I Couldn't Love You More

by Esther Freud

  Eddie yawned and reached out blindly – ‘Don’t have a home’ – but neither of them believed him. Where, then, did he keep his collection of smart suits, and why, if no one was expecting him, did he sidle off along the street at lunchtime each day?

  ‘He’s not going to give up.’ Rosaleen caught Teresa in the kitchen. ‘He’s crazy about you.’

  ‘I told you. I can’t, not after my sister . . . I’ll never do it with anyone unless I’m married.’ She was crunching toast. ‘Look what happened to Chloe Hazell.’

  ‘But Chloe’s working, and she’s got her child.’

  ‘It’s illegitimate.’ She made the word sound dirty, and Rosaleen saw Teresa’s mother in her, a small suspicious woman, and remembered how, in the school holidays, her father would take his belt to her, not caring where it left its mark. Teresa clattered her knife into the sink. ‘I wouldn’t risk this for anything. Books to read and films to see. When I walk down the King’s Road, I get this feeling’ – she filled her lungs as if she could taste it – ‘my life’s about to happen. Aren’t we the lucky ones?’ She took hold of her friend’s hands.

  Rosaleen nodded, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t find herself among those carefree girls.

  The leaves on the trees were turning when Rosaleen arranged a picnic supper in the garden. She’d clipped and weeded, deadheaded the last of the roses, and spread a blanket on the meadow that must once have been a lawn. She dared herself to travel to the delicatessen on Brewer Street, and using wages saved from the pub she bought olives, smoked ham, bread. Afterwards she walked through Berwick Street market, eyes guarded for anyone she might know, and chose mussels from the fish stall, dipping into Foyles, where she memorised a recipe from a book.

  I did it, she congratulated herself, but there, taped to the glass of the window, was an advert for an exhibition. It was a group show. There were names she recognised, and at the bottom: The Secret – New Work. Felix Lichtman.

  She put a hand to her own image. I couldn’t love you more; his eyes bored into her, his arms held her up. He couldn’t. She saw that now, and she ran.

  THE FOOD WAS A TRIUMPH. The mussels cooked with garlic and cream, they washed down with wine, and Esme contributed a pineapple upside-down cake baked from a recipe in a women’s magazine. When they’d finished, Diane fetched her guitar. The Professor sat awkward above them on a chair, disapproving of the music which to his mind wasn’t music at all, but he stayed, even after the men arrived. Larry, Cyril, Eddie and a friend of Cyril’s – tall and black – Pascal. Pascal demolished the leftover food. ‘Most delicious . . .’ He cast around for who to thank, and his eyes alighted on Rosaleen.

  They stayed late in the garden, talking, passing joints through the soft dark. Larry lit a fire, drawing moths that danced amidst the sparks as the twigs hissed and leaves threw up a coil of smoke. They played Truth or Dare. What’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever done? The knife spun, pointing towards Suzette, but before she could answer the Professor roused himself and asked for a volunteer to escort him to bed, and when she rose they laughed, so idiotically, they were still snickering when she returned. The knife was spun again, and Diane told them how, in her last year at school, she’d written a love letter to the history master who, having seemingly never noticed her before, caught up with her behind the outside loos and put a hand under her skirt. It wasn’t actually that sexy, now she came to think about it, but the good thing was it cured her. For two long years she’d thought of little else; after that she hardly ever thought of him again.

  ‘Rose?’ Teresa was asking her. ‘The sexiest thing?’

  Her eyes fixed on the fire: ‘Marseilles.’

  ‘I say Marseilles,’ the others echoed, but for all their begging she added nothing more.

  Teresa told them she’d once read a sexy book.

  ‘Maybe that’s why you went into publishing.’

  ‘It is!’

  They forgot about the game, and Larry, in his denim and leather, took over the guitar and strummed a twangy imitation of Elvis, while Eddie rolled another joint.

  The next day Rosaleen woke to find herself alone. The sun was high outside the window, the house quiet. Late morning was her most suggestible time, and she put a hand to her breast and traced the altered shape of it, the nipple darkened, the wreath around it bloomed. She slipped a finger in between her legs, testing for the silk sheen of her wetness, feeling for the heal of her scars. The door opened, and she froze.

  ‘Hello.’ Pascal was more devastating even than the night before.

  ‘I was wondering where you were.’ He raised his eyebrows and, shutting the door softly behind him, he stepped into the room.

  For a minute he sat on the edge of the bed, and then he took her hand and kissed it. ‘You one sad lady.’ His lips were velvet soft. ‘I thought I might drop by and cheer you up.’

  Rosaleen looked at him. His eyes were glittery with life. She reached out and he bent his head to her. ‘Teresa?’ She looked towards the door.

  ‘Gone to church, like a good girl,’ and as if to stop all questioning he put his mouth on hers.

  It was delicious. The pleasure pulsing, the wiry thrill of being held. ‘Hey.’ He used the pad of his thumb to wipe away a tear, and she smiled, encouraging, urging him on through the pain. ‘You OK?’ He paused, and she nodded yes.

  ‘No, I mean, are you OK?’

  ‘Oh.’ She’d no idea. She’d lost track of her safe time. She assured him that she was.

  Afterwards they lay together, dozing, and would have stayed like that if the Professor hadn’t banged his stick. Rosaleen started, sure it was her father, damning her further, and then she remembered: he was free of her, as she was free of him. ‘Rosaleen!’ It was her turn to take the Professor to the Italian for lunch, and sighing she pulled on her clothes.

  ‘So long.’ Pascal kissed her on the forehead, and with a grin he eased up the window, waved, and he was gone.

  Kate

  I DON’T WAIT FOR THE END OF TERM. I CAN’T. I BUY TWO RETURN tickets from a travel agent in Camden, and book a bed and breakfast in the Blackrock suburb of Cork. The flight is almost too easy. One hour and we’re there, and the taxi driver we find waiting, chatting with others at the airport, examines the address of the home and, to my dismay, declares it to be no distance at all.

  Freya slips from her seat belt and burrows against my side. ‘Who are we visiting?’ she wants to know, but my heart is whirring and I don’t trust myself to speak.

  The sign has been painted in religious font. I hadn’t known there was one, but there it is: CONVENT OF THE SACRED HEART. Black letters against white. My stomach tightens as we start along the drive and I stare out of the window, at the hedge of hawthorn, the saplings overshot, the cows arranged in painterly groups, legs folded, draped against the green.

  The rain is stronger here, the wipers swipe it back and forth, and as we sweep round in a curve, there it is: the home. Tall windows in a flat-roofed wall, a wrought-iron conservatory, and beyond it, the main building: three storeys, stone steps leading to a dark front door. ‘Here we are, right enough.’ The man gets out, and he lifts our bag from the boot.

  ‘It’s Mary.’ Freya points towards a shrine.

  I pay the driver, and I turn. The Virgin’s statue stands in a canopy of stones. Ivy trails around her head, and her hands are raised in prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace, the words reel out, thirteen years of Mass before it occurred to me I didn’t have to attend, and I picture Alice waving to me from the rear window of the car. That first Sunday I’d dutifully done homework, remaining, guilty, at my desk, the triumph fading as it occurred to me how easily they’d let me go. The following week I minded less. I lay on my bed and read a magazine. I baked peanut butter cookies, and when they went on to a pub for lunch without me, I devoured them, one by one, until I felt sick.

  ‘Mum?’ Freya looks out from her yellow hood. ‘Next Christmas, can I be Mary?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I take her hand, and w
e walk up the shallow flight of steps to the front door.

  We wait until the car has turned before I ring the bell. It shrills, and we can hear it, startling on the other side. When no one comes, I take a breath and ring again, longer, louder, and even before the drill of it has died I seize the round black handle, and I twist. ‘Hello?’ There is no hint of give, and so I bang a fist against the wood. ‘Hello!’ I shout again, and would have gone on shouting if Freya hadn’t tugged at my coat.

  I spin round for the car. It’s gone. Of course it’s gone. There is nothing but the plume of its exhaust, and desperate for what else there is to do, I see a gate in the fence and I rush us both towards it.

  ‘Was no one there?’ Freya has to run.

  I look back and, on the second floor, catch the dim glow of a lamp. ‘That’s right.’

  The latched gate opens easily, and we find ourselves in a shaded glade of trees, a mulched path sodden with wet leading between pine and rhododendron, and in the distance, the low hum of the road. At the far end is a rectangle of lawn, and beyond it the ruins of a tower.

  ‘A castle!’ Freya races towards it.

  ‘Wait!’ Around the edges of the lawn there are black crosses. I bend to one, my breath caught, fearful as I am of finding my mother, but the graves are inscribed with the names of nuns. Sister Augustine. Mother Euphrasia. The most recent, Sister Gerarda, buried two years before.

  I saw a face, I’m sure of it, peering out beside the lamp.

  On the castle wall, there is a plaque:

  IN REMEMBRANCE OF ALL BABIES WHO DIED HERE BEFORE OR SHORTLY AFTER BIRTH. I GATHER YOU IN YOUR FRESHNESS BEFORE A SINGLE BREEZE HAS DAMAGED YOUR PURITY.

  ‘Freya!’ Who decides a single breeze is all it takes, but Freya has stepped inside, and is standing with her hood up in a leak of rain.

  We wait there until the downpour lightens, and when it does, we walk back the way we came. A pale sun has broken through the cloud.

  ‘Excuse me!’ There is someone striding from the house. ‘Can I help?’

  The nun is tall and bent, a straggle of white hair on her upper lip. ‘It’s private property you’re on.’

  I swallow and my heart beats sharp. ‘I was hoping for information. I’d like to talk to someone who might know . . . my mother, she was here . . .’

  Her eyes widen, and I see her flash a look across the knuckles of my hand. ‘Shame on you, dragging the child along.’

  ‘I’ve come from England to talk to—’

  ‘This is no talk for innocent ears. Now off with you.’ She ushers us, with unholy strength, past the front of the house, round to the side, and points us down the drive to the main road.

  ‘My mother. She was here.’

  The nun stands squarely. ‘You’ll find you have it all mixed up.’

  My blood rises, and I’m spinning in a mist of red. ‘And so was I.’ I’m flailing, falling, holding out my arms, and when I’m steady, and my vision’s cleared, the nun has turned her back and we are left alone.

  THERE’S ONE LUMPY DIVAN AT the bed and breakfast, and a bathroom along the hall. ‘I could have brought in a trestle for the child.’ The woman looks aggrieved.

  ‘There’s no need, we can share.’ Freya gives a yelp. ‘And if there’s space we’ll stay in and have our dinner.’ She softens then and offers us the choice between a first course of orange juice or soup.

  While we wait we climb under the covers and I tell Freya the story of my mother, how young she was when she had to give me up, how she came and stayed in that big house, it was the place where I was born. It was where Gran and Grandad collected me from when I was ten days old. ‘They chose me,’ I try out the words, and it helps when Freya wriggles. ‘They gave me the name Catherine, although they always called me Kate, or Katie if they were very pleased, and they brought me up and looked after me, but now I want to know what happened to my other mother, I want to let her know I have a girl of my own.’ Tomorrow, I tell her, we’ll go back and we’ll ring the bell, we’ll ring it until the door is opened, we’ll stand there until they let us in.

  THE NEXT DAY the rain is slanting sideways. ‘Are you up here for a visit?’ this new taxi driver asks, and I tell him, ‘No, I’ve come for information. I was born here, you see.’

  We’ve slowed at a hump, and the car stalls. ‘Right you are,’ he says as he jerks it into gear, and there’s silence as we continue along the drive.

  Once again we walk up the steps. I can see the same dim light through a window on the second floor, and I press my finger to the bell. I press so long my finger starts to tremble, but before I can release it there’s a shout: ‘Enough now!’ and the clack of shoes.

  It is a different nun that pulls open the door. ‘What is it I can do for you?’ She is younger, dimpled, and she gives Freya a quick smile.

  ‘I came by yesterday,’ I tell her. ‘I was adopted from here in 1961 . . . my mother, she was . . .’ The nun holds up her hand. ‘Slow down, will you.’ Behind her there’s a girl, her stomach heavy, dragging a mop across the floor. She hesitates. ‘If you could come back . . .’

  ‘I have come back.’

  The young nun falters, and it gives me strength, but instead of welcoming us in, she comes out on to the step and closes the door. ‘This way,’ she says, and she hurries round to the side of the house where the building stretches back, ten, eleven windows deep. She lets us in through a narrow door, into a hall with boots and coats where we shake ourselves and follow her along a corridor, damp and incense meshed into its walls. At the far end she opens a door, and we’re in a sitting room with windows looking out on to a yard. There is a sofa, armchairs, a low table. ‘Now,’ she says when we’ve sat down, ‘the thing is . . .’ She pauses and asks if we wouldn’t like a cup of tea? ‘The thing is,’ she continues when I shake my head, ‘there was a fire, and if it’s records you’re after, they have mostly been destroyed.’

  ‘Mostly,’ I stop her, ‘but not all?’

  ‘When was it you were born?’

  I tell her, and she creases her soft forehead. ‘You’re sure that it was here?’

  ‘I am.’ I write down the names of my adoptive parents. ‘You’ll have a record of them, surely?’

  ‘And your mother’s name?’

  We look at each other.

  ‘Your given name?’ She’s quietly cheerful.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’

  There’s a silence in which she drops her eyes. ‘There’s nothing we can do for you,’ she says.

  ‘But surely if you search under the date?’

  ‘I told you, there was the fire.’

  ‘When was that?’ My voice flares, and as if shouting is a sin that can’t be countenanced, she suggests it would be best that we leave.

  ‘Mum?’ I’ve forgotten Freya. ‘If you have tea, could I have a biscuit?’

  We both look over at the nun. ‘I would like tea after all.’

  She hesitates. I can see she’s tempted to refuse, but she opens another door and she is gone.

  It’s a long time before she reappears, and when she does, the tall, moustachioed nun is with her.

  ‘Sister Ignatius may answer your questions.’ She sets down a tray.

  Today Sister Ignatius takes a different tack. ‘Now I can tell you, if it’s information that you’re after, you’ll need to go to St Joseph’s, that’s where the records are kept.’

  ‘St Joseph’s?’ I look at the first nun. Why had she not said? ‘I’ll do that then.’ I snatch up a biscuit and hand it to Freya, and without bothering with tea, I stand to go. ‘Thank you.’

  They both give me the same wan smile.

  Once again we hurry down the drive, keeping close in to the hedgerows. We turn right past the lodge, trudge along a winding road until we find a phone box. There’s St Joseph’s Church, St Joseph’s School, and a cemetery of the same name – Cork City County Archives in small black print below. When I call, I’m told I’ll need an appointment. A confirmed appoint
ment. Would I like to make one? There’s a space in two weeks’ time.

  Panic rises. ‘Is there any chance of a cancellation?’ I’ve managed the not knowing for so long, now it seems I can’t wait one more day. ‘It’s unlikely,’ she tells me, ‘although you can always ring again and see.’ I risk another question. ‘Is there a way to find a birth certificate even if I don’t have a name?’

  ‘A birth certificate?’ She sounds confused. ‘It’s death certificates we deal with here. I’m sorry,’ she says when I don’t speak. ‘Were you directed to the wrong place, is that it?’

  There’s a ringing in my ears, and I ask myself, Why didn’t I say yes, when Beck offered to come with me? Think of me, he’d urged, if you need a friend, but I have my daughter pressed against my side writing Freya in the steam cloud of our breath. ‘Maybe.’ I put down the phone.

  That night while Freya’s asleep, I creep down to the payphone in an alcove under the stairs. ‘Dad,’ I whisper, my voice carrying in the carpeted hall.

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘Dad?’ It’s important he’s alone.

  ‘Your mother has gone up to bed.’ He knows.

  Above me, on the landing, a door creaks open, and is closed. ‘I’m here, in Cork. I need to know my name.’

  There’s a pause. I can hear the arguments whirring, and when he speaks his voice is very low. ‘All we know . . .’ He stops, and my heart threatens to stop too. ‘It was stitched into the inside of your bonnet. We didn’t notice, not at first. The thread was white against white wool. It may not even—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Felicia.’

  ‘Felicia.’ I hold the word in my mouth.

  ‘I looked it up.’ His voice is close. ‘It derives from Felix, and means happy, although’ – and here he sounds as if he’s reciting some long-ago knowledge – ‘it most often occurs in the phrase tempora felicia – happy times – and is associated with . . .’ I can hear him trawling through all the things he knows, ‘. . . saints, poets, plants.’

  I am sitting on the swirling carpet. I don’t remember how I got here. ‘Dad,’ I whisper into the receiver. ‘Thanks.’