The Things You Do for Love

by Rachel Crowther

  Flora kept her attention firmly on the road – the long straight stretch of the route nationale, sweeping past villages whose names she could connect, now, to Touraine cheeses and wines and rivers. So much of it still unexplored, she thought, but even so this countryside felt familiar, and its familiarity felt comforting. The prospect of leaving France, and particularly this corner of it, filled her with sorrow, but she couldn’t stay here indefinitely. She had no idea now what she’d hoped for from this summer. It seemed to her that her only motive had been to escape from what was waiting at home – the future as well as the past – and sooner or later she must, as Jean would say, go back and face the music.

  A perception of herself settled on Flora then with the clarity of a perfect diagnosis. Her brain, she thought, had run rings around her all her life. She’d always been able to talk herself into or out of anything: that had been her tragedy, as well as the source of her success. She had lived all these years on the strength of her conviction, and it had been an admirable companion, ready to bend itself to the expediency of any situation – but when it failed her, she was left without a compass. She had no idea – now, for example – whether she was making things too complicated or too simple; whither she wanted to go.

  And her heart had been trained so long ago to accept second billing that it had almost lost the ability to express itself. She wasn’t even sure, now, whether that surge of passion for Landon that had almost overwhelmed her just a few days ago had simply been an attempt by her brain to provide a response, a solution, to the situation in which she found herself. She could believe just as readily in the revelation that she had been in love with Landon all along, and in its opposite: that she had been carried away by the intensity of the moment and a subliminal desire to tie everything up neatly.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Mum.’ Lou, sitting beside her, shot a glance at her. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Flora blinked, unsure whether the itch in her eyes was the result of emotion or the strain of staring out into the sunshine. Self-pity again, she thought. Could she not be allowed a portion of self-knowledge without the scourge of self-pity in its wake?

  ‘Shouldn’t we have turned off, back there?’ Lou asked. ‘I saw a sign for St Rémy.’

  ‘Oh!’ Flora braked hard, and a small Fiat sounded its horn furiously before sweeping past her, the driver exclaiming expressively with his right arm.

  ‘I might be wrong,’ Lou said. ‘You know these roads much better than me.’

  ‘I wasn’t concentrating,’ Flora said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  For a moment she sat, the car stationary and her passengers silent. Had they driven along this bit of road earlier? Impossible to say. She was conscious of Daniel sitting behind her; of three pairs of eyes watching her. The road was too narrow for a three-point turn, anyway. She slid the car crossly back into gear.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Kitty, ‘it’s good to get lost now and then.’

  The words were kindly meant, Flora knew, but it added to her humiliation that they should feel she needed reassurance. She squinted into the sun as the road unfolded in front of them, gripping the steering wheel hard. Someone’s stupid mother, she thought, who can’t even find her way home. God Almighty, what had she come to?

  At last, out of the glare, some buildings loomed up.

  ‘Voilà!’ said Kitty. ‘Look, we can turn there, in the garage.’

  Too tense to feel relieved, Flora pulled off the road and swung the car round. This time, the miles seemed to pass at twice the speed, and almost before she’d started looking for it the sign to St Rémy appeared. She flicked on her indicator at once, to show that she’d seen it. The D road rose invitingly over a bridge, some tributary of the Vienne or the Indre dawdling beneath it, then turned east along the riverbank.

  As they wound their way through the chain of villages that led back to Les Violettes, conversation in the car gradually became easier. By the time they reached St Rémy, Flora could almost feel a shred of amusement at her flusterment.

  ‘Can you drop us in the village?’ Kitty asked. ‘We could walk the last bit.’

  Flora bestowed her best maternal smile as Kitty and Daniel climbed out of the car. ‘There’s a pretty walk along the river,’ she said. ‘Over the bridge down there and turn left.’

  Kitty smiled too, a flash of gaiety that barely concealed her impatience to be alone with Daniel. ‘See you later, Mum. Thanks for the lift.’

  Lou was silent as they drove off again.

  ‘All right?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Mmm.’

  Flora glanced at her. ‘Hard for you, seeing Kitty with Daniel,’ she said.

  Lou made a little movement that was part-grimace, part-shrug. Then she said, ‘I’ve been wondering, Ma. Something you said – are you thinking about going back to Orchards? I mean, imminently?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Flora. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was thinking – perhaps I could come and stay for a while. I mean, if Alice isn’t . . . that would be nice, wouldn’t it? For you too?’

  ‘It would be lovely,’ said Flora. ‘Oh, Lou, it would be absolutely lovely.’

  They were passing the water tower that stood sentinel over her daily walk to the shop now. She shouldn’t count any chickens, Flora told herself. Alice’s letter might change everything, and of course she hoped it would, for Lou’s sake – but even so it seemed to her just then that perhaps she had done some things right after all, in those years of compromise and travail. Or perhaps sometimes, occasionally, life simply delivered up more than you strictly deserved.

  December 2004

  This is the first Christmas for twenty-five years that Flora hasn’t had to beg and barter for time off. The irony isn’t lost on her – nor does it fail to remind her of that earlier occasion, so many years ago now, when the luck of the on-call rota first exposed the faultline in her marriage.

  Her colleagues are each covering a day or two over Christmas and New Year, and Flora has been released for the whole stretch. She’s collected enough prizes and distinctions lately that no one can doubt she’s earned a certain deference: even Mark Upward, a few years younger but tireless in his bid for supremacy, has been less forceful lately. And no doubt, Flora thinks, lying in bed this first morning, their chivalrous instincts are flattered by the idea of granting her a week en famille. No doubt they believe, assuming her unconventional marriage is an open secret in the hospital, that she will be duly grateful.

  But the truth is that there is no one else in the house as Flora begins her luxuriously extended festive break. Kitty is skiing with the school, and will soon be starting the long coach journey home, and Lou is due back from university any moment. But just now Flora is alone, and more conscious of it than she expected. More conscious of Henry’s absence from her bed, though she would die rather than admit it.

  She is determined to be able to report that she’s made the most of her leisure, staying in bed for half the morning, but although her body remains supine her mind roams restlessly through the empty rooms, intent on noticing things she’s chosen to ignore all these years. The house, she thinks, contains far more evidence of Henry’s occupation than of hers. Henry’s books, Henry’s piano, Henry’s collection of LPs ranged along a whole wall of the sitting room. And of course Henry’s pictures, especially the Comyns.

  She has never liked the Comyns, Flora admits. It’s not an aesthetic judgement – she doesn’t feel qualified to make an aesthetic judgement about them. Nor is it entirely a judgement about Nick Comyn himself. Poor Nick, dead for nearly ten years already: there is nothing she can hold against him now, and even when he was alive he was always pathetically eager to appease her, pathetically self-conscious in her presence. He had no idea, presumably, that he made her self-conscious too. That isn’t something people ever think about Flora, and she’s always made especially sure it isn’t what Henry’s friends think.

  On the wall opposite the bed hangs Henry’s favourite picture: that hateful portr
ait of her, radiantly pregnant. Flora has never wanted to recognise herself in that picture, but it would be too simplistic to say that she objects to being represented as womanly and fruitful. And also too simplistic to say that she didn’t like being surprised by Henry, or that she resented his triumphant pleasure in fathering a child. None of that can fully account for her feelings about the portrait.

  She forces herself to look at it now, to try to pin down what it is she resents about these pictures that hang in every room of her house. Some of them – the portrait of Elizabeth playing the cello, for example – her objection to that doesn’t require an explanation, but oddly enough Flora likes that painting more than some of the others nowadays, although she was livid at the time to think that Nick Comyn had met Elizabeth; that he’d been in and out of Orchards all those years, in and out of their lives, and back and forth to Henry’s mistress too. No, despite all that it’s so beautiful, so striking, that she can’t help feeling something for the image, for the subject, even for her recidivous husband. Though the point, surely, is that the painting reminds her of that night of drama and tragedy when she felt she understood Henry properly at last, and understood what he needed from her. It reminds her of the magnanimity she felt when she realised what he’d lost – and of the calm water that followed, the long period when she believed she’d got her reward at last. It seemed to her the night Elizabeth died that they had come through something together, breached a point of no return. She believed Henry’s infidelity was in the past, or at least its capacity to hurt her.

  Until three weeks ago she believed that: until the night she came back triumphant from Geneva, the night of the Chassagne-Montrachet and the fateful phone call. Her defences had been weakened, she thinks. She’d stopped suspecting that anyone could come between them.

  She turns away from her portrait now, although it’s innocent of any part in that deception. But there’s the rub, she understands: they are all deceptions, these pictures. They are versions of the truth as Comyn saw it, or as Henry imparted it. She ponders that thought for a moment, conscious of being out of her depth in this argument, but pleased by the idea of justifying her suspicion of the paintings. But then she thinks, perhaps the point is that they do tell the truth, that they hold it there in clear sight, in perpetuity, and don’t allow her any room for escape.

  She throws the duvet back crossly and climbs out of bed. Perhaps what she really objects to is Henry’s conviction that Comyn deserves more recognition than he got: that reminder of Henry’s generosity to his friends, and his impossible certainty about his own judgement.

  Perhaps today she simply minds the fact that Henry has gone, and has stayed away, as she insisted after that last debacle.

  She’s getting dressed when she hears the gate clink open, and then a car rolling through it. Through the window she watches Lou getting out of the third-hand Golf she insisted on having, despite Henry’s eagerness to buy her something flashier, racier, more glamorous for her twenty-first birthday. When Lou comes into the hall Flora is waiting at the top of the stairs, a smile on her face.

  ‘Hello,’ Lou says. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were here.’

  ‘I am. First day of my holiday.’

  ‘Good timing, then.’

  ‘Did you get the dissertation finished?’ Flora asks, as she comes down the stairs.

  Lou makes a rueful face. ‘No, but it’s getting there. I’ve trawled through most of the references, at least.’

  Flora can’t remember what the subject of the dissertation is, and doesn’t like to ask again. ‘Well done,’ she says. ‘You must have set off early. What do you need? Coffee? Breakfast?’

  ‘I had breakfast before I left, but I could have more, if you’re . . .’

  ‘I’ve been enjoying a lie-in,’ Flora says, but the statement feels less satisfying than she hoped. They all know she hates staying in bed.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Lou asks.

  ‘New York.’

  Lou nods. She has stopped in the kitchen doorway, not quite looking at Flora.

  ‘When’s he coming home?’ she asks, her voice carefully modulated.

  Flora sighs – a little theatrically, she’s aware of that, although she’s not certain what effect she hopes to achieve. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’m not quite sure.’

  *

  The weather is unseasonably mild; well on the way to a record-breaking Christmas. While the bacon cooks in the oven, Flora helps Lou bring in her luggage and carry it up to her room, and they both remark on the warmth of the day.

  ‘You wouldn’t guess it’s almost Christmas,’ Lou says, and then she raises an eyebrow, as if to acknowledge the other resonances of that statement. There are no decorations in the house, no food in the fridge. All that falls within Henry’s purview.

  Flora doesn’t answer, but a little later, when the last boxes have been deposited on Lou’s bedroom floor, she says, ‘We could go and buy a tree this afternoon. Kitty’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure.’ Lou smiles. ‘That would be nice.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t warn you,’ Flora says. ‘About Henry, I mean. About him not being here.’

  ‘Does Kitty know?’ Lou asks.

  ‘She knows he’s in New York. Working in New York for a bit. She didn’t ask, before she went off skiing –’ Flora breaks off. ‘I don’t know whether she expects him to be home for Christmas.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Flora gives a tiny shrug. ‘I threw him out,’ she says, although she fears this admission will make things worse in Lou’s eyes.

  ‘For good?’

  ‘That wasn’t specified.’ The conversation looms up in Flora’s mind, and she pushes it away. This is ignominious, she thinks. Why should she have to justify herself to her daughter?

  Lou says nothing for a while, and Flora wonders what she’s thinking. But what she says comes as a surprise.

  ‘Do you want me to speak to him?’ she offers. ‘If you don’t want him here for Christmas that’s fine, but . . .’

  ‘It’s a bit late now,’ Flora says.

  ‘To get a flight, do you mean?’

  Flora nods. She feels suddenly tearful, not so much because of Henry as because of Lou: because this is the first conversation she’s had with her daughter in which Lou has played the adult. She sits down on the bed, and after a moment Lou comes to sit next to her.

  This is the moment, Flora thinks, when she could explain herself. She could tell Lou how it has been, all this time, and why she has done what she’s done. Sentences rise in her mind and flow for a few seconds before petering out. The thing about Henry, she tells the empty space in her head, is that he needs other women: he can’t settle to monogamy any more than I can settle to being a housewife. The thing is, I couldn’t have walked away, because you and Kitty needed him, because I wasn’t here enough, and when I had the chance to choose something different, right at the beginning, I didn’t. The thing is that having him beside me all these years has meant something, and I’m in a quandary now.

  She can’t say any of it. It’s like those pictures: if she sets it out for someone else to look at it will become the truth, a version of the truth that she’ll have to stick to.

  ‘If you have to sell yourself short, Lou,’ she says eventually, ‘it’s better to sacrifice your heart, not your mind. That’s the long and short of it. You can rely on making something of your brain, but the heart is a dicey business.’

  ‘Words of comfort for the young woman,’ says Lou, and Flora laughs. Then Lou starts laughing too, and before they know it they are clinging to each other, helpless with mirth. God knows why, thinks the bit of Flora’s brain that hangs on to lucidity. God only knows what there is to laugh about, but it’s an extraordinary relief. It seems to her suddenly that she hasn’t laughed enough, certainly not with her daughters. Perhaps that’s a better maxim: there’s always a funny side, and you’ll feel better if you can find it.

  ‘I can smell burning,’ Lou says, when they
finally collect themselves.

  ‘Oh Lord, the bacon!’ Flora jumps up, and they race downstairs, still exhilarated, carrying with them that sumptuous feeling of easy intimacy that is so rare between them.

  The bacon is rescued in the nick of time, and they sit at the kitchen table to eat it.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ Flora says, greatly daring. ‘What else is going on in your life?’

  ‘Well,’ says Lou. She looks, all of a sudden, both guarded and vulnerable. That strong jawline of hers is softened by a blush that looks more like a bruise. ‘Actually, there is somebody – possibly – who . . .’

  Flora waits.

  ‘It’s early days,’ Lou says, ‘I’ll keep you posted.’ She smiles, a tight little smile, and looks down at her plate.

  ‘What’s she like?’ Flora asks, and Lou’s head shoots up again.

  ‘I didn’t think –’ she begins – and then she laughs. ‘I’ve never told you,’ she says.

  ‘Not in so many words.’ Flora looks at her, thinking how beautiful Lou looks this morning, and how wise. How very much wiser than her mother, not ever to risk her happiness on a man.

  54

  ‘This is a great place,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  They were up in Kitty’s room, propped one at each end of her bed against the wrought-iron bedstead. If only the day could go on and on exactly like this, Kitty thought, with neither of them saying much, just looking at each other and feeling the warm, closed air of the room around them. All that beauty down by the river, the light and shade and the soft music of the water, had been almost more than she could bear.