Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  Tears felt close this morning. She had showered, but without her own tubes and bottles, her skin felt rough, her hair limp, and the tights on their third day had half moons at the heels where her new shoes had rubbed them. She didn’t usually wear tights, hadn’t known not to buy cheap ones.

  She had never been on a journey without a companion, one so carefully chosen she wanted the road to be longer, the destination farther. Travelling bookless was a kind of purgatory, the monotony broken only by her constant, then frequent, then carefully spaced peeks at her phone. Every time she looked the only change was the little blue battery draining to black while her inbox remained empty. Ten miles from Newton Stewart, the blue turned to orange. She put her phone away and started sorting the contents of her wallet. She wouldn’t need her library card here, or her gym card, and she was determined not to use their joint credit card either. These three she zipped into a pocket of her bag. She kept her Boots, Tesco, and Caffé Nero cards handy, but then, when the bus drew into Newton Stewart station and she looked at the family solicitors, takeaway pizza, and the kind of ironmonger with brushes hanging in the doorway, she felt foolish and tried to ignore the ache in her throat that told her tears were close again.

  It was only eight miles down the country road to Wigtown, although hours until a bus, but the taxi firm near the bus station didn’t bat an eye and so it was just after lunchtime that Jude stood opposite the etched-glass doors as the cab drew away and she tried to think of an opening line.

  The toyshop had gone, replaced by a tarot and crystals outfit. It and the wool shop were closed, cardboard apologies propped in their windows. When Jude crossed the road and tried the handle, she half expected to find Lowland Glen locked too and was ready to sit in the bus shelter, then retrace her journey to Newton Stewart, Castle Douglas, Dumfries, with a night in one of the tired hotels clinging on in a tired town, then a train south and the tube home to face the music.

  But the door opened.

  There were one or two more carrier bags stacked in the passageway, but otherwise nothing had changed. Well, the light was different—no sunshine competing with the lamp behind the curtain—and there was Calor Gas as well as tobacco and dust in the bouquet today as she pulled aside the heavy brocade and stepped through. Also, this time, the man was at his desk, sitting with the fawn cardigan around his shoulders and a cup of greyish coffee steaming.

  “I—” said Jude.

  “I’m just—” he said, sliding something into a drawer and turning back to face her. He pushed his reading glasses halfway up his forehead. “Aha!” he said, slamming the drawer shut. “Ha-ha-HA!” He turned to the other side and rummaged in a pigeonhole. “It came in September. I saved it for you.”

  Jude stared, then stepped forward and picked it up. The Day of Small Things, it was called. A bright dust jacket, the sandy pink and blue of a beach scene; that same brisk young woman, or one just like her, in a warm jacket and beret, larking among the rock pools with the terrier.

  She didn’t even know she was crying until he stood and hurried round the desk to remove the book from her hand, brushing at a teardrop before it could soak in and dimple the shiny paper. When he had set it down well out of the way, he turned back and, taking a large, ironed, cotton handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers, held it out to her.

  She dabbed her eyes with it still folded. She really wanted to shake it out, bury her face in it, and howl, but, breathing carefully in and holding the breath, she managed to stem the flow.

  “Is everything all right?” the man asked her.

  “No,” said Jude. “Nothing.”

  “Good for you!” he cried, making her look up. She had bowed her head for the shame of it all. “I admire honesty above all things,” he declared. “Quite right to give a pusillanimous question the answer it deserves!”

  And then she was lost. Exhaustion and embarrassment were in there; fear too, and dread that she hadn’t run far enough away.

  O. Douglas in the Nelson edition tugged hard, reminding her of the last happy day, but what finished her was someone sounding pleased and giving praise. If he only knew, Jude thought, he would throw her out, lock the door, call the cops. But he was smiling at her and now the pain was coming up inside her like the dark yolk in a lava lamp, trembling and eddying but always rising, until it burst out in a long howl, bringing hot gusts of fresh tears and leaving her hacking and jerking, her seam of grief cracked wide.

  “Shush now,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. And, “There, there.” He rocked her as she shrieked into his cardigan front somewhere near one armpit. “Oh my,” he said. “Dear me. Shush now.”

  Jude cried until her scalp was sweaty and her stomach quaking, then she drew back, unfolded the handkerchief, and blew her nose hard.

  “Now, that must feel better, surely,” the man said, sounding pleased with her again, even though all she’d done was wreck his hanky.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for the book.”

  “It’s a gem,” he said. “And if you like it as much as I know you will, the happy news is that there’s a companion volume. The Proper Place. Now dry your tears and I shall give it back to you.”

  Two

  It was still hard to explain what happened next.

  “I’m so—” Jude started to say

  “Don’t apologise.”

  “—tired,” she finished. That’s what people said when they were going to kill themselves. One of the women at work did a weekly night shift with the Samaritans, and she’d told Jude all about it. If they say they’re angry or sad or desperate, you can talk them round. But the ones who say they’re tired … Well, what can we do? More talking when they’re exhausted already?

  “I could close up early and drive you home,” said the man. Jude blinked herself back to the bookshop; she’d been in the tearoom at work, listening to the hard words, deciding she’d never call the Samaritans again. “Although, dear me, I do have my assistant coming at four, but as long as I pay him … ”

  “Home,” said Jude, and her eyes filled again.

  “I rather thought, last time, that you were a guest,” he said, looking her up and down. Now that he wasn’t embracing her, he had stepped back to a more normal distance. “A tourist, as used to be. Tourist has gone the way of passenger and patient, I rather think. Everyone’s a guest now. Can’t see that it makes a scrap of difference, can you?”

  Jude nodded then shook. “Home’s London,” she said. “I ran away.”

  He took that in with a series of slow nods, his lower lip stuck out and his mouth turned down. “I ran away to home a few times,” he said. “From school.” When Jude said nothing, he tried again. “What happened?”

  How could she even begin to tell him? “Funeral,” she said, spreading her arms to display the cheap black suit.

  “Who died?” he asked gently.

  Jude hesitated. She didn’t know and couldn’t bear to imagine. She had spent the journey not looking at the headlines on other people’s papers, had let the long hours yesterday evening in the sad hotel room limp past without putting the telly on.

  “My parents,” she said and, because it was true and because she hadn’t thought of them since she left the crematorium two days ago, she could feel her face begin to melt again. One tear, the only one she had left inside her maybe, crept out and down her puffy cheek.

  “Oh, you poor child,” said the man. He rummaged in his trouser pockets, eventually drawing out a second handkerchief that he inspected and then dismissed. He cast his eyes around, but by the time he had concluded there was nothing else absorbent he could offer, she was calm again.

  “I’m just so tired,” she said. It wasn’t meant to be a plea. She would have said it in an empty room. But he drew up his brows and chewed his lip.

  “Could you manage a five-minute walk?”

  She shrugged.

 
“Here,” he went on, lunging for the desktop and snatching up a bunch of keys. He worked a strong yellow fingernail into the double ring, freeing one of the smaller keys in the collection. “My house is round the corner. Have a drink of water and lie down. Try to sleep.”

  “I can’t—You don’t—” she said.

  “Help yourself to whichever bed or couch you fancy,” he told her, pressing the key into her hand.

  “Why would you let—?”

  “It’s quiet and the shutters close.”

  “We don’t even …”

  He turned her round and gave her the gentlest of pushes. She turned back.

  “Why would you trust me?”

  “You’re not in London now,” he told her, looking at her over the spectacles, which had fallen back down from his forehead.

  “I could leave my wallet here as … ”

  “Surety,” he supplied. “Unnecessary, my dear.”

  “I can’t just … ”

  “Very well,” he said. “Your wallet for my latchkey.”

  She opened her bag and then closed it a little so he wouldn’t see her passport in there. She drew out her purse and handed it over.

  “You won’t ghost my cards, will you?”

  “My dear girl, I have a schoolchild coming at four whom I must pay handsomely simply to add books to the catalogue on that loathèd appliance. No, I shan’t ‘ghost your cards.’ And you shan’t ransack my family silver. None of Miss Buchan’s admirers would be capable of such a thing.”

  She managed a smile.

  “Follow the left fork round and down,” he said, pointing. “And it’s left again at the end. Jamaica House. You can’t miss it.”

  “What flat number?” she said.

  “Hm?” said the man, then he smiled. “No, no, you misunderstand. Dear me, no. Not a celebration of the Windrush by the local authority. No, I’m sorry to say it’s rather earlier and much more unseemly.”

  “What?” She was swaying with exhaustion and couldn’t follow the patter and waft of his voice.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Jamaica House. On the left. I’ll see you once you’ve rested, and we shall talk then.” He slipped the copy of

  O. Douglas into her bag. “In case you have trouble dropping off,” he said. Then he held out his hand. “Lowland Glen.”

  Jude blinked, took his hand, and shook it. It was dry and warm and she didn’t want to let it go.

  “My mother’s maiden name was Lowland,” he said. “But, still, schooldays were a trial. These days, thankfully, people call me Lowell. You see? There’s always a solution.”

  She tried to smile again but failed this time. “I’m Jemimah, for my gran,” she said. She choked on the second name, still not sure what to say.

  “Oh dear!”

  “But I get Jude.”

  “You see? Jude!” he cried. “Nothing is ever as bad as it seems.”

  She nodded and turned away before he could see the shadow pass over.

  Outside, the weak winter sun had turned the street into a dreamscape. Or perhaps Jude’s lightheadedness only made it seem that way. She was dizzy from sobbing, from lack of food, from lack of sleep, from the horror of the last three days, the two coffins side-by-side and the squeak of the rollers behind the velvet screen as they were borne away. The undertaker had urged her to have music and she had refused. If he had told her why, she’d have known better. That muffled squeak was stuck in her head like a jingle.

  There was a corner shop coming up. She crossed the road to avoid its windows but found herself outside a newsagents and didn’t look away in time. She saw the headlines, then relaxed. Clinton, Europe, immigration. But when she looked up the street for the left fork he’d told her was coming, what she saw stopped her dead then made her sink against the wall at her side as her legs weakened.

  Two police, shoulder to shoulder, were strolling towards her just twenty yards away, heads like searchlights, turning and watching, seeing everything. Like always.

  They’d seen her stumble, and now their eyes fixed on her as they strolled forward. No rush, they seemed to say, and no escaping.

  “Everything all right?” one of them asked when they drew near. “Need any help?”

  “You’re not driving, madam, are you?” said the other.

  Jude shook her head. “New shoes,” she managed to say.

  “You take care then,” said the first, mouth smiling, eyes cold.

  Jude felt her stomach rise. “Thanks,” she said. She took a step but they were still standing four-square. “Hope you have a quiet shift,” she said. And at last they started moving, swivelling their gaze again for whatever else might happening farther along.

  “Safe bet, round here,” one said.

  “Mind how you go,” said the other. “Get yourself a coffee, eh?”

  She made it to the corner and out of sight, then leaned back against the wall, sick and whimpering.

  “Come on, come on!” she hissed at herself. If they came back and saw her like this, she was done for.

  But they didn’t and the street was deserted. No bookshops round here. When she could walk again, she found herself passing along between rows of stone cottages, the smallest ones just a door with a single window beside it, another tucked under the eaves. They must be tiny inside, but even the meanest of them would be a real home, thick stone walls and a working chimney. Not like London, with the chipboard that divided a mean little house into two even meaner flats at the front door. She put her hand in her bag and stroked the jacket of the book. The Day of Small Things now and The Proper Place to hope for. As she turned left again onto a broader road, nothing but flat fields on its far side, she felt, unaccountably, a lifting inside her. It was probably just the fresh air and the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other after two days of travelling. Or perhaps not.

  She had talked about rock bottom for months, always thinking she could feel it, cold and unyielding under her. And then there would be another lurch and another drop and she would tell herself that this time she was there. The funeral. Was there anywhere lower to fall after a double funeral? By that midnight she couldn’t have touched it with her middle finger if she’d stood on tiptoe. Now, in three-day-old clothes with unbrushed teeth, with tears and worse dried into her cheeks, she saw the gateposts for Jamaica House and, cops or no cops, thought she’d passed rock bottom and was on her way up again.

  The house matched the vowels and the ironed handkerchief: stone steps leading to a pillared portico and banks of tall windows. It wasn’t quite castellated, but there was a ridge running round the edge of the roof like the crust of a pie, and chimneys and finials were spaced out along it so that the silhouette was more like a castle than any house Jude had seen before.

  She looked at the black iron keyhole in the front door, big enough for a mouse to pass through, and then at the small modern key in her hand and the leaves blown into the porch. Then she walked round the side of the house to look for another entry.

  The garden was winter neat, the grass so short she could see worm casts dotted over it and the roses pruned down to skeletal hands. At the kitchen door, reached through an arch into a cobbled courtyard, there were clay pots with the first green nubbins of snowdrops showing through and, in the centre of the cobbles, an urn with a small bright bush in it; impossibly fragrant purple flowers, like sugar ornaments for cupcakes, crowded on its bare branches.

  It misled her and she wasn’t ready when she opened the door. She felt her throat soften with disgust. The inside of Jamaica House went with the grey teeth and the duct taped chair and the bulging carriers full of unsorted paperbacks. Jude stood on the threshold and did what she knew.

  There was no dog, she told herself, and the drain and bins were okay. It was just the contrast with the little purple sugar flowers that made the air in the house so flat and stale.
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  Then she stepped inside and couldn’t ignore it. The tiled floor was stained with spots and trails where someone was in the habit of slopping tea as he walked. And there were teacup rings on the windowsill too, and desiccated flies from summer.

  But she was so tired and his words came back to her on a new wave of fatigue. Take whichever bed or couch you fancy. She was turning to close the door at her back when the clamour of her mobile made her jerk and set her heart rattling. She fumbled it from her bag and swiped with clumsy fingers. The voice started up high and tiny before she could raise it to her ear.

  “Jude? Jude? Where are you?” It was Natalie, her sister-in-law. Holding her breath, she listened. “Jude? Oh my God, at last! Have you heard?”

  She pressed the button to power down and stood staring at the black rectangle, her heart banging high in her chest. They could still trace it when it was off, couldn’t they? Could they?

  She went back out to the courtyard. Behind the door there was an old-fashioned iron boot scraper set into the ground. Jude brought the phone down hard on one of its curled ends, so hard she felt the knock all the way up her arm to her jaw. The phone came apart in three jagged pieces. She lifted the battery clear and tried with both hands to bend it, putting deep red scores in the heel of each palm but leaving the little square intact. She looked around. There was a tin watering can sitting under a dripping copper tap in the wall. She could hear the plink of each drop falling. She walked over and slid the battery into the can, leaving it there for as long as it took her to grind the SIM card to crumbs under her heel then gather the crumbs and the shattered fragments of phone together.

  She put all the pieces in the greasy paper bag from her morning pasty, then she plunged her hand into the can of water, gasping at the cold, and fished the battery out again.

  There was a puddle now, but the ground was damp everywhere and the extra would soon soak away. Jude searched around the little yard, then down a back drive, where she saw what she was looking for. She glanced in both directions, but there were no neighbours, no windows. She hurried down, dropped the paper bag into one corner of the wheeliebin, heard it hit the bottom, and then trotted back to the kitchen door.