When the phone did ring, William scrambled to his feet.
‘Hello?’ His voice was thick from hours of not speaking.
‘Hi, Daddy, it’s me.’
William glanced at the clock, Joanna’s dutiful check-up call on the dot. She called it a catch-up but William knew otherwise.
‘How’s things?’ Joanna asked. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m quite well, thank you,’ he said sitting down again at the table.
‘Did you go to the doctor?’
William had not been to the doctor. He knew his insomnia was not due to any medical condition.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘But you should. Get yourself checked out. It can’t do any harm.’
‘Maybe tomorrow. It’s not easy getting an appointment, you know, this time of year.’
‘Well, they should give you priority.’
‘Because I’m old, you mean?’ William was only mildly indignant; at the moment, he felt particularly ancient. ‘And before you ask, I am eating properly.’ He asked about the family, hoping to avoid further interrogation.
‘We’re all good thanks. Hate this time of year. The garden’s a mess.’
William doubted that. Mess to Joanna was a few stray leaves.
‘I went to see Evie again last week. I still don’t think she’s coping, but you know Evie, she won’t ask for help.’ There was a tense note in Joanna’s voice, slightly miffed that her services were not required. ‘You’d think she’d want us around at the moment. I mean, Mark’s not the most supportive of people, is he?’
William bridled, Joanna’s harsh edge catching at his soft side. ‘No doubt he’s doing his best. It’s hard with a new baby – you know that.’
‘Exactly. That’s why we should be there for her.’
William pictured Joanna, indignant in her elegant kitchen, waving her arms about, exasperated. Just like her grandmother, William now thought ruefully, Rhona’s ultra-efficiency rearing up before him. It annoyed him in his daughter, but in his mother, it had terrified him.
‘She knows we’re here if she needs us,’ William said, ‘but we also have to let them get on with it and hope that if they want help, they’ll ask for it.’
His last attempt at helping having proved such a failure, William was in no hurry to repeat the experience, particularly now he would have to go there on his own.
‘I’ll see if I can call in later in the week,’ Joanna was saying. ‘Someone has to keep an eye on her. By the way, have you heard from Mum at all? Have you spoken to her?’
William’s heart sank. He didn’t want to talk about Francine, had no wish to invite Joanna’s curiosity and didn’t really have a clue what was going on anyway.
He ended the call to Joanna and went into the living room to draw the curtains. Kneeling at the hearth, he lit the fire, watched the flame take hold and tapped the coals gently into place with the poker. His knees hurt; in fact, he hurt everywhere – every muscle and joint in his body seemed to protest, lodging a complaint against all that was happening, all that had suddenly been visited upon him.
In spite of his words to Joanna, William did worry about Evie. Since the baby came there had been little contact and he had hardly seen his new grandson. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, his wife had left him. He sat down in the armchair by the fire and rested his elbows on his knees. What a joke you are, William Gardner. Exactly as your mother always said: You won’t amount to much – your brother has all the brains. But his brother had died, too young, and William couldn’t compete with a ghost.
Six
Edward starts to cry again, tiny whimperings preceding his full-blown yells. He would have slept if I’d left him alone. I’ve noticed he’s starting to do that now and again. Not at night, but sometimes in the daytime there might be an hour when I can do something. Get dressed perhaps? Tidy the kitchen? Sleep?
I try to calm him, put him back in the pram and tuck the blanket over the little mound, his pink skull dry and flaky peeping out at the top, his tiny fists that open and close for no reason.
I steal away and wait, counting until I know he will start again. Eight, nine, ten… I didn’t have time to make up a bottle. Mark is supposed to do them before he goes to work, only now we are told not to do that. We should make each one up as it’s needed – less risk. Risk of what? This is Cambridge, not sub-Saharan Africa. I haven’t been to any more clinics since they told me this. I don’t want them checking up on me – am I doing this or that right? Why aren’t you breast feeding? Have you tried? For how long? Well, three weeks actually, but when Edward was in the unit, I was stuck on a pump like something bovine. I saw the look on Mark’s face. Some things a man should not see. Childbirth for instance. He’s not touched me since.
When Edward came home, I tried again to feed him but I couldn’t work out how to hold him so he’d get the hang of it. And he was hungry all the time. He took the bottle though, no problem, especially when someone else was doing it. That was a relief, it meant I didn’t have to. Only now, apart from Joanna who just turns up out of the blue, and the next-door-neighbour Rose, I don’t see many people. It’s a good thing; it means I needn’t worry about the mess or my grubby hair or the fact that Edward cries all the time. I’m learning to ignore it, I can go into another room or down the garden and pretend he’s not there, pretend my body is not drained and sore and still bleeding even now. My hands are raw, the ends of my fingers dry and split, I have an abscess on my thumb. All this arrived with the baby, this arid condition, draining my system of goodness and leaving the grit, the silt, the harshness. It’s not the baby’s fault. I must have done this – done something wrong – why else would it happen? At night I wrap my hands in an old pair of socks and slip them down, tight between my knees to stop the pain.
Mark comes home early this evening. He’s brought a take-away from the curry house on the High Street.
‘Hey,’ he says, waving carrier bags. ‘Celebration!’
‘We’re celebrating?’
‘Yup.’ He chucks last night’s supper plates into the sink together with mugs and pans and breakfast dishes and starts to unpack the foil containers onto the overflowing worktop. Rich spiciness fills the small room; I have to admit it smells good.
‘Can you stick some plates in the oven?’
I’m holding Edward because he still won’t go down, although I’ve now been trying for two hours. I don’t like being in the kitchen with him, there are hazards – many things that might fall or splash or cut him. With one hand, I fish out forks and spoons, take them to the table in the living room and move the clean laundry, Edward’s storage basket, Mark’s laptop. Edward fidgets, rubs his head back and forth against my shoulder, grumbling, searching for his fist. Mark brings in the food, sits down and serves out.
‘So, what are we celebrating?’ I try to hold Edward with one arm and eat with the other. Mark pauses, a forkful of chicken dansak half-way to his mouth.
‘Got a new contract,’ he says.
This is good news for Mark, for us both. I haven’t been able to work for months. The cut flower business I run from a lean-to shed in the garden is temporarily suspended; I’ve had to let a lot of people down.
‘It’s a big one,’ Mark says now. ‘Landscaping. They want bells and whistles – the works.’ He waves his fork around, talking and eating.
I nibble an onion barjee, try again to help myself to a little rice and korma.
‘Only problem,’ Mark empties his mouth and looks across at me, ‘it’s not exactly on the doorstep.’
‘Oh. By that you mean…?’
‘Yorkshire. Well, South Yorkshire so it’s not so bad. Couple of hours away maybe?’
I shift Edward to my other shoulder, running through the implications of this. Mark starts work at 7.30 – he’ll be leaving in the middle of the night. I look at my plate and don’t
feel hungry any more. I push bits of chicken around then say unwisely, ‘Is there nothing nearer?’
‘You know damn well there’s nothing round here. It’s saturated with garden makeovers. Yorkshire’s only just catching on.’
I don’t like to spoil his moment. Clearly he’s pleased, it will mean we can pay the mortgage a bit longer. But there’s a big question mark and I can’t find a picture of how it will work, of how I will cope. So I ask, ‘How long will it take – the project?’
Mark pauses again, mid-mouthful, then swallows. ‘A month – maybe six weeks. It’s a big place, retirement home on the edge of the moors.’
‘I see.’ But I don’t see, I don’t see at all. There’s a tug on the knot in my stomach and my mouth is dry. Then he asks the question I’ve been dreading. ‘Did you get out this morning? Sort that left-hand border?’
Yes Mark, of course I did. And I painted the living room and baked a cake.
‘I’ll try later,’ I say. But I won’t, even though I can’t bear another scene about how little I’ve done and how the hell is he supposed to do it all in a weekend? He grunts and carries on eating. He’s right, of course. It’s Wednesday, I’ve two days to get it sorted.
Fishing for something else to say, I tell him Joanna phoned again. ‘She’s asked us to lunch on Sunday.’
‘Do we have to?’
I tell him it might be nice though it’s the last thing I want to do.
‘You go if you want – I’ll have stuff to do here. I start in Yorkshire on Monday.’
I put down my fork as Mark helps himself to more food and scrapes the contents of my plate onto his. I leave the table and begin to pace, just as Edward starts his evening yell.
Seven
Persistent rain hammering against the shutters woke Francine at five. It was dark, another two hours before daybreak. She turned over, pulled the covers up. They seemed too light – perhaps her coat had slipped to the floor. But no sleep came. Her mind snapped open, overcrowded, rolling into the day.
It had all become so complex, her life a composite of other people’s fragments. William, Evie, even her own mother whose bits and pieces she was hiding behind, attempting to order. But her mother’s affairs were merely a pretext and not the real reason she’d left William alone at the moment. Now there was Simon too, that moment of idiocy, a thoughtless expression of need. In her own bakery of all places, one night after work with the blinds down, backed up against the counter, urgent fumbling as if it had been building for weeks. Had it? Had Simon always wanted her? Had she simply buried her own need alongside William’s waning enthusiasm? But that night in the shop, with Simon’s bulk so close, his baker’s arms trapping her, his mouth upon her neck, something was unleashed – a flicker of desperation. Afterwards, there had been no awkwardness between them. They simply resumed where they’d left off. The awkwardness came later, when she’d walked home, sticky and tired, fending off William’s solicitous offers of tea and sympathy for her long day and escaping to a hot bath and a raging conscience.
She’d slept little, moving into the spare room around three. The following day she’d gone to work as usual, Simon was there in the bakery, throwing dough onto the slab, stretching and kneading, working it with perfect precision. She’d lined the window with pastries, stacking the shelves with the day’s stock, but her body was ahead of her and she knew it would happen again. For weeks she kept it from William, for weeks she tried to avoid being alone with Simon. Then, with perfect timing, her mother had died, as if on cue, offering her the perfect excuse to run.
She’d left the business for Simon to look after, laid out the truth for William while it was still a ‘one-off’ and taken herself away to cool down. William didn’t deserve this – perhaps she should have said nothing, perhaps it would have saved him the pain of knowing, the humiliation of his entreaty to make her stay. But that would have been another lie, another truth kept hidden, and there had been too many of those already.
Francine got up and pulled on her coat. There was no dressing gown apart from her mother’s old one and it seemed ghoulish to wander around in that. Too often now she caught sight of her mother when she looked in the mirror – a set of the jaw, a lift of the eyebrow. The years were catching up: fine lines on her face in the harsh morning light, greying hair screwed up in a clasp. Old-looking. Upset with the image, she felt angry with William, as if it were his fault she’d aged, as if by association she’d grown old before her time. She was only fifty-four – un certain âge. No wonder Simon’s attentions had suddenly seemed so welcome.
In the kitchen, she made coffee and attempted to light the fire by breaking the kindling into smaller pieces. Again she avoided washing in the icy bathroom and was beginning to feel grimy and sour.
William had phoned last night; he’d sounded so far away, so vulnerable. This business had shaken him, she feared it had aged him too. The eighteen years’ difference in their age stretched out between them, a vast space now – William’s ‘other country’ foreign, unknowable. His past had always been a closed book; Francine had only dealt with what was there, in front of her: his loneliness, his children, his home. With caution, she’d taken on the uneasy mantel of second wife, of stepmother, together with his kindness and gratitude. That William cared for her, that he cherished the years she’d given bringing up his daughters, was never in doubt. But Francine knew too that a man does not recover from desertion, even one as self-deprecating as William. In his heart, she believed he still held a morsel of hope that his first wife would return. She had nervous problems, William had said. Should have been locked up, was his mother’s verdict. For Francine, an ex-wife – even a dead wife – was one thing, but an absent wife, one who was out there leading a life none of them knew about, was something she had never quite come to terms with.
Francine pulled out another overflowing drawer from the dresser, tipped the contents onto the table and spread it out, removing all the items not made of paper: string, plastic bags, paper clips, scissors and, for some reason, a potato peeler. She began to wind the string, to look for a pot to house the paper clips, then gave up and dumped the whole lot in the bin.
Eight
I don’t want to go to Joanna’s for lunch. Mark doesn’t either – he’s said as much. He’s leaving for Yorkshire in the morning and has a pile of things to do. It isn’t far to Joanna’s but it will mean getting there on my own, putting Edward in the van, driving us both. I’m not sure I can do that yet, and I ring Joanna with my excuses.
‘Oh, Andy’ll come and fetch you, won’t you darling?’ Joanna calls into the distance.
‘Do what?’ Andy’s voice comes back.
‘Fetch Evie and Edward for lunch.’
I don’t hear the response but Andy duly appears at midday, beaming on the doorstep, all smiles and helpfulness. I’ve always tried to like Andy – what could I possibly object to? Kind, thoughtful and not bad looking in a clean-cut sort of way. Someone, probably the Help, even irons his jeans. Only the second serious love of Joanna’s life, he rescued her from the inconvenience of a broken heart and continues to dote on her still.
‘Hi!’ he says, kissing me warmly. ‘How’s things?’ He holds me in a fierce hug, smelling as always as if he’s just stepped from the shower: shampoo, after shave, a hint of coffee. Mark is more earth and metal, a hint of sweat. I loved it once but now? It’s all a bit different now.
Andy follows me into the living room and hovers, waiting for instructions. I see his eyes flick round, taking it all in: the piles, the clutter, the chaos. He trips on a cereal bowl on the floor by the couch.
‘Is Mark home?’ he says.
‘He’s round the back loading the van. He’s leaving again first thing.’
‘Ah, that’s tough.’
‘No choice really, it’s just the way it is.’ Andy has no idea how it is, any more than Joanna does.
I call down the gar
den to Mark who’s piling up paving slabs by the back gate. ‘I’m going now, see you later.’
He looks up briefly but doesn’t smile. I miss that, his smile. The way his face hides the secret beneath.
‘Have fun,’ he says and stoops to pick up another slab.
I begin to put random baby things in Edward’s go-bag, oddly named since we haven’t ‘gone’ anywhere at all. I’ve no idea where to start, what I might need for an afternoon out. We’ve scarcely left the house since Edward came home from hospital. How in God’s name do people do it? I have friends who’ve gone back to work after six weeks.
Andy takes the bag and holds it open for me. ‘Don’t worry about too much stuff,’ he says, ‘Jo has everything stashed away somewhere if you need it.’
Yes, I bet she does. Well, I can manage, I will manage.
I stuff in a handful of nappies, take the bag again, sling it on my shoulder and make for the door. But then remember Edward sleeping in his car seat in the corner, swaddled in numerous layers. Mark has strapped him in already, I didn’t trust myself to fasten it properly, now I can’t bring myself to carry him or fix him safely in the car.
‘Andy,’ I say, ‘can you, please…?’
Andy whisks Edward out to the car parked on the pavement by the front door, his latest vehicle – something black and solid. At least it’s solid.
The journey to Joanna’s house takes less than half an hour. I sit in the back staring through the window, my hands sticky, pressed together on my lap. The sun shines, gaudy over-brightness after weeks in the endless dark at home. I blink at the window, a nocturnal creature turned out into the light. Across the fields, wind turbines turn three-legged cartwheels. By the roadside, sunlight flicks between the poplars, strobe lighting that hurts my eyes. I close them, breathing slowly, inhaling leather from the seats, Andy’s aftershave and something else, something rank. It’s the smell of my own hair.
The Place Where Love Should Be Page 3
