The Stopped Heart

by Julie Myerson

  “Only because I used to grow them. Every year, I grew them from seed.”

  He looks at her.

  “That sounds difficult.”

  She smiles, shaking her head.

  “It’s not. Not at all. It’s unbelievably easy.”

  “But not anymore?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t do it anymore?”

  Mary glances back at the flowers.

  “No.”

  He says nothing. She sips her water. Hears the tinny sound of a radio from what must be the pub kitchen.

  “Go on,” she says, “order some lunch.”

  He hesitates.

  “You really don’t want anything?”

  She shakes her head. He picks up the laminated menu, turns it over, puts it back down again. She asks him how come he’s not working.

  He looks away.

  “Day off.”

  “You have a lot of days off.”

  He lifts his head.

  “Do you know, I’ve actually taken three days off this month.”

  “Three?”

  “Yes, three.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “Not when I’m owed three and a half bloody weeks; no, it isn’t.”

  Mary thinks about this and asks him to explain what it is that he does. He laughs, looking away down the lawn.

  “My work? You don’t want to know about that.”

  “How do you know I don’t?”

  “All right, are you interested in software? Systems analysis? Implementation quality? Net productivity?”

  Mary smiles.

  “I thought not.” He pulls cigarettes out of his pocket, places them on the table. “Look, I had a day off, didn’t I? I was passing. I suppose it just seemed like a good idea to ask you to lunch.” He hesitates. “An impulse. There’s nothing more complicated about it than that.”

  “All right,” she says.

  He looks at her, passing his hand across his face.

  “And OK, I suppose I just thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  “Talk to?”

  “You know. A friend.”

  Mary takes a breath.

  “I don’t need friends.”

  “Everyone needs friends.”

  “I don’t. Not anymore.” She stares at him, her good mood suddenly gone. “Seriously, Eddie. I don’t need to talk. If you knew how much money and time and bloody energy we’ve spent on talking—”

  She breaks off, seeing his face. Hurt in his eyes. Looking down at the table. Its rough brown slats. The hole for the umbrella. She runs her fingers round the hole.

  “I know you’re only trying to be kind,” she says.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t need to say sorry.”

  “All right, but I can see you must be sick of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of people trying to be kind.”

  Mary shrugs. Watches a woman in an apron cross the lawn to the bins. Lifting the lid and putting something in. Coming back again, wiping her hands on her apron.

  He pulls a cigarette from the pack and gets ready to light it.

  “Can I have one of those?” she says.

  He stares at her.

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “Watch me.”

  He lights it for her, shaking his head, laughing.

  “It doesn’t work. You look all wrong with a cigarette.”

  She blows out smoke.

  “I hardly ever smoke these days. I shouldn’t. Graham doesn’t like it. For God’s sake, even I don’t like it.”

  He looks at her.

  “He’s a good man.”

  “Graham?” She nods, looking down at the cigarette in her hand. “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  “And she’s great, that girl of his.”

  “She is. Ruby. She’s great.”

  “Though I suppose it must be hard for you sometimes.”

  “Hard?”

  He looks at his hands.

  “Well—I mean, that he, you know, that he has Ruby.” He lifts his head and looks at her. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. That came out all wrong.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right. I’m really sorry. Forgive me.”

  She looks at him.

  “What?” he says.

  She sighs. “Can I be honest?”

  “Of course you can.”

  She takes a breath. Flicks ash to the ground.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me, that’s all. All of this.” She indicates the pub, the garden. “Well, it’s a kind thought, I know you only mean to be kind. But you see, there’s no point. I haven’t any interest in any of it. You know—friendships, life, talking to people, whatever.”

  “You haven’t any interest in life?”

  “Not really, no.”

  She watches his face, listening to her. Watches as he looks off across the lawn, keeping his eyes away from her. He bites his lip. Looks at her.

  “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he says.

  “I’m not just saying it. You have to believe me.”

  He blinks.

  “I do believe you.”

  They are both silent for a moment. At last Mary takes a breath.

  “That kind of loss—what happened to us—people think it makes you angry, and who knows, I’ve lost track, maybe it does. I honestly don’t think I’m the best person to tell if I’m angry anymore.” She gazes down again at the cigarette. “But more than anything, do you know what it does? It just sucks every single little thing that’s interesting out of you. All the life. All the stuff you had before, the stuff that made you worth knowing. It sucks it out. It makes you dull.”

  Another silence. She waits.

  “Do you know,” he says, “that’s the first time in all these weeks or however long that I’ve heard you refer to it.”

  She puts out the cigarette, half-smoked. Takes her glass and lines it up with the slats of the table. Moves it off again.

  “Is it?” she says, knowing that it is.

  He says nothing. She doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. She knows he is still looking at her.

  “Can I ask you something a bit personal?” he says at last.

  She says nothing. Feeling him hesitate.

  “What were your daughters’ names?”

  Her daughters. She looks up at him. Her face flushed and her heart thudding. She licks her lips.

  “Ella,” she says. “And Flo. Ella and Flo.”

  “And how old were they?”

  She swallows.

  “Seven and a half and almost six.”

  IT WAS VERY BAD THAT THEY FOUND THE DOG WHEN THEY DID. Frank loved that dog and she loved him. He was the keenest of all of us on animals, always good at using ferrets and setting snares for rabbits and trapping sparrows and bullfinches and even knowing how to creep up stealthily and take a pheasant off the branch of a tree with his bare hands.

  And he’d chosen the dog from a litter as a puppy and she was his mate, he said, his chum. She hadn’t a bad bone in her body, that dog. And though she was in most ways a working dog, and though our father said it was best to keep it that way, still to our Frank she was a dear and beloved pet. He loved her. She could do no wrong in his eyes.

  The doctor at Ipswich had looked him over and said the horse had done no real damage and he didn’t think he needed an operation. He said that the cough was nothing much and it would soon clear up and Frank would stop being pingly and poorly if he rested up and didn’t go climbing too many trees and was properly looked after.

  And this news was so cheering that on the way home, according to my mother, he already reckoned he felt better and managed to eat a whole sugar bun and three sips of the lemonade they’d got him from the fancy grocer’s at Needham Market.

  So they got home and put the cart in the yard and our mother called out the good news while our father lifted Frank and carried him around and there she was.
She had crept behind the hedge to die and was half-hidden except that Frank had spied the feathery white ends of her tail sticking out.

  Frank was always a calm boy and it wasn’t like him to kick up a fuss about anything, but he screamed. He screamed and he kept on screaming. The kiddies had just come in from school and we heard the screams from where we were indoors and we all came running out. We stared at the dog. Her ears were wet and there was blood around her mouth. Flies already crawling over her eyes.

  Our father’s face was dark.

  Does anyone know how this happened?

  No one spoke.

  Frank had to be put to bed while our father wrapped the dog in a sack and went to dig a hole.

  Where are you going to put her? Jazzy said.

  I don’t know, he said. In the woods, I suppose.

  Jazzy said why didn’t he bury her on the edge of the orchard under the hawthorn, like the first dead kitten, so that they could keep each other company—and our father said that he would do his best, but I knew he was only saying it to keep her quiet.

  When they’d gone, Lottie looked at me.

  Where’s James?

  I don’t know, I said.

  She stamped her foot.

  Tell me, Eliza!

  I told you, I don’t know where he is. Why should I know? And why do you want him anyway?

  Lottie made a face. There were tears standing in her eyes and her chin was wobbling. She glanced back at the kitchen door.

  I don’t want him to creep up on me.

  Creep up on you? What do you mean? Why would James do that?

  Lottie shook her head.

  I don’t know.

  Tell me, Lottie. What are you talking about?

  She gave a little sob.

  I don’t know.

  Are you scared of him? Are you scared of James?

  Lottie uncrossed her arms. I saw that there were scratches all over them. She bit her lip.

  When our Frank dies, will there be dirt and blood and flies on him?

  I gazed at her and my skin began to crawl.

  Blood and flies?

  Like our dog, will he be like that?

  Her chin wobbled again and she began to cry.

  Oh, Lottie, I said and I pulled her onto my lap. Frank’s not going to die. Didn’t you hear what Mother said? The doctor said Frank’s going to get well very soon. He’s just very sad about the dog, that’s all.

  EDDIE ORDERS PIE. PIE AND CHIPS. THE CHIPS ARE A FATTY YELLOW, crinkly at the edges. He pokes a fork into the pastry lid of the pie, lifts it, steam coming out.

  “I’ve forgotten what I ordered now, the chicken or the steak.”

  Mary fingers the plastic packets of ketchup. Thinking of Ella, turning the bottle upside down and banging it the way she’d seen Graham do it. Ketchup spraying across the table, the wall, and onto Flo’s face, into her hair. Both of them laughing as Mary pulled her out of the high chair and carried her straight up to the shower.

  “Ah,” he prizes the pastry lid farther off with his fork, “some kind of steak. Steak and kidney, was it?”

  She takes a breath.

  “How’s Deborah anyway?”

  He picks up a pink paper packet of salt. Shakes it and tears it. Meeting her eyes.

  “Deborah? She’s fine. She’s at the shop today. Helping that woman out. You know, the antiques place in Wickham Market?”

  Mary says she doesn’t know it.

  “And she didn’t want to come out to lunch?”

  “Lunch?” He sprinkles salt on the chips, pushes the plate toward her.

  She shakes her head.

  “But didn’t she want to come?”

  “I told you,” he blows on a chip and puts it in his mouth, “she doesn’t like this place. She’s not a pub person.”

  “You didn’t ask her, did you?”

  He doesn’t look at her. Picks up a paper napkin to wipe his mouth.

  “Why? Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, then.”

  “I didn’t say it didn’t.”

  He smiles at her, taking another chip.

  “You don’t need to worry,” he says.

  “Worry about what?”

  “About anything.”

  AFTER THE PIE, HE ORDERS COFFEE. SHE SAYS SHE DOESN’T WANT anything, but he insists, so she orders a Diet Coke. He watches her pour it.

  “I thought it was just teenagers who drank that stuff.”

  “Teenagers?”

  “Little blond punks. Like your friend Lisa.”

  She smiles.

  “She’s not my friend and I don’t think she’s a punk.”

  “Sorry. Am I in the wrong decade?”

  “The wrong century, perhaps.”

  He laughs.

  “And you don’t like her?”

  “What?”

  “Young Lisa. You don’t like her?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “She’s OK.”

  “Bit of a handful, are they?”

  She glances at him.

  “What, the girls? Not really. No more than you’d expect, anyway. I don’t think Ruby really appreciates being out of London.” She hesitates. “You were nice to them, the other night. It was good of you. I know Graham appreciated it.”

  He stares at his plate for a moment.

  “It was no trouble at all. I told you. I thought they were great.”

  “All the same. You went out of your way with them.”

  “It’s easy for me, though, isn’t it? I don’t have to live with them.”

  “Well, neither do I, most of the time.”

  He’s silent for a moment and she sees that he’s watching her.

  “Am I allowed to ask you another extremely personal question?”

  “I don’t really know how to stop you.”

  “I’m sorry. I suppose I shouldn’t be so nosy. I keep on forgetting to be careful around you.”

  “You don’t need to be careful. I’m sick of people always being careful.”

  “Are you?”

  “For a while people were so careful that they avoided us in the street. People who knew us, I mean. People who used to be our friends. They literally crossed the road if they saw us coming.”

  He stares at her.

  “You’re not serious?”

  She shrugs.

  “Well, it’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “Grief. Having to deal with other people’s grief.” He holds the cigarettes out to her again. She shakes her head. “All right,” she says. “So what’s the question?”

  He bites his lip.

  “I don’t know if I should ask it now.”

  “Come on,” she says.

  “All right, it’s this. Do you think you’d ever try and have more children, you and Graham, I mean?”

  “Children?”

  She feels herself flush.

  “Sorry,” he says. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

  “We can’t,” she says, cutting him off before he can say anything else. “Even if we wanted to, I mean.”

  He looks at her. She takes another sip of her Diet Coke, puts it back down.

  “After Flo was born, he decided—he was actually very definite about it. He went and had a—”

  The word. For some reason she can’t bring herself to say it. But he nods.

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Were you definite about it too?”

  She looks away over the grass for a moment. Remembering Graham as he was then. So young, so certain, with his knitted pullover and his jeans and his black curly hair. Standing in the doorway of their old bedroom, sun streaming in through the sash window, the curve of her daughter’s warm head at her breast.

  “I suppose at the time I didn’t feel very strongly either way,” she says, suddenly amazed at her long-ago and myste
riously oblivious self.

  YOU’RE A PIECE OF BAD LUCK, I TOLD JAMES. I KNEW IT FROM THE first moment I saw you. Lottie knows it too. She’s afraid of you, you know.

  My heart was thudding. I thought he would yell at me but he didn’t—he did nothing. Just stayed where he was and looked up from where he was sitting all lamb ’n’ lettuce on my mother’s creaking rocker.

  Did you hear me? I said. Are you listening to anything I say?

  He said nothing. I saw that he was smiling.

  And I tried my best to look at him with a cold heart—tried to take him in as if I were seeing him for the very first time. The hard brightness of that hair. The dirt on his face. The inky snake of the tattoo that so impressed our Frank. I tried to forget all the love things we had said to each other. The sweet shudders that had run down my whole body when he breathed on my neck.

  I waited.

  Why is everything always my fault? he said at last.

  I stared at him.

  Everything isn’t your fault. But certain things are.

  What things?

  You know what things. And that thing that we were doing by the way, it’s over. I’m not your sweetheart anymore, James, and I don’t want to be ever again.

  For a moment he was still. Then he raised his eyebrows and looked at me. Pulled out his pouch and began to make a cigarette.

  And all because I showed a bad animal who was in charge?

  The dog wasn’t bad. It’s you who are bad.

  He laughed.

  Good, bad, what difference does it make?

  I licked my lips. My mouth was dry.

  What difference? What are you saying? You know very well that it makes all the difference in the world.

  He seemed to think about this, but then he shrugged.

  Do what you want, Eliza, it makes no odds.

  I don’t care if it makes no odds to you. It does to me. I don’t like you and I won’t blow about with you anymore.

  He glanced at me then and I was glad. It meant my words had got to him. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it.

  You’re ditching me?

  That’s right.

  He began to laugh.

  Stop it, I said.

  I can’t. I can’t stop it. Because that’s very funny.

  Shut up, I said. It’s not funny.

  He leaned across to light his cigarette.

  It is, he said. And I’ll tell you why. It’s funny because I haven’t even had you yet. You think you can ditch me before you even know what you’re ditching?

  My heart was banging.

  I’ll do what I want, I said.