The Stopped Heart

by Julie Myerson

  Except there’d been no fire, there definitely was no fire, as her parents constantly tried to reassure her. And they were right, of course. It was true. She was safe; they were all safe. The fire, it turned out, was later—long after they’d moved, in fact—an electrical fire that killed some people. Four people dead in that house in the night.

  She feels Eddie looking at her.

  “What? What are you thinking?”

  She shakes her head.

  “You have a back-to-front memory,” her mother had said when they found out about that later fire, reading in the local paper of the man, the two women, the little boy. “Or do I mean front-to-back? You remembered the future.”

  As if it was a good thing. Trying to normalize it, trying to fob her off.

  Mary thinks about how none of it matters now—past, present, or future, what does it matter? She turns back to Eddie.

  “I’m not attuned,” she says. “Or not in any useful way, anyway.”

  Eddie looks interested.

  “And what does that mean? What would be useful?” He takes a quick breath. “Sorry. Forget I said that. You don’t have to answer, of course.”

  Mary is silent.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t mean to— What I mean is, that was too much.”

  Mary takes a step back, away from him. She tries to laugh.

  “I honestly don’t even know what we’re talking about,” she says.

  He smiles at her.

  “Quite right. You’re right. Neither do I.”

  She hesitates, then turns to go downstairs, but he stops her, touching her briefly on the arm.

  “Want to see something?”

  She doesn’t know if she does, but she follows him across the landing, into what she assumes is their bedroom. Low ceilings and creaky boards. A faint smell of sweetness, old sheets and scent, a mess of thrown-off clothes implying that Deborah may have gone through as many changes as she did. She notices a pile of interior-decorating magazines falling all over the floor by the bed. A pair of tweezers, a box of tampons. She looks away. Sensing that Deborah wouldn’t want her coming in here.

  Eddie leads her across the room to the wall by the dressing table. An old photo, Victorian probably—old glass, thin black frame.

  “Have a look at this,” he says.

  Mary looks. A country lane, brick cottages, trees, long grass, a huge dark cartwheel leaning up against a fence. In the far distance, what look like some ducks or chickens and, standing against a tall hedge, a group of young children: white pinafores, bare legs, heavy boots. A boy and a girl standing hand in hand, one of them holding a piece of rope. A toddler, maybe one or two years old, arms outstretched and her face a white blur as she moves or turns. Another small girl, her hair tied in a topknot, chubby and serious, holding a stick, scowling and looking down. And the oldest one, maybe nine or ten, her legs hooked over the gate so she’s hanging upside down, long dark hair sweeping the ground.

  She feels Eddie breathing over her shoulder.

  “Recognize it?”

  “What?”

  “The place.”

  Mary feels herself go still.

  “Is it here?”

  He smiles.

  “This village. End of the nineteenth century. You can’t see our house, but if you look just past there, you see that long shadow? Well, if you could go around the corner, which you can’t, of course, that’s your place.”

  Mary looks again. For a few quick seconds feeling herself right there in the lane, walking around that corner, dust underfoot, sun in her face, the shrill clatter of birds in her ears, the long shadow—

  “There’s someone else there,” she says, hearing the words come out before she can think about them.

  “Is there? Where?”

  Mary moves her face closer.

  “Around that corner. That’s what the shadow is. Look—you can see, there’s someone standing there.” Mary points with a fingernail.

  He leans in closer. His body so close to hers for a moment as he stares into the picture that she catches the cigarettes and clean laundry smell of him.

  “I can’t see anything,” he says at last.

  “You don’t see the shadow?”

  “I think so but—that’s just a shadow.”

  Mary’s heart is thudding. Blood in her ears.

  “You can’t see him,” she says. “But he’s there.”

  “He? How do you know it’s a he?”

  Mary looks again at the skinny, upside-down child, whose face she can’t see. The blurred baby. And the one with the stick, only about four or five years old, gazing at the ground—she sees that her fists are clenched.

  She turns away, unable suddenly to bear it.

  “I don’t recognize the cottages,” she says.

  Eddie takes off his glasses, cleans them on his untucked shirt.

  “What, those two? Pulled down, I think, don’t know when. There’s a bungalow there now. But you see that one?” She looks again as he points to the rickety tiled roof just behind. “That’s still there. I don’t know who lives there now, but it’s much the same.”

  Mary looks at him.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “The picture? A junk shop somewhere on the way to Kessingland. I don’t think it’s there anymore. I got two more as well—look.”

  He goes to the bottom of the wardrobe and pulls out a second picture: a young boy pushing a girl along in a wheelbarrow—blurred again, her bonnet flying behind her, laughter. The glass is cracked. Mary looks at it.

  “The same children?”

  “I think so, don’t you? Aren’t they the two holding hands in the other picture? The same family anyway.”

  Mary takes it from him. For a moment she can’t look at it, and then she can, she has to, she does.

  “And this one—look, don’t you love it?”

  He holds out a smaller picture, the glass also broken: a pair of grubby childish hands holding an old wicker bicycle basket, a brood of chicks nestled inside.

  “They need new frames,” he says. “I need to get them fixed—then I’ll put them up.” He looks at her. “Local history. I love it, don’t you?” He puts his glasses back on, smiles. She notices for the first time that he has a dimple.

  “Why?” Mary asks.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you love it?”

  He takes a breath, looks surprised.

  “Well, I suppose it’s proof, isn’t it?”

  “Proof?”

  “That they were here. That we’re all here. Even that you and I are here right now. It seems to fix things somehow.”

  “Does it?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  Mary looks again at the first picture. Chubby bare arms; small, scowling faces. The sun is bright, the air hot—a hot day, she thinks. Someone has lined them up for a reason. Why? She turns away, not wanting to look again at the shadow.

  “Do you know anything about them?” she says.

  “What?”

  “The children. Do you know who they were?”

  “No, I don’t.” He looks at her. “Do you?”

  THEY EAT DESSERT, ICE CREAM FROM THE FARM SHOP—“I TELL you, everything we bloody eat comes out of that farm shop freezer,” Eddie says, laughing—and then they have coffee and chat some more and Graham looks at his watch and says it’s late and they really ought to go home and see to their dog.

  “A dog!” says Deborah. “You never said you had a dog!”

  Graham looks at Mary.

  “Just a puppy,” he says. “Which is why I don’t think we can leave her too long.”

  “A puppy! But that’s adorable,” says Deborah. “You should have brought her.”

  “You’re not a dog person,” Eddie points out in a way that Mary finds unnecessarily mean.

  Deborah looks at him.

  “Everyone’s a puppy person.”

  Mary thinks of the little dog that will almost certainly be
curled on the brown blanket on the chair in the kitchen instead of in her bed.

  “I suppose we should get back to her,” she says, trying not to notice the look of appreciation on Graham’s face.

  Before they go, Deborah insists on taking them outside, walking them down the steps toward the dark lawn, the air around them dewy and fast-cooling.

  “It feels like we have a proper home at last,” she tells Mary as she takes her arm and makes her sniff at the air to take in the scent of jasmine and tobacco plants. “I’m really hoping I can finally get Eddie to settle down.”

  Mary looks at her, surprised.

  “But I thought it was you?”

  “What?”

  “Eddie told me you were the one who liked moving house?”

  Deborah laughs, shakes her head.

  “God, no, not me. I’m a bit of a homebody really. I try not to be. I mean, it was fun, moving around and all that, but I suppose I really long to put down roots.”

  “And Eddie doesn’t?”

  Deborah thinks for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is careful.

  “He’s one of those people who’s always on to the next thing, I guess, the next project, you know? His energy is unbelievable—and I mean that literally. You have to see it to believe it. And I know you can’t really ever hope to change people, and of course, I wouldn’t want to change him, not at all but, well, I suppose it just got a little bit tiring, moving around all the time.”

  WALKING BACK HOME UNDER AN ALMOST STARLESS SKY, GRAHAM squeezes her arm.

  “Well done.”

  “What do you mean?” she says. “Well done for what?”

  He breathes out a long breath.

  “I know you didn’t want to do it.”

  “It was OK.”

  “All right, but I know it cost you something.”

  “It didn’t cost me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She’s silent a moment.

  “It was all right,” she says at last. “I liked it more than I thought I would. I liked Deborah. And he’s OK. And it was a nice dinner. And at least they didn’t know anything.”

  “Know anything?”

  “About us.”

  He turns to her.

  “Oh,” he says. “Oh, but they did. They’d worked it out and of course they’d Googled us. And when you were upstairs, well, Deborah said some very kind things. And then just now in the garden, while you were talking to her about the roses or whatever, well, Eddie was the same. He was really very sensitive, careful.”

  She stares at him. Thinking about finding Eddie waiting there for her on the landing.

  “I was glad actually,” Graham says. “If we’re going to get to know them, I mean. Far better to get it out of the way now. I don’t think I could bear to have them discover it and then for us to have to go through it all with them, could you?”

  FOUR

  PHOEBE HARKISS, AN UNPLEASANT, PINGLY, FRECKLE-FACED girl who lived down the lane, came around with an apronful of kittens. And because Jazzy won a badge at school for helping with the smaller kiddies and laying the fires and fetching the mistress’s bread and so on, she was allowed to choose one to keep.

  But that’s not fair! Minnie screamed.

  And who the hell ever said life was fair? our father shouted so loud in her face that she burst into tears.

  While Minnie sobbed and Honey, helped by Charlie, crawled around on the floor trying to grab at the little, sticky-up tails, Jazzy sat with her skirts bunched up around her knees and examined the kittens carefully one by one.

  What are you going to name it? Lottie asked her, as Jazzy lifted each one and kissed its warm belly and breathed in the smell of its fur.

  I haven’t decided which one it’s going to be yet, have I? Jazzy said. How can I know what its name’s going to be?

  Lottie thought about this.

  But when you do decide, what will you name it?

  I laughed.

  Give her a chance to choose one first, Lottikins, I said.

  Lottie ignored me. She kept her eyes on Jazzy.

  I think you should name it Miracles. That’s a very pretty name, don’t you think?

  Jazzy laughed.

  That’s not even a name. That’s just a word. No one in the world’s called Miracles.

  She carried on looking at the kittens and saying it was awfully hard to choose and she wished she could take them all. But since she couldn’t, and since Phoebe was standing there in the doorway sighing and tossing her hair about to make it quite plain she did not have time to wait around, she chose the smallest, a flimsy gray thing that barely made a sound when she lifted it up, but instead just hung there and returned her solemn gaze.

  The sweetest and the saddest, she announced, as if that settled it.

  Lottie stepped in closer, her eyes on the kitten.

  And what are you going to name it?

  Jazzy blinked.

  I’ve got to make friends with it first and see what kind of a kitten it is.

  Lottie blinked.

  I can tell you a good name for it.

  Didn’t you hear me the first time? Jazzy said. I don’t want your piddling names. Anyway, I need to ask Father to look if it’s a boy or a girl.

  It’s a girl, Lottie said.

  Jazzy looked at her.

  You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. You don’t have any idea at all, so stop making things up. And whatever it is, I promise you I’m not calling it Miracles.

  Lottie carried on looking at her with hard dark eyes.

  Not Miracles, she said. Merricoles.

  RUBY COMES FOR HALF-TERM.

  “It wasn’t my idea and I don’t want to be here either, so please, for God’s sake, don’t go blaming me,” she tells them as she slams the door and throws down her rucksack and marches straight to the downstairs toilet.

  But coming back out, she sees the dog.

  “Oh my God.” She drops down on her hands and knees on the floor. “You never told me it was this cute! Why didn’t you tell me it was a Babe dog?”

  Graham laughs.

  “I’d forgotten all about Babe.”

  Ruby looks up at him from where she’s sitting on the old stone floor as the dog jumps and snuffles and licks her fingers and tries to nibble her sweater, which is already full of holes. Her eyes are shining and she looks so like the little girl that she used to be, that for a quick moment Mary has to look away.

  “Hey, I’ve got it, maybe that’s what you should call her—it is a girl, right?—Babe!”

  Graham looks at her.

  “Babe? Is that the name of the dog in the film?”

  “For God’s sake, Dad, Babe’s the name of the pig. Don’t you remember, the dog’s called Fly? But it’s such a cute name, don’t you think, Babe? Or Fly? Fly’s nice too. Oh look, she’s trying to lick me through the holes in my jeans,” Ruby says, laughing.

  “Don’t let her eat the pins,” Graham says.

  “What pins?”

  “You’ve got about a hundred safety pins holding those jeans together.”

  “Oh,” Ruby says. “Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t let her get them.”

  She goes up to her room and is gone for an hour.

  “Do you think she’s all right?” Graham says.

  “Please,” Mary says. “Don’t start that again.”

  “But she’s always disappearing.”

  “She’s a teenager. She’s allowed to disappear. Seriously, we’ll never get through a week if you keep on wanting to check up on her.”

  He opens the fridge, takes out a Coke.

  “Veronica says she’s worried about her.”

  “In what way?”

  He sighs. “I don’t know. School says she’s been OK. But there’s something.”

  “Something?”

  “Veronica says she stays in her room all the time and she hardly ever eats.”

  “She looks like she eats.”

  “What, you thin
k she’s overweight?”

  Mary looks at him.

  “Seriously, I wouldn’t worry about her not eating.”

  When Ruby comes back down, she’s tied her hair up in a single bunch on top of her head and changed into another sweater with even more holes than the last. Graham looks at her.

  “Goodness, Rubes, aren’t you hot? It’s almost summer outside, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Ruby looks at him and pulls the sleeves over her hands.

  “I’m never hot. I’m always freezing. I get it from Mum.”

  “I don’t remember your mum ever being cold.”

  Ruby blinks.

  “She is. She’s always cold. Even in summer. And I’m the same. I don’t mind—it’s better than being hot all the time. It means you don’t sweat.”

  THE SADNESS IN JAZZY’S KITTEN TURNED OUT TO BE A BAD SIGN. Soon after Phoebe Harkiss went home, it started to cough and even though Jazzy was allowed to keep it in her bed all night, by morning it was cold as stone.

  Jazzy wept and wept, holding on to it with both hands and refusing to give it up, swearing that she could still see some life left in its eyes. In the end we had to prize it from her and send Frank off with a shovel to put it in the ground before she changed her mind.

  All that day she took the loss very badly, staying hot and sad and becoming so feverish that our mother worried. It seemed that only another kitten would console her, so in the end Phoebe was fetched back so that she could choose another one. This time the girl emptied the kittens out on the kitchen floor a bit too roughly and then waited by the door with folded arms and a sullen look on her face.

  You picked a wrong’un, she told Jazzy. I could have told you that one wouldn’t make it. Don’t you know the last one born is always the runt?

  Jazzy gazed at her.

  It was a dear little thing, she said. And I didn’t know it was a runt, but I loved it all the same.

  I looked at Phoebe. The freckles went all over her face and mouth and neck and even right down under her dress. I thought that they made her look dirty. Her mother, the widow of the smithy, was well known to be proud and miserly. The type that would go to bed with the sun most of the year to save candles, and would make her children shake the tablecloth out in the garden in the showiest manner possible, even if they’d had no dinner.