Perfect (14 page)

He wished he could tell James. At lunchtime on Tuesday he even ventured so far as to ask, ‘Do you have secrets?’

James gulped on a forkful of meat pie and said, ‘Yes, I do, Byron.’ He glanced both ways to check none of the boys was listening but Watkins had a new rubber balloon that made a fart noise and the others were busy
placing it on the bench, squashing down on it and laughing. ‘Why? Do you?’ There was something alive about the way James watched, waiting for Byron’s reply, and not chewing his meat pie.

‘I’m not sure.’ Byron felt a rush of adrenalin as if he were about to jump from a wall.

‘For instance,’ said James, ‘sometimes I dip my finger in my mother’s pot of Pond cream.’

This did not seem much of a secret to Byron but James continued, slowly and deliberately, and Byron assumed worse was to come. ‘I only use a tiny bit. I do it when she’s not looking. It’s so that I won’t get wrinkles.’ James returned to chewing his meat pie and washed it down with water. It was only when he failed to say anything else, and helped himself to salt, that Byron realized he had finished.

‘But I don’t understand. You don’t have wrinkles, James.’

‘That is because I use Pond cream, Byron.’

This was a further example of how James planned ahead.

Byron decided to make amends for telling his mother what she had done. After school he followed her into the utility room where she was sorting dirty clothes for the washing machine. He told her he was wrong. It was his mistake, he said. She had done nothing in Digby Road.

‘Would you stop going on about it?’ she said. This was definitely strange because it was the first time in five days he had referred to it.

Byron balanced with one foot on top of the other, as if by taking up less floor space he might also become less of an inconvenience. ‘You see there is no evidence,’ he said. ‘No damage to the car.’

‘Please would you pass me the starch?’

‘If we had hit the little girl there would be a dent on the Jaguar.’ He passed her the starch and she sprinkled it liberally over the whites. ‘And there is no dent,’ he said. ‘I have checked. I have checked several times actually.’

‘Well there we are.’

‘Also no one saw us in Digby Road.’

‘It’s a free country, Byron. We can drive wherever we like.’

He would have liked to say, Well, actually Father says we are not supposed to go down Digby Road and we should bring back hanging and neither of those seems all that free to me, but it was a long sentence and he sensed it wasn’t the time. His mother shoved the laundry into the drum of the washing machine and then slammed the door shut. He repeated that he was probably wrong but she was already halfway towards the kitchen.

And yet, that afternoon he began to realize she was thinking about what he had said. Despite her protestations, he caught her staring several times out of the French windows, glass in hand, with a preoccupied look. When his father rang to check she was listening and that everything was as it should be, she said, ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’ And when he repeated himself she even raised her voice: ‘Darling, what do you think happens? I never see anyone. No one has a clue where I live.’ She finished with her fluttery laugh but from the way it cut mid-air, it didn’t sound as if she found any of this very funny.

Why would she forget the truth like that? After all, there had been the Christmas party at Cranham House; all the mothers knew where Diana lived. He put the mistake down to further evidence of her anxiety.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Seymour,’ said his mother to the telephone. She hung up and failed to move.

So once again Byron tried to reassure his mother. Even though what he had said earlier was not true, he explained, even though she had actually hit the little girl and driven away, the accident was not her fault. ‘What?’ said his mother, as if she didn’t speak his language. Then she shook her head and asked him to move from under her feet, she had things to do.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t proper time. It was added time. It was
time that shouldn’t have been there. It wouldn’t have been there, if they hadn’t stopped the clocks to add two seconds. So no one can blame you because it wasn’t your fault. There may have been a conspiracy like President Kennedy or the moon landings.’ Repeating James gave his words extra weight, although he had no idea what he was talking about.

His mother appeared to be less impressed. ‘Of course they landed on the moon. Of course time didn’t stop. That’s the whole point of time. It keeps going forward.’

He tried to explain that maybe time was not so reliable, but she was no longer listening. While the children ate tea, she thumbed through the pages of her magazine so fast she couldn’t possibly be reading. She bathed the children but forgot to fetch crazy foam. And when Lucy asked, as she did every evening, could she read with the funny voices, his mother sighed and said wasn’t one voice enough?

Byron lay awake most of the night, trying to work out how to help his mother. The following morning he felt so punched he could barely move. His father rang and as usual his mother reassured him no one was there. ‘Not even the milkman,’ she laughed. Then she said quickly, ‘No, I’m not being rude, darling.’ While she listened to his reply she stabbed the carpet with the point of her shoe, over and over. ‘Of course I care. Of course we want to see you.’ Again she replaced the mouthpiece on its hook and stared at it.

Byron accompanied Lucy to school and walked with his mother back to the car. Diana kept sighing and not saying anything, only sighing again. He was certain she was dwelling on something that caused her pain and that this must be the accident.

‘No one knows,’ he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They would have arrested you by now and they haven’t. There has been no mention of it in
The Times
. There has been nothing about it on
Nationwide
.’

Diana threw up her hands and gave an impatient sigh. ‘Do you never stop?’ And saying that, almost to the pavement it seemed, she broke into a walk that was so fast Byron had to canter at a sideways angle in order to keep up.

At the car, his mother threw her handbag to the pavement. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing her finger at the silver bodywork. ‘There’s nothing there. There’s nothing there because there was no accident in Digby Road. You’ve got it wrong. You imagined it.’

Wriggling her skirt over her knees, she even knelt on the pavement. She pointed to the bonnet, the doors, the engine. Other mothers were beginning to approach, on their way back to their cars. Diana didn’t look up at them or say hello; she kept her eyes fixed on Byron, as if none of them was important. ‘You see, you see?’ she kept saying. He had to smile at the mothers to show there was nothing wrong and it was such effort to keep doing it, his face hurt. All he wanted was to get in the car.

Byron stooped closer. ‘Shouldn’t we do this at home?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough. You don’t stop. I walk into the garden, I go to do the washing, and you’re still talking about it. I want you to see everything’s all right.’ She smoothed her fingers over the paintwork, showing him how clear it was. And she was right; it shone bright as a knife blade, shimmering with heat and light. Against it her nails were small pearly shells. ‘There’s not a scratch. There’s nothing. You see?’ She stooped and craned her neck beneath the bodywork of the car. ‘You see? You see, sweetheart?’

Byron felt his eyes bud with tears. He understood now. He understood that he must have been mistaken, that there had been no accident, that he had been wrong about what he had witnessed. Shame filled him like heat. Then his mother let out a gasp. She pulled back from the car with her face clutched in her hands.

‘What is it?’ he said.

She was trying to stand but her skirt was too narrow and wouldn’t make room for her legs. Her hands were still over her mouth, pressing something inside.

Byron peered at the car but he could see nothing. He helped his mother to her feet and she stood with her back to the Jaguar, as if she couldn’t bear to look. Her face was blanched, her eyes terrified. He didn’t know whether she was about to be ill.

Byron lowered himself to his knees. He pressed his fingers into the grit and peered at the spot she had been indicating. There was a heated-up smell of oil but he could see nothing. And then just as he was about to laugh and say, Don’t worry, he found it. He found the evidence. His heart went so fast it was like someone at a door. It was as if they were actually inside him, banging all over his insides. He stooped closer to the hubcap.

‘Get inside the car,’ murmured his mother. ‘Get in right now.’

There it was. A tiny nick just above the engraved Jaguar emblem. No bigger than a metal nick or a graze. He couldn’t think how he had missed it. It was red. Bicycle red.

A
SCRAP OF FAST-MOVING
cloud splinters the china plate of a moon. The evergreen leaves rattle like plastic. Rain is coming. Carefully Jim makes his way to the van. His footsteps do not sound like ones he recognizes. He hears the click of crutches on the pavement. The slow pulling forward of a plaster cast. He feels the bottle of painkillers weighted in his pocket. His foot is not a foot. It is a brick. A blue brick.

The curtains of the houses are drawn against the dark and the moor and the outsiders such as Jim.

Something has happened tonight. Not just the accident. It has sliced open the space between past and present. He wishes for his bed at Besley Hill and the patients who wore each other’s pyjamas. He wishes for the food that arrived every mealtime and the nurses who brought his pills. He wishes for the emptying of his mind. For sleep.

But he knows none of these things will come. Fragments of memories flash through his mind and it is like being struck. Beyond Cranham Village,
beyond the moor, there are lost years, there are lost people, there is all that. He recalls Eileen’s look of confusion and the boy who was once his friend. He thinks about the bridge over the pond and the two seconds that started everything.

The pain in his foot is as nothing, compared to this other wound that is deep inside. There is no atoning for the past. There are only the mistakes that have been made.

The rituals will go on all night. And even when he finally believes he has done enough, there will be tomorrow, and the whole process must begin again. There will be the day after that. The next day; and the next. He pulls the key from his pocket and briefly the brass keyring catches the light.

Black rain begins to fall. It explodes on the paving stones of Cranham Village, the wheelie bins, the slate rooftops and the van. Slowly Jim moves forward. Anything, he thinks, anything would be better than what lies ahead.

‘I
T WAS A
terrible mistake.’

When Byron confessed the truth, James’s face lost the little colour it had. He listened to the story of how the girl had run towards the road at the exact moment the seconds were added and a knot emerged between his eyebrows, so deep it looked cut with a knife. He twisted his fringe until it made a loop when Byron described how he had tried to keep the secret and failed. For a long time James sat with his head in his hands. Byron began to fear it was a mistake to ask his help.

‘But, Byron, what were you doing in Digby Road?’ James said at last. ‘Doesn’t your mother know it’s dangerous? Once a person had their knees shot off. And some of the houses have no lavatories.’

‘I don’t think my mother was thinking about things like that. She told us she had been there before.’

‘I don’t understand how this could happen. She drives very carefully. I have watched. Some of the other mothers are not good drivers. Mrs
Watkins, for instance. She is actually dangerous. But your mother is not like that. Is she all right?’

‘She isn’t saying anything. She washed the car twice yesterday. If my father finds out, there will be trouble. I don’t know what will happen at the weekend.’

‘But it isn’t her fault. The accident only happened because of the two seconds.’

Byron said it was lucky James had read about the addition of time. It was such a relief to have him on board.