Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  ‘Do you think he’ll come back?’ she asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ I said. ‘He usually does.’

  Mum took a long time to answer and I felt angry as I waited, as though she were deliberately evading me. When I heard her voice, though, I told myself to go easy. She sounded paper thin.

  ‘Hello, dear, how are things?’ she asked.

  I could see her, standing at the window of her cottage, paint down her front, an undertow of turps and the paraffin cream she used to stop her hands from cracking.

  ‘David’s gone. He’s left again.’

  She was quiet on the line. My impatience rose.

  ‘Are you still there, Mum?’ I said.

  ‘I am. Yes. Well. I hope he’s keeping himself safe,’ she said, at last.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘I imagine he needs some space,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s OK?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Nancy.’

  ‘What about the rest of us?’

  ‘Well if you mean Skyler, I suppose it must be hard. But to be honest I’m not sure—’

  ‘Not Skyler. Us. The family.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see what anyone can do other than wait.’

  *

  I left him messages. David. She tells me you’ve gone. What the fuck? I think the first one ran. He may have laughed at that, if he listened to it; at its sweet familiarity, our relationship encoded in my tone. ‘I’m Nancy-proof,’ he started to say, at about thirteen and it was true, from then he simply shrugged me off. I tried his number again when I got off the phone from Mum, sitting out on the sofa in reception after everyone else had left, a radiator ticking evenly. But this time it didn’t even ring and I imagined him stepping out along a sunny pavement, chucking his mobile behind him in a careless loop that somehow found the bin. He is like a cat, my brother, always falling on his feet. I saw him at night, slinking, stealing the best bits out of bins and bathing in the moon. His cold nose on a suburban patio door as he peeped into over-lit rooms and then he was off, up and over the wall. I was jealous of him then.

  *

  That evening, I snatched Free’s phone. My arm moved suddenly, before I’d acknowledged any sort of decision. Her screen clattered against my rings, the handset was wider and thinner than mine and my grip was slippery – I was sweating, already, in response to my act – I nearly launched the thing straight back at her. It came to life in the struggle, lit up in my palm, but I didn’t dare look down. Instead I held it, weakly, in the space between us and watched her watching me, like the dog will if another comes for its stick, waiting for the opponent’s move.

  ‘I think we should limit screen time, that’s all,’ I said and handed it to her in a pathetic reversal. She took it wordlessly and turned away. I should have said sorry but my frustration and the fact that I have to feel all of her pain, real and imagined, forever, and in technicolour, when I’d learnt, years ago, how to swallow my own, had contorted into rage.

  I logged on to the school website to check her grades, plotted on a graph with their new software. There was the dip they’d talked about, and a steady climb back from that point. Weekly data from various tests and observations. So much work these poor kids have to do. I called the teacher again who had nothing to add. And so I watched her, and she bore it, though it added to her load.

  The others saw. There was Louisa at my elbow, with a question or a story she had written, something or other that she wanted me to see. A scruffy effort, when I turned to it, knocked up with no other aim than to distract me. I knew to set my face to interested, a lesson learnt in the earlier parenting years, but my youngest was too shrewd and she heard my deceit. I nearly asked her: ‘What is it you want? What can I give to you that will ever be enough?’ but hid the thought inside a brief stiff hug which she succumbed to, eyes closed.

  *

  On Thursday Stefan spoke to me. I found him at the sink rinsing mud from Jake’s trainers, turning the soles carefully in a thin coil of water.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to have a word.’

  He propped the shoes up against a windowsill. A blast of bleak sudden sunlight forced me to move.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine thanks,’ I replied. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Look I know this isn’t easy,’ he said. ‘This business with David.’

  I saw him think to come closer and change his mind. I felt for the island behind me.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I replied.

  ‘I realise it’s complicated,’ he went on. ‘I’m trying my best to understand.’

  My husband’s family are a neat and forthright four who live two hours away by plane. ‘Thank you for this,’ his father said, that first Christmas they visited, when he opened my gift. ‘It’s beautiful but I can’t wear it. Long fibres, see?’ He gave a large moist sneeze and handed it back. ‘I’ll have it,’ said his sister and took it from my outstretched hand. ‘Yeah. This will look good on me,’ she said, holding it against her chest. She wore it for the rest of the week. ‘Hey,’ she said, on the last night, ‘is your dress meant to look like that, or has it got rucked up?’ ‘That is the design,’ I replied. ‘Oh right. I see. Nice,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

  ‘I’m fine, Stefan,’ I said. ‘He does this. It’s happened before.’

  Upstairs, a child knocked tentatively on another’s door. ‘What?’ Free yelled. ‘Let me in and I’ll tell you,’ came Louisa’s cool reply. I heard the lock go.

  ‘Are you though?’ Stefan asked.

  I turned back to the kitchen. Cleared a surface. Stacked a mug.

  ‘You seem stressed.’ he said. ‘And if it isn’t David, then—?’

  He watched me, his legs folded neatly at the ankle. He wore the slippers I had bought him, a lovely pair of sheepskin scuffs.

  ‘Oh Stefan, where’s the problem?’ I said. I tried to accelerate it. I wanted it done. ‘I’m busy. I’m tired. That’s all.’

  ‘Maybe I can help,’ he said. ‘If you talk to me.’ His look was long and narrow. ‘But I can’t if you won’t.’

  I felt a little squall of panic.

  ‘Well I do miss David,’ I said, in a rush. ‘I mean, inevitably. And there’s Frieda—’

  ‘Are you guys fighting?’ said Lou, from the doorway, in the funny sing-song voice she used to hide behind.

  ‘We’re just talking, sweetheart,’ I said.

  ‘Well, can you stop it, please, it upsets the dog.’

  She dragged him in as evidence, doleful and splay-legged.

  ‘Let him go, Louisa,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s enjoying that.’

  She looked between us, trying to read the scene. Gauge the nature and scale of the problem. I had done the same, as a child. I thought of telling her that what we were doing was normal; that conflict is not wrong. Anger is a valid emotion.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ she said, in the end. Conforming to the easiest version.

  ‘What do you fancy, honey? I could do a curry, if you like,’ he said.

  I listened for frustration; a thread of resentment or irritation, but I couldn’t find it. She went to him.

  ‘You can chop, if you like,’ he said. ‘How about that?’

  She barged him, rubbed her head against his jumper till it fuzzed and he wrapped her in an arm, scratched her shoulder roughly where he reached it. This is what they do for comfort. I left them to it and the kitchen door swung shut behind me, save for one thin drop of light.

  I paused in the hall and their natter picked up; Lou chirruping at her father, Stefan’s grumble of reply. It was dim out there. I gripped the radiator, its thick bands of cast iron cold against my skin. Ahead, the TV blasted and Jake railed briefly against some injustice on his screen. Frieda, upstairs, was silent, though perhaps she crossed her room; I heard the low complaint of a floorboard.

  I would have liked, at that point, to simply go. No drama; no need for flounce.
Just pick up my bag from its place and go to Adam, feel the steady heat of his touch. Close my eyes against him for an hour or two. Instead I thought of a summer, years ago.

  It was our final holiday as family, that last seaside afternoon. The tide out, a line of choppy glint at the edge of the horizon. Mum sleeping with Mads, newborn, beached on her front. Dad fighting the windbreak and David and I walking and walking until they were tiny behind us.

  ‘Let’s stop here,’ he said, next to an inland shallow, scum-rimmed, full of low-nappied toddlers. ‘It’s just the right wetness. You start the castle. I’ll dig a moat.’

  I gave him a spade. He worked fast, and I worried for my fingers as he carved a square of ditch, trapping me in. I turned out my first bucket but the sand flopped like wet cement. David scooped it up and lobbed it into the pool of paddlers with a deep swallowed plash.

  ‘Do you think they’ll get divorced?’ he said.

  I pressed down into the sand and water rose in tiny bubbles around my fingers.

  ‘I should think so,’ I replied.

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘What about us?’ I said.

  The weather felt busy and malicious; the sun, just now, a thick column of heat. Everything slowed.

  ‘What if they split us up?’ he said.

  ‘They can’t,’ I replied. He burrowed, still, intent.

  ‘They can. They can do whatever they like.’

  We filled two buckets, packed down hard, their handles strained and threatening to pop their sockets. Two perfect castles this time, and so we went for shells to stick along the walls; limpets, mussels, cockles, and a perfect auger, spiralled like a unicorn’s horn. Then my favourite bit; everyone’s favourite. David filled the bucket and sluiced water into our moat. It raced around to meet itself, thick and muscled, and just for a second the channel was filled, until the sand began to drink it up. We watched, crouching easily. He peeled a rind of grimy sand from beneath each nail.

  ‘We could always run away,’ he said.

  The frame of his ribs was clear under his skin; a child, still, to my adolescent. I hated that distance. I wanted to yank him across that space.

  ‘We could do it now,’ he said.

  I tried to find our parents. It was our things that placed them; the skew of the brolly, the buggy’s wonky stance. David waited, flinching at the swoop of a fearless gull.

  ‘No that’s silly,’ I said. A cloud crossed the sun and then the sand came to life, shadows racing like speeded-up film. ‘Let’s wait and see.’ I pushed up to my feet, but his face showed worry and I knew I had planted it there.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ I said. ‘We’ve got each other. Always and forever.’

  I don’t know where I got it from but it sounded like poetry for that second. I snatched for his hand, slick and grainy.

  ‘That is the gayest thing I ever heard,’ he said and we laughed, then, until we tipped over onto the sand.

  *

  At bedtime, Frieda came to me. I heard her stop outside my room, her pause lifting my eyes up from my book.

  ‘Mum,’ she said in the doorway. ‘There is one thing—’

  ‘What’s that, love?’ I said, making a silent prayer that I could grant it.

  She settled at the end of my bed. Her face, when she looked at me, was pure want.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask—’ she said.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You know Tara?’

  ‘You mean Adam’s wife?’

  ‘Yes. I was wondering. Can I see her, do you think? I mean, she said I could. When we met at the party. And I’ve spoken to her since—’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’ I said.

  ‘She gave me her number. I wanted advice on a piece. But I do really need to show her.’

  She brought her hands down onto my legs, gripping them tightly through the duvet.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d better ask.’ Her pen must have leaked for she left three smudged prints on the cotton.

  ‘Yep, you’re right, you really should be asking about going round to a strange adult’s house.’

  ‘But it’s Adam—’ she said.

  ‘I’m aware of that, Frieda—’

  ‘Nance,’ said Stefan. He shut his laptop, pulled out an earbud, dropped onto his back. ‘It’s a good idea,’ he said, up towards the ceiling. ‘What is the possible harm?’ His movement made me aware of the heat of the bed. I lifted the duvet and dropped a foot to the floor.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of an imposition,’ I said. ‘That’s the thing. I mean, they don’t have kids of their own, so—’

  ‘It’s not. I know it’s not,’ Frieda said. ‘She told me it’s fine.’ Her eyes were wide and glassy. ‘She wants to help. She says that I’m talented—’ and then she stopped, leaving that statement in the air, and it was clear that to object any further would be construed as a challenge to that analysis.

  ‘You can go, all right?’ said Stef. ‘Done. It’s fine.’

  ‘Yeah, great, thanks,’ said Free, and she was off.

  ‘Stefan—’ I said.

  ‘Give her a break, Nancy.’

  ‘OK, but you and I could perhaps have—’

  ‘And give me a break, too,’ he said. ‘Leave it. And by the way, she told me earlier she wants a party for her birthday which I’ve said she can have. Here at home. We could do family first, I suppose, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Yes, let’s do that. We can put faces to a few names,’ but he had turned onto his side and resumed his viewing. Next door, her white noise machine began and above it I heard the lovely cadence of her voice as she rehearsed alone.

  *

  I had asked Adam near the beginning why they hadn’t had children.

  ‘It just didn’t happen,’ he said, and though it was crass, I went on: ‘So you tried?’

  ‘We did,’ he said, his body cool and pale. He watched me seriously. ‘But we never got pregnant.’

  ‘Did you consider adoption, or any of the other routes?’ I said. ‘I mean, if it’s OK for me to ask. Unless it’s private.’

  ‘Private?’ he said. ‘We’re in bed. I love you,’ and I wanted to allow that logic, but all the time we slept each night with someone else, there would be these huge unknowns between us. ‘No. We just accepted it,’ he said.

  ‘Tara too?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

  ‘I see.’ I don’t know how I would have felt if he’d said it was his decision. That she had cried and begged but he wouldn’t hear a word.

  ‘We never saw a doctor or had any sort of intervention. We just got on,’ he said. ‘Is that hard for you to understand?’ There is a scar, a line like a snip of white cotton, under his eye where as a boy he’d been bitten by a dog.

  ‘No. Of course not,’ I said, and that was a difficult moment, a hard knowledge to swallow. It was their kindness to each other, their serenity, the lack of blame – what a team – but most of all, the confidence they must have shared in believing that the two of them, alone, would be self-sustaining across these long mid-life years.

  I tried to hold my face steady. He gave me his smile, mainlined to my heart. And I reminded myself that their optimism had been misplaced. That he was here, after all, with me.

  14

  Sitting up late in the corner of a Cambridge basement bar, feeling beautiful and tragic, a melancholic barman mixing cocktails and talking gin botanicals to a soundtrack of elevator jazz, I loved my lover, that night, for very many things. His curiosity and kindness as the sour boy talked, the way his Adam’s apple jumped in that long ill-shaven neck, the cross of his legs on a high stool that pulled the same old trousers tight across the thin arc of his thigh. I spotted various signs of age and ill-attention, the hang-nail that he bothered as he talked, the spider nevus burst beneath one eye and the lone blue thread that trailed from a shirt sleeve which I had to pinch out after pulling it made things worse, and they moved me, every on
e. When I noticed where he’d tried, matched his shirt to his socks and the slick of creme in his hair that made it greasy, nothing more, I couldn’t help but reach across and kiss him. I drank it up – all of this – that’s how I knew I loved him, and it presented in me as this seismic desire. We could have gone to bed then; it was late and the promise of it passed between us in the grip of our fingers under the bar. I’d had enough to drink, a smear of elderflower at the back of my throat outliving the booze, but instead we ordered another. I’m not sure if it was his idea or mine.

  ‘When can we do this again?’ I said, feeling feverish and desperate.

  ‘Whenever,’ he replied. ‘Name the day. And we’ve got all of tomorrow.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I have a slightly odd request,’ he said. Two shallow dimples like arrow tips appeared at the side of his mouth. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to think.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, wanting him to ask something of me.

  ‘How would you feel about meeting my mother?’

  ‘You told your mother?’ I said.

  ‘I did. A while ago, actually.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I’m happy, and I knew it would make her happy, too.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Were you unhappy before, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I was,’ he replied. ‘Weren’t you?’ and I told him yes, though I wasn’t sure this was true. There had been that time when we watched a film, the whole family crammed onto the sofa – uncomfortable, but no one willing to concede – and the love scene arrived and the hero took the woman’s face in his hands and they kissed, the camera locked in close, the music swelling and I felt my eyes spring tears and I thought: ‘That will never again be me. I will never again abandon myself to a kiss like that,’ and I felt a grief, I don’t deny it, but unhappy? No.

  ‘You didn’t strike me as unhappy,’ I said, ‘when we met. Met again, I mean. I never saw that.’