Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

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.”

  “Speaking of which, I think I’ll go and get on with it,” Jude said. “Shout up if the rush gets too much for you.”

  She walked up the first flight making no effort to be quiet—making a bit of effort to be noisy, actually. Then she slipped off her clogs and padded as silently as she could up the second flight. A pregnant woman wouldn’t climb these steeps steps if she didn’t have to. A girl pretending to be one wouldn’t, certainly.

  Lowell was standing in the back room gazing around in dismay.

  “What happened here?” he said. “There should be two shelves of military biography.”

  “Have you just been standing there this whole time willing them to come back?” said Jude. “What happened is I put them downstairs with all the other Biography in the L-shaped bit.” She held up a hand to stem his protest. “Because they’ve all got the same Library of Congress and Dewey numbers, and I’m guessing the average age of the military buff is not twenty-five and I’m saving their poor old feet with corns from all the marching.”

  “What about my poor old feet?” Lowell muttered.

  “You didn’t tell me what you were looking for, for one thing. And for another, this isn’t what’s bugging you.” She left a pause and then tried to turn her voice gentle. “What is bugging you?”

  “What’s upsetting me is I don’t think Eddy’s going to stay after all. As to what happened … Well dear me, I have no earthly idea. Not a clue.”

  “She doesn’t think much of the doctor,” Jude offered.

  “She refused to listen to reason!” Lowell exclaimed. Then they both, with a look at the floor, realised how loud he was talking. When he spoke again it was in a fierce whisper. “He’s not against the notion at all—although why on earth any sensible girl would eschew medicine on the one day in her life she’s most likely suddenly to need it … ” His exasperation had left him breathless and he heaved and puffed before starting again. “But the doctor was sweetness and kindness. He explained how far it was to either hospital—Ayr or Dumfries—and how bad the roads are, and if she’d been at all in the mood to listen she would have seen the sense of it. If things go wrong there’s simply no time for the journey. He was very clear.”

  “He doesn’t seem to have been very clever, though, if he put her back up and made her dig her heels in.”

  Lowell was shaking his head. “She walked in looking for trouble,” he said. “She made up her mind on the drive over.”

  “Oh? What happened on the drive over?”

  “Nothing!” said Lowell, and they both glanced downwards again. “She spent the whole time poking at the tiny tyrant.” Jude quirked her head. “The inevitable and dreary iPhone. One of your finest attributes, my dear, in my obsolete opinion, is that you do not possess one.”

  Jude registered the compliment, undeserved, with an absent smile. Had Eddy found something online that changed her mind? Had she got an email that put her off? Or had she, as Jude thought, always intended to dodge the doctor in the end? Or perhaps they were both wrong and she really was a fledgling earth mother, stung by the condescension of the Wigtown GP.

  As Lowell pottered off in search of his prey, she decided that, since she was here in what was destined to be the Crime, Horror, and Fantasy section, she might as well do some work and clear some floor space.

  Years of shelving in her past had left her with an instinct for it. She knew to leave plenty room for Cs in crime, Ks in horror, and Ps in fantasy, and when she started in on the nearest pile, knee-high and four-square, indeed there were endless Pratchetts, well-thumbed and grubby, endless Childs and Christies, and more Kings than she could believe.

  Under a full set of the Inspector Wexford novels, she found a nice early edition of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids that got her thinking. A librarian doesn’t consider value but, here at LG Books, was a subject-matter split enough? Should the tatty Pratchetts be shelved with that pristine Wyndham, or should there be a premium section for hardback, first editions, and rarities? What would something like this be worth anyway?

  She flipped it open and felt a burst of warmth to see T. Jolly on the endpaper. Immediately she checked the back but was disappointed not to find any notes there.

  Back on the ground floor, Eddy was sitting mulishly in Lowell’s chair scrolling through messages, while he leaned awkwardly past her to look at something on the computer.

  “Price, Lowell?” Jude said, holding up The Chrysalids.

  “Ah, Wyndham,” Lowell said.

  Eddy rolled her eyes and Jude bit her cheek to hold back a smirk. It was a classic father/daughter relationship already in some ways.

  “Underappreciated these days of course,” Lowell said. “Dear me, now The Day of the Triffids is a fine piece of story-telling but not flashy enough for—” He broke off and Jude was sure the words he had swallowed were the youth of today. “Fifteen pounds,” he said instead.

  “For an old book?” Eddy squeaked.

  “And look,” said Jude, ignoring her. “I’m glad to see not everything he owned ended up in the dead room.”

  Lowell gave her a sheepish look and rubbed his jaw. “Well, dear me, yes, but you see he used to drop in. Bring me things, you know. He had none of the snobbery that leads a pedestrian mind to value the obscure.”

  “What the hell are you on about?” Eddy said.

  “And he was the kindest man,” said Lowell, absolutely ignoring her. “For instance, dear me, I had quite forgotten this and it’s a charming story. When his daughter … Now what was her name?”

  “Angela,” said Jude, and Lowell registered his surprise with a startled look that dislodged his spectacles from his forehead and de
posited them towards the end of his nose, which startled him even more.

  “I read his gravestone,” Jude said.

  “Jesus,” said Eddy. “Is there anyone normal in this entire town?”

  “So you see, dear me, yes, Angela wasn’t a reader. And so one Christmas, when she gave old Todd a book-club membership as a present—very thoughtful—he was distressed whenever he was sent a duplicate. It happened moderately often because , as I say, of his populist tastes: Trollope, Brontë, Wyndham.”

  “He wasn’t exactly slumming it,” said Jude.

  “So he would bring the original to me. In case, you understand, Angela saw that there were two and felt her gift had been unwanted. The kindest of men.”

  “Sounds a bit uptight, if you ask me,” said Eddy.

  “You’re saying his first editions are in stock or sold, and Angela’s are all in the dead room?” Jude said.

  “Well, as I say, she wasn’t a reader and she’d moved to Christchurch, and so you see the next chapter of the story unfolds. In his last years he signed up for yet another book club. One hundred books to read before you die.”

  “Seems like the time to do it,” Eddy said.

  “Along those lines anyway,” Lowell said. “Quite a few of the town’s worthies joined, I think, since I’ve got multiple copies of some of the offerings. Of course, this was years before the true epidemic of book clubs, but it was annoying enough for a bookseller to notice.”

  “And what sort of age would he have been by then?” Jude asked.

  “In his seventies.”

  “Jesus, good luck reading a hundred books!”

  “And of course, my dear, among the hundred books to be read before—that is, while one can—were quite a few of the same again. Barchester Towers, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men.”

  “Sounds like enough to finish ‘one’ off,” Eddy put in.

  “And so we had a fair few of Angela’s passing through our hands too,” Lowell said. “But yes, I’m afraid to say, his entire final library awaits your attentions, my dear.”

  Eddy looked up, ready to protest, but when she realised that Jude was his “dear” this time, the scowl on her face dropped away, leaving it naked. She saw Jude noticing, though, and managed to close herself again, with a snap.

  “Great story,” she said.

  Lowell levelled a look at her. “When I disappointed my father,” he said, “which was often, he used to tell me that soon enough my son would be disappointing me. It strikes me, my other dear—my primary dear, my unexpected and utterly delightful dear—that as you sulk and mock, you can lay your hand upon the little one who, in days not far hence, will be sulking and mocking you.”

  Eddy stared glumly at him for a minute before she spoke. “It would be less weird if someone was feeding you all this through an ear piece. Just coming out with it like that is freakorama.”

  “Speaking of fathers and sons,” Jude said, “and daughters. Todd and Angela sound pretty tight.”

  “Tight?” said Lowell.

  Eddy snorted.

  “Not estranged in any way, I mean. Have you any idea why he left his house to your father?”

  Lowell heaved an enormous sigh and rubbed his face with his hands. “Indeed I do,” he said. “It’s a sad tale. He was forced to let his wife go into a nursing home. She was very frail. Younger than him, but, as they say in these parts, she didn’t ‘keep well’. He visited her every day and she cried inconsolably when he left. After that—or perhaps he had always felt this way, in which case, dear me, it must have been even worse, so let’s hope not—but after that he had a horror almost amounting to a phobia about ending up there himself. He left my father the house to thank him for letting Todd die in his own home.”

  “Is that ethic—” Jude began.

  “Oh, but my dear, my father didn’t know about it! He made home visits and organised nursing care because he was that kind of doctor. But when Todd died and the will was read. Well! Can you imagine? The BMA took a long hard look at him—”

  “The who?”

  “The British Medical Association. Yes, a very long hard look and there were rumblings about an enquiry. But three things saved him. One, he tried to refuse the bequest. Two, he had decided to retire. I think he was holding on as long as Todd held on. And most importantly, three, Angela, halfway around the world, and young Todd, only in London but further off in a way, put in a good word for him.”

  “And saved themselves trailing back here to crack out the binbags,” said Eddy.

  “Unkind but not untrue, dear child,” Lowell said, and Eddy gave him one of her sunniest smiles.

  “Sorry I was a mare,” she said. “You’re dead good at not reacting. Both of you.”

  “Are you commending or complaining?” Lowell asked her.

  “I’m just saying you’re weird,” Eddy said. “My dad—” She stopped and Jude saw that Lowell had grown very still. “My step—Mum’s—Well anyway, he’d have been throwing bottles.”

  Lowell stood up so suddenly that he knocked a pile of invoices off his desk and sent them swishing out in a fan across the dead nap of the old carpet.

  “He beat you?” he demanded. “This Preston fellow? He hurt you? What’s his address?”

  “He—No!” Eddy said. “Well, he smacked my bum when I was little if I was asking for it.”

  But all Lowell heard was smacked. “Where is he?” he said, even louder. “Have you a phone number for him?”

  “It’s just an expression,” Eddy said. “Throwing bottles. Didn’t your dad smack you?”

  “Bottles?” cried Lowell. “He’s an alcoholic, is he? He beat you when he’d been drinking?”

  Jude was crouching to pick up the fallen papers and said nothing.

  “No!” said Eddy, as loud as Lowell now. “Well, yes. Yes, he’s a drinker and not a happy drunk, but he never lifted a finger to either of us.”

  “I’ll still have his address,” said Lowell, snatching a piece of paper out of a drawer and holding his pencil over it like a dagger.

  “Lowell,” said Jude, from her position on the floor, “you’re upsetting her. Look at her. Her blood pressure must be sky high.”

  And although he continued to breath hard through his nose, nostrils whitening and reddening in time, at least he put the pencil down.

  “Drunken brute,” he said.

  “Irish guy,” said Eddy. “That’s all.”

  “I am a Scot,” Lowell said, “but I don’t drink myself senseless then blame my birthplace.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Eddy said. “Changing the subject.”

  Lowell shrugged; a gesture he’d learned from her, surely.

  “How did you know Mrs. Cottage cried for hours after Mr. Cottage left the care home?”

  “Jolly,” Lowell supplied.

  “Right. How’d you know?”

  “How observant you are!” cried Lowell, beaming again. “I worked there.”

  Jude said nothing, but Eddy cackled. “You? You worked in an old folk’s home? Did you wear a polo shirt? You?”

  “It was when polo shirts were worn for polo,” Lowell told her. Jude knew from her face that she didn’t understand. “But yes, me. After displeasing my father by rejecting medicine and before my grandmother died and left me her money, I worked in a care home.”

  “A care assistant,” Eddy said. “God almighty, I’ve had some shitty jobs since I left school, but that takes the biscuit. Did Mum know? Cos she hated the system. You know why, don’t you?”

  Lowell nodded. “Jude, what the child is hinting at is that Miranda herself—”

  “I told her,” Eddy said.

  “Did you?” said Lowell. Jude had never heard him so haughty. “Well, all I can say is that your mother and I both deserve some of the loyalty you’re happy to show towards a violent al
coholic who abandoned you.”

  “That’s not fai—” Eddy began.

  “And as for your execrable jobs: I thought you were on a gap year.”

  Jude couldn’t be sure why she said what she said next. She didn’t usually jump to fill silences.

  “Max was a drinker,” she said. “There’s a big difference between a drinker and an alcoholic, Lowell.”

  “You poor dear,” he said. “Both of you. I am ashamed of my sex!”

  “But I’m trying to tell you. It wasn’t a problem. He worked hard, never drank the night before a shift. Never tried to hide it, never drank alone. Never puked on the carpet or peed in the wardrobe.” She grinned. “If he hadn’t dumped me, we’d have been happy ever after.”

  “Sounds like it,” said Eddy, not scornful or mocking, but more world-weary than any nineteen-year-old should be. “Sounds like Disney.”

  Thirteen

  Of course, it was worse than that. True, he never had puked on the carpet, because she always put a bucket by the bed. And he had never peed in the wardrobe because he didn’t wake up. She’d grown to dread the sound of a taxi engine in the street outside; grown adept at guessing, from the length of time it sat there, how bad he was, how unable to count out notes and open the door. Twice, only twice, but both times it crushed her, the taxi driver had honked his horn over and over and she’d had to go out in her dressing gown to help.

  She laughed it off the first few years. Actually, the first few years she matched him glass for glass. The next few years she laughed at how she’d changed and he hadn’t. Then, as she noticed their friends shaking heads and rolling eyes while Max stumbled around the dance floor at yet another wedding, face red, tie lost, she stopped laughing. She never turned into a nag, though. She even managed to turn it back on anyone who tried to patronise her. Some female friend—it was always a woman—would cluck and tut and say, “Max is hammered, Jude.”

  “Drunk as a skunk,” Jude would agree.

  “Can’t you—I mean, don’t you worry?”

  “He’s a big boy and I’m not his mum,” Jude would reply. “He buys his own undies too.” As if the clucking, tutting friend was a throwback housewife. That usually did it.