Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  ‘Right, no, he’s fine. He took a day off school? Yes, of course. Of course he was sick. Right. Thank you.’

  After he’d hung up he and Jake had looked at each other for a moment before he sat back down. After a couple of minutes, the room was empty to Jake, although he still remembered the phone call.

  They were becoming ghosts to each other.

  Marcus.

  HE SAT COLD IN THE park in the gathering dark. He knew he should be getting home. She would tell him to get home, if she knew where he was. He could catch a cold, she would say. Even though it was still summer, even though the weather was still warm.

  He knew he should be getting home.

  But home was so empty.

  Home wasn’t his anymore.

  He would walk, he decided. She wouldn’t mind if he was walking, probably.

  He walked slowly towards his house. There was a woman loitering on the corner, with a cigarette and a wild mane of curly brown hair. She was standing with her eyes closed as she smoked and as he grew closer she gave a shudder and turned unexpectedly, elbowing him in the chest.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘Please don’t tell on me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh. I mean, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why would I tell on you?’

  ‘I’m smoking. Smoking’s bad.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I was supposed to have given up. Before I tried for a baby, that was the deal. And I did, I did give up. And then she started school. The baby. She’s not a baby anymore, she’s a child. A school child. Anyway, I started smoking again. But no one can know. Her father would kill me. With shock and exasperation.’

  ‘He’ll probably notice. When you get home.’

  ‘He has no sense of smell. Bit of a freebie, right? I mean, no, I should stop. I will stop. I just really like it. I’m Mara, by the way, do you live around here?’

  ‘Around the corner. Marcus.’

  ‘Oh my god, you’re Marcus Weber.’

  He stared and nodded.

  ‘I’d heard you were somewhere near here, years ago. Well, not you. I heard Albert Kane was, and you know. I loved him. I thought, when I was younger, I thought I’d maybe be an actress. But I’m terrible at it. But no. Robert, he saw you play once, in his formative years. It stopped him giving up piano. Well, he gave up a year later than he otherwise would have. He was always telling me he’d take me to see you play sometime, but you retired before he got round to it. So that was sad. He said you had the most amazing green piano.’

  ‘I did. I built it myself. With my father. When I was young.’

  ‘You built it? Yourself? That’s ridiculous. I didn’t think real people did things like that. I thought pianos grew. I didn’t really, obviously. I just, never … you know.’

  ‘My father was a master carpenter. He made pianos for a living. In Austria.’

  ‘Wow.’

  The woman finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on a nearby rubbish bin.

  ‘Do you still have it?’ she asked. ‘The green piano?’

  He didn’t answer right away. He looked down the street to a house at the end that was half covered in huge plastic sheets.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

  He nodded at the woman and made to walk on.

  ‘Do you give lessons?’ she called after him.

  He turned back.

  ‘Sorry. Of course you don’t. Stupid of me. It’s just, my daughter, she tries to play with her dad all the time. But he can’t teach her, he’s forgotten all the important stuff.’

  ‘I—’ he paused. He thought.

  ‘Of course you don’t, you’re a famous pianist, you don’t need to. Stupid. Sorry. It was nice meeting you.’

  He watched her as she walked away and headed into the house opposite the one covered in plastic. Then he, once again, turned towards his empty house.

  Cassie.

  THE ARBORIST HAD BEGUN VISITING Cassie every week to check on her progress. Cassie’s mother had tried to stop her, but after all, it was a public space.

  ‘What’s particularly interesting,’ the arborist was saying one day, when the bark had reached Cassie’s shoulders and started creeping down her arms, ‘is that the bark isn’t that of a sapling.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Jeremy, Bridie’s boyfriend. Bridie, who loved the arborist, had fought with Cassie’s mum over who took the shift during which she’d come. Since the reason Cassie’s mum wanted to be there was to fight the arborist, Cassie generally weighed in on Bridie’s side. Sometimes Bridie would bring along some of their other friends, sometimes she’d come alone. This was the first time her boyfriend had come, although Cassie suspected he’d been begging to for a while.

  ‘He’s insultingly eager,’ Bridie had said to Cassie, when Cassie had asked how he was a week earlier. ‘He keeps bragging about you to people, and then he loses credit when he has to admit he hasn’t seen you himself. He wouldn’t be coming to be helpful, you know. He’d be rubbernecking.’

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘Pfft. If you realised you do need help, you wouldn’t need as much help as you need.’

  She didn’t know what Jerm had said to convince Bridie to let him come, but she was glad. She’d missed him. She’d missed hanging out with the two of them together.

  He had latched on to the arborist instantly, finding everything she said and did interesting.

  ‘I don’t know really what it means,’ the arborist said. ‘But it’s interesting. I suppose that if the bark was young, it would suggest that a new tree was growing over the young lady.’ The arborist had never bothered to learn Cassie’s name. ‘The age of it probably means that the young lady herself is indeed becoming a tree. Or perhaps the tree she’s always been is making itself apparent.’

  ‘Are you saying our Cass has always been a tree?’ said Jeremy. ‘Blimey, how’d that one get past us all these years?’ Bridie thumped him in the chest.

  The arborist was stripping bark away from what used to be Cassie’s right knee. ‘Mind you, the rate of change is indication of the latter theory on its own, anyway.’

  ‘What are the bark samples for?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘I want to see if the fact that this area is completely removed from natural light is having any effect on the health of the tree.’

  ‘I’d say the tree is having a pretty adverse effect on the health of our Cass.’

  The arborist appeared unconcerned by Jeremy’s point. She carefully deposited the bark she’d collected into ziplock bags and left.

  ‘Holy Christ,’ said Jeremy. ‘She’s amazing.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Bridie. ‘She’s incredible. She actually doesn’t care at all.’

  ‘In her defence, she cares rather a lot, just not about Cass here.’

  ‘That is a very strong defence. Thank you for mentioning it.’

  ‘Anytime. Now, Cass, I’ve come here for a very specific reason.’

  ‘No you haven’t,’ said Bridie. ‘You’ve come here to provide general emotional support while we all try to think of a way to first, stop Cassie turning into a tree, and second, stop her mooning over her erstwhile strumpet.’

  ‘Right, my lovely, and I have a specific way to do that.’

  ‘Oh god,’ Bridie said.

  ‘Right, so,’ Jeremy continued. ‘You know, Cass, that I have a younger sister.’

  ‘The one that keeps changing her mind about who her boyfriend is?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Yes, her. Well, I think you’re the perfect solution.’

  ‘You want me to be the next boyfriend?’

  ‘I just think, she has such terrible taste in boys, right. She’d be much better off as a lesbian.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m really up for turning someone gay just at the moment, Jerm.’

  ‘That’s not a particularly PC way of talking about this, is it?’

  Bridie sighed. ‘Jeremy, I’m pretty sure there are only three or four people i
n the entire world who make less sense than you.’

  Cassie laughed. ‘Why don’t you just try introducing her to some nice boys?’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t tried?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cassie. ‘I do think that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jeremy, ‘you may be right. But that’s only because none of the boys I know are anywhere near as nice as you.’

  ‘So get some better friends.’

  ‘Right. Good point. You women folk are always so logical. That’s exactly why everyone should always date women and no one should date men.’

  ‘OK,’ said Bridie. ‘You’ve convinced me.’

  ‘Excellent. Can you two please make out now?’

  Cassie laughed as Bridie and Jeremy continued to bicker. She and Floss had never bickered. They’d not had enough time to develop the habit. They would, Cassie thought. When Floss arrived they would learn to bicker.

  Mrs Featherby.

  MRS FEATHERBY WAS EXPECTING BONNY but when she entered the sitting room the silhouette she found was fully grown.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh,’ said the silhouette. ‘Hello. I just wanted to apologise, actually, about Bonny pestering you all the time.’

  ‘You are Bonny’s mother?’

  ‘Yes. I’m Mara. I’ve been meaning to come and introduce myself for a while, but I’ve been having to work a lot at the moment.’

  ‘How nice to meet you,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘I’m Mrs … I’m Wendy.’

  ‘We’ve told Bonny that she shouldn’t bother you so much, but she’s so certain you like talking to her, and we didn’t want to forbid her outright. We don’t want to tell her people don’t like her company, you know? And Rob said you didn’t seem to mind. Not that he’d notice if you did.’

  Mrs Featherby paused for a moment before answering. ‘It’s perfectly all right; she’s not doing any harm.’

  ‘Well.’ Mara sounded unconvinced. ‘Please do let us know if you get tired of it. She’s persistent.’

  ‘Naturally I will. Thank you.’

  Mrs Featherby waited for a farewell, but Mara didn’t move.

  ‘She gets it from me. It’s worrying.’

  ‘You mean your persistence is a bad thing?’

  Mara paused. ‘Oh. I don’t really mean anything.’

  ‘You do, I think,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘You do mean something.’

  ‘Fine, but I don’t know what I mean. Yes, I think – it is a bad thing. Or if it’s not a bad thing itself it has caused bad things.’

  ‘How exactly has it done that?’ asked Mrs Featherby.

  ‘I was persistent about my career, you see, when it looked like I would never get there. Rob slaved away at his job so I could pursue mine and it became a habit for him. Neither of us realised he was unhappy. Now who knows what he’s going to do. And if I’d backed off, he could have relaxed years ago, taken some space to figure himself out without it being this fraught thing.’

  Mrs Featherby wasn’t sure what Mara was talking about, but it seemed rude to ask for clarification. She remained silent and let the young woman continue.

  ‘I can’t help but feel,’ Mara went on, ‘that the reason for everything that’s going on with Rob at the moment is my having made the wrong choices.’

  ‘That’s a very strongly defined term, dear, “wrong choices”, and I’m not sure it’s helpful. There are no wrong or right choices, necessarily, just those you make or don’t make and the consequences. And by extension, how you deal with the consequences.’

  ‘That’s quite seriously philosophical of you.’

  ‘It’s simply a less complicated way of looking at things.’

  Mrs Featherby listened as the young woman on the other side of the plastic took a deep breath.

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Mara. ‘Thank you again for how good you’ve been with Bonny. We’ll have you over for dinner one of these days.’

  Mrs Featherby pursed her lips. ‘Oh not at all. That’s not necessary.’

  Mara laughed. ‘Well, we’ll do it anyway. I have to get back to work, I’m afraid. It’s been just ace talking to you.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mrs Featherby.

  She watched as the shadow of Mara faded from her wall and sat down to wait for Bonny.

  Robert.

  ROBERT WAS STANDING, CHISEL IN hand, staring down at the piece of heavy wood on the bench in front of him. It was going to become a low table, but he’d decided to carve narrow grooves into it, close to the edges. He lowered the chisel to the wood.

  Robert wasn’t entirely sure how long he spent in the shed that afternoon. As soon as the metal touched the wood he felt some kind of concentrated electrical pulse down his arm; he wasn’t sure if it was he himself becoming so focused on his task that all his energy was directed to doing it, rather than thinking about it, or if he was completely disengaged. He never consciously decided what he was carving, and it was only once he’d finished that he was able to look clearly at what he’d done.

  Curls unfurled themselves over the surface over the wood, spiralling out from the lower right corner, interlocking and overflowing. Down in the corner was the barely suggested face of a woman.

  He stared at it for a few moments before suddenly dashing inside to get Mara.

  She looked at it for a moment. ‘God that’s ugly,’ she said. ‘I mean, extraordinarily well done, I’m very impressed and all that, but holy hell it’s a hideous style of thing.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Robert.

  ‘Oh yeah. Not that that’s a bad thing; there are loads of people with awful taste.’

  ‘Are you saying I should sell it?’

  ‘Obviously you should. We can’t put it in the house; people will think I chose it. Weren’t you meaning to sell all this anyway?’ She waved vaguely at the stacked chests and stools and jewellery boxes.

  ‘Well, kind of, but I thought you’d think that was stupid.’

  ‘I think you’re stupid, does that count?’

  Robert looked back down at the spiralling hair.

  ‘Do you really think it’s ugly?’

  Mara pinched his arse. ‘I really do.’

  Delia.

  ‘BREAKFAST IS AN ALL RIGHT date, isn’t it?’ said Anthony.

  ‘You’ve stopped talking about Jake,’ said Delia.

  ‘What? I mean, you don’t get candles, but it’s still pretty good.’

  ‘Why do you not mention your son anymore?’

  ‘And it sets you up for your day well, doesn’t it, making breakfast exciting and special?’

  ‘Anthony.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How is Jake?’

  It was like Anthony couldn’t hear her, like any mention of his son was white noise, a conversation happening at someone else’s table. Delia didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know what to do. Throughout the morning she tried again and again to bring up Jake, but there was no response.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said finally. ‘There’s something I need to do.’

  ‘Do you need me to take you somewhere?’

  ‘No; I have directions home. That’s all I need for now.’

  ‘Will you call me to let me know you’ve got there?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘It’s like you want me to come frantically looking for you.’

  ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘So just call.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Mrs Featherby.

  MRS FEATHERBY HAD A RARE and unexpectedly sweet smile on her lips as she sifted flour, but no one was there to see it. She herself wasn’t aware of it. She cracked eggs and stirred in chocolate and if you were watching, you’d be sure that she was about to hum.

  It was just about that time of day that a small girl could be expected to appear on the other side of the plastic wall. Bonny was always pretty set on not making normal days tea days on the spur of the moment, but if there was a cake, fresh from the oven, there was a chance sh
e might change her mind.

  Mrs Featherby poured batter into a cake tin and slid the tin into the oven before walking through to the sitting room. She glanced over at her white plastic wall, but there was no child-sized outline waiting for her. She chewed her lip for a moment and went back to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. When she carried it through, the plastic sheet was still blank.

  Mrs Featherby sat with her tea and a book that she did not read for half an hour. She cleared away the tea things, returned to the lounge and still there was no Bonny.

  Good, she thought to herself. There was no need to patiently listen to childish ramblings. No need to prudently answer impertinent questions. The afternoon would remain peaceful.

  Mrs Featherby took her cake from the oven when it was done. She let it cool. She iced it, placed it in a cake tin and put it on its appropriate shelf in the pantry. She carefully washed her bowls and spoons and tins. She dried them thoroughly and returned them to their drawers and cupboards.

  She went back to the sitting room and sat.

  Cassie.

  FLIGHT ATTENDANT MAEVE DIDN’T REALLY know why she wanted to talk to Cassie that day. She was stressed and tired and still a little afraid she might catch whatever it was that was causing the girl’s bizarre and frightening transformation. She decided it was because she couldn’t resist taking a moment to sit on the grass, which was at its lushest and most comfortable the metre or two around Cassie.

  Flight Attendant Maeve had had a fight with her husband before the trip to Antwerp and back from which she’d just debarked. It was not an original fight; in fact it was almost on its 50th retread.

  You should get tested, he’d said, once more, again. We both should get tested, he insisted, so we know what’s wrong.

  Maeve was offended that he thought there was something wrong, and scared that they’d find that it was her, that she was the problem, that something awful in her was preventing them having a baby.

  Flight Attendant Maeve hadn’t thought she wanted kids. She’d felt guilty for not wanting them, and more for letting her husband assume she did. It’s an odd thing for a woman to say, she thought: no, I don’t want to ever push a human out of me. But she didn’t. She hadn’t wanted any of it. Not the pregnancy, not the birth, not the screaming or feeding or being sick at three in the morning, none of it.