Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  When his father failed to collect Byron from the police station, Andrea Lowe came instead. She explained that Seymour had telephoned her from London and asked for her help. Byron sat very still and heard the constable reply they had the poor kid in a cell because they didn’t know what else to do with him. He had travelled three hundred miles in his pyjamas, school blazer and shoes. From the look of him, he hadn’t eaten for days. Byron tried to lie down and his feet reached the end of the mattress. The scratchy blanket would not cover him.

  Andrea was saying there were family issues. Her voice was sharp and fast. He thought she sounded frightened. The mother was dead. The father was – how could she put it? – not coping. There were no other living relatives, apart from a sister, and she was at boarding school. The problem was, she said, that he was a problem. He was trouble.

  He didn’t know why she would say that about him.

  The constable pointed out they couldn’t keep the boy in a police cell just because he’d run away from school. He asked if Andrea could take him in for the night but she said she could not. She would not feel safe alone with a young man with a history like his.

  ‘But he’s sixteen. And there’s nothing wrong with him,’ repeated the constable. ‘He says he’s dangerous but you only have to take one look at him to see he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s in his pyjamas, for goodness’ sake.’ He actually raised his voice.

  Andrea’s voice, however, remained low. Byron had to keep very still in order to hear, so still he was almost not himself. She spoke in a rush as if she didn’t want the words in her mouth. Had the police not heard? Byron had been sent away because he was trouble. These were facts, she said. He had stood and done nothing while his mother drowned. He even ate cake at her funeral. ‘Cake,’ she repeated. If that was not enough, there had been further trouble. The boy had been responsible for a head injury to his sister. The signs were there from the start. When he was ten, he had nearly killed her son on a pond. She had been forced to remove James from the school, she said.

  Byron’s mouth yawned open in a silent scream. It was too much to hear these things. He had wanted to help his mother. He would never have hurt James. And when he put the ladder outside, he was trying to save his sister. It was as if they were talking about another boy, one that was not him, but who also appeared to be himself. Maybe she was right? Maybe it was all his fault? The bridge and Lucy’s accident? Maybe he had wanted to hurt them all along, even though another part of him would never want that? Maybe he was two boys? One who did terrible things and another who needed to stop them? Byron began to shake. He got up, he kicked at the bed, at the bucket beneath. The tin bucket spun round and round, it was dizzying, and then it crashed against the wall. He picked it up. He threw it again at the wall and then it was too much to keep hitting the bucket at the wall because the bucket had dents in it now. It would fall apart. Instead he knocked the wall with his head to stop hearing, to stop feeling, to meet something solid, and it was like shouting at himself because he didn’t want to be rude and shout out loud. The wall was cold and hard against his head and it was a crazy thing to do and maybe that was why he couldn’t stop. He heard shouts at the door of the cell. Everything seemed to be going up a notch. To be happening in ways that did not add up.

  ‘All right, all right, son,’ said the constable and when Byron still wouldn’t stop, the constable slapped him. Andrea shrieked.

  It wasn’t to hurt, the constable said. It was just to pull the boy up. He looked appalled that he had done that to Byron. Watching from the door, Andrea Lowe was white. The constable held his head in his hands. This was too much, he kept saying, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening.

  ‘I cause accidents,’ Byron whispered.

  ‘Are you listening?’ shrieked Andrea.

  ‘I need to go to Besley Hill. I want to go to Besley Hill.’

  ‘You heard what he said,’ said Andrea. ‘He wants to go. He’s asking to go. He needs our help.’

  Another phone call was made and Andrea fetched her car. She was clearly beside herself now. She insisted with a brave voice that she was a close friend of the family; she would see this through. She wouldn’t let him sit in the front, however. When he asked where they were going, she wouldn’t answer. He tried to say something different, a question about how James was getting along at his school these days, but still she gave no reply. He wanted to tell her she was wrong about the pond, the bridge had not been his idea, it was James’s, but the words were too hard. It was easier to sit with his nails digging into his hands and say nothing.

  Andrea’s car thumped over the bars of the cattle grid and the moor opened up round them. It was wild and endless and he had no idea what he was doing in her car. He didn’t even know why he had run away from school or why he had gone to the police or why he had battered his head against the wall. He was maybe trying to show them that he wasn’t coping, that he was unhappy. He could so easily go back to being what he had been before. If only she would stop the car, if only they could pause everything a moment, it wasn’t too late, he could get back to what he was. But the car swung into the drive and people were already running down the steps to meet them.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Lowe,’ they said.

  She jumped out of the car and rushed towards the entrance. ‘Just get him out of my car. Get him out,’ she was saying.

  They moved so fast he had no time to think. They swung open his car door. They swooped on him as if he might explode at any minute. He dug his nails into the car seat, he grasped tight to the safety belt. Then someone grabbed his feet and someone else pulled at his arms and he was shouting no, no, no, please. More people were coming with jackets and blankets and they were saying mind his head and asking one another if they could find his veins. They were pulling up his sleeves and he didn’t know if he was crying or making no noise at all. How old was he? someone was shouting.

  ‘He’s sixteen,’ Andrea Lowe was shouting back. ‘He’s sixteen.’

  Andrea Lowe was crying, or maybe it was someone else.

  All the voices were getting mixed up because his head was not his any more. They were carrying him towards the building. The sky flew above him, as if pulled, and then he was in a room with chairs, and then he was nothing.

  The first day at Besley Hill he was not fit to move. He slept and woke and remembered where he was and felt such pain he returned to sleep again. On the second day he showed more signs of being calm and this was when one of the nurses said maybe he would like to take a walk.

  She was a small, neat woman. Maybe it was the colour of her hair – a soft gold bob – but he felt that she was kind. She showed him the dormitory where he would sleep, and the room where he could bathe, and where he could go to the lavatory. She pointed to the garden through the window and said it was a shame that such a lovely place had run to seed. He could hear voices, shouting and sometimes laughter, but they came and went. Mainly there was silence. A silence so profound, he could believe the rest of the world had been shorn away. He didn’t know if he was happy or sad for that. Since the injections they had given to calm his nerves, he found his emotions stopped at the point before he felt them. It was the same as seeing the black of sadness and being filled with something that did not match sadness, purple maybe, light as a bird that never lands.

  The nurse unlocked the door to the television room and when he asked why they had to keep it behind a glass door, she smiled and said he was not to be frightened. He would be safe at Besley Hill.

  ‘We are going to look after you,’ she said. Her face was pink and powdered, as if she had been dusted with icing sugar. She reminded Byron of a sugar mouse and he realized in that moment he was hungry. He was so hungry he felt like a hole.

  She told him her name was Sandra. ‘What’s yours?’ she said.

  He was about to answer when something stopped him. It was as if, in hearing her question, he saw a door, like the glass one in front of the television, in a place where previously he had ass
umed there was nothing but wall.

  Byron thought about what his life had become. He thought of all the mistakes he had made and there were so many his head reeled. Given the shame, the loneliness, the constant sorrow, there was no way Byron could keep being the person he was. It was more than he could endure. The only way to keep going was to become someone else.

  The nurse smiled. ‘I’m only asking your name. You needn’t look so worried.’

  Byron reached inside his pocket. He closed his eyes and thought of the cleverest person he knew. The friend who was like the missing part of himself and whom he adored as much as he had loved his mother. He curled his fingers around the lucky beetle.

  ‘It’s James.’ The name felt soft and raw in his mouth.

  ‘James?’ repeated the nurse.

  He glanced over his shoulder, waiting for someone to spring out and say, This young man is not James, he is Byron, he is a failure, he is a mess. But no one sprang from anywhere. He nodded his head to show the nurse he was a James.

  ‘My nephew is called James,’ said the nurse. ‘It’s a nice name. But, do you know? My nephew doesn’t like it. He makes us call him Jim.’ The name sounded funny, like jam, and he laughed. The nurse laughed too. It was like sharing something at last and it was a relief.

  He remembered his mother smiling the day they bought presents to take to Digby Road and her strange story about the man who liked champagne. He thought of her different voices, the feathery one for Seymour and the kind one for the children. He thought of her laughing with Beverley and the way she could slip, like a pool of water beneath a door, into being someone else. Maybe it was that easy? Maybe it was simply a question of giving a new name to what you were, and you could become that. After all, James had said you could call a dog a hat and discover, in doing so, that you had been missing something all along.

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated, a little more boldly. ‘I am Jim too.’ Already it didn’t seem so much of a lie now they had abbreviated it. It was as if his friend was right there with him at Besley Hill. He wasn’t frightened any more. He wasn’t even hungry.

  The nurse smiled. ‘Let’s get you comfy, Jim,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you take off your belt and your shoes?’

  A little trail of men passed in pyjamas, walking slowly. He wanted to wave, they looked so tired. Each had two marks stamped on their forehead, red as poppies.

  ‘You see,’ said the nurse, ‘lots of gentlemen wear slippers while they are here.’

  At the windows, the moor rose to touch the winter sky. The clouds were so heavy there might even be snow. He remembered the way the sun used to spill through the French windows at Cranham House in such clean warm squares he could stand in them and feel lit up.

  Byron knelt to remove his shoes.

  8

  A Different Ending

  UP ON THE moor, a veil of rain falls. Even in the dark, he is aware of the first traces of spring. Curled leaves prod through the earth, so new they are thin as grass. He finds a perfect yellow celandine and scraps of leaves that will become cow parsley and nettles. In town, he has already seen cherry blossom, pale catkins, new buds the size of crumbs. Once again, the land is changing.

  Jim thinks of James Lowe and Diana; of his sister Lucy, whom he no longer sees; of his father, whose funeral he did not attend. It made no difference. All the years of duct tape and double-checking and h-hello. He sees it with a clarity that robs him of breath, it hurts so much. He could never be safe. No matter how many times he did the rituals he would never protect himself because the thing he most feared had already happened. It happened the day he glanced at his watch and saw that seconds were being added. It happened the day his mother took a walk on the pond and dissolved into rain. The worst is not to come. It is already here. It has been with him for over forty years.

  There is so much to take in. He stands still, taking his breath in short gasps, as if someone is punching him from inside. He doesn’t know how he will walk back into the café, how he will resume his old life. The rift between the past and this moment is so huge it is like being marooned on a square of ice, seeing other patches of his life also floating around him, and unable to piece them all together. Sometimes it is easier, he thinks, to live out the mistakes we have made than to summon the energy and imagination required to repair them.

  He sees his mother throwing her watch into the pond. He thinks of the years that have come and gone since then, the days, the minutes. Their measurement means nothing.

  James Lowe is right. Their meeting has been there all along. It is something the universe requires. But for one person to help another, for one small act of kindness to succeed, a lot must go well, a whole myriad of things must fall into place. Over forty years have passed and yet the time in which they have not seen one another has not broken the two friends apart. James Lowe has found a good job, he has a wife and a mortgage; just as Byron has had many jobs, has never married, and does not own a house. They have held on to the hope that some day this moment will arrive. They have waited. He has kept James’s lucky beetle; James has kept the Brooke Bond tea card. Tears fill his eyes and stars lance the sky. He sobs, he sobs hard, hard as a child. For the loss, the suffering, the pain. For the waste, the wrong turns, the mistakes. For his friend. For forgiveness.

  With a clutter of wings a flock of starlings lifts into the air, unravelling and lengthening like black ribbon. He walks across the moor and further, further into the night.

  Byron, says the wind; the grass; the earth. And sometimes he tries to say it too, ‘I am Byron. Byron Hemmings.’

  He is no longer two people. He is no longer two fractured stories. He is one.

  EPILOGUE

  The Subtraction of Time

  IT IS NEW Year’s Morning and the air is clear. Giant clouds pass slowly over the stars. The land is spiked with a hoar frost and each blade of grass sparkles in the moonlight. It is too early to see clearly but a wind moves through the dead leaves and the sleeves of ivy, and they give the gentlest whishing. Across the hills, the church bell rings six.

  Byron sits outside the van in a coat and wool hat. Already he has been out to check his planting and cleared back a frozen carpet of leaves. Eileen is still sleeping on the pull-out bed, her hair thick across the pillow. As he got up he tucked the covers round her, and she ground her teeth but did not waken. She was fully dressed. He marvelled again at the smallness of her boots, the holly green of her coat on the back of his door. The wrapped pens hang in her pocket. Her sleeve, he noticed, was tucked up on the shoulder. He stopped. He took the cuff, where her hand might be, and smoothed the sleeve straight.

  He caught himself wondering if he should do it twenty-one times. His fingers twitched. He left the coat as it was. He shut the van door quietly behind him.

  He did not do the full set of rituals the previous night. He completed only part. After arriving at Eileen’s, and drinking tea, they drove to the moor and walked to a high point to watch the fireworks. From there the walk extended itself to Cranham Village, from there to the Green, and from there to his van. They didn’t even discuss what they were doing. Their boots just kept going. It was only as they reached the cul-de-sac that he realized what was happening and began to tremble.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Eileen said. ‘I could go home.’

  It took him a long time to say he would like her to stay.

  ‘Maybe one step at a time,’ she said.

  He has told her his real name and the story of James. He has told her about Diana and the accident. He has told her about Cranham House; how it was sold to developers; how he watched the bulldozers knock it to the ground. He has told her about the different treatments over the years and, with difficulty, he has explained he is safe so long as he does the rituals. None of this has come easily. The sentences have been like pieces of glass in his throat and mouth. They have taken hours. All the time, Eileen has listened, waiting, with her head very still, her blue eyes wide. She has not said, I can’t believe this. She has not s
aid, I must get some sleep now. She has said none of these things. The only thing she has mentioned is that she likes Cambridge. She would like to visit one day. He has shown her the Brooke Bond tea card.

  Next to the van, he sets up a fold-up table and two Zip Dee chairs, along with a pot of tea, milk, sugar, mugs and a packet of custard creams. The chair opposite his is for Eileen, and it sits there, looking back at him, open as a question.

  He arranges her mug so that the handle will be facing her when she sits.

  If she sits.

  He arranges the mug handle so that it faces himself.

  He turns it to a non-committal midway point.

  He says Eileen’s Cup, hello.

  Her name in his mouth is like touching a small part of her, a part she might not notice, like the soft cuff of her coat. He thinks of lying beside her in the night, their clothes creaking. The close-up smell of her skin. Her breathing alongside his breathing. He wonders if they will ever sleep naked but the thought is so big he has to shoo it away with a biscuit. His head spins.

  The truth is he hasn’t slept. It was past four when he finally realized Eileen was staying. He explained he had not said Tea Towel hello, Mattress hello, and she shrugged and said he was not to mind her. She would wait, she said. And after ten rounds of unlocking the door and stepping inside, each time jumping at the shock of the solid shape of her by his two-ring hob, she said at last:

  ‘You haven’t said anything to me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You haven’t said, Eileen hello.’

  ‘But you are not part of my van.’

  ‘I might be,’ she said.

  ‘You are not an inanimate object.’

  ‘I’m not saying you have to. I’m just saying it might be nice.’

  After that he lost heart. He pulled down the fold-up bed and fetched blankets, hoping to finish when she was asleep. She lay down and asked if he wanted to lie next to her. He sat first in a casual way, somewhere near her knees, and then gently he lifted his feet, and after that made a sighing noise as if he had not noticed he was lying down. She rested her head on his arm and was asleep within minutes.