As She Left It: A Novel

by Catriona McPherson

  A family group this time. Two stony-faced, middle-aged parents and a range of children from their twenties down to one who was still a baby. A grandchild maybe, or a big surprise. The beautiful film-star girl was here, one of the oldest ones, looking less well-groomed in this picture but just as happy. She was holding one of the smallest ones, and standing between two of the other eldest children. Opal studied their faces and gasped. One of them was definitely Fishbo. It was hard to say which, the family resemblance was so strong, but one or the other, it had to be. Hilarious, flattened-down hair with a center parting and a collar and thin tie that was almost as funny, but no mistaking him: the broad shoulders poking his jacket out as if it was still on a hanger and all the rest of his clothes just draped over his skin-and-bone figure, the same at twenty as he was today. Again she turned the picture over, but this time she was lucky. The names were on the back.

  Eugene Sr., Isabella, Eugene Jr., George, Samuel, Samantha, Cleora, Little George, Little Samantha. 17 May 1960.

  Opal flipped it back and forward a bit, trying to work out who was who, but the main point was that Little Samantha and Little George were babies then and they would definitely be alive today, even if the rest were gone. Then she frowned. There couldn’t be two brothers called George and Little George, could there? Or two sister Samanthas. She didn’t think so, although she supposed things could be different in New Orleans from how they were here. But probably that meant that Little George in Cleora’s or Isabella’s arms was a grandchild.

  The next picture added another piece to the puzzle. Cleora wasn’t a daughter of the family at all, because here was a wedding picture of her standing beside George, Eugene at his elbow as best man and looking even more like him in their identical formal suits. Cleora was beautiful in a lace dress that pressed her figure in at the top and then spread like a tutu to her ankles and showed off slim, pretty feet in high-heeled white sandals. A flower girl that Opal thought was the sister Samantha was slightly out of focus on the other side as if she was moving when the camera clicked, scratching at her tight satin dress maybe or just squirming, hating to be dolled up that way and asked to stand still.

  Right. So Fishbo had two brothers and a sister and at least one niece and nephew. Probably more if Samuel had met a Cleora of his own or if Samantha had got over her dislike of tight satin and had her own wedding day.

  Opal listened and could hear Margaret singing in the bathroom, her voice growling on the low notes and soaring out of all control on the high ones. Was it a hymn? Opal cocked her head. Michael Bublé. She smiled and went back to the pile of papers that waited under the picture frames.

  She meant to go right past the Evening Posts—they would tell her about life here in Leeds and it was New Orleans she needed to study up if she was ever going to find them, but she couldn’t help herself. Craig Southgate’s face stopped her dead, and she couldn’t move past it without looking. There was Karen, Robbie at her side, divorce forgotten for the moment. Opal felt a lurch when she looked at Robbie Southgate. In her real memory of him he was just a voice and a pair of jeans, but there was his face and hairstyle and the little bluebird tattoo on his forearm; she had forgotten he had that. And she thought he should have rolled down his sleeves so it didn’t show in the picture; it was just wrong to have it displayed that way. For a sliver of a moment, Opal thought about why that might be, then her mind scuttled away, kept moving, fast and light, never stopping until the thought was a distant smudge far behind her.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  AND THERE ON ANOTHER front page were Margaret and Denny, Margaret with darker hair and fewer lines and Denny unrecognisable. Or rather the Denny that Opal would have recognised anywhere instead of the man he was now. They were looking into the camera with stricken faces—she checked the date; it was less than a week after Craig had gone, and so the whole Reid family must have been reeling between grief and worry and the secret they had just begun pressing down. All of them except Robbie, that is, and right enough he didn’t look like the rest of them. He stood tall and glared at the camera with a look of pure righteous anger in his eyes that made Opal shiver even ten years on. She didn’t look at his arms, didn’t want to see.

  Then there was the paper she couldn’t account for even though she skimmed right through every page before moving on.

  And the reviews for the band. She flicked through them.

  Until there was only one Evening Post left. From 1970 it was. March 1970 and there in the double-page section right in the middle of the paper, where a montage of photographs was gathered, she saw three familiar faces, all beaming: Fishbo, George, and Cleora standing on a dockside, dressed in thick winter coats and with hats on. She blinked and read the caption: “Yorkshire lads and lasses! Eugene, George and Cleora Gordon, jazz trio, arriving at Hull after sailing from Kingston. ‘By ’eck, it’s good to be ’ome’.”

  Opal could only stare. Three of them? Fishbo’s brother and sister-in-law had come with him? From Kingston? Were they still here? Was Fishbo lying in hospital gasping for breath and wishing for family when some of his family was a phone call and a quick car run away? She couldn’t begin to imagine why that would be.

  Opal bundled up the newspapers—all those copies of the Daily Gleaner—and put the tissue paper back around the photos. She quickly hoovered the mattress and reset the sheets then dragged the wardrobe away from the door and looked around. Let Margaret think that was her best shot at gutting a bedroom, she decided. She couldn’t spend any more time in here without it looking dodgy. So she just picked up the few tissues he’d used overnight and left.

  Margaret was on her knees scrubbing herself out of the bathroom door, out of breath and pink in the cheeks, like a young girl.

  “Are you all right?” she said, craning over her shoulder at Opal. “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m fine,” Opal said, but her voice was husky and her eyes were filling.

  “You look like fine’s cousin that doesn’t get on with him,” Margaret said.

  “Maybe that driver was right after all about the Shake-n-Vac,” Opal said.

  But Margaret would have none of it, just set Opal to work in the kitchen saying that hard work cured most things and cabbage water helped with the rest of them. And she was still going at the frying pan with a Brillo pad—onto the third one—when Big Al rat-a-tatted on the back door and walked in.

  “Hello, lovey,” he said. “What’s the news from upstairs then?”

  Opal only stared back at him.

  “Fishbo,” Al said. “Any better?”

  Margaret came powering into the room, still holding her scrubbing brush in one hand. She had lit a cigarette, Opal saw.

  “Jesus, Mary, and who’s the other fella,” she said. “I was supposed to call you and it flew right out of my mind. He’s in hospital, Al, he’s off to St James’s in an ambulance with Mr. Kendal. I was supposed to call you all.”

  “I thought he was on the mend,” Big Al said, patting his pockets until he found his phone. “Thought the grog was working.” Opal shrank at the words, but Big Al had turned away and noticed nothing. “Jim?” he said. “Aye, I’m there now. No—listen, don’t come. The old fart’s only gone and ended up in Jimmy’s. Pep’s there now. Can you go round and … Aye, that’s what I were thinking. No, there’s no use, they don’t let you have them on. Mucks up the machines. You get round, and I’ll call Hoadley.”

  He hung up and dialled again. One button, speed dial.

  “Jimmy D’s only round the corner,” he said to Margaret and Opal while the phone rang. “When did he go in?” But then the phone was answered and he turned away again.

  “Now then, H,” he said. “You’ve not to get in a state, right? Is Stella there? Right, well, I’m going to tell you summat and don’t take on.”

  Opal and Margaret exchanged a look then. They all really cared about Fishbo, this bunch of men. Big Al was talking like he was giving bad news to a loved one. And when they heard the raised voice coming over th
e phone, a squawk of fear, they knew that Mr. Hoadley (who Opal had always thought was the very strangest of a pretty strange bunch) was just as rocked on his heels as the rest of them.

  “I will, I will,” said Big Al. “He is. I’ve already called him. He’s on his way. Aye, well, you could. Or come here and wait for him with me. Come here, H. We’ll wait together.” He put his phone back in the breast pocket of his Hawaiian print shirt and blew out a big sigh, puffing his cheeks, rolling his eyes, rubbing his hand on his trousers as if he had been gripping the phone tight enough to get sore.

  “I hope Pep’s got some beers,” he said. “And summat to eat wouldn’t go wrong.”

  Margaret opened the fridge and clucked her tongue. “Slim pickings,” she said. “He’s not been thinking on shopping, with Fish so ill. And it would be Sunday night too.” Then the house phone rang, and Big Al went to answer.

  “It’s Pep,” he called through to the kitchen. “He’s on his road home.”

  “How’s—” Margaret and Opal both shouted.

  “Stable. Critical,” he called. Then into the phone, “How can he be both?”

  “Can I go and see—” Opal said.

  Big Al shushed her and listened to Pep on the other end of the phone, then he shook his head. “ICU,” he said. “No visitors except family.” He turned away. “They’re cleaning. Aye well, I’ll tell them. Okay. But hang on for Jimmy and he’ll run you over. H is on his way too.”

  He hung up and came back to the kitchen door.

  “Doesn’t sound too good,” he said. “No visitors except family! What’s a man like Fishbo supposed to do then? Talk to the wall?”

  “Did Pep tell them his family’s in Louisiana?” Margaret said.

  “Kingston,” Opal said. She spoke softly, but Big Al heard her. He rolled his eyes and smiled.

  “Pep said to stop cleaning and start cooking. He said he hasn’t eaten a bite since yesterday and not a proper meal since Thursday teatime.”

  Kingston. Inside her head, the word was deafening.

  Margaret was still standing in front of the open fridge. She bent down and peered in as if she might still see something she’d missed before.

  “Men!” she said. “How can you not even have a bit of bacon to save your life?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Big Al. “My wife buys bacon by the ton.” He patted his front, making a solid smacking sound. “This isn’t just the wind blowing up me shirt, you know.”

  “I’ll go to Zula,” said Opal. “She’ll help out, I’m sure she will. With the food anyway, not so sure about the beers.”

  “What? Are you kidding?” said Big Al. “Sunil likes his pint. That end garage of his is like a cash and carry.”

  She reeled out of the door and stood in the yard, shaking. Kingston. There was only one Kingston that Opal had ever heard of. The one that people left in the Sixties to come to England. And it wasn’t in Louisiana. If she looked at all those copies of The Daily Gleaner up there in his wardrobe, she knew she’d find it was printed in Kingston, Jamaica, and it would be full of birth, marriage, and death announcements for the Gordon family who lived there.

  That was what Pep Kendal was on about all those times he said plenty without speaking a word. Fishbo wasn’t a jazz man from New Orleans. It was total hogwash; it was his patter, and he’d been at it so long he’d almost forgotten it wasn’t true. That accent that never faded and always sounded the same, no matter how long he lived in Leeds. All that guff about the hurricane! And then when Opal said she’d find his family, he couldn’t think up one good reason to stop her. She almost laughed. He’d rather die without seeing his own bloody family than have anyone find out he was bogus? Then suddenly she felt as if she’d never laugh again. He’d rather die than have his fantasy revealed for the pose it was until along came Opal Jones, meddling, threatening to find them. He was ill and tired and she’d made him anxious, put him under strain. And then she’d squirted poisonous chemicals in his bed, and now he was in hospital and might never get out again.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  AND SO IT WAS that, as Pep and Jimmy D arrived from the hospital, Pep leaning hard on the younger man’s arm and Big Al rushing forward to offer another, and as Mr. Hoadley belted up the road from Morley, Opal found herself knocking on the Joshis’ door and asking Zula if she could reduce the Mote Street pizza mountain by taking some supplies down to the other end, where the Boys were gathering for some kind of vigil or practise wake or something. And Zula pressed her hand to her heart and said she couldn’t believe it—she knew Mr. Fish had a bit of a cough, hadn’t seen him for weeks, knew he was in bed trying to kick it, but surely it hadn’t gone that far. Really and truly? And nothing would do but she took the pot of meat stew she was cooking for the boys’ dinner—carried it down the street with her oven mitts on, the steam wafting after her—and then came back for bags of chips and tubs of ice cream, punnets of strawberries she’d got for nearly nothing if Opal could believe that (with it being such great strawberry weather), and Sunil was packed off to the end garage for beer and some pink wine for Zula and Margaret, and then he went to get Denny, because Margaret could no more leave the men to muck up the kitchen and waste Zula’s curry that she could bear to think of her husband sitting all alone. So Denny Reid left the house for the first time since Easter, and they gathered in the music room with the door open to where the phone was in case the hospital called: Sunil and Zula, Denny and Margaret, and four out of five of the Mote Street Boys.

  But not Opal. When Zula was flying round her kitchen, Opal saw a laptop open on the table and just asked, on the off-chance, if Zula would mind …

  “Now?” she said.

  “I want to do a bit of research on pneumonia, have something to tell Pep, stop him worrying.”

  “You youngsters and your Internet,” Zula said. “But as long as you don’t find out the worst of the worst and come down the street shouting about it.”

  “No, I want to reassure them all,” Opal said. Of course, what she really wanted to do was try to see if there was any word that George and Cleora Gordon or their children anyway were still in Yorkshire. There couldn’t be too many Cleoras, surely. Even in Leeds. Certainly not in Hull, anyway.

  “Aye well, you crack on,” Zula said. “You can tell Vik where his dinner’s gone for me.”

  Opal got herself a long drink of cold water and sat down. She was pretty sure she was doing the right thing. She had been wrong to start—dead wrong—but since she had started she couldn’t stop now. If he really was dying at least he could see a familiar face, hear his brother’s voice, or Cleora’s, or someone calling him Uncle Gene and reminding him of home.

  “Cleora Gordon” got nothing in the UK. “Cleora Gordon” worldwide turned up seventeen hits, and Opal’s heart soared. Genealogy, it was. Just like how Sarah Fossett’s father had found Cousin Norah again. Strange abbreviations and little numbers sending you off somewhere else with more Gordons and more abbreviations, but they were all in Kingston, anyway. And then Opal began to wonder if the reason that Fishbo had joined the Mote Street Boys when he used to be in a Gordon trio was that he had stayed and George and Cleora had gone back again. There was no sign of Little George and Little Samantha in that photo at the docks. Maybe their mum and dad were just visiting and it was only Fishbo who was here for good.

  The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. They wouldn’t leave their kids, and Fishbo would hardly start putting it about that he was a Louisiana jazzman if his brother was right here in Yorkshire and could blow the story sky high. She didn’t know much about the jazz scene in Yorkshire, but it couldn’t be a big one.

  Then Opal wondered if Kingston was the kind of place that had online phone books, like America, or the kind of place like England where nobody knew anybody’s number and if you lost your phone your friends thought you’d dropped them and then they dropped you. “Online Phone Book, Jamaica” she typed. And “Kingston” and “Kingston, Jamaica” and all she got were
towns all over Ohio and Kansas named after both of them. So she typed “Online phone book, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies” with a last gasp kind of feeling. If there was a little town in Minnesota called the West Indies, she was giving up and going down the road for some curry.

  But there it was—bingo! The White Pages for Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Opal typed in Gordon and then watched, heart sinking, as the screen filled up with them and the end of the list disappeared out of view, the little blue bar at the side showing how many screens there were. She scrolled down and looked at the Georges—over a screenful just of them!—and was scrolling back up to the top again when she saw it. Saw them. But only three of them.

  Cleora Gordon. One, two, three.

  And there was a phone sitting right there on Zula’s table. Opal told herself Zula and Mr. Joshi must never be done calling overseas and they’d never notice, then she looked up all the extra numbers to punch in in the right order to call someone that far away and she punched them in and waited, listening to the phone ring, thinking—too late—that she didn’t know what time it was over there and she might wake someone up and make them worry that it was bad news. Only of course it was bad news—exactly the sort of news you’d think it might be when the phone woke you in the middle of the night. And someone was answering.

  “Morning!” said a woman’s voice. She didn’t sound groggy or annoyed.

  “Hi,” said Opal. “Can I speak to Cleora Gordon, please?”

  “That’s me,” said the woman. She still didn’t sound annoyed, but she didn’t sound a day over twenty-five either.

  “Um. Are you George Gordon’s wife, Eugene Gordon’s sister? Sister-in-law?”

  “I’m nobody’s wife,” said the woman with a rich, rolling laugh. “You got the wrong lady, I’m glad to say.”

  The next Cleora Gordon answered the phone with the same sunny greeting, sung out. “Morning!”