Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  But Eddy only snorted and told her to start packing.

  She really wanted to take the books and tried for a quite a while to convince Eddy it made sense.

  “There are clues in them,” she said. “I found the start of it in them.”

  “So take the ones with the clues in,” Eddy said. “What’s that, like three?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Jude said. “It’s all of them.”

  “It can’t be,” said Eddy. “Get a grip.”

  So Jude took the copies with the long reviews in the back and left the rest. She took O. Douglas even though they were tainted now. If Lowell was what they suspected him of being, then every memory was stained. The first visit last summer when he popped his head round the door to share her joy and certainly every moment since she came back and he showed her The Day of Small Things he’d been saving for her. What had she been thinking? Going round to a stranger’s house and sleeping in his bed? She must have been crazy.

  “What?” said Eddy.

  Jude had laughed out loud. They had phoned for a taxi from Newton Stewart and they were sitting in the living room waiting for it to arrive, surrounded by boxes of perishable food from the fridge and binbags full of Jude’s clothes. She had her stash in a tower on her lap. Douglas, the downed plane, the Rushdie, the Allingham, and the old cloth Rebecca.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said. “I cannot believe that man could do harm to a living soul. Can you? Really?”

  “Nope,” said Eddy. “Maybe … Maybe he knew who it was, though. At the nursing home. Maybe he covered something up and my mum covered for him. Christ, I wish she was still here so I could just ask her.”

  They both fell silent. One thing Jude had learned after her parents’ death, in the first few horrendous weeks following it, was the kindness of silence.

  If she’d had someone who understood and would sit quietly, shoulders touching, and let her feel her feelings, she wouldn’t have ended up back round at her old house the night of the funeral, looking for comfort in the place she’d found it all those married years.

  But all she’d had was people commenting under the online Standard article, sniggering like idiots. And then the neighbours asking if there was anything they could do or telling her they’d pray for her and so, without even deciding to, all of a sudden she was opening the wardrobe door and standing looking down at the back of Max’s head hanging over the side of the bed, keeping his airways clear. She wanted to slap him awake. To open his eyes with her fingers and make him see her. She didn’t get quite that far.

  The baby had been crying when Raminder opened the front door. Jude heard the thin, high wails before she even heard the latch.

  “Max!” She’d sounded a little bit anxious but happy underneath. “All hands on deck, sweetheart! Jade needs a feed and a bum change and I’m busting for a pee!”

  Jude was frozen in place. Max snored steadily.

  “Max?” Raminder called up. “Come on, love. This isn’t funny. Listen to her! Are you in the shower? Max, for God’s sake, will you—Are you okay?”

  Jude didn’t have time to get back to the wardrobe—thankfully, as it turned out. She withdrew into the deep shadow between the open door and the bedroom wall as Raminder came up the stairs, leaving the baby’s cries behind her.

  “Max, for God—” she said, striding into the bedroom. She stopped dead, a foot from the bed where Max was now snoring harder than ever, gurgling snorts that filled the air of the small room with the belch stink of beer and the reek of whisky. She was so close that Jude could see individual stray hairs, mussed out of her ponytail, silhouetted against the light of the bedside lamp. They were quivering.

  “You promised,” Raminder said. “Wet the baby’s head. One drink. You promised me.”

  Max snored so loudly it sounded like a snarl and Raminder spun away, into the tiny en suite bathroom. Jude could hear her opening and shutting drawers, thumping and rustling, while she peed. Jude had done it herself, sitting on the loo and reaching over to the sink to the little cupboard, putting new toiletries away, tidying, packing like Raminder was doing now. The toilet flushed and when she came out she was carrying a little drawstring bag. If she had looked over she would have seen Jude standing there, but she was busy. She got a case out of the wardrobe, threw it down on the bed beside Max and dropped the drawstring bag in it. Downstairs the baby’s cries went up in pitch.

  “Mummy’s coming,” Raminder said, under her breath. She went back and forward twice from the chest of drawers with underclothes and pyjamas, once to the wardrobe for jeans and shirts and then she zipped the case shut and stalked out of the door without a glance at the bed.

  Jude only had to stand there for another minute and she’d be clear, but she heard the first sob wrench itself from Raminder’s throat and found her feet moving.

  The banging on the cottage door brought both of them back, Eddy starting as violently as Jude.

  “Taxi!” said a woman’s voice. And then, “Is this it?” surveying the bags when Jude opened up.

  “No!” Jude said. “Sorry. Start the metre if you like, but I’ve got more I want to take.” She ignored Eddy’s snort and ran back upstairs. She had no idea why, but she knew she needed the books. Not the natural history collection or the reference books, but all those book club choices with the notes in the back. It took three trips for her to carry them, both Eddy and the taxi driver rolling their eyes and neither offering to help.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said, when they were underway at last. “I just know the answer is there somewhere.”

  “Like in a secret code or something?” said Eddy.

  Jude shushed her but the driver wasn’t listening. “No, of course not,” she said. “There’s notes, but no one was ever meant to read them. They’re like a diary.”

  “I never understood the point of a diary if no one’s meant to read it,” Eddy said. “You don’t need to tell yourself, do you? You were there. Know what I mean? I reckon everybody that writes a diary must basically hope someone’s going to read it one day.”

  “Not at all,” said Jude. “Todd Jolly’s notes were private jokes between him and him.” Then she stopped.

  “What?” said Eddy.

  “I don’t know,” said Jude. “Something’s bothering me.”

  “This right?” said the taxi driver. Jude looked out and saw that they were on the corner of Lightlands Terrace, Jamaica House almost in view. “All the way from Newton Stewart for this?”

  “Oh, shut up your moaning,” Eddy said. “There’s a minimum fare, isn’t there? Right, well, there you go. Pay her, Jude. I’m nipping in fast, cos I’m busting.”

  Her words brought Raminder back and Jude was lost again as they rolled up the side drive and parked at the front door. She paid the driver the modest minimum tariff and doubled it with a tip, then unloaded the bags and boxes by herself, without help. Eddy had not reappeared.

  She was standing looking at the pile of luggage, wondering whether to take it round in loads or try to find the front door key when she heard a familiar voice and her heart sank.

  “It’s like Paddington Station round here today.” Mrs. Hewston was crossing the side lawn in her slippers with a half apron on top of her skirt and her sleeves rolled to the elbow. “I was at my kitchen sink, peeling spuds,” she said. “Was that a taxi? I thought you liked Digger’s Cottage.”

  “I do,” said Jude. “I’m just moving in to be here for Eddy.” She looked at the piles of books around her feet on the marble step and knew how unlikely it seemed.

  “Is she near her time?” said Mrs. Hewston. “My goodness me, like mother like daughter, eh? But she’ll be away to the hospital when it comes, won’t she?” Jude nodded. “It’s a filthy time of year to be having a baby, if you ask me,” said Mrs. Hewston. “Rotten time for getting nappies dry. It’s like winter weddings. Wha
t are you supposed to do for flowers in your bouquet?”

  Mrs. Hewston, thought Jude, seemed to live in a time warp where there were no such things as Pampers or global markets.

  “Have you heard the news?” Jude said. Her head was reeling with suspicions of Lowell and half-formed notions of what might have happened here years ago, and all of a sudden, Mrs. Hewston, loyal to the doctor, scathing about his son, seemed like someone with good radar. If they were right. If the monstrous idea could possibly be right.

  “About Jackie Mac?” said Mrs. Hewston. “Yes, terrible.” She pressed a hand to her chest. Her fingers were raw and pink-looking, as if she’d peeled the spuds in cold water.

  “But she’s in the best place,” said Jude.

  “Well, you say that, but it’s different these days. It’s all about not getting sued these days. Nursing and medicine isn’t what it was. And if it’s a stroke she’s had, maybe it’s best she doesn’t linger.”

  Jude didn’t know where to start. Mrs. Hewston had no idea whether it was a stroke or what it was. No one did. As quick as that, she changed her mind back again. She was just a daft old bat who lived half in the past and half in a dream world.

  They both turned as the front door, creaking and yawning, was dragged open.

  “Sorry,” said Eddy. “I didn’t mean to—Oh.”

  “Hello to you too,” said Mrs. Hewston. “It’s nice to see that door open. When the doctor was alive that door was never closed. The vestibule floor was polished with linseed oil and there were fresh flowers in a vase on the hallstand every day of the year.”

  “Polish it himself, did he?” said Eddy. “What a guy! And he did the flower arranging too?”

  Mrs. Hewston ignored her. “But now look at it. The brasses not even shined and—Oh! Oh!” She pointed with a shaking finger. Jude followed her gaze with real alarm and then let out a huff of relief when she saw what had caused the problem. On the hallstand, in the vestibule, was a glass vase brown with old algae and completely dry, a few dead twigs sticking up in it. Mrs. Hewston tutted at it and then left them.

  “That’s a bit scruffy,” said Jude. “I’ll clear it away.”

  “Or you could leave it,” Eddy said. “Kind of just … leave it and sit and do some relaxation instead. It’d be a start. I’ll help you.”

  Jude’s breath was knocked out of her. She stared at Eddy for a minute or two until the girl’s eyes were wide with worry. “Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot, really. But one thing at a time, eh?”

  She moved her bags and books into the hallway in relays. The bright start to the day had run out and clouds were rolling in across the water, a haze under them telling her they were dropping rain out there in the bay and their purplish colour, weighty and threatening, telling her they wouldn’t be empty by the time they got to the coast.

  It was beginning to feel normal to be able to look out for miles and see the weather long before it reached her. She could imagine getting used to it, becoming one of those people who found London cramped and confusing; becoming someone who, like Mrs. Glen, could keep fresh flowers in the house every day of the year. Once her belongings were under cover, she took the vaseful of Lowell’s failure into the kitchen where Eddy was waiting.

  “Be fair,” she said. “This must have been sitting there for—”

  “Months,” said Eddy. “That’s forsythia. It’s out in the spring.” She picked a little twist of something dead off one of the branches and rubbed it to crumbs between her fingers.

  “Well, aren’t you full of surprises today!” Jude said.

  “Nah, it was Mum’s favourite,” Eddy said. “One of them.”

  Jude set the vase down amongst the bills and batteries that littered the top of the long dresser and rubbed her hands on her jeans.

  “If we’re serious about suspecting Lowell and I’m serious that there’s a clue somewhere in all those books,” she said, “I better get them out of sight before he comes home.”

  “Put them up in my bit,” said Eddy. “He never comes up there. I told him I wander about naked and he nearly poked his eye in with his fountain pen just thinking about it.”

  “Smart,” said Jude. “Okay, I will then.”

  She had only spent a few days in these rooms, but that was long enough. Seeing them again, with Eddy’s magazines lying around and Eddy’s shoes kicked off at the top of the stairs, made her feel as if she’d cleaned a toilet with her bare hands and now she was licking her fingers. And Eddy’s kindness had sent the portcullis rattling up so high she couldn’t reach it to bring it down again.

  “I’m not here. I’m not—” she began. Then she sighed. “Except I am.”

  It was crazy. She knew that. It was crazy to feel sick because there were shoes on the floor of a flat she’d slept in last week. Like it was crazy to move to Cataloguing, bored senseless but surrounded by clean new books and away from the readers with their snot and chocolate. It was crazy to say she wouldn’t have children because snot and chocolate weren’t the half of it. She knew no one blamed Max for what happened. Poor Max. What could he do when his wife was crazy?

  When she was finished ferrying the books upstairs, she took her clothes and toilet things into one of the first-floor bedrooms. Then, wondering, she went back to the kitchen.

  “Do you want me to sleep up top with you?” she said. “I could make up a kind of whatsit with sofa cushions.” They stared at each other.

  “Are we really serious?” said Eddy. “We’re really saying Lowell abused his position at the care home. That his dad knew. That Mrs. Hewston knows. That Jackie collapsed when you brought the memories back?”

  Jude sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Carting boxes up and down was part of it, but really she felt bowed under the weight of too many mysteries, too many switchback changes.

  “There’s too much … ” she said, and Eddy shouted with laughter. It was a sound, Jude thought, she had picked up from Lowell in the time she’d been here.

  “You’re telling me!” Eddy said. “There’s my shit and your shit and then there’s all this shit! Where are we supposed to start, eh?”

  “We don’t need to start with my—”

  “Shit,” said Eddy.

  “—because there’s nothing to do except sit tight and see what happens.”

  “You’re a machine,” Eddy said. “I couldn’t do that if you paid me.” She put a mug of tea on the table in front of Jude and opened a packet of biscuits, sawing through the wrapper with the breadknife.

  “And you’ve dealt with your … situation, haven’t you?”

  “How’d you mean?” Eddy said. “Oh, telling him about Liam and Terry, like? Well, sure, but that’s only half of it, isn’t it? That’s only the future. There’s still the past. Fuckadoodledoo is there ever the past.” She took a biscuit out of the packet, dipped it in her tea for longer than Jude thought was feasible and then held it over her open mouth until the soggy half moon sloughed off and dropped. She closed her lips with a smack. “But I’m on it. I nicked his toothbrush,” she said. “Sent away for a DNA test. That’s my way, see? Rip off the plaster and see what’s under there.”

  “But I thought you were sure he wasn’t?” Jude said.

  Eddy dropped her eyes to her cup and a new biscuit. “I am. I don’t see how he can be. Cos of the dates. She’d never lie about my star sign and birth date. All that woo woo. Birthstones are crystals, man. Powerful stuff. Burying them at the foot—” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Getting myself mixed up. It’s liver and lights you bury, right? Full moon, for a bumper crop. So, like I was saying, I’ve dealt with it. When the DNA comes back, I can either tell him and skedaddle or not tell him and stay.”

  “And wonder forever who your real dad is?”

  “Unless the other shit we’ve still got to work out explains it all,” Ed
dy said. “If he’s a loony, that’s why she kept me away. If someone else from that summer is my real dad, that’s why she sent me back. She told me I was his so he’d take me in. Or, she sent me back to bring something to light that she’d left hidden.”

  “So where do we start? What do we think? What do we know?” said Jude. “What are the uncontested facts?”

  Eddy opened the drawer in the kitchen table—the knife drawer it was called, although it contained napkins and a corkscrew and a little dust pan and brush for sweeping away crumbs in between courses. It also contained a pad of paper Lowell used for working out knotty crossword clues, and Eddy drew that out and turned over to a fresh sheet.

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “I received an anonymous note,” said Jude, “tying together the deaths of Todd, Archie, Etta, Norma, and Elsie. Todd Jolly put his wife in a home—the home Lowell worked at? Let’s find out—and was very keen not to follow her. Auntie Lorna McLennan died two weeks after going into a home. Again, the home? Let’s find out. Mrs. Hewston has some kind of hold over Lowell, and Todd wrote in one of his books I will tell Dr. Glen enough is enough. Then Lowell left the home and Dr. Glen retired and took an interest in the bookshop, a place he’d always hated and disapproved of. He organised the Fiction rooms, you know.”

  Eddy caught up and stopped writing, then bent over again and added a thick blot like a bullet point beside each of the lines. “Jesus,” she said. “When you write it all down like that, it’s pretty bad, eh?”

  “And in the present day. Jackie warned me off face-to-face. Someone warned me off in a note. But it wasn’t Lowell or Jackie. But Jackie did speak to Lowell before she collapsed. Did she speak to someone else? We don’t know because someone related to Etta Bell stopped us finding out.”

  Eddy turned over a page, scribbled a little more, and then threw the pen down. “This is too hard to organise,” she said.

  “We need lists,” said Jude. “We need a timeline. What happened when.”

  “Right,” said Eddy. “Names and dates. On it.” She pulled her phone out of the capacious pocket of the afghan coat and started clicking.