Half Broken Things (18 page)

It was Steph who was doing the feeding. She wasn't a natural at it though. She got very tired and cross over it and I remember she was often in tears. With Miranda bawling over her shoulder she would nag at Michael or me about getting Cow & Gate or something.
There must be bottles and that in the nursery! There's everything in there! Can't we give her a bottle? We had to tell her there weren't any. Miranda would get used to the feeding, I was sure of it. I mean, it was natural to take mother's milk, and must surely be better for her. It wasn't as if she'd ever had a bottle, was it, so why should that be any easier for her than the natural way? It seemed a reasonable argument and I really did believe it, and I could see Michael did too. We couldn't suggest going out to buy baby milk and bottles. We both honestly thought it would be better to spend what we had building Steph up so that she could feed the baby herself.

Money. Of course, it
was mainly to do with money, though at the time we convinced ourselves we were doing it for better reasons than that.

———

Miranda blurred Steph's nights and days by waking her almost every hour, chewing her till she bled and vomiting up curds. She writhed and groaned in her arms when she was not actually fretting at the nipple. Steph's right breast swelled up and became so red and sore that she could hardly bear it to be touched even by bathwater, then it grew so hard that she had to squeeze the spurting milk from it, yelping and crying with the pain and the waste of it; it was mixed with blood and serum from the cracked nipple so that she could not slip it into Miranda's mouth from a spoon. Her temperature rose. She grew feverish and woke from wild and anxious dreams. Her heat entered the baby, who did not seem to know if she screamed for want of Steph's milk or out of disgust for it. Steph lay beached on the soft bed, or sat for hours in cool baths to ease her breasts and the stinging from what she called her exit wound. She could only lie and hope that the burning, if it were not to stop, would just consume her altogether. At appallingly frequent intervals she would take the baby from Michael or from Jean, clamp her to the breast, and suffer. Later it seemed to her that in those weeks she cried not just in the bath or when Miranda was mauling her, but at every waking moment, even when eating, or drinking the glasses of water which were also brought to her too solicitously, and too often. Miranda's periods of sleep were snatches of exhausted respite from what seemed her personal awareness-raising campaign at the injustice of having been born; she would wake from them freshly enraged and renewed for the fight. Steph herself felt cowed by her ferocity and at the same time enslaved to the task of appeasing it. Sometimes she cried for shame at her own inadequacy. Nobody understood. All Jean's brightness and Michael's doggedness were irrelevant, merely atmospheres that she sensed dimly against the background of the days and nights, as they moved about bearing trays and glasses or bringing the baby to her again. They took care of the practicalities as best they could, but there was no relief. Miranda screamed and would not feed, or she screamed and then attacked with her pitiless mouth, later sicking up most of the milk she had pulled from her weeping mother. Not once did anyone suggest calling a doctor.

When Steph's temperature eventually fell and her infected nipple shrank and dried, she ate. She had been torn during the birth and walking was still painful, but she began to come downstairs for meals, dressed in clothes that Jean had put in the wardrobe in her bedroom. Michael had brought her few old things from the flat but she discovered she could not bear to look at them. It was Jean who sized her up and chose from her own collection the ‘youngest' trousers and shirts that would be comfortable, though fashionless. None of it much suited her. Steph did not care.

Michael and Jean exchanged a smile when she came into the kitchen early and slightly sheepishly for breakfast one day, taking her presence as a compliment to themselves. Perhaps kindness was becoming a habit with them all, for Steph did not spoil their pleasure by saying that it was not their company she was in need of but simply more to eat. It was the smell of bacon that had brought her down, and she thought it might be easier to get a second helping or extra toast and butter if she were nearer the food.

Jean's beautiful trays, with flowers and napkins and silver, had been getting a little short on quantity.

April

Life acquired fluency. On good days, which came more frequently, there were long stretches of peace, even glimpses of grace. The weather improved and bulbs came up all over the grass and around the garden. Jean brought in tulips and daffodils by the armload and for the first time in her life was amazed by them. How had she missed them all these years, she wondered; their colours, the clinging, yearning scent, the slippery sap and the stamens, so unbearably naked and tuned to the air that it was impossible to believe they were not receiving some strain of music too fine for human ears. She discussed with the others what vases she should use and where they would like them put, and she was pleased when one day Michael said he didn't much mind, just whatever she thought, anywhere was fine as far as he was concerned. His mildly distracted indifference struck her as affectionate; she felt promoted. His taking her somewhat for granted confirmed not just their familiarity but also his security in their relationship, and perhaps there really was something endearing about her, something elusive that only a son could see. She hummed as she trimmed stems and filled vases, to show that her prettifying efforts were for fun and she was not being fussy and anxious. Most of the flowers went in the drawing room for Steph, who said that she might get around to doing a painting of them sometime. On days when Miranda consented to sleep (which she did more and more, and even took on a slight listlessness when awake which they all agreed was a sign that she was nice and relaxed) Steph would settle on the drawing-room sofa in the afternoon while Jean and Michael flitted about on little tasks which seemed to please them, Jean most often around the kitchen, Michael ranging more widely about the garden and outbuildings as he searched out things that needed doing.

One morning early in the month the telephone rang while they were having breakfast. A man, who introduced himself as Stan, told Jean wearily that he could send one of the boys round later in the week to mow the lawns. As long as that was convenient to herself, he added, as per the arrangement.

‘Oh! Oh my goodness, arrangement? What arrangement?
This
week? . . .' Jean turned to see Michael and Steph sitting upright and alarmed, and realised that her voice had sounded frightened.

‘Ma'am? The arrangement for the grass. I was told you'd know all about it. Shan't inconvenience
you
at all, ma'am,' Stan said, implying that the inconvenience would be his.

‘The grass? Well, I . . . I couldn't say. How—I mean I'm not sure . . .'

‘The arrangement, ma'am, didn't they tell you? They said there'd be somebody here that knew the score.' When Jean said nothing he went on, even more wearily, ‘Ma'am, I farm the next land. Mr Standish-Cave lets me have his hay from the fields either side of his driveway, and for that I get one of my boys to cut his grass when he's away. Suits us both, except I'm short of hands. So I'm not saying we'll be round every week but I can spare Darren Thursday, most probably.'

There was a silence. There had been something on the owners' list about the grass but Jean could not remember what. Until this moment she had not given the grass a thought beyond thinking it was getting rather long; it was silly of her, for of course it would need mowing. But not by an outsider. She said, ‘Well, actually, if you're short of hands, there's no need. I'm sure we can manage. It's only a bit of grass cutting.'

‘There's a lot of lawns, ma'am. You're not planning driving the mower yourself, are you?'

‘Well, no, I don't suppose so. But we, I . . .' She looked at Michael. ‘I have someone here. I'm sure he's perfectly willing. Then there would be no need to bother you, would there?'

Stan brightened. ‘That's made my day, that has. I don't mind doing it, mind, but it's hard to fit in, come summer. If your visitor's up to it, good on him, and you thank him from me. Only,' he said, ‘I wonder, ma'am, if you'd mind not saying . . . you know, to Mr Standish-Cave. Thing is, you see, I'd still owe him then, wouldn't I? You with me, ma'am? I mean I
would
do it, only if you're telling me there's no need . . . and it's only a bit of hay at the end of the day, isn't it?' He laughed.

‘Quite right,' Jean said. ‘You're quite right, I shan't bother to mention it. Goodbye.'

After she had put down the telephone they remained tense for a few moments. Then Steph said, trustingly, ‘No problem, is there?'

‘No. Oh no, it's just—' It was just
what,
Jean wondered. That matters such as grass-cutting, and a hundred others, were not for her to decide because the house was not hers and she had somehow not been able to bring herself to spell that out? That Michael and Steph had no right to be here because she herself was only temporary, transient, and belonged, in the end, nowhere? It was all too unsavoury. Jean looked slowly from one to the other and decided that they understood it all anyway, and more than that, they understood the need not to go into any of it.

‘It's just—oh,
arrangements,
' she said. ‘You know. If it's not the grass it's another thing. But I don't think we want to be disturbed, do we? I should think we can manage by ourselves.'

‘Definitely,' Michael said.

Steph shifted Miranda to the other breast and nodded. We don't need nobody else.'

Jean reached for the coffee pot and refilled Steph's cup. ‘You keep your fluids up now. Michael, I think the mower keys are in the jar on the window sill.'

Michael cut the grass that day, chugging pleasurably on the tractor mower, learning how to corner just at the right moment for the blade to snatch the edges of the grass without munching into the plants in the borders. The smell of the cut grass brought Jean and Steph outside, and Michael made a note that later he would scrub down the wooden table and chairs by the kitchen door so that they could sit there when it was warm enough.

Over the next couple of weeks he made it his business to discover the extent and nature of the grounds, the condition of window fastenings, door latches, furniture. He even inspected the roof, tutted over blocked guttering, and spent two days clearing out wet and wormy leaves, wearing huge industrial gloves. He cleaned and oiled garden tools. It was a house with more behind-the-scenes arrangements for comfort than he had ever seen; it felt like a theatre. He found out what appliances, machinery and systems made it all work and came to understand the boiler, the septic tank, the water softener, the plumbing, the Aga. Mentally he stored up projects for himself for the next day, the week after, next month. He bled the radiators, sawed up some felled logs on the edge of the woods. Thinking of Steph and Miranda, he planned that soon he would master the swimming pool.

Yet in all these things he was a little less than proprietorial, behaving more like a respectful and discreet householder-elect. It was with a sense of his filial duty, a grown-up obligation to help his capable but ageing mother with such a large house, that he took some of the weight on his younger shoulders. Jean observed him with increasing pride that she should inspire such quiet and solid devotion, and that he should express it in ways that she thought so apt and so manly.

But perversely, as the good days became more frequent, the bad days when they came grew worse. There were days on which Jean woke with her heart pounding so hard that she felt she had been thrown out of a dream about an impending collision, just a second before the moment of impact. Saying nothing, she began to dread her trips to the freezers, whose pickings were growing thin. She felt guilty about her early lavishness with the beef, salmon and game of which the supply had once seemed endless. Her generosity and the sense of celebration she attached to feeding everybody had been, she now saw, simple profligacy and poor husbandry. One morning she came back from the freezers with a packet of sausages to find Steph in the kitchen.

‘Oh hiya,' Steph said, backing out of the fridge with a packet of bacon in one hand and a butter dish in the other. ‘I'm starving.
Got
to have a bacon sarnie.' She set the things on the table and pulled a baking tray (the wrong one, Jean observed, not the one to use for bacon) from the pan drawer. Jean watched her as she peeled five slices from the bacon packet and laid them out on the tray.

‘But you've already had bacon for breakfast. About two hours ago,' Jean said, in a rather ringing voice. ‘That's all that's left now.'

‘I
know,
' Steph said, turning flat eyes to Jean's. ‘Isn't it awful. I'm that hungry. I'll get huge. Must be the feeding, I'm just really hungry the whole time.' She smiled lazily. Jean watched in silence as Steph slid the tray of bacon that was meant to be tomorrow's breakfast into the top of the Aga. She tried to expel, in a long sigh, the resentment she felt at the commandeering of her oven. Her oven, her kitchen,
her
baking tray (the wrong one for bacon).

Steph was nosing in the bread bin now. ‘Bread's finished as well, once I've had this,' she said, taking out the end of a loaf. She sniffed it. ‘Needs using anyway.'

‘Steph—.' There were no more than two or three loaves of bread left in the freezer now. Jean hesitated. She was in danger of saying something tight and mother-in-lawish. There was flour in the kitchen cupboards, after all, and dried yeast. They would be all right for a while.

‘Know what I was thinking?' Steph was saying, as she went about sawing the bread into slabs. ‘I was thinking Miranda's room could do with—' She glanced at Jean apologetically. ‘I mean it's lovely and everything—but it's, like, kind of serious? A bit old-fashioned? What with the panelling, it's kind of dark, you know?' When Jean did not answer she went on, ‘I mean it's
lovely,
as panelling. But I've always wanted to do a baby's mural, you know, paint things on the wall. A cartoon character, maybe. Life size, and like in a kind of setting that you paint them in, maybe a castle or a forest or on a mountain or whatever.' She waved her hands in the air. She did not seem to notice that Jean was not filling the silence with an enthusiastic response. ‘Saw an Aladdin one in a magazine once. I'd only need a bit of paint in maybe eight, ten colours, and the brushes. I could do a really nice job. I mean I'm not professional but I'm not rubbish, I could do it really nice.
Is
there any paint, sort of, around anywhere?'

She wandered along the row of wall cupboards, opening them until she found tomato ketchup, which Jean considered a ruination of good bacon. The plastic bottle wheezed two long red worms of the stuff onto the slices of bread. Then Steph set the bottle down so hard that a bead of ketchup still hanging from the top flew off and spattered on the worktop, which Jean had lately wiped clean.

‘Though it doesn't matter if there isn't because it doesn't cost much, paint. I mean if I could get it myself I would, only I'm not exactly earning anything at the moment, am I? I mean soon as I was I'd pay you back and everything.'

Dear God. Paint in eight colours, brushes, nursery murals featuring cartoon characters? Jean opened her mouth but could not trust herself to speak. Was Steph blind? Could she not see that she, Jean, was standing in front of her holding six frozen sausages that were making her fingers numb, wondering if she could spin them out with rice or something and call it supper? Jean put the sausages in the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table. What could she say to Steph, round-eyed and trusting, no more aware than a child, who was calmly eating anything that wasn't nailed down and asking her to find the money for
paint
? She would have to face up to a few things.

But what Jean actually heard herself saying was, ‘Oh yes, how lovely. I can just picture it. I wonder what Miranda would think—she'd be thrilled, wouldn't she?' She knew no way to point out that buying paint was out of the question, to tell her that there was hardly any money even to buy more food; to suggest that actually, they might all have to learn to manage with less to eat. Nor could she mention that even if they had the money, it would have to be Steph or Michael who would have to get up the courage to go shopping, because Jean herself could not.

But she could not point any of this out because to do so would amount to saying that life could not be lived in this way. And how could she suggest that when life together here was now, for them all, a simple necessity? Jean was protecting them all by saying nothing. Things would sort themselves out. In the meantime it was still true (in a way) that whether or not they could buy the paint Steph's mural sounded lovely. And since it would never happen, Jean would not have to say anything heavy-handed about not touching the seventeenth century oak panelling. It could not matter, then, that she said again, ‘She'd be thrilled, wouldn't she?'

Steph was now laying out flabby bacon slices over the bread, murmuring that she thought they'd be a bit crisper than that after this long in the top oven but she was too hungry to wait. Jean rested her elbows on the table and tried to think seriously about what else she might give them with the sausages that evening, knowing that by luxuriating in this immediate but comparatively small problem she was displacing temporarily the huge, intractable one. They could not live forever on the contents of the freezers, but in the meantime, until she absolutely had to decide what to do about it, there were a couple of onions and a tin of tomatoes. Jean brightened. And she would see if Michael could find anything more in the garden. He had already found some potatoes in the large walled garden that Jean had never explored properly. She would ask him to dig it over again, there were always a few more. Everything would be all right.

Steph was finishing her sandwich and Jean was sifting through a collection of jars of dried herbs when Michael came in, bringing a blast of outdoor air with him. He strode over to the Aga, crouched over the temperature gauge and groaned. ‘Thought as much,' he said, straightening up and turning to them. ‘I've just been out and checked the tank and it's practically empty. We're out of oil.'