I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  THERE IS BEER AT IAN’S, spirits and wine. I pour myself a splash of vodka and I gulp it down. ‘I haven’t seen you for bloody ages.’ It’s Annie, husky, effortless in faded jeans. It sounds like an accusation, although she’s smiling.

  ‘I’ve been busy. Freya, you know, and work, I’m—’ Annie is pulling the cork from a bottle. The doorbell rings and more people force in. ‘How about you, what have you been up to?’ Annie has turned away to wave to someone else.

  I take my vodka and find Matt. He’s in a thick circle of people, none of whom I know. They are talking about music. The bastards from their label. The shitty contracts they were stupid enough to sign. Matt nods and sucks at his beer. However ugly their stories, it’s what he wants, and I want it for him too. A red-haired woman joins the group. She stayed behind to watch the last band. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered,’ she says, and she smiles dreamily at Matt. ‘Should have left on a high.’

  The music is turned loud and people start to dance. I wander into the kitchen for another drink, but instead of getting drunker I seem already to be sobering up. I gulp down a glass of water and there is Andy behind me, leaning in with his mouth open, steadying himself against me as he drinks from the running tap. ‘Hello, sexy. Where’ve you been?’

  I pull away. ‘You know . . .’ I shrug, and drift through the rooms. I dance, I shout over the music to Ian, who is already so wasted he won’t remember that I’m here. Annie passes me a joint. ‘How’s your little girl?’ Before I can answer I have a vision of her, sitting up in bed, calling to me. I’m certain I can hear her now.

  I find Matt leant back into a sofa, the red-haired woman sitting on the arm, a squash of people craning round to talk to him. He still has his jacket on, and his smile is bleary. I kneel down before him. ‘I’ve got to get back.’ For one sweet second I think he may be about to stagger up.

  ‘All right, darl.’ He stays where he is.

  I feel the others’ eyes on me. ‘See you later then,’ I tell him, and I smile so convincingly I’m still smiling when I step into the night.

  I SEE MY MOTHER OUTSIDE the locked and gated Tube. She’s a small woman, hair scrunched into a knot, and beside her on a cardboard pallet there’s a white-and-tan dog, its head in her lap.

  I dig into my pocket and gather all the change I have. ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’

  My mother’s eyes are rheumy. She looks at me as if she hasn’t heard. ‘Fuck off,’ she hisses when I suggest I could come back, with a sandwich, and when I still don’t move, the dog lifts its head and growls.

  THE NEXT MORNING WE ARRIVE at the playground so early it’s still closed. Freya hangs over the railings and we stare in at the obsolete equipment: a see-saw wrapped in hazard tape, a merry-go-round with warning signs for people to Keep Off. There is a red-brick hut stocked with plasters and disinfectant and an attendant who flies out the moment anybody falls. She appears now, keys clanging, to open up, and I follow Freya from one activity to the next, stand by as she rocks on a virtually immobile horse, dash after her when she runs towards the sandpit, where she seizes an abandoned spade and proceeds to dig with it, fast, and rightly so, as within minutes a small boy, solid as his father who hovers on the sidelines, appears and snatches it back.

  Saturday, I’ve noticed, is a morning for men. I push Freya on the swing and picture the wives luxuriating in bed, stretching out for magazines and tea. ‘Higher!’ Freya demands, her sandalled feet pedalling, and I use all my strength to fling her into the blue sky. Matt arrived home as it was getting light. I heard the car and lay there, listening to it idling, a murmur of music drifting up, until I kicked out of bed and, inching back the curtain, peered out. The car was red, two tyres on the kerb, and as I watched, Matt uncurled himself from its interior and, stooping down for a last word, loped towards the house.

  IT’S MIDDAY AND WE STOP to buy lunch from the deli on the corner. Bread, cheese, salami, olives. ‘How are you, darling?’ the owner asks so tenderly I feel myself buckle, and looking down at Freya, he tips a bowl of miniature chocolate bars towards her. She turns to me, pleading, and unable to resist her pearly smile, I tell her she can choose one if she saves it for pudding.

  I make a salad. Pick mint to float with ice and lemon in a jug, and lay the food out in the garden. ‘Go and wake Daddy,’ I tell Freya – if I thought he’d wake I’d go myself – and as I wait, I listen to the messages on the machine. Mum has rung to remind me about dinner. Alice arrives on Friday for a week-long visit, and she’s bringing someone with her. Who could it possibly be? There’s a message from Annie, her voice huskier than ever. Matt left his wallet. She’s not sure how he got home.

  Freya is looking up at me. ‘Daddy says he’s coming.’

  We wait another fifteen minutes. Relax, I tell myself. What does it matter? The salami is sweating and the cheese has turned waxy in the sun. I cut a slice and lay it on bread, I halve olives and form them into a face. ‘Where’s her hair?’ Freya wants to know. I peel a carrot and arrange the orange curls and she shakes her own curls and eats an eye.

  We are on the sofa by the time Matt comes down, the curtains drawn, Freya watching The Little Mermaid while I slip in and out of sleep. ‘Mum.’ She pokes me and my eyes spring open and I watch the film intently as if to make up for the bits I’ve missed.

  ‘So this is what you’re up to on a sunny afternoon?’ Matt has on a crisp white shirt and jeans.

  ‘We were out, first thing, we went to—’

  ‘Shhh!’ Freya scowls.

  ‘Coffee?’ Matt mock-whispers, and I uncoil myself and follow him into the kitchen.

  I watch him fill the kettle, arrange the cups. He looks happy. Lighter. ‘Well done last night,’ I tell him. At dawn I pretended to be asleep.

  ‘It was a good night.’

  But I can’t help myself. ‘So, what happened, the party lasted . . . till . . . ?’

  Matt shrugs as if surprised by time, that it can slip away so easily, that here he is on the other side of a new day. He brings the coffees to the table. ‘I’m glad you were there.’ He takes my hand.

  ‘I’m glad I was there too.’

  He leans forward and kisses me and I can taste the heat of spirits burning through mint. Are you still drunk? I hate myself, and I bat away my question and I kiss him back. His skin is smooth, his hair dense with damp, and when he draws me up and holds me hard against him I close my eyes and, with one ear out for the familiar finale of the mermaid’s song, I move my body against his. ‘So good,’ he murmurs as he manoeuvres us against the wall, between the fridge and the dresser. ‘That’s it.’ My skirt is hoisted up, his belt unbuckled. ‘Yes.’ He lifts me, my arms are round his neck, bare skin cool against the wall, and then we are sliding, lowering, laughing as we stumble to the floor, where soon everything is speed and need and if I had a worry it is rattled from my head. In the cool slippery aftermath he wedges his hand between my legs, circles his fingers, stroking, gentle, fast, so that I am drawn up out of myself, overflowing, exquisite.

  ‘Ow.’ I smile up at him. The sharp edge of the cooker is cutting into my thigh, and there is the plaintive sound of Freya calling.

  We look at each other and laugh.

  ‘Your turn,’ I tell him, and light as spring I skip away upstairs.

  Aoife

  THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS AOIFE HERDED HER FAMILY UP THE puddled lane for a drink with the O’Malleys.

  ‘Hello there!’ Patrick O’Malley stood at the door, alerted by two spaniels barking fit to burst. ‘See the wanderers approach.’

  ‘We’re not putting you out?’ Aoife called to him, although wasn’t it he himself that had insisted on the visit?

  ‘Not a bit of it.’ He threw an order to the dogs, who skittered away, ashamed. ‘Come on now and get yourselves inside.’ He flattened his large body against the frame and ushered them into the porch. The girls went first – sullen was how Aoife would describe them, could they not raise a smile as they squeezed past?

  ‘Sweet
Youghal Bay,’ he crooned into her ear as his fingers caught her wrist.

  ‘That’ll be enough of that,’ she shushed him, but she was smiling as she tugged off her galoshes, and still smiling as the two men slapped each other on the back.

  Mrs O’Malley was pleased enough to see them. She must be lonely, home with her one son, and himself away over at the Moby Dick most every evening of the week, but this afternoon she had the lot of them at home, and a cake too, on the sideboard, dark and dry, there was no disguising that, even in its shell of icing. Mrs O’Malley cut two slices, which she quartered and presented on a plate. Rosaleen shook her head, ‘No thank you,’ but Angela took a square, the crumbs cascading down on to her saucer, and Kitty helped herself to a corner and, before anyone could stop her, peeled away the icing and gobbled it up. Aoife winced in expectation of a reprimand, but Cashel was leaning against the range, deep into his favourite conversation – what it might mean for the farm if the rain went on bucketing down all year.

  ‘Mrs O’Malley,’ Kitty was made bold with sugar, ‘is it right one of your dogs is sick?’

  ‘That’s the truth.’ The woman’s face softened. ‘We’ve done everything we can for her.’ She lifted the lid off a blackened pot. ‘Why don’t you take her out a scrap of food?’ and she scooped out a spoon of slop and dropped it into a bowl.

  Kitty looked doubtful.

  ‘That’s it.’ Mrs O’Malley pushed the bowl across the table. ‘Kevin will show you. You’ll take the child out to the shed now, won’t you?’

  The O’Malley boy slouched over his teacup. He was a tall young man with a cowed face.

  A fleck of marzipan clung to Kitty’s lip. ‘Go on then, pet,’ Aoife encouraged, although there was nothing she liked the idea of less than her child going off into the wet with this great gangling fellow. There was silence as Kevin unfolded his long legs, and with a terse nod he led Kitty out along the hall.

  ‘So . . .’ Patrick O’Malley stretched, expansive, as the front door slammed. ‘How’ve you been keeping?’ And right there in plain sight, he turned to Aoife and winked.

  ‘We’re grand, aren’t we?’ Aoife flashed a smile at her husband. ‘And why wouldn’t we be, with the girls all home.’

  Cashel took his pipe from his pocket and began packing in tobacco. ‘A house full of women!’ He made a strangled noise and clutched at his throat as if he might expire if he wasn’t soon given a drink.

  Patrick O’Malley opened a cupboard and leant in. ‘I got this off a man from Kerry, who got it from a man . . .’ He pulled out a bottle and tapped his nose, and Aoife thought what a fool he was, playing the bog Irishman – half an hour and he might break into a jig. He moved behind her then and lifted the good glasses from the dresser, and as he turned he brushed his hand across the silk of her blouse, and there it was, the shock of him, electric.

  The clear liquid was poured with practised ease, and glasses set down before the three of them. Cash lifted his to his lips.

  ‘Forgive me,’ O’Malley stopped, his hand in midair, ‘there’s a young lady here that we’re forgetting.’ He turned his gaze on Rosaleen. ‘Will you join us in a drop of poteen now that you’re grown?’

  ‘No thank you,’ Rosaleen answered in the same imperious voice she’d used to turn down cake, and Aoife shot a quick look at Mrs O’Malley, who’d also been forgotten, and found her sipping tea as if the idea of spirits on this afternoon, or any other, was so far out of the question as to be absurd.

  ‘Cheers!’ O’Malley drew them in. ‘To peace, prosperity . . .’

  ‘And a clear sky,’ Cash intervened, and they all tipped up their glasses.

  Aoife’s throat burned, her eyes stung. ‘Well’ was all she allowed herself when she could speak, and a rush of fire roared up inside her and forced out a laugh. ‘Well, indeed,’ Cash was laughing too, and she had a pang for those nights when they’d lock the doors and sit in the bar, the two of them, and no one else.

  Rosaleen got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and check on my sister.’

  Kitty! Aoife’s face was flushed. Had she been gone long?

  Angela stood too. ‘We’ll see how the dog is doing,’ she said, placating, and they could hear them, out in the yard, slushing through puddles in their boots.

  * * *

  I said nothing when I saw her walking down the gangplank, pale, with her coat buttoned to the neck. Let her be rid of it, I sent up a prayer, although with my next breath I asked forgiveness for the wickedness of my thoughts. Maybe I hoped I’d got it wrong, but all week she wore that orange jersey with the roll-neck, and a pair of slacks – would have worn them to Mass on Christmas morning if I’d not insisted that she change. Rosaleen! who loved her clothes. She borrowed a skirt of Angela’s then, the green kilt with the giant pin, and a black cardigan that she struggled to do up. All her life till then, scrawny as a stick. You’d sit with her – do you remember? – from lunch to dinner if that’s what it took. But would she eat? Not a bit of it. I blame Elspeth Stead. Spoilt the girl, spoon-fed her mashed potato, warm milk from the cow. She’d make a special custard, sent me the recipe, a vanilla pod, as if they grew on trees. Did they not have rationing in Yorkshire? She’ll eat what she’s given, we decided, but we didn’t know then, how could we have guessed, the trouble we were in for.

  Your Rosaleen’s blooming! O’Malley’s eyes, they were on stalks, and that’s what everyone was saying. It suits her, you agreed, the Daily Express. I didn’t want to be the one to contradict you.

  I was glad when she went off again. My own daughter, glad to see her board the ferry. We all went, waved to her, waited until the boat began to move, and she stayed out on deck, friendly now that she was leaving.

  Kitty cried on the way home. Why’d Rosie have to go? and I couldn’t find the words to comfort her because I knew, if she’d stayed another week, there’d have been no hiding it.

  I shouldn’t be saying this. Not now. But I’ve fretted over it, all these years. The thing itself. And the not telling. Cash? Was that . . . ? Nurse! Nurse, I think it was a squeeze. Cash, blink then, if it’s easier, blink if you can hear me. Is it an earthquake or simply a shock? Do you hear me, Cashel?

  No?

  I’ll leave you be. Maybe it’s God’s will that you don’t know.

  Rosaleen

  ROSALEEN WENT STRAIGHT TO FELIX FROM THE BOAT TRAIN. Not a single person noticed! She could see his face when she gave him the news, but Felix wasn’t there. She rang the bell, and called up to his window. She leant against the door, and then, undaunted, sat down on her case to wait. It was cold, and getting colder. Where are you? They’d made a plan to meet. Here, on New Year’s Eve, and certain he’d appear at any moment, she slipped a hand between the buttons of her coat and held it over the warm bump of her belly. Her stomach had swollen in the hours since leaving Ireland, relief releasing her, all subterfuge gone, and she caught her breath as the scudding quiver of a kick rippled up under her skin.

  A couple swung by, arm in arm. ‘Happy New Year!’ The man touched his hat, and the woman, leaning into him, smiled covetous.

  ‘And to you,’ she returned, and she blew on her fingers for warmth.

  After half an hour Rosaleen rang the bell again. ‘Felix!’ She threw her voice up towards his window, and then not caring what anyone might think, she yelled louder. ‘Felix!’ She was sitting back down when it occurred to her. Of course. He was at Maida Vale. He’d be there with a bottle of champagne, cheese wrapped in white paper, crackers with poppy seed, the ones she liked best. There’d be a fire, and he’d be lying on the sofa, waiting for her to slide her body alongside his. A wave of longing propelled her up. Her feet had lost all feeling, and her hands, even inside her gloves, were ice, but even so, she ran, heaving her suitcase towards the bus stop. There was one old man, lost inside an overcoat, and two couples, dressed for a night out. They nodded to each other, shivering, but when the bus did come, its windows glowed warm as a lantern, and the passengers on board were festive. ‘Happy New
Year,’ they greeted one another. Even the conductor was jolly.

  Rosaleen sat behind the driver and tapped her feet. ‘Come on,’ she murmured, sighing each time they rattled to a halt. She stared at the curtained houses, flickers of light seeping at the seams, the occasional bright tree. When they reached her stop she ran, the case banging against her leg, her fingers so eager to unlock the door the keys flew from her hand. The stairs she took more slowly, winding up their carpeted width, the image of Felix flying up before her, his rackety Charlie Chaplin gait.

  The flat, when she entered it, was cold as hell. ‘Hello?’ She flicked on the light in the tiny kitchen, turned on the gas and rubbed her hands. She switched on the oven, although there was nothing to put in it, but she knew if she waited long enough her legs would warm. The door to the bedroom was closed. Was that how she’d left it? She pushed it, hopeful, but the room was empty. She sat down on the bed and with a hollow lurch remembered she’d not eaten, not since that morning at the terminal when she’d bought herself a bacon roll. There was one potato in the larder, sprouting, but she peeled and chopped it and put it on to boil. There was a pat of butter, half frozen in a saucer, which she mashed in when it was soft, and spooning the food into a bowl she sat on the grey sofa and ate. Where are you? She had enough fuel now for outrage, and, still in her coat, she picked up her keys and walked out into the night.

  The warmth and chatter of the French pub hit her with force. Rosaleen reached out a hand to steady herself. ‘Hello, love.’ She was clutching at the shoulder of a man, big and leering, a feather in his hat. ‘Sorry.’ She made her way towards the bar, easing along the length of it, craning for anyone she knew. She came out in a little hollow beside a wooden table. They’d sat at this table, she and Felix, one night after hours, and the proprietor had come over with a tray of teacups and a bottle of gin. Cheers, they’d laughed as they clinked china, and the quiet photographer had snapped his shutter, and there they were, their faces blazing, their eyes lit by each other.