Things that are Lost, and Things that are Broken by SJ Bradley / Fiction / Untitled Books

"His parents showed their affection in understated ways, a touch on the shoulder as the peas were passed, or a chaste embrace in the kitchen after work, communicating in their every movement the value of living an undramatic life."

Things that are Lost, and Things that are Broken by SJ Bradley

The alarm beeps and beeps in the darkness, the single-note buzz persisting around the walls like an angry digital bee. Paul raises his head slightly from the pillow, feeling insulted. He, lying awake with his eyelids lightly closed in the dull cold air, had thought it was earlier. Under the curtains, night looms between the folds, the heavy curves of the crushed velvet appearing gloomier on the outside than the in. The flashing numbers sear electric turquoise trails in the dark, leaving carved images on his retinas where they came, and went again. Time to get up.

Sinking in the distance, hanging far away over the terraced roofs, the moon still lingers in a midnight-blue sky. Recently night has seemed to last forever, although apparently the sun will always come up. It was there yesterday, and the day before that, the universe disappointing him with its stoic insistence on going through the motions, at a time when he feels as though the very earth might crumble away beneath him. The days assault him with their reliability, turning up one after another and forcing him to endure them, and the most he can do is to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Not so long ago, Paul had been happy. In the mornings, spurred by a childlike feeling of mild curiosity, he'd leap out of the bed leaving the still-slumbering form inside it, and get ready for work with a song just out of reach of his mouth. Although he hadn't laughed often - he wasn't the type - he had been content. The days were pleasingly smooth, his movements dictated by a more satisfying kind of automation. He went through life in a type of hazy, dreamy contentment, coming home in the afternoons to the smell of pastry and potatoes, and spending the evenings dozing pleasantly in front of the television with his arm loosely around the woman who made it all possible. Things change, the givens go. She went away suddenly, and everything was different after that.

Paul is unremarkably ordinary, and always has been. His mother and father, who lived quietly and obediently in a two-up two-down house in a decent housing estate, rarely argued, and brought him up in an atmosphere of austere satisfaction. Voices were never raised, and disagreements efficiently solved by father, who wrote lists and diagrams, and at the end of his decision-making process, explained logically how he had arrived at his conclusion. Tea was always prompt, and the house tidy. Mother worked part-time in the library, and her habit of speaking quietly, whether in-born or learned, went with her in the house too. His parents showed their affection in understated ways, a touch on the shoulder as the peas were passed, or a chaste embrace in the kitchen after work, communicating in their every movement the value of living an undramatic life.

Paul himself went to a school ten minutes' walk from home, where he gained an impeccable record for attendance. He neither excelled himself enough to be distinguished, and nor did he cause the sort of disruption that drew any attention. His classmates admired his easy-going, blank demeanour, and he was famous for his laconic ability to stay calm in every situation. On the sports field, he was less of a ferocious tiger, and more of an ambling, amiable shire horse.

Although not in the popular set, he was well-liked by everyone who met him. When school ended, he took a job with the Highways Agency. It was a grimy, dirty, hot and dangerous job; he liked the camaraderie of it. They worked early and they worked long, Paul putting out the cones as the cars roared by, the roar of engines long in his ears after the day ended. It required little of him besides reliability and the ability to stay calm in the face of danger. It suited him, and he couldn't imagine himself doing anything else. There were four other men in his work-gang, and he had married one of their sisters.

They had first met in the golf club bar, at Gary and Tina's wedding reception. Gary was on the dance floor with his new wife, the rest of them sitting around a table cluttered with empty pint jars. As ever, they were talking about women. That night, there were a lot of them clicking together in small groups. They formed circles, moving their legs and shoulders in time with the music, like herons trying to dislodge a fly. According to custom, Paul and the others were devising a mental league table of the prettiest. When talk turned around to the girl in the violet dress with the stout hips and the broad, large-featured face, Paul said: "Don't say a thing about her. That's my future wife you're talking about." They roared with laughter, and clapped him on the back, and didn't say two more words about it. The champagne had got the better of him.

She turned out to be Gary's sister, two years younger than he, and with a respectable job in the admin department of the local college. Paul's mind was made up the moment he laid eyes on her. Hers took a little longer. Eventually, she suffered him to court her and, in the end, marry her. She insisted on a church wedding and he went along with it. It didn't matter too much to him about the ceremony itself. "What the lady wants, the lady gets," he grumbled to the boys, pretending to mind. Afterwards, he carried his wife over the threshold into this house, with the kitchen in the back room, and the bathroom whose window always needs to be open so that the steam can escape.

He thought they were happy, then one day she said, "I just need some time." Nothing could move him to histrionics, and so he gave it to her. It wasn't in him not to take her words at face value, and he expected her to be back after a week, or maybe two. The days elapsed, the house growing ever louder with her absence. The periods of silence seemed to yawn ever longer, but still he hoped that she might come back. He tried desperately to stay normal, but on the inside was thinking, thinking, thinking. Why did she go? What had he done wrong? Where did she go? Always the same things, never anything useful, over and over again. Every single notion he has repeats itself, his thoughts prowling around in circles, snapping at their own tails like hungry dogs. He would like to wake with a new revelation, except he never sleeps.

The hours no longer flew by, each minute dragging out to unnatural lengths. It was during one of these long days that the box appeared. He had been at work, and it was in the hall when he came in, a fairly small corrugated cardboard box that had once transported several multi-packs of tissues. It had been folded together for the purposes of moving things. The lid was angled open, but there was nothing in it. He picked it up and brought it upstairs.

There was another box the same in the wardrobe, the box of broken things she called it, and he slid this new box in beside it on the shelf. He closed the wardrobe doors and looked around, and saw that her things had gone. It had been her habit to fling her things off when she came in, for them to find their new homes wherever they lay. This was how her gloves came to live by the desk-legs, and her hat on the chest of drawers. Weeks later, when she wanted to wear the flung clothes again, she would rifle the drawers and wardrobe in a fury, declaring that everything was lost, that she could never find anything, and why were things never where they should be? She flew everywhere in a blur of high-pitched noises and colour, always leaving a trail of crumpled clothes in her wake. The only time she was ever quiet was when she was asleep, her face relaxed in slumber, hair curling in dark exclamations all over the pillow. Her smell on the sheets receded weakly into his, now, and he didn't want to wash them. Every now and again he caught the faint scent of shampoo and coffee that was a reminder that she had been there. He was loath to be rid even of these little faint suggestions of her presence. But now, that odd black sock, an old worn greying thing that had long peeked out from underneath the bed, had gone; and she had taken the handbag whose strap had been looped around the banister.

With her detritus removed, the room looked tidier. It looked empty. Often-worn jackets and jumpers had gone from the wardrobe, bottles and jars from the bathroom. The dressing-table was swept clean of brushes and compacts. Even the bed-spread was pulled a little straighter than he had left it when going out. All of her mess had gone, except for the box of broken things, the collection of things she wouldn't hear of throwing away, something over which they had frequently argued. The box held nothing of earthly use or value. The items in it, which no longer served any purpose, lay expired together in a tangle of dead circuit boards and plastic casing. It had begun with the remote control when the buttons stopped working. "It seems wasteful to throw it away," she said, and so it began. The collection expanded every time some small thing gave up the ghost, and came to include, amongst other things, a lighter full of gas but without any flint, a turning corkscrew with one broken arm, and an old pair of curling tongs that no longer reached the temperature required to curl hair.

"What are you going to do with them?" he asked, despairing. Her answers never gave him any satisfaction, and yet he wasn't allowed to throw the things away: she argued fiercely against it. They had such towering rows over this thing and when the insults traded reached a point beyond her tolerance she would shout, half-jokingly, that she was going to start a fucking museum.

He went up from the shower, rubbing his hair with a towel, and stood in front of the open wardrobe.

Now that he had chance to throw it away, he hesitated. Between that and the unwashed sheets were the memories, the clues that she had been here, and the lingering hope that she might come back. His optimism that all she needed was a few more days, a little more time away, guttered with the buffeting of each passing day. The prospect of her coming home, bags in hand, with an apologetic smile on that large-featured face, never quite went out of his thoughts. He had decided to ask her no questions. If he became too difficult, she could easily leave again. Instead, holding back sobs of gratitude, he would welcome her back with open arms, and pretend that nothing had happened.

It couldn't be gone when she returned. She would notice. Not straight away, but eventually, and then the arguments would start again. It would be weeks before she'd open the wardrobe. Leaving her bag on the floor, in a spot where each would have to walk around it daily, she would unzip the lid and take clothes out of it as she needed them, rather than unpack. Once it was empty, she would open the wardrobe to shove it into the bottom, and then ask, "Where's the box?"

He closed the doors, first the right and then the left, and put on his clothes for work. It would stay in there for another day, and tomorrow again, like today, he would open the doors and look at it and wonder what to do.

Dressed and ready, he pulled at the curtains. Over to the east, in the houses over Graham Road, a thin strip of grey hugged insecurely their roofs and gardens. The sun was rising again. It was time to go to work.

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SJ Bradley writes fiction, and is currently at work on a novel. Her work has appeared in small-press fanzines and anthologies, including in 2010's Even More Tonto Short Stories. She is the instigator and co-organiser of Fictions of Every Kind, a Leeds-based non-profit literary social night.

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Thursday, 4 August, 2011

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Issue 44 / May 2012

"His parents showed their affection in understated ways, a touch on the shoulder as the peas were passed, or a chaste embrace in the kitchen after work, communicating in their every movement the value of living an undramatic life."