The Crane Wife(25)
Author: Patrick Ness

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 f**king cups of f**king 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–