Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  ‘Wow.’ I said. ‘She’s kept it well.’

  ‘She has.’ He felt a cabinet’s warped corner as I said it but nothing a spot of glue wouldn’t make right.

  ‘Do you want to look around?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  We moved off and I felt a strange formality and a greedy kind of appetite as though I was looking to buy the place. It was Stefan’s dream, a house like this, whose face you could wipe clean and then start again. It had struck me as a discrepancy of personality at first, but all these years on, it made more sense.

  ‘Do you remember much about your dad?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Adam replied.

  In the sitting room, I saw where the family had shrunk. The armchairs were configured for a group but only one seat showed any signs of occupancy with its scattering of effects: a pile of magazines, chemist’s spectacles, and a half-finished embroidery frame; she hadn’t struck me as the sewing type. Beyond that, the room was just ambiguity. I could find nothing in that space to hang an impression on.

  The walls were cream and empty, save for a still-life of fruit in clotted oils and an expressionist print of summer flowers in a field, I think. There was a rattan bucket filled with logs by a green-tiled fireplace and a huge red Persian rug with a thin straw-like pile. The furniture was mismatched; a seat in tobacco leather, then a long woollen sofa of a similar shade, and the chair in dark velvet paisley with subtle twists of silver and metallic purple, that the mother clearly preferred. It was the only item in the room that showed any comfort or care, placed in the best spot, overlooking her yard and the short hop of hedge before the pavement. Across the road were tubed railings of the sort girls like to roll around, bordering a stretch of social housing. I could see six netted windows and wondered if she sat and watched the lives going on behind them. I know I would.

  ‘It’s a huge place to live in alone,’ I said. ‘Or even for two.’

  A brass carriage clock, a crystal owl – all glinting rainbow planes – and a clay horse that struck me as Chinese, were arranged on two squat rows of skewed pine shelves. I had never been in a house so inconsistent, so uncontrived, so unimproved.

  ‘Ah, but it wasn’t just us,’ he said. ‘Not when I was growing up. We had lodgers. Did I not say?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Wasn’t that strange?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘They were students mainly. Older ones from overseas. She must have been on some kind of list. So it was busy, which was good, because she always worked,’ and at that the house fell into a different shape and I saw a woman who, although she was alone, had built a broad life of many influences for her son. I thought of the sealed-shut unit of my own little tribe. This felt like a home with no expectation. I thought, what an easy place to grow up.

  ‘And she never considered selling?’

  ‘Not that she said. It might have had something to do with Dad. And it was an investment, of course. Come up here. Let me show you my room.’

  The runner on the stairs was worn in a thin dark trench up the middle. The landing floorboards adjusted noisily under our weight and when we reached the top, I saw a glimpse of the bedroom ahead, Vivien’s. A pair of practical sandals, huge – still, she was tall – and as we passed, I noticed a strip of her wallpaper, too. It was a deep, dark cobalt broken up by silver lines that seemed to run down the wall, opening up, now and again, like water flowing round stones. I wondered what it would be like to sleep in there, in that river of a room. The choice seemed bold and romantic in the face of the rest of the house, and I adjusted my perception of her once more.

  His room was up a final twist of staircase.

  ‘She redecorated, of course, after I was gone, but the bed’s still mine.’

  It was chilly inside, painted Elastoplast pink, and the single bed of Adam, the boy, had been pushed into a corner, its length against the wall. He sat and put his hand up to the plaster.

  ‘There was a girl next door who I thought I was in love with and I used to press my ear to a glass and try and hear her voice. I suppose that sounds creepy now. It felt like the height of devotion at the time.’

  Can another’s face solve your problems? Their mere proximity? Then there is his hair which makes a joke of him. In the murk of his room, his eyes had dimmed to puddle.

  ‘Lie down with me,’ he said.

  We were close in the central sag of his bed, his arm under my shoulder, our heads just touching.

  ‘It must have been cold, in the winter, up here,’ I said.

  ‘But nice in the heat.’ He turned a section of my hair around a finger.

  ‘Are you leaving me?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t carry on.’

  ‘So come with me.’

  The cotton of his duvet had been worn to a newborn softness. I pushed my cheek down into it, but he didn’t turn his face.

  ‘Do you doubt we would be happy?’ he asked.

  ‘Not for one moment. But the rest would crowd it out.’

  ‘They would recover, you know. All of them. Your children.’

  ‘But how can I wilfully hurt them?’

  He pulled his arm out from under me and rolled onto his side.

  ‘I think they’re your excuse, Nancy. I think you use them to avoid the job of making yourself happy. You say, I am a mother, I am needed, and you step down from it.’

  ‘Well that’s easy for you to say—’

  ‘Yes, of course. Because I’m not a parent. But I was a child and the best thing my mother did for me was to leave me free of responsibility for her choices. She made some for me and others despite me, but I never felt that I was the architect of her happiness.’

  ‘Touch my forehead,’ I said. ‘Do I feel hot?’

  ‘There’s nothing noble in playing the martyr, Nancy,’ he said. ‘No one will even notice,’ but I could hear that he was losing heart.

  ‘What would you say to your daughter?’ he said, ‘if she came to you with this?’ but I’d stopped listening by then.

  ‘I have to go soon,’ I said.

  Downstairs the letterbox went and a package hit the mat in one sharp clap, and then a second with a slower, cushioned slither.

  26

  Some time in what felt like the early hours, there was her touch. I knew it as I rose up towards wakefulness; her scent, perhaps, the special way she has of stroking my cheek, that particular give of her skin. I opened my eyes grateful. I had thought we were too old for all this.

  ‘It’s today,’ she whispered and her breath made my nose twitch.

  ‘It is, sweet.’

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t believe it. My little girl fifteen.’

  ‘Yay!’ Frieda cried.

  She had been kneeling on the floor by the bed and hopped over me, then, in her striped long johns, coming to land lightly in the space between Stefan and me.

  ‘Are you going to get in?’ I said. ‘It’s not even six.’

  ‘Daddy.’ She sat cross-legged, facing away from me, her spine curved like a bow through the cotton of her vest.

  ‘Daddy.’

  She shook the top of his arm.

  ‘Wake up,’ she said, and then he roared and she shrieked and thrashed and shunted me to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Shall I make us some tea?’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she called after me.

  ‘That’s all right, birthday girl.’

  *

  Downstairs was chilly, save for the greeting of the dog. On the island lay a great landslide of gifts that Stef and I had wrapped last night. The fridge was crammed with food, the family was due and the mood of the house was giddy and volatile. It felt like a rehearsal for Christmas. I heard Jake’s tread on the stair, struggling with the notion of somebody else’s day. He spoke to his X-box, which replied, and I left them to it. Louisa, upstairs, called: ‘Bring the presents up, Mum. Free says I can open one, if she chooses which.’

  *

  T
here was cooking later; a neck of pork that had been marinating in the fridge. Disgusting, the girls declared, when I hauled it across, then set to massaging it viciously through the plastic, tipping up the liquid collected in various pockets and working it into the flesh. We opened the bag to a huge slab stained an artificial red, a number 8 marked out in pricks of ink on the skin like a child’s join-the-dots. Free traced it with a finger.

  ‘Poor pig,’ said Lou, as I tipped it into a tray.

  ‘It’s food,’ said Free.

  ‘Didn’t used to be,’ said Lou.

  ‘It’s organic,’ I said. ‘It had a good life. Now rub in the butter, someone. Lou, you can start on the veg.’

  She began, humming quietly in her tuneless voice, retreating to that interior place.

  ‘Pay attention, Lou,’ I said. ‘Or you’ll cut yourself.’

  Frieda toasted cumin in one pan, which smelt of unwashed shirt, and pumpkin seeds in another. She got hot and blew her new fringe up off her forehead. Stefan in profile, with her wide cheekbones and that flat, straight nose.

  ‘Who wants to separate an egg?’ I asked. Both of them did.

  The dog came in and sneezed twice, conclusively, which made us laugh. Then a song began which we all three liked and when it was over, Frieda played it again and I risked an arm around each girl, which they allowed, and I wondered if it would always be like this from now, the taint at the back of every happiness. The bone in the mouthful, small enough that I could have been dreaming it, a temporary tickle at the back of my throat, or something worse, something lodged, doing slow, steady damage. And next, I thought: I know this feeling and it is not new, it is as old as I am. It was there before, it has always been there, apart from that brief period when Adam chased it away.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Free. ‘It’s started to rain.’ She lifted her head. The panels on the roof of the side return ran. She moved to the back of the kitchen and pressed her palms against the glass. We seem to slide so easily into gloom these days. My unhappiness is the largest thing in the room. If I let it, it might swallow up the world, but I will not. My children are my only hope of reprieve.

  ‘It’s pouring,’ Frieda said.

  ‘So what?’ I replied. ‘The party’s inside.’

  ‘Suppose so.’ She came across slowly, dragging her feet in huge furred slippers.

  I turned the music up, spoke of more gifts to come, made an unsolicited offer of sweets and the mood began to reverse.

  ‘Are you looking forward to tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘Kind of,’ Frieda replied. She wore the jewellery that I had found in her bedroom, a tiny triangle of wire that fitted the upper curve of her ear perfectly. She touched it again; she couldn’t leave it alone.

  ‘That’s pretty,’ I said. ‘Birthday present?’

  She swerved away from my hand.

  ‘Look, I’ll keep the family in the kitchen, I promise. We’ll have a couple of hours before your friends arrive and then we’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘Can I come in, Free?’ Louisa said, morose, already, in advance of the answer.

  ‘No,’ Frieda replied. She whisked oil into the egg, flicking gummy splats up her front with each turn of the fork. ‘Uncle David won’t be here, though,’ she said.

  ‘That’s true,’ I replied, ‘but I’m sure we’ll cope. Come on. Let’s get the sitting room sorted. And after that, time to get dressed.’

  *

  I’d bought something new to wear and hung it on the back of my door, where it pleased everyone but me.

  ‘Like it, Mum,’ Jake had said, swooping the skirt up as he passed. When he dropped his arm, he took the dress along with him caught on a rough edge of his big cupped hand. It puddled on the floor but he continued, oblivious. This new phase of Jake calls the toddler back to life. He is curious, impulsive, clumsy; often in need of a hug, but unable to ask. His efforts at separation make him foolish, but it is better, surely, than the next bit, when he is gone. To Jake, though, the dress was just a dress. The others tried to read it.

  Stefan approved. ‘Nice,’ he said, a man who feels attention to appearance signals self-esteem.

  Next Frieda stopped by: ‘Why did you get that?’ she asked and I knew she was thinking of the moment of attempted reversal that can happen about now, the Botox or the boob-job. The sudden, directional hair.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, sweet. Do you hate it?’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s pretty,’ she replied. ‘Will you wear it to my party?’

  ‘If you like,’ I said.

  ‘You OK, Mum?’

  It was mid-afternoon, after all, and I lay in bed, curtains shut, our separation still knife-fresh, just days old. Adam had left the office and Lynn cried in my arms when he went. He’d bought her flowers as a thank-you and a box of chemist’s smellies, but I hadn’t loved him for his taste. It won’t be hard to fill his room, or Tim’s. The rent is cheap for London.

  ‘I’m fine. I’ve got a headache, that’s all. Won’t be long,’ I told her.

  ‘Would you call it red?’ Louisa asked. She had come to find me when she heard that I was ill. The dress was of a mid-weight, well-lined silk with a round neck and wide sleeves that finished on the elbow. It fell loosely, and its success lay in the drape; it hung as it was cut, irrespective of the body beneath.

  ‘Garnet, perhaps,’ I said, ‘like Granny’s old brooch.’ My mother had already given the girls her jewellery. ‘Why wait until I die?’ she said.

  ‘It makes me think of autumn when I look at it,’ said Lou. There was the sudden ruck of flesh above her eye. She had found the melancholy in my choice.

  ‘Me too,’ I replied. ‘Just give me an hour, Lou, would you? I need to rest,’ but I was up again after ten minutes; the children needed dropping places, there were things to do. I couldn’t just sit in the dark, nursing my tragedy.

  *

  The party began at four. April first; handbag high, all exclamation.

  ‘Hello, hello. Are the youngsters here?’ she said, her little hands snatching at me by way of greeting. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to it. A bit of life. Lovely to see the youth,’ she said, her voice scratched and gleeful.

  ‘Not yet, Ape. I told you. We’ve got a few hours first. You look smart, Uncle Pete.’

  He snapped his heels together, a square of shine on each toe. I wondered who had ironed his shirt, put that crease down the front of his trousers. Not April, that was for sure.

  ‘I’ll keep it just now, thanks, love,’ he said, when I offered to take his jacket. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Straight out the back. They’re in the kitchen.’

  He passed me, leaving a strong, frank cologne in his wake.

  ‘And you too, Aunty. That’s a lovely dress,’ I said, although it wasn’t. She looked like an old-fashioned child in her patterned nylon frock of blues and greens, long-sleeved and gathered in an elastic ruff at the wrists. Her collarbones and the steep fall of her chest were prominent above the neckline and she wore a thick outdated foundation that gathered around her pores, and a lipstick of a bright inhuman pink.

  ‘And where’s the birthday girl?’ she called. Then: ‘Is your dad here yet? Ah, there she is!’

  Frieda appeared at the top of the stairs and came down gingerly. She wore DM-style boots, laced across the foot although the eyelets around her ankles were empty and the leather gaped. Above, her little legs emerged in thin black stretchy jeans, I’d thought, until she got closer and I realised they were leggings, with the detail of the fly printed on. They finished high, way above her belly button, making a deep curvy shape of her where there usually was none. She’d picked a short, trapeze-shaped shirt, sleeveless and buttoned to the neck, as her dad wore his. Since I’d seen her an hour before, she had sprayed her hair in thick stripes of peppermint and mauve and wore a couple of strings of long plastic pearls, her eyes lined in Winehouse flicks. Otherwise her face was quite clean. There was a discordant elegance to her, some kind of play with proportion and femininity. It
was new and mindful and rather grown-up. And I prayed, as I looked at her, let this feeling sustain me. Let this, which is so very much, become enough. And I wondered, when had I got so greedy? When had I started to think that I was due still more?

  ‘Is it OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely beautiful, my darling,’ April said. ‘Just look at her.’ She took Frieda’s shoulders and twisted her, a little, left and right and I knew she was admiring her shape; I remembered it from my own childhood, the pleasure Ape took in our development, as if womanhood was some kind of achievement or prize.

  ‘Peter?’ she called. ‘Come out here and look at Free.’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ I said, straight into her ear, as we moved along the hall.

  *

  Stefan passed me a gin and tonic in a bowl-shaped glass on a long thin stem with an eighth of pink grapefruit in it and a shaving of orange peel. ‘Just as you like,’ he said. I look a long deep drink. The gin was tart and dry and sucked the moisture from my mouth.

  Dad next, though it was Justine’s voice that reached me in the kitchen, asking Stef about the parking. Did we have a permit? She couldn’t be doing with the text. I got up and moved straight past them to Dad, who stood on the path, waiting like a pet in the thin suspended drizzle. I stepped down onto the tiles in stockinged feet. His smell was dry and talcy, my tights sucked up the wetness from the tiles, my glass, behind his back was slippy with condensation and nearly popped out of my hand. I embraced him for a long time, which brought a brief kind of rest down on me, and then I thought of raising my head and telling him everything. I wondered what his daughter’s shame would look like on his face, the collapse of his vision of his number one girl.

  ‘Nance,’ he said. ‘What’s up, love?’ but that question wasn’t real. His voice held bewilderment and also an appeal. A plea that I keep silence, leave his fragile redaction of the world intact. He hasn’t long to go and he knows it. He’s far too old for change.