I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  The bus fills and empties, fills again as we career round Parliament Square, past Westminster Abbey, a fairy-tale cathedral, dwarfed only by the clock faces of Big Ben. It’s warm and hazy, our hilltop home, but as we near Victoria Station my stomach quakes and I consider staying on and heading back the way we’ve come.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ Freya stops on the wind of the staircase as if she’s only now noticed he’s not with us.

  ‘We’ll see him tomorrow, when we’re home.’

  MY MOTHER ASKS the same question an hour later as we come through the barrier.

  ‘We’ll see him tomorrow,’ Freya answers for me, and I put a hand on her newly plaited hair.

  ‘Not well?’ my mother mouths to me, and I nod and look away from her alarm.

  ‘So . . .’ My father’s voice is breezy as we sit out on the terrace. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?’

  I swallow. ‘I missed you, that’s all,’ and when he looks bemused, ‘It’s nice to be out in the fresh air.’

  My mother appears with a quiche. She smiles, innocent, as she serves it up. ‘What a lovely surprise. Any special reason?’

  I blush. ‘I . . . it’s just . . .’ Their suspicions stall me. Words settle and disperse, and I cough so hard when I attempt a bite of pastry I am forced to rise from the table.

  My mother turns her attention to Freya. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Mia might be going to have a baby brother,’ she tells her.

  ‘I see.’ My mother gathers herself for more, but Freya is sliding from her seat. ‘Careful!’ my mother calls as she tracks across the lawn. ‘The stream!’ But the stream is a trickle of its former self, and even though the fence has been removed, the water was only ever ankle-deep. ‘Look at the sweet thing, amusing herself, all on her own.’ Her eyes fly open and she turns to me. ‘Kate?’ she asks, expectant.

  ‘No!’ I protest, and my hand goes to the flat of my stomach. ‘Can I really not just visit?’

  We sit in silence. There’s nothing I can say now. Nothing that I’d planned. ‘I was telling Freya about Trafalgar Square,’ I try instead. ‘How we used to feed the pigeons. I said I’d show her the photograph.’

  My mother frowns. ‘I wonder where that is.’

  On the hall table! But of course, some years ago they’d had the house redecorated, and old photographs were replaced, for the most part, with prints of ferns.

  That night we climb into the attic. There is a metal ladder that can be latched down with a pole, and as my mother expertly hooks and pulls, I think how we’d heave the stepladder in from the shed and push the trapdoor up. Inside are the same shelves, built against the slope, the same stack of files, labelled in my father’s upright hand. Our doll’s house is here, flanked by a trunk of clothes for dressing-up, and the farm with red-brick paper walls. I ask if I can bring the farm down, but she hesitates and my heart falls. Who is she keeping it for, if not Freya?

  ‘Is there a date then?’ I clutch the cracked back of a chair. ‘For the wedding?’

  My mother has her head inside a box, but she springs to attention. ‘They’re thinking of venues, here in Sussex. We should go shopping together.’ She runs a finger along the farmyard wall, squints at the pad of dust. ‘We must.’

  I cast my eyes across the stack of files. Household. Volvo. Guarantees. ‘I thought they were going for a long engagement.’

  My mother laughs, indulgent. ‘There’s never enough time to find the right thing to wear. Fenwick’s have lovely hats . . .’

  ‘Let me look, I might already—’

  ‘No,’ she interjects. ‘We’re going shopping. We’ll put something in the diary. It’ll be my treat.’

  I perch on a crate of paperback books: The Foundling, Lady of Quality, Charity Girl. I can see my mother in the embrace of Georgette Heyer, lying on a lounger on the lawn. ‘Of course,’ she says, smearing the dust against a doorstop. ‘We’ll lift down the farm.’

  That’s when I see them, two rectangular folders: Alice, the label inked with high fine letters. Kate.

  ‘Found it.’ My mother draws out a bubble-wrapped frame and there we are, under the watery plastic, our hair bobbled up in bunches, our identical clothes failing to make us match.

  I put the farm with the animals arranged beside it on the rug in Freya’s room. When she wakes I may gain half an hour. The photograph I stand on my bedside table. ‘Goodnight, darling.’ My mother hovers by the door, soft and feathery in her wrap-around gown. ‘Your father’s turned in.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ I want to keep her there, for questioning, forever, but her kiss is a peck, and she is gone.

  I wake in the night and summon up the folders. They stand on a shelf, side by side, the only difference our names. What could be inside? School reports, piano certificates? The rosette I won at the horticultural show for a painting of a pineapple? My mouth is dry as I peel back the covers and creak on to the landing. I stand and stare at the square of the trapdoor. How quietly could I hook down the ladder? I imagine my parents storming out from their twin room; me, a thief in my own home.

  ‘Katie? Is that you?’ There’s the rustling of a quilt.

  ‘Night,’ I call, and I hurry back to my room.

  ALL MORNING MY BLOOD FIZZES, and the words I have prepared stick in my throat. We walk down to the Splash and across the common to look at the Big Oak. The ladder still leans against it, and I climb and inspect the oval of its scar. Below me Freya walks along its fallen branch, my mother hovering.

  I’d like to know, I take a moment to practise, I need to know . . . I lay my head against the trunk as a tribe of children race across the field.

  If you could give me . . . I try out phrases as I help prepare the lunch, but my mother is explaining the best way to make gravy and I don’t interrupt. Afterwards she takes Freya to say goodbye to the bees. She has three hives, white clapboard, a surprising hobby for someone so concerned with peril. I sit on the terrace and wait. If I’m going to ask my questions it had better be soon. I need . . . My nerve dissolves and my own hand clamps itself across my mouth. I check the time of my train.

  ‘Back to the Big Smoke?’

  ‘Dad?’ I look up at him, and thinking himself safe, he leans in. ‘I was wondering . . .’

  He nods, encouraging.

  ‘When I was adopted . . .’

  He rears back, his forehead shooting up into the bald dome of his head, but I’ve started – I’ve started! – and so I go on. ‘Was it through an agency? Or how was it arranged?’

  My father’s lips are white. His grey cheeks quiver.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I reach out and touch his hand. ‘I need to—’

  ‘No.’ He snaps into action. ‘You have every right . . . It’s only that your mother . . .’

  We look at each other. Which mother?

  ‘Your mother.’ He makes it plain. ‘We don’t want to upset her.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He pulls out a chair and sits across from me. ‘Cork,’ he says, as if he hopes this may be enough. I shake my head to show him that it isn’t. ‘There was a home there, run by nuns. The Convent of the Sacred Heart, Bessborough. Babies were available, as long as you were Catholic.’ His face is close, and I look at him, at the shadow of his shave, his pebbled eyes, so tired. It’s as if I’ve never looked at him before. ‘The girl, your mother, she was from a good family, young, unmarried.’

  ‘You met her?’

  He jumps, as if accused. ‘It was the nuns who handed you over, perfect, and so beautifully dressed, in a white knitted jacket and a bonnet. We were going to stay, there was a hotel booked, but once we’d got you, we made a dash for it, found a car to take us to Rosslare, took the shortest crossing home.’ His whisper is so low I hang my head to hear. ‘Your mother was terrified, we both were, that there would be a change of heart.’

  I hear Freya before I see her, skipping across the lawn. ‘Not a word!’ My father looks at me with such severity that How old was I? What was m
y name? are as nothing beside his fear.

  ‘We’d better make a move,’ my mother calls happily, and my father staggers up and takes hold of my bag.

  ‘Bye, old girl, don’t let it be too long.’ He’s walking us towards the garage, and we follow him and pack ourselves into the car.

  ‘What a treat!’ My mother wriggles.

  ‘Gran,’ Freya asks. ‘Could I have one bee? To keep?’

  ‘No.’ She hands over an emergency supply of sandwiches. ‘Bees need to live together. You remember I told you about the queen? They live in hives, they work together – one bee on its own would die.’

  ‘Not if I looked after it.’ Freya is adamant, and on the train she makes a drawing of an independent bee, its striped body held up by silvery wings.

  I take out my notebook and I write:

  Dear Mother Superior,

  I was born in your home on 10th April 1961 and adopted by a Mr and Mrs Hayes from East Sussex, England. Could you kindly provide me with the name of my mother, and any other information that may be useful in finding her.

  Yours . . . sincerely,

  appreciatively,

  desperately?

  Catherine Hayes (Kate).

  As soon as I am home I call the Irish directory enquiries. A woman answers, her accent swooping me across the sea, and when I ask for the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Bessborough, her voice softens and stalls. ‘Is that the Mother and Baby Home you’re wanting?’

  I say it is, at least I think that’s it, and she whispers me the number as if we may be overheard. My pen scratches out the digits. ‘The address?’ She seems to press the phone closer to her ear as if she has something of her own to add.

  I thank her, and she pauses. ‘Take care now.’ The line goes dead.

  I copy out the letter, consider what else there is to write, but there’s nothing else, or too much, so I seal the envelope, paste on a stamp, another for good luck, and unable to wait for tomorrow, I pull open the front door.

  ‘You’re home.’ It’s Matt, standing on the step, and with a thrill of shock I realise I hadn’t noticed he was gone.

  Rosaleen

  IT HAD BEEN HARD TO SLEEP WITH THE SOUND OF CARMEL’S sniffling, but when her time neared, and she was ordered to the dormitory, Rosaleen was distraught. ‘I’ll miss you.’ They clung together, their stomachs knocking.

  ‘I won’t start, not while Sister is on duty.’ Carmel crossed herself and turned her eyes to heaven. ‘Pray for me, Patricia.’

  Rosaleen promised, although what good it would do she’d no idea, and she thought of the stories whispered, how Sister would have you sitting on the bedpan, would slap you if you made a sound, whereas the midwife, a woman not much older than themselves, would at least allow a girl on to the bed.

  That first night alone, Rosaleen spread her palms over the stretched skin of her belly. She was too tired to imagine any future. All there was to do was wait, and afterwards – in the After Life, as she imagined it – she’d make a plan. She listened for her baby. It lay still and low, and she was almost asleep before she felt the familiar flutter as it waved.

  On her third night a knocking started. A tapping, scraping, drawing in of breath – not painful, but insistent; it tunnelled through to where she lay on a forest floor, the warm earth twisting, tight and tighter, a fist, closing and releasing, until it punched her awake. It’s too soon! Her due date wasn’t for a fortnight, and even as she thought it, a wave started close in to her spine. It rolled up through her, gathering force, bringing blood, small stones and seaweed, until it dropped her on the shore. Fidgety with fear, she made her way to the bathroom, where she sat on the cold bowl, soothed as the minutes passed by the comfort of her peeing. It’s a false start, surely, she said as she wiped herself, but there on the waxed paper was a smear of blood. Rosaleen shook so violently her teeth clattered in her head. Please, she moaned. There was no mirror, but all the same she saw her eyes dilated, her nostrils flared, a horse girding itself for an impossible jump.

  She was at the basin when the next contraction caught her. It bent her to the floor where she would have stayed, pressed against the damp check of the tiles, if a spider hanging between the claw legs of the bath hadn’t made a scuttling dash. There’ll be hell to pay – Rosaleen feared for the girl who’d failed to dust there. She pulled herself upright.

  Through the rest of that night she kept to her room, a cloth between her teeth, biting down on each new swell of pain. Gulls circled, cawing, flying out from the port, or was it her own voice, moaning? Soon her mattress was soaked through. She crawled across and lay on Carmel’s bed. ‘Please, Lord’ – she had no other words – ‘have mercy.’ Sweat ran down her sides. She struggled free of her nightdress, pressed her face into the musty pillow, added her own tears to those already soaked into its feathers.

  As dawn broke her door flew open. ‘Will you stop the racket!’ It was Sister Ignatius. ‘You know the rules.’ She forced the damp material back over Rosaleen’s head and yanked her by the arm. ‘Get up now, won’t you.’

  Rosaleen did her best to stand. ‘That’s it.’ The nun led her towards the stairs, but halfway down, she buckled. ‘There’s something wrong.’ The pain was searing.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ the woman hissed. ‘Nothing that you haven’t brought upon yourself. Nothing that couldn’t have been avoided by keeping your legs together.’

  Vomit flew from her mouth, but Sister Ignatius pushed her on.

  ‘What a fuss!’ Sister was sour-faced when they arrived. ‘A first offender, is it?’ She forced Rosaleen on to the bedpan, and measured her dilation in the copper gleam. ‘And only three centimetres.’

  When Rosaleen tried to rise, she held her down. ‘Is there nothing you can give me?’ Rosaleen grasped at the white cloth of Sister’s habit. Surely there were powders, gas, an injection of some kind?

  Sister said nothing, only passed her a clipboard. ‘Sign here.’ A pen was folded into her fist, and eager, the words swimming before her, she began to write: P a t r . . .

  ‘No.’ Sister crossed it out. ‘The name you came in with.’

  Rosaleen was gripped by a new pain, so fierce she lost sight of the form, the room, the home. Rosaleen Kelly, she managed at last. ‘Now let me have something!’

  The nun smiled and, taking the form, she left the room.

  How long Rosaleen sat there she couldn’t tell. The bedpan turned from ice to fire, scalding as the edges slipped with sweat. Her contractions roared, the spaces between each one so short she could hardly catch her breath. ‘Help me,’ she sobbed, but no one came. Only Bess, who’d been there twenty years, who had nowhere else to go. She stroked her brow and told her to be patient. ‘The midwife’ll be back from her day off,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll try to keep the witch away till then. Hold on.’

  Later, much later, a softer voice came through to her. ‘Get her up.’ Hands were in her armpits, on her back, and she was on the bed, the pain of a sharp instrument, a gash, and warm water gushed between her legs.

  ‘It’ll be a while yet.’ It was the midwife. How long is a while? She had no breath to ask. How many heartbeats? How many screams? The price of sin, it seemed, was everlasting, and she saw that God, as she’d suspected, was godless. I can’t go on. She forgot there was no choice, and then she remembered the child. She must keep on for the sake of the baby. Please, she gasped, the child is without sin. She fought to find a sky, a sea, the comfort of her nana’s singing, but God did not want respite for her, and the pain that seized her was so violent it grew dark. There were raised voices, then, that weren’t her own. Shouts. A hush.

  A banging started in her head, and then a falling, and for a sweet while she was adrift. She floated, high above her body. I’ll go now, she was calm, I’m ready for what is next, but she was tugged back, and the wave, when it found her, left less than a second before the screams ripped out.

  This time no one told her to shut up. She could hear prayers, mumbling, voices rushing. Sh
e had no tears left to cry, and then a new pain bore down. ‘That’s it, keep going.’ She gritted her teeth and fought. For the baby. She would pay the price for her child. She pushed, and pushed again, the very centre of her splitting, until not a thing was left.

  ‘A girl.’

  The girl was placed in Rosaleen’s arms. A scrap of fury, blood and slime, with Felix’s face, squashed and angry, and a black slick of hair. ‘Shhh,’ she soothed, amazed to find that she could speak, and she held her, trembling, and the two of them looked into each other’s eyes.

  Around her people were moving; a dab of some sharp spirit stung her wounds. ‘Stitches?’ she heard the midwife. ‘Surely in this instance?’

  Sister, irritable: ‘Come now. You know we don’t offer that service here.’

  There must have been some word of dissent because Sister, when she spoke again, was ice. ‘Women all over the world give birth in the most appalling and unsanitary conditions every minute of every day, and these girls . . .’ She paused to emphasise what kind of girls she meant. ‘These girls would do well to remember they’re lucky to have the support they do.’

  The midwife was silent, and it wasn’t until later, when the baby was removed and Rosaleen had been helped, limping, to another room, that the bruise of her insides began to burn. She suffered the flame of it, lighting her baby in a delirium of pain, her child, someone of her own to love, and her arms ached above all else to have her back. She forced open her eyes and watched the clock, ticking lightly, and saw that every minute that passed was a countdown to their parting. Three years. So short a time! Was that all she’d be allowed? Three years, less an hour, and she urged the morning on when they would bring her daughter in to her; three years, less a day, when she’d hold her tight and memorise her face.

  FOR ONE SHORT WEEK ROSALEEN kept her child beside her. She wasn’t going to let her go, not after the first morning when she’d woken to a siren wail, its source far along the corridor, a baby – her baby – crying.

  ‘She’s awake.’ It was Bess, her mop dropped as she ran across the ward.