Harvest

by Celia Brayfield

  The child ignored Louisa and yelled into the house. ‘Mummy! The salmon lady’s been. Mummy!’

  ‘She’s on the phone. Is this a salmon? Surely not…’

  ‘Yes it is,’ the child asserted, scratching the back of her neck as she turned to hop away back to the swimming pool. ‘She always brings it when it’s Daddy’s birthday. She steals it, or something.’

  ‘Don’t scratch, Em.’ Jane said it automatically as she appeared from the house. ‘Have you put your cream on?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy. I’m a greasy French fry, just like the doctor said.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘When is Daddy coming?’

  ‘Not till lunchtime at the earliest.’ Jane’s voice was weary, begging Louisa not to begin another interrogation. The child pouted and came to cling to her mother. Jane had a general appearance of tiredness; she was wearing one of her favourite dresses, a cotton wrapover in faded Madras check, which gave her the air of a work-worn prairie wife.

  ‘Why not, Mummy? I thought he was coming this morning. I thought we could have a picnic.’

  ‘I know, darling. That was what he said yesterday, but you know how it is with his work, things come up.’

  ‘It’s his company, isn’t it? He doesn’t work for anyone else. If a thing comes up he can give it to somebody else. It’s deli-something. Delicatessen?’ With her bare foot she was kicking at the table leg, obviously disappointed. A scratching hand was wandering towards a patch of rash on her elbow. Gently, Jane took the hand and held it.

  ‘Delegation. Don’t look at me, Em. That’s exactly what I think but your father says some things are too important to delegate. Are you going back in the water?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m hungry. Are there any cookies?’

  ‘There are some of your special cookies in the kitchen.’

  ‘Can’t I have chocolate chip? Just one? Just one cookie? Please, Mummy.’

  Jane sighed, but stood firm. ‘You know chocolate makes it worse. Better have one of your special cookies, eh? And put a T-shirt on before you get sunburnt.’

  The nanny stepped into the picture, a self-contained Australian girl who held the struggling toddler in her arms. Xanthe had been born with bright red hair growing upwards in a coconut tuft. Somehow it had instantly stamped her as different from Emma and Sam. Jane had chosen her name, finding that it came from the Greek word to describe that red-gold colour and feeling that this child deserved something better than the false-modest plain labels Michael had fixed on the others.

  Xanthe’s topknot was now tied with a blue ribbon. She had the classic redhead’s complexion, very pale and prone to sunburn, and much of Debbie’s energy that summer was diverted into schemes to keep her out of the sun. ‘Em, why don’t you come inside with me?’ The nanny held out her hand. ‘We’ll get you a cookie and make your Chinese medicine? And Xanthe’s about ready for her rest, maybe you can help me get her down?’

  ‘Oh well.’ The child responded with a show of almost adult fortitude. ‘If I must I must, I suppose. That Chinese medicine is totally disgusting. It’s even more disgusting than ordinary medicine, which you would think was impossible, wouldn’t you?’

  The nanny exchanged looks with Jane and hitched the toddler higher on her hip. ‘Be worth it if it makes you better, eh?’

  Pointedly waiting until the child was out of earshot, Louisa turned around, saying, ‘Chinese herbs – is she really getting better?’

  Jane shrugged and dismissed the subject, saying brightly, ‘Who knows? I’ll try anything – she woke up five times last night. What’s this? Did the salmon lady come? I’m so sorry, Louisa, I should have told you she was expected. Here, let me have it. My, it’s a big one this year … We must get it cooked at once…’

  Louisa yawned and stretched, brandishing her unshaven armpits with what she intended to be hoydenish sensuality. ‘I love coming to stay with you, Jane. It makes me so glad I haven’t got any children.’

  There was no point in trying to make Louisa understand. At the bottom of what she called her heart, she was sure that if an afflicted child woke up five times in the night all a sensible mother needed to do was roll over in her sleep to let the demanding brat know that the scam wasn’t working. Opulently selfish herself, she attributed all distressing behaviour in children to the same motive and regarded maternal selfishness as the only cure.

  The first rashes had appeared when Emma was eight months old. By her first birthday she was diagnosed, and affected over most of her body. For two years bedtime became a ritual of wet-wrap bandages and tiny cotton gloves. Jane felt she was torturing the child. She was relieved that at least there was a good reason why her baby never slept for more than half an hour at a time, and embarked on a long trial of foods and household chemicals; for a while the hunt for domestic toxins dominated her life.

  Louisa knew Jane had felt robbed of carefree youth when she accepted the infant Imogen with Michael; with Emma, the anticipated joys of motherhood turned sour. Comforting the child was hopeless; most treats had to be denied her and, worst of all, she was alone with it. Jane’s mother retreated, helpless, and attached herself to her sister, whose children were dull and healthy and whose husband was not only devoted but working part-time on invalidity benefit, and therefore often present to validate the household with his masculine presence. Jane’s leisure time disappeared. So did many of her friends – a diminished company since her marriage in any case; Michael intimidated them. The company of other new mothers was almost as painful as the child’s distress; they reacted badly when the little girl scratched herself to bleeding.

  She felt blamed. Michael never implied that she had failed him, but all the same she reproached herself with it, and assumed that he would be overjoyed with another baby, a baby without problems, and a son. A mistake, she knew that now. Only in her work was she able to do things right. She solaced herself with writing. Xanthe had been an accidental conception, and an unexpected, untainted joy to her at last. Whatever reserve of strength she had tapped to draw Grace Nichols to their home, she felt obscurely that her determined red-haired child, growing up so defiantly different, had opened it.

  The Bar du Marche must once have been a refuge for the traders, a place where they could take the weight off their feet, check the racing results and pass a few minutes in conversation away from the din of the market. The Left Bank got smarter every year now, the houses were hotels, the baker had become an internationally promoted centre of farinaceous culture where they ground their own flour and pulled the peasant-shaped loaves from a traditional wood-fired oven; the market was no longer a necessity to the neighbourhood. Its true purpose was street theatre.

  As this tract of the city had become a canyon of pretension littered with glass-walled boutiques and antiquarian bookshops, the bar had also raised its ambitions, acquired red-and-yellow wicker chairs and planted fringed umbrellas on the pavement. Well-dressed young couples idled their precious time together over coffee, and the stall-holders had leisure to sit on their crates between customers.

  ‘Bloody cliché we are, young lovers in Paris. At least it’s not spring any more. You look well, you know.’

  Imi looked at him down her nose. It was a nose sculpted ideally for contempt, strong, slightly flattened, scorn carved in the wide nostrils. ‘You mean I’ve put on weight.’

  ‘No, I mean you look well. Your skin’s good.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Stephen was expecting to feel joyful. Even when she was in a witch-out, being with Imi had always made him happy, in the mindless wriggling way puppies are happy. Now it was not happening. He leaned back on his chair.

  ‘You’ve lost that sort of look you had in London at Christmas.’

  ‘Yeah, well … we don’t want to talk about Christmas, do we?’

  Of course, she had gained weight, but he knew better than to say it, and she looked older, more focused, more of a woman maybe. She was not quite the unearthly girl he had loved so long. There was
something watchful, baleful about her but she was in control now, she was OK. All that drama at Christmas had just been a reaction to the stress of the time, having to be together with her family.

  ‘Your arm healed OK.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ Automatically, she stroked the inside of her wrist, her hand lying on the table. The skin was almost perfectly smooth now, evenly white, snow in the sunshine, the scars no more than threads. ‘It wasn’t too bad, you know. Under all the blood.’

  ‘There was a lot of blood.’ Eight months ago, and the memory still frightened him, the way a long ribbon of it ran down to her elbow, the leading edge pulsing, getting thick enough to drip.

  ‘I didn’t cut very deep. I couldn’t. I remember trying to, but it wouldn’t go in, the blade. I don’t think it was very sharp, actually. Jane had been using it:’

  ‘Her face when you asked about the gravy.’ They laughed together but he felt guilty, worried that he was corrupting her with his sympathy, indulging her blackness. ‘I like your hair that way. Who cut it?’

  ‘I cut it, dickhead. Can’t you tell? I just got sick of it all around my ears and stuff.’ Self-consciously, she ran a hand over her forehead, then cradled her thin arms around her head, monkey-like, pulling up tufts with her fingertips.

  ‘Your Dad and Jane will have something to say about it.’

  ‘Jane won’t, she’s given up on me. I’m sure Dad’ll have something to say, he always does, doesn’t he? If I see him, he’ll have something to say.’ No smile. He had the expectation of the little cruel smile that was specially reserved for the idea of wounding her father, but Imi kept her blank, pouting expression and gazed into the middle distance.

  ‘You’re thinking of blowing the party, then?’

  ‘I mean he might not see me. He never really sees me, does he? Or hears me. Being with him … it’s the great special treat, special for birthdays and holidays, but he’s not with you even when you’re with him.’

  ‘I don’t mind, we can stay here. I’m here for you, you know that.’ He was never quite sure of his position with her family. In his plain, petit-bourgeois world parents were not glamorous public figures, nor did they have nervous breakdowns or neurotic children. A second marriage was a rare, barely excusable phenomenon. Stephen aspired to the status of Michael and Jane, censured their morality and wondered if he did so because they intimidated him.

  ‘Don’t look like that, I hate it. You look like a stupid animal in a field, waiting to be turned into hamburgers.’

  He was hurt; she always said nasty things, it was part of the testing process, he was used to it, but there was more weight in her words. Today he was surprised to feel that he had been tested enough. ‘Imi, I do know what a bitch you can be. It’s OK, you don’t need to go on proving it.’

  ‘You don’t need to go on proving that you can take it, either.’

  ‘I hate not being with you, you know. I hate this having to see you in the holidays and us being different.’

  ‘You gotta study, Stephen. Gotta get your exams, get your degree, be an architect, get a job. You’ve gotta do it, haven’t you?’

  Was she accusing him? Her tone was bitter and her face was hard, but she was still staring into the centre of the street, arms and legs crossed, weaving her shoulders slightly from side to side.

  ‘We talked about all this, we agreed. I want to take care of you, you know I do, but I’ve got to have a job or I can’t do it. You’re life itself to me, Imi, I’d do anything for you. But we haven’t got anywhere to live, haven’t got any money – what else can we do? I know it’s hard for you to be patient…’

  ‘Oh no. Oh no. It isn’t hard for me to be patient, don’t think that.’ At last she turned to look at him, an odd animation galvanizing her features, her eyes digging spitefully into his face. ‘I can be really, really patient, Stephen. You don’t know how patient I can be. We’re going to be together in a place, we are. And soon, really soon. You wait.’ He wondered what drugs she had been doing. In the smack phase she’d talked that way a lot, vague, mysterious, threats and promises.

  ‘In case you’re wondering, I am straight. I’ve been straight for months. I know you are wondering, oh yes, I know you, Stephen. I’m chemically pure. Nothing wicked has passed my lips for days. Or my nostrils or my veins or my cunt or my ears or my asshole or any other way into me, nothing. I had dinner last night, you’d have been proud of me, given me a good mark for that.’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Yes, you would. I said to myself, if old Stephen were here, he’d be proud of me. I almost ate meat. I thought about cutting the flesh of an animal. What do you think of that then?’

  He never knew how to respond when she was like this. Sometimes every sentence was just a mine, waiting for him to take an innocent step forward to detonate the blast. There was a repellent knowingness about her in these moods, she would tease him out of their own bond, their own coupledness, picking out exactly the thing he cared about most to make him stumble over his own high feelings.

  ‘But don’t you worry,’ she continued, unfolding her limbs and stretching out on the hard chair. ‘I’m still all square – no errors there. Come on, let’s go home, I’m tired. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.’

  The vegetarian thing had started when she was twelve, at the end of her first year at school. Sitting together on the summer grass, the bell had rung for assembly but Imi had not moved; he had scrambled to his feet – he remembered himself as a chunky boy always off-balance and lost for words – and stood awkwardly for a few seconds, awed at her disobedience. After he sat down again she pulled up a little green leaf, held it against the sunlight and rambled through an oath, something like, ‘I, Imogen Melissa Knight, reject forever any food which will make any animal unhappy or cause any animal pain or suffering and I swear I will never cut the flesh of any animal.’

  Then she had looked at him, a harsh challenge diffused by the black veil of her hair, and held out the leaf, saying, ‘You can swear too, if you like. You like animals, don’t you?’ That was how they had started out together.

  Up in the apartment she lay down on the bed and let him take her boots off, then rolled over and fell asleep without saying another word, zapped by whatever she was feeling. Imi and her emotions, she was like a toy sailboat on a windswept pond, blown over at the first gust.

  The sleeping business was one of her habits with him. When they were older, and holding fiercely together through the tyranny of his exams and the escalation of her outrages, she used to drift into his study and go unconscious on the floor. It frightened him at first, he would try to wake her, get her to go back to the girls’ house; there were penalties for being out of bounds, after all. She was right out, unconscious, nothing would bring her round. Then, after an hour or so, she’d sit up and say she felt better. He got used to it. He would go on writing an essay and in an hour or so she’d wake up, and quite often eat something, so he liked her sleeping with him because it was good for her. In time the housemaster knew, but never took any action. Stephen was good for people, the school had picked him out for it; all those things teachers approve of, solid, responsible, trustworthy, and because he cared, not because he was just another one of those whose good citizenship was only political.

  He looked around the room, reassured by its order and cleanliness, agreeing with his earlier opinion: Imi was OK now, it was going to be all right. Her books were stacked up, her brushes clean, pencils sharpened, paper all arranged on the desk. A bank statement and a letter from the landlord about rent arrears were under the bottle of white spirit – not so good. There was a whole portfolio of new work, quick sketches mostly. God, she was so talented.

  The bathroom let her down. A faint smell of vomit lingered, but he decided to say nothing; probably nerves on his account. This wasn’t another bulimic phase; when she’d been doing that she’d covered up by cleaning the bathroom. And she had gained weight. No drugs to be found; all the little hiding places, the filigree bo
xes and the soapstone bowls, were empty. There were two green capsules in the mother-of-pearl box; he left them, being obviously prescribed stuff. He found the bleach and cleaned the shower tray, dusted the shelf and her makeup.

  The kitchen had been used, another good sign. There were toast crumbs and a half-empty bottle of ketchup. It was quiet. The bustling of the pigeons through the open window was the loudest noise, louder than the market chatter from the street far below. Stephen found he was hungry, but knew better than to waste energy opening the fridge. They could eat when she woke up; she would enjoy that, going out to choose their lunch.

  Returning to the sitting room he saw one item out of place, her big brown rucksack on the floor, half under the bed. When he pulled it out, intending to hang it up, it was heavy and made metal noises. Inside were five photograph frames, two salt pots, two sweet dishes, two modern silver spoons with elongated handles, a silver Empire-style candlestick and a silk scarf wrapped around some rings and small jewellery.

  ‘What are you doing? Where’s my bag? Come on, Stephen, I heard you take it. Where is it? Hand it over.’ She was sitting up unsteadily, pulling imaginary clothes around her as if she was cold.

  ‘It’s here.’ He held it up to show her. ‘I was going to hang it up.’

  ‘Leave it alone, can’t you? Stop tidying me, Stephen. You know there’s no point.’

  ‘What’s all this stuff in here?’

  ‘It’s none of your business. Give it to me.’ She coiled up from the bed and grabbed at the bag, but he stepped back and held it out of her reach. Kneeling, she glared at him. ‘That stuff’s for us.’

  ‘What do you mean, for us? It’s all silver – you didn’t buy this…’

  ‘No, I nicked it, stupid. And I’m going to sell it. And then I’ll have money, and with the money we can get out of this fucking mess. Got that?’ She was biting her nails furiously, raising blood at her fingertips.