39

Beck is named for Samuel Beckett, her father’s favourite playwright. She grows into a dark-haired, olive-skinned plump little girl who loves water, is mostly grubby, and is very fond of her special penguin cap. Tom is a quiet boy with deep blue eyes who has the look of his uncles about him.

When Beck’s eighteen months old, John opens the door to the bedroom and Louisa is reading in the lamplight. Once again, he’s home late but at least he’s still got his tie on. He drags it off absently, like a man letting go. He’s been at a lot of poetry readings lately. He’s out most nights. He’s so busy. She’s heard there are poetry groupies galore. Doesn’t believe a word of it.

‘Lou,’ he says, standing in front of the chest of drawers with his back to her while he watches her in the mirror.

‘Yeah,’ she says, reading hard and resisting the current of her husband’s attention.

‘I’ve got something to tell you and you’re not going to like hearing it.’

She seems to drag herself from the page, but really she hasn’t absorbed a word since he walked in. She sits up straighter, arranges the covers and knows immediately that what he will say will change every single thing.

She’s always expected that he will leave her, that it wasn’t really love, and here is the truth. If you wait long enough, it comes. She wonders whether she might intervene, put up her hands and stop the words, put her mouth against his, but no, it doesn’t seem so.

‘You see, the thing is,’ he says, stumbling forward with resolve and red eyes, ‘I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’ He seems to hope that she will show him a little mercy because he’s in love. He hasn’t planned it, you see, this thing has just befallen him.

‘What did you say?’ she asks thinly.

‘I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’

‘Fallen?’

‘Yeah, fallen. I’ll move out.’

‘Who did you fall in love with?’

‘Her name is irrelevant.’

‘Not to me, mate, and I’m guessing her name is not irrelevant to you or you wouldn’t be doing this.’

‘Well, I don’t want to get into that.’ And then the rage is released.

‘You unbelievable, you complete fucker,’ she cries, and it feels exactly like her heart has been torn out.

The emotions that flash through her are as familiar as family. Fear returns like an old enemy who knows its way around, but there’s a kind of release and she seems to be becoming Emmett and she runs at him stumbling from the bed in the ugly duckling pyjamas and hits him around the head but he holds her hands away from her until, sobbing like the girl she always held at bay, she sinks into the bed.

She cannot think. Nothing works. This pain has halved her. She lies there while he sits beside her, tentatively stroking her back with an involuntary kindness that even she can’t stand. At each touch she feels a little more dead. She can see nothing, nothing but her children, and they are all there is.

It takes a while for her voice to remember how it works, but when it does, she says nastily, ‘Well, fuck off then. We don’t need you around here.’ And that’s all it takes. He packs a bag, stuffing in socks and underpants, his T-shirts and carrying his other stuff on hangers. And he leaves. In an effort to seem normal, Louisa switches off the light and gets into bed with Beck and there she stays, awake all night.

It takes many months for Louisa to recall who she is. Her mother and the babies are what get her through. Slowly, she comes to see that she will survive John Keele but it takes longer to understand how she is changed.

‘How come Louisa always gets on better with men than women?’ Jessie asks Anne one day while they’re hanging out washing in the yard behind the shop. There’s not that much washing anymore, and they’re both aware of it. ‘She drove her own husband away by never talking to him. Remember last Christmas? She barely looked at him. She spends more time talking to Rob than anyone else and Rob doesn’t give a stuff, he just can’t stand John, so anything that gets up his nose is fine by him. He’s a stirrer, but what’s her excuse? I tell you, I pity those kids.’

Anne cannot be expected to choose between her children. To her they are equal in every way. Ah, let’s be honest a minute, she thinks and smiles to herself, Jessie was always the favourite of my heart, but that will go to the grave with me. And so it follows that she cannot let Louisa go undefended.

‘Well as for Mr John Keele, he was no great shakes, nothing but a gutless wonder really,’ she begins. ‘He didn’t even have the guts to try to work it out, no, he just kept up the little dalliances. He’s long had a roving eye and it seems to me they were never really suited. Louisa had to do all the work with him. He’s one of those men who wants a woman to do all the running. She has to come up with all the moves, but only after he approves. You know where the house will be, and she must keep the children happy and bring up all the topics they talk about. He will never contribute. Then she’s got to entertain him and make a home for him, cook for him, bring in half the income, give him children and then keep them quiet so he can pursue his great dream and you know what? Louisa’s a more talented person and a better one than he will ever be.’ Anne savagely pegs a tea towel and it flutters, a stained and captured flag snagging occasionally on a brave red geranium that climbs the wall of the garage. Anne continues. This is a theme she’s given much thought to.

‘She got tired of it all and who can blame her? In the end, if you’re doing everything, then you may as well do it on your own, that’s the mistake I made, staying there under the thumb all those bloody years. Once there are children my girl, every single thing changes and some men do not cope well with the changes. And by the way, did you know Mr Keele used to dye his hair?’

Jess is not hugely bothered by any of this news, as far as she’s concerned people can have whatever hair colour they like. Anyway, she still likes John Keele but she’s got the sense to shut up about that and she always had a sneaking feeling that he liked her better than Lou and maybe he did. ‘Oh,’ she says limply, dropping a dry yellow towel into the dirt and Anne says impatiently, ‘Give it to me, give it a good shake. And did you know if you fold it in half on the line, the fluffiness increases?’ But Jess is lost to her, she’s kicking away a pile of cat shit, shoulders slumped. Her mother grabs the towel and shakes it vigorously. Jess wishes she didn’t have to hear any of this. Bugger Louisa, Mum’s always on about her.

The truth is, Jess will always strive to find a way to feel left out because that’s where she’s comfortable, but now she wants her mother to agree that Louisa excludes her and always has. She strides over to the plastic seats and hurls herself into one so hard the leg buckles and has an adolescent sulk, years late.

Absently, Anne asks, ‘What did she do love, what was it that upset you?’ as she follows her back into the yard with the clothes basket on her hip, and a ripple of impatience shoots through her, though it’s got nothing to do with her girls. It’s those rotten little birds at it again, disturbed all her mulch, chucking it around willy-nilly.

Triumphantly, Jess believes she’s finally captured her mother’s attention. ‘She just ignores me, she always has, and she seems to love the boys. What’s so special about them? They’re not fussed on her. She just bars you, that’s all. Never asks a question, doesn’t give a stuff what I’m doing. Looks through you. It’s always only about herself. Doesn’t even talk about the kids much. You have to drag it out of her.’

Anne wishes that Jessie could see past herself for just five minutes but she says, ‘Louie and the boys have a special bond. Before you were born they were very close, especially after Daniel died, and I think if you look hard you’ll see that it’s not men she prefers, it’s her brothers.’

Though it’s true, Anne thinks, she’s always been a bit on the odd side has our little Louie. She smiles and gets up to go in, that’s enough now. Time for a cup of tea.