The Place Where Love Should Be

by Elizabeth Ellis

  The words of so many years, ten thousand days, have dried like seaweed, abandoned on the rocks waiting for the tide to return. But now that it has, now that my mother is here before me, when I finally manage to speak, my voice comes from far away, a five-year-old alter ego that now steps into the room to sit beside me.

  ‘It’s been so long. I don’t even know what to call you.’

  ‘You could try Helena?’

  That makes sense.

  ‘What made you contact me, Evie? Why now, after so much time?’

  I shrug, shake my head.

  ‘You must know how much, how often, I’ve wanted to get in touch, to meet you. To know about you, your life.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  Helena looks away, up at the beamed ceiling and the pleated retro lamp shades. Then she says quietly, ‘Looking back, I suppose it was for the best.’

  ‘Best? Best for whom? Not for me, not for Joanna – and surely not for Dad?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says simply. ‘Perhaps your father and grandmother didn’t want to complicate things. Then Francine came on the scene and I wanted you to have a fresh start, with someone who…’ Helena sniffs, reaches under the table for her bag and finds another tissue. ‘Someone who could care for you. Someone who wasn’t… damaged.’

  ‘Damaged?’

  ‘You were there Evie, you saw what happened, what I’d become.’

  That afternoon: a seared tableau, dazzling sunlight across the cot and Joanna yelling. The guilt load, since then so heavy on my shoulder, digs in its claws and resettles. I want to tell her it was me, that I was the one to betray her, but those words too are stuck, and remain unspoken.

  Instead I ask: ‘And when we were older? Why didn’t you contact us then?’

  ‘I could have done, yes, but by then I’d made a new life and didn’t want to intrude into yours. I figured that if you wanted to find me, you would. And, well… here you are.’

  I get the impression she’s holding something back, but then, I’m never going to have all the answers in one go. My tea has gone cold. I stare past her, out of the window. I tell her about my business, about Mark, and finally about Edward. She stops, half way through a cup cake and looks at me. Her eyes hold mine a moment, then drop. In the silence that follows I watch her take this in, then I tell her that Joanna has children too, a boy and a girl, and that Olivia is almost thirteen.

  Helena presses chocolate crumbs on her plate with her finger, the nail smart and red. Then she pushes her plate away and is busy with her bag and tissues and a show of needing to be gone.

  ‘We must do this again,’ she says, handing me a small card with her contact details as if I’m a mere acquaintance. ‘I’ll leave it up to you,’ she says. ‘No pressure.’

  I’m not sure what I want to happen now. I offer to pay the bill but she’s already pulled out her purse and is heading for the counter. I follow her outside and we stand together in the afternoon sun. I don’t want to leave, I’m not sure I have what I came for, but it’s awkward to stay and Helena clearly has other plans.

  ‘Okay then. I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Goodbye, Evie. Look after yourself.’ She touches my arm briefly and walks off towards the car park.

  Bemused, bereft on the pavement, I stand and watch her go.

  Fourteen

  Francine finished the inventory in the living room and returned to the kitchen to warm her hands by the stove. She’d isolated old gas and electricity bills, an invoice from the wood merchant, an old order book for the bakery – one of a multitude her parents had kept over the years. Inside, her mother’s neat figures, her beautiful script:

  Gaston – 2 pains / 4 croissants

  Lavallier – 3 baguettes / 3 pains chocolats

  Dupieux – 1 pain de seigle / 1 baguette sans sel

  The entire population of the village in columns down the pages. Her mother had carried on that way, refusing Francine’s frequent offer to set her up with electronic records. It will save you so much time, Maman – you can correct errors easily and submit your paperwork on-line. It’s not paperwork then, is it? Her mother had argued, reasonably enough. And I could fill five ledgers in the time it would take me to learn all that. Thank you but no, I’ll stay as I am. And Francine had given up trying to persuade her. Only now, she thought, leafing slowly, lovingly, through the pages, I’m so glad she hadn’t seen fit to change.

  An hour later, she’d sorted another pile of paper for recycling, but suddenly concerned for the theft of her mother’s identity, took it all into the living room and burnt it in the fireplace. There was a flash of warmth as it caught fire. She tried again to ignite the kindling but again it failed. She gave up and left the house in need of a meal.

  At the other end of the village was a small restaurant. Francine had known the patron Thierry since childhood, his wife too; they had met many times in the intervening years when she brought the girls back to the village. The place was quiet. Thierry welcomed her warmly, though they did not kiss on greeting. She ordered a modest supper of poulet-frites followed by crème caramel. After her meal, Thierry brought the bill and sat down at her table, offering Armagnac and a packet of Disque-Bleu.

  ‘You’re here alone this time, Francine? Monsieur is not with you?’ Thierry eyed her with concern. He hadn’t failed to register the change in her appearance.

  ‘No,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Our daughter has just had a baby. He wanted to stay close to home.’

  ‘Would that be Joanna?’

  ‘No, it’s Evie.’

  ‘Ah, la Grande. And, how is she?’

  ‘She’s well. It’s a little boy.’

  ‘And now you’re a grandmother again!’ This amused him for some reason. Thierry lit himself a cigarette and again pushed the packet towards her. Francine shook her head but helped herself to a small Armagnac, its warmth slithering gently down, settling her. She seemed to have too much time now, too many hours to ponder, to reflect. Apart from the phone calls, this was the first real conversation she’d had for over a week.

  ‘How’s Pascale?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah.’ Thierry sat back in his chair. ‘How much time to do have?’

  Thierry’s wife always proved a fruitful topic of conversation, though Francine had learned not to stray into Pascale’s territory: drinking with Thierry even now might be a step too far. Pascale did not dismiss the past lightly.

  ‘She’s better,’ Thierry pinched a piece of tobacco from his tongue. ‘At the moment things are going well. Last summer she found a new treatment – weeks of meditation and complementary medicine that costs a fortune. Worth it I suppose. She’s happier now, for the time being, anyway. She still spends a lot of time away, though I’m expecting her back this weekend.’

  Francine recalled the wiry, restless figure of Pascale, moving rapidly between the tables at busy lunchtimes in August. ‘Do you manage here alone – when she’s away?’

  ‘It’s not so bad now, out of season. But come the summer, if she’s not back, I have help.’ Thierry stubbed his cigarette out and glanced at Francine, suggesting that this ‘help’ might be something more than duties in the kitchen. Old games, Francine thought, the same old rules.

  ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What will you do with the house now that Madame has passed?’

  Francine shifted, uncomfortable, again.

  ‘And the business?’ Thierry continued. ‘What will happen to it? You know we could do with a boulangerie again – we don’t like to fetch our bread from out of town.’

  The words hung as a question mark between them. Had he designs on the land for building? Did he see his business expanding? There were old disputes here; her father had not always been popular.

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ Francine said, finishing her drink. ‘It’s early days.’ She fished under the table for her bag, paid the bill and st
ood up to leave.

  Thierry followed her to the door and held it open for her. ‘See you tomorrow then?’

  Francine walked back down the dark street to the house, thinking she should have done more to deflect his curiosity. Perhaps tomorrow she would eat somewhere else. Certainly, at the weekend, if Pascale was around she would keep a low profile.

  William could not sleep. True to form, the coffee had stirred up his heartbeat so that even worn out as he was, he lay awake for hours. He got up several times during the night, padding around upstairs, then wandered into the spare bedroom and sat down on the bed. This had been Evie’s room, tucked away at the back of the house with a small window that looked out over the long thin garden. Straw coloured curtains were folded clumsily into large hooks. Evie had somehow managed to protect her room from Joanna’s ruthless makeovers.

  William recalled the girls arguing, though both adult by then, Evie pleading ownership of her space and Joanna exasperated by her sister’s adherence to the past. Evie had gone to the window, and lightly touched the tiny glass ornaments that sat on the sill, as if reaffirming their right to be there: a dark blue owl, a cat whose long tail had broken off at the tip, a miniature glass dome that became a snow scene when you shook it. A faded copy of Mary Poppins, curled at the edges, lay on the bedside table. Evie’s favourite book, read and reread by her mother over and over until the wind changed and her mother had left.

  Hunched into his dressing gown William looked gloomily through the window. The night was clear, a faint glow visible from the city ten miles away. The moon had gone, deserting him like everything else it seemed, including his reason. A dark hour this, too often witnessed of late. On the bed where he sat, a small old teddy bear lay like a stranded beetle, arms and legs pointing upwards, abandoned. This was his own bear, adopted by Evie, lovingly guarded. William picked it up, ran his hand across the mangy fur. His mother had tried to throw the bear out, with all his other childhood things, the year he turned eight. You don’t need this anymore William, she’d said. You’ll be going away to school soon. You can’t possibly take a teddy bear with you. But, he had protested, can’t it just stay here, in my room while I’m gone? Don’t be ridiculous William. You’re nearly eight!

  And William had witnessed the betrayal, had watched her from the high nursery window as she’d marched round to the back of the house where the bins were, his bear held aloft like a plate of mouldy food. Later that night he’d crept downstairs, pulled it from the bin while the rest of the family were at supper and hidden it under the floorboards in his bedroom until morning. Cleaned up and smuggled into the bag his mother had packed, the bear had gone away with him to school after all.

  William held it now, put it to his nose and ran back through countless years to that dismal time. Small and frightened, shivering in the cold, dark dormitory, biting his lip till it bled in his efforts not to cry. He heard again the muted sobs of a dozen small boys, similarly huddled, allowing themselves the luxury of defeat.

  School had been the bleakest of places for William. He could think of no reason why his parents should have inflicted it upon him, unless, as he ultimately concluded, they simply didn’t like him very much. But as the years crawled by, and William crawled with them, his salvation had been his passion for knowledge. With history in particular, he no longer needed to deal in the uncertainties of the future. The past simply was, it had happened, it was all there to be pulled out, examined and put away. Sitting on his daughter’s bed, clutching an old stuffed bear, William realised his love of learning had been the one constant in his life. Unfailing, reliable, when all else it seemed, had fled.

  William stood up, stretched his aching back and replaced the bear on the bedcovers, no longer stranded but leaning neatly against the pillow. He made his way back to bed and somewhere towards dawn, he finally fell asleep.

  Fifteen

  I have no wish to be going home, knowing what will greet me: the weight as I enter the house, Rose clucking, enthusing, exalting the joys of motherhood. What a beautiful baby! How lucky I am! Then there’s Edward’s next feed. I’ll have to pick him up and change him, hold him while he drinks, and my heart will break.

  Before the birth, I would sometimes wander round Mothercare, or scroll through websites devoted to baby things, but none of it registered, or connected me with what was happening inside. Even when I saw the first scan, and heard the swishing waterlogged heartbeat, there was no sudden awakening, the gush and rush of wonder did not arrive with the baby as I was assured it would, as it seems to do so readily for the rest of the entire world.

  Mark rarely came with me for check-ups, time off for clinic visits and classes was out of the question. It was all a lot of fuss; how hard could it be? We would manage. But it didn’t go away and we didn’t manage. It has all been a trick, a freak of nature, giving me this to deal with when I’m so unfit to do so. I stalk the house in my night clothes, circling the space where the baby lies. My heart aches, but there’s fear at the centre – fear he will wake, or break if I touch him. When Edward cries I have to leave the room. If Mark is there, I wait until he picks him up, or until he’s quiet and I can bring myself to take him. But I see that Mark is angry, he’s rough with Edward, and that’s wrong too, his large hands struggle with the clothes, the nappy, the feed. And I’m not how he wants me to be. He’s lost who I was.

  When I reach home, it’s growing dark and my hands shake as I put the key in the lock. I hear Edward at full volume. In the living room Rose stands with him in her arms, patting gently with one hand, a bottle of formula in the other.

  ‘There!’ she clucks at the bundle. ‘Enough with the fuss. Mum’s here now, she’ll sort you out.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, more to the baby than to Rose.

  ‘Not to worry. We’ve been fine, haven’t we?’ Rose continues to gaze at Edward, his head cupped in her hand. ‘Just a bit of bother with your grub that’s all. Nothing your Mum can’t fix, eh? How was your little outing?’’

  ‘It was good to get out.’

  ‘There! Told you so. Anywhere nice?’

  Rose is beginning to fish. I don’t want questions about who I’ve been with. ‘Just a little place I go to sometimes.’

  Lacking details, Rose lets the matter drop. ‘When’s Mark home?’

  ‘Friday. He finishes at lunchtime.’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then. If you need anything, you know where I am.’

  I take the baby. ‘Thanks Rose,’ I say.

  ‘Anytime Evie. Anytime.’ Rose leaves, rooting in her pocket for her cigarettes.

  I hear the front door close and in my stomach the knot tightens. I heave Edward upright over my shoulder and begin to pace the room. In solitary confinement, I know each measured tread exactly: six up, six back. Edward seems calmer now. For one surprising moment I wonder whether he recognises me, knows the difference between me and others – the smell, the sound perhaps? Does he acknowledge my nervous handling? Unlikely. He spent the first week of his life away from me – that first, vital week. No wonder he found it hard to adjust. I shake my head as if to clear the water gathering in my eyes, my sad sense of failure. Who else to blame for his early arrival, for having a body that shed its burden too soon? Maybe if I’d stopped work and rested up as they warned me to do, would it have made a difference? At eight months, I was still carting crates of flowers, shifting bags of compost and digging the garden with Mark at the weekend. Maybe all that was wrong. I should have sat around like a princess, like Joanna, then Edward might have arrived on time. I might have been prepared.

  I tug at the blind cord on the window overlooking the side alleyway. As the blind hits the sill, Edward’s arms open and close, his involuntary response to the sound. I creep to his pram, place him softly on his back and hold my breath.

  I wake as it grows light and lie with familiar dread, listening for Edward, the sound of his neediness. It’s a few hours
since the last feed and he’ll be clamouring soon. The days stretch ahead, day after weary day. There’s no routine, the house, the garden, my workshop all alien places piled high with my own incompetence. But what’s the point of washing or cleaning or any of it, when it never stays done? The very thought is exhausting.

  Mark is still away, the weeks of his project are crawling, the weekends when he’s home we’re trapped in a tangle of dark autumn days and unending nights, marooned here with Edward in our too-small house. I long to be out in the garden or on the allotment, clearing and tending, preparing for next year’s growth. The late summer flowering long over, new bulbs need to be in. Mark was right, it should be simple to dress Edward and take him out with me, bundled and warm. But in my head, there’s so much trapping me between the kitchen and the great outdoors.

  I turn over in bed and try to sleep again but Edward is stirring. There are no bottles made up and I need to get moving. In the kitchen the light is dingy. Half the bulbs under the cupboards have blown and we haven’t got around to replacing them. I rummage among the pots and plates for the tin of formula and switch on the kettle.

  Mark phones me later, calling from work. He wants to know how I am – he’s started doing that. I tell him I’m fine, had a good night, that Edward is sleeping. It’s easy to make it up, a fantasy life a world away from this dark, sleepless muddle of crying, feeding, pacing. It’s easier than trying to make everything normal, or waiting for Mark to erupt because it’s not. Nothing has been normal since the night I told him about the baby. How the fuck did that happen?’ he’d said. It wasn’t a joke. He sat up in bed and reached for his cigarettes. What about the business? The loan? You know how much that’s costing us! How are you going to work with a baby?

  I’ll manage. We’ll manage. Lots of people do, you know. I’m sorry, I thought you wanted this too.