Half Broken Things

fireplace. Steph caught sight of a teddy identical to one that had been in Miranda’s nursery, and felt something kick suddenly in her throat. She opened her mouth, but did not speak and managed not to gasp, and then the moment had gone, supplanted by a sense of safety. Because absolutely nothing else in this chaotic house- not Charlie’s bewildering mother with her aloof but embarrassing way of telling her too much, certainly not the streaked and bawling face of Charlie himself- sounded even the thinnest chord of memory, painful or otherwise. Steph simply did not recognise it, this bulging, crammed and messy place that so many things had been spilled into, as if the house were a repository for the thoughts, ideas, plans, all the stuff in Sally’s head. It was a place where myriad fragments and layers that made up her life had substantiated somehow into wave after wave of bits of beached rubbish, which Sally then used, abandoned, dropped, broke, lost or cherished, without explanation, apology or, it seemed, particular concern. Charlie was perhaps just another item in her collection. The very idea that one person’s life could so casually produce such rich and overwhelming disorder was unknown to Steph.

Sally had Charlie on the changing mat and had wrestled him out of his wet nappy. The sight of him insulated Steph further from any link with Miranda. Charlie had a standard pouting, apelike baby face, quite unlike Miranda’s ladylike and slightly worried one. And he never stopped moving. His flailing limbs creased into their own peculiar folds and bends like a badly stuffed toy, while Miranda had now and then waved her spindly arms and legs without conviction, and they had been what Jean called finely made. Steph darted forward and handed Sally a baby wipe from the carton, and deftly took the sodden clump from Sally. ‘Bin under the sink,’ Sally said flatly. When Steph came back Sally was walking round the room jiggling the angry bundle on one shoulder. For the first time since she had arrived Steph saw on Sally’s face not only impatience and distaste, but complete exhaustion.

‘I’m supposed to be going in for a meeting this afternoon. They keep doing it, I’m not due back till next week but oh, will I pop in to discuss this or that. I said okay but I’d have to bring him with me and they said oh really, well, with a bit of luck he’ll be asleep.’ She shifted him onto the other shoulder and blew gently in his ear, to no effect. ‘He probably would go back to sleep if I gave him his bottle now but he fights it and takes ages over it, so if I do that I’ll be incredibly late and that won’t go down very well.’

‘Tell you what, you go,’ Steph said, ‘why don’t you go to your meeting, and leave him with me? I’ll see to the bottle and everything. Just to help you out.’

‘What? Oh, no, I don’t think, I mean I’d like you to take the job, I mean for a trial period, but you’ve only just… I mean you, we- we don’t really know each other, do we?’

Steph smiled and nodded understandingly. ‘Oh, you’re quite right. I know, you haven’t got my references or anything- but look, I’d love to do the job, and you could do with a hand now, couldn’t you? Look, he’s got a wet patch on his bum, he needs a dry suit. Shall I take him a minute while you get a clean one, only I don’t know where you keep them.’ She held up her arms and Sally, a little taken aback, allowed Charlie to be taken from her. She rummaged in the pile of clothes while Steph rocked Charlie from side to side. In a lower voice, she said, ‘Tell you what, Sally, suppose I come with you, then I could look after him in the car or take him for a walk or something while you’re at the meeting. If you’re not sure about leaving him here with me, I quite understand.’ Charlie’s yells seemed to subside as she spoke. ‘Don’t I, Charlie?’ she said softly in his ear. ‘You don’t want to be left all alone with a stranger, do you? Do you, little Charlie?’ Charlie grew quiet. Steph smiled beatifically. ‘Hello, poppet. I’m Steph, all right? Aren’t you a lovely little man, aren’t you a good baby?’ she told him softly, rocking him with gentle confidence.

Sally straightened up and looked hard at Steph for several moments. ‘I suppose you have got references, haven’t you? Good ones?’

‘Oh yes, only not with me. I was just in the shop, you see. I was just out for a walk. I wasn’t expecting to see the perfect job there on a card in the window. But I just came straight along ’cause I didn’t want to miss the chance. I was scared I’d be too late and somebody else would get it.’

Sally said, ‘And how many years’ experience did you say you’d got?’

‘Oh, it was ten months with my sister’s,’ Steph said, ‘and loads of other little jobs childminding, babysitting and that. Babies and up to age five. But you need to see it all in writing, that’s okay. I understand. If you don’t feel comfortable.’

Sally looked at her watch and studied Steph’s face again. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I’ve decided. I can always tell, I’m good at reading people. And if you’re going to do the job I’ll have to leave him anyway, won’t I? I can tell I can trust you, Steph. I can feel it. And it’s very, very good of you to offer.’

Steph smiled up at Sally. ‘He’s a lovely baby,’ she breathed. ‘Now are you sure? Because I mean I could come with you, in the car.’

But the whole idea was suddenly cumbersome and silly. Sally shook her head. ‘No- decision’s made. As long as you’re sure…’

‘Go on, you go. We’ll be fine. I’ll give him his bottle.’

For the first time Sally gave a genuine smile. ‘Really? Oh God, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s all made up, just needs microwaving. I’ll be back in about an hour and a half,’ she said, with sudden energy, ‘if that’s not too late for you? I mean, you are taking the job? I didn’t expect… oh, brilliant!’

‘You go,’ Steph said serenely. ‘And you and I, young man, we’re going to get on just fine, aren’t we, while Mummy’s at her meeting?’

‘He’ll fight it. He hates the bottle, I’m warning you, you have to insist. It’s in the fridge. Twelve seconds on six,’ Sally said, on her way through the door. ‘And you mustn’t… do you know how a…’

‘And leave it for about another minute and give it a good shake, and test it on the back of my hand. I know,’ Steph said, more to Charlie than to Sally. ‘Don’t I, Charlie? I know.’

When the front door had closed behind Sally, Steph waited for a moment with the feeding bottle in her hand, then unscrewed the top and tipped the plastic-smelling formula milk down the sink. In the sitting room she removed a cat basket with a pair of sunglasses in it and a tilting stack of magazines from the sofa. Then she settled back with her feet up and placed Charlie on her stomach. Opening up her shirt, she lay back and gazed up at the cracked ceiling. Tears ran down her face as he gorged. She could feel the fingertips of his greedy little hand closing and unclosing over the skin of her breast, while his gums pulled milk from her bursting nipple almost faster than he could swallow it.

* * *

Michael listened to make sure that the house was quiet. Then he pulled a tartan rug from one of the library sofas, brought it into the utility room and spread it out on the floor. He thought that he would be safe from interruption here, even if Jean should wake up.

They had not had lunch until after half-past three. Neither of them had commented on Steph’s absence. They had chosen to assume that she must be resting and therefore did not remark on it- in this way they disallowed the possibility that there might be any significance in her failure to appear. Because as long as a thing remained unsaid, it could be deemed to be not happening. It would remain untrue, for as long as they did not draw attention to it, that dozens of little hairline cracks in their arrangements were about to open into fissures. They were afraid to refer even to how late it was to be eating lunch, lest it make them take a mere irregularity in mealtimes seriously. Since Miranda’s death everyone had been rising late and, in between daytime naps and lie-downs, scratching effortfully at things, in search of some sort of purpose in anything. To mention a lapse in the punctuality of lunch might be to suggest that they were failing to find it, or even that they might be falling apart. What did it matter, anyway, what time they had lunch? It was only time after all, told by a clock somewhere, and these days, except to notice that there seemed to be too much of it, they were hardly aware of it. Time did not seem to have any need of them nor they for it. Lunch itself, a sparse soup that had been getting weirder as well as sparser by the day, had not been worth waiting for anyway. This was its fourth manifestation, and since flavour had quite deserted the original stock, which had been made with the last cube, today Jean had added a shake of angostura bitters and a small tin of macaroni. Defeated by the effort of pretending it was edible, she had left hers unfinished and agreed to lie down for the rest of the afternoon.

Michael moved silently in bare feet through the house while he pictured her sleeping above, trusting but unaware. He was conscious of the first pleasurable sensation he had felt since before Miranda died, an agreeable certainty that what he was working quietly at now, without her knowledge, would please his mother. From the