The Stopped Heart (25 page)

Deborah asks if she should go after her.

“No,” she hears Graham say. “It's all right. She just needs a moment. Please, I mean it. Just let her go.”

S
HE HOLDS HERSELF VERY STILL ON THE EDGE OF THE LITTLE
sofa in the study off the hall. Alone and in darkness, just the faint pools of light coming from the garden. Wrists on knees, her hands still shaking, managing to breathe, one breath at a time, concentrating on the in and out, calmer now.

Eddie is standing in front of her.

“I brought you a drink of water.”

When she doesn't take it, he sets it down on the small table next to her. She waits for him to go but he still stands there.

“Graham said we should leave you alone but—I couldn't. I'm so sorry, I know I should probably be able to but—I just couldn't.”

She lifts her head a little and sees the stitching on his jeans, the part of his belt where it's ragged and frayed, the end hanging off. She hears him take a breath.

“I wish I could do something. I know there's nothing I can do, but I want you to know that I wish with all my heart that there was.” He reaches out and touches her head—the sudden, startling warmth of his hand on her. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No,” she says, surprised that she doesn't.

He moves his hand over her hair. Smoothing her hair, the way she used to touch her girls.

“What are you thinking?”

She does not speak, shaking her head.

“Try and tell me. What are you feeling? Is there anything you can tell me?”

She says nothing.

“Mary?”

“Not really,” she says.

She wishes she could tell him something. But what would
she tell him? Could she tell him what she did yesterday—that she walked for more than a mile, in search of a field, any field, where she could find herself sufficiently alone to shout their names? Needing so badly to have that feeling again, the simple taste of those sweet words in her mouth, even if only for a few seconds. But that just as she thought she'd found the perfect spot—a vast expanse of rough, ploughed land, deserted and unholy—the farmer appeared on his tractor. Or she assumes it was the farmer. Him waving to her. Her, silenced, waving back.

Or she could try to explain how she never stops thinking about the precious, soft hours after Ella was born. How, when the midwife saw how she did not once let her out of her arms—so close and warm against her, the fuzz of her small head tickling her nose—she nodded approval and said there was no need to check her temperature. And how this made her feel like the very best of mothers, the most valiant and effective protector of her newborn child.

Or else she could just tell him how, for some brief fraction of almost every second of every hour of this sorry, continuing life of hers, she is forced to think of them in that ditch.

Is forced to think of how they spent more than two weeks rotting there in the ditch, barely covered, partially burned, hands, faces, fingers, hair, their small bodies half-submerged in the cold black water. How she thinks all the time of the night falling and the sun rising and night falling again, black and cold. And how, even once they were found, it was still necessary to leave them lying there for two more days and one more night, unlifted and unconsoled, while police and forensics completed their tests and evidence gathering.

She could tell him how, during this period, she wept and vomited and ground her teeth so badly in her sleep that she cracked a molar. How she thought about killing herself so often that one
night she dreamed she'd succeeded and when she woke up and found herself still alive, she sobbed with disappointment.

She takes hold of his wrist and removes his hand from her head. Picking up the water and sipping it. Startled by its clean coldness.

“I'm all right now,” she says. “Thank you. I'll be back in a minute.”

I
CAN
'
T MARRY YOU, YOU KNOW
, J
AMES SAID TO ME.
I
'
M JUST SAYING
, princess. Because I don't want you to go getting any ideas in your head that aren't possible. I don't want you to end up disappointed. All right?

Yes, I said. All right.

He kept his eyes on me.

What? You really don't mind?

I looked at him. The idea of marriage had never entered my head and I told him so. He gave me a careful look, then he grinned.

Well, that's good. Good girl! Because I am hopeless fond of you—you know that?

I'm fond of you too, I said, though I was still thinking about the word
hopeless
—was it hopeless? In fact, I love you to pieces.

He looked uncertain.

It's for your own benefit, you see. I don't want to lead you on.

I don't care about that, I said, but I could see from his face that he wasn't listening.

I wouldn't want to leave you in the lurch and all because you got your hopes up.

I don't ever want to marry anyone, I told him truthfully. Why would I?

He gazed at me for another long moment and then he sighed.

Because it's what girls want.

Well, I don't want it, I told him truthfully. I don't want what other girls want. I just want to go on being me.

He looked at me again and then he scratched his head.

What a rare one you are. I wish all women would think the same as you.

I sat up and pulled up my drawers, putting my hand for a moment where he'd just been. I liked to feel it, the wet. It was like water but not like water, slipping over your fingers with a gritty roughness that made me think of pears when you sink your teeth in and the juice runs down your chin and you wonder if the mess is worth it and then you realize that it is.

Well, I don't know why they don't, I told him.

Don't what?

Think the same as me. I don't know why all women don't think it. It's as clear as ice to me.

He shrugged.

It's when a child comes along, that's the problem. As soon as they're up the spout, then that's it. Then they just want to sit back and start taking your money.

But you haven't any, I reminded him.

What, children?

I laughed.

Money!

He nodded and his eyes were hard and bright.

That's right. I haven't. Not a brass ha'penny, princess. You know as well as I do that I've nothing. Though I can tell you that's not what the bird in Lowestoft thought.

What, you mean Violet? Or the one called Tilly? Or do you mean the dead one? I said, because I was getting more and more confused by the tangle of alive and dead women he seemed to have left behind him.

He gazed at me for a moment, his eyes like somebody dreaming.

None of those. Though it is true that Violet might have wanted marriage had she not been insane.

I said nothing, because he'd got my interest now and I wanted more. I held my breath, hoping he would go on and he did.

I was very unlucky with Violet, he said. I was not in her for more than a minute. There was no proof whatsoever that I was the father.

I stared at him.

What? I said. A child? Violet had a child?

Violet? Ah, well, she would have, if she had not destroyed herself.

Now I was aghast.

You mean to say she killed herself? With a poor baby inside her?

He blinked and then he nodded. Even though his eyes were still quite serious, his face was bothering me.

Herself. The child. And the pony too.

What pony?

The one that should have been her livelihood. The little piebald that wore the feathers and the jewels and went around all the fairs. It made no sense at all. I told you. That girl was not sane.

Poor Violet, I said, though in my head I was also feeling very sorry for the poor dressed-up pony that sounded like a grand little animal and surely ought not to have had to die as well.

He looked at me.

Not poor Violet. Not poor at all. She would have had me. She would have caught me up for life, that Violet would have. A little fish, I was, wriggling in her net.

You're not a bit like a fish, I began to say, but he wasn't listening.

Very fortunate, then, that when the pony was found with its throat cut, Violet was lying right there beside it. She must have
done the pony first and then herself, mustn't she? It was the only explanation.

I swallowed back a bad taste. I couldn't work out why it was, and then I could. The look on his face. It belonged to someone else, not him.

James Dix struck a match and lit a cigarette. He took a long suck and then he blew the smoke out. At last he looked at me.

I had nothing to do with it, he said. I wasn't even in the neighborhood. That's what I told them and it was God's own truth. And don't you ever forget that, Eliza.

T
HEY WALK BACK HOME TOGETHER DOWN THE LANE.
T
HE AIR
still warm, the sky alive with stars. They don't speak, but after a while Graham reaches for her hand and she lets him take it. She remembers how, when she first knew him, they held hands all the time, constantly, everywhere, fingers always entwined, never letting go if they could help it, and how much she came to love the feeling of it, of being so willingly linked—and she glances down now at her hand in his larger one and can't believe these are the same two hands from that innocent time so long ago.

As if he can feel her thoughts, he gives her hand the smallest squeeze but she doesn't squeeze back.

“What?” he says. “What are you thinking?”

She tells him she isn't thinking anything, though in fact she's wondering about whether she could tell him about her visit to the doctor's, realizing to her surprise that she has no idea what she would say—would not know how to find any words that would be both truthful and satisfactory.

Reaching the house, they're surprised to find the little wooden gate open, moving gently on its hinges as if someone has just that moment left and failed to latch it behind them. He stares at it.

“That's odd. Didn't we close it?”

“I don't know.”

“I did. I know I did. I remember doing it.”

“Someone might have put something through the door,” she says.

“At half past twelve on a Friday night?” He looks at her. “Well, if someone's broken in, we'll soon find out.”

They go in. There are no deliveries and no sign of burglars either. Graham takes the dog into the garden while Mary gets ready for bed. She undresses, washes her face and then stands at the window cleaning her teeth, her hand cupped under her chin, watching the two of them weaving their way in and out of the trees, stopping now and then before moving off again.

While the dog sniffs at something, she watches Graham stand and tilt his head back, hands in pockets, swaying slightly, gazing up at the stars. He's drunk, she thinks, and for a quick moment she doesn't even recognize him—as if he's just a fragment of some larger thing, fleeting, uncertain, distorted. She walks into the bathroom and spits in the sink.

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER, WHEN HE
'
S COME IN AND GOT INTO BED
, she goes back to the window.

“Can you hear it?” she says.

“Hear what?”

“That.”

“What?”

“Listen. That awful sound.”

He lowers the newspaper, holding it against his chest.

“I can't hear anything.”

“You really can't? A little way off? Like someone screaming?”

He smiles. “It'll be an owl.”

“An owl?”

“Remember when you came here that first time, in the night, on your own? You said you heard an owl?”

That night. She tries to think of it. The car. The lane. The uneasy, waiting presence of the dark house with no one inside it. She looks at him.

“It wasn't like that. It was like someone in pain. A girl screaming.”

“Then it'll be a fox. Foxes sound terrible. Unearthly. They're famous for it.”

Graham lifts his paper again. She turns back to the window. Silence. A warm, black wind stirring the trees.

“Come to bed,” he says. “It's very late.”

She glances back at him.

“You're reading.”

“I'm waiting for you.”

She says nothing. Still peering into the garden. Far off—right down at what must be the very bottom by the fallen tree—a blob of light, moving slowly and unevenly, up and down and side to side. A firefly, she thinks.

“What have you arranged?” she asks him, still watching the light. “With Veronica?”

He yawns.

“Arranged in what sense?”

She glances back at him.

“About us having Ruby. I'd rather know now than have to wait for you to find the right moment.”

He looks at her.

“I actually haven't arranged anything yet.”

“Right.” Mary sighs. “Of course you haven't.”

She turns back to the darkness. The screams have stopped but the light is still there, bobbing around. She hears Graham folding the paper and chucking it on the floor.

“Look, do you really want to do this now? At this time of night? What I mean is, aren't we both a bit too tired and drunk to have this conversation?”

Mary looks at him.

“I'm not drunk.” She hesitates. “I don't mind having her here. You know I don't. You keep on acting as if I mind it. But I don't. I realize that it's necessary.”

She sees his jaw tighten.

“Great. Nice for Ruby to know how much she's wanted.” He turns out the light and lies down.

“Don't sulk,” she says.

“I'm not. I'm very tired and I want to sleep.”

Mary watches him for a moment, then she looks out the window again. The light is gone now, but she can just about make out the dark shape of something moving down the garden. Too big to be an animal, but surely not a person?

“It changes our whole summer,” she says, frowning at the shape as it steals along the edges of the flower beds. “I think there's someone in our garden,” she adds.