Half Broken Things (12 page)

‘What's your name?' she asked, fingering the two ten pound notes in the pocket.

Michael's eyes blinked open. ‘Michael.'

‘Mine's Steph.'

It may have been in the exchange of names, but when the door closed behind her Michael felt oddly certain that she was not going to disappear with his jacket and twenty pounds, and Steph was confident that when she returned he would not still be weeping.

That evening winter returned. It was dark by the time I came in from the garden, knowing that the sunshine that afternoon had been only the illusion of spring. I ached all over and I was chilled from being out for so long. My exertions had kept me warm for as long as I worked, but as soon as I stopped I could feel that the cold had got right into me. I ran a very hot bath in my lovely white, green and yellow bathroom and lay in it, luxuriating in the knowledge that the drawing-room fire which I had just lit would be blazing for me when I came down. It crossed my mind that it was burning unattended, but I didn't worry. It was such a benign presence, the drawing-room fire, I knew no sparks would fly from it and burn the rug. A fire can be a great comfort.

———

After her bath Jean sat by the fire in her alpaca dressing gown and silk pyjamas. Her face burned from the warm water and the tingle of soft cream after the punishment of the wind in the afternoon. Beneath the pyjamas, that were slipping over her shoulders and breasts and across her stomach as she breathed, her body felt and returned every stroke of the supple silk, yet it was stiffening up after all her work in the garden. The hardness in her arms and legs made her slightly triumphant, aware less of the age of her limbs than of their strength, as if she were a schoolgirl flexing them ready to make a long jump. But although the skin all over her body was soothed, at her core she was still cold and it was difficult to tell if she felt better than usual, or about to become ill. Better, she decided. Better, and more than that: it was as if her mind had just made the discovery that she actually had a body, and her body, just very slightly sorry for itself, was basking in the attention.

The body might, she also thought, be telling her that she was actually very, very hungry, a thing it had not told her, or that she had not heard it say, for years. In fact she ought perhaps to be listening a little more carefully, because she had the feeling that since she had arrived she had grown if anything a little thinner. As Jean had begun to enjoy the loosening of the customary austerity with which she managed her physical needs, she had been considering herself with a new gentleness. Her habitual tone of self-chastisement had quietened down; if she felt like resting in the afternoons, she did so, the word
lazy
barely crossing her mind. And she did now recall that she had made a little half-promise to herself, on what she now thought of as Wardrobe Day, that she would try to fill out her new clothes a little more convincingly. She was still a little small for them. Now, she recognised, if she were properly to fit her new life, the time had come to attend to the matter of feeding herself as if she still had some growing to do.

First, though, the chill in her joints called for a drink. She had noticed without concern or surprise on her first or second day that the decanters in the dining room were empty. She should have preferred to make her first visit to the cellar in daylight and when she was feeling less tired, but she rose, fetched the key, opened the low panelled door in the corner of the dining room and descended the cellar steps.

In the sudden fluorescent light and thick underground smell, Jean paused. From the bottom of the steps she could see, stretching down both sides of the cellar, a series of whitewashed, arched bays that were filled with metal racks laden with bottles. At Jean's end, close to the steps, stood an old oak table. She looked at it closely. It was like nearly everything else in the house: old, imperfect, beautiful, and although the wood now looked hungry, having been left so long unpolished, Jean could imagine it being used as a dining table in many houses not much humbler than this one. On it sat a small torch, a candle in a metal holder, a leather-bound book and a number of corkscrews, one of which had, inexplicably, a brush on one end. There was also an unnerving sort of circular cutter that looked as if it had been designed for removing fingertips. On the wall behind the table a pair of metal tongs hung from a hook. Jean immediately felt intimidated, as if she had happened upon the instruments of a painful, semi-surgical religious ceremony of quite Masonic abstruseness. She scraped quietly along the flagged floor, peering into the racks and reading labels which told her nothing except how ignorant she was: Léoville-Poyferré, Batailley, Domaine de Chevalier. The shape of the bottles changed; she read Chambolle-Musigny, Vosne-Romanée and sighed, unenlightened. It was easy to recognise the champagne bottles by their corks but it was not champagne she wanted now. Some treacherous-looking bottles on the lowest racks had lost their labels altogether and bore only a number and a daub of white paint, presumably having been caught by a swipe of the brush when the cellar was being whitewashed. Passing by them, knowing better than to open such dangerously old, unlabelled bottles, she walked on, reading names she could not pronounce and feeling, rather aggressively, that the whole thing was unnecessarily complicated. A nice red wine, or a glass of port or sherry, was all she wanted. It was absurd to be frightened by a lot of foreign names, but the trouble was not simply that they were the names of places she had never been to and of wines she had never drunk. They spoke of qualities she did not possess. Permanence and graciousness, let alone pedigree, had scarcely been the hallmarks of her life so far, she thought, lapsing for a moment into old habits and almost forgetting that she was not that Jean any more. She pulled out another bottle, of which there were at least half a dozen identical ones in the rack. Above the words ‘Château Palmer 1982' was a picture of the château and she sighed again, this time with relief. At last, a name she could read, a nice ordinary English name. She recalled that there had been a Palmer family in Oakfield Avenue. And the château on the label was, really, just a house when it came to it. Or rather not
just
a house like the one in Oakfield Avenue, it was a house like this one, Walden Manor. Her house. The thought gave her confidence. She scanned the drawing, imagining the heavy French furniture behind the tall drawing-room windows. There might be a pretty boudoir upstairs with another window looking over the back perhaps, onto a view of a terrace and gardens and vineyards. She turned the bottle in her hand, almost as if she thought that the far side would show the back of the house, and turned it back to the drawing. Who would live in this place? A woman, certainly. Madame, a woman of Jean's age, would be at her dressing table under the window attending to her hair, pinning it into a simple, elegant chignon. I shall grow mine, Jean thought, patting her own, which was still damp at the ends from her bath. In fact, now that she thought about it, she would have to grow it, since she was not going to go out any more. The label drew her attention again. What a delightful place it was. On a summer morning, the chestnut trees—that Jean felt sure were there, flanking the courtyard just out of the frame of the drawing—would rustle in the breeze with a soft shivering note that would carry upon it the fluting calls of pigeons and doves. Madame would hear them from the open window at the back as she embedded the final long pin in her coiffure, and then she would look up to see—who? Her son, perhaps. Yes, definitely her son, some way off, moving thoughtfully between the vines, inspecting the grapes. Madame would know by the tilt of his head as he passed down the rows and as he paused to look up at the sky, that he was worrying a little, wondering if the weather would hold. Would the sun shine right up until the last day before the harvest? Jean smiled, then turned and made her way up the cellar steps, picking up a corkscrew as she went. The label had told her all she needed to know about the wine, whatever it might taste like.

It was nice, that first bottle of wine. It certainly loosened my poor old joints, at least. It was strong and I suppose what you'd call dry. I liked it more the more I drank, and it went well with my supper. Because after the first glass by the fire I started to think about food again. I'm no cook, or I wasn't then—I've learned all that since. Up till then I hadn't bothered with the Aga. I only had cereal or sandwiches, or I used the microwave for scrambled eggs or soup if I wanted something hot. I didn't bother much. But that night I needed something more. I got the key to one of the two big freezers in the utility room and found bacon, sausages, butter. I noticed one or two other very tempting-looking things at the same time. For another day, I thought, half-expecting Michael. I'd already got eggs and tomatoes and bread. The Aga behaved itself. There was nothing difficult about it. There was an excellent pan for a big fry-up, and I sipped the wine while I cooked and the kitchen filled with the most wonderful smell. How they would have hated it, the owners! All of it: the smell of bacon and sausages, the fat-spattered Aga and the way I disobeyed their instructions about where I ate. I took my supper on a tray and ate by the drawing-room fire and finished the bottle of wine with some cheese. By then I felt rather sleepy so I made some very good coffee (theirs) and threw out my jar of instant as I waited for the kettle to boil. I wanted to stay awake, because after that wine label and everything that the château had told me, I had been thinking about the importance of pictures. Photographs in particular.

I had taken a look at the photographs round the place, while I was dusting. There were two tables in the drawing room covered with photographs in silver frames, and others elsewhere in the house. I collected them all up and brought them over to the fireside for a proper look. The wedding ones I didn't go for. I was pretty certain it was them, the owners, and the woman—blonde, quite a bit younger than him—looked tall and solid enough to fit my clothes, as far as I could tell by how she looked in the wedding dress, which was cream and heavy-looking, not proper white. Not a shred of decent chiffon either, just a flat veil with a little tiara. He was quite heavy-looking in that English male way that often ages well and they were smiling at each other, looking safe and polished and pleased. I suppose I mean rich. They did not so much as glance out of the photograph. I burned it.

There were others of him and her both singly and together, and with older people, parents or relatives I supposed, and some with friends. They seemed to go on holiday a lot. Sometimes they were tanned, or holding skis, or sitting at tables, and her hair changed, both colour and length, but it always looked expensive. Those pictures went in the fire, too. But there were others: proper portraits of the older people, and early snaps taken on beaches when they were white squinting children in baggy bathing costumes, holding up buckets, balancing on rocks. And there they were, older, at their own weddings or with their babies on christening day, and there were black and white pictures of men in uniform who looked hopeful and unironic in a way that you don't get now. It was sad, but I burned all of them too. I will admit I did hesitate, but it would have been wrong to get sentimental about them. They had all begun to jar. The time for their stories had been and gone. They did not belong here, with me and all the other things, the vases and bowls and books and trinkets and little boxes. These people had nothing to do with this house, or with me and my son. It was time for our stories now.

March

Hiya Nan! I've picked up my stuff, sorry you werent here you must be at work. Thought you might be wondering where I was, well Jace and me have split, dont worry I wont be in your way, I've got somewhere to stay! Jace and me just wasnt working out, I'm staying with Michael now, he's just a friend, he's really nice, alot older than me, I'll send you the address. Anyway dont worry, but you'r not the worrying kind! I am making a go of it this time, hopefully thing will work out. I took £10 from the draw, I will pay you back, thats a promise Nan. I'm sorry I gave you heartache in the past hopefully thats all behind me now, Luv from Steph xxxxx

ps theres also a pan, 2 blankets plus a towel they looked like they were old ones, if you want some money for them I will pay you back.

———

On the first few days after Steph's arrival Michael had gone out in the mornings before she was properly awake, apparently embarrassed by her presence. Then one day Steph got up and made him some toast, and as he ate it standing in the kitchen he told her, in what felt like an exchange—information for breakfast—that he would be out trying to do a bit of dealing. That day Steph blitzed the flat and was asleep on the sofa when Michael returned in the afternoon. He made her a cup of tea, sniffing at the air that was vibrant with the smells from plastic bottles lined up on the draining board, with names like citrus cavalcade and mountain mist.

A few days later when he came back his face was tight. When Steph asked him what was wrong, the look had turned to one of slight confusion. He told her about Ken, who was worse and was going into a home. He had just come from there.

‘Aw, got no family to go to? Poor old soul,' Steph said, putting teabags into mugs and getting out milk, in the manner of the sort of mildly compassionate, busy wife that she had seen on television.

‘He's not old, he's just disabled. He was in the Gulf War. Got divorced after he came back. Doesn't see his kids and his wife's got someone else now. He's got emphysema, other stuff as well, he can hardly walk. He's in a right state.' He paused with the effort of producing so many words at once. ‘Got medals. Decorated, he was—he's got medals. That's about all he's got, poor bugger.'

‘He's got you. He's got a friend.'

Michael frowned. He had never thought of himself as Ken's friend although it had been a slight surprise to realise, as he was talking, just how sorry he felt about him and how much he knew about him, when he had never noticed being actively sympathetic or curious. He grunted and sipped at the mug of tea that Steph had poured out, struggling in his mind with another surprise: the strangeness of being asked by Steph what the matter was. He had not realised that his face might betray his feelings. Even less had he expected there to be someone else around to notice the look on his face and care. But he had stopped wondering, on his way back to the flat in the afternoons, if she would still be there. He took it for granted that she would be.

‘Yeah, well,' he said. ‘Thanks for the tea. And for asking.'

‘You're welcome,' she said. That was the first time that they exchanged smiles. After that they did so often, enjoying first the novelty, then the habit of it.

Steph had shoplifted a set of fairy lights that she strung along the shelf above the gas fire. But the sofa was too small for both of them. In the evenings, with the remains of that night's takeaway lying in dishes on the floor around them, Steph would stretch out along the sofa and Michael would sit on the floor leaning against it, his long legs bent in front of the fire, which was now always lit. For a while they would not speak of anything and their silence seemed meditative. Then, full-bellied in the warmth, and in the soft coloured lights and confessional flicker of the candles Steph lit, they talked, unable to see each other's faces.

Michael told Steph the story of his fifteen-year-old mother and the children's home. He hesitated after a few moments, when he had finished the short, true part. From the age of about six he had begun to learn that some facts required decoration; there had been hardly anyone at the children's home whose mother was not a ballerina or a princess, whose father had not commanded a submarine or killed tigers with his bare hands. Michael had so long ago concocted his own story that he felt more its curator than its author; the adult version was by now a carefully embellished artefact that required only occasional polishing. It had never mattered very much that he had made the story up because most of the time he barely remembered that he had. He could, if he chose, reel it off to Steph. It had undergone slight variations over the years and now it went like this:
Most of the papers have been lost. What I do know is that my father was a household name. He was married, and my mother was so young, and of course it was not to be. It broke both their hearts.
At this point Michael was quite used to being asked who the famous father was.
Of course his career would have been destroyed if the story got out, I mean this is years ago, it was a different world. So my mother refused to put his name on the birth certificate though he begged her to. But in high circles, and I mean high, my existence is an open secret. But it's all in the past. Hey, it happens. You've got to move on.

Instead, he told Steph, ‘When I was eight I had to have my tonsils out. They did it to loads of kids then, they cut out people's tonsils all the time.'

Steph said, ‘Urgh, do you mind, I've just eaten.' She squirmed.

‘There was four of us all sent to the children's hospital, we thought it'd be worse than the children's home but it wasn't. The doctor told me they would put me to sleep and take away the bad bit inside me, and afterwards I would get jelly and ice cream and feel all better with the bad bit taken away. Well, I was dead surprised that they even
knew
about my bad bit, because nobody had ever said anything before so I thought it was just me and nobody else had one or knew what it felt like to have a bad bit inside them, so I was really happy it wasn't a secret and they were going to take it away. Only they didn't. It was maybe ten days later I could feel the bad bit was still there, you know? I still felt bad inside but I didn't say anything because they kept looking down my throat and saying it was fine.'

‘Didn't you tell anyone?'

‘Nah. I just went back to thinking it was just me. I nearly told Sister Beth. She was my favourite nurse, she came to see me a lot and ask me how I was feeling. Sometimes she sat on a chair with me on her lap, one time I just put my head against her and stayed there for ages. The other three boys that had their tonsils out at the same time as me went back, but I stayed. I hadn't picked up, they said. I was there for weeks on the children's ward, in my pyjamas and dressing gown. We did jigsaws. And this boy's parents brought him in this train set—with trailers and goods wagons and stuff that went in them and carriages and everything. Most of the time I just lay on my bed, though.'

‘Then what happened?'

‘Dunno, really, don't remember. I must've got better.' He hesitated. ‘Well, Sister Beth, she didn't have her own kids, she must've felt sorry for me. She set it all up. She arranged to foster me, they asked me if I'd like to go and live with her and I said yes. Well, I thought it'd be great. I was miserable unless Sister Beth was on the ward. I thought it'd be wonderful.'

There was a silence except for the sighing of the gas fire. Steph asked, ‘Did you go?'

‘Oh yeah. I had to meet her husband and all that first, he was OK, friendly. Barry, he was called, he wanted me to call him Dad. The day they came to get me from the ward Sister Beth was in tears, hugging me the whole time. I was there till I was fourteen. Then they sent me back.'

‘Why did they do that? They sound nice.'

‘Oh, yeah, they were. Wasn't their fault, I s'pose I was messing around. It just didn't work out.'

‘Why not?'

‘Just didn't.' Michael stretched and sighed. ‘I just wasn't like them. I wanted to be an actor, for a start. I always wanted to be an actor, they didn't understand that,' he said, trying to close the matter.

‘I'm sorry. Honest.'

‘S'okay. I didn't become one, anyway, did I? Didn't work out. It doesn't always.' He was sitting in his usual place leaning against the sofa, and now shifted his legs and tipped his head back just a little towards her. It was less than a clear sign but Steph reached with one hand and stroked his hair, once.

Michael sniffed and drew in a deep breath. ‘What about you, then?' he asked.

‘Me? Oh—I'm a survivor, me,' Steph said, automatically. ‘Nothing's going to hold me back. I'm an art student. Only I've got to take a bit of time out, for obvious reasons.' She glanced down at her stomach. ‘I'm going back, though. Definitely. When I'm sorted,' she said. But it was no good. She petered out in simple disbelief and stared into the gas fire, remembering that she had once impressed Jace with all the survivor talk. That was when she'd just got into Bath City College, at twenty-two, to do A-level art. Jace had been doing an NVQ in something to do with building and came in one day a week on day release. When she had told Jace she was a survivor, it was not as if she had not meant it. Look where it had got her.

‘Oh, that's all bollocks,' she sighed. ‘I haven't got a fucking clue.'

‘I know,' Michael said, complacently. ‘You're as bad as me.'

‘Bloody cheek. Who asked you?'

‘Well, not your kid's dad, anyway. Where's he?'

‘What's it to you?'

‘Maybe nothing.'

Or maybe something, Steph thought. She did not dare ask if he wanted her to leave. She had been here for weeks now, and the longer something went on, the more that meant that it was all right, surely? They had worked out a kind of routine; she cleaned and shopped for food, using money that Michael left on the kitchen worktop next to the kettle before he went out in the mornings. To begin with she tended to go through it too fast and once he had complained, but apart from that not one word had been said about the arrangement, nor how long it was to last. Usually she lay down and rested in the afternoons, and Michael would be back by the time she woke up. Quite often now he cooked; he said that takeaways cost too much. At the end of each evening they would say goodnight, Michael would go to his bedroom and she would make up her bed on the sofa with blankets and Michael's coat.

‘He's not around, OK? If that's what you mean,' she said.

‘OK. So it's not a problem, then.'

A few nights later Steph explained what the matter had been with Jace. She added a little of what had been the matter with one or two others, including the father of her first child.

‘He was called Lee. We were far too young, we didn't know what we were doing. I left school and had her. I called her Stacey. I wanted to keep her but I didn't have anywhere, I couldn't get myself together, so they took her off me.'

‘Didn't you have no family that could help? What about your mum and that?'

‘She told me to get her adopted. They all went on at me. Said I had my life ahead of me and anyway she'd be better off with a mum and dad that could look after her. They said I'd soon get over it.'

‘Sometimes the gran looks after it, if you've had a baby too young.'

‘Yeah, well. My mum had her own baby then, with my stepfather, my second stepfather. My Nan wouldn't do it neither. She's not that sort of Nan. Got her own life to lead.' After a pause she added, ‘Besides I don't particularly get on with any of them. They can be quite awkward. I still think of Stacey, though, most days.'

‘So what did you do after that?'

Steph shrugged. ‘Usual—bummed around, did stuff, stayed with friends, sometimes with my Nan. She put up with me on and off after my mum moved to Colchester but she don't like it. I had jobs sometimes, retail, shops and that. I was always good at art, though. Got sorted in the end, went to college, met Jace, got pregnant. Bloody hell, I never learn, me. Told you I ain't got a clue, didn't I?'

‘Yeah, well. Nobody's perfect.' It really did appear that that would do. Not only was he not going to criticise her and tell her what she should have done instead, Michael did not even seem to expect from her the effort of pretending that she bounced back from failure all the time. The thought made her tearful.

‘I'm keeping this baby, though. No way am I giving up this baby, all right?'

Michael said nothing. Later, settling down in the sudden silence that followed the click of the gas fire being turned off, and surrounded by the smell of curry, which seemed stronger in the dark and which tainted even the stuffy air under her Nan's blankets, Steph hugged herself and hoped that everything would be all right. Because really, she hardly knew where she stood, or even where she wanted to stand. Michael had never tried anything on with her, and while she supposed she would have been flattered by an attempt, the practicalities might have made it difficult. She was getting so much bigger. She wondered if Michael were one of those men disgusted by pregnancy. She smoothed her hands over her stomach. She quite liked it, getting so round and important-feeling, and she had the idea Michael liked looking at her. Could it be he was old-fashioned, a proper gentleman who would never exact favours in return for bed and board? Or perhaps he was just gay. The filthy soup tins that she had cleared from the bedroom pointed to straight male slobbiness, but the cooking, the nearly becoming an actor, and the suspicious number of books in the flat suggested otherwise. Whichever it might turn out to be, Steph was grateful that Michael had neither asked her, nor shown any sign of wondering privately, when she might be moving on. In the dark she tapped a rhythm on her stomach with her fingertips, and whispered to her baby that everything would be all right.