Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  Delia paused, her heart thumping. She hadn’t held a paintbrush in years.

  ‘I don’t have any—’

  ‘Nonsense, obviously you’ll use anything you want of mine. I mean, not my best, obviously, only I use that, but not the horrible battered things I keep for the dross who insist on forgetting their own all the time either. I’ll give you nice brushes. Or pencils. Or whatever. Please do.’

  Delia swallowed. ‘Um. OK?’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Mattie. ‘Now, come up with me, we’ll cadge you one of the good spots.’

  In the studio a girl, a much younger girl than Delia, was doing stretches in the corner by the screen. Delia wondered suddenly if she should have been doing stretches all this time. It seemed sensible. Mattie dragged her over to the store cupboard and opened one of the drawers inside it.

  ‘Now, since you’re not a confident painter you may want to just stick to charcoal.’

  Delia bit her lip. She looked over at the easels and back into the drawer of Mattie’s middle-quality art supplies, before grabbing a handful of brushes and some acrylic paints.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Mattie. ‘I thought so.’

  As the rest of the class began to trickle in, Delia set herself up beside the window.

  The model shed her robe and sauntered into the middle of the room.

  ‘We’re going straight into it today,’ said Mattie. ‘We’ll do a half-hour pose, then a few short ones, and another half-hour to finish.’

  Delia squeezed a few fat worms of paint onto the plastic box she was using as a palette and began to mix colours. She began painting the model’s pensive, downturned face a mossy-brown colour.

  It was all still there. The brush felt familiar and comforting, as if she’d painted every day for years.

  As she worked, Delia began to be less aware of the class around her. Soon she was ignoring even the model as she got sucked into her own painting.

  ‘All right,’ called Mattie. ‘That’s time.’

  She came up behind Delia as the model stretched again and prepared for the next set of poses. ‘Good work, my girl. Those colours are extraordinary. Although, the point of this class isn’t so much to be as fanciful as all that.’

  Delia looked again at what she’d painted. The green face gave way to paler shoulders that flowed into arms. Instead of hands, the arms led to a cluster of delicate brown branches, covered over in leaves. Her waist sloped into rough bark on her hips, and grew down into a twisted trunk, spreading its roots into the floor.

  Robert.

  IN SPITE OF HIS EXCESSIVE caution, it took Robert less than a week to finish the chest. He tried quite hard not to feel smug, but he really did think it was pretty good.

  ‘Look, my daughter,’ he said to Bonny, who was sitting on his shoulders. ‘Look at what your father has created. From a pile of rubble, I have built Storage.’

  ‘It’s boring,’ said Bonny.

  ‘Incorrect, dear girl. It is wondrous. It is a thing of beauty and joy. It is my previously latent potential to build such glory that has prevented your mother leaving me all these years.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. I am brilliant. That is all you ever need know.’

  Mara hugged him a little too fervently when he brought her out to see it.

  ‘It’s not that surprising, is it?’ Robert said. ‘That I managed to construct a thing without losing a digit.’

  ‘It needs varnish.’

  ‘Yes, well, fine. Obviously.’

  Robert paused and looked down at her. ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m brilliant. I’m happy you’ve done this.’

  ‘If I’d known carpentry was all it took, I’d have discovered the shed ages ago. We’re talking full minutes here.’

  ‘OK, you,’ said Mara. ‘Go varnish your chest.’

  ‘I’d rather varnish yours.’

  ‘Please. You can’t handle it. And I have work to do.’

  ‘Then leave me, strumpet. Leave me to my impressiveness.’

  Mrs Featherby.

  ‘I FIGURED SOMETHING OUT,’ Small Girl Bonny called through the plastic barrier. She hadn’t come over officially for tea this time, although she had once or twice more since her first visit.

  Mrs Featherby looked up from the skirt she was mending. ‘Hello, Small Girl Bonny. Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Um, no. It’s not a tea day today, is it?’

  ‘It’s not a pre-arranged tea day, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a tea day at all.’

  There was a silence from the silhouette. ‘I figured something out,’ it said again.

  ‘All right. What did you figure out?’

  ‘I figured out that you haven’t always been alone all the time.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘How did you figure that out?’

  ‘Your name is Mrs. Mrs is the name you get when you get married. So you had a husband one time, I think.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What was your husband like?’

  Mrs Featherby smoothed her hands over the stitches she’d made and began going over them a second time. She was glad Small Girl Bonny had elected to remain on the other side of the plastic.

  ‘His name was David,’ she began. ‘He was tall and black haired and he had a moustache. He flew planes. We met when we were both in France, although we were from the same part of England. On our honeymoon I taught him how to ride horses, he never had before. After we’d been married four years his plane crashed. And he died.’

  There was further silence from beyond the plastic. Then: ‘That’s a very sad story.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Featherby, ‘it’s not a true one. I was on an assignment, you see, a mission, and I got hurt. My back was damaged and it was going to take a long time to recover. I spent quite a few months in hospital, and when I was well enough to leave, it was still going to be a long time before I was ready to work again, so I came here. I knew that I would be here for longer than I was usually in one place, and I needed a story. When something’s happened to you that shouldn’t have happened, when someone has died before they should have died, people don’t know how to talk to you, so they don’t ask questions.’

  ‘So, that is just the story you told to everyone?’

  ‘Actually, I never did. I had it ready, but no one ever asked. You’re the first person to hear it, Small Girl Bonny. I hope you enjoyed it.’

  The Ring.

  ITEM: RING

  Place found: School playground, in dirt beside rubbish bin.

  The ring belonged to a girl who has still not admitted to herself that it’s gone. In spite of the fact that she’s moved twice since, she tells herself that it’s bound to turn up one day. One morning, when she’s not looking for it, there it will be, sitting on the lid of a long-abandoned tub of moisturiser, or in the pocket of a pair of jeans.

  In reality, she didn’t lose the ring at home, so this can never happen.

  It slipped off her finger as she fought her way through the crowds in London Bridge Station at quarter to nine on a Thursday and she didn’t notice its absence until hours later. She went to take it off so she could put on some hand cream, and there it was: gone. She decided she must have neglected to put it on after her morning run, and forgot about it for the rest of the day. She remembered two days later and searched at home, but it wasn’t there.

  The ring had been a gift from a man who later deceived her. It was the one gift she’d had from him, in three years of entanglement, and the one thing she could use to convince herself that he really wanted her, in spite of everything he did. After it was gone, his coldness became more apparent. His failure to show up, his refusal to acknowledge her successes, they were no longer tempered by the one sign of affection the ring had been.

  Delia.

  DELIA HAD DECIDED SHE WAS going to have to try to find ways of getting around on her own. She’d made it to the supermarket and back by writing out directions in excruciating detail. She hadn’t really needed
to go, she always had everything delivered anyway, but she invented an excuse just to give herself the challenge. The journey time was half an hour, which she decided was very nearly worth the three hours the directions had taken her to write.

  A week later she went to the movies by herself, a journey that involved a bus, so had room for greater error. This too, was a success, thanks to her five pages of notes.

  After a month of small steps, she was ready to give the tube another go. She called Anthony.

  ‘I’m having a cider on the South Bank,’ she said. ‘Come and meet me?’

  She was on her second by the time he arrived.

  ‘Where were you trying to go and why didn’t you call me?’ he asked.

  ‘Here. And I did call you. I called you just now.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  Delia waved her sheaf of paper. ‘I wrote it down. All of it. Step one is “Turn left onto street”. Two is “Walk past eight houses”.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, we’re just going to have to face up to the fact that this might be what I need to do from now on.’

  ‘It isn’t what you need to do. You can just call me.’

  ‘That’s worse. Or at least as bad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Not because it’s you. I mean, kind of because it’s you. I just don’t want to be some girl who needs her boyfriend to take her wherever she wants to go.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I mean, if you were my boyfriend. Are you my boyfriend?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well then. It hasn’t been acceptable to rely on your boyfriend to take you places since you lot all went away to war and we stayed here making factories or whatever. I can do it on my own. It’s just harder. Which is OK; there are lots of people who find doing things harder. People who are in wheelchairs, or missing an arm, or really short.’

  ‘But if they had something that took the place of that, they’d probably use it.’

  ‘Thank you, but I do not want you to be my prosthetic arm.’

  ‘How long did that take you to do?’

  ‘I’m not telling you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s not because I’m embarrassed about it, it’s just that it’s my problem.’

  ‘If I’m your boyfriend—’

  ‘I thought we’d just established that you are.’

  ‘Yes, so doesn’t that mean that part of my job is to help with your problems?’

  ‘OK, first, being my boyfriend is not a job. Second, yes, but I get to choose when you help and when I do something myself.’

  ‘What if I disagree?’

  ‘You can voice your objections and I will seriously consider them before overruling them.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘You can’t be going out for hours every day to help me find my way around. You’ve an actual job.’

  ‘Yes, but I freelance, I get to do it whenever I want. If I spend the day with you, I can just do my work in the evenings.’

  ‘When you should be spending time with your son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you should be talking to Jake. Helping him with his homework, advising him about girls.’

  Anthony shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I do see Jake, though. He was in the kitchen this morning, when I had breakfast. I think he was having his breakfast too. I saw him.’

  ‘I should hope so. How is he?’

  ‘Fine. He’s fine.’

  ‘I should probably meet him, no? I mean, when you think it’s a good time, obviously.’

  ‘Sure. Well, now that I’m down here, what shall we do?’

  ‘Just sit. Let’s just sit for a while.’

  Robert.

  IT WAS A WEDNESDAY SO Robert had taken Bonny to the zoo. They’d made the zoo trip once before, but Robert figured there wasn’t a limit on how many times a five-year-old girl should be exposed to great animals.

  There was a boy looking at them as they watched the giraffes. Robert gave him a small smile and glanced around, looking for the adult or group of similarly-aged children he must belong to.

  ‘Hello,’ said the boy.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bonny.

  ‘The giraffes are my favourite,’ said the boy.

  ‘Giraffes have billions of bones in their necks. My dad knows the actual number. He knows all of the things. Where’s your dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is your dad at the zoo, too? I’m Bonny. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Jake,’ said the boy. ‘Did you know there have been giraffes for eight million years? Well, not giraffes exactly, but things like them.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bonny. ‘How do you know? Did your dad tell you? My dad tells me all the things.’

  ‘Um, I don’t know.’

  ‘Or did your mum? My mum tells me things too, but my dad more because he doesn’t have to do working.’

  Robert decided he should intervene. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked the boy. ‘Are you here with school?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m fine. I was just looking for something. I should get back.’

  Robert was a bit concerned as he watched the boy walk away, but he did seem old enough to navigate the zoo and find his way back to whichever group he was a part of. He and Bonny turned and went off to find the lions.

  Cassie.

  IT TOOK ONE MONTH, TWO weeks, and six days for the bark to reach Cassie’s boobs.

  She was never alone now, Jasper checked on her daily and her mum would leave only when Bridie was there.

  Sometimes the airport staff – the flight attendants and shop workers – would talk to her, but something in their manner was odd, as if they were trying to talk normally, trying not to show how strange they found her. One of the security guards would always try to linger close by in case anyone needed moving on. In case anyone got too invasive. She knew Jasper had asked them to.

  It was only then, when she was more tree than girl, that a letter arrived.

  Cass,

  I’m sorry.

  I do love you. But I’m not coming back yet. Not now.

  There were so many words in the first version of this. But they didn’t really say anything. I hope you’re OK.

  I love you. I love you.

  See you sometime.

  Floss

  After another week, when the bark began tickling her armpits, Cassie showed Bridie.

  ‘Well,’ said Bridie. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘She said “Not now”,’ said Cassie. ‘So maybe that means she’s coming back later.’

  ‘She’s not coming back.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘All that means is that she has a vague inclination to maybe come back, maybe, one day, for a while, maybe, if nothing else is going on, and she’s nowhere better to be, maybe she’ll pop over for a bit. Maybe. Probably with a hot girlfriend on her arm. Or even a boyfriend; I wouldn’t put it past her.’

  Bridie’s tone was dark, as if she was determined to be personally offended by Floss’s potential future lovers. Cassie didn’t say anything. She let Bridie continue, let her vitriol grow until she had repeated herself enough to be aware of it and grow silent.

  Floss loved her. She still loved her.

  They had been in Floss’s tiny flat the first time she’d said it. Floss’s vile flatmates had both gone away for the weekend, and the weather was horrible. Cassie and Floss sat watching foreign movies for eight hours straight. They’d been spending almost all their time together – Cassie’s other friends had been annoyed – but nothing had really been said or done by either. The credits had been rolling and their drinks had been empty but neither of them made a move to change either. Floss had sat up suddenly and bitten Cassie on the ear.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Cassie had asked.

  ‘Because,’ said Floss, ‘I love you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m in lo
ve with you.’

  Cassie had said nothing, just looked. Then she’d sat up too, so both of them were kneeling on the couch, facing each other. She’d leant forward slowly and taken Floss’s head in her hands.

  Cassie had never kissed anyone before, not properly, not when it really mattered. She didn’t know if Floss had, but it seemed likely.

  They hadn’t left the flat for the rest of the weekend.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bridie was saying. ‘Now you know she’s not coming. So you can concentrate on getting out of here.’

  Cassie didn’t reply. She wished she hadn’t shown her the letter.

  Jake.

  THERE WERE LOW PILES OF lost things all over the floor of Jake’s room, spreading and merging, so he had to pick his way carefully from the door to his bed. He lay on top of his bed sheets, gazing at his collection of lost things, feeling the weight of their stories.

  When he wasn’t at home he would look everywhere for new items to add to it. He’d bought more things from the shop. He’d found some in the park, some in the zoo, some at school. When he was home, he was always in his room. He would re-examine the books and shoes and necklaces he’d found, replaying how they’d come to be lost.

  He was only half aware of it himself, but he was seeing his dad less and less. Sometimes it was like he was there, properly there, but he was blurred around the edges. Sometimes it was more like he wasn’t there at all, but there was a shadow of him, like a sketch someone had drawn before beginning a proper painting.

  When Jake was able to focus on him enough, he thought that his dad couldn’t quite see him clearly either.

  There was the time Jake was sitting on the floor of the living room, reading a book. One of his mother’s favourites. The phone had rung and Jake’s dad had got up from the chair where Jake hadn’t realised he’d been sitting.

  ‘Hello?’ he’d said, sounding eager at first.

  ‘Oh. What? Oh, Jake. Right.’ He had swallowed and looked around the room before his eyes came to rest on Jake sitting on the floor.