Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

‘An invasion? I mean, Jean, she- How many are there, here, I mean?’

Michael turned and walked backwards without slowing down, as he called back to her, now several yards behind, ‘Oh, just the three! My missus, and Charlie, that’s the son and heir, five months. But we’ll be gone in another week. I say, you’re not wearing the right shoes for the country, are you? Poor you!’

He stopped and waited with his hands on his hips, grinning. ‘Course, we wouldn’t have been stuck in the first place without a roof over our heads but God, decorators! They’re on another planet, aren’t they? Three weeks behind already. Here we are!’ He was steering Shelley through the back door into the kitchen. ‘Gosh, you do look hot!’ he beamed.

Jean silently filled the kettle, watching Shelley out of the corner of her eye. Michael was right. Shelley’s suit was made of something that sparkled very slightly in the sun and was of a light sage green colour. Two thick slices of dark green, like watermelon skins, grinned beneath her armpits. With a tinkle of her bracelet she lifted one hand to move her frizzy hair, which today was sticking to her scalp like clumps of damp wire. Her round face had started to ooze like a carelessly kept cheese. Jean disliked Shelley enough to feel a sharp and unworthy pleasure that she looked such a mess. In fact, it was more than that, Jean realised, with a slight shock, as she set about making tea. Her pleasure stemmed not just from Shelley’s wrecked appearance but from watching her in the role of underdog. Michael had taken up his customary place with his back to the Aga, where he stood with his hands on the rail.

‘Do sit down, Kell- er… Shelley,’ he said graciously, gesturing to a chair.

Shelley sat down, confused. She had stepped out of her car very clear about who was in charge. Of course the owner could invite whomsoever he pleased to use his house in his absence, but the balance was upset. He was under no obligation to do so, but Mr Standish-Cave had not had the courtesy to inform Town and Country that his cousin and family would be appearing out of the blue, and Shelley felt undermined. ‘She’s doing an awfully good job, you know.’ That was plain cheeky. It was her place, not his (cousin or not), to comment on how well Jean was fulfilling her duties. This cousin was behaving almost as if he owned the place, and while everyone seemed quite clear that he did not, he had been invited to treat it as if he did, and by the owner. Did that amount to much the same thing? It was confusing.

Shelley looked up at him, his lanky, relaxed body towering above her, and an affable, head-of-household grin on his face. He was being friendly, of course, but she knew that sort of friendliness. He was as status-conscious as she was, friendly only for as long as it cost him no effort. They both knew that at any moment he could decide that it no longer amused him to be charming to her, and could switch the tone of their exchanges to one as if between employer and employee. And Management Visit or not, employees cannot insist on making tours of their employers’ premises. Shelley tightened her mouth and breathed noisily through her nose. Jean was no help. True to character, she was flitting about in the background setting out cups and saucers with that sly smile of hers. Jean was either slow and superior in an unassuming way, or unassuming in a slow and superior way; Shelley had never quite decided which. But now that she looked at her properly, she could see that Jean had changed. Shelley reached into her bag for her inhaler and took several puffs.

Jean said, ‘So, these spot checks you’re doing. They’re a new thing, are they?’

‘Management Visits,’ Shelley corrected her. ‘You’ve grown your hair, haven’t you? I knew there was something different about you.’

As she expected it to, this caused Jean a little embarrassment. She was the sort of tight old spinster who would always prefer not to have any attention drawn to herself, least of all if it concerned her appearance, and Shelley was the sort of person who made a point of ignoring such outdated and inexplicable preferences. Nonetheless there was something different about Jean. ‘Or is it your dress? Nice to have a change from separates. It’s not Marks, is it? Very unusual colour. I’ve never had you down as a yellow person.’

‘It’s not yellow,’ Jean said, weak with offence, ‘it’s old gold.’ She lifted a hand to her throat. ‘l don’t wear it very often, only in this weather…’

Just then Michael lunged forward from his station in front of the Aga. With a terrifying cry of ’Haaaaaa!’ he dived towards them and banged his hand down hard on the table, just inches from Shelley’s elbow. The table shuddered. Shelley’s hands flew up to her face and for a moment both women stared at him, wide-eyed and speechless.

‘Gosh, close thing. That,’ he said cheerfully, ‘was an earwig. Making a beeline for your sleeve, Shelley. Lucky I saw it!’ He dusted his hands together and returned to the Aga rail.

‘I gather they can give quite a nasty nip,’ said Jean, smooth and smiling now. Clever Michael. She poured out three cups of tea and pushed one across the table to Shelley. ‘It must have been hiding in the roses.’

‘I hate the fuckers, don’t you?’ Michael asked, conversationally.

‘Ugh. Yuck, ’ Shelley said, in Jean’s direction. She realised that she could not openly complain about being ‘subjected’ to ‘language’, and was pretending instead not to have heard him. She took a sip of her tea, noting with dismay that it was Earl Grey, and looked with suspicion at the jug of roses on the table. They were already overblown and Michael’s sudden mad attack had caused several of the heavy-headed flowers to moult even more petals onto the table. The drooping, denuded remains in the jug were now surrounded by a moat of curling, pink and yellow velvet discs.

‘That’s the trouble with garden flowers. You end up bringing in all sorts,’ she asserted.

‘Jean does all the flowers,’ Michael said. ‘Don’t you, Jean? Jean, is there any of your cinnamon and honey cake left? She makes the most marvellous cinnamon and honey cake, you know.’

‘Oh, really? Not for me,’ Shelley said, ‘thank you very much.’ She gave a professional cough, signalling that she was ready to start ignoring Michael. Quite where she stood in relation to him she could not work out, but she was a busy woman with a job to do and she would not be deflected from it any longer. She cleared her throat again, and reached down for her briefcase.

‘Jean, there’s a short questionnaire I’m required to go through with you, it won’t take long. This is your opportunity to voice any issues or concerns.’

‘Issues and concerns? Wouldn’t I just have told you if I’d had any?’ Jean asked mildly. ‘Issues and concerns?’ She repeated the words with suspicion. ‘I haven’t got any, anyway. Everything’s going fine.’

‘I’ll say!’ Michael chimed in. He had found the tin with Jean’s cake in it and cut off a large lump. ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’ he offered Shelley, lifting up his fistful of cake and pointing to it with the other hand.

Shelley smiled and shook her head. Because she had scoffed a Kit Kat in the car this morning, she had skipped lunch and was now starving, but she always felt it looked better to refuse anything offered between meals. Looking back at Jean, she said, ‘But it can be useful, can’t it, to identify issues and concerns in the first place? That’s good management practice, pure and simple.’

She had arranged a stapled sheaf of papers in front of her. Next to that she placed her mobile telephone and personal organiser. She now popped the top off a pen.