The Stopped Heart

by Julie Myerson

  If you could have told her, I said, then why didn’t you?

  Phoebe shrugged and chewed on a nail. All her nails were bitten down to stumps. You never saw her without a finger in her mouth. But she shrugged and did not look at me. You could tell she didn’t care a scoot what I thought about anything.

  But then James came in the room and her face changed. She was all smiles, wiping her wet fingers on her skirt and gazing up at him with all the measly trappings that her eager piggy face could muster.

  He paid no attention, of course. He put out his cigarette and crouched down on the floor with Jazzy to look at the kittens. He sat and watched them for a long time, careful as anything, putting out a hand to stroke them as they stumbled around, mewing and pawing and falling over one another.

  He sat there so still and gentle that Honey crawled over and sat herself down between his legs and Minnie and Charlie snuggled up to him and even Lottie came over, standing there calm as anything with her small hand resting on his shoulder.

  Get a girl, she whispered, not to anyone in particular. Pick a girl. I want you to get a little girl cat.

  Jazzy ignored her; in fact, everyone ignored her, but still Lottie carried on.

  You’ve got to get a girl and call it—

  Shut up, Jazzy said, and she put her hands over her ears. I’m not listening to you, Lottie, so just shut up!

  Lottie stuck out her bottom lip.

  I think the little tabby looks quite hale and hearty, James said at last.

  That’s a girl, Lottie said.

  Jazzy ignored her. She looked at James.

  What, the one with the white paws?

  That’s Merricoles, Lottie whispered in a naughty voice as Jazzy scooped it up, but no one paid any attention. The kitten hung there for a moment, its tail stretched in the air as it tried to balance.

  That’s the one, James said. That’s your cat.

  Jazzy looked at the kitten and looked at James. And that was that. It couldn’t have been clearer if God himself had groped his way down from the skies and made his choice.

  MARY DRIVES SIX AND A HALF MILES TO A PLACE WHERE SHE’S heard there’s a Wednesday market. A small enough expedition, but she has not been out of the village without Graham since they moved in.

  She asks Ruby if she’d like to come.

  “Come where?” says Ruby, craning her neck around from the sofa to look at her. Mary’s eyes go to the TV screen, where some loud, groomed characters in an American sitcom have been paused midjoke.

  “I’m going to a market.”

  “What kind of market?”

  “Flowers. Fruit and veg. Stuff like that.”

  Ruby blinks.

  “I’ll be all right, thanks.” She turns back to the TV and presses a button and the beautiful people jerk back to life.

  Mary knows that if she thinks too hard about what she’s about to do, she won’t do it. But when she gets in the car, she’s surprised at how easy it feels to speed along the hard gray country roads, bright, sunlit fields slipping by on either side. Corn, rape, something that might be potatoes. And cows. She slows to go over a metal grid. Stops at a railway crossing, winding the window right down and breathing in the musty green of cow parsley as the train rattles by.

  She drives past a pub, a bunch of pink cottages with For Sale signs, a trestle table with flowers and vegetables on it. She sees thick dark hedges, a black smudge of woodland, a man walking his dog. She notices some kind of a bloody mess at the side of the road and is pleased with herself for not minding it. Just a rabbit or a fox, she thinks, driving on.

  She parks near the market. Gets out of the car and makes herself walk around. It is midday, the sun high and hot. She looks at cabbages and cauliflowers, punnets of strawberries and plastic buckets of every kind of summer flower.

  She knew that there might be children, and, sure enough, a mother with a baby in a sling on her chest is bending to speak angrily to a three- or four-year-old boy in a T-shirt with a TV character on it. With one hand cradling the infant’s head as she bends, the mother uses the other to grab the child’s arm, pull his hands down and make him look at her.

  “You think it’s good?” she says. “Tell me? You think fighting is good?”

  The child sobs loudly and the mother keeps on talking and Mary, realizing she is staring, looks away.

  She doesn’t want or need anything from the market—their fridge is already crammed with food—but she buys things anyway. Beetroot, onions, pleasingly muddy bunches of carrots, a glass bottle of apple juice, strawberries. Just as she is taking the plastic bags from the tall, long-haired market guy, she feels a hand on her elbow.

  She turns a bit too quickly and sees a gray-haired man in glasses smiling at her.

  “Eddie.”

  “What?”

  “As in, Deborah and Eddie? The other night?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” She takes a breath, noticing the dimple as he smiles at her.

  “I knew you wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “I do,” she says. “I mean, of course I recognize you.”

  He laughs. “It’s OK. I’ve been told before. I’ve got one of those faces.”

  “What?”

  “You know. Unmemorable. Without any distinguishing features.” She stares at him and sees that he is smaller than she remembers, slimmer perhaps, and more disheveled. He points to his jeans. “And I was all dressed up the other night. This is the real me, I’m afraid.”

  He laughs again, looking at her.

  “I’m off work today. On holiday. A rare event. You got time for a coffee?”

  THE KITTEN THAT JAMES CHOSE ATE AND SLEPT AND THRIVED and grew. After about a week it was twice the size. It was supposed to have just water and scraps, but when our mother wasn’t looking, Jazzy would put a plate of warm milk on the floor and the kitten knew to run over and lap at it with its tiny pink tongue until the plate was as clean and dry as if there’d never been anything on it at all.

  Lottie was right. The cat was a girl. But Jazzy didn’t call her Miracles as Lottie had suggested, but Lupin.

  I would’ve called it James if it was a boy, she said.

  Phoebe Harkiss called around at least three times that week to see how the kitten was doing. At first I was surprised. It didn’t seem all that likely that she would give a toss whether it was alive or dead. But then I saw how carefully she’d tied her hair, fixing it with pins and a velvet bow, and how she swished herself around just like a dancing lady at a fairground, and I realized.

  She must have been disappointed, because often James wasn’t there at all. Another time he was there, but he had to leave after just a minute to go and milk the cows. And even when he was there, he gave her only the briefest of glances before picking Honey up off the floor and throwing her in the air till she screamed and then playing horsey-horsey with her on his knee while Phoebe squinched up her freckly face and watched and smiled, pretending she had an interest in babies, which it was very clear she did not.

  THE COFFEE SHOP IS ONE SMALL ROOM WITH NO ONE IN IT. Framed pastels of dogs and cats on the walls. A window with a view onto a well-kept garden with a blue-and-yellow children’s climbing frame in the middle of it.

  They can hear the noises of a kitchen, but they wait for a long time and no one comes. At last Eddie gets up and goes and shakes the old-fashioned bell that hangs from the wall. A waitress appears. She can’t be more than fourteen. Eddie picks up the laminated menu, turning it over and over. He looks at Mary.

  “Cappuccino? Espresso? Americano? What do you want?”

  “We only do cafetières,” the girl says.

  He gazes at her for a moment, bewildered.

  “It’s fine,” Mary tells her. “Whatever you have.”

  The girl goes away. Eddie seems to relax.

  “Well,” he says, “it’s not exactly jumping, is it?”

  “What?”

  “The joint.”

  She tries to smile. Glancing over at the window, w
here the climbing frame gleams bright in the sunshine. She does not want to look at it but there is nowhere else to look. She can feel his eyes on her.

  “You’re wishing you hadn’t said yes, aren’t you?” he says.

  “What?”

  “To coffee. I rather crept up on you, didn’t I? You didn’t have time to think of an excuse.”

  She looks at him in surprise.

  “Of course I don’t think that,” she says, even though a part of her definitely does.

  He grins.

  “And you could even have escaped just then. Before the girl came. Come on, admit it, I know that’s what you were thinking.”

  She feels herself flush.

  “I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing that,” she says.

  He lowers his eyes.

  “Ah, well, that’s only because you’re a nice, well-brought-up girl, you see.”

  She can’t help it, she laughs.

  “It’s a long time since someone called me a girl. Never mind well brought up.”

  He blinks and suddenly she understands. He’s nervous.

  “Well, you are. You’re both. I’m an expert. I can tell. You’re very polite, very restrained.”

  “Restrained?” Mary makes a face.

  “It’s a good thing. Trust me. Not enough people are restrained these days. No one has any manners anymore. And as for being a girl—”

  “I’m forty-two,” she says.

  He glances at her, caught off balance.

  “Well, that’s young, isn’t it? It’s very young indeed. And take it from me, you’re very youthful, very girlish.”

  The waitress brings the coffee and they both sit in silence while trivet and pot and spoons and cups and sugar are all laid out. Once the girl’s gone, Mary asks him what he’s doing at the market.

  He makes a gesture of defeat.

  “I was sent on an errand. By the wife. To buy veg. She was not very specific. I have no idea what she wants. Help me. Please. Tell me what I should get.”

  “Why don’t you just buy what you want?”

  He makes a face.

  “I’m not a great fan of vegetables. Wouldn’t mind if I never saw another green thing as long as I live. I expect that puts you off me, doesn’t it?”

  Mary looks at him.

  “So what do you eat?”

  “Anything that’s not green.”

  His face is solemn, but Mary sees that his eyes are smiling. She can’t tell if he’s teasing her. She looks down at her coffee.

  “People are allowed not to like vegetables,” she says at last.

  He sighs and takes off his glasses and wipes them on his shirt. For a moment, without them, he looks like a teenager. Glancing at her with his raw boy’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Listen to me. Talk about a boring conversation.”

  She smiles.

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine. Now you’re really just being polite.”

  “I thought you said manners were a good thing.”

  He laughs, caught out.

  “You’re only trying to be friendly,” she says more gently. “I appreciate that. I appreciate that you’re making an effort.” She looks away, briefly, out the window. Suddenly exhausted. “It’s been a while since I did anything like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Just sat and chatted over coffee about nothing in particular with someone I hardly know.”

  Now he puts down his cup.

  “You do know me.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, I’d like you to know me—or what I mean is, I’d like to get to know you better.”

  Mary looks at her hands.

  “Well, me too. That would be nice. We had a great time the other night. We’ll have to get you back to ours.”

  She feels Eddie looking at her.

  “Tell me honestly: What do you think of me?” he says.

  She shakes her head. Laughs.

  “What do I think?”

  “You can be honest. Say anything you like. I won’t be hurt.”

  Mary glances at him.

  “I don’t know what I think.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  She takes a breath.

  “Well, I suppose I think you’re quite—direct.”

  His eyes light up.

  “Direct? Really? You think I’m direct? But is that a good thing?”

  “Does it have to be good or bad?”

  “All right, but what do you think?”

  “Me?”

  “Do you mind it? That I’m direct?”

  Mary says nothing. She looks down at her cup on the table. Remembering her car waiting for her, parked in the sunshine. Five minutes, she thinks. Looking at Eddie.

  “Why do you have such a low opinion of yourself?”

  He lifts his head.

  “You think I do?”

  “I’m pretty sure you do, yes.”

  He says nothing. He looks at her steadily for a long moment and then he smiles.

  HE WALKS HER TO HER CAR. SHE DOESN’T WANT HIM TO, BUT HE seems to want to insist and in the end it’s less trouble than the larger effort of pushing him away.

  “Do you mind?” he says, as on the way there he pulls out his cigarettes and, stopping briefly to light it, smokes half of one very quickly, before chucking it away.

  At the car she is surprised to find herself offering to give him the two bags containing just about everything she bought. Beetroot, onions, carrots, strawberries. Everything apart from the apple juice, which she thinks Ruby might enjoy.

  “You can tell Deborah you chose them all,” she says, and she makes him look at how beautiful the carrots are, with their bright fronds of green and the mud caked into their little bumps and veins.

  “What?” he says, still gazing at the carrots. “You want me to lie?”

  She laughs and holds them out to him.

  “I don’t care what you do. I’m just saying that you can take them, that’s all.”

  Standing there by the open car door, he stares at her.

  “I can’t take them.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “But you bought them. They’re yours.”

  “I don’t want them. Honestly. I wouldn’t offer them to you if I did. We don’t need them.”

  He puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head.

  “I can’t possibly take them. Not without paying you.”

  “Don’t be silly. You had us to dinner.”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “All right, then. You paid for the coffee.”

  “What, one lousy cafetière?”

  She looks at him.

  “Come on, Eddie. They’re only bloody vegetables.”

  He laughs as he lets her give them to him, holding out his hand to her, the wrong hand because the other one’s holding the bags. She shakes it awkwardly, then he pulls her to him and seems to be trying to kiss her on the cheek, but she moves away just in time and gets in the car and drives off.

  She doesn’t look back. Only when she’s almost out of the village on the dual carriageway does she realize that she didn’t say good-bye.

  LESS THAN A MILE FROM HOME, SHE PULLS OFF THE ROAD AND onto a bumpy, dusty track by a metal farm gate. Turning off the engine. Silence. Insects. A tractor somewhere far off.

  The pain she feels is beyond pain. Not even properly detectable anymore—a blur, a wall, a kind of gray desperation—a sense that nothing she can think, feel, or do will ever take it away. Here in this world without them, always—always. She would like to cry, but she cannot cry. Not even that much comfort or relief available to her. Her mouth is dry, her breath sticky. She loathes every part of herself. She lays her head down on the steering wheel and waits for the moments to pass.

  When at last she lifts her head—it could be minutes, it could be an hour—there they are. Quite unsurprising—as if she’d expected them, as if she’d alway
s known they were coming—a small crowd moving through the field in front of her. The man and an older girl in front, followed by the younger kids, four or five of them at least, one of them tottering along on the smallest legs, no more than a baby.

  That’s right, she thinks, unable to understand why it makes a kind of sense. Of course. That’s right.

  She cannot hear them—a deadness and softness stopping her ears—but she knows all the same that they are chattering, laughing. Each child is carrying a small bucket and now and then they stoop to pick things up. Stones, she thinks. They’re collecting the stones.

  She has no idea how long she watches them for: time stretches and contracts, darkening and then turning light again. All she knows is that for the whole time she keeps her eyes on them, a warm steadiness comes over her. She feels quite tied to this moment—fixed and safe, unwilling to move away.

  She watches them until the sun disappears behind a cloud and by the time it comes out again—bands of light rushing over the fields—they’re gone and all she can see is the metal gate, the far-off smudge of woodland, and the great black crows swooping up and down over the hazy, lilac-brown clods of muddy earth.

  I DIDN’T MIND THE SLIGHTEST BIT IF JAMES DIX WANTED TO give his attention to Phoebe. She wasn’t much more than a child, a silly, piggy girl with thin lips and bitten-down nails, and I did think she’d been very unkind to Jazzy about the first, dead kitten. But apart from that I had nothing particular against her, and anyway, I couldn’t have cared less who James chose to blow around with.

  Still, I was surprised when, looking out of an upstairs window one morning, I saw them standing together in the lane. Their heads were close, their eyes intent. Phoebe Harkiss and James Dix. He was talking and she was gazing up at him. I didn’t know what he could be saying. Both of them looked very sly and serious.

  As I watched, Phoebe hung her head, and her lips and eyes moved as if she was saying something and I saw James put his hands on his hips and take a step back. He looked very angry for a moment, but straight after he seemed to be laughing at her. Phoebe looked very forlorn then, her face sad and sullen, her fingers going up to find her mouth. I wondered what James could have said to upset her.