by Morag Joss
‘Carry on,’ Gordon said, pulling off the gloves and handing them to Michael. ‘I’m no expert so I’ll leave you to get on with it. I’m assuming you know how to handle them.’
Michael almost burst into song. ‘Right! That’s terribly good of you. I do appreciate it. It’s a marvellous opportunity.’ He sat down at the table and squinted purposefully at the figures, wrinkling his nose. Gordon Brookes did not leave. Michael looked at him with the gentlest smile of dismissal he could manage.
‘I’ll be fine, now. Thanks so much,’ he said.
‘Right. Well, I’ll let you get on, while I just potter.’ So that was what he meant by leaving him to get on with it. Get on with it, but I’ll be right here behind you. In the same room. I am not going to leave. Michael’s face twitched behind his glasses. How was he going to manage the amount of bluffing that would now be required? He could drop out of the whole thing, just look at the figures and go. But how could he even think of leaving without them, after this much effort? His heart had been thumping in his throat since he arrived. He coughed. He dared not touch the figures in front of Gordon Brookes. He could not trust his hands not to shake.
‘Don’t let me, er… I’m quite happy here on my own, if you’ve got things to do.’
‘I gather it’s a study of yours. Have you published?’
‘Oh no! Oh, you know, the usual problem. Time! Takes so much time, getting anything knocked into proper shape for a publisher. That’s life. But I chip away, live in hope. You know.’ He turned and looked at the alabaster figures in what he hoped was an informed sort of way.
Gordon turned and started to busy himself with a precarious stack of books and sheets of paper. ‘Choir. They will leave things higgledy-piggledy,’ he murmured. Michael, pretending to consult his notebook, was getting desperate. He had to get Gordon Brookes to leave.
‘Honestly, don’t let me stop you getting on,’ he said. ‘I’m quite happy on my own for… well, I should think twenty minutes should do it. But naturally I’d prefer you to come back to put them back in their case.’
‘You were ordained when, Jeff?’ Gordon asked mildly.
‘Oh, only in 1996,’ Michael replied. ‘Latecomer.’ He would volunteer nothing more lest it provoke more conversation. He needed the man to go.
‘Yes. Yes, because you see, if you don’t mind, Jeff, it’s odd you’re not aware. Trivial thing, of course, but if nobody’s pointed it out to you… we never say Crockford’s, do you see. It’s Crockford, not Crockford’s. You just don’t say Crockford’zzzz, except when you’re saying the whole name, as in “Crockford’s Directory of the Clergy”. Hope you don’t mind my mentioning it.’
Michael fixed a look of polite amusement on his face and turned.
‘Oh? Well! Well, my goodness. I, er…’
‘It’s odd you’ve not picked that up so far.’
It was too late for Michael to pretend he was hard of hearing, had to lip-read and sometimes made mistakes. His mouth was dry. Gordon Brookes was about to say that he knew perfectly well that Michael was a fraud. But Michael knew, just as perfectly, that he needed the alabaster figures to get himself afloat again; he needed them so badly that he felt a rush of fury at the thought that Gordon Brookes might stop him. Just as he was thinking that the only course open to him now was physical assault, he wondered. Dare he try it again? He had done it once before with a punter who’d come back to the stall complaining that Michael had sold him some dud Cornish ware the week before. ’1930s you said and when I get it home I turn it upside down an’ it says fucking dishwasherproof on the bottom.’ The punter had not been in the right frame of mind to be convinced that dishwashers had been around for a lot longer than people realised. Michael had had to think fast. It had worked then, and it had to work now.
He pretended to turn his attention back to the figures, but stirred, then coughed, started rigidly in his chair and sucked up a noisy breath. He swung back in his chair and pulled in another breath with a sound like air being blown into a balloon. He struggled to say, ‘Asthma. Be all right… in a minute.’ And then he took another, even more shallow, pained and laborious breath to show that he would not be all right at all.
‘Oh good heavens- have you got something to take for it? An inhaler or something? Don’t you carry an inhaler?’
Michael shook his head and lurched in his chair, sucking and heaving. ‘Glass of water. Pills. Need water. Glass of water.’ He now brought fear into his eyes, which swivelled wildly round the room in search of the sink and tap, which he had already established were not there.
‘Oh! Oh right, I see, right. Hang on. I’ll just have to… er, look, will you be all right for a minute? I’ll get one from the vicarage. I’ll be back in a second, can you, are you sure you, er…’
Michael nodded. ‘Please! Please, water.’
When the vestry outside door had closed behind Gordon, Michael waited for a moment, got up, wrapped each figure quickly in the magazine on which it stood and placed them both in his backpack. Then he dashed back into the church, crossed it swiftly, let himself out and raced down through the churchyard, keeping off the path, which he knew could be seen from the vicarage. By the time the van started on the third attempt Michael was half-dead with terror, but with the pulse of fear came also a quickening surge of relief because he was, after all, alive.
***
My mood changed. Something happened to remove any last trace of uncertainty. Two people turned up on bicycles- imagine, in February! They were Dutch, and I believe they did say that they had hired the bicycles for the day as it was fine and they wanted to see something of the countryside outside Bath. They had all that strange clothing that people wear on bicycles. I’ve never had the slightest idea where such clothing is even to be bought or what it is called, let alone what particular purpose it might serve, and it took me a moment to get over their appearance at the door, like giant tadpoles in some sort of brightly coloured race. And they had maps, of course, and showed me the special cycle route they were doing on which certain ‘points of interest’ had been marked, including Walden Manor. They had left the marked route and come all the way down the drive, even though there is a sign saying ‘Private’ at the top, next to the road. This is Walden Manor, yes? they asked me. I couldn’t very well dispute it. So I said yes, and then I stood at the door waiting for them to go.
‘We know that the house is not open to the visitors,’ the man said. He smiled even more than the girl, which is unusual. At least the girl had the grace to look embarrassed.
‘We are so sorry to bother you, we are the students of architecture,’ she explained. The man hadn’t stopped nodding and smiling. Lovely teeth, but I distrusted such a conscious effort to charm.
‘It is so beautiful!’ he said, ‘we have nothing like this in Holland. So- we don’t know, but if you might very kindly let us take a look round…’
‘- little look, only on the outside, perhaps,’ the girl said. ‘If you can bother with us so near your house.’
Rash of me. They could have been anybody, burglars, rapists. Quite apart from it being the last thing a house sitter should do, give strangers the run of a place. They could have had coshes, knives, rope, handcuffs, anything, in those saddlebags. Supposing they’d even left me alive, I would never have recognised them again, not out of those ridiculous clingy suits and helmets. So why did I let them in? It was the ‘your house’ that did it, I suppose. I suddenly felt so proud, and I swear that all of a sudden the thought came to me, if it’s my house I can do what I like. So I heard myself saying I’d be pleased to show them round my house. They didn’t stay long. I went a bit vague about dates after ‘fifteenth century origins’ (I just made that up, it sounded about right), which gave them the chance to show off and argue between themselves over when different bits might have been built. He said they were intrigued by the building materials and methods more than the design because, evidently, he said, the house was ‘provincial’ and not by a distinguished or even a
known architect. I said there was more to good design than fancy London names, and they were a bit taken aback, I think, and I was too, because I hadn’t realised I thought that. They asked how long my family had lived here, and I simply told them, oh always. And would the house stay in the family? It was the man, of course, who asked that, and his girlfriend gave him a look that said of course it will and that was an impertinent question. So I said of course it will in a voice that justified her look (and as I spoke I did feel mildly though genuinely offended). I inherited the house from my parents, I told them, another thing I hadn’t realised I thought. My mother died eighteen years ago, when she was in her eighties. I nursed her for many years, I said, and now the house is mine and my son will have it after me. I have just one son, I told them, smiling. If they wondered about where my husband might be they didn’t say. Though the girl would have sneaked a look at my ringless hands and concluded I was divorced, I suppose. Women notice things like that.
When they left I saw them off at the front door and closed it after them, and I had the sense that we both, me and the house, breathed a sigh, glad to be alone together again. I thought I would just walk through the rooms once more, and it was as I was turning to go upstairs that I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror, which by then I was describing to myself as a looking-glass. I had been smiling at those two young people. I thought perhaps I had smiled because of their youth and friendliness, smiled while putting them in their place and perhaps also at their deference and respect for me, ‘the English lady’, and for their admiration of my house. Whatever the reason, my face was much improved for it. It had not smiled like that for a long time and I liked the brightness in my eyes and the lift round my mouth. My skin looked warmer and my face rounder, as if I’d been plumped up with optimism, and I had a receptive look, as if the sound of human voices, including my own, had made me newly alert.
I was still half-smiling, long after they had gone. The reason for my continuing smile lay in the remembered pleasure of the words I had spoken, talking about my son to complete strangers.
Steph was carrying this one high. There had been a growth spurt and now it lodged right under her boobs like a strapped-on sandbag and her stretchy cotton skirt rose up at the front, well above her knees. It had been some time since her cardigan closed over the swell, and now the T-shirt she wore underneath was also too small and an acreage of skin like uncooked pastry was revealed where the T-shirt failed to meet the skirt top. She had taken the ring out of her navel, which now protruded, its vulnerable flesh like private, inside skin turned indecently outwards. She pulled the T-shirt over it a hundred times a day but always her belly shifted, the T-shirt rode up again and her navel reappeared like the inquisitive pink snout of a puppy sniffing at cold air. She had no money for new clothes.
‘Cover that up, will you.’ Jace’s eyes returned to the road in front. Steph pulled the T-shirt down and shivered. The seatbelt was uncomfortably tight, although she had let it out all she could. She thought that Jace probably could adjust it more but he would need to fiddle about with the bit clamped to the wall of the car. She had asked him to, once. She had no very clear idea how advanced her pregnancy was but it was not more than six months; she was going to get bigger still, and if Jace wouldn’t adjust the seatbelt for her, then she was going to have to go without it. But she did not think it would be worth asking again. It was the least of her worries. Jace kept saying he had no money either, but he had more than her, that was for certain. They were on their way now to look at somebody’s car stereo, for God’s sake, that Jace had seen advertised in the paper. He fancied a better one, that was all, and he was ready to spend hundreds on it, so how come she had nothing to wear, and nothing for the baby, when it came? As they drove on in silence, she considered asking him again for some money. But if she did, the conversation would go like this:
I can’t help it showing. I need some new stuff to wear, don’t I? This is too small.
Better get something then, hadn’t you?
I can’t. Aw, Jace, going to buy us something? I haven’t got any money, have I?
Get your Nan to get it. She’s the one supposed to be looking after you.
Steph sighed at the wholly expected turn that the imagined conversation would take. It was true that she was still living, though Nan called it staying, at her grandmother’s house. She had told Jace several times what the score was, that it was only temporary and Nan would rather she were not there at all, but the trouble with Jace was it didn’t matter how many times you told him something, if he didn’t like it he would just keep going on about it and in exactly the same way, whatever you said. So Steph could say now, yet again: She’s not looking after me. She says I should be in my own place. She says she’s not having a baby in the house and when all’s said and done she’s got her own life to lead. But it would make no difference. Actually, as far as Steph could see her Nan did lead her own life anyway whether Steph was there or not, but Nan often made the point and Steph supposed that, as it was Nan’s house, she was entitled to make it.
She looked at Jace. He was doing three things: driving, smoking and poking his head forwards and backwards in time to the music. He would not add conversation to these, being quite absorbed already. The music was so loud you would think the drummer plus drum kit were riding along in the back of the car. Jace, if he had anything to say to her, would have to shout to be heard and what he would say would be:
Well, then. You should do something about it, shouldn’t you? Get your benefit sorted for a start. Don’t think I’m forking out just ’cause you won’t get your money sorted.
I can’t go to the benefit office like this.
Shouldn’t have fallen pregnant, then, should you?
It wasn’t just up to me, Jace. You are its father.
So you say. I’m not forking out for a bloody kid that’s maybe not even mine. You want to get yourself sorted.
Steph stared straight ahead. The conversation always ended there, so she was right not even to have started it. It wouldn’t have been worth the breath. Every conversation started with Jace going on about something to do with the way she looked, then went on to her lack of money, at which point she would tell him again why she could not go to claim any. Early on in her pregnancy she might also have pointed out something about having to give up college for the baby, reminding him that getting to college had been important to her, and Jace would have said something dismissive about doing A-level art in the first place. Fucking useless. Where’s that leading, fucking nowhere, was how he put it. Then he would shift the attack onto different ground, saying just to torment her that he couldn’t be sure that the baby was his and so why should his money support ‘it’. And anything that she might say in reply to that would make no difference. So Steph squirmed quietly as they drove along, pulled at her T-shirt and knew she was right, again, not to have opened her mouth.
It was less exhausting to run the conversation in her head, which was the closest Steph could bear to go in confronting the mess she was in. Her Nan did not want her any more than Jace did, and she had no money for clothes or anything else. And she could not go and register for benefit because she was going to keep this baby, and if they knew she was having it they would interfere. No more could she go to a doctor, or even have it in hospital, because they would take it off her the minute it was born. Not that Jace had ever suggested she should see a doctor, he didn’t think about things like that. She should be all right, though. It was just nature, after all. She tried to swallow her fear. She would be all right, she had done it once before with no problems, and it got easier with each one, didn’t it? That was what everyone said.
She looked across at Jace again and thought without emotion that he looked bloody stupid with his head going in and out like that. He was a thin person with a very small chin, and Steph suddenly realised that he looked just like the school tortoise, speeded up. If you held out a leaf of parsley to the tortoise- she remembered it had 4F, the class number
, painted on its shell but she had forgotten its name- its head would pop out like that and pop back in, just like Jace’s. Anyway, the tortoise was dead now and here she was, sitting here, knowing there was no point in saying I can’t go to the benefit office in this state, can I? They’ll get the social workers at me and then they’ll take it away when it comes and I’m not having that, right? I’m keeping this one, right? She tugged her T-shirt protectively over her belly and felt like crying.
You’re mad, you’re fucking mad, you are. And you got a bloody kid already. Jesus, look at the state of you.
I was too young. I told you that I was only fifteen with Stacey. I wanted to keep her, it’s not my fault they wouldn’t let me.
And so what’s different now? You’ve not even got a place to bring it up, have you?
She remembered, it was called Tommy. Tommy the tortoise. Steph began to cry noisily. He had got run over by a teacher’s car in the playground. That was the kind of thing that upset her now, silly things. Important things, like Stacey, upset her even more. Stacey would be nearly seven now. Seven, and somebody else’s. Steph’s sobs grew louder and more desperate. She had been too young and scared not to go along with what everybody told her to do.
That’s not my fault, is it? You said you’d get us a flat! And we’re not too young, I’m twenty-three and you’re twenty-one, there’s loads of people our age with kids! Loads! You were meant to be moving out of your mum’s and getting us a place. You said.
Jace was looking at her crumpled weeping face with scorn, but there was no let-up in the poke-poke of his head nor in the volume of sound. He shouted, ‘You do my head in, you do! Shut up, can’t you!’
