More Than You Know (42 page)

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” said Sarah. “One wouldn’t have expected it.” And then she added hastily that she simply meant that men weren’t normally obsessed with their babies. “I’m not saying anything especially about Matt.”

“Yes, well, I sometimes wish he wasn’t,” said Eliza gloomily, “and he’d just leave me alone to get on with looking after her.”

“And … how are you finding it, darling, being at home? With Emmie? Enjoying it, I expect, not missing your job too much.”

“Oh … yes, it’s … it’s lovely,” said Eliza carefully. There was no way she could even begin to explain to her mother how she felt.

Lost. Disenfranchised. Lonely. And confused.

Now she had Emmie, it was quite difficult to imagine leaving her. She loved her more than she would have believed she could love anything. The day Emmie first smiled at her, she never forgot. She had just fed her and burped her and was sitting looking at her, holding her on her lap, and Emmie’s brilliant blue eyes fixed very firmly on hers. She seemed to be concentrating very hard, almost anxiously, on what she was doing, which was looking back at her mother. And then, slowly, her rosebud of a mouth moved into a rather lopsided, but distinctly joyful smile. All her tiny world, every bit of her effort was in it; it was a great, joyous, evolutionary leap. And Eliza, touched beyond anything by it, found tears in her eyes and felt a great aching rush of love and something close to awe.

She had tried to explain her feelings to Matt, half expecting him to pooh-pooh it, to tease her, but he looked at her very seriously and then kissed her.

“God, I love you,” he said.

It was at such times that she knew she had done the right thing.

Christmas worked out very well. Her father was incredibly frail and was beginning to find making himself understood difficult, but he was so patently happy to have them there that it was impossible not to feel pleased in return. Pete Shaw had, as promised, been down to Summercourt to install some ramps for his wheelchair, in both the house and the garden, which was a great help to Sarah, and had taken to coming down every other Saturday to take Adrian to the pub.

“Well,” Pete said to Sandra, “what a life, stuck in that freezing pile of a place, no one to talk to except Mrs. C., who’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. He likes a good joke, and we can talk about the war a
bit—he was in the army, the gunners; did some pretty brave things—and then I tell him about being at sea, and it’s closing time before you know it.”

He had also, he said, nipped up to the top of the house to look at the rooms. “Sodden, they are; it’s bloody terrifying, thinking what might happen. I’m going to tell Matt to have a look, see what he thinks, if anything can be done that won’t break the bank. Funny, isn’t it—you’d think they was rolling, but Matt says the only money they’ve got is tied up in the house.”

“Your dad’s so good to mine,” said Eliza on Christmas Eve, as she began the momentous task of unpacking Emmie’s things for the two days’ stay. “I’m so grateful to him. Funny, isn’t it; they’re really quite good friends now.”

Matt said he couldn’t see why it was funny. “Now, look what I got Emmie for her first Christmas. Can’t you just see that on her little wrist?”

It was a gold bangle hung with two disks, one engraved with Emmie’s name and one “Christmas 1965.”

“D’you think she’ll like it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Eliza, laughing, “she’ll absolutely love it, and she’ll say, ‘Thank you so much, Daddy, it’s beautiful; please will you help me put it on.’ ”

He looked hurt; he couldn’t stand being teased about his devotion to his daughter. Sometimes Eliza wondered just how far below Emmie she came in the family pecking order. A long, long way …

They put Emmie in the carry-cot on wheels and took her for a walk while they waited for Charles and Juliet. Eliza was looking forward to seeing Charles. He had become a commuter, leaving London on the six-o’clock train to Guildford and their new house, and apparently completely unable to delay for even an hour for a drink. But he was quiet and subdued, she discovered, miles away from the charming, funny brother of their childhood and youth. Juliet had always been bossy, but now she was quite overbearing, and seemed to have him constantly running round after her, fetching her cups of tea and “another cardigan, darling,
it’s so cold here,” refusing to go for a walk on Christmas morning, which would have been fine, except that she wouldn’t let Charles go either—“I really don’t want to stay here all alone on Christmas Day.”

Eliza marvelled at Charles’s patience, worried about his state of mind, and resolved to insist on meeting him when they were all back in London. She was, after all, free every lunchtime.

They all went to midnight mass in the village church, apart from Matt, who agreed to babysit both Adrian and Emmie. “How marvellous of you,” said Sarah, looking at him quite fondly. Eliza pointed out briskly that this was the first time ever that Matt had looked after Emmie, and Juliet said she thought that was quite right; babysitting was not a man’s job. It began to look like a long Christmas to Eliza.

Christmas lunch—“This is one of your best, Mummy,” said Eliza, smiling at her—was followed by a walk; Juliet agreed to this one, as it was necessarily short: “It’s almost dark already,” said Charles, who pushed the wheelchair and expressed appreciation of the new ramps—and then presents, followed by tea, which nobody wanted, and some carol singing by Eliza and Juliet, while Sarah played the piano. Everyone was putting up a very good pretence of being happy, Eliza thought; and who was to say it was only pretence? She had enjoyed her day, Matt had behaved very well, and he and Charles had spent a fair bit of time reminiscing about the army, and Matt had presented her with an extremely pretty gold bracelet watch, “in case you got jealous of Emmie’s. I’ve put the date on yours as well.

“Now,” said Matt, as Eliza stood up and said she was going to bathe Emmie, “I’d like you to come upstairs with me, Eliza. Got something to show you.”

“Goodness,” said Juliet, looking arch.

He led her up to the top of the house, into the leaking rooms.

“My dad told me to take a look at these,” he said. “Shocking sight, isn’t it? Tragic, really. Why they don’t move, your parents, I’ll never know. Still, I got an idea. Wanted to see what you thought.”

“Mummy! Daddy! Matt wants to talk to you. It’s so exciting …”

“What is?” said Sarah, her eyes meeting Eliza’s.
Heavens
, Eliza thought,
she thinks I’m having another one already
.

“Well, thing is, I’ve got quite a big team now, working on my various sites,” Matt said.

“Ye-es?”

“Yeah. Couple of very good roofers. And I thought I could send them down here. It’s quiet just now, and we’re waiting on planning permission on a new development; costs me money for them to be mucking about. So they could come down here, do some work on your roof.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Sarah went bright pink. “Well, that is so very kind of you, Matt, but we don’t have any … enough money for that. I have no idea what it would cost, and … I’m afraid we would just have to say no, wouldn’t we, Adrian?”

“No, well, I could help there as well,” said Matt. “First off, it won’t be nearly as much money as you might think; we can do everything at cost, and then I could arrange you a loan. Not me personally, my company. We got a couple of very good bank managers who value my custom, if you know what I mean; it’d be company rates. And if it was too much, I could absorb it, and you could pay me off as you could afford it. What d’you say?”

“I … I just don’t know what to say,” said Sarah. “It is so terribly kind, but we couldn’t possibly accept; I’d feel so embarrassed, and why should you—”

“Well, I’m married to your daughter,” said Matt, smiling at her suddenly. “I don’t like to see the family house going to rack and ruin.”

“Oh, dear,” said Sarah, and there were tears in her eyes, “oh, dear, it’s so … so good of you. I just don’t know what to say …”

“You’re such a fraud,” said Eliza, as they got ready for bed, “pretending you’re so hard and tough. It’s so wonderful, Matt, so generous; I can’t believe it.”

“It’s you I’m doing it for, really,” he said. “Because it worries you. Because I love you.”

“Oh, Matt—I love you too.”

“And if it’s not too cold, leave that nightdress off, would you? I want to celebrate Christmas properly with you.”

“Now, how can I refuse, after what you’ve done for us all?” said Eliza, grimacing at the cold as she pulled her nightdress off again.

She woke Emmie, yelling as she came. She simply couldn’t help it. Matt grabbed a pillow and put it over her face, but it was still quite noisy. And good. So, so good.

They had only just started having sex again; it was different. She’d dreaded it, had lain there almost shaking when the statutory six weeks were up, but Matt had been very patient, very careful; even so, it took her a while to start responding, wary of pain, of tenderness, of damage even, but when she did, when the half-forgotten sensations began, when she felt the stirring, the wanting of him, when she started moving under him, it became a roller coaster, a wonderful, wild, rediscovered delight, gathering pace, sweeping her along, carrying her up and up and into pleasure.

“Goodness,” she said, lying back when it was over, wiping on the back of her hand the tears that always came, “goodness, Matt, I never thought that would happen again.”

“Nor did I,” he said with a grin.

She turned to him now, moved beyond anything at his generosity, filled with love and a certain pride in him, kissing him, pulling him against her, wrapping her long legs round him.

“More than more than?” he said.

That was their private joke; he had once asked her if she wanted sex “more than anything” and she’d said no, she wanted it more than more than anything.

And … how did you describe that feeling? It was exactly that. You could want lots of things more than anything, but wanting sex, wanting the sweet, shooting, aching, painful pleasure of it, the absolute laughing, crying joy of it, the huge, wild relief and release of it, that really was more than more than anything. Nothing could be better than that. Really and truly, nothing at all.