A Faraway Smell of Lemon (Short Story) by Rachel Joyce

Author:Rachel Joyce [Joyce, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Drama, Short Stories, England/Great Britain, Holidays, 21st Century
ISBN: 978-0385682732
Publisher: Bond Street Books
Published: 2013-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Only, of course, it wasn’t. Binny found that what had seemed an acceptable level of pain when Oliver told her about Sally became searingly unacceptable once he was gone. She had been seduced by his soft voice, and the regular flow of his words, into behaving as if what he was saying were reasonable. And it wasn’t. It was like the ripping out of a whole landscape. Nothing looked the same, or even suggested someplace she dimly recognized. 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 screwed firmly on. His absence became a presence, and she swore at it like a dog at her heels.

The children brought home paper angels and homemade stained-glass windows that jumped lemming-like off the mantelpiece every time Binny opened the front door. They sang from their bedroom about Good King Winsylass and We Three Kings of Ori an’ Tar. Luke said he would like a Go-Kart for Christmas. Coco said she wanted to donate a goat to charity. Only here was the thing: She wanted to keep the goat in the back garden first and look after it. “But the poor people who need a goat live in Africa,” said Binny. “I think that is racist, actually,” said Coco. “There are some very poor people down the road.” Overwhelmed, Binny bought nothing.

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

“He’s out, Coco.”

“I’ll wait up.”

“I wouldn’t.”

The little girl folded her neat mouth. “I think I will, though.”

Binny did not purchase 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. So lacking in meaning. But she’d catch her daughter silent 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 thick mass of cold winter sky. But nothing, nothing eased her fury.

Last night she’d finally given in. When the children were safely in bed, she had watched a program showing the hundred funniest moments in television—she’d laughed at none 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, pressing REDIAL over and over. Now that she had started this thing she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place, this unashamed self-humiliation, this willful pecking of her bare wound, she couldn’t leave it. She tried maybe a hundred times in all. And every time he failed to answer she felt increasingly diminished and increasingly betrayed.

Knowing Oliver, he’d probably lost his mobile. It was probably caught in the lining of his trousers.

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