The Place Where Love Should Be

by Elizabeth Ellis

  Francine could not read his eyes, his shoulders sunk deep in sorrow perhaps, and failure. Yes, William, you’ve always been too old for drama. Too old and too intractable. A quiet life is all you’ve ever wanted, it was one of the things I loved about you, your steadiness. But you got Helena, and then you got me. Between then and now though, was that not quiet enough? Did I not try to keep your peace?

  ‘And Albières?’ he asked. ‘Where are you with your mother’s house?’

  ‘It’s taking longer than I thought,’ Francine replied. ‘There’s a lot to see to and I’ve had to leave it all for the time being. I wanted to be here to help Evie, it was more important. More than important.’

  ‘Yes,’ William said, ‘I can imagine it was. It won’t have been easy for her to ask.’ He took a sip of beer and looked at her over the top of his glass. ‘And the other… business. Have you been in touch?’

  Francine looked away, ‘You mean with Simon?’

  William spoke quietly, a barely concealed edge to his voice, ‘Of course, Simon. Who else?’

  Francine had rehearsed many times how she would explain it to William, the truth laid out for them both to examine, but now that time had come, she could not speak. Her first revelation, weeks ago in their bedroom just before Maman died, had been just that: a revelation. Not a confession, infused with anguished guilt, simply a statement of fact. But now, with more to admit to, and William dealing with enough torments of his own, there seemed to be no starting point and no end in sight. What exactly could she say to mitigate what she’d done? What had it really been about and what did she want from it now? No answers sprang to mind, no solution neatly formed. Talking was unlikely to help.

  ‘We need to be in touch,’ she said, evasively. ‘Simon’s running the shop.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Don’t insult me Francine.’

  ‘I know what you meant, William.’

  ‘So? What do you intend to do?’

  It was a reasonable question, but again, his control, his guarded reticence, maddened her.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake William!’ she cried, banging the table, ‘I don’t have any answers!’ Her words burst into the room above the music, the background clamour. ‘And if you think about it, is that so surprising, given everything that’s happened? You spend your life in a torpor, nothing shifts you, or prompts you to action and then suddenly your ex-wife crops up in hospital and you’re down here like a shot.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘At least I’m not sleeping with her!’ William’s voice rose too. Heads turned in the room, how odd they must appear, how incongruous the conversation – a topic for youthful passions, not ageing gloom.

  Francine finished her water and gathered her things. ‘Let’s not discuss this here. I’m going back to the hotel. Edward’s feed is due and Evie will be back soon – she won’t stay away from Helena longer than she has to.’

  William stood too and retied his scarf. ‘In that case, I’ll go back to the hospital and wait for Evie. Perhaps we should meet later when we’ve both had a chance to think.’

  ‘You’re probably right. But don’t expect any simple answers. Come down to the hotel when you’ve seen Evie, I’m staying there again tonight.’

  As she walked back to the hotel, one thing alone tempered her anger: the certainty that above all else – her marriage, her business, Simon – she could not bear to lose the bond with Evie. All the careful, cautious, tiptoed years seemed finally to have paid off. That was all there was.

  Forty-Three

  Helena is sleeping when I return to her room. Staff drift in and out, checking her tubes and attachments, the monitors and dials. Through the open door, voices reach me from the corridor. Faraway I hear a deep persistent cough.

  ‘You’re back,’ Helena says when she wakes. ‘You were supposed to go home. Sort things out with Mark.’

  ‘And I will. But I wanted to see if you were okay. You know – after Dad’s visit?’

  ‘He hasn’t changed a bit, you know. Still skirting around life.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure he’d come – that he’d want to see you.’

  ‘We had some unfinished business.’

  ‘From so long ago?’

  ‘Your father’s a historian – he’s all about the past.’

  ‘He’s been a bit lost lately – without Francine. She’s only just back from France. In fact, she’s here, at the hospital looking after Edward. She came back to help me. I asked her – in the end.’

  Helena takes my hand. Her grip is stronger now. ‘You see? It’s not so hard to ask for help, is it?’

  ‘And she went to fetch Mark – he’s here too.’

  ‘Quite a family gathering, then.’

  ‘Family. Yes, I suppose so.’ But it’s all shifted, and tomorrow things will change again. Helena doesn’t know that I haven’t yet told Joanna.

  I ask about progress, any change in her condition and she shakes her head. ‘I’ll be here for a while. They’re going to give me a new hip, though not before time. Apparently, this one’s pretty useless.’

  ‘Isn’t that a rather dramatic way to jump the queue?’

  She starts to laugh, then grabs her pain control. When she settles, she asks whether I’ve phoned Jack.

  ‘We talked, yes. I tried to put him off, said you didn’t want him to worry.’

  ‘He wouldn’t take kindly to that.’

  ‘He didn’t. He said waiting at home knowing you were here, all stitched up, would hardly stop him worrying, would it?’

  ‘You must meet Jack sometime. You’ll like him.’

  ‘One thing at a time.’

  ‘Then there’s Joanna.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to her, have you?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m planning to see her tomorrow.’

  ‘What will she do, do you think?’

  ‘What do you want her to do?’

  ‘I’d like her to make contact, but I realise that may not happen. Not if she knows the truth.’

  ‘The truth is you were ill.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  I’m meeting my father at five and I need to go. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Get some rest now.’

  As I stoop to kiss her, her look says: what else could I possibly do?

  I find my father in the corridor near the main entrance, perched on a hard, blue chair, holding his gloves. On the seat beside him a newspaper and a small canvas bag. For a while we sit in silence. Two women wander past, deep in conversation, a young man on crutches, his right leg cased in plaster, eases past and into the book shop.

  ‘I gather you’ve been to see Helena.’

  My father nods, looks at the floor. ‘She’s a mess,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry Dad. This whole thing’s a mess.’

  He reaches over and pats my hand, ‘That’s as may be, but keeping your distance, keeping this from us –– meant we couldn’t see what you were really dealing with.’

  ‘I don’t think I knew either. Not how bad it was. But Helena did. It helped so much to have her there, not just because she’d come back but because she understood. I didn’t have to explain anything, she just got it. I realised I wasn’t a freak – or worse. I would have told you in time, but then this happened.’ I lift my hands to the bustling, clinical space around us, ‘And that changed things.’

  My father sighs. ‘Well, we know now,’ he says. ‘Perhaps it’s for the best. There were things we needed to deal with, your mother and I.’

  Sounds in the corridor where we sit are muted, a pulse races in my ear. Then I’m back in the room with the sound of Joanna crying and Helena with the pillow poised inches from her face. ‘It was my fault, wasn’t it?’ I say. ‘The reason she went away. If I hadn’t told you and Grandma it wo
uld have been different. But I remember I put the pillow in Joanna’s cot, to make her comfortable. I thought if she cried so much she must be in pain. I thought maybe Helena was taking the pillow away, keeping her safe. I don’t know what I saw.’

  ‘None of it matters now. You were only five. What you said, what you thought you’d seen, I wanted to believe it was all a misunderstanding, a trick of the light. But your grandmother had other ideas. She was very…’ he searches for the right word, ‘persuasive. Stuff and nonsense sort of person. She never did like your mother.’

  ‘So I’m learning.’

  ‘She thought your mother should pull herself together, didn’t hold with lying around in bed unless you were at death’s door. In her eyes your mother was weak, neglectful of her duties, unfair on me.’

  ‘But we didn’t know how ill she was – even that she was ill.

  ‘It’s called post-partum psychosis,’ my father says.

  So that’s what it is. It seems too neat, too technical for the abject turmoil that’s been slinging me around these past weeks.

  ‘Later, after your mother had gone, I did some research. That doctor helped – you remember her? Doctor Roberts?’

  I recall the brisk and smiling figure, so different from Grandma Rhona’s looming presence or my mother’s shrinking misery. I remember the young doctor in Helena’s room yesterday and the name falls into place.

  ‘So, when you realised what was wrong, why didn’t you try to find her? Bring her home? Do something to help?’

  ‘It wasn’t that simple,’ my father says. ‘And it’s all a long time ago. Let’s just leave it, shall we?’

  I don’t want to leave it, I want to poke around for the facts, I want the truth. I want to know why my father gave up. It might just help me understand why Mark has given up too. But when I look across at my father, hunched in his overcoat, a deep ridge above his eyes, he seems suddenly unbearably old, and instead of anger spilling into his frailty, I pull back and leave a comforting space between us.

  I ask about the bag, whether he’s planning to stay over, but he shakes his head and says he needs to get home. He reminds me too that I still have my sister to deal with, that Joanna needs to know what has happened and I wonder where I’ll find the strength for that.

  ‘You owe her an explanation at least,’ he says.

  ‘But it’s different for Joanna, isn’t it? She has no memory of what happened.’

  Then my father finally looks up, ‘I think we should keep it that way, don’t you? She mustn’t ever know.’

  Forty-Four

  William continued to sit in the entrance corridor long after Evie had gone. The reception desk had closed; patient transport, the pharmacy, even the coffee shop appeared to be shutting up. He remembered it was Saturday and people, even hospital people, probably had lives to live. No doubt in the bowels of the place, urgent surgery was still going on but things were thinning out, its clockworks running down.

  William had no idea what to do, or where to go; he’d not thought of booking somewhere to stay. If he left now, he could find a bite to eat and head home. He’d done what he came for, he’d seen Helena, perhaps even settled his own past. The players in his present life were at this moment too close for comfort – the last thing he wanted was to run into Francine again, not now, not yet. In the pub, he’d lost his temper again – stripping off twice in one day. It was quite likely she was already on her way back to France.

  In spite of Helena’s entreaty, he felt powerless to intrude into Evie and Mark’s business. Meddling would do no good, they would sort it out and if not – he would deal with that when it happened. This eruption of the past would all slot back into place. Francine would make up her own mind what to do, life would go on. He was really past caring. Home was the answer, he needed to be back in the familiar. He might even allow himself another beer.

  He gathered his newspaper and gloves and was on the point of leaving when a man approached the reception desk. Finding it closed, he swore quietly, and asked William where he might go for information.

  ‘I can’t really help, I’m afraid,’ William said. ‘Just a visitor, you see.’

  ‘Well that makes two of us,’ the man looked around, casting an eye up to the ceiling, as if taking in the structure of the place.

  ‘The wards are on the next floor,’ William offered. ‘There’s a lift down there to the left.’

  The man continued his appraisal of the building. ‘Thanks, but I need the ICU,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ William came and stood beside him, ‘second floor then. I’ve just come from there. My wife…’ William checked himself, coughed lightly. ‘I’ve been visiting,’ he said.

  The man eyed him for a moment then touched his arm. ‘Cheers,’ he called and set off down the corridor.

  William stood wondering why in God’s name he’d said that. What had possessed him to mention his wife? So much for the past slotting back into place. William hadn’t found the courage to tell Evie what he’d fully meant to confess. He’d not given her the letters, had not owned up to keeping them from her. After all, he’d seen off two wives, he wasn’t about to risk losing his daughter as well. Moreover, how could he ever explain his part in telling Helena not to come back? For months after she left, there had been no word from her. He’d tried the police, but grown women are not of interest and did not warrant overstretched manpower. There was nothing to suggest a crime, was there? Women leave home all the time. No, William thought, they don’t. But a crime? Then came Evie’s revelation in the kitchen and if he believed her story, something serious had occurred. If Helena came back, could he trust her near the baby? His mother had been adamant: the police would be involved, they would find her, she would be arrested. There was no way he could allow that and he wrote, asking to meet her at Kings Cross. In the station buffet they sat with strong coffee for support and she listened as he laid out his request: the small, heartless speech, authored largely by his mother, that turned her away for ever. The cycle of their life together, their love, both opened and closed on a railway station.

  But it was not, he now realised, that he was still in love with Helena. How could he be after thirty-three years of absence? He’d held the lock gates closed all this time, only to find the canal was dry after all. No, what he felt, quite simply, was pure unmitigated guilt. And what distressed him further was that he wasn’t in love with Francine either. Was it her betrayal or was he simply too old to care? What he did know for certain was that he was done with matters of the heart, this ageing pump within his tired old frame had had more than enough excitement for one lifetime. Joanna would never know how her mother once tried to silence her with a pillow, and Evie would never know it was he who’d refused to allow their mother to come home. Not lies, but truths kept hidden, things that were best left unsaid.

  William gathered his things, stood wavering a moment by the doors as they slid open and closed, then dropped the newspaper in the nearest bin and made his way to the Underground at speed.

  Forty-Five

  ‘Are you coming in?’

  Mark has driven me to Joanna and Andy’s house. We sit outside on the wide circular drive, the engine idling.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Mark reaches for his tobacco on the dashboard. ‘Not sure I’d be much use – you probably need to do this on your own.’

  I nod, look at my fingers, find the door handle, ‘Okay, you’re probably right.’

  ‘Phone me if there’s a problem.’

  ‘If there’s a problem?’

  ‘I won’t go far. See you later.’

  I watch the van disappear out of the gate then ring the doorbell. In the wide recessed porch, boots of various colours and sizes lie on the red quarry tiles like a pile of skittles.

  Olivia answers the door. ‘Oh,’ she says, her bright smile fading. ‘It’s you. Hi, Evie.’ Clearly, she’s expecting someone els
e.

  Andy appears behind her and pulls the door open wide. ‘Evie! This is lovely!’ He looks right and left on the drive. ‘Are you on your own? Is Mark with you? I thought I heard a car.’

  I make an excuse, something about a work thing.

  ‘Well, come in! Livvi don’t leave your favourite aunt standing on the doorstep!’

  Olivia moves aside and disappears upstairs. The smell of baking wafts around the large hallway, a surprising comfort, something to cling to, knowing what I have to do. I haven’t been inside the house for a while, since before my abortive attempt at Sunday lunch when I threatened to throw up and made Andy drive me home again.

  This time, though, his welcome touches me. He ushers me towards the kitchen and the source of the baking smell.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he says. ‘Jo’s nipped out for a run but she’ll be back any minute. Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee? Something stronger?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Maybe just some water?’

  Andy fetches filtered water from the fridge and puts a glass in front of me on the table. I’m tempted to spill the whole story, to lay it all out in the heart of Joanna’s soccer-mum kitchen, but I don’t. I see the dark, smiling sweetness of Joanna as a child, her blessed life, the one she nearly didn’t have. The life Helena in her misery, had tried to extinguish.

  I draw breath and face Andy, ‘I need to speak to Joanna. Something’s happened and… well she needs to know what’s going on.’

  Andy frowns, ‘I see. And is everything alright – Edward? Your parents?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I begin, but then remember that it is. It’s all of that, and more.

  Andy comes closer, says softly, ‘I’m guessing it’s complicated?’

  My jaw aches, my eyes fill, and when Joanna arrives at the backdoor a few minutes later, glowing and stretching hamstrings, I’m a mess of tears.