Snow Garden (3 page)

The children brought home paper angels and pictures like stained-glass windows that fluttered from the mantelpiece every time she banged the front door. They sang from their bedroom about Good King Winsylass and We Three Kings of Ori ’n’ Tar. Luke said he would like a go-kart for Christmas. Coco said she wanted to give a goat for charity. Only she wanted to keep the goat in their back garden. ‘But the poor people who need the goat live in Africa,’ said Binny. ‘That is racist, actually,’ said Coco. ‘There are some very poor people who live down the road.’ Overwhelmed, Binny bought nothing.

And every evening it was the same question: ‘Where’s Oliver?’

‘He’s gone away for a while, Coco.’

‘I’ll wait up.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

The little girl pursed her neat mouth. ‘I think I will, though.’

So Binny did not buy a Christmas tree or get out the box of decorations from the loft or fill the kitchen with mince pies and jars of pickle. It was all so futile. But she’d catch her daughter at the window, waiting for the person Binny knew she couldn’t make appear, and she was overcome. It was worse than hoping for Father Christmas. She’d kick the washing. Slam the doors. Rail at the mass of winter sky, flat and grey as a Tupperware lid. But nothing, nothing eased her fury.

Last night she’d finally given in. When the children were in bed, she had watched a programme showing the hundred funniest moments in television – she’d laughed at not one of them – and drunk a bottle of red wine. After that she had phoned Oliver. Why shouldn’t she? She didn’t even know what she was planning to say. And when he didn’t answer, as she knew all along he wouldn’t, she tried again and then again. Now that she had started this thing that she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place, she couldn’t stop. She tried maybe a hundred times in all. And every time he failed to answer she felt increasingly diminished and increasingly betrayed.

‘
I am not here
,’ his voicemail message told her, over and over. ‘
I am not here. I am not here.
’

Knowing Oliver, he’d probably lost his phone. It was most likely in a bar somewhere or slipped between the cushions of a sofa. And then a new thought had come to her; a real thorn. What if the mobile was not lost? What if he and Sally were lying in bed, clinging to one another like beautiful weeds,
choosing
not to answer? In Binny’s mind the couple sent her a closed-off smile.

How
dare
Oliver find peace when she had none? How dare he replace her and be so easily, so stupidly happy? Did her love mean
nothing
? She hurled the empty wine bottle at the kitchen wall. To her surprise, it did not break. It bounced off the fridge into a pile of dirty washing and returned dog-like to her feet. And because the bottle would not smash, she grabbed her mother’s best Royal Doulton plates from the dresser and shot them at the floor. One by one.

They broke. Oh yes. They splintered into a thousand blue ceramic pins. And then she bent over the pieces, the only thing she had left of her parents, and her face yawned into one gigantic noiseless scream.

‘Mum,’ Coco said in the morning, on discovering the wreckage, ‘I think we had better buy breakfast in the garage shop today.’ She closed the kitchen door as if it were better Binny did not see.

It was too much. All too much. But
I will not cry
. Emotion washed up and over Binny, and still she would not surrender to it. While the children were finding their song sheets, she swept the splinters of china into her hands and squeezed until they spiked her skin. Then she shoved her feet into trainers – Luke’s actually – and slammed her front door so hard that the pane of glass tinkled.

‘Bollocks,’ she told it.

The children skipped ahead, counting Christmas trees in windows. ‘
Away in a manger
,’ sang Coco, ‘
no crib for a bed.
’ And Luke sang, ‘
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet legs
.’

But now it is past ten o’clock on a mild and damp morning and Oliver will have finished his porridge. Her children are rehearsing a Winter Celebration about Larry the Lizard and Buzz Lightyear while Binny stands alone in the middle of a shop that stocks nothing but cleaning products. How could this place be less appropriate? Deep inside her, something is stretching and expanding and she has to clench her jaw to keep a grip.

‘So can I help you?’ asks the young woman. This could be the third time she’s asked the question, but if it is she doesn’t raise her voice or speak with any sign of impatience.

‘I probably need a dustpan and brush, to start with. For my kitchen floor.’

‘Are we talking wood or marble?’

‘We’re talking crappy lino. Does it really make a difference?’

‘It affects the brush.’

The assistant fetches a ladder and reaches for a chrome dustpan. She pulls out several brushes and examines them, running her fingers through the bristles. ‘This is the one,’ she says. When she returns from her ladder she is smiling.
How easy it is to be you
, thinks Binny.

‘You don’t like cleaning, do you?’ says the young woman.

‘I find it hard to waste my time on something that is just going to get dirty again. If it’s any consolation, it’s the same with the ironing.’

‘Domestic chores can be therapeutic.’

‘So can red wine,’ says Binny.

To her surprise, the young woman laughs. ‘It’s small things that make a difference. Something that you know you can do if you take the time. It’s important to have those things. If I was a painter I would paint, but I am not a painter and so I don’t. Cleaning is what I like. I take a piece of silver. I apply the polish with a duster and I wipe it all over. Then I take a fresh duster – nice and clean – and I rub carefully. Ages, I can do that. Tears will be running down my face, and I’ll keep polishing till it’s over. It always works.’

The young woman looks directly at Binny. Tears running down her smooth, pale face? It’s hard to believe. Nevertheless there is something in her eyes, something shiny, like Coco when she has hidden a coin behind her back. Suddenly she doesn’t look so young any more and neither does she look tidy in that hygienic sort of way. She asks, ‘What happened to your hands?’

‘Oh.’ Binny steals a guilty glance at the tiny cuts. ‘I had an accident.’ She expects the young woman to move away, but she doesn’t; if anything the young woman looks even more carefully, as if she recognizes hands like these.

‘Maybe you would like me to show you? How to polish?’

‘Me?’

‘Why not?’

Without waiting for an answer, the young woman walks to the cash till, bends to retrieve something from beneath the counter and produces a shoebox. She sets it on the counter beside the Christmas angel with her tinsel wings. For a moment she gazes at the box with her hands suspended in the space above it, as if it contains hallowed treasure. Then she takes off the cardboard lid and places it beside the box.

Inside there is one folded duster and another duster wrapped around something small, along with a pot of cream. She removes the pot, the folded duster and the one in a bundle. She places them just-so on the counter. She unscrews the lid from the pot and shows Binny the white cream inside. Binny gets the lemon smell again. Slowly and carefully, the young woman unwraps the bundle and reveals a small, silver christening cup.

‘Life is hard sometimes,’ she says, lifting the cup from its duster wrapping. ‘And that’s a fact.’ She balances it between the tips of her thumb and forefinger and lifts it to the light. Transfixed, she stares at the cup, and so does Binny. It is about the size of Coco’s fist and the handle is the slimmest crescent moon, so delicate an adult finger will not fit inside. Below the rim there is an illegible inscription in a swirling font. At its centre the cup bears a gleaming reflection of both Binny’s face and the young woman’s.

With her right hand, the young woman rolls the duster into a cigar shape and dips the end into the cream. She rubs it all over the cup’s surface until it is smeared white. Clearly she’s done this many times before. Her tongue tip rests on the corner of her mouth as, without looking, she flaps open her second duster and begins to polish. It is beautiful the way she does it, so carefully and in such tiny perfect circles.

‘Five years ago I lost my baby,’ says the young woman. ‘He was stillborn. He was so little I had to bury him in doll’s clothes. They were pink and I wanted them to be blue so I cried. But when he was dressed I didn’t care about the pink any more.’

‘I am so sorry,’ murmurs Binny. ‘It was Christmas. Everyone was happy. I felt like I didn’t belong.’ She continues to wipe and wipe.

Binny has a feeling like a bubble in her stomach and she doesn’t know why but it rises up, up, up. Without warning, something warm slants down the side of Binny’s nose towards her mouth. It tastes of salt. She knocks it with the heel of her hand, but here come more. Tears. It’s the grace of this young woman that unpicks her, the way she keeps wiping. With her tears come images from the past, images of people Binny has loved and lost. Her parents, Oliver, boyfriends, her ex-husband, old friends, Alice with her rose-oil smell, even people she passes every day on the street and does not know. So many lives somehow tangled with hers, gone now, or going. So much love, so much energy, and for what? It all seems to smell of lemon.

Fresh tears well from Binny’s eyes and swamp her cheeks, her chin, her hair. It is so big, this feeling, it is hard to believe she is alone with it. Are there moments when those people we remember are plunged simultaneously and without warning into the same ocean of memory? Is it possible that Oliver, for instance, is at this very moment recalling the curve of Binny’s thigh and picking up his guitar and singing from a high-up window while the Christmas lights blink over a housing estate? She cries and stops and wipes her eyes, and then she cries some more.

‘Would you like a tissue?’ The young woman magics one from her pocket.

Binny blows her nose with a honk. ‘This is not something I do. I can take anything. I mean, look at me. I’m a rock. I
never
cry.’

‘You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. Do you want a go?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You can if you like.’ The young woman offers the tiny silver cup and the yellow duster. ‘Try not to touch the surface. Then you won’t get finger marks and smudges. You want to do it properly.’

Binny wipes her hands carefully on her coat. She receives the small, cold christening cup like a gift in the cradle of her palm, her whole body tensed. It touches the cuts on her hands, but it is so light they do not hurt. If anything, it soothes them.

‘That’s it,’ says the young woman. She tucks the duster into Binny’s right hand and guides it, as if Binny is blind, to the pot of cream. ‘Gently now,’ she says.

Binny scoops up a tiny spot of polish. She dabs it over the cup. She takes the second cloth, the polishing one, and she rubs with tiny circular movements all over, up and down, left and right, just as the young woman showed her. She thinks of nothing except the silver cup, how it was covered in white and how, as she polishes, the silver returns. She balances it between her fingertips, holding only the base and the rim. She mustn’t smudge.

‘You have to accept it, don’t you?’ says the young woman. ‘He’s gone.’

Binny continues to wipe the duster in the smallest concentric circles. Briefly she closes her eyes and breathes in the lemon smell.

A memory comes back. It is so clear, she sees it. It is herself as a girl. It is Bronnley soap on a rope. Of course. Sherbet-yellow and shaped like a small, dimpled balloon. She is pulling it out of her stocking, tugging off the paper, and everything, everything smells of lemon, even the satsuma and walnut hidden at the bottom. The whole of Christmas will smell of it. ‘What do you have, darling?’ Her parents laugh as if they have never seen such a thing as soap on a rope. It is that simple. And every year it is the same. The soap, the smell.

When she opens her eyes, the young woman is watching. Binny holds the cup very still.

‘I am sorry you lost your baby,’ she says.

‘It’s nice to talk about him. People don’t want to see me upset so they don’t mention him.’

‘Did he have a name?’

‘I called him Gabriel.’ She points to the engraved writing. ‘Because of the time of year.’

‘You must hate Christmas.’

‘No. I like it.’

Binny pokes a corner of the first duster into the pot of cream, just as the young woman showed her, and rubs again. She takes the second duster and begins to polish.

‘My partner left me,’ she says at last.

Her words echo in the silence. The young woman nods. And because she does not reply, because she does not fight Binny’s words, because she does not soften or dilute them with a sentence of her own, they fall for the first time. They land. Binny feels their weight, her loss, but the world does not stop or shudder. Yes, she is still standing. She is still breathing.

And so Binny dares to think of those other people she has lost. No matter how much she rails, some of them are gone for ever. The young woman is right. Some things we can have only briefly. So why, then, do we behave as if everything we have connected with, everything we have blessed with our loving, should be ours for keeps? It is enough to have tiptoed to that space which is beyond the skin, beyond our nerve endings, and to have glimpsed that which beforehand we could not even imagine.

‘I don’t promise cleaning is the answer to everything.’ Saying this makes the young woman laugh. ‘You could try something else. Chop wood. Or make soup. Sometimes you just need to do something ordinary. Something you don’t need to think about, you just do. And there are times, too, when it’s nice to show someone what you’ve done. When it’s nice to hear them say,
Yes, that’s very good. I like that
.’

How has she become so wise, this unassuming young woman?

So Binny will make a start on the kitchen. She will get a tree for the children to hang with their homemade decorations. She will buy cards and write messages. It’s still a few days until Christmas; it’s not too late. She will find little gifts, rubbish really – soap on a roap, a satsuma, to wrap and stuff in those woollen slipper socks hanging on the mantelpiece. She will join the ritual of acknowledging what she has loved, either with an email or a sparkling snow scene. She will remind the people who are left that they mean something to her, even after all these years, even after all this separation. This is what her Christmas will be.