Everything Love Is

by Claire King

  When Etienne returned from the bar he didn’t ring the bell, just came in, and I woke groggily to find his hand on my shoulder. Beside him was a sheepish-looking Sophie holding a casserole dish. ‘I’m sorry,’ Etienne said, ‘she insisted.’

  Sophie put down the casserole on the galley counter and came over, squatting on the floor beside me. ‘Oh my God, look at you.’

  ‘I know. Who will love me now?’

  A shadow crossed her face. ‘Don’t joke about it, you look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was spiteful to you. Neither of us expected you to come. Not after last time, not after what you said.’

  ‘You weren’t spiteful.’

  ‘I was. I’ve been horrible to you. I should have minded my own business.’

  I shrugged. ‘Concussion,’ I said.

  Sophie allowed herself a grin. ‘I can see how that could be rather convenient.’

  ‘I’m going to leave you to it,’ Etienne interrupted. He turned to Sophie. ‘Now don’t get him too excited, he needs to rest.’

  As soon as he was out of the door, Sophie turned to me, her face serious. ‘Look, I have to get back to work once I’ve seen you eat something, but I need to ask you a question first. Did this happen because you were jealous of Didier? Is that why you came? Your text that morning was so cryptic. Didier’s convinced you’ve got a crush on me too, but I asked your friend just now’ – she looked bashful – ‘sorry about that, I couldn’t help myself, and he said you told him you’re in love with someone else. But to be honest he didn’t look so sure himself.’

  The evening was getting so surreal that I really couldn’t be certain I wasn’t dreaming it. ‘What? No, Sophie, I’m not in love with you. Why do people keep asking me that?’

  ‘That’s what I told Didier. I think it’s him that’s jealous.’ She stood to serve the casserole, opening and closing cupboards in the galley until she found a suitable bowl. ‘Why then?’

  ‘Goodness knows what possessed me, I don’t really remember, but even if it was because of you it wouldn’t have been to impress Didier, but because I thought you were in danger.’

  ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘I was stupid to go. My mother went mad with me afterwards.’ She glanced back at me over her shoulder, a look in her eyes that I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘So, then. Just how long is this concussion going to last?’

  ‘Anyone’s guess,’ I said. I wasn’t ready to tell people yet. I didn’t want to watch their feelings towards me change until I’d worked out how I felt about myself.

  35

  Amandine arrived out of blue skies. I should have been pleased to see her at the door, perplexing as it was after not having spoken for so long, but the sight of her only gave a shape to the dismay that already lay heavy as rocks in my chest.

  Her timing was abysmal. I was a mess, the boat was a mess, even the towpath was a mess. The wind had left signs hanging off hinges and litter strewn along the towpath and in the canal. But worse than any of that, this was the end. It was the end for all my clients. How could it be anything else? That was one discussion we needed to have. Then there was everything that happened the last time she turned up without an appointment. The kiss. The secret she had kept from me. I felt a welcome frisson of excitement at this unchartered territory. Five months of appointments and she had avoided telling me she had had a child. Why?

  ‘You’re letting all the cold air through. Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be coming back.’

  ‘Come on,’ Amandine said briskly, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. ‘Come and sit down. Even under all those bruises you look pale.’

  She didn’t seem at all fazed by the way I looked. I suppose as a doctor she would have seen much worse. I offered her a drink and she insisted on making it, bustling around the galley making small talk and tea.

  She sat. We looked at each other. We looked at the tea. We looked out of the windows and back to each other. My heart swelled and ached. My eyes stung. I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  ‘You were on the news,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Oh. That’s embarrassing.’

  She stirred her tea, the spoon chinking against the cup. ‘Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How are you feeling now?’

  Everything was amplified: a cyclist scraping past on the towpath, the ducks snacking their way around Candice’s flanks like a troop of amateur tap dancers. Amandine stretched out her legs in front of her, crossing them at the ankles. In her hurry to get me sitting down she had kept her shoes on. Just like the first time. These shoes were the same colour as her skin, with straps that ran over the ankle bone. A tiny silver buckle on each. How was I feeling? Where to start?

  ‘I can’t see you any more,’ I said.

  Amandine shifted in the chair as though the swell of a wave had caught her briefly then set her down again. ‘I’m sorry about last time. I shouldn’t have just walked off, and I shouldn’t have left things that way afterwards. I meant to call you to explain, but I was angry. Or confused maybe. Can’t we talk about it?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘I told you, you complicate things too much.’ Her voice was soft, patient.

  ‘I wish it were as simple as that.’

  She smiled. ‘You kissed me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m glad you remember,’ Amandine said. Behind her a butterfly tilted the light as it brushed through the dusty air by the window. ‘I thought what with the concussion and so on …’

  ‘It’s not concussion.’

  I still don’t know why I said that. But Amandine’s eyes flashed, suddenly hard and alert. ‘Baptiste?’ I felt as though the weight of whatever I said next could capsize me.

  ‘Did I ever tell you I was an orphan?’ I said. Amandine shook her head warily. ‘My mother died in childbirth and we still don’t know who she was. It’s a complete mystery and there are so few clues.’ I pointed to the violin. ‘Remember that?’

  ‘Of course. Was it hers?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a funny thing, for years I wondered about those few possessions she had when she died. What did they mean? I tried to define her through them, as though that would help me understand myself.’

  ‘Perhaps she was a musician?’

  ‘Perhaps, although she could just as likely have not been.’

  ‘What else do you have of hers?’

  ‘Just the violin, a little money, her coat – a green coat – and a wooden toy.’

  ‘A toy?’

  ‘Well, an ornament maybe; a carved horse. But it doesn’t really matter. The clues were never in her things. My mother has always been inside me, if only I had known where to look.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles,’ Amandine said. ‘What is it you’re trying to tell me?’

  I spread my fingers wide, counted on my fingers. ‘In a nutshell, what do we know about my mother? One: she was eight and a half months pregnant but travelling alone. Two: she carried almost nothing with her, not even a change of clothes. Three: she was travelling on a train from Barcelona to Toulouse, and four: she had Toulouse written on her arm.’

  ‘So she had no passport or papers?’ Amandine asked. ‘How could she have come from Spain?’

  ‘Something could have happened to them along the way if she wasn’t thinking straight.’ I looked down at my tea, going cold before me.

  ‘Drink some,’ Amandine said. ‘It will do you good.’

  I drank. ‘Why would you write something on your own skin?’ I said.

  ‘Because it’s a reminder you can’t lose.’

  ‘Exactly. It makes perfect sense now,’ I said. ‘I always imagined she’d had to escape something bad, that she was fleeing with whatever she could carry. But now I ask myself, what if she didn’t really know what she was doing? What if she
just left home one morning and never came back? What if back where she came from there was a family, if there were children who went to school one morning, a husband who went to work, and when they got home she had gone? Eight and a half months pregnant and she just disappeared like that?’

  It had crept up on me so slowly that I hadn’t noticed the way the edges had rubbed off my mind. But when the doctors had asked, when I thought about it, I had admitted that yes, I had been losing the names of things, losing the sense of things, and when I grasped for them they were not even just out of reach. Not on the tip of my tongue like before. Just absent, as though they were never there. Had it been the same for her, I wondered? Did she even know why she was on that train at all?

  ‘Oh no.’ Amandine covered her mouth, falling back against the Louis XV as though knocked. I have learned since that this is what happens around people like me. Grief follows us around like a thickening fog, suffocating those who get too close.

  ‘Dementia.’ I stepped over to the stove and pushed another log on to the waning embers, letting the wood smoke drift over my eyes. A jolt of pain shot through my ribs and I winced.

  ‘Let me.’ Amandine came to stand by my side, closing the glass door and looking up at me. Sunlight fell in layers over her face, cast through the windows dirty after the storms. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I shrugged awkwardly. I was sorry too. ‘Your work?’

  ‘A change of career I suppose.’

  ‘Take some time to let it sink in before you start making any decisions, Baptiste. Speak to your doctor. If you need any advice, I’m here. I’m not a specialist, but …’ She put her hand on my arm.

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ I said. Her eyebrows creased inwards. Of course I wouldn’t be OK. The irony was that after all the searching and imagining, who I was didn’t matter at all. What mattered was who I would become.

  ‘Even if you don’t want to talk about it,’ Amandine said ‘even if you just need some company, I’m here for you. I don’t like to think of you having to deal with this alone. It must be a huge shock.’

  ‘The last thing I want is for you to feel sorry for me.’ The fire was blazing again now. I closed the vent.

  Amandine stiffened. ‘Don’t insult me. You know me well enough by now. If you thought about it for even a minute you’d know that I’d never pity you. Don’t let this define you, Baptiste. Don’t shut yourself off.’

  But I didn’t know her, did I? I couldn’t shake it from my mind, the way her skin had felt under my fingers, the fine soft scars on her belly. One discussion down, I thought, and two to go. ‘Amandine, why in all this time did we never talk about you being a mother? What made you turn away from me that night?’

  Amandine retreated to the safety of her chair and crossed her legs, her hand reaching up to the ladybird at her throat. ‘Don’t you have anything stronger than tea?’

  ‘Maybe. I could look?’

  She smiled wearily. ‘I’m kidding, it’s 11 a.m. No I’m not, what have you got?’

  Amandine cradled the glass in her hand, looking down into the crimson pool of wine. ‘I was an unmarried mother,’ she said. ‘It was shameful. Both my parents were angry and ashamed of me. They judged me. Other people judged me.’

  ‘Did you think that I would judge you?’

  ‘No. But even people who don’t judge look at you differently. I never thought that keeping the baby would determine who I was, but it did. Even for people I thought loved me. Even to this day.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She shrugged. ‘I got over it. I never judged myself. But still it rankled. And then when I came here, when I met you, it was as though you didn’t even consider it. There was something exclusive between us, as if when we were alone together we had shut everyone else out. I wasn’t anyone’s mother or daughter or doctor; all you could see was Amandine.’

  She was right. There she was in the chair she had made her own, her pale hair cut the same as always, framing the same cool eyes, yet somehow in my mind she had changed. She was a mother now. She was different. It’s impressive the way a single piece of information can transform how we see someone. I wondered how I had missed this. How long had I been failing at what I used to do best? I shook my head.

  ‘No,’ Amandine insisted, ‘it was perfect. You had seen exactly what I needed. I was rediscovering myself. But it did feel like I was the one taking all the risks, revealing myself to you while you kept your distance. And then that evening on the towpath, after everything we had talked about …’ She extended a hand as though to touch me, but I was beyond her reach and she rested it instead on the curved arm of the chair. ‘Baptiste, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. About you being in love …’

  ‘With Sophie?’

  ‘Yes.’ Amandine sighed. ‘It was an awful thing to say. It was an awful thing to think.’

  ‘Was it something I did?’ The wine was too sharp to be drunk on its own, but it took the edge off the seismic waves that rippled through me as though a fault line had opened in my heart. I wondered if she saw.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It was a combination of things. Look, I know I’m not as young as I was. I’m already older than my mother was when my father left her. I know my body carries its age and I don’t mind that at all. I’m not shy. But there was still a worry, a sliver of doubt in my mind.’

  I thought again about the strong curve of her back, the softness of her skin. My hands ached with longing. If I could have had one wish at that moment it would have been either to make love to Amandine, or to play the piano. Both, given the state of my hands, were impossible.

  She took another drink. ‘This wine is rough.’

  ‘Sentimental value. It’s last year’s primeur.’

  ‘Ah.’ She drank again.

  ‘And now?’ I said.

  ‘Here I am. Back again.’

  ‘Yes.’ I smiled weakly. ‘Thank you. And I’m sorry how this turned out.’

  ‘No, wait –’ she raised a hand to curtail my conclusion – ‘I’ve thought about it a lot since then. The thing is, I saw the look in your eyes when you touched me and I knew after that there’d be no avoiding it: you would want to talk about that part of me, about motherhood, and I got cold feet.’

  ‘I needed to know that part of you too. I needed to see all of you.’

  Amandine shivered. ‘I know. And we would have got round to it eventually of course, but I’d deliberately put it off. It was a side of me I wasn’t ready to show you yet. I wanted to be the other me just a little longer. Until I could be sure you’d understand.’

  ‘You thought I wouldn’t?’ I sat back, devastated.

  Amandine rubbed at the soft traces of anguish that creased her forehead. ‘Listen, I’ve never told anyone this, Baptiste, but those first days after her birth changed how I saw myself. I was so tired. So lost. I had no one to help me. Even my own mother said that I had made my own bed and I should lie in it. I’ve never forgiven her for her spite. But worst of all, the love didn’t come like I’d been told it would. From the way people had described it I’d expected a perfect love to blossom within me even as they cut the cord. As though having a baby would transform me into the patient, selfless woman I had never been as a girl. But when they handed her to me, nothing had changed. I wanted to love my daughter so much, but I just couldn’t find it in me.’ Amandine gazed out at the towpath, the broad trunks of trees emerging from drifts of dead leaves. ‘I blamed her for what was happening to me, because I had no one else to blame. I resented her. How my life would have been different if she had never been born.’

  ‘I think you’re being too hard on yourself,’ I said. ‘You resented the situation, not your child.’

  ‘Either way.’ She twisted the silver ring around on her thumb. ‘I suppose you can figure out how the story goes.’

  ‘You had her adopted?’

  Amandine looked up at me and rubbed her forehead. ‘What? Baptiste? What are you talking about? Why wo
uld you think that?’ She stopped and checked herself. ‘No. Of course I didn’t. Just because it was hard I didn’t give up. Just because I imagine losing people I love doesn’t mean I would actually abandon them. Yes, I imagined her being taken from me. As I held her and rocked her and fed her I pictured the most terrible things – kidnapping, car crash, cot death – anything so that I would feel that crushing pain of loss, the surging of my need to protect her. I’m not proud of it. But it made me feel love, if love means spending your waking hours being terrified of losing what is most precious to you.’

  ‘So that is how you love people?’

  ‘We all find our ways.’ Amandine pulled her chair closer, leaning in until her fingertips found my skin once more. ‘Which brings us back to the question, Baptiste, where do we go from here?’

  36

  The first frosts took us by surprise as we slept. Seduced by months of mild weather, January had already given us mimosa and sweet-scented apple blossom, but then the cold sprang down from the mountains, bearing in on the city like a tide, and when it finally smothered the city everything stopped.

  Bitter weeks lay ahead of us. It was all they could do to keep the main streets and roads passable. Everywhere else the snow was left to drift thickly over deserted streets and pavements. Blankets of quiet lay like relief over the city and her outskirts.

  The flow of water slowed and then stopped. The canal froze around our boats and crackled against their flanks at midday. The wide sprawling Garonne river set hard in places. Every winter when the village duck pond first iced over my father used to tell me of the time the Garonne froze solid right through Toulouse. Maybe it was the same year some time in the early seventies – I can’t have been that old – when a child drowned on that icy pond. That year our house was as cold as the church, and smelled of tallow and musty blankets brought up from the cellar. I remember the day they found him under the ice, my mother drew me the first hot bath after what seemed an age without warm water, and stood watching as I sank my cold skin under the steam as though it were a miracle. The village children were kept away from the pond for a few weeks after that – not that I needed any persuading – but when spring came around life got back to normal. The water had been forgiven.