Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  When he had nothing else to say – when all the words were used up and the room was wheeling on its axis, walls sliding and floors tipping – he said, ‘Excuse me. I’m going to be sick.’

  He wasn’t. He gripped hold of the toilet bowl and shoved his head down. He even tried to push out with his stomach muscles and constrict those of his throat. His body retched but nothing came. When his mother knocked at the door and asked if she could come in, if she could fetch something, he repeated that he was all right. He still couldn’t understand why she didn’t believe him. He turned on the taps and sat very still on the floor, waiting for her to go, and when at last he heard her heels on the stairs, slow, as if she were not in a hurry but drifting, or deep in thought, he unlocked the door and returned swiftly to his room.

  Byron missed James very much that night. It wasn’t even that Byron had anything specific to say, it was more that James was in his head and so was the memory of the bridge they had built on the pond. If he knew about the accident James would know what to do, just as he had understood about load bearing and gravity.

  Byron remembered how it felt to fall; the moment between losing his balance and landing in the cold water. The shock of that. The mud bed had pulled at his feet and even though he knew the pond was shallow, he had thrashed about, fearing suddenly he might drown. The water had swamped in at his ears and mouth and nose. ‘Mrs Hemmings, Mrs Hemmings!’ James had screamed from the banks. He couldn’t seem to do anything. He just flapped his arms. Byron saw his mother running so fast to his rescue her arms and legs flew out and she appeared to be falling. She had waded into the water without even throwing off her shoes. She had walked the two boys back to the house with her arms around their shoulders and despite the fact that James was dry, she had cocooned them both in towels. ‘It was my fault, it was my fault,’ James kept saying. But his mother had stopped and held him by the shoulders. She told him he had saved Byron and that he should be proud. Afterwards she had made sandwiches and sweet tea for them to have on the lawn and James had said through chattering teeth, ‘She is so kind, she is so kind, your mother.’

  Byron unfolded the map he had drawn in his father’s study. With the aid of his torch, he studied it under the sheet. He traced the path of arrows with his fingertip and his heart pounded when he reached the red mark where the Jaguar had pulled to a sudden halt. He knew he was right about the accident. After all, he had seen everything. Downstairs he heard the clunk of the fridge door as his mother opened it, and the slamming of the ice-cube tray on the draining board. A little later he heard her music from the gramophone and it was so sad, this song, he wondered if she was crying. He thought again of the little girl in Digby Road and the trouble his mother was in. More than anything he wanted to go to her but he couldn’t move. He told himself he would go in a minute and yet a minute passed, and another and another, and he was still lying there. In telling Diana what she had done, he felt he had become part of the accident too. If only he’d kept quiet, the whole thing might have disappeared. It might have remained not real.

  Later, when his mother eased open his door, bringing a sharp arc of light into the room that hurt his head, and when she whispered, ‘Byron, are you awake?’ he lay still, with his eyes pressed tight. He tried to make his breathing heavy like someone who was asleep. He heard her footsteps creak on the carpet and he caught the sweet smell of her, and then the room flicked to dark.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked the next morning. It was Friday again and he was cleaning his teeth in the bathroom. He had no idea his mother was behind him until he saw her fingers on his shoulder. He must have jumped because she laughed. Her hair was a golden cloud around her face and her skin was soft like ice cream.

  ‘You didn’t come and wait for my alarm this morning. I missed you.’

  ‘I overslept.’ He couldn’t turn and look at her. The mirror son was talking to the mirror mother.

  She smiled. ‘Well, it’s good that you slept.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Did I—?’

  ‘Sleep.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I slept well. Thank you.’

  For a moment, they fell silent. He felt they were searching for the most acceptable words, in the way that his mother tried on clothes before his father’s arrival, slipping them on and sighing and slipping them off again. Then Lucy called for her school uniform and they both laughed. They did it long and hard as if it was a relief to have something that wasn’t talking.

  ‘You look pale,’ she said, when the laughter had drained away and there was nothing left.

  ‘You won’t go to the police?’

  ‘The police? Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because of the little girl in Digby Road.’

  His mother shook her head as if she couldn’t understand why he would say these things all over again. ‘We went through this last night. There was no little girl. You made a mistake.’

  ‘But I saw.’ He was beginning to shout. ‘I was sitting right beside the window. I saw the whole thing. I saw the extra seconds and then I saw the little girl. You couldn’t see because you were driving. You couldn’t see because of the mist.’

  His mother placed her forehead in her hands and then raked her fingers through her hair as if she was clearing a space through which to see. She said slowly, ‘I was in the car, too. And nothing happened. I know it. Nothing happened, Byron.’

  He waited for her to say something else but his mother simply looked across at him, without speaking. And so all there was between them was the thing she had already said. Her words flapped over their heads and beat through his ears like an echo; even in the silence they found a voice. Nothing happened. Nothing happened, Byron.

  It did, though. He knew it.

  His father visited at the weekend and so there was no opportunity to speak to his mother again about the accident. The only time he found her alone was when his father checked the monthly accounts in his study. She was pacing the floor of the drawing room. She kept picking things up and putting them back down again without looking. When his father appeared at the door and said he had a query, her hands flew to her neck and her eyes widened. There was a blank, he said.

  ‘A blank?’ She repeated the word as if she did not know what it meant.

  It was not the first time, said his father. He remained still but his mother went back to straightening things that were already straight and lifting her fingers to her mouth. She couldn’t think why there would be a blank, she said. She promised to be more careful in future.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I said it was a mistake, Seymour.’

  ‘I mean, your nails. I wish you wouldn’t bite them.’

  ‘Oh darling, there are so many things you wish I didn’t do.’ She laughed and went to tidy the garden. Once again his father left on Sunday morning.

  As the third week began, Byron trailed his mother like a shadow. He watched her washing up at the sink. He watched her digging over the rose beds. Their blooms were so full now he could barely see the stems, the petals all floppy and pink; they covered the pagoda like a skyful of stars. At night he listened to Diana, playing her music downstairs on the gramophone. The only thing in his mind was Digby Road. He couldn’t believe he had gone and told her. For the first time, there was something between them, like the fence separating the pond from the meadow, and it was to do with the fact she believed one thing and he knew another. It even carried the implication that he was in some terrible way accusing her.

  He wished he could tell James. At lunchtime on Tuesday he even ventured so far as to ask, ‘Do you have secrets?’

  James gulped on a forkful of meat pie and said, ‘Yes, I do, Byron.’ He glanced both ways to check none of the boys was listening but Watkins had a new rubber balloon that made a fart noise and the others were busy placing it on the bench, squashing down on it and laughing. ‘Why? Do you?’ There was something alive about the way James watched, waiting for
Byron’s reply, and not chewing his meat pie.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Byron felt a rush of adrenalin as if he were about to jump from a wall.

  ‘For instance,’ said James, ‘sometimes I dip my finger in my mother’s pot of Pond cream.’

  This did not seem much of a secret to Byron but James continued, slowly and deliberately, and Byron assumed worse was to come. ‘I only use a tiny bit. I do it when she’s not looking. It’s so that I won’t get wrinkles.’ James returned to chewing his meat pie and washed it down with water. It was only when he failed to say anything else, and helped himself to salt, that Byron realized he had finished.

  ‘But I don’t understand. You don’t have wrinkles, James.’

  ‘That is because I use Pond cream, Byron.’

  This was a further example of how James planned ahead.

  Byron decided to make amends for telling his mother what she had done. After school he followed her into the utility room where she was sorting dirty clothes for the washing machine. He told her he was wrong. It was his mistake, he said. She had done nothing in Digby Road.

  ‘Would you stop going on about it?’ she said. This was definitely strange because it was the first time in five days he had referred to it.

  Byron balanced with one foot on top of the other, as if by taking up less floor space he might also become less of an inconvenience. ‘You see there is no evidence,’ he said. ‘No damage to the car.’

  ‘Please would you pass me the starch?’

  ‘If we had hit the little girl there would be a dent on the Jaguar.’ He passed her the starch and she sprinkled it liberally over the whites. ‘And there is no dent,’ he said. ‘I have checked. I have checked several times actually.’

  ‘Well there we are.’

  ‘Also no one saw us in Digby Road.’

  ‘It’s a free country, Byron. We can drive wherever we like.’

  He would have liked to say, Well, actually Father says we are not supposed to go down Digby Road and we should bring back hanging and neither of those seems all that free to me, but it was a long sentence and he sensed it wasn’t the time. His mother shoved the laundry into the drum of the washing machine and then slammed the door shut. He repeated that he was probably wrong but she was already halfway towards the kitchen.

  And yet, that afternoon he began to realize she was thinking about what he had said. Despite her protestations, he caught her staring several times out of the French windows, glass in hand, with a preoccupied look. When his father rang to check she was listening and that everything was as it should be, she said, ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’ And when he repeated himself she even raised her voice: ‘Darling, what do you think happens? I never see anyone. No one has a clue where I live.’ She finished with her fluttery laugh but from the way it cut mid-air, it didn’t sound as if she found any of this very funny.

  Why would she forget the truth like that? After all, there had been the Christmas party at Cranham House; all the mothers knew where Diana lived. He put the mistake down to further evidence of her anxiety.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Seymour,’ said his mother to the telephone. She hung up and failed to move.

  So once again Byron tried to reassure his mother. Even though what he had said earlier was not true, he explained, even though she had actually hit the little girl and driven away, the accident was not her fault. ‘What?’ said his mother, as if she didn’t speak his language. Then she shook her head and asked him to move from under her feet, she had things to do.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t proper time. It was added time. It was time that shouldn’t have been there. It wouldn’t have been there, if they hadn’t stopped the clocks to add two seconds. So no one can blame you because it wasn’t your fault. There may have been a conspiracy like President Kennedy or the moon landings.’ Repeating James gave his words extra weight, although he had no idea what he was talking about.

  His mother appeared to be less impressed. ‘Of course they landed on the moon. Of course time didn’t stop. That’s the whole point of time. It keeps going forward.’

  He tried to explain that maybe time was not so reliable, but she was no longer listening. While the children ate tea, she thumbed through the pages of her magazine so fast she couldn’t possibly be reading. She bathed the children but forgot to fetch crazy foam. And when Lucy asked, as she did every evening, could she read with the funny voices, his mother sighed and said wasn’t one voice enough?

  Byron lay awake most of the night, trying to work out how to help his mother. The following morning he felt so punched he could barely move. His father rang and as usual his mother reassured him no one was there. ‘Not even the milkman,’ she laughed. Then she said quickly, ‘No, I’m not being rude, darling.’ While she listened to his reply she stabbed the carpet with the point of her shoe, over and over. ‘Of course I care. Of course we want to see you.’ Again she replaced the mouthpiece on its hook and stared at it.

  Byron accompanied Lucy to school and walked with his mother back to the car. Diana kept sighing and not saying anything, only sighing again. He was certain she was dwelling on something that caused her pain and that this must be the accident.

  ‘No one knows,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘They would have arrested you by now and they haven’t. There has been no mention of it in The Times. There has been nothing about it on Nationwide.’

  Diana threw up her hands and gave an impatient sigh. ‘Do you never stop?’ And saying that, almost to the pavement it seemed, she broke into a walk that was so fast Byron had to canter at a sideways angle in order to keep up.

  At the car, his mother threw her handbag to the pavement. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing her finger at the silver bodywork. ‘There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there because there was no accident in Digby Road. You’ve got it wrong. You imagined it.’

  Wriggling her skirt over her knees, she even knelt on the pavement. She pointed to the bonnet, the doors, the engine. Other mothers were beginning to approach, on their way back to their cars. Diana didn’t look up at them or say hello; she kept her eyes fixed on Byron, as if none of them was important. ‘You see, you see?’ she kept saying. He had to smile at the mothers to show there was nothing wrong and it was such effort to keep doing it, his face hurt. All he wanted was to get in the car.

  Byron stooped closer. ‘Shouldn’t we do this at home?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough. You don’t stop. I walk into the garden, I go to do the washing, and you’re still talking about it. I want you to see everything’s all right.’ She smoothed her fingers over the paintwork, showing him how clear it was. And she was right; it shone bright as a knife blade, shimmering with heat and light. Against it her nails were small pearly shells. ‘There’s not a scratch. There’s nothing. You see?’ She stooped and craned her neck beneath the bodywork of the car. ‘You see? You see, sweetheart?’

  Byron felt his eyes bud with tears. He understood now. He understood that he must have been mistaken, that there had been no accident, that he had been wrong about what he had witnessed. Shame filled him like heat. Then his mother let out a gasp. She pulled back from the car with her face clutched in her hands.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  She was trying to stand but her skirt was too narrow and wouldn’t make room for her legs. Her hands were still over her mouth, pressing something inside.

  Byron peered at the car but he could see nothing. He helped his mother to her feet and she stood with her back to the Jaguar, as if she couldn’t bear to look. Her face was blanched, her eyes terrified. He didn’t know whether she was about to be ill.

  Byron lowered himself to his knees. He pressed his fingers into the grit and peered at the spot she had been indicating. There was a heated-up smell of oil but he could see nothing. And then just as he was about to laugh and say, Don’t worry, he found it. He found the evidence. His heart went so fast it was like someone at
a door. It was as if they were actually inside him, banging all over his insides. He stooped closer to the hubcap.

  ‘Get inside the car,’ murmured his mother. ‘Get in right now.’

  There it was. A tiny nick just above the engraved Jaguar emblem. No bigger than a metal nick or a graze. He couldn’t think how he had missed it. It was red. Bicycle red.

  14

  Jim’s Sorrow

  A SCRAP OF FAST-MOVING cloud splinters the china plate of a moon. The evergreen leaves rattle like plastic. Rain is coming. Carefully Jim makes his way to the van. His footsteps do not sound like ones he recognizes. He hears the click of crutches on the pavement. The slow pulling forward of a plaster cast. He feels the bottle of painkillers weighted in his pocket. His foot is not a foot. It is a brick. A blue brick.

  The curtains of the houses are drawn against the dark and the moor and the outsiders such as Jim.

  Something has happened tonight. Not just the accident. It has sliced open the space between past and present. He wishes for his bed at Besley Hill and the patients who wore each other’s pyjamas. He wishes for the food that arrived every mealtime and the nurses who brought his pills. He wishes for the emptying of his mind. For sleep.

  But he knows none of these things will come. Fragments of memories flash through his mind and it is like being struck. Beyond Cranham Village, beyond the moor, there are lost years, there are lost people, there is all that. He recalls Eileen’s look of confusion and the boy who was once his friend. He thinks about the bridge over the pond and the two seconds that started everything.

  The pain in his foot is as nothing, compared to this other wound that is deep inside. There is no atoning for the past. There are only the mistakes that have been made.

  The rituals will go on all night. And even when he finally believes he has done enough, there will be tomorrow, and the whole process must begin again. There will be the day after that. The next day; and the next. He pulls the key from his pocket and briefly the brass keyring catches the light.