The Stopped Heart (20 page)

“I don't want to be pitied.”

“I don't pity you. I'm sad for you. It's not the same at all.”

He lifts his head, looks at her.

“You still like me?”

“For goodness' sake, Eddie. Of course I do.”

“You promise? You're not just saying it?”

Mary laughs, realizing that he's playing with her. She looks away.

“But what about now?” she says at last.

“What about it?”

“Your life now. Isn't that what matters?”

“There's only one now I'm interested in and that's sitting here at this moment in this garden with you.”

Mary hesitates, avoiding his gaze.

“But—are you saying you're not happy?”

He sighs.

“I don't know about happy. I suppose I think of myself as pretty lucky, the way things have worked out. But . . .” She watches as he takes off his glasses again, pinches at the space between his eyes, puts them back on. “Well, there's always some fallout, isn't there?”

“Is there?”

“I don't get to be with my kid, do I?” He says nothing for a moment and neither does Mary. Both of them sitting there, not speaking. At last he looks at her. “Once I knew about him, that was it. It was astonishing, how everything changed. It's not that I'm surprised that I love him—”

“Love him?” Mary feels the blood rise in her cheeks. “Of course you love him.”

“All right, but that it would take up so much of my head, that I would have no choice, that it would be so overwhelming—well, I suppose I never expected that.”

Mary says nothing. Under the table, she knits her hands together. Watching the faint movement of his face as he looks out across the garden, to the fields, the wide sweep of the sky.

The waitress comes, picks up the bill and the money, walks away. He watches her go.

“Every day I feel the loss of him, you know. Every single
day—” He stops, breaking off suddenly and looking at her. “Oh God, Mary, I'm sorry.”

He puts a hand on her arm. Gives her the one unused paper napkin. She stares at it for a moment, then she puts it to her eyes. She hadn't even known she was crying.

For a moment he just sits there. Then, when she doesn't do anything, he leans forward and touches her hand with his and, when she doesn't pull away, he covers it, puts his whole hand on hers and he leaves it there.

F
RANK DIED.
T
HEY THOUGHT HE WAS BETTER BUT HE WASN
'
T
better. He had a fever and a prickling scarlet rash and the rash got worse in the night and the first doctor was called back and this time he said the Ipswich doctor had got it all wrong. It wasn't because of the horse kicking him or the whooping cough but a bad infection that had got inside his bones and there was nothing to be done.

My mother wept. She'd lost the two or three babies after I was born, but we'd never known them, so it didn't matter. And then after that she'd had a lucky run of it and all her children had stayed sturdy and bonny and alive.

Until now.

I don't believe it, my father said after the doctor had packed up and gone. He could be wrong. He's had it wrong before. Remember poor old Mrs. Hancy, how he had them ordering up her coffin, but she went along quite well for another two years?

My mother said nothing.

For a while Frank seemed peaceful. His breath went in and out just as if he was having any normal kind of sleep. I began to wonder if my father might be right and he'd recover. But then,
as the dawn broke and morning sunshine flooded the room, he seemed to change. His face looked like a stranger's face and his breath came harder and louder and he looked like he was fighting some startling and terrible presence in the room that none of us could see.

My mother covered her face with her hands.

No, she said. No.

Frank's eyes rolled back in his head as if he was just playing a joke on us, and then he stopped breathing.

No! my mother screamed.

I stared at him. He still looked like my brother and not at all like a dead person. He looked like he'd just forgotten to take another breath. I found I was holding my own breath, waiting for him to do it.

Is he all right? I said at last.

My father had been swearing and cursing but now I saw that he was crying as well. There was a string of nose-blow hanging from his face. He lifted Frank up a bit and held him and kissed him and rubbed at his chest.

Is that it? my mother sobbed. Is that it? Are you telling me he's gone?

My father said nothing. He lowered Frank back down onto the bed. Upstairs the baby started crying, but my mother ignored him. She bit down hard on her clenched-up fist. Her eyes were closed tight and there was a sound happening right in her throat but it didn't seem to want to come out.

I looked at Frank again. It still seemed to me that he might change his mind and take another breath, but he didn't. The more I watched, the more he stayed there just exactly as he was, eyes and mouth open, staring at the foot of the bed.

My father reached out and put his fingers on his eyes to shut them.

H
E TOLD ME TO SIT WITH HIM WHILE HE WENT TO FETCH THE
undertaker and my mother went up to the baby. He said I shouldn't touch him and at first I didn't mind because I didn't want to. But then as I sat there with the morning noises and normal sunshine going on outside, my courage began to come back to me. It was only our Frank, after all. Also I was curious to know what a dead person felt like. I stretched out a hand and put a finger on his poor, bare arm.

Hello, Frank, I whispered.

I put one finger on him very lightly and then I put another. He wasn't even cold, but he was hard as dead meat and for a moment the warm firmness of him made me want to heave. I took my hand off and sat there, taking little breaths and waiting for the feeling to pass.

My father came back in.

He said he'd told James and sent him off to milk the animals. He said we weren't telling the kiddies yet, but I was to wake them and make them get dressed and send them into the orchard to play while the undertaker came.

Why? said Charlie when I went up there.

Yes, why? Minnie said.

Because Father says so, that's why.

But what's the reason? Jazzy demanded, picking up her kitten and trying to make it stay in her apron pocket. Why does he want us out of the house? You can't just say that and not tell us the reason.

I know the reason, Lottie said.

You don't know anything, Jazzy told her, struggling with the
kitten as it mewed and scuffled to get out. You don't even know how to tie up your own shoe, you little twot.

Lottie looked at me with hard black eyes.

Is it because of Frank?

What about him? Jazzy said.

I looked at Lottie.

We'll talk about it later, I said.

T
HE UNDERTAKER CAME.
H
E WAS A HORRIBLE MAN.
H
E LAID
Frank out on the kitchen table because he said he needed a steady surface to work on. The table still had some grease and crumbs on it, so I got a cloth and wiped them away. I didn't think it right that Lottie's mess left over from breakfast should be all over Frank.

The undertaker washed him and cut his hair, which didn't need cutting, and he put him in the good Sunday clothes my mother had given him, twisting his poor arms back and forward a bit too roughly to get them in the sleeves and not really caring that much what he did to him. Then when he'd finished he put the coffin next to Frank on the kitchen table and lifted him into it with our father's help.

Father went upstairs to comfort my mother. He asked if she wanted to see him but she said she didn't and that she would not come down till the man was gone.

The undertaker asked to use the privy then, so I had to take him out the back and show him where it was. He smiled at me a bit too hard and asked would I like to wait to escort him back after he'd used it?

No, thanks, I said.

And he stood there still looking at me and not going in the privy and saying what a pretty young girl I was, how sweet and fresh-faced, and was I courting any lads yet?

I told him that was none of his business. And he stared at me then and said I had a very overly sharp tongue for someone whose little brother had just died and I ought to have a bit more respect.

Respect for what? I said.

Respect for the dead.

I do respect the dead, I told him. It's the living I don't respect.

He smiled at me as if this was somehow a compliment to himself, and then he turned and went into the privy. I went back inside and looked at poor Frank, who lay there in the coffin on the kitchen table not really looking that dead but for all the world as if he might be about to spring to life and chase the chickens around the yard as usual.

James came in. He had on his hat that he wore in the fields, but he took it off and held it to his chest as he looked at Frank.

Don't do that, I said. I mean it. I don't want you here. Just please go away.

He held up his hands.

I only came to look at him.

I don't want you looking at him. You have no right. You broke his heart. It was the last thing that ever happened in his life, the killing of the dog, and the worst thing too.

James looked at me carefully.

I wish you'd stop saying that I killed the dog, Eliza. When you know perfectly well I had nothing to do with it.

I shook my head and pressed my lips together. I wondered where he had learned it from, the knack of always making you feel that you were the one whose mind had come undone.

Go away, I said.

James did not move. His eyes still on poor Frank.

I did nothing to the dog. The dog ran off. You know I would have fetched her—in fact, I offered to fetch her back but you said
not to. Surely you remember that, Eliza, that you told me not to?

The undertaker came back in, still doing up the flap of his breeches. He glanced at James as if he wondered who he was and then he said he was about to put the lid on and I should try again to fetch my mother.

She won't want to come, I said.

The undertaker coughed. The cough went on for a long time and you could hear all the various wet and dry parts of it.

Well, tell her it's her last chance to see him before I screw him down, he said, taking out a handkerchief and spitting out a quick lump of phlegm before he winked at me.

I did as he said and went and told her, but my mother would not look at me and just said I should go and see how the kiddies were doing.

I'll go, James said.

No, I said. I'll do it.

And I walked out of the house, down the steps and through the long wavy grass and down into the orchard. The morning was very still and light and hot. There was no sign of the kiddies anywhere and I couldn't hear them shouting either. For a moment I was alarmed. I hoped they hadn't gone into the lane or off into the fields, which they weren't allowed to do by themselves.

But when I got down to the bottom of the orchard, there they all were sitting in a row on the lightning tree, scowling and fighting and kicking their heels. Charlie was pinching Minnie, who was half laughing and half crying. Honey was almost asleep, squeezed in between her and Lottie, who was sucking her thumb and in a world of her own. And Jazzy was looking properly delighted with herself and smoking a cigarette. As I watched she blew three perfect rings of smoke, a trick, I realized with a quick clench of my heart, that she could only have learned from James Dix.

A
S SOON AS
G
RAHAM
'
S GOT IN THE DOOR, WHILE SHE
'
S SIMMERING
the stock for the risotto, Mary asks him to guess who she went to the pub with.

He looks at her.

“The pub? You went to the pub?”

She nods. Watching as he puts his bag down on the chair, looking through to find his glasses and the paper.

“Why?” he says. “Who?”

She turns back to the stove.

“You have to guess.”

He sits down slowly in a chair with the paper. Puts on his glasses and gazes at her over the top of them.

“Seriously, I've no idea who you went with.”

“Come on.”

“No, I give up.”

“All right. Eddie.”

“Eddie?” He holds the paper to one side and takes off his glasses. “You had lunch with Eddie?”

She bangs the wooden spoon on the side of the pan.

“He had lunch. I didn't.”

A quick silence as he looks at her.

“You should have eaten.”

“I wasn't hungry.”

“You're never hungry.”

Mary hesitates.

“I don't get hungry till the evenings,” she says, realizing only as she says it that she often, now, feels sick in the mornings.

She sees that Graham is gazing at her. Rubbing his eyes. “How did that come about, then?”

“What?”

“Lunch with Eddie.”

“I don't know. He just knocked on the door and asked me.”

“He wasn't at work?”

“He had a day off. He's owed a lot of time.”

“Time?”

“Holiday or something. That's what he said.”

Graham looks at her.

“I wish someone owed me a lot of time.”

B
UT LATER, MUCH LATER, WHEN THEY
'
VE EATEN AND CLEARED UP
and the dishwasher is thundering in the background and they are both on the sofa ready for the news, she tells him the rest. The part about the child. The boy named Oliver and the woman called Trish.

“Well, aren't you surprised?” she says, when all he does is shrug and keep his eyes on the screen.

“Surprised at what?”

“At what I just told you. The whole thing. Doesn't it surprise you?”

He yawns.

“I don't know. Not especially. Why should it?”

Mary moves closer to him. Edging across the cushions until she can put her bare legs over his trousered ones. Watching the side of his face.

“What, so you think of him as that kind of person?”

“What kind of person?”

“Someone with this whole other life going on elsewhere?”

He places a hand on her knee.

“Hardly a whole other life.”

“But a secret child?”

“Not so secret if he told you about it. And from what you're saying, it's just some poor woman he got knocked up.”

“It wasn't his fault.”

“Hmm.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He keeps his face steady.

“Just—I don't know—maybe he should have been more careful.”

Mary stares at him.

“You don't really think that.”

Graham says nothing, keeping his eyes on the news. She pulls her legs off him. He turns and looks at her.

“What? Now I'm supposed to agree with every little thing you say?”

She hesitates.

“I don't know why you aren't more surprised. I was so surprised.”

He looks at her.

“All right. I'm surprised. Happy now?”

She ignores him.

“It must be very odd for Deborah,” she says, even though it's the first time that Deborah's part in it has occurred to her.

The weather comes on and Graham zaps through the channels to find something else. Brushing her knee with his fingers, then moving his hand up and holding her thigh. A firm, teasing grip that might, in the old days, have signaled the beginning of sex.

“He's had a hard time, you know,” Mary says.

“Who has?”

“Eddie. He had a terrible childhood.”

“That's what he told you, is it?”

“What?” she says. “Suddenly you don't believe a thing he says? I thought you liked Eddie?”

“I do like him.”

“Then why are you suddenly being so—”

Graham smiles. Looking at her.

“What am I being?”

“I don't know. So grudging about everything.”

He laughs. Mary watches him. The side of his face. The little lines around his eyes that twitch when he's tired. The upper lip with its faintly girlish pout, which, many years ago, first attracted her to him and which in some ineluctable and agonizing way will always make her think of Ella.

“Come here,” she says.