Morag Joss - Half Broken Things

You see, I hadn’t quite realised until that day that I had been living all those years, all of my life to date, not with the hope that I would find her, but living on that hope. It had been feeding me. And with what Mother told me, the hope died. That day, I saw that I would never know how it felt to come first with somebody. I had been holding on to the chance that I might still come first with my real mother, once I found her. But what Mother told me, the information she tossed at me as if it didn’t matter, was that although my mother had not died when I was five, she had died since. She had been alive, all those years ago, when Mother first told me I was a prostitute’s bastard. But now she was dead.

It will keep for later, what happened next. It still makes me cry to think about it and really I think I’ve said enough on that subject for now. I have searched my conscience and concluded that what I did was not my fault.

So let me get back to that night after Michael came home. I did sleep a little, burdened still with something that, on balance, was not a feeling of guilt. This may surprise you if you are the sort of person who puts people like Michael, Steph and me in a different category from other people. But for some reason I find myself incapable of believing that I am significantly worse than everyone else.

Michael slept dreamlessly and woke early. But Steph was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, and he could tell that she had been like that for hours. Even in the half-light, he thought her features had sharpened overnight; around her mouth it seemed that an old tightness had returned. Turning on his side, he reached out and, starting at her hairline, with one finger traced the line of her profile. When he touched her forehead she did not move, but when he reached the soft little lift of flesh between the base of her nose and her upper lip she tipped back her head and caught his finger in her mouth. They had done this before so many times that it was by now their customary foreplay. But Steph did not this time keep hold of his finger, running her teeth gently along its length. She did not then turn to him without letting go for a moment, and take her mouth to his, and only then gently remove his hand and place it between her legs. Instead she took his finger from her mouth and pressed hard, dry kisses all over his hand, pulled the fingers open and smoothed his palm over her face. Her cheeks were wet. Michael drew her close and they held each other tight in the silence of the room. Outside, the first creamy light of the day was melting to yellow sunshine. They heard Jean get up and go downstairs. Then they lay listening to the yammering of the birds as light tried to burn through the curtains, until Steph’s body relaxed against his and slowly she drew him into her. They did not hurry; all too soon this sweet time would be over, anyway.

By six o’clock the next morning we were all downstairs. I had made a pot of tea and got out all the maps I could find, for I had already begun to grapple with the practicalities and had an inkling of how we would have to proceed. We had been set upon a path that we simply had to follow to the end. We had no choice. We hated the necessity for it, and wished desperately that we could undo the events of the day before. I could tell by their faces when they joined me at the table that Michael and Steph felt this, too.

There was so much more to do, and in some ways it would be even worse than what had been done yesterday. And there was the extra worry of not knowing how much time we had. So if I say that we became brutally practical, don’t misunderstand. I mean it only in the sense that one might say it of people attending to the consequences of accident or misfortune: firemen or paramedics or surgeons. (That was, in fact, exactly what we were doing.) There is a need to get the job done, and what it looks like, or feels like, to attend to it must not be allowed to interfere with physical skill, courage or resolve to see it through. What good ever comes of people ceasing to think clearly? So we became brutally practical, but we never acted with brutality. We merely mustered the strength, for one another’s sakes, to do what we had to. In fact I would go as far as to say that in our case, the killing of that man was attended by nothing but regret. Even what we did next was carried out only because we had to, and it was done with respect, even with something like tenderness.

He couldn’t stay here, at Walden. That was certain. Not just for the obvious reason that he might be found but because he would somehow dirty our surroundings. We were already thinking of the poor soul as a kind of pollutant. Wherever we might have put him, and there were dozens of places where he could have been buried, we just could not bear to keep him anywhere on the premises. The earth here was Miranda’s, and her presence sanctified it. I imagined myself lying in bed in a week’s time at four in the morning, knowing that he was lying not far off, and I knew that unless he was got rid of I should never feel that this place was ours or was quite clean, ever again. We had to get him away. We had to put far from us the ugly, terrible thing that Michael had been forced to do, we had to take ourselves beyond the whole episode. If we could, we would rid ourselves even of the memory of what had happened. We had to be allowed to go on as before and that would not be possible if he were anywhere close by. Besides, what if the police came digging?

No, he would have to go, and this brought a number of considerations. For one thing, I could not leave the house. Quite apart from my own inclinations (I had not felt like leaving the house since my day in Bath) I was the house sitter and what if Shelley telephoned about anything? Steph also would have to carry on as before, appearing each day at Sally’s and looking after Charlie. So it would be up to Michael alone. He would have to do it by himself, and here came the first of several quite appalling practical difficulties. Michael could barely lift him. In one piece, I mean.

Jean seemed to know that the police would not do anything about the disappearance of an adult until at least forty-eight hours had elapsed. Even then they would point out that people have a perfect right to absent themselves without being considered as having gone missing. But eventually the police would have to take it seriously, and when they did, she told them, they would be sure to come asking questions. Neither Michael nor what remained of Gordon Brookes must be anywhere near Walden when that happened. Michael’s presence was in itself a problem, because trivial though it now seemed, the matter of his unpaid fines meant that he could not risk giving the police either his real name or a false one. By this time tomorrow Michael would have to be well clear, and the business of disposing of Gordon Brookes under way. Jean waved an arm over the maps that covered the table.

‘I’m trying to work out where you could go. But it’s hard to tell,’ she said, apologetically. ‘A map only tells you so much.’

‘As long as it’s quiet places,’ Michael said. ‘And a long way from here. Just write me down a route and I’ll improvise.’

Steph squinted at the maps, then at Michael. ‘It’s hard on your own,’ she said, suddenly eager, ‘trying to read a map and drive. You need somebody with you. Jean, he needs somebody with him, doesn’t he? Jean, suppose I go as well?’

But of course she knew even as she asked that it was out of the question. Steph and Jean must stay, and carry on precisely as they would if Gordon Brookes had actually visited and left, as Steph had already told Sally he had. Nothing must change on the surface; life must go on in its usual way. Meanwhile in their heads, they must create a yesterday in which everything had happened as it should have done, and as they would claim it had. They must construct a yesterday like a film that would play over and over in the imagination, with conversations and events whose details they must rehearse until they were as real as memories. This must be the yesterday they would reel back to and remember and talk of, when they were asked about it.