For a while she simply sat, letting what Alice had written sink in, and then she took the letter inside and up to her room. Stretching out on the bed, she unfolded it again.
Dear Lou, Alice began, I know you will think it’s cowardly to write this in a letter, but I want it to come out the right way and this is my best chance.
Lou sighed, smoothing the paper flat against the pillow and wondering if the words would mean the same thing the second time round, or if she’d find she had somehow misunderstood them. That used to happen sometimes with the notes and cards she’d hoarded as a teenager – thank yous for birthday presents or invitations to parties – but back then she’d known she was deliberately reading more into them than was really there. Was she still capable of the same self-deception? Shaking her head to shut out everything but Alice’s voice, she let herself devour the whole letter once more.
I should have told you all this sooner, but I hoped it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t. When I met you I felt what had happened before wasn’t important anymore, and I guess I was ashamed, too. I didn’t want you to think less of me – and you know, we never talked about men. You never asked me, so I never told you.
When I was in high school and everyone talked about boys, I went along with it. It was a small world, and you had to fit in. You could say no to one boy, or two, but you couldn’t go on saying no. And then a strange thing happened to me. I wasn’t a beauty, and I never made the same effort other girls did, but – maybe because I was different and I didn’t care as much – the boy everyone wanted fell for me. He was a nice boy, kind of arrogant but confident enough that he didn’t need to be aggressive, and clever too. The only one who wasn’t going to be a farmer.
So you can guess what happened. Halfway through twelfth grade, just when I’d figured out how to get out of Webster County and go to art school, I got pregnant. He offered to marry me. We were both seventeen, and he said he’d give up on college and stay on his Dad’s farm just like everyone wanted him to. I let him think, for a bit, that I might go along with it, although I knew the me that said those things to him wasn’t the person I really was, not the me who lay awake at night and felt as if the walls were closing in on me. It would have made my parents happy, and his, and there was some comfort in knowing exactly how my life would unroll, but not enough.
The baby would have been due just before I graduated from high school. I never told my parents. Never told anyone but him. There was a clinic in Fort Dodge that did things quietly. We said we were going away for the weekend, and they didn’t turn a hair, just made some jokes that were the opposite of what really happened. I went away pregnant and came back not. He stayed with me all weekend, and for those few days I really did love him. I’d like to say we stayed friends, but we didn’t. The next semester he started going out with my friend Grace, and after he left for college I never saw him again.
I’ve thought sometimes that it would have been better if I’d let the baby be adopted, so I could know that my child was out there somewhere and might come and find me one day, but I couldn’t have managed that at the time. It hasn’t troubled me much, especially not since I met you and found out how to be happy. Not since my career got going and I could tell myself all that would never have happened if I’d had a baby ten years ago.
You can guess the next bit too, I’m sure. I won’t say it took me by surprise, because I had a pretty good idea it would be difficult, and that’s why I was reluctant about the whole plan. Why I was upset you went ahead without telling me, and why I couldn’t be happy for you in the way you wanted. It wasn’t just the fact of you being pregnant: it was knowing exactly how you were feeling, and not saying anything. It was seeing the pleasure in your face that I couldn’t share, because although you said it was our baby, I knew in my heart it was yours, and I knew I didn’t deserve it. It was feeling you slipping away from me, putting the baby first even before it was born. I guess those things would have been hard anyway, but the abortion made it worse. I did my best to look after you and not let you see how I was feeling. I could see you were going through more than you expected too, and I hoped we’d come through it together, but all the time I was afraid we’d lost something we couldn’t get back.
The weekend we went to Parnells you were thirteen weeks pregnant, exactly the time I lost my baby. All that day, while we were walking around, I tried to psych myself up to tell you. I thought if I could do it, maybe that would sort everything out, but I was so scared of telling you I’d killed a baby the same age as yours. As ours. And then I said something that upset you and – I know neither of us meant all those things we said, but they still hurt. The truth is, my Mom’s accident wasn’t so bad, but it was a reason to come home, and that’s what I needed. I needed some time to sort things out in my head, and some distance between us. I don’t know if you’ll understand, or if you’ll forgive me, but at least now you know the worst.
With my best love,
Alice
57
Alice’s letter hadn’t had the effect Kitty anticipated. She’d thought they’d get back from the shop to find Lou either ecstatic or desolate, but it was almost impossible to tell what she was feeling when they came face to face in the hallway. She seemed, Kitty thought, both agitated and listless, as though the situation required some great energy that she couldn’t summon.
In the kitchen, Flora was busy arranging baguettes in the tall bread bin, and Daniel was staring out through the back door like someone used to making himself inconspicuous. Watching her sister fiddle with one thing then another – glancing at a postcard, touching the blade of a knife – Kitty had to stop herself grabbing Lou’s hand.
‘Please tell us, Looby,’ she said – hearing the long-forgotten nickname with surprise, as though it was a younger, less tactful version of herself who had spoken. ‘Is it good or bad?’
Lou turned, and Kitty took a step back. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Of course you don’t have to say anything if you . . .’
‘Alice had an abortion,’ Lou said. ‘Years ago. When she was still at school.’
Kitty waited. She saw Lou glance towards Flora.
‘That’s it, really,’ Lou said. ‘I mean – it was hard for her, seeing me pregnant. It brought it all back. She didn’t want me to do it in the first place. I should have . . .’
‘Should have what?’ said Kitty, and at the same moment Flora said, ‘Lou, darling –’
‘I should have thought more about her,’ Lou said. ‘I hardly thought at all about what it felt like for her. I wanted her to think about me. I can’t believe how selfish . . .’
‘That’s what pregnancy does,’ Flora said. ‘That’s what it’s meant to do.’
Kitty looked at her: she’d got used to hearing her mother sounding less assured this last week, but this was the old forthright Flora, certain of her ground.
‘Don’t,’ said Lou. ‘Excuses won’t help.’
‘It’s not an excuse,’ said Flora, ‘it’s a fact. Pregnancy is meant to make you selfish. There’s an evolutionary advantage to all those hormones buffering you from the world, you and the baby. It’s the supreme moment of self-justification for a woman, biologically. I suppose the difficulty . . .’
She stopped. Lou looked at her, and Flora looked back.
‘What would I know,’ Flora said. ‘But of course Alice is a woman too. It must be . . .’
She took Lou in her arms then, and Kitty saw Lou’s shoulders sag, and heard a muffled sound of distress coming from deep in her sister’s chest. She glanced at Daniel, and the two of them slipped out of the room.
*
By mutual assent Kitty and Daniel set off towards the river, down the dusty, deserted road. Since the storm there had hardly been a cloud in the sky: Kitty could see how you might long for rain by the end of summer.
‘She’s quite something, your mum,’ Daniel said.
‘She’s had to be.’
‘In what way?’
Kitty hesi
tated. Perhaps this wasn’t the right thing to say, but she couldn’t veer away from it now she’d started. She wished suddenly that she’d stayed with Lou and her mother.
‘To live with Henry,’ she said. ‘He was a pretty lousy husband.’
The phrase hung between them, weighted by the unfamiliar adjective. Little tracks of dialogue sprung from it in Kitty’s head, like a crack spreading, crazing over the surface of a plate.
‘We don’t have to tell her, you know,’ Daniel said.
‘What?’
‘Your mother. We don’t have to tell her that I’m . . .’
Kitty bit her lip. She had said the same thing, to Lou, but . . .
‘Never, you mean?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Kitty shook her head. The crack had reached the edge of the plate now: in her mind’s eye, she saw it split into pieces, jagged but distinct.
‘I can’t deceive her.’
‘I didn’t mean –’
Just then, a car appeared as if from nowhere, and it swerved so sharply as it approached that Kitty was sure the sight of them at the side of the road had startled the driver.
‘Dangerous drivers, the French,’ Daniel said, as they stepped back onto the verge.
‘Wait,’ said Kitty. ‘Wait, Daniel. I’m sure I . . . Fucking hell, that was Martin Carver.’
58
Flora and Lou were sitting together on one of Les Violettes’ more uncomfortable sofas when the doorbell rang.
‘Damn,’ Flora said. ‘Let’s leave it. It won’t be anyone important.’
‘It might be,’ said Lou. Something flashed across her face that tore at Flora’s heart: Heavens, she thinks it might be Alice, she thought. Alice thinking better of leaving matters in Lou’s hands, hurtling across the Atlantic after her letter. Flora put a hand on Lou’s knee and got to her feet. Not Francine this time, she thought, and not Martin either; they’d both be up at the hospital. Who else, choosing such a bad moment?
But it was Martin. And not just Martin, but Kitty and Daniel, who had slipped out of the house only a few minutes before, rushing back up the path now as though some disaster had occurred. Flora’s heart plummeted. But then she thought: Kitty must have seen Martin arriving and leapt to the wrong conclusion – imagined a catastrophe at Orchards, perhaps.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, as Kitty bolted towards her. ‘Martin’s come from visiting Claude.’
‘Who’s Claude?’ Kitty stopped just behind Martin, staring at Flora without comprehension.
‘A friend who’s had a heart attack,’ Flora said. ‘The reason Martin’s here. He’s Francine’s husband. I stayed with them when I first arrived here.’
Flora was conscious, as she spoke, of something strange happening to her words. It was as if they were metamorphosing into a language no one else understood: the same feeling as when you wake from a dream saying things that make no sense to anyone around you, and whose meaning soon eludes you, too. But she knew what was happening here, of course. This confusion was just a trick of the light. She looked at Kitty and then at Martin, summoning a reassuring smile.
‘Mum,’ said Kitty. ‘Shall we come in?’ Urgency and anxiety were etched across her face still.
‘Yes, of course.’ Flora stood back from the doorway and they all came past her, Kitty and then Martin and then Daniel. Things looked just fractionally different from how they had a beat or two ago, her grasp on the situation less certain.
‘What is it, Kitty?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
Martin looked at Kitty, then at Flora.
‘What’s going on?’ Flora asked. ‘Is there something. . .?’
Daniel cleared his throat. ‘This really isn’t the right way to do this,’ he said.
Flora looked at him then, his face charged with agitation – but an agitation masked by misjudged nonchalance. That expression, she thought – and then recognition flared in her mind’s eye. My God, could he . . .? The resemblance was uncanny. How had she not seen it before, she who was trained to seek clues in face and gait and gesture? At the same time she heard Martin’s voice, several weeks ago: Miranda knew Henry. Their paths crossed. Some family business.
‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘You’re Henry’s son, aren’t you. Is that why. . .?’
She remembered Kitty’s unexplained misery, and the rapprochement with Daniel that had come so soon after the revelation about her own parentage. My God, what had Kitty been through?
‘Yes,’ Daniel said.
‘I’m sorry.’ Kitty looked utterly stricken. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. We weren’t – we meant . . . Martin doesn’t know about Landon, you see. He doesn’t know Henry wasn’t my father.’
59
Kitty’s eyes flicked from her mother to Martin and back again. Try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to look at Daniel. Hovering just out of her field of view, just behind Daniel, was her father. Or rather, not her father. Daniel’s father.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again. ‘We would have told you. It just seemed . . . I didn’t think there was any rush.’
She looked at Martin again then, a gaze of fierce accusation. Martin looked more miserable than anyone; he had that sagging, forlorn look that big square men get when things go badly wrong, as though they’ve suddenly realised they’re taller and wider and more conspicuous than anyone else and wish they could fold in on themselves. Not that any of this was his fault, Kitty admitted. It was just that he was the only person left to blame, with Henry resoundingly absent and the rest of them, in one way or another, casualties of the situation.
‘I can’t think how I didn’t see the likeness,’ Flora said. ‘Everything but the voice.’ She stopped, and Kitty glanced at her, afraid that her composure might fracture. ‘Do you know, I never even suspected there might be a child,’ Flora said. ‘It never occurred to me. Isn’t that odd? Despite – Kitty.’
Kitty wanted to say something – he should have told you, or it wasn’t the same thing – but she could see that it was, at least in her mother’s mind. Except that she hadn’t been left fatherless, of course. Flora was looking at Daniel still – how strange it was, the way their five pairs of eyes kept moving from one person to another, like a game of wink murder – and Kitty wondered whether she was thinking the same thing, blaming Henry for his negligence. This, she thought, was exactly what she’d hoped to spare her mother: thinking worse of Henry than she already did. Piling up fresh evidence against him, when Flora had made her peace, at last, with the rest of it. But then she wondered whether Flora had gone further than that – whether she’d come to see herself as the guilty party. Might this discovery lift a burden, when the shock had ebbed away?
‘Well,’ said Lou. ‘I think a cup of tea is called for.’
The echo of Jean’s voice must be deliberate, Kitty thought; either way, it introduced a spark of humour that fizzed for a moment and then died. But Martin leapt to attention.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Tea. Let me make it.’
*
The making and drinking of tea served a vital purpose in English life, Kitty thought: it was the thing you could always do when there was nothing else to be done, and you needed to pass a little time, laying down a measure of it like a coat of paint over something raw and rough-edged. But even if you all understood what was happening, it was still quite possible to suffer agonies of embarrassment and awkwardness through it. Poor Martin, bringing beautiful tea cups from a cupboard in the sitting room and fussing over strainers and milk jugs, was ill-suited to the role of geisha, and more than once during the enactment of the charade (English expatriates drinking tea in Indre-et-Loire, she thought; Beryl Cook after Monet, perhaps) Kitty had the sense that any one of them might succumb to either mirth or despair at their own clumsiness.
Lou gave up first. They all looked at her with envy when she pushed back her chair.
‘I’m going to have a rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
&nbs
p; Kitty shot a rather wild look at Daniel, who caught her eye and gave a barely perceptible nod, and then she glanced guiltily at Flora. Really, she thought, they should have found more to say, between them. Perhaps later, when Martin had gone. . .
‘Well,’ said Daniel, responding to his cue. ‘Kitty and I were just off for a walk. Shall we . . .?’
*
It seemed important, as they set off, that they had somewhere to head for.
‘Flora mentioned a painting in the church,’ Kitty said. ‘It’s very old, apparently. Shall we go and look at it?’
‘Sure.’
‘We always used to –’ She stopped. Everything felt loaded now; anything they might say to each other too momentous for the fragility of the situation. She was grateful that Daniel didn’t attempt to pick up the thread of conversation. They walked in silence along the road, barely noticing the scenery, the houses and trees and the empty sky, but the further they went the more the things that weren’t being said seemed to press in on them. There was no music in her head today – too much else filling it up, Kitty thought – but that seemed suddenly a topic less freighted than anything else.
‘I’ve been thinking about writing another song cycle,’ she said. That wasn’t entirely true, but Landon had talked to her about singing the Ted Hughes cycle at Henry’s memorial concert – unless you want to write something else, he’d said, and Kitty had thought perhaps she could, perhaps she should. And there had been an email from Janet Davidson this morning, forgotten until now among the drama of Alice’s letter and Martin’s appearance, confirming her PhD place for next year, and that would mean – well, she’d have to write lots for that. Lots and lots.
The Things You Do for Love Page 36