Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Well –’ Robert had paused, ‘– it’s the only option, really.’

  Robert stared at the ground, pretending he could see a stain from Mara’s waters breaking. He couldn’t, of course; he hadn’t even been able to see it when he came home that night, but he liked to think it was there still, invisibly. Bonny’s birth part of the street for ever.

  He gave a start, suddenly remembering what he was meant to be doing, and continued across the road. It took him a moment to remember which house he was aiming for; it looked a lot less distinctive now that it was missing a lot less wall. He approached the new front door and knocked.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting when it occurred to him to knock again.

  After a couple of tries he peered through the nearest new window. It looked like the furniture was covered in sheets and the room was dim.

  Robert went back to the front door and chewed his lip. After a moment he noticed a small note stuck on the door at hip height. He pulled it off.

  ‘Small Girl Bonny,’ it read. ‘I will see you again.’

  Robert stood there in the dark, outside the empty house.

  Jake.

  JAKE WASN’T SUPPOSED TO GET the tube on his own. When he had first arrived in London and he hadn’t started school yet, he’d had to ride the tube to get to some places. He’d gone to the Tower of London, where he’d heard stories about the two little princes who disappeared, and about all the different imprisoned queens. He’d gone to the park, the giant park, and he’d seen deer. He’d gone to Buckingham Palace, which didn’t look anything like what a palace was supposed to look like.

  But he hadn’t gone alone.

  Someone had gone with him.

  Then, he’d wanted to find things. And he couldn’t see the someone who was supposed to take him.

  Jake thought back to his first rides on the tube. Don’t run for the train, he’d been told, and don’t lean on the doors. Stand on the right-hand side when you’re on the escalator. Make sure you go to the right platform.

  His dad had told him that.

  Jake could picture his dad telling him how to ride the tube more clearly than he could see him in real life.

  He went through the barrier and waited at the lift. He was the only person in the station. He looked carefully at the list of stations the train went to and headed to the platform.

  The journey was long and he had to change trains but he got there.

  The airport was busy and loud and full of people. Some of them looked at Jake, some of them seemed puzzled and worried, but he kept walking. He had somewhere to be. He walked towards Terminal Two, to the arrivals gate.

  He went to where he was supposed to go, to where the letter was needed, but there was no one there. There was no person there.

  The floor of the airport was covered in grass, and in the place where Jake was taking the letter there was only a tree.

  He wasn’t prepared for this. You can’t give a letter to a tree, after all.

  He sat on the floor by the tree, where it would have been spreading shade if it had been out in the open where it belonged, instead of shut up inside an airport. Jake sat on the floor with the letter in his hand and he thought about what he should do.

  Marcus.

  HE HAD A STRANGER’S HANDS. For weeks now he’d had a stranger’s hands. Their joints wouldn’t bend the way he wanted them to – they would send sharp pains through him, as though in punishment. They didn’t look like his hands either, the fingers seemed shorter, squatter, less communicative than they should be.

  Even his handwriting was different. He used to write in a long, slender dance of elegant illegibility. Now, out of nowhere, round but cramped letters had started appearing, muddling the sense of his words.

  There was a letter he wanted to write. It was the only thing he could think to do with himself.

  Dear Brown-Haired Woman,

  I apologise, I have forgotten your name.

  Yes. Yes, I will give lessons to your daughter.

  I will not charge. I have no need of money.

  I will call at your home on Wednesday at 4pm.

  Yours,

  Marcus Weber

  He delivered the letter by hand, early in the morning before anyone was around.

  This, he thought, couldn’t be something to hang on to.

  Afterwards he sat in his music room, by the window, trying to write another letter. A letter to his best loved. But it felt like it wasn’t him in the letter at all.

  Most Wondrous of Katharines,

  It is hard for me to use words, but easier this way than speaking. And what I have to say is important, for it is from not only me, but from your other father. Your better father.

  You were my gift to him, you see. He wanted you so much, and I wasn’t sure. We were too old, I thought, and had I known that I would be the one you were left with last, I would have fought that battle harder, I think. I am glad I didn’t know. For many reasons, of course, but for you most of all.

  I could never have made Albert as happy alone as you were able to make him. I could never have recovered after his death, if you were not there to recover for.

  It is not just that you have been the greatest joy to me, and to your other father before he was lost, rather you have been the thing that has brought the greatest joy to every part of our lives.

  You are wonderful. You are glorious.

  Your loving father, Marcus.

  He sealed the letter in an envelope. He didn’t know that this was his last opportunity to write it, but he didn’t know that it wasn’t either. He walked into the room he now so rarely entered. He crossed to his fractured piano and raised the lip. Trying not to hit one of the keys – the keys that were not his, the keys that were not right – he set the letter down and closed the lid over it. She would find it later.

  He could no longer rely on himself. He was no longer enough. He couldn’t sustain himself. He knew it was coming.

  He had now only to wait.

  Robert.

  THE DAY WAS CLEAR AND lovely and Mara had decided to stop working at twelve. She’d ordered Robert to pack a picnic, so he spent the better part of the morning on salads, breads and an apple pie.

  They sat on a rug, took turns chasing Bonny in dizzying circles, and ate slowly and luxuriously, with no regard for the passage of time.

  ‘I’ve decided something,’ Mara said suddenly, when Bonny had become distracted by the passage of a ladybird over the corner of their rug.

  ‘You want to give up your career and join a burlesque troop?’ said Robert.

  ‘Well, obviously, but I think I can save that for retirement.’

  ‘You’ve all of a sudden developed a passion for shellfish?’

  Mara gave a grimace that passed over her entire body.

  ‘All right,’ said Robert. ‘I’ve no idea. In my mind they were the only two possibilities. What’s up?’

  ‘I don’t want us to live in London anymore.’

  Robert was silent for a moment, watching his daughter try to coax the ladybird off the rug and onto her finger. He wanted to warn the bug away; the finger of a five-year-old girl is a safe place for no one.

  ‘You don’t want us to live in London?’ he said. ‘Not you don’t want to live in London yourself, but you don’t want us as a family to live here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mara said. She was looking at Robert, but not in his eyes. ‘I think it would be a good time for us to be somewhere else. For a while. Just a year, maybe, or two.’

  ‘Have I done this?’

  ‘Well, kind of, but that’s not a bad thing. Moving isn’t a bad thing. We could go anywhere. We could live by the sea for a while. We could even try living in a different country. I can work anywhere, obviously, and you’re, you know … transitioning. We could go somewhere exciting, with cliffs and wind, or somewhere pleasant, with meadows. We could get both somewhere, probab
ly. You can finish carving all the woodwork into hideousness in our house, and then we’ll bugger off.’

  Robert sat up and began packing away the plates.

  ‘Let’s not go yet,’ said Mara. ‘It’s a nice day.’

  ‘I’m worried it’s going to start getting too cold for Bonny. We didn’t bring her a warm jersey, that cardigan’s all she’s got.’

  ‘She’s fine. Are you cold, Bonny?’

  ‘No,’ said their girl. ‘Did we bring a kite?’

  ‘No,’ said Mara. ‘We should have. What happened to the kite?’

  ‘It’s broken, remember?’ said Robert. ‘Last time we flew it, it crashed.’

  ‘Right. Well, we should get a new one.’ Mara took out the Thermos Robert had just packed in the basket and poured herself another coffee. ‘We never wanted to live here for ever, did we? We never wanted to stay. Besides, we have to get out of that hideous house, with all its crazy vine carvings.’

  ‘I just didn’t want leaving to be my fault.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘Well it’s not yours. It’s not Bonny’s. I lost my job, which is bad enough, and then I got all obsessive and needy about it, which makes the whole thing worse. I’ve made the house all strange and toxic with my worry, the house where you have to work and Bonny has to learn. You’ve decided that the only way to get me over myself is to move all of us to god knows where so I can’t spend all my energy not going into work. Right?’

  Mara sat cross-legged, languorously sipping her coffee, leaning back on one arm. ‘I’m not trying to fix you, Rob. I’m not saying you need fixing. I think this isn’t a good place for us to be, just at the moment. So we should go.’

  ‘“For us”. Not for you, not for Bonny. Just for me, which means it has to be not a good place for all of us.’

  ‘That’s the deal, sweet pea. That’s how it works.’

  Robert groaned and passed a hand over his face. The idea of leaving, of leaving everything so unresolved, of giving up on the idea of his job ever reappearing, of vanishing into the distance terrified him. A pair of tiny arms encircled his neck.

  ‘Dad, I need a piggyback ride just now,’ Bonny said in his ear.

  ‘You kids go nuts,’ said Mara. ‘I brought a book.’

  Robert felt a surge of frustration. It didn’t seem OK to still have not figured out what to do. It didn’t seem right or fair. Mara seemed so calm and sure.

  He had never felt so uncertain. There was so little in his life he was sure of.

  ‘Dad,’ said Bonny, tightening her grip on him. ‘Come on. Play with me.’

  Robert lifted his daughter high into the air.

  Delia.

  THERE WAS NO ONE AT the house when Delia got there. It was the first time Jake hadn’t been at home. The first evening he’d not been waiting for her to arrive. She knocked on the door every five minutes for almost an hour, growing more and more frantic.

  Finally, she turned away from her latest attempt to get inside to see Anthony coming up the path. At the sight of him she burst into tears.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, moving quickly towards her and putting his hands on either side of her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Delia grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled herself up onto her toes, her eyes fixed on his. ‘Where is he?’ she said. ‘Where is Jake?’

  ‘What is it, Delia? Why are you so upset?’

  Delia shook him a little bit. ‘Anthony. You have a son. Where is your son?’

  ‘Come on, you know you can talk to me.’

  Delia took a breath and let go. ‘Just let me in. Let me into the house.’

  Once Anthony had opened the door she pushed past him and started charging through the house. There were photos everywhere, slotted in the sides of every picture frame, pinned to walls, doors, and windows, resting on shelves, spread over tables. There were also notes and drawings. As he caught sight of them, Anthony squinted his eyes and shook his head a little. He walked over to the fridge. There was a large, poster-like note that said ‘Hiya Dad’ in large green letters. He pulled it off and held it, gazing down at it, his brow furrowed.

  ‘Anthony,’ said Delia. He took a moment to look up and when he did, for a moment it was as if she were the one he couldn’t see.

  He swallowed twice.

  ‘Anthony,’ said Delia again. ‘Where is he?’

  It took him a moment to speak. ‘I don’t know.’

  Delia spun on her heel and headed into the hall. She climbed the stairs and raced into Jake’s room. Anthony was only a few steps behind.

  The room was small and incredibly messy, although not with the normal clutter of a prepubescent boy. Scattered over the floor, falling off shelves, spilling out of drawers was a collection of miscellany; a battered leather notebook, a single pearl earring, an ostentatious perfume bottle.

  ‘What is all this?’ said Anthony.

  ‘Jake’s collection,’ said Delia. ‘He likes collecting lost things.’

  ‘Where does he find it all?’

  ‘I don’t know. Around. I suppose.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter right now, Anthony. What matters is, where is he? When was the last time you saw him?’

  Anthony was silent for a moment. ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Delia. ‘Yes, exactly.’

  She turned and headed for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Anthony called after her.

  ‘To find your son, obviously.’

  ‘You don’t know where to look. And even if you did know, you wouldn’t know how to get there.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. This is more important than my ludicrous inability to find my way anywhere at all.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense,’ Anthony called down the stairs after her, but Delia was already halfway out the door. He caught up to her as she approached the corner of the street.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Delia, this isn’t the way to look for him. We should go back to the house and try to figure out where he’d be likely to go.’

  ‘You can do that if you want. I’m going to walk to the end of this street. And when I get there, I’m going to turn right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the right way to go.’

  ‘To get where?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  Delia stopped walking and looked at Anthony. He was pale, and suddenly seemed a lot older than he normally did. His eyes were red and he kept swallowing. This was a man who couldn’t find his son and whose girlfriend was suddenly acting crazy.

  ‘Anthony,’ she said. ‘Please just trust me.’

  ‘But what if you’re wrong?’

  ‘What if we assume that and we go back and spend hours and hours trying to figure out where Jake could have gone, which, given that I’ve only met the boy a few times and you’ve become physically unable to see him, promises to be a difficult task, but what if we do it anyway, what if we spend hours listing vague possibilities, and what if we check them all and he’s not there and we end up criss-crossing vaguely all over London for ever and ever, and we could have just found him today because I know where to go, and also why in god’s name does the boy not have a mobile?’

  ‘I – he’s too young. He’s not allowed one till he’s older. Till he’s old enough to go out on his own.’

  ‘I’m going this way. You’re welcome to join me.’

  Anthony stood there, looking so worried, looking so suddenly tired.

  ‘I just don’t believe you really know the way,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care what you believe, I’m going this way. You don’t have to come. But if you do, if it’ll make you happier, we can try to think of places he might have gone while we walk.’

  Anthony still looked upset and doubt-ridden, but he nodded once and walked on. His sudden agreement gave Delia a moment of disquiet. What if she wa
s wrong? How could she possibly know which way to go?

  It was like driving along a winding road in thick fog. She only knew what to do next, not what to do after that, and she had no idea of the end destination. What if suddenly she didn’t know the next step? What if she was sure the whole way until they arrived somewhere and found she was wrong?

  She led Anthony through the winding streets of the neighbourhood until they arrived at a bus stop. Anthony gave her a querying look and went to get on the bus that had just pulled up. Delia shook her head. They waited.

  After ten minutes another bus arrived and this one was right. Delia didn’t know when they’d have to get off the bus, or how quickly she’d know to, so they stood near the door.

  ‘Here,’ Delia said as the bus pulled up outside the tube station, and headed down to the platform, Anthony following. They changed at Kings Cross and sat in silence as the train moved on.

  ‘Do you know yet,’ Anthony asked after a while. ‘Do you know where he is? Actually?’

  ‘No,’ said Delia. ‘Are we getting close to somewhere you think he’d go?’

  ‘He doesn’t know this side of London at all.’

  They were silent again as they went through a few more stations, getting further and further west.

  ‘Oh my god,’ said Anthony suddenly. ‘We’re practically at Heathrow.’

  ‘Why would he go to the airport?’

  ‘To go home.’

  ‘No. He can’t have thought he’d be able to go home. He’s old enough to know you can’t just fly away to the antipodes on a moment’s notice. And he hasn’t taken your credit card has he?’

  ‘I lost my credit card three weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘I just assumed I’d left it somewhere around the house, I do that all the time. I’ve been meaning to have a proper look for it, but I just – it didn’t seem important.’

  ‘You are a disaster. It’s been disguised all this time by how much of a disaster I am, but actually you, you’re worse.’

  ‘How have I done this?’ said Anthony. ‘How have I let this happen?’

  ‘You just didn’t put your card back in your wallet like a sensible grown up.’