Quiet Neighbors

by Catriona McPherson

  Thirty

  It took her two days to get there. She arrived at half past eleven on Friday morning and the first any of them knew about it was when they heard a baby crying.

  They were in the dining room. Lowell and Jude had started trying to organise the hundred-books books. Eddy had drifted in; since Lowell’s lecture about the hazards of childbirth, she had been sticking close to him, catching his eye a lot, assuring him she was fine. She had even moved downstairs from her pink and yellow haven to sleep in the adjoining room. Liam and Terry had taken over the attic rooms now, their third occupants in a month after the long empty years. Jude, that first night after Begbie left, ended up in Lowell’s bed and had slept ten straight hours there.

  “Totally disgusting, by the way,” said Eddy. “But fair enough, because Dad would probably pass out if my waters broke. But you’d be okay.”

  “I think I’d have time to get to you from any door on the landing,” Jude said. “Even from downstairs if I was still up.”

  Eddy shook her head solemnly. “Who knows how quick it might come on?” she said. “Did I tell you Dad’s taking a hotel room beside the hospital starting next week, cos of how we’re in the back of beyond. And as for the boat!” It was decided. Liam and Terry’s child would be born Scottish. They didn’t seem to mind. They were already making jokes about wearing kilts to its Christening.

  The question of “how quick it could come on” was one of the many things that troubled Jude about that night almost twenty years ago. Dying in childbirth was surely slow. Even if Inez meant to go it alone, wouldn’t she finally panic and cry out? And even if Miranda meant to do everything with a cup of raspberry tea and some lavender oil, wouldn’t she eventually realise she was out of her depth and get help? The only pictures Jude could bring to mind of women dying alone in childbirth were Victorian and as gruesome as any of Lowell’s collection, involving locked doors and shackles and grim-faced wardens determined to see that some wretched girl paid for her sin. When she tried to think of Miranda and Inez in those terms, tried to imagine Miranda locking Inez in a bedroom and ignoring her screams, she felt faint and foolish. They were friends. It couldn’t have happened that way.

  She was half thinking about it as she sorted books on the Friday morning. Eddy was propped across two armchairs, complaining about her newly swollen ankles. Liam and Terry, who followed Eddy as closely as she followed Lowell, were massaging one each. Jude was trying not to roll her eyes.

  When they heard the baby cry, Lowell put a hand out to steady himself and Eddy batted the fathers’ hands away. “What the fuck?” she said, suddenly white in the face. “Jesus Christ, see what’s happened now? They’ve disturbed her grave and here she is.”

  “Eddy,” Jude said over her shoulder, making her way to the door, “it’s lunchtime. Ghosts haunt at night. And the baby didn’t die, you moron. The baby’s you.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Eddy, sitting back and lifting her feet again.

  “Is it who I think it is, dearest?” said Lowell. And then louder when she didn’t answer, “I’m here if you need me.”

  “I’m fine,” Jude called back. She went on her own and opened the inside porch door.

  Raminder was standing on the tiled floor of the vestibule with a wailing, wriggling bundle under one arm and a phone in her free hand.

  “Hi,” said Jude. “You better come in.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” Raminder said and, despite everything, Jude felt a surge of emotion to hear the sound of home in her London accent after all those weeks of dry Scottish twigs snapping. “Jade’s starving.”

  She cast her eyes about as they walked along the passageway to the kitchen. Jude could see her appraising the place, the soaring ceilings and deep mouldings, the shabby carpet and dusty picture frames.

  “Looks about right,” she said. “The Mail said he was some kind of corpse collector. Photographs of remains and owned a house in a graveyard. But he didn’t know about the woman in the garden?”

  “He’s not really as—I mean, they can twist anything,” said Jude, holding open the kitchen door and stepping back to let Raminder enter. The baby was gasping and grizzling, sure she’d be fed soon now that they were inside.

  Raminder shrugged out of her coat and plumped down in a chair. She lifted her jumper, rootled in a capacious beige bra, and then bent low over the baby until the crying stopped, replaced by soft little snorts and grunts. She sat up and smiled.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks, really,” she said.

  “For … ?” Jude sat down opposite her. She should offer tea, but she didn’t know if Raminder could drink hot tea over Jade’s head. Anyway, she seemed to have lost the use of her legs.

  “For phoning,” Raminder said. “Dialling it in. No one sussed out it wasn’t me, by the way. It only took them two minutes to get there. Shouldn’t get preferential treatment, I suppose, but the truth is, what with it being my number and me being on a crew … Yeah, about two minutes.”

  “But—I mean, you know what I said, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Raminder. “I worked it out eventually.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “Police came round the next day. I was still pretty out of it. They asked me what I could remember. I said I tripped and fell. They said they understood I was frightened and would it help to know I wasn’t in any danger.”

  “What?”

  “I twigged then. That’s what they say to abused wives. They say, ‘He’s under lock and key, love. He can’t hurt you.’ Get the woman to make a statement and then they bail the bugger out and he goes straight back round and beats her bloody. Brilliant system.”

  “How do you know all that?” Jude said. “Max never—”

  “No!” said Raminder. “Just from us being there getting the poor cow on a stretcher and the cops being there asking questions at the same time. This one time, we were splinting the wife—dislocated shoulder, dislocated jaw—and there’s a copper with his notebook out saying, ‘Where does he drink, love? What’s his local? We can pick him up now and he’ll never bother you again.’ Little kids in their pyjamas standing there listening to it all. And she goes—through her dislocated jaw—she goes, ‘Don’t arrest him. We can’t afford a babysitter.’”

  “So … ” Jude was trying to piece it together. “The cops prompted you? Told you what I’d said?”

  Raminder shook her head and glanced down at the little head burrowing deeper and deeper into her. “The crew came to check up on me. Tom and Bernie, it was. Came shuffling in looking at their feet. And I asked them. I said I couldn’t remember what I’d said on the call. They told me. And so when the cops came back—no one had said a word about Max at this point, mind—when the cops came back, I said he was angry and drunk and he didn’t mean anything by it. Probably didn’t even realise I was at the head of the staircase, just pushed past me to get to the bedroom.”

  “When did you find out he was dead?” Jude said.

  “Later that day, once the nurses said it was safe to upset me. Yeah, later that afternoon. My mum was there. And they told me. He’d passed out drunk and choked on his own.”

  “But why didn’t the ambulance crew that came to get you take care of him?” Jude said. “Tom and Bernie.”

  “Ah yeah, there you’ve got it,” said Raminder. “That’s why the police were so keen to get me on record that he’d beaten me about a bit and why Tom and Bernie wanted me to spill. They never checked the house. They found me and Jade and took us off and never looked upstairs. They were covering their arses in case I tried to sue them, innit? In case I asked for forty jillion for the loss of my loving husband.”

  “Tom and Bernie never looked upstairs?” Jude knew ambulancemen. It was second nature to check a premises when they were called out.

  “That’s their story and they’re sticking to it,” Raminder said. “
Said they were concerned for my safety, what with me being a colleague. If they’d known he was there, they’d never have left him … like that, you know?” She paused, chewing her lip. “If you back me up, we’re all okay.”

  “Back you up … ?”

  “I’ve told the cops you left before it kicked off between Max and me.”

  “But one of the neighbours saw me leaving.”

  “That’s right,” Raminder said. “I told the cops you left and that’s when Max went to bed and pushed past me and I fell down the stairs, just had time to dial 999 and say he shoved me before I passed out. Neighbour hears Jade crying, sees you leaving, bit later sees an ambulance turn up. There’s no loose ends.”

  “You don’t seem—I mean, are you okay? You seem okay.” In the depths of the house, Jude was aware of the doorbell, but she ignored it. “I mean, he’s dead, right? And you loved him.”

  “Must have, innit?” Raminder said, hollowly. “I went against my family, broke up a marriage. If I didn’t love him that’d make me a bit of a bitch.” She looked down again and this time crunched herself over so she could kiss the side of Jade’s head. The baby was lolling, sated already, and Raminder pulled her gently away from her breast, with a soft sound like a small pebble falling into water. Jude took her eyes away after just a glimpse of a dark egg-shaped blotch and a sharp black nipple. Raminder was still smiling. “I can’t regret anything I did,” she said, “or I’m wishing this little one away.”

  Jude was speaking before she knew what she would say. “I don’t regret anything you did either. Choice between living in London still married to Max and being here? Easy.”

  Raminder nodded, rhythmically. She looked almost as sleepy as the baby, blinking slowly.

  “How did you get here?” Jude asked her. “Did you drive?”

  Raminder nodded again. Jade was snoring.

  “Do you want to go upstairs and rest?” Jude asked. “First left at the top’s a spare. Bathroom’s the one with the etched glass.”

  Raminder got to her feet and pushed her car keys across the table. “Don’t suppose you’d slip out and get her changing bag?” she said.

  “Course,” said Jude. Raminder’s words were still ringing in her ears. They’d never have left him … like that, you know. “Hey, can I ask you something?” she said. Raminder was walking slowly, carrying the sleeping baby like a ticking bomb, Jude thought. “Was that his first slip? Since you two got together?”

  Raminder snorted. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? That was his fourth ‘slip.’ First time since Jade was born, though.”

  “I remember that,” Jude said. “First time this year, first time this holiday, first time since the last time.”

  Raminder gave a ghost of a laugh, just a lift of her chin and a single breath. The weariness couldn’t all be from her long drive and the broken sleep that comes with a baby.

  She knew, Jude thought. She’d been three times round the merry-go-round Jude had been round so many times she couldn’t count anymore. She definitely knew.

  “No regrets,” Raminder said, reading her mind. “No complaints. My parents have forgiven me. Well, this one helps.” She lifted the baby a little and then let her settle again.

  Jude was dazed when she walked back into the dining room. Liam and Terry were dusting books now and Eddy was sitting in one of the armchairs in the window staring at her phone. Lowell stood with his back to the fireplace, hands in his pockets, sorting his change. In the two carver chairs at either end of the long sideboard sat Maureen Bell and Jackie MacLennan.

  “Hey!” said Jude, rushing over and taking both Jackie’s hands. “You look fantastic. But what are you doing out?”

  “Out of the hospital or out in the rain?” said Jackie. Her voice was rough and she had bags under her eyes, but she gripped Jude firmly. “Billy told me you’d been round so I asked Mo here if she’d give me a lift. See if we couldn’t set things straight somehow.”

  Maureen shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I was a wee bit thon way last time,” she said.

  Jude managed to smile without her eyebrows rising, but she couldn’t forget Maureen’s jabbing finger and her voice snapping Out! like a dog’s bark.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “I raked up old hurts.”

  “It was a terrible time,” Maureen said. “We’d always been such a friendly wee town and then suddenly everyone was looking sideways at everyone else.”

  “Aye well, it was us MacLennans that started it,” said Jackie. “That besom putting poor Auntie Lorna in a home. Like kenneling a dog.”

  “And what with this trouble that’s come to you now,” Maureen went on, with a glance at Eddy, “I was glad Jack asked me to bring her. Gave me the excuse to say sorry and let’s just forget it happened, eh?”

  Lowell was frowning deeply. “That’s very generous of you both,” he said, “but you’re not in full possession of the facts.”

  “Lowell,” said Jude, flashing a desperate message at him with her eyes. “They’re not facts. They’re suppositions. And Maureen and Jackie want to let it drop.”

  He was going to fall on his sword if she didn’t stop him. He was going to tell the world his father was a killer and do no one any good—not the relatives, not himself, not the town that was already reeling.

  If she could take what Raminder offered, Jude thought, then Lowell could grab this chance that the two women were holding out to him now.

  “Since it was me who opened up the can of worms,” she went on, “flying around dropping names, it should be me who gets to close it again.”

  “My father—” Lowell began.

  “If you want to be generous,” Jude cut in, “be generous about the cottage. Let the question of who set the fire quietly die.”

  “I was in HDU,” said Jackie.

  “I was upstairs with my curtains drawn,” said Maureen. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

  “My dear,” said Lowell, “I shouldn’t dream of accusing you. I rather like my original idea: that some young scamps took the chance to make mischief.”

  It was an uneasy truce, but when they left minutes later, Jackie suddenly pale from exertion, they were agreed.

  “Our family gets more and more baroque,” Lowell said watching them drive away. “Your ex-husband’s widow and child tipped us over into soap opera territory anyway, but my father the serial killer? Well, we’re squarely in the horror genre now, aren’t we.”

  “If you’re not a horror fan,” said Terry, “don’t join a fecking book club.” He finished with the volume he was wiping and added it to the top of a pile.

  Jude and Lowell both turned to stare at him.

  “What?” Jude asked.

  “Well, look,” said Terry. “Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

  Jude blinked and gazed down the length of the long dining table at the piles of books laid out like a 3-D chart there.

  “Norma, Elsie, Archie, Etta, and Todd,” Terry said. “Eddy explained it all and showed us pics of the gravestones. They were all in the book club. And they were all still alive when Ulysses was pick of the month. Look. Five copies. Number 45 and they’re all alive.”

  “Then Norma died and by number 48, we’re down to four Mockingbirds. Four, four, four, and then bam! Elsie Day died and there’s only three copies of On the Beach.”

  “So what?” said Eddy. “God, you’re as bad as them! Books, books, books. Of course they stopped getting books. They were dead! Even the fucking hundred-books book club’s got a clue in the name.”

  Lowell was shaking his head, the picture of patience. “My dear child,” he said. “One doesn’t stop getting book club choices, magazine offers, or gas bills merely because one is dead.”

  “And anyway,” Jude said, “isn’t it a bit weird for all of them to be in the same book club?
”

  “Five random old identikit people?” said Eddy. “No.”

  “And then two,” said Terry in a very small voice and with a wary look at Eddy. “Just two copies of Lolita. One was Todd’s with his name in and his notes in the back, and the other one was probably Etta’s.”

  “You’ve no need to pander to her, my dear boy,” Lowell said. “I shan’t let her … I hardly know how to express it.”

  “Dick us about?” suggested Liam.

  Eddy, in spite of herself, snorted with laughter.

  “And then one,” Jude said. “What’s the last one?”

  “Last we found is two number 61s,” said Terry. “Virginia Woolf.”

  Jude opened one copy of To the Lighthouse again and read Todd’s words. “I asked after Etta. M. said she can’t keep anything down. It’ll only be days. Sometimes folk can’t see what’s right in front of them. So we’ve missed one,” she said. “Lowell, didn’t you put any of the cleared-out books on the shelves? Were they all in the dead room?”

  “Every one. I didn’t want to upset the relatives,” he said. “As I told you.”

  “Seems like smart thinking,” said Liam. “If one of the relatives has started burning down houses they might start bumping off old people again.”

  “It was my father who did the first round of bumping off,” Lowell said. “I assumed Eddy would have told you.”

  “That’s my granddad!” Eddy said. “I didn’t want them getting weird about my genes.”

  “But didn’t you say the egg came from a lawyer?” Jude asked.

  “Yeah,” said Eddy. “Yeah, I did say that. Well, it didn’t.”

  “Was your father still alive in the mid-nineties?” said Liam.

  “He wasn’t,” Lowell said. “But had he been, your inference is quite right. He attended home births quite readily.”

  “Not like that arse you’ve got now,” Eddy said, missing the point. “I thought I’d had the last load of nagging after Mum—Miranda—died. She was insane about it, Liam. It was her right blind spot. Get into hospital, Eddy, do what the doctors tell you, Eddy. Promise me if I’m not here you won’t listen to anyone in the Community. Promise me you’ll get to the maternity wing in Derry. Cross your heart and hope to die.”