Perfect (35 page)

‘Where is Mummy?’ said Lucy.

‘She’s outside. She’s gone for a walk, sweetheart.’

The telephone was ringing again and whoever it was, James or his father, he could no longer answer either of them. Instead he chased Lucy upstairs to make it fun and then he ran her a bath and found the crazy foam. Afterwards he wrapped her in a towel and rubbed her dry, just as his mother would. He even stroked the tiny spaces between her toes. ‘You’re tickling,’ she said but she didn’t laugh. She looked sad.

‘Mummy will be back soon,’ he said.

‘She used to make tea and read us stories and she looked pretty. And another thing, she smells.’

‘Of what?’ He hadn’t noticed his mother smelling.

‘Stinky sprouts.’

He laughed. ‘You don’t know what stinky sprouts smell like.’

‘I do. They smell like her.’

‘Well I don’t know how,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t even eaten sprouts. It’s summer.’

Lucy curled into the space beneath his arm. She drew up her legs and folded them beneath her like a small fawn. ‘She used to be like a proper mummy. She used to hold our hands and say nice things.’

‘Mummy will be back soon,’ he repeated. ‘Now why don’t I read you a nice story?’

‘Will you do the funny voices?’

‘I will do really funny ones.’

After he had read to Lucy he held her hand. It was small and warm inside his.

‘Mummy sings,’ she said, opening one eye and snapping it shut again.

He sang the song he had heard his mother sing in the field, although he didn’t know the words or the tune. He felt that in taking it upon himself to echo her song he was also throwing a rope out to her in her armchair amid the flowers. Lucy lay very still, her head tucked into her pillow. The light was dimming. Outside the clouds were swept across the sky in drifts that shone the colour of tinned peaches.

He found his mother by the pond, curled into her chair. He led her back to the house, inch by inch, in the same way he had coaxed Lucy towards sleep. He felt he had to be very careful with her. Obediently Diana climbed the stairs and slipped between her sheets. She was still wearing her shoes and her skirt but it wouldn’t matter this once.

‘There, there, dear,’ he murmured, but there was no need. She was already fast asleep.

J
IM HAS BEEN
looking forward to his date all day. Since the initial experience with the deodorant he has avoided scent of any kind but he has washed and combed his hair. When Paula caught him checking his reflection in a car window after work, she said, ‘Going somewhere special, Jim?’ Darren gave a thumbs-up and also such a colossal wink it looked painful. They were not laughing at him, though. They made Jim feel like one of them, so he winked and gave a thumbs-up too.

‘I’m meeting Eileen,’ he said. ‘I have a present for her.’

Paula rolled her eyes but to his surprise she didn’t shout. ‘Takes all sorts,’ she said.

‘Good for you, mate,’ laughed Darren.

The crowds jostle along the pavement, making last Christmas Eve purchases. Some of the shops have already started their sales. In the window of the sweet shop, a young assistant sets up a display of Easter eggs. Jim watches her arrange them in order of size. He likes the way she
balances the smallest ones at the top, and the way she tucks five yellow fluffy chicks around the boxes. Maybe she is a little like him. Maybe he is not so strange, after all.

Eileen’s pens are safe in Jim’s jacket pocket. It was Moira who helped wrap them in Christmas paper and then tied the bundle with metallic ribbon. In a separate carrier bag, he stowed the makings of his Christmas lunch as well as extra duct tape. It would be nice not to have to carry duct tape and his Christmas lunch on a date. It would be nice to think of one thing at a time. But he sees this is another part of being normal, that you have to carry several things in your mind at once, even when they do not feel right together.

The pub is packed with Christmas Eve drinkers. Some of them have clearly been here all afternoon. They wear paper crowns and Father Christmas hats. They shout to be heard. There are flashing lights and plates of free mince pies at the bar, in silver foil cases. One of a group of men in business suits is asking if they do bottles of Côtes du Rhône and the bargirl is asking is that red or white, that’s the only sort of wine they do. Threading his way through the crowd, Jim carries a tray with two drinks, only his fingers hurt today and by the time he reaches the table the beer swims all over the tray. The carpet is spongy beneath his feet.

‘I will – I will get more,’ he says.

Eileen laughs and says bugger that. She lifts both drinks and mops the underside of the glasses. She is wearing her green winter coat but she has added a coloured glass brooch. Jim realizes there is something funny about her face and then that it is lipstick. She has also done a new thing with her hair. It is quite flat and wet around her face. Noticing the direction of his gaze, Eileen lifts her hands and presses both sides of her head. Maybe the thing she has tried to do with her hair is brush it.

Eileen asks about his plans for Christmas. In turn he shows her the
turkey supreme in his shopping bag and the ready-prepared potatoes and sprouts, as well as the microwaveable pudding for one.

‘Sounds like you have everything you need,’ she says.

He explains that he doesn’t. He has no microwave, for a start. ‘And I have never cooked a Christmas lunch before.’

This last sentence takes a long time. It is partly because he is nervous, partly because he has to shout. Overhearing him, three young women at the table directly behind Eileen turn to look. This is strange because they seem to have forgotten clothes. They are wearing underwear, or garments that would once have passed for underwear: tiny strappy tops that reveal soft white flesh and inky coils of tattoos. If anyone should be staring, it is surely Jim.

‘I actually hate Christmas,’ says Eileen. ‘Everybody has this idea you have to have a good time. Like happiness comes in a ruddy packet.’ Her face is flushed with heat.

‘One time,’ says Eileen, ‘I stayed in bed all day. That was one of my best Christmases. Another time, I went to the seaside. I got this idea Rea was there. I stayed in a B&B.’

‘That was nice,’ says Jim.

‘It wasn’t. Someone in the next room took an overdose. He had gone away to kill himself at Christmas. See what I mean? It’s crap. For loads of people it’s crap. It took me and the landlady hours to clear up.’

Jim explains this is his first Christmas in the van. He is looking forward to it, he says. Eileen shrugs and drinks, suggesting it takes all sorts. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she says. She twiddles her glass round and round on the table.

‘What have you been th-thinking?’

Hearing his stutter again, the young women share a smirk, though they have the generosity to do it behind their hands.

‘You can say no to this idea,’ says Eileen.

‘I d-don’t think anyone s-s-says n-n-no to you, Ei-ei-ei-eileen.’ The words take for ever to emerge from his mouth. It is like throwing up a selection of consonants and vowels. But Eileen does not interrupt. She watches, she waits, as if she has nothing else to do but listen to Jim, and this somehow makes the stupid words even more difficult. He can’t think why he is bothering. It isn’t even funny. However, when he gets to the end she throws back her head and laughs so hard you would think he had told her a joke, a proper one, like the nurses used to pull from the crackers at Christmas. He can see the creamy folds of Eileen’s neck. Even the young women at the table behind her are smiling.

Eileen takes a large swig of her beer. She mops her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I’m actually embarrassed,’ she says. She drags her fingers through her flattened hair and when she replaces her hands on her hips a wedge is sticking out sideways like an orange flap. ‘Fuck, this is difficult.’

The girls have noticed Eileen’s hair. They nudge one another.

‘What is difficult?’

The girls repeat what he has said. ‘W-w-w-w,’ they go, and clearly the sound of this in their mouths feels so hilarious they have to laugh.

Eileen says, ‘I’m going away.’

He tries to drink his beer but a splash of it hits his lap.

‘Are you listening?’ says Eileen. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Leaving?’ It is only as he repeats the word that he realizes what it is, what it signifies. Eileen will be an absence, not a presence. ‘W-w-w-w?’ He is so devastated, already so lonely, that he can’t get the word out, he can’t ask why. He covers his mouth to show he is all done.

‘I’ll go in the New Year. I don’t know where. I’m going – I’m going to travel again.’ Now Eileen can’t get the words out and she doesn’t even have a stammer. ‘The thing is, Jim. The thing is—Blimey, why is this so difficult? I want you to come.’

‘Me?’

‘I know I’m a handful. I know I ran you over and everything and that’s not exactly a good start. But we’ve been through stuff, Jim. We’ve both been through stuff, and the fact is we’re still standing. So why not? While we can? Why don’t we go away and give ourselves a go? We can help each other try again.’

Jim is so bewildered he has to look away to replay what she has just said. She wants to go away with him. From the bar, a businessman stares. He is with the group looking for Côtes du Rhône. Catching Jim’s eye, the man murmurs something to his friends and breaks free. He is heading straight for Jim and Eileen. He is pointing at Jim. ‘I know you,’ he is mouthing.

‘Oh,’ Eileen says, feeling the stranger’s presence. She gives a smile, a girlish small one, and it is heartbreaking to see her cowed suddenly by this businessman in his suit.

‘Hi, how are you? I’m back to see the folks for Christmas,’ says the man. He has the loud, confident voice of a Winston House boy, a college chap, a chap who has followed his father into the city. He takes no notice of Eileen. ‘But I can’t stay in the old house for more than five minutes.’

Before he can say any more, Jim staggers to his feet. He yanks his jacket from the chair, only the sleeve is caught and he has to pull it so hard the chair is thrown to the ground.

‘What’s happening?’ says Eileen. ‘Where’re you going?’

How can he start again with Eileen? What about the rituals? She says she’s a handful. She snores. She sleepwalks. But he is used to all this. He has shared dormitories for years with people who do these things. What she has no idea about is who he is. What he did in the past and all that he must continue to do to atone for that. She wants Jim’s help? She has no idea. Look at the girls watching him, waiting for him to try and voice what he feels, waiting to laugh.

He can only see Eileen’s buttons and her wild red hair. Despite the
earlier brushing, it has risen like a cloud from her shocked-white parting. He wants to tell her he loves her. ‘Goodbye,’ he says.

Eileen’s face drops and she gives a groan. She lowers her head. Even the businessman looks uncomfortable. ‘Sorry, guys. My mistake.’ He is already backing away.

Jim’s coat is not even on his shoulders, it is caught round his arms, as he pushes his way towards the door. He has to knock into customers and they shout things like, Where’s the fire? and, Watch my glass, tosser, but he doesn’t stop, he keeps pushing, past the men in party crowns and the girls dressed in underwear. It is only when he is halfway down the street that he realizes his hands are empty. He still has Eileen’s present in his pocket and he has left under the table the carrier bag with his Christmas lunch.

It is too late to go back and fetch it.

I
T WAS TOO
late to go back. The summer had acquired an energy of its own. Byron didn’t know how much longer it could continue. The heat, the long days, his mother’s guilt, Jeanie’s leg and Beverley’s visits.

Jeanie sat on her wool rug beneath the fruit trees. Her legs were straight out in front of her, the one with the caliper and the other with its ordinary white sock and sandal. She had the Sindy dolls, or at least she had their torsos in one pile and their heads in another, and she had the colouring books and pens. She had her glass of Sunquick and a biscuit as well as some healthy apple. Every time Byron passed, she was singing gently. From the house he could hear Beverley practising a new piece on her organ and he knew his mother was resting in the armchair down by the pond. It had been a difficult night. Every time he woke, he had heard her playing the gramophone downstairs. She probably hadn’t been to bed again. Lucy was inside the house. She refused to come out of her room.