The Curious Charms Of Arthur Pepper. Phaedra Patrick

he tried to picture Miriam kneeling in the dust, playing marbles with young children in India. It was too hard to comprehend.

      Time had only ticked on ten minutes so Arthur picked up the remote control for the miniature television which hung wonkily on the bedroom wall. He switched it on, flicked through all the stations, and began to watch the last twenty minutes of an episode of Columbo.

      

Lucy and the Tortoise

      Lucy Pepper stood on the doorstep of her old home and looked up at her old bedroom window. Each time she returned the house seemed to shrink in size. It had once seemed so spacious with her and Dan running up and down the stairs and Mum and Dad sat reading in the sitting room. They were always together, like those porcelain dogs that sat on the opposite ends of the mantelpiece.

      Her father, once strong and upright, now seemed so much smaller too. His back curved where once it was straight. The black hair she used to love pulling on and watching spring back into place was now wiry and white. It had all happened so quickly. The innocence of being young and thinking that your parents would last for ever had been broken.

      All Lucy had ever wanted was to be a mum. Even since she was little, when she used to pretend that her dolls were her babies, she had pictured herself with two kids. Whether that was a boy and a girl, two boys or two girls, she didn’t care. At the age of thirty-six, she should be a mother with toddlers by now. On Facebook, one of her classmates was even a grandmother. She longed to feel the planting of small, sticky kisses on her cheeks.

      These days it felt like a strange thing to admit to. Shouldn’t she be striving for a glittering career, or wanting to travel the world? But she wanted to be like her mum, Miriam, who had been so happy raising her children. She and Dad had the perfect marriage. They never argued. They laughed at each other’s jokes and they held hands. Lucy had found this something of an embarrassment when she was younger: her mum and dad strolling around with their arms wrapped around each other’s waist as if they were teenage lovers. It was only when she started dating herself and couldn’t seem to find someone who would put their hand on the small of her back when she crossed the road, as if she was precious, that she realised what her parents had. She didn’t of course need protection as she had a brown belt in karate, but it would be nice to feel that way.

      Her brother, Dan, had never shown any interest in becoming a parent. He was focused on setting up his business, on making a life for himself overseas. It seemed unfair that he and his wife, Kelly, had managed to pop out two gorgeous kids as soon as they tried. Dan always seemed to land lucky whereas Lucy felt she had to struggle to achieve anything, whether that was in her marriage, her relationship with Dad or her job.

      When she lay in bed at night and thought about her ideal life, she saw herself at the park with her husband and kids, laughing and pushing the swings. Her mum would be there too with a ready supply of tissues and kisses for scuffed knees.

      But Mum wasn’t here and she never would be again. She would never see or hold the grandchildren that hadn’t yet been born to Lucy.

      As a schoolteacher at a local primary, Lucy had noticed that the mums dropping their kids off at the school were now younger than she was. She grimaced when she thought about wasting so much of her time on Anthony. He insisted that they should have just one more foreign holiday before she threw away her contraceptive pills. They should treat themselves to a new sofa before they started baby making. They had differing priorities.

      She came off the pill anyway, without him knowing. In opposition to her usual cautious self, she knew she had to become a think-now act-later person in this situation. If Anthony had his way then he would be still musing about whether to have kids or not when he was fifty. Anyway, within a few weeks she was pregnant and then, a few months later, she was not.

      Anthony was gone now and Mum had gone too. And with them, Lucy’s dreams of family had evaporated like perfume spilled in the sun.

      She still beat herself up that she hadn’t gone to her mum’s funeral. What kind of daughter did that make her? A crap one, that’s what. She should have been there to say goodbye. But it was impossible. She hadn’t even managed to tell her dad why she couldn’t be there. The note she wrote and pushed through his door said:

       Sorry, Dad, I can’t go through with it. Say goodbye to Mum for me. Love, Lucy xxx.

      Then she had gone back to bed and hadn’t got up for a week.

      Her father had settled into a routine. His life was regimented and together. When she did call, she felt like an inconvenience. He constantly looked at his watch and carried on with tasks around her as if she wasn’t there, like the two of them existed in parallel universes. The last time she called, she put the kettle on and made two cups of tea. Her father then refused to drink it, saying that he only took his tea at eight-thirty in the morning, eleven, and sometimes a cup at three. It was like visiting Howard Hughes.

      She wished her mum was still here to sort him out. Lucy still expected to find her sitting at the kitchen table or pruning the rose bushes in the garden. She found herself reaching out into thin air to place a gentle hand on her mother’s diminishing shoulders.

      Lucy wanted her brother to show more of an interest, in her life and Dad’s. Dan and Dad’s relationship always had an edge to it, as if the two men couldn’t quite embrace each other’s ways and personalities. They were like two jigsaw pieces with the same bit of sky on, but which didn’t fit together. It was more evident now that Mum was gone, when Lucy had to remind Dad and Dan how and when to communicate.

      When Lucy went home after a frustrating hour spent with her father, she wished she had someone there, waiting to hold her and tell her that things were going to be okay.

      It had been six months now since Anthony had walked out on their marriage. It was such a cliché but she had come home from work one day and found his suitcase in the hallway. At first she thought he might be working away and had forgotten to tell her. But when he appeared behind the case, she knew. He stared down at the ground. ‘It isn’t working, Luce. We both know it isn’t.’

      She hadn’t wanted to beg. When she looked back it seemed so feeble. But she had begged. She told him that she wanted him to stay, that he was the future father of her children. That whatever crap they’d been through in the past year was all behind them. They could move on. She knew she had neglected him when her mother died. Since they lost the baby.

      But he shook his head. ‘There’s been too much sadness. I want to be happy. I want you to be happy. But we can’t be with all the history between us. We need to be apart so we don’t dwell on it. I have to go.’

      Just last month, under the stark white light of the Co-op confectionary aisle, she had spied Anthony pushing a shopping trolley with another woman. She looked a bit like Lucy, with her bobbed hair and long neck.

      Lucy followed them around the fruit juice aisle and into frozen desserts but then gave up. If Anthony saw her then he’d think she was stalking him. He would introduce her to his new girlfriend and Lucy would have to smile and say that it was lovely to see him again but she had really just popped in for some fresh strawberries and now she had to dash. When she was out of earshot, Anthony would whisper and tell his new girlfriend, ‘That was my estranged wife. She lost our baby when she was fifteen weeks pregnant and she was never the same again. It was like a light went off or something. I had to get out.’ And his girlfriend would nod sympathetically and squeeze Anthony’s hand to reassure him that she was massively fertile and if he wanted a family then her body wouldn’t let things down.

      Lucy held it together at the tills, but when she was in the trolley park she started to cry. She rammed her trolley over and over into the one in front to return it, but it wouldn’t fit. She walked away leaving her token, with a white Yorkshire rose on it, still in the trolley slot. A man with a neck the same thickness as his waist offered her a tissue and she blew her nose, went home and drank half