Half Broken Things

Charlie? It’s only a mile, it’s just along the road, really. We count the cars, don’t we, Charlie?’

‘Along the road? The top road? That settles it. They tear along there, there’s no proper pavement, is there, and they just tear along… it’s not safe. No, never mind the coffee, I’m giving you a lift. What can Sally be thinking of? I’ll have to speak to her. So dangerous!’ He had already found his car keys.

Steph tried to protest. ‘But we always walk! I’m careful! I wouldn’t let anything happen to him!’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t, but I won’t have it. I’m taking you in the car.’

‘Oh, but you can’t! I’ve just remembered. You won’t have a car seat. And Charlie’s is in Sally’s car, and she’s gone to work, and she wouldn’t like it. He’s got to be in a proper car seat. He’s only safe if he’s in a proper car seat, she says. So we can’t come with you.’

The man gave a dismissive tut. ‘Oh really, as if that were the point. Anyway, there’s a car seat in the hall. I’m sure I saw one in the hall, on the way in.’

Steph had not noticed. There it was, partly hidden under a thrown-down jumper of Philip’s. She remembered now. Philip’s car was a BMW two-seater, so they had gone to France in Sally’s Volvo, folding the back seat down flat to make room for the cases of wine. The car seat had been taken out and, true to form, Sally had not yet put it back.

Mr Brookes’s car was almost as crammed with things as Sally’s usually was. While Steph tugged the rear seat belt round the car seat, Mr Brookes cleared stuff out from the front so that Steph could sit there. He first chucked over some books, folders and a number of cardboard tubes, and then he brought out several boxes with no lids, that contained bundles of brightly coloured paper strips held by elastic bands. They all carried the same words: SAVE YOUR LYCHGATE. Several identical strips were stuck all over the windows and rear windscreen of his car. He opened the boot and began rearranging things to make room for the boxes.

‘What are they?’ Steph asked.

‘Oh, a parish project of mine. Car stickers, good for awareness-raising. I’ve still got plenty, printer was most obliging, twenty thousand cost hardly any more than five. Want some?’

‘But what is it, a- whatever, a lychgate?’

‘Oh, the lychgate’s where you park a coffin if it’s raining. You must have seen them, quite a lot of churches have them. We’ve done a bit of a blitz on ours, coat of paint, got a few plants in containers round it, that kind of thing. Petunias and busy lizzies, mainly. Trying to get a volunteer warden scheme going for the watering, discourage the graffiti merchants.’

‘Sounds nice,’ was all Steph could find to say.

Perhaps because all she could do was sit there passively, Steph felt, as soon as she was in the car, that Charlie’s granddad was trying to take over. He said, ‘Stephanie, please don’t think I’m being at all critical of you. But the thought of a pushchair on this road, well. But it’s not you, it’s Sally I blame.’

‘But I’m careful, I stay on the grass, we’ve never once had any trouble. I- oh, turn off here, the next left, this is the drive. Where it says Private Drive.’ The car swung in suddenly. ‘You could just drop us here,’ Steph said, optimistically.

‘Oh no. No, I’ll take you right up. In any case, I should like, if there’s no objection, to stay for a few minutes. I don’t see much of my grandson, after all. Do I, Charlie?’

He turned to Charlie in the back and beamed luridly, and Steph wondered, gazing at his nostrils, which opened much too wide when he smiled, if perhaps she didn’t like him so much after all. Still, she thought, turning back and staring through the windscreen, it won’t do any harm. She would prefer not to be giving Jean and Michael the fright of an unexpected visitor, but he wouldn’t stay long. They had coped with Sally coming here, and that woman Shelley, so they could easily manage this.

Michael had moved the croquet hoops off the side lawn, which he would mow later on, and had set them out ready for a game on the stretch of grass between the back of the house and the pool pavilion. He was fetching the mallets and balls and carrying them round when he heard the sound of the car. Jean appeared at the kitchen door. Together, exchanging a look, they made their way quickly round the side of the house to the front. Steph had stepped out of the car and was hurrying towards them with an appeasing but doubtful smile. Jean stopped and was wiping her hands on her apron and Michael stood some distance behind her, tossing two croquet balls up and down in one hand. They tried to smile back.

‘It’s okay!’ she said breathlessly, as she reached them, ‘honest, it’s okay. I couldn’t help it. It’s only Charlie’s granddad.’ Jean and Michael looked past her to the back of the figure bending into the rear of the car, fiddling with the straps of the car seat. Michael stopped his half-hearted juggling with the croquet balls. ‘Only I couldn’t help it. He just turned up at Sally’s, and then he wouldn’t let me bring Charlie along the road in the pushchair. He’s okay, though. He never sees Charlie and he wants to stay a minute. Just act ordinary.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Michael said slowly. He was staring at the man, who was now smiling broadly and walking towards them with Charlie in his arms. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ He stepped back a few paces, but it was too late to disappear. He had been seen. ‘Jean, go on and say hello.’

Mr Brookes pulled off his hat and called out, ‘How do you do! Forgive my descending on you out of the blue, did Stephanie explain? Bit of communication breakdown, I’m afraid! Here we go, young man!’ He shifted one arm under Charlie’s bottom and handed him over to Steph. Then he extended a hand towards Jean. I’m Charlie’s grandfather. Gordon Brookes. And you’re…?’

‘Er, Jean,’ she said, in a voice that sounded out of practice. ‘I’m Jean. Hello.’ Steph bit her lip. Jean looked rather wild, standing there in a strawberry smeared apron, her hair wandering. She sounded rather out of it, too.

‘What a marvellous house!’ the man was saying, taking Jean’s hand and pumping it while he looked past her at the faзade. ‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Quite long,’ she managed to say, suspiciously.

‘What’s the period? The usual hotchpotch? Tudor origins, later additions? Glorious stone!’ The man was turning his full charm and attention equally on Jean and the house, and Jean seemed about to collapse under it. Steph shot Michael a darting look. Michael must see what was happening. Why was he simply staring, and not doing something to rescue her?

And why was Charlie’s grandfather now staring so hard at Michael? The smile had gone, and his mouth was opening and closing. ‘You? My God. You. I- I’m going to- My God, it is you, you’re the- the-’ Gordon Brookes’s face was reddening.

‘Steph,’ Michael said quietly, ‘Steph, take Jean and Charlie indoors. Please, go now. Now. Right now.’ He took a step backwards.

Gordon Brookes was advancing, and growing agitated. He gasped, ‘It’s not, is it? It is! It’s you! You little, you…! My figures, my St John and St Catharine. Oh good God… you-’

Being a man capable of fury yet unused to physical contact of any kind, least of all fighting, Gordon Brookes did not move smoothly, but his hands flew up and one fist caught Michael on the shoulder, half pushing, half punching. The blow seemed to take him almost as much by surprise as it did Michael, but he followed it with another before Michael could raise his arms to protect his head. Gordon Brookes had long ago been civilised into churchy mental habits, so it was a shock to him to realise that hitting somebody could feel, while unfamiliar, the only natural and appropriate thing to be doing. His outrage was overtaking all his beliefs about the pointlessness of violence; he was instead almost dancing, animated by an angry energy that he would never, ever have imagined he could expend on any response as ‘mindless’ as punching someone about the face. He landed a hard kick on Michael’s leg. Michael’s whimpering stopped him for a moment. He raised a shaking hand. ‘That curate… that poor man. You… have you any idea what you did? We know you did it, you know! I’m getting the police down here, right now! Good God, you’re- you won’t get away with this-!’

‘Steph, take Jean and Charlie away, now. Do it.’ Michael’s voice was wavering, and when he lowered his arms from his head, his eyes and lips fluttered with fear. Yet he did not move from the spot where he stood, nor take his eyes away from Gordon Brookes. Brookes moved in again, this time kicking wildly.

‘Steph, go! Go, for Christ’s sake!’

Steph, still holding Charlie, managed to pull at Jean’s arm and she, now dumbly bewildered, allowed herself to be led. They hurried in the direction of the house. And Steph even managed to prevent them both from looking back when, a moment later, they heard the hard crack of a croquet ball against the side of Gordon Brookes’s head