The Stopped Heart (43 page)

“It's just my gardening dress.”

He smiles.

“It's nice. I like all your dresses.”

“I don't really wear dresses.”

“No, I know you don't. You wear jeans, don't you? I like all your jeans too.”

Mary can't help it—she laughs. And before she can do anything he has pulled her to him, putting his arms around her. She doesn't try to stop him. She waits. Held against him like that. She does nothing.

“I can feel your heart,” he says after a few seconds have passed.

“Can you?”

“In my chest. It's pounding in my chest.”

“In your chest?”

“Yes. Straight through from your chest into mine. Can you feel it?”

“No.”

“Listen.”

“To what?”

“To that. Listen. Come on, surely you can feel that?”

She laughs again, trying to pull away.

“No,” he says. “No, I'm sorry, I'm not letting you go. You can struggle all you like but you're staying right here.”

Mary waits, obedient.

“My arm,” she says at last. “Ow. You're crushing my arm.”

“Sorry.”

He releases her, but only a little. She feels his lips against her cheek. His breath in her ear.

“Go on,” he says. “Say it.”

“Say what?”

“‘I shouldn't be doing this, Eddie. I ought to go. We really shouldn't be doing this, Eddie.'”

Mary tries to laugh but doesn't manage it. She pulls away slightly. Realizing that she is trembling.

“I don't really care what we do.”

“You don't?”

She shakes her head and he pulls her to him again. She feels him kiss the side of her head.

“That's a dangerous thing to say.”

“I know.”

He waits a moment. So does she. She can hardly breathe. She does not want to breathe. Heat and light causing the air all around them to shimmer and bend.

“Do you know what this field is called?” he says at last.

“What do you mean, what it's called?”

“Fields have names. Or they did in the old days. I found a map at the library. There's one called Glebe field. And there's Hulver. And Nut Tree. This one is Yarrow's field.”

“Yarrow? Why Yarrow?”

“Who knows? Perhaps the name of some long-ago farmer. I know there aren't any Yarrows around here anymore because I checked.”

“You checked?”

“Just in the library.”

“What were you doing at the library?”

“I like to look things up. I always have. The records. Archives. It's amazing what you can find out.”

She smiles at this. His liking for facts.

“Like my picture,” she says.

“What?”

“The old photo. The one you gave me.”

He hesitates.

“That's right. I'd forgotten about that. What have you done with it?”

“Nothing. Just kept it. It's on the shelf in the kitchen.”

“You still like it?”

“I love it.” She doesn't tell him that some days she is afraid to look at it, that some days it can seem to buckle and twist under her gaze until she is certain she can see something in it that cannot possibly be there. How can one picture contain such a presence, so many shadows? She's losing her mind, she sometimes thinks when she looks at that picture, going mad.

“Does Graham know about it?”

Mary turns her head.

“What? That you gave it to me? Yes.”

“He doesn't mind?”

“No, of course he doesn't.”

Eddie pulls her closer.

“You're right. Those little girls in the picture—maybe it was their father who owned this field. Maybe he was Yarrow. Mr. Yarrow. I know that you like to think of it as your field,” he adds.

“It isn't?”

“No. I'm very sorry to break it to you, but it belongs to Yarrow.”

She laughs.

“Yarrow,” she says.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just I like the sound of it, that's all.”

Moments pass. At last, he lets go of her. Picking up her hand instead and holding it in his. Mary sighs.

“It was a person, you know. The bones. The bones that you and Graham found, under the shed.”

He hesitates.

“I know. Deb told me.”

“She knows?”

“I think Graham told her. Before they came to take them away.”

Them. Mary turns and she looks at him. Tears standing in her eyes. He puts both arms around her.

“Oh, don't,” he says. “I mean it, darling. Please don't cry.”

T
HEY SIT THERE FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
H
IS ARM AROUND HER.
Her head against his chest.

“I didn't think you'd let me do this,” he says. “I didn't think you'd ever let me do it.”

She shuts her eyes for a moment, opens them again.

“Do what?”

“Have you this close. Hold you like this. Is it OK?”

She smiles. We're just friends, she thinks.

“Are we?” he says. She glances at him. She must have said it aloud. “Funny sort of friendship.”

“I don't care,” she says.

He's silent a moment.

“We're friends,” he says. “We're definitely friends. But if it was up to me, we wouldn't waste time sitting here like this.”

She looks at him.

“Why? What would we do?”

“You really want to know?”

“I don't know.”

He sits up straighter, points.

“You see that little dip, just before you get back on the path that leads up to the golf course?” Mary nods. “Well, we'd go and lie down there in the long grass. And I'd take all of your clothes off one by one—pull off your lovely, funny garden dress as well as everything else—and then I'd make very passionate love to you. Twice.”

“Twice?” Mary starts to laugh. “I'm too old for twice.”

“All right. Once then. If that's how you want it. It would take a while anyway, getting you to relax.”

“Would it?”

“You know it would. You know what you're like. You'd have all your reasons. You'd say you didn't like it there and that you couldn't get comfortable and that you kept on feeling things—”

“Things?”

“I don't know. Creatures. Wildlife. Mice. Snakes. You'd probably tell me you were afraid of snakes.”

“I'm not afraid of snakes,” Mary says, remembering the python she picked up to show Ella at the children's zoo. Its surprisingly hot, dry weight in her hands.

“All right, but you'd say you were. And I'd have to reassure you. And then you'd confess to me that it wasn't snakes you were afraid of at all, but something else.”

“What?” she says, interested now. “What would it be that I was afraid of?” She looks at the side of Eddie's face. “Tell me,” she says.

He turns to look at her.

“I don't know. I don't really know what you're afraid of. I'm making it all up. I suppose the truth is I've only ever kissed you once and I just wish I could do it again, that's all.”

Mary thinks about this.

“Thank you,” she says.

“It's my pleasure.”

“I appreciate that you're so honest.”

He nods. “I am. Searingly honest. Well?” he says.

“Well what?”

“How about it?”

She laughs and so does he. She looks at him.

“I'm sorry, but I don't think we can.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think that's what I'm afraid of.”

“What do you mean? What are you afraid of?”

She hesitates.

“I suppose I'm afraid that I might start to like you too much.”

“What? You don't like me now?”

“Yes, I do like you. You know I do. But I might start to like you a lot more.”

“What, and that wouldn't be a good thing?”

“No, it wouldn't. You know it wouldn't.”

“Even though I'd be such a fantastic lover?”

Mary laughs.

“It wouldn't be a good thing. And I wouldn't really care if you were a fantastic lover or not. I suppose I'd just be worried—that you'd be too nice to me.”

He looks surprised. “Too nice?”

She closes her eyes, sun warming her face.

“You'd hold me. You'd say nice things. I know you would. I worry that you'd do it in a way I wasn't used to and it would upset me because I'd realize no one had ever done it to me like that before—”

She breaks off, thinking about what she's just said. For a moment she's quiet. Feeling him looking at her, his fingers reaching for hers.

“Are you all right?” he says.

Mary looks at him. Looks at her hand in his. Tears standing in her eyes.

“And then at the end, you'd ask me if I was all right and just the simple fact of you asking me that would make me want to cry.”

H
E SQUEEZES HER HAND AND FOR A WHILE NEITHER OF THEM
speaks. She sits there with her hand in his and then at last, very gently, she takes it away, replacing it on her lap. She lets out a sigh. Thinks she feels her blood slowing down, her bones relaxing.

“And then afterward,” he says, “when we were lying together in the long grass and I'd banished all your fears of snakes, I'd ask you if you were still afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Of what might happen. ‘Are you still afraid, Mary?' I'd say. Or has it happened now, the thing that you were afraid of?”

Mary puts her hands to her eyes.

“It would have happened,” she says. “It would definitely have happened. And I'd tell you that. I'd say, ‘Yes, it's happened.' And what then?”

Eddie thinks about this.

“Well, we'd probably just lie there together in the long grass, and the sky would be huge and blue just like it is right now, today—”

“It's always blue,” Mary says, tilting her head back to look at it. “All this summer, isn't that just what it's been? Blue and blue and nothing but blue.”

“And I'd take hold of your hand—like this—and we'd weave our fingers together and block out the sun for a moment.”

“Why would we do that?” Mary gazes at their two hands knitted together.

“Just for a game. Just to see if we could. Maybe we'd have a look for the kestrel, too. But we wouldn't see it.”

“Why wouldn't we?”

“Because it wouldn't be here.”

Mary looks around her.

“I don't think it's here now either. If it really was a kestrel. The one that we saw that time.”

“We don't know for sure.”

“That's right, we don't.”

Eddie takes Mary's face in his hands and he kisses her and for a moment she lets him. He holds her face for a longer moment, looking at her.

“This is agony,” he says, releasing her again.

“I'm sorry.”

“You don't love me, do you?” he says.

She says nothing. He looks at her.

“Where are you with Graham?” he says at last. “How are things between you? Are you OK? Have you told him yet—about the baby?” Mary hesitates and she feels him watching her face. She does nothing. “What?” he says.

She looks down at her hands in her lap. Her heart churning. She licks her lips.

“It's complicated,” she says.

She feels him still looking at her. She almost can't bear it. At last he sighs. He puts a hand on hers.

“There never was a baby, was there?” he says.

Mary glances away at the fields, the blue sky, her heart still racing, all the blood coming to her face.

“I don't know what's been happening to me,” she says. “This whole summer. Something's been going on. I haven't been myself.”

He's silent a moment.

“Well, of course you haven't.”

“No, it's not that. It's like I've had to switch whole parts of myself off. Whole parts of who I am shut down.”

He takes a breath.

“That's just called grief.”

Mary shakes her head. “No. No, it's more than that.”

She thinks for a moment about whether it's worth trying to say it aloud to him, whether it's something she can dare to articulate to herself. And before she can even stop its happening, her mind starts to take her in there, around the house—rooms, walls, landing, windows, fireplace, table—racing out fast into the garden, in darkness now—face at the window, night coming down, soil in her mouth, a tree falling, doors slamming—

“What? Mary, what is it?”

She puts her hands up to her face.

“I think it has to do with the house,” she says at last.

“The house?” Now he looks surprised.

She hesitates.

“I suppose I've been deciding what to do. How to live. Whether to live. Whether it's going to be worth it.”

“What's that got to do with the house?”

“I don't know.” She shakes her head. “I don't know.”

She hears him sigh.

“I'm not going to ask you what you decided. About living, I mean.”

“No, that's right, please don't.”

“You don't want to answer that question?”

“No, I don't.”

Eddie says nothing. He looks off across the fields for a moment, then before she can see what he is looking for, he turns and looks straight back into her eyes.

“Run away with me.”

Mary laughs.

“I'm serious. Let's go. Today. Now. I have money. Just pop home and get your passport. We need never come back.”

She laughs again.

“I'm deadly serious.”

“I know you are,” she says.

I
T TURNED OUT THAT MY FATHER DIDN
'
T NEED MANY REASONS TO
go looking for James. It turned out that he had actually been holding it all in for some time. My father was a peaceful man generally and not a hard person at all, but once his blood was up, you did not want to let yourself too near him.