Quiet Neighbors (10 page)

He had never married, she decided, never been entangled in messy emotions at all, had left his estate to his doctor in gratitude for … Actually, it was hard to explain, unless Dr. Glen had found the cancer that the specialist missed, or had been through the war with Jolly and had carried him over one shoulder from a battlefield. Not in the Navy, she told herself, and shook the daydreams away.

She stepped out onto a small patch of paving at the back door. There was a single clothes pole at the far end of it and a cleat on the cottage wall. Jude could imagine a line of shirts and tea towels waggling in a stiff breeze, tugging at their pegs, and a row of geraniums and petunias planted in the thin strip of soil hard against the house. And despite the gravestones three feet away, she could imagine sunshine—no matter what Lowell said about Wigtown—and clean windows and something like happiness.

Then a gust of wind blew the kitchen door shut and, with timing she couldn't help finding malevolent, the rain that had been threatening all morning finally began. One drop hit her head right in the parting of her hair and the paving stones were spotted and then blotched and then, as the heavens opened, Jude hunched her shoulders and ran round the cottage towards the front door.

Halfway, despite the shower, she stopped. The black letters on one of the newest gravestones had caught her eye, glittering in the wet.
jolly
, it said.

in loving memory of
todd robert jolly
beloved husband of the late margaret payne
and adored father of todd and angela
“he sees each sparrow fall”
31st dec 1905—21st may 1985

She stood there until a convergence of raindrops ran down the bridge of her nose and dripped from its tip, then she shook herself, hurrying under the porch and back in at the living room door.

Now she could see Margaret Jolly neé Payne everywhere: in the choice of pink and burgundy for the carpet and in the whimsy of the tiles on the table. What she couldn't see was why a father of two children—an adored father—would disinherit them and give the cottage to Dr. Glen.

She had noticed a roll of kitchen paper, yellowed and rather brittle-looking, but she had no option, so she went through and used it to blot her hair and wipe her face dry, wadding some up and putting the pads under the shoulders of her shirt to soak up the rain there before it chilled her.

Then, newly intrigued by T. Jolly, she climbed the stairs.

They must have moved here once Todd Jr. and Angela were grown and off their hands; there were only two bedrooms, a large one above the living room and a small one at the far end of the house sharing space with a bathroom. This had been T. Jolly's library. It was lined with shelves, handmade by the same careful workman who had built the kitchen cupboards. Jude's librarian heart thrilled to see them. He had planned them meticulously; there was a single folio shelf near the floor by the doorway and a low run of quarto all around the rest of the room. Above them were six shelves precisely sized for octavos and above the window a couple of very shallow slots for maps. The only furniture in the room was an easy chair drawn close to the light, a side table beyond it, a standard lamp behind it, and an upholstered footstool before it with two heel dents in its plump dome.

Even before she looked in the big bedroom—where T. Jolly had made a fitted bed head to rival the fireplace downstairs, replete with nooks and shelving and integral lights and deep drawers below that still ran smooth and silent all these years later—Jude knew she wanted to live here. And not just for the month or so it would take her to finish the overhaul at LG Books. She could imagine a
life
here. She walked into the bathroom—tiled all over; every tile still square and flat decades after T. Jolly had spaced and grouted them—and the window decided her. It was plain glass; no reason for it to be frosted when it looked out over nothing but endless miles of rolling gorse-dotted grass, dark trees in the dips, and pale rock breaking through at the gentle summits. This was better than hiding in a garret with a skylight. Here she was safe not because no one could see in, but because no one would think to look.

Suddenly even the graveyard felt like a comfort. The railings above the wall and the tall gates that she could surely close. The church like a bulwark hiding her cottage from view even if someone ventured along the dead-end lane.

Was it possible?

Soon, Lowland Glen would be licked into shape, and she hadn't dreamed that Lowell would keep her on forever to sit at the desk and read O. Douglas. But he
had
said that thing about being fond of the books but knowing the photographs were his downfall. No, not downfall, she corrected herself. Obsession. That wasn't right either, but it didn't matter. There was more to her plan than just that. She remembered the easy way he told her money was no object. And the way he beetled off back to Eddy. He wanted the girl to stay and, at least until the child went to school, wouldn't he rather be free to be papa and grandpapa? Wouldn't he happily pay Jude to take his place?

Not in fistfuls of twenty-pound notes, though. She leaned her head against the bathroom mirror, stopping the daydream. And so that would mean a bank account and the tax office and the end of everything.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps she was hiding for nothing. Perhaps if she Googled she'd find out everything was okay. She patted her pocket, forgetting for the hundredth time that her phone was shattered and gone. She'd buy a new one, once she'd stopped all this stupid worrying. She'd buy a phone, ask Lowell if she could stay. She was only a cataloguer, but Cataloguing had shared an open-plan office with Display and Events and she'd picked up some basics. Would Lowell's deep pockets hold enough cash to employ her as a … ? She didn't really know the name for it, which wasn't a glowing
recommendation. But by hook or by crook she'd work, make
friends, put down roots. She'd start the exposure therapy again, find a group, and—this was her rest and her reward—she'd sniff out T. Jolly's library, as much of it as was left, and bring it home.

Home to the house he
didn't
leave to his adoring kids, she thought again, as she hurried through the rain to the car and turned the heater up as high as it would go. Were there radiators in the cottage? She hadn't seen them. If it was just the fireplace, she'd wear thick jumpers and toughen up.

Families were weird, she told herself, as she rolled over the gravel towards the back of the empty church, watching the cottage in her mirror. Miranda, for instance, was weird enough to keep her pregnancy a secret and only tell Eddy who her dad was on her deathbed, even though one summer with Lowell must have taught her he'd be the kind of father any girl would dream of. Some men were just made for fatherhood. She would start facing facts like that right away.

Ten

First, though, to LG
Books to use the Internet—could she get WiFi at the cottage?—and to pluck
On the Beach
out of place again. Unless someone had bought it, she suddenly thought, putting on a little spurt as she drove along the road towards the first of the houses.

Turning into the main street minutes later, it seemed sadly unlikely. Her neat shelves and clear prices would entice anyone who made it over the threshold, as long as her cheerful day-glo yellow posters didn't annoy them—
Excuse the mess while we make our bookshop even better!
—the way they had annoyed Lowell. He hadn't said much, only that some of his regulars were rather stuffy and would harrumph. But nothing she did inside LG Books would get someone into a car or onto a bus on a day like this. At least she got to park right at the door.

“Ah splendid!” said Lowell, seeing her. Her heart lifted. “I need the car to take Eddy to the surgery.” And dropped again. “She mentioned exercise, but it's filthy out there. Great news, my dear. Tremendous news. She's definitely staying! She's going to have the baby here! And then
stay
!”

“That is wonderful,” Jude said. “I'm absolutely thrilled for you both.” Lowell beamed. “I love the cottage, by the way.” He nodded absently. “Do I sign a lease?”

“Tush,” said Lowell with a wave of his hand. “Pish-posh. Well then, dear me, I'd better shake a leg.” He held his hand out for the car keys and was gone before Jude could ask about services or Internet or a phone number or a deposit or even if she would get a staff discount on the Nevil Shute.

She went upstairs, quicker than the first days, getting used to the rise and the turn and the low ceiling above her, and took it down from the shelf. “Tush,” she said to herself, “I shan't hear of it, my dear child. Well, my goodness, of course, dear me, you must help yourself to anything. Pish-posh, not another word.”

She didn't even mind the writing on the end papers now that she knew Todd Jolly. She sat down on the kick stool and turned to the back, wanting to know him better.

This is a very sad book
, he had written.
I do not know if Mr. Shute is a widower as myself, but Dwight's sorrow for his wife is very sad. This was the wrong time to read this book. Poor M. would be upset to know what she had brought in to me to read to take my mind off my own troubles. She said it was about submarines and just my cup of tea. I need to tell Dr. Glen enough is enough. Archie Patterstone is dead.

Jude stared at the writing. The familiar name was so unexpected that it took a minute for the last sentence to sink in.

“Archie Patterstone is dead,” she whispered. But Archie was an old man's name back then, before its second vogue. There needn't be anything sinister about his dying.

But enough of what was enough? Was this mysterious note connected to Jolly's cottage being owned by the Glen family?

And who was M.? His daughter-in-law perhaps. Jude would have guessed a neighbour from the way he had written “brought in,” but Kirk Cottage
had
no neighbours.

Giving the ink a final stroke, she closed the book and went down to the desk. However Lowell had ended up owning the cottage, it was his now and it could be her home. She took two deep breaths to pull courage down inside her, and shook the mouse to wake the computer. She would Google Max's name and find only his Sunday football team, his face tiny and unknowable, just one of twelve in a thumbnail.

She typed
Max Hamner
into the browser and waited and waited and waited, and then cried out, fumbled the mouse, managed to close the window, cleared the history, emptied the cache, all without taking a breath. Then she leaned back in the seat thinking she might faint, leaned forward thinking she might vomit, and couldn't get that string of numbers out of her head. They were printed on the back of her eyeballs, branded there:
414,326 hits
. All in “news.”

Shaking, she started again.
Raminder Ha
—
she typed and the browser, helpful as ever, finished it for her. She clicked on search. For some reason this one was faster, and she didn't have time to close the window. Or maybe the shock had slowed her reaction.
633,248 hits
she read, and flashed on a headline—
Tragic New Mother
—
before she killed it.

She was wrong to think it was a portcullis. It was definitely a guillotine, at least this time.

Stupid. The cottage was empty and cold. She'd done no more than walk through it once on a miserable winter's morning and yet she felt as if the life snatched from her was something real. The line of shirts and tea towels dancing in the breeze, the geraniums and pe
tunias in the strip of dirt, the rows of spines on the shelves in the little library—they were all more real than any memory of the life she had lived. She saw snowdrops in the tussocky grass at the edge of the churchyard, sheltered from the winds by the lee of the wall. Crocuses, daffodils, bluebells, and then she didn't know. Like she didn't know if geraniums and petunias were out at the same time or would thrive in the same soil and sunlight.

She knew there was one more search she ought to do. How many hits would come shooting out if she entered her own name? What words would the headlines use in place of “tragic” for her?

But she couldn't make her fingers type the words. She stood, walked unsteadily to the street door, and let herself out, locking the shop behind her.

“I hope you don't mind me closing,” she called out, coming in the kitchen door at Jamaica House. “It's as dead as a doorknob and I'm too cold for a sandwich.”

No one answered until she was along the passageway and right in the open doorway of the kitchen. It was warmer and brighter than she remembered it; cleaner too, and there was something bubbling on the hob. Eddy, dressed in one of Lowell's cardigans and a pinafore so large that the bib covered her stomach and the shoulder straps functioned like braces, was sitting at the table reading a gossip magazine, one slippered foot on the floor and one tucked up beside her so that her knee was practically by her ear.

It didn't seem a comfortable pose for a pregnant woman and, as Jude watched, Eddy shifted, putting both feet up on the rung of the chair opposite and slumping down a little.

“He's not here,” she said. “He's gone to the town with the two names to get petrol.”

Jude had never found a Northern Irish accent beautiful before, but everything Eddy said sounded like lark song. “Newton Stewart?” she offered, then added, “There's a petrol station in Wigtown.”

“He said he got grit in his carburetor one time from that petrol and the engine cut out. He doesn't want the engine to cut out when he's driving me.” She blew upwards with her bottom lip stuck out, as if to lift a fringe. Her raven hair, hanging in two curtains from a knife-edge parting, didn't move.

“Hang on though,” said Jude. “If he's got enough petrol to drive to Newton Stewart, he's got enough to take to you the doctor's ten times over.”

“I know,” said Eddy. “He wants enough to drive me to London to the Lindo Wing in case my waters break while I'm in the car.” She grinned. “I should tell him to chill, but he'll more likely listen to the doctor. And anyway, I like it.”

Jude grinned back, but she knew from the look in Eddy's eyes that she hadn't managed to make it convincing. “Something smells good,” she said, taking a quick peek into the bubbling pot.

“Just some broth,” Eddy said. “Warmer than a sandwich, though. Go for it.”

Jude helped herself to a bowlful, fished a spoon out of the clean dishwasher, and sat opposite the girl.

Once, a rat had died in their under-stairs cupboard when Max was on a double shift. It was high summer and the smell grew by the hour. Jude, hating every second of it but knowing she'd be glad when it was done, covered her hand with a bag and picked it up. She had tied a knot, thrown it away, and squirted air freshener.

She needed to do the same now. To stay here—to hide here—she needed Lowell's help. And this girl was the apple of Lowell's eye. Instantly. She had come along and bewitched him. No! Those were the very thoughts Jude couldn't allow herself to think, like she didn't allow herself to feel the weight of the rat, the soft rustle of its body in the bag as she tied it shut.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” she said. Then she smiled and spooned up some of the broth. “This is delicious!”

“It's just peas and onions,” Eddy said, “and herbs from his garden out there. Did you know he's got strings of onions hanging in the shed like a bistro? I told him he should have them in the kitchen but he said the steam would ruin them.”
He
she called him. She couldn't bring herself to say
Dad
, but she wouldn't say
Lowell
either. “Anyway, how d'you mean ‘wrong foot'?”

“Not you,” said Jude. “Me. I was a torn-faced cow when you fetched up yesterday.”

“I didn't notice,” said Eddy. “I was shitting myself. I wouldn't have noticed if an elephant had been in the shop.”

Jude wondered. Was that innocent? Telling her she was beneath notice then picking an elephant to compare her to? A unicorn would have worked just as well.

“And you'd just had a fright too,” Jude said. “All that hammering on the door when you were in the garden.”

Eddy grew very still. “The garden?” she said, turning to look out the side kitchen window towards the rose terraces and the asparagus bed at the far end, where the ferns, yellowing by now and bedraggled in the downpour, served as a backdrop to the sturdy figure of Mrs. Hewston advancing in a raincoat and short wellingtons with a plastic rain bonnet tied over her hair.

“Who the hell's this?” said Eddy, and her voice was an octave lower and a lot less bell-like in her surprise. Which, Jude thought, was unusual, since it normally went the other way.

“This,” she said, “is another one of Lowell's hangers-on. You think
I'm
bad.”

Eddy turned back to her and laughed. “I don't think you're bad,” she said. “I don't know where you've got any of this from. I thought you were his wife! I thought I'd got a step-mum for free and I was happy. I wish you'd believe me.”

Jude said nothing. Either the girl had barely noticed her or she thought she'd stumbled over a brand-new mummy, but not both. And there it was again, like “elephant.” Telling her she could be married to Lowell and ready to be a granny.

“It really
was
just me then,” Jude said. “I'm sorry.”

“So what's the scoop about Mrs. Welly-boots?” Eddy said. “Quick, before she gets here.”

“Like I said, another one of Lowell's waifs. Well, his dad's waif that Lowell inherited, I suppose. Truly, Eddy, he's been in training his whole life for you turning up here.”

Before Eddy could answer, Mrs. Hewston was lifting the latch.

“Knock knock,” she called, as if saying it while she barged in would make it like she'd done things properly. When she came round the corner she pretended to be surprised at the sight of Eddy, but her acting was over the top and fooled no one. Besides, she had togged herself up head-to-toe in waterproofs and tramped through wet grass; she wouldn't have done that just to see Jude a third time.

“Oh!” she said and actually put her hand up to her cheek in a gesture of affected shock. “Company.”

“Shall I introduce you?” said Jude.

“Aye, go on,” said Eddy. “Unless you think we better wait.”

Jude gave it some thought, unsure whether Lowell would mind missing the chance to drop Mrs. Hewston's jaw. She decided he was probably above such petty concerns. She wasn't, and she paused dramatically.

“This is Mrs. Hewston, Dr. Glen's old practice nurse and now Lowell's tenant from the bungalow at the bottom of the garden.”

“Not tenant, dear,” said Mrs. Hewston. “Neighbour.”

“There's no shame in being Lowell's tenant,” Jude said. “I am too.” That caught the woman's interest. “I'm renting Jolly's Cottage now that Eddy's moved in.”

“Eddy?” said Mrs. Hewston.

“This is Eddy,” Jude said, gesturing. “She's Lowell's daughter. She's come to stay.”

Eddy, with perfect timing, rose to her feet, held out one hand to shake and used the other to smooth her pinafore over the bump in her belly, pushing it forward as far as it would go.

Suddenly, Jude felt something like a sunrise spreading inside her, lighting up everything.
Everything
. She had no idea what Eddy was up to or where she thought it would end, but all of a sudden, Jude was sure what was going on here: why Eddy would want to sleep upstairs away from Lowell and any accidental sightings of her if her bedroom door swung open; how she could sit with her foot tucked up at eight months gone and why she moved when Jude saw her; why her belly was like an apple and no other part of her had an ounce of flesh on it.

It all made sense now.