Say You Love Me

by Marion Husband

  ‘Does it?’ He laughed brokenly. ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘Self-pity.’

  Shyly she said, ‘I just came to tell you I’m going now.’

  ‘Yes. Right. Of course. Off you go.’

  ‘I could stay if you like – make you some lunch…?’

  ‘No, I mustn’t keep you. But thank you, you’re very kind.’

  About to go, she said suddenly, ‘It’s not self-pity to feel sad about your wife and baby.’

  Ashamed he said, ‘I was crying for myself, really.’

  ‘That’s all most of us ever do.’

  Surprised by the bleakness in her voice he said, ‘Perhaps. All the same, best not to wallow, I think.’

  She seemed about to say something, only to stop herself. Glancing towards the house, she said, ‘Should I come back same time next week?’

  ‘Would you come sooner than that? Say Friday? I feel the house is so untidy – so much clutter to clear out…Would you mind?’

  ‘No. Friday would be fine.’

  He took the envelope containing her wages from his pocket and held it out to her. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done today.’

  She took the envelope without looking at it, as though it was something to be embarrassed by.

  Chapter 7

  Kitty watched as her mother changed Nathan. Julie was much quicker than she was at this – more slap-dash. But she supposed the end result was the same: a clean, sweeter-smelling baby, the dirty nappy folded in on itself to form a tight ball and fastened down with its sticky tapes. Nathan smiled up at his grandmother from the changing mat; he laughed as Julie lifted him onto her knee and rubbed her nose against his.

  ‘Who’s my lovely boy? Who’s gorgeous? You are! Aren’t you? Yes you are!’

  Kitty sighed. ‘Do you want a coffee, Mam?’

  Julie barely glanced at her. ‘I have to be back at work soon.’

  Julie worked at a mortgage call centre. Recently she’d been made team leader; Kitty believed she would take the place over. Julie had more energy than anyone she knew; it made her feel weary just thinking about her mother’s non-stop go. She yawned, wanting to close her eyes and sleep, wanting her mother to stay and keep watch, or take the baby out on a long, long walk. But Julie didn’t do walking. Her purple Micra stood on the drive outside the window; she imagined its engine was still hot from her mother’s too-fast driving.

  Julie frowned at her. ‘You look awful.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You could put a bit of lippy on, comb your hair at least. Have you had a shower this morning?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Her mother raised her eyebrows, holding her gaze as she used to when she was little and had sniffed a lie. Kitty looked down at her bitten fingernails.

  Julie said, ‘You’re not depressed, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be, not with all you’ve got going for you.’ She looked around the large lounge with its polished wooden floor and deep, bright, modern rugs. The cream leather sofa she sat on matched the one opposite, a large glass coffee table between them. Beyond the sofas, French doors led to the garden that was almost as big as Simon’s. Bookcases lined the alcoves either side of the fireplace, full of books she hadn’t read – Ben’s first wife’s books, clever-clever books by writers Kitty had never heard of. Books written by Mark. The first question her family asked was where the telly was. In the snug, she told them, or at least she did until she got sick of their teasing. ‘The snug?’ Her brother Sean had laughed scornfully. ‘What the fuck’s a snug?’

  Julie said, ‘Kitty, love, I know you’re tired –’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘It’s the same for all young mums. And think if you were living in some grotty council flat with kids running riot outside and music blaring day and night. It’s lovely here. Look at the blossom on those trees!’

  Kitty laughed but tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Blossom doesn’t get him to sleep, Mam.’

  ‘Oh, don’t cry, pet!’ Julie frowned, looking from her to the baby as though torn between them. Coming to a decision she put Nathan down on the changing mat and crossed the room to where Kitty was sitting on the window seat in the bay. She put her arm around her shoulders; never having been a motherly type, her embrace was stiff. She kissed the side of Kitty’s head awkwardly.

  ‘Don’t be sad, eh? Everything will be all right, I promise. This is just a phase babies go through. I know when Sean was little – I was at my wit’s end…’

  ‘But you had Dad helping –’

  Julie laughed as though amazed. ‘Helping? Your Dad?’

  Kitty wiped her eyes. ‘At least he was there.’

  ‘Aye – getting in the way, wanting his tea and his ironing doing. I’d have loved it if he’d buggered off abroad for a few days.’ She glanced at her watch surreptitiously.

  Kitty sat up straight, allowing her mother not to feel so bad about withdrawing her embrace. ‘You’d best get going. You’ll be late.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right for a few minutes. Should we have that coffee?’

  Julie followed her into the kitchen carrying Nathan and talking her baby talk. She sat down at the table, keeping up her stream of nonsense words as Kitty switched on the coffee machine and fetched milk from the fridge. This was her mother’s most favourite room in a house full of favourite rooms. She liked its sunniness, its buttermilk walls that set off the soft, honey glow of the pine cupboards. Beyond the table where her mother sat were doors leading out into the conservatory and beyond that the decking area and another table with its eight matching chairs made of some dark, heavy wood. There were too many big tables in this house, a table for every kind of formal and informal occasion. The first wife used to give dinner parties.

  Julie said casually, ‘Did Mark get here all right?’

  Kitty placed a coffee on the table in front of her. Taking Nathan she said, ‘He arrived when I was at Simon’s.’

  ‘Oh? Still as gorgeous as ever, is he?’

  ‘Mam! Honestly you’re embarrassing.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Unashamed she said, ‘How is he, then?’

  Kitty sat down. Cuddling Nathan closer she said, ‘He doesn’t like me.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘Don’t be childish.’

  ‘And he hardly looked at Nath.’

  ‘No! I don’t believe that! How could anyone not be interested in this little prince, eh?’ Julie grinned. ‘Maybe he was tired after that long journey. Mark’s nice. He was kind to your gran at your wedding. She still asks after that lovely young man.’

  ‘He’s not young.’

  ‘Everyone’s young to your gran, pet. And he is young! Younger than me.’

  Kitty reached for the salt cellar, fiddling with it to avoid her mother’s eye. Usually, when she wasn’t thick with tiredness, she avoided mentioning anyone’s age in case the conversation turned to the twenty-two years between her and Ben. Everyone had an opinion on it; everyone was surprised or curious as though she’d done something weird in marrying him. A couple of her friends had made gagging noise when they’d discovered Ben’s age, like he was eighty, or something. She shook the salt cellar at Nathan, remembering her own surprise when he’d told her just how old he was. She’d thought he was thirty; she’d thought thirty was getting past it.

  Julie sipped her coffee. Smiling at Nathan she said, ‘Why don’t you ask Mark and Simon to Sean’s twenty-first?’

  Kitty laughed.

  ‘What? What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Julie said, ‘You think Mark’s stuck up.’

  Kitty thought of Mark dancing with her mother at her wedding. He had been attentive, smiling and laughing at her mother’s jokes so that she began to worry that her stepfather, Alan, would be jealous. But Mark had also seemed partly absent. She had thought of the prime minister on TV visiting some do or other – smiling for the show of it, looking like he was wondering when he could poli
tely leave the plebs to it.

  Julie said, ‘Mark’s only a couple of years younger than me.’

  ‘So?’ Too sharply she said, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  Julie laughed. ‘You’re too serious, you are. I’m just saying – I wouldn’t crawl over Mark to get to Alan.’ She stood up, smiling at Kitty’s look of disgust. ‘I’m going. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  Her mother sighed. ‘Cheer up, eh? Take Nathan out for a walk – fresh air will do you both good.’

  Kitty took her mother’s advice and walked Nathan in his pushchair along the lane towards St Hilda’s. The church stood in the centre of the village, opposite the one shop, a post office-cum-grocers-cum-newsagent. On her way back from strolling around the graves in the churchyard she would buy Cosmopolitan and a bar of fruit and nut. Not that Nathan would allow her to read or eat chocolate; she bought these things in hope rather than the expectation of the peace they represented.

  She pushed Nath through the church’s lych gate and along the path that led around the church. A bird hopped ahead of her, as if leading her on to some secret place; she thought of the fairy tales she’d read as a child, where animals and birds were knowing and could speak. As a little girl she had wanted to live in a village such as this, the type where such stories seemed to be set – an old place, full of the past and its ghosts. She’d imagined she would be happy away from her family’s bickering.

  The bird took off and perched on Mary Edward’s angel. Mary, who died in 1864, had been the same age as her when the Lord welcomed her into heaven. Kitty stopped and read the inscription carved into the plaque the angel held. Mary had been a mother, too. She crouched beside Nath’s pushchair, feeling protective of him suddenly. He slept, a trickle of drool at the corner of his mouth. She wiped it away gently.

  To her relief, Ben’s first wife wasn’t buried here, but had been cremated and her ashes scattered over a meadow close to her parents’ home in Kent. Ben had told her once that in spring the meadow was full of cowslips, a half-tame, half-wild place. He had told her in his matter-of-fact voice as though he was teaching her something she might find interesting.

  Kitty sat down on a bench. This was her bench, hers and Ben’s. Their wedding video featured them kissing here, the full skirt of her dress covering its graffiti-scarred wood. There was confetti in Ben’s hair. She remembered how he had kissed her so sensuously she’d been embarrassed when she saw it replayed on the video. After the kiss he had told the photographer to leave them alone. He’d whispered how much he wanted to make love to her, that perhaps they could skip the reception, that my God! – he had never wanted anyone so badly! He wanted her right then and there, behind that tomb. He wanted to make her pregnant. He’d pressed her hand against the bulge of his hard-on. She remembered how shocked she’d been at the darkness in his eyes, how the intensity of his lust made him seem angry.

  The first time she saw Ben Walker what struck her most was how sophisticated he looked. He wore a dark, pinstripe suit and a flawless pale shirt with complicated cuffs fastened with heavy gold cufflinks. His collar was undone, the fat knot of his blue silk tie loosened. He was laughing, a delighted, head-back, uninhibited laugh. Standing a few feet away from her at the bar of the Cross Keys, he had caught her eye and smiled. Before she could look away he said, ‘My friend here has just told me the worst joke I’ve ever heard.’

  Surprising herself with her boldness, she’d said, ‘If it was so bad then why did you laugh?’

  ‘Now, there you have me. Max – why do I laugh at your awful jokes?’

  ‘Because you’re an idiot,’ Max said.

  Still smiling at her, Ben said, ‘There’s your answer – I’m an idiot. My best friend thinks so and so it must be true. An idiot called Ben. What’s your name?’

  She’d told him and he’d taken her hand and kissed it, bowing deeply from the waist like a prince in a Disney cartoon. He was only a little drunk. Ben never got more than a little drunk. Later, as they’d walked to the next pub behind the combined group of their friends, he’d stopped, catching her hand so that she’d stop too.

  He waited until the others were out of earshot. ‘May I see you again?’

  No one said may I. No one she knew, anyway. At first she thought he was making fun of her. She’d noticed how his friends spoke in loud, posh voices, how they had sized up her friends as if they were trying to decide if they were as easy as their clothes suggested they might be. They even looked faintly amused, as though all their expectations of Thorp girls had been met. She’d guessed that Ben and his friends had heard of the Cross Keys reputation and had found herself growing angrier at the knowing, sniggering looks they gave each other.

  On the street between the Cross Keys and The Green Tree, she had pulled her hand away from his. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh.’ He smiled, reinforcing the idea he was laughing at her. ‘I suppose I couldn’t compete, could I? Rather too old to be a boyfriend.’ Becoming serious he said, ‘Listen, I know you think I’m a prick who hangs around with a lot of other pricks –’

  ‘How do you know I think that?’

  ‘You’ve quite an expressive face.’ He’d gazed at her, a direct, appraising look that made her think he was trying to figure her out. Eventually he said, ‘Whatever you think, I’d like to take you out to dinner on Saturday.’

  She’d glanced after her friends. One of them staggered and Max caught her elbow, the two of them laughing uproariously. Kitty thought of Gary, the boy she was seeing. He’d never said she had an expressive face or asked her out to dinner.

  Turning back to Ben she’d said, ‘All right. If you like.’

  He’d grinned. ‘Good. Now, let’s get you inside. It’s freezing out here.’

  Kitty remembered that later, as they waited in the queue for a taxi, he had taken off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. It was heavy and warm, its silk lining soft against her bare arms. She had wanted to wrap it tightly around her and inhale the subtle, expensive smell of him. How quick and easy it was to fall in love with someone just because they were kind and attentive, because they spoke beautifully and listened when you told them about your boring life. How badly she’d wanted him just because his eyes smiled and smiled and his body was hard and muscular-looking beneath that pristine shirt. He worked out at a gym and played rugby every Saturday in winter. The first time he made love to her she had ached for days afterwards, growing hot every time she thought of the way he’d looked at her as he brought her to orgasm. For all her experience she had never come before. There had only been lads like Gary, banging away on top of her, eyes shut tight as though sex was a trial.

  On the graveyard bench Kitty took her mobile from her handbag and re-read the last text Ben had sent her. Will be late tonight, 10pm. Love you, my darling girl, love to Nath xxxx. Earlier that morning he had telephoned her during a break between one operation and the next. He’d sounded tired. ‘I can’t think straight,’ he said, and she’d felt a flurry of alarm, a feeling that was subsumed in her ordinary anxiety as Nathan began to cry. Holding the phone between her shoulder and neck she’d lifted Nath from his cot, hush-hushing him. She heard Ben laugh bleakly. ‘I’ll ring you later,’ he said. She’d forgotten to tell him that she loved him.

  Two women walked up the path and went inside the church. The church had a cleaning rota and a flower arranging rota and a church hall that held Women’s Institute meetings and a mother and toddler group on Wednesday mornings. Church services were held at 10.15am and 6.30pm each Sunday led by the Reverend Graham Winterton. All were welcome, or so the notice board concluded. She was sure she would be welcome. People in the village smiled at her and asked about the baby. She felt shy of them, these neighbours who had known Ben’s first wife. She knew she was being compared. Afraid one of the two women might come outside and ask her if she’d like to be part of some group, she got up and walked towards the gate that led down to the river path.


  On their first date Ben had taken her to a country house hotel, all huge fireplaces and tall windows that looked out over a lawn where peacocks strutted and shrieked. In the dining room, oil paintings of women in ball gowns looked down on tables set with white linen and silver that glinted in the late evening sun. Their table looked out over the garden, away from the swinging door the waiters used and the discreet, green man fire exit sign. The waiters told Ben how nice it was to see him again.

  Alone with their menus, Ben had smiled at her. ‘You look lovely.’

  She had been cutting a bread roll in half and she must have looked up at him too sharply because he said, ‘Was that the wrong thing to say?’

  ‘No.’ Remembering her manners she said, ‘Thanks.’

  She’d worn a dress she found in the H&M sale, black and short and plain with a scooped neckline. The hangar had stated it was a size ten. It was actually a size eight and it cut a little beneath her arms and pushed her small breasts together so that for the first time in her life it appeared she had a cleavage. She’d borrowed a pair of her mother’s evening sandals, the heels higher than she was used to so that Julie had laughed as she’d tottered down the stairs. She’d applied lip-gloss sitting on the edge of the settee as her stepfather watched TV. He’d frowned at her. ‘Where you going dressed like a tart?’

  Ben said, ‘The scallops are very good here.’ He’d looked up at her from studying his menu. ‘The Parma ham, too.’

  ‘What are you having?’ How nervous she’d sounded. She’d never tasted scallops, or Parma ham. On the next table a middle-aged couple toasted themselves with Champagne. A group of Japanese men came in and silently took their seats. Ben caught her eye. He smiled. ‘I’m having the soup then the steak.’

  ‘Do you come here a lot?’

  He closed his menu and placed it down. ‘Sometimes. I like its grandeur.’

  ‘It’s nice.’ She glanced out of the window, awkwardly aware that she’d hardly strung more than a few words together since they’d arrived. She realised she was shy of him; he looked older than he had in the pub, he seemed more serious. She began to wonder if he thought he had made a mistake by asking her out – not that she cared, she was sure she would never see him again after this evening. He was too old; she had nothing to say to him; he made her feel she wasn’t up to his standards.