The Stopped Heart (26 page)

The quality of his silence makes her shiver.

“She's not even slightly a part of your family, is she?” he says at last.

Mary thinks about this. The shape is almost out of sight now, moving toward the bottom of the garden. In a moment she won't be able to see it.

“I don't have a family anymore,” she says.

“Right. That's good to hear.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. I understand completely and it cheers me up immensely.”

He punches his pillows, turning over.

“There's something moving in the garden,” she tells him again. “Seriously, Graham. I've been watching it for a while.”

He doesn't answer. She searches for the shape again, gazing into the black knot of the trees. Listening again for the screams that sounded human even though they couldn't be human—

“Well, whatever it was, it's gone.”

She turns back to look at him and she sees that he's asleep and has been for some time.

I
N THE NIGHT, A STORM.
N
OT AS BAD AS THE STORM THAT
brought James Dix to us, but it blew down some big branches with all the leaves on and turned the cart in the yard over on its side and uprooted the row of currant bushes our father had only just dug in.

Our mother was upset because it also ripped out the lilies she'd planted on our Frank's grave, scattering them around the churchyard as if it intended that all the other dead should grab some for themselves. She sent Jazzy and me to gather as many of the plants as we could and put them back in.

We didn't have to take the little ones with us, because Honey was asleep and Charlie had jumped off the apple ladder and hurt his leg, even though it didn't stop him and Minnie chasing chickens around the yard. We would have preferred not to take Lottie with us either, but she yelled and cried and went around upstairs slamming doors and then banged her head so hard on the kitchen table that in the end we had to.

It was a warm, wet morning. The earth on the grave was fresh and sad and brown. There was no headstone because we were saving up, but you knew it was Frank because of how small and clean and new it was. Of the seven lilies Ma had planted—one for every year of his age—only one was left and even that one looked a sorry sight.

For a moment, we all just looked at the grave. It was hard to know what to think. It didn't seem to have anything to do with our Frank, and yet at the same time you knew it was everything.

Lottie sat down on the ground next to one of the big gray stones and she scuffed the heels of her boots around in the earth
and sucked her thumb and watched in a not very helpful way as Jazzy and I gathered up some of the plants that were strewn around. We checked they still had roots and dusted the muck off and then dug new holes to plant them in.

Won't he catch cold? Lottie said.

Won't who catch cold?

Our Frank. Under the earth. It's claggy in there.

She shuddered.

Frank's in heaven, I said. He's in heaven and he's quite warm enough. You don't need to worry about him, Lottikins.

Lottie's mouth fell open.

Ain't he under the earth?

I hesitated.

Only his poor body, I said, though a part of me still felt that bodies were all that could ever matter to anyone. As I took another lily and pushed its hairy roots into the soil, I couldn't help thinking of poor Frank, who must be down there just a few feet beneath my fingers. How would he look now? Would he still look like himself or would he be just a shape made of bones or would he be something worse?

Lottie was frowning.

Why is his body poor?

Because he was poorly and he died. But his dear soul survived and it's gone up to heaven to be with the angels.

She seemed satisfied with this. She put her thumb back in her mouth, but a moment later took it out again.

But I want him to come home. When's he coming home, Eliza?

Jazzy looked at me and rolled her eyes.

Never, she said, as she hacked away at the black earth with her trowel. He's never coming home. Weren't you listening to a single thing Eliza said? He'll never ever come home again, Lottie, because he's dead.

Lottie stared at her.

Dead?

Yes, dead! Why do you think they buried him? What do you think everyone's been weeping about, you silly little goose?

Lottie's face went very still, but you could see her thoughts working.

But when he stops being dead, then can he come back home?

Jazzy laughed.

People don't stop being dead. Dead goes on forever, Lottie, don't you know that? It's what's so very horrible about it. Tell her, Eliza.

It's true, I said, though even just saying it made me feel quite cold and dull inside. Frank can't ever be alive again, because you only get one chance at living and when it's over, that's it, you're dead.

Now Lottie's chin began to wobble.

Frank not dead, she said, and she folded her arms and shook her head and drummed the heels of her boots on the ground.

I put my trowel down and looked at her.

Oh, Lottie, I said. You know very well that he is. Don't you remember how they put him in a box and how we all cried and cried?

Lottie stared at me as if this was a new and terrible piece of information.

But what about the little dog?

What, you mean Frank's dog?

Lottie shook her head.

No, Tuffy. The Tuffy dog. Did we put him in the box with Frank?

I stared at Lottie.

I don't know what you're talking about, I said. I don't know anything about any dog called Tuffy.

Lottie's face turned dark.

Tuffy! The dog that is soft as a lamb and you put it on your face like this.

She made a rubbing motion with her fingers on her cheek. Jazzy was looking at her and shaking her head.

Shut up, Lottie. What are you on about? There was only our old dog and she wasn't like a lamb and you know very well that Pa put her in a hole in the woods.

Lottie seemed to think about this. She put her thumb back in her mouth and sucked on it for a while. At last she pulled it out and wiped it on her pinafore.

I think Tuffy was the little girls' dog anyway. But I thinked if Frank was dead, then maybe he could have it too.

I felt my heart drop.

What little girls?

She blinked.

Them little girls. The ones that died.

I bit my lip.

Lottie, I said, there aren't any little girls. Whatever are you talking about?

Yes there is. The little girls of miracles that had the Tuffy dog.

Little girls of miracles! What a stupid thing to say, said Jazzy, and she began to laugh loudly.

I looked at her.

She probably dreamed it, I said.

Not a dream! Lottie said. Anyway, I used to be dead too, and I came back.

Jazzy had had enough. She threw down her trowel.

No, Lottie! You didn't used to be dead. And you didn't used to be a dog. You didn't used to be anything. And there aren't any little girls either. Why do you always make up so many boomers?

Not boomers, Lottie said.

Yes, they are, they're boomers. Do you know that God punishes children who make up stories about dead people? It's wicked to lie. You're a wicked child and I wish you had died instead of Frank!

I looked at Jazzy and I thought that recently she'd become almost as mean as Phoebe Harkiss. But Lottie was staring at her.

When I was dead, she whispered in her darkest voice, I just laid there on the floor with the blood coming out of me.

Lottie, I said, that's horrible. I wish you wouldn't say such things. Where do you go getting such horrid ideas from?

From the man who killed me.

What?

Lottie smiled. Her eyes were raw and furious.

He couldn't help it. He was a bad man, so he just had to do it and God let him because God is bad.

Lottie! I said. Just stop it right now.

The man hit me and hit me till I was dead. Just like the little girls.

I took hold of Lottie's shoulders and looked in her eyes.

Just stop this nonsense right now or you're going straight home to Ma. For once and for all, no one killed you and you weren't ever dead.

Though you will be one day, Jazzy said. And sooner than you think, if you don't shut up with all this rubbish about miracles.

Lottie was silent for a long moment.

Not miracles, she said. Mary Coles.

I
THOUGHT THAT WAS THE END OF IT, BUT
I
WAS WRONG.

Later, much later, after night had come down and the sky had turned from blue to black, I was sitting in the kitchen biting my thumb and thinking about poor Frank and all the awful
and aggravating things he used to say and do that now that he'd gone just seemed quite ordinary and sweet.

And I was thinking too about whether I should go and look for James, who had gone with my father to the steeplechase at Bungay but must surely be back by now. And I was thinking about something else as well—a wavy, upset, and hard-to-understand kind of thought that had not yet taken shape in my head but was already making my throat feel tight and sad—when she came and stood behind me.

At first I didn't feel her there. In fact, she kept herself so quiet and still, that when at last she reached up and tugged my sleeve, I jumped so hard that my thoughts exploded all around me, shattering into pieces.

Lottie! I cried. Whatever are you doing? Why aren't you in bed?

She was gazing up at me with hot eyes. Her cheeks were bright and her breath smelled sickly and of fever. She licked her lips.

I don't like it, she said.

What? What don't you like?

The lady.

What?

She keeps coming—Lottie looked around the room and then back at me. She held up her hands. I said to her to go away, I said: You must go away right now or I'll bite you! But every time I say it she just stays and stays—

But, Lottie—

I watched as she plucked at her nightgown and stomped her bare feet and gazed all around the room again. I saw that she was on the verge of tears.

Make her go away, Eliza. Please make her—

Make who go away?

The lady!

What lady? I can't see any lady. Ouch! I said as she grabbed hold of my arms so tight with her fingers that it started to hurt. Get off, Lottie. I mean it; you're pinching me.

I prized myself away and got up.

Is it the same lady you were talking about before? I asked her as I reached for a spill to light the lamp.

Lottie was still for a moment.

It's Mary Coles.

Mary Coles? Who's Mary Coles? We don't know anyone called Mary Coles. What are you talking about, Lottie? I said as I went to the window to look for any sign of James.

She blinked.

It's a name, isn't it?

Yes, but whose name?

It's her name and I told you, I don't like it.

Now Lottie began properly to cry.

Oh, Lottie, I said. Look at you, you're just about ragged with tiredness. Why aren't you in bed and asleep?

I don't like her, she sobbed. I don't like her—I want her to go.

Her sobs were so loud that I had no choice but to go over and sit back down on the chair and pull her on my knee.

I don't know what you mean, I told her more gently now. What lady? There isn't any lady here.

She turned and nestled herself into me, hugging her small arms round my waist and pushing her face into my sleeve.

She's in here and I don't like it.

In here? You mean in this room?

Yes.

And are the little girls in here too?

Lottie let out a wail.

Not them! The little girls are dead!

I thought about this.

Look, Lottie, I said as I got her comfortable on my lap and kissed her soft hair that smelled of bed and old milk. I want you to look around the room. Let's do it now. Let's look around the room together.

And I took her chin in my hand and as calmly as I could turned her head so I could show her every inch of that empty room with its shadows and dark spaces and familiar objects that were only just visible in the light of the lamp.

You see, I said. There's no one. No lady, no little girls, no monkeys or bears or tigers either. There's no one here at all but you and me.

Yes, there is! Lottie cried—and she pointed with her finger before twisting her head back against my breast as if she could hardly bear to look.

No, there isn't.

There is! Look. Over there!

Where?

There!

Again, she jabbed her finger into the air. And so I looked. I did it. I put my eyes in the very place where she was telling me to put them.

I looked at the flagstone floor that I'd swept not more than an hour ago. The sheet of newspaper that Pa had pinned to the wall, that had prices for horse rakes on it. The chair he always sat in to take his boots off. The mirror. The clock. The oil lamp. The platters and the mixing bowls on the dresser. A brown jug. Some strips of sack cloth for tying birds' feet together. Ma's worn-out apron with the blue flower pattern and the blackberry stains on it. And beneath all of that, the stack of firewood, barely visible now in the dark of the fireplace,
which always had mice nesting in it, and the rug that Ma and me had made from an old red soldier's coat she'd got from a rag-and-bone man.

I looked at all of these things—things I fully expected to see, and which were indeed as precisely and definitely there as they always were—and I was about to start scolding Lottie again for telling great big booming lies, when I saw it. Something—

Human, it was. Woman. The legs long and loose in dark breeches, the face shadowy, black hair coming undone and falling over its shoulders, moving fast across the kitchen floor, slicing softly through the air toward the place where we—

Drawing breath and springing to my feet, knocking the chair out from under me and pulling Lottie into my arms, I would have cried out, but at that exact moment James came in. His hands were dirty and hung heavy by his side and his face was gray and terrible.