I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  Rosaleen attempted to sit up. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Shh.’ Bess held a hand to her forehead as if she might be ill, or raving, as if the red-hot squalling of a desperate child didn’t warrant their attention. ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘No.’ She slid a leg towards the floor, but a shard of glass splintered through her and she couldn’t help herself, she screamed.

  The midwife was there then, on her other side. ‘Let’s see how you’re getting on.’ She peeled back the sheet and removed a sodden pad. There was no disguising the hiss of air as she drew in her breath. ‘Right.’ Her voice turned bright and bustling. ‘What’s to be done here?’ She reached for the Dettol, which she applied with stinging dabs. The baby’s crying had reached a feverish pitch, drilling through the walls and floor. The others ignored it, rolling her deftly to one side, stripping the sheet from under her, tucking in a new one. ‘A hot, sweet cup of tea, that’ll set you straight,’ Bess determined, and she was left alone with the midwife, who busied herself with her trolley.

  ‘Can you not bring her?’ Rosaleen begged, but the midwife turned away, and fearful – what did she know that didn’t bear telling? – Rosaleen folded her arms around herself and pressed down with her nails.

  When the tray arrived she was hoisted to a sitting position, a cup held to her lips. ‘That’s better,’ the midwife nodded, as if the pain-relieving drugs she’d begged for had been administered, and she was handed a plate of toast. Rosaleen ate obediently, and then with a ferocious hunger. How long was it since she’d tasted butter? She licked up every crumb, and then, when she listened, there was silence. Terror gripped her. Where had her baby gone? Had they made a note of her desire to keep her, did they not hear it when she told them she could sleep beside her in a drawer? But the lull may have been a gathering of breath because the screaming started with the force of an electric bell. ‘Please!’ She would crawl from the ward if she had to, and she was making ready to throw herself from the bed when Sister appeared, a swaddled bundle in her arms. ‘The little devil!’ She dropped her into Rosaleen’s lap where she lay, shivering and scarlet with distress.

  Rosaleen held her tight against her heart. ‘I’ve got you,’ she sobbed and her daughter’s screams softened to gulps, to hiccups, to small stuttery breaths. Rosaleen didn’t look up. If she couldn’t see those bitches, then maybe they’d disappear, and she unbuttoned her nightdress and pressed a nipple to the child’s mouth. The baby took it and began to suck, the gummy hardness of her palate drawing out a feed, and with it, a softening so deep she felt it in her bones.

  ‘And what will you be calling her?’ Sister was still there.

  When Rosaleen didn’t answer – what business was it of hers? – the nun persisted. ‘We’ll be needing a name for the certificate. Although of course,’ she added, ‘it’ll be half the usual size, for illegitimates.’

  Rosaleen kept her eyes on her baby. She’d been washed and dressed since she’d last seen her, but there was the same black tuft of hair, the arc of eyebrow, the eye moving mauve beneath closed lids. Her ears were Felix’s, as was the shape of her head, and her mouth – when she stopped sucking and for a moment looked up – was all her own. ‘Isabelle,’ she decided.

  ‘Isabelle.’ Sister scratched it on to the form. ‘That’ll do. For now.’

  THAT NIGHT ROSALEEN HARDLY SLEPT. She had Isabelle beside her in a crib and was unable to look away, her face so familiar that she couldn’t keep from smiling. Look at our baby, she sought Felix in the shadows, and she stretched out an arm and gripped the bars of the cot. ‘It’ll be all right.’ She stroked the tiny hand, splay-fingered as a bird’s, and her heart clenched. Who was she to reassure their child?

  The baby was still sleeping when Rosaleen heaved herself up and crept through to breakfast, each step a trial, where she sat with other new mothers on a bench. Girls still pregnant looked across, and away. With Reverend Mother at the top table, no one risked a word.

  By the time she got back, seeping blood and sweating with the effort, Isabelle was crying. She washed her and folded her into a fresh nappy before lifting her on to the bed where she grappled with the pinafore of her dress – no slovenly nightwear in the dining room – and, clutching her tight, she quietened her with a feed.

  On the third day Rosaleen woke to a new trial. Her milk had thickened to cement, clogging and blocking, turning her breasts to stone. Her poor child could barely scale their bouldering surface, floundering to catch hold of a nipple, and when she did clamp down, the soreness of it made her break into a sweat. By the fifth day her nipples were blistered, but Isabelle’s face was filling out, her skin smoothing, her eyes as deep and beautiful as glass. Someone of my own to love; Rosaleen stroked her tiny ankle, and she watched the girls and women, those arriving and others removing to the farm where, once their babies had been settled in the nursery, they would be set to work in the fields. For months she’d watched these girls at Mass, pitying them the long incarceration. Three years! Now she saw three years would never be enough.

  On the sixth day Carmel joined her. Carmel’s baby had been late. A boy, red-haired, with the same sweet groove above his lip. She sat on Rosaleen’s bed and showed him off, and the tears gushed from her as she wept for her mam who wasn’t here to see him.

  That night, once more, they lay side by side. ‘How was it?’ Rosaleen whispered. Carmel’s labour had been quick, that’s what she’d heard, and the girl had a shocked look to be so soon on the other side.

  ‘Not so very bad.’ A shadow settled over her. ‘Although I was scared witless, all the girls are, after what happened to you.’

  Rosaleen frowned. She’d not had a word of pity, and she didn’t want to risk one now.

  ‘When the priest came . . .’

  ‘The priest?’

  ‘Did they not tell you?’ Carmel propped herself on an elbow and relayed in a dramatic hiss what everyone else knew. How they thought they were to lose her, she’d been in that much danger that the priest was called to deliver the last rites; how, before he could do that, they’d rung the emergency number, they must have, or why would her father have come by?

  Rosaleen felt her blood still. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He was here at the back door. Fiametta saw him, a dark-skinned man’ – Carmel coughed and made a quick correction – ‘weather-worn. He had an overcoat, bottle-green, and a brown hat.’

  Rosaleen was shaking. Her father had been here. He knew she was in danger, and he’d gone away again without a word. ‘Was he alone?’ she managed.

  ‘He was.’

  Surely he’d told Mummy? Why had no one come? A wail threatened to fly out of her.

  ‘It was while they were giving the last rites the baby woke you. A fighter. It’s what they’re saying. She needed you to push.’

  They both looked across at Isabelle, her face framed in the swaddle of her blanket, her chest rising gently with each breath.

  ‘Your pa . . .’ Carmel wasn’t finished. ‘They must have given him the news you were delivered because he was off away along the drive, and later . . .’ She paused, and for so long Rosaleen was forced to urge her on. ‘He came back, parked by the front door, broad daylight it was then, and he walked through to the Mother Superior’s office . . . Oh, Patricia, I always knew there’d be someone to hand over the one hundred pounds.’

  ‘No.’ Rosaleen shook her head.

  ‘Why do you think Sister is off out today? There’s a party of them gone for tea in Cork.’

  Rosaleen flew from the bed, her cuts and sores as nothing, and seized Isabelle up.

  ‘You have the free leg!’ Carmel whispered. ‘It’s what he wanted for you. Your da.’

  Rosaleen was trembling.

  ‘I always said best not to have a bonny one.’ Carmel was crying again now. ‘Look at mine, he’ll be with me till the end.’

  ‘Ten days.’ Rosaleen clutched the child so tight she made a strangled sound.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Carmel sobbed, and
they both looked into her peaceful sleeping face.

  IT WAS THE NEXT EVENING they came for her. ‘It’s only been a week!’ She’d lost three years; she couldn’t lose a moment more.

  ‘Stop that nonsense.’ Sister was stern. ‘The child must be made ready. No one wants her returned.’

  They gave Rosaleen a dish with which to collect her milk, showing her how to push it out with the flat of her hand where it sprayed in pinpricks, so pitifully little for the effort involved. They collected milk from other girls too. Scraps, unused, their babies taken to the nursery. Rosaleen’s tears plinked into the dish, and she imagined her daughter’s eyes sprung open as she tasted the surprise of salt.

  That night Isabelle’s crying seared into her soul. Hunger, hopelessness, the discomfort of a cold wet nappy. She recognised each yell. She’d been moved into a room below the nursery, one more punishment to add to the rest, and not just for her – no baby over a week old must be attended to during the night. I’ll not walk down that corridor, I’ll not give them the pleasure, Rosaleen swore near dawn when the anguished chorus reached a pitch, and in the half light she picked up the bonnet she’d been knitting and stitched a message into the white rim. But by the tenth day she was so hungry for a hold of her child that she would have begged, if she’d been asked to, for the chance of one more minute. She glanced briefly through the window at the car pulled up, at a woman, stiff and fearful, her husband moving around her in a nervous dance, and she ran as fast as her socked feet would take her to the start of the corridor, where she waited for her baby to be placed, for the last time, into her arms.

  Aoife

  AOIFE FLICKED ON THE LIGHT. WHO COULD IT BE, CALLING AT this hour? She reached for her robe but Cash was up, pulling on his trousers, looping the braces over his vest. ‘You stay here now.’ She nodded, only tiptoeing to the landing as he lifted the phone in the hall below. ‘Barraghmore one five three. Cashel Kelly speaking.’ There was a pause. ‘No, she isn’t here.’

  Who isn’t here? Their two girls were tucked into bed. Everyone was here but Rosaleen. She strained her ears – it couldn’t be O’Malley, the great fool, calling for her, he didn’t have a phone. She crept a little closer, risking the creak of the third step, but all she could hear was the sound of her husband, listening. ‘I’m on my way.’

  He came up then, neither fast nor slow. ‘What is it?’ She had scrambled back into bed.

  ‘Trouble over at the Foley place. There’s been an acc—’ He shook his head, not wanting to worry her, and he slid a fresh shirt from its hanger and buttoned it methodically, starting as he always did, at the top. He put on his good suit, and the black shoes reserved for Mass, and looping his tie, and knotting it, he came round to her side. ‘You get some sleep now. I’ll not be long.’

  There’s been a death, Aoife knew it. No one dresses in their Sunday best if they’re called out for a fire, and as soon as she heard the car, crunching away over the gravel, she got up and went down to the kitchen where Humphrey watched her from his basket, his velvety face creased with concern. Who had they been asking for when they called? The confusion of it wouldn’t let her alone, and it kept her sitting in the chair so long that it was nearly time to start the breakfast before she went up to get changed.

  Cash arrived back as the men trooped in. ‘Morning.’ Patsy gave her his shy smile, and Tim and Eamon grunted as they washed their hands. Cash sat at the table without a word, and so without a word she served him, only once catching his eye as she handed him his plate: sausage, mushroom, bacon; three rashers, crispy as he liked it. ‘Business,’ he muttered when Tim asked what had kept him from the milking, and whatever it was, it had robbed him of his appetite. She could see Patsy looking hungrily at his plate, the sausage half eaten, the tomato untouched, and when he failed to take his slice of toast, the men ate it between them, scraping the last of the jam.

  She’d catch him, Aoife decided, when he went up to change, but as she began to clear the table he filed out behind the men, and she could hear him giving orders in the yard. She scraped the plates, throwing the rind to Humphrey, the end of the sausage, although she knew she shouldn’t or they’d suffer for it later, and by the time she’d filled the sink, wiped down the table, swept the floor, he’d started up the car. She ran through the house to the front door in time to see the tail end of it slip through the gate. ‘Cash!’ She had a dishcloth in her hand and she waved it, but it was too late, he was gone.

  She waited, and would have waited longer if it hadn’t been her morning for a set and dry. She turned the radio on, listening for the local news, an ear out for accidental shootings, barns burned down, a body found drowned in a stream, but there was nothing, and if there had been, wouldn’t it have been all the talk among the men?

  Maureen was finishing with a customer, and as soon as she was done she relieved Aoife of her coat and settled her at the sink. As she eased her backwards, the jet of water prickling her scalp, she began to tell her about the child of a neighbour – not that she was one to gossip – but the girl had gone across to England, to Liverpool, to work as a domestic, and she’d not been there three months before she found herself in trouble. Maureen gave a sniff as if it pained her to go on, and Aoife felt the cold slick of the shampoo eased into her hair. ‘Now, this is the surprise of it. When she sought help she was told the English no longer wanted to be saddled with the worry and expense of girls like her, and she was directed to a Repatriation Scheme, they’re calling it.’ She lifted her hand to cross herself and a stinging drop dripped into Aoife’s eye. Aoife bolted up and dabbed it with a towel, but the froth of the lather slid down her forehead and she lay quickly back. ‘Would you believe it’ – Maureen began to rinse – ‘they pay for those girls’ tickets, and when they’ve set them on the ferry there’s a nurse, and a taxi at the dock to take them’ – she lowered her voice – ‘to the comfort of a home.’

  She sat Aoife up and bound her hair into a towel, and led her over to the mirror. ‘Those nuns’ – Maureen’s face was flushed – ‘they wear themselves out for girls like that, teaching them morals, caring for them, finding new parents for their brats.’

  Aoife saw, reflected, that she was shivering. ‘It’s God’s work they do,’ she agreed, and she slapped away the image of her daughter, waving to her from the boat.

  ‘Now then,’ Maureen said, brushing out the wet hair, ‘let’s make a start, shall we, or you’ll be here at teatime,’ and, slicing a segment with her fingers, she wound it into a roller and pinned it to Aoife’s head. ‘And how are your own lovely family?’ Aoife would need to have her roots done when she next came in, but neither of them mentioned it.

  ‘We’re all well, thank you. And yours?’

  ‘Mustn’t complain.’ Her face turned sour, and then, catching herself, she sighed and took another roller and wound the hair expertly, setting it beside the other, so that soon Aoife’s head was a halo of hollow curls, and she was placed under the dryer beside old Mrs Fitzpatrick, with whom mercifully the whirr of the air made it impossible to converse.

  That evening Cash was in a teasing mood, asking Angela, and even Kitty, did they have boyfriends – surely there were one or two they had their eye on? – until they were both helpless with protesting, and when they’d cleared, and swept the floor, and the kitchen was set to rights for the morning, he insisted Aoife’s lipstick was a shade brighter than usual, and hadn’t he better check it with a kiss?

  ‘Are you not going to tell me where you dashed off to in such a hurry?’ Aoife looked into his eyes, but he answered that he had to see a man about a dog, and although she nudged him and gave him a pinch, he held her tight and hummed into her new-set hair.

  Later, as he slept, Aoife lay beside him, Maureen’s nuns filing through her mind, until, tormented, she crept from the room and sat at the desk, where she wrote to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart to enquire: Had they any news of her daughter? She knew it was unlikely, but could they reassure her she was safely in their care?
r />   Kate

  MY LETTER IS WAITING BY THE DOOR. I’M NOT SURE I HAVE THE courage to send it. I examine the address – Blackrock, Cork – and I put it into my work bag with my ink and paints.

  On the bus I keep my eyes averted. My mother is in Ireland, and not staring at me from a billboard. She’s not the woman whose bicycle we overtake, back straight, hair streaming, although – I can’t help myself – I turn around to check. And then, for all that I’m determined to stop searching, she’s there! So familiar I start out of my seat. Her hair is speckled black and grey, cut severe into a helmet, and she has on a short-sleeved shirt. I know that shirt, those arms, her elbows, as if they are my own. Hello. I roll the word, consider offering up my seat, and then it comes to me: she’s not my mother, she’s the attendant from the playground on the heath. I’ve seen her standing by her brick-tight hut, handing out plasters, splashing antiseptic over wounds. Idiot. I turn away and close my eyes, and I daren’t open them until I reach my stop.

  There’s a postbox on the corner, but as I approach a sheen of sweat washes cold over my skin. Keep quiet. Whose voice is that? A hand presses on my head. Later, I decide, I’ll post the letter later, and I stop outside the main door of the centre and I gulp for air, three gasps before I catch enough to breathe.

  Donica is already settled. She’s prising the lid off a Tupperware box, unrolling a wad of tissue to reveal a pen with multicoloured nibs. Jen arrives as I am pasting a sheet of paper to a board. ‘Do I get one?’ she asks, panicked, and before I can tell her that yes, there will be enough for everyone, Donica pronounces: ‘God giveth, and he taketh away.’

  Jen looks unnerved, so I set the first board before her. ‘The theme is summer.’ Summer is safe. Or safer. I considered dreams, but dreams take you inward, and my job is to ease my people from themselves. I spread out materials – glitter, tissue paper, wool.

  ‘Can’t you . . . ?’ Jen begs me to start for her, and although my fingers itch, I wait until she takes up her brush, squirts paint into a bowl and slants grey rain across her page.