Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

Shelley said quickly, ‘Oh, perhaps I ought to come with you, normally I would, you see, on a normal Management Visit, if there was just the house sitter in residence. If you don’t mind, I could just go round-’

‘Oh, don’t ! We’d die of embarrassment, wouldn’t we?’ Michael almost shouted. ‘If we’d known you were coming, of course it would be different. We wouldn’t have dreamt of letting you see what utter piggies we are, we’d have had a proper tidy round. I’m sure you understand. But with babies, well, they do rather take over, it’s a bit messy. But I’d hate you to see.’

‘Oh, well, of course I wouldn’t like to intrude, but-’

‘And anyway you know Jean’s marvellous, don’t you. She keeps us in order, doesn’t let us get away with too much. Eh, Jean?’ He almost leered at her before turning back to Shelley. ‘Come with me and see the pool,’ he commanded, in a new onslaught of friendliness. ‘For a bit of fresh air, before you’re all cooped up in the car. Haven’t got a cozzie with you by any chance- no, too bad! Still, you could always have a paddle!’

Shelley was torn; reluctant to follow the striding Michael outside and God knew where, in the wrong shoes, but pleased to have a reason to get away from the spectacle of Charlie feeding. ‘Oh, well, I suppose. Just for a minute, then,’ she said, with a careful smile. Michael was already at the door.

Fifteen minutes later they all trooped out to see her off, Charlie now latched to Steph’s other breast, Michael once again wearing his straw hat at a silly angle. Jean was careful to stand a way off from them, and lifted a hand once at the departing car with a courteous but disinterested wave. They watched until after the car had gone from sight, and stayed listening until long after the noise of the engine had died in the evening air. The returning silence seemed newly their own after Shelley’s cooing baby voices, her noisy breathing and her Yankee Doodle Dandy telephone.

‘Party time,’ Michael said, under his breath.

Well, we did go a bit daft after that, I will admit. It was late for Steph to be taking Charlie home, so Michael drove them down to the edge of the village and Steph walked him in the pushchair from there. She wanted to arrive on foot, thinking that Sally might already be home (she wasn’t). She knew she would go berserk if she saw them and found out that Charlie had been travelling in her arms in the front of the van, not in a proper car seat, and of course on top of that Sally knew nothing of Michael’s existence. Do you begin to see the trouble we took to keep everybody happy?

It happened to be Steph’s payday, and when she met up with Michael again they went off to Corsham and bought a Chinese takeaway. They had decided between them, the sweethearts, that I had had too demanding a day to cook that night! In fact they bought so much food that the man taking the order threw in free Cokes and prawn crackers, a calendar and a bottle of soy sauce. It felt like a sort of approval. They came back giggling. Then Michael said the occasion called for something special and got four bottles of champagne up from the cellar. I don’t have a good memory for the names of wines, because we tried so many. But Steph stuck a candle in one of the empties from that night and it’s been on the table ever since, so I know that it was a 1988 Krug, which Michael would insist is marvellous. It wasn’t the ideal thing with sweet and sour though, and I think it was the combination of the two, plus the release of all the tension, that caused me to be ill so suddenly that evening. I would like it to be understood that afterwards I made every effort with the carpet. By the way, the rings on the dining table date from that evening too. There was such an air of celebration we didn’t even notice how much soy sauce was escaping down the side of the bottle. Actually, when we did, it didn’t seem to matter. After all, it’s only a table, Michael said, and I recall that that led on to us talking about possessions in general, and how it is that the objects that bear the marks of events in our lives are always the ones most precious to us. There was general agreement on this point.

Oh, it was like a life from the pages of a magazine for a while. There was the weather. I don’t believe I have ever noticed the weather so much before. Here, the seasons get themselves noticed in a way that does not happen in towns, and by the time the summer really arrived I had developed something of a countrywoman’s eye for it. The garden burst into bloom, of course, a thing that I would have observed without much interest before I became the kind of person who would stick her nose into flowers and bring masses of them into the house. My choice of reading expanded out from the cookery books. In the library there were dozens of books on gardening. There was one in particular that had pictures and descriptions of just about every flower that grows in England, and I took it into the garden with me and learned the names of all the ones we had. I found that the Latin names went into my head and straight back out again, but even now in August I can still recite the common names of the flowers that came up in the garden in June. There were some I already knew, of course: fat daisies that were almost spherical like pom-poms, candytuft, forget-me-nots and wallflowers, catmint, and the peonies: both white and red ones, so many! I watched the peony buds swell like wet green fists in the rain and when they split open and the flowers came I could hardly get over them, they lolled on their stems like upended tutus, all those petals with their edges ripped into tiny points. And the colour! I wondered how that shade of crimson could be brought into existence without some juice deep underground in the root being crushed and distilled and sucked up to the very tips of the flowers. There were also Canterbury bells, columbines, leopard’s bane, bishop’s hat, foxtail lilies, Chinese trumpet flowers- every one a delight to me.

On and on it went. Birdsong woke me at five, and I wore the same three or four dresses over and over until they grew soft and familiar. I could feel something dancing inside me, all day long. It was my first barelegged summer since I was a girl, and I almost gave up on shoes. Mine had never fitted me, quite. Then Michael brought back for me and for Steph some espadrilles that he had seen on sale at the supermarket, which turned out to be just the thing. They were such a success he bought us several more pairs, all in different colours. Our feet were as happy as the rest of us.

One day when they were finishing breakfast Michael said, ‘Am I the only one who’s noticed? We’re all bigger.’

He looked round the table. ‘Haven’t you noticed it? We’re bigger .’

They always had breakfast late. They preferred to wait until Steph had been to Sally’s and returned with Charlie, by which time they were all hungry. Jean’s breakfasts had resumed their original lavishness. It did not matter that they seldom got round to doing anything else before about half past eleven; the days were theirs to spend as they chose. Steph smiled her sleepy smile, and nodded without speaking. She was sitting with Charlie, who had fallen asleep with his mouth open against her skin.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Jean said. ‘I may have filled out, a little . Cheek.’

‘No, I mean bigger. Not fatter, just bigger. In every way. As people.’

Steph sighed, shifted Charlie and buttoned herself back into her clothes. She didn’t really understand or care. She had some news for them, but she was enjoying, for the moment, having it all to herself. The pleasure of giving it could wait a little while, and anyway, she liked listening to them talk. They were always talking, these days. They just were words people, Jean and Michael, and really, she was not, never had been. What was different was that she no longer felt inadequate about it.