Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

  It wasn’t until he rose suddenly to his feet that she realised she had been staring.

  “There’s only one way back,” he said. “We’ll have to run.”

  He hunched against the drenching rain and darted from the cover of the old hut. Reluctant to move out onto the sodden grass, Jenna watched him running like a hunted hare across the field. When he reached the fence he did not alter his stride. With the lightest of touches on a post, his knees flexed, his legs swung high and he landed with a small splash on the other side.

  An extraordinary feeling surged through Jenna, unidentified but no less real for that. Paul turned and spread his arms wide. His voice came back across the green distance, broken by the incessant staccato of the rain. “Come on! I’ll help you over!”

  She rose onto her toes and down again. Then she ran. She had no coat and the rain streamed through her hair, soaked her face like tears, chilled her skin through the wool of her jumper, darkened her jeans to the knees. When she reached the fence, she placed a hand on the fence post and flung herself high into the air.

  Paul skipped backwards a few steps as she landed lightly beside him.

  “Hey!” he shouted, clapping. “That’s doing it!”

  Jenna straightened, caught her breath, spat a dripping strand of hair from her mouth, raised her chin and looked him in the eye. She didn’t need to say a word.

  As they came through the kitchen, her mother was aghast. “Take off those wet things straight away, Jenna. What possessed you?”

  Luke turned back to the small television in the corner. “I didn’t know you could jump that fence, Jay.”

  Paul went into the hall to collect his camera bag. “Neither did she,” he said over his shoulder.

  They gathered politely at the door. Paul and Luke exchanged a high five, their palms meeting close to the ceiling.

  “When you get to Outer Mongolia,” Paul said, “send me a postcard.”

  Luke grinned. “I don’t know your address.”

  Paul slung the strap over his head and swung his bag round his hip. “Just send it ‘care of home’”.

  Cora closed the door as the black car turned the corner by the river bridge. Jenna turned to go up the stairs to change. Dianne’s husband had not addressed another word to her. Her mother shook her head.

  “What an odd man. Normally the elder brother’s the more sensible one. But Adam’s a good chap.”

  “What’s sensible?” said Jenna.

  “What’s good?” said Luke.

  “Any more tea in the pot?” said their father, opening his study door.

  5

  IT WAS TEN o’clock that night and Adam still had not phoned. He knew she was at her parent’s house because she had told him she would stay overnight. Her father had a meeting in Belfast the next day and she planned to go back with him.

  Luke was watching a film about an asteroid that was hurtling towards the earth. He was sprawled on the sofa, legs spread across the floor, his knees pointing in different directions. Jenna flicked over the pages of the TV magazine. There was an archaeology programme on another channel. At least the science on it would make sense. She left her chair restlessly. She wouldn’t have a hope of getting the channel changed. Luke would cheerfully tell her that she didn’t live here any more. He glanced round as she reached for the door handle.

  “If you marry Adam, that guy would be related to us, wouldn’t he?”

  “If,” she said. “Why?”

  Luke tore open a packet of crisps. “No reason.” He splintered a crisp between his teeth. “He’s OK.”

  In the hall, Jenna looked at the phone on the table. Beside it was a picture of herself at her graduation. She glanced across at her father’s study. There was a phone in there also. She could hear her parents sharing a cup of tea in the kitchen, talking over the day. They had always done that. No matter how busy or how distracted they were, they always had supper together.

  Undecided, Jenna drummed the table with her fingertips. She shouldn’t ring him. He was the one who hadn’t come. He should ring her. But she really wanted to hear his voice, talk to him.

  Quietly, she shut the door of the study behind her and turned on a reading lamp, which stood beside the broad desk. The phone nestled between a pile of her father’s papers and a huge open commentary on the Gospel of John.

  She dialled the number of Adam’s flat. One of his flatmates answered.

  “Sorry, he’s not in. Probably out with his girlfriend.”

  “No, he’s not,” said Jenna.

  There was a silence. Then, “Well, try his mobile.”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  She replaced the receiver. She wouldn’t chase him. He would get in touch tomorrow. A thought struck her. His mother. That’s where he was probably. He would have worked late and then gone to his mother’s. He seemed to be good to his mother. They would have got talking and maybe he was doing the odd thing for her in her house. He would have forgotten all about what Jenna was doing today.

  Her old room didn’t feel quite the same as she lay down in bed and pulled the duvet over her. All the things that had made it her room were gone, now scattered round her own house. She lay and looked at the ceiling. The rain had stopped but the wind still tossed the trees outside. Her eyes closed slowly.

  It seemed as if her feet flew across a wet green field. She was light and free, the wind snatching at her hair, the grass whipping her ankles. A smile touched her mouth as she felt herself lift into the air, her arms spread like wings, her face to the wind. Way below her, someone was clapping, cheering, willing her on.

  A weak sun had begun to dry the ground as Donald Warwick pulled the car round a three-point turn and drove out through the manse gates. Jenna snapped on her seatbelt.

  “So what’s on today, Dad?”

  Her father slowed to cross the river bridge and turn up the village street. “Just a church committee. Exciting stuff.” He smiled across at her briefly. “And there’s someone I must visit in the City Hospital. Nothing too serious, but I need to check he’s OK.”

  He waved to an elderly woman who had just come out of the village shop. Jenna watched her juggle her carrier bags and free a hand to wave back. Her father turned out of the main street and onto the road to Belfast. “Mrs McCormick was asking about you the other day. A lot of people do.”

  “So what do you say to them?”

  “I say you’re fine. Studying away. Doing well.”

  Jenna looked away from him, out of the side window. The trees were almost bare now. Some leaves still clung to branches, rippling like russet bunting in the fresh morning breeze.

  “You should have that on tape,” she said.

  “What?” Her father leaned his ear towards her.

  She turned her head back and spoke more lightly. “You should have that on tape. It’s what you always say.”

  “Well, it’s always true.”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  Her father slowed to pass a car parked at a bend in the road; indicated, worked down the gears.

  “Some people have no imagination when they pick their parking spot,” he said. He gathered speed again. “Of course it’s true. The whole village is proud of you.”

  Jenna didn’t reply immediately. Then she shifted round in her seat. “Dad, I’m not too far into this year yet. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Maybe I’m wasting a year. I’m costing you a lot of money.”

  Donald’s eyebrows rose. “We’re glad to support you, Jenna. Goodness, don’t chicken out now. The sky’s the limit for you with your brains. You’re getting the educational chances I never had. Or your mum.”

  “I suppose it depends what you want brains for,” said Jenna. Her father drove for a while in silence. Then he said, “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re still down because Adam didn’t come yesterday.”

  No, and he hadn’t rung either. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  “He had a good reason,” she said.
>
  “Of course he did.” He put on what Jenna called his pastoral voice. “You’ve been very fortunate. You’ve always been a hard worker. Your mum and I want the best for you. A good man and a good job. You’ve got the first…” he flashed a quick smile “… we hope. And this extra year at university will give you a great advantage in getting the second.” He took one hand off the steering wheel to pat her knee. “It’ll be worth it, Missy.”

  Missy. When would he stop calling her that? The sound of it was like the pull of reins on a horse’s bit. Years ago, he had used it when she had been naughty or needed something explained that he thought she should have known. The sound of ‘Missy’ pulled her back, set her on the straight and narrow again, enclosed her in a paddock with high fences.

  On her seventh birthday, she was told she could go to bed an hour later every night from now on. She had skipped with delight. She was really grown-up. Not like baby Luke who fretted on her mother’s knee after his bath. She had been sent to the kitchen to fetch Luke’s bottle. She felt tall with importance as she brought it through the hall. Her father came out of his study.

  “Missy! Time to go to bed. It might be an hour later, but it’s still bedtime. Up you go.”

  He had taken the bottle from her and steered her to the stairs. She had tried not to cry. After all, it was her birthday.

  The outline of the city was coming into view. She hated Missy. She didn’t want to be Missy ever again. She closed her eyes, an unexpected refrain starting in her head. Who are you? Are you good? Are you bad? Who are you? Who are you?

  Paul was still using the small bedroom upstairs as a study, much to Dianne’s annoyance. Spread on the table in front of him were four black and white portraits. The Warwicks would get their family portrait, but he had also got four character studies.

  He loved photographing people, particularly when they were unaware. He was tired of formal portraiture. There was a falsity about it, a manipulation of the truth. He picked up the picture of Cora and played his word game. Proud. Fussy. Hard-working. He paused and then added the word ‘loyal’. Donald was next. His head was thrown back and he was laughing. Intelligent. Strict. Paul set down the portrait. But kind. A good pastor.

  He had caught Luke in a rare smile. He was looking to his left, the gelled tips of blond highlights outlined against the velvet curtain. Restless. Intelligent. Shy. Angry. Paul set the photograph beside the others. Luke had more in him than anyone knew, maybe even more than Luke himself knew. He was sure of that. Anger and restlessness were giants that could nurture or destroy. What would Luke do with those giants?

  And Jenna. He didn’t pick up the portrait of Jenna. He left it on the table and leaned over it, a hand on each side. Jenna was simply looking straight at the camera, almost expressionless. Only a slight narrowing of her eyes betrayed that she was listening to instructions he was giving from behind the lens. When he said, “Raise your head a little, Jenna,” she had raised her head thinking he was composing the group. When the light was striking her cheek just where he wanted it, he had snapped the shutter.

  Fresh and plain. Those had been the first two words he had assigned to her the night she and Adam had called. Now he wasn’t so sure. He joined his thumbs and index fingers into an oval and held them over her face so that her hair was hidden. Then he angled his hands to reveal only her eyes. She was more her father’s daughter than her mother’s.

  His word game was failing this time. Of the whole family, she was the only one who had startled him. How could someone be plain who could trace the carved initials of a dead man as if she cared about him? How could someone be plain who could talk sensibly of being only moments from William the Conqueror? He remembered the flushed cheeks, the dripping hair, the defiant tilt of the chin as she had landed in front of him in the rain. He lifted a hand to the portrait and put a finger on her mouth, the mouth his brother kissed. But that was all Adam did, because he remembered something else, a fact he had absorbed effortlessly as they had agreed the identity of the woodlouse. She had stared at him for a moment and the knowledge had slipped into his mind. This girl wasn’t sleeping with Adam. There was an unawakened innocence about her, a way of looking at things that was unencumbered by complexity. He gave a low laugh. She still thought love made the world go round! She had never slept with anyone. He knew it as if she had told him.

  At the back of the table, his mobile warbled. He reached for it, read the number. His thumb hovered for a moment and then he cancelled the call. He was turning away to go downstairs when it sang again with the rising notes of a text message. He picked it up.

  “Talk to me Paul.”

  He stood looking at the tiny screen. Then he jabbed delete. He opened a drawer and threw the phone to the back of it and slammed it shut again. He put his hand out to the door handle. Then suddenly he leaned back against the wall, slid down onto his heels and lowered his head onto his crossed arms.

  Dianne put her key in the door. She had been visiting an exhibition at an art gallery and had got into conversation with the owner. It was a wonderful, interesting conversation. She had even told him about Luther’s gallery in London. Now she was even more homesick and lonely for familiar people and places. She was so absorbed in her thoughts, her head buzzing with ideas that she would love to talk over with Luther that she boarded a bus that took a different route from the one she had become familiar with. She spent the journey worrying that she was on the wrong road, that she would find herself in some strange part of this strange city and have no idea how to get back. When she lived with her father, she had travelled everywhere by car, or occasionally by train. She didn’t drive; there had always been somebody, even a taxi, to take her wherever she wanted to go.

  By the time the bus lurched round a set of traffic lights and into the road she knew, she was feeling nauseous. Her head throbbed. She was longing for a quiet evening curled up in front of the television or listening to Paul strumming quietly, as he often did.

  She set her keys down on the hall table and called hallo. Silence. His car was in the drive. She hung up her coat on one of the pegs on the wall and went into the lounge. He wasn’t there. Through the door into the kitchen, she saw dishes piled on the ledge, all of them dirty.

  She wasn’t up for this tonight. She really wasn’t. Irritation rising, she mounted the stairs. As she had walked up to the front door, she had seen that the curtains were tightly closed at the window of the little room upstairs. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Paul didn’t bother to open them sometimes. She thought it looked terrible from the outside, but he just ignored her if she said anything. The door was shut tight. Dianne hesitated.

  “Paul?” she called.

  The door handle turned and there he was. “Hi,” he said.

  “You’re early.”

  “No, Paul. I’m late. Didn’t you notice?”

  His eyes flicked to his watch. “I was busy.”

  Irritation was turning into rage. “What the hell at? It certainly wasn’t at washing dishes. And it certainly wasn’t at cooking!”

  He came out of the room and tried to put an arm round her. She pushed his arm away. He raised his hands, let them drop.

  “Dishes can wait. Life can’t.”

  Dianne turned and stormed down the stairs. “What do you think life is, Paul? A free ride?” At the bottom of the stairs she spun round to look up at him as he followed her. “There’s no-one else to do the work in this house, is there? Just us! On our own.” He reached the bottom step, his hand on the bannister. Her voice rose. “I’m tired, I had a horrible journey home, I’m homesick, I’ve a headache, and I don’t want to come home to another one of your moods.”

  Paul stepped off the last step and went past her without a word. In the kitchen, he began to run water into a basin in the sink. She followed, flinging out a hand.

  “What’s the point of doing them now? By the time we’ve cooked dinner it’ll be midnight.”

  He turned off the tap, reached for a towel. He
dried his hands, watching her steadily as he did so. He dropped the towel on the ledge. She lifted it.

  “The towel has a rail to hang on.”

  She hung it on the rail. Paul’s eyes were beginning to narrow, his expression to harden.

  He spoke carefully. “A towel’s mission in life is to be there when it’s needed. It doesn’t matter where it stays. And the point of eating is to avoid being hungry. It doesn’t have to be any more than scrambled eggs in front of the fire.”

  “Scrambled eggs! Maybe you were brought up on scrambled eggs, but I wasn’t!”

  His eyes snapped, his voice rising to match hers. “So what were you brought up on? Sautéed silver spoons in a champagne sauce?”

  He was never like this before. She put her hands over her face. After a silence, she felt him come closer, put a hand under her chin. She stayed rigid.

  “Would you like to go out for dinner?”

  She hadn’t foreseen that life with Paul would be quite so exasperating. Her voice was muffled by her fingers. “We wouldn’t be having to live like this if it wasn’t for you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Explain that.”

  “My father would have bought us a house. He told you that.” She was shouting again. “But you would rather we lived in a city side street!”

  He held up a hand, raised his own voice again. “We’ve done nothing that you didn’t agree to.”

  She whirled round to the other end of the kitchen. “Paul, I want a proper house. I want it now!”

  His eyebrows shot up. “What exactly do you mean – ‘a proper house’?”

  Something in his tone enraged her. He just didn’t understand. He didn’t understand and he didn’t care. Before he could see it coming, she grabbed a white pottery mug from the sink and hurled it at him. He ducked and it missed, flew through the door into the lounge and knocked a porcelain penguin from a bookcase onto the floor, its fragments mixed with the white shards of the mug. Her grandmother had given her that penguin years ago, after her mother died when she was three years old. She loved it.