by Esther Freud
Rosaleen placed a hand on her stomach. There were minutes, whole half hours, when she forgot there was the beginning and the end of life there, and the jolt was the same sharp knifing she received when she thought of Felix and how he’d turned away.
‘I thought I must be ill – run down, you know.’ Marie was still talking. ‘And then I started getting fatter, and when the zipper on my skirt wouldn’t fasten my mother took me to the priest.’ Marie gave a dangerous wobble and steadied herself with a smeary hand. ‘It was Christmas when I came in, not that you’d have known, except that Sister went off to Cork carousing with her friends, and there was a girl whose baby was a breech. No cake, no pudding, no ham boiling on the stove, and that poor girl, howling fit to wake the dead.’
Rosaleen ripped a length of cloth from what must once have been a sheet and, stepping on to the stool, she doused it with purple. Looking down, she saw the roots along Siobhan’s parting, the old dyed hair escaped from its bun. It was only a matter of time before they asked, What’s your story, and as she rubbed at the glass she felt the sun streaming through the hotel window in Marseilles, caught the two of them entwined on the bed. No. She’d not bring Felix in here, however he’d behaved, and she balled a strip of paper in her fist and rubbed the pane so hard it squeaked.
‘Patricia?’ Marie was waiting, but she was saved by the unexpected sight of a car, rolling towards them up the drive, a large, dark car, gleaming brighter than the glass.
‘Lord, there’ll be tears tonight.’ They watched as the driver curved on to the tarmac and stopped. With a clip he was out and swinging open the back door. A lady stepped down, a short fur cape, a hat perched on the side of her head. From the other side a man uncoiled himself, and he walked round, slow as you like, and stood beside her and together they looked, a kind of wonder on their faces, at the house, the lawns, the statue of the Virgin Mary, as if this was indeed a holy place.
The three of them at the window hardly blinked. A nun appeared, stretching out her arm as she approached, and shook their hands. They stood there talking; You’ve been blessed with a clear day, is that what they were saying? Then, after a word with the driver, whose hand she also shook, the nun led them round the side of the house and out of sight.
No one spoke.
They worked till lunch, rubbing and polishing, squinting for smears, and then outside they went, where the ground was lower, and a nun came with a set of steps so old and rickety they hardly dared risk them. Rosaleen volunteered to climb, volunteered Patricia who was less unsteady than the others, who cared nothing if she fell. The window looked on to the entrance hall. Maisie was gone, but two girls had come to mop the stairs. Rosaleen waved, but they kept their heads down. ‘Careful,’ Siobhan hissed, as the ladder quivered.
They moved across the front of the building, peering through into a library, bound books lining a wall, a hard cold bench set into an alcove, and on to the far end of the house where Rosaleen found herself staring into the Reverend Mother’s office. Reverend Mother was at her desk, sorting and shuffling papers, and before her, on straight-backed chairs, sat the couple from the car, and with them was a baby. It was dressed smart in a blue knitted jacket, a matching hat buttoned below the chin.
‘What is it?’ Marie hissed.
Rosaleen swallowed. The child sat awkward on the woman’s lap, his eyes, surprised, gazing round the room. ‘They have a baby.’ She felt the steps beneath her shudder.
‘Let me see.’ Marie rattled the wood, but Rosaleen wasn’t ready to come down. The baby looked to be about a year old, his skin milky, a curl of yellow hair slipped from his cap.
‘Wait,’ she said too loudly, and the Reverend Mother’s head shot up. Their eyes met. Cold and hard. Disgusted. Away with you. She flicked her hand. The couple noticed nothing. The woman was fussing with the child, while the man lifted banknotes from an envelope, and as Rosaleen stepped slowly down, she saw the nun’s beady, counting face as he passed them over.
There was a hand on her calf, another on her hip, a firm grip on her shoulder as she reached the ground, and then Marie was scrambling up.
‘They’re taking Mikey!’
‘Mikey!’ Siobhan echoed her. ‘Dear God. Poor Irene.’ They stood there, the three of them, in the spring afternoon, and it seemed they could hear it, the sound of weeping from high up in the home.
That evening Irene didn’t come down for her tea. Rosaleen looked at her empty place, and wondered about her rations. Sin upon sin, she berated herself for coveting the girl’s bread and margarine, and she had to stop herself resting her head on the table as she’d been punished for at school.
For a week Irene didn’t eat. Rosaleen caught sight of her, cutting wood in the yard. She had hold of a cross saw, two mothers holding the long limb of a branch, while another loaded the wheelbarrow and one more swept away the dust. She had a hollow look and her eyes were raw, but no tears were going to bring Mikey back; he was away over in America, and would not be seen again.
‘She thought to have him two more years.’ Carmel sat with her feet pulled up. ‘If the babies are bonny, sometimes they go early.’
She and Rosaleen looked at each other across the narrow alley between their beds. ‘I hope this one’ – Carmel glanced at the mound of her stomach – ‘isn’t too much of a looker, or is that an awful thing to say?’
‘Why is she still here?’ Rosaleen asked.
‘Irene? She’ll have to work out the three years. To pay the nuns back for their care.’
It was lights-off, and Rosaleen rolled on to her side. Carmel did the same. ‘Do you have any news?’ she whispered.
‘News of what?’
‘Who it is that will send over the hundred pounds?’
When she was silent, Carmel tried again. ‘Patricia?’
Maybe I’ll die, was all Rosaleen could think. We’ll all die – me, Patricia, the baby – and there will be an end to it. ‘Not yet,’ she said instead, and she closed her eyes and turned towards the wall. There, waiting for her, was Felix. He was wearing a white shirt, the cotton stiff and smelling of the wash. Where’s the fight in you? he challenged, and seeming to forget he had betrayed her, he sang into her ear, ‘Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot . . .,’ until she gave in and sang along.
Kate
ONCE A WEEK NOW, SOMETIMES TWICE, MATT FAILS TO GO INTO work. There are messages on the answerphone, increasingly hostile, asking where he is. I watch his face as I replay them. ‘Idiots.’ He looks astounded. ‘They said take the day off,’ and he glares as if it’s me who’s been delaying him.
On those nights when he comes home, he’s gentle. ‘I think I’m going to knock it on the head, this drinking business,’ he says, and we spend the evening softly on the sofa, watching quiz shows, holding hands. My hope is such a hungry thing that I believe him, and maybe he believes it too, but on the third night, or occasionally the fourth, he reaches for a beer and we are back at the beginning. Or not at the beginning, further on, because each time he stops, and starts again, his tolerance for it lessens. Maybe it’s stopping that’s the problem, and not the drink at all? I don’t offer this suggestion because either he’s sober and he’s never going to drink again, or he’s roaring, falling, telling me he loves me, and he can’t hear anything I say.
Tonight it is a fourth night, and I’m waiting up. A bus rumbles past the end of the road. The windows shudder, and I shudder too, alert, in case it’s the door. It isn’t the door, and I take the punch of disappointment, promise myself I’ll sleep, although it isn’t long before I’m glancing at the clock, charting Matt’s progress: the pub, the lock-in, the stagger home. It’s like an equation that I’ve set myself. If the pub closes, officially, at eleven, the regulars locked in till twelve, the walk home, ten minutes, with an extra five for stumbling, pissing . . . I stop myself and take a breath. Enough! And then I’m sure I hear him. I throw off the covers and I run downstairs, but if it is Matt, he’s walked on. I go to the door and yank it open. The gate hangs lopsided on its
hinge, the path is cracked, one tile raised, just as it always was. A car’s headlamps flood across the road, and I imagine the driver catching me, frantic, in my slip.
I walk into the kitchen and pick up the phone. I’ll ring the White Horse. I have the number somewhere, but as I search through the scrappy pages at the back of my address book, I find that other number, the one for alcoholics, and I remember the kind voice of the man from AA, telling me to take my time. Tonight a woman answers, and it’s not long before I wish I hadn’t called. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ She’s blunt. ‘If he’s drinking, he won’t stop until he’s ready.’
‘If he said he’d stop . . .’
The woman lets me cry.
‘Have you thought about getting support yourself? There are groups for families and friends affected by another person’s drinking.’ She’s giving me the names of churches, the days and times of meetings. ‘This disease is too hard to manage on our own.’
I’m silent. I don’t want to go to any meeting, I don’t want to sit in any fucking church. ‘Thanks,’ I say, and I put down the phone, and I go upstairs and I pull the sheet over my head.
THE NEXT MORNING I FIND Matt face down on the sofa. I squeeze myself against his body and Freya, sensing competition, crawls on to his back. Matt moans, ‘Get off,’ and he rolls away from us so violently we slide on to the floor. I laugh, and Freya laughs too. ‘Why’s Daddy grumpy?’
I rub my nose against her tummy and I say he’s grumpy because he drank too much beer.
Matt pulls a cushion over his ear. ‘Get out!’ he barks, and I scoop Freya up and carry her through to the kitchen. I tune the radio to music, take her hands and dance her round the room. The more irritable Matt is, the happier I must become.
THERE’S A NOTE FOR ME when I arrive at work – my request for the tree stencil has been granted. I’m so relieved I run through to the café and pass the news to Beck. ‘Well done.’ He puts out a hand, and there’s an awkward moment as we reach for each other and withdraw. ‘If you need help, holding the ladder, knocking in nails. Biscuits . . . ?’ I thank him and say I’ll let him know.
I flip through my diary and block out the following weekend. It’ll take all of Saturday to secure the boards, tape down the stencil, spray. Matt has a rehearsal on Friday evening – Not that there’s much point – but apart from that he’s free.
‘I’ll need you to be around, just in the days, to keep an eye on Freya,’ I tell him.
‘Sure.’ He sounds confounded. ‘What else would I be doing?’
I thank him anyway.
‘You don’t have to thank me for looking after my own child.’
We stare past each other in silence.
All week I pray that it won’t rain. I scrutinise the forecast, track the drifts of cloud, unravel the stencil on the kitchen floor to check each twig and groove. I trial a miniature version, slicing, spraying, resetting it a centimetre to the left to give an edge of shadow, and I imagine how easily it might go wrong, the look on the faces of my group as they arrive to find the mess of it, indelible, on the wall.
That Friday I don’t wait up for Matt. I get into bed early, pick up my sleep book and, as directed, take three breaths. My thoughts are scratched and wired. I scramble through the mud and scurf of the Thames, searching for treasure, sifting through debris, until I’m out in the fast flow of the current, floating past boats and barges, face up to the sky. Calmed, I turn to my tree and there’s my oak, its branch intact, rooted, in full leaf. My Feeling Self is still in hospital. How can I support you? the book tells me to ask, and although a part of me has split off and is laughing, I dip a hand inside my gown and draw out the pulped mess of my heart.
I wake to a pool of vomit in the hall. I rush Freya into the kitchen and stand her on a chair. Flour, eggs, milk. I take out a mixing bowl and before she can protest I’ve started whisking. ‘Who wants pancakes?’ I say as if a horde of children’s voices might rise up, and I spoon the mixture into the hot pan. We watch in silence as the edges frill.
‘Keep guard,’ I instruct her. I grab hold of yesterday’s newspaper and, running back into the hall, I fling it over the sick. Eyes closed, I scrunch it up, wiping and swiping at the floor, bashing away gobbets with the mop, erasing every smear. I tip the contents into the outside bin, wash my hands, and returning to the pan I flip the pancake so expertly there is only one fine line of white. I take a breath and lay the table, unscrew the rusted maple syrup. I sit Freya on her chair, a napkin tucked around her neck, and when it’s ready I somersault her breakfast through the air and land it on her plate. ‘Ta-dah!’ You see, I tell myself, I can manage on my own, but when Freya pours the syrup, too fast in a lake, I seize her arm and scream at her to stop.
The day, at least, is fine and blue. I lift the boards from where they’re stored and lay them out across the garden. I tell Freya she can help hold the stencil down while I unroll. I have a can of spray mount, but it doesn’t always stick, so I rip lengths of masking tape and wrestle with it as I paste it into place. ‘Keep holding!’ The tree is taking shape. Roots, trunk, branches, but the more intricate the pattern, the more delicate the paper, the harder it is to attach. By the time I reach the twigs, Freya is bored. ‘I’m going in to do my own work,’ she informs me, grand, from the back door.
A breeze has sprung up. There’s a danger it will rip the stencil if I stop. ‘Not long now,’ I tell her, but it’s mid-afternoon before I have the pattern down. Clouds have gathered, and the wind is buffeting. I go inside and butter Freya toast, smear it with Marmite, pour her a glass of milk. ‘You’ll need to stay in the house . . .’ I’m pulling on gloves, a mask, collecting up the cans of car spray. ‘Will you do more colouring?’ But Freya only blinks. Matt is standing in the doorway.
‘Why the fuck didn’t you wake me?’ He peers, disgusted at the hour.
I rattle my can, defiant. ‘I’ve got to get the stencil finished, Beck’s coming tomorrow first thing with a van.’ I pull the mask over my face and back into the garden, where I rattle it again, and crouch over the tree roots. A squelch of black oozes out. Damn. I shake the can, fierce, and a fine sheen settles. I crawl forward, stopping only to change the nozzle when it clogs, leaning close in to keep the spray from drifting even as I choke.
‘Mum!’ Freya is calling.
I rise up on my knees. ‘What?’ My voice comes muffled.
‘Dad’s gone.’
I stagger to my feet. ‘Out, you mean?’ I peel away the ragged rubber of my gloves, walk into the house and lift the mask. Bloody hell. I gulp down water. I shouldn’t have stopped, or should have stopped before.
‘Matt?’ I bellow. There’s no answer. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘Who?’ She looks at me.
‘Dad.’
Freya begins to doodle. She has reached the letter E in her ‘Ant Zoo’ book. ‘He said “bollocks”.’
‘Sweetheart’ – I’m laughing – ‘I have to finish this . . .’ The paper tree bristles in the wind. ‘I won’t be long.’ I hand her a banana, pull my mask down, tug on new gloves, and step across the blackened grass. ‘Come on!’ I pray for progress, but the more I rush, the faster the paint clogs. Shake, spray, stop. The first spit of rain catches me, and I rattle the can so vigorously the nozzle flies off, and I scrabble for it, press it on, and lean in over the topmost branches, shielding the paper with my body, keeping the can upright, trying not to breathe. There are small crooked twigs that must not be missed and I hunt them out – it’s easier than thinking – press the paper flat, and ink them in.
‘Mum!’
‘No!’ I cling to my board as if it is a cliff. It’s too dangerous even to look down.
‘Muuuum!’
‘Not now!’ I roar so loudly that my throat feels torn.
There is silence, not even the grating sound of snivels, and I keep working. Shake, spray, stop, until every bud is in.
IT’S DARK IN THE HOUSE when I remove the mask. My hair is gritted into metal curls, and m
y nails even through the gloves are dyed. In the kitchen there are pencils scattered on the floor, and the ‘Ant Zoo’ book has been attacked by biro.
I trudge upstairs and glance into Freya’s bedroom, swing the door open into mine. ‘Hello?’ I check the bathroom. Consider pressing the angel to my ear. I walk back into the garden. My tree glowers from its paper frill. ‘Freya?’
There is a bush in the corner where she sometimes hides. I tiptoe towards it, part its scraggy leaves, imagine her grinning up at me, but she isn’t there. I turn and run to the front door.
Outside the street lights have come on, and the road is wreathed in dusk. It’s a short street, small squat houses, a tower block looming at either end. I wedge the door and bend to a shadow as it flits between the wheels of a car. ‘Freya!’ My heart flips, but it’s not Freya, it’s a cat. I hold its stare. Where is she? The cat narrows its green eyes and, when I uncoil, the man from Number 37 is peering round at me. You OK? his glance enquires, but when I turn to him, he twitches, nervous, and walks away.
I rush inside. ‘Freya!’ I’ll frighten her out from wherever she’s hiding, and then it occurs to me – she’s with Matt. That’s it. I calm myself. He must have come for her, of course, and I see them, eating pizza in the window of a restaurant, drinking lemonade. I slide down the hall wall, my back pressed into the skirting. I’ll stay here, however long it takes, and I listen to the traffic, the brakes and tyres, a siren screaming in the distance, and wait.
When the gate rattles, my legs are so numb I can hardly stand. With clumsy fingers I yank the door. ‘Where is she?’
‘Who? I haven’t . . .’ Lies and avowals scatter in Matt’s eyes.
‘Our daughter!’
He veers towards me, his forehead creasing.
I want to pummel him, but I’ve already wasted too much time. ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘I don’t . . . what’s . . . where . . . ?’ I have the phone in my hand, and the look I throw stops him into silence. I have dialled the first 9 when I see him slump, and as I turn to dial again I hear the click of the catch as he falls against my workroom door. Only his legs are visible as I listen to the ring.
