Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

One day as she stood by the covered swimming pool, Jean, trudging back from the walled garden with a few sticks of rhubarb, stopped and watched her contemplating the turquoise rectangle. Had the pool been uncovered, would she try to drown herself, or was she imagining a summer day when Miranda might have been making her first splashes in the water? Steph roused herself, walked on towards the gate in the fence at the edge of the lawn, and stepped through it into the paddock. Jean turned towards the house, frowning at the bundle in her hand. Supper was going to have to be the last of the potatoes and an onion, and more rhubarb. It hardly seemed to matter; the walk to the garden and back had exhausted her so completely that she thought she might go back to bed anyway. Whilst thinking this Jean did not notice that Steph had already crossed the paddock and was now walking quite fast, making her way down the drive towards the road.

As she went further from the house, Steph wished she could stop thinking. It would have been a relief to be free of thought, free of the thousands of quarrelling and contradictory memories of the past few months: Jean’s house and how she had arrived that night, the birth of Miranda and before that, Michael and the flat, then Miranda, the awful first weeks. The miracle of waking up slowly, over several days, to the idea that her daughter would not be taken away, that she now lived in this amazing place with her, and with Michael and Michael’s mother. Even as she had been lulled by her new and gentle circumstances, there had still been space in her mind for Jace and at an unreal and distant point there had been Stacey, college, her pictures, her Nan. But as these thoughts tramped softly through her memory, now she wondered if, even as she had been learning to feel safe from that old life, she had been aware of a shade of disbelief. For how could she appear first in one life and then leave it for another, like the same small detail in two pictures- a jug, a scrap of lace, a tulip- that an artist might have arranged and painted twice on different canvases, for some sentimental reason or just through laziness or accident? In that sense she was, in a manner of speaking, simply the jug or flower or trinket that had come to someone’s hand. Perhaps it was her fault. Perhaps this happened to her because she continually consented to be picked up and placed in surroundings which might turn out to please or displease her, but over which she had no power in either case. She could even, as she had this time, grow convinced of her happiness, but her inability to change anything did not alter. She had been determined that Miranda should not be taken away, and had been shown her powerlessness over that.

As she walked, this idea too got left behind, along with other thoughts of the past. They took their leave tightly, like tentative visitors who had come just to remind her that once they might have been important but would not be staying. She walked on in some expectation that now something else would have to happen to her. New things would have to come along; the things, whatever they were, that were to be important next, the things she was to be placed among, in whose canvas she was to occupy a space. She opened her mind, inviting new thoughts to come and fill it. She walked, but none came.

She was wearing trousers and boots and began to notice that both were too big, while the white shirt (whose, for God’s sake?) was a little tight over her chest. Her clothes had an indoor, bready smell, or was that the smell of her milk? And the clothes felt no more hers than any of the sensations they created, the trouser stitching chafing a little on her hipbones, the pressing of the shirt over her breasts, but suddenly nor did they, or she, seem to belong to anything she could remember of the past three months. She liked the feeling of neutrality. She carried on walking.

It may have been just the sound of passing traffic as she got nearer, but at some point it seemed to Steph that the long drive had, invisibly, begun to belong more to the road that ran past it than to Walden Manor, with its stone arms outstretched more than half a mile behind. Nothing as simple as curiosity turned her in the direction of the village, but when she took the turning that led to it after another twenty minutes’ walk along the edge of the noisy road, she found herself slowing down to look at it properly.

Most of the houses were old and the stone built ones along the curving main street were joined together. Many of them were double-fronted and had steps leading up to their doors. Some had window boxes, others had Bed & Breakfast signs in their windows. Trees were planted at intervals along the pavement. Most of the traffic ripped past along the top road that Steph had turned off, leaving the village quiet. In the middle, the street opened out round a small triangle of grass surrounded by railings and beds of flowering plants, where a stone monument stood, its steps and inscription worn away. On one side of the triangle was an empty bus shelter, across the road on another side was a peeling, semi-detached house with a sign saying ‘Vicarage’. The church sat behind, down a road that led off at the side. Next to the vicarage, well set back, stood a grander, older house, the only one with a drive and a front garden full of trees. The slate sign on the wall read ‘The Old Rectory’. Next to that stood two empty cottages, a shut-up garage, a modern, bright-green painted shop with orange star-shaped notices on its wide flat windows, a litter bin and a sign announcing that lottery tickets were On Sale Here. It was all very pretty, of course, Steph could see that, but empty and pointless unless you lived there. Perhaps even if you did, she thought, as a familiar feeling stirred in her. She wanted chocolate, suddenly, or crisps. Anything, and she had no money.

At the ting of the bell, Steph stepped into the shop and was surrounded by the smells of cheese, wrapped cake, newspapers and ageing vegetables. There was silence but for the dismal buzzing of strip lighting and refrigerators, and the almost audible expectation that she should buy something. From behind the counter a man with big yellow hands was stabbing at buttons on a calculator that sat on an open ledger. He nodded at her over his glasses without smiling. Steph raised one corner of her mouth and turned her back, browsing a rack of biscuits, fly sprays and birthday cards. The man looked down again, and Steph sidled along past shampoo and tins of soup. She couldn’t take crisps without making a noise, the biscuit packets were too big, and the sweets were on display right under the man’s nose. There was a tall, freestanding row of shelves that divided the shop in two, but there was also a round mirror high on one wall that gave the man a view of whoever was behind it. The stuff on the shelves round the back was only light bulbs, soap powder and tin foil, anyway. Unless somebody else came and distracted him, she had no chance. She turned and looked through the door on to the triangle of green grass, willing someone to come in with a long shopping list.

‘You looking for a tent or a lawnmower, you’re in luck,’ the man said, distantly. ‘Four new ones in yesterday.’ Steph turned and smiled cautiously, wondering what he meant.

‘Small ads, four new ones. Good price, the tent. Only got used once, bloke said. Selling it after one go, the wife didn’t like camping, apparently. He’s giving it away at that price, just wants rid of it.’ The man was motioning now towards the door, and Steph saw that he was pointing at a cluster of handwritten postcards pasted over the top half of it. She turned back and looked at them, pretending to be interested. She couldn’t have cared less about a tent or a lawnmower, but if she spent a minute or two reading the ads, something might happen. His phone might ring. He might even go through to the back or something.