Broken Things (Salt Modern Fiction)

by Padrika Tarrant

  “In fact, the higher I climbed, the more I felt the crawling horror of knowledge. At the foot of the stairs, all of truth lay torn open, flayed; with me above it, omniscient and shaking, not looking down.”

  Broken Things encompasses a world of fractured realities and magic. Here are voices lost inside themselves, where the world is not as it should be and nothing may be trusted. These are the lives that are eked out at the very edges of the city, where God might be found in a bonfire or a bag lady can burst into a flock of pigeons and wild laughter.

  This book picks at the familiar parts of the everyday and frays them, very slightly, reminding us of the beauty and fear of dreams, of things just glimpsed through the corner of the eye. A woman becomes a gas explosion, or witness to the death of a nameless man in a library. A kitchen knife crawls after a little girl to keep her safe and an old lady hears her mother calling from a cupboard.

  Broken Things is a book for those who have not outgrown fairytales; for those who like to feel just a little disturbed; for those who remember the ancient creeping of childhood darkness and the exquisite glory of snow.

  Broken Things

  PADRIKA TARRANT was born in 1974 and lives in Norwich. She studied sculpture at Norwich School of Art, where she developed an unhealthy fixation with scissors and the work of Jan Svankmajer. Broken Things is her first full-length work, reflecting both an interest in surrealism and her own experience of psychosis. She shares her home with a daughter, an ill-mannered cockatiel and far too many animal skulls.

  Published by Salt Publishing

  Dutch House, 307–308 High Holborn, London WC1V 7LL United Kingdom

  All rights reserved

  © Padrika Tarrant, 2007, 2009, 2010

  The right of Padrika Tarrant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2010

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978 1 84471 839 9 electronic

  For my friend Charlotte Francis, because I miss her.

  For all the precious broken things.

  Darling

  UNTIL TODAY, I always pushed a pram, just in case I find a baby. People lose them all the time, don’t they, so the chances are some day I’ll get lucky and pick one up. I’m kind, and ever so patient; a baby wouldn’t be badly off with me, I don’t think.

  I save stuff, keep safe what nobody else cares for, whatever Jesus sends my way. My heart is full of darkness, otherwise I would be an angel, but still he does let me have things, little things like chewed gum and broken bottles, and words. I wrap them in tissue paper to keep them safe, except the words, which are fragile and have to be learned by heart.

  So, it wasn’t a big shock when I found the dog; I was overjoyed, and sent little thankyous to heaven by the thousand, because a dog is very nearly a baby. He was black and white, and wet with blood, and when I found him he was so vulnerable and wounded that I simply cried. I called him Darling, because that is a good name for someone you love.

  When I lifted my Darling from the roadside, the utter looseness of his body shocked me so much that I all but dropped him. His head lolled at a sick angle; he seemed boneless, just a floppy mass of joints. No wonder he needed me so badly. I lowered him into my pram, and as if at some secret sign from God, it began to rain.

  I wheeled him right indoors; my bedsit’s on the ground floor, which is lucky. The landlady is godless and dyes her hair; she hates me because I pain her conscience. I save things from being ruined, and I keep them in my room; she’s envious of my vocation.

  When I lit the gas fire and turned on the light, I looked down at my Darling. He was wrong, all flat across the ribs where the car’s wheel had squashed him, and sort of funny, as if his arms and legs had been attached backwards.

  I hunted around the room for plastic bags, and with them I propped him into a better shape, around the sides and under his chin, until his muzzle was resting on his front paws. He had big ears shaped like triangles and a little short tail.

  I stroked his poor chest and tried to make it better with my fingers, but in the end I had to pad it out with a Sainsbury’s bag, which I fed inside through a slit I made in his skin. I was terrified I’d hurt him, but Darling was so brave, he didn’t complain once, just lay quite still and let me help him.

  It was after three when I finished, and I was worried, because it’s binmen day on a Friday, and I usually go from house to house, making sure only bad things are left for the dust truck. Generally, I start my rounds at five, but in the end, I was simply too tired. My soul was swimming with love, and that just couldn’t be a sin.

  I slept until nine, but my dreams were odd. I heard Darling in my sleep; he was dreaming too, of headlamps and screechy brakes, and he whimpered for hours. I was trying to find him in my room, but somehow I couldn’t; all that I could get my hands on were clumps and clumps of dog hair.

  When I said Good morning to my Darling the next day, I was shocked at the state of him. His fur was clotty with blood, and it wouldn’t clean up, not with shampoo, not even with bleach. Eventually, an idea struck me, and I tore up newspaper and made him a brand new skin, layered with glue. He was stiff inside his fur already, and so he didn’t mind at all, having a paper shell. The dents on his surface smoothed out beneath it, and I made him sculpted flanks and the muscular haunches of a prophet dog. He needed a more dignified tail, so I carried on where his left off, and made it curl like a whip along his side.

  Darling took ages to dry, even with both halves of the fire on full, and during the night he whined. I began to worry about the landlady, but the noise didn’t seem to bother anyone. By the next day his carapace was almost hard, but poor Darling had begun to seep and stain it, and at any rate he didn’t like being all covered with bad news writing from the paper, so I looked among my piles and boxes for paint. I gave him a lovely black enamelled coat, and I varnished his eyes, which I had left uncovered so he would be able to see.

  All that night I worried about Darling’s eyes. What kind of mother would I be, I thought, if I did the wrong thing? God would never trust me again. Perhaps he would be better off with new ones, now he was becoming so beautiful? In my dreams I tried to catch him, but his flesh was soft and loose as wet cotton wool and my fingers went right through.

  In the end, I got up before my window grew light. Darling’s eyes were going brown and caving in. I rushed about in a panic, piling up milk bottle tops and buttons and five pence pieces, but none were right. Then a thought came to me from somewhere perfect, and I snapped the thread of my necklace. Darling gazed at me with his golden amber eyeballs, and I was so happy I could have flown to heaven.

  That day was like Christmas lights; I found a bit of gold leaf to gild his eartips and I dabbed in a blue scrolled nose with a tiny paintbrush. I stuck tinfoil in strips to give my Darling claws for his feet, and made a clever, latticework design over his spine with picture wire. I left the fire on high to help him dry, and went to bed exh
austed.

  But to my horror, Darling howled all night and the air in my bedsit grew fat with stink. In my sleep I gagged on it; I coughed and retched myself awake a dozen times. When I woke in the morning, I jammed cushions along the gap beneath the door to stop the smell of Darling crawling down the hallway, and I poured a bottle of violet scent over him.

  I wracked my brains for things to make my Darling nice; I glued little paper stars along his front paws and sang him songs to cheer him up. I let him wear my charm bracelet around his proud dog neck, and I decorated the pram like a bier with toilet paper roses. I cut out happy faces from magazines and stuck them over the places where my Darling’s body was oozing.

  He was so unhappy; he barked and yelped that night, fit to break your heart. I still tried to catch hold of him as I slept, but all my hands could close upon were bones. He yammered louder than the radio on full volume, and so loud I didn’t hear the landlady come to the door. The neighbours had phoned the police; I got a note, but it went underneath the cushions so I didn’t see.

  In the darkness, my Darling spoke. With a voice like wet leaves; he told me that he hated me. I couldn’t believe it, I just couldn’t, but then a godly wisdom came upon me and I knew what I had to do. I forced myself to be happy, for my Darling’s sake, and before five I left the house, with him staring out from the pram like a prince dog.

  I stopped along the roadside, wherever there was something beautiful, and I filled the space at Darling’s feet with flowers from gardens and crisp packets and handfuls of fresh green grass, until he looked like a holy effigy from Walsingham, processing down the street on a feast day.

  We watched the sun come up, Darling and I, as we stood on the kerb at the spot where I had found him first. Although I’d loved him, my Darling had not loved me back, and I knew that it was only kind to return him to the place where I had found him. Even so, I could not quite find it in my heart to strip him of all his glory, for surely love is a perfect thing, even if futile?

  We waited there for an hour, in a morning that was horrible with bird song, until a car came past, and then I pushed my Darling out in front of it.

  Anatomy

  INSIDE ME IS a secret; I am keeping it calm, soothing its splinters and bones among my intestines and a warm soup of blood. When I walk, it balances perfectly.

  My secret likes the campus, and I take it here often, even though the people that I used to know have all gone now. All except for Finn. I drink hot chocolate in the refectory, and when it’s warm, I sit on my coat on the lawns. I bring my textbook everywhere I go, and when the afternoons are sunny, the pages are bright enough to blind. The students sit in gangs of five, or else they come alone and try to read. Some have secrets of their own: you can tell by the way they hold their heads.

  I keep my secret underneath my skin. It nestles there behind my liver, piercing a membrane, and to pass the time, it ticks in time with the tocking of my heart.

  Inside the gentle squish of fat, my secret is growing, my alien child. A stethoscope might find it, diagnose its jaggy pulse, but there is no one to diagnose but me.

  I spend a lot of time at the Pathology Museum. It’s always quiet, except when they do lessons in here; they don’t let the public in off the streets, you understand, it’s not a freak show. They think I’m a medical student: I was, in point of fact, but not for very long. Still, I showed the man at the desk my student card the first few times, and after some weeks he stopped asking to see it. I nod to him every day, and smile; he always says, Good morning.

  I come to stand among the jars, and breathe the clean air among the cases and wax models. I spend a lot of time drawing, too. Often, I will lean my back against an empty wall, and crook my arm until it makes a sort of shelf for my sketchpad. It would be more comfortable to sit on the floor. But I wouldn’t want to disturb my secret, because if I move too quickly then it digs me, jabs with its corners. It doesn’t want me to forget it; my secret wants to hurt.

  My tutor was a prophet, you know, with silver hair. He said we were to call him Finn: no standing on ceremony. At the first dissection class I was worried that I might disgrace myself somehow, vomit perhaps; the thought had scared me. But, when Finn’s long hands laid out the digestive tract, I was euphoric, having glimpsed the universe.

  The open body is a rare flower, with thick peeled petals, and yet more petals within. I heard once that the mother of a god looked down his throat and found that all the universe was there: stars and shopping malls and death and horses, all quivering and vulnerable, trembling like an epiglottis.

  At half term he asked to see me. There was something in his look, something peculiar; at the time I misread it. I was anxious, of course, convinced that I had done something wrong. I barely slept that night; I passed the time in bed with my textbook, revising, as if I might get through ’til morning, if only I could learn enough. I dreamed of Finn, for just a moment. His teeth were very white. I woke, startled, with my cheek against a diagram, when one of my housemates flushed the toilet.

  When I stand before the mirror naked, I can see the beauty tracing though me: the deep and shallow colours, and the calm, soft masses. My secret sets off my organs like an expensive brooch, asymmetrical and daring.

  When Finn came past today, he didn’t see me. I saw him though: he was glistening red and grey and blue; the bones in his face were the soft yellow of piano keys. I saw the jump of his oesophagus as he swallowed, and then I ducked behind a lime tree.

  The affair was brief, if you could call it that. He adjusted his tie, clawed his fingers through his hair. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. I gathered up my coat and stuff, and left. He didn’t look up, just picked up a biro and began to drum the table with it.

  I didn’t go home right away. My housemates would all be there, arguing and eating toast and watching children’s TV. I found myself at the Museum instead, hunting among the jars and plastic anatomical models, frantically looking for something. It got dark and the cleaner came in and cleared her throat, but I still hadn’t found it, so I went to the house and crept up to my room.

  Later, in the bath, I spread out my hand, covered in bubbles, and then I dunked it, splash, and pulled it out again. As the water streamed away, I recited my fingers like a poem: the bones, tendons and major nerves. At the wrist was the tender bloom of a bruise.

  That first night, the secret formed; it sang like a gale through a cracked window. By the weekend I was afraid that I was pregnant. I took tests, dozens of them, until the people in Boots and Superdrug started giving me weird looks. I wasn’t, of course; no baby is made of blades and edges and bits of tooth enamel.

  I didn’t attend any tutorials after that. As the months wore on, I found that I didn’t have time for lectures anyway; I’d hit on something new, undiscovered: the physiology of a secret. When they sent the letter to say I’d failed the year, I didn’t care.

  I sent drawing after drawing to Finn, always to scale, showing the cartilage and claws and locks of matted hair. I didn’t need a scalpel; my secret was so painful that I could feel its contours underneath my skin, just as if I had swallowed needles. After the third one, the envelopes started to come back unopened. I sent them anyway.

  Sometimes I would creep into the Lecture Theatre and sit at the back. Sometimes, Finn would catch my eye, and then flick quickly back to the whiteboard. For a long time, I wondered why he didn’t just have me thrown out; then it dawned on me that he was afraid of me, of the secret.

  These days I’m much more discreet. I wouldn’t like to be banned from the university; there isn’t really anywhere else to go. So, I’m polite, friendly to the refectory staff; I give them cards at Christmas. They think I’m rather sweet.

  There is death in the museum, and order too, that gives it balance. Every pain is catalogued, lined up, made pure and clean in glass cases and bell jars, until it’s hardly a pain at all. There is every syndrome
here except my own; I have looked: carefully; scientifically; systematically. There aren’t any secrets in the Path Museum. Even so, it’s nice inside, and out of the rain on wet days. I am at home here. My secret belongs here too.

  Coffinwood

  THEY ARE NOT the dead, although they look it. They look like the dead because they dress like them; they wear their three-piece suits, and favourite outfits, and First Communion dresses. It’s all they have to wear; if it weren’t for the borrowings from the people in the cemetery, the poor things would go naked. Corpses don’t really need warm clothes.

  It is so cold underground. They only have little shacks to keep themselves warm; they make poor little houses, out of coffinwood and tree roots, and they shiver and sigh and their children cry in winter.

  They don’t dare have fires, you see, a fire might suffocate them with smoke, or bake the soil so hard that they’d be entombed in their tunnels and holes. And they’re shy; they don’t want to be discovered by the light-dwellers; they’d hate to pose a nuisance. So they make do, by and large; the reckless ones creep out sometimes though, to stand underneath the streetlamps and dry their mouldy clothes.

  When I was all but a kid myself, I met a coffinwood child, in a green-patched bridesmaid dress, with mushrooms in her hair instead of flowers. I was a lonely teenager back then; when I saw her I was not afraid.

  I’d been squatting on the grass behind the stairwell, listening to the rush hour beyond the boundary wall. There were no stars. You don’t get stars if you live in the city.

  You do see foxes though, sometimes, especially on the estates where there’s a bit of grass and foliage that the council men maintain. I was in my first real home, with my Housing Benefit and my Income Support all in place, and although the flat was titchy, the freedom made me feel like a child playing hide-and-seek in an empty house. After the noise and radios and cigarette-coughing of the hostel, I would have died for a pet, but they weren’t allowed.