Perfect (18 page)

‘Isn’t this exciting?’ she said as the waiter slid out a chair for her, again without noise.

Byron tucked his stiff napkin into his collar because that was what the gentleman at the next table had done. The man had oiled his hair across
his scalp so that it looked like a plastic cap and Byron thought he would ask his mother if he could buy some of that oil too and slick his hair.

‘No school today, sonny?’ said the waiter.

‘We’ve been shopping.’ Diana didn’t even flinch. Instead she glanced over the menu and tapped her mouth with her fingertip. ‘What would you like, Byron? Today you can have whatever you want. It’s a celebration.’ When she smiled she looked lit up from inside.

Byron said he would very much like cream of tomato soup, but he would also like prawn cocktail, and he couldn’t decide which. To his amazement she ordered both and as she did so, the gentleman at the next table winked.

‘And what can I get for you, madam?’

‘Oh, nothing for me.’

Byron didn’t know why the gentleman had winked at him and so he winked back.

‘Nothing?’ said the waiter. ‘For a lovely lady like yourself?’

‘Just water, please. With ice.’

‘A glass of champagne?’

She laughed. ‘It’s not yet noon.’

‘Oh you must,’ added Byron. He couldn’t help catching the gentleman’s eye again because now he seemed to be smiling. ‘After all it’s a special occasion.’

While they waited for their drinks, Diana played with her hands. He thought of how Beverley had stared at his mother’s fingers as if she were measuring the size of her rings. ‘Once I knew a man who drank nothing but champagne,’ she said. ‘I think he even had it for breakfast. You’d have liked him, Byron. He could make buttons come out of your ear. He was funny. Then one day – he was gone.’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘I don’t know. I never saw him again. He said the bubbles made him
happy.’ She smiled but in a sad, brave way. Byron had never heard her talk like this before. ‘I wonder what happened.’

‘Did he live in Digby Road? Is that why you went there?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That was something else.’ Diana made a small flicking movement with her hands as if she had discovered a scattering of breadcrumbs on the tablecloth and needed to brush them away. ‘I’m talking about years ago. Before I met your father. Sit tall. Here come our drinks.’

His mother curled her fingers around the slim flute and lifted it to her lips. Byron watched the way the bubbles clung to the glass. He fancied he heard them crack as the buttery yellow liquid slid towards her mouth. She took the smallest sip and smiled. ‘Here’s to all that’s gone.’

The waiter laughed and so did the gentleman with the plastic hair. Byron didn’t know what any of it meant. The men watching his mother, and her blushing, and toasting all that had gone. She had never talked before about people who could disappear buttons from your ear, just as she had never mentioned a time before she knew his father.

‘I expect my soup will come soon,’ Byron said. He laughed too, not because the waiter’s hand was close to his mother’s, and not because the gentleman at the next table was staring at her, but because he was about to have soup and also prawn cocktail, when it was not quite lunchtime. It was like jumping out of ordinary time and seeing the world from a fresh perspective. And, unlike the adding of two seconds, this was his mother’s decision. It was no accident.

That afternoon the gifts were delivered to Digby Road. Diana telephoned the garage to enquire about a new hubcap. She spoke to his father too and gave her fluttery laugh. It had been another good day, she said. James was right. If you thought in a logical way, there was a solution to everything.

When Byron checked the next morning the glass by his mother’s bed
was empty and the lid was off her bottle of pills. She slept heavily. Even when the alarm went off, she failed to stir. She had forgotten to close the curtains and a shower of glittering light fell over the room; outside, a fragile mist like a spider’s web clung to the moor. Everything was so still, so at peace with itself, it was a shame to have to wake her.

S
OMETIMES, WHEN THE
wind stops, the air carries music across the moor. Jim waits at the door of his van and he listens. He watches the last crack of gold light as it slips over the western rim of the hills. He does not know what the music is, and he does not know who is playing it. The sound is sad, songs with words he cannot hear. Somewhere out there someone is playing music to fill their loneliness and if only they knew it, here is Jim, listening too. We are not alone; and even as he has that thought it occurs to him there is no one with whom he can share it. He closes the door of his van and pulls out his keys, his duct tape. He performs the rituals smoothly and efficiently and then he sleeps.

He doesn’t know if it is his injury or the pressure of work but he finds that since the accident he is more tired. His stutter is bad and so is the pain in his hands. Things have got busier at the café too. Human Resources at Head Office have decided that in the run-up to Christmas, the general atmosphere in the building needs to become more festive. Due to the
recent bad weather and also the recession, sales figures are down. Something must be done; a tree that flashes is apparently not enough. In response, HR have hired the services of a youth brass band to play carols at the store entrance. The store manager, who is not generally known for her warmth or her creativity, has come up with a further idea. Every week a soft toy snowman will be hidden in the store and the first lucky customer to find it will win a Christmas hamper. Meanwhile all staff have been issued with flashing badges that read, ‘
Hi! My name is —! Season’s Greetings!
’ Paula has painted her nails in alternate shades of red and green and stuck sparkling motifs on them. Her friend, Moira, has a pair of reindeer earrings. Moira’s flashing badge shouts from her left breast like an invitation while Jim wears his as if the rest of him is an apology.

Word has flown round the supermarket café about his accident. Initially Mr Meade offered sick leave but Jim begged to keep working. He insists he doesn’t need the crutches. (‘Can I have a go?’ says Paula.) He has his special plastic sock from the hospital with which to protect the plaster cast. If he moves slowly, if he just wipes tables, he promises he won’t cause trouble.

It is the prospect of being alone in the van for nights and days on end that terrifies him. Since the hospital, he knows he wouldn’t survive. The rituals would get worse and worse. He also knows this is another of the things he can tell no one.

‘Health and Safety won’t be happy,’ says Mr Meade. ‘They won’t like you on the café floor with a broken foot.’

‘It’s not exactly his fault,’ pipes up Paula, ‘if a lunatic woman reverses into him and drives off.’

It is a source of pain to Jim that she has worked out Eileen’s part in the accident. He had not intended to tell anyone; it was bad enough to have a plaster cast. Only when Darren described the car and remembered the registration number did she twig. She had a photographic memory, she said. In fact what she said she had was a photogenic memory, but they
knew what she meant. Since the trip to hospital, Paula wears an array of love bites like a necklace of purple and green stones. Jim sees Darren waiting for her after work in the car park. Spotting Jim, Darren waves.

Now the truth is out, everyone agrees. Eileen is the sort of person who should be put away. They cite her final exit from the café, her consistent lateness, her foul language. In the short space of time in which she worked as cook, apparently three complaints were made against her. Paula says that the problem is people like Jim are too good. And he knows the problem is not that. The problem is that people need other people – like Eileen – to be too bad.

‘You have to report her to the police,’ she tells Jim every day. ‘It was a hit-and-run. She could have killed you.’

Mr Meade adds that Eileen is a danger to the community. She should not have a driving licence.

‘You have to press charges,’ says Moira. Her reindeer earrings keep getting caught in her hair and Paula has to step in and unthread them. ‘These days they do witness protection and stuff. They put you in sheltered housing and give you a new name.’

It’s too much for Jim. It was an accident, he repeats. The girls fetch him lavatory paper to blow his nose.

The fact is that something has changed. It isn’t that he has become more likeable or any less strange, but the accident has accentuated the fragility of things. If this could happen to Jim, it could happen to any one of them. Consequently the café staff have decided that Jim’s strangeness is a part of themselves, and they must protect it. Mr Meade picks Jim up from the sign welcoming careful drivers to Crapham Village and gives him a lift to work. Every morning he says it’s shocking, what kids get up to. In turn, Jim looks out of the car window with his nose pressed to the glass. Sometimes he pretends to sleep, not because he is tired but because he needs to be quiet.

‘You have to confront your assailant,’ Paula tells Jim. ‘Otherwise you can’t heal. You heard what the nurse told you. You’re the victim of a violent crime. You will never get over this unless you confront it head-on.’

‘But my f-foot is healing. I don’t want to c-c—’

‘It’s the inner trauma I’m talking about. I knew someone who didn’t confront his assailant. No, no, he kept saying, I’m cool with what happened. And guess what?’

Jim admits he has no idea though he has a hunch the answer will involve personal injury and that it will be of a devastating nature.

‘He ended up stabbing a man in the supermarket. Just because he queue-jumped.’

‘Who? The assail—?’

‘No, the victim. He had unresolved issues.’

That word again.

‘The victim became an assailant,’ says Paula, ‘because of the trauma. It happens.’

‘I don’t u-understand,’ says Jim. ‘You knew—’

‘I didn’t know him as such,’ she interrupts. ‘I knew someone who knew him. Or I knew someone who knew someone else.’ She shakes her head impatiently as if Jim is being deliberately obtuse. ‘The point is, you will never get over this if you don’t confront it. And that is why we are going to get you some help.’

The visit takes place on Wednesday after work. Paula has arranged everything and both she and Darren will accompany him. They help Jim on and off the bus and he feels like an old man. He watches them, shoulders touching in the seat in front, and the way Darren lifts the pink curl of her hair to whisper in her ear, and it is like being left behind.

For the last part of the journey, Darren and Paula walk either side of Jim. There are no stars and the sky is thick with cloud that shines sulphur
orange. They enter the pedestrianized High Street, passing the Pound Shop, the amusement arcade, the closed-down electrics store, USA Chicken and Café Max. The windows are brightly illuminated, some decorated with coloured lanterns, some squirted with foam snow. A young woman is collecting for victims of cancer at Christmas and shakes her collection box at passers-by. When she sees Jim, something about him unsettles her and she holds her box very still. She pretends to be studying a shop window and this is hard because it is one of several that are available for letting. Bar several dead flies on the windowsill, and some ransacked units, it is empty.

‘My mum had breast cancer,’ says Paula. ‘She died when I was eighteen.’ Hearing this, Darren stops a moment and wraps her inside his jacket.

At the end of the High Street they turn into a long road of terraced housing. Almost there, says Darren. The kerb is packed with cars and vans. Many of the houses have roof conversions and front porches with frosted glass windows. All of them have satellite dishes and TV aerials. As they pass, Jim counts the Christmas trees in the front rooms. He wonders if he will find twenty-one.

Paula says, ‘You just have to talk to the woman. About how you feel. She won’t bite.’

Jim realizes he has lost his place with the counting and he would like to go back to the beginning of the street to start again. He would feel better if he could do that, less exposed. He turns to head back.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ says Paula.

‘I don’t need a-a-a d-doctor—’

‘She isn’t a doctor. She is a person to help. She’s fully trained.’

Darren pulls out the address from his pocket. This is it, he says. He pushes open the gate to a garden. He steps to one side, allowing Jim and Paula to go first.

Wind chimes hang from the low black branches of three or four closely planted fruit trees. In single file, they follow the dark path to the door.

‘How come we’re at someone’s house?’ says Darren. ‘I thought this woman was professional.’

‘She is professional,’ says Paula. ‘She’s a friend of a friend and she’s going to give Jim an introductory session for free. Apparently she’s awesome. She does all sorts of things, including phobia therapy. She even does parties. She’s been fully trained online.’

The psychic counsellor is a sturdy woman with a thick grey bob that is held from her face by an Alice band. She wears sensible shoes, elasticated slacks, a loose-fitting blouse and an optimistically colourful scarf. In the presence of the counsellor both Paula and Darren become children, she twisting her pink hair, he mumbling into bundled hands.