Perfect (10 page)

‘I’d rather be like you than anyone else.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. People like me will never get it right.’ She rested the point of her chin on his shoulder so that her voice seemed to come from inside his bones. ‘Besides, your father wants you to have the best. He wants you to make a success of your life. He’s very definite about that.’

For a while they remained bound together by her arms, her face close to his. Then she kissed his hair and threw back the covers. ‘I’m going to draw you a bath, sweetheart. You don’t watch to catch a cold.’

He didn’t know what she meant. Why would he not want to become like his mother? What did she mean when she said she never got it right? She surely hadn’t guessed about Digby Road. As soon as she was gone, he eased the stem of clover from his dressing-gown pocket. It was a little rumpled, a little soggy, and it didn’t really have four leaves, it was technically three, but he knew it would save her because James said clover was lucky. Byron tucked it deep beneath her pillow so that it would be there to protect her, even without her knowing.

Humming softly, he followed his mother to the bathroom. The light from the windows was like white stepping stones across the hall carpet and he jumped from one to the next. He thought of his mother drawing a bath. It was not a phrase she’d used before. Sometimes she said things like that, or the remark about not wanting him to become like her, and they were so sideways it was as if there was another person inside her, just as there was a boy inside his father, and another world inside the pond.

He wished he hadn’t eaten all those Garibaldis. It was not the sort of thing that James would do.

T
HE SNOW FALLS
on and off for three more days. It whitens even the night. Just as it begins to thaw, there is another blizzard and the land is hidden all over again. Silence pads the air and the earth is one and soon it is only by staring into the dusk that Jim can make out the movement of swarming flakes. The sky is of a piece with the ground.

On the estate, cars are abandoned at angles into the kerb. The old man who never smiles watches from his window. His neighbour with the dangerous dog shovels a path to the door and within hours there is no path again. Bare branches are showered with snow as if they are in blossom; the leaves of the evergreens droop under the weight. The foreign students head out in puffa jackets and wool hats with plastic bags on which to sledge. They climb over the fencing and try to skate on the iced-over ditch in the middle of the Green. Jim watches, a little apart, as they laugh and shout to one another in words he does not understand. He hopes they won’t disturb anything. Sometimes he checks the window
boxes when no one is looking, but there is no sign of life.

At work, the girls from the kitchen complain there is nothing to do and Mr Meade says the supermarket is already reducing its Christmas grocery prices. Jim cleans the tables and no one sits at them, he just squirts and wipes. At dusk the new snow creaks soft beneath his feet and the moor sleeps pale beneath the moonlight. Needlepoints of ice trim the street lamps and hedgerows.

Late one night, Jim scrapes the snow from a bed of winter bulbs. This is his latest project. No need for rituals here. No need for duct tape or greetings. When he is planting there is nothing but himself and the earth. He remembers Eileen and her bonsai tree, how she called him a gardener, and despite the biting cold, he feels warm inside. He wishes she could see what he has done.

It was one of the nurses at Besley Hill who first noticed he was happier outside. She suggested he might help in the garden. After all it was a wreck, she said. He began slowly, a little raking, a little pruning. The grey square building was behind him; the barred windows were forgotten, as were the lime-green walls, the smells of gravy and disinfectant, the endless faces. He learned as he went. He saw how the plants changed over the seasons. He discovered what they needed. Within a few years, he had borders of his own. There were splashes of marigolds, spikes of delphinium, foxglove and hollyhock. There were clumps of thyme, sage, mint and rosemary, the butterflies hovering over them like petals. He grew them all. He even managed asparagus, as well as gooseberry, blackcurrant and loganberry bushes. The nurses let him sow apple pips too, although the home was closed before he saw them flourish. Sometimes they told him about their gardens. They showed him seed catalogues and asked what they should choose. Once when he was released, a doctor gave him a small potted cactus for good luck. Jim was back within months but the doctor said he could keep the plant.

There have been so many years in and out of Besley Hill, Jim has lost count. There have been so many doctors and nurses and inpatients they all seem to share one face, one voice, one coat. Sometimes he notices a customer stop at the café, stare a little, and he has no idea if it is because they know him or because he is strange. There are gaps in what he remembers, gaps that span weeks, months and sometimes more. Recalling the past is like travelling to a place he visited once, and discovering that everything has lifted up and blown away.

What he cannot forget is the first time. He was only sixteen. He can still see himself in the passenger seat, scared and refusing to get out. He can see the doctors and nurses who rushed down the stone steps to the car, shouting, ‘Thank you, Mrs Lowe. We will take over now.’ He remembers how they prised his fingertips from the lip of the leather seat and how he was already so tall they had to press down his neck so as not to knock the top of his head. He even has a picture in his mind of the nurse who showed him round, once they had given him something and he had slept. He was assigned to a ward with five men who were old enough to be his grandfather. They cried at night for their mothers and Jim cried too but it made no difference and she never came.

After the first job on the rubbish trucks, he tried others. Nothing strenuous. He mowed lawns, stacked wood, swept leaves, delivered leaflets. Between the spells at Besley Hill, there have been single rooms in flats and bedsits. There has been sheltered housing. None of it lasts. He has been given further shock treatment for depression and cocktails of drugs. After morphine shots, he has seen spiders spill out of light bulbs and nurses with razor blades instead of teeth. For most of his mid-thirties he was so undernourished his stomach sank between his hip bones like a grave. While in the occupational therapy department, he learned pottery and drawing, as well as rudimentary woodwork skills and French for beginners. None of it prevented him from breaking down again and again,
sometimes weeks or months after being discharged. The last time he returned to Besley Hill, he resigned himself to never leaving. And then they went and closed it.

Snow laces the hedgerows and coils of old man’s beard. The whitened branches of the trees sway as if there is music in the air that only they can hear. Cars crawl over the frozen ridges of the moor and the light on the lower foothills is a polished blue.

It is too soon for signs of life. The cold would kill new growth and the earth is hard as stone. Jim lies on the snow beside his bulbs and stretches out his arms to send them warmth. Sometimes caring for something already growing is more perilous than planting something new.

‘I
DON’T UNDERSTAND
,’ said James. ‘Why do you think we need to tell the police?’

‘In case they don’t know about the two seconds,’ said Byron. ‘In case you are right about the conspiracy. Innocent people may be in danger and it’s not their fault.’

‘But if there is a conspiracy, the police probably know. And so do the government. We need to think of someone else. Someone we can trust.’

Until the accident, Byron had no idea that keeping a secret could be so difficult. All he could think about was what his mother had done and what would happen if she knew. He told himself not to think about the accident, but not thinking took so much space it was the same as thinking about it all the time. Every time he began a sentence, he was afraid the wrong words would escape from his mouth. Consequently he had to keep examining them on their way out, as if he was checking their hands for cleanliness. It was exhausting.

‘Est-ce qu’il faut parler avec quelqu’un d’autre?’ James said. ‘Monsieur Roper peut-être?’

Byron shook his head in a nodding sort of way. He wasn’t clear what James had said and he was waiting for further clues.

‘It needs to be someone who would understand,’ said his friend. ‘Votre mère? Elle est très sympathique.’ At the mention of Diana, James’s skin stained. ‘She wasn’t cross with us about the pond. She made us hot tea and those little sandwiches. Also, she doesn’t make you sit outside if you are muddy, for example.’

Even though James was right about his mother, even though she had not shouted like Seymour after the pond incident, or been tight-lipped, like Andrea; even though Diana had insisted all along that Byron’s fall into the water was an accident, Byron suggested they should not tell her about the two seconds. ‘Do you think a person could be guilty if they didn’t know they had made a mistake?’ he said.

‘Is this to do with the extra seconds as well?’

Byron said it was more of a general enquiry and slipped his Brooke Bond tea cards from his blazer pocket to lighten the conversation. He now had the full series, even the number one.

‘I don’t see how someone could be guilty if they didn’t know about it,’ said James, transfixed by the cards. He stretched out his fingers but he didn’t touch them. ‘You can only be guilty if you have deliberately committed a crime. If you murder someone, for example.’

Byron said he wasn’t thinking of a murder. He was only thinking of an accident.

‘What sort of accident? Do you mean cutting off someone’s hand in the workplace?’

Sometimes Byron thought James read too many newspapers. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just doing something you didn’t mean to.’

‘I think if you said sorry for your mistake,’ said James, ‘and if
you showed you really meant it, that would be all right. It’s what I do.’

‘You never do wrong things,’ Byron reminded him.

‘I get my h’s confused. I say haitch when I am tired. And once, I trod in something outside school and brought it into the car. My mother had to scrub the foot mats. I sat on the wall all afternoon.’

‘Because of your shoes?’

‘Because she wouldn’t let me in. When she cleans, I have to stay outside. Sometimes I am not sure my mother wants me.’ With this confession, James studied his fingertips and fell quiet again. Then: ‘Do you have the Montgolfier Balloon card?’ he said. ‘It’s actually number one in the set.’

Byron knew the card was number one. It showed a blue air balloon, festooned with gold, and it was his favourite; not even Samuel Watkins had it. Nevertheless there was something so compact and alone about the way his friend sat that Byron slipped the balloon card into James’s hands. He offered it for keeps. And when James said, ‘No, no, you can’t give me this. You won’t have the full set any more,’ Byron tickled him to show there was no problem. James bent double and shrieked with laughter while Byron’s fingers found the hard little spaces in his armpits and beneath his chin. ‘Please s-stop,’ howled James. ‘You’re giving me hiccups.’ When James laughed, he was like a child.

That night was no easier. Sleep came in fits and when it did, Byron saw things that frightened him and woke tangled in wet sheets. When he looked in the bathroom mirror the next morning, he was shocked to discover a big, pale boy, with shadows hanging beneath his eyes like bruises.

His mother was equally shocked. Catching sight of him, she said he must stay at home. Byron pointed out he had his important scholarship work but she merely smiled. A day would make no difference. There was the mothers’ coffee morning too; she said, ‘At least I won’t have to go to that now.’ This troubled Bryon. If she did anything unusual, the other
mothers would grow suspicious. He agreed to take the day off school but only because he planned to ensure she attended the coffee morning.

‘I would like a day at home,’ said Lucy.