The Place Where Love Should Be

by Elizabeth Ellis

  William stood motionless by the window, a bewildered, uncomfortable look on his face. None of this was doing him any good, though she knew Evie’s situation was not the main cause. Her confession a week ago, and now her plan to return to France, was at the heart of it. She went to rest a hand on his arm. He didn’t move away but his body tightened.

  ‘Shall we sort out the kitchen, do you think? Would that help?’

  William nodded slowly, ‘Probably, yes. We should do something useful while Edward sleeps.’

  They began to clear the worktops, stacking dirty pots in the sink, wrapping and putting away butter, cheese, bread, tomatoes. Francine used hot water from the kettle to wash up, there was no hot water in the tap.

  ‘Dad?’

  They turned to find Evie behind them in the doorway.

  ‘Dad, what are you doing?’ Still in her pyjamas, Evie had a dressing gown draped around her shoulders, oversized slippers on her feet. Like Mark, there were deep circles beneath her eyes and her face, normally tanned from working outdoors, was bleached and drawn.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she repeated, stepping into the kitchen. ‘Please leave this. There’s no need.’

  William kissed her on the cheek. She smiled weakly at Francine, turned back to the living room and sank onto the couch. William followed and sat down next to her while Francine stayed in the kitchen to finish the washing up. Clearly Evie was more than ‘quiet’. She had an unkempt look about her, wild almost, eyes that never settled. There was weight loss too. Early on, Evie had glowed in her pregnancy, her hair thick and lustrous. Now it seemed she hadn’t washed it for days, weeks even. Francine could see her, hunched up, clutching her knees as she used to in her teenage years, doubled over with period cramps. Here she was, twenty-five years later, all folded up, keeping herself together and the rest of the world out.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming. You didn’t say.’

  ‘I rang yesterday,’ William said. ‘I spoke to Mark.’

  ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I’m sure he meant to. Probably just forgot.’

  Francine dried her hands and joined them in the living room. ‘I’ve put a casserole in the freezer,’ she said.

  ‘You didn’t need to do that.’

  ‘I know, but… we just want to help.’

  Evie sprang up from the couch, ‘I don’t need any help! Why does everyone think I need help? I’m fine. I’m tired but I’m fine. Really, I can manage.’

  William patted his daughter’s arm cautiously as if she were an irritable pet. ‘We just wanted to see you that’s all – and the baby, of course.’

  Evie sat down again and eyed Francine across the room. ‘Mark didn’t ask you to come did he?’

  ‘No, not at all. It was our idea. It’s not been easy to get over here since Maman died and I’m aware we haven’t done much to help you.’

  ‘I see.’ Evie turned away, fiddling with the frayed arm of the couch. Edward began to cry. Francine ventured to the pram and looked over at Evie. ‘Can I?’ she said.

  Evie shrugged, ‘He’s due a feed. He’s always due a feed.’

  ‘Shall I do that?’ Francine offered, ‘would that be helpful?’

  Again, Evie shrugged, then kicked off her slippers and curled her feet up beneath her. ‘If you like.’

  Francine picked Edward up. His sleepsuit, sheet, mattress, were all soaking wet, his nappy hung like a bulging hammock between his legs.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll change him first,’ she said, looking round for somewhere to lay him down. On the table next to the toolbox was a changing mat, bright blue with ducks, it matched the bouncing chair by the pram. Gifts from Joanna.

  Still Evie made no move to take him. ‘I’ll do it thanks. In a bit. Just leave him.’

  ‘He’s a bit… damp.’ Edward was crying now, full bodied and desperate, his face contorted and red. Wet though he was, Francine couldn’t bring herself to put him down. She’d read somewhere that the cry of an infant cannot be ignored, that it’s pitched to reach even the most hardened, disaffected heart. Something in Evie’s wiring had clearly broken. Edward’s tiny form shook, urgent and trembling, as Francine attempted to calm him. Now the room overflowed with the sound, yet Evie continued to sit, plucking at the arm of the couch with William sitting patiently beside her.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get dressed,’ he said. ‘We’ll see to things down here.’

  Evie heaved herself up and padded off up the stairs. William went back to the kitchen, found the clean mugs and made a pot of tea.

  ‘This isn’t right William,’ Francine said, ‘she’s not coping.’ She laid Edward on the changing mat and began to unbutton his sleepsuit. ‘Can you help please? Pass me the wipes?’

  ‘But Evie said to leave him – that she would deal with it. I don’t want her to think we’re interfering.’

  ‘William, he’s soaking. We don’t know how long he’s been like this. He might…’

  ‘Might what?’ Evie stood again in the doorway. She’d pulled on a pair of grey joggers and a sweatshirt. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m just saying we want to make sure he doesn’t get ill again.’

  ‘We?’ Evie’s voice rose again. ‘Who’s we?’

  William sighed and scratched his head. ‘We’re just here to give you a hand, that’s all. But if you’d rather we went home then that’s what we’ll do. Leave you to it.’

  Evie took Edward from Francine and propped him against her shoulder, then looked at her hand as if to register how damp he really was. ‘I’ll change him in a minute,’ she said. ‘Mark’ll be back soon anyway. He’s only delivering some stuff for a job tomorrow.’

  As Evie began to pace, Francine could see her eyes were full of tears.

  Three

  They’ve gone now. I’m alone with Edward and he’s still crying. He needs a bath, I’ve left it too long and now Francine and my father have seen it and will think I can’t cope, or they’ll tell Joanna and she’ll come and poke her nose in again. I know they all want to help, I know I should let them. But, really. This can’t be that difficult. He’s only a baby – how hard can it be? I just need time. And practice. And sleep.

  Mark comes back at five. It’s been dark for over an hour, I’m not sure what he’s been doing. He slings his jacket on the couch, opens the fridge and leans on the door.

  ‘Your folks have gone then? That was quick.’

  ‘They couldn’t stay long,’ I lie. ‘Francine had to be somewhere.’

  Mark nods towards Edward. ‘Have you fed him?’

  My stomach curls. ‘Not yet. I was going to bath him first.’

  ‘Shall I do it?’

  I see that look on his face. The one that tells me I’m a mess. As if I didn’t know. There’s something else there too. Is it pity? I want Mark to help but then he’ll know I’ve not changed Edward since this morning and he’ll get mad. I tell him I can manage and take Edward upstairs to the bathroom.

  It’s warm here. I pull a towel off the rack, spread it on the floor and lie Edward down. He’s still crying, way overdue for a feed. But here’s the thing, if I feed him now, he’ll only throw it all up afterwards when I bath him. And I have to bath him because he’s soaking wet. His yelling grows louder, he’s gripped in pink and purple convulsions as my cracked fingers wrestle with the poppers on his day suit and pull off the nappy. It’s worse than I thought. His bottom, legs, back are all caked in a thick mustard mess and I didn’t think to get things ready before I started, like they tell you to – that’s only logical. But my logic is hijacked, I have no train of thought, the carriages are all uncoupled and falling off the rails.

  I fold the nappy, shove it out of the way and wipe him down with the corner of the towel, only that’s now filthy too. I fill the baby bath and test the water with my elbow – this much I remember – then hold him
under his armpits and lower him, still yelling into the water. There’s a sudden silence as the shock of it reaches him. He seems to catch my eye, to question, as if he knows I’m not doing it right. Already he does this. Already I’m letting him down.

  Here’s another problem. I’m holding him with both hands so I can’t wash him. I can’t let go with one hand or he’ll go under. After seven weeks, I still haven’t got this sorted. I try sliding him up and down a bit, hoping he’ll soak clean, but he’s been lying in muck for too long and it won’t come off without a fight. I call for Mark but there’s music coming from downstairs and I know he won’t hear.

  Edward starts to cry again.

  Think.

  With my right hand I grip his left shoulder tightly, the joint like a chicken bone between my fingers. Then I slide my left hand through the water beneath his back to free up my right hand. But when my hands meet, my left hand can’t hold him and in a flash he pivots and ends up face down in the water.

  There’s a long, long moment.

  Too long.

  It’s quiet now, a sudden, blissful quiet.

  But as I savour the stillness, my mind hares off into realms of negligence, of coroners and inquests while some other primal force attacks my hands. I scoop him spluttering from the water into my lap and wrap the filthy towel around him. He lies swaddled, too shocked now to yell. And a long-ago memory creeps up from that forbidden place, to lodge on my shoulder and blow softly in my ear. Something in my life is dislodged, like a blood clot circulating unseen in my system, about to pounce, threatening the flow. I’m lost and adrift, fielding memories and pain, and, not for the first time since becoming a mother, I have become a child again.

  When my sister was born, Grandma Rhona came to stay. She took over my bedroom so that I had to sleep on a wobbly chair bed in the box room at the back of the house where the casement rattled and owls hooted in the sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden. My grandmother was a daunting figure to a young child. Tall and straight, she smelled of lavender bags and smoke and held a firm belief that children, like vegetables, should be kept in the dark. I don’t recall her smiling much. She seemed to have the baby with her all the time, which was odd because I assumed she had come to spend time with me while my mother looked after the baby. Perhaps she did, perhaps my memory is distorted. But the one truth from that time is that I scarcely remember seeing my mother at all. She’s resting, my grandmother would say, best not to disturb her.

  Grandma Rhona found a string of jobs for me to do: washing up, dusting, feeding the cat. We baked cakes, but they always burnt and had to be given to the birds. It was winter, and the birds needed feeding, she said. The smell of burnt food is forever tied to that time – dark days that drew a line across my life. It’s the reason I loathe the smell of baking even now. In spite of all the cakes that followed, all the baking Francine filled our years with, it’s that time with Rhona I remember.

  When my father came home, I would sit with him sometimes after tea. He would read to me, ask about my day, but he didn’t smile much now. It was something I got used to, the not-smiling. I must have adopted this expression too, wanting to blend in. She’s a very serious child, isn’t she? I heard people say. Takes after her mother.

  Through all this I sensed there was something going on, not just a new baby. I longed to be allowed to hold her but every time I went to the cot, Grandma Rhona would rush over and move me out of the way. I did manage it once, though not for long. She was crying so loudly she seemed to stop breathing and shake and go blue in the face. I tried jiggling the cot, but when that didn’t stop her I leaned in and lifted her out. She was heavier than I thought, but I sat down with her on the floor, crossed my legs and made a nest in my lap. She stopped crying then, all the creased up ugly bits in her face melting away. She held my finger while I moved it back and forth like the pendulum on an old clock. I sat with her until my grandmother came in and shouted at me and told me the baby wasn’t a toy and I was to go and play in my room. Then she gathered up my sister and took her away.

  I take Edward downstairs, still wrapped in the grubby towel. Mark is in the kitchen, banging and chopping – he must have found something to make a meal. But then I see the empty supermarket carrier bags in a heap on the worktop and realise where he’s been. I lie Edward on the changing mat, fish out a nappy and some clean clothes and begin the endless, fumbling task of trying to get him dressed.

  Four

  Francine stood at the bottom of the garden looking across the orchard beyond. It had stopped raining; mist still hung among the peach trees, tiny droplets threaded onto cobwebs between low branches. In places the fence had come down, the gate her father put up to stop the chickens wandering through, swung loose on its hinges. Neglect. It all reeked of neglect. In the weeks since her mother’s funeral, vandals had broken in, leaving smashed windows in the outbuildings, graffiti on the walls – lurid blue paint on the old grey limestone.

  Francine had been back here a week. There was the house to clear, the estate to settle. At least, that was the pretext. She thought of the morning she left, how she’d perched on the edge of their bed, staring at the wardrobe. William had handed her a glass of orange juice and she’d knocked it back, wishing it was whisky. This loss had marked her. Losing her mother, in spite of the sickness and wishing for it all to be finished, had swept the ground away, leaving it turned in ragged furrows with all the old familiar footpaths lost from view.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ William had asked. ‘Would that be best?’

  She turned and looked at him vaguely. ‘No, thank you William. It’s probably best if I go alone under the circumstances. At least for the time being.’ And that was it, the circumstances having nothing whatever to do with her mother’s death.

  Francine pulled her long coat round her and tramped back up the garden to the house. The autumn chill had come early this year and the kitchen was cold. She dropped her boots by the sink, filled the coffee maker and turned on the cooker to warm her hands. Her parents had never seen the need for heating, spending most of their time in the bakery next door where the ovens raged day and night for eleven months of the year. Her father Philippe, his dark hair prematurely grey from its permanent sprinkling of flour, was always in a vest. He only ever wore a shirt for Mass on Sundays.

  In winter, Francine would live in the bake house too, curling up in a corner chair with a book, or leaning on a fragile table to do her homework. On racks above her head, warm, fragrant dough lay proving in neat rows, the scent of it a constant, sweet complement to her studies. After school she would help herself from the tray of rejects they couldn’t sell: brioches that were too large, misshapen croissants, baguettes that were too small. Bread here was regulated. Later she would take the remainder in a basket to the families at the end of the village who lived on the waste ground behind the lumber yard. Francine sometimes wondered how much of her father’s profits went into making bread that was the wrong size.

  The basket still hung on the hook behind the door. Francine took it down and refolded the cloth that lay inside. What on earth will I do with all this – where do I start? A system, she thought, I’ll work out a system. Take each room one by one, fetch some boxes. But how much time will that take? Every item, letter, bill, ornament – all to be examined, mulled over, each with its own memory to give up, like the basket behind the door. She could be here forever, and that wasn’t the plan. A little time was all she needed, a little respite from events at home.

  This should have been a joint venture, William should be here with her, sorting it out. There would be a system then, a methodical process with a start and a finish, all taken care of, nothing overlooked. He would have a mental inventory of every item, would know exactly where it should be kept or where it should go. He had done it in his own family home after his mother Rhona died and his father had gone into care. Everything accounted for, everything logged. Like his precious ar
chives, Francine thought now. Though he’d retired from his job ten years ago, he would still apply the same attention to detail, the same rigour – the only thing about William that could ever be called rigorous.

  But William isn’t here, is he? You’ve seen to that. What an idiot, she thought. All these years, you might well have thrown them all away. She would have to go back, and soon. In his obtuse way, William needed her, but more importantly, perhaps Evie did too. Hiding away in France would be no help to her at all. She’d been so lost amid the chaos of her tiny living room, she must have struggled since Edward’s birth. Becoming a first-time mother at thirty-eight couldn’t have been easy. But Francine found herself caught in a mire between William’s reluctance to interfere and Evie’s refusal to ask for help. Even now, when she could barely cope, she kept her boundaries firmly pegged, clear and demarcated, as they had always been.

  Francine poured the coffee and sat down at the table. Outside, the rain started up again, beating in squalls against the windows. She picked up another pile of papers, wishing there was more she could do to help Evie, wishing there wasn’t always so much distance between them.

  Five

  William hovered by the phone. He was expecting a call from Joanna, it was that time. Since Francine’s return to France, she’d taken to phoning him daily. Outside, the afternoon gloom gathered. Autumn’s misery clung to the shed, to the tall sycamores at the bottom of the garden and laced across the washing line he’d failed to take down at the end of the summer. Just one in a long line of failures, of omissions, not important in itself but a symptom, he thought, gazing out of the window, of so much more.

  He made a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. Yesterday’s newspaper, patterned with coffee rings, lay open at the Arts section, a week of post was stacked in a pile by the toast rack. The milk jug minus its handle, waited for attention; several shirts he had at least managed to wash lay accusingly in a crumpled heap. In front of him was a cork placemat covered in breakfast crumbs, his serviette still in its ring and an odd spoon from the night before when he’d not bothered to eat a pudding.