Perfect

by Rachel Joyce

  For the last part of the journey, Darren and Paula walk either side of Jim. There are no stars and the sky is thick with cloud that shines sulphur orange. They enter the pedestrianized High Street, passing the Pound Shop, the amusement arcade, the closed-down electrics store, USA Chicken and Café Max. The windows are brightly illuminated, some decorated with coloured lanterns, some squirted with foam snow. A young woman is collecting for victims of cancer at Christmas and shakes her collection box at passers-by. When she sees Jim, something about him unsettles her and she holds her box very still. She pretends to be studying a shop window and this is hard because it is one of several that are available for letting. Bar several dead flies on the windowsill, and some ransacked units, it is empty.

  ‘My mum had breast cancer,’ says Paula. ‘She died when I was eighteen.’ Hearing this, Darren stops a moment and wraps her inside his jacket.

  At the end of the High Street they turn into a long road of terraced housing. Almost there, says Darren. The kerb is packed with cars and vans. Many of the houses have roof conversions and front porches with frosted glass windows. All of them have satellite dishes and TV aerials. As they pass, Jim counts the Christmas trees in the front rooms. He wonders if he will find twenty-one.

  Paula says, ‘You just have to talk to the woman. About how you feel. She won’t bite.’

  Jim realizes he has lost his place with the counting and he would like to go back to the beginning of the street to start again. He would feel better if he could do that, less exposed. He turns to head back.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ says Paula.

  ‘I don’t need a-a-a d-doctor—’

  ‘She isn’t a doctor. She is a person to help. She’s fully trained.’

  Darren pulls out the address from his pocket. This is it, he says. He pushes open the gate to a garden. He steps to one side, allowing Jim and Paula to go first.

  Wind chimes hang from the low black branches of three or four closely planted fruit trees. In single file, they follow the dark path to the door.

  ‘How come we’re at someone’s house?’ says Darren. ‘I thought this woman was professional.’

  ‘She is professional,’ says Paula. ‘She’s a friend of a friend and she’s going to give Jim an introductory session for free. Apparently she’s awesome. She does all sorts of things, including phobia therapy. She even does parties. She’s been fully trained online.’

  The psychic counsellor is a sturdy woman with a thick grey bob that is held from her face by an Alice band. She wears sensible shoes, elasticated slacks, a loose-fitting blouse and an optimistically colourful scarf. In the presence of the counsellor both Paula and Darren become children, she twisting her pink hair, he mumbling into bundled hands.

  ‘Who is the client?’ says the counsellor, casting her eyes over the three of them.

  Paula and Darren quickly point at Jim and he in turn lowers his head.

  The counsellor invites the couple to sit in the kitchen but Darren says they would prefer to wait outside.

  Her house smells of something clean and sterile, like a disinfected lemon, and the narrow hallway is so dark Jim has to feel his way with his hands as he follows her. She points to an open door to her left and asks Jim to go first. The small room is tidy and brightly lit. There are no chairs, no pictures, simply a bookcase on top of which sits a plaster-cast Buddha.

  ‘Please take a seat,’ says the woman.

  She slips one foot behind the other, lowers her rear and then plummets towards the floor with such speed it is like watching a lift go down. She hits what turns out to be a beanbag with a polystyrene pop. ‘Do you need a hand?’ she says, looking up.

  Carefully Jim attempts to do the same on the free beanbag opposite hers, although he has a problem with his legs. If he crosses them, as she is doing, he may never walk again. He pushes his plaster-cast foot out ahead and lowers himself down on the other leg but this gives way and he too crashes into his beanbag with a splash. His arms and legs stick out from his body. He is not sure if or how he will get up again.

  ‘How can I help you, Jim?’ says the counsellor.

  Short of fetching a chair, he has no idea. She has green socks. But not Eileen-green. Just sensible.

  ‘Your colleague tells me you’re the victim of a violent crime. I gather you do not wish to press charges against the assailant. We need to talk about that.’

  ‘It was an a-a-a—’

  ‘Nothing is an accident. Everything happens for a reason and that reason is deep inside us. What we have to do today, Jim, is get that reason out. I know it frightens you but I’m here to help. I want you to know you are not alone. I am in this with you.’ Here she gives a small smile and her eyes narrow. ‘You have a good aura. Are you aware of that?’

  He admits he isn’t. He is more aware of a stinging sensation in his good foot.

  ‘Why do you stammer?’

  Jim blushes and it is like being burnt all over his back, his face, his arms. She waits for him to answer but he can’t and there is only the sound of her breathing, like small pinches at the air.

  She says, ‘In my experience, people stammer for a reason. What is it you feel you can’t say?’

  There are lots of things Jim can’t say. And it’s not as if they didn’t try to help at Besley Hill. They gave him exercises to focus his mind, they gave him tips to form words. He spoke into mirrors. He visualized sentences. He said ‘Grr’ when he got stuck. None of it helped. ECT would not cause a stammer, the doctors agreed. Jim knew they must be right; they were professionals. It was just that a short while after his last session his mouth stopped remembering how to make words.

  However, this is not the time for thinking back. The psychic counsellor is still talking. She is pointing at herself and then raising her fists into unlikely punch shapes. ‘Imagine I am your assailant. What would you like to tell me? There is no need to hide. I can take it.’

  He would like to say, It was an accident. He would like to say, Hear me, Eileen.

  ‘Jim, I’m a woman. I work with my instincts. And I look at you, and I know this accident has been very tough.’

  He slowly nods. He can’t lie.

  ‘Why do you think that is?’

  Jim tries to say he doesn’t know.

  The counsellor says she is going a little off-piste. Jim must bear with her. ‘Your assailant ran over your foot. She didn’t stop. But as far as I understand, you shouted at her to go. You didn’t want her help. Is that right?’

  Jim tries to say yes but the word is not there.

  ‘So why did you want her to go? Why did you choose to be the victim? You could have shouted at her. You could have let her know she’d hurt you. What happened, Jim? Why couldn’t you say that?’

  The silence seems to ring like glass. His mind races back over the years and it is like throwing open doors on things that have long been safely shut away. His throat locks. His pulse flaps. He tries not to think, to be empty. Outside he can hear Paula and Darren’s laughter. He can hear the low playing of wind chimes. Stealing his hand inside his pocket, he grips his keyring for help.

  The counsellor smiles gently. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe we’re going too fast.’

  Instead she asks Jim to imagine he is a letter. What would he like to say? She asks him to imagine he is an arrow. Where would he like to hit? He must picture himself as a receptacle, a tree with roots, a rubber ball. There are so many versions of himself, all bouncing, shooting and posting themselves inside his head, he feels very tired. ‘We need to get everything out in the open,’ says the counsellor with robust enthusiasm. ‘Now is not the time to be afraid.’

  He whispers, ‘Bookcase hello, Buddha hello.’

  ‘Think about all the things that you’ve hidden away, Jim. It is time to let them go.’ She makes a whooshing noise as if she has been punctured and is rapidly losing air. ‘You have to own the past and let it go.’

  It is like being grabbed by the mouth, the ears, the eyes and wrenched o
pen. The accident, the hospital – they were nothing compared to this. He does not know how he will piece himself back together again.

  She says, ‘You don’t have to be a victim, Jim. You can be a player.’ She shakes herself as if she has just woken. She smiles. ‘It’s time to stop. Our introductory session is over.’

  Jim’s psychic counsellor pushes herself up from her beanbag and squints down. He bows his face so that she will not see the state of it.

  ‘You should come for an angel reading,’ she says. ‘You know you can ask the angels for the simplest things? Finding a parking space, for instance. Nothing is too small.’

  Jim tries to explain that it is very kind but he already has a parking space. Also, he adds, there is a problem with the gearbox and the van won’t drive. It was a gift, he says, many years ago from an employer who didn’t want it. He adds that he used to stack logs for her and dispose of her sherry bottles. Words rise and spew out of his mouth. It is possible half his sentences lack verbs. Anything, rather than speak the pictures surfacing in his mind. The things she says he must let go.

  The counsellor nods. ‘Well, it was just a thought,’ she says.

  She asks if he has been satisfied with the service, and Jim promises he has. If he does not feel he has been offered the service he needs, he is free to make a complaint. Jim reassures her he has no wish to complain. Maybe he would like to add a testimonial to her website? He explains that he has no laptop. She reaches into a notebook and passes down a form. She asks if he would be so good as to give her service a rating out of ten and return the form in the self-addressed envelope. ‘It’s time to go home now,’ she says.

  Jim tells her he can’t.

  She smiles as if she understands. ‘I know you feel you can’t cope. You think you need me. But you will be OK, Jim. I am giving you permission to be OK.’

  Jim explains he actually can’t get up. He has lost all feeling in both legs. It takes both Paula and Darren to lift him and they do so by taking one arm each and hoicking him upwards. Returned to his full height, he looks down on Paula, on Darren and the psychic counsellor and despite his extra inches he feels painfully small.

  ‘Yes, we have done some very good work,’ says the counsellor. ‘Jim is ready to let go. He can get on with his life now.’

  A flock of seagulls rise and swoop above the black profile of the moor and they are so luminous, so fragile, it would be easy to mistake them for shreds of paper. Jim does not mention angel guides or parking spaces to Paula and Darren. He does not mention the counsellor’s questions. He is so shaken he can barely remember how to put one foot in front of the other. Several times he staggers and Darren has to catch him.

  ‘There, there, Jimbo,’ says Paula. ‘It’s been a big day.’

  Walking back to the High Street, past the dark houses with their front porches and loft conversions, she says, ‘This place used to be a real dump. Not fit for humans, some of it.’

  And he realizes they are in Digby Road.

  3

  Two Stitches

  ‘IT ISN’T THAT I am offended, Byron,’ said James. His voice was high and childlike. ‘It is just that I am surprised you went so suddenly. I thought the plan was that I would come too.’

  ‘But things went faster than you said they would.’

  James ignored this. He finished his milk and wiped the top of the bottle clean. ‘I have been before, you know.’

  ‘To Digby Road?’

  ‘There is a doctor there. My mother took me when I had head lice. He is a private doctor. My mother didn’t want people to know.’

  It occurred to Byron there were things about James Lowe that still surprised him.

  James said, ‘It is difficult for me to help save Diana if I do not know the full situation. I would have liked to hear the conversation in order to make observations for my Operation Perfect notebook.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a notebook.’

  ‘I have diagrams as well. Also, I would have liked to go to the hotel restaurant. Prawn cocktail is my favourite. Did she really let you have tomato soup before lunchtime? Did she really buy a red Chopper bicycle for the little girl?’ Yes, a Tomahawk, Byron repeated. James’s eyes widened like shiny blue buttons. ‘There is no one like her,’ he said. ‘Tout va bien.’ It was true. The return to Digby Road, and the subsequent delivery of such generous gifts, had marked a turning point. Byron’s mother became herself again. She went back to doing all those things she did so well, the tiny details that marked her above everyone else. She filled the vases with cut flowers, she weeded the grass between the paving stones, she sewed on loose buttons and darned small holes. His father came for his weekend visit and this time she did not cough or twitch her napkin when he asked how the Jaguar was driving.

  ‘Beautifully. She is a wonderful vehicle,’ said Diana. She gave an immaculate smile.

  The school mothers met for their last coffee of the summer term at the beginning of the second week in July. Byron was present only because he had a dental appointment. ‘We can’t stay long,’ explained Diana. ‘We’ll perch at the end.’ The new mother asked if she wasn’t worrying about Byron’s scholarship work with all the lessons he was missing. (‘What is the woman’s name?’ said Andrea.) The women talked about holiday plans. Deirdre had booked a two-week foreign trip. The new mother was going to visit her sister-in-law in Tunbridge Wells. When they asked Diana she said she had no plans. Her husband would be taking his annual holiday with work colleagues in Scotland but she would spend the summer at home with the children. Home was so much nicer than going away, said Andrea Lowe. There were none of those things to worry about like water tablets and insect bites. Then someone else began to talk economizing, and Andrea mentioned by-the-by that she had been fortunate enough to purchase a marvellous new leather sofa in nigger brown.

  Diana abruptly reached for her handbag and pushed back her chair. Byron thought they were about to leave and he didn’t know why because the dental appointment was not for another thirty minutes. Then his mother appeared to catch sight of someone at the other side of the tearoom and she waved. Byron couldn’t think who it was. And then, as the woman began to dart towards them, threading between tables and chairs, he realized it was Beverley.

  Dressed in a pair of black swing trousers and a cheesecloth smock top, she was also wearing a wide-brimmed purple hat. ‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ said Beverley, glancing at all the mothers. She took off her hat and turned it round and round in her hands like a wheel. ‘I’m looking for the soft toys department. But I keep going wrong. I’ve been here ages.’ Her eyes travelled so fast over the women that she was tripping over words.

  Diana smiled. ‘Everyone, this is Beverley.’

  ‘Hello, hello, hello,’ said Beverley. She offered a series of frantic waves, like polishing an invisible window. In return, the women gave tight smiles that appeared to stick to their mouths and hurt.

  ‘I’m not interrupting you, am I?’ said Beverley to Diana.

  ‘No, no,’ said Andrea in a yes, yes sort of way.

  ‘Byron, offer Beverley your chair,’ said Diana.

  ‘Oh no, please. I won’t stop.’

  But Diana insisted.

  Byron carried his gilt chair to his mother’s side and Andrea shifted her own several feet to make a space. He lingered behind his mother’s shoulder. It was a mistake to offer Beverley a chair. It was a mistake to introduce her to the Winston House mothers. He was sure James would agree.

  Nevertheless Beverley took his chair. She sat very tensely, her spine not touching the back of it, and she clearly didn’t know what to do with her hat. First she draped it on her lap, then she hooked it over her chair, but it slipped to the floor and that was where she left it. ‘Yes,’ she said, as if someone had asked her a question, though no one had, or showed any likelihood of doing so. ‘Jeanie loves the lamb you bought her.’ Still she addressed only Diana. ‘She plays with it all the time. But guess what?’

  Diana gave the smallest
shake of her head. ‘I don’t know, Beverley.’

  ‘His little guitar broke. I told her to be careful. That’s a collector’s item, I said. But she is so sad. It just went snap in her hands. Like that. Snap.’ She plucked up Andrea’s plastic teaspoon and cracked it in half.

  Byron stood very still. If he so much as moved a muscle he was afraid he would push Beverley out of the way. He wanted to shout at her not to mention the bicycle. He wanted to shout at the mothers to get on and drink their coffees. They watched with stony, glazed smiles.

  ‘I knew from the bag you had bought it here and so I promised. I said, You be a good girl, Jeanie, and don’t go on, and Mother will fetch you another one. It’s so nice to bump into you again.’ She cast a net of a glance over the other mothers. ‘Do you come here a lot?’

  The mothers said they did. All the time, said Andrea. Beverley nodded.

  ‘Would you like anything to drink?’ asked Diana, offering the leather-bound menu.

  ‘Do they do the hard stuff?’ This was clearly meant to be a joke, but no one laughed or smiled or even, for that matter, said no, they don’t, what about coffee? Beverley’s face slid so fast into red, she looked on the verge of moving on to an altogether more violent shade, like blue.

  ‘I won’t stop,’ she said, failing to go. Then: ‘I suppose you all have kids like Diana?’

  The women reached for their cups and murmured things like yes and one or two.

  ‘I suppose they’re all at Winston House?’ She was clearly trying to be friendly.

  Yes, yes, said the mothers, as if there was nowhere else.

  ‘It’s a very nice school,’ said Beverley. ‘If you can afford it. Very nice.’ Her eyes darted around, swallowing the cut-glass light fittings, the waitresses in their black and white uniforms, the starched tablecloths. ‘Shame they don’t do Green Shield Stamps in this place,’ she said. ‘I’d be here all the time.’