The Stopped Heart

by Julie Myerson

  What? I said. What’s the matter, Lottie? What is it?

  Lottie nodded at something just past my shoulder.

  There, she said, and she narrowed her eyes as if she was staring at something.

  What?

  Eliza, look! There. It’s her—she’s just behind you.

  I couldn’t help it. I shivered.

  What do you mean? I said. Who’s behind me?

  Her. The lady.

  I tried to look behind me. Lottie was laughing, very amused now.

  There’s no one there, I said.

  Yes, there is.

  Where?

  I watched as Lottie’s face went cool and intent, as if she was trying even harder to look at something.

  There! By your neck—

  My neck?

  No, your hair. Oh no, now she’s right by your hand!

  I pulled my hand back sharply and looked at our mother. I tried to laugh.

  What? Now you’re saying you can see old Mrs. Narket standing next to me?

  Still gazing at the space around me, Lottie shook her head.

  Not Mrs. Narket, no. The other lady.

  What do you mean? What other lady?

  The one with the long black hair. The one that cries all the time and doesn’t have any skirts.

  Our mother seemed relieved that it wasn’t Mrs. Narket. She let out a laugh.

  No skirts? A lady in the altogether? Now that would certainly be enough to make anybody cry.

  Lottie gazed at our mother and chewed her lip as if she was considering this. Then she shook her head.

  No, she ain’t in the altogether. She don’t mind about the skirts. She has other clothes. She has breeches.

  A lady in breeches?

  For a moment Lottie looked upset.

  And she’s crying because of the man.

  What man?

  The man that took her little girls away and did—this!—to them.

  Lottie raised up her hands and brought them down so hard on the table that the spoons and knives rattled in the drawer. I gasped. I saw a flash of fear go across our mother’s face.

  Don’t do that, Lottie, she said. I mean it. You just stop it right this minute or you’ll break something.

  Keeping herself very still, Lottie blinked.

  It’s what the man did.

  The man. A cold, dark pain in my chest. For a quick moment I couldn’t breathe.

  What man? I said. What little girls?

  Lottie didn’t look at me. She had a look on her face that I didn’t recognize: you would think she was staring at something that was going on a very long way away from us.

  I don’t know if they’re in heaven or not but I don’t think they’re coming back ever again.

  IT’S MAY. THE SKIES ARE BLUE AND THE DAYS ARE LENGTHENING. They had a week or two of coolness and cloud, but now every morning they wake to the same wide, steady sky, the same swelling promise of heat.

  Leaving the back door open, Mary walks down the garden to hang the washing. The dog follows her, bobbing in and out of the flower beds, sniffing at leaves and shrubs, squatting always to pee in the exact same, yellowing place on the edge of the lawn where the grass is mostly moss and scrub and dandelions.

  She hasn’t named it yet. But for Graham just the fact that she hasn’t made him take it back is enough. Three weeks now they’ve had it.

  A week ago, Ruby phoned up and said if they didn’t want it, she’d take it. She said that her mother had agreed to seriously consider it if it would make her work harder at school.

  Mary heard Graham laugh.

  “If she really said that, then she’s an even bigger fool than I thought she was. The only thing that’s ever going to make you do any work at school is you, Rubes. And anyway, that dog was Mary’s birthday present and we’re keeping it, thanks very much.”

  Ruby must have asked if Mary really wanted to keep it, because she heard Graham hesitate.

  “Yes. Yes, she does. She’s coming around to it anyway.” He paused, listening. “Oh, she did, did she?” Then he laughed. “And anyway, I seem to remember that you don’t have the best track record when it comes to looking after animals,” he added, reminding Ruby of the hamster that she took to school that drowned in a bucket of glue.

  When he came off the phone, he looked at Mary.

  “She says it wasn’t her fault.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The hamster and the glue. She says she was seven years old and the supply teacher left the cage door open.”

  Seven years old. Feeling Graham watching her, she tried to smile. Heard him sigh.

  “Did you tell her you didn’t want the dog?”

  Mary remembered the phone call. Ruby, clearly put up to it by her mother, ringing to wish her a sullen happy birthday.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you said something?”

  Thinking about that morning, something inside Mary seemed to collapse.

  “Oh God. I don’t know what I said. I can’t remember. You know what she’s like. She hears whatever she wants to hear.”

  Graham looked at her with pain in his eyes.

  “I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter if you said it or not. I was only making conversation.”

  “All right.”

  “I was, you know.”

  “I know you were.”

  He took a breath.

  “She’s not having it anyway. I’d rather take it back to the breeder than let her and her mother get their hands on it.”

  “Come on,” Mary says now to the dog as she makes her way down the garden with the washing basket. “Come on, let’s go and hang up the washing.”

  They thought about having a line in the yard—there’s even a handy iron hook on the old brick wall. But she’s come to rather like this short walk—down the shallow stone steps, brushing past the tired and leggy old lavender and on through the long, unmown grass, down toward the huge old tree trunk that looks as if it’s lain there for a hundred years or more.

  The line is strung between two apple trees. On a hot day, the washing is dry in less than half an hour. She can get a couple of loads done before lunch.

  They haven’t done anything to the garden yet, though they keep on telling each other they will. In the old house, she grew anything and everything. Roses, delphiniums, hollyhocks, sweet peas, anything she could get past the slugs. She used to say it was her passion, gardening. She meant it, too. She’d lie in bed reading gardening books and fall asleep dreaming of chitting potatoes and digging rich manure trenches in which to sow broad beans. Graham has said he wouldn’t mind making a cut flower patch, with robust, old-fashioned blooms like dahlias and chrysanthemums. She likes that about him, that he can talk about flowers. And yet it’s May and neither of them has lifted a finger.

  He did at last clear an area around the old white bench so they could sit with a drink in the evening. But that was weeks ago and the weeds are already knee-high again. Most mornings she sits here with her tea among the giant nettles and the henbane and the other tall, springy plants she cannot even name and she can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of her. She has to take it on trust that the cottage still exists on one side, the seemingly endless, bottomless garden on the other.

  She pegs the washing out quickly—his socks, his pants, a couple of shirts and a worn and faded T-shirt with holes under the arms and some French ski resort advertised on it. Two of her bras. The jeans that used to be tight but hang so stupidly loose on her now.

  Once she’s finished, she makes sure not to glance at the line—one half of a family blowing there—but turns away quickly, bending for the basket and calling the dog, ready to head off back across the wavy, sunlit grass.

  And the very moment she straightens up, there he is.

  I DIDN’T THINK JAMES DIX WOULD BE MUCH OF A WORKER. I thought he would kick up a rough if he had to do half of what my father managed each day. But I was wrong. He got on with it. He did everything he
was told to do and more.

  He helped with the hay harvest and he raked up the cuttings and he lifted and turned the compost and helped to get the piglets away from the sow for weaning. He watched my mother as she soaped the gooseberries to keep the sawfly off, and all by himself he earthed up the potatoes we’d put in at Easter.

  My father showed him how to go on the common and tell which cows were ours so as to bring them in for milking. He made Frank take him into the fields and teach him to use a weedhook and how to recognize sorrel and megbeg and field vetch and hensfoot and all the other sly and creeping weeds the crops didn’t get on with.

  You could tell he wasn’t from the country. He had to be shown just about everything. He didn’t know the first thing about grazing, or where a cow’s teat was or which part to pull so the milk came down. He didn’t know a thing about growing or corn or what was in the earth or what animals could understand or do for themselves. He didn’t know which tools were for what or when you should plant things or how you kept the crows off or why you had to take notice of the rain and the wind or the sun and moon or do things in a certain order according to the seasons.

  But he didn’t shirk. He put in the hours. And he was handy when he wanted to be. At his own suggestion, he patched up the chicken coop with some planks he found in the apple shed, and my father—who’d been grumbling for months that it was a job that needed doing—was very happy indeed with it. And after Frank had showed him how to go over the dry earth between the corn rows with a daisy rake, he prepared the ground as good as anyone could have, and then organized hours of stone picking in the turnip fields with the little ones.

  My mother, who was growing stronger with every day that passed, stopped pounding the washing and looked up from the tub to watch.

  Look at that, she said, wiping her raw, sudsy hands on her apron so she could shield her eyes against the sun. Whatever is he up to with all those kiddies?

  I looked. The little ones were staggering up and down over the brown earth behind him with their buckets and baskets. Even Lottie, who could never usually be made to do anything halfway helpful or useful, was managing perfectly well with a small basket all her own.

  He’s got a way with him, hasn’t he? my mother said. He can get anyone to do anything, that one can.

  And I looked at her and I saw that there was a flush of brightness on her cheeks for the first time since Isaac Roper died.

  “THE DOG DIDN’T EVEN GROWL,” MARY TELLS GRAHAM LATER when trying to describe what exactly she saw. A slender red-haired man, crouching at the bottom of the orchard and looking at something in the long grass.

  “Looking at what?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see. And then the next moment, I don’t know what happened but he just wasn’t there at all.”

  “Well, you must have looked away for a second.”

  “And what?”

  “And he ran off.”

  “But I didn’t. I didn’t look away. I was so shocked.”

  Graham smiles.

  “OK. So he dissolved.”

  Mary says nothing. Already in her mind the moment is less certain, more indistinct. She remembers some things. The sun hot on her shoulders, the creaky lightness of the empty basket in her arms. She remembers the dog idly sniffing at a clump of lemon balm. A bee floating past. The sudden shock of understanding she was not alone.

  “Maybe I imagined it,” she says.

  Graham’s face tightens.

  “Either he was there or he wasn’t.”

  “He was. It’s just—well, it only felt like a split second.”

  He takes a breath.

  “Do you think it was the same man Ruby saw?”

  “What?”

  “You know. Red hair. In the lane.”

  Ruby. The man in the lane. Mary realizes she’d forgotten all about that night. She looks at him.

  “I thought you weren’t sure that was true?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly.”

  Mary hesitates.

  “There was smoke,” she says, remembering all of a sudden the thin wisp of white she saw, rising up from the long grass.

  “Smoke?”

  “Didn’t Ruby say the man she saw standing there and looking at the house was smoking? Well, so was this man. I’m sure he was smoking.”

  “A lot of people smoke.”

  “But the hair as well.”

  Graham looks at the dog, who is sniffing at his shoe.

  “Ah, well, we probably need to have a look at the fence, don’t we?” he says.

  “What fence?”

  “At the bottom of the orchard. There’s almost nothing left of it. At the moment anyone’s free to wander straight in from the fields.”

  Mary stares at him.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, it clearly does, doesn’t it? Don’t worry; I knew we needed to do something about it. It’s just not been high on my list, that’s all.” He bends to the dog, pulls at her ears. “Rotten bloody guard dog you turned out to be,” he says.

  FRANK WANTED TO KNOW IF I THOUGHT JAMES DIX WAS A GOOD sort. He went on and on about it as if it was the most important question in the whole world.

  I don’t know, I said. I don’t know what I think. Why do you want to know?

  He scrunched up his nose.

  Well, you see, sometimes I think he is and sometimes I think he isn’t.

  I kept my eyes on Frank and tried to stay steady.

  And why ever would you think he wasn’t?

  Now he looked uncomfortable.

  Well, I do like him a lot—

  But?

  But what?

  That’s what I’m asking, you idiot. What don’t you like about him?

  I do like him!

  I thought you said that sometimes you think he isn’t such a good sort.

  Now Frank looked quite troubled. He licked his lips. Then his face brightened.

  I like how he lets us punch him in the stomach and he’s brazen and not afraid of anything and he shows us how to fight—

  Fight? You think fighting is good?

  Frank looked at me, his eyes uncertain.

  Well, I don’t know, but he says he’s going to teach me to ride a bicycle—

  You haven’t got a bicycle.

  He says he can get one, and anyway, I like his snake tattoo and—

  I laughed and I saw that his ears were turning red. Frank could never hide his feelings. He looked away quickly.

  I hate his tattoo, I said.

  Why?

  I shrugged.

  It’s a snake, isn’t it? Who would want a snake on them? Snakes are wicked and slimy things.

  Frank looked at me as if he was thinking hard.

  Why don’t you like him, Eliza?

  I never said I didn’t like him. I said I didn’t like his tattoo. And anyway, you’re blushing. Why are you blushing?

  I’m not blushing.

  Oh, Frankie. Your ears. They’re on fire, look at them—you’ll die from the heat.

  Even though he was only seven, Frank was my favorite brother. My only brother, really, because Charlie was more like a girl and the new baby didn’t count. I decided to stop tormenting him.

  Why do you think I don’t like him, anyway? I said.

  He blinked at me.

  Lottie told me.

  Told you what?

  She told me that you didn’t like him.

  This made me catch my breath. Lottie could be the limit sometimes.

  But how ever does Lottie know?

  Frank shrugged.

  Well, I think James told her. He tells her everything. Him and Lottie are always talking. They’re very thick together, you know.

  Even though I hadn’t really thought about it, I realized I did know this.

  Lottie’s just a baby, I said at last. I wouldn’t worry about what Lottie says.

  And anyway, I do think he likes boys as well, Frank said at last.

  As well as what?r />
  As well as little girls.

  MARY GOES TO THE FARM SHOP TO GET BREAD AND MILK AND TO see if they have any minced beef or lamb. Most of the meat there is frozen, but at least it’s local and she can’t be bothered to drive to the nearest proper butcher’s, which is a good five miles away at Hinton.

  She picks up a couple of pints of milk, a loaf, some cheddar cheese and decides in the end to get chicken breasts instead of mince. She also picks up two bunches of local asparagus, their fat stalks held together with blue rubber bands. She goes to the counter to pay.

  The woman—she’s spoken to her once or twice and thinks her name might be Rose—is on the phone, but she hangs up quickly when she sees Mary waiting. Starting to ring up the items on the big, old-fashioned till. She smiles at her.

  “Seen your daughter recently, then?”

  Mary freezes, her whole body suddenly rigid.

  “What?” She chokes it out, barely even a whisper.

  The woman doesn’t look at her. Pulling a white plastic bag from under the counter, shaking it open.

  “Didn’t she come and stay the other week? My other half says he saw your husband at the station, getting her off the London train.”

  “Oh.” Mary can hardly speak, relief like warm water flooding through her. “Yes. That’s Ruby. My stepdaughter.”

  The woman, Rose, puts the things in the bag. Shaking her head, gold hoop earrings catching the light.

  “Ha, that’s funny. Reg only mentioned it because he said how she was the spitting image of you. All that lovely dark hair. Mind you, proper handfuls, teenagers, aren’t they? Bet you’re glad you’ve only got the one.”

  Mary manages to say that she is glad. She asks Rose then if she has kids. Rose throws her head back and laughs, fiddling with one of her earrings.

  “Six! At the last count anyway. Four boys and two girls. And do you know, the last two were complete bloody accidents. Welcome accidents, but all the same. I guess you never know what life is going to dish up, do you?”

  SHE WALKS HOME THROUGH THE LANES WITH HER WHITE plastic bag. The hedgerows are scented, humming with smells and sounds. She passes the dried-out, zigzag skin of a snake flattened into the asphalt and stops for a moment to look at it. She sees no one except a youngish, dirty-faced boy on an odd, old-fashioned bike, fair hair lifting as he pedals past.