A Perfect Life

by Raffaella Barker

  Another ball, another run and now he is facing the bowler again. This ball is fast and he does nothing but stop it dead. As the impact reverberates through his arms and down his spine, Nick’s concentration surges and focuses on the game, his restless mind soothed by the gentle unfolding of order, the inevitability of runs notching up, and the clear visibility of what each team is trying to achieve, that is the structure of cricket. Minutes pass, and Nick and Jem bat and run, pause and watch, and implicit trust forms between them. The straggle of spectators is a crescent of colour along the curve of the pitch on the pavilion side, fading to nothing but the odd figure walking a dog at the woodland end and a muddle of cars parked along beneath the wall to the graveyard at the farthest part of the ground. Nick is on seventeen, Jem heading for fifty, and a symbiosis has developed between them which Nick loves. Even more, he loves not noticing it because he is concentrating on play. Fully present in his game.

  Jem hits a six off the last ball of the over, and passes fifty. He takes his helmet off and rubs his hands through hot damp hair, looking over at his father.

  ‘How’re you doing, Dad?’ He grins. Nick wants to cry. He never had a moment like this with his father. He never had a moment at all with his father that belonged to the two of them. You couldn’t count the last moment, when he kissed Silas’s yellow, puffed cheek in the hospital ward and walked away, holding his mother’s hand, not daring to look across at her in case she was crying. His father died of liver failure aged forty-seven, the age Nick is now. Nick was sixteen, the same age as Jem.

  A bull-necked farmer comes in to bowl. Nick swipes and it is all over. Like a kick in the balls from the girl of your dreams. And you are set up for it from the moment you first step on to the pitch. His stomach disappears from inside himself as he unscrambles his thoughts, reminding himself bitterly, This is what life is really about. Disappointment. And the walk in is the longest two minutes of your life since the last time it happened.

  ‘Oh Dad.’ Jem leans on his bat, hunched and sorry.

  Nick manages to smile. ‘I’m glad it was me, not you,’ he says, and is surprised to find that he means it.

  Angel

  September has a way of inhabiting the early morning air, imbuing it with crisp purpose, a brisk energy that is different from the excitement of spring when everything is new, or the lush presence of summer, but is mature, redolent and strong. Angel feeds the hens and her footprints are a path of soft darkness on the silvered dew. Today she will take Foss and Ruby to school and deliver a letter to their headmaster telling him she and Nick have split up and are getting divorced. The letter is already on the kitchen table and the thought of it keeps her outside, wandering around the house, mentally dead-heading the buddleia but not touching it, pulling browned rose petals off the fat hips as the sun gathers strength.

  Jem went back to school yesterday, into the sixth form. Angel took him and his suspiciously small amount of stuff to Ely yesterday evening. Dragging the bags into his room, the smell of polish and the squeak of fire doors swinging took her back to being seventeen at school herself, and how awful, yet also what a relief it was to get away from home at the end of the holidays.

  ‘So, here we are,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Jem threw himself flat behind her and pulled his cap down over his face. Jem’s room overlooked the walls of the cathedral. Angel stared out at the massive wall of stone and the sun going down behind it, softening the towers and the atmosphere.

  ‘I hope this term is fun.’

  Jem grunted. There was no chance she would say the right thing.

  ‘I got expelled from here.’ This was almost certainly the wrong thing to say, but she was running out of time and to leave with stilted silence was wrong – it was what her parents used to do. Jem pulled off his cap and smiled.

  ‘I know you did,’ he said.

  ‘But do you know why?’ This was not a confessional; it was just a chance to get a conversation going.

  ‘Wasn’t it for running around naked?’ Jem put the cap back over his eyes.

  ‘Yes, basically that was it.’ Angel wished she had been expelled for something less mortifying for a teenage son. ‘I was wearing this trench coat to go into town and for some reason I decided to take it off at the end of the High Street and run back to school with no clothes on.’

  ‘That is so stupid,’ said Jem.

  Angel laughed. ‘Yes. Completely stupid. And I have done lots of other stupid things too.’

  ‘Yes, you have,’ said Jem. Angel looked at him. He was still hidden by the hat, but he pulled it off again and looked back at her.

  ‘Mum, I’ve got to unpack and get my stuff to meet my new tutor after supper.’

  Jem stood up. Angel’s stomach flipped because she didn’t want to leave him. She got up too. Jem started taking his speakers out of the box on the floor. His phone rang.

  ‘Yeah? OK, I’ll meet you in a minute.’ He smiled at Angel, friendly but busy. It was time for Angel to go. She was not going to cry.

  ‘Bye, darling, have a good time.’ There was nothing adequate to say. She hugged him, and Jem was taller. He had grown in the holidays and Angel reached up to kiss him.

  ‘I’ll see you next weekend,’ she said and walked out of the door as Jem’s phone rang again.

  ‘Yeah? OK. I’m coming.’

  Leaving Ely in the dusk she was glad he could just get on with his own teenage life. And she hoped he would not get expelled.

  Pausing on the door step, the cool dark kitchen and the contemplative ticking of the clock offer a different mood from the busy, gold morning outside with the sound of cars accelerating along the road, a dog barking somewhere and leaves whispering around the house. It is time to get the children up. In fact, it is well past time to get the children up. Racing up the stairs three at a time, Angel erupts into Foss’s room to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she gasps. It is almost sinister: the school shirt and v-neck, the grey shorts and knee socks give a ghostly frisson – a 1930s version of Foss. Even his wild hair, cut yesterday at Hair to Impress, a salon with salt-caked windows on the sea front, is tamed this morning.

  ‘Gosha did it. She’s helping Ruby now.’

  Feeling grateful, Angel lifts Foss off the bed and kisses him. ‘That is so wonderful of her. Now you come down-stairs and we’ll have porridge.’

  ‘I would rather have cheese strings,’ says Foss hopefully, alive to his mother’s good mood. ‘Or pork pie.’

  It was a good idea to wear dark glasses. They are a shield once the children are safely in their new classrooms. Ruby clings to her, wrapping her arms around Angel’s waist, lifting her feet off the ground and wrapping her legs around her mother too. Angel’s skirt begins to fall down. Mrs Little clasps her hands and keens towards Ruby.

  ‘Come on now, we don’t want Mum in here all day, do we? We’ve got to get started with our work. We’re doing the family tree and I know you will have lots to contribute, Ruby.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Ruby has her eyes fixed on the floor, her face buried in Angel’s stomach, tears where her eyelashes brush against Angel’s skin under her shirt, like a paintbrush sweeping watercolour over paper. The letter to the headmaster is dismally inadequate. Angel glances around, hoping a small confessional box might suddenly appear so she and Mrs Little could have a quiet moment, during which she can stick a blood-letting instrument into a vein and expel some of the guilt.

  The classroom is full of healthy freckle-faced, sun-tanned children, hair neat and cut, clothes slightly big and creased from shop packaging, clamouring for their desks, their pencil cases, waiting their turn to show Mrs Little their lunch money purse, or their newborn baby sister, or their reading book. And beside each small child stands a smiling mother, focused, gentle and interested, each one uniquely engaged with her own child but united in their willingness to make everything easy for their darling offspring returning to school after the lo
ng summer.

  Angel wants to belong. Ruby is yanking her, like a sandbag pulling her down. It is time to go. Undoing Ruby’s grip from around her waist is unseemly, but luckily her concentration lapses as the bell goes, and Angel makes her escape. She is almost out of the playground, when Alice West catches her.

  ‘Oh, Angel, I am glad I got you, how was the summer?’ Her hand on Angel’s arm is cool, there is a small clatter of gold bangles.

  ‘The summer? Oh you know, full of life.’

  Does she know? Is Angel being cowardly not to bring it up? What is the protocol? With no idea, Angel realises she just has to smile and be friendly and see what happens. This is a bad idea.

  ‘We’re having a meeting to kick-start the Parents’ Association autumn programme and I wanted to make sure we had it on a day that was good for you.’

  Oh hell. Oh fuck. It is her own fault. Angel distinctly remembers last summer at the school camp-out, drinking a tooth mug full of whisky and approaching Alice to say, with guileless insincerity, ‘If only I knew when your meetings were I would so love to play a more active part in the committee. This sort of thing is what life is all about.’ Such crap. Even if she wasn’t getting divorced, joining the Parents’ Association is on a par with becoming a traffic warden or learning to play bridge on Angel’s list of things never to do.

  Alice flicks back her hair. Angel opens and closes her mouth, stress or distress gathering like fog. A coffin floats into her mind, inspired by the confession box, no doubt. It is open, and cosily lined with white cashmere, inviting and gentle.

  ‘I must be going mad. I always wondered what it felt like.’ Unintentionally, Angel speaks her thoughts; Alice has taken a step back.

  ‘Pardon?’ she says, blinking, her face wiped clean of the cool smile.

  ‘Oh, I mean – I’m so sorry, Alice, I’ve got a lot on this week. Let me call you from home when I’ve got a diary in front of me. I’m sure we can work something out.’

  ‘Well, I could give you a few possibilities. If—’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll call you from home.’

  Angel smiles and flips her sunglasses down with determined finality. It is fine to leave. Alice can’t block her path, and now she will walk out, just like that. She takes a breath and the school gate clangs behind her. No footsteps follow, no voice calls out. Angel runs.

  At home there is a lot to do and the house is strange with no children in it. Angel drifts through the rooms, keeping away from the kitchen where clattering plates tell her Gosha is clearing breakfast. The shutters in the sitting room are closed, and light spills in through the gaps in bright bars, falling like rails on the carpet. Angel lies down on the sofa and, finding a phone on the floor beside her trailing hand, she calls Jake’s number, pressing the buttons fast, not allowing herself a moment to think or regret.

  ‘Jake?’

  ‘Hello, Angel.’ He doesn’t sound surprised, he sounds pleased, successful, and sexy. The springing adrenalin in Angel steadies to a fast pulse.

  ‘Hello. Jake?’ She must have called him before in the morning, but today something is different. Maybe just her awareness, which seems to have taken on panoramic acuteness so every word is open to illicit interpretation.

  There is a smile in his voice. ‘Yes, I’m Jake. I’m just walking along the Backs on the way to work. Where are you?’

  He sounds like he wants to know. Angel presses the phone closer to her ear and hears his breath.

  ‘I’m on the sofa.’ Angel’s nerves scream, ‘Stop!’ She is heading into dangerous territory, it is right ahead of her. She does nothing. Holding her nerve takes every pulsing of adrenalin, and her heart thuds in the silence.

  Jake takes a while to answer. ‘Are you?’

  Angel wriggles down and lies flat, pulling a cushion on to her stomach, biting her top lip and smiling at the ceiling. He is good at this game. He has clearly had a lot of practice.

  ‘Yes. And it’s dark in here, I haven’t opened the shutters yet.’ She is not bad either, for a beginner. Crunching footsteps on the gravel outside are followed by the clang of the doorbell.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got visitors,’ says Jake, and that’s it. Gone. The intense flirtation is not there any more. Jake sounds brisk and businesslike, and Angel answers him lightly, following his lead back from intimacy.

  ‘So I have. Let’s talk later,’ she says, then wonders what they are supposed to be talking about.

  ‘I’d like that,’ says Jake. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  What has she done? What is she trying to do? What is she going to say?

  Opening the door, Angel is still smiling. A red-faced man stands in front of her; he is holding a red leather collar.

  ‘I caught the dog but it slipped out. It’s gone off with those sheep chasing down towards the school. You should get your animals fenced properly. They could cause an accident.’ He waves the collar at Angel; suddenly she recognises it.

  ‘Oh, thank you. It belongs to Vespa. My dog, I mean. What sheep?’ Sometimes the effort to focus on the here and now is too much. Inside the house the telephone begins to ring. And she remembers that she does have sheep. Two sheep at the last count. Oh God. Jem was looking after them in the holidays and Angel has not thought about them for weeks. No wonder they escaped, they probably want to be fed. When had Jem last fed them? Yesterday, with any luck. The man turns away, shaking his head, smiting his brow in exasperation.

  ‘People like you shouldn’t have animals,’ he mutters. ‘They said they were your sheep. Small ones. They were standing in the middle of the road, but as I said, they’ve gone down towards the school.’

  The scene sounds absurd and familiar. Angel is trying not to laugh.

  ‘Yes, they are my sheep. How funny that they chose to go that way – towards school, I mean, rather than anywhere else. You know – “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow” . . . mind you, these ones are brown, but the next line is, “It followed her to school one day which was against the rules”.’

  The man gazes at her. ‘I am glad you find it so amusing,’ he says witheringly.

  ‘Sorry,’ snorts Angel. The phone rings again. ‘Please excuse me.’

  She shuts the door then opens it again to shout to him, ‘I’ll come and get them. Just give me a moment, please.’

  The man marches off down the drive, and Angel slams herself in the study. Animals, divorce, children, Nick, work, Jake. Oh God.

  Gosha taps on the door.

  Angel is ready for action. ‘Oh good, Gosha, please could you come with me, we’ve got to get the sheep and –’ Angel tails off as she takes in Gosha’s slippery mauve lipstick, thick spiders of mascara and pale green high heels. ‘Oh!’ she says.

  ‘Excuse me, do you have the pocket money for me? This is the day to go to college.’

  Of course. College. Angel had forgotten this is part of the au pair deal in term time. Feeling guilty for not putting Gosha’s needs on her list of priorities, she scrabbles in her handbag for her wallet.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, you must have your money. I’m sure I’ve got some of it. Oh, ten pounds isn’t good. Shall I draw you a map? I’ll just see if I can find some more money somewhere.’

  Angel dashes out of the room and up to Ruby’s bedroom, ignoring the telephone as it rings yet again. Ruby always has money. A small pink wallet covered by a notebook on Ruby’s dressing table bulges with cash.

  ‘Twenty-four pounds, thirty-seven!!!!’ she reads on the last page of the book. Feeling sinful and like a baby snatcher, she takes the twenty pounds and writes on the next page, ‘Mummy owes you twenty pounds plus interest!!!!’

  Nick

  Getting through immigration at JFK always feels to Nick like a prize in itself, so to him every trip to New York begins with a bonus. He hadn’t really meant to go this month, but the children going back to school coincided with a conference on global manufacturing, and Nick suddenly couldn’t bear to be staying in the Travel Lodge, knowing his small
son and daughter were going back to school as the products of a strife-torn family. Sliding into the comforting squashiness of a cab and sinking back so all he can really see is the roof, and the coil of greasy black hair his Sikh driver has pinned up under what Nick always thinks looks like a small, crocheted beer mat, he shudders, part exhaustion, part recollection of the night before. There he was, in the Travel Lodge, lying on the neatly made brown bed, channel-hopping and drinking cup after cup of bitter, nausea-inducing coffee from the endlessly dripping filter machine. The football highlights were over, and reality TV had hit all channels like a virus. Even Nick, whose capacity for avoidance was bottomless, could not watch another simpering girl with pumped-up lips and a soppy mind expressing her entirely unoriginal feelings on spending three days tucked up in a house full of strangers. Ten minutes of feverish texting was the next attempt to get away from pain. Before he had even told himself he was going to get a plane to New York the next morning, he was asking Jem if he wanted any music brought back, and composing a balletic dance, avoiding truth, to tell Foss and Ruby he was going away on Angel’s phone. There was no reason Angel shouldn’t know he was going to New York; he just didn’t feel like telling her himself.

  Having sent these messages, Nick had the double sense of achievement of having created a new reality for himself and having something to do tomorrow. Content to go to bed once there was no gaping void ahead of him, Nick took two of the sleeping pills he had stashed from Angel’s supply and lay down. He did not sleep.

  So today he is in transit and fucked up, two of his most familiar states of being, positions from which he feels numb and therefore to some degree comfortable. There is so much to do, and the time lag means that he is safe now to do much of it without anyone from home calling him. His favourite thing about being in America is that he can lead so much of his life while everyone he is important to is asleep and so in some way, in Nick’s mind, does not know and therefore cannot be harmed by his antics.