Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

No one moves. No one answers. There is a moment of stillness as if everything has been stopped, or turned off, as if everything and everyone has mislaid what should come next. Only the Christmas tree appears to remember and continues its happy transformation from green to red to blue. Then Eileen’s face creases with disbelief and she makes that wild honking noise that is in fact a laugh. But once again, it is as if she is not laughing at them, but with them. As if she is looking down over the scene, herself included, and suddenly seeing the outrageous joke.

  Eileen turns, revealing two white-grey legs where her skirt has pitched itself into the gusset of her underwear. ‘Oh fuck it,’ she snorts, as she gropes for the handrail and throws out her foot for the first of the customer-only stairs.

  Without Eileen, there is a fresh silence. Something unspecific has occurred and no one is prepared to move until they understand the full extent of the damage. Someone murmurs and when nothing happens, nothing splits open or crashes down, someone else laughs. Gradually, softly, voices thread into the density of silence until the café is once more itself again.

  ‘That woman is fired,’ says Mr Meade, although it could be argued Eileen has already fired herself. ‘Back to work, team.’ Then: ‘Jim? Hat?’

  Jim straightens it. It is probably best he will not see Eileen again; she carries such chaos in her wake. And yet her parting words resound in his head, as does her generous laugh. He can’t help wondering what sort of sandwich she would have brought him. Whether she would have served it with crisps and lettuce and a star-shaped tomato. He remembers a time long ago when there were cut sandwiches on a lawn, when there was hot tea. He has to hold his head so that while he shakes, he will not lose his orange hat.

  The first flakes of snow begin to fall, silent and twisting, like feathers through the air, but he does not look.

  9

  Pond

  THE SUN WAS up and already the dawn sky was pasted with copper-tipped clouds. Gold light trickled over the moor like honey. Six days, twenty-one hours and forty-five minutes had passed since the accident. At last Byron had a plan.

  He made his way purposefully through the garden and towards the meadow. His mother and sister were still sleeping. Equipped with essential tools and a packet of Garibaldis in case the work was difficult, he clicked the picket gate shut. Heavy dew had fallen overnight and fat drops clung to the wild grass like pendants. His slippers, pyjamas and the hem of his towelling dressing gown were soaked within minutes. When he stopped briefly to glance back at the house he could see the dark path his feet had made, and sunlight growing like flames at the bedroom windows. Both his mother and Lucy were asleep. Far away, a farm dog barked across the hills.

  James Lowe once said that a dog was not necessarily a dog. It was only a name, in the same way that hat was just a name, or chest freezer. Maybe, he had said, a dog was really a hat.

  ‘But how could a dog be a hat?’ Byron had asked. He was getting a picture in his mind of his father’s deerstalker on a lead and it was confusing.

  ‘I am only saying hat and dog are words that someone has chosen. And if they are only words someone has chosen, it stands to reason they may have got the wrong ones. Also, maybe not all dogs are dogs. Maybe they are different. Just because we have given them all one name, doesn’t mean all dogs are actually dogs.’

  ‘But they are still not hats,’ said Byron. ‘And they are not chest freezers either.’

  ‘You have to think bigger than what you know,’ James had said.

  Using the magnifying glass from his chemistry set, as well as a torch and his mother’s silver tweezers, Byron began his search. He found a yellow striped stone, a tiny spider with a big blue ball of eggs, wild thyme and two white feathers, but not the important thing he needed. Maybe he was looking in the wrong place. Resting a foot on the lowest rung of the fencing round the pond, he hauled himself over. It was strange to be on the forbidden side of the fence after all this time. It was like being in his father’s study, where the air grew sharp edges. The geese hissed and stuck their necks forward but they didn’t run at him. Losing interest, they swaggered towards the water’s edge.

  The remains of the bridge still crossed the pond. It stretched, like a shiny black spine, from the bank to the small island in the middle. He could see too where the fragile structure left the island and then disappeared halfway before reaching the furthest side. Kneeling in the grass, he tried to resume his search with his torch and magnifying glass, but it was no good, he couldn’t concentrate. His head kept walking off and remembering things.

  The bridge had been all James’s idea. Byron was really only manual labour. James had thought about it for weeks. He had drawn up plans. At school he had talked about it constantly. On the day of construction, the boys had sat side by side on the bank, the two of them viewing the expanse of water through their splayed fingers in order to get a professional perspective. It was Byron who had lifted stones to the pond and dragged the larger of the branches from the ash trees at the end of the meadow.

  ‘Very good, very good,’ James had murmured, without actually getting up.

  Byron had piled the stones one on top of the other in the shallows, using them as supports for the thicker branches. After several hours an irregular structure had spanned the skin of water. ‘Do you want to test it?’ Byron had asked.

  James had consulted his diagram. ‘I think we need to look at the load bearing.’ Byron had insisted it was only a pond. He had stepped out.

  He remembered how his heart had swung like the structure beneath his feet. The wood was dark and oily; his toes could gain no purchase. With each step he was waiting to fall and the more he expected failure, the more inevitable it seemed. He remembered too how James had mouthed numbers and insisted it wasn’t because he was worried, it was because he was calculating.

  The memory of that day was so clear it was like watching two ghost children beside the water. Then something else began to happen.

  The more Byron gazed at the water, the more he found not only the bridge but also the sky’s reflection, as if beneath the surface lay a second, more refracted world that was also pasted with copper clouds and flickering sunshine. If a boy did not go to Winston House he might be forgiven for believing there were two skies that morning, one above his head and another below the water. And supposing, after all, the scientists were wrong? They had clearly made a mess of time. Supposing there were really two skies? Until the accident, Byron had assumed everything was the thing it appeared to be. Now, staring at the pond, and the sky within its shining circumference, it occurred to him that people knew things only because they had been told they were true. James was right. It didn’t seem a very good basis for believing.

  This was so much to think about Byron thought he might eat a Garibaldi. A slight wind rustled the water and sent tiny jewels of light darting all over the grass. It was already quarter past six. He shook the crumbs from his dressing gown and returned to his task. The magnifying glass and the torch made no significant difference; the sun was sailing higher by the minute. They just made him feel more like a boy who found things. There would be no need for either if James was at his side.

  ‘Goodness, you’re soaked,’ said his mother when the alarm went off and her eyes flicked open. She reached for her pill and her water. ‘You haven’t been down by the pond?’

  ‘I think it’s going to be another hot day,’ he said. ‘Do I have to go to school?’

  Diana pulled him close and wound her arms round him. He couldn’t wait to show her what he had found.

  She said: ‘Your education is very important. If you don’t have a proper beginning, you end up like me.’

  ‘I’d rather be like you than anyone else.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. People like me will never get it right.’ She rested the point of her chin on his shoulder so that her voice seemed to come from inside his bones. ‘Besides, your father wants you to have the best. He wants you to make a success of your life. He’s very definite about th
at.’

  For a while they remained bound together by her arms, her face close to his. Then she kissed his hair and threw back the covers. ‘I’m going to draw you a bath, sweetheart. You don’t watch to catch a cold.’

  He didn’t know what she meant. Why would he not want to become like his mother? What did she mean when she said she never got it right? She surely hadn’t guessed about Digby Road. As soon as she was gone, he eased the stem of clover from his dressing-gown pocket. It was a little rumpled, a little soggy, and it didn’t really have four leaves, it was technically three, but he knew it would save her because James said clover was lucky. Byron tucked it deep beneath her pillow so that it would be there to protect her, even without her knowing.

  Humming softly, he followed his mother to the bathroom. The light from the windows was like white stepping stones across the hall carpet and he jumped from one to the next. He thought of his mother drawing a bath. It was not a phrase she’d used before. Sometimes she said things like that, or the remark about not wanting him to become like her, and they were so sideways it was as if there was another person inside her, just as there was a boy inside his father, and another world inside the pond.

  He wished he hadn’t eaten all those Garibaldis. It was not the sort of thing that James would do.

  10

  Planting

  THE SNOW FALLS on and off for three more days. It whitens even the night. Just as it begins to thaw, there is another blizzard and the land is hidden all over again. Silence pads the air and the earth is one and soon it is only by staring into the dusk that Jim can make out the movement of swarming flakes. The sky is of a piece with the ground.

  On the estate, cars are abandoned at angles into the kerb. The old man who never smiles watches from his window. His neighbour with the dangerous dog shovels a path to the door and within hours there is no path again. Bare branches are showered with snow as if they are in blossom; the leaves of the evergreens droop under the weight. The foreign students head out in puffa jackets and wool hats with plastic bags on which to sledge. They climb over the fencing and try to skate on the iced-over ditch in the middle of the Green. Jim watches, a little apart, as they laugh and shout to one another in words he does not understand. He hopes they won’t disturb anything. Sometimes he checks the window boxes when no one is looking, but there is no sign of life.

  At work, the girls from the kitchen complain there is nothing to do and Mr Meade says the supermarket is already reducing its Christmas grocery prices. Jim cleans the tables and no one sits at them, he just squirts and wipes. At dusk the new snow creaks soft beneath his feet and the moor sleeps pale beneath the moonlight. Needlepoints of ice trim the street lamps and hedgerows.

  Late one night, Jim scrapes the snow from a bed of winter bulbs. This is his latest project. No need for rituals here. No need for duct tape or greetings. When he is planting there is nothing but himself and the earth. He remembers Eileen and her bonsai tree, how she called him a gardener, and despite the biting cold, he feels warm inside. He wishes she could see what he has done.

  It was one of the nurses at Besley Hill who first noticed he was happier outside. She suggested he might help in the garden. After all it was a wreck, she said. He began slowly, a little raking, a little pruning. The grey square building was behind him; the barred windows were forgotten, as were the lime-green walls, the smells of gravy and disinfectant, the endless faces. He learned as he went. He saw how the plants changed over the seasons. He discovered what they needed. Within a few years, he had borders of his own. There were splashes of marigolds, spikes of delphinium, foxglove and hollyhock. There were clumps of thyme, sage, mint and rosemary, the butterflies hovering over them like petals. He grew them all. He even managed asparagus, as well as gooseberry, blackcurrant and loganberry bushes. The nurses let him sow apple pips too, although the home was closed before he saw them flourish. Sometimes they told him about their gardens. They showed him seed catalogues and asked what they should choose. Once when he was released, a doctor gave him a small potted cactus for good luck. Jim was back within months but the doctor said he could keep the plant.

  There have been so many years in and out of Besley Hill, Jim has lost count. There have been so many doctors and nurses and inpatients they all seem to share one face, one voice, one coat. Sometimes he notices a customer stop at the café, stare a little, and he has no idea if it is because they know him or because he is strange. There are gaps in what he remembers, gaps that span weeks, months and sometimes more. Recalling the past is like travelling to a place he visited once, and discovering that everything has lifted up and blown away.

  What he cannot forget is the first time. He was only sixteen. He can still see himself in the passenger seat, scared and refusing to get out. He can see the doctors and nurses who rushed down the stone steps to the car, shouting, ‘Thank you, Mrs Lowe. We will take over now.’ He remembers how they prised his fingertips from the lip of the leather seat and how he was already so tall they had to press down his neck so as not to knock the top of his head. He even has a picture in his mind of the nurse who showed him round, once they had given him something and he had slept. He was assigned to a ward with five men who were old enough to be his grandfather. They cried at night for their mothers and Jim cried too but it made no difference and she never came.

  After the first job on the rubbish trucks, he tried others. Nothing strenuous. He mowed lawns, stacked wood, swept leaves, delivered leaflets. Between the spells at Besley Hill, there have been single rooms in flats and bedsits. There has been sheltered housing. None of it lasts. He has been given further shock treatment for depression and cocktails of drugs. After morphine shots, he has seen spiders spill out of light bulbs and nurses with razor blades instead of teeth. For most of his mid-thirties he was so undernourished his stomach sank between his hip bones like a grave. While in the occupational therapy department, he learned pottery and drawing, as well as rudimentary woodwork skills and French for beginners. None of it prevented him from breaking down again and again, sometimes weeks or months after being discharged. The last time he returned to Besley Hill, he resigned himself to never leaving. And then they went and closed it.

  Snow laces the hedgerows and coils of old man’s beard. The whitened branches of the trees sway as if there is music in the air that only they can hear. Cars crawl over the frozen ridges of the moor and the light on the lower foothills is a polished blue.

  It is too soon for signs of life. The cold would kill new growth and the earth is hard as stone. Jim lies on the snow beside his bulbs and stretches out his arms to send them warmth. Sometimes caring for something already growing is more perilous than planting something new.

  11

  Mothers and Psychology

  ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND,’ said James. ‘Why do you think we need to tell the police?’

  ‘In case they don’t know about the two seconds,’ said Byron. ‘In case you are right about the conspiracy. Innocent people may be in danger and it’s not their fault.’

  ‘But if there is a conspiracy, the police probably know. And so do the government. We need to think of someone else. Someone we can trust.’

  Until the accident, Byron had no idea that keeping a secret could be so difficult. All he could think about was what his mother had done and what would happen if she knew. He told himself not to think about the accident, but not thinking took so much space it was the same as thinking about it all the time. Every time he began a sentence, he was afraid the wrong words would escape from his mouth. Consequently he had to keep examining them on their way out, as if he was checking their hands for cleanliness. It was exhausting.

  ‘Est-ce qu’il faut parler avec quelqu’un d’autre?’ James said. ‘Monsieur Roper peut-être?’

  Byron shook his head in a nodding sort of way. He wasn’t clear what James had said and he was waiting for further clues.

  ‘It needs to be someone who would understand,’ said his friend. ‘Votre mère? Elle est trè
s sympathique.’ At the mention of Diana, James’s skin stained. ‘She wasn’t cross with us about the pond. She made us hot tea and those little sandwiches. Also, she doesn’t make you sit outside if you are muddy, for example.’

  Even though James was right about his mother, even though she had not shouted like Seymour after the pond incident, or been tight-lipped, like Andrea; even though Diana had insisted all along that Byron’s fall into the water was an accident, Byron suggested they should not tell her about the two seconds. ‘Do you think a person could be guilty if they didn’t know they had made a mistake?’ he said.

  ‘Is this to do with the extra seconds as well?’

  Byron said it was more of a general enquiry and slipped his Brooke Bond tea cards from his blazer pocket to lighten the conversation. He now had the full series, even the number one.

  ‘I don’t see how someone could be guilty if they didn’t know about it,’ said James, transfixed by the cards. He stretched out his fingers but he didn’t touch them. ‘You can only be guilty if you have deliberately committed a crime. If you murder someone, for example.’

  Byron said he wasn’t thinking of a murder. He was only thinking of an accident.

  ‘What sort of accident? Do you mean cutting off someone’s hand in the workplace?’

  Sometimes Byron thought James read too many newspapers. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just doing something you didn’t mean to.’

  ‘I think if you said sorry for your mistake,’ said James, ‘and if you showed you really meant it, that would be all right. It’s what I do.’

  ‘You never do wrong things,’ Byron reminded him.

  ‘I get my h’s confused. I say haitch when I am tired. And once, I trod in something outside school and brought it into the car. My mother had to scrub the foot mats. I sat on the wall all afternoon.’