Half Broken Things

Charlie’s forearm in the air. ‘Charlie says hello!’

Shelley had no option but to lift her hand and give a tinkling wave back, with a sort of Watch with Mother smile. ‘Hello, Charlie!’ she said. Jean did the same.

‘No sign, I’m afraid,’ Michael was saying, scratching the back of his head. ‘Bloody paperwork, never where you think it is. Know it’s there somewhere, but need to have a bloody good look. Sorry!’

But Shelley was not listening. Steph had advanced towards her with Charlie, who had given a sudden beam and stretched his arms out towards her. He was now being settled in Shelley’s lap and Shelley was taking off in an unselfconscious flight of rapture. It was not clear to whom she was speaking, Charlie, his parents, or herself, but she was making kissing faces and letting loose with a burble of words and noises of admiration. Charlie gazed up at her, impassive and open-mouthed. A bead of saliva that had been gathering on his bottom lip fell onto the back of her hand. She did not even notice.

***

It was Charlie who saved us. I never would have taken Shelley for the type to go helpless over babies, but once she’d got Charlie on her lap I knew we would be all right. I apologised nicely about the inventory again and Michael kept butting in saying the fault was his; between us we bored Shelley into the ground over the inventory until she said it wouldn’t matter. She was hardly listening. By then Charlie was smiling and laughing up at her and she was completely taken up with talking to him and shaking his bunny rabbit at him. We just bombarded her- Charlie with his giggles, I with cup after cup of tea, Michael with all sorts of banter to show what a scatty but charming sort he was. Steph just sat nearby looking luminous and drinking up the compliments about Charlie. Michael offered to check over the house himself with the inventory, when he found it, and report anything amiss direct to her in Stockport. Shelley said that would be fine.

I suppose Michael simply wore her out with protestations about what a good job I was doing and how he had said so to Oliver on the telephone. Now that was an awkward moment, because Shelley was a bit surprised at that. For a minute I thought we’d gone too far. But it was just that the agency had been instructed not to contact ‘Oliver’ (as Shelley was now calling him, even though she had never met him) unless there was some dire emergency. He did not wish to be disturbed, apparently. Oh, but of course the family keeps in touch, Michael said, so barefaced I could have blushed for him. So when he finally pulled her off to see the swimming pool nobody even remembered she was supposed to be here on this stupid ‘Management Visit’ and she’d long since lost any hope of seeing over the house. But by then she didn’t really care. After all, she had satisfied herself that the place was still standing.

I point this out because even though I’ve never been a fan of Shelley’s I don’t think the agency can be blamed for anything, except for trying to get rid of me before I was ready.

Charlie grew fractious just in time. First he got a little cranky, and then he twisted in Shelley’s arms until Steph took him firmly, settled herself back in her chair and flipped out one enormous blue-veined breast. Shelley at once turned her startled eyes away, embarrassed at being embarrassed. Nobody else was.

‘More tea?’ Jean asked, cupping her hand round the pot and frowning. She glanced at the clock. ‘You’ve got a bit of a journey, haven’t you?’ she said pleasantly.

‘Yes, poor you,’ Steph murmured, smiling down at Charlie, who was slapping and guzzling happily.

‘I usually go round and close the windows about now,’ Jean went on. ‘So if you’ll excuse me-’

Shelley said quickly, ‘Oh, perhaps I ought to come with you, normally I would, you see, on a normal Management Visit, if there was just the house sitter in residence. If you don’t mind, I could just go round-’

‘Oh, don’t! We’d die of embarrassment, wouldn’t we?’ Michael almost shouted. ‘If we’d known you were coming, of course it would be different. We wouldn’t have dreamt of letting you see what utter piggies we are, we’d have had a proper tidy round. I’m sure you understand. But with babies, well, they do rather take over, it’s a bit messy. But I’d hate you to see.’

‘Oh, well, of course I wouldn’t like to intrude, but-’

‘And anyway you know Jean’s marvellous, don’t you. She keeps us in order, doesn’t let us get away with too much. Eh, Jean?’ He almost leered at her before turning back to Shelley. ‘Come with me and see the pool,’ he commanded, in a new onslaught of friendliness. ‘For a bit of fresh air, before you’re all cooped up in the car. Haven’t got a cozzie with you by any chance- no, too bad! Still, you could always have a paddle!’

Shelley was torn; reluctant to follow the striding Michael outside and God knew where, in the wrong shoes, but pleased to have a reason to get away from the spectacle of Charlie feeding. ‘Oh, well, I suppose. Just for a minute, then,’ she said, with a careful smile. Michael was already at the door.

Fifteen minutes later they all trooped out to see her off, Charlie now latched to Steph’s other breast, Michael once again wearing his straw hat at a silly angle. Jean was careful to stand a way off from them, and lifted a hand once at the departing car with a courteous but disinterested wave. They watched until after the car had gone from sight, and stayed listening until long after the noise of the engine had died in the evening air. The returning silence seemed newly their own after Shelley’s cooing baby voices, her noisy breathing and her Yankee Doodle Dandy telephone.

‘Party time,’ Michael said, under his breath.

***

Well, we did go a bit daft after that, I will admit. It was late for Steph to be taking Charlie home, so Michael drove them down to the edge of the village and Steph walked him in the pushchair from there. She wanted to arrive on foot, thinking that Sally might already be home (she wasn’t). She knew she would go berserk if she saw them and found out that Charlie had been travelling in her arms in the front of the van, not in a proper car seat, and of course on top of that Sally knew nothing of Michael’s existence. Do you begin to see the trouble we took to keep everybody happy?

It happened to be Steph’s payday, and when she met up with Michael again they went off to Corsham and bought a Chinese takeaway. They had decided between them, the sweethearts, that I had had too demanding a day to cook that night! In fact they bought so much food that the man taking the order threw in free Cokes and prawn crackers, a calendar and a bottle of soy sauce. It felt like a sort of approval. They came back giggling. Then Michael said the occasion called for something special and got four bottles of champagne up from the cellar. I don’t have a good memory for the names of wines, because we tried so many. But Steph stuck a candle in one of the empties from that night and it’s been on the table ever since, so I know that it was a 1988 Krug, which Michael would insist is marvellous. It wasn’t the ideal thing with sweet and sour though, and I think it was the combination of the two, plus the release of all the tension, that caused me to be ill so suddenly that evening. I would like it to be understood that afterwards I made every effort with the carpet. By the way, the rings on the dining table date from that evening too. There was such an air of celebration we didn’t even notice how much soy sauce was escaping down the side of the bottle. Actually, when we did, it didn’t seem to matter. After all, it’s only a table, Michael said, and I recall that that led on to us talking about possessions in general, and how it is that the objects that bear the marks of events in our lives are always the ones most precious to us. There was general agreement on this point.

June

Oh, it was like a life from the pages of a magazine for a while. There was the weather. I don’t believe I have ever noticed the weather so much before. Here, the seasons get themselves noticed in a way that does not happen in towns, and by the time the summer really arrived I had developed something of a countrywoman’s eye for it. The garden burst into bloom, of course, a thing that I would have observed without much interest before I became the kind of person who would stick her nose into flowers and bring masses of them into the house. My choice of reading expanded out from the cookery books. In the library there were dozens of books on gardening. There was one in particular that had pictures and descriptions of just about every flower that