Perfect Lives

by Polly Samson

  Tilda’s first thought when she set eyes on Danny was of a Christmas gammon, boiled and ready for studding with cloves. His eyes were rimmed and sore-looking, almost myxomatosis rabbit. She stared with a rather queasy and complicated fascination at the livid creature, with its flailing arms and the umbilical cord, like a great purple worm still attached to its tummy, and knew that these were not the thoughts she was supposed to be having.

  ‘When Callum was born I couldn’t believe the over-whelming currents of love that flowed from me to him,’ Jane said. ‘I would have killed anyone who came near’, and Tilda stared at the baby as it was laid, still screaming and slimy with blood, on to her stomach. She bit her lip and thought that now she was going to be found wanting at this along with everything else.

  Tilda had read about deep eye contact, or ‘imprinting’ if you’re a poultry breeder; she had witnessed it on the farm dozens of times with the cows giving birth. She had stood in the barn and listened to the soft sounds they made calling to their calves as they emerged with an almighty squelch on to the straw; shiny and streaked in their slick blue sac of membranes. The mothers nuzzled and licked, miraculously turning them from slimy sea creature (that no matter how many times you witnessed it you always believed must be dead), to fluffy toy-shop thing on drunken legs, a magical transformation achieved with no other trick than the steady caress of their tongues.

  The cows were clearly superior beings. Tilda didn’t feel the need to stare at her baby in quite such a star-struck way. In fact as he lay there slithering on her stomach, she was ashamed to remember that she had looked around the room, as though she was seeing it for the first time; the calming tone of the pale green walls, the tasteful stripe of the curtains, and wondered about the other mothers. How many births had the room seen? How many didn’t make it out?

  They decided to call him Danny, which was about the only name from Callum’s list that Tilda hadn’t vetoed on the grounds of being characters in novels by Thomas Hardy. Jane was disappointed, naturally, when ‘Samuel’ was not chosen. ‘Such a fine family name.’

  ‘Oh Danny boy,’ Callum whistled as they drove to the farm, Tilda with the newborn in swaddling, as recommended by Jane; trying to feel something more than pity, still believing that the love would come crashing in along with her milk.

  She kept waiting. The eye contact business didn’t improve. It seemed to Tilda that there was always something she didn’t want to see. He had sticky eye at a week old; all that yellow crustiness made her own eye feel gummy just to look at it, and the health visitor suggested she squirt a little milk into it from her breast. And now he was at eye level in the high chair, sitting up and burbling, she was scared that if she looked she might find reproach. It was all beginning to feel too late. She sang ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, but didn’t mean a word.

  She’d tried to brush everything away with jokes when he was new: ‘Quite honestly, I’d rather go out in the garden and dig worms’, when the health visitor called, a crash course in the fine art of feeding, ‘I’d be good at finding worms.’ All that talk of aiming the areola to the back of Baby’s mouth. ‘Do it so he nearly gags!’ Her breast grappled with like something to be stuffed into the gaping cavity of a chicken.

  Stout in Hush Puppies, the health visitor had been a daily occurrence. She brought green cabbage leaves when Tilda was so inflamed that her breasts looked like two monstrous gorgonzolas, cornflower for her cracked nipples and, on Fridays, iced buns for Callum.

  After the first few weeks Jane took to calling in when the health visitor was due, and discussions of Tilda’s nipples took place in the other room, over a cup of tea. They noticed when Tilda’s breasts had leaked into a pillow. Perhaps the boy had missed a feed? Tilda began to feel that she belonged in the dairy. If she didn’t watch out they’d call in the vet. Eventually she gave up and put the baby on the bottle. The first night she dreamt that her breasts were two scoops of melting vanilla ice cream, the second night was more disturbing: she dreamt that her mother-in-law came into the room wearing her maternity bra, dancing and swaying, opening and shutting the flaps, up and down, flaunting it.

  By the time of Callum’s birthday Danny had started on solids. ‘A one-man chimpanzee’s tea party,’ Callum called it, laughing at the mess, though Tilda secretly dreaded the mashed and moulied food reappearing later in the folds of Danny’s neck. She had gift-wrapped for Callum the new Halliwell’s, though they hadn’t seen a film for ages, and an American first edition of In Cold Blood that she’d found at the village bookshop, as well as the sheepskin-lined waterproof boots that he had asked for and she thought hideous.

  She had dragged herself out of bed before he stirred, to arrange his presents on the kitchen table and to get the kettle boiling. Danny was already squawking, of course, so she grabbed him on her way down. ‘Blimey,’ she said when she got to the kitchen and Jane’s clock. ‘Five bloody a.m.’

  ‘He’ll make the perfect farmer.’ Jane always said that about Danny. ‘The hours he keeps. It’s in his blood, you know …’

  Didn’t she know it. Tilda lodged the infant farmer on the mat at her feet, changed his nappy and tried not to gag as she wiped him clean with a wad of damp kitchen roll. Danny kicked his fat legs and rolled himself over. She wondered if all babies had that much cellulite on their bottoms as he did lewd little press-ups in an effort to master the mechanics of crawling away.

  The day stretched before her: a day with Danny was like being left in charge of a nuclear power plant, lonely and bleak, slightly nerve-racking, with lots of servicing and safety checks required. Cal would be down any minute, dressed in his usual garb plus extra-thick socks over his jeans, and the grey beanie hat that he’d taken to wearing. Happy Birthday to You. Later Jane would galumph by for her morning coffee and a madly gesticulated monologue on the Meet down at Southwood; the fall she’d taken from her horse, the way she’d got straight back into the saddle. ‘Tough as old boots, me,’ she’d say.

  Another day with Danny. Too wet to go out. She could already hear the wind whining between the barns, driving straight at them from the East. ‘Siberia.’ She shivered, remembered a map of the winds from geography lessons at school. All arrows pointing at good old Blighty. It was still dark outside and the bare knuckles of climbing plants battered the kitchen windows.

  Cream for their porridge, a golden swirl of demerara in the shape of a heart in his bowl. Six o’clock in the morning and Callum had already opened his presents. Danny was in his father’s arms, chewing on the corner of the first edition of Truman Capote’s masterpiece.

  ‘I’ve decided to make you a cake,’ she said.

  ‘It’s easier to make a baby than a cake, you know. Wouldn’t you rather?’ He looked to the ceiling in the direction of their bedroom. ‘It’s quicker, more fun …’ Callum had four younger brothers; she could have seen this coming. Jane was the eldest of eight. Theirs was a family that liked to breed.

  ‘It’s certainly quicker,’ she retorted, retrieving the Capote from harm but making Danny howl in the process, and Callum flicked her backside with the tea towel.

  Callum wasn’t wrong. It had been easier, and a lot more fun, to make a baby than a cake: they’d done it without even trying.

  Making the cake was more of a performance. Having to fit it in around Danny’s mucky new menu, and finding the time to drive into town for baking powder and icing sugar and candles. Having to chat to busybodies.

  Danny in the front of the trolley like any other baby.

  A voice in her ear: ‘Well, he looks nothing like you, dear, does he?’ Turning to find a large woman in an unseasonally floral dress. Danny, slumped down a bit too far into the trolley seat, his face concertinaed into his chins, the familiar bullfrog pose. He looked like Jane. She remembered someone saying that all children closely resembled one of their grandparents more than any other ancestor.

  Tilda hauled Danny up in the seat, managed her usual, ‘No, he doesn’t, does he? I
think my husband must’ve had an affair!’ The woman laughed, reached in to touch the baby’s cheek, as they all did. ‘With himself,’ she added.

  The woman withdrew her hand from Danny’s cheek. ‘You take good care of him, mind,’ she said, and studied Tilda for a little longer than was comfortable, leaving Tilda with the feeling that somehow this woman knew.

  The cake she made from two mounds of Victoria sponge, beautifully iced and smoothed in vanilla fondant: a pair of breasts. Her own, obviously. It would be like handing them back to him. She had been thinking about it all day, about how she’d ice it and colour it; and then she’d got Danny to sleep a whole extra half-hour, just time to add the nipples in chocolate icing and change out of her mucky jeans.

  Callum strode in whistling a hymn. He’d hired a new hand, what a relief. A Quaker, as it happened, so he’d be good at silence.

  He laughed when he saw his cake, blew out the candles, but it was as Tilda was cutting it, Danny safely decanted upstairs in his cot, that he got his birthday wish: a final furious howl of wind, something that sounded like a door slamming, and then black. Perfect timing. Not even a moon.

  Callum put a match to the first candle, his face flared almost manically above it, gleaming skin and dark eyes shining, burnished and bronzed as a painting by Georges de La Tour. Tilda reached across the table and stroked his cheek. His smile was conspiratorial, his teeth very white by candlelight.

  ‘There, this is something you only get here. Total blackness and silence.’ He smiled broadly, the love of a good power cut. Next he’d have to build up the fire, light another in their bedroom; primitive pleasures, she supposed, candles all over the place. ‘Caveman,’ she said, returning his smile.

  They heard the front door clatter. ‘Callum, you’d better come.’ A blast of cold air. She was very sorry, she said. If Callum didn’t finish fitting the spare parts to the generator in the next couple of hours they’d be out of battery juice before the morning. ‘Come now,’ she rasped again, breathless from her journey, borne by the wind across the fields. ‘Unless, of course, you fancy milking all the ladies yourself by hand in the morning.’

  Tilda waved goodbye to their bath by candlelight. Callum stuck the candle to a saucer and she fumbled in the kitchen drawer for the tinfoil and covered the bosoms.

  ‘I’ll leave Bitzer,’ Callum said, pulling on his big grey coat, kissing her apologetically. ‘Stay,’ he commanded. He thought she might get ‘freaked out’ alone in the dark.

  Unsurprisingly Bitzer didn’t settle without Callum. She could see him dimly across the room, nose pressed to the door, pining for his master like Greyfriars Bobby. Lucky she liked to be alone, she thought, the way things were around here. Except she wasn’t really alone, was she? Danny was asleep upstairs, how could she have forgotten? She thought about the woman in the shop, the look she’d given her. She would never tell anyone the truth. Not her mother, not her sister, not any of her friends, least of all Callum. What sort of woman doesn’t love her own child? She can’t even make herself love him. She’s tried: it’s like willing a dream.

  She found herself moulding the top of the candle, a face of warm wax, molten tears dripping down, and then she heard it: something on the stairs, a sort of scrabbling, and Bitzer barked and leapt up.

  Taking a candle and another in her pocket, she called the dog to come with her. Again, that sound. Her own shadows spooked her up the stairs, flickering on the ochreous walls and umber wood, a hunchback, stooped over the flame with a hand cupped around it. The dog followed her as she listened, cocking his head to one side. She could hear only the wind rattling the landing windows, battering the corrugated roof of the feed-store a bit further away.

  Tilda held the candle above her sleeping son. He was curled around Callum’s old maroon velvet bear. She could see, objectively, that Danny was a regular cherub with his blowzy cheeks and vigorous curls, his thumb resting on his lower lip. She stared for a while and then turned and checked the window.

  She placed the saucer with the candle on the nursery dresser and lit another from it. She lifted the old velvet bear from the cot and stood it high on the dresser shelf. She tucked the knitted blanket around Danny. Bitzer, the creep, had already deserted her to await his master’s voice. Cursing him, she took her new candle and carried it quickly downstairs with her hand cupped around it before the shadows started their dance.

  As she rounded the bottom steps something flashed past her on its way up, a silver wraith of a thing, then gone. The tabby cat. Tilda remembered with a pang that she had meant to do something to save the kittens. Too late now.

  She had been back downstairs for over an hour, it might well have been two. She didn’t like to dwell on it. She had been sketching the shadows of the room with a piece of charcoal from the fire, the narrowest rib of a moon at the window.

  The first thing she noticed when she awoke in the chair was the smell. She checked the fireplace before anything else, then the Aga. Then she was up the wooden stairs, the smell of burning getting stronger, and running along the corridor. It was advancing towards her along the ceiling, a dark fist uncurling from the door of Danny’s room. She couldn’t remember grabbing him, just the louring smoke hanging above his cot, a cloud slipping down over a mountain. Somehow she must have got the window open and chucked out the smouldering remains of the velvet bear and the flaming nursery cushions and made it with Danny, crushed to her, down the stairs without her legs giving way beneath her.

  Back in the kitchen, Tilda collapsed on to a chair with Danny in her arms. His eyes were closed, his lashes long against his cheek. She squeezed him closer and looked down into his beautiful face. Translucent in the candlelight like polished ivory, a delicate wash of pink over his cheeks, the juicy-redcurrant curve of his lip still dented by his thumb, a head full of golden curls, a regular cherub. Beloved. He was breathing steadily, his head against her chest, asleep though her heart was hammering. He opened his eyes and looked up into hers. Light flickered in his dark pupils. She heard the front door open but couldn’t tear her eyes away. A warmth like candlelight ran through her. He reached a hand to her cheek and rested it there, calming her.

  This is how Callum found them when he returned. Beside them, on the table, was the jug of Honesty, glowing golden planets, the single flame finding the gleam within the gloom in the unlit room.

  MORGANNA

  Morganna burst into my life, jingling and jangling armfuls of bracelets and puffing thin cigarettes that she rolled herself, silk flowers scattered here and there in twists of dark hair, fresh from her crisis and still prone to sudden tears. My shoulders were not the kind that usually got cried on: a bit on the tense side, I suppose, what with Simon working all the time and Angus and Ivan like leaky buckets, never full no matter how much I poured into them.

  Morganna’s fandango. What a nightmare. Things being thrown: hot cups of tea across the kitchen, Mike’s clothes into Marine Parade, the photographs of their wedding day removed from the top of the piano, put back again, twice, and removed again with such force that the glass shattered in the frames.

  She was wild when he left: a river of tears washing over a fortnight’s dismal blow jobs that failed to make him stay. She put half a brick through the window of the basement he was renting one night when he wouldn’t open the door. His girlfriend Elizabeth, who he pretended didn’t live there with him at all, looked up from playing her oboe, straight at Morganna outside on the pavement, and, laying the oboe carefully down, raised her arms to release a long skein of hair from its band, sending it falling and swinging down her back like molten metal, and sashayed to the telephone to call the police.

  Morganna’s driving is not improved when she tells me about these things.

  I had, though not without misgiving, agreed to put my life in Morganna’s hands a couple of afternoons a week. She was quite bold when she suggested it:

  ‘Mike did all the driving,’ she told me one afternoon when I’d come with my films to the studio she ran
from the basement of her house. ‘After twenty-nine years in the passenger seat I’ll be needing to brush up.’

  Her house in Marine Parade was full of stuff: cats and oriental rugs and pictures and mirrors and ancient masks on the wall, and that was just what I managed to glimpse on my way from the front door to the basement. She even had a parrot in a brass cage.

  I was there to collect a print she’d made of one of my photographs, from a series of black and whites I’d shot of my cat with a vole swinging from his mouth. I’d managed to capture the medallion-man swagger of the moment, we both agreed. It was hand-printed, silver lith. Morganna held it up so I could admire it, before slipping it between sheets of corrugated green plastic.

  ‘It’s come out well,’ she said and taped my negative to the outside. ‘So, I was wondering, would you let me drive your car?’ It was so abrupt I thought I might have misheard her. ‘A few times, for the practice,’ she said, looking at me with her head on one side. ‘Just until I remember how it’s done.’

  Morganna had been raised by half-baked Maoists in a hippy town called Totnes where favours were traded with tokens in the shape of acorns, so bartering was second nature to her. I was taken aback because I hardly knew her but she had a generous face that I liked, large features; grave eyes almost raccoon-like with the amount of dark eye make-up she piled on, a habit of biting the corner of her lip when she smiled her easy smile and a laugh that promised mischief.

  ‘What do you think? In return I’ll develop your stuff free of charge.’ I’d been getting through a lot of films, more than I could really afford to have developed, and Morganna had taken quite a fancy to my little Peugeot 305. I liked her voice, too, it was husky from the roll-ups. ‘The aromatherapists outnumbered the plumbers by about a thousand to one, the Acorn Economy wasn’t without its problems,’ she said, taking a pinch of tobacco and sliding a liquorice paper across the tip of her tongue.