Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

There were roses still blooming against the wall. Was it only yesterday he had wondered about the best time to prune them? He looked down at the wheelbarrow. That would be just the kind of thing Gordon Brookes would know, and now here he was, bleeding from the side of his head that was beginning to look like a cut aubergine. Michael looked away, shaking with pity for the man and with fear for himself. For it was terrifying, how quickly it was possible to go from one to the other, from considering the pruning of roses and setting out croquet hoops, to this moment, looking at a bleeding man heaped in a wheelbarrow and facing the inevitability of the next step. More terrifying still was how much further Michael now had to go. From not far off, birds were singing above the snuffling sounds coming from the man’s slack mouth. But when Michael breathed in he could smell roses and warm grass. He grew still, and then quiet, and then he wiped his hands over his eyes again, crossed the lawn and entered the kitchen. Steph and Jean were standing in silence, waiting. Charlie waved and jiggled in Steph’s arms when Michael appeared in the doorway.

‘Right,’ he said, still breathless, ‘don’t worry. Stay here for a bit. I want you to stay here, okay? Make some tea.’

But neither of them could reply. Steph opened her mouth first. ‘l don’t know what I did, I don’t understand. Why-’

‘Never mind, I’ll explain. It’ll be all right,’ Michael said, tightly. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll make it all right. I’ve got to-’ And then he began to feel that strange thing at work again, that way he actually could begin to believe himself when he had other people to convince. ‘It’s okay. It’s just that, well, I know him. I mean he knows me, he knows about this thing I did. He’d bring the police here and we’d all, well- think about it. See? I’d end up in jail. We all might.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You see? What with everything. The stuff I did, the fines, us, the things here. It’d finish everything. I mean, we’ve got to- you see? Look, just stay in here for a while. I’ll deal with it. We’ve got to be normal.’

‘All right,’ Jean said, finding her strength. ‘All right.’ She took a deep breath and smiled round bravely. ‘We’ll just be normal. Won’t we? We’ll just get on and make our jam, won’t we, Steph? The fruit’s all hulled already.’ In the moment’s silence after she spoke it became understood that neither she nor Steph would ask Michael exactly what he was going to do when he went back outside, and he would not volunteer to tell. They all knew.

Michael wheeled the barrow slowly round, limping from the kicks he had taken on his legs, and stopped at the side of the pool. He had begun to shake again just at the thought of touching Gordon Brookes, who was sliding so far over to one side that his head almost scraped along the grass. He did not dare think about what else he now had to do to him, and could not look at the face as he heaved him over and pulled him off the wheelbarrow. Laboriously, closing his eyes when he could, he dragged him to the edge of the water; it felt as if Gordon Brookes were filled with loose stones. Then he seemed to become aware of what was happening; he mouthed and moaned, and succeeded in raising one hand, flexing his fingers for a second over Michael’s bare arm and scratching hard. Michael hissed in pain. Gordon Brookes gurgled and coughed, and his moans rose to pitiful yelping when Michael hauled him over and tipped him into the pool. He landed with a crack on the water. Michael followed, feeling through the cold shock on his groin the warm flow of his own urine. Gordon Brookes, revived by the slap of the water, flailed desperately, as if trying to grab armfuls of it. But he did not have the strength to protest much when Michael grabbed the back of his head and pushed it under. Michael turned away from the sight of the mouth taking great choking bites of water but could do nothing to avoid hearing the panicked snatches of screams as, time after time, Gordon Brookes managed to force his head up hard enough under Michael’s hands to snatch at the air. Michael’s legs were shaking so much that but for the water he would have collapsed. For it came as a dreadful, slow-dawning shock, how long it took. It was unbelievably long; incredible how much fight and life and air and struggle there was in one man, how often his arms tried to reach and grab at Michael’s hands, and how hopelessly; Michael was filled with a kind of respectful horror until, almost exasperated and suddenly fearing that he might not be able to finish this, he gave a great roar, thrust the head down deep into the water with both hands and held it there. Brookes’s mouth, still gaping and searching, surfaced only twice more. In its final, slackening, waterlogged gasp Michael thought he heard a note of sorrow. For at least ten minutes more he stood holding his head under, until long after the last throes had stopped. Michael turned his face up to the sky and saw merely a flat, blurred blue through his stinging eyes. Nor, as the minutes passed, could he hear very much, save his own bitter sobbing and the slap of water as the waves made by Gordon Brookes’s thrashing arms smacked and subsided against the pool walls.

Michael waded down the length of the pool and hauled himself up. He sank onto the grass at the side and lay stretched out, shaking and weeping, until he had to turn his head and vomit. He shifted some feet away and lay down again. He closed his eyes. The sun’s heat pulsed down on him, water dripped from his clothes and soaked around him into the grass, flies buzzed over and landed on his still-twitching body. Then he began to sense that the air carried another scent, freighted with sweetness. He could hear that in the kitchen someone had turned on the radio. Voices from a studio somewhere had started up in polite and amused discussion. The sound rose and mingled and was borne along, bubbling in a commixture with boiling strawberries and sugar that perfumed and corrupted the air. Michael opened his eyes and watched butterflies pass above him. Turning his head, he saw two or three ants among the droplets of water, scaling blades of grass inches from his face. It seemed, then, that life was continuing. He refused to focus on the gently lapping water of the pool some yards away but could not help seeing that its surface sparkled under the sun, as before. Was it outrageous or miraculous, he wondered, that it could look so much the same when everything had changed? How could it be the same if, the next time this bright, turquoise water flew upwards in glittering drops into the sun-laden air, it were to be Steph’s hand flicking little playful splashes onto Charlie’s golden shoulders, rather than Gordon Brookes’s desperate, dying limbs jerking and grabbing for a few more seconds of life? Was it possible that you could just lift a corner of this pretty world that Gordon Brookes was suddenly no longer a part of, push him out and drop the corner back in place, and go on as before? For it really did seem as if that were what was happening. Michael closed his eyes again, breathing in sun and the smell of fruit. The voices on the radio stopped, there was a second’s pause, a burst of laughter, then the tap of polite applause. Another voice, and then came the pips. He had just killed a man while people somewhere chatted and an audience clapped. Life was just going on. And it was incredible to him, as well as a little unnerving, that it was not just other things that were going on as before, but that he himself was, too. Here he was, lying wet on the grass but feeling the same sun, hearing the same birds and voices, smelling the same flowers and fruits. The thought comforted him. He knew he should be changed. He should be inconsolable, but instead was soothed. He knew himself to be filthy, but felt cleansed.