by Morag Joss
And Steph did, because Jace’s voice was at a dangerous pitch and a whack might follow, even though he was driving. Jace stubbed out his cigarette. He had won that round easily and planned to win the next by changing the subject. ‘I’m out of fucking fags.’
Steph sniffed and blew her nose. ‘You shouldn’t smoke in front of me, it’s bad for the baby. And I’m not giving this one up, we’re keeping it. You said we’d keep it. You said.’
Jace turned off the music. The sudden silence rang round the car. He said, ‘Yeah, well, that was a bloody while ago.’
Steph pulled down her T-shirt again and squirmed as the baby trapped under the too-tight seatbelt wriggled and kicked.
* * *
He should not have done it. Michael was perching on the edge of the driver’s seat as lightly as he dared to while driving, as if in some way this would make him less of a load for the afflicted van. He leaned forward, trying to squeeze a little more speed out of it, but actually speed was out of the question. Keeping going, even at twenty miles an hour, was as much as he hoped for now. He should not have done it.
Maybe it was because of the latest bad time he had just gone through, maybe he had not been thinking straight, but he just had not been ready. In fact, it had been mad to go and do a job like this, the first time he had been out of the flat in weeks, and without thinking about the state of the van, without its even crossing his mind that the vicar would see it and might remember it. In fact he might even have got the number if he had been quick. Michael was not sure. He had been too petrified getting the van started to dare look up the churchyard path to see if the vicar was coming after him. If he had been, Michael thought he would have died of fright, or worse, got out of the van and done something silly to him. Without defining to himself quite what might have lain on the other side, he knew that doing something silly to the vicar would have constituted the irreversible crossing of some line. It was not that he had decided not to cross it, it was just that he had not dared look up the churchyard path. And then the van had started.
He should not have done it. As he chugged hopelessly along, Michael’s mind raced and churned with self-reproach. That bloody sprint down the path with the stuff bumping up and down in the backpack, that too had been mad. Not classy, like he took a pride in being. The smart, the classy bit was the impersonation, the getting-to-know-you thing, then lifting the stuff carefully, perhaps coming back later for it, not grabbing it then and there like some cheap little shoplifter. Later, when nobody was likely to be around, when it wouldn’t have mattered even if anybody was because he would be just that visiting curate, popping back again. That was classy, if not easy, so why had he been so stupid? Grabbing and running off with the alabaster effigies had been bad enough, but with the van in this state! There was another terminal-sounding cough from under the bonnet and Michael held his breath. He was so tense that his head pounded, and although he was staring through the windscreen he was not giving enough attention to the road. A white car swung angrily past him and cut in front with a blast of its horn. It must have been sitting on his tail for miles. The bloody van! On the way here he had been so busy feeling like Jeff Stevenson coping with a dodgy alternator or gearbox or whatever that he had not stopped to think about the van’s next journey; it fell a little short of Criminal Mastermind standard for the getaway vehicle to be on its last legs. He was sweating now, and still barely seven miles from the bloody church. If that vicar had decided to get in his car and come looking for him, Michael could be in trouble. He tried to weigh up calmly the chances of the vicar taking such direct action against the more conventional ringing for the police and waiting at the church for their arrival. But all his practical calculations were fading in importance. The more comforting thought of going to bed and staying there (should he ever reach home) was tugging at him, a wanton and persistent desire for oblivion that Michael dreaded, but which his mind was now embracing like an old, disgraceful, but already forgiven friend.
He fought the desire, and two thoughts surfaced. The first was that the van would never make it back to Bath, and the second was that it would be safer to get it off the road than to have it break down, in full view of any passing vicars, at the side of the road. Michael roused himself, and a couple of miles farther on steered the van into the forecourt of a petrol station and garage. He drove in under the canopied petrol pumps, past ranks of second-hand cars for sale, and parked at the far end next to some sheds, where a couple of lads in boiler suits were working on cars. Just in time, Michael remembered who he was for the purposes of getting the van fixed, and bounced out of the driver’s seat with an attempt at Jeff Stevenson’s smile on his face.
He was not sure that the young man in overalls with the strange curtain haircut really understood what a curate was, not even after he had explained it to him, and pleaded that he had to get the van back on the road at once because he had ‘things to deliver to some elderly people’. (It was not much of a story but there was no time to embellish.) What the curtain-haired mechanic did know, and was telling Michael, was that no way could they sort it today.
‘No, way, booked solid with MOTs and Terry’s behind anyway,’ he said, motioning with his head towards a pair of legs poking out from under a car. ‘Booked up solid. We don’t do emergencies. You’d be better getting it home and sorting it there, mate,’ he added.
Michael smiled at the bad news, as he imagined a curate would, and could not help feeling mildly scandalised at such a lack of respect for the clergy. He wished he were wearing a dog collar. Over the youth’s shoulder he watched a pregnant woman get out of a car that had just parked on the forecourt. She stood by the open passenger door and followed with her eyes as her husband, or boyfriend more like, slammed the driver’s door and stalked off to the garage shop. She looked uncomfortable, unhappy in her clothes and slightly ashamed, and Michael, only half listening to the mechanic, understood with a stab of recognition that she felt these things whether she was pregnant or not. He must have been staring, for she seemed to have caught his eye and now, to his horror, she was waddling over to him. He turned his attention back to the mechanic.
‘Number’s in the shop if you wanna call them,’ the mechanic said, turning to go. He added over his shoulder, grinning, ‘They’ll sort it for you, but they’ll charge.’ He called underneath the car where the feet were squirming. ‘Terry! They still charging eighty-five for call-out, Corsham Breakdown? You know, whatsisname, that Steve at Corsham Breakdown. Still charges eighty-five, does he?’
The legs shifted again and a muffled voice replied, ‘Oh yeah, think so. Eighty-five, mileage on top. Cash.’
‘Yeah, well, there you go,’ said curtain-hair, with the slightest and first edge of sympathy in his voice. ‘Number’s in the shop, there’s a payphone if you ain’t got a mobile.’ Michael nodded his thanks, calculating. It would cost at least a hundred in the end just to get towed back to Bath, never mind the cost of getting the van fixed. He could just hitch a lift home and forget all about the van, just leave it to rust here. But he could hardly remove the licence plates in full view of the mechanics, and the registration number would lead them straight to him. Also it was an offence to abandon a vehicle and he was in enough trouble anyway.
‘You going to Bath, by any chance?’
The pregnant woman was no more than a shivering girl, with large, greenish eyes. She was trying to sound and look casual, standing with one knee bent and her arms crossed. But she had pulled her clothes tightly round herself and over the impertinent bump, which seemed to Michael oddly prominent. It was all out in front, as if the baby had not filled out her sides at all. There was little difference between the colour of her skin and hair, which, in a spectrum between olive and dark gold, might have been striking if she had been warmer and healthier. As it was, she looked yellow in the wrong places, across her forehead and round her mouth, and greenish at the roots of her hair and under the eyes. She was small-boned and long bodied; she brought to mind a snake that h
as swallowed a watermelon. He tried not to look at her stomach but found himself imagining that she would be very slim after the baby was born. And here she was offering him a lift. He could leave the van here and get them to fix it when they had time, surely in a few days. In the meantime it could be pushed round the back out of sight of the road. He beamed Jeff Stevenson’s smile at her.
‘Yes! Yes, I am! You can give me a lift? How wonderful, thank you! Anywhere in Bath’s fine- drop me anywhere- how kind!’
The girl was taken aback. ‘What, isn’t that your van? I thought that was your van. I thought you might be going to Bath, that’s all. I’m looking for a lift.’
Michael stared at her and saw his own dismay in her face. ‘It is. It’s broken down. I thought you were offering me a lift. Is there something wrong with your car as well, then?’
‘No. Anyway, it’s not mine.’ She did not pretend to find the confusion amusing, or try to dislodge the disappointment that now sat on her mouth. She motioned towards the garage shop, where the boyfriend, or whoever he was, was just emerging. ‘It’s his,’ she said. ‘Him over there.’
‘Oh, I see. I see, you’re hitching, are you? That was your last lift? I thought you were with him.’
‘I am, I was, I mean- I’m not hitching,’ she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears and shaking her head. ‘Mind you, maybe I am, now.’ She tried a smile that turned out to be more a wrinkle of her nose, which was red with cold. She sniffed. ‘I just thought you was going to Bath, that’s all.’
‘Well, I am. Or I will be, but I’ve got to get the van towed back.’
‘Oh, well. Never mind.’
‘But isn’t that your car? I saw you getting out.’
The boyfriend had stopped at the door of his car and was lighting a cigarette. The girl watched him and said dully, ‘No. It’s his.’ With his hands on his hips, he scowled in her direction. She looked away. He shouted something mocking, which Michael did not quite hear. The girl turned, shook her head and the man swore, got in and turned the ignition. Loud and aggressive music pulsed from the car as he drove off with a deliberate scream of the tyres.
The girl watched until the car had disappeared. ‘Can’t I get a lift with the tow?’ she asked.
Michael could not begin to ask what it all meant, for fear that the girl, who was now looking at him with an expectant half-smile, might tell him. Something in the eyes, or perhaps in the droop of the shoulders, or the ripe bulge, or the way she shivered in her inadequate clothing, was crying out to him. Slightly flattered as Michael was by the thought that anyone could turn to him for anything, he was also bewildered and appalled. Big eyes or not, she was another thing he did not need, and already she had confused him to the point that he was no longer sure whether he was Jeff Stevenson or Michael. But it was Michael who was stuck with two stolen church effigies in the back of the useless van, the sight of which could get him picked up by the police at any minute. It was Michael who had not been alone in the company of a woman for so long it felt like years, Michael who wanted only to sink into the dark bedroom of his flat. So it was Michael who said, ‘Can’t help you, sorry. Got to make a phone call,’ and strode away. Feeling stupid, he changed his mind, walked back to the van and took the backpack from the back, glaring at Steph as he lifted it over one shoulder and made for the shop.
It crossed Steph’s mind that it was not very clever of this man to refuse her a lift and then walk off leaving the van unlocked like that. Not that she made a habit of assessing men’s intelligence. She did not assess men at all (except to wonder if and for how long they might be nice to her) so much as react to them. So as she watched Michael’s progress across the forecourt, she shivered, wondering if he, with his dark eyes, might turn out to be nice. She was often wrong. Jace had been nice to her for quite a long time before he changed. It had been after about three months that Jace had first muttered in her ear that she was so great, he was dead carried away and he couldn’t stop, she didn’t want him to stop, did she, not to put on a stupid condom, did she? The truth was that she hadn’t. So Steph had spent a lot of time thinking that it was at least partly her fault that when she got pregnant he had stopped thinking she was great, which made it partly her fault that he hit her. And he had only ever taken the back of his hand to her, never his fists. She had spent an equal amount of time hoping that after the baby was born things would change.
A waste of time, she knew. Jace had turned out to be one of those people who did nothing for your loneliness. In fact she had felt lonelier when she was with him than when she was on her own in her Nan’s empty house; lonelier even than she was now, stuck at this freezing garage in the middle of nowhere. She stared up the road where Jace had burned out of sight. Had she dumped him or he her? She could have got back in the car. Jace had not stopped her from getting back in the car, but still, he must have dumped her, because she felt so miserable. If she had done the dumping it would be Jace who was in a mess, stuck with no transport and no money. But she had noticed already that Michael’s skin was as smooth as bone and there was no threat in his eyes. When she had looked at him, perhaps she had felt a little less lonely. He was out of sight now, in the shop. She opened the van door. There was a solid wall between the van’s interior and the seats in front, and no windows in the sides. It would have been nice to find a blanket, but there were dustsheets and a couple of flattened cardboard boxes. Steph clambered in awkwardly, holding her stomach, and pulled the door shut behind her.
***
It was the day after the Dutch couple came that I noticed the buddleias in the garden. I must have seen them before, there were four of them and they were such huge ones, how could I not have seen them? But it was not until that afternoon that I really took them in. Perhaps until then they were simply waiting for me to pay attention to them. Perhaps it was the talk of Mother, combined with the brighter weather that day. Or perhaps it was just that the buddleias’ time had come. I had already begun to think of things coming round in their own time.
Anyway, I had allowed myself a little rest after lunch, feeling rather tired by the strain of my unexpected visitors the day before. I had got up about three o’clock and was looking down at the garden from my bedroom window, and in the sunshine and a brisk wind there they were, four enormous buddleias, waving those disgusting dead blooms at me.
In an instant I was back in Oakfield Avenue on that day eighteen years ago, in Mother’s room, the ground floor bedroom behind the kitchen that she took when she moved downstairs after Father died. She was lying in bed on her side waiting to be wiped, as usual saying nothing and with the butter-wouldn’t-melt face on her. I was trying not to look at her backside or think about her face. In fact I was trying not to be there, I suppose, because through her bedroom window I was concentrating on watching the buddleia in our back garden. It was February then, too, and I remember thinking suddenly that that buddleia out there in the garden should not be allowed to get away with it. It should not be allowed to go on waving its branches of dead flowers that looked like Mother’s long pointy turds (not a word I like, but there is no other somehow) at me. I cast my mind back to the summer before and it seemed a poor bargain, this plant trading an unreliable memory of a short season, a mere month of butterflies fluttering at its purple flowers, for its intolerable appearance now and for most of the rest of the year. Between a finger and thumb I was holding Mother’s big pants that I’d just hoicked off her, and the pad which contained the awful wobbly chocolate-coloured rope that she had squeezed out in the night and whose precise shape and colour I saw replicated on the buddleia bush swaying in the wind. The room was full of our silence, and of the familiar smell like vinegar and lavender mixed with dirt and that particular human clay. Outside, the buddleia waved its thousand old lady’s turd-tipped branches and I looked back at Mother’s offering in my hand and I thought, oh God, how many more of these, as many as wave at me from the buddleia bush? How many more squalid little starts to how many more squalid little days w
ith me looking through a window onto a view of dead flowers?
Perhaps it would have been enough, then, if I had just gone straight out there and got busy with Father’s old saw. Who knows if some savage pruning would have been all that was needed. Then that would have been an end of it, and what happened later that day would not have happened, and life would have gone on in the same fashion for a lot longer. And do you know, weighing it up now, despite everything, I am glad it didn’t. I’m glad of the new and surprising turn things took. But eighteen years ago I did not have the knack of clarity that I have acquired here.
So it was here, on this February afternoon eighteen years on, as I looked down at those four buddleias, that it was suddenly obvious what had to be done this time. I found a saw, an axe and a crowbar, as well as Wellingtons, gloves and a waxed jacket in one of the outbuildings in the courtyard, and I got busy. Though pruning is not the word for what I did to those buddleias. It took all my strength. It was dark by the time I had finished and I got badly scratched and I pulled I don’t know how many muscles, and I don’t think I have ever been so tired, but I got all four of them out by their filthy brown roots.
No offence intended, nothing personal, but Steve of Corsham Breakdown refused to uncouple Michael’s van from the pickup until Michael paid him the hundred quid. Nothing personal, but Steve had formed the opinion after an hour’s drive with his silent, motionless passenger- silent but for short replies to Steve’s attempts at chat, and motionless but for the gripping and releasing of his fingers over the backpack on his lap- that the guy might be weird and/or broke, despite the clean, regular-looking clothes. It was a little before five o’clock when he pulled over, with difficulty, on the steep road leading up through the Snow Hill estate, and set out his terms. No offence, but I need to see your money, mate. It’s not me, it’s the boss, all right? Cashpoints still open, aren’t they? Time to get down there and get the cash, haven’t you?