Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  Before Diana could answer, she shot out a coil of smoke and laughed. ‘A vicar. I’m a vicar’s daughter and look what happened. Up the duff at twenty-three. Council house and not even a wedding.’

  At the end of the afternoon, Diana offered them a lift to town but Beverley declined. As they walked to the door, Beverley thanked his mother profusely for the drinks and the sandwiches. It was only when Diana said, ‘But what about her leg?’ that Jeanie faltered and began to swing it like a wooden one.

  Fiddling with her hat, Beverley insisted they would take the bus. Diana had already done more than enough; she wouldn’t take up any more of her precious time. And when Diana said her time was not precious – now they had the holidays she had no idea what she would do with herself – Beverley gave a laugh that was like one of his father’s, as if she were trying to quell it but couldn’t. Well how about next week? she said. She thanked Diana again for the tea and the Pretty Polly tights. She would wash and return them on Monday.

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ called Diana, waving from the front step and turning inside.

  He couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw Beverley pause as she passed the Jaguar. She seemed to scan the bonnet, the doors, the wheels, as if she had seen something of interest and was committing it to memory.

  After the visit Diana was in a light mood. Byron helped her to wash the plates and glasses and she told him how much she’d enjoyed the afternoon. More than expected, she said.

  ‘I knew a woman once who could dance the flamenco. She had the dress and everything. You should have seen her. She would put up her hands like this and bang her feet and it was the most beautiful thing.’ His mother held her hands in an arch over her head. She stamped several times and her heels rang out. He had never seen her dance like that.

  ‘How did you know that woman?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, dropping her arms and taking up the tea towel. ‘That was in the past. I don’t know why she came into my head.’

  She stowed the dried plates in the dresser and closed the door with a click and it was as though the dancing version of his mother had been shut in the cupboard too. Maybe her new happiness was something to do with Beverley’s visit. Now that James was involved, everything had taken a turn for the better. His mother went to fetch newspaper for a bonfire.

  ‘You haven’t seen my lighter, have you?’ she said. ‘I can’t think where I left it.’

  6

  Looking for Small Things

  EILEEN’S CAR IS parked and waiting beneath the sign that reads, No Parking. No Waiting. It is only once he has stepped out of the staff door that Jim realizes it is hers. Panic prickles his neck and shimmies all the way to the backs of his knees. He tries to reverse but the door has already clunked shut behind him.

  There is nothing for it but to pretend he is someone else. A person without a new plaster-cast foot, for instance. Eileen stares straight at him and her face erupts into an eager, happy smile of recognition. She waves. Clearly he needs a new tactic. He must pretend she is someone else instead and that he has never met her.

  Jim peers carefully through the dark at other things – the stashed trolleys, the bus stop, the cashpoint. He studies each of them as if he is finding them so extremely interesting he cannot possibly register anything else and will need to keep this up for a good few hours. He hums to give his distracted appearance further authenticity. And all the while he is studying these extremely interesting inanimate objects, what he is in fact seeing is Eileen. Her image is branded over his vision. She is all there is. Her green coat. Her flame of hair. Her radiant smile. It is as if she is talking to him.

  Jim finds a very interesting spot in the pavement. He stoops to take a closer look. Then he makes a show of seeing another interesting spot a few feet on. If he can keep this up, if he can follow a trail of interesting spots, he should make it to the other side of the car park.

  Already he is right next to her car. Without looking he can feel all through his left side that she has noticed him and is watching. He is dizzy with the closeness of her. And then, just as he is almost safe, he forgets that the extremely interesting spot is purely ground-based and accidentally raises his head. His eyes bump straight into Eileen’s.

  Her car door swings open and she scrambles out of the passenger seat. ‘Have you lost something, Jim?’

  ‘Oh hello, Eileen,’ he says. ‘I didn’t see you sitting next to me in your car.’

  He can’t imagine why he has said that, since it is now clear he recognized her straight away. He tries to make a dash towards the supermarket entrance and realizes he can only hobble. Unfortunately Eileen realizes he can only hobble too. She sees everything. His plaster-cast foot. His plastic sock. ‘Jim,’ she cries. ‘What happened?’

  ‘N-n-n—’ He can’t say it. He can’t get the word out and it is so small. She stands and waits. And all the time he gropes for it, mouth poised, chin jabbing the air, he is wretched. It is like clawing for words his mouth can’t make.

  ‘How are you getting home?’ she says. At least she has not connected his foot with her Ford. ‘Do you want a lift?’

  ‘Mr – Mr – Mr Meade.’

  Eileen nods. She says nothing and neither does Jim. The pause extends itself into something more solid.

  ‘So do you want a hand?’ she asks at last. ‘Looking for whatever it is you’re looking for?’ Caught in the glare of the car park security lighting, he sees her eyes are the colour of a hyacinth. The blue of them is almost shocking. How has he not noticed this before?

  ‘Yes,’ he says. It is the wrong word. He means no. No, you mustn’t help me. He shoots his gaze away from her eyes and back to the ground. It will surely be safer down there.

  Oh but her feet are so small. She wears patent-leather brown lace-up shoes with a square toe and they shine under the street lamp. She has tied the laces into bows like flower petals.

  ‘How big is it?’ she says.

  He has no idea what she’s talking about. He’s thinking about her tiny feet. They are so perfect they are heartbreaking.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The thing we’re looking for.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Small.’ It’s the first word his head comes out with because it is still busy with her shoes. He must stop staring at them. He must look up.

  Eileen gives a wide, uncomplicated grin. Her teeth are as beautiful as her feet.

  This new knowledge so alarms him he tries to fix on a different bit of her. A neutral upper bit. And then he realizes with another flip of horror that the bit of her he has alighted upon is her left bosom. Or the shape of it; like a firm, smooth hillock inside her rucked green coat.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Jim?’ says Eileen.

  To his relief, a middle-aged suited man with a trolley charges through the space between them. He’s talking into his mobile. Jim and Eileen step back hastily, as if they’ve been discovered doing something wrong.

  ‘Excuse me, both,’ says the man. He says it as if they are an item. Jim feels a pulse of excitement.

  It seems to take the man with the trolley a long time to pass. He has filled it to overflowing with bottles and Christmas groceries, on top of which he has balanced a bouquet of lilies in plastic wrapping. He keeps mistakenly ramming the trolley into the gaps between paving stones. Then his Christmas gift bouquet slides off the trolley and lands at Jim’s feet. The man walks on.

  Seeing the lilies, Jim’s heart bangs inside his chest. The petalled hoods are so white, so waxy, they shine. He can smell them. He doesn’t know if he is terribly happy or terribly sad. Maybe he is both. Sometimes things happen like that; they appear like a sign from another part of life, from another context, as if stray moments from past and present can join up and gain extra significance. He sees a church full of lilies, from long ago, and he also sees the coat that Eileen caused to fall from a chair only the other day. The unconnected memories are combined, newly blended, by the flowers lying near his foot. He doesn’t even think; he
stoops to pick them up.

  ‘Here,’ he says, handing the man his bouquet. He would like to give it to Eileen.

  When the man has gone, the newly empty space between Jim and Eileen feels so alive it should make a noise.

  ‘I hate flowers,’ says Eileen at last. ‘I mean, I like them in the ground. When they’re growing. I just don’t see why people give each other cut flowers. They’re dying. I’d rather have something useful. Pens or something.’ Jim tries to nod in a polite way to suggest he is interested, but not that interested. He doesn’t know where to look. At her mouth. Her eyes. Her hair. He wonders if she prefers biros or rollerballs.

  Eileen shrugs. ‘Not that people ever give me flowers,’ she says. ‘Or pens for that matter.’

  ‘No.’ It is only once he says the word, he realizes it is not the one he means.

  ‘I’m too mouthy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Again. Wrong word.

  ‘So you’re sure you don’t want a lift? We could stop for a drink on the way.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. And then with a bang he realizes what she has said. She has asked him for a drink.

  Only maybe he has misunderstood, maybe she has said something else, such as, ‘I’m gasping for a drink,’ because now it is Eileen’s turn to bow her head and scour the pavement. He wonders if she has lost something too and then he remembers that he hasn’t lost anything, he is simply pretending. So they are now side by side, almost touching, but not quite, both of them looking for things that may or may not be there.

  ‘How big is yours?’ he says.

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Have you lost something too?’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, blushing. ‘Yes, well. Mine’s very small as well. It’s teensy. We won’t find it.’

  ‘A shame, though.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Suddenly it is Eileen who appears not to know where to look. Her blue eyes are everywhere. Smacking into his mouth. His hair. His jacket.

  ‘It’s a shame to lose something.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘Crap.’

  He doesn’t know if the words they are using actually mean the things they purport to mean or whether the words have taken on a new significance. They are talking about nothing, after all. And yet these words, these nothings, are all they have, and he wishes there were whole dictionaries of them.

  ‘The thing is, I lose things all the time,’ says Eileen. ‘My purse. My keys. Do you know what I really hate?’

  ‘No.’ He is only smiling because she is smiling. It isn’t funny yet. It is going to be.

  ‘When people say, Where did you lose it?’ Eileen’s laugh rips forth, causing her shoulders to shake and her eyes to stream. She prods them with her finger. ‘Fuck me. That’s a stupid question.’ She has no wedding ring. ‘But actually I’ve lost big things too.’

  Jim says, ‘Oh.’ He can’t think of anything else.

  ‘I don’t mean small stuff like cars and money.’ He is aware of having to run in his mind to keep up. Cars and money do not strike him as small. Then she says suddenly, ‘To be honest, sometimes I don’t know how to keep going. You know what I mean?’

  He says yes, he does.

  ‘I can’t get up. I can’t speak. I can’t even clean my teeth. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a thin line. It’s a thin line between the people in Besley Hill and the ones outside.’

  She laughs again but he doesn’t know any more if Eileen is being funny. They return to staring at the pavement. ‘So we might as well keep looking, then?’ she says. ‘For whatever it is we’re looking for. Hey, Jim?’ And all the time they walk up and down, heads bowed, he is aware of the square-set woman beside him. He wonders if their eyes are making contact on the ground, if his beam of vision and her beam of vision are meeting down there in one unifying point. The thought sends his pulse galloping. Beneath his long feet, and her small ones, the frozen paving stones shine as if sequinned. He has never found a pavement so beautiful.

  A shout interrupts and Paula approaches, with Darren galloping to keep up.

  ‘I can’t believe you,’ hollers Paula. ‘Haven’t you done enough damage?’

  Eileen turns. She stands solid inside her holly-green coat.

  ‘First you run him over,’ shouts Paula. ‘Then you stalk him. He’s in counselling because of you.’

  Eileen’s jaw drops. He can almost hear the clunk of it. What surprises him most, however, is that she does not swear. She stares at Jim as if he has changed, as if bits of him have swapped place. ‘What do you mean, run him over?’ she says slowly. ‘What do you mean, counselling?’

  ‘After you reversed into him. He had to go to hospital. You’re a disgrace. You’re not fit to drive.’

  Eileen doesn’t reply. She remains still, taking in Paula’s words and not retaliating, not even blinking. It is like watching a champion boxer on the television and waiting for them to make a devastating punch before realizing they are not going to do anything. It is like seeing the other side of the champion boxer, the frail, human one, who should be at home, sitting in an armchair beside yours, and it is uncomfortable.

  ‘He could sue,’ yells Paula. ‘You should be locked up.’

  Eileen sends Jim a look of confusion that is so tender, so childlike, he can’t bear to meet it. All of a sudden he would like not to be here. He would like to be in his van. But before he can move, Eileen backs away from him, from Paula and Darren, and more or less flees to her car. She doesn’t even shout goodbye. She starts up the ignition and her car retches forward.

  ‘She’s still got the handbrake on,’ says Darren.

  As if she has heard, the car stops with a jolt and then passes smoothly out of the frosted car park. The moon is not full but shines in a half-circle, burning a yellowy-green nimbus of light into the dark. The moor glitters so hard it is like little whisperings.

  He will not share a lift with Eileen. They will not go for a drink. He thinks briefly of how she fell still when she talked about losing things, how she watched and said nothing while Paula shouted. It was like meeting Eileen in completely different, light summer clothes.

  Jim wonders if she had mislaid something on the pavement after all. And then it occurs to him that if she did, he would like to spend for ever finding it.

  7

  Friendship

  ‘YOU HAVE TO show Beverley that you know she stole your mother’s lighter,’ said James over the telephone.

  ‘But I don’t know that,’ said Byron. ‘And why is the lighter so important?’

  ‘Because it tells us more about the sort of person Beverley is. This is why you have to do what I say. It is known as calling her bluff. If she has not stolen the lighter, she won’t understand what you are talking about and you can cover your tracks. You can say, My mistake, my mistake. But if she is guilty she will show signs of guilt and we will know the truth.’ James dictated Signs of Guilt in alphabetical order. They included: Blushing. Nervous Hand Movements. Not Looking a Person in the Eye.

  ‘But she does those things already,’ said Byron.

  James confirmed that he was glad the two women had met again and that further meetings should be encouraged in order to get the full evidence about Jeanie’s knee. He added that things were very quiet that weekend. His parents were attending a cheese and wine luncheon at the Rotary Club.

  Beverley spent every afternoon the following week at Cranham House. The children often found her sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the pages of Diana’s magazines. But, despite James’s suspicions about Beverley and the lighter, the new friendship clearly made Diana happy. More than once she said it could do no harm. When Byron questioned what she meant by that, she shrugged as if she were throwing a cardigan from her shoulders. She only meant they shouldn’t mention it to his father, she said.

  He didn’t know why his father would disapprove. Byron overheard the women’s laughter from the plastic sun loungers, or a room inside the h
ouse if there was rain. It was true that the friendship had grown quickly and started in an unusual place, but he didn’t see how there could be anything wrong with being happy. He felt proud of the part he and James had played in bringing the women together. Sometimes he idled past with James’s notebook and they were so lost in conversation, his mother didn’t even look up. Beverley told her frequently how kind she was, how beautiful, how different from the other Winston House mothers. These things were true; it seemed natural she should become his mother’s confidante. He was careful to enquire after Jeanie but Beverley never brought her. Walt could look after her, she said. The knee was almost healed; her two stitches would be out soon. ‘Everything turned out for the best in the end,’ she said, smiling at his mother.

  In the meantime Diana was so taken up with her guest – fetching drinks, listening to her stories, providing her with small plates of canapé food, not to mention vacuuming after her visits, airing the rooms, plumping up cushions, putting away ashtrays and disposing of the empty bottles of advocaat she had begun to provide – there was no time for her to think about the hubcap. It was as if, every time Beverley came to visit, his mother was so busy tidying away one set of evidence, she forgot about the other. And maybe that was good for her too.

  When his father rang in the mornings she repeated the usual phrases; that no one was there, that of course he had her full attention. In the evenings she said the day had been the same as always. The holidays were going well.

  Since they were no longer at school, James and Byron wrote to each other and frequently telephoned. His mother didn’t question this; after all, she knew they were friends. She knew Byron liked to write a letter. He sat on the front step every morning, waiting for the postman. When James’s correspondence arrived, he rushed it straight to his room. He read it several times over and kept the letters in his Jacob’s box, along with those from the Queen and Mr Roy Castle. Meanwhile he filled pages and pages of the Operation notebook. He described on one occasion how the women laughed thirty-two times and his mother produced cigarettes from her handbag. ‘My mother used matches to light them,’ he read out on the telephone. ‘And my father does not like women smoking.’ (‘WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO MENTION THE ISSUE OF THE LIGHTER?’ hissed James.) Another time Byron noted that his mother had produced a plate of Party Rings biscuits. ‘Beverley ate all of them and did not share. She does not eat fruit. She does not drink tea. Yesterday she finished the Sunquick and we had none for breakfast.’ Again James repeated, ‘You still have to confront Beverley about your mother’s lighter.’