No TV. In an effort to distract her, I teach her how to make a bracelet. It was something I used to do with Alice, sitting on the terrace with our plastic looms. Freya has no loom, so we use a breadboard, tapping in nails at either end, and as she weaves her beads between the lines of thread, I think of my sister and what friends we were that summer, our bracelets gathering on our arms, blocks of colour, alternating stripes. It was the year that I turned ten. Alice was already nine, and I was fixing a choker round her neck, a wave design of pink and white, when our parents trailed out of the house. They waited while I fumbled with the knot. ‘There’s something we’d like to talk to you about.’ Our mother was wearing a mauve dress, our father awkward in his weekend clothes. ‘We’ve been thinking’ – Mum swallowed – ‘for a while, that it might be best, would be best, to tell you . . .’ Her mouth looked worried as she scratched around for words, and I was consumed by a falling kind of dread. Don’t tell me! I let the choker drop. My father took charge. ‘When you were born’ – he hesitated as if to check this was allowed – ‘another mummy who wasn’t able to look after you . . .’ He began to cough. ‘She let us have you.’

  Mum nodded, vehemently, as if she wanted me to know that she agreed. ‘We love you very much.’

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and I wonder now as I scoop up beads how I knew it was me they were addressing. But it was me. That at least was clear, and when I didn’t speak our mother continued. ‘What’s wonderful is that you are extra-special. You were chosen. By us.’

  Alice turned her gaze on me, and then her eyes flew out to our parents, and I saw her as I never had before, her moon face, the pale hang of her hair. ‘Not you, Alice.’ Our father put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You were a surprise. It happens sometimes. People who’ve longed for a child, like we had, for years, when they give up, sometimes that’s when they get one of their own.’

  Mum nudged him. ‘Not given up exactly, because obviously we had Katie here . . .’

  I’d stopped listening. I was reeling through the news . . . Another mummy . . . I looked at my parents, and it was as if I’d always known that they weren’t mine.

  ‘Mum!’ Freya has the needle in her mouth. ‘I can’t find yellow!’

  I dip my hands into the tin and let the beads pour through my fingers. ‘Here we are.’ I scoop one with my nail.

  At first I didn’t think about my real mother, only about the one I’d lost. But then I saw her. She was serving tea at a fete in the next village, standing with a group of women behind a table spread with cakes. She had dark hair, parted in the centre, and as she leant forward to pick out a date slice, two plaits, braided with red thread, flipped over her shoulders. She wore a green dress, printed with leaves, and there was a gold band on her finger. ‘You look like my mother,’ I told her as she handed over a caramel square, and she hesitated, unsure whether to serve the next person or not.

  Later I went back to the stall. ‘What would you like?’ It was another mother. Mine was nowhere to be seen, and so I bought a butterfly cake and ate the wings, throwing its sponge body into the hedge.

  ‘How are we this morning?’ There’s a bruise risen on Matt’s forehead, and he does his best to smile as he staggers in. When I say nothing he catches hold of me. My neck is jammed into his shoulder, my right breast squeezed against his ribs. Out of the corner of my eye I see Freya climb down from her chair. She burrows into the tent of us, jutting out an elbow. ‘Aghhh.’ Matt winces. ‘Bloody hell, where did you come from?’ but Freya has her limpet arms around my waist and she is steering me away.

  ‘You little minx!’ Matt snatches her up and lifts her high above his head. ‘Are you my little minx?’ He turns her upside down and tickles her and I watch, my heart scattered, as she begins to laugh.

  * * *

  For three fine days Matt doesn’t drink. We eat supper in the kitchen, play cards with Freya, blow Fairy Liquid bubbles into the darkening sky, but on the fourth he starts again with a vengeance. He has a beer as soon as he gets home, ripping a can from the webbing of its six-pack before demolishing the rest. I pretend not to notice, not to care. Sometimes six beers are enough and he remains sprawled in front of the TV, raised voices drifting up to where I am reciting ‘Baby Day’ for the one hundred and seventeenth time, but often he needs more.

  Tonight I find him standing in the hall, an enquiring look as he watches me walk down. ‘I might go out for a bit.’ There is a tilt to his voice as if he’s asking, although we both know that he’s not. ‘I won’t be long.’

  I pause before replying, because how can I compete with the warm fug of the White Horse?

  The door closed, the house still, I retreat to my workroom. My stencil is rolled into a corner, flimsy with its shredding, and between the boards of my trees are canvases, turned to the wall. I check the bleakness of my mood before dismissing them, but even so there is nothing here to admire. I take the smallest picture and I paint it out, and while it dries I stare into its whiteness. All I can see there is an empty can of beer. I look into the bin and I retrieve one, but one it seems is not enough, and so I tip the dustbin up, assembling a week’s worth of supplies. The cans give off a stale smell. They wheeze and crackle, the fish eyes of their ring-pulled holes observing me as I take a sharp grey pencil and begin to sketch.

  I’m still working when I hear the door. ‘Hello!’ Matt is looking in at me. He’s happy. Soppy. Home. I stand with my
back to the tower of cans. ‘What you up to?’ He approaches, unsteady.

  ‘Nothing much.’

  Soulful, he dances me from side to side. ‘I love you, Kate.’ There are tears in his eyes.

  ‘I love you too.’ We sway into the silence until Matt catches his foot against a chair and, for one excruciating moment, I’m sure we will both fall. ‘Let’s get to bed,’ I tell him when we steady, and I nudge him up the stairs.

  Matt runs his hot hands over my body. He’s too drunk for sex and I’m too weary, and so we settle, tucked against each other, his mouth beside my ear so that I hear him as he sinks into sleep. I search for my river, and when I find it the current ripples past me fast under a sluice gate and drags me out to sea. With the greatest effort I turn around, battling upstream until I’m in open water, and I breathe. My tree is mine for nothing. A lime, its leaves like flowers. I stretch under its canopy and bask. I’m reluctant to move to the next stage, to meet my Feeling Self, and I’m right to resist because, when I do, I find that I’m in hospital, lying in a high white bed, my body bandaged, nothing visible but my face.

  Rosaleen

  THE DRIVE FROM THE FERRY HAD NOT BEEN LONG ENOUGH, AND as the car turned in through a five-bar gate and rumbled on past low, rough fields, Rosaleen was seized with terror. Slow down, was what she needed to say, but the man’s neck below his cap looked obstinate. Rosaleen twisted her fingers, re-examining the events of the last months, re-thinking, re-calculating, still hoping she might land upon any other outcome, but each path she sloped down ended in a wall. ‘Excuse me,’ she tried, ‘could we, might we . . . ?’ Even the driver’s ears were disapproving, and her request that they might stop for five minutes faded away to nothing.

  ‘Here we are then.’ The car slowed, and there it was before her, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a grey stone mansion, three rows of windows stretching away on either side of the front door. The driver left the engine running as he lifted her case out of the boot, and for a moment he caught her eye as she took it from him. ‘All right.’ He nodded, and folded his body safe behind the wheel.