Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  She had a technique for things like this—for public toilets and lifts in multi-storeys—and she employed it now. “Not here, I’m not here, I’m not here,” she said as she walked through the house from the tiled corridor to a carpeted hall, up a curving stairway, and into the first door on the upstairs landing.

  It was his bedroom; she knew that right away. There were clothes heaped on an armchair beside the high fireplace and a pair of trousers slung by its braces from one post of the dressing mirror. There was a jumble of prescription bottles and crumpled handfuls of receipts on the chest of drawers, a coffee cup with cold dregs beside a newspaper folded open at the crossword on the bedside table.

  She slipped out of her shoes, let her jacket slide to the floor, and pulled back the covers, old-fashioned striped flannel sheets and woollen blankets edged with bands of faded blue satin.

  She pushed her stockinged feet down the cold bed and lowered her head into the dent in the pillow, smelling hair tonic she hadn’t noticed when he hugged her. She closed her eyes and waited for her pulse to slow, waited for the smash! of the phone and plunk! of the battery to stop sounding in her head, for the breathless urgency of Natalie’s voice to stop running through her like a shudder.

  But even when she was sunk in a pit of sleep with sheer, steep sides and a soft, clawing floor that held her snugly, even then, in her dreams, the glass and plastic shattered and the cold disc of water gulped what she fed it and Natalie’s voice, strung taut, kept repeating Jude? Where are you?

  Three

  Birdsong woke her. She opened her eyes onto a soft greyness and the sound of something not a sparrow or a pigeon. Not a London bird at all. Its liquid treble was unconcerned with food or squabbles, as though it sang from pure joy at the morning. Jude was lulled back towards sleep by it but then, shifting, she felt the nylon toes of her tights and the waistband of her skirt and, turning her head, her cheek brushed the satin edge and then the rough wool of the blanket and she sat up abruptly, a gasp escaping her.

  The first thing she saw was her wallet on the bedside table. Then, looking past it, she glimpsed Lowell Glen sitting in the armchair, its load of clothes dumped in a heap at his side. His legs were stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles—he still had his shoes on—and his arms were folded over his front. His head had dropped back until his mouth was wide open and he breathed in uncomfortable, choking snores that set Jude’s pulse rattling. Then she took in the rest of the scene. The trousers hanging by their braces, the till receipts and coins, the coffee cup, the newspaper. They were all still there, and shoes shoved under the wardrobe that she hadn’t noticed before. She felt her throat begin to close and lowered herself gently back down again, trying to stare at a blank section of the ceiling and ignore the dark bulbs in the centre light, the fly resting in the bottom of the shade. But the bed was old and creaky. The snoring stopped, and when she glanced over he was smiling at her.

  “You slept all night,” he said. “It’s almost morning.”

  “What about all the other beds and couches?” she said, sounding terse, feeling guilty.

  “I was worried about you. I decided to keep watch.” He rubbed his chin and laughed a little. “Dear me, I fell down on the job rather.” Before Jude could answer, he sat up and smacked his hands. “Coffee!” he exclaimed. Then at her silence, “Tea?”

  “Coffee would be wonderful.”

  He got up, levering himself out of the armchair with both hands, groaned and stretched, then shuffled away. Jude watched his reflection in the dressing mirror. He stopped at the top of the stairs and spoke over his shoulder.

  “That’s … ahh … that’s a bathroom with the half-glass door, my dear. I’ll use the downstairs carsy.” Then he descended, his hair—like a seed head from his night in the chair—catching the first light from the landing window.

  Jude swung her legs round and stood. She thought she caught a whiff of odour as she moved. Funeral, Wednesday night hiding with her heart in her mouth, fleeing across London scared to look behind her, hours in the station, hours on the train, the raucous commercial hotel, the bus, the weeping, and then—she glanced at her watch—fifteen hours in a stranger’s bed, dead to the world like a princess with vines grown up around the castle.

  No wonder she stank.

  As if he had heard her thoughts, Lowell spoke again. She glanced at the dressing mirror and could see him hovering on the half landing, eyes down to shield her privacy.

  “There’s always lots of hot water in the morning,” he said, “if you should want a bath. And um, second door along from there, if you rummage in the wardrobe there are clothes and things … Look in the chest too. There are … Well, clothes and what have you, you know.”

  Jude was intrigued. She waited until he’d gone, then tiptoed out and along to the second door to investigate. It hadn’t been used recently. Dust lay thickly on the dressing-table top and even furred the tufted trim of a cushion on the armchair, but there was nothing out of place. If she could have brought a Hoover in here and worked round from the door, floor to ceiling, following the swags of cobweb and nudging into every fold, it would be perfect again in minutes. She dragged her feet across the carpet as she walked and then picked the grey rolls from the soles of her tights and pocketed them.

  The wardrobe door was a snug fit and it squeaked open, letting go a breath of old wood and faded lavender. Jude ran her hands along the row of plastic department-store hangers, little cylindrical beads on their necks showing the sizes. She was no expert, since jeans were jeans and tee-shirts were tee-shirts, but these clothes looked decades old. She could remember a teacher at her primary school wearing one of those long cotton skirts with tassels of silk along the hem and tiny mirrors stitched on like patches, could remember the cheap green dye rubbing off on their homework as Miss Pol-something sat with worksheets on her lap and told the children how well they’d done, how pleased she was. The blouses made Jude think of Miss Pol-whatsit too. They were loose and smocked with bell sleeves and drawstrings through the necks, the strings bound at the ends with gold thread or finished off with bells. There was a shop in Camden where you could still buy it all, this and incense sticks and cheap brass elephants, but it wasn’t real. It wasn’t from the seventies, and some of it wasn’t even Indian. Jude pulled at the neck of one of the blouses: 100% viscose, made in Korea.

  She took a dress exactly the shade of green she remembered from Miss Pol … perran? kennan? … and a quilted waistcoat and turned to the dressing table. The top drawer was a tangle of beads, sunglasses, and hair bands, sitting in a rubble of cheap outsized earrings and loose change from before the Euro. Jude saw some pesetas and francs and got as far as smiling at the memories they loosened before the guillotine fell.

  She opened the next drawer. It had bras tucked into dome shapes and pants folded in squares, and she knew their owner washed everything together—cheap Korean tie-dye and white cotton undies—because everything in the drawer was a uniform murky grey. But if the choice was a fourth day in her own or someone else’s clean, no matter how halfheartedly clean, she didn’t have to think for long. She lifted a pair of the thickest socks and a pair of paler (and so perhaps newer) knickers, decided not to trouble with a bra because they all looked enormous, and ventured to the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, she followed the smell of coffee downstairs and through a door beside the passage she had flitted along the night before.

  Lowell was standing with his back to her, bent over a toaster with a pair of wooden tongs in his hand. Jude cleared her throat and he turned.

  The flare in his eyes came and went too swiftly for her to give it a name.

  “Ah,” he said. “Excellent. That’s better. Sorry I don’t run to a hair dryer.” He gestured vaguely towards his neck as though apologising for Jude’s wet hair on hers. “You could perhaps wrap it up in a towel.”

  “It won’t take long,” Jude sa
id. “I’m not blessed with luxuriant tresses.” She could feel her mouth twisting up and could hear the bitterness in her voice. She saw a sheet of shining black spread out on a wooden floor and then, thank God, the blade came down again.

  “Marmalade, honey, jam,” said Lowell, ferrying jars from an open cupboard to the kitchen table. “Or, dear me, perhaps not.” He squinted into the jam jar, then opened a bin with his foot and dropped it in. “Marmite,” he said. “And Nutella, my guilty pleasure.”

  Jude sidled into a seat as he put a plate of toast and a cup of coffee, dark as treacle, down in front of her and pushed a butter dish forward.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’ll just nip up and … ” said Lowell, waving his hand around again to display his stubble and messy hair. “I don’t suppose you left the water in?” And then, at her look, “No. No, of course not. I can’t think why I said that. I … ”

  “Do you have sisters?” said Jude, taking pity on him.

  “That’s it!” he said. “Exactly. Thank you.”

  She looked around the kitchen while he was gone. She was fine. She had decided in the bathroom that she needed to get out of here, decided as soon as she saw the towels, the soap scum on his razor, the plughole. The kitchen was one last thing to be endured, and then she would leave.

  It must have been impressive once, with its high ceiling and flagged floor. She could imagine a cook in an apron and a little hat, bossing maids and garden boys around. But someone had ruined it with units in walnut veneer, lights under the top cupboards, and little quarter-circle shelves at the ends of the rows, finished off with tiny fences to safeguard the decorative jugs and tureens that were meant to be displayed there. What was displayed there, or shoved there anyway, was envelopes rucked open by someone’s thumb, yellowed fliers, faded seed packets with clothes-pegs holding them shut, FedEx packets with their rip-strips hanging in ringlets. Jude turned to face the other way, where bottles of oil and sauce and cooking sherry sat along the back of the hob, grease-spattered and dust-furred, a single charred oven glove stuffed behind them.

  “I’m not here,” she said, sipping her coffee.

  Then Lowell was back, hair combed and chin smooth, in a different though identical shirt and the same trousers.

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked him.

  “Born here,” he said. “I went away to school and university, travelled a bit, but, dear me, yes, more or less always, I suppose you’d say.”

  “It’s got that feel about it,” said Jude. “Solid.”

  Lowell wrinkled his nose. “My mother wrecked this room,” he said. “When I was a little boy, Mrs. Dawson used to bathe me in the big sink and warm my nightshirt on a rail above the range. And in my father’s day, there was a pump in the middle of the floor. All very swish. No going out to the yard for water. He remembered his mother saying it would spoil the maids. Turn them soft, you know.”

  “Your father was born here too?”

  “He was the doctor,” said Lowell, nodding. “The young doctor. My grandfather was the doctor and then the old doctor, and my father was supposed to become the old doctor in turn, because of me.” His face fell and he tried to hide it by taking a bite of his toast and chewing it thoroughly.

  “That’s not fair,” said Jude. “That’s too much to ask.”

  “Of someone who faints at the sight of a cut finger, certainly!” Lowell said.

  “What about your sisters?” said Jude. “Were they press-ganged too?”

  “No sisters,” said Lowell. “Or brothers. Only me.” He took another bite of toast and looked fixedly at Jude until he had swallowed. “I shouldn’t have grabbed that lifeline you threw regarding the bath-water. I don’t have the wits to see it through.” Then he opened his eyes very wide. “Sorry!” he said. “Unforgivable! Forcing you to pity me. You must forgi—Oh dear.” He took a draught of coffee and tried again. “And what line of … It’s quite all right to ask this of a young lady these days, isn’t it? What line of work are you in, ah, ah … ”

  “Jude.”

  He closed his eyes, pained again by his failings. “What does your family run to, Jude? Butchers, bakers, candlestick makers?”

  “Well,” said Jude, “before they died—”

  Lowell groaned and passed a hand over his eyes. “I am the biggest—” he began, but Jude stopped him.

  “No,” she said. “I want to talk about them. My dad was a foreman at the Swallow’s Works until it closed down, and then it was backshift at B&Q, and my mum had her own hairdressers until the works closed, then she went mobile. They retired last year. My dad got his lump sum—he’d deferred it till he was sixty-five—and they were all set.”

  Lowell tutted. “What happened?”

  “They got one of those big … like a caravan but with an engine? I can never remember the name.”

  “Winnebago,” said Lowell. “It comes up in crosswords.”

  “That’s it,” Jude said. “They were going to tour in it. I was surprised at my mum, to be honest. She was always a one for little things. Natty things. Likes of a doll’s house? So I could see her in a camper-van. A VW caravanette.” Jude knew her voice was rising. “But it was so stupid! Winnebagos are made for empty freeways not Cotswolds B roads.”

  “Did they have a crash?” asked Lowell gently.

  Jude shook her head. She was still angry with them, still embarrassed and ashamed of her embarrassment and angry at being ashamed.

  “You don’t have to tell me. Dear me, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I have to tell someone,” Jude said, and the note in her voice frightened her; so strained and high, she was almost singing. “I have to tell someone something,” she said, trying to breathe out and speak on the fall. She turned her thoughts away from the memory of all those people she thought were friends. Friends of the family. All that barely concealed delight at the funeral. Everyone who had snatched at the pay-out when Swallows closed, jeered at her dad in his B&Q tee-shirt and back brace, then looked round the tourer with a smirk on their lips, pretending to care, while her mum showed off the little fridge and the shower room.

  “Use my phone,” said Lowell, misunderstanding. “Call a friend.”

  “They built a high garage to keep it in,” Jude said. “Is it okay if I tell you? Friends are … Friends have been … They built a high garage.”

  “People can be thoughtlessly unkind.”

  “And they tried it out the night before they set off: showers, cooking, telly, had the heating on. The whole bit. But they didn’t want to drain the power pack.”

  Lowell put a hand up to cover his mouth and Jude looked closely, but his eyes were wide. He wasn’t hiding a smirk, she was sure of it.

  “Yes,” she said. “In the garage with the engine on. Stupid—”

  “Oh, my dear child,” said Lowell again, as he had the day before. “Oh, my dear!”

  “It was in the paper,” said Jude. “It was on the news, at the end, where they have the talking dogs and quintuplets.”

  “My dear.”

  “I mean, no one reading the news actually laughed.”

  “But I understand completely,” he said. “No wonder you ran away.”

  Jude stared at him. Every word was true. It was the truth and nothing but the truth, and he was happy with it. She could leave it at that and say no more. She was a poor dear child and he understood her.

  “I just snapped,” she said. Also true. “I think you can get to a point where you just snap. Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” he said. “We’ve all been there, my dear, and for lesser reasons than you.”

  She didn’t believe him, of course. Everything about his life said otherwise; from the etched-glass initials in the shop door to the ironed hanky to the memories of his grandparents’ servants, spoiled by the luxury of a water pump in the kitch
en.

  “I ran,” she said, trying it out. “In the clothes I stood up in. Left my job, left my home.”

  “Are you a hairdresser too?” Even that showed the world he lived in, where children follow their parents through quiet lives.

  “Librarian,” she said. “Possibly. If I’ve got a job to go back to after taking off like this.”

  “Local authority?” said Lowell. She nodded. “Well then … ”

  “It’s not like that now, though,” said Jude. “Not with all the austerity and everything. I’d phone them if I could think what to say.”

  “Don’t you have bereavement leave?” said Lowell. “I’ve always thought council workers … The county buildings are at the bottom of the street, you know. We meet at lunchtime and some of them are customers.”

  Jude nodded from behind the guillotine that had once again come thundering down. Or maybe it was a portcullis, but the edge of it was sharp and it whistled as it fell, cleaving her life in two pieces, sliced cleanly apart on Wednesday.

  “I’ve used all my leave up,” she told him. “If I don’t start again soon my cataloguing days are over.”

  “Cataloguing?” said Lowell. “Well now, how interesting. I’ve lost my schoolchild, you see. He’s gone to Safeway, for the bright lights and big money. He told me yesterday.” He gave her a solemn look. “I don’t mean to make light of your difficulties, my dear, and I don’t mean to imply serendipity or even timeliness, given what brought you here, but if you really have found yourself free and if you happened to look around up at LG Books yesterday … I mean, if you’ve no one to rush back home to.”

  Jude felt her eyes fill, and Lowell went so far as to jump out of his seat and come round the table towards her.

  “I wish I could say this isn’t like me,” he said, shifting from foot to foot, “but it is. It’s absolutely like me. Absolutely typical of me. ‘No one to rush home to!’ I’m a fool. I’m so very sorry, my dear. You told me. Your parents! The funeral. You told me!”