by Esther Freud
* * *
The summer had reached its height, and it was Rosaleen’s turn to accompany the Professor to the chiropodist where his bunions were examined, the horny yellow nails clipped short with such a snap she jumped. They hobbled home – it was too near for a cab – and she sat listening to his reminiscences, stories of the friends who’d crowded in to hear the music played in the house. Later she helped him down into the basement. He’d retreated to one room after his wife’s death, stuffy, the window grimed with dirt, but at the back, along a linoed corridor, was a door into the garden. ‘Do you mind?’ She dragged it free, and they stood and looked out. Nettles and ragwort, dog rose, lavender, half strangled by convolvulus.
Rosaleen found a pair of gloves under the sink and, buttoning herself into a shirt, she waded out. The bindweed came away easily enough, bringing with it a shower of petals, but at its root it had wound itself so tight around each stem it clung like wire. Rosaleen clipped and tore, and flung it into piles, ignoring the frilly plaintive faces of its flowers. ‘Rosie,’ Teresa entreated her. ‘We’re going out. Come with us.’ She attempted to lure her with the coffee shop she used to love in Soho, but Rosaleen wasn’t ready to leave the safe square mile of World’s End. ‘At least stop for five minutes,’ Teresa said, exasperated. Rosaleen shook her head. She had hold of a clinging string of bindweed and she would not let it go.
Late into the evening she worked, ripping, flinging it on to the stone yard where it lay, only waiting, Rosaleen was sure of it, to dig its tendrils back into the earth. The next day she found a metal bin and, stoking it with paper, she made a fire and gloried as it burned.
The girls were admiring and perturbed. They clucked over her scratched arms, the welts and stings, and whispered that the rent was so little surely a shift or two at the Queen’s Elm would be enough to cover it. But Rosaleen had had enough of pubs. My daughter, she’s one of those Chelsea girls; she could see her father leaning on the bar, and although she knew he was safely on the farm, picking off rabbits with his shotgun, she felt the sting of his sneer. You’ve made your bed. She caught at the root of a clump of nettles and tugged. Now you must lie on it. She’d lie on it, all right. A thorn razored through her glove and, cursing freely, she felt the hot blood swell.
Kate
‘YOU WERE GONE FOR A WHOLE WEEK!’
Beck, his apron loose, is setting out a tray of cornbread. He looks amused. ‘I said I might take a few extra days.’
I shake my head, and tears, unasked for, scatter from my eyes. He lifts the hatch, and before I can protest he steers me out into the yard. ‘What’s up?’ We are standing under the branches of my tree.
‘I missed my morning coffee.’ I do my best to smile.
Beck puts out an arm and draws me close. I’d like to stay here. I’d like to stay until my tears are spent.
‘You need a holiday.’
‘Maybe.’
‘When are you off to Ireland?’
‘Ireland?’ I think of my unanswered letter, the phone call unreceived, and for the first time it occurs to me that I could go. ‘When Freya breaks up from school, after that, I might . . .’
‘Do you have family there?’
‘No!’
Beck’s eyes widen, and before I can begin to explain, Neil is in the yard, rolling tobacco, no attempt to hide his smirk. ‘You’re in demand,’ he calls to Beck. ‘That girl, pretty as she is, can’t manage on her own.’
Beck sighs. ‘I’ll see you later.’ He turns, and as he does he mouths ‘Hopeless’ before he disappears inside.
At the end of the day we line our boards along the ledges of the windows and examine each created world. ‘Amen.’ Donica bows her head, but it doesn’t stop her swathing her board in bubble wrap and taking it with her when she leaves. ‘Do not covet your neighbour’s possessions.’ She gives me a sharp look, and knowing it is pointless to argue, I watch as she rumbles away in her cab. I wait until she’s turned the corner, and then I wait a little longer. When Beck doesn’t appear I set off for my bus. Maybe he left early, maybe he’s with Zoe? and to banish further thoughts of him, I replay the phone calls of the last few days. Andy? I’d practised until my voice was calm. I was wondering. Is Matt with you, by any chance?
When Andy knew nothing, I tried Ian, but Ian knew even less, and so I called his work. ‘Is Matt . . . Matthew Jensen . . . is he in today?’ I asked the woman on reception.
‘Can I ask who’s calling?’
There was a surprised pause when I said it was his wife, and I was put on hold. ‘Matthew doesn’t work for us any more . . . last month, let me see . . .’ She sounded embarrassed. ‘Three weeks it is now since we parted ways.’
‘Of course!’ I pretended. ‘I meant to ring— There’s another number somewhere, for his new job.’
Three weeks? I think of the mornings when I questioned him, of all the ways he shot me down – board meetings, financial reviews . . .
Tonight, I decide, I am going to call his brother. If I don’t try his brother, then I can’t call the police. I can’t call the police and report a missing person. A person who I asked to disappear. I’ll have to explain I hadn’t expected Matt to go, not when he never usually does anything I ask. But did you mean it? I am deep in conversation with a detective. His eyes are brown, his face cheerful, he looks remarkably like Beck, and I’m pondering the question – Did I mean it? – when a man jumps out at me. I shriek and clasp my bag. It seems I’d risk my life for sheets of coloured card and tissue.
‘Kate, it’s me. My God.’
My vision clears, and I see that it is Beck.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I can’t stop shaking, and he takes my arm. ‘You need a drink.’ And as if he has arranged it there’s a pub on the corner, empty except for two women, laughing as they stir ice with their straws. ‘What will you have?’ He keeps hold of me, and when I hesitate he suggests a brandy and orders two. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks once we’re at a table.
If there was a pill that dried tears, I’d take it. ‘It’s Matt,’ I say, because it’s easier, ‘a week ago, he left.’ But I can’t withstand his puzzled face, and I grip his hand, strong enough to hurt, and whisper, ‘My mother. I’ve found her.’
‘In Ireland?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘No one goes that pale when they mention a weekend break.’
‘When I say I’ve found her . . . it’s not actually that I have found her.’ I tell him about the Sacred Heart, the babies given up to Catholic homes, that I am one of them. Beck moves round to sit beside me. I drain my drink, and the heat of it burns through me.
‘I read somewhere’ – he is hesitant – ‘that if you’re going to trace your birth parents, it’s best to do it at a time’ – he looks at me – ‘when you’re happy and stable.’
‘But what if I’m never happy and stable?’
He laughs and, despite myself, I laugh too.
‘I can’t wait. That’s the thing.’
‘Then don’t.’
It’s not long before I’ve made a promise that, if I’ve heard nothing by the time Freya’s school finishes for the summer, I’ll go to Cork, to the home at Blackrock, and I will ask for information. Whatever else, it will be a start.
THAT NIGHT I CALL Matt’s brother. ‘Kate.’ His voice is jovial. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘I’m worried . . . Matt, he’s not been home. I’m not sure if you know, but apparently he’s not working for you any more, and he’s been—’
‘He is working for me. I saw him this morning—’
‘But I rang—’
‘Kate. Listen. It’s all rather hush-hush, and it is a bit of a sideways move, but I’ve set up a bespoke service for our most, shall we say . . . valuable clients, and I’ve asked Matthew to join the team. He’s got potential. I know you’d rather have him messing around with his guitar . . . the amount of time he’s missed . . . anyone else would have . . . but let’s face it, Kate, he’s never—’
> A stone drops into the well of me. ‘Is he there?’ I imagine him in the next room, sitting round the family table, eating poached salmon, drinking wine.
‘Not just at the moment. No.’
‘Where is he, then?’
I have him, finally, flustered. ‘He . . . he’s staying with a colleague.’
A colleague. Does Matt have colleagues now?
‘Who is it?’ I take up a pen.
‘Someone . . . from Accounts.’ He pauses as if searching. ‘Sarah.’
S—I don’t write the rest of it. For a few seconds neither of us speaks.
‘We must make time to see Freya.’
I put down the phone.
IT’S ONLY LATER, as I slide off my ring and put it on the bathroom shelf, that I realise I don’t have a name. Not for myself. Or for her. How will I find my mother with nothing but a date?
Aoife
THERE WERE SHEEP THAT NEEDED SHEARING, AND CASH HAD THE trailer attached. He was whistling for the dogs when Aoife hurried out in her jacket and her boots. ‘If you’re after a bit of company?’
Cash grunted. His publican’s talk had quieted over the years, the long days seeing to the cattle and the crops, but it was she that needed company, four paying guests the whole of the last month, and now a couple from Kilkenny with eyes only for each other. Cash whistled again, and the dogs streaked round the side of the house. ‘Get in then, if you’re coming,’ he told her, and Aoife slid into the front seat.
They rattled along the farm track, the hedgerows green on either side, the hay in the far field cut, the stalks so even she might have smoothed her hand across the tops.
‘Philip is growing into a fine lad.’ Aoife smiled at the thought of her grandson, the bristles of his scythed hair springing, much the same.
Cash grunted again, and Aoife twisted in her seat to look at him. ‘And Jackie, so good to her nana.’ Still she had no response. Aoife sighed and stared out of the window, remembering the barrage of her talk. If you wanted a word, you had to slip the girl a sweet. She’d bought a packet, orange and yellow, the same boiled pastilles they’d handed out on the plane that time they flew to London. She had one now in the pocket of her skirt, left over from a visit, the boys out in the garden kicking a ball, a great bare patch of dirt it was, the flowers in the borders with their heads blown off, not that Angela minded. She sat inside with the new baby, and let her oldest daughter chatter.
‘Cashel.’ She rested her hand on his arm, sidling a finger under the cuff of his shirt. She hoped to rouse him with her touch, and found instead the glass dome of a watch. ‘What’s this?’
Cashel turned sharp into the lane.
‘Aren’t you afraid, wearing it for work?’ Aoife knew what it was, and she was back at his mother’s funeral, asking the name of the stranger who helped carry the coffin. It had been Mavis who had taken her round to the side of the church and told her what her husband wouldn’t say, how Isabelle had married again when Cash was just a baby, had had another son. They’d lived happily, until it was discovered Dad – as they all called him – already had a wife, and although he was a criminal in the eyes of the law, the law allowed it that he take the child. Did Cash never say? ‘If he’d been a girl,’ Mavis whispered, ‘Isabelle might have kept him.’
Cash braked hard and the dogs leapt from the back and ran low and fast across the field, slipping like water over the far fence, the sheep scattering before them. Cash spun the trailer round and backed it up against the gate. He secured the panels of the fence, helped form a tunnel for the dogs, who rounded the sheep into a flock, doubling back for stragglers, then forced them up the ramp. Clang, and they were in the trailer. The dogs lay down, paws out, and Cash nodded to them, trained as they were, to expect nothing more.
It was something of his mother’s he was after. That’s why he’d come.
Mavis showed him to the room where Isabelle had lived out her last years. There was her dressing table, the brush she’d used, a silver strand threaded through the bristles, and a box of trinkets, a brooch, a bracelet. Her rosary was buried with her, strung around her hands.
‘My da said there was a watch.’
‘There is a watch. He gave it to her when he had to go.’ Mavis pulled open a drawer, but hard as they looked, there was no watch now.
Cash had stayed in the front room, making conversation. Old ladies, hungry with mourning, sloshing their tea.
‘Turn out your pockets,’ the brother had demanded, but Cash advanced, much as he had rounded on troublemakers in the pub.
‘Maybe’ – Mavis stepped between them – ‘it was somebody else took it?’
That was a cowardly thing to do, to pick on the one who wasn’t there.
‘A ring went missing,’ she explained, ‘the last time Rosaleen was here.’
There was a silence then, and Cash let his hands fall to his sides, and the man was seen off with a shamrock brooch, although if anyone had wanted to retrieve it, they could have trawled the pawn shops the next day.
The dogs sprang up and into the open back of the car. You let them suspect her. There were days even now when Aoife’s heart was hard with unforgiving, but children, they left you, and the man you married, he was there for better or for worse.
Cash started the car, and they bumped across the fields. As they drove she slid her fingers around the back of his neck, felt how he’d weathered, dark and creased, and when he didn’t shrug her off, she trailed the tips under his collar to where his skin was smooth. Cash said nothing, but his breath softened, slowed, and they drove along the border of their land, speaking in a language that was safe.
Rosaleen
IN THE PROFESSOR’S HOUSE NO MEN WERE ALLOWED TO STAY overnight. Men visited, friends, admirers – Suzette and Esme both had boyfriends – but much as if the girls were indeed ‘young ladies’, once they heard the Professor’s stick thump against his ceiling, they accepted the rule and made do with a doorstep kiss. The girls complained, but Rosaleen wondered if they might like it. No entanglements, no domestic ties, no mess or rows. They twittered through the rooms like birds, scattering clothes and wisdom, indulging the Professor, who, fortified with their youth and beauty, arranged it so that he was almost never alone. It was only Eddie who flouted the rules, arguing there was no mention of the morning, and so he returned in the early hours, still in the same slick suit, and Rosaleen would wake to the sound of the window sliding up and watch drowsily while his clothes came off and his white body in white Y-fronts slipped in beside her. She held her breath, her eyes half closed, as he clambered over her, into the narrow space between her and Teresa, and Rosaleen felt his hard bones and the rise of his desire. ‘Damn you, Eddie.’ Now they were all awake, and Teresa allowed him an embrace, endured a little snuffling and stroking, before insisting he get off. ‘Some of us have jobs.’
‘And where d’you think I’ve been?’ There was much talk about the dubious nature of Eddie’s night-time activities.
‘I’m not sure I want to know.’ All this in a whisper so as not to wake her, but whatever he’d been up to, Eddie was left exhausted, and once Teresa had bestowed a last irritable kiss and left the room, he descended into sleep.
Rosaleen waited for the slam of the front door before flipping open her eyes. Eddie slept on his side, one arm stretched towards her. He had silk black hair, and the green tracks of his veins flowed smooth to his wrists. His lips were blushed, his jaw stubbled, and an unfamiliar scent rose from him, the sharp edge of cologne. A longing knifed through her, for dust and heat and turps, and she eased herself from the bed. She dressed and washed and tiptoed down into the basement to look in on the old man, who snored hard enough to lift his covers, before pushing open the door to the back garden. Here she held herself and sobbed.
THE WILDERNESS WAS RECEDING. Her efforts had revealed a stretch of land bordered with shrub roses, dense with artichoke and rhubarb. The bindweed was gone, tugged out at the roots, although she knew, next spring, with the tenacity of evi
l, it would come creeping back. The Professor had looked unsure as she’d brought the place to life. ‘My wife, she was in charge of the garden.’ He stared at the clumps of ox-eye daisies, the hollyhocks and asters, as if he’d never expected to see any of them again.
One morning, once Teresa had hurried out, Rosaleen drifted back to sleep, and when she woke there was Eddie still beside her. A hand hovered by her thigh. Touch me, she willed him. She was consumed by need. Brush a thumb against my skin. She began to count her baby’s fingers, twist a lock of Isabelle’s hair. She stroked her ear, inspected the marvel of her eyes, but all the while she longed for something that might make her forget. In a fever she climbed from the bed and retreated to the bathroom. Teresa didn’t want him; her eyes were in the mirror. Neither, if she was honest, did she. But for a bit of comfort . . . She knocked her forehead against the wall and allowed herself a brief, hot rush of tears.
Teresa’s publisher had a surprise hit. The Golden Notebook, by a woman who had left her husband and two children and come to London from South Africa to write. She brought home a copy and they passed it round, discussed the author, Doris Lessing, over cups of tea, alluded to the four strands of a girl’s interior life so often during games of rummy that the Professor took it away to his basement to read. Now Teresa leapt up as soon as the alarm rang. Work was busy, and they noticed if she was late. ‘Eddie!’ She wriggled free of his embrace. ‘Is no one missing you at home?’
