Perfect (36 page)

A pale yellow butterfly landed close to Byron’s feet. He tried to touch it
but it flitted up to the white bell of a flower and rested on the petals, fanning its wings. He whispered to the butterfly not to be frightened and for a moment he thought it had heard because it remained very still as he reached out his finger. Then it skittered into the air again and landed on a buttercup. For a while he followed it, up and down the garden, until Beverley hit a bass chord on her organ and the butterfly flew towards the sky like a little leaf. He kept trying to watch for it, screwing his eyes tighter and tighter, until at last the butterfly grew so slight it was not there. Glancing around him, he realized he had strayed right to the edge of Jeanie’s blanket.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a rush.

She stared back up at him with round, frightened eyes.

Byron knelt on the edge of her blanket to show he meant no harm. He had not been alone with Jeanie since he had found her sleeping in Lucy’s bed. He didn’t know what to say. He gazed at the worn leather of her caliper, the straps and the buckles. It looked painful. Jeanie gave a small sniff and he saw she was crying. He asked if she would like him to play with the dolls. She nodded.

Byron gave hats to the heads and dresses to the bodies. He said it was a shame they were all broken. Again she nodded. ‘Would you like them to be fixed?’

She didn’t nod or speak but she smiled.

Byron found a head and a body. He pushed one hard over the other and for a while he thought it couldn’t work until with a snap the head suddenly slipped back into place.

‘There,’ he said. ‘We fixed them.’

It wasn’t strictly true that she had helped but somehow his saying it made her smile again, as if she might have fixed them if circumstances were different. Jeanie took the doll in her hands. She touched its head. She touched its arms, its legs. Gently she stroked its hair.

‘Oh but what happened to these poor girls?’ he said suddenly, picking up another torso and head. They were covered in felt-tip spots.

Jeanie gave a tiny cry and cowered. It was so nervous and sharp a movement, it made him jump too, as if she expected he would smack her.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you,’ he said softly. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Jeanie.’

She gave an uneasy smile. He asked if the dolls had measles. She nodded.

‘Oh I see,’ he said. ‘Poor things.’

She nodded.

‘Do they like having the measles?’

Slowly she shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on his.

‘Do they wish they were better?’

When she gave another nod his heart began to bang so hard he could feel it in his fingers but he breathed slowly. It was a shame, he said, that these girls were stuck with measles and she nodded to say yes, it was a shame. ‘Do they need help to get better?’ he asked quietly.

Jeanie did nothing. She simply looked at Byron with her wide, alarmed eyes.

He picked up a red pen. He drew three spots on his hand. He said nothing about what he was doing, partly because he had no idea, he was just doing it, and partly because he sensed they were better off, he and Jeanie, in a place that had no words. Jeanie remained very still, watching as he drew on his fist, watching the red felt-tip pen and the marks like small berries.

‘Do you want to have a go on me?’ he said. He gave her the pen. He offered his hand.

Jeanie reached out with her slight fingers and he placed his plump hand in hers. Her palm was cold, like stone. She drew one circle on his hand and coloured it, then she did another. She didn’t press. She did them slowly and carefully.

‘You can do spots on my leg, if you like,’ he said.

She nodded and drew some more spots on his knee, then his thigh, then all the way down to his foot. Overhead the warm breeze rustled the leaves of the fruit tree.

‘Would you like some, Jeanie?’ he said.

Jeanie glanced up at the house where her mother was playing the organ. She looked confused or sad, he wasn’t sure which. She shook her head.

‘No one will be angry,’ he said. ‘And I will help you wash them off afterwards.’ He held out his spotty arms and his spotty legs. ‘Look,’ he laughed. ‘You can have measles like me.’

Jeanie gave him her hand. It was like touching the stone again. He gave her four small spots on her knuckles. He did them gently because he was afraid of hurting. When he had finished she drew her hand close to her face. She examined his work carefully.

‘Do you like them?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Do you want any more?’

She stared back at him and the look she gave was a strange one, a questioning one. She pointed to her legs.

‘This one?’ he said.

She shook her head and pointed to the caliper. He glanced back at the house and then down to the pond. Beverley was playing a new piece. She kept stopping and going back to the beginning to get it right. There was no sign of his mother.

His hands shook as he undid the buckles. He unfolded the leather and the skin of her leg was soft and white, and it smelt a little of salt, but it wasn’t unpleasant. He didn’t want to upset her. There was no plaster. There was no scar on either knee.

‘Poor, poor knee,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Poor Jeanie.’

He drew one spot on her knee. It was so faint, so slight, it was like the smallest blemish. She didn’t flinch. She watched very carefully.

‘Do you want another?’

She pointed to her ankle, then her shin, then her thigh. He drew six more. All the time he drew, she craned her head forward, studying his work intently. Their heads were almost touching. He saw she was not lying about her legs. She was just waiting for them to be ready to move again.

‘We’re the same now,’ he said.

A yellow leaf flittered through the sunlight. It landed on the blanket and he saw it was the butterfly with her yellow wings. He didn’t know if it could be a sign, the butterfly, but its reappearance was certainly like the joining of two moments that would otherwise be split apart. Beverley’s music was building to a finish. She hit the chorus with a crescendo of chords. He even thought he heard his mother calling from the pond. He had a sense that something was coming, another landmark, and that if he didn’t capture it quickly it would be gone again.

‘The butterfly is looking for a flower,’ he whispered. He held out his fingers like petals and so did Jeanie. ‘It thinks our spots are flowers.’

He scooped the butterfly gently inside his hands. He could feel its wings, pale as paper, beating against his skin. He lowered it into her hands and told her to be still. It sat in her palm, and somehow the butterfly knew too about keeping still, it didn’t flap its wings or get frightened. Jeanie was so still she was not breathing.

‘Jeanie!’ called Beverley from the terrace.

‘Byron!’ called his mother, crossing the garden.

The butterfly edged towards Jeanie’s fingertips. ‘Oh no,’ he murmured, ‘it might fall. What should we do, Jeanie?’

In the silence and very slowly she began to lift her knees to make a
flowery bridge. As the butterfly crept over her nails and down towards her legs, she brought them higher. The women were shouting, they were running towards them, but he kept saying to Jeanie, ‘Higher, higher, sweetheart.’ The butterfly tiptoed up and down her small white lifting knees and at last she laughed.

A
NEW MOON
in early September brought a change in the weather. The heat subsided. The days were warm but no longer fierce. There was a slight chill in the morning air, and a white cloud of condensation at the windows. Already the leaves of the clematis were drying brown twists on the stems, and the ox-eye daisies were almost over. The morning sun peeped at Byron over the hedgerows as if it couldn’t quite reach the zenith of the sky.

The new moon brought a change in his mother too. She was happier again. She continued to post small gifts to Beverley and to telephone about Jeanie but she no longer drove to Digby Road and Beverley no longer came to visit. James had greeted the news of Jeanie’s recovery with silence. He had informed Byron he was spending the last weekend of the holidays at the seaside. Maybe he would get to see a concert? Byron had suggested. James had said awkwardly it would not be that sort of trip.

Beverley’s response was the opposite. It was a miracle, she concluded. That a child should recover when all the doctors had given up. She had
thanked Byron profusely. She had apologized over and over for the anxiety she had caused. Things had got out of hand, she kept saying. She just wanted to be Diana’s friend, she never meant her to suffer. Everybody made misakes, she cried. She had never guessed Jeanie’s lame leg was imagined. She had promised to return the soft toys, the pushchair, the kaftan dress, the borrowed clothes. There were many tears. But Diana had reassured her. It had been a strange summer, she said. Maybe the heat had got to them all? She seemed so relieved to have reached a conclusion she had no space for blame or even understanding. The last time Beverley had telephoned, she confided that Walt had asked her to marry him. They were thinking of moving north; they would be like a proper family. She had an idea too for a small import business. She talked about grabbing opportunities and thinking big but with the threat of strikes, her business idea seemed unlikely to work out. She promised to fetch her organ and somehow or other she never did.

Meanwhile Diana retrieved her pencil skirts from where they had been hiding, screwed up beside her shoes, and pressed them. They were a little loose about the waist but they returned her to that tight way of walking with her clippy steps. She stopped spending hours at the pond, or sleeping under the stars. She retrieved her notebook and small butterfly cakes with sponge wings. Byron helped her carry her mother’s old furniture back to the garage and they covered it with the dustsheet. Diana reset the clocks. She began to tidy the house and clean. When his father came for his first visit, she did not contradict him. She washed his smalls and over dinner they talked about his shooting holiday and the weather. Lucy played chopsticks over and over again on her electric organ. And even though Seymour insisted it was an extravagant birthday present for a little girl, Diana assured him none of the other children had Wurlitzers and he gave his upside-down smile.

The children returned to school. Now that Jeanie was no longer lame,
James rarely discussed what had happened and how the boys had planned to save Diana. Once or twice he referred to that business in the summer, but only in a disparaging way, as if they had been childish. He gave Byron the Operation Perfect folder. He did not talk about magic tricks or ask about Brooke Bond tea cards. Maybe he was disappointed in Byron; it was hard to tell.

Besides, it was not simply James who seemed reserved or altered. Being in their scholarship year made young men of the boys. Some of them had gained inches. Their voices alternately squeaked and growled. Their faces bore spots like marbles. Their bodies smelt and moved and bulged in new ways that were both confusing and exciting. It was like the heating going on in parts of themselves they were not aware they owned. Samuel Watkins even had a moustache.

One night in mid-September they sat outside, Byron and his mother, beneath a clear sky that was upholstered with stars. He showed her the Plough and the Seven Sisters and she gazed up, with her glass on her lap, her neck tipped back. He pointed out the winged eagle shape of Aquila, Cygnus the swan, and Capricornus. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. She was obviously listening. She kept nodding at the sky and then turning to gaze at him.

‘They’re playing with us, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘The gods. We think we understand, we’ve invented science, but we haven’t a clue. Maybe the clever people are not the ones who think they’re clever. Maybe the clever people are the ones who accept they know nothing.’

He had no idea what to say. As if reading his thoughts, she reached for his hand and wove his arm through hers. ‘You’re clever, though. You’re really clever. And you’ll be a good person. That’s what counts.’

She pointed to a veil of opaque light above their heads. ‘Now tell me about that.’

He told her it was the Milky Way. Then, from nowhere, a star shot through the dark as if it had been hurled, and snapped out of sight. ‘Did you see that?’ He grabbed her arm so hard she almost spilt her drink.

‘What? What?’ She had clearly missed it but once he had explained she sat very still, watching the sky and waiting. ‘I know I’m going to see one,’ she said. ‘I just feel it in my bones.’ He went to laugh but she held up her hand as if to silence him. ‘Don’t say anything else or I will want to look at you. And I mustn’t because I have to concentrate.’ She sat so neat and expectant she looked like Lucy.

When at last she found one, she leapt up, her eyes wide, her finger making a tapping movement at the night. ‘Look! Look!’ she told him. ‘Do you see?’

‘That’s a beauty,’ he said.

It was an aeroplane. He could even see its vapour trail, lit up by the moon and shining through the sky like a stitchwork of silver thread. He kept waiting for her to realize and when she didn’t, when she laughed and squeezed his hand and said, ‘I made a wish for you, Byron. Everything will be all right now I’ve seen that lucky star,’ he had to nod his head and look away. How could she be so innocent? So stupid? He followed her to the house but she slipped in her shoe and he had to hold out a hand to steady her.