A Snow Garden and Other Stories

  Binny tells the young woman, ‘Our Hoover broke. My partner was going to fix it. I don’t think he actually knows how to fix things. He just wishes he was the sort of person who could mend Hoovers, so he says the kind of things they would say.’

  ‘Does it suck?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your Hoover?’ The young woman gives a small intake of breath to indicate what she means. It sounds like the tidiest hiccup. ‘Maybe all you need is a new bag.’

  ‘If only life were that simple,’ says Binny. ‘What do you suggest for the heart?’

  The young woman is looking confused again.

  ‘Joke,’ Binny reassures her.

  ‘Yes,’ says the young woman. But she is not laughing.

  The real joke is that Binny believed things were beginning to look up for her and Oliver. About two weeks ago he’d bought her a Christmas present. She knew because he’d left it on the driving seat of the van (she discovered it when she was hunting for the keys). It was a bottle of her favourite perfume in a special gift box. They’d made love that night and again the next. It wasn’t abandoned, like at the very beginning, when the need for one another was like eating. But it was familiar: faces breathing smiles in the dark, skin on skin, the honey warmth of him. Oliver’s kisses were beautiful things; his mouth opened over hers, as if he was giving a part of himself that was unavailable at other times. Silently he had moved within her until deep inside she opened like a flower.

  A few days later he’d limped barefoot into the kitchen, dancing the weight from his left foot as if the sole was shot with invisible nails. ‘Ooh,’ he’d sighed like one of the children, waiting to be noticed. ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh.’

  ‘Morning, Ols.’

  ‘Where’s Coco? She said she’d find me a plaster.’

  ‘She’s at school, hon. It’s quarter past nine. Why do you want a plaster?’

  ‘Ooh, ooh,’ he’d repeated, hobbling to a chair. ‘I’ve got a verruca, Bin. Coco took a look. It hurts. It hurts a hell of a lot, actually. I don’t know why you’re smiling. It’s not exactly very nice.’

  She’d said not to be a weed. Let her have a look, she’d said.

  And when she did, she saw his toenails. Silvery blue, they shimmered like mermaid scales, with little black hairs sprouting below the nails. ‘Hey, Ols, what’s with the nail varnish?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, appearing to remember something insignificant. ‘Oh yes, Sally did those.’

  ‘Sally?’ she said.

  And then it all came out.

  Binny and Oliver sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table and spoke quietly. There was no anger. They even smiled. They forgot about the verruca. Holding her hand in his, studying her fingers as if he’d lost something in them, Oliver explained how he’d met Sally when he did the breakfast-cereal commercial a few months ago. She was in advertising. Hated it, of course.

  ‘Of course.’ Binny found herself siding with Sally as if she were a friend. And this was strange when she had lost touch with so many real ones. ‘But you’re not in love with her or anything?’ It was a joke. She was expecting him to say no.

  Instead he said, ‘This is so confusing for me.’

  She felt a ping of alarm.

  ‘Yes,’ she said; well, it was getting quite confusing for her too.

  ‘Sally is really excited about what she believes. Not like all those mothers in the playground first thing in the morning. They look as if they can’t remember what they believe.’

  ‘At that particular moment they’ve got their hands full. They’re amazed they’ve got their kids to school, for one thing. And that they’re dressed, for another.’ She laughed to show how fun she was.

  Oliver continued talking earnestly to her fingernails. ‘Sally’s got so many opinions. She collects ideas like … I don’t know … like other women buy shoes. She keeps me thinking. I know this sounds mad, but you’d really like her, Bin.’

  Binny felt an impulse to shout and sat on it. ‘I don’t suppose that’s important,’ she said. ‘Also, not all women buy shoes.’

  ‘I know I’m an arse.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said.

  Oliver sighed. He sank his head to the table, as if he couldn’t bear the weight of it. Binny glimpsed beneath his T-shirt the secret smooth skin of his shoulders and the sprinkling of freckles. His back would be golden again by the summer and the freckles would be washed away. She longed to slip her hand down there, to touch the warm softness of him. She thought of lying naked at his side and then her heart took a plunge. She realized with a terrible, blank and absolute clarity that it was over.

  ‘What’s up, Bin?’ said Oliver. ‘You’ve gone a funny colour.’

  ‘I’m just trying to understand.’

  She would never touch his bare skin again. From this moment onwards they must behave like two people who only knew one another in clothes. Her breath was snatched clean out of her. She felt hollowed.

  ‘I wanted to say something to you before,’ he said. ‘I should have said something. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, Bin. Oh, I feel really shit.’

  ‘No, no, you mustn’t,’ she said, groping for the companionship of his fingers. But he dipped his hand between his knees and her arm was left shipwrecked on the table.

  Oliver told her that Sally loved all the words to his songs. (I love them too, thought Binny; I just didn’t tell you.) Sally said he was a gifted musician, as well as an actor. ‘It’s not just the sex,’ he added. They had only done it six times. Twice after the commercial, twice in the van—

  ‘Not my van?’ gasped Binny. The words shot out. She never normally referred to things as her own.

  —and twice at her parents’ place.

  ‘Her parents’?’

  ‘She’s moved out. She had to. Now there’s going to be a baby.’

  Binny slumped as if she’d been walloped in the spine. Sex? Parents? Baby? There was not enough room in her lungs for the words and the breath and the emotions that were beginning to swell there in an amorphous gloop.

  Oliver flexed his silvery-blue toes. His eyes melted. ‘I’m sorry, Bin. I’ve got to do the decent thing. I mean, I’m only realizing this as I say it. I kind of hoped the problem would go away on its own. But it’s because of you, Bin.’

  ‘What’s because of me, hon?’

  ‘You’re such a good person. Now I’m telling you, I’m sort of seeing it through your eyes. And I’m seeing I’ve got to stick by her. She’s petrified. She needs me.’

  Binny gazed at him, and tried to speak, but couldn’t. All she knew was that nothing made sense, as if someone had cut a space out of time and had failed to tell her.

  Then, ‘No!’ she roared. She thumped the table so hard that the piled-up breakfast bowls jumped and chattered. ‘What about Coco? And Luke? What about me?’

  ‘I know, Bin, you’re right. And I’m heartbroken that I’ve lost you. But what would you do?’

  So his mind was made up. I’ve lost you. Already Binny and her children existed in the past tense. She swallowed, but the lump in her throat stuck like a stone. ‘Well you’d better go,’ she said.

  ‘Shall I have my porridge first?’ he said.

  It took barely an hour for Oliver to snip the shape of himself out of Binny’s life and paste it into someone else’s. She piled his bag and his guitar into the van, along with his Asterix bowl, and she gave him a lift to Sally’s new council flat. He buzzed at the door and waited, rubbing his thick hair with his knuckles until a girl shape appeared at a high-up window. Sally looked tiny all the way up there, like a little bird framed with coloured fairy lights.

  ‘Bye, Ols.’ Binny lifted her hand to wave. It looked more like a ‘halt’ sign.

  Oliver turned and his face was dark and tangled up. ‘Oh, I left you some perfume,’ he said. ‘In the bathroom.’

  And that was the end of it. So straightforward. So simple.

  Except, of course, it wasn’t. Binny found that what had s
eemed to be an acceptable level of pain that morning became searingly unacceptable once he was gone. She had been seduced by his kind, milky voice and the regular flow of his words into behaving as if what he had told her was bearable. But it was not. She felt the lack of Oliver’s guitar when she failed to crash into it in the mornings, just as she felt the lack of him when her moisturizing cream remained in the same place, with the lid on. No one made porridge at half past nine and no one left the saucepan on the worktop, or a sticky rim of honey on the table. She stared at the places where his things had once been and all she could feel was that they should still be there. His absence became a presence and she thought of nothing else. She binned the perfume.

  The children brought home paper angels and pictures like stained-glass windows that fluttered from the mantelpiece every time she banged the front door. They sang from their bedroom about Good King Winsylass and We Three Kings of Ori ’n’ Tar. Luke said he would like a go-kart for Christmas. Coco said she wanted to give a goat for charity. Only she wanted to keep the goat in their back garden. ‘But the poor people who need the goat live in Africa,’ said Binny. ‘That is racist, actually,’ said Coco. ‘There are some very poor people who live down the road.’ Overwhelmed, Binny bought nothing.

  And every evening it was the same question: ‘Where’s Oliver?’

  ‘He’s gone away for a while, Coco.’

  ‘I’ll wait up.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  The little girl pursed her neat mouth. ‘I think I will, though.’

  So Binny did not buy a Christmas tree or get out the box of decorations from the loft or fill the kitchen with mince pies and jars of pickle. It was all so futile. But she’d catch her daughter at the window, waiting for the person Binny knew she couldn’t make appear, and she was overcome. It was worse than hoping for Father Christmas. She’d kick the washing. Slam the doors. Rail at the mass of winter sky, flat and grey as a Tupperware lid. But nothing, nothing eased her fury.

  Last night she’d finally given in. When the children were in bed, she had watched a programme showing the hundred funniest moments in television – she’d laughed at not one of them – and drunk a bottle of red wine. After that she had phoned Oliver. Why shouldn’t she? She didn’t even know what she was planning to say. And when he didn’t answer, as she knew all along he wouldn’t, she tried again and then again. Now that she had started this thing that she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place, she couldn’t stop. She tried maybe a hundred times in all. And every time he failed to answer she felt increasingly diminished and increasingly betrayed.

  ‘I am not here,’ his voicemail message told her, over and over. ‘I am not here. I am not here.’

  Knowing Oliver, he’d probably lost his phone. It was most likely in a bar somewhere or slipped between the cushions of a sofa. And then a new thought had come to her; a real thorn. What if the mobile was not lost? What if he and Sally were lying in bed, clinging to one another like beautiful weeds, choosing not to answer? In Binny’s mind the couple sent her a closed-off smile.

  How dare Oliver find peace when she had none? How dare he replace her and be so easily, so stupidly happy? Did her love mean nothing? She hurled the empty wine bottle at the kitchen wall. To her surprise, it did not break. It bounced off the fridge into a pile of dirty washing and returned dog-like to her feet. And because the bottle would not smash, she grabbed her mother’s best Royal Doulton plates from the dresser and shot them at the floor. One by one.

  They broke. Oh yes. They splintered into a thousand blue ceramic pins. And then she bent over the pieces, the only thing she had left of her parents, and her face yawned into one gigantic noiseless scream.

  ‘Mum,’ Coco said in the morning, on discovering the wreckage, ‘I think we had better buy breakfast in the garage shop today.’ She closed the kitchen door as if it were better Binny did not see.

  It was too much. All too much. But I will not cry. Emotion washed up and over Binny, and still she would not surrender to it. While the children were finding their song sheets, she swept the splinters of china into her hands and squeezed until they spiked her skin. Then she shoved her feet into trainers – Luke’s actually – and slammed her front door so hard that the pane of glass tinkled.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she told it.

  The children skipped ahead, counting Christmas trees in windows. ‘Away in a manger,’ sang Coco, ‘no crib for a bed.’ And Luke sang, ‘The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet legs.’

  But now it is past ten o’clock on a mild and damp morning and Oliver will have finished his porridge. Her children are rehearsing a Winter Celebration about Larry the Lizard and Buzz Lightyear while Binny stands alone in the middle of a shop that stocks nothing but cleaning products. How could this place be less appropriate? Deep inside her, something is stretching and expanding and she has to clench her jaw to keep a grip.

  ‘So can I help you?’ asks the young woman. This could be the third time she’s asked the question, but if it is she doesn’t raise her voice or speak with any sign of impatience.

  ‘I probably need a dustpan and brush, to start with. For my kitchen floor.’

  ‘Are we talking wood or marble?’

  ‘We’re talking crappy lino. Does it really make a difference?’

  ‘It affects the brush.’

  The assistant fetches a ladder and reaches for a chrome dustpan. She pulls out several brushes and examines them, running her fingers through the bristles. ‘This is the one,’ she says. When she returns from her ladder she is smiling. How easy it is to be you, thinks Binny.

  ‘You don’t like cleaning, do you?’ says the young woman.

  ‘I find it hard to waste my time on something that is just going to get dirty again. If it’s any consolation, it’s the same with the ironing.’

  ‘Domestic chores can be therapeutic.’

  ‘So can red wine,’ says Binny.

  To her surprise, the young woman laughs. ‘It’s small things that make a difference. Something that you know you can do if you take the time. It’s important to have those things. If I was a painter I would paint, but I am not a painter and so I don’t. Cleaning is what I like. I take a piece of silver. I apply the polish with a duster and I wipe it all over. Then I take a fresh duster – nice and clean – and I rub carefully. Ages, I can do that. Tears will be running down my face, and I’ll keep polishing till it’s over. It always works.’

  The young woman looks directly at Binny. Tears running down her smooth, pale face? It’s hard to believe. Nevertheless there is something in her eyes, something shiny, like Coco when she has hidden a coin behind her back. Suddenly she doesn’t look so young any more and neither does she look tidy in that hygienic sort of way. She asks, ‘What happened to your hands?’

  ‘Oh.’ Binny steals a guilty glance at the tiny cuts. ‘I had an accident.’ She expects the young woman to move away, but she doesn’t; if anything the young woman looks even more carefully, as if she recognizes hands like these.

  ‘Maybe you would like me to show you? How to polish?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Without waiting for an answer, the young woman walks to the cash till, bends to retrieve something from beneath the counter and produces a shoebox. She sets it on the counter beside the Christmas angel with her tinsel wings. For a moment she gazes at the box with her hands suspended in the space above it, as if it contains hallowed treasure. Then she takes off the cardboard lid and places it beside the box.

  Inside there is one folded duster and another duster wrapped around something small, along with a pot of cream. She removes the pot, the folded duster and the one in a bundle. She places them just-so on the counter. She unscrews the lid from the pot and shows Binny the white cream inside. Binny gets the lemon smell again. Slowly and carefully, the young woman unwraps the bundle and reveals a small, silver christening cup.

  ‘Life is hard sometimes,’ she says, lifting the cup from its duster wrapping. ?
??And that’s a fact.’ She balances it between the tips of her thumb and forefinger and lifts it to the light. Transfixed, she stares at the cup, and so does Binny. It is about the size of Coco’s fist and the handle is the slimmest crescent moon, so delicate an adult finger will not fit inside. Below the rim there is an illegible inscription in a swirling font. At its centre the cup bears a gleaming reflection of both Binny’s face and the young woman’s.

  With her right hand, the young woman rolls the duster into a cigar shape and dips the end into the cream. She rubs it all over the cup’s surface until it is smeared white. Clearly she’s done this many times before. Her tongue tip rests on the corner of her mouth as, without looking, she flaps open her second duster and begins to polish. It is beautiful the way she does it, so carefully and in such tiny perfect circles.

  ‘Five years ago I lost my baby,’ says the young woman. ‘He was stillborn. He was so little I had to bury him in doll’s clothes. They were pink and I wanted them to be blue so I cried. But when he was dressed I didn’t care about the pink any more.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ murmurs Binny. ‘It was Christmas. Everyone was happy. I felt like I didn’t belong.’ She continues to wipe and wipe.

  Binny has a feeling like a bubble in her stomach and she doesn’t know why but it rises up, up, up. Without warning, something warm slants down the side of Binny’s nose towards her mouth. It tastes of salt. She knocks it with the heel of her hand, but here come more. Tears. It’s the grace of this young woman that unpicks her, the way she keeps wiping. With her tears come images from the past, images of people Binny has loved and lost. Her parents, Oliver, boyfriends, her ex-husband, old friends, Alice with her rose-oil smell, even people she passes every day on the street and does not know. So many lives somehow tangled with hers, gone now, or going. So much love, so much energy, and for what? It all seems to smell of lemon.