Yes, Lottie said.
I tried to think.
I’ll cut you a switch, I told her. From the elder. As a special treat. Would you like that? A magic switch that you can use to keep yourself safe.
Lottie hesitated.
I’d like it, she said. But I’m not going to school.
Our father looked at her.
You will if she cuts you a switch, he said. Otherwise you’ll get a good hiding from me and I can tell you right now that you won’t be happy about it.
Lottie said nothing. I went to the table and picked up the knife.
THE TREE IN THE LANE WAS SMALL, BUT IT WAS BLACK WITH berries. Some people in the village believed it was uncanny—that a spray or a switch from its boughs could guard you like the most ferocious dog.
I didn’t know what I believed, but as I chose a long, slim branch and moved in with my blade, I sensed a flick of movement from beyond the hedge and had a quick, chill certainty that someone was watching me. For a moment, I froze.
He’s there, I thought. He’s back.
I waited but I saw nothing, and at last the feeling eased, the air around me loosening and growing loud and bright. Clatter of birdsong. Sun on my face. I breathed again.
Turning, I saw that the man from London was there, setting up his apparatus. He had a shiny leather bag on a strap. Some wooden legs. The camera looked like something you would use to blow on the fire with. The boy who was meant to be helping wasn’t doing much—just whistling away to himself and picking berries in the hedgerow.
The man looked at me with his head to one side. He had a bushy mustache but not much hair on his head and there were dark shadows under his eyes.
Want to have your picture taken? he said.
I shook my head. He looked surprised.
You don’t?
No, thanks, I said.
He touched his mustache, which was yellow at the edges.
Well then, can you fetch your brothers and sisters? I want a picture with some kiddies up against this hedge. They let me do it the other day, he added.
Did they? I said.
He smiled.
Larking around in the wheelbarrow, they were. I got some good ones, didn’t I, Tommy? He looked at the boy, who nodded, his mouth full of berries. Tell them it’s the man with the camera, he said.
I hesitated.
They’ve got to go to Sunday school.
The man smiled. I saw that his teeth were yellow too.
Tell them I’ll give them a ha’penny. A ha’penny each.
They don’t want money, I said.
He kept on smiling.
Well, I won’t keep them and that’s a promise. They know the score. Just a minute or two of standing still for me, that’s all it is.
He clearly expected me to do it, because he put the leather bag down in the grass and folded his arms and stood there in the lane waiting. I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to entice them all—and especially Lottie—out into the sunshine. So I went back in and asked who’d like to have their picture taken.
Me! said Jazz.
And me! said Charlie and Minnie together—and Minnie picked up her skipping rope and rushed around getting her boots on, while Honey made a small undecided noise and sat down on the floor and drummed her feet.
Well, you’ll have to get a move on, won’t you? our father said.
I handed Lottie the switch I’d cut.
Here you are, I said. Here it is. Your sword.
She looked at me as if I was trying to hand her a snake.
Take it, I said. I told you, it will keep you safe.
She said nothing, but she reached out her hand and she took it. She hit the table with it briefly, once, as if testing its powers. And I waited, thinking she would start to make another big old fuss about going outside, but she didn’t. Her eyes were dark but her face was very calm. She seemed to have changed her mind about everything. Maybe the switch had done it. She turned and went out into the sunny lane with the others.
I watched as they all stood in front of the yew hedge by the gate, the twins holding hands next to Jazzy, Lottie and Honey standing on the other side. They waited while the man fussed around with his camera, twiddling the knobs and moving the cloth and the boy turned cartwheels in the dust to amuse them.
At last he was ready.
Where’s that baby off to? he said, as Honey started to wander off out of the picture toward me.
I caught her up in my arms and carried her back and set her down next to Charlie, who tried to catch hold of her but she wouldn’t let him. She stretched out her hands and started to turn around and around on the spot, laughing and making herself dizzy.
The man didn’t seem to mind. He asked me again if I wouldn’t like to be in the picture after all? I said no.
Suit yourself, he said. Now then: everyone keep very still—and look at the camera!
Honey didn’t keep still. But the twins did: they stared at him, their faces frozen, Minnie clutching her rope in one hand and Charlie’s hand in the other. Lottie kept still too, but she didn’t look at the camera. She didn’t do anything. She seemed to be somewhere else entirely—gazing down with a quiet and solemn face at the branch of elder in her hand.
All right, said the man. Here we go—
He put his head under the cloth and, just as he did so, Jazz swung her legs over the top of the gate and turned herself upside down. Her hair hanging in the dust. Minnie gave a little squeal and Honey hiccupped.
The man laughed and punched something under the cloth.
Eureka! he said. There it is.
Is it over? Minnie cried.
It’s over, I said.
The man pulled his head out.
That was a saucy trick, young lady, he said to Jazz as she jumped off the gate and pulled down her dress and shook the dust out of her hair. But you could see that he didn’t mind that much; in fact, he seemed quite excited about it.
I handed Honey’s bonnet to Jazz.
Now hurry off to school, I told them. All of you, I mean it—run along as quick as you can. Miss Sands is waiting.
And I watched them go, all five of them, trailing off down the lane in the bright and dusty air. Minnie jumping and hopping with the skipping rope, Charlie kicking along beside her, waiting for his turn. Honey—tired and fretful—at last starting to cry and having to be picked up by Jazz, who managed to go along with her wedged on her hip the way our mother did. And last of all, Lottie, with that face full of shadows, carrying the switch in both hands and swishing and smacking it against the hedge with all the strength that she could muster.
Just above my head, I heard a warbler, its bright liquid sound pouring down from somewhere in the elder.
And I called out to Lottie and I waved, but she did not look at me. She did not once look up. She did nothing. She did not wave.
A MAN’S BODY IS FOUND ON THE RAILWAY LINE BETWEEN MELTON and Woodbridge, and for a brief and terrible half hour while the police struggle to identify him, Deborah prepares herself for the worst.
But that’s before she gets the e-mail. A lengthy and rapturous and barely punctuated e-mail from Eddie, sent from an undisclosed location, describing exactly how hard and unexpectedly he fell for Lisa, how deeply sorry he is to have let Deborah down like this, to have caused her all this pain, how very much he did not want to hurt her, how he would have done almost anything to spare her this.
He was the last person in the world, he says, who would have expected to fall in love with a sixteen-year-old. But he did and it is what it is and he is madly, crazily in love and the fact is he’s happier than he’s ever been in his whole life. And no, he can’t explain it or justify it, but neither does he think he could have done anything to stop it from happening.
The heart wants what it wants, he tells Deborah in the e-mail. And he hopes she won’t mind him telling her all this, but he respects her far too much just to leave without saying anything. He feels that the very least he owes her is some kin
d of an explanation. He thanks her for all the happiness she has given him and he will never forget her and he wishes her well and he hopes she will find it in her heart one day to forgive him.
Graham has to sit down when he hears the news.
“Lisa! But he didn’t even know Lisa! They’d met—what?—once? Maybe twice?”
Ruby tells them that Eddie and Lisa have been messaging each other for a while.
“Messaging? What, you mean on the Internet? You e-mail someone for a few weeks and it’s the basis on which to elope?”
“They haven’t eloped,” Ruby says.
“What, then? What do you call this?”
Ruby makes a face. “I guess they just wanted to spend some time together, didn’t they?”
“What, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and a fortysomething married man?”
“Lisa’s leaving school. And she says he’s thirty-eight.”
“All right,” Graham says. “But more than twice her age. And she’s a complete idiot if she wants to leave school at sixteen.”
Ruby says nothing. Mary looks at her.
“Did you know about this? Did you know that they were planning it?”
Ruby frowns.
“I don’t think they were planning it. Lisa just got very pissed off with her parents the other day and they just suddenly felt like they’d do it, that’s all.”
Graham almost laughs.
“Great. Let’s all do anything we suddenly feel like doing, shall we?”
But Mary looks at Ruby, her stomach beginning to churn.
“They felt like it? You mean, they just decided it on the spur of the moment, or what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know when they decided it. Why? Does it matter? Why is it important?”
“It’s not important,” Mary says, though to her it suddenly is, very important. “I just wondered how long they’d been planning it, that’s all.”
“They met up a couple of times in London,” Ruby says. “And she did try to tell her mum and dad about it but they wouldn’t even listen and then they banned her from seeing him and that’s when they decided to do it.”
“My God.” Graham shakes his head. “I actually thought Eddie was a decent kind of person. I honestly thought he was better than that.”
“So she used us?” Mary says, feeling her cheeks growing hot. “That’s why she wanted to come here? To see him?”
Ruby puts a hand out to stroke the dog.
“I don’t know. Maybe. What else was she meant to do?”
“Wonderful,” Graham says. “What a very mature way to get back at your parents. So this was what it was all about, then? The fight?”
Ruby shrugs.
“They were idiots, weren’t they? Her parents are just so fucking uptight. I told you, they wouldn’t even let her see him. That’s all she was asking, just to be allowed to meet up for a drink or something. It’s their own fault. If they’d just let her see him, then none of this would have happened.”
THAT NIGHT THEY GO OVER AND STAY WITH DEBORAH UNTIL her sister and brother-in-law arrive. She insists that it’s not necessary but they tell her that it is.
“You’ve had a big shock,” Mary tells her. “You need company. I don’t want to leave you all alone.”
“Turns out I’ve been alone for a very long time,” Deborah says.
The sister brings a bottle of whiskey, half a cooked chicken and some sleeping pills. The brother-in-law is holding his car keys and keeps on looking at his watch.
“I’m picking his mum up from the station in a minute,” he says.
“His mum?” Mary catches her breath.
Deborah looks at her.
“She’s devastated. She can’t believe it. She’s always been completely supportive of me and we get on like a house on fire. I told her she doesn’t have to take sides, but she insisted on coming. She’s furious with him, poor Jane.”
Mary stares at her.
“But I thought his mother was—”
Deborah looks at her.
“What, oh, he gave you all that stuff about his mother dying when he was ten, did he?” She shakes her head. “That’s us, I’m afraid.” She looks at her sister. “We lost our mum when we were—well, I was ten and you were older, weren’t you?”
The sister nods.
“Car crash,” she says.
Deborah folds her arms and looks at Mary.
“His mum, Jane, lives in Berkshire. She’s a district nurse. A lovely woman, who thinks the world of him. We see her all the time.”
For a few moments they all stand together in the middle of Eddie and Deborah’s huge, clean kitchen. The knives in their block. The mugs on their mug tree. The bowl of fruit on the island.
Mary feels Graham’s fingers searching for hers.
“We should leave,” he says.
She goes over and puts an arm around Deborah, kisses the side of her head.
“You know where we are if you need us,” she says.
BACK HOME, THEY OPEN A BOTTLE OF WINE—“I CAN’T TAKE ANY more fucking tea,” Graham says—and sit together on the old bench in the thick, starry darkness of the middle of the garden. The dog wanders in and out of the shrubs and bushes, sniffing.
“What’s she looking for?” Graham says. “What is it that she’s after in there?”
“Toads,” Mary says. “I think she can smell toads.”
“You think there are toads in there?”
“She brought one out the other day. I had to make her drop it. Though I think she was more frightened of it than I was.”
Mary calls to the dog, who comes over briefly, tail wagging, then goes straight back to the bushes. Graham looks at her.
“What did you call her just then?”
Mary hesitates.
“What? The dog?”
“Tuffy? Did you call her Tuffy?”
Mary smiles.
“Do you mind? You don’t think it’s too weird? It just seems like quite a good name for her, that’s all.”
Graham is gazing at her. He looks back toward the bushes.
“You’ve been calling her that?”
“Well, only sometimes. When we’re out here in the garden on our own. I suppose I’m trying it out. We really can’t keep on just calling her ‘the dog,’ can we? What?” She looks at him. “Is it a bad idea? You don’t like it?”
She watches his face. He’s smiling.
“I think it’s a very good idea. As long as Flo wouldn’t mind.”
Flo. She hasn’t heard him say it in so long. A shiver of warmth through her arms and down into her fingertips. Flo. She swallows.
“I don’t think she’d mind. I think she’d like it. In fact, I think she’d love it. It would make her laugh, wouldn’t it?”
For a moment, she almost hears it: the naughty, out-of-control giggle that was the sound of Flo laughing.
“Where did that name come from anyway?” Graham says now. “Tuffy. She made it up, didn’t she?”
“One of her silly words,” Mary says.
Graham takes a breath.
“All those silly words of hers.” He’s silent for a moment. “Well, I like it,” he says. “That’s it, then. From now on, it’s official. She’s Tuffy. Tuffy!” he calls, and the dog looks up for a moment, then returns to the bushes.
“See,” Mary says. “She already knows it.”
Graham laughs and turns back to her.
“It doesn’t guarantee obedience, of course. And we’ll have to check it with Rubes.”
“Of course. Of course we will.”
He’s silent a moment.
“You know what I heard the other day? I heard her talking to Lisa about Ella.”
Ella. Mary turns to him, startled all over again.
“I shouldn’t have been listening really. It was wrong of me. I suppose I was eavesdropping. I was just trying to find out what they were up to, that’s all. And what I heard was—”
He stops for a moment.
&nbs
p; “What?” Mary says.
“She was telling Lisa about when Ella was a baby. How she used to carry her around for us. Walking up and down the hallway with her in her arms to get her to sleep. Hours and hours, she’d do it. Do you remember that?”
Mary looks at him. A sudden memory of Ella’s mousy head on Ruby’s shoulder. The white baby blanket. The ferocious eight-year-old with the long dark plait.
“Yes. I remember.”
“She was telling her all of this in such a proud voice, with such, I don’t know, such sweetness. I just—I didn’t know what to think. For a moment, I almost thought I was imagining it. She’s so hard these days, so tough. I didn’t think she had any memory of stuff like that. It didn’t really sound like her.”
Mary thinks about this.
“Of course she remembers. And anyway, that’s just the part she shows us.”
“What?”
“The tough side.”
Graham says nothing. For a moment they’re both silent. Mary sees him turning and glancing back at the house, at Ruby’s lit-up window.
“Do you think she’s OK?” she says.
He shakes his head. “How can you tell? I’ve absolutely no fucking idea. What’s she thinking? What’s she doing? I’m beginning to think I’m never going to be able to talk to that girl.”
Mary looks at him.
“You can. You can talk to her. You don’t realize. It’s fine. It will be fine. You’re very good with her.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are. You are, you know. You forget how good you are.”
Mary thinks of Ruby as she was back then, before Ella was even born, six years old, the day she met her. Cartwheeling over the lawn as Graham watched, unable to take his eyes off her. An odd lump in her throat as she stood there watching the two of them, trying to take in the hugeness of what her life was about to turn into.
“Anyway, it will all change,” she says then. “You’ll see. Any moment now, she’ll change all over again.”
He picks up his wineglass.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she always does. Ruby changes all the time. Haven’t you noticed? That’s what teenagers do. Like you just said. So many different Rubies, and just when you think you’ve got used to one of them, up comes another.”
She feels him thinking about this.
The Stopped Heart Page 41