Half Broken Things (31 page)

———

Michael and Jean had been picking strawberries for days, since the middle of June. First they had eaten them just as they came, warm off the plants, or with cream and sugar. Black pepper had been tried. Then they had had strawberry ice cream. Then strawberry shortcake, and a strawberry mousse. By the time bottles of strawberry vinegar were maturing in the larder Michael and Steph were begging for mercy. With the fruit that was left, Jean announced at breakfast on the last day of June, she would make jam.

They waited until the afternoon, after the sun had been on the strawberry patch all day, and together they picked the last of the crop. Under a canopy, Charlie in a white brimmed hat and white cotton clothes lay drowsy in a nest of white blankets at the end of the strawberry beds, presiding over the pickers like a large and rather viceregal fruit fairy, kicking arms and legs as smooth and golden as butter. His serious eyes, when they were not inspecting his hands to see if they had pulled anything more surprising than a trapeze of saliva from his mouth, would follow birds and insects, and from time to time he would chatter in reply to the others' voices or to the sound of far-off buzzing—Michael had set wasp traps a good distance away from him. Every few minutes he or one of the others would rise from the picking and sink down onto the rug nearby to chatter back to him and put on more of his sun cream, or tickle him under the chin or touch his cheek with a stained hand, to make sure he was not getting too hot.

After a time Steph stood up, groaning, and licked her fingers clean of strawberry gore. Clutching her lower back, she sauntered back to the house and returned with a tray with bottles of water and glasses, and a bowl and spoon. They plonked themselves down while Steph, sitting next to Charlie, mashed up two strawberries in the bowl with the back of the spoon and then, to Jean's slight horror, added a few drops of breast milk.

‘Steph, are you
sure,
I mean is one supposed to . . .?' She looked round at Michael for support, but he was simply gazing at Steph with that look on his face, the one of soft but total absorption that so often came over it when he watched her with Charlie.

Steph smiled as the resulting pink paste disappeared into Charlie's mouth. After a second's astonished smacking of his lips and widening of his eyes, he opened his mouth for more. Within four mouthfuls he was laughing and turning the stuff over in his mouth. Everyone applauded. It was his first taste of anything besides milk, and because they had watched it together the event was, it went without saying, theirs alone, a private joy; nothing whatsoever to do with Sally.

They went back to the picking. The strawberries mounted up in a large plastic bowl that Jean had brought from the laundry room. It was the end of the season. Most of the whole strawberries had lost their gloss and grown dull and deviant-looking; this was the riff-raff, the small, the reticent, late-forming and grudging fruit, and it was already almost too late. Some of the berries were so ripe that as they were picked they burst in the fingers and landed in the bowl as wet, scented rags. The warm heap of exposed flesh in the bowl would, within a very few hours, begin to mist over with a blue-green bloom of mould.

Even though they discarded the rotten fruit and all the stunted berries that were almost white on one side, the quantity was almost threatening. Jean began to re-calculate the amount of sugar she would need. But there would have been even more strawberries, Michael said, if he had known more about them back in April.

‘In April,' he told them when they had nearly finished, ‘you've got to nip off the first blossom, it encourages more fruit. I read it in one of the gardening books, only,' he said, heaving the bowl of strawberries from the ground up onto his hip, ‘not until May.'

Steph had already picked up Charlie and was following Michael back to the house, trailing his blankets on the grass behind her. So they were too far away to hear, that was all. They were simply too far away to hear, so of course did not reply when Jean said, dreamily, ‘Oh well, never mind that now, we've got plenty. And there's always next year.'

They could not have heard. They had reached the end of the walled garden, crossed the sunlit lawn and were moving between the borders of rose bushes into the jagged shadow of the corner of the house. Jean stared after them until they disappeared round the side. She thought, watching them go, ‘They didn't hear me. So I could pretend that I never said that, that it was never even thought of, let alone said. I could pretend that, even to myself.' She stooped down, ruffled through the clumped leaves of a couple of strawberry plants, with a hand that was shaking. She could hear her own heart beating. Finding nothing worth picking, she stood up again. She should go back to the house. There were things to do. There was no reason for her to stand out here, with the sun beating down, as if she were waiting for something. But then it came, as she knew it would, as she stood unwilling or unable to move, an old ache gathering weight somewhere inside her.

Of course I never did go to university. Mother wouldn't put up the money and in any case, she said, she needed me at home. (By the way, I'm sorry to keep going back to Mother, and I'm not confessing anything in the sense of owning up to something I should not have done. She drove me too far.) The clock money paid for a secretarial course, and the rest went on my board, Mother's point being that I had left school and until I was earning why should she stump up for everything if, after the course was paid for, I was still ‘sitting on a goldmine'. Hardly a goldmine. I began to get angry with Father for saying the clock would get me through college. I even began to wonder if by
college
he actually had meant Technical College, a year learning to type and file and do shorthand and organise the boss's diary? If so, it was just cruelty on his part to have let me run on with thoughts of proper university. I could scarcely believe it of him, and he had always told me I could be a teacher, like him. But then his dying and leaving me felt like an act of cruelty also. All those years I spent thinking ill of him, of course I regret them now, but I was misled.

After college I was never out of work, Mother would have to concede that. I kept the money coming in, not that secretaries earn much, and I was there at the end of every day. I fed her the usual things at the usual times, making sure that nothing on the plate had a noticeable taste. Anything that might be described as having what I now consider flavour she would have refused, because she did not like anything unexpected in her mouth. She said anything with a taste came back on her. Steamed fish, mashed potato. Semolina. Yes, I looked after her and I was never out of work, and before I knew it, those two facts were all I had to put in place of achievements, not that they added up to enough to be proud of. Nothing in the actual work I did, in any one of the places where I was employed over the years, interested me in the slightest. Most of the time I scarcely noticed what I typed or took down in my shorthand pad or filed away or said politely on the telephone. I was a pleasant enough colleague, I think, not difficult or hostile, but I did not care one way or the other about the work that went on, and over time that becomes indistinguishable from mental dullness. I could be relied upon to do as I was asked, nothing more. It seemed enough to me. Ditto at home with Mother, although I did develop what she called a ‘nasty sarcastic streak'. I know what she meant. I could sometimes come out with remarks that were rather bitter-sounding. And sarcasm without wit (which I have never possessed) comes across rather sourly. Without quite realising it, I became sour.

I had long, long since stopped going to Mr Hapgood's, of course. Once or twice towards the end I saw through the glass bit of the shop door that there was a woman with dyed blonde hair behind the counter, and on those days I walked on home. Gradually I stopped even looking to see if she was there and didn't go near the place. Mr Hapgood had grown a little distant, anyway, by then.

Incredible, you will be thinking, that she could even think of carrying on with that awful man, even after she knew he was getting married? How could anyone be so naÏve? But it wasn't naÏveté, quite, although I was as ignorant and unwise as the next provincial schoolgirl in 1951, and out of my depth. If you think depravity's involved, I'm not even sure I was much less depraved than he was. But there was more to it than that. I had been lonely since Father died and at the end of every school day my heart sank at the thought of going home. At least going to Mr Hapgood's put that off for an hour. At least, in the smoky back of the shop, I got a welcome of sorts.

And I think I was overwhelmed by something else, a sort of knowledge that had been growing over the years, more in my bones than in my brain, a thing I just knew without noticing I'd been learning it. So when I told Mr Hapgood that yes, I would keep coming, it felt not like a decision that I was making but like a reflex reaction to a blow that I had been expecting. It was quite clear and unsurprising. The fact was that with Father gone, I had nobody. Nobody. The feeling this gave me was unbearable, as if I were made of something weighty but without colour or life, like damp ashes, so worthless I could be swept into a sack and tipped out somewhere and never be missed. So I would have clung to anyone who stopped me feeling like that. I would have stuck to anyone who wanted me, and I was in no position to much mind who they were, or even what it was they wanted me for.

So for a time Mr Hapgood was a kind of intermittent relief from that feeling. But when that episode finally closed the feeling came back, of course, and I managed to live for years and years either feeling it or in danger of feeling it, so it turned out not to be unbearable after all, in the strict sense. I bore it, I even learned to pretend it wasn't there. But I've done enough of that now. I cannot bear to feel like that ever again, not now that I have been truly free of it, living here.

It was my own fault, that day of the strawberry picking, letting a mention of next year slip out of my mouth, but it helped me. Because when that unbearable feeling stole over me again, as I stood there, after I had watched them walk away from me, that was the moment when I knew I would do anything, I mean absolutely anything, to keep us all together.

July

Steph was pressing the little studs on Charlie's pale green shorts and tucking in his T-shirt, wondering which of his several hats he might wear today. It was going to be hot again, too hot for jam making, really, but the fruit had been picked yesterday and would not last out the day.

‘We're going to make jam, Charlie,' she told him. ‘Aren't we? Are you going to help me make the jam? Are you going to have a taste of the jam?' She popped an acorn shaped hat of green gingham on his head. Charlie looked back at her coolly. It was a morning on which Sally had, surprisingly, left calmly and in good time, so Charlie had already had a peaceful breakfast with Steph and apparently was scrutinising the day ahead with equanimity. They were both startled by the sudden loud pang-pang-pang of Sally's doorbell.

A very tall, elderly man wearing smeared glasses and dressed in a light linen jacket and an open-necked shirt stood on the doorstep. He raised his panama hat and smiled experimentally. ‘How do you do. I hope Sally told you to expect me?'

He asked this in a way that suggested he assumed she would have, so Steph felt somehow in the wrong when she told him that Sally had not. The man wriggled his full lips. ‘Oh, dear. I did tell Sally. I told her expressly that I would visit today. I was supposed to pop in yesterday evening, which frankly would have been more convenient, but she rang and said Charlie was too tired. So I said I would come today instead, and she said I would have to be here early. Do I take it I've missed her?' He looked at Charlie for the first time and chucked him under the chin. ‘Hello, young man! Helloooh!'

Steph wondered how she could ask him who he was without sounding rude or suspicious. Before she could say anything he turned from Charlie, who now had hold of one of his forefingers, and said, ‘And you must be Nanny, am I correct?' The words were followed by a parting of the lips, offering Steph a view of greyish teeth that appeared to be huddling in his mouth for shelter.

‘I'm the childminder. Steph.'

‘Well, how do you do, Steph. I'm Charlie's grandfather. Mr Brookes, or Reverend Brookes if you like, but in mufti today, not in fancy dress! Actually I'm on holiday.' He grinned at her. The sun was falling directly on his face, and Steph, seeing nothing beyond the obscuring rainbow glint of grease across the lenses of his glasses, could not be certain if his eyes were friendly.

‘Oh. Oh, that's nice. Nice weather for you.'

‘Yes, only wouldn't you just know it—I gather it's wet where I'm going! I'm off later, you see, for a week's walking. Up north, probably in the rain! Anyway, I thought I'd pop over before I head off, and see my grandson. I did tell Sally I would, but evidently she's forgotten to tell you. Eh, Charlie?'

‘Oh.'

So this was the, what was it Sally had called him? The uptight bugger, the miserable old sod, the one Sally preferred when he was depressed. Steph's heart went out to him. He was just old and awkward, a big embarrassment of a man, too tall for his clothes and too helpless to clean his glasses, yet here he was on the doorstep making an effort. But what could she do?

‘Well, I'm sorry Sally's not here; but we were just going. Charlie and me, we were—'

‘Going? Going where?'

‘Oh, we don't stay
here
. We don't spend the day here. Didn't Sally tell you? We always—' She stopped. It was clear from the falling of the man's already long face that Sally had told him nothing at all. Steph could almost hear it, Sally barking down the phone at him that he'd better be early and she wouldn't be hanging around,
she
would have to get to work, and he would have to sort it out with Steph. It was suddenly much less surprising that Sally had gone off so promptly today; she had deliberately left the two of them to deal with each other. Steph immediately felt rather sorry for herself, as well as for him. In fact Charlie's grandfather was not at all as she had imagined him. He was quite kind-looking, really, just a bit unfamiliar with babies.

‘I take him up to my house. There's lots of room and the garden and everything, and a pool.' She added, ‘Sally knows. We keep lots of his stuff up there, there's nothing here for him. And, er, well—well, I need to get off, they're expecting us. Takes a little while, what with the pushchair.'

‘Oh. Oh, I see, yes, I'm sure, but you see, I've come nearly eighteen miles. Though of course you've got your routine, I wouldn't want to . . .'

‘Well, come on in for a minute, anyway,' Steph said, comfortably. He was nice, she was deciding. And he had come specially, and must be wearing that hat just as a sort a joke. It was typical of Sally to take against him. Sally did seem always to be furious with the wrong people. ‘Come on in and have a cup of coffee. What a shame, you coming all this way and Sally never saying.'

Charlie's granddad seemed as mystified by the cluttered house as Steph was. He stood frowning, looking round the kitchen as if he were wondering if he could bear to stay in such a muddle even long enough to drink a cup of coffee.

‘Tell you what,' he said. ‘Don't bother with the coffee. I'll give you a lift. And then perhaps I could spend—'

‘Oh, no! No, don't, there's no need, honest. Kettle's on, won't take a minute. And we like the walk. Don't we, Charlie? It's only a mile, it's just along the road, really. We count the cars, don't we, Charlie?'

‘Along the road? The top road? That settles it. They tear along there, there's no proper pavement, is there, and they just tear along . . . it's not safe. No, never mind the coffee, I'm giving you a lift. What can Sally be thinking of? I'll have to speak to her. So dangerous!' He had already found his car keys.

Steph tried to protest. ‘But we always walk! I'm careful! I wouldn't let anything happen to him!'

‘I'm sure you wouldn't, but I won't have it. I'm taking you in the car.'

‘Oh, but you can't! I've just remembered. You won't have a car seat. And Charlie's is in Sally's car, and she's gone to work, and she wouldn't like it. He's got to be in a proper car seat. He's only safe if he's in a proper car seat, she says. So we can't come with you.'

The man gave a dismissive tut. ‘Oh really, as if that were the point. Anyway, there's a car seat in the hall. I'm sure I saw one in the hall, on the way in.'

Steph had not noticed. There it was, partly hidden under a thrown-down jumper of Philip's. She remembered now. Philip's car was a BMW two-seater, so they had gone to France in Sally's Volvo, folding the back seat down flat to make room for the cases of wine. The car seat had been taken out and, true to form, Sally had not yet put it back.

Mr Brookes's car was almost as crammed with things as Sally's usually was. While Steph tugged the rear seat belt round the car seat, Mr Brookes cleared stuff out from the front so that Steph could sit there. He first chucked over some books, folders and a number of cardboard tubes, and then he brought out several boxes with no lids, that contained bundles of brightly coloured paper strips held by elastic bands. They all carried the same words: SAVE YOUR LYCHGATE. Several identical strips were stuck all over the windows and rear windscreen of his car. He opened the boot and began rearranging things to make room for the boxes.

‘What are they?' Steph asked.

‘Oh, a parish project of mine. Car stickers, good for awareness-raising. I've still got plenty, printer was most obliging, twenty thousand cost hardly any more than five. Want some?'

‘But what is it, a—whatever, a lychgate?'

‘Oh, the lychgate's where you park a coffin if it's raining. You must have seen them, quite a lot of churches have them. We've done a bit of a blitz on ours, coat of paint, got a few plants in containers round it, that kind of thing. Petunias and busy lizzies, mainly. Trying to get a volunteer warden scheme going for the watering, discourage the graffiti merchants.'

‘Sounds nice,' was all Steph could find to say.

Perhaps because all she could do was sit there passively, Steph felt, as soon as she was in the car, that Charlie's granddad was trying to take over. He said, ‘Stephanie, please don't think I'm being at all critical of
you
. But the thought of a pushchair on this road,
well
. But it's not you, it's Sally I blame.'

‘But I'm careful, I stay on the grass, we've never once had any trouble. I—oh, turn off here, the next left, this is the drive. Where it says Private Drive.' The car swung in suddenly. ‘You could just drop us here,' Steph said, optimistically.

‘Oh no. No, I'll take you right up. In any case, I should like, if there's no objection, to stay for a few minutes. I don't see much of my grandson, after all. Do I, Charlie?'

He turned to Charlie in the back and beamed luridly, and Steph wondered, gazing at his nostrils, which opened much too wide when he smiled, if perhaps she didn't like him so much after all. Still, she thought, turning back and staring through the windscreen, it won't do any harm. She would prefer not to be giving Jean and Michael the fright of an unexpected visitor, but he wouldn't stay long. They had coped with Sally coming here, and that woman Shelley, so they could easily manage this.

Michael had moved the croquet hoops off the side lawn, which he would mow later on, and had set them out ready for a game on the stretch of grass between the back of the house and the pool pavilion. He was fetching the mallets and balls and carrying them round when he heard the sound of the car. Jean appeared at the kitchen door. Together, exchanging a look, they made their way quickly round the side of the house to the front. Steph had stepped out of the car and was hurrying towards them with an appeasing but doubtful smile. Jean stopped and was wiping her hands on her apron and Michael stood some distance behind her, tossing two croquet balls up and down in one hand. They tried to smile back.

‘It's okay!' she said breathlessly, as she reached them, ‘honest, it's okay. I couldn't help it. It's only Charlie's granddad.' Jean and Michael looked past her to the back of the figure bending into the rear of the car, fiddling with the straps of the car seat. Michael stopped his half-hearted juggling with the croquet balls. ‘Only I couldn't help it. He just turned up at Sally's, and then he wouldn't let me bring Charlie along the road in the pushchair. He's okay, though. He never sees Charlie and he wants to stay a minute. Just act ordinary.'

‘Oh, Jesus Christ,' Michael said slowly. He was staring at the man, who was now smiling broadly and walking towards them with Charlie in his arms. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.' He stepped back a few paces, but it was too late to disappear. He had been seen. ‘Jean, go on and say hello.'

Mr Brookes pulled off his hat and called out, ‘How do you do! Forgive my descending on you out of the blue, did Stephanie explain? Bit of communication breakdown, I'm afraid! Here we go, young man!' He shifted one arm under Charlie's bottom and handed him over to Steph. Then he extended a hand towards Jean. I'm Charlie's grandfather. Gordon Brookes. And you're . . .?'

‘Er, Jean,' she said, in a voice that sounded out of practice. ‘I'm Jean. Hello.' Steph bit her lip. Jean looked rather wild, standing there in a strawberry smeared apron, her hair wandering. She sounded rather out of it, too.

‘What a
marvellous
house!' the man was saying, taking Jean's hand and pumping it while he looked past her at the façade. ‘Have you lived here long?'

‘Quite long,' she managed to say, suspiciously.

‘What's the period? The usual hotchpotch? Tudor origins, later additions? Glorious stone!' The man was turning his full charm and attention equally on Jean and the house, and Jean seemed about to collapse under it. Steph shot Michael a darting look. Michael must see what was happening. Why was he simply staring, and not doing something to rescue her?

And why was Charlie's grandfather now staring so hard at Michael? The smile had gone, and his mouth was opening and closing. ‘You? My God.
You.
I—I'm going to— My God, it
is
you, you're the—the—' Gordon Brookes's face was reddening.

‘Steph,' Michael said quietly, ‘Steph, take Jean and Charlie indoors. Please, go now. Now. Right now.' He took a step backwards.

Gordon Brookes was advancing, and growing agitated. He gasped, ‘It's not, is it? It is! It's
you
! You little, you . . . ! My figures, my St John and St Catharine. Oh good God . . . you—'

Being a man capable of fury yet unused to physical contact of any kind, least of all fighting, Gordon Brookes did not move smoothly, but his hands flew up and one fist caught Michael on the shoulder, half pushing, half punching. The blow seemed to take him almost as much by surprise as it did Michael, but he followed it with another before Michael could raise his arms to protect his head. Gordon Brookes had long ago been civilised into churchy mental habits, so it was a shock to him to realise that hitting somebody could feel, while unfamiliar, the only natural and appropriate thing to be doing. His outrage was overtaking all his beliefs about the pointlessness of violence; he was instead almost dancing, animated by an angry energy that he would never, ever have imagined he could expend on any response as ‘mindless' as punching someone about the face. He landed a hard kick on Michael's leg. Michael's whimpering stopped him for a moment. He raised a shaking hand. ‘That curate . . . that poor man. You . . . have you
any
idea what you did? We know you did it, you know! I'm getting the police down here, right now! Good God, you're—you won't get away with this—!'

‘Steph, take Jean and Charlie away,
now
.
Do
it.' Michael's voice was wavering, and when he lowered his arms from his head, his eyes and lips fluttered with fear. Yet he did not move from the spot where he stood, nor take his eyes away from Gordon Brookes. Brookes moved in again, this time kicking wildly.