Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  A gleeful voice rang out.

  ‘I can see you!’

  ‘Right,’ said Mrs Featherby, startled. ‘How splendid of you.’

  ‘Can you see me?’

  ‘I can, in actual fact.’

  There followed a sequence of uncontrolled chortling from behind the curtain.

  ‘This is a funny house. It didn’t used to be funny, but it’s funny now.’

  ‘Yes, well. I suppose it is.’

  ‘Does it make you laugh all of the time to live in it?’

  ‘I can’t say that it does.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s not as funny to me as it is to you.’

  ‘OK.’

  There was another voice from outside. A grown-up voice. A manly voice.

  ‘Bonny,’ it said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m talking to the lady in the funny house. She doesn’t laugh.’

  ‘Right. Good. I’m sorry, Mrs, um.’

  ‘Mrs Featherby,’ said Mrs Featherby.

  ‘Mrs Featherby. I’m Rob. I’m also sorry. I’ll drag this rascalish she-devil away.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s quite all right.’

  ‘Dad,’ said the small girl. ‘What’s rascalish?’

  ‘Someone who runs off and pesters the neighbours and makes her mother worry. Shall I teach you to spell it?’

  ‘Not right now. Can I play a game? Can you play a game with me?’

  ‘We can play the game of learning, young wench.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Goodbye lady!’

  Mrs Featherby stood for a few minutes before heading back through to the kitchen. She put on the kettle and waited for it to boil. She set up a tray with a teapot, one cup, and one plate with one biscuit. She spooned tea leaves into the teapot and poured in the boiled water. She carried the tray through to the sitting room and sat down.

  She drank her tea and ate her biscuit and carried the tray back to the kitchen to clean up, just as the cake was ready. She iced it and slid it into the pantry, so that it would be on hand in the event of visitors, as her mother had always taught her.

  Jake.

  ‘WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU not at school, youngster? Do you ever go?’

  The Voice had been in a back room when Jake entered the shop, but had come through at the sound of the door.

  ‘I already went to school today. I was there this morning.’

  ‘Right. Didn’t realise it had become the sort of deal where you just check in once a day and you’re done. You know, you used to have to stay there for upwards of several hours.’

  Jake didn’t answer. He was browsing the shelves.

  ‘Do you have anything else interesting?’

  ‘Everything’s interesting.’

  ‘Anything like before. Anything lost.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I bought the book last time. The woman who sold it to you, it wasn’t hers. She’d just found it somewhere. Do you have anything else like that?’

  The Voice stared at him. ‘You want things that didn’t belong to the people that brought them in here?’

  Jake beamed. ‘Exactly. Yes please.’

  ‘OK.’ The Voice came further out into the shop and started looking at the shelves. ‘There’s a necklace somewhere that a guy found in his mother’s things after she died. He’d never seen it before, and it was hidden away. Not kept with the rest of her jewellery.’

  ‘No,’ said Jake decisively. ‘Not that.’

  ‘All right. Ooh, there’s this hat.’ She pulled down a blue felt hat, the kind of hat that Jake had seen gangsters wearing in old movies, although he’d never seen a gangster wearing a blue one. ‘A guy had just become a cabbie and he found this under the seat of the cab he bought. The cab hadn’t been used in years.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Jake paid, jammed the hat on his head, and left the shop.

  He dawdled on his walk home. His head was hot. It was not hat weather.

  Marcus.

  HE WAS SITTING AT THE piano. It was seven in the morning and he’d been sitting there for forty minutes. His right hand was raised, his fingers resting gently on the keys.

  He raised his left hand.

  Closing his eyes he began to play a Rachmaninoff concerto. He persisted for a few bars before pulling his hands sharply away from the instrument as if they were burning.

  It wasn’t the same.

  It was still broken.

  It was not his piano.

  The day the keys had been replaced he’d felt his imminent renewal building deep within himself, preparing to flow out as soon as he was able to play. He thought he’d play as soon as he was alone, but instead he waited, keeping the euphoria suppressed for the thrill of it.

  Finally, this morning, he’d sat down. He’d breathed in and prepared himself. He’d begun to play. And it was useless.

  He knew after half a bar that it was no good. The latent restoration of his spirits died as he removed his hands and the music faded away.

  He should have known.

  He should have repaired it himself.

  She never would have let him.

  He should have done it anyway.

  He wouldn’t have been able; his mind was too fractured, his body too unsteady.

  He couldn’t have done it.

  This would have to do.

  He would get used to it.

  He would just have to get used to it.

  Robert.

  ‘DO YOU THINK,’ MARA SAID just as Robert was preparing to make a roguish move on her, ‘that it will just turn up one day?’

  ‘What?’ said Robert, not yet 100 per cent turned off.

  ‘The building. Your job. Do you think it’ll just turn up as if it had never been away?’

  ‘I really have no idea how to predict potential outcomes of this scenario.’

  ‘I mean, a sudden reappearance doesn’t seem altogether outside the realm of possibility, does it?’

  ‘An entire building I’d spent a solid chunk of my time in disappeared into the ether without leaving so much as an empty lot behind it. A reanimated dodo, who’s married to a cyborg and godmother to the Mad Hatter, doesn’t seem altogether outside the realm of possibility.’

  Mara poked out her tongue. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t figure it out. I don’t know how it can have happened so I don’t know how to fix it. Maybe I just have unreasonable expectations of it fixing itself.’

  Robert looked away. ‘Sick of having me all up in your grill?’

  ‘No, idiot,’ she said. ‘Would quite like to not pay the mortgage on my own.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. I can go back. I can check again. I should have gone back before now. I’m sorry. I’ll have a look tomorrow. I’ve been, you know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I know. I’ll have another look.’

  Mara looked worried, but didn’t say anything, and Robert quietly began changing into his pyjamas.

  Mara didn’t bring it up the next day and Robert avoided talking to her. He set out alone after lunch without mentioning to her where he was going.

  He didn’t listen to any music as he rode the tube. He stared at a poster for internet dating and counted stops. He felt a little clammy as he walked through the streets, one moment trudging reluctantly, the next breaking into a stride that only just escaped being a run.

  He reached the street where his office was supposed to be. He turned the corner and walked down it. He reached the point on the street, and narrowly avoided melting with relief.

  He let himself into the house half an hour later and walked down to Mara’s office. She looked at him, biting her lip.

  ‘I still can’t find it, babe,’ Robert said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mara burst into tears.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Robert said, moving forward, and putting his arms around her.

  ‘No,’ said Mara. ‘I’m happy. Because you’re so happy. I can tell, even though you feel guilt
y. You didn’t want to find it. And I feel like you must have been unhappy there for a long time and I didn’t notice, so I didn’t want you to find it either, but I just don’t know what we’re going to do.’

  Robert held her, massaging the back of her neck.

  ‘I can keep looking for another job. I don’t have references, but I can make something up to cover that.’

  ‘No. You won’t want to find one. We’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘What will we think of?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just something.’

  Robert kissed her. He kissed her for a long time.

  ‘Later, tiger,’ she said, her voice still unsteady. ‘I’ve work to do.’

  Robert kissed her one more time. And again.

  Delia.

  WHEN SHE FINALLY CALLED ANTHONY, Delia tried to make it sound like she wasn’t lost. She hadn’t wanted to call him. She didn’t want to be calling him because she was lost. She wanted to be calling him because she liked his nose.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, casually, breezily, as if she were a real person, as if she were a grown up of the type with gym memberships and frequent flyer miles and other trappings of a life lived with quiet sense. ‘I was thinking of having a picnic in Richmond Park. It’s a lovely day. Would you care to join me?’

  Delia blinked. Care to join me. She had said ‘care to join me’.

  ‘Oh,’ said Anthony. ‘All right. Would you like me to pick you up?’

  ‘That’s OK, I’m already there.’

  ‘Ah. And where was your intended destination?’

  ‘Oh, just a park, you know. Any park.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Victoria Park.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Anthony. ‘That’s kind of impressive, in a way.’

  ‘Yes, well. Let’s not get too het up about the fact that I now get lost on the tube, shall we?’

  ‘You realise it’s going to take a small eternity to get there, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine waiting,’ said Delia. ‘I’ve a book.’

  ‘Obviously that’s precisely what I was worried about.’

  Delia didn’t read, though, while she waited. She wanted to get all her being freaked out over and done with while she was alone. It had never occurred to her that her struggle to find her way would get worse over time. That it would grow into an inability to follow clearly marked signs in tube stations, so she couldn’t get on the right train.

  She’d very nearly managed to rein in her panic by the time he arrived. They chatted about ordinary things like cereal preferences and talked about their days as if everything was normal. Delia told Anthony about how she’d been modelling for art classes, and how much she enjoyed Donald and Mattie and their readiness to chauffeur her the three blocks to and from her house without needing to know why. Anthony talked about the collage Jake had made of the wives of Henry VIII and how the kitchen table was now coated in glue, with tiny scraps of fabric and paper stuck to it.

  There was an awkward silence while Anthony tried to make a cohesive sandwich out of torn bread and houmous he was spreading with his finger, but fortunately Delia managed to save it:

  ‘So, what happened to your wife?’ she said abruptly. It occurred to her too late that she could have led up to the subject more slowly. ‘I mean, I don’t know if you were married. Jake’s mother. Your past co-parent.’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘Right. Good. Your wife.’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Oh. Um. Right.’

  ‘There was a – thing. Jake was there. Jake found her.’

  ‘Oh god. Um – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

  ‘It’s OK. He’s fine. We’re fine. He’s doing well.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I mean, for a kid who’s lost his mother.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘His class went on a school trip to the zoo last week and he was put in charge of taking photos. Some of them are really very interesting, as well. He’s good at spotting things other people miss. The teacher printed out his pictures and put them on the wall. Obviously other kids were taking photos as well, they all have phones these days, with cameras on them, but their pictures didn’t get displayed because they weren’t the official trip photographer.’

  There was a silence while Delia tried to think of a compliment.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Anthony before she managed it, ‘he’s fine, he’s getting along. Let’s go find some deer.’

  Cassie.

  CASSIE HAD THOUGHT IT WOULD be nice to watch people greet each other after long absences. She knew she’d feel jealous, and she was prepared for that, but the last thing she’d expected was to be bored. But she was. Bored and dissatisfied, and even a little bit tempted to instruct people on how to greet each other.

  Really, she thought, most of the reunited were quite insufficiently delighted to see each other. There were hugs and kisses, but they all could have put in a lot more effort, been a lot more rapturous. She would be rapturous.

  After a few days of hard consideration, she decided the departures gate would be a much more interesting place to be stuck. It would be full of people whose excitement over going wherever they were going and why had been suddenly compromised with realisations of what and who they were leaving.

  She had seen Floss off. At first there had been six months to go, which was ages, and then four, which was more than a whole season. Then six weeks, which caused a panic attack, then three, then one, and then they were there. Standing at the check-in counter, holding each other’s hands so tight. Floss had barely been able to speak; Cassie couldn’t keep her mouth closed.

  ‘I think these boots were a bad choice,’ Floss had said, while they stood, panicked and awkward, outside the gate to passport control. ‘They’re super tight.’

  ‘But if you weren’t wearing them you would’ve had to pack them. They would have taken up so much room, all wedge-heeled and bulky. And this way you’ll look super stylish when you get off the flight at the other end, not like most travellers. You’ll look like some kind of glamorous starlet who travels all the time.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you’ll probably be fine. Probably feet don’t swell as much as people say. I don’t know, though, I’ve never flown for more than, like, two hours. Did your feet swell on the way over here? Or were they all right?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  They had stood for as long as possible. They had hugged and kissed and said goodbye and then hugged and kissed again. After Floss had walked through, Cassie had stood alone for an hour.

  Floss’s first letter had been written from the plane. She’d spoken about the poor boy sitting next to her who hadn’t known what to do about the fact that she couldn’t stop crying. She’d spoken about how she could only bear to watch action movies or cartoons. How she’d been so grateful for the red wine they’d served, in spite of the fact that it was cold.

  Cassie watched a young couple greet each other. They kissed briefly and walked off hand in hand. It shouldn’t be brief, she thought. Kissing should never be brief.

  Jake.

  The rain falls like pellets on Jake’s flattened and sodden hair and clothes. He shivers and waits. His mum shouldn’t be taking this long. They’ll be late for the doctor. Not that Jake would mind being late for the doctor, but he’s worried that if they miss the doctor he won’t get to go to McDonald’s. Going to McDonald’s is supposed to be a reward for going to the doctor.

  Jake’s mum wouldn’t have left him standing in the rain if she’d known she was going to take this long. She doesn’t even want to get the recipe she’s forgotten. Jake’s mum doesn’t like giving other people her recipes. No one who was actually friends with Jake’s mum would have asked for a recipe.

  There is a flash of lightning and Jake suddenly realises how dark it’s become. It shouldn’t be this dark in the middle of the day.

  Jake squints and peers through the rain to s
ee if she is coming. He is just about to go in after her, to ask her if he can get changed, to show her how cold and wet he is. He is just about to move when it happens. It is sudden. It is sharp and quick. It is louder than the thunder.

  Jake stands, soaked to the bone, and watches his house fall down in the rain.

  No. That couldn’t be it. That couldn’t be it at all. His mother would have never left him standing in a thunderstorm, not even for a moment. He sighed and leaned back against a lamppost, kicking his foot against the kerb.

  There was a bracelet lying in the gutter, half hidden by a leaf. Jake stood looking at it for a few minutes before he realised what it was and leaned down to pick it up. He looked around, but there was no one else on the street and, anyway, it looked like it had been there for a while.

  Jake picked it up and walked on.

  He came to a small grassy square and sat down, his legs crossed, the bracelet held loosely in his hand. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how long he sat there for.

  After some time he became aware of words being pressed into his mind. Or, rather than words, thoughts that existed before they became words and were stripped back into communicable chunks. In half-processed fragments, he was becoming aware of the history of the bracelet.

  A girl had been given it by her father, the day before he left her behind. She’d worn it, in desperate hope and loneliness, for years, until one day it slipped off her wrist.

  When Jake opened his eyes he felt heavy and tired. He wanted to be home. Not at his house in London, but truly home. But home was lost, he knew that.

  Jake sighed, got to his feet, and left the square.

  When he got back to his house, his dad wasn’t there. Jake puzzled over this for a moment; his dad was almost always working in his office.

  He headed up to his room, the bracelet still dangling loosely from his fingers. There were more things on the floor of his room, now. They were forming a circle around his bed, and around the map on the floor beside it, which was now dotted with symbols and the occasional words. Jake drew a silver circle on the map and placed the bracelet in the circle. He added ‘Bracelet. Gutter.’ to the list that now filled a quarter of an old notebook.