Love After Love

by Alex Hourston

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m just glad to see you, that’s all.’

  ‘You too, love,’ he replied, in relief, and he squeezed me breathless as he had when I was tiny, the very best that he could do. We walked through to the kitchen, hand in hand, the rest of them arranged around the island now, cleared of crap for the day, a row of tea lights running its length, picking out the details of the concrete like pox scars or the outlines of burst bubbles. April ahhed at the sight of us. Stef came forward, and I watched Dad try to stifle his response to him, but it was there in his half-mast arm, which failed, as usual, to deflect Stefan’s hug. Weight tipped back to keep it brief. The scolded drop of his gaze. It was Stef’s difference, of course; the name at first: ‘Steve? Steven, d’you say,’ Dad had misheard, for the first six months.

  ‘Mum,’ Lou called, in horror. ‘Your tights. You’re leaving marks.’

  ‘Oh don’t panic, Louisa,’ I said, ‘I can always get changed,’ and I laughed in a strange euphoria that would worry her still more. ‘Chuck me a tea towel, someone,’ I said and toed off the wet. In a weird kind of reflex, I looked around for David.

  Mum arrived about this time, with her best friend Alison, making little impact. She gave a vague eye-contactless wave around the room and accepted a fizzy water along with her glass of wine. With both hands full, our greeting was brief. She wore her usual wide-legged trousers, in oat or stone or beige, under a shot silk tunic in a surprising cerise.

  ‘It’s a kameez, you see,’ I heard her say, ‘and the scarf that Alison is wearing is a dupatta. These are the Indian terms. That’s where she got them from. Alison travels a lot.’

  She pressed her cheek to Dad’s dryly when he passed by, later, unavoidably, on his way to the loo and I watched them for a bit: Alison doing all the talking, Dad hunched and apologetic, working hard to respond in the right ways, and Mum looking between them quietly, holding the end of her thin loose plait. Then she said something I couldn’t catch, just tossed it at him and the way she tipped her cheekbone and he quickly raised his gaze made the two of them, just for a second, seem possible. I wondered, suddenly, if he had loved her all along, and then from across the room came Justine’s laugh, loud and full of anguish, for she had seen it too, and her love for him was teenaged, all temper and jealousy. She tapped a nervous little run against the back of a chair with her shellacked nails and I enjoyed the sound of it and the brief possibility of chaos. Then Dad returned and he kissed Justine, restoring order in the act. She closed her eyes deep into it.

  And finally, there was Madeline, frantic with apology, fresh from some task both stressful and important. If David had been there, he would have taken her in his arms about now: ‘Come on, sis. Forget it. You’re here.’ Ever since she was a child, when he held her, she fell into a kind of swoon like a girl in a story book.

  ‘This’ll help,’ I said, to Madeline. I had made her one of the gins and another for myself.

  ‘Yum yum,’ she said.

  ‘Nance,’ said Stefan. ‘Isn’t it about time we started with the food?’

  *

  We ate late. My appetite was shot and I couldn’t taste for seasoning but I had laid the table earlier with vintage linen and packed four stubby vases with hydrangeas, the blue ones, cut short, so it looked nice, at least.

  ‘They’ve come round again, have they?’ April said. Then: ‘Oh right,’ as she noticed the pile of plates and heaped cutlery. ‘Eating off our laps, are we? I see.’

  ‘You can sit at the table, Ape, if you like, but we’re thirteen, so we won’t all fit,’ I said.

  ‘Thirteen, is it?’ she replied, and began to count down names on her fingers.

  ‘Don’t start all that again, love,’ said Peter. I saw her remember David, and stop.

  ‘Sit down, Ape, please,’ I said. I pulled out a chair.

  ‘Don’t bother on account of me,’ she replied. She wore a pair of drop earrings with a stack of black and red stones that stretched the piercing in her lobe into a keyhole. She looked like a saloon-bar madam and I failed to stifle a laugh at the thought of it.

  ‘New earrings, Ape?’ I said. ‘Don’t think I’ve seen those before.’

  ‘New?’ she replied, raising her hands to them.

  ‘Why don’t you sit up here at the counter with the birthday girl, Aunty,’ Stef said.

  ‘Yes I think I will,’ she replied. ‘Free, come up here with your old Aunty Ape, will you?’

  She gave me a haughty look, rehabilitated by Stefan’s attention, and Frieda came across, moving through the kitchen with the slow acknowledgement of her own importance that she seemed to be assuming for the day.

  ‘Be nice, Nancy,’ Stef said, quietly, as he passed.

  *

  The meat was shredded on a huge oval dish, with a garnish of coriander and red onions that I’d pickled in lime.

  ‘Lovely bit of roast pork,’ Peter said, skimming his serving from the plate’s edge. ‘Any gravy with that?’

  ‘Mum, do we still get Dominos?’ Frieda asked, turning her fork through her coleslaw and looking glum.

  ‘Yes, of course. Later,’ I said. ‘But there’s this, for now.’

  Jake sat at the table in his headphones, his expression mobile and eccentric.

  ‘Should he be allowed to do that?’ April asked but I pretended I hadn’t heard.

  ‘It’s all delicious,’ said Mum, who ate standing, with just a fork. ‘Very authentic, dear. Have you been to the Americas, Alison?’

  The pork cooled quickly and set into a fibrous kind of nest. Nobody wanted seconds, but there was pavlova next, which redeemed things.

  ‘Here we go,’ Peter said, stretching out the vowels and rubbing his hands together as I brought it to the table. It gave us all comfort, that pudding, rising up on its porcelain-footed stand, peaked and princessy, so blessedly familiar. When I cut it and crunch gave way to marshmallow, April clapped like a child. The cream was so thick you could stand a spoon in it – Jake did – and the fruit on top was raspberries – Frieda’s choice – plus a little slick of coulis, just berries and a sugar syrup pushed through a fine mesh sieve.

  ‘Lovely,’ Ape said, all forgiven. ‘I don’t know where she gets it from. Do you bake, Kath?’

  My mother looked up, surprised to be addressed.

  ‘No, April,’ she replied. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Is there any—? Oh, here we are.’ I passed April the jug of single cream that I know she likes. There was cheese, too, the Camembert already sprawled across its slate, with oatcakes for Mum and the Swedish crispbreads that Stef prefers. I was past food, myself; I stuck to wine.

  The doorbell went, although it still seemed far too early. I looked up at the clock which was vintage and unreliable. It read ten to five. I watched it for a while. The zero in the ten is my favourite number – in that font, a kind of war-time Gill Sans, it looks all crushed and stunted – but just as I felt sure that it had stopped, the hand jerked by.

  ‘Is that right?’ I said. ‘Has anyone got the time? Who’s seen my phone?’ I was drunk by now, and observing things from a distance, my pain hard and tinkling at the edge of it all.

  ‘Wake up, Mum,’ Free yelled across the table, in panic. ‘Who is it? Why are they here?’

  I was just getting to my feet when Jake burst in.

  ‘It’s some weird guy,’ he cried. ‘I saw him coming up the path.’ The bell rang once again. ‘That’s him!’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said.

  ‘No, I will,’ replied Stef. He shut the kitchen behind him and I sat down, feeling weightless and suspended. We all listened. There was the timbre of a man’s voice but it was impossible to make out what was said.

  ‘Who’s that then?’ April said, gaping, agog. Then Stef was in the doorway. ‘It’s for you, Nancy,’ he said, unreadable. I stood. The skirt of my dress had gathered at the front in two jagged fistfuls.

  On the doorstep stood a man I’d never seen before, a handsome man, ten years younger than me at least, wi
th the overdeveloped look of the gym-goer; bunched thigh muscles that pulled his jeans out of shape and a mound of chest rising above the neck of a thin white T-shirt. His hair was short and neat and he gave off a gentleness and capability like some kind of idealised army recruit.

  ‘It’s the weekend,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not sure we’ve met before.’

  ‘We haven’t,’ he replied, ‘though perhaps you know of me. I’ve come about Marie.’

  Mark, then. Unrecognisable from her account or my extrapolation.

  ‘I’m afraid it is not appropriate for you—’

  He shifted on his feet and flexed his hands.

  ‘I know. I just wanted to talk to you for a moment.’

  ‘I’d have to speak to Marie about that first. But either way, you shouldn’t have come to my house.’

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to disturb you or you family—’ Still, he looked so strong. ‘I just need you to help me understand.’

  I took a step towards him. He was surprised and his heel tipped back off the path. The outside light came on and he startled in its glare, his leg struck out to the side like a dancer. I’d expected trainers, but he wore lace-up shoes of a thin brown leather, narrowing to a squared-off toe. Their delicacy at the end of his thick blunt body make him look unbalanced. I wondered if he’d chosen them for me, for this meeting on my doorstep in the wet.

  ‘You need to go,’ I said.

  He was pathetic in the rain, the cotton of his top drenched instantly.

  ‘Please,’ he said again, ‘I’m only asking for five minutes.’

  The front door opened. ‘Is everything all right?’ Stef called over my shoulder.

  ‘Stefan,’ I said. ‘It’s about a client. I can deal with this.’

  ‘She was pregnant,’ Mark said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Stefan said, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I felt the weather too, then, a swipe of moisture on my cheek, the wind take up my hair.

  ‘I know nothing about that,’ I said and thought of her face, the way she had seemed to have an idea ticking behind it. ‘And I’m sorry too, but you have to leave.’

  ‘Nancy,’ Stef said, in a short shocked voice. He pushed past me into the rain. ‘Can I drop you anywhere?’ he said to Mark. ‘Is there somebody we could phone?’

  Mark pulled his eyes from me to Stef in a kind of benign confusion.

  ‘Go now, Mark,’ I said, ‘or I will call the police. You can tell Marie to ring me, if she needs to. She has my office number. I can pick up calls.’ I heard the schoolmarmish strain in my voice.

  Mark gave an incredulous little laugh and raised his face up to the wet. I could see Stef turned to me, his deep disapproval, but I knew he wouldn’t speak again.

  ‘But she must have—Surely you—’ Mark said.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all.’

  Mark went then, without fuss or aggression, and I listened to the tap of his surprising shoes as he crossed the street; their high, hollow sound. He got into a car and I saw the swivel of his head, one way, then the other and back again, just as they tell you to do for your test. He pulled out carefully and was gone. The light on the path went out and Stefan spoke to me in the dark.

  ‘That was harsh,’ he said.

  ‘There are rules, Stefan. For very good reason.’

  ‘And there is behaving like a human being,’ he replied. His tone was chill. ‘Did you not hear what he said?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘And did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied and I hadn’t; I had no inkling. ‘And if I did,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t tell you anyway. My office is a sealed space, you’re fully aware of that.’

  ‘A sealed space?’ Stef replied. ‘It strikes me things are leaking.’

  ‘I’m going back in,’ I said. ‘This is Frieda’s day. I won’t have it spoiled.’

  I went upstairs and called the office answer phone but there was no message. I thought of Marie. The fierce grip of her gaze. That look of hers locked on like a bite. Where I’d seen challenge, perhaps I should have read fear. Was it all defence? I thought of that slim chain she wore, the way she felt for it as I talked, smooth under her neckline, out of sight.

  ‘Nancy,’ Stefan said from beyond the bedroom door. ‘Are you coming out? I can do this by myself, you know.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said and tried to pull all this down off my face.

  ‘Whoa, Mum,’ said Jake, when I joined them. ‘What the hell was that?’ A cluster of bright blemishes had risen on his neck across the day.

  ‘Don’t swear,’ said Stefan.

  ‘That’s not swearing,’ replied Jake.

  ‘It was nothing,’ I replied. ‘Just work.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Frieda said, with a huge theatrical exhale, her hand on her heart. ‘I thought, like, everything was going wrong for a moment. I’ll wait upstairs now. And can you keep that door shut please?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said April, after she left. ‘She ashamed of us?’

  ‘Come on, Ape,’ Stef said, in a larky voice he’d borrowed from someone else. He threw his arm around my aunty and she wiggled deeper into it. ‘Jake, find some music please,’ he said. ‘I know. Who fancies a game of cards?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ April replied. ‘Rummy, we could do, or twenty-one? Shall we play for cash? Who’s seen my bag? And I’ll have another drink, Nance, while you’re up. Go on. Whatever you’re having,’ she said. ‘Surprise me.’

  27

  The girls arrived. Who first? Who else, but Clemency and Jude.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ Jude’s mother called down from the cabin of her boxy car, ‘are we too early? I thought the invite said six.’

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘you’re fine.’ My cuticles were stained pink with achiote paste and one sleeve was rimmed with grease.

  ‘I won’t get out.’ She leant her forearms on the fat stitched circle of her steering wheel, a stack of gold up to the knuckle of one finger, the broad stupid face of a Labrador looking out at me from the boot.

  ‘Be back for them about half-ten,’ she called. ‘Good luck!’

  Clemency and Jude, bouncing off each other as they staggered sillily up my path. They fitted their names, all grace and eccentricity, and seemed to put the other girls down implicitly, merely through contrast. Their arms were threaded, the padding of their jackets huge. I couldn’t see where one of them finished and the other began. Their intimacy was a subtle form of aggression; a smiling, scatty, spite.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Jansen,’ they called. They are not my favourites, Clemency and Jude, though just like Frieda, I would have wanted them for my own.

  ‘Frieda,’ I shouted, ‘your friends are here.’

  There was a clatter from beyond the kitchen door and Ape’s pissed titter.

  Frieda appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Hi,’ she cried maniacally, but she didn’t move, waiting for their cue. She looked down, the pair looked back, then something broke and the girls bounded up.

  ‘Who was it?’ cried Ape.

  ‘No one you know,’ I replied.

  I kept my phone in my hand like one of the kids, refreshing and refreshing, alert to every ping and buzz, but no one called.

  The rest arrived across half an hour. ‘The names!’ Ape said, when Stef returned each time and told us. ‘Don’t they come in, Nance? Don’t they at least pop in to say hello?’

  There were Beatrice and Hannah. Emily, Sydney and Cait. Nic and Savannah – the final pair – arrived alone. They’d walked from the bus-stop, and each carried a loaded rucksack, the straps pulled tight across their shoulders, the body of the bags slung low.

  ‘You know the rules, girls,’ I said. ‘No alcohol. Did your mothers say?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Jansen,’ the children sang. They each wore a thick fishtail plait that began above one ear and ran around the back of the hairline, coming to rest heavily across the opposite shoul
der.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘Upstairs.’

  Mum and Alison left, and the whole room breathed out.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’ my mother asked, when we were alone in the hall waiting for Alison to find her scarf. ‘I mean what with your client. My gosh.’

  ‘It’ll be fine, Mum,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. Off you go.’

  Back in the kitchen and: ‘You don’t think? I mean, the two of them? Surely—’ April began, but no one finished the thought.

  ‘Nance,’ said Peter, come back from the loo. ‘I’m not being funny, but there’s a strange smell out there. Like alcohol, or something.’

  Upstairs, I found that Nic and Savannah had emptied their bags. A towel was spread on the floor and a girl rested back upon the knees of another. One painted fingernails, one toes, each removing old polish with a swipe of acetone. A pile of discarded pads lay on the carpet; beautiful, really, a slick, on each, of a fashionable shade. As I watched, Sydney dropped a little constellation of stars onto Hannah’s cheek and licked the tip of a cotton-bud which she used to alter their placement. Someone else sat crossed-legged, sorting hair accessories into piles: clips and bands, flowers and jewels, nets and hunks of artificial hair. By this girl stood a huge canister of value spray. I had to smile, at their innocence, their effort, their application.

  ‘Mum,’ Frieda screamed, when she saw me at the door. ‘Get out.’

  *

  April got her wish; they all came down and showed themselves to us when they were done, walking a circuit of the kitchen and accepting our praise. ‘What beauties!’ Uncle Peter cried. A number of them blushed; not yet so grown. Frieda, I thought, looked largely unchanged, though her nails were done in alternate greens and someone had clipped in a couple of fluro plaits.

  ‘Shall we go into the sitting room now, Mum?’ Frieda asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Say goodbye to Ape and Peter, then you can all go through.’

  *

  Our theme was Moroccan, our colours turquoise, fuchsia and gold. The windows were hung with layers of gauze and chiffon, altering the light, and we had covered the furniture in old sarongs. On the floor lay a rug that Stef and I had had shipped from Marrakesh a long time ago, and I’d bought two hammered brass trays and a couple of Moroccan tea sets with fluted metal pots and henna-patterned glasses.