Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  Jude peered at him. “You look different,” she said.

  Lowell snorted and then bared his teeth at her. They were gleaming like pearls. Like enormous mismatched magnolia pearls. “She ordered a preparation from the dreaded Internet and made me sleep with a mouthful of it. Like little strips of gaffer tape. It was most disconcerting.”

  “It’s incredible,” Jude said. “Is it safe?”

  “The instructions weren’t in English,” Lowell said, “so I very much fear not. Anyway, if you come round for supper tonight you can help me resist another application, and I’ll dig out my photograph albums. Toddle down memory lane, eh?” Then, when he was almost out of the room, he stopped. “Idiot. I forgot to give you what I came up for.”

  “You gave me tea and biscuits.”

  Lowell fished in the inside pocket of his jacket and drew out a small book. He was beaming.

  “Oh!” said Jude. “Where did you get it? You haven’t been to a sale.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, and reached out, only faltering when it was in her hands.

  “I—I thought it was a Douglas,” she said. “I mean, thank you.”

  In fact, it was a field guide to British seabirds, a pocket edition from the middle of the last century. Jude supposed migration patterns wouldn’t have changed much, unless global warming had knocked them off kilter, and here she was right at the coast in a wild place where miles of empty headland met miles of mudflats and estuary. It must seem silly to Lowell that she wasn’t making the most of it.

  He was laughing. “My dear, what do you take me for? I wouldn’t give you a thing simply because I happened to like it. I had an uncle who collected coins and he gave me coins for every birthday between the ages of eight and eighteen. Postal orders at Christmas thankfully, but still. Ten dreary birthdays until finally I got a bottle of malt.” He nodded at the book. “Look inside.”

  Jude opened it and smiled. T. Jolly.

  “It’s a sad tale, actually,” Lowell said. “When he was getting very frail indeed, no longer going out and about, he began to cull the library somewhat. He did away with his natural history collection—too painful, one supposes, when he knew his days of spotting things were over. Or perhaps he needed the space. One hundred books to read before et cetera. Well, dear me, many of them are gone, but I found this for you.”

  Jude flipped to the back, but there was nothing there. As the pages turned, though, a piece of card fell out and landed at Lowell’s feet. He stooped with another grunt and swiped it up.

  “Sighting list?” he said, but he handed it over without looking. “Interleaved ephemera, anyway,” he went on. “And therefore yours, my dear. And I shall keep shaking my remaining brain cells for memories of more.” He turned away and then turned halfway back. “He was an interesting man, Todd Jolly. I’m very happy that you’re … honouring him, I suppose. I don’t suppose … ”

  “What?” said Jude.

  “I know all this”—he waved a hand at the disorder in the room, at the piles of books and the unpacked boxes of stock jammed onto what should be a display table—“will come to an end, and it’s not exactly stretching you even at that. I don’t suppose you’d consider just staying on, would you? No, of course not. Why would you? This backwater. Dusty old relic like Lowland Glen.”

  Jude honestly had no idea whether he meant the bookshop or the man.

  “Only, heavens above, you make her laugh. You and she seem to be quite … in cahoots already.”

  “You don’t need me to sweeten the pill, Lowell,” Jude said. “She loves you. And you’re all she’s got.”

  Lowell couldn’t hide his pleasure, but when he let in the whole of what she’d said, he shook his head. “I didn’t mean that exactly,” he told her. “I didn’t mean that you should function as some sort of … Dear me, no. I simply thought perhaps the three of us could be happy.”

  Lowell was no less surprised than Jude herself when she stepped over and hugged him tight. He had the mugs in one hand but he pressed the other against the middle of her back and said, “Well, well,” before he left.

  She had never been the emotional type. She knew it had unnerved people at the funeral. They had come ready to find her broken, or even to witness her breaking, and they went away disappointed and disapproving. But just because her grief didn’t come out as tears in the crematorium, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It had to be at the bottom of what came after. If she could have gone to work she might have been all right. Well, not to work exactly. But to the bindery.

  She tried to ration herself to a couple of visits there a month, because of the glue fumes and the suspicious gossipy nature of the three bindery workers, who didn’t know why she came. Why did she go? Because it was mesmerising: the bindery inbox filled up during the day with the grubby, slackened, bacon-greased books from all over the system, then at night Stella and her girls stripped their baggy plastic, bleached the stains, stitched the slackness tight and glued feather-light tape on the tears. They put the books in clamps and buffed the edges of the pages with a sanding block until they were white again.

  After Max left her—after he made her leave him—she wished they would turn their talents her way. Strip her, bleach her, clamp her, buff her smooth and pale with finer and finer grades of sandpaper until the last stroked her like silk and left her gleaming

  Anyway, she couldn’t go and sit in the bindery in the middle of her bereavement leave. And so what came after happened instead. She wasn’t in control. She was reverberating like Wile E. Coyote when he made for the painted tunnel and met the rock face. That would be the basis of her defence if it came to that. Reeling from the double funeral of her parents, her only family, poor orphan child.

  If it came to that. But between a new name from a Glasgow cemetery and a change of hair colour too, maybe it never would. Maybe the three of them could be happy. Eddy, the cuckoo in Lowell’s nest with her secrets and lies. Jude on the run, looking over one shoulder for the rest of her life, careful never to get her face on a screen or her name on the news. And kind, honest, open Lowell, saving the world from tame Victorian porn, suspecting but not caring that once again it was his house and his money and this haven of a town that were the real draw.

  Finally, she glanced at the card he had handed her. It was one of those rectangles, shiny on one side and rough on the other, familiar once upon a time to anyone who worked in a public library. Youngsters finding them now would be mystified most likely. But Jude was just old enough to remember when pairs of tights came with one leg stretched precariously around them to show what “American Tan” or “Ecru” would look like on a leg of pure snowy white.

  These were birding notes, as Lowell had suspected. On a single day in November 1984, Todd had recorded a robin, ten sparrows, four herring gulls, something called a dooker that Jude had never heard of and three oystercatchers. Oystercatchers? She was intrigued despite herself, charmed by the thought of something so exotic-sounding in Scotland in November. If she went down to the shore one of these days, if it ever stopped raining, would she see oystercatchers too?

  She was just about to look in the index for a picture when the last few lines caught her eye.

  a. patterstone

  e. bell?

  l. mclennan—next?

  “Archie Patterstone is dead,” she said. “Etta Bell is fading fast.”

  She dropped the card back into the book and rubbed her hands on her jeans but could feel the echo of its glossy surface like a taint on the pad of her finger and thumb for the rest of the day, even after hours of shelf-washing, hours of dunking her hand over and over again in a bucket of lemon-scented water.

  She tried to talk herself round. She already knew he was near the end by late 1984, housebound, mourning his wife, losing his friends. If he was a lifelong note-taker he might well jot all kinds of things down. And when two of his friends died, he might well wonder who was next
. She only wished she could get the other sentence out of her mind. I will tell Dr. Glen enough is enough.

  By closing time, she was filthy and exhausted, not much of a prospect as a dinner companion and so she stopped off at the newsagents to buy a box of mints as a sweetener, remembering Lowell’s words: I thought perhaps the three of us could be happy.

  “Nice to see a smiling face,” said Jackie, as she walked in. She was tying up the unsold Sunday papers to set them out for recycling. “Nowt but torn coupons all afternoon. November, ken.”

  “Sorry?” said Jude.

  “Halloween weeks back and a gey stretch to Christmas,” said Jackie. “Everyone’s mumping. And if they’re stuck for somebody else, they mump at me.”

  “You sell them sweets and ciggies,” said Jude. “I should think you’d be a friend.”

  “Not the shop,” Jackie agreed. “They mump about the prices though, mind. Naw. The Post Office.” She nodded to the glass cubicle, which had its shutter drawn down and a closed sign sitting on the counter. “Moan that it’s shut, moan that it’s open and I’m busy, moan that the lassie canna take a shot when they ken damn fine I’m the postmistress.” She pointed at the proclamation of her status—a yellowed sheet with an official red stamp in one corner, stuck in the glass of the cubicle in pride of place amongst the small ads.

  “Can I take the cottage advert down, Jackie?” Jude said. “It’s let.”

  “Moan that they’ve missed the parcel van, moan that I canna do them a passport photo. Christ! They’re in here every day of life. Think if there was a photo booth they’d have seen it, eh? Aye, go on, hen, rip it off. Lowell’s not one to come moaning that I should have left it for him to take down since he put it up there.”

  Jude smiled politely, getting just the gist, as was usual with Jackie, and slightly less than the gist towards the end since she wasn’t really trying. She had seen something. She had noticed that the name of the postmistress, printed in ink on the dotted line of the form was J. McLennan. She took a chance.

  “I’ve just been handling something that belonged to a relative of yours, I think.”

  “Oh?” said Jackie. “Has that wee besom been putting mair stuff out? I’ve telt her till I’m blue.” She saw Jude’s frown and attempted an explanation. “My brother’s wife’s cowping everything that came out of my mother’s house, the wee bitch that she is. I told her I would help her when I’m not stuck in here, but oh no!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “She’ll have the place stripped to the walls and everything she fancies away!”

  “I don’t think—it was a book, quite an old one.”

  “She’s never!” said Jackie. She took a phone out of her overall pocket and started jabbing the buttons. When she put it to her ear, her face was thunderous, her mouth a line.

  “No!” said Jude and put out a hand. “This was a book that’s been in Lowell’s shop for ages. L. McLennan.”

  “Oh!” said Jackie, killing the phone call. “Christ on a bike, hen! We’d’ve had World War III if she’d picked up. She’s a nippy sweetie when she’s riled.”

  “Sorry.”

  “L. McLennan? That can’t be right, though.”

  “A different family?”

  “No, no, that’s my Auntie Lorna, right enough. But she’s long gone.”

  “His stock doesn’t exactly turn over,” Jude said.

  “Aye, but I’m talking decades,” said Jackie. “Must be well past twenty years. She nearly saw a hundred, mind.”

  “A hundred? That’s marvelous.”

  “Nearly a hundred!” Jackie said. “And then she died.”

  After Etta and Archie, in her turn, like the list said.

  Something in Jackie’s tone made Jude ask, “What did she die of?”

  And the tone turned stronger and darker, like espresso, as Jackie answered, “She died of me having a job I couldn’t walk away from and that useless bitch being too lazy to do a hand’s turn.”

  Jude tutted, as though she understood. Which she didn’t. Jackie gave a single nod, just a tuck of the chin, and carried on.

  “Auntie Lorna was scared she’d die alone and lie; ken, for days, till the smell got bad? So she went into the home and right downhill. She was fine in her own wee flat on the ground floor. But the minute she went into Bayview, she was on her way. She was too frail to be changing her diet and it wasn’t good for her to be cooped up in that so-called social room—roasting hot and all of them passing their germs around. This was before the flu jabs came in. She’d always kept her window cracked at home, but there was none of that. In case they caught cold. Cold! Those folk went through the war on mashed turnips and liquorice water. They weren’t soft like some I could name.”

  “I’m forty,” said Jude. “I’m not as tough as your auntie, but even I’m not as bad as the teenagers now.”

  “She missed her telegram by two weeks, the wee sweetheart,” Jackie said. “We had the cake ordered. Would you believe that cold-hearted so-and-so kept it in her fridge and ate it slice by slice?”

  Jude tutted again. “It’s a thought, isn’t it?” she said. “Going into a home. Mr. Jolly—you know, who lived in my house?—he managed to stay in his own place, didn’t he?”

  “Back when doctors still did house calls. It was better in some ways. Depending on the doctor anyway. The last thing you needed, when you were lying in your bed covered in chicken pox or running at both ends, was him barking at you, and the stink of his cigars.”

  “Dr. Glen?”

  “I missed my sick bucket and got the sleeve of his jacket when I was four years old and he reminded me every last blessed time I saw him till his dying day. He made a joke about it at my wedding, the swine.”

  “Why was he at your wedding?”

  “Ocht, he wasn’t. But it was in the function room at the Masonic and he was in the public bar. Todd Jolly told him to shut his face. Just like that, one end of the bar to the other. Oh it doesn’t sound like much now, but things were different then.”

  “I can imagine,” Jude said.

  “He was a fine man, was Todd.” Jackie sighed. “He went fast at the end.”

  “After his wife died?” said Jude.

  “What? Ocht, no. She was a sorry wee thing, barely saw her pension. It wasn’t till after she went that he got his life under him. Ken the type? She was always ailing with something or other. What a life he had! Well, no life at all. No, it was when he was a widower that he started to live. Joined the bowling, joined the bridge, worked on the house. She’d kept him back—always in her bed with her migraines and didn’t want the sound of a saw or the smell of paint. Then he had fifteen good years, just his own self. It’s sometimes the way.”

  Jude wasn’t acting when she shook her head in wonder. “I love that you know everyone,” she said. “They’re not really gone if someone remembers them, are they?”

  “Everyone who?” said Jackie, giving Jude an odd look. Jude thought if she said nothing, Jackie would be sure to carry on, but when the silence started getting awkward she was forced to say a little more. With her throat slightly tight she said more than she had expected to.

  “Well, Mr. Jolly. And … Etta Bell was another name I came across, and Archie Patterstone.”

  The woman blinked twice. “By jings, you’re going back there,” she said. “Etta Bell was my mother’s age, and where the hang did you get Archie’s name from? What did you say you were here doing? I thought it was just clearing out that midden. Is it a history of the town you’re at?”

  “Occupational hazard,” Jude said. “I’m a cataloguer. If I come across a name I want to record it somewhere, cross-reference. Make it fit.”

  “Fit what?” Jackie said. Two clipped words. No family history, no side swipes at her sister-in-law, no local colour. And Jude had no idea how to answer.

  “Aunt
ie Lorna was a good age,” Jackie said in the end. “And Etta and Archie and them are a long time gone. Resting easy.”

  Jude paid for her mints and left.

  It had stopped raining, and a rising ground fog dulled her footsteps. Walking in the muffled quiet towards Jamaica House, Jackie’s last words rang in her ears. Etta and Archie and them. She repeated it to herself and found her footsteps starting to keep time to the rhythm. Etta and Archie and them. Like Lions and tigers and bears. Etta and Archie and who, though? Not Auntie Lorna because Jackie had just mentioned her. Etta and Archie and who? Todd Jolly was one more, but that still left someone missing.

  Eighteen

  He had moved the onions to the kitchen. Festoons of them, neat braids of whitened stems and double rows of copper orbs, were hooked over the open ends of the drying rack high above Eddy’s head. She saw Jude looking.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He didn’t do it to make me feel guilty, so why do I feel guilty?”

  “Use them up quick before they go mouldy,” Jude said. “He loves your cooking. Where is he anyway?”

  “Last minute eBay bid on a box of photos,” Eddy said, pointing upwards. “He said to have a drink and he’ll be down at seven when it closes.”

  Jude helped herself from an open bottle of red sitting in the middle of the kitchen table with two glasses. Eddy, drinking Coke from a can, lifted it to toast her.

  “I’m not allowed any,” she said. “Cos of the baby.”

  Jude gave her a quizzical look then shrugged. Maybe it was easier to keep the fake pregnancy going all the time rather than on and off.

  “You’d probably do any baby more harm with that muck,” she said.

  “Don’t drink wine anyway. And he’s got no vodka, cos I’ve checked. I’ve been trying to work out what she was playing at.”

  “Who?” said Jude, after her first swallow.

  “Mum,” Eddy told her. “Who else?”

  Raminder, Jude didn’t say. She had spent a year trying to work out what Raminder was playing at. A good Sikh girl who lived with her family in Hounslow, dressed modestly, brought in food from home. She should have met her husband through a matchmaker and slept with him for the first time on her wedding night. Instead, she had picked up a married drunk heathen and got herself pregnant before he’d even left his wife.