Half Broken Things (25 page)

It was while we were turning the place upside down looking for a sewing machine that Michael came across the silver picture frames that I'd torn the photographs out of in January. After I'd burned the pictures I'd put the frames away and hardly thought of them. He said we ought to have some of our own family pictures, and of course he was right. So he sold more of the old books and bought a digital camera. I had no idea what was meant by
digital
(I still don't) but Michael laughed and said it was all done by computers and that he didn't even need film! Sure enough he spent a couple of sunny afternoons taking pictures and he actually developed them in the study. I'd always thought you needed a dark-room. Michael did explain—he said he was new to it himself but if you spend a bit of time on a computer it's amazing how fast you pick it up and in any case the computer tells you what buttons to press half the time—but the details escape me. I'll never understand it. There were some lovely shots of Charlie and Steph, the garden, and even some not bad ones of me. You don't notice how you change until you see a photo of yourself, do you? All that hair I have now! It has grown bushy as well as white and thick, but I fancy it suits me. When I noticed my hair in those photos I thought back to that night in the cellar and the label on the wine bottle, and saw how far I had come in a few months. Steph had taken some pictures of Michael, too; so we are all there, somewhere or other; the pictures are all still here, in their frames, all over the house. Steph and I had great fun trimming them for the frames and sticking them up all round the place. The very best one of Charlie was too big for any of the frames, though. That's the one that's still on the door of the fridge, under a toy magnet shaped like a carrot that Michael picked up at the garden centre.

Oh, yes—the garden centre. Well, I had begun to think seriously again about a tree for Miranda's grave. In fact that was another thing. It became easier to talk of Miranda. We all learned how, even Steph, we helped each other, persevering even when it was difficult. Not that we can ever speak of her casually or without longing, even to this day. Still when her name is mentioned, more often than not one or another of us weeps. But there is a certain sweetness in that. We learned to speak of her often, always fondly and sadly, and one day I told them about my idea of a tree. They both said very firmly that I should have it. There was a rather florid Edwardian dinner service that we none of us cared for and agreed we could spare. We never used it, preferring the very thin, plain white porcelain. So I got my tree. I sent Michael off to the garden centre with careful instructions and he brought back a very large magnolia that we planted all together.

Michael had been amazed by the garden centre. It turned out he had never been to one before (well, why would he, with no garden?) and it was a revelation, all those tender shoots, just waiting to be put in the ground and allowed to thrive. He thought he would like to plant a proper vegetable garden. Everything he needed was there, he would only have to buy the seedlings and put them in. I can see it now, how his face was shining. He was already taking a pride in this garden, which existed at that point only in his mind. It was yet to be planted, but just the idea of keeping us supplied with fruit and vegetables for the summer made him proud. I at once encouraged it, so he picked out some more things we could do without (I left it to him this time to choose what—I knew he would be sensible). I believe it was more furniture from the bedrooms. He filled the walled garden with row upon row of fresh, bright little plants, and he tended them every day. There was no end to the care he took with them, and he kept the lawns cut and the flowerbeds tidy, too. We were all in a kind of heaven—not sitting about on clouds, you understand, but busy doing things that made us happy.

I do not think we were ever afraid that it might not last, but perhaps we were half-expecting that somebody would come and try to spoil it. I do know that we acted extremely quickly to stop Shelley.

———

The weather grew warmer. One morning Sally told Steph, unnecessarily, to be sure to put on Charlie's sunblock, which Steph took as approval in principle that she might take Charlie out and about in the pushchair. That evening Steph told Sally that she had taken Charlie up to the manor to ‘meet my aunt', omitting to mention that Charlie had, in fact, spent every single day there so far. The following day, Steph made a point of saying that she had taken Charlie there again and that he had enjoyed the walk up the drive, and she brought back a lemon cake for Sally ‘with best wishes from my aunt. She's great at cakes'. After that Steph filled a vase with buttercups that, she explained, Charlie had been charmed to see growing in one of the manor paddocks. The next day she reported how ‘my aunt' had been reading his baby books with him. Then Steph had a brainwave.

The following day, instead of taking Charlie up to the manor, she got Michael to come down to the house after Sally had left. Together they blitzed the place, resisting the temptation to throw most of Sally's junk away, instead cleaning round it and tidying it into more rational arrangements. That evening Sally arrived home not just to the silent, smiling Steph and a bathed, fed and sweet-tempered Charlie, but also to a pine-scented and gleaming house. It was still cluttered, but there were at least enough clean surfaces to allow her to walk in and put her things down without having to move other things first, and then find places (by shifting other things) for those things she had picked up in order to make room for the things she had come home with. She seemed slightly confused by the tidiness, but grateful. She even offered Steph a glass of wine but Steph, anxious to get home and feeling fairly sure that she was unlikely to enjoy the Côtes du Rhône that Sally was uncorking, declined, and slipped off.

‘Sally,' Steph said the next morning, ‘you don't mind me taking Charlie up to the manor, do you? I thought it'd be nice to have him up there and save messing up the house. Now it's all nice, shame to get it all, you know.'

‘No, I don't mind, you take him, it's fine,' Sally said, slightly absently, looking round the kitchen. The wine bottle she had emptied the night before stood on the draining board. ‘But he does
live
here. I mean I'm really grateful, but we don't want things so perfect we can't touch them, do we? I'm not bringing him up in a bloody
sterile environment,
after all. Am I?' She began picking through a basket of onions to find her car keys. ‘Maybe I should pop up there one day, you know, just to see he's settled. I'd like to meet your aunt, anyway.'

Steph had been expecting this.
I'm going to check up on where he is all day and who he's with
is what you really mean, she thought. Jean had suggested that any half-normal mother would want to do that.

‘Oh, yeah, right,' she said. ‘My aunt was saying she'd like to meet you, meet Charlie's mum. She said suppose you take us up there in the car one morning and drop us off, on your way to work?'

‘Well, we could do. It's in the other direction. We'd have to be out of here half an hour earlier,' Sally said, her interest waning.

‘OK. I'll tell her you'll be up tomorrow then, OK?'

‘What? Oh fine, yes, tell her that's fine.'

‘Glad you like the spring-clean, anyway. Nice to have it a bit clearer, isn't it?'

‘Oh yes, but I mean in a way, now it
is
a bit better, it seems a shame not to be here a bit
more
.'

‘Oh no, of course, I didn't mean—' Was it all going to backfire? Steph thought fast, and delivered her masterstroke. ‘It's just—well, I think Charlie likes to see new faces. You know. He likes my auntie. He gets tons of attention up there, you see.'

‘Oh, yes, yes. Oh,
where
are my keys? Steph, have you seen my fucking keys?'

‘Here they are. Anyway, I think the stimulation's really good for him. You know, especially when he doesn't see very much of
you
. You know, when he doesn't see you
all day
. And with him being an only.'

The next day Sally drove them up to the manor, cursing at the early start. Jean came out to meet them in the drive, shook hands with Sally and invited her in. Sally refused coffee, spent all of five minutes in the kitchen where one end had already been transformed into Charlie's play area, smiled and said she must be off. Jean saw her back to her car, chatting amiably. When she returned, she and Steph exchanged a look. Jean put plates to warm and made a pot of coffee while Steph, with Charlie on her hip, laid the table. After another minute or two, just to be cautious in case Sally came roaring back up the drive for any reason, they called to Michael, who had been waiting upstairs, and then they sat down to the breakfast that Jean had ready in the oven. That was all it took.

I've gone woefully off the point, because looking back a few pages I see I didn't get to the end of the Mr Hapgood story. He took Father's clock away and stored it at the back of the shop. He reported that he had found out that it was a Vulliamy clock of 1788. Unfortunately, however, it had only a number (169) rather than the maker's signature, indicating that it wasn't among his best work. He showed me all this, how the number 169 wasn't engraved on the backplate along with a signature like the finest examples, but punch struck on the reverse of the brass bob at the base of the pendulum, somewhere inconspicuous. It would have been signed if it had been a superior clock, he said, but it was still an attractive piece and could be worth as much as £150. It seemed an awful lot for a clock, I said. But inside I was thinking it didn't sound like enough to go to university for three years. I hoped I was wrong. I hadn't looked into it. Although Mother had rallied, a little—she had been up and about quite a bit in fact, supervising the people putting in her downstairs bathroom—it still hadn't seemed the right time to raise it with her, the question of me leaving home. Did I say, it was always difficult to talk in that house? It was no easier with Father gone. With him gone there were no more kind little blinks or never-mind looks between us when Mother's back was turned. So I didn't broach the subject.

Mr Hapgood went on to say that it was very important to find the right buyer. Why didn't I ask what he meant? I don't know why, except that he made it sound as if I should already know, or as if there were a sort of buyer who was ‘right' in some way over and above wanting the clock and having the money for it. He said that even though he himself wasn't in the ‘mainstream antiques business' I had done the right thing in coming to him, because he would see me right. For a start I wouldn't be having to pay an ‘extortionate dealer's premium'. I didn't ask what that meant, either. But it might take a little while to find ‘the right buyer', however, and he suggested that I pop in once or twice a week to see if there was any progress to report.

So I did. I must have been living in some fug that stopped me barely noticing, let alone minding, that there at the back of the shop, in the drowsy oil-stove heat, he always had more tea for me than progress to report, and soon a lot more cuddles than tea, and before long he said we were very good at comforting each other and cheering each other up, and could get even better. Soon enough his hands had been everywhere and I was confused by the way he seemed both a little impatient if I showed any reluctance, but at the same time pleased with me. He was gradual, and clever with his hands. So by the time he took my hand and put it down his trousers and made me keep it there, I was at the very least curious. And on the day he unbuttoned himself and showed me everything, I was almost as ready as he was to go (as he said, brandishing it) the whole hog. The whole hog did not take long, and was carried out in silence except for the creaking of the rickety old sofa. I remember thinking it was the sofa that was taking the brunt, because I felt in a curious way rather out of it and at a distance. Then Mr Hapgood was saying I should be on my way and I remember the slipperiness and the smell like raw potato that I thought was me, so that I was embarrassed and only too ready to go.

These days it would be called abuse, of course. But it was what he did later that still seems to me infinitely worse.

———

In the third week of May Michael unlocked the door at the back of the low stone pavilion by the pool. Old, trapped summer air poured out, peppery and slightly damp. White cotton curtains had been drawn against the French windows on the far side, so he crossed the room through the milky light and pulled them apart, finding the material just slightly tacky under his fingers. A few dead flies stuck in old webs in the curtain folds spun with the sudden movement; one or two fell and clicked faintly on the floor. He opened the French windows, strolled out onto the stone terrace, from which shallow blue steps led down into the water, and made his way to the end of the pool. Slowly he turned the handle at one end of the horizontal spindle that stretched the width of the poolside, and wound in the winter cover. After its last edge had been pulled free and was hanging dripping from the spindle, Michael crouched down and dipped his hand in the water. It was extremely cold, and the level of the water was lower than he expected, but he was surprised at how clean it looked.