Half Broken Things

find her. I’ll track her down. Exactly how I had no idea, but it certainly would not be with Mother’s help. In fact I should probably have to be very patient and wait at least until I was twenty-one, when, it seemed to me, I would suddenly, magically know how to go about it. I could imagine the uproar it would cause. But I rejoiced also that Mother had just created a purpose for me and would never know it, because I was going to keep very quiet about it. I was intrigued by the prostitute part, and frankly unbelieving- I knew, because I could just sense it, that even if it were true there would be a reason for it. Something must have happened to her, something she couldn’t help. I would find her and make everything all right.

I’m getting to the guilt part of it. So, with my beautiful secret, the years went by. Twenty-one came and went, of course. Mother got worse and really did need looking after. I got sour, as I think I mentioned. So by the time I was forty-six, on that day eighteen years ago when the buddleia outside Mother’s window offended me so deeply, I am afraid there was a bit of a row. I am afraid my patience deserted me and I raged at Mother about the incontinence. At the heart of it was her notion that I was only worthy to clear up her mess, and yes, I admit that I shouted at her, and not for the first time. She of course screamed back, along the usual lines. But this time she added something. She said it wasn’t her fault I was still here. What’s that supposed to mean, I yelled at her. And then she said, in the way you would, the only way you could say it if you’d been saving it up for about thirty years, that if I hadn’t been so stupid and gullible over the clock, I could have left years ago.

I got it out of her, finally. She had spoken to Christie’s. They had told her that that series of numbered, unsigned Vulliamy clocks are the earliest and best. The records, the first surviving Vulliamy Clock Book, begin with Number 297, delivered in 1797. Mine was 169, predating the known records by at least ten years. It would have fetched about Ј1,700, possibly Ј2,000, in the early nineteen-fifties. The longcase clock had been worth at least ten times what I’d got for it. More than enough to go to university.

Mother herself had always had a shrewd idea that it was worth something, though Father would never spell out to her how much. That was why she had checked up and, of course, why she was furious that the clock was mentioned specifically in Father’s will as going to me. But why didn’t you tell me, I asked her, why? Of course I knew the answer: if I wanted to flounce off on my high horse and sell it to some two-bit shop, that was my own lookout. She loved it, telling me all this.

It explained Mr Hapgood’s three bedroom house in Rectory Fields. I think I’d realised something of the sort.

Anyway, since I’ve told this much, I might as well tell it all.

It wasn’t even Mother’s bombshell over the clock that day that did it, in the end, nor the way she kept quiet so that the money for university never came my way. No, it was what she went on to tell me about my real mother that really did it.

You see, I hadn’t quite realised until that day that I had been living all those years, all of my life to date, not with the hope that I would find her, but living on that hope. It had been feeding me. And with what Mother told me, the hope died. That day, I saw that I would never know how it felt to come first with somebody. I had been holding on to the chance that I might still come first with my real mother, once I found her. But what Mother told me, the information she tossed at me as if it didn’t matter, was that although my mother had not died when I was five, she had died since. She had been alive, all those years ago, when Mother first told me I was a prostitute’s bastard. But now she was dead.

It will keep for later, what happened next. It still makes me cry to think about it and really I think I’ve said enough on that subject for now. I have searched my conscience and concluded that what I did was not my fault.

So let me get back to that night after Michael came home. I did sleep a little, burdened still with something that, on balance, was not a feeling of guilt. This may surprise you if you are the sort of person who puts people like Michael, Steph and me in a different category from other people. But for some reason I find myself incapable of believing that I am significantly worse than everyone else.

Michael slept dreamlessly and woke early. But Steph was lying on her back staring at the ceiling, and he could tell that she had been like that for hours. Even in the half-light, he thought her features had sharpened overnight; around her mouth it seemed that an old tightness had returned. Turning on his side, he reached out and, starting at her hairline, with one finger traced the line of her profile. When he touched her forehead she did not move, but when he reached the soft little lift of flesh between the base of her nose and her upper lip she tipped back her head and caught his finger in her mouth. They had done this before so many times that it was by now their customary foreplay. But Steph did not this time keep hold of his finger, running her teeth gently along its length. She did not then turn to him without letting go for a moment, and take her mouth to his, and only then gently remove his hand and place it between her legs. Instead she took his finger from her mouth and pressed hard, dry kisses all over his hand, pulled the fingers open and smoothed his palm over her face. Her cheeks were wet. Michael drew her close and they held each other tight in the silence of the room. Outside, the first creamy light of the day was melting to yellow sunshine. They heard Jean get up and go downstairs. Then they lay listening to the yammering of the birds as light tried to burn through the curtains, until Steph’s body relaxed against his and slowly she drew him into her. They did not hurry; all too soon this sweet time would be over, anyway.

***

By six o’clock the next morning we were all downstairs. I had made a pot of tea and got out all the maps I could find, for I had already begun to grapple with the practicalities and had an inkling of how we would have to proceed. We had been set upon a path that we simply had to follow to the end. We had no choice. We hated the necessity for it, and wished desperately that we could undo the events of the day before. I could tell by their faces when they joined me at the table that Michael and Steph felt this, too.

There was so much more to do, and in some ways it would be even worse than what had been done yesterday. And there was the extra worry of not knowing how much time we had. So if I say that we became brutally practical, don’t misunderstand. I mean it only in the sense that one might say it of people attending to the consequences of accident or misfortune: firemen or paramedics or surgeons. (That was, in fact, exactly what we were doing.) There is a need to get the job done, and what it looks like, or feels like, to attend to it must not be allowed to interfere with physical skill, courage or resolve to see it through. What good ever comes of people ceasing to think clearly? So we became brutally practical, but we never acted with brutality. We merely mustered the strength, for one another’s sakes, to do what we had to. In fact I would go as far as to say that in our case, the killing of that man was attended by nothing but regret. Even what we did next was carried out only because we had to, and it was done with respect, even with something like tenderness.

He couldn’t stay here, at Walden. That was certain. Not just for the obvious reason that he might be found but because he would somehow dirty our surroundings. We were already thinking of the poor soul as a kind of pollutant. Wherever we might have put him, and there were dozens of places where he could have been buried, we just could not bear to keep him anywhere on the premises. The earth here was Miranda’s, and her presence sanctified it. I imagined myself lying in bed in a week’s time at four in the morning, knowing that he was lying not far off, and I knew that unless he was got rid of I should never feel that this place was ours or was quite clean, ever again. We had to get him away. We had to put far from us the ugly, terrible thing that Michael had been forced to do, we had to take ourselves beyond the whole episode. If we could, we would rid ourselves even of the memory of what had happened. We had to be allowed to go on as before and that would not be possible if he were anywhere close by. Besides, what if the police came digging?

No, he would have to go, and this brought a number of considerations. For one thing, I could not leave the house. Quite apart from my own inclinations (I had not felt like leaving the house since my day in Bath) I was the house sitter and what if Shelley telephoned about anything? Steph also would have to carry on as before, appearing each day at Sally’s and looking after Charlie. So it would be up to Michael alone. He would have to do it by himself, and here came the first of several quite appalling practical difficulties. Michael could barely lift him. In one piece, I mean.

Jean seemed to know that the police would not do anything about the disappearance of an adult until at least forty-eight hours had elapsed. Even then they would point out that people have a perfect right to absent themselves without being considered as having gone missing. But eventually the police would have to take it