The Stopped Heart (14 page)

He's only James Dix, I told myself.

Once I was close, he reached down and pulled me up and put me next to him on the tree. The morning sun had warmed it. The wood felt smooth as butter.

Feeling myself slipping a bit against him, I tried to pull away. But before I could do it, he caught me around the waist and yanked me hard, turning me so my back was to him. Then, holding me there tight against him, he picked up the whole length of my hair, which was loose down my back.

What are you doing? I tried to say—but already it felt like the words had passed straight through me and into another place entirely.

Still holding my hair, he put his lips to my neck, then my ear. The slowest of shivers went through me.

Shhh, he whispered. I'm tidying you up.

And at first I laughed, but then quite quickly I didn't laugh anymore. Feeling myself go still as his hands tugged gently at my head, lifting the hair and sending more and more shivers down me and making my body go sad and warm and tight.

I took a sharp little breath.

What? he said, and I tried to say something back but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out.

M
ARY HEARS THE PHONE RINGING.
T
HE LANDLINE.
I
T NEVER
rings. It makes her jump. She thinks it might be her mother. She would prefer not to pick it up, but she knows that if she doesn't Ruby will.

“It was good to see you,” he says.

“What?”

“The other night. We really enjoyed it.”

She hesitates, feeling herself tense for no reason she can understand.

“Well good,” she says.

“Good?”

“That's good. It was nice to see you too.”

She hears him take a breath.

“Sorry,” he says. “I began that all wrong, didn't I? I should have said, ‘Hello, Mary, how are you?'”

She is silent.

“You still there?”

“I'm very well,” she says as smoothly as she can, trying to imagine him in that large immaculate house, pink evening light catching at his glasses. “How are you?”

A brief, cautious silence.

“Look, I hope you don't mind. It's on the spur of the moment, really. I was just wondering what you were up to.”

“Up to?”

She stares at the fridge.

“What I mean is, we wondered if you'd like to come around again. A spot of supper. The two of you, of course. Tomorrow or Saturday perhaps?”

She tries to think.

“I'm not sure,” she says. “The thing is—I mean, Ruby's still here, you see.”

“Graham's girl? Well, bring her along too. Seriously. The more the merrier.”

Mary hesitates.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but I think there may already be a plan.”

“A plan?”

“To do something. I think we might be busy.”

“What? You mean you won't come?”

He sounds appalled. She tries to laugh.

“Another time. Maybe another time you can come to us?”

After she's put the phone down, she looks at it. She looks at it and she knows exactly what's going to happen next and it does. Except that this time she doesn't do anything. This time she just looks at it and lets it ring.

B
UT WHEN
G
RAHAM GETS BACK WITH
R
UBY AND
R
UBY
'
S FRIEND
Lisa, who she'd forgotten was coming for the weekend, he tells her he just ran into Eddie.

“They've asked us to go over tomorrow, bring the girls as well. He insisted. I said yes, but only if they let us bring something, dessert or whatever.”

She stares at him.

“You really want to go there again?”

“You said you enjoyed it, the other night.”

“But we only just saw them.”

He shrugs.

“Village life.”

“What about it?”

“Well, do we want to be a part of it or not?”

Mary looks at Ruby, who's crouched on the floor with Lisa, both of them petting the dog.

“There's no way those two will want to come,” she says.

Ruby looks up and so does Lisa. Two unearthly, indoors faces, one raven-haired, the other a shock of cropped, peroxide white. Some kind of fetid scent in the air, like stagnant water or rotting flowers.

“Hi, Lisa,” Mary says, looking at the girl, who she's met only once before and who never appears to speak. She takes in the black clumpy boots, fishnet tights, dirty-looking silver bangles, the ring through her nose.

“Hi,” Lisa says.

“You guys don't want to come to some boring dinner party, do you?”

“We're cool with it,” says Ruby, who's trying to make the dog settle on her lap. “And Dad says we can always come back here and watch a film if we're bored.”

L
ATER, SHE GETS INTO BED, PULLING THE DUVET UP AROUND
her, fixing her eyes on a spot just between the mirror and the chest. There's a shadow she's not noticed before, the faint, rectangular ghost of an old picture.

“We should paint this room,” she says.

Unbuttoning his shirt, Graham glances at her.

“You pick the color,” he says a little too quickly. “I'll do it.”

Still gazing at the wall, she sighs.

“I suppose I was hoping we might just have a quiet weekend.”

“I didn't mean do it this weekend.”

“No. Eddie and Deborah. I don't see why they're suddenly so keen on us.”

He stops and looks at her.

“Are they keen on us?”

“I don't know. Don't you think so? Wanting to see us all the time. They seem to be.”

Graham sits in the chair to take his shoes off.

“I think they're just trying to be friendly. And anyway, it's not like we're going to have a very quiet weekend with the Morticia twins around.”

Mary sighs.

“Does she ever speak?”

“What?”

“Lisa. I don't think I've ever heard her say more than three or four words in a row.”

Graham looks at her.

“I think she's just shy.”

He drops his shoes on the floor and stands up to go to the bathroom. Mary watches him.

“Shy? That's not the word I'd use.”

“What, then?”

She says nothing. Keeping her eyes on the shadow on the wall. It is smooth and gray and even. And then just for a moment it isn't: it has curves and contours, a shock of light brown hair, the dark gleam of an eye—

Graham is looking at her.

“You OK, sweetheart?”

“I'm OK.”

She continues to gaze at the wall.

“I'm fine,” she says.

He looks at her for a moment. Then he goes into the bathroom and she hears the click of the light and the soft shutting of the door.

T
HIS TIME
M
ARY NOTICES THAT
D
EBORAH HASN
'
T DRESSED UP,
though her jeans are tight and expensive-looking and she looks even prettier with her creamy hair twisted up on top of her head. The dishwasher is on when they arrive and so is the radio—some violin concerto drifting out through the back door and off over the lavender-fringed paving stones. The kitchen could even be said to be in a mess.

“She's making her fish pie,” Eddie says. “Quite a production, I'm afraid. Never have more pans been harmed in the making of one simple supper.”

“Eddie”—Deborah is laughing—“that's not fair.”

Graham says that fish pie is his favorite, and Mary knows he's not lying but also that even if it wasn't, he would have said it was. She kisses Deborah on the cheek and catches a scent of something citrusy. They introduce the girls. Ruby yawns and Lisa fiddles with the ring in her nose. Mary notices that she has on thick false eyelashes. The effect is to make her eyes seem even heavier and sleepier.

Eddie asks the girls if they're interested in music. For a long moment, neither of them speaks.

“Kind of,” Ruby says at last.

He laughs loudly, rubbing his hands together. Mary notices that his shirt is coming untucked at the back and it makes her feel briefly sorry for him.

“‘Kind of'? Only kind of? What self-respecting, paid-up member of the teenage class isn't interested in rock 'n' roll?”

“Can you really call teenagers a class?” Graham says, helping himself to an olive.

“Class of their own, more like,” Eddie says. “Super classy anyway.”

Ruby rolls her eyes and Lisa looks away and he asks them if they'd like to see his collection of vinyl and Lisa still doesn't speak but Ruby glances at Graham.

“OK,” she says.

Graham laughs.

“I'm afraid OK is the best you'll get from my daughter. Roughly translated, it means ‘Yes please, she would like to very much.'”

“And you?” Eddie says to Lisa.

Lisa blinks.

“What about me?”

“What are you into, young lady?”

Lisa doesn't answer, but Deborah turns around from the board where she's chopping parsley.

“Please don't pander to him, girls. And don't feel you've got to see his bloody vinyls either. I don't think Eddie realizes that not everyone's as mad about old records as he is.”

Mary expects Eddie to argue with her, but he doesn't. He says nothing and then gets busy pouring them all drinks. Lisa refuses wine and whispers a request for Diet Coke. Straightaway Eddie disappears to another room beyond the kitchen.

“You're in luck,” he says, returning with a can that he snaps open for her.

Deborah turns down the oven and takes off her apron and they leave the girls inside and wander out into the garden with their drinks. The light is brilliant, the air hot and silky. Mary notices the rows of orange flowers. The stone urns, clipped box hedge. The pond with its coating of bright green algae.

Deborah and Graham stand on the terrace and talk, but Eddie follows Mary as she walks farther down the lawn, past the
clumps of daisies and catmint and the lavender, still alive with bees. He pulls out his cigarettes.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I know you didn't want to come.”

Mary flushes.

“Don't be silly,” she says.

“Yes, but I forced your hand, didn't I?”

She says nothing. Looks over to where Deborah is standing on one leg and taking off her shoe and shaking something out of it while laughing at something Graham just said.

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

She turns to look at him properly. Smiling as he lights his cigarette.

“Why is it always so important for you to know what I'm thinking?”

He makes a face.

“Sorry. Just interested.”

Mary shivers. She looks back over at Deborah again. She's putting the shoe back on, her hand on Graham's shoulder, steadying herself.

“It's very nice of you to ask us,” she says. “Very kind of you to include the girls.”

She feels him gazing at her, deliberate and intent. She knows he's waiting for her to say something else but she doesn't, she says nothing and, when he doesn't speak either, she takes it as her chance to move away.

T
HEY EAT THE FISH PIE AND SOME SALAD AND DRINK THE TWO
bottles of prosecco that Mary and Graham brought with them, since Deborah refused their offer of a dessert. Graham says it's the best fish pie he's ever had and he asks for seconds and eats them quickly, hardly pausing between one mouthful and the next, and Mary looks at him, his head bent over his plate, and is struck
by how suddenly alive he seems, how awake and alert, and she finds herself wondering what it is that she does to him. Does she oppress him, push him down and make him sad? Does her daily presence only serve to continue the misery for him, a constant reminder of how viciously their lives were interrupted?

Graham insisted the girls leave their phones at home and Mary thinks that may be why Ruby can't seem to settle, tapping her foot and joggling her leg and looking around as if she expects at any moment to hear the ping of a text.

Deborah leans across the table and tells Ruby she likes her earrings and are they really what they look like, little animal skulls, or something? And Ruby mutters something in reply that Mary doesn't catch and then Deborah asks her what subjects she's doing at school and Ruby looks at Lisa and again says something quite inaudible and Mary sees that Lisa has picked every single piece of prawn out of her pie and left them around the side of the plate.

“She's allergic,” Ruby says when Eddie asks her if she's not keen on seafood.

Deborah gasps.

“My God, I'm so sorry. You mean properly allergic? My God, Mary, I do apologize. I feel awful, I really ought to have asked.”

Mary looks at Lisa's pale peroxide face.

“Are you allergic to prawns, Lisa?”

Lisa looks at her plate and seems about to speak, but Ruby jumps in.

“She has stomach problems. It was when you had your appendix out, wasn't it, Lisa?”

Graham leans back in his chair.

“Maybe let her talk for herself?”

At last Lisa seems to startle awake.

“It's all right,” she says in a surprisingly crisp and assured
voice. “It's not an allergy. It's a digestion thing. I developed an allergy to something they gave me at the hospital and it's affected my stomach ever since.”

Mary stares at her. For a moment no one speaks.

“Well, I do hope we haven't made you ill,” Deborah says—and she offers to make Lisa a sandwich, but Lisa says she's had enough.

“But you've hardly eaten anything! I feel we haven't fed you.”

“Leave the poor girl alone,” Eddie says, and, when they excuse themselves together to go to the toilet, he leans over and pats Graham's arm. “They're great,” he says. “Really great. Both of them. She's quite a girl, isn't she, your Ruby? A real charmer.”

Graham laughs.

“
Girl
may be one way of describing her.
Charming
, well, perhaps not so much.”