Sweet Home

by Carys Bray

  ‘What do you want, Emma?’ people asked me.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. But I wanted a girl.

  When I’m not taking a couple of weeks off to get some rest, I work at Pack It In, a bag and luggage shop. I like my job. I like the warm smell of leather, the whispering crinkle of tissue paper, the snap of locks, and the soft crunch of zips. I like being the first to open a new bag. The first to discover the secretive slits in the lining that can hide credit cards or an iPod. The first to unsnap, unzip, undo every little compartment, and the first to unearth the tiny packet of guarding desiccant. I like the ding dong of the door every time it opens, and the initial impression of a customer, the sizing up which happens instantaneously. Does he need help? Is she just browsing? I recognise the awkward doorway pause of a man who is looking for a gift in unfamiliar territory. The furtiveness of serial browsers, the eagerness of handbag aesthetes, and the simmering anticipation of travellers, anxious to begin their holiday experience with new luggage.

  Every bag, every case, is a receptacle for the hopes and aspirations of the person who eventually owns it. People carry all sorts in their handbags and luggage: passports, photographs, presents, treats; secrets too, in love letters, unpaid bills, appointment diaries and surreptitious cigarettes.

  Every morning when I open the shop door, I am encircled by the welcoming smell of leather. Occasionally, I arrive early so I can enjoy the moment. There is something magical about a shop outside of opening hours. When Richard was small he used to imagine that he was locked in a supermarket overnight. Sometimes when we go grocery shopping he asks what I would do if I was locked in a supermarket.

  ‘They’re all open twenty-four hours now,’ I said once. ‘You couldn’t be locked in.’

  ‘Sundays,’ he replied triumphantly. ‘They open at ten on Sunday mornings. You could be locked in on a Saturday night. What would you do? What would you eat? I’d probably start with the ice cream.’

  ‘I’d rather be locked in Pack It In,’ I told him. ‘It’d be much nicer there. Warmer, cosier and the smell—’

  ‘You’re absolutely nuts,’ he said.

  My baby’s name was Eve. After she was born I inched to my knees, ripped and stinging, to watch Richard cut the cord. Eve was bloody and scrabbling, bleating feebly, her eyes locked shut in the fluorescent hospital light. Unwrapped, revealed at last, and I couldn’t believe that she was mine. I stayed in the hospital for a couple of days. There was a breast-feeding counsellor. She told you stuff about being a good mother. I wanted to be a good mother. Would you notice if your baby was unconscious, or would you assume that she was asleep? When I noticed, a doctor came, then another. They lifted Eve out of the cot and raced to a side room. I put my slippers on and followed. I held my breath as the tiny, manual pump squeezed oxygen into her mouth and nose. It seemed as if my bursting lungs might activate hers. If I didn’t use any of the air, perhaps there would be enough left for her.

  ‘Shit,’ said the first doctor.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ the second urged.

  It was probably only minutes before they stopped.

  You might imagine that the moment of realisation is all hysterics and screaming. Pleading, howls, undignified bargaining, hasty promises and so on. Actors certainly seem to think so. But if I were an actor I would quietly say, ‘Oh.’ That’s what people really do.

  ‘How could you not notice?’ Richard asked when he arrived, half dressed and terrified. He hasn’t mentioned it since, except to say I must be more careful in future and he doesn’t blame me.

  Afterwards my arms felt empty. Richard bought me a Gucci bag. The long strap sat between my breasts and their constant dribble of milky tears. I went back to work early, my bra stuffed with wads of tissue. There was a sign in the bin. It said, ‘Eve – 8lbs 2oz. Congratulations Emma!’ I wondered how many people had walked past and seen it. What had they thought? I told Phil, the manager, that I would lock up. I stuck the sign back in the window. I went outside and walked backwards and forwards, pretending to be someone else.

  Eve. What a lovely name, I thought.

  Eight pounds is a good weight, I thought.

  A girl. Lucky Emma, I thought.

  When I had finished, I put the sign in the bin and locked the door.

  After I’d been back for a few weeks, a woman came into Pack It In. She was going on holiday. She wanted to buy luggage. In her newspaper there was a story about a man who had found a suitcase when he was clearing out his late mother’s loft. Inside the suitcase was a baby skeleton. That’s what the woman said. A baby skeleton. As if it might grow into an adolescent skeleton and then an adult skeleton. Phil interrupted her. He told her not to believe everything she read in the paper, and he pretended that we were about to close for lunch. Then he gave me the afternoon off.

  I wondered what kind of suitcase the baby skeleton was found in. Say it was born in the 1960s – it might have been hidden in a soft-bodied case. Something classic with a teal, brown and green floral pattern and a leather base, handle, and trim. A case like that would have silver zippers and a lined interior, with separate sections and tie downs. Or perhaps the baby skeleton was hidden in a more modern model, like the Antler Zenith, with a red moulded shell and grey interior. The Antler Zenith had flush fitting locks. The base and lid had an ottoman lining, like a quilt.

  Eve’s coffin had a quilted interior with a lacy pillow. It had silver handles. She wore a white dress and a bonnet to cover the stitches. They opened her head in the postmortem, like a lid. I had to sign a form. They did blanket stitch. It wasn’t neat. The stitching on my Gucci bag is straight with high-quality threading; only replica bags have lopsided, inconsistent stitching. I dressed her myself. She was raw-meat cold because the undertaker kept her in a refrigerator. There was a story on the news of a man who reached into his baby’s coffin for a goodbye kiss, only to discover that it was alive. This happened in India. Eve was dead. She was too cold to kiss.

  I tried not to think of her underground, decaying in the thick, damp silence. Then I read that the decomposition of the human body is a cascade process. There are four stages: fresh, bloat, decay and dry. I don’t like the word cascade. It makes me think of skin and tissue streaming off in a pulpy torrent. I’d rather imagine the flesh wisping away like dandelion seeds, leaving slender bone stems behind. It’s possible that the baby skeleton in the woman’s newspaper was partially mummified. I know because I looked it up. The bodies of newborns that have never ingested food lack the internal microbial flora which initiates decomposition. These bodies quite commonly mummify if kept in moderately dry conditions.

  ‘If you could go anywhere at night, and do anything, where would you go?’ I asked Richard one evening.

  ‘The supermarket, of course.’

  ‘I’d go to the cemetery and dig Eve up.’

  ‘You bloody wouldn’t.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’d never dig her up.’ Grave diggers go on a week-long residential course. They have to learn to use a JCB. I read about it. There’s no way I could dig her up by myself.

  ‘That wasn’t funny, Emma.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny.’

  ‘Perhaps we should try again?’

  I said I’d think about it.

  I started collecting the desiccant after I bought the suitcase. Phil gave me a discount on the case. He said it would do me good to go on holiday and offered to give me time off at short notice if I found a last-minute deal. I chose the small Samsonite Termo Spinner, in lavender. It’s made of high-strength polypropylene and has a ten-year global warranty. Someone has registered a patent for an airtight suitcase, but you can’t buy one yet. I checked. As I unpacked the bags at work, I borrowed the desiccant. There are thirty-eight packets of desiccant in the interior pockets of my Samsonite case. It is an extremely dry environment.

  Last week a customer we hadn’t see for a while came into Pack It In. Her name was Angie Proctor.

  ‘Emma!’ she said.
‘I saw the notice months ago. Belated congratulations! What did you call her again? I know you had a little girl, but I can’t remember—’

  ‘Eve.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  Phil strode out from the behind the counter as Angie Proctor’s eyes filled with mortified tears. ‘I’m afraid Emma lost little Eve.’

  ‘I didn’t lose her,’ I said. ‘She’s not been carelessly misplaced. She’s dead.’

  Angie Proctor remembered that she was late for an appointment. After the door shut behind her, Phil asked me to take a couple of weeks off. To rest.

  This baby does not look like Eve. She is definitely conscious. I can tell because I am watching her stomach move up and down. I am being careful. This is how I might have sat with Eve. Nearly lunch time on a Wednesday. Doing nothing in particular. When she died Eve was not much smaller than this baby is now.

  The Samsonite suitcase is waiting in my bedroom. The baby keeps sleeping as I carry her up the stairs. I place her gently on the bed, so as not to wake her. I lift the suitcase alongside her. The size is perfect. This is what I needed to know. I open the lid and place her on the silky lining inside. Just to see. This is what I should have done with Eve. I should have kept her, like a secret. A Tollund baby in a suitcase. But Eve’s skin and tissue are cascading into the earth. Rotting into her bonnet and dress. Staining the tiny lace pillow. She is shrinking into a baby skeleton. Richard wants to try again, and I can’t say yes until I have made the arrangements. Just in case.

  I want to feel it, that moment of surprise as the case is opened and its secret revealed. I snap the lid closed. It isn’t airtight. She should be all right. But perhaps I should count to thirty as a precaution. Thirty seconds shouldn’t do any harm and she is asleep. She won’t know anything about it. It’s probably very comfy in there. Should I begin at number ten now? If I begin counting at ten will that account for the time already passed, or should I start at fifteen? Lavender was the right choice. I want a girl, but I will be careful not to say that to anyone. You mustn’t actually say it. It’s one of those things you mustn’t say. Like dead. You mustn’t say that your baby is dead because it upsets people. Perhaps I should start counting at fifteen …

  The click of the front door interrupts my counting.

  ‘Emma? Where are you?’ Richard calls. He takes the stairs two at a time, slowing as he reaches the bedroom. ‘Ta-dah! Surprise!’ He comes to stand behind me and brushes warm lips against the back of my neck. ‘It’s lunch time and I’m hungry.’

  His hands trace the arc of my vacant stomach and he nudges the backs of my legs with his, encouraging me to move forward. But I stand still as he embraces me, my eyes fastened on the suitcase; so beautiful on the bed, snapped shut around its precious secret.

  Sweet home

  Of course no one accused the old woman of being a witch. But she was foreign. Her words percolated up the tunnel of her throat, espresso-thick and strong. Bad weather had eroded her face. Some believed that the sun had crisped her skin into coriaceous pleats. Others blamed the chaw of a wintry climate. No one knew where she had come from, though lots of people privately thought that perhaps she ought to go back.

  There was no interest in the small parcel of woodland until the old woman bought it. The wood grew at the edge of the village, at the brink of awareness. For most people its existence was an abstract or fleetingly pleasant local detail. After the old woman’s visit to the estate agent, everyone suddenly began to talk about conservation. They shook their heads and tutted as they wrapped their mouths around unfamiliar words like heritage and legacy. Remarks about the wellbeing of red squirrels and dormice speckled habitual conversations about the weather, and people became overnight experts on the preservation of indigenous wildflowers. There was speculation that ghost orchids and wild gladiolus grew in the wood, leading to claims that it should have been categorised as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and its sale accordingly prevented.

  Following the completion of the sale, the old woman bought a tent from the camping shop on the high street. Then she trudged down the B road to her new acquisition. She was followed, several days later, by a foreign removal truck, leading people to mutter darkly about planning permission and residential dwellings. A few especially indignant individuals pursued the truck. They stood at the edge of the wood and watched the tail lift lower to reveal a colossal, black, antique stove, crouching fatly on ball and claw legs. Three men emerged from the back of the truck and, along with the driver, moved the stove onto the woodland floor. The tail lift was raised and lowered a second time to reveal several sacks of flour, numerous Tupperware containers, a stepladder, an axe, a shovel and a chicken coop.

  During the days that followed, everyone kept an eye on the B road. They were disappointed not to observe flatbed lorries stacked with building supplies, speedy white trade vans or even a removal truck containing the rest of the old woman’s possessions. Although no such vehicles were observed, the old woman’s intentions were perfectly plain and people were clearly obliged to report her to the authorities.

  The Planning Office couldn’t cope with the volume of phone calls. Public-sector redundancies had culled all but one of the secretaries and she didn’t have either the time or the inclination to politely log numerous versions of the same complaint. After ten similar objections, the phone was switched to answer machine and a Planning Officer was despatched to investigate as a matter of urgency.

  The Planning Officer wasn’t one to talk. But on his way back from the wood he stopped off at the pub for a drink and felt he ought to reveal that the old woman was indeed planning to build. However, as the structure would not be permanent, there was nothing he could do about it. He was also compelled to disclose that the old woman had applied for a coppice grant worth £500, money which would surely be better spent on honest, hardworking, English people. And while he had a captive audience, he made an eloquent speech about the inadequacies of the government. When he’d finished he called a taxi because he was a responsible drinker: he’d claim for it later on expenses.

  The old woman built her house around the stove. She dug out the foundations with a shovel and filled trenches with slow-baked slabs of salt dough and buckets of oozy sugar paste. She cooked thick gingerbread bricks and glazed them with glacé icing which set hard during the cool, wood-shaded evenings. Paper-thin slices of gelatine were latticed into windows, criss-crossed by steady cords of ganache. She constructed a roof out of Linzertorte squares and piped meringue along every join. The midday sun hardened the egg-white mortar into stiff, crispy peaks. When she had finished, she sat on her gingerbread porch modelling tiny flowers out of fondant. She dyed them using wild onion skins, beetroot, and hollyhock petals, and placed them in gingerbread window boxes.

  It was only when the postman had to deliver a package addressed to The Gingerbread House, using a postcode which indicated the wood at the margin of the village, that people heard about what the old woman had done. They chatted about it in the Post Office, discussed it in the pub and then sauntered down the B road on the pretext of getting some fresh air. The gingerbread house was set back from the road by several hundred feet, but was just about visible from the path through the crisscross of foliage and branches. A crowd gathered at the edge of the wood, their exclamations rising in a whipswirl of disquiet.

  ‘It looks like gingerbread.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s a …’

  ‘She should have used an English recipe.’

  ‘Like shortbread.’

  ‘I don’t think shortbread—’

  ‘Or Swiss roll.’

  ‘Isn’t Swiss roll from—’

  ‘Victoria sponge, then. You can’t get more English than that.’

  ‘It’s not in keeping with the character of the village.’

  ‘Is this a conservation area? Are we in a conservation area? Maybe the Planning Officer can make her take it down.’

  ‘I don’t think so.
He said not. Although I doubt he realised that she was intending this.’

  ‘It’s unhygienic. Don’t you think it’s unhygienic? It’ll attract mice and rats.’

  ‘I bet she won’t pay council tax.’

  ‘How about home insurance?’

  ‘What could she insure it against – compulsive eaters?’

  ‘I need a drink, anyone up for a quick half?’

  It would not be true to state that everyone grew used to the gingerbread house. However, it did become a hard fact of people’s existence, like gastritis or heartburn. The old woman often walked along the B road to the high street and back again, carrying supermarket carrier bags packed with butter, sugar and glycerine. She walked slowly, the ‘s’ of her spine concertinaing into a tortile ‘z’ as she hefted her shopping. Occasionally people passed her, but no one offered to help.

  In the weeks and months that followed, no one’s milk soured. No one’s allotment crop failed and the weather was typical of early and subsequently late autumn. But as winter approached, the Post Office closed down and the highspeed broadband connection date was postponed. In the week before Christmas, the sky tipped a foot of snow over the village and hundreds of condensing boilers failed. In the New Year, VAT went up to 20%. And everyone began to see a pattern in the configuration of events, began to believe that the old woman’s arrival had catalysed their misfortunes.

  The quiet in the wood was welcome and calming. The passage of time was determined by the seasons rather than hours and minutes. The old woman found that she was pleasantly busy. Every day she tended to her chickens, chopped logs for the stove and maintained and repaired her house. The heavy snowfall limited her activities, and trips to the supermarket were suddenly difficult. But the stove belted out plenty of heat, and she watched the flames osculating like tongues behind its wide glass mouth as she relaxed in her lebkuchen chair.