Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  “That’s her house,” said Eddy when they turned the corner onto a row of semis. One of the doors was open, a woman in slippers leaning against the doorjamb enjoying a cigarette and another standing on the step.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m from a village,” she said. “Hey!” she shouted. “Any news?”

  Both women turned to look. “Who’s asking?” the smoking woman shouted back. She stubbed out her cigarette on the harled wall of the cottage, leaving a black smear there, and threw the stub into the flowers. “Are you one of Billy’s girls come over as quick as that?”

  “What’s she on about?” muttered Jude.

  “Billy?” said Eddy. “Come over? Shut up and follow my lead, Jude.” She opened the gate and strode up the path. “Aye, I am,” she said. “Is he in? Or is he at the hospital?”

  “Christ, how many years has it been since you saw him?” said the woman. “If he was fit to be at the hospital why would I be here, wiping his arse for minimum wage? This is emergency care on top of my regular shift, you know.”

  That was when Jude noticed that as well as her slippers she wore a nylon tabard and had a name badge pinned to her chest.

  “Well, aren’t you a fucking bitch?” Eddy said. “He’s expecting us.”

  “You think I’m daft?” said the woman. “Why would he be expecting you?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” said Eddy, squaring up to her.

  “Because I know who you are now I get a right look at you,” she said. “Both of you. You’re nothing to Billy at all.”

  “Now, now,” said the other woman, with a chiding note in her voice.

  But the care worker sailed on. “You’re the pair that have shacked up with the Glen one. Maureen Bell’s my cousin, by the way. I ken all about you.”

  “And I’m finding out more about you every time you open your mouth,” Eddy said. She shouldered past the woman with her hand raised to block any more talk.

  Jude scuttled after her, marvelling.

  Thankfully, there were so many visitors inside and all of them talking that it seemed unlikely the man of the house had heard his care worker’s words. At least six women were either sitting around on hard dining chairs or bustling back and forth from the kitchen with tea things.

  Billy himself was in the main living room in a hospital bed with a drip and a catheter bag on one side, two tanks of oxygen on the other. He was a terrible greyish-yellow colour, but he was all there. Jude knew that as soon as he turned his head and looked at Eddy and her. She saw the lift of helpless hope in his eyes and then the swift drop.

  Jude squeezed Eddy’s hand, willing her for once not to say anything from her usual menu. But Eddy surprised her. Surprised them all.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. McLennan,” she said. “We were just coming to ask after Jackie. We’re not wanting to be bothering you.”

  “Oh!” said the old man, lifting his head from the pillow just a shade before he ran out of energy. “Listen to that now, will you? And who might you be?” There was a thick layer of Galloway in his voice, but the sound of Belfast lay underneath it like a seam of iron.

  Eddy played up her own accent even more as she answered him. “Sure, I’m Lowell Glen’s daughter, sir. I’m the big scandal of Wigtown, with the state of me, see. Had you not heard?”

  The old man’s face cracked into a smile, his eyes swimming. “Aye, Jackie was telling me.” He turned to Jude. “And you’ll be the girlfriend, are you?” Eddy cackled and then smothered it. “You’re surely young? But look at that. Jackie and me had forty-odd good years till this morning.” He turned away and groped around on his bedspread until the nearest of the women in the dining chairs took his hand. She had red-rimmed eyes and looked exhausted.

  “Oh, Dad,” she said. “Don’t lose hope. Come on, eh?”

  “I wonder,” Eddy said, “Mr. McLennan, can I have a wee word with you? Can we? Jackie … see now, the thing is that Jackie told Jude here something in confidence yesterday, and we’ve sort of been left with it hanging. We don’t want to bother you at all, but can we just have one wee quiet word?”

  His daughter was frowning and she gave her dad an uncertain look.

  “You can stay, of course,” Eddy said to her. Clever psychology, Jude thought. It was enough to get the woman on her feet and backing away politely.

  “Right,” she said. “Ladies? Fag break in the back garden. Come on. You’ve got five minutes,” she told Jude. “And only because I know my mum would never have taken ill if there wasn’t something really badly wrong.” She dropped a kiss on her father’s head. “Don’t upset him,” she said to Eddy, and then she herded the other women out ahead of her and closed the door.

  Eddy sat down on one side of the high bed and left Jude the other. The old man reached out a hand to each and held tight. His skin was thin and bruised from needles, but his grip was firm. “I can’t do without her,” he said. “I don’t mean for the nursing. It’s not fair.”

  “Forty years, eh?” said Eddy.

  “She deserves time once I’m gone,” he said. “She’s been a slave since I took bad. Never a night out. Never a weekend away. This is the wrong way on.”

  “She’ll have her time,” said Eddy. “You and her’ll have your wee golden sunset and then she’ll be dying her hair and away to Vegas with her pals and you’ll be that jealous you’ll haunt her.”

  Jude cast a wary at eye at the old man—it was the strangest comfort she’d ever heard—but he was laughing. Of course, Eddy had experience talking to people at the end. She’d have learned better than platitudes with her mother.

  “So what happened, Mr. McLennan?” Eddy said.

  “Billy,” he told her. “She came in from her work, got me fed and changed, but I knew something was troubling her. She was quiet.”

  “Is that odd?” said Eddy.

  Jude smothered a laugh. “She’s never met Jackie,” she said to Billy. Then, “Yes, Eddy, it’s very odd. Billy, was she in at the usual time? Was she out of breath?”

  “Wee bit early if anything,” he said.

  Eddy flashed Jude a look. Jackie didn’t leave the note then.

  “And she didn’t say anything?” Eddy asked.

  “Not to me,” Billy said. “She phoned someone, though.”

  “Did you overhear the phone call?” said Jude.

  Billy shook his head. “She went out in the garden.”

  “In all that manky fog?” Eddy said. “That’s odd.”

  “And all I heard was her raised voice. I couldn’t make out the words. What’s this about, girls?”

  Jude and Eddy glanced at each other.

  “It’s hard to know,” Jude said. “It started a long time ago and we’re only catching the echoes.”

  “Where’s her phone?” Eddy said. “We can look at the call log.”

  “Oh, you’re a wee smarty,” said Billy. It sounded like an insult to Jude’s ears but it got Eddy beaming. “Aye, it was in her pocket like always but they brought her stuff back from Casualty in a bag last night. It’ll be in the front bedroom there. That’s just a dumping ground for my bottles and whatever these days.” He lifted his head and raised his voice. “Hey? Are you through there? Can you bring me Jack’s bag from last night?”

  “Who are you talk—?” said Eddy, then she sprang to her feet and made a dive for a connecting door. The smoking woman in the tabard had a thick blue plastic bag in one hand and a mobile in the other. She dropped the phone and held the bag out.

  “Everything’s in here,” she said. “I was just checking.”

  Jude struggled to keep up with the girl on the way back into the village. “Are you timing it?” she said.

  “No, I’m just that mad with myself. I never even stopped to think where that sly bitch went once we were in. Maureen Bell’s cousin, Jude! Etta Bell’s
something, for sure. And she cleared the call log on Jackie’s phone because we practically told her to! What a pair of morons.”

  “Well, she didn’t strike me as a very helpful person anyway you slice her,” Jude said. “And you kind of put her back up, you know, calling her a fucking bitch like that.”

  Eddy blew a raspberry. “So you think it might just be a great big coincidence then?”

  “I talk to Jackie about Etta and Archie; she collapses; someone warns me off Etta, Archie, and three more; and we find out Jackie spoke to someone, but one of Etta’s relatives tries to hide who? Coincidence? Ah no, Eddy, I don’t think so.”

  They had arrived at the bookshop. Eddy rested her bottom on the windowsill of Spinning Yarns and splayed her feet. “Christ, I’m sick of lugging this around,” she said, lacing her hands under her belly. “And I don’t believe in coincidences anyway.” She hauled herself to her feet again. “Let’s lay it all out for Lowell and see what he says.”

  “Eddy, this is moving kind of fast, don’t you think?” said Jude. “We— Shouldn’t we … think it through? Before we say anything? To anyone?”

  “Lowell?” Eddy said and opened the door.

  He leapt to his feet when he saw them. Two of the shallow drawers were open but, quick as a fish, he slid the picture he’d been looking at into one, pushed both closed, and leaned against them.

  “Nice picnic?” he said.

  “Not so’s you notice,” Jude said. “We stopped in to see Jackie’s husband. He thinks she’ll die and it’s breaking him.”

  “Poor Bill,” Lowell said. “Oh my! He’d never cope on his own. Even with all the nurses and carers. He’d have to go into a home. Oh poor Jackie! I spoke to her yesterday, you know.”

  Eddy said nothing but Jude managed, “Really?”

  “Yes,” said Lowell. “She phoned me to check if I really wanted the card for the cottage taken down.”

  “You never mentioned that,” said Jude. “And I took the card down. That’s why—You never said any of this.”

  “Don’t be offended, my dear. Jackie is a very conscientious postmistress. She let you take it down but she checked with me before she destroyed it, you see?”

  “Hey, Dad,” Eddy said, “if Billy does go into a home, will it be the same one you worked in? Is it still open?”

  “Hm?” Lowell said, blinking as he tried to split his attention between them. “Good heavens no, that place closed millennia ago. Just after I left, actually.” His eyes came to rest on Jude. “Are you quite well, my dear? You look pale?”

  “Period,” said Eddy. “She’s going home.”

  “Oh um, golly,” said Lowell.

  “I’ll chum you,” said Eddy to Jude. “Exercise’ll do us good.”

  Before Lowell could work out that they had just walked the mile from the McLennans’ cottage, she grabbed Jude’s hand and pulled her out the door.

  Twenty-One

  “If your dad punished you for not doing medicine by making you empty bed pans,” Eddy said, “would that piss you off? It would piss me off.”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Jude asked her. “You think your dad, my friend Lowell, was bumping people off in the home and his dad knew and covered it up? And Todd Jolly knew and bribed the doctor into making sure he never ended up in there?”

  “And Mrs. Hewston knew too,” said Eddy. “That’s why she’s so down on him. And fuck, yeah! This always bugged me. That’s why she gets to stay there even though she’s a pain in the arse and he could chuck her out.”

  “But Lowell?” said Jude. “Dear me, yes, quite, oh golly Lowell?”

  They turned a corner out of the sunshine, which was already beginning to lose what little strength it had had that morning. Jude shivered.

  “Although,” she said, “there is the creepy porn collection. You might be right about that, Eddy.”

  “Creepy but harmless,” Eddy said.

  “And living all alone in the house he was born in.”

  “That sounds like your classic serial killer, right enough,” Eddy said. “But he had friends. He had … we’ve seen the pictures of that summer!”

  “And one by one they all left,” Jude said beginning to nod as she caught up. “And your mum kept you away from him all those years, even when being married to Dave Preston went wrong.”

  “But she sent me back to him again!” Eddy said. “And I think you’re forgetting something, aren’t you? He’s not my dad! My mum lied about when my birthday was so I’d … wait a minute. Wait a minute.” She stopped talking and stopped walking too, ten feet from the turn into the cemetery lane.

  Jude put a hand in the small of her back and pushed. “Keep it moving,” she said. “It’s brass monkeys out here.”

  “If he’s not my dad—and he can’t be—she might send me back to a kind man she slept with once, especially if he could help me track down my real dad. But she’d hardly send me back to a psycho she slept with once, would she?”

  “Unless she sent you back to bust him,” Jude said. “You told me she was going on about something wrong she’d done. On her last night? She’d done something terrible? Maybe she meant keeping quiet about Lowell.”

  Eddy said nothing and after the silence had gone on for a while, when they were almost at the gates, Jude peeked past the curtain of hair. It was soot black, blacker than death and midnight in the low light. Inside it, Eddy’s face was candle white.

  “That’s right,” she said, and her voice was tiny. “That actually makes sense, if you must know.” She reached for Jude’s hand as they entered the graveyard. “She said she couldn’t pass over with it on her conscience.”

  “It what?” said Jude.

  But Eddy only shrugged. “She was scared. What if we all meet up? That’s what she said. I thought it was the morphine. The nurse said it was the morphine.” Eddy sniffed and came out of her memory. “Jesus fucking Christ, Jude. Seriously, how can you live here?”

  And indeed the cemetery did look particularly bleak that afternoon, a very different place from Jude’s morning memory of blue sky and sparkling, frost-tipped grass.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Of course, I can’t live here now. Not after that note. Know what I mean? Better safe than sorry.”

  “Right!” said Eddy, catching on without a hitch. “And it’s different now I know you, isn’t it? I was a right cow chucking you out, but that was when you were a stranger. Now I know you, I’m dying to get you back round to Jamaica. Hey, maybe I even did the note thing—you know, to persuade you? Maybe I did jump out the window and haul my fat arse round here to freak you out.”

  “Let’s not complicate it,” Jude said, and Eddy blew another raspberry at her.

  Then she folded her lips in, drying them, and turned serious. “Thanks,” she said. “You really think Lowell might be dodgy as fuck and you’re coming back anyway?”

  “Haven’t got much choice,” said Jude. “You know too much. You could make one phone call and I’d be toast.”

  “Course,” said Eddy. “Duh. I’ve got something on you, so you’ve got to do what I say. Back scratching like we said, yeah?” Her eyes were shining.

  “It’s not just that,” Jude said. “Sorry.” She shivered again. In the shadow of the church it was even colder, not just from the chill in the air, but as though cold was seeping up from the ground and leaching out of the dark stone beside them. “It’s that I really do want to find out what’s going on. Something is. Jackie knows and the strain of it’s done her in. And you shouldn’t be on your own. You’re too young and too—”

  “I’m a shit-ton tougher than you, pal,” Eddy said.

  “You’re not even twenty and I’m forty,” Jude said.

  “And you’ve spent the extra twenty years in a … wooo … library,” Eddy said, making ghost hands.

  “Don’t kid y
ourself,” Jude said, in her best south-London. “You get rougher homeless in a London library than you’ll have seen in Derry, gel.”

  “Oh right,” Eddy said. “Yeah, we wouldn’t know the meaning of ‘trouble’ in Ulster.”

  Jude rolled her eyes and shook her head. “All right, have the last word. I’m mature enough to let it go. You’ve said thank you and I’ll say you’re welcome.”

  Eddy smirked but she didn’t start another round. Instead, she sniffed and squeezed her eyes tight to get rid of the sheen of tears. “So where’s these graves then?” she said. “We need to take a pic so we can study them up when you’re not staying here anymore.”

  Jude led her around and waited while Eddy snapped each of them. Archibald Patterstone, Henrietta Bell, Todd Jolly, Elspeth Day, and Norma Oughton. She scrolled through the photographs as Jude was opening the cottage door.

  “Tell you one thing for nothing,” Eddy said. “It wasn’t kids. The note, I mean.”

  “How do you know?” said Jude. She was looking round at the living room. She hadn’t made much of a mark in here, but she would be sorry to leave Todd’s shipshape kitchen and she was filled with a kind of blank, dead feeling inside to think of leaving the upstairs library.

  “Because,” Eddy said, “if it was kids going round collecting the names and writing them down, right? They’d have written Archibald and Elspeth. And definitely Henrietta. It was someone who remembers them who wrote that note to you.”

  “My God, you’re right!” Jude said. “Elsie and Etta and Archie. It’s got to be someone old enough to have known them.”

  “And at least we know that bit wasn’t Lowell,” Eddy said. “I was with him right from teatime to bedtime.”

  “What about when you were waxing?”

  “He was at the door every two minutes,” Eddy said. “He wouldn’t leave me in peace. And I wasn’t waxing. I was just having a wash and that. Not like anyone’s going to see any bit of me that grows hair anytime soon, is it?”

  “What? Liam and Terry aren’t coming to the birth?” Jude said.