‘So where’s Claudine now?’ she asked.
‘On her way back to France,’ Henri said, and Amanda thought there was nothing more French in the world than a Frenchman saying
France
. ‘Her mother is using my ticket. I could not get another until tomorrow.’
‘It took both of you to save her mother?’
Henri rolled his eyes as if asking for mercy from the gods. ‘You will have to believe yourself very lucky not to have met her.
Your
mother, so different, so English, so
nice
. I very much love Claudine’ – he was looking away so he didn’t see Amanda’s small flinch – ‘she is like the oboe playing Bach, but her
maman
. . .’
He took another sip of his tea. ‘Thank you for allowing this intrusion.’ His voice was without cynicism or hidden meaning. He really was grateful. ‘I really am grateful,’ he said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, in a small voice.
There was a short, careful silence. ‘May I ask how are you?’ he said.
‘You may.’
He smiled back at her, in a way that made her stomach sink down to her toes. She loved him, she loved him, she loved him, she hated the French motherfucker, mostly for how
much
she loved him, but oh she loved loved loved him still, the handsome bastard. ‘So, how
are
you?’ he asked again.
She opened her mouth to say ‘I’m fine’, but what came out instead was ‘I can’t seem to stop crying lately’.
And to her surprise, it was true. She’d never considered herself much of a crier, but lately, oh, just lately. Crying when she talked with her father, crying at the slightest bit of TV sentiment, crying when a lift door closed before she reached it. It was infuriating, which weirdly only made her cry more.
‘Are you depressed?’ Henri asked, not unkindly.
‘Only if that means being angry all the time.’
‘I think the word for that is
Amanda-esque
.’ He raised his eyebrows in a way that only the French ever bothered with, but it was still friendly. This detente was still fairly new. Henri visited often enough to be sure JP kept his physical presence fresh in his memory, but it had, for the first couple of years, been like the exchange of nuclear secrets between hostile agents, with her, if she was honest, by far the more hostile. Over time, though, it had become too tiring to stay so constantly mad at him. She had thawed from strained to curt, from curt to polite, from polite to this almost friendliness, one which, in a way, was almost harder to take, because if she could be this calm with him, then that probably meant the spark had completely gone, hadn’t it? All that furious passion had at least been
passion
. The thought made her frown, and Henri mistook her expression.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, setting down his cup of tea. ‘I do not wish to offer you reason to shout at me.’
‘Is that all you think I did? Shout at you?’
‘There was quite a lot of shouting.’
‘There was quite a lot to be shouting
at
.’
He grinned. ‘And we are nearly there again. But please, I did not come for an argument. I came to see my son, and I would very happily do so in peace, if we can agree?’
Amanda said nothing, just swished the last bit of cold tea across the bottom of her cup as she looked at him. He was annoyingly tanned, his salt-and-pepper hair cropped very short to downplay a receding hairline. It only made him look sexier, though, as did the slightly French cut of his t-shirt and the slightly French wisp of chest hair over its collar.
‘This bothers me, the crying,’ he said, leaning towards her on the settee. ‘It cannot be good for you. It cannot be good for Jean-Pierre if his mother is sad.’
She thought for a moment. ‘I really don’t think they’re entirely sad tears. They’re more angry.’
‘These are not very different shadings.’
He was still there, leaning close enough to smell, an achingly familiar scent that was partly the honey soap she knew he was partial to, partly the cigarette he’d no doubt had on the walk here from the Tube, and partly just Henri, the individual smell that anyone had, made alluring or off-putting only because of the person who wore it.
Alluring. Or off-putting. Or alluring.
Goddamn him.
She reached up and ran a hand across his cheek. The stubble softly scraped her fingertips.
‘Amanda,’ Henri said.
He didn’t back away as she neared him, didn’t back away as she unquestionably entered his personal space, didn’t back away as her lips touched his.
But then he backed away. ‘That would be a bad idea.’
‘Claudine is under twenty-five miles of water,’ Amanda said, still close, though not quite sure what she was doing, feeling tears just seconds away, trying to make sure they didn’t arrive. ‘And think how well we already know each other. We could skip all the stuff neither of us like.’
He took her hand and kissed it. ‘We should not.’
‘But you’re thinking about it.’
He smiled and gestured to his lap, where an impressive area of strained fabric made his physical interest plain. ‘But we should not,’ he said. ‘We cannot.’
She waited another second to see if he would yield (and
yield
was the right word, she was asking him to yield to her, not just to see if he would, but because her need was clearly so much greater, so much greater at that moment that it felt as if she was falling off a cliff and desperately wanted him not to save her from falling, but to fall
with
her, and if they survived, well, then, afterwards there could be more fucking cups of fucking tea) and then she sat back on the settee, trying to smile casually, as if it was just a passing fancy, no big deal, some mature adult fun they could have had, but nothing to regret, nothing to worry about.
She had to bite her bottom lip to keep from crying. Again.
‘I love you, Amanda,’ Henri said, ‘and I know, despite what you might shout, that you love me as well. But I love Claudine now and she is able to love me in a way that doesn’t cost her as much as it costs you.’
‘It was nothing,’ Amanda said, annoyed at the thickness in her voice, trying to turn it into a false brightness, knowing neither of them believed her. ‘Passing fancy on a Saturday evening.’ She sniffled and looked away from him as she took a sip from her empty teacup. ‘Just a bit of fun.’
He watched her for a moment. She knew he was fighting between trying to look noble about everything – he’d always had a pompous streak – but also truly trying to delicately, kindly, not embarrass her, if it was at all possible. It wasn’t, and she just had to wait until he realised that.
‘I should go,’ he finally said, standing, but he didn’t move away from her when he stood. Their proximity was suddenly very close, him standing, her sitting, both of them aware again of the still-present strain against his trousers.
They breathed for a moment.
‘
Merde
,’ Henri whispered, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
Later, when it was over, and he sat on the edge of the settee wearing nothing but a cigarette and his now inside-out underpants, he gestured towards JP’s room. ‘I miss him,’ he said. ‘Every day, I miss him.’
‘I know,’ was all Amanda could manage.
She didn’t cry after he left, didn’t feel angry or sad or anything at all, just watched brightly coloured people suffer brightly coloured hysteria all across the Saturday night telly. When it was finally time to turn all of that off and go to bed,
that’s
when she cried.
Sunday passed in a grind of chores: a week’s worth of dishes (she was ashamed to admit), slightly more than a week’s worth of laundry (she was even more ashamed to admit, JP was on a third rotation of a certain pair of dungarees), plus a break to feed the ducks at a nearby pond, which JP refused to do wearing anything but his Superman costume, complete with fake muscles.
‘Ducks, ducks, ducks!’ JP said, throwing an entire slice of bread at a goose.
‘Little bits at a time, sweetheart,’ she said, bending down to show him. He watched her hands, almost panting with bread-anticipation.
‘Me!’ he said. ‘Me, me, me!’
She handed him the bits and he threw them all at the goose in a single motion. ‘Duck!’
She was lucky, she knew it, told herself so with annoying repetition. She’d found an affordable nursery near work that JP seemed to love and which was even mostly covered by Henri’s child support. Her mother could pick him up at the end of the nursery day if Amanda’s work overran and watch him until Amanda collected him on the way home. George, too, was always more than happy to take him in at odd times when needed.
And look at him. Christ, just
look
at him. Sometimes she loved him so much she wanted to eat him alive. Just put him between two slices of this stale duck bread and munch on his bones like a fairy-tale witch. The juice stain around his lips, the way he was brave about almost everything on earth except balloons, the way his French was so much more punctilious than his English. She loved him so much she’d tear the earth apart if anyone ever dared harm–
‘Okay,’ she whispered to herself, feeling the tears coming again. ‘Right then.’
She leaned forward and kissed the back of his head. He was a little bit stinky because bathtime was another chore running late today, but he was still purely him.
‘Mama?’ he asked, turning round, hands out for more bread.
She swallowed the tears. (What was
wrong
with her?) ‘Here you go, sweet cheeks,’ she said, handing him another batch. ‘This one, by the way, isn’t actually a duck.’
He turned back to the goose, amazed. ‘It’s not?’
‘It’s a goose.’
‘Like Suzy Goose!’
‘Yes, of course, I forgot we read that–’
‘She’s not white, though.’
‘There are lots of different kinds of geese.’
‘Is that different than goose?’
‘One goose, two geese.’
‘One moose, two meese.’
‘This one’s a Canada goose, I think.’
‘Canada moose,’ JP said. ‘What’s Canada?’
‘A big country by America.’
‘What do they do there?’
‘They chop down trees and eat their lunch and go to the lavatory.’
JP was thrilled at this news.
‘Is that a goose, too?’ he said, pointing.
She followed his finger to a great white bird wading through the pond. It had a splash of red feathers across its head and was looking carefully at the water between its feet, as if hunting.
‘I’m not sure,’ Amanda said. ‘A stork maybe?’
Then a thought occurred. A startling one.
But no, that had just been George’s dream, hadn’t it? She hadn’t believed that had actually happened. He hadn’t called it a stork either. He’d called it a
crane
, that was it. Did England even
have
cranes? She didn’t think so, but she’d certainly never seen a bird like this before. The size of it, for one thing–
JP coughed, and the bird glanced up at the noise. A bright golden eye, crazy like the eyes of all birds, caught hers briefly and held it for one second, two, before returning to its hunt.
Amanda felt briefly like she’d been judged. But then, she felt that most days.
‘Is Papa coming to feed the ducks with us?’ JP asked.
‘No, baby, Papa had to go back to France.’
‘Claudine,’ JP said, proud of his knowledge.
‘Indeed,’ Amanda said. ‘Claudine.’
JP looked back at the goose he’d been feeding. It had nibbled up the last of the bread and was poking its long neck at them in a request that managed to seem both embarrassed and assertive. JP just stood there, hands on his hips, foam Superman muscles bulging. ‘A goose,’ he said. ‘
I
am not a goose.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Sometimes I am a duck, Mama,’ he explained, ‘but I am not ever a goose. Not even once.’
‘Why do you suppose that is?’
‘If I was a goose, I would know my name. But when I am a goose, I don’t know my name, so I’m not a goose. I’m a duck.’
‘You’re a JP.’
‘I am a Jean-Pierre.’
‘That, too.’
He stuck his sticky hand in hers (how? How was it sticky? All he’d been handling was
bread
. Did little boys just ooze sticky resin, like snails?). Amanda glanced again at the stork/possibly crane thing, watching it until it disappeared behind the branches of an overhanging tree, still scanning the water for food.
‘Surely the fish are hibernating this time of year?’ she asked, then rolled her eyes at how stupid it sounded. She was becoming increasingly worried she was turning into one of those single mothers you saw on trains, speaking in a loud, clear voice to their child, as if pleading for somebody,
anybody
to please join in and give her something else to talk about besides goddamn wriggling.
‘What’s hyperflating?’ JP asked.
‘Hibernating. Means sleeping off the winter.’
‘Oh,
I
do that. I get into bed and I sleep the whole winter. And sometimes, Mama? Sometimes, I
am
winter.
Je suis l’hiver
.’
‘
Oui
, little dude.
Mais oui
.’
By the time she’d got JP to bed that night, she found she was so tired she couldn’t be bothered to even make lunch for the next day. She was supposed to have time off in lieu for all these idiotic Saturdays out in soul-sapping middle-of-Essex nowhere, but Head of Personnel Felicity Hartford had made it clear that ‘time off in lieu’ was like the gold standard: worth the world, as long as no one ever asked to spend it.
She called George that evening instead, and they talked about Kumiko – who Amanda
still
hadn’t met; it had got to the point where it seemed George was purposely keeping her secret – and about the astonishing amount of money he and Kumiko were suddenly being offered for the art they made together, a development Amanda instinctively mistrusted, like telling everyone you’d won the lottery before doing the final verification of your numbers.
‘You remember that bird you said you saved?’ she asked. ‘What was it? A stork?’
‘A crane,’ he said. ‘At least I’m pretty sure it was a crane.’
‘Did that really happen? Or did you just dream it?’