Respect for what? I said.
Respect for the dead.
I do respect the dead, I told him. It’s the living I don’t respect.
He smiled at me as if this was somehow a compliment to himself, and then he turned and went into the privy. I went back inside and looked at poor Frank, who lay there in the coffin on the kitchen table not really looking that dead but for all the world as if he might be about to spring to life and chase the chickens around the yard as usual.
James came in. He had on his hat that he wore in the fields, but he took it off and held it to his chest as he looked at Frank.
Don’t do that, I said. I mean it. I don’t want you here. Just please go away.
He held up his hands.
I only came to look at him.
I don’t want you looking at him. You have no right. You broke his heart. It was the last thing that ever happened in his life, the killing of the dog, and the worst thing too.
James looked at me carefully.
I wish you’d stop saying that I killed the dog, Eliza. When you know perfectly well I had nothing to do with it.
I shook my head and pressed my lips together. I wondered where he had learned it from, the knack of always making you feel that you were the one whose mind had come undone.
Go away, I said.
James did not move. His eyes still on poor Frank.
I did nothing to the dog. The dog ran off. You know I would have fetched her—in fact, I offered to fetch her back but you said not to. Surely you remember that, Eliza, that you told me not to?
The undertaker came back in, still doing up the flap of his breeches. He glanced at James as if he wondered who he was and then he said he was about to put the lid on and I should try again to fetch my mother.
She won’t want to come, I said.
The undertaker coughed. The cough went on for a long time and you could hear all the various wet and dry parts of it.
Well, tell her it’s her last chance to see him before I screw him down, he said, taking out a handkerchief and spitting out a quick lump of phlegm before he winked at me.
I did as he said and went and told her, but my mother would not look at me and just said I should go and see how the kiddies were doing.
I’ll go, James said.
No, I said. I’ll do it.
And I walked out of the house, down the steps and through the long wavy grass and down into the orchard. The morning was very still and light and hot. There was no sign of the kiddies anywhere and I couldn’t hear them shouting either. For a moment I was alarmed. I hoped they hadn’t gone into the lane or off into the fields, which they weren’t allowed to do by themselves.
But when I got down to the bottom of the orchard, there they all were sitting in a row on the lightning tree, scowling and fighting and kicking their heels. Charlie was pinching Minnie, who was half laughing and half crying. Honey was almost asleep, squeezed in between her and Lottie, who was sucking her thumb and in a world of her own. And Jazzy was looking properly delighted with herself and smoking a cigarette. As I watched she blew three perfect rings of smoke, a trick, I realized with a quick clench of my heart, that she could only have learned from James Dix.
AS SOON AS GRAHAM’S GOT IN THE DOOR, WHILE SHE’S SIMMERING the stock for the risotto, Mary asks him to guess who she went to the pub with.
He looks at her.
“The pub? You went to the pub?”
She nods. Watching as he puts his bag down on the chair, looking through to find his glasses and the paper.
“Why?” he says. “Who?”
She turns back to the stove.
“You have to guess.”
He sits down slowly in a chair with the paper. Puts on his glasses and gazes at her over the top of them.
“Seriously, I’ve no idea who you went with.”
“Come on.”
“No, I give up.”
“All right. Eddie.”
“Eddie?” He holds the paper to one side and takes off his glasses. “You had lunch with Eddie?”
She bangs the wooden spoon on the side of the pan.
“He had lunch. I didn’t.”
A quick silence as he looks at her.
“You should have eaten.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You’re never hungry.”
Mary hesitates.
“I don’t get hungry till the evenings,” she says, realizing only as she says it that she often, now, feels sick in the mornings.
She sees that Graham is gazing at her. Rubbing his eyes. “How did that come about, then?”
“What?”
“Lunch with Eddie.”
“I don’t know. He just knocked on the door and asked me.”
“He wasn’t at work?”
“He had a day off. He’s owed a lot of time.”
“Time?”
“Holiday or something. That’s what he said.”
Graham looks at her.
“I wish someone owed me a lot of time.”
BUT LATER, MUCH LATER, WHEN THEY’VE EATEN AND CLEARED UP and the dishwasher is thundering in the background and they are both on the sofa ready for the news, she tells him the rest. The part about the child. The boy named Oliver and the woman called Trish.
“Well, aren’t you surprised?” she says, when all he does is shrug and keep his eyes on the screen.
“Surprised at what?”
“At what I just told you. The whole thing. Doesn’t it surprise you?”
He yawns.
“I don’t know. Not especially. Why should it?”
Mary moves closer to him. Edging across the cushions until she can put her bare legs over his trousered ones. Watching the side of his face.
“What, so you think of him as that kind of person?”
“What kind of person?”
“Someone with this whole other life going on elsewhere?”
He places a hand on her knee.
“Hardly a whole other life.”
“But a secret child?”
“Not so secret if he told you about it. And from what you’re saying, it’s just some poor woman he got knocked up.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He keeps his face steady.
“Just—I don’t know—maybe he should have been more careful.”
Mary stares at him.
“You don’t really think that.”
Graham says nothing, keeping his eyes on the news. She pulls her legs off him. He turns and looks at her.
“What? Now I’m supposed to agree with every little thing you say?”
She hesitates.
“I don’t know why you aren’t more surprised. I was so surprised.”
He looks at her.
“All right. I’m surprised. Happy now?”
She ignores him.
“It must be very odd for Deborah,” she says, even though it’s the first time that Deborah’s part in it has occurred to her.
The weather comes on and Graham zaps through the channels to find something else. Brushing her knee with his fingers, then moving his hand up and holding her thigh. A firm, teasing grip that might, in the old days, have signaled the beginning of sex.
“He’s had a hard time, you know,” Mary says.
“Who has?”
“Eddie. He had a terrible childhood.”
“That’s what he told you, is it?”
“What?” she says. “Suddenly you don’t believe a thing he says? I thought you liked Eddie?”
“I do like him.”
“Then why are you suddenly being so—”
Graham smiles. Looking at her.
“What am I being?”
“I don’t know. So grudging about everything.”
He laughs. Mary watches him. The side of his face. The little lines around his eyes that twitch when he’s tired. The upper lip with its faintly girlish
pout, which, many years ago, first attracted her to him and which in some ineluctable and agonizing way will always make her think of Ella.
“Come here,” she says.
“What?”
“I said come here.”
When he doesn’t move, she reaches over and takes the remote from his hand, turning off the TV. Moving herself onto him, astride him. Feeling beneath her the tired trousers, the worn linen shirt, their colors and textures so familiar as to have almost become a part of him.
Blindly, eyes half-closed, he reaches up and touches her. A finger on her breast, then her waist—once ten pounds too soft, now taut, defined by grief.
As she feels the first stirrings of something, he looks up at her.
“What’s all this, then?”
His face is kind. Baffled. A stranger’s face.
She says nothing. She bends and kisses him. He lets her do it. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t do anything. She can’t decide if it matters. She doesn’t know what it is that she wants him to do.
Upstairs, a door bangs shut. Mary stops, her hands still on him.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Upstairs. You didn’t hear it?”
Graham looks at her.
“What do you think you heard?”
Mary strains, still listening.
“I don’t know,” she says. “It sounded like a door. Ruby’s room, or—”
“Well, it couldn’t be.”
“I know.”
Graham reaches up to her, his hands searching her face, his thumb on her lip.
“Hey. Don’t stop. I was enjoying that.”
“Were you?”
Mary hesitates, still listening to the house.
“Yes,” he says. “I was.”
THAT NIGHT, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A VERY LONG TIME, SHE dreams of Ella. Ella undressed and ready for a bath. Water crashing from the taps in the bathroom across the landing. Ella, naked and happily clamped on her hip, the sensation of that small body against hers, its springy weight, its solid, curving warmth. The dream is long, unhurried. It seems to go on and on. More than once she lets her lips drift over that downy hair, breathing it in, staying there, leaving herself there, nowhere else she’d rather be.
In fact, the sensation of not having to hurry, of having time, is so intense that when she wakes she does not weep but just lies there. Afraid to move or even breathe in case she dislodges the feeling that is washing over her. A feeling that she had imagined was lost to her forever. Not loss or grief or even anger. Just, quite simply, love.
I WAS VERY ANGRY WITH JAMES AND I TOLD HIM SO. I TOLD HIM he should not have given Jazzy a cigarette.
Why not?
Because she’s too young.
What’s it to you, Eliza? Isn’t it her business what she does?
She’s a child, I said. She’s ten years old. She doesn’t know a single thing about anything.
He smiled.
Ah, well, but she probably knows a lot more than you think.
Don’t speak about her like that.
Like what?
I don’t know.
You don’t know?
I just don’t like the way you talk about her, that’s all.
James stared at me for a moment and I stared back. I tried hard to think what it was that I didn’t like. A lot of my energy was having to go into hating him, and a part of me thought of how much easier it would be just to give in and beg him to slide his hand inside my dress so I could feel his fingers on the keen and shivery point of my breast the way I used to. He gave me a look then as if he could see right inside my head.
Just because you’re afraid to try new things, he said.
What? What’s that meant to mean?
He said nothing, just looked at me hard and then laughed again.
You’re an innocent, Eliza. Even more than all those kiddies, I’m telling you. You’ve no idea. It’s you who’s the child. You’re the one who knows nothing at all.
I looked at him. He was still smiling.
It’s all right, he said. Don’t worry about it. It’s why I like you. It’s why I like you best of all of them. It’s why you’re my girl.
I’m not your girl.
Whatever you say.
FRANK WAS BURIED IN THE EVENING AS THE LIGHT WAS GOING and the birds were calling and the cows were coming home.
My mother didn’t go and the little ones weren’t allowed. It was just my father and Jazzy and me. I don’t know if James would have cared to be there or not, but my father needed him to bring the cows in. He told my father that he would look in on my mother and take her a cup of tea.
I looked in the hole before they put him in. Poor Frank. I didn’t like to think of him going down into that deep and murky darkness all alone. I wished the dog could have gone in with him, but my father had already put her in the woods.
Afterward, my father would not speak. His face was white and his hands trembled and he would not say a word to anyone. We went home and he pulled up a chair in the kitchen and sat with his head in his hands. I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea and he said he didn’t, he said he didn’t want anything. He said I didn’t need to sit with him either, but I was afraid to leave him there all alone. So I sat and watched the back of his head and I saw him wipe his face a couple of times. After that he had a smoke and then I think he went up to bed and there I was, left alone with my thoughts.
At last Jazzy came in. I saw that she’d been crying. I felt sorry for her and I put out my hand and she came over and took it, trying to plait my fingers as she liked to do, twisting them over and over each other, till I said ouch and pulled my hand away.
Jazzy looked at me. Her hair was in rats’ tails and the tears had made her face dirty. She had on her oldest, most torn chemise. She was fidgeting and scratching at the tops of her legs.
I’ve got boobies, she said. Look.
And she put her two hands in the place where anyone could see there was only little girl’s hard flatness.
Don’t be silly, Jazz, I said. Of course you haven’t. What are you saying that for?
But I have. Look. They’re growing, aren’t they, Eliza?
She bunched them up again with her hands, trying her best to make something of them. I didn’t know what she was on about.
They’re not growing, I said. Not yet. You’re too young.
She gazed at me.
But I’m a woman, aren’t I? she said.
I shook my head.
You’re ten years old. You’re nowhere near being a woman.
But I am. James Dix said I am.
What do you mean, James said you are? What’s James been saying?
She bit her lip.
He said I wasn’t to tell you.
Wasn’t to tell me what?
Nothing, she said, and the look on her face was hard and tight and ugly.
At that moment there was a knock on the door, but before either of us could go to it, it opened and Phoebe Harkiss came in. She had an armful of flowers. She stood there for a moment, looking at us both.
From my ma, she said.
It’s a bit late for flowers, I said.
I know. I was supposed to bring them earlier.
I did not move. I could not be bothered with Phoebe Harkiss right now.
All right, I said. You can put them in the sink.
Phoebe looked at me for a moment, then she went over and put them there, but after she’d done it she did not seem to want to go. She stood there looking at both of us with a smirk on her face.
So is it true? she said.
Is what true?
About your ma.
What about her?
She rolled her eyes and glanced at a corner of the room.
That she’s up the spout again?
I lifted my head and stared at her.
She’s not! Jazzy said.
Phoebe smiled, enjoying our surprise. Her face splattered with freckles and the
eyes so lacking in color they made you feel queasy.
Our ma almost died from the last one, I said. She’s not having another one as long as she lives.
Phoebe cast her eyes over me.
It’s not what they’re saying in the village.
What are they saying in the village? Jazzy said.
Phoebe sighed. She looked over at where the flowers were and she made a worried, fussing face that anyone could see she’d just copied from women in the village.
I don’t want to upset you, she said.
Either tell us at once or shut up about it, I said.
She shrugged.
Well, I suppose you ought to ask James about it.
Jazzy stared at her.
Why would we want to ask him?
Phoebe looked at her for a long moment and then, as if she couldn’t contain it any longer, she laughed.
JUNE. THE WEATHER CONTINUES HOT AND DRY. DECIDING AT last to tackle the garden, Graham and Mary drive off together to a garden center. About nine miles down the A12, three or four roundabouts, and a turning off to the left. Very well signposted, Deborah said it was.
Mary’s made a list of what they need. Compost, mulch. A long hose on a reel to fix to the tap in the yard. Some good-quality pruning shears. A rake. Perhaps a plant or two.
“We could even see if there’s any decent garden furniture,” Graham says as they drive around looking for a space in the busy, dusty car park.
They take a trolley, pushing it off past the wood and laminate and paint aisles, past the barbecues and parasols and lawn mowers. Then they stand together out in the dappled sunshine of the gardening section, wiping crumbs of black compost off on their jeans, trying to decide if it’s crazy to plant a climber—honeysuckle or clematis—in the middle of what some are saying might turn out to be a heat wave.
“We’ll just have to be very good about watering it,” Mary says. She catches him smiling at her.
“What?”
“Just—it’s nice. To hear you talking like that.”
They decide on a jasmine and a clematis, as well as some small shrubs and a rose with blooms that are neither pink nor gold but somehow in between.
They spend at least ten minutes choosing a proper hose with all the different, complicated attachments. And then they look briefly at tables and chairs but agree that none of them are very nice.
The Stopped Heart Page 18