Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ says the stranger. He drains the last of his cup and mops his mouth with a festive paper napkin. Jim continues to spray and wipe.

  The man is dressed in pressed casual clothes: fawn trousers, checked shirt, rainproof jacket. He looks the sort of person who has to think about relaxing. Like his clothes, his thin hair is a nondescript shade of greying brown, and his skin is soft and pale, suggesting a life spent mostly indoors. Beside his coffee cup he has folded his driving gloves into a bundle. Is he a doctor? It seems unlikely he was ever a patient. He smells clean. It is a smell Jim dimly remembers.

  The stranger pushes back his chair. He stands. And then just as he is about to move away he appears to pause. ‘Byron?’ he whispers. ‘Is it you?’ His voice is thicker with age, a little more fluid around the consonants, but unmistakable. ‘I’m James Lowe. I don’t suppose you remember?’ He offers his hand. It is palm-open, like an invitation. Years fall away.

  Suddenly Jim would like to lose his own, to have no hand, but James waits and there is such kindness in his stillness, such patience, Jim cannot move away. He reaches out. He places his hand on James’s. His own is shaking but James’s feels clean and soft, and warm too, like freshly melting candle wax.

  It is not a handshake. There is nothing shaken about it. It is a hand-grasp. A hand-hold. For the first time in over forty years, Jim presses his left palm against the right palm of James Lowe. Their fingers touch, slide together, and lock.

  ‘Dear fellow,’ says James softly. And because Jim is suddenly shaking his head and blinking his eyes, James removes his hand and offers instead the festive paper napkin. ‘I am sorry,’ he says. Though whether he is sorry for gripping Jim’s hand, or offering a used napkin, or calling him dear fellow, is unclear.

  Jim blows his nose to suggest he has a cold. Meanwhile James aligns the fastening of the zip on his jacket. Jim continues to dab his nose and James runs the zip right up to his neck.

  James says, ‘We were passing on our way home. My wife and I. I wanted to show her the moor, and where we grew up. My wife is getting some last-minute shopping before we head back to Cambridge. Her sister will be with us for New Year.’ There is something childlike about him, with the zip fastened all the way up to the collar. Maybe he realizes that because, looking down at it, he frowns and carefully unzips it to a midway point.

  There is so much to take in. That James Lowe has become a short, thin-haired man in his fifties. That he is here, in the supermarket café. That he has a home in Cambridge and a wife. A sister-in-law who visits for New Year. A waterproof jacket with a zip.

  ‘Margaret sent me to buy a coffee. I get under her feet. I am afraid I’m still not a practical man. Even after all these years.’ Since the handshake, James can’t seem to look Jim in the eye. ‘Margaret is my wife,’ he adds. And then he says, ‘I am her second husband.’

  Bereft of words, Jim nods.

  ‘It was a shock,’ says James. ‘It was a shock to find Cranham House gone and the gardens too. I didn’t intend to drive that way; the satnav must have made a mistake. When I saw the estate, I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered I’d heard about the new village. Only I had somehow imagined they would keep the old house. I had no idea they would flatten it.’

  Jim listens and keeps nodding as if he is not trembling or holding antibacterial spray or wearing an orange hat. Occasionally James pauses between sentences, offering an opening, but Jim can only muster a few hm-hm noises, a few trudges of breath.

  James says, ‘I had no idea, Byron, about the size of Cranham Village. I can’t believe the developers got away with it. It must have been so hard to see the old house go. And the garden. It must have been very hard for you, Byron.’

  The use of his real name is like being repeatedly hit. Byron. Byron. He has not heard it spoken in forty years. It is the ease with which James says it that unpicks him, as if he is helping Jim into an old piece of clothing, like his old blue gaberdine, for instance, something that he thought was mislaid, or no longer fitted. Still Jim – who is not Jim, who is Byron after all, but has long been someone else, this other person, this Jim, this man without roots, without a past – can’t speak. And sensing this, James continues:

  ‘But maybe you were ready to let the place go? Maybe you wanted them to flatten it. After all, things don’t always go the way we think. They never made another landing on the moon, Byron, after 1972. They played golf up there, they collected samples, and then the whole thing stopped.’ James Lowe pauses with his face in a frown of concentration as if he is rewinding the last sentence and listening again. ‘I don’t have a problem with golf. It just seems a shame they had to play it on the moon.’

  ‘Yes.’ At last. A word.

  ‘But it is easy for me to be sentimental about the moon, just as it is easy for me to be sentimental about Cranham House. The truth is, I haven’t come back. Not for many years.’

  Jim opens his mouth. It gropes and snaps around words that will not come. ‘They – they s-sold.’

  ‘The house?’

  He nods. But James does not appear confused or embarrassed or even surprised by the stutter.

  ‘The trustees sold it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am sorry. So very sorry, Byron.’

  ‘There was no – there was no money left. My father let things – he let things go.’

  ‘I heard as much. Such a terrible thing. And what happened to your sister Lucy? What did she do?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘She lives there?’

  ‘She-she-she married a banker.’

  ‘Does she have children?’

  ‘We lost – we lost – touch.’

  James nods sadly as if he understands; as if the rift between brother and sister was inevitable, given the circumstances, but nevertheless to be mourned. He changes the subject. He asks if Byron still hears from any of the old crowd. ‘My wife and I went to one of those drinks receptions – for old Winstonians. I saw Watkins. Do you remember?’

  Jim says yes, he remembers. Apparently Watkins went into the City after Oxford. He married a nice French lady. James adds that parties are more his wife Margaret’s thing. ‘So what brings you here, Byron?’

  He explains it is his job, to squirt tables, but James does not look surprised. He nods eagerly, suggesting this is marvellous news. ‘I’m retired myself. I took it early. I didn’t wish to keep up with new technology. And time is such a precise measurement. One cannot afford to make mistakes.’ Jim feels his knees weaken as though someone has just struck them with a blunt instrument. He needs to sit, the room is spinning, but he can’t sit, he is at work. ‘Time?’

  ‘I became an atomic scientist. My wife used to say my job was fixing the clock.’ James Lowe smiles but not in a way that suggests he thinks he has said anything funny. It is more crumpled, his smile. ‘It was a difficult job to explain. She found people either looked tired or busy. Although you would understand, of course. You were always the intelligent one.’

  James Lowe refers to caesium atoms and minus the twenty-fourth. There is a mention of Greenwich Observatory, as well as phases of the moon, gravitational pull and Earth wobbles. Jim listens, he hears the words, but they do not register as sounds with meaning. They are more like soft noise drowned by the confusion inside him. He wonders if he heard right; that James Lowe said he was the intelligent one? Maybe he is staring or making a face, because James falters. ‘It’s so good to see you, Byron. I was thinking of you – and then here you are. The older I get, the more I have to admit that life is strange. It is full of surprises.’

  All the time James has spoken, there has been no café. There has only been the two men, and a bewildering collision of past and present. Then there is a noise from the server, a whoosh from the coffee machine, and Jim glances up. Paula is staring straight at him. She turns to Mr Meade, murmurs something in his ear, and he too stops what he is doing and stares in the direction of the two old friends.

  James, how
ever, sees none of this. He is back to his zip. He realigns the pull with the metal teeth. He says, ‘There is something I need to say to you.’

  And all the time that Jim is hearing James Lowe, he is also seeing Mr Meade. The manager pours two cups of coffee and sets them on a tray. James’s voice and Mr Meade’s actions blend to become part of the same scene, like a soundtrack to the wrong film.

  ‘This is so difficult,’ says James.

  Mr Meade lifts the plastic tray. He is heading straight towards them. Jim must find a way of excusing himself. He must do it immediately. But Mr Meade is so close, the coffee cups make a nervous rattle against their china saucers.

  ‘Forgive me, Byron,’ says James.

  Mr Meade stops at their table with his plastic tray. ‘Forgive me, Jim,’ says Mr Meade.

  Jim has no idea what is happening. It is like another accident that seems to make no sense. Mr Meade sets the tray on the edge of the table. He addresses the hot beverages and also a plate of mince pies. ‘I have brought refreshment, courtesy of the management. Please, gentlemen, be seated. Sprinkles?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ says James Lowe.

  ‘On your cappuccinos?’

  The gentlemen agree they would both like sprinkles. Mr Meade produces a small dispenser and applies a liberal coating of powdered chocolate to each drink. He sets the table with knives and forks and clean napkins. He places the condiments in the middle. ‘Bon appétit,’ he says and ‘Enjoy,’ as well as ‘Gesundheit.’ Turning swiftly, he scampers towards the kitchen, only relaxing his pace when he is at a safe distance. ‘Darren?’ he calls out with sudden authority. ‘Hat.’

  Jim and James Lowe stare a moment at the gift of coffee and pies as if they have never seen such richness. James pulls out a chair for Jim. Jim in turn passes James his coffee and a fresh paper napkin. He offers him the larger of the two pies. They sit.

  For a moment the two childhood friends do nothing but eat and drink. James Lowe carves his mince pie into quarters and tidies each one into his mouth. Their jaws chew, their teeth bite, their tongues lick, as if to draw every shred of goodness from the sustenance provided. They are so insignificant, these middle-aged friends, one tall, the other small, one in an orange hat, the other in a waterproof jacket, and yet they each wait as if the other holds the answer to a question which for now lacks words. It is only once they have finished that James Lowe begins again. ‘I was saying,’ he murmurs. He folds his napkin in half and half again and then into a tiny square. ‘There is a summer I’ve never forgotten. We were boys.’

  Jim tries to drink but his hands are shaking so hard he has to give up on the coffee.

  James leans one hand on the table to steady himself and puts the other over his eyes, as if shielding himself from the present, and seeing nothing but the past.

  ‘Things happened. Things neither of us really understood. They were terrible things that changed everything.’ His face clouds and Jim knows that James is thinking of Diana because all at once he is thinking of her too. She is everything he can see. Her hair like a gold frill, her skin pale as water, her silhouette dancing on the surface of the pond.

  ‘Her loss—’ says James. And here his mouth freezes. There is a long moment of silence in which they both sit, saying nothing. James reassembles his face. ‘Her loss is still with me.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jim fumbles for his anti-bacterial spray but even as he picks it up he knows it is redundant and puts it down.

  ‘I tried to tell Margaret – about her. About your mother. But there are some things that can’t be said.’

  Jim nods, or does he shake his head?

  ‘She was like—’ and again James falters. All at once, Jim can clearly see the boy, the intense stillness that was always James Lowe. It is so obvious he can’t understand how he initially missed it. ‘I was never a big reader. It is only really in my retirement I have discovered books. I like Blake. I hope you don’t mind my saying this but – your mother was like a poem.’

  Jim nods. She was. A poem.

  It is clearly too much for James to keep speaking of her. He clears his throat, he rubs his hands. Eventually he lifts his chin, just as Diana used to lift hers, and he says: ‘And what do you do, Byron, in your spare time? Do you read too?’

  ‘I plant.’

  James smiles as if to say yes. Yes, of course you plant things. ‘Your mother’s son,’ he says. And then without explanation the smile slides into an expression of such grief, such sorrow, Jim wonders what has happened. James says with difficulty, ‘I don’t sleep. Not well. I owe you an apology, Byron. I’ve owed it to you for many years.’

  James screws his eyes shut but tears shoot out anyway. He sits, with his fists clenched into balls on the tabletop. Jim would like to reach out across the laminated table and take his hand, but there is a plastic tray between them, not to mention over forty years. And such is the consternation in his heart, his head, he can’t remember how to lift his arms.

  ‘When I heard what had happened to you – when I heard about Besley Hill – and your father’s loss – all those awful things that followed – I felt terrible. I tried to write. Many times. I wanted to visit. I couldn’t. My best friend and I did nothing.’

  Jim looks round helplessly and finds Mr Meade, Darren and Paula all staring from the servery. Embarrassed, they try to become busy but there are no customers, there are only plates of cakes to rearrange, and they are not fooling anyone. Paula mimes a little series of words with her fingers. She has to do it twice because he doesn’t respond, he only stares. ‘Are you two OK?’ she mouths.

  He nods once.

  ‘Byron, I’m sorry. I’ve spent my life regretting it. If only – My God, if only I’d never told you about those two seconds.’

  Jim feels James’s words reach him. They slide beneath his orange uniform and touch his bones. Meanwhile James brushes down his jacket sleeves. He picks up his driving gloves and undoes the poppers and slips his fingers inside.

  Jim says, ‘No.’ He says, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ In a fumbling rush, he plunges his hand in his pocket. He pulls out his key. James Lowe watches in confusion as he struggles to unhook the keyring. Jim’s fingers are shaking so hard he wonders if he will ever do it. He catches his nail on the silver ring but at last it is free and lying in the palm of his hand.

  James stares at the brass beetle. He doesn’t move. Jim stares too. It is as if both men are seeing it for the first time. The smooth folded wings. The small engraved markings of the thorax. The flattened head.

  ‘Take it. It’s yours,’ says Jim. He offers it again. He is both desperate to give and terrified of what it will mean when he goes to the van and does not have it. Everything will fall apart. He knows that and yet he also knows the keyring must be returned.

  Understanding none of this, however, James Lowe nods. ‘Thank you,’ he says softly. He takes up the beetle and twists it between his fingers, unable to believe what he has been given. ‘My goodness, my goodness,’ he says, smiling over and over, as if what Byron has returned to him is an intrinsic and long-lost part of himself. And then he says, ‘I have something of yours.’

  Now it is James’s turn to tremble. He fumbles with his inside jacket pocket, his eyes on the ceiling, his mouth parted, as if waiting for his fingers to get it right. Eventually he produces a wallet. It is brushed leather. He opens it and from a line of pockets he pulls something out. ‘Here.’ He places a crumpled card in Jim’s palm. It is the Brooke Bond Montgolfier Balloon card. Number one in the series.

  It is hard to say how the next things happen. One moment they sit opposite each other, staring at their returned possessions. The next, James stands and something seems to undo him even as his legs straighten. Before he can fall, Jim has leapt up and caught him. They stand a moment like this, two grown men, caught in each other’s arms. And finding one another again after all these years, they cannot let go. They hold on tight, knowing even as they do so that the moment they pull away, they will behave as if they h
ave not.

  ‘It was good,’ says James Lowe into his ear. ‘To find you again. It was good.’

  Jim, who is not Jim, who is Byron after all, murmurs yes. It was good.

  ‘Tout va bien,’ says James bravely. Or rather, his mouth makes the shapes of those words. The two men break apart.

  When they say goodbye they shake hands. Unlike the first time, and unlike the embrace, this is both swift and formal. From the same wallet, James Lowe produces his old business card. He points to the telephone number and says the mobile details are still the same. ‘If you are ever in Cambridge, you must visit.’ In turn, Jim nods and says yes, he will, knowing all the while that he will never leave Cranham Moor, that he will always be here and his mother will be here too, and now he has found it again, there can be no disconnecting from the past. James Lowe turns and creeps out of Jim’s life as unobtrusively as he has just entered it.

  ‘That looked intensive,’ observes Paula. ‘You all right?’ Darren suggests he might like a nip of something strong. In turn, Jim asks if they would excuse him a moment. He needs fresh air.

  There is a tugging at his elbow and, looking down, he finds Mr Meade. Flushed like a raspberry, he suggests Jim might be more comfortable if, if – he can’t say it, he is so embarrassed – if he removed his orange hat.

  7

  A Name

  CHANGING HIS NAME was not something Byron planned. The thought had never even occurred to him. He assumed that, once you had a name, that was who you were, you could not move from that. His new name was something that happened in the same way that Diana’s death was something that happened, or Besley Hill was something that happened, or the clouds’ movement over the moor was another. Each of these things came in the same moment they passed. There was no warning. It was only afterwards that he looked back and put words to what had occurred and thereby began to make order of something fluid; to find a specific context in which to fix it.