The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  Mira called home while Jody and I shared a bag of chips, too nervous for anything more substantial, though I kept insisting it would all be fine.

  The finger whistle made us all jump.

  Rauf stood on the steps of the court, his white grin glittering in the sunshine. He gave me a thumbs-up. The jury was back already, which could only mean one thing.

  As we approached the gate, my eye was caught by a brass plaque on the wall. The garden was a memorial for twenty-nine people killed by a direct hit from a German V-2 bomb in 1944. Beside the list of names, an angel hung his head in sorrow. I thought of another angel, drifting down through jeweled light, never landing.

  Nine years.

  It was never going to seem enough. Not for murder, or for rape. But it will well and truly screw his life chances when he gets out. The three of us stood up as he was taken down for the three lives he had torn apart: Jody’s, Abe’s, and Loran’s.

  We cremated Abe on a spring morning before Mira went back home.

  It’ll be time for me to go back soon too. Daniel’s there already. Not exactly waiting for me—just waiting and seeing.

  But before I go, there’s one more thing I need to do.

  Something I should have done years ago, when I’d finally found the life I wanted to lead. I should have shuffled off my bitterness about my past back then, not let it become the baggage I always criticized other women for displaying with such martyred zeal.

  Because however misguided they were, our parents thought they were doing what was best for us. And though I may dismiss it as a childish nursery tale, they considered their faith as a truth to live by.

  So this last loose end, I must tie up.

  I must go home to tell my parents that their son is dead.

  Father Archibald is long gone, but the church secretary promises me that Father Chinelo will call me back. When he does, he tells me, in a booming Nigerian voice, that both my parents are alive and well and still worshipping at the same church.

  “I didn’t know they had a daughter,” he says, but I just thank him and say goodbye. I wonder how my father feels about an African priest leading him in worship.

  On the long train journey from King’s Cross, I have plenty of time to think. I believe that after the initial shock and grief, they will be satisfied with the manner of Abe’s death. He died a hero. Protecting the weak.

  I will tell them that the man who killed him is in prison and will be there for many years.

  I will tell them Abe was loved, and if they ask the name of his partner, I will give them Jody’s name.

  I will not tell them he was homosexual. They’re too old to overcome their prejudices now. Let them imagine the grandchildren they might have had (and perhaps will have one day, after all).

  I will tell them that he kept the ring and let them believe, in the end, that Abe found his way to Jesus, and that given a little more time, he would have found his way home. As I have done.

  In the end, they will consider it a good way to go.

  At Edinburgh, I change onto the local train and trundle through endless purple valleys threaded with silver streams and waterfalls and the odd loch that crisply reflects the landscape around it—a looking glass that Abe has stepped through.

  The names of the stations are so familiar: Crianlarich, Tyndrum, Loch Awe, Bridge of Orchy.

  To get to Eilean Donan, I will have to travel farther north. I wonder how many will have gone before me when I stand on the parapet and scatter Abe’s ashes into Loch Alsh. I wonder how long it will take them to get to the sea.

  The train slows, passing my old school and the bridge that Maisie Ross jumped off for a laugh into the creek that swept her away, never to be seen again. We pass the road that leads up to the old people’s home where my nana died and the pub where the wake was held and where my father wouldn’t let us join in the ceilidh dancing.

  I start to feel sick as we pull into the station, and my arms are so weak, a man has to help me get my case down. Clutching it before me like a shield, I step off the train into the station I left fourteen years ago, vowing never to return.

  The station concourse is bitterly cold, and every time the entrance doors slide open, there’s a blast of icy wind. But it brings no litter, just a few fallen leaves.

  I walk out of the station and emerge onto a roundabout. Even here, on the busy main road that runs up to Inverness, the air is different. Clean and mineral-tasting, like fresh water. To my right, the loch sparkles. Whatever the weather, the surface of the water is always black. It has kept its secrets for ten thousand years.

  This is my father’s country. My mother was a second-generation Irish immigrant, but this land molded him. And me, perhaps. We were two stones clashing together. No wonder there were sparks.

  Do they regret the way they treated us, or are they still deluding themselves that they did the right thing and it was we who were in the wrong? The lie would have been easier to bear, but if nothing else, my father was a brave man. He brought seven half-dead climbers off that mountain, in weather that would have given the hardiest Sherpa pause. Of anyone, he might have had the balls to face up to his mistakes.

  Ach!—I punch the button for the pedestrian crossing—what does it matter anymore? Their child is dead. That’s punishment enough.

  I cross the road and enter my hometown.

  The shops have changed: local independents have been replaced by the franchises you see in every other British town. The greasy spoon where I gossiped with the Proddy girls when my father thought I was at netball has become a Starbucks.

  I walk past the war memorial, the rumble of my case wincingly loud in the silence. Away from the main road, the street is empty of traffic, and the few pedestrians hurry on their way, their heads bent against the wind.

  It was always so windy at St. Jerome’s. Was it Abe trying to tell me something? Go home, Mags.

  I’m glad to be wearing his parka. The sweet smell of him still lingers in the fur. It’s a smell I remember from long evenings of Bible reading on the sofa at home. I would slip a paperback into mine, but Abe never did. I used to sneer at him for his apparent devotion, but his eyes, though they gazed dutifully at the text, were always distant, as if fixed on some other reality. I wonder what you were thinking about then, Abe. Or who. Was it Dougie Kennedy, the cheesy football champ who most of the girls fancied? Or did you have my taste in boys—Pete Goldring, for instance, the dark, clever one who was never afraid to pass sardonic comment on the behavior of the class morons and got his face bashed in a few times for it?

  How strange that I can picture them all so clearly.

  The once grand Royal Highland has become a budget-chain hotel. It was the best I could find, and at least there’s a bar. The place has that thick-carpeted hush of all provincial hotels, and the air smells of overstewed vegetables. KFC for dinner, then.

  A boy I went to school with is on reception. He doesn’t recognize me, and I give a different surname so as not to have to make conversation. Currie. It’s the first name that pops into my head.

  He gives me my room key, and I go up. The room is huge and bare, with a white-sheeted bed and a cheap-looking armchair. For company, I turn on the TV as I run a bath.

  Afterward, I feel different. I have been baptized in the waters of home, and it has washed something away. My confidence? My self-esteem? My sense of security?

  No, I’m just afraid.

  To steel my nerves, I order up a gin and tonic and sip it by the window. If I’d raised my head as a child, I would have seen that this place is breathtakingly beautiful. No wonder they get religion up here and never lose it. The place looks like it has been molded by the hand of God.

  I’d like a second drink, but I don’t want to arrive at dusk so, slipping Jody’s silver charm into my pocket, I head out.

  The wind has died down, and the loch is
as still as glass as I walk down the steps.

  I could make the short trip up the hill with my eyes closed. The road snakes up past the funeral director, the hairdresser, and the house with all the china dolls on the windowsill—all unchanged.

  I take a deep breath and turn the corner.

  There is the playground where he broke my arm. The sandpit replaced by a wooden castle surrounded by a blue rubber moat.

  And there is my house. White walls, green door, slate roof, roses snaking up the next-door neighbor’s garage wall.

  There is my bedroom, the rainbow sticker still in the window, its colors faded, almost transparent.

  There is my father, digging in the rose bed. My fingers close around the guardian angel in my pocket.

  The soles of my sneakers are silent on the sidewalk as I walk the last few yards to the garden gate.

  He was a big man, the muscles gone to seed when he stopped the mountain rescue but always there; now he’s leaner, and the coarse gray hair has thinned and become wispy. I never saw my father in jeans before. Jeans, a plain sweatshirt, and gray slip-ons that are caked in mud. His mustache is gone, revealing full lips like his son’s. The ice-blue eyes are framed in square bifocals.

  Oh, Daddy.

  When he sees me, he straightens up and frowns for a second, as if trying to remember. Then the trowel goes limp in his hand, and the soil tumbles like confetti onto the multicolored petals below.

  _____________________

  The main street is busy.

  It’s a mild evening, the Indian summer seems to be going on forever, and people on their way home from work pause to browse the vegetables outside the Lebanese supermarket or take a tiny paper cup from an aproned young man standing in the doorway of the new coffee bar. His silver tray reflects a pink-and-yellow sky.

  The Cosmo waiters are laying out the tables for the evening rush. It got into some London restaurant guide, and now the locals can’t get a table for love nor money, or so she has heard.

  She waves at the woman in the pharmacy, who gestures a cup tipping at her mouth: Coffee? She holds her hand to her ear, finger and thumb extended: I’ll call you. After shaky beginnings, the two women have become friends. The pharmacist’s mother has dementia, and sometimes she needs a shoulder to cry on.

  She crosses at the lights and turns into Gordon Terrace.

  An explosion of color halfway down marks out the house of the new family from Syria. They held a street party to celebrate their arrival and have since been filling their little front garden with flowers that would never grow under the harsh Arabian sun. There are roses and hydrangeas, a Californian lilac, hanging baskets of fuchsias, window boxes of lavender, and some pointed red-and-yellow blossoms that look like flames.

  For a moment, he flashes into her mind. The man she thought she loved. The man who saved her life. In all the lies and confusion, she thought she had lost any notion of what was real and what wasn’t from that crazy time, but the memory has come back so clear and so strong that she knows it must really have happened. Her broiler pan caught fire, and he rushed over and put it out with a wet tea towel. That was all.

  She understands now why it affected her so powerfully. It made her feel cared for. And it felt good. She wanted more of it, but she was knocking at the wrong door. It took her too long to realize. She is sorry now, but her friend Mags says not to have any regrets, because he saved her life. And that was an act of love even if love wasn’t in his heart.

  Mags insists on telling her she is loved. Once, when she’d been drinking in a bar with Daniel, she told her, “I love you.” The thought makes Jody smile.

  Then Daniel took the phone and said he loved her too and when was she coming to visit them in Vegas. She promised she would in the summer if she had enough money.

  They said forget the money, they would pay, but it’s important to her to pay her own way. It helps with her self-esteem. Marian says that by next year, she will be ready for a management role, and there’s a thrift shop two miles away with a vacancy coming up because the manager’s retiring. She’s not afraid of the journey. The youths who used to hang around Gordon Terrace have moved on because the police patrol it now, and the face she feared to see on every bus that passed her will be very changed by the time the prison sentence is over.

  At the end of Gordon Terrace, she steps onto the path that runs up to St. Jerome’s. The new girl from flat 3 and her toddler are working on the community vegetable garden with Dale and Sara. Tessy, the terrier, skitters about, snapping at the white butterflies that have been disturbed by the presence of the gardeners. It’s time to harvest the beans, and she has promised to help, so she tells them she will just go and change out of her work clothes.

  As she passes the first-floor window, she murmurs hello to Mrs. Lyons. She’s in a home now and doesn’t recognize Jody, but sometimes, she visits and sits on the sofa watching the Carry On films that still make the old lady laugh uproariously.

  Dale’s wheelchair has left muddy tracks through the foyer. José will be livid.

  On the table is a postcard from Mira who is visiting relatives in Budapest with Flori. Jody smiles wistfully. She had hoped to see Flori grow, but of course, it was right for Mira to return home to her family. If Jody had family, she would have done the same. She will have to save up for those flights too, as the invitation to Albania is an open one.

  She passes through the door into the stairwell, aglow with the colors of the stained-glass window. There’s a young man sitting on the stairs, drawing with pastels. He is so thin, she knows he must be the recovering anorexic who has moved into flat 10. He’s absorbed in what he’s doing and only looks up when her shadow falls across the page. He starts and drops his crayon.

  “Sorry,” she says, picking it up.

  “Hello,” he says. “I’m Benno.”

  They shake hands. His fingertips leave colored spots of chalk on her skin.

  “I’m Jody. Flat 12. We’re almost next-door neighbors.”

  They talk about the logistics of the flats: the unreliable availability of hot water, the dodgy tumble dryer in the basement that shrinks socks, the ambulance that arrived in the middle of the night to take the woman in flat 7 to the hospital. Benno says he was lucky to get a flat in such a beautiful place, and did she know the window was by Thomas Willement?

  For a moment, they gaze at Jesus. His mild brown eyes gaze back at them. Willement was good, Jody thinks; she cannot look away.

  “Well, nice to meet you,” she says finally. “If you get bored, we’ll be outside picking runner beans for the next three hours!”

  Benno laughs. “With these artist’s fingers? I’ll think about it.”

  She goes upstairs and lets herself into the flat, dumping her bag and kicking off her shoes. She’s got time for a cup of tea.

  She listens for the sounds of the church: the distant gurgle of plumbing, the heartbeat of the organist’s foot, the sighing of the wind around the spire, then she puts on the radio.

  The kettle boils, and she takes her tea to the table by the window. She used to think this view was terrible, looking down over the bins. But you don’t have to look down. You can look up.

  Above the shabby flats opposite, the gulls soar through the sudden afternoon sunlight, their backs ablaze with gold and red. She watches them a moment, wheeling through the blue, never to land, then she goes to get changed.

  Abe

  It’s cold, and the wind’s whipping my jacket around like mad, but I don’t go inside. I like the feel of the salt spray on my face and the boom when the ferry bucks through a wave. I’m standing at the front, right up by the chain, as far as they let you go, and I can’t help the feeling that if I look back, I’ll see my da striding over the water to fetch me back.

  Mam found me packing. I thought she’d try to stop me or go and fetch my da from the prayer meeting, but she didn’t. She
just stood in the doorway watching me stuff a few pairs of underwear and socks and some toiletries into my case. She must have seen the cell phone Pete gave me when he got his iPhone sitting on top of the pile, but she didn’t say nothing. I didn’t take many clothes. When I can afford it, I’m going to buy new ones. Tight ones that cling to my body: like a little tart. It’s not just girls that can be tarts, Daddy.

  I met a man online who lives in Dublin. He’s older than me, and I don’t fancy him much, but he says he’ll put me up, help me find a job, get me on my feet. Like a real dad should. I’ll do whatever I need to to pay for it. I think I know what that’ll be, because one of the other boys showed me a video online.

  “Goodbye, Mam,” I said.

  “Goodbye, Abraham.” When she said it, her lips hardly moved.

  I’d left myself only a couple of minutes to spare before the bus left, but they were the longest moments of my life as I waited in the wind for my da to come striding down the slope.

  Even as I got on the bus, I didn’t believe it. Even as it pulled away and went rocketing down the motorway. Even as it clunked onto the ferry and the metal doors went down and the engines roared.

  Still, I was looking for him, not quite believing I’d made it.

  I’ve not much to thank you for, Mary. And you’ve not much to thank me for—we were real bastards to each other, weren’t we? But for this one thing, I’ll be grateful to you for my whole life.

  You showed me it was possible to leave.

  You laid a trail of white pebbles for me, and here I am, following them. Da always said I was weak. Well, you’ve taught me to be brave, to fight for my dreams.

  I know yours will come true. You were always clever and strong; you didn’t take any shit from Da even when you were little. I always admired you. Even when you were tattling on me or whipping my arse with that belt. I hated you, but I admired you. I reckon you’ll be something really special. And I reckon that when you don’t have to fight to stay alive anymore, you’ll be a decent person.