Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  ‘Because of your shoes?’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t let me in. When she cleans, I have to stay outside. Sometimes I am not sure my mother wants me.’ With this confession, James studied his fingertips and fell quiet again. Then: ‘Do you have the Montgolfier Balloon card?’ he said. ‘It’s actually number one in the set.’

  Byron knew the card was number one. It showed a blue air balloon, festooned with gold, and it was his favourite; not even Samuel Watkins had it. Nevertheless there was something so compact and alone about the way his friend sat that Byron slipped the balloon card into James’s hands. He offered it for keeps. And when James said, ‘No, no, you can’t give me this. You won’t have the full set any more,’ Byron tickled him to show there was no problem. James bent double and shrieked with laughter while Byron’s fingers found the hard little spaces in his armpits and beneath his chin. ‘Please s-stop,’ howled James. ‘You’re giving me hiccups.’ When James laughed, he was like a child.

  That night was no easier. Sleep came in fits and when it did, Byron saw things that frightened him and woke tangled in wet sheets. When he looked in the bathroom mirror the next morning, he was shocked to discover a big, pale boy, with shadows hanging beneath his eyes like bruises.

  His mother was equally shocked. Catching sight of him, she said he must stay at home. Byron pointed out he had his important scholarship work but she merely smiled. A day would make no difference. There was the mothers’ coffee morning too; she said, ‘At least I won’t have to go to that now.’ This troubled Bryon. If she did anything unusual, the other mothers would grow suspicious. He agreed to take the day off school but only because he planned to ensure she attended the coffee morning.

  ‘I would like a day at home,’ said Lucy.

  ‘You are not ill,’ said their mother.

  ‘Byron is not ill neither,’ said Lucy. ‘He has no spots.’

  Once a month the Winston House mothers met for morning coffee in the only department store in town. There were other cafés but they were the type of new establishment at the lower end of the High Street that served American hamburgers and flavoured milkshakes. The department store tearoom opened at eleven. It had wooden-framed gilt chairs with blue velveteen cushions. The waitresses wore white, trimmed aprons and brought teacakes on plates with paper doilies. If you ordered coffee, it came with a choice of milk or cream, and also a slim mint chocolate in a black wrapper.

  There were fifteen mothers present that morning. ‘What a marvellous turnout,’ said Andrea Lowe, batting at the air with her menu. She had bright eyes that appeared to stay open to their widest extent, as if she was permanently seeing things that shocked her. Deirdre Watkins, who had arrived last, was perched on a low stool she had requisitioned from the lavatories because all the gilt chairs were taken. Her face was filmy with the heat and she had to keep dabbing at it. ‘I don’t know why we don’t meet like this more often,’ said Andrea. ‘Are you sure you can see us down there, Deirdre?’

  Deirdre said she was just splendid but would someone mind passing her the sugar.

  ‘Not for me,’ said the new mother. Her husband was something to do with sales, but not door-to-door. She held up her hands as if merely touching sugar would fatten up her fingers.

  ‘Is Byron ill?’ said Andrea, nodding at him from the other end of the table.

  ‘He has a headache,’ said Diana. ‘He’s not infectious. He doesn’t have lumps or spots.’

  ‘Goodness no,’ chorused the mothers. Who would bring an infectious child to a department store?

  ‘No more accidents, then?’ said Andrea.

  Byron swallowed hard as his mother said no, there had been no more accidents. The pond was fenced in now. Andrea explained to the new mother that James and Byron had tried to build a bridge at Cranham House the previous summer. ‘They almost drowned,’ she laughed. She added there were no hard feelings.

  ‘It was only Byron who fell in,’ murmured Diana. ‘The water’s not much deeper than my knees. And James didn’t even get wet.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. Andrea Lowe battered her coffee with a teaspoon. ‘Still, you don’t want Byron to miss his scholarship work. If I were you, I’d get him looked at. My husband knows a very good fellow in town. Howards, he’s called. They were at the college together. This man is an expert on children.’

  ‘Thank you, Andrea,’ said Diana. ‘I’ll remember that.’ She reached for her notebook and folded it open on an empty page.

  ‘He is actually a psychologist.’

  The word hit the air like a small slap. Without looking, Byron saw his mother stall over her book. He knew the problem. She wouldn’t know how to spell psychologist.

  ‘Not that I’ve ever needed his services personally,’ said Andrea.

  Scribble, scribble, scribble went Diana’s pen. She slammed her notebook shut and tossed it into her handbag.

  ‘But there are people who do need him. There are some sick people out there.’

  Byron offered the women a wide smile to show the mothers he wasn’t one of those people; that he was normal, just a bit achy.

  ‘Take my mother-in-law,’ piped up Deirdre. ‘She writes love letters to that DJ on Radio 2. What’s his name?’

  Andrea said she had no idea. She wasn’t a DJ person, she said. Beethoven was more her thing.

  ‘I keep telling her, “Mother, you can’t write to him every day.” She has that thing – what’s it called?’ Again the mothers shook their heads but this time Deirdre got there. ‘Schizophrenia. That’s it. She says he talks to her on the radio.’

  ‘I like writing letters,’ said Byron. ‘Once I wrote to the Queen. She wrote back. Didn’t she, Mummy? Or rather, her lady-in-waiting wrote back.’

  Andrea studied him with her mouth pinched as if she was sucking on a throat lozenge. He regretted mentioning the Queen, even though privately he was proud of her correspondence. He kept it in a special Jacob’s Crackers tin along with those from NASA and Mr Roy Castle. He felt he had the knack of letter writing.

  ‘But I don’t suppose you wrote to the Queen on your underwear,’ said Deirdre. ‘That’s what my mother-in-law does.’

  The women erupted with laughter and Byron wished he could disappear. Even his ears were embarrassed. He hadn’t meant anything to do with underwear and now there was a picture in his mind of all the mothers in peach corsets and he didn’t know what to do with it. He felt Diana’s soft hand close around his beneath the table. Meanwhile Andrea said mental illness was a disease. You had to put people like that in Besley Hill. It was the kindest thing in the long run, she said. It was like homosexuals. They had to be helped to get better.

  From here the women discussed other things. A recipe for chicken escalopes. The Olympic Games in the summer; who still had a black and white set? Deirdre Watkins said that every time she bent over the new chest freezer she worried her husband would stuff her inside it. Wasn’t Andrea worried for Anthony’s safety, asked the new mother, after the recent spate of IRA bombings? Andrea said the terrorists should be strung up in her view, they were fanatics. Fortunately her husband’s area was domestic crime.

  ‘Gosh,’ said the women.

  ‘I’m afraid he even gets women in front of him. Sometimes mothers.’

  ‘Mothers?’ said Deirdre.

  Byron’s heart tossed itself upwards like a pancake and fell flat on his bowels.

  ‘They think that just because they have children they can get away with it. Anthony takes the tough line. If there is a crime, someone must pay. Even if she’s a woman. Even if she’s a mother.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the new mother. ‘An eye for an eye.’

  ‘Sometimes they shout the most appalling abuse as they get taken down. Anthony won’t tell me the words sometimes.’

  ‘Goodness,’ carolled the women.

  Byron couldn’t look at Diana. He heard her gasping and murmuring like the other women, and the pop of her lips as they met her cup, the chink of her pink fingernail
s against the china and the small wet click of air as she swallowed her drink. Her innocence was clear, so palpable he felt he could touch it and yet, without even knowing, she had been guilty for nine days. The pity of it was cruel beyond words.

  ‘This is the price of feminism,’ said Andrea. ‘The country’s going to the dogs.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ murmured the women, dipping their mouths like little beaks towards their coffees.

  Byron whispered to Diana that he would like to go but she shook her head. Her face was a sheet of glass.

  Andrea said, ‘This is what happens when women go to work. We can’t be men. We are females. We have to behave like females.’ She gave extra stress to the ‘fe’ so that this part of the word shot out of the sentence, sounding long and important. ‘The first duty of a married woman is to have babies. We shouldn’t ask for more.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the women.

  Plonk plonk went two more sugar cubes into Deirdre’s tea.

  ‘Why not?’ asked a small voice.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Andrea’s coffee cup froze to her mouth.

  ‘Why can’t we ask for more?’ said the small voice again.

  Fifteen faces shot in Byron’s direction. He shook his head, signifying he meant no harm when, to his horror, he realized that the small voice was his mother’s. She had tucked her hair behind her ears and sat tall, the way she did in the driving seat to show his father she was concentrating.

  She said, ‘I don’t want to spend my whole life at home. I want to see things. When the children are older, I might take another job.’

  ‘You mean you had one before?’ repeated Andrea.

  His mother bowed her head. ‘It might be interesting. That’s all I meant.’

  What was she doing? Byron mopped the sweat from his upper lip and sank into his chair. More than anything, he wanted her to be like the others. But here she was, talking about being different, when already she was marked apart in ways she couldn’t imagine. He wanted to get up, flap his arms, yell at her, just to cause a distraction.

  Meanwhile Deirdre asked again for the sugar. The new mother held up her hands as it passed. Several women became very busy with loose strands of cotton in their sleeves.

  ‘Oh, interesting,’ laughed Andrea.

  They drifted along the High Street in silence, Byron and his mother. The sun was a blinding hole and a buzzard hung above the moor, waiting to swoop. The air was so stale and close it was like a fist pressing into the land. Even when a cloud popped up, the sky seemed to drink the moisture before the cloud could spill it. Byron wondered how much longer such heat could last.

  After what his mother had said in the teashop about taking a job, conversation between the women had faltered, as if it were unwell or overtired. Byron held her hand and concentrated on stepping between the cracks in the paving stones. There were so many things he wanted to ask. She moved in her lemon dress past the windows of the Conservative Party shop and her puff of hair glowed in the sunlight.

  ‘They have no idea,’ she said. She seemed to be staring ahead.

  ‘Who has no idea?’

  ‘Those women. They haven’t a clue.’

  He wasn’t sure what to do with that piece of information so he said, ‘I think I will look at my letter from the Queen when we get home.’

  His mother smiled at him as if he were clever. It felt like her hand on his. ‘That’s a fine idea, sweetheart. You’re so good at letters.’

  ‘Then I might design a new Blue Peter badge.’

  ‘I thought they already had one?’

  ‘They do. They have silver and gold too. But you have to do something like rescuing a person in distress to get the gold. Do you think that’s realistic?’

  She nodded, but as if she were no longer listening, or at least not to him. They were stopped outside the off-licence. His mother glanced over her shoulder. Tap, tap, tap went her pointed toe on the pavement.

  ‘Wait here a moment, like a good boy,’ she said. ‘I need tonic water for the weekend.’

  The weather broke that night. Byron woke when a gust of wind slammed open his window, causing his bedroom curtains to fill like sails. A fork of lightning sliced the sky and the moor flashed like a blue photograph, framed by his window. He lay very still and counted, waiting for the crack of thunder. Needles of rain began to fall. They shot through his open curtains. If he didn’t get up and close them there would be a wet patch on the carpet. He lay on top of his covers, unable to sleep and unable to move. All he could hear was the rain, the splashing of it on the roof and the trees and the terrace. He couldn’t imagine how it would ever stop.

  Byron thought of what Andrea had said about women not getting away with a crime. He didn’t know how he was going to keep his mother safe. The job seemed too big for one boy alone. Take the way she had spoken out about taking a job, and the way she had objected at the weekend when his father called the car female. It wasn’t simply what she had done in Digby Road that marked Diana apart. There was something about her, something pure and fluid that would not be contained. If she discovered what she had done, the truth would spill out. She wouldn’t be able to stop it. He pictured again those tiny jewelled drawers inside her mind and maybe it was to do with the rain, but all he could see was them brimming with water. He shouted out.

  Suddenly the silver outline of her was at his doorway, shining in the light from the hall. ‘What is it, love?’ He told her he was frightened and she rushed to close his window. She rearranged his curtains into neat blue folds.

  ‘You’re such a worrier,’ she smiled. ‘Things are never so bad as we think.’ Sitting on the edge of his bed, she stroked her fingers over his forehead. She sang a quiet song he didn’t know and he closed his eyes.

  Whatever happened, he must never tell his mother what she had done. Of all the people to know, she was surely the most dangerous. He told himself this over and over while her fingers crept through his hair and the rain pattered on the leaves and the thunder grew tame. Byron faltered towards sleep as if pulled on strings.

  12

  Another Accident

  FIVE DAYS AFTER Eileen’s exit from the café, Jim encounters her again. The snow has begun to thaw. During the day it slides from the trees and everywhere there is the pattering of water, the tap, tap of melting ice. As the land reappears, its muted colours – the greens, the browns, the purples – look too startling, too full of themselves. It is only up on the moor that there remains a white shawl of snow.

  Jim is leaving the car park after work. The street is dark. Commuters are going home. Lamps spill orange light over the wet pavements and ice mounts in dirt ridges at the kerb. He heads towards the roundabout in order to cross safely when a maroon Ford Escort rattles past. A sticker is pasted on the back window – My other car is a Porsche. With a screech and a metallic smell of fireworks, the car slams to a halt at the give way markings on the road. Jim steps out behind it.

  There is no obvious reason why a car that is stationary should change its mind and reverse; but this one does both. With a roar and a sudden shot of smoke, the Ford appears to jump backwards, and then brakes with another jolt right against Jim. He realizes that something significant has happened and then that it is pain. It bolts up through him, starting from his toe and flashing the length of his leg into his spine.

  ‘Whoa,’ a male voice shouts from across the road.

  The passenger door flies open and there she is. Or rather, there her face is, at a slanted angle. She must have jumped across from the driver’s seat. Blaze of sticking-out orange hair. Wide eyes. There is only her car between them.

  ‘What the—?’ There is no mistaking her.

  Jim raises his hands. If he had a white flag, he would wave that too. ‘I-I-I. Your car – your car—’ He has much on his mind and 1,105 kilograms of Ford Escort on the end of his boot.

  Eileen stares at him and the look she sends is one of bewilderment. He doesn’t know why but, staring back at Eileen, an image pops into
his mind of a hydrangea he found in flower only that morning, so pink it was vulgar. He remembers how he wanted to cup its head and hold it safe until spring.

  Eileen and Jim continue to stare at one another without moving, him thinking of hydrangeas, her murmuring ‘Fuck,’ until the voice from across the road shouts again: ‘Stop! Stop! There’s been an accident!’

  For a moment the words mean nothing. Then, realizing what they signify, Jim feels a flood of panic. He doesn’t want any of this. It must stop happening. He calls out, ‘Nothing’s wrong.’ People are beginning to notice. He flaps his arms as if Eileen is wedged in his path and, with vigorous hand movements, he can waft her free. ‘Go away!’ he shouts, or something close to that. ‘Go away! Go on!’ It is almost rude.

  Eileen’s head withdraws, the door is slammed shut and she drives forward. Her passenger wheel cuffs the kerb as she takes the turning.

  The man who shouted now dashes across the road, dodging cars. He is young, dark-haired, wearing a leather jacket, face like a skeleton. His breath hits the cold in small plumes of smoke. ‘I got the registration number,’ he says. ‘Can you walk?’

  Jim says he is sure he can. Now that Eileen’s back wheel has parted from his shoe, he feels surprisingly light, as if his foot is made of air.

  ‘Do you want me to call the police?’

  ‘I-I—’

  ‘An ambulance?’

  ‘N-n—’

  ‘Here.’ The young man hands Jim a scrap of notepaper on which he has apparently scribbled the car’s details. His writing is childlike.

  Jim folds the paper and pockets it. His thoughts are struggling to connect with each other. He has been hit and he is hurt. All he wants is to remove his boot in the privacy of the van and examine his toe, without anyone else running him over or threatening to fetch people who terrify him. And then he realizes that he has only folded the young man’s note once. It should be twice, and then once. After all, there has been an accident. He should be performing the rituals, even here on the pavement. But he has done it now; he has done a wrong thing. Despite the cold, a rush of sweat showers his skin. He starts to tremble.