Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  *

  ‘I suppose it’s very quiet over there?’ I asked Frieda.

  I imagined Adam’s home marked by lack. My daughter, a gift, touching colour into everything.

  ‘Not really, no,’ Frieda replied.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean it’s not quiet at all,’ she said.

  ‘How come, though? With just the two of them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘That’s just not how it feels.’

  ‘I don’t—So what is it like then, would you say?’ I asked, but I was losing her now. She gave me one quick derisive look and checked her phone, tapping fast with her thumb.

  ‘Fun? I dunno. Whatever, Mum.’

  ‘Well it’s a big ask, Saturday afternoons, that’s all,’ I said. ‘We need to be mindful. They’re probably busy,’ but Frieda didn’t bite.

  ‘They weren’t busy at all,’ she said, airily, but she had turned from me now. ‘They weren’t going out for hours.’

  ‘Did they go out?’ I said. ‘At night, you mean.’

  ‘Uhh, yeah. I just said so.’

  I followed her down the hall.

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Mum,’ she said, over her shoulder, my grip on her attention thinning all the time. ‘Don’t be a creep.’

  I’m not. I’m just interested. In what other people do.’

  With a huff, she turned to me on the stairs. ‘Some restaurant or other. Their favourite place since always. Maybe you and Dad should try something like that for a change.’

  *

  And: ‘It’s interesting,’ I said to Marie, ‘because there is a view that anxiety can arise from a sense of being stuck. We all need to feel that we are inhabiting our lives. Making progress through them.’

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘One of the things this process can offer is the chance to understand our deeper wants and needs,’ I said. ‘We can discover what really sustains us, or makes us tick. It can be about much more than just getting rid of the unpleasant symptoms you’ve been experiencing. We can find out how to make your life richer. That’s the ambition here.’

  I gave it time to percolate. She wrote it all down.

  ‘So, this week’s homework.’ She dropped her pen in her haste to take the page, which slipped down the side of the cushion to join the cache of coins and the odd forgotten tissue. ‘Same as usual. I’d like you to read through this sheet. Tick everything that feels appropriate.’

  ‘Yes. I will,’ she said. ‘Looking forward to it,’ and her look was strange; a kind of jumpy fragile hope.

  ‘We’ll get there, Marie,’ I said.

  She tucked her book between the teeth of the zip of her high-street handbag, and left.

  I met Tim outside, next to the kettle.

  ‘Long time no see,’ he said. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Very good,’ I replied.

  ‘How was the conference, by the way?’

  I chanced a look at him but he was watching his hand bounce a teabag lightly in a mug of milky water.

  ‘Fine. Great, actually,’ I said.

  ‘What was it about, again?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, lots of speakers. Psychodynamics. That was one,’ I replied.

  ‘Didn’t know that was Adam’s kind of thing,’ he said. ‘Sounds interesting.’

  ‘It was.’

  I went to reach across him but he held his space and I straightened again.

  ‘Could you pass me that, please?’ I said, pointing along the countertop.

  ‘What?’ he replied.

  ‘The sugar. There. In that pot.’

  ‘Oh right,’ he said and pushed it towards me. ‘Catch you later, then, I guess,’ he said, and I breathed out, but then he was back, filling the space at the end of the little galley kitchen.

  ‘Meant to ask,’ he said. ‘Any notes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or handouts? Anything worth sharing? I don’t want to get left behind. It’s not convenient for me, you see. The travelling. What with the family.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Young family, I mean. I know you have family, too.’

  ‘I’ll see what there is,’ I said. ‘I’ll email you something.’

  ‘Not a biggy,’ he replied. ‘I can always try Adam.’

  *

  ‘You know they don’t have children, Mum,’ Frieda had said, hours later, her feet up on my lap. I didn’t go through the charade of asking who.

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  ‘Why is that, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What makes you ask?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ she replied and then, after a bit, ‘I might not bother, myself.’

  ‘Bother with what?’

  ‘The whole kid thing,’ she said, with a roll of her eyes. ‘I might just give it a miss.’ She swung her legs down and off she went, humming something, absurdly elegant in her old grey school socks.

  16

  I headed across town to meet Adam’s mother. Waiting in a panelled tea room, I was expecting a little bird, sharp hair and waist, a postwar suit – I hadn’t ruled out a hat. Genteel and English, anyway; I think it was the fact of the tea. Something in the orthodoxy of it charmed me and I felt girlish and bashful in line with the scene. ‘She doesn’t drink any more, that’s why,’ Adam said, when I told him this, which was new and possibly important, but then she had arrived and she was just like him at the door, angular and mobile. She had a grey crop and a small bag on a narrow strap that emphasised her height and I thought she might be elegant but then she saw him and started towards us and, closer, I saw that her clothes were old and her haircut merely practical. She knocked a coffee cup as she came, filling its saucer, but her eyes were on her boy and for a moment I shared her emotion, either for Adam, or as a mother, met with the face of the man your child has become. When she raised her arms and I saw the sag at the back of her trousers, the cinch of her belt, it could have been him. I felt like thanking her for loving him so well. Then she kissed me too, crisply, on each cheek.

  ‘This is Nancy,’ Adam said. ‘Nancy, my mum, Vivien.’

  ‘I’m here for no other reason than to meet you,’ she said. ‘I just want to know you a bit.’ Her eyes were not the same though, a cool light blue. A screech of steam from the coffee machine broke the moment.

  ‘I appreciate it,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know you too.’

  ‘I’ll get you a coffee, Mum,’ he said. ‘Do you want another, Nancy?’

  ‘Let me,’ Vivien said, ‘while I’m up.’

  ‘You’re so alike,’ I said, as we waited for her.

  He laughed. ‘You should have seen my father. Short and fat.’ She seemed entirely unselfconscious in the queue. Her bone structure alone, the way her face was pinned between the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones gave her a kind of command. I couldn’t find a single cue of femininity on her.

  ‘So you know each other from college, I think?’ she said, when she was settled at the table. My legs bent neatly under it, but the long bones of their thighs were pushed up high. I felt small and badly designed next to the two of them. ‘But you practise different methods, if I’m right?’

  Adam was eating, a plait of custardy pastry, so I replied.

  ‘Yes we do. There’s an element of analysis in my approach,’ I said. ‘I look at the history. Adam focuses on the problem the client presents with, so he’s all about the here and now.’

  She looked across for his response.

  ‘Basically, Nancy’s the purist,’ said Adam.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen it that way.’

  ‘Nancy needs to know why. She unpacks everything and then puts it back together again in perfect working order,’ he said.

  ‘If only,’ I replied, and off we set and Vivien indulged us, watching on as we twisted everything into flirtation.

  ‘So what does that make you, then, Adam?’ she said, after a while. ‘If Nancy’s the purist?’

  �
�Me?’ he replied. ‘Hmm. Let me think.’

  I felt her wish to speak and then her deference to me, her son’s lover, but I remained silent and sipped my coffee instead, which was already cold and had a smattering of grounds circling its surface.

  ‘A pragmatist, perhaps?’ he said. Then: ‘You don’t like the sound of it, Mum.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She considered him seriously. ‘But no one wishes compromise on their child.’ She turned to me. ‘I understand you have children, Nancy.’

  They shared the same slouch across their shoulders, a function of their height, which brought her head in close as we spoke. Her attention cast a sort of spell on me.

  ‘I do,’ I said and I began to tell her. I spoke of Frieda’s gift for the stage, then Jake and his rugby – an exaggeration, verging on a lie – and all the time, she maintained that same warm steady interest and I thought, you must be hiding it away, some envy, some pain; you, the mother of one childless son, who will never come close to all of this again.

  ‘Such a pleasure, children,’ Vivien said, with her implacable good will. ‘Despite all the difficulty along the way.’

  Adam sat between us with that loose blithe smile and I wondered, what would it take to hurt or shame these people? In a fresh betrayal, I let myself imagine my children under her love. A Christmas, perhaps, in Adam’s childhood home, the big house in Ealing he had told me about. No screens, a piano, old-fashioned carols. The kids scrubbed and candle-lit, everything forgiven and forgotten. My own best self at the middle of it, happy, tranquil, satisfied; all lessons learnt.

  ‘I mean—It would be lovely for you to meet them. I would love that, Vivien,’ I said, suddenly, rashly.

  ‘They sound absolutely wonderful,’ she replied and sat back into her chair, ‘but I don’t suppose that will be possible,’ and I wondered, briefly, could it be that they don’t want what I have got?

  ‘I’ll get us another, shall I?’ said Adam. ‘If everybody’s got time?’ and I told him no, that I had to leave. Vivien asked for a sandwich and a tea. I reached for my bag but she stopped me with a touch.

  ‘Is it difficult?’ she said, when he had gone. ‘Sharing, I mean?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll admit to you, when he told me, I was surprised.’

  ‘About me and him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you met Tara?’

  ‘I have. Very briefly.’

  ‘What did you think?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know how to answer that honestly,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes, of course, it must be impossible for you to see her clearly while you are doing what you’re doing, but come on, Nancy, you must have formed some kind of impression. And please don’t mistake me. It’s not that I judge. But I am interested to know.’

  I thought of Tara at David’s party, her bracelets travelling up and down her arms as she spoke, their tinkling accompaniment. Her low steady voice.

  ‘I felt she had a kind of composure. A grace, even. She struck me as very much her own person,’ I said.

  ‘All true,’ Vivien replied. ‘I find her rather self-absorbed myself, but also very self-sufficient. I think, in a woman, these qualities are rather rare. I found them very appealing and I thought they would help her keep a man. She isn’t needy. I cannot see her becoming familiar. As I said, I was surprised.’

  ‘And do you like her?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Vivien said. ‘I like her very much. Yet she has failed to keep Adam. There is something between you two that seems to have trumped whatever they had. And I accept it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said and had to fight to keep the elation off my face.

  ‘I can see that you love him, Nancy, and I know that he loves you. So I am interested to see what will happen next.’ She began to arrange sachets of sugar, some wide and flat, some long and thin, in a small white china bowl, as she waited for me to reply.

  ‘Next? We don’t really … consider our relationship in those terms,’ I said.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if I am free. You know my situation,’ I said, ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘No choice?’ Vivien gave a chuckle. ‘Life is nothing but choice, Nancy.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘Sometimes things happen and we have to find a way to live with them.’

  ‘Indeed they do. When Adam was a boy, his father died suddenly. I’m sure he told you. But it’s what you do next, isn’t it? When you find yourself in a new situation.’

  ‘I am a parent,’ I said.

  ‘Quite.’ She touched the back of my hand again, lightly, across the table. It was colder than his and under-stuffed. ‘And I’m a parent too. I am here to meet you, today, because I welcome what will make my son happy. But it strikes me that as things are, you’re asking an awful lot of him.’

  ‘I see the opposite,’ I said. ‘Being with Adam, I risk hurting my children every day.’

  She considered this; I assumed she had conceded the point.

  ‘You do, you’re right,’ she said, ‘and yet you continue to do it.’

  From the counter, Adam called across: did I not want a drink to take away?

  ‘You have everything and he has nothing,’ she said. Her tone was steady.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Vivien. What do you want?’

  ‘Me? Nancy, who cares what I want? What does Adam want? I wonder, have you ever even asked him that question?’ And I hadn’t, of course, I’d merely presented my conditions, which he had accepted. There had been a conversation very early on when I said: ‘You will never force me to choose, will you? Can you promise that? There are my children. You must understand,’ but he had only laughed. ‘I will never force you to do anything, Nancy,’ he said, and so we continued. I wondered what Vivien knew.

  She sighed. ‘I do remember love, Nancy. The way it feels. But you must see that as things are you are limiting his life. You are shrinking it to tiny. Just to you, in fact. I hope you can carry that. And you, with so much already on your plate.’ Then: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘It’s just my son is a generous man. You don’t seem the sort of person to take advantage.’

  ‘OK?’ Adam said, over the top of his tray. Her cup of tea slid around it dangerously.

  ‘Bye-bye then, Nancy,’ Vivien said. ‘I’m so glad we had the chance to chat.’

  *

  At home my husband cooked squid.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, when I found him in the kitchen. ‘Something good for tonight. I got it from the fishmonger’s.’

  He lifted a white plastic bag and the thing inside rolled and settled wetly.

  ‘Your favourite.’

  ‘It is,’ I replied. On holiday I always chose squid. It had become a joke, about my fixedness, but my fidelity too.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Let me show you.’

  He tipped the bag and the animal turned over itself heavily onto the board. It smelt of nothing much; brine, maybe ozone, a trace of cucumber.

  ‘It’s an arrow squid, see?’ he said.

  He unpeeled two flaps tucked tight around the body.

  ‘So you start here.’

  He pulled off the head. It came away clean, with just the slightest viscousy click, trailing stringy innards.

  ‘We need this bit,’ he said, holding the perfect little flower of tentacles before me, like a gift. ‘But not all this.’

  The guts shimmied gently. He made a swift cut with a sharp knife just above the flat black eyes.

  ‘You remove the beak,’ he said and eased his thumb into the bud of tentacles. He found something there, and reached another finger in after.

  ‘Got it,’ he said, but whatever he held was tiny, and had gone into the bag with the rest of the ruins before I could make it out.

  ‘Will you fetch me a bowl?’ he asked, and I broug
ht him the metal one. What he tossed in sluiced a half-circle up the side. He smoothed the squid’s casing flat with both palms.

  ‘This is the mantle. It’s beautiful, no?’ he said, and it was, an opaque ivory speckled with bronze in spots and circles. Freckled and ancient-looking. More sun-blasted than sea. His nails began to work at its rim. I noticed the deep bend of his thumb and it pleased me, as always. He took grip of a sliver of frayed edge and peeled a little, then ripped the membrane from the flesh in one perfect piece, limp and translucent.

  ‘You chuck that, and then you need to pull out the quill.’

  It came out from the sheath of the squid like a smooth shard of plastic, just as you see them washed up on the beach. He scraped the tube of flesh with the back of a knife, sliced it into rings and the squid was food.

  ‘I was thinking chilli and garlic. And rice, if you like?’ he said.

  He pushed the board away and leant back against the counter to look at me. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt in navy marl. A neat crop of beard.

  ‘Delicious. Thank you, Stef. I do appreciate that, you know.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me. It makes me happy to prepare dinner for my wife.’

  I stepped towards him.

  He held his unwashed palms before him.

  ‘Hey. Be careful.’

  I moved between them and laid my whole length against him. He smelt as he always did, of lime and forest and deep cold water. His childhood, I imagined, the place of his birth, though I’d never been. I let him take my weight.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, not so bad.’

  ‘Everything passes, Nancy. It won’t be like this forever.’

  ‘I know.

  17

  ‘There’s somebody else,’ she said.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Skyler,’ she replied. ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t recognise the number.’

  ‘I found a note. I went through his things.’

  ‘What does it say?’ I asked. I pictured my father, the little nod of confirmation he gave when things went as he expected.