Graham sits in the chair to take his shoes off.
“I think they’re just trying to be friendly. And anyway, it’s not like we’re going to have a very quiet weekend with the Morticia twins around.”
Mary sighs.
“Does she ever speak?”
“What?”
“Lisa. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say more than three or four words in a row.”
Graham looks at her.
“I think she’s just shy.”
He drops his shoes on the floor and stands up to go to the bathroom. Mary watches him.
“Shy? That’s not the word I’d use.”
“What, then?”
She says nothing. Keeping her eyes on the shadow on the wall. It is smooth and gray and even. And then just for a moment it isn’t: it has curves and contours, a shock of light brown hair, the dark gleam of an eye—
Graham is looking at her.
“You OK, sweetheart?”
“I’m OK.”
She continues to gaze at the wall.
“I’m fine,” she says.
He looks at her for a moment. Then he goes into the bathroom and she hears the click of the light and the soft shutting of the door.
THIS TIME MARY NOTICES THAT DEBORAH HASN’T DRESSED UP, though her jeans are tight and expensive-looking and she looks even prettier with her creamy hair twisted up on top of her head. The dishwasher is on when they arrive and so is the radio—some violin concerto drifting out through the back door and off over the lavender-fringed paving stones. The kitchen could even be said to be in a mess.
“She’s making her fish pie,” Eddie says. “Quite a production, I’m afraid. Never have more pans been harmed in the making of one simple supper.”
“Eddie”—Deborah is laughing—“that’s not fair.”
Graham says that fish pie is his favorite, and Mary knows he’s not lying but also that even if it wasn’t, he would have said it was. She kisses Deborah on the cheek and catches a scent of something citrusy. They introduce the girls. Ruby yawns and Lisa fiddles with the ring in her nose. Mary notices that she has on thick false eyelashes. The effect is to make her eyes seem even heavier and sleepier.
Eddie asks the girls if they’re interested in music. For a long moment, neither of them speaks.
“Kind of,” Ruby says at last.
He laughs loudly, rubbing his hands together. Mary notices that his shirt is coming untucked at the back and it makes her feel briefly sorry for him.
“‘Kind of’? Only kind of? What self-respecting, paid-up member of the teenage class isn’t interested in rock ’n’ roll?”
“Can you really call teenagers a class?” Graham says, helping himself to an olive.
“Class of their own, more like,” Eddie says. “Super classy anyway.”
Ruby rolls her eyes and Lisa looks away and he asks them if they’d like to see his collection of vinyl and Lisa still doesn’t speak but Ruby glances at Graham.
“OK,” she says.
Graham laughs.
“I’m afraid OK is the best you’ll get from my daughter. Roughly translated, it means ‘Yes please, she would like to very much.’”
“And you?” Eddie says to Lisa.
Lisa blinks.
“What about me?”
“What are you into, young lady?”
Lisa doesn’t answer, but Deborah turns around from the board where she’s chopping parsley.
“Please don’t pander to him, girls. And don’t feel you’ve got to see his bloody vinyls either. I don’t think Eddie realizes that not everyone’s as mad about old records as he is.”
Mary expects Eddie to argue with her, but he doesn’t. He says nothing and then gets busy pouring them all drinks. Lisa refuses wine and whispers a request for Diet Coke. Straightaway Eddie disappears to another room beyond the kitchen.
“You’re in luck,” he says, returning with a can that he snaps open for her.
Deborah turns down the oven and takes off her apron and they leave the girls inside and wander out into the garden with their drinks. The light is brilliant, the air hot and silky. Mary notices the rows of orange flowers. The stone urns, clipped box hedge. The pond with its coating of bright green algae.
Deborah and Graham stand on the terrace and talk, but Eddie follows Mary as she walks farther down the lawn, past the clumps of daisies and catmint and the lavender, still alive with bees. He pulls out his cigarettes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you didn’t want to come.”
Mary flushes.
“Don’t be silly,” she says.
“Yes, but I forced your hand, didn’t I?”
She says nothing. Looks over to where Deborah is standing on one leg and taking off her shoe and shaking something out of it while laughing at something Graham just said.
“What?” he says. “What are you thinking now?”
She turns to look at him properly. Smiling as he lights his cigarette.
“Why is it always so important for you to know what I’m thinking?”
He makes a face.
“Sorry. Just interested.”
Mary shivers. She looks back over at Deborah again. She’s putting the shoe back on, her hand on Graham’s shoulder, steadying herself.
“It’s very nice of you to ask us,” she says. “Very kind of you to include the girls.”
She feels him gazing at her, deliberate and intent. She knows he’s waiting for her to say something else but she doesn’t, she says nothing and, when he doesn’t speak either, she takes it as her chance to move away.
THEY EAT THE FISH PIE AND SOME SALAD AND DRINK THE TWO bottles of prosecco that Mary and Graham brought with them, since Deborah refused their offer of a dessert. Graham says it’s the best fish pie he’s ever had and he asks for seconds and eats them quickly, hardly pausing between one mouthful and the next, and Mary looks at him, his head bent over his plate, and is struck by how suddenly alive he seems, how awake and alert, and she finds herself wondering what it is that she does to him. Does she oppress him, push him down and make him sad? Does her daily presence only serve to continue the misery for him, a constant reminder of how viciously their lives were interrupted?
Graham insisted the girls leave their phones at home and Mary thinks that may be why Ruby can’t seem to settle, tapping her foot and joggling her leg and looking around as if she expects at any moment to hear the ping of a text.
Deborah leans across the table and tells Ruby she likes her earrings and are they really what they look like, little animal skulls, or something? And Ruby mutters something in reply that Mary doesn’t catch and then Deborah asks her what subjects she’s doing at school and Ruby looks at Lisa and again says something quite inaudible and Mary sees that Lisa has picked every single piece of prawn out of her pie and left them around the side of the plate.
“She’s allergic,” Ruby says when Eddie asks her if she’s not keen on seafood.
Deborah gasps.
“My God, I’m so sorry. You mean properly allergic? My God, Mary, I do apologize. I feel awful, I really ought to have asked.”
Mary looks at Lisa’s pale peroxide face.
“Are you allergic to prawns, Lisa?”
Lisa looks at her plate and seems about to speak, but Ruby jumps in.
“She has stomach problems. It was when you had your appendix out, wasn’t it, Lisa?”
Graham leans back in his chair.
“Maybe let her talk for herself?”
At last Lisa seems to startle awake.
“It’s all right,” she says in a surprisingly crisp and assured voice. “It’s not an allergy. It’s a digestion thing. I developed an allergy to something they gave me at the hospital and it’s affected my stomach ever since.”
Mary stares at her. For a moment no one speaks.
“Well, I do hope we haven’t made you ill,” Deborah says—and she offers to make Lisa a sandwich, but Lisa says she’s had enough.
�
�But you’ve hardly eaten anything! I feel we haven’t fed you.”
“Leave the poor girl alone,” Eddie says, and, when they excuse themselves together to go to the toilet, he leans over and pats Graham’s arm. “They’re great,” he says. “Really great. Both of them. She’s quite a girl, isn’t she, your Ruby? A real charmer.”
Graham laughs.
“Girl may be one way of describing her. Charming, well, perhaps not so much.”
“Well, I think they’re great,” Eddie says. “Both of them. A breath of fresh air, aren’t they, Deb?”
Deborah smiles.
“We just don’t know anyone with kids that age—teenagers, I mean. It makes a nice change.”
Eddie nods.
“They’re welcome here anytime,” he says.
“You’re very kind,” Graham says.
Still, Mary is relieved when he suggests the girls go and eat dessert at home.
“They need to let the dog out,” he tells Deborah as he hands Ruby a key.
Straightaway, Eddie jumps up.
“Not so fast. I’m sorry but you’re not getting away without seeing my vinyls.”
“Really, Eddie,” Deborah says, “can’t it wait for another time?”
He glances at her, rubbing at his hair. Mary notices that he looks quite agitated.
“Not if you’re about to make me pack them away ready for the builders to start on the bloody extension, they can’t.”
Deborah laughs. She undoes her hair clip and shakes her hair out so it falls all over her shoulders. She looks at Mary.
“You see why we need an extension? Not for ourselves at all, but to house his entire collection of seventies memorabilia.” She looks at the girls. “You think I’m joking? Go on up and see. You won’t believe the amount of stuff he’s got up there.”
I DID NOT KNOW WHAT HAD HAPPENED BETWEEN JAMES AND me, but I knew that something had. Even though he was still the same tall, red-haired, annoying person, he no longer affected me in the same way. Something was different. There seemed to be more of him—so much more—as if his eyes now contained a thousand possibilities that I’d never noticed before. His body too—or maybe it was my own body. Where I’d once been hard and worried around him, now I was liquid velvet, the softest thing.
Next day and the day after, we sat together again on the old tree and he told me all about himself. He said that his mother had died when he was ten years old and he was brought up by an aunt who had thrown him out on the streets when he was fourteen.
I stared at him.
Why did she throw you out?
He scratched his head.
It’s a long story and not for your innocent ears.
He told me he had worked as a dustman in London for a time and after that as a fish gutter in Lowestoft, where he’d had a sweetheart for a short while but she’d died soon after and that was that.
But don’t worry, he said. She wasn’t as pretty as you, not even the smallest bit, and that’s a fact.
I thought it very unkind of him to be so cruel about a person he had once loved, especially if she’d had the awful misfortune to die, and I told him so.
Oh, he said. But I didn’t love her.
Then that’s even worse! I said.
He laughed and he reached out his hand and touched my hair and then my face, and I didn’t stop him but I told him he shouldn’t be laughing about it either.
What? he said. Am I supposed to lie about it, then?
I had no answer to that, but all the same I couldn’t get the idea of the poor dead unloved woman out of my head. I asked him what her name was and what she died of, but he said he didn’t want to talk about her.
We weren’t engaged or anything, he said. I wouldn’t have been so stupid as to promise her marriage.
I asked him why that would have been stupid.
Well, because she was already poorly when I met her. It’s like horses, isn’t it?
What?
You don’t go putting your money on a lame horse, do you?
I looked at him and didn’t know if he was joking or not. I said I thought he was being very unkind.
He laughed.
Oh Eliza, I’m only teasing. You think I’d really say that about a poor sick woman?
I don’t know what you’d say, I said. Especially since I don’t know the first thing about you.
Dearest Eliza, he said. But you do. You know everything about me. Everything that’s worth knowing, anyway.
And he tried to take hold of my hand then, tried to pull my face to his so he could kiss me, but I would not let him. And when he wouldn’t take no for an answer, I got quite fierce and shook him off. He did not seem to like this very much, telling me that all through his life he’d always been very upset when women pushed him away.
It began with my mother and my aunt, he said. And after that it was downhill all the way.
I pointed out that, while it might be all right to say this about his aunt, it was not exactly fair on his poor mother, since she surely did not choose to die.
But he didn’t seem to be listening. He stuck out his bottom lip.
She left me to it, he said.
Yes, but what else could she have done?
He shrugged.
She did not care what happened to me—
Oh, but I’m very sure she did care! I cried.
He looked at me for a moment.
Well, it was very hard for me, being left. I don’t know any other way to put it, Eliza. She left me to it and that was that.
I struggled for a moment with this and I thought about trying to explain his poor mother a little more carefully to him. But I could see there was no use: his face was pinched and sad and hard.
Well, I feel very sorry for you, I said. But that’s all in the past. There’s no point dwelling on it, is there?
His face seemed to brighten.
You’re right. There’s not. And anyway, I’ve got you now, haven’t I?
I looked at my boots.
What? he said. What is it?
I don’t think I want to be anybody’s sweetheart, I said.
He stopped and looked at me and he pushed some hair out of my face. He put his hand on the part of my skirts where my knee was and then he slid it upward, to my thigh. A little flame-like feeling crept and flickered around there under my petticoats. I took a quick breath.
You don’t have to be anyone’s anything, he said. You just have to be you. And to know that I like you very much.
I like you too, I told him.
You do?
And he looked as if he was waiting for more. But the truth was I had run out of words. I thought he must think me a very raw, dull child compared to his old dead sweetheart.
I want to be with you all the time, he said. I mean it, Eliza. I’d see to it if I could.
I stared at him, not understanding.
What do you mean? I said. How would you see to it?
He shrugged.
I suppose I’d kidnap you if I could.
I didn’t like the way he said it—as if it was the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. I thought about it for a moment and then I pointed out that you didn’t have to kidnap a person if they were already there.
He nodded and smiled as if he’d already thought of this.
And anyway I wouldn’t want to hurt you, would I?
I should hope not, I said, though I still felt worried.
And I was about to wonder whether he’d thought about kidnapping the poor dead woman, but then we heard the sound of my mother calling the little ones in for supper, so all ideas and questions disappeared from my head.
Before we parted, he put his mouth to my ear.
Shall I tell you what I’d really like?
I laughed.
No, thanks, I said.
He looked surprised.
What? You don’t want me to tell you? Really, Eliza? You really don’t want to know what it is?
I don’t think I do,
I said.
Why not?
I shrugged. Feeling my face grow tight and hot.
Because I’m afraid.
Afraid? What on earth are you afraid of, Eliza?
I’m afraid of what it is that you’re going to say.
He looked at me for a moment.
You’re afraid of me?
I swallowed.
I don’t know, I said.
Then he took my hand and held it in both of his. He pulled me toward him and he stared into my eyes.
Well, maybe you’re right to be afraid. Maybe your instinct is correct, Eliza. But I’m going to tell you anyway—
I tried to turn my head away.
Please, I said.
Please what?
Please don’t—and I tugged at my hand, but he would not let go. Instead, he laughed. And when at last he spoke, he lowered his voice to a whisper as if the next part was so secret that even the birds and insects around us should not be allowed to hear it.
What I’d really like is to see you with no clothes on.
I stared at him. I couldn’t believe he’d said it. It was the most awful and nerve-racking idea. He smiled.
And shall I tell you the really funny thing? The really funny thing—and I know you won’t believe this but take it from me, it is God’s own truth—is that one day you’ll feel the precise same way. One day I swear you’ll take them all off for me—dress, petticoats, even your drawers. You’ll take them all off and you’ll stand there in front of me as naked as the day you were born and I won’t know which part to look at first—your breasts or your belly or your sweet little fanny.
I swallowed and turned my head away. I felt so ashamed I thought I would faint. I began to cry.
But don’t worry, he added, letting go of my hand as if he suddenly understood that he’d gone too far. It’s only an idea I have in my head. Just a mischievous idea. I’d never do anything to upset you, Eliza, I promise you that, gentleman’s honor.
THERE’S A MOWN PATH THAT LEADS BETWEEN THE REED BEDS and up to the golf course. On the edge of a wide field, next to the wood. Mary doesn’t go as far as the golf course—she never goes up there. Instead, she stops right there in the middle of the reeds where she’s never seen or heard another human soul.
Silence.
Cow parsley as high as your head. Nettles. Wild orchids and foxgloves. Lush, damp grass, where it’s been flooded and boggy all winter and spring. The occasional molehill. But apart from the squawk of a bird or the sudden eerie splash of something in the water, nothing. Recently, as spring has given way to early summer, she has begun to look forward to coming here.
The Stopped Heart Page 13
