“Telling me what?”
“I can tell you, if you really don’t know.” She straightened her jumper and crossed her arms cosily. “I was watching the telly—unusual for me to still be up by the ten o’clock news, but I made a special effort that night. Terrible doings in America.”
Jude believed that bit. Mrs. Hewston would have been phoning cousins in Indiana on 9/11 hoping to hear they’d gone to New York to catch a Broadway show.
“So you were watching the telly at ten o’clock, minding your own business,” Jude said.
“I was born in Derry,” said Eddy again.
“And I heard you crying.”
“Mrs. Hewston,” said Jude, “don’t you think Lowell would have known he had a daughter if she’d been born in his house?”
“He wasn’t here,” Mrs. Hewston said. “He was over there on some trip or other. See, the doctor stayed at home tending to the sick apart from his two weeks away. But sometimes it seemed the other way on with—Ho!” Her brain had caught up with her ears at last. “He didn’t know?”
Jude could have bitten off her tongue, stuffed the words back in her mouth.
“Well!” Mrs. Hewston said. “I knew that was the end of the party. The house was empty when I woke, but it never occurred to me that he didn’t know. Mind you, it never occurred to me that he was the father. Your mum was just a child herself, here and there with all those lads that hung around, and he was gone forty. But then some men prefer youngsters, don’t they?”
“What do you mean, youngsters?” said Eddy, looking sick.
“I don’t mean kiddies!” said Mrs. Hewston. “I wouldn’t stand by if that was going on. I just mean too young for him. Young girls and boys who didn’t know any better. You two should watch out for yourselves, you know. You can’t be too careful these days.”
“For God’s sake,” said Jude.
“That’s my dad!” said Eddy.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Hewston, and Jude was sure her cheeks reddened. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m an old woman and I get mixed up sometimes.”
“Aye right,” said Eddy. “Cheers for making out my mum was some kind of slag too.”
“When did I do that?” said Mrs. Hewston. “What did I say? I assure you I meant nothing of the kind.” She was wriggling again as she worked her wellingtons back on. “I’m not interfering.”
“God almighty,” said Jude.
“I know my day is done and it’s all changed,” Mrs. Hewston went on, “but I really do have to say this.” She turned to Jude once she had struggled her way back into the damp mackintosh. “You’d better not go taking the Lord’s name in vain at Jolly’s Cottage. I’m just telling you to be helpful, dear. You don’t want your neighbours rising up to tell you what they think of you.”
She left with her coat flying back in two wings behind her and her rain bonnet clutched in her hand. They watched her stumping down the garden until she disappeared between dripping fronds of asparagus fern.
“She’s horrendous!” Eddy said. “Does she just barge in and go on like that all the time?”
“That was towards the top end, I think,” Jude said. “But she’s harmless, really.” She said it to comfort herself. Truth was, Mrs. Hewston worried her. Straitlaced and always watching.
“She’s barking mad!”
“Well, you can take everything she says with a pinch of salt anyway,” Jude said. It seemed a smart move. Discredit her before she caused any trouble.
“Total crap! She heard me crying all the way from Ireland? She’s as bad as that bint that can see Russia from her front step.” Eddy sighed. “And I look nothing like Mum.” She sighed again and rubbed her belly. “But I’m glad she came. We’re pals now, aren’t we?”
“We’re pals,” Jude said.
“And why weren’t we?” said Eddy. “What was the problem before?”
Jude got up and took her empty bowl to the sink, buying time to decide what to say. She was just a kid, half Jude’s age. Would she understand? She turned, leaned against the sink, and gave it a go.
“I was married,” she said. “Then someone else came along and I was out on my ear. It brought back memories. That’s all.”
“But I’m his daughter,” Eddy said. “Not a … Like a …”
“Rival,” said Jude. “I know. And I’m an employee. It didn’t make sense.”
“So it wasn’t me being pregnant then?”
“No way,” said Jude. “To be honest, I thought that was a scam.” Eddy stared. “You know,” said Jude, “a cushion up your front?”
The girl stared for another minute then stood and undid three buttons of her pinafore to show a patch of taut, waxy-looking skin streaked with purplish-red lines across the alabaster.
Jude chuckled and raised her eyebrows, turning her lips down in the expression that means “idiot,” even to monkeys. She had seen it once on the telly.
But what she was thinking was that Eddy had chosen a strange way to show her. Wouldn’t most people just have lifted their skirt up? Perhaps she was shy about showing her knickers. Or perhaps those plastic pregnancy bellies that fasten round the back with elastic straps, although they were very lifelike with the stretch marks and all, are more convincing if you can’t see the edges.
“Satisfied?” Eddy said, when she was buttoned up again. “Jesus, I knew something was bothering you about me. But I can’t believe it was that.”
Jude said nothing. Eddy’s original story had been she didn’t know anything was wrong at all.
“Shoot me,” said Jude. “And, listen, thanks for the soup. I need to go and get my stuff packed up. Clear out and let you move in. I’ll scrape it together now and get some boxes from Jackie later.”
“Jackie?”
“In the Co-op,” said Jude, knowing how pathetic it was to show off that she knew someone’s name but unable to help it. “You’ll be used to it, living in a village, but I’m still tickled pink, knowing everyone, everyone knowing me.”
“I’m used to that,” Eddy said. “Miranda didn’t exactly blend into the background. Even in a new place, we were never incognito. And I don’t suppose I will be.” She made that same gesture again, smoothing her hand down over her front and tucking her dress in close, making Jude think of a duck preening its gleaming feathers.
“I’d say not,” Jude said. “This doesn’t strike me as a place you can keep secrets.” A pretence of openness. That was a good move too.
“Good,” said Eddy. “I’m here to get some answers, so that’s good news to me.”
Before Jude could reply, Lowell’s voice rang out from the front of the house.
“Madam, your chariot awaits!” He arrived in the kitchen, sweeping off his hat and bowing low. “I’ve parked out the front. Those cobbles get terribly slick in the rain. I should wash them down with … Well, dear me, there must be something.”
“Jeyes fluid,” said Jude. “And get some grit before the first frost too.”
“I’m not going to throw myself at the ground walking to the car,” Eddy said.
“But it changes your centre of gravity, doesn’t it?” Jude said, poking again, just gently. Shouldn’t the girl herself be worried about those mossy cobbles and frost on stone steps?
“Do you want some soup?” said Eddy, and Lowell leapt across the kitchen for a bowl before she got to her feet.
“There’s just time before your appointment,” he said. “I’m taking Eddy to the doc to start the ball rolling,” he told Jude.
“Is that right?” Jude said. A doctor’s visit would put the pregnancy beyond doubt, she admitted to herself, and yet Eddy’s answer set off all the alarms again.
“Yeah, it is right,” the girl said. “So what?”
Lowell noticed nothing. “So how have you passed your morning?” he asked. Jude opened her mouth to apologise for shutting the shop, but he went on, “Besides making this delicious concoction.”
“We’ve had a visitor,” said Eddy. “Mrs. Whatsit.”
&nb
sp; “A surprise attack, more like,” Jude said.
“Mrs. Hewston?” said Lowell, sitting. “Well, well. What did you say? I’m happy to field any enquiries from that quarter of course, dear child. Well, not happy, dear me, no, but at your service.”
“Jude told her,” said Eddy. “She nearly died.”
Lowell choked a little, laughing through his first mouthful of soup.
“But you should have seen the recovery,” Jude said. “She was all over it like a rash in ten seconds flat.”
“Oh?” said Lowell. He was tearing lumps of bread and dropping them into his soup bowl. His manners were an odd mix of posh and revolting. Napkins in rings but open-mouthed belches with no apologies.
“She went straight from never clapping eyes on me to remembering the night I was born,” Eddy said. Lowell’s eyebrows shot up and he coughed, either from a second choke or because he hadn’t recovered from the first one. Eddy laughed. “She—what was it, Jude? She heard the cry of a newborn baby but she just kept watching the telly cos she was glued to the news. And then the next day Mum had hooked it and was never seen again. She’s barking, isn’t she?”
“Mad as a brush,” agreed Lowell. “Be ready for her to decide she was Miranda’s bosom pal, won’t you?”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Jude said. “She was glued to the news because there was some scandal or disaster somewhere and she wanted in on it.”
“Scandal,” said Lowell, “not disaster.” He wiped his face with his napkin and put his spoon down. “It’s funny she should say that, actually. The last time I saw Miranda, she and I were glued to the news, as a matter of fact. It was the verdict on the OJ trial.”
“The what?” Eddy said, and Jude and Lowell shared a look.
“She said it was America, right enough,” said Jude.
“But it wasn’t the night of your birth,” said Lowell. “I can ah … I can … Yes, dear me, I can attest to that. Still.” He cleared his throat, from embarrassment or yet more fall-out from the soup. “A grain of truth, eh?”
“What grain of truth?” said Eddy. “How can there be a grain of truth about me being born here?”
Lowell gulped.
“But wait,” Jude said. “She reckoned you were travelling. She said you were in America. She was worried about you getting caught up in it. Were you?”
“What is an OJ trial?” said Eddy.
“Well now, dear me, yes,” said Lowell. “There’s that grain of truth again. I was travelling. I came home and found Miranda waiting for me.”
“Oh, I get it,” Eddy said. “You mean that was the night I was conceived? But how can you be so sure?”
“Because it was the, ahhh … It was the only, ahhh …”
“Seriously? I was a one-night special?”
“And what about the cry of the newborn baby?” said Jude, trying to change the subject before Lowell’s blush singed his shirt collar.
“Oh, gad!” said Eddy. “Which one of you is the squealer? Toxic vomit.”
“But I’d been in Plymouth at a maritime book fair,” Lowell said, doggedly. “Not in L.A.” He gathered their bowls and piled them in the sink on top of the morning’s porridge pot and the chopping board from Eddy’s cooking.
“I’ll just show these the dishcloth,” he said.
Jude didn’t offer to help. She couldn’t bear to dry what he washed. Showing them the dishcloth was all too accurate. She just kept an eye on the rotation and made sure to use plates she’d been responsible for washing.
“I’m sorry you were subjected to Mrs. Hewston quite so soon, dear child,” he said.
Eddy shrugged. “It was nice to speak to someone who knew Mum, no matter what they say about her.”
“Oh? And what exactly did dear Mrs. Hewston have to say?”
Eddy sent a worried look over to Jude.
“Don’t worry,” Jude said. “He’s heard it all before.” She turned to Lowell. “Pretty much that your father was a saint and you were Hugh Hefner.”
“Who?” said Eddy.
“And Raminder was no better than she should be.”
“Who?” said Eddy.
Jude rolled her eyes, but this time Lowell joined in.
“Who’s Raminder?” he said, and Jude felt the colour, all the rosy glow from the hot soup and shared laughter, leave her cheeks.
“Slip of the tongue,” she said. “I meant Miranda.”
“Although Raminder is a name, isn’t it?” said Eddy. “Indian.”
“I’ve never heard it,” said Jude, recovering.
“Nor I,” said Lowell. “Not round here anyway. Wigtown is many wonderful things, but a melting pot? Dear me, no.”
“Well, if she’s moved in, like you and me, Jude,” said Eddy, “we’ll soon know. No secrets here, like you were saying.”
She spoke so lightly that Lowell, elbow-deep in suds at the sink, didn’t even pause in his tuneless whistling, but Jude heard something under the tone and felt a chill crawl up her neck and shrink her scalp, leaving her tingling.
“Good luck at the doctor’s,” she said and was sure she didn’t just imagine the girl’s face clouding over.
TWELVE
Jude had only just gone back round to the shop to start her afternoon’s work when they returned. It was clear something had changed.
“Glad to see you opened up again,” Lowell said as he ushered Eddy in. He was holding an elderly golf umbrella over her, brought it right inside before drawing it away and shaking it out at the open door, shooting it into the umbrella stand when he was done. “Sandy at the doctor’s said there’s a coach load around somewhere.” He turned to Eddy. “Since Jude’s here doing her duty, I can take you home.”
“I don’t mind,” Eddy said. “I keep saying.”
“And actually, Lowell,” said Jude. “I could do with concentrating, not bobbing down every time the door goes.” In truth, she had been sitting blankly at the desk, summoning the courage to look at the Internet again and had only leapt up, grabbing her duster, when the handle rattled. She was aware of the desk chair slowly turning, one arm of the fawn cardigan hanging down.
“Ten minutes, then,” Lowell said, clipped speech for him. “I need to find something in Biography.”
Eddy took the chair and Jude settled on the bottom step. When his footsteps told her he was on his way to the top floor, she spoke.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t like the doctor,” said Eddy. “I didn’t sign on.”
“What was wrong with him? Her?”
“Him. I didn’t like him. I don’t want him delivering me and there’s no practice midwife.”
“But what was wrong with him?” Jude said. “Was he rough?” Poke, poke. “Or did he give you what-for for being pregnant?” she added as a distraction.
Eddy screwed one eyebrow up and dropped the other one down. “What? They can’t do that. It’s none of their business.”
She was right, of course. Only, Wigtown was the kind of place where the doctor and the minister might well still dress you down for moral failings. With Nurse Hewston standing by, nodding.
“Is he a creeper?” said Jude. “We had a doctor when I was little called Dr. Goff and everyone called him Knickers Off Goff.”
Eddy giggled. “We never got that far,” she said.
Jude managed to sound surprised. “He never examined you?”
The girl had handled it beautifully. If she had quibbled about seeing the doctor from the off, Lowell would have wondered why and might have got suspicious, but going along cheerfully and then claiming to have changed her mind for a reason she wouldn’t make clear … Who could argue? She was good at this. If she was really at it.
“How come?” Jude said.
“He wanted to muck about with me,” Eddy said. “Interfere for no reason.”
“Examine you, you mean?” said Jude. “Are you weird about people seeing your body?” Poke, poke, poke.
Eddy snorted. “What century were you
born in?”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“He wouldn’t let me sign up for a home birth,” said Eddy. “He was a right stuck-up shite about it, actually.”
“A home birth?” said Jude, thinking of Jamaica House, dusty and draughty, with its creaking, sprung beds and its long slippery bath, no handrails, no shower hose.
“Why not?” said Eddy. “I’m healthy.”
“You’re nineteen!” said Jude. What she meant was that nineteen-year-olds wore Playboy bunny tee-shirts and got Brazilian waxes and thought women’s rights were for their grannies. She remembered a conversation in the staff room at the library when she said she wouldn’t let a man pay for dinner, all the youngsters hooting with laughter and calling her a sucker.
But Eddy misunderstood her.
“Nineteen’s when we should be pregnant,” she said. “Nineteen’s normal. It’s not natural to wait till you’re God knows how old like everyone does now. No offence.” She paused, but Jude didn’t respond with a none taken, so Eddy just stuck her tongue out and sailed on. “And I thought this was totally the kind of place they’d have all that water and chanting. I was dead chuffed when I looked him up and he was living here. Christ, it was like having Mum back again. ‘Go to the biggest hospital you can find and get everything modern medicine can give you.’ On and on.”
“Really?” said Jude.
“Right? That’s what I thought. I thought she’d be on my side because she was so … Never met a crystal she didn’t believe in. And she hated official things instead of homemade things. We had three kids living with us for a year once when their mum was in the bin. Mum was adamant we could cope. Instead of them going to a fosterer or into a group home.”
“It’s not really the same thing,” said Jude.
“I know,” said Eddy. “Anyway, Mum came from care, so that explains that. And apart from her one blind spot about me having this baby in a space-age laboratory, she was pretty sorted out about most things. At least, when I came looking for him I knew he wouldn’t be an accountant or that. No offence.”
“I’m a librarian,” said Jude.
“Right,” said Eddy. “Exactly.”
QUIET NEIGHBOURS an unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist Page 10