Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  ‘I’m, um, sorry?’ Robert said.

  ‘It wasn’t a movie, Rob – although for the record I hate being late to them, too – it was a play. You can’t be late to plays; if they do let you in, and I think they were perfectly right not to, the actors can see you. They can see you being late and they probably want to hit you almost as much as I have been wanting to hit you all bloody night.’

  Robert stared at her furrowed brow and snarling mouth and the words ‘I love you’ just said themselves.

  Saying I love you is quite a good way to get out of a fight when you’ve not said it before. Robert didn’t think it would work in this case.

  ‘Hello, my love,’ he said to Mara’s back.

  ‘What,’ she said. ‘What have you done? What is this? What have you done to the bannister?’

  What Robert had done to the bannister was strip the paint from it and carve vines all over it.

  ‘What did I tell you,’ Mara went on, ‘about your fuck-ugly carving?’

  ‘…’ was Robert’s reply.

  ‘If people see this, they will think I had someone in to do it. They’ll think it’s here on purpose. This is not how I want my house to look. This is not how I want people to think I want my house to look.’

  ‘OK, I know. I know you hate it. I know it’s awful. It just happened. I looked at it, thought, ooh that’s carvable, and the next thing I knew I was carving it, OK?’

  Mara stared at him as if he was crazy. Which was fair, all things considered.

  ‘Are you saying you are liable to carve any wood that happens to be lying around this house into hideousness, even if it’s attached?’

  ‘I can’t guarantee that that’s not the case.’

  ‘I really didn’t know that’s what I was getting into with this thing. You never said this was going to happen.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know, of course, but fine.’

  Mara ran her hand over the newly ornate bannister. ‘Well, eventually we’re going to have to move. We’re going to have to move somewhere with nothing wood about it.’

  Robert took her hands and rested his chin on her head.

  ‘I am quite seriously in love with you. You are probably the most good of all the good things. And you are a fine piece of arse.’

  ‘Christ, boy. There’s no need to go overboard on the complimenting me just because I’m being all understanding.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ll just drag you upstairs and have my way with you instead.’

  The Perfume Bottle.

  ITEM: PERFUME BOTTLE

  Place found: second-hand shop.

  The perfume in the bottle wasn’t that special. The woman was young and broke and bought the cheapest she could find, more because she liked to have the bottle full than because she was particularly worried about her own scent.

  The bottle had been a gift from her best friend when they were both twelve and reading books in which the heroines had dressing tables. It was the sort of bottle that belonged on a dressing table: cut glass with a green-tasselled atomiser.

  The young woman didn’t lose the bottle. She would never have lost the bottle. The bottle was in her suitcase. She lost the suitcase. It was large and orange and should have been difficult to lose, but she lost it. She sat down in a quiet square for half an hour with a coffee and a book, and when she left, she walked away without it.

  The suitcase stood where it was for a few hours until someone came along to clean the square. He dragged it to the nearest skip and left it beside it. The suitcase was on the heavy side and he had a bad back.

  It didn’t move from the skip until five the next morning, when a middle-aged woman, unable to sleep, took an early morning walk. She removed all the items from inside it, tossing them carelessly aside, and took it home. She’d been meaning to get a new suitcase.

  The bottle rolled under a bush, where it sat for three days.

  Mrs Featherby.

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG, MRS Featherby answered it in what some may have considered an unnecessarily short tone of voice. She’d been sitting alone with a cup of tea, unmolested for the fourth afternoon in a row. There had been no giggling from Bonny, no apologies from her father, no visits for tea.

  Mrs Featherby had been restored to her solitary existence, and now her peace was interrupted by the telephone.

  ‘Hiya Mrs F,’ said Bruno on the other end of the line. ‘How’s it going over there?’

  Mrs Featherby closed her eyes briefly before answering. ‘Fine, thank you. I’m fine. And yourself?’

  ‘Oh, just tops, Mrs F, just tops. Look, the chap with the bricks has come through, he’s got them all ready to go.’

  ‘Oh.’ For a moment Mrs Featherby didn’t know how to respond. She almost felt unsettled, almost reluctant, although this was just the call she’d been waiting for all these weeks. Before she could rouse herself to speak, Bruno went on.

  ‘The other good news is I’ve Thursday and Friday free, right, so, assuming the bricks arrive tomorrow, which he’s assured me they will, we can crack right on. Have you all snug, like, in no time.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘That’s excellent. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Thought you’d be pleased. Stop those pesky conversations you hate so much.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Right so, the bricks’ll arrive tomorrow, they’ve said before midday. You don’t need to worry, they’ll just pop their heads in to let you know they’re there, and leave them in the front garden, bit of tarp, all sorted.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  ‘And then I’ll be round the day after to start slapping them all together for you, you know. In wall form.’

  ‘That would be most satisfactory.’

  ‘Of course it will. Well, I’ll be off then, see you Thursday, Mrs F.’

  Mrs Featherby stood silently by the phone for a few minutes. She walked through to the sitting room to retrieve her now-cold tea. She gazed at her white wall. Soon it would be gone. Things would be back to normal. She would be protected from the world. Alone, as she preferred to be.

  That was what she wanted, she reminded herself. That was what she’d always wanted. To be left alone.

  Cassie.

  A BOY CAME UP TO Cassie one day, when the bark was halfway up her neck. He’d been watching her for a while, but not in a way she minded. It was as if he was just trying to figure her out. He didn’t assume any kind of ownership, as was so often the way with those who gaped and pointed. He just looked. He looked curious.

  ‘Hello,’ Cassie said, when he was close to her. ‘I’m Cassie.’

  ‘Hello,’ said the boy. ‘I’m Jake. Why are you turning into a tree?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to not turn into a tree enough to be able to stop.’

  ‘Oh. OK. I don’t think being a tree is a very good thing.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you will get pooped on by birds and peed on by dogs and people will climb you and one day someone will cut you down and make a fire. And you won’t be able to stop them. Because trees don’t have opposable thumbs. Or any kind of thumb. They’re pretty useless in a fight.’

  ‘I think that to not want to be a tree you have to have something that stops you from wanting to be a tree.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what I had. Before I lost it.’

  ‘What did you have?’

  ‘Oh, just a person. I don’t have her anymore.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘No. Not my mum.’

  ‘Oh. So you still have your mum?’

  ‘Yeah. I lost someone else. And losing people changes you, I guess.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘What?’ said Cassie, surprised.

  ‘When you lose something you just lose that thing. That’s all that’s different. You don’t have to be different just because of it.’

  ‘How do you know? What have you ever lost?’

  The boy st
ared at her for a moment. ‘Everything,’ he said.

  Cassie stared back at the boy. ‘Who are you here to meet?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not here to meet anyone. I’m just looking for some things. I’m looking for somethings.’

  Cassie tried to think of something else to say.

  ‘Bye,’ said the boy. ‘I hope you get better.’

  ‘I’m not sick.’

  The boy looked at her and walked away.

  Delia.

  DELIA WAS EXHAUSTED. SHE’D SLEPT badly, thanks in part to her now constant worry about Anthony and Jake, and in part to one of her absurdly young neighbours rowdily kicking the other twenty-one-year-old’s boy out of the house at three in the morning. The cries of ‘She doesn’t want you here, why did you even come over, you giant jerk face!’ went right into Delia’s brain like a needle and lodged there.

  She’d walked to the park, carrying what had become her usual sheaf of directions, spread out her jacket and sat on it with a sketch pad. She’d bought it two weeks earlier and left it sitting on her shelf ever since. In the past she would have rushed back to get breakfast ready for her mother, but she knew now that her mother would relish her absence as an opportunity to do things for herself. They were learning a comparative independence from one another.

  Delia spent half an hour trying to decide to draw something.

  She drew a circle.

  She traced over it again.

  She drew round and round the same circle until the charcoal was thick and solid and glinting.

  After twenty-four minutes she left the park.

  ‘Morning Dee,’ her mother trilled as she walked in the front door. Her mother had started trilling. Delia hadn’t realised things had gone that far. Delia grinned as she hung her bag on a hook on the wall, but stopped when the hook fell out of the wall and her bag crashed to the floor.

  ‘Morning Mum,’ Delia said as she walked through to the kitchen.

  ‘Guess what I did?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I made you breakfast.’

  ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘Guess what I made you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Poached eggs! I made poached eggs.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I did. I was a bit worried I’d burn the house down, but I wanted to try, and the stove top’s not that hard to reach. And I’d got this special poaching set that’s quite low and easy to use and I didn’t tell you about it because I wanted to surprise you and aren’t you surprised?’

  ‘This is amazing, Mum. You’re a rock star.’

  ‘You know, I really think I am. We should go out today, you and I. Do you have work to get done? We could go to a matinee.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Would you like to? And let’s get tea out somewhere. Let’s put on nice dresses and do tea and a matinee.’

  Delia grinned again and began to make coffee.

  Marcus.

  HE WALKED SLOWLY THROUGH THE park with his girl, her arm through his. She had come to his house to study because she could concentrate better at his house. She had told the boy, told that Jasper, not to call her today. She was working and spending time with her father and couldn’t be distracted.

  Her study did not seem that important, though. She’d sat with a cup of tea and a book for a while and when he’d asked her about it, she’d said that it was required reading. He did not think she was studying literature, but he didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want her to know he understood why she wanted to be always around.

  She had said she needed a break after an hour. She had said she needed to get outside for a while. She had said he needed to as well.

  And so they walked through the park.

  He saw mothers playing with their babies. He saw pregnant women. He wondered if it had been strange for her growing up without a mother. She had known about The Woman ever since she’d been old enough to ask, and had never expressed any inclination to find her. She’d always seemed happy.

  They had been two months away from having her when he and Albert had gone to see The Woman’s opening night. He had been prepared to be in excruciating pain all evening, worried about how the extremes of emotion through which The Woman was putting herself would affect the child within. He needn’t have been concerned.

  Although her face contorted itself beyond recognition, changing expression with a speed and dexterity that astounded him, that was as far as the emotion went. It barely made it to her collarbone and had no chance at all of getting to her womb. The baby was safe.

  Albert had been right. Of course he had.

  Albert had been right about everything.

  Mrs Featherby.

  THE BRICK MEN INSERTED THEMSELVES in Mrs Featherby’s consciousness at one thirty-seven in the afternoon. She hadn’t been expecting them to be punctual, but all the same, she had to fight the urge to explain to them what the phrase ‘before midday’ meant.

  They were quick and brutal in their assault on her front garden. They deposited their load callously and efficiently, leaving in their wake a crushed and ruined reminder of what had been a well-crafted bower. Mrs Featherby gave them tea and watched silently as they drank it.

  After they left, she gazed into the remaining mess for a while, barely aware of the passage of time. It wasn’t until there were school children walking past her, on their way home, that she stirred herself with a jolt, realising suddenly what she had been doing.

  She walked through to the kitchen and took the kettle from its stand. She stood by the sink, staring at the tap for several minutes. Finally, she crossed to the phone.

  Her first attempt went to voicemail, but on her second try Bruno answered immediately.

  ‘Hiya Mrs F,’ he said. ‘Problem is there? With the bricks?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘They’ve arrived, and they seem fine.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Well I’ll be over by seven tomorrow, then, if that’s OK for you, to start work.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Obviously it’s going to be a bit noisy and chaotic, but we’ll try to have it over with as soon as possible for you.’

  Mrs Featherby didn’t reply.

  ‘You all right with that, Mrs F?’ said Bruno.

  Mrs Featherby couldn’t see the plastic sheet from where she stood by the phone, but the draughts that had been inescapable since its advent were dancing around her ankles. She reminded herself that this would be getting her back to normal, not changing her.

  Once again, people would be barred from her by bricks and mortar. There would be no more causeless intrusions. No overheard whisperings, no photos. No childish chatter.

  ‘Mrs F?’

  ‘Actually, do you know, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d very much like to put it off. It’s just I, well, I think I have a migraine coming on, I get them from time to time, and if I’m right I won’t be able to handle the noise tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all, Mrs F. You OK?’

  ‘I shall be, thank you. They can sometimes last a couple of days, you see.’

  ‘Right, right. Never had migraines, but my sister-in-law gets them all the time.’

  ‘They are …’ Mrs Featherby paused for a moment, trying to think of a word to describe an affliction from which she’d never suffered. ‘Unpleasant,’ she concluded.

  ‘That’s what I hear. Well, I’ve no problem delaying for you. Thing is, though, I’m booked solid for the next two and a half weeks. I won’t be able to fit you in till then.’

  ‘I understand that completely. If you could just come back as soon as you’re able, that would be perfectly fine.’

  ‘Okey doke, well, if you’re sure. Hope you feel better soon.’

  Mrs Featherby walked through to the sitting room. There had been no Bonny. Mrs Featherby sighed. She carried on to the kitchen and began sifting flour.

  Robert.

  ROBERT WAS SITTING IN A deck chair watchin
g Mara and Bonny build a sandcastle. The sun was beating down on him in a way that would normally put him to sleep, but despite his stillness he was agitated.

  He was supposed to be relaxing, the point was to relax, but he was struggling. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he should be doing something, that he should be active in his own interests; he couldn’t convince himself to calm down.

  He watched as Bonny smoothed the sides of her castle before getting up and jumping on it.

  Mara’s father came and sat on the sand beside Robert and handed him a beer.

  ‘Hell, she’s getting tall, that girl,’ he said.

  ‘Yep,’ said Robert. ‘That’ll happen.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before the older man spoke again.

  ‘I’m glad you made it over. It’s been too long.’

  Robert cleared his throat uncomfortably. Mara’s father had moved to this small part of the Portuguese coast shortly after Bonny was born and they’d only ever managed two visits.

  ‘Things always seemed to come up, Geoff. We tried. I always seemed to get so tied up at work.’

  ‘You did.’

  Bonny had lain down flat on her back and was forcefully directing Mara to cover her with sand.

  ‘So what do you think you’ll do now?’ Geoff asked.

  Robert looked away and took a sip of his beer.

  Geoff continued talking before he could answer.

  ‘It’s odd, the way jobs work nowadays. Not how they used to. Everyone seems so sure that you’re supposed to know what you want to do, that it’s important to find just the right job, and that you have to figure it out early. I’m not so sure that’s how it works. Seems to me it’s much less complicated to just do whatever you want when you want to do it, for as long as that’ll work for you.’

  ‘That’s not always practical, is the problem, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, that’s true. That is true. I don’t have an answer for that.’