Quiet Neighbors (13 page)

Eddy stared glumly at him for a minute before she spoke. “It would be less weird if someone was feeding you all this through an ear piece. Just coming out with it like that is freakorama.”

“Speaking of fathers and sons,” Jude said, “and daughters. Todd and Angela sound pretty tight.”

“Tight?” said Lowell.

Eddy snorted.

“Not estranged in any way, I mean. Have you any idea why he left his house to your father?”

Lowell heaved an enormous sigh and rubbed his face with his hands. “Indeed I do,” he said. “It's a sad tale. He was forced to let his wife go into a nursing home. She was very frail. Younger than him, but, as they say in these parts, she didn't ‘keep well'. He visited her every day and she cried inconsolably when he left. After that—or perhaps he had always felt this way, in which case, dear me, it must have been even worse, so let's hope not—but after that he had a horror almost amounting to a phobia about ending up there himself. He left my father the house to thank him for letting Todd die in his own home.”

“Is that ethic—” Jude began.

“Oh, but my dear, my father didn't know about it! He made home visits and organised nursing care because he was that kind of doctor. But when Todd died and the will was read.
Well!
Can you imagine? The BMA took a long hard look at him—”

“The
who
?”

“The British Medical Association. Yes, a very long hard look and there were rumblings about an enquiry. But three things saved him. One, he tried to refuse the bequest. Two, he had decided to retire. I think he was holding on as long as Todd held on. And most importantly, three, Angela, halfway around the world, and young Todd, only in London but further off in a way, put in a good word for him.”

“And saved themselves trailing back here to crack out the binbags,” said Eddy.

“Unkind but not untrue, dear child,” Lowell said, and Eddy gave him one of her sunniest smiles.

“Sorry I was a mare,” she said. “You're dead good at not reacting. Both of you.”

“Are you commending or complaining?” Lowell asked her.

“I'm just saying you're weird,” Eddy said. “
My
dad—” She stopped and Jude saw that Lowell had grown very still. “My step—Mum's—Well anyway, he'd have been throwing bottles.”

Lowell stood up so suddenly that he knocked a pile of invoices off his desk and sent them swishing out in a fan across the dead nap of the old carpet.

“He beat you?” he demanded. “This Preston fellow? He hurt you? What's his address?”

“He—No!” Eddy said. “Well, he smacked my bum when I was little if I was asking for it.”

But all Lowell heard was
smacked
. “Where is he?” he said, even louder. “Have you a phone number for him?”

“It's just an expression,” Eddy said. “
Throwing bottles
. Didn't your dad smack you?”

“Bottles?” cried Lowell. “He's an alcoholic, is he? He beat you when he'd been drinking?”

Jude was crouching to pick up the fallen papers and said nothing.

“No!” said Eddy, as loud as Lowell now. “Well, yes. Yes, he's a drinker and not a happy drunk, but he never lifted a finger to either of us.”

“I'll still have his address,” said Lowell, snatching a piece of paper out of a drawer and holding his pencil over it like a dagger.

“Lowell,” said Jude, from her position on the floor, “you're upsetting her. Look at her. Her blood pressure must be sky high.”

And although he continued to breath hard through his nose, nostrils whitening and reddening in time, at least he put the pencil down.

“Drunken brute,” he said.

“Irish guy,” said Eddy. “That's all.”

“I am a Scot,” Lowell said, “but I don't drink myself senseless then blame my birthplace.”

“Can I ask you something?” Eddy said. “Changing the subject.”

Lowell shrugged; a gesture he'd learned from her, surely.

“How did you know Mrs. Cottage cried for hours after Mr. Cottage left the care home?”

“Jolly,” Lowell supplied.

“Right. How'd you know?”

“How observant you are!” cried Lowell, beaming again. “I worked there.”

Jude said nothing, but Eddy cackled. “You? You worked in an
old folk's home? Did you wear a polo shirt?
You?
”

“It was when polo shirts were worn for polo,” Lowell told her. Jude knew from her face that she didn't understand. “But yes, me. After displeasing my father by rejecting medicine and before my grandmother died and left me her money, I worked in a care home.”

“A care assistant,” Eddy said. “God almighty, I've had some shitty jobs since I left school, but that takes the biscuit. Did Mum know? Cos she hated the system. You know why, don't you?”

Lowell nodded. “Jude, what the child is hinting at is that Miranda herself—”

“I told her,” Eddy said.

“Did you?” said Lowell. Jude had never heard him so haughty. “Well, all I can say is that your mother and I both deserve some of the loyalty you're happy to show towards a violent alcoholic who abandoned you.”

“That's not fai—” Eddy began.

“And as for your execrable jobs: I thought you were on a gap year.”

Jude couldn't be sure why she said what she said next. She didn't usually jump to fill silences.

“Max was a drinker,” she said. “There's a big difference between a drinker and an alcoholic, Lowell.”

“You poor dear,” he said. “Both of you. I am ashamed of my sex!”

“But I'm trying to
tell
you. It wasn't a problem. He worked hard, never drank the night before a shift. Never tried to hide it, never drank alone. Never puked on the carpet or peed in the wardrobe.” She grinned. “If he hadn't dumped me, we'd have been happy ever after.”

“Sounds like it,” said Eddy, not scornful or mocking, but more world-weary than any nineteen-year-old should be. “Sounds like Disney.”

Thirteen

Of course, it was
worse than that. True, he never
had
puked on the carpet, because she always put a bucket by the bed. And he had never peed in the wardrobe because he didn't wake up. She'd grown to dread the sound of a taxi engine in the street outside; grown adept at guessing, from the length of time it sat there, how bad he was, how unable to count out notes and open the door. Twice, only twice, but both times it crushed her, the taxi driver had honked his horn over and over and she'd had to go out in her dressing gown to help.

She laughed it off the first few years. Actually, the first few years she matched him glass for glass. The
next
few years she laughed at how she'd changed and he hadn't. Then, as she noticed their friends shaking heads and rolling eyes while Max stumbled around the dance floor at yet another wedding, face red, tie lost, she stopped laughing. She never turned into a nag, though. She even managed to turn it back on anyone who tried to patronise her. Some female friend—it was always a woman—would cluck and tut and say, “Max is hammered, Jude.”

“Drunk as a skunk,” Jude would agree.

“Can't you—I mean, don't you worry?”

“He's a big boy and I'm not his mum,” Jude would reply. “He buys his own undies too.” As if the clucking, tutting friend was a throwback housewife. That usually did it.

And if the friend, stung, lobbed another one—“So you just put up with it? I wouldn't.”—Jude had the perfect put-down. “No one gets everything,” she'd say, and then she'd watch the woman grow thoughtful, realising what
she'd
missed, what
she'd
settled for. And Jude would hate herself and wonder why she
didn't
nag and shout, sneer at his stains and stumbles instead of turning it out on everyone else.

That was when she'd tried to persuade him. They made deals. He made promises. She wiped the slate clean and waited, and then they made deals again.

Eventually, she gave up. She was too busy to be out there watching Max lurch towards the toilets, green and weaving. She had her job and she had the flat to look after. He drank and she cleaned. She bought a wallpaper nozzle for the Hoover, a fringe comb for the rugs, a wire tidy for the cables in the entertainment system. She learned how to dismantle a keyboard to clean it, from a YouTube video, how to freshen trainers with cat litter and degrease burners with vinegar and mouthwash.

Then he stopped. That was the bit she hadn't told Lowell and Eddy. She didn't ask him why. She didn't talk about him stopping any more than she'd talked about him drinking. She just quietly took the credit for playing it well and getting what she wanted in the end. It wasn't until the last night—

Jude caught herself. That was the first “last night.” The night she thought might be the worst night of her life until the real worst night came along.

The book she was holding slipped from her hands and she sat back on her heels as a brand-new thought slotted neatly into a space in her brain she hadn't realised was there: even now, she hadn't had the worst night of her life. The night she had given that name to was just the first step to the big one that was coming.

She picked up the book again and shelved it. Lowell's distress at the shifting of his military biography had spurred her on to finish the section. At least they all had prices already, since he found Biography more worthwhile than Fiction. He wasn't going to be happy with her work though; she knew that already.

“How are you doing it?” he'd said. “Subject area? Century?”

“Subject area?” Jude echoed. “It's Biography.”

“Yes, but … Military, political, royal, theatrical … ?”

“Alphabetically by surname,” said Jude.

“But how would a man find, say, all the biographies of the Boer war?”

“Google it. Or I can put colour-coded spots on the bottoms of the spines.”

“Colour-co—” said Lowell. “Why not handcuffs and love hearts? Why not have carousels and two-for-ones? Why not sell coffee?”

“Libraries don't sell coffee,” Jude said. “It
was
libraries you were scoffing at, wasn't it?”

He might change his mind when he saw the neat shelves and started noticing all the sales he was ringing up, once people could find what they were looking for. Although Jude knew from Saturdays in a supermarket when she was a kid that you weren't supposed to make things
too
easy to find. You were supposed to make the ambience so appealing they'd want to stay, find what they were looking for and a whole load extra; more expensive, if you were lucky.

Browse appeal, she thought, looking round. Pick the right one to go face out in the space at the end of the row: Simon Weston, Paul O'Grady, Winston Churchill, that kind of thing. Then encourage people to linger. She had seen the perfect encouragement in the window of the charity shop as she'd walked to work that morning. A green velvet armchair and beside it a tiny octagonal mahogany table with a Tiffany lamp on top. It had made her think of T. Jolly's chair upstairs in her cottage. Reading perfection. She had barely sat on the rust-red sofa in the living room at all.

Assuming it was velour, veneer, and Tiffany-
style
, she thought, she could probably scoop the lot with petty cash and surprise him. She finished picking off another of the ubiquitous number stickers and headed downstairs.

Eddy was sitting at the desk, leafing through an outsize guide to natural childbirth.

“I should take this round to that doctor's and shove it up his arse,” she said. “Then tell him he's got a thousand miles to go to the nearest hospital to get it removed.” She slammed the book shut and spun round on the chair with her head back. When it stopped revolving, she was facing the bank of shallow drawers where Lowell kept his photograph collection. She tugged on a few of the handles then sighed and slumped back.

“Have you ever seen these?” she said. “He won't show me.”

“There's no ‘ever' about it,” said Jude. “I've only been here a week.” Eddy sighed louder. “And no. He's pretty possessive about them.”

“That's one word,” said Eddy. “They've got to be porn, right?” She spun round to face Jude. “Right? Else why's he so weird?”

“They could be anything,” Jude said. “Landscapes, wildlife, tall ships. They're locked away from your grubby hands because they're valuable.” Eddy was nodding. Slow, sarcastic nods. “I'm going out,” said Jude. “And cheer up. There's bound to be midwives round here. Independent wacky ones. Doulas.”

“How much would that set me back?” Eddy said.

“Tell Lowell you're staying and he'd cough up for a busload,” Jude said.

“He knows I'm staying,” said Eddy. “Where the hell else'm I going to go?”

She had no idea of her power, Jude thought, hurrying along the road with her head bent against a halfhearted drizzle. God help Lowell if she ever worked it out.

Maureen was alone in the charity shop, pressing a suit and ready for company.

“Stick the kettle on, petal,” she said, leaning down hard on a cloth-covered turn-up. “I must be mad,” she added, peering at Jude through a plume of steam. “No one appreciates it. Not as if some natty gent's going to buy it to wear with a collar and tie. It'll be a Goth wearing the jacket covered in badges with the sleeves rolled up and some punk in the trousers with a string vest and red braces.”

Maureen, thought Jude, hadn't kept up to date with street tribes, but she was probably right about the natty gent. As she set about making the tea, she flashed on Max in his paramedic's uniform the day he'd qualified. Then, to take her mind off that, she checked the price tags in the window. £40 for the chair, whose back at least one cat had used as a scratch post; £20 for the table, which had a wedge of paper under one of its three feet to keep it steady; and £5 for the plastic lamp.

“I'll give you a round fifty in cash for this lot,” she said.

“Typical Londoner,” said Maureen. “You know it's for cancer, don't you?” Then she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and fanned the neck of her blouse. “Go on then if you'll wait till closing so's I don't have to redo the window. And if you'll share any news you might have,” she added, just a shade too innocently.

Jude smiled. “You've heard then.”

“Heard and can't believe it!” Maureen said, setting the iron on its end and taking the cup Jude offered. She dropped into one of a pair of wicker garden chairs marked
nfs
and nodded at the other.

“Where will I start?” Jude said. “Eddy is nineteen. She's the daughter of Miranda, who used to stay at Lowell's away back.”

“Twenty years back probably, eh no?”

“Good point. Back when Jamaica House was a bit of a bordello.” Maureen raised her eyebrows. “According to Mrs. Hewston anyway.”

“You need a pound of salt with anything she tells you,” Maureen said. “She's never recovered from Dr. Glen leaving her. Lowell can do no right.”

“So what's the truth?” said Jude, blowing into her cup. Maureen was one of those tea-drinkers with a cast-iron mouth; she was taking great gulps of it already

“I can't say for sure,” Maureen said. “Twenty years ago I was busy with my girls and, nosy as I am, I couldn't spare the time. He did have a sort of open house, I suppose you'd say, once the old fella was gone and he got to start living. Had a party or two, had some lads camping on the lawn. Mrs. Hewston nearly blew a gasket. Folk came and they went. But, right enough, there were girl hitchhikers. Dressed like hippies—and this was years too late for real hippies, mind. Now, which one was it?”

“Miranda,” said Jude. “I told you.”

“Aye, but which one was she?” said Maureen. “There was a big one, big bushy head of black hair, big red lips, put me in mind of Raquel Welch. And a wee one like a prawn—no colour at all and never said much either.”

“Miranda was the big one,” Jude said.
Amazonian
, Lowell had called her. “She sounds terrifying.”

“A right femme fatale I always thought, even with the cheesecloth and thon clompy shoes. And it would have taken one to get round Lowell.”

“That's a bit odd, isn't it?” Jude said. “I mean, he's too old for me, but he's a kind man with a nice house and a job—sort of. Why's he single?”

“Oh mighty!” Maureen said. “He's far too old for
you
. He's … now let me see. He was a year behind my brother at the school and Alec's two years younger than me. And I'm sixty–five, or so the mirror tells me in the morning so … sixty-two he would be.”

“Twenty years,” Jude said, which didn't seem so much, really. Only Lowell with his monogrammed hankies was from another time, like the star in a black-and-white war film.

“And as to why he never married,” Maureen said, “that's like I was telling you.” Tea finished, she was wresting the lid off the jar of toffees she kept on the counter. When she had one unwrapped and stowed in her cheek, she spoke again. “Of course, we all thought he wasn't ‘the marrying kind.' But that was just our ignorance here at the back of beyond. Just because he read books and loved his mother. Well, here we all read books now, since Oprah, and he was close to his mother because it was either her or the doctor.”

“You're not one of his fans then,” said Jude.

“Och, doctors had too much say, in the old days, and nobody saying anything back to them. It would turn anybody's head in the end. Same as coppers. A clip round the ear and no paperwork.”

“Mrs. Hewston calls it the good old days. When nursing meant more than—”

“Reading a screen and wearing pjs, aye,” Maureen said. “That's her wee catchphrase. Dr. Glen used to smack your arm before he put the needle in. And you only got a lolly if you didn't cry. Well, I cried because he smacked me and then I cried because I didn't get a lolly! Then the teacher tanned my arse and I cried more.”

“The teacher?” said Jude.

“Small pox jags,” Maureen said. “Dr. G. sat at the front of the class and did thirty of us.
Whack! Jab! Whack! Jab!
” She laughed and shook her head. “The good old days, my foot. He played a canny hand at the end, mind.”

Jude gave her an expectant smile, hoping for more, but Maureen looked away.

“What we were talk—Oh aye! Lowell never married. If
that
was at the back of it, he'd be ‘out' now, wouldn't he? These days we've all got a bit more sense in our heads. I mean, look at this Eddy that's rolled up. When I was a youngster Miranda getting in the family way would have been whispered about, and then the same carry-on with her daughter would be the tin lid. Unless that's just Mrs. Hewston stirring.” She turned curious eyes on Jude.

“No, it's not just Mrs. Hewston,” Jude said, only just managing to follow the thread. “Eddy's out to here. Which reminds me: she's not too struck on the current doctor and she's looking for a private midwife.”

“Ocht, she's her mother's daughter right enough,” Maureen said. “All incense and beansprouts. Aye, you can't spit in Galloway without hitting a healer of something or other. She'll not need to look far. And so is her mother with her? Will she be coming to help with the baby?”

“Oh God,” said Jude. “I can't believe Mrs. Hewston didn't tell you this bit! Her mother's dead. Miranda died. That's what spurred Eddy on to come and find her father.”

“Dead,” said Maureen. “That lovely girl with her mane of raven hair?” She had been upgraded out of sympathy, Jude noted.