Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

It was all very difficult for a time. As I said, there was a patch when I could not be sure how many days passed. And it hardly mattered except that our supplies, which were low, dwindled to nothing without anyone noticing. Or it’s possible we noticed but just could not consider it important. So by the time Michael took matters in hand it was serious. The only thing we had plenty of was wine (although even the cellar was looking rather emptier than at the beginning). That, and unhappiness. Unhappiness was everywhere in layers, layers all the same colour folded and unfolded over and around us; we carried wads of it everywhere, we left it in every room and then it came flapping after us. I neglected the housework, I will admit, and so after a while I thought I could actually see it, this unhappiness everywhere- it had come to look the same as the coating of dust that flattened all the surfaces.

But things did get better, starting with some very practical developments. I date it from the day after the one when Steph had not been home for lunch and Michael and I, saying nothing, had sat over bowls of some awful stuff we were trying to call soup. Michael’s silence was kind, as is everything about Michael, and afterwards he shooed me off upstairs for a lie-down. The next morning I decided I would stay in bed. Michael brought me up a cup of tea and said he’d be back later and not to worry. What I did not find out until later that day was that he and Steph had both gone out. If I had known, I wonder if I would have worried (even worrying was beginning to require more energy than I could find). How that day passed I still do not know. I had gone beyond being hungry so it wasn’t that, though at the back of my mind I was aware that this was the fifth or possibly the sixth day when there literally was not enough to go round. We had got to the stage of eating rhubarb from the garden, without sugar because there wasn’t any, and there’s a limit to how much of that a stomach will stand. We had all but finished the potatoes, and there was scarcely another thing except for a tin of anchovies and some dried chestnuts, nor any money to buy anything until my next salary was paid. Steph and Michael for a time had been as unable to care about this as I was, but they kept turning the study upside down looking for a way out of our problem. Michael in particular got to know all about the investments and so on but there was no way of getting ready cash. So nothing more came of that, except that Michael and Steph fell out. That was to do with hunger, I’m sure.

Anyway, it crossed my mind that day that perhaps if I kept upstairs in bed and out of the way, Michael and Steph would not feel bad about dividing what there was between the two of them. I felt that perhaps I was the problem. I was dragging them down with me. I was an old woman and the time had come to relinquish my hold. A bleak idea on the face of it, but I swear that just the thought of their survival filled me with joy, even then. I was hopeful, even as I lay there (as I thought dying) that with me out of the way they would find some way to manage. After all, they had done well over getting the oil; that had gone without a hitch and Michael had even managed to relight the Aga without any trouble. My mind wandered in and out of all the things we’d done and said we would do, until I was a little confused between what had really happened here and what had not.

So by the time it came to afternoon on this day, I’d dropped off to sleep again and was dreaming about food. Surprisingly, not so much the taste of it in my mouth as the sight of it being prepared, and the smells, the savoury air of a good kitchen. The relish of those sensations is not just the prospect of eating but also the homeliness of a prosperous, well-ordered house and somebody generous-spirited at the stove. It makes me happy again to think of it. So in this dream I could see and smell food, and it’s not true that a starving man dreams of a feast. What I could smell was toast. Plain, simple, lovely toast. And then I realised I was awake and Michael was at the foot of my bed. My first thought was oh, my goodness, has the day gone by already, and here’s me still in bed and I haven’t managed to do a thing.

So there he was, Michael, and he was holding a tray with a pot of tea, some toast and scrambled eggs, which he knew I was very fond of, and some black grapes, and chocolates. Actually, very expensive chocolates. And from his face I could tell there was nothing to worry about. He’d got hold of money from somewhere, he said, plenty to keep us going. He sat on the chair over by the window while I ate (I’m afraid I did bolt it all down, rather). He said nothing, just looked out across the courtyard and down the drive, and refused to taste the grapes.

I’m not stupid. I was still eating when I said, what did you sell to buy all this? Must be quite a bit, I said, and just to show him I wasn’t cross with him, or even in the least upset, I smiled. So then he told me about the books and fans and bits of china and all of it, and he was surprised at how little I cared. I was surprised myself. All I said was that they were only things, not even in perfect condition. I was thinking to myself that I could always doctor the inventory if the need arose (which I didn’t anticipate) until I remembered that I’d burned the inventory months ago. So there wasn’t even that to worry about. Then he looked out of the window again and said he could see Steph coming, and he would walk down the drive to meet her. Now that did surprise me, because I didn’t know she had gone out, and I said so. Michael just gave me a look and said no, he would explain, and everything would work out. I wasn’t sure he meant it. But already I felt much better so I got up and went downstairs.

That day, looking out of Jean’s bedroom window while she ate, Michael watched Steph in the distance bending into the wind on her way up the drive, just as she had done the day before. Once again he felt that she was escaping danger by a hair’s breadth; by the merest chance she was being delivered back to him rather than borne away and destroyed. She was oblivious, of course, like a sleepwalker gliding across a motorway. He watched her with growing anger, feeling that he had been dangerously inattentive. How could he have allowed her to go off like that in the first place? If she had no sense of danger, then clearly it was up to him to have it for her, and he should have been more insistent. He had almost forgotten that when he had told her that morning about the risks she was taking she had seemed not so much to disagree with what he was saying as simply not to be hearing him at all.

They had sat at the kitchen table over mugs of tea and all the time that he was talking, she had appeared to be waiting. And then, without the least hostility, she had patiently drained her mug and declared that she must be off, just as if he had never opened his mouth. Michael had set about adding water to the teapot to get another cup out of it for Jean, feeling so angry and miserable that his hands shook. He had calmed himself down so that he could take Jean her tea without her seeing the state he was in, but he need not have worried. She had been so dopey- just sleepy, Michael tried to tell himself- that she would not have noticed anyway. Back downstairs again he realised that he would have to get a grip on himself if he were to accomplish the tasks he had set himself for the day. He had no choice but to concentrate on those. It was not possible to deal with so many dangers all together; selling the stuff that he had already put in the van, getting cash and buying food were as much as he could cope with. In fact, an agenda of such complexity and risk was beginning to fill him with the kind of depression that in the old days would have immobilised him for a week. Because it was risky: driving the untaxed, uninsured, un-MOT’d van into Bath, selling to Mr David, shopping openly with a large sum of cash. Any one or all of them could go wrong. If something did, if the van were spotted, if Mr David (always of uncertain temper and sometimes malicious) screwed him over, then Michael’s entire new life would fold in upon itself and disappear.