Mothers

by Chris Power

  ‘Mamma,’ Marie said, reaching up for Eva’s hand. ‘Mamma, it’s cold.’ Eva remained rigid in Joe’s arms, looking around her in confusion.

  ‘Marie, inside!’ Joe said. ‘Everything’s OK, I just need to talk to Mum.’

  Marie took a few steps backwards, then turned and went through the front door, which stood open to the cold night. It looked like every light in the house was on. ‘Eva,’ Joe repeated, ‘it’s me. It’s Joe. I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink.’ His voice seemed to calm her to an extent, and he was able to lead her off the street towards the house. His foot sent something skidding along the path – one of their landline handsets – and looking around he saw a number of other things strewn in the bushes that boxed in the small front garden: snapped cigarettes, a pair of knickers, a washing-up glove, balled pages from a magazine. A stack of plates had been dropped beside the front door, the bottommost plates smashed and the upper ones leaning haphazardly. When Joe shut the door behind them Eva began pacing again, walking up and down the length of the hallway.

  Marie watched from the doorway to the living room. ‘What’s wrong, Mamma?’ she said.

  Joe knelt down beside her. ‘Mum’s not feeling well,’ he said. ‘The walking helps her feel better.’

  Marie looked like she was about to ask another question, but didn’t say anything. She watched TV while Joe persuaded Eva to come upstairs with him and lie down in bed. She fell asleep almost immediately and didn’t stir for the next twelve hours. When she woke she didn’t remember anything about what had happened. She remembered having a few drinks, but that was all. She tried to laugh it off, but Joe couldn’t do the same. If she had sat at home and got drunk enough to black out that was a problem in itself, but he didn’t think what he had seen was drunkenness.

  Later that week Eva got up in the middle of the night and went downstairs. When he realised she wasn’t coming back to bed, Joe got up to look for her. He watched her through the living-room doorway, her face blue from the TV. Bundled in a blanket, her legs tucked beneath her, she seemed to him like an animal in its den. Her eyes were staring, and it was difficult to tell if she was entranced by what she was looking at, or by something only she could see. He had no idea what was going through her mind. ‘Eva?’ he called softly, then again more loudly. Nothing.

  Eva left their bed again the next night, and the night after that. Then she started making her bed up on the couch. She said she didn’t feel able to drop Marie off in the morning or collect her in the afternoon, so Joe did the mornings and hired a childminder to take her until he got back from work.

  It was within a few weeks of these new arrangements that Joe first slept with Gwen, his finance assistant. It was month end and the financial controller was away on her honeymoon, so Joe needed to put in a few late nights. Given Eva’s state, Joe’s parents had picked up Marie and taken her down to Hampshire for a long weekend. Unexpectedly, Eva protested against this arrangement, although she had said nothing when it was first suggested. ‘I don’t like her staying with them,’ she told Joe while he was packing Marie’s things.

  ‘Why not?’ Joe said, taking a handful of dresses from the wardrobe.

  ‘They tell lies about me,’ she said, shrugging as if what she was saying was common knowledge.

  ‘What are you talking about, Eva? They love you.’

  She smiled and shook her head pityingly. ‘They despise me,’ she said, as if talking to a child. ‘They always have.’

  But she let Marie go, and when, on the Friday night, Gwen suggested a drink, past nine and with the rest of the team already gone, he eagerly agreed. Better that than going home to Eva bundled up on the couch in a room that smelled of cigarettes and a body that had been cooped up too long. They went to a pub around the corner from the office, a sprawling place that was always deserted on the irregular occasions Joe went there. Paying for a bottle of wine at the bar, he realised he didn’t really know Gwen at all. She had been at the company for three months, had just passed her probation, but they didn’t work closely together. He knew she was from Leeds, and that he found her accent attractive. Found her attractive. Sitting at their corner table he asked the standard questions – how she was enjoying the job; what made her choose a finance role; was she going to take her accountancy exams? – but she didn’t want to talk about any of that. She wanted to talk about him, and although he knew it was a bad idea he told her about Eva and the problems they were having. ‘I don’t know what to do, Gwen. I’ve tried everything.’

  ‘She needs to see someone,’ Gwen said.

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘She should. My uncle David had – has – depression and tried to tough it out for years – there’s a Yorkshireman for you. He reckons going to see the doctor and getting pills was the best thing he’s ever done.’

  ‘He got better?’ Joe topped up Gwen’s wine. He felt drunk.

  ‘Totally, yeah,’ Gwen nodded. ‘It was like, “Oh, David’s back.” Like this person you’d missed for so long suddenly walks back through the door and you’re like, “All right.”’

  ‘That’s it,’ Joe said. ‘That’s exactly it. I know she’s somewhere in there and I want her back.’

  ‘Oh Joe,’ Gwen said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘Chin up.’

  Leaving the pub, stepping into the frigid air, Gwen muttered, ‘Fuck! It’s freezing!’ and moved against him. His arm went up to her shoulder. He squeezed it, and rubbed his hand up and down her arm. She squirmed against him, looked up, and they were kissing. Kissing her warm, winey mouth, the quick probing movements of her tongue, felt extraordinary. ‘Take me home,’ she breathed, and they were on each other like teenagers in the back of a black cab all the way to Hackney. It was when they stepped into her darkened flat, and she told him her housemates were away, that he thought what a terrible idea this was. But then she rolled down her tights and straddled him on the couch and he wasn’t thinking any more. He carried her into her bedroom, or tried to – she slipped off him halfway there, and hopped along on one foot for a few steps, her other leg still hiked up, his hand gripping the underside of her thigh, before she pushed herself away from him and half-ran the last few steps to the bed. He hurriedly took off his clothes while she, on all fours on the bed, searched her bedside drawer. She rolled a condom onto him and guided him inside her. It had been so long that he feared he would come instantly. He tried to distract himself, staring at the iron curlicues of her bedstead, but when she gasped his name and dug her nails into his arms he couldn’t hold off. He bore down on her, moaning in a way that sounded ragged and pained, but he was helpless to stop making the horrible sound. He pressed his face harder into the pillow to stifle it. ‘Hey,’ Gwen said, a hand in his hair, stroking his head. ‘Hey, hey.’

  When he woke up the green digits of the clock radio read 02:34. Gwen was snoring lightly. He picked up his clothes and got dressed in the living room, shut the door quietly behind him and walked down a cold stairway lit by a bright, flickering bulb. His head throbbed and his mouth felt coated in something foetid. Gwen lived off Kingsland Road, busy at this hour, so there was no trouble finding a cab. Half an hour later he was turning his key in the lock as quietly as he could, the blood roaring in his ears. He heard voices, and saw the TV’s shifting light reflected against the white of the living-room door. He edged towards the doorway and peered into the room. Eva was asleep, the remote clutched in a hand that dangled off the couch. He slipped it from her loose grip and switched off the TV. In the quietness he heard her breathing and thought of Gwen asleep in her bed across the city. His prostate throbbed. His penis was sticky, stuck in a tight spiral. He had been trapped, he thought. Forced into this. He felt sick. He wanted to go to bed and not get up for days, weeks. However long it took for everything to go back to what it had been like before. Eva’s foot had escaped the covers. Joe tugged her duvet over it and left the room.

  *

  Joe used to spend a lot of time thinking about what he could have done diff
erently and now, with Eva returned to reality, he is going over things again. With hindsight it is maddeningly easy to identify the things he got wrong, all the signs he ignored. He thinks he can even pinpoint the dividing line between hope and hopelessness to a specific weekend, although at the time it had felt like progress. It was Sally who gave him the idea. She had surprised Mark with a trip to Ghent the previous winter. ‘It’s romantic, Joe,’ she said. ‘Eva will love it. We can take Marie and you two can have some time for each other.’

  Eva said no at first, but Joe asked her to think about it. He somehow thought if she agreed it would reset things after that terrible night with Gwen and give them a new start together. When he saw her poring over her old European travel guide he knew she had decided.

  It shocked Joe to realise how strange it was to see Eva outside, away from her couch. She had put on weight and her skin was pallid and oily. She had never worn much make-up, had never needed to, but now Joe found himself wondering if it might make her feel better about herself if she did. He didn’t say it, though. In fact on the Eurostar they barely said a word to each other about anything, spending most of the time reading. From Brussels they caught a half-hour connection to Ghent across flat farmland. Joe felt nervous: it was so strange to be alone together, on holiday, after the difficulties of the last six months.

  They rode a tram to their hotel, past ornate buildings and across broad, empty canals, their surfaces choppy in the fresh spring wind, the moored boats rocking at the quayside. Their conversation was awkward, as if they were on a first date, but arriving in the city seemed to help Eva slough something off. The more time that passed, the happier she became. At the hotel, in a room that looked across the water at the fairytale battlements of Gravensteen Castle, she flopped down on the bed and laughed, sticking her legs in the air and cycling them round and round. ‘Let’s get drunk!’ she said.

  ‘You’re on,’ said Joe.

  ‘And eat! I’m starving.’

  They left the hotel, crossed the bridge beneath the castle and were soon in the cobbled alleyways of the Patershol. They ate ribs at a cosy, cluttered place with books lining the walls and oilcloth covers on the tables. They drank a bottle of wine, and afterwards found a cavelike bar where Eva insisted on trying the strongest Trappist beer they could find.

  ‘Hardcore,’ Joe said. ‘Think you can handle it?’

  Eva stuck her tongue out at him and the barman put two goblets of dark beer in front of them. Eva lifted her glass and gulped at it. ‘Mm,’ she said, smacking her lips and looking searchingly towards the ceiling. ‘I’m getting flagellation … sackcloth … abuse.’

  Joe laughed. ‘Isn’t it more priests who’re the abusers?’

  ‘Ah, no, you’re right,’ she said. ‘Monks only abuse each other, and good on them for that.’

  They watched the people around them. Joe enjoyed them being in this tight space together, listening to other people’s talk and laughter, away from that vile couch and the inane noise of the TV.

  ‘It’s nice to be here with you,’ Eva said, as if she had read Joe’s mind.

  ‘It’s great,’ he said. ‘It’s only a shame Marie isn’t here.’

  Eva shrivelled in her seat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Please don’t,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t it enough to be here with me?’

  ‘No, course it is,’ Joe said, confused. ‘I just meant I like it when we’re all together, that’s all.’

  ‘We’re on holiday,’ Eva said, ‘let’s forget all that.’ She gulped her drink.

  ‘All that’? Joe wanted to say more but stopped himself. He looked around the bar and saw a group of musicians setting up in the corner: a guitarist, a double bassist, a violinist and a drummer with a single snare on a stand.

  ‘Look at that guy,’ Eva said conspiratorially, leaning over the table and jerking her chin in the direction of a bearded young man in a hoodie seated near the musicians. ‘Interpol.’ She glanced from side to side and hissed, ‘He’s here for the monks.’

  The band struck up in a hot jazz style, the violinist twisting his melody above the guitarist’s staccato strum. They swayed in their seats to the first couple of numbers, and when Joe came back from the press at the bar with another round of drinks Eva was dancing in the narrow space between tables – the place was too small for a dancefloor. They danced for a long time, and at one point Eva paired up with her undercover policeman, turning circles beneath his raised arm. They were still breaking into occasional moves on the walk back to their hotel beside the black mirror of the Leie, the spotlit stone of the Gravensteen doubled in the water.

  The next day they took a boat trip along the canals, joined a guided tour to see the Mystic Lamb at St Bavo’s, and spent a couple of blissfully empty hours outside a cafe drinking hot chocolate with brandy in the chill air, a wool blanket spread across their legs. Joe didn’t mention Marie. When he texted his mum he did it covertly, and that evening, before dinner, he left Eva reading in their room while he went down to the street to FaceTime Marie before bed. ‘Look at the canal, Pluff,’ he said, turning the phone and panning it slowly around him. ‘Look at the castle! A big, angry king lives in there.’

  ‘Where’s Mamma?’ Marie asked when Joe blew her goodnight kisses. The phone was in her lap, and her long brown hair dangled down towards the camera.

  ‘She’s just having a rest,’ Joe said. ‘She sends her love.’

  ‘Is she resting because she’s sick?’

  ‘No, this is a getting-better rest,’ Joe said, but he didn’t know if Marie had heard him because the connection failed, and he couldn’t get through again.

  That night, having gone back to the hotel straight after dinner, they had sex for the first time in nearly a year. Joe tried and failed to stop memories of his night with Gwen seeping into his mind as he moved above Eva, and as they rolled and she moved above him. Her face was pained, her eyes closed. She dug her hands into her hair and pulled it up, up, until it radiated from her scalp in thick strands.

  ‘Look at me, Eva,’ he began to say as she pumped up and down. He felt that she was somewhere else. He wanted her there with him. He needed to see her. ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘look at me.’

  She didn’t look, and when it was over she didn’t open her eyes, only curled up and pressed herself against him, and fell asleep without speaking.

  *

  The night they got back from Ghent, Eva moved back into the bedroom. In the following days she started swimming and running. She pulled her bike out of the shed and went on long rides around the Heath. For Joe it was like seeing a blurry picture snap into focus, and not only because of the weight she lost: her eyes were brighter, her posture better. She started using her free time during the day to go to the cinema, or read books in coffee shops. ‘It’s about structure,’ she said, an urgency in her voice. She took Marie to nursery in the morning and was usually out until it was time to collect her in the afternoon. Cancelling the childminder, Joe thought happily that the time they had spent together had reforged some broken connection. He started planning another trip, thinking that Marie could join them this time.

  But before his plans got anywhere, Eva crashed. He came home one night to find her back on the couch, back in the pyjamas. The Eva of the last few weeks had disappeared, leaving this empty casing behind. ‘I want to go away again,’ she told him, her voice sapped of energy.

  ‘We can do that,’ Joe said, ‘but I need to give work some notice.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘on my own.’ The next morning she was packing.

  She flew to Turin with a plan to do some walking in Piedmont. Joe didn’t expect to hear from her, and didn’t ask her to stay in touch. Maybe a period of total separation would help. A fortnight after she left, with no idea when she would come back, Joe asked his parents if they could take Marie for a few days. ‘Work’s a nightmare,’ he told his mum. ‘I need the weekend to sort it out.’<
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  That Friday Joe and Gwen left work separately and met up a few streets away from the office. They sat apart in the cab they took to Joe’s house then fucked in the hallway. They ordered takeaway and lay in bed watching a film on Joe’s laptop. They had only spoken once about what had happened at Gwen’s flat. Joe had taken her for a coffee and apologised. ‘I like you a lot, Gwen, but what I did was wrong. My family …’ The words, so familiar from TV shows, sounded unreal to him, almost pointless.

  Gwen said she didn’t mind. ‘I get it,’ she said, smiling and shaking her head a little as she spoke. ‘It’s fine. I get it.’

  Now they were in Joe’s bed, entangled under a duvet eating Chinese food. He wondered what would happen if Eva walked in and found them there. Would she care? Would he? He didn’t think so.

  The feeling didn’t last. He woke up in the morning groggy from wine and appalled to see Gwen in the spaces normally occupied by Eva and Marie. When she came out of the shower he told her he had stomach cramps and a temperature. ‘Maybe the food last night,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, towelling her hair. ‘Fucking classy too.’

  ‘You should go,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘You’re joking. You’re chucking me out? Now?’

  ‘No! I said, I’m sick.’

  ‘Course you are, Joe,’ Gwen said, pulling on her jeans. ‘Fucking classy too.’

  ‘Gwen—’ he began, but she raised her hand to silence him. As she snatched up her things he stood there holding his stomach – not caring how it looked, just wanting her gone.

  She stamped down the stairs and opened the front door. ‘Pathetic,’ she said without turning, and slammed the door behind her.

  Eva returned a month later, in early summer. She had bought Marie a gift, a carved shepherd boy from a place called Biella, but she wouldn’t say anything more about her trip. She shared a bed with Joe again, but when he tried to embrace her she pushed him away.