Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

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!’

And Steph did, because Jace’s voice was at a dangerous pitch and a whack might follow, even though he was driving. Jace stubbed out his cigarette. He had won that round easily and planned to win the next by changing the subject. ‘I’m out of fucking fags.’

Steph sniffed and blew her nose. ‘You shouldn’t smoke in front of me, it’s bad for the baby. And I’m not giving this one up, we’re keeping it. You said we’d keep it. You said.’

Jace turned off the music. The sudden silence rang round the car. He said, ‘Yeah, well, that was a bloody while ago.’

Steph pulled down her T-shirt again and squirmed as the baby trapped under the too-tight seatbelt wriggled and kicked.

He should not have done it. Michael was perching on the edge of the driver’s seat as lightly as he dared to while driving, as if in some way this would make him less of a load for the afflicted van. He leaned forward, trying to squeeze a little more speed out of it, but actually speed was out of the question. Keeping going, even at twenty miles an hour, was as much as he hoped for now. He should not have done it.

Maybe it was because of the latest bad time he had just gone through, maybe he had not been thinking straight, but he just had not been ready. In fact, it had been mad to go and do a job like this, the first time he had been out of the flat in weeks, and without thinking about the state of the van, without its even crossing his mind that the vicar would see it and might remember it. In fact he might even have got the number if he had been quick. Michael was not sure. He had been too petrified getting the van started to dare look up the churchyard path to see if the vicar was coming after him. If he had been, Michael thought he would have died of fright, or worse, got out of the van and done something silly to him. Without defining to himself quite what might have lain on the other side, he knew that doing something silly to the vicar would have constituted the irreversible crossing of some line. It was not that he had decided not to cross it, it was just that he had not dared look up the churchyard path. And then the van had started.

He should not have done it. As he chugged hopelessly along, Michael’s mind raced and churned with self-reproach. That bloody sprint down the path with the stuff bumping up and down in the backpack, that too had been mad. Not classy, like he took a pride in being. The smart, the classy bit was the impersonation, the getting-to-know-you thing, then lifting the stuff carefully, perhaps coming back later for it, not grabbing it then and there like some cheap little shoplifter. Later, when nobody was likely to be around, when it wouldn’t have mattered even if anybody was because he would be just that visiting curate, popping back again. That was classy, if not easy, so why had he been so stupid? Grabbing and running off with the alabaster effigies had been bad enough, but with the van in this state! There was another terminal-sounding cough from under the bonnet and Michael held his breath. He was so tense that his head pounded, and although he was staring through the windscreen he was not giving enough attention to the road. A white car swung angrily past him and cut in front with a blast of its horn. It must have been sitting on his tail for miles. The bloody van! On the way here he had been so busy feeling like Jeff Stevenson coping with a dodgy alternator or gearbox or whatever that he had not stopped to think about the van’s next journey; it fell a little short of Criminal Mastermind standard for the getaway vehicle to be on its last legs. He was sweating now, and still barely seven miles from the bloody church. If that vicar had decided to get in his car and come looking for him, Michael could be in trouble. He tried to weigh up calmly the chances of the vicar taking such direct action against the more conventional ringing for the police and waiting at the church for their arrival. But all his practical calculations were fading in importance. The more comforting thought of going to bed and staying there (should he ever reach home) was tugging at him, a wanton and persistent desire for oblivion that Michael dreaded, but which his mind was now embracing like an old, disgraceful, but already forgiven friend.

He fought the desire, and two thoughts surfaced. The first was that the van would never make it back to Bath, and the second was that it would be safer to get it off the road than to have it break down, in full view of any passing vicars, at the side of the road. Michael roused himself, and a couple of miles farther on steered the van into the forecourt of a petrol station and garage. He drove in under the canopied petrol pumps, past ranks of second-hand cars for sale, and parked at the far end next to some sheds, where a couple of lads in boiler suits were working on cars. Just in time, Michael remembered who he was for the purposes of getting the van fixed, and bounced out of the driver’s seat with an attempt at Jeff Stevenson’s smile on his face.

He was not sure that the young man in overalls with the strange curtain haircut really understood what a curate was, not even after he had explained it to him, and pleaded that he had to get the van back on the road at once because he had ‘things to deliver to some elderly people’. (It was not much of a story but there was no time to embellish.) What the curtain-haired mechanic did know, and was telling Michael, was that no way could they sort it today.

‘No, way, booked solid with MOTs and Terry’s behind anyway,’ he said, motioning with his head towards a pair of legs poking out from under a car. ‘Booked up solid. We don’t do emergencies. You’d be better getting it home and sorting it there, mate,’ he added.

Michael smiled at the bad news, as he imagined a curate would, and could not help feeling mildly scandalised at such a lack of respect for the clergy. He wished he were wearing a dog collar. Over the youth’s shoulder he watched a pregnant woman get out of a car that had just parked on the forecourt. She stood by the open passenger door and followed with her eyes as her husband, or boyfriend more like, slammed the driver’s door and stalked off to the garage shop. She looked uncomfortable, unhappy in her clothes and slightly ashamed, and Michael, only half listening to the mechanic, understood with a stab of recognition that she felt these things whether she was pregnant or not. He must have been staring, for she seemed to have caught his eye and now, to his horror, she was waddling over to him. He turned his attention back to the mechanic.

‘Number’s in the shop if you wanna call them,’ the mechanic said, turning to go. He added over his shoulder, grinning, ‘They’ll sort it for you, but they’ll charge.’ He called underneath the car where the feet were squirming. ‘Terry! They still charging eighty-five for call-out, Corsham Breakdown? You know, whatsisname, that Steve at Corsham Breakdown. Still charges eighty-five, does he?’

The legs shifted again and a muffled voice replied, ‘Oh yeah, think so. Eighty-five, mileage on top. Cash.’

‘Yeah, well, there you go,’ said curtain-hair, with the slightest and first edge of sympathy in his voice. ‘Number’s in the shop, there’s a payphone if you ain’t got a mobile.’ Michael nodded his thanks, calculating. It would cost at least a hundred in the end just to get towed back to Bath, never mind the cost of getting the van fixed. He could just hitch a lift home and forget all about the van, just leave it to rust here. But he could hardly remove the licence plates in full view of the mechanics, and the registration number would lead them straight to him. Also it was an offence to abandon a vehicle and he was in enough trouble anyway.