The Things You Do for Love

by Rachel Crowther

  But apparently not. Flora stares at Gillian across the Formica table while words jostle in her head, reshaping themselves like dominoes into a succession of slightly different questions.

  ‘Why?’ is all she asks in the end.

  Gillian laughs, and her face reminds Flora of a prefect at her school, a leggy, handsome girl who flunked her A levels after falling flamboyantly for the captain of rugby at the boys’ school. The same mix of certainty and doubt at the corners of her mouth, willing you to agree with her even though she’s decided your opinion isn’t one she wants.

  ‘Why stop?’ Gillian asks. ‘Heavens, Flora, we can’t all be like you. Things change, you know. I’m not interested in martyrdom.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ says Flora, stung, but she can see there’s no point pursuing the conversation. She thinks, waspishly, of a more pertinent analogy: a patient who’s given up on life, despite the heroic hours on the operating table devoted to their rescue.

  ‘I want to look after this baby,’ Gillian says, her gaze dipping downwards; and then, after a tiny hesitation, ‘Bob wants me to. We always said if we had children . . .’

  For a moment there’s a look of appeal in her eyes.

  ‘Well,’ Flora says. ‘Each to her own. Congratulations.’

  She picks up her tray and makes for the door, hating herself a little, but only enough to kindle an answering spark of self-righteousness.

  *

  ‘Would you have liked me to give up work when Lou was born?’ she asks Henry that night, as they clear the table after their late supper. Omelette; a loyal standby.

  Henry looks at her, a quizzical note in his face that could mean anything.

  ‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Are you thinking . . .?’

  ‘Gillian Sutherland’s throwing in the towel,’ she says. ‘I saw her today, at the conference. She’s pregnant, and she’s stopping at twenty-eight weeks and not coming back.’

  ‘She might change her mind. People do.’

  Flora shakes her head. ‘Not a chance. Lose your handhold for a moment and you’ve had it. No one would employ her after she’s made a song and dance about motherhood. She’ll set the rest of us back too – it’ll confirm their belief that it’s what we all want, deep down. You should see them, fawning over her like a disarmed warhead.’

  Henry laughs. ‘What a turn of phrase you have,’ he says. ‘You make them sound like Soviet salvage experts.’

  ‘Not so far from the truth.’

  Henry puts the last of the glasses into the dishwasher and straightens up.

  ‘No one’s going to disarm you, my love,’ he says. ‘Not a chance.’

  This, Flora tells herself, is what other people envy: Henry’s support, and his belief in her. The fact that he doesn’t tell her what to think, but reassures her that what she thinks is right. Whatever she thinks, presumably. She could always change her mind, and . . .

  Henry puts a hand on her shoulder, his grip firm enough to be more than a casual gesture.

  ‘Do you want to stop?’ he asks. ‘Has she made you wonder . . .?’

  Flora thinks of Lou’s first birthday party two weeks ago, of the tottering steps she’s taking now, and she squeezes her fists tight.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s just a surprise to find that she’s – different from me.’

  ‘You were never much like her,’ says Henry. ‘She doesn’t, for example, have nearly as nice a bottom as yours.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Flora knows what’s coming – Henry’s way of making things better – and she’s grateful, but part of her would rather continue the conversation. There’s another step, she thinks now, and another, that they never take. The deal. The balance. The upsides and the downsides.

  But what’s the point, really? Most women in her position would give their eye teeth for Henry and the life they have. The baby, the twin careers, the perfect understanding. If it suits Henry to have a wife who spends so much time at work, can she really complain? It suits him to have a wife he’s proud of, too; she knows that. Not just a wife with enough self-esteem to carry herself with dignity, but one who brings something, a big something, to the party. It would be impossible to explain the intricacies of it to anyone else.

  ‘Come on,’ Henry says, ‘it’s late. The great surgeon needs her rest.’

  ‘I’ll look in on Lou on the way up,’ Flora says.

  She climbs the stairs slowly, the sight and smell and feel of her daughter filling her head. She can conjure the child so vividly, that distinct, solid, not-quite-baby, not-quite-toddler weight when you pick her up, and her jerky, purposeful movements. As she leans over the cot Lou sighs and murmurs in her sleep, rolling onto her back so that her small face looks up at her mother. Her eyes are tightly shut, her dark hair lying in wisps across her forehead. Not a care in the world, Flora thinks. Not a single care.

  21

  Flora took a cup of coffee into the sitting room and sat down to check her email. This too had become part of her routine, something she only allowed herself to do once a day. There were often no new messages, but for some reason she’d expected more today, and rather than closing the screen, she scrolled back instead through the correspondence of the last few weeks.

  Martin’s email reporting that he was settled at Orchards had been several stilted paragraphs long. I am very comfortable here, he’d written, and I hope St Rémy is suiting you just as well, before moving on with evident relief to the weather. Reading it, she’d been reminded of her first impression of him that afternoon in the shop: an Englishman of an entirely recognisable type. Nothing, she told herself, to justify the quiver of anticipation his name evoked, nor to warrant re-reading his words. But she skimmed through her reply again now, wondering whether it had been too brusque, whether she should have asked another question or two; and then, chiding herself, she closed it. Remember that last night, she thought. Remember the pain she might have avoided if she’d been more careful.

  Both Kitty and Lou had been in touch intermittently, but it was clear that they didn’t always know what to say to her. Kitty asked the same questions each time: How are you enjoying France? Is it hot there? She’d mentioned a song cycle she’d been writing for her MA course, but otherwise said little about herself. Was she all right, Flora wondered? Kitty had taken Henry’s death badly. Had she been upset by that business of the sculpture? Wished her mother were there, even?

  Frowning, Flora leaned back in her chair. Lou had told her about Alice’s statue of Bacchus in her first email, soon after the private view. Flora could tell that Lou expected her to be shocked, but instead she’d found the story oddly amusing. Perhaps it was the effect of distance, or of Lou’s rather legalistic prose. But if it was true that Bacchus had tipped the balance in Alice’s favour with the Morris Prize judges, wasn’t there a certain justice in the notion of Henry, rendered in marble by his lesbian daughter-in-law, adding lustre to her career after his death? And of Henry showcased (although Lou tactfully did not remind her of this) in a collection that represented male oppression.

  Flora skipped on to Lou’s emails. I’ve been to Orchards with the agent, she’d written. He says it will let quite easily. And then, a week later: I’ve heard from your Frenchman. He seems delighted with Orchards.

  Was she wrong, Flora wondered, to detect a note of reproach in this message – for wasting Lou’s time, or for acting irrationally? She and Lou often failed to hit the right note with each other, she thought. She’d imagined them being friends as Lou grew up, but perhaps that wasn’t how it worked. Had they missed a turning somewhere? Was that her fault?

  Sitting at Madame Carver’s pretty desk, she felt a sudden tension in the invisible thread that linked her to her daughters. For the first time she felt trapped here, enclosed by the high walls that bounded the house and garden and by the decorum that held her to the plans she’d made.

  An image came into her mind of Lou as a baby: her preternatural composure, accepting the embrace of whoever h
eld her in their arms, and the swiftness with which she’d settled into a routine that meant she was asleep by the time Flora got home from work. She felt again her pent-up desire as she’d lifted Lou from her cot every evening, willing her to cry to show that she’d noticed her mother’s absence, as well as her return. Of course she’d never expected the path she’d chosen to be easy, but those few minutes every evening had threatened her confidence in the balance she’d achieved, and her fitness as a mother. Amid the tangle of emotions that accompanied her second pregnancy, Flora had rejoiced, guiltily, at the chance to start afresh – and things had been different that time. The infant Kitty had woken every night for several years. Flora’s concentration in the operating theatre had suffered, but she’d been happier. This baby needed her mother; she claimed her fair share of Flora’s energies.

  Flora sighed. It was Lou, of course, who’d grown up more sure of herself, but Flora had always believed that had happened despite her neglect, not because of her example. Perhaps, she thought now, she’d been wrong, all these years, to read rejection into Lou’s competence. She ought to talk to her daughters, rather than waiting for emails to flit to and fro. Why didn’t she do that? Why didn’t they?

  She shut her eyes for a moment, imagining the day stretching ahead of her, and the next day, and the next. She wondered what Lou and Kitty would be doing at this moment: whether they too were eking out the summer. Whether they were happy.

  PART III

  Greville Auctioneers, Friday 12th December 2014

  Paintings and drawings by Nicholas Comyn, from the collection of the late Henry Jones

  Lot no. 3: Beach scene, 1994

  This painting was among the last Comyn produced before his death the following year. Although he often sketched outside, this is one of only a few outdoor scenes he completed. It depicts the two Jones children, Louisa and Kitty, on holiday in North Wales, and the unusually free and rapid brush strokes represent a significant departure for Comyn: there is a spontaneity in this piece which is absent from his earlier work. The children are a prominent part of the composition, but not central to it; they are, in effect, part of the landscape, a landscape which is both faithful to the topography of the coastline and yet expressive.

  Given the short time left to Comyn at this point, it is perhaps tempting to read more into the image of dark clouds hanging over the beach than was intended. It would be typical of Comyn’s faithfulness to his subject matter, and his insistence on painting what was before him, not to portray this family holiday scene in imaginary sunshine.

  The image of children playing as storm clouds gather will be familiar to most aficionados of British beach holidays, and in the hands of an artist of Comyn’s calibre it makes for a powerfully evocative painting. The quality of light Comyn captures just above the horizon, and the colour the weather lends to the beach and the figures playing on it, is masterly.

  22

  Alice had been enthusiastic about going away for the weekend. Alice ever-practical, Lou thought, jubilant at this evidence that she too was keen to find a remedy for their impasse. Fresh air and a clear horizon, and salt spray to temper the morning sickness. Surely that recipe couldn’t fail?

  Neither of them knew the south coast: that, as well as its proximity, made it the right place to go. Not Brighton or Bognor but Seaford, a modest little town that made no special claims apart from its beach and the English Channel laid out beyond. They rented a white clapperboard house on Marine Parade where they could sit and look out at the pleasing striation of sky and sea and stones.

  At breakfast on Saturday morning, Alice glanced at Lou’s untouched plate.

  ‘Not feeling so good?’ she asked.

  Lou made a gesture of resignation. The smell of toast, usually redolent of cosiness and comfort, was perilous this morning.

  ‘Isn’t it better if you eat?’

  ‘Not today, I don’t think.’

  Lou’s nausea still ebbed and flowed. The midwife who’d conducted her booking visit had told her it usually began to let up by this stage, but the online forum she’d found had been less reassuring.

  Across the table, Alice pushed back her chair and stood up.

  ‘No point sitting staring at it,’ she said, gathering up their plates.

  Watching her, Lou was conscious of how familiar Alice’s movements were. She never did anything impulsively. There was a sense of purpose and balance about her that reminded Lou of her handling of her tools, mindful that any ill-considered gesture might dislodge a fragment of stone that would have been better left where it was, but that hesitation could be just as disastrous, once you’d made up your mind.

  Noticing Lou’s eyes on her, Alice smiled: a smile that seemed to Lou, like so many recently, to have nothing behind it. The glimmer of pleasure it kindled in Lou’s mind melted away before it flowered into hope.

  ‘How about a walk on the beach?’ Alice said. ‘It’s a lovely morning.’

  What Lou really wanted was to go back to sleep, but there was no point being at the seaside if you spent the day in bed. No point coming away unless she made an effort.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Good idea.’

  *

  The tide was low, exposing the beach. To the right, it ran in a sharp curve towards Newhaven, and to the left in an extended crescent of sand and shingle towards Seaford Head. It was a fine morning, the sky blue inland and opalescent ahead, as though the sea was lighting it from beneath. Apart from the occasional deckchair or kite, everything was grey, blue, brown, calm. Lou and Alice crunched over the ridge of stones and down towards the sea, their footing growing firmer as they reached the damp sand below the tide line, then turned towards the sharp white outline of the cliffs.

  Distance had an elastic quality on the beach, Lou thought, especially one like this with so few landmarks. It was hard to tell how far you’d gone, or how long you’d been walking. That was good: a blessed antidote to her professional life where time was monitored minute by minute, allotted and billed and accounted for. A trail of footsteps spooled slowly out behind them, cutting through the collage of pebbles and slipper limpets that were scattered sparsely in some areas and strewn more thickly where the tide had gathered and paused.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Alice said, after a while. ‘I’m glad we’ve come.’

  ‘It reminds me of Wales,’ Lou said. ‘Being on the beach like this.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘When Kitty was little. We went to Wales every August for a while. There were pebble beaches there too: I remember Henry skimming stones. I could never get the hang of it.’

  Alice picked up a flat stone. ‘I’ll teach you,’ she said.

  She turned, and Lou watched her walk a few steps towards the sea and then stop, twist round, and send the stone out low over the water so that it bounced once, twice, three times, before it hit a wave on the rise and disappeared from view.

  Lou felt a surge of joy, a sudden clearing of the air.

  ‘Bet you can’t do it again!’ she called.

  Alice grinned. She bent to pick up a second stone and flicked it out across the incoming tide. It bounced twice, a flicker of black against the glimmering surface, before dropping into the water.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that, in the Midwestern plains?’ Lou asked.

  ‘You haven’t heard of the Iowa Great Lakes?’ Alice lifted her eyebrows, play-acting disbelief. ‘While you were vacationing in Wales, we were taking trips to Spirit Lake. There’s enough water there to skim a few pebbles.’ She selected another stone and held it out to Lou. ‘You have a go.’

  Lou remembered well the frustration of failure, all those years ago, but also the thrill with which she’d weighed each new stone in her hand, sure that its contours were perfect for skimming. She remembered Henry on the beach, too. Henry in his element as the hearty father on holiday, and Nick Comyn mooning after him.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t tried,’ she said.

  ‘Try it my way.’ />
  Alice put the stone into her hand and held her arm to show her the technique, the cocking of the wrist and the right moment for release. Another in the repertoire of deft movements that conveyed her smoothly through life, Lou thought, filled with longing and with a sudden, fearful optimism.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘Stone’s your thing. You can make it do whatever you want.’

  ‘Just flick it,’ Alice said. ‘Send it on its way.’

  Lou crouched a little, angled her arm, and spun the stone straight into the spume at the edge of the sea. The next one Alice handed her went higher, looping upwards before it dropped down into the water.

  ‘Keep focussed on the horizon,’ Alice said. ‘You need enough spin to lift it off the surface.’

  Lou frowned, cocked her wrist and tried again. This time the stone sped towards the sea in a straight line and bounced, just once, a tiny hop from one ripple to the next.

  ‘See?’

  Alice touched her shoulder, a fleeting gesture altogether different from the purposeful way she’d held Lou’s hand a moment before. Lou felt a shiver run through her, leaving a sort of numbness in its wake.

  ‘Your go,’ she said.

  Alice picked up a tiny flat pebble and whipped it out across the water. It bounced four or five times, but Lou hardly saw it. She could feel Alice’s fingers still, the ghost of their presence, and her flesh goosepimpled beneath them.

  Alice didn’t move away from the sea this time; didn’t bend to pick up another stone. Had she felt her flinch, Lou wondered? Her heart was beating furiously. She’d wanted Alice to touch her so badly: what had made her recoil? Her mind raced now, chasing her heartbeat, unsettling the stack of assumptions and defences she had built up.

  In the last week or two she’d felt self-conscious with Alice in a way she never had before, but she’d assumed that was the result of the froideur between them, not a contributory cause. When she took off her clothes she was aware of difference, imbalance, vulnerability: emotions that made her think of a woman baring herself for a man. She’d even taken to wearing the dressing gown Aunt Jean had given her for Christmas, pulling the wings of it around her to cover the tiny prominence at the base of her belly. Could it be, she wondered now, that she was deceiving herself: that her feelings for Alice had changed? Could the ambiguity she had been attributing to Alice emanate from her instead?