by Rachel Joyce
Byron walked down the meadow where the overflow of water lay on the land as huge as silver plates. He climbed the fence and sat at the pond’s edge. He gazed at the sky’s reflection, like another world, or a different truth, one that was coral-coloured and upside down. Already his father was home, talking in his study with the police, and Andrea Lowe was boiling the kettle for visitors.
A flock of gulls flew east, rising and falling, as if they might clean the sky with their wings.
2
Rituals
A MOUNTAIN OF cloud is stacked against the night sky, so solid it is like another horizon. Briefly Jim watches from the opened door of his van. The church clock chimes nine across the hills. It’s dark, though. So this must be night-time. The rituals are back but they are worse than ever. He cannot stop.
It is over for Jim. There is no escape. He does the rituals all day. And yet they make no difference. It is like being pressed against the bars of a cage. He knows they do not help, he knows they never work, and yet he has to do them. He has not slept or eaten since he fled from Eileen.
The very thought of her makes him shut the door and move inside the van. She was his one hope. She asked for his help. How could he have abandoned her like that?
Christmas has come and gone. Days have been nights and he has lost track of how many of them have passed. It could be two, three, he has no idea. He has heard rain, wind, he has noticed the van interior lit by patches of sunlight, but it is only once they are gone that he registers they may have been present. Catching his reflection in the window, he jumps, thinking someone is staring in, someone who intends him harm. His face sails flat and pale against the black square of glass. Stubble pins his jaw. Deep shadows hang beneath his eyes. The pupils are dark and bulging. If he were a stranger, passing himself on the street, he would skirt round. He would pretend he had not seen.
How did he get here? When he first started, all those years ago, the rituals were small. They were his friend. He could say, Hello Baby Belling, and it felt like a secret between himself and his bedsit. It was something easy to make things right. Even when he realized that he had to say it every time he entered the room, it only took a moment and then he could get on. If he felt a little panicky, if he was frightened, he could say hello quickly in a public place and make it sound like a joke. ‘Hello, Cup of Tea!’ he could laugh and people might think he was thirsty, or jovial, but not that he was weird. He could hide the words with a little cough.
Time changed the rituals. It was only when wrong thoughts or words swooped into his head that he began to experience new anxieties about them. He began to see that if you wanted everything to be safe, you couldn’t expect that to happen simply because you had said hello and moved on to do something else. You had to work for everything to be truly safe, otherwise it would not be strong enough. This was logical.
He is not sure how he got to the number twenty-one. That idea seemed to present itself as a rule to his mind and then get stuck. There was a period when he was terrified if the time did not involve a 2 or a 1. He had to keep doing the rituals, until the hands of the clock reached one of those numbers. His favourite times were two minutes past one. Or one minute past two. Sometimes he set his alarm so that he could wake up and look at them.
Soap hello. Plug Socket hello. Teabags hello.
He thought he was cured. He thought he could be ordinary. But the social worker was wrong and so was the psychic counsellor. It is too late for Jim.
There is nothing but him and the rituals.
3
An Ending
JAMES REMAINED ABSENT from school after the news of Diana’s death. Her funeral came on a Monday in early October. It was the same day as the accident, and a mere four months later, but so many large things had happened within that small space that time had changed yet again. It was no longer a linear progression from one moment to another. It lacked all regularity, all sense. It was a wild, ragged hole into which things indiscriminately fell and changed shape.
Above the moor, the October sky grew soft with blooms of purple cloud, broken occasionally by a cone of sunlight, or the swooping path of a bird. It was the sort of sky his mother would have loved, and watching it made Byron hurt because he could imagine her pointing at it and telling him to come and look. Sometimes he felt he was offering her perfect opportunities to return and her not doing so made her absence even more bewildering. She would surely come back soon. He only had to find the right incentive.
And so he kept looking. After all, her coat was on its peg. Her shoes were by the door. Her removal was so sudden it lacked all credibility. He waited every morning at the pond. He even lifted her armchair over the fence. He sat where she had sat at the water’s edge and the cushion still held the shape, the scent, of her. He couldn’t understand how it was that, in the moments it took for a boy to blow his nose, something so substantial as a mother’s life could stop.
All the women were present for the funeral and most of the fathers too. Some chose to bring their sons, but the little girls were not included. The women had decorated the church with arum lilies and cooked a York ham for the reception. There would be a good spread. So much energy went into the planning that it was like a wedding, except that there would be no photographer and guests wore only black. Tea would be served and orange squash, though Andrea had brandy in a hip flask for emergencies. No one could be expected to survive the morning without a little help.
It was the drink, he overheard people say. Towards the end poor Diana had been rarely sober. No one explicitly mentioned Beverley’s concert but it was clear they were thinking of such things. All the same, it was a tragedy. That a mother of two, and a wife of one, should die so young. And then came the autopsy and here was another shock. Her stomach contained water and the remains of an apple. Anti-depressants were found in her blood. Her lungs were plump with water and loneliness, as were her liver, her spleen, her bladder and the tiny cavities of her bones. But there was no alcohol. Not a trace.
‘I only ever saw her drink it once,’ Byron had told the policeman who came to interview the family. ‘She had a glass of champagne in a restaurant. She only took a few sips and then she left the rest. Really what she liked was water. She drank it all the time with ice. I don’t know if you need to write this down, but I had tomato soup in the restaurant. She let me have prawn cocktail as well. It wasn’t even lunchtime.’
This was the most he had spoken about his mother since the accident. The room stood very still as if the air was suspended, waiting for him to continue. He had caught sight of the adult faces and the policeman’s notebook and suddenly the gap that was his mother shot open at his feet. He had cried so long and uncontrollably he forgot to stop. His father cleared his throat. The policeman signalled to Andrea Lowe to do something and she fetched biscuits. It was an accident, the policeman said to Andrea. He didn’t even lower his voice, as if grief rendered the bereaved deaf. It was a terrible accident.
A private doctor in Digby Road was interviewed. He confirmed he had been providing Mrs Diana Hemmings with the drug Tryptizol for several years. She was a gentle lady, he said. She had come to him when she found she could not cope with her new surroundings. He expressed his sorrow and sent his condolences to the family.
Of course there were other stories as to why Diana had died, the most common being she had drowned and that this was her intention. How else to explain the stones in her pockets? Some grey, some blue, some banded like humbugs? Byron overheard the stories. He knew they were about his mother by the way people glanced in his direction and then fell silent, smoothing imaginary creases from their sleeves. But they had no idea. They had not been there. They had not seen what he had seen that evening by the pond, as the light dimmed and the rain fell. She had stood on water, swaying as if the air was full of music, and then she had lifted out her arms and dropped. She had returned not to earth but to water.
The town church was so packed, the last mourners had to stand. Despite the autumn
sun, most wore winter coats, gloves and hats. There was a smell cramming the air and it was so full, so sweet, Byron couldn’t tell if it was happy or sad. He sat at the front beside Andrea Lowe. He noticed how the congregation had watched and parted as he approached. They were sorry for his loss, they told him in muted tones, and from the way they looked at their feet, he saw his loss had made him important, and it was a strange thing but he felt proud. James sat further back with his father and even though Byron turned several times to smile and show how brave he was, James kept his head bowed. The boys had not met since before the accident.
When the coffin bearers emerged, it was too much for some people. Beverley gasped and Walt had to help her out. They limped down the aisle like a broken crab, crashing into the lily arrangement as they passed, so that a trail of yellowy powder clung to their black sleeves. The mourners stood very still, watching the coffin, singing quietly, while outside in the autumn sunshine Beverley screamed. Byron wondered if he should be screaming too because after all it was his mother, not Beverley’s, and maybe it would be a relief to make a noise like that, but he caught sight of his father, standing stiff beside the coffin, and Byron stretched his spine up tall. He heard his voice singing louder than everyone else and it was like showing them the way forward.
The sun was out for the reception at Cranham House. Beverley and Walt made their excuses and went home. It was exactly the sort of party Diana would have liked, except that she wasn’t there, they had lowered her into a cavity so deep it had made Byron’s head reel to look at it, and then they had scattered it with soil and her favourite roses, as if she would mind, and hurried away.
‘You have to eat,’ said Andrea Lowe. The new mother fetched him a slice of fruitcake and a napkin. He didn’t want it, he suddenly didn’t think he would ever want to eat again, it was as though his insides had gone, but it would be rude to refuse the cake so he ate it in one go, almost without breathing, just stuffing it into his mouth. When the new mother said, ‘Better now?’ he said yes, to be polite. He even asked if he might have another slice.
‘Poor children. Poor children,’ sobbed Deirdre. She held on to Andrea and shook like a shrub in the wind.
‘It has been very hard for James,’ murmured Andrea. ‘The nights have not been good. My husband and I have decided—’ She gave a sideways conspiratorial glance that landed on Byron and made him feel he shouldn’t be there. ‘We have decided steps must be taken.’ Byron put down his cake plate and slipped away.
He found James down by the pond. On Seymour’s orders, it had been drained. A local farmer had taken the geese and the ducks had either gone with them or flown away. It still shocked Byron how shallow the space looked, how slight, without water or birds. The green tangle of nettles, mint and cow parsley came to an abrupt halt where the surface of water had previously started. The bare black mud glistened in the sun, strewn only with the remaining logs and stones that Byron had once so carefully placed to make a bridge, and the turfy island in the middle was no more than a hump of earth. It was hard to understand how his mother could lose her balance and drown in something so insignificant.
James must have climbed over the fence and slid down the bank; his church trousers were a mess. He stood in the centre of the mud bed, hauling at one of the longest branches and grunting with the effort. He was bowed into it, clutching one end in both hands, but the thing was almost his size and he couldn’t shift it. His shoes were caked with mud, as were the sleeves of his grown-up jacket. A column of gnats hung beside him.
‘What are you doing?’ called Byron.
James didn’t look up. He kept heaving and heaving and getting nowhere.
Byron climbed the fence and moved carefully down the bank. He stood on the edge because he didn’t want to ruin his funeral shoes. He called James again and this time James paused. He tried to hide his face behind the crook of his elbow, but there was no denying he was upset. His face was so red and swollen it looked mangled.
‘It’s too big for you,’ shouted Byron.
There was a grating sound from James’s chest, as if the pain inside him was more than he could bear. ‘Why did she do it? Why? I can’t stop thinking—’ He went back to yanking at the log and groaning but his hands were so muddy they kept slipping and twice he almost dropped it.
Byron didn’t understand. ‘She didn’t mean to fall. It was an accident.’ James was sobbing so hard he had stringy bits dangling from his mouth.
‘Why – why – why was she trying to cross the pond?’ he wailed.
‘She was fetching an egg. She didn’t like the crows to get them. She slipped.’
James shook his head. The gesture was wild and it shot through his whole body so that he stumbled beneath the weight of the log, on the verge of losing his balance. ‘It was because of me.’
‘You? How could it have been?’
‘Didn’t she know our bridge was dangerous?’
Byron saw his mother again, waving from the pond. Showing him the goose egg. She wasn’t walking on water, of course she wasn’t. Despite the heat, his skin prickled with cold.
‘I should have checked the load bearing,’ sobbed James. ‘I said I would help her and I did all the wrong things. It all came from me.’
‘But it didn’t. It came from the two seconds. That was what started everything.’
To Byron’s alarm, his words caused James to howl again. He had never seen James like this before; so raw, so desperate, so angry. He was still tugging at the log but with such small, ineffectual movements he looked almost defeated. ‘Why did you listen to me, Byron? I was wrong. Don’t you see? I was even wrong about the two seconds.’
Byron didn’t know why but suddenly it was hard to get enough air inside his lungs. ‘You read it in your newspaper.’
‘After your mother—’ James couldn’t say it. He tried again. ‘After she—’ He couldn’t say that either. He pulled harder at the log. He looked furious with it. ‘I did more research. The two seconds didn’t happen in June. One was added at the beginning of the year. The other will be at the end.’ He bared his teeth as he sobbed. ‘There were no extra seconds when you saw them.’
It was like a physical blow. Byron clutched his stomach. He maybe even stumbled. He saw in a flash his hand poked in front of his mother’s face as he tried to show her the second hands of his watch. He saw the car swerve to the left.
The air was broken with shouts from the lawn. Figures in black were searching the garden, calling for James. They were not calling for Byron. And hearing them, he realized that for the first time ever, there was a rift, a breakage, between the two friends that could not be healed.
He said quietly, ‘Your mother’s looking for you. You’d better put the log down and go back.’
James lowered it towards the mud, as if it were a body. He rubbed hard at his face with his sleeve and moved towards the bank where Byron stood waiting for him, but when Byron offered his handkerchief James did not take it. He couldn’t even lift his eyes. He said, ‘We won’t be seeing each other any more. My health is a concern. I have to move schools.’ James gave a clunk of a swallow.
‘But what about the college?’
‘We have to think about my future,’ said James, sounding increasingly not like himself. ‘The college is not the best place for my future.’
Before he could ask more, Byron was aware of a tugging movement at his left pocket.
‘This is for you.’
Reaching down, he felt something smooth and hard between his fingers but there was no time to look because his friend was already running away. James scrambled up the bank, almost on hands and knees, clutching at the long grasses to haul himself forward. Sometimes they tore out in his hands and almost sent him flying backwards, but he kept hauling himself up. He practically flipped himself over the fence.
Byron watched James tearing through the meadow. His jacket was hanging from one shoulder and several times he stumbled, as if the grass was trying to pull off his shoes. The
space between them grew wider, until James was finally through the picket gate and racing towards the group of parents at the house. Andrea rushed across the upper lawn to guide him out of the way while James’s father drew up in the car. She ushered James into the back seat as if he were on the verge of breaking and slammed his door shut. Byron knew he was being left behind.
In one last effort to stop what he knew was coming, he threw himself up the bank and over the fence. He stooped to crawl between the fencing posts and in the rush maybe he knocked his head, maybe he caught the nettles, because his legs were fizzing suddenly and his head was pounding. He tore through the thick meadow grass in pursuit of the Lowes’ car, as it made its steady progress down the drive. ‘James! James!’ he was shouting, and the panting and the words burnt like wounds to his chest but he wouldn’t stop. He threw open the picket gate, he charged past the cutting garden, the stone path slapping at his feet. He ran the length of the beech hedging, sometimes crashing into the leaves he was so dizzy, and across the grass to the drive. The car was almost at the road. ‘James! James!’ He could make out his friend in the back seat, the tall silhouette of Andrea Lowe beside him. But the car did not slow and James did not look back. It turned out of the drive and then it was gone.
Just at that point where his feelings threatened to rise up and swamp him, Byron found himself feeling completely empty.
4
The End of the Duct Tape
DESPITE THE CHANGE in temperature, the unseasonably mild weather, Jim does not go to the moor. He does not go to work. He cannot even walk as far as the phone box to ring and explain to Mr Meade. He assumes he will be out of a job and hasn’t the energy to feel, let alone do, anything about that. He doesn’t check his planting. He spends each day in the van. The rituals never stop.