Quiet Neighbors (18 page)

By closing time, she was filthy and exhausted, not much of a prospect as a dinner companion and so she stopped off at the newsagents to buy a box of mints as a sweetener, remembering Lowell's words:
I thought perhaps the three of us could be happy
.

“Nice to see a smiling face,” said Jackie, as she walked in. She was tying up the unsold Sunday papers to set them out for recycling. “Nowt but torn coupons all afternoon. November, ken.”

“Sorry?” said Jude.

“Halloween weeks back and a gey stretch to Christmas,” said Jackie. “Everyone's mumping. And if they're stuck for somebody else, they mump at me.”

“You sell them sweets and ciggies,” said Jude. “I should think you'd be a friend.”

“Not the shop,” Jackie agreed. “They mump about the prices though, mind. Naw. The Post Office.” She nodded to the glass cubicle, which had its shutter drawn down and a closed sign sitting on the counter. “Moan that it's shut, moan that it's open and I'm busy, moan that the lassie canna take a shot when they ken damn fine I'm the postmistress.” She pointed at the proclamation of her status—a yellowed sheet with an official red stamp in one corner, stuck in the glass of the cubicle in pride of place amongst the small ads.

“Can I take the cottage advert down, Jackie?” Jude said. “It's let.”

“Moan that they've missed the parcel van, moan that I canna do them a passport photo. Christ! They're in here every day of life. Think if there was a photo booth they'd have seen it, eh? Aye, go on, hen, rip it off. Lowell's not one to come moaning that I should have left it for him to take down since he put it up there.”

Jude smiled politely, getting just the gist, as was usual with Jackie, and slightly less than the gist towards the end since she wasn't really trying. She had seen something. She had noticed that the name of the postmistress, printed in ink on the dotted line of the form was
J. McLennan
. She took a chance.

“I've just been handling something that belonged to a relative of yours, I think.”

“Oh?” said Jackie. “Has that wee besom been putting mair stuff out? I've telt her till I'm blue.” She saw Jude's frown and attempted an explanation. “My brother's wife's cowping everything that came out of my mother's house, the wee bitch that she is. I told her I would help her when I'm not stuck in here, but oh no!”

“I don't think—”

“She'll have the place stripped to the walls and everything she fancies away!”

“I don't think—it was a book, quite an old one.”

“She's never!” said Jackie. She took a phone out of her overall pocket and started jabbing the buttons. When she put it to her ear, her face was thunderous, her mouth a line.

“No!” said Jude and put out a hand. “This was a book that's been in Lowell's shop for ages. L. McLennan.”

“Oh!” said Jackie, killing the phone call. “Christ on a bike, hen! We'd've had World War III if she'd picked up. She's a nippy sweetie when she's riled.”

“Sorry.”

“L. McLennan? That can't be right, though.”

“A different family?”

“No, no, that's my Auntie Lorna, right enough. But she's long gone.”

“His stock doesn't exactly turn over,” Jude said.

“Aye, but I'm talking decades,” said Jackie. “Must be well past twenty years. She nearly saw a hundred, mind.”

“A hundred? That's marvelous.”

“
Nearly
a hundred!” Jackie said. “And then she died.”

After Etta and Archie, in her turn, like the list said.

Something in Jackie's tone made Jude ask, “What did she die of?”

And the tone turned stronger and darker, like espresso, as Jackie answered, “She died of me having a job I couldn't walk away from and that useless bitch being too lazy to do a hand's turn.”

Jude tutted, as though she understood. Which she didn't. Jackie gave a single nod, just a tuck of the chin, and carried on.

“Auntie Lorna was scared she'd die alone and
lie
; ken, for days, till the smell got bad? So she went into the home and right downhill. She was fine in her own wee flat on the ground floor. But the minute she went into Bayview, she was on her way. She was too frail to be changing her diet and it wasn't good for her to be cooped up in that so-called social room—roasting hot and all of them passing their germs around. This was before the flu jabs came in. She'd always kept her window cracked at home, but there was none of that. In case they caught cold. Cold! Those folk went through the war on mashed turnips and liquorice water. They weren't soft like some I could name.”

“I'm forty,” said Jude. “I'm not as tough as your auntie, but even I'm not as bad as the teenagers now.”

“She missed her telegram by two weeks, the wee sweetheart,” Jackie said. “We had the cake ordered. Would you believe that cold-hearted so-and-so kept it in her fridge and ate it slice by slice?”

Jude tutted again. “It's a thought, isn't it?” she said. “Going into a home. Mr. Jolly—you know, who lived in my house?—he managed to stay in his own place, didn't he?”

“Back when doctors still did house calls. It was better in some ways. Depending on the doctor anyway. The last thing you needed, when you were lying in your bed covered in chicken pox or running at both ends, was
him
barking at you, and the stink of his cigars.”

“Dr. Glen?”

“I missed my sick bucket and got the sleeve of his jacket when I was four years old and he reminded me every last blessed time I saw him till his dying day. He made a joke about it at my wedding, the swine.”

“Why was he at your wedding?”

“Ocht, he wasn't. But it was in the function room at the Masonic and he was in the public bar. Todd Jolly told him to shut his face. Just like that, one end of the bar to the other. Oh it doesn't sound like much now, but things were different then.”

“I can imagine,” Jude said.

“He was a fine man, was Todd.” Jackie sighed. “He went fast at the end.”

“After his wife died?” said Jude.

“What? Ocht, no. She was a sorry wee thing, barely saw her pension. It wasn't till after she went that he got his life under him. Ken the type? She was always ailing with something or other. What a life he had! Well, no life at all. No, it was when he was a widower that he started to live. Joined the bowling, joined the bridge, worked on the house. She'd kept him back—always in her bed with her migraines and didn't want the sound of a saw or the smell of paint. Then he had fifteen good years, just his own self. It's sometimes the way.”

Jude wasn't acting when she shook her head in wonder. “I love that you know everyone,” she said. “They're not really gone if someone remembers them, are they?”

“Everyone who?” said Jackie, giving Jude an odd look. Jude thought if she said nothing, Jackie would be sure to carry on, but when the silence started getting awkward she was forced to say a little more. With her throat slightly tight she said more than she had expected to.

“Well, Mr. Jolly. And … Etta Bell was another name I came across, and Archie Patterstone.”

The woman blinked twice. “By jings, you're going back there,” she said. “Etta Bell was my mother's age, and where the hang did you get Archie's name from? What did you say you were here doing? I thought it was just clearing out that midden. Is it a history of the town you're at?”

“Occupational hazard,” Jude said. “I'm a cataloguer. If I come across a name I want to record it somewhere, cross-reference. Make it fit.”

“Fit what?” Jackie said. Two clipped words. No family history, no side swipes at her sister-in-law, no local colour. And Jude had no idea how to answer.

“Auntie Lorna was a good age,” Jackie said in the end. “And Etta and Archie and them are a long time gone. Resting easy.”

Jude paid for her mints and left.

It had stopped raining, and a rising ground fog dulled her footsteps. Walking in the muffled quiet towards Jamaica House, Jackie's last words rang in her ears.
Etta and Archie and them
. She repeated it to herself and found her footsteps starting to keep time to the rhythm.
Etta and Archie and them
. Like
Lions and tigers and bears
. Etta and Archie and who, though? Not Auntie Lorna because Jackie had just mentioned her. Etta and Archie and who? Todd Jolly was one more, but that still left someone missing.

Eighteen

He had moved the
onions to the kitchen. Festoons of them, neat braids of whitened stems and double rows of copper orbs, were hooked over the open ends of the drying rack high above Eddy's head. She saw Jude looking.

“Yeah,” she said. “He didn't do it to make me feel guilty, so why do I feel guilty?”

“Use them up quick before they go mouldy,” Jude said. “He loves your cooking. Where is he anyway?”

“Last minute eBay bid on a box of photos,” Eddy said, pointing upwards. “He said to have a drink and he'll be down at seven when it closes.”

Jude helped herself from an open bottle of red sitting in the middle of the kitchen table with two glasses. Eddy, drinking Coke from a can, lifted it to toast her.

“I'm not allowed any,” she said. “Cos of the baby.”

Jude gave her a quizzical look then shrugged. Maybe it was easier to keep the fake pregnancy going all the time rather than on and off.

“You'd probably do any baby more harm with that muck,” she said.

“Don't drink wine anyway. And he's got no vodka, cos I've checked. I've been trying to work out what she was playing at.”

“Who?” said Jude, after her first swallow.

“Mum,” Eddy told her. “Who else?”

Raminder, Jude didn't say. She had spent a year trying to work out what Raminder was playing at. A good Sikh girl who lived with her family in Hounslow, dressed modestly, brought in food from home. She should have met her husband through a matchmaker and slept with him for the first time on her wedding night. Instead, she had picked up a married drunk heathen and got herself pregnant before he'd even left his wife.

“It's a funny expression,
got yourself pregnant
, isn't it?” Jude said with another mouthful of wine.

“Unless you're a stick insect,” Eddy said. “Yeah, so I've been trying to work out what she was playing at. Because what I'm thinking is this: why did she send me back here if Lowell's not my dad? And the only answer I've come up with is that the deed was done that summer, while she was here,
by
someone who was here. See? Someone who was at the big party that lasted all summer long. And sending me back here was the only way she could set me on the path to finding him. Maybe she never meant to say Lowell was my dad, just that he was here and he'd help me start searching.”

“For some guy from a wild time twenty years ago?”

“I can try,” Eddy said. “Lowell's going to show me his photos.”

“Really?” said Jude. “
Seriously?
”

Eddy snorted. “Not those ones! What is wrong with him with that, right? Photos of Mum, I mean. Summer of '94. Perfect chance to ask everyone's name. You never know. And I might recognise him.”

There was a creak upstairs and both of them stiffened. Then Jude looked at her watch.

“Only five to,” she said.

“He'll be just getting on his marks,” Eddy said. “You should see him. Hunched over the keyboard like a vulture. He goes bright red.” She leaned back and hooted with laughter. “I'm not being rotten. I think he's great.”

“So why not leave it?” Jude said. “He loves you, like I said. And you're getting fond of him too.”

“Because I'm normal,” said Eddy. “Unlike you.”

Jude took a careful slow sip from her glass and then made her voice as light as she could get it. “How's that?”

“Are you really not looking?” Eddy said. “How can you not be looking? How is that not killing you?”

“What at?” She remembered as she said it Jackie's two darts of sound earlier.
Fit what?

“At the news! The Internet. All the buzz!”

Jude froze. It was her own fault, trusting a bloody kid.

“Look,” she said in an urgent whisper, “I'll make a deal. I won't talk about ‘Liam and Terry' if you don't talk about Max and Raminder.”

“It's not the same though, is it?” Eddy said. She was right. Max and Raminder were real; hundreds of thousands of hits in the online news was how real they were.

“I didn't say it was. But I can't keep talking about it every time we're alone.”

“Sorry!” said Eddy. “Jeez. But just tell me one thing and then I'll never mention it again. How right did the papers get it? Likes of, did you really go round to the house?”

And just like that Jude was back. She could feel the cheap black shoes chafing her heels through the tights and the awkward tug of the ill-fitting jacket across her shoulders. She could taste the sourness in her mouth from three cups of stale coffee at the reception and smell the stink of her sweat, drying cold on the polyester shirt. She could hear the unfamiliar sound of her own breathing, muffled and close, panicky quick, and the
too
familiar sound of Max stumbling on his way up the stairs, opening the door to the bedroom. She held her breath. He had never, in all the years they were married, put his clothes away when he came home drunk. He would kick his shoes off, one toe against the other heel, and then he'd fall like a tree, facedown on the bed with his head hanging over.

“Say what you like about Max,” a colleague had drawled once. “Doesn't matter how blattered he is, he's still a paramedic. Sleeps on his front with his airways clear.”

She heard one shoe, the other, then at last she felt the floorboards shudder and heard the creak and thump as he let himself fall, knocking the headboard against the wall. In less than ten more of her frantic heartbeats, he was snoring. She'd stood, batted away the sweet folds of Raminder's clothes, careful not to jangle the coat hangers, and opened the wardrobe door.

She drained her glass. “I can't talk about it,” she said.

“Right, right, got it,” Eddy said. “I'm only asking.”

“Hail the conquering hero!” Lowell strode into the room and beamed at both them—briefly, before his face fell. “Oh my dears, I've done it again, haven't I? You were talking about your mothers.”

“Not this time,” said Eddy. “Scumbag boyfriends. How'd the auction go?”

“I triumphed,” Lowell said. “Fifteen pounds within my budget. And I picked up a Richard Scarry in mint condition while I was waiting.”

“Children's book?” said Jude, trying and failing to sound cheerful. “You'll only attract them if you keep buying books for them, you know.”

“Mint Scarry?” said Lowell. “It's a
collector's
piece. I'll price it
out of range of their grubby little fistfuls of pocket money.” He glanced at Eddy's belly, particularly prominent in a skimpy skinny-rib polo neck. “Not that I'm speaking against children in general.”

“You're off the hook, Dad,” Eddy said. “This isn't your grandchild, remember?”

And she sounded just about as miserable as Jude.

“Are you—forgive me, dear child—but are you going to be a part of its life at all? Am I? I'm not
au fait
with the rules governing this kind of thing. Dear me, no.”

“Nope,” said Eddy. “I'm just babysitting. It's not—Well, if you must know, it's not my egg. It's no relation to either of us.”

“I see,” said Lowell. “Yes, I see.”

“The egg donor's a big high-flying lawyer or something and she didn't have time. If I'd known about you back then I would have been able to brag a bit more about
my
genes, but I didn't, so there it is.”

Stop talking, Jude willed her silently. It was sounding more ridiculous by the minute. But Lowell didn't bat an eyelid.

“I shouldn't have thought I'd be any great recommendation,” he said. “Doddery old bookseller from the back of beyond.”

“Your dad was a doctor!” said Eddy.

“A GP, also in the back of beyond, with a third-class degree,” said Lowell.

“Don't be like that,” Jude said. “I mean, from what I was hearing this afternoon, he might have been a bit bossy, but he really took care of people.”

“Ah,” said Lowell. “Mrs. Hewston has been back, has she? Singing his praises. She really has got Queen Victoria knocked into a cocked hat for posthumous devotion.”

“You don't half talk a pile of shite,” said Eddy.

“Jackie in the post office, actually,” Jude said. “She said he made house calls and kept people alive. And you said yourself he didn't retire while any of his long-timers still needed him.”

“What does Jackie know about it?” said Lowell. “And how on earth did it come up?”

“She was eulogising her Auntie Lorna.”

“Eulogising!” said Eddy. “You're as bad as him.”

Jude ignored her. “Saying she would have made it to a hundred if she'd stuck with Dr. Glen and not gone into the nursing home.”

“Was that the nursing home you worked in?” Eddy said. Again, the notion seemed to tickle her. “Jeez, people couldn't get away from the Glen family and die in peace, could they?”

“How damning!” said Lowell. “Well then, let me see. Let's turn to something happier shall we? I fished this out earlier.” He patted the pile at his side. There was the usual
Telegraph
folded in quarters and open at the crossword, the junk mail and magazines, but also now the bulk of a photograph album, one of the ones with a bulbous spine hiding thick internal rings and stiff pages covered with sticky clear plastic to clamp down the pictures.

Eddy took it and laid it on the table in front of her, pushing her Coke can away. Jude sidled into a chair beside her, and Lowell got to his feet and came to stand behind both of them.

“I'll get supper started in a minute,” he said. “Bacon sandwiches okay? I'll have to toast the bread though. It's not in the first flush of youth.”

Jude looked over at her box of mints meant to make up for being scruffy and felt a surge of happiness. It was the first time in her life a housekeeping shambles had made her happy.

“But I wouldn't mind a quick trip down memory lane first,” said Lowell. He put a hand on Eddy's shoulder and patted it gently as she opened the front cover.

Someone—surely not Lowell—had gone to a bit of trouble here. The first page had a handmade label under the plastic.
Wigtown, Summer 1994,
it said. The top corners were decorated with water-colour paintings of bees and butterflies, long grass along the bottom edge with buttercups and plantain heads.

“They were so very young,” Lowell said.

Eddy turned the page and Jude heard her let her breath go. There were four pictures in the double-page spread, but all were of the mud flats down by the shore. Different times of day from dawn until sunset and different weather days too: a periwinkle blue sky or angry banks of rolling grey thunderclouds. The photographer had caught the dimpled look of raindrops hitting the surface of the water and the dream look of the sky darker than the land.

“Bo-ring,” Eddy said and flicked the page over.

These four were of the beach. Someone had lain flat on the sand to make a sandcastle loom in the foreground. First it was new and dark, with shells for windows and a feather flag on top, then pale and beginning to crumble with some of the shells lying around it. The third photograph showed it with the tide sloshing into the moat, and finally it was no more than a bump, shells and feathers long gone.

“Bloody hell,” said Eddy.

“It was Inez's camera,” Lowell said. “And she was more interested in—”

“That's better!” Eddy said. It was the same beach but this time with a bonfire in the foreground, the flames showing up as faint purplish wisps, and around it a ring of faces, all young, all reddened by the sun. The women sat cross-legged or Little Mermaid style and the young men, two of them and another hidden by the fire, just his legs visible, were stretched out. One had his head in a girl's lap, her long hair hanging worryingly close to the glowing tip of the cigarette he held clamped in his lips. He was laughing around it, his face crinkled and his hands wide as if he had just clapped them together with glee. And yet the girl who cradled his head was looking off to the side in the other direction, unsmiling.

“That's her,” Eddy said. She pointed at one of the faces distorted by the heat.

All Jude could see clearly was an elbow and a knee, a tented skirt, and a rolled sleeve. And then with a gasp she recognised the pinafore Eddy had been wearing the day before. Eddy recognised it too and traced it with a careful finger.

“Who are the rest, Lowell?” said Jude.

“Well, that's Tom with the cigarette, and John
… dear me, I've forgotten his name, with the guitar. He strummed it endlessly, never quite getting as far as what you'd call a tune but never quite stopping either. And the girl in the jeans was called … Diana. And the other two were … oh, I think they just joined us for the evening. I'm not sure I was ever introduced.”

“Where are
you
, Lowell?” Jude asked him.

“I was there somewhere,” Lowell said. “I think—Yes, those are my legs!”

Eddy began turning the pages again. There were shots of the empty road outside Jamaica House with a sea fog rolling across it, shots of cows standing in the rain by a field gate, shots of the garden, looking raw with tiny roses in yards of bare earth and new paths laid out in the muddy mess caused by their laying.

“That was all your mother's doi—” Lowell said, as Eddy whipped past to another page.

Every so often she stopped. Whenever there was a picture peopled with figures. Most of them were set pieces like the bonfire; another was of a supper table laid in the garden of the shop with fairy lights and lanterns hanging in the branches of the apple tree, and two rows of faces, red again, perhaps from wine this time, leaning in to be seen from both sides. Lowell was at the head of the table, with a paper hat on his head and his arms thrown wide.