Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

  “Typical!”

  Jenna fiddled with her fingers and then looked up at her father.

  “Dad, I know keeping the house in Belfast has been a strain on you and Mum.” Donald gave a dismissive gesture but she ploughed on. “Specially this year, after the others moved out and you had to pay it all yourselves. I really appreciate it.”

  “You know we do it happily. You have a bit of privacy and comfort and we know where you are.”

  Jenna studied her feet then began again. “I know you were going to sell it when I finished this year.” She looked up, meeting his eye. “But you can sell it now. You’ll get a very good price for it. I’m moving on.”

  Donald’s brows drew together. “Moving on? What do you mean?”

  Nerves began to ripple in her stomach but she had to say this; to tell him. “Dad, I dropped out of university on Wednesday…” At his sharp intake of breath she raised a hand to make him wait. “I’ve thought about this very hard and I want you to respect my decision.” She opened her palms. “Please Dad. I know you and Mum have sacrificed a lot for me and when I get a job, I’ll pay you back for what I’ve cost you this year.”

  He had been relaxed; now he sat forward, searching her face. “Why, Jenna? Why are you giving it all up at this stage?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t want to spend any more of my life like this. Actually… I didn’t want to last summer. One degree’s enough.”

  “But your potential, Jenna! You could go so much further with your ability. A doctorate even.”

  “But don’t you see, Dad? Everyone…” She struggled for the right words. “I… have the potential to be and to do many things. I can’t fulfil them all. I have to fulfil the potential that…” she smiled weakly, a little embarrassed, “is closest to my heart.”

  “And what is that?”

  She breathed a little easier. He was listening and it made her words more fluent. “I’m thinking of going overseas for a year. Volunteering. There are organisations that badly need volunteers. They build houses and schools in places that have suffered hurricanes and floods and even civil war. Central America maybe.”

  Donald’s eyebrows had been slowly rising. “I know of them. And how do you intend to support yourself?”

  “Luke can do his exams – the doctors are sure of it, and he might get a little extra time to sit them, considering.”

  “What’s that got…”

  “He’ll probably do well and get his first choice of university in Scotland. I’m going to go over there to find a job and a flat. He’s going to join me in October.” She made a face. “He’ll carve his own patch and won’t want to live with his sister for ever. I don’t want him under my feet for ever either. When I’ve saved enough – and I won’t need a lot – I’ll go abroad.”

  Donald’s voice rose, incredulous. “You mean you’ve talked this over with Luke already?” She nodded. “And you’ve already told your tutor you’re dropping out?” Another nod.

  Her father swung his chair round to his desk, propped his elbows beside the keyboard and covered his face. The light from the desk lamp threw dark shadows from his fingers across his lined cheeks. He sat like that for so long Jenna reached across and touched his arm. “Dad?”

  He dropped his hands. “This is a shock, Jenna.”

  They sat in silence until Jenna broke it, her voice strong. “You told me once that your mother was upset when you decided to candidate for the ministry. She wanted you to continue in business because you had a talent for it; she wanted you to be rich. Isn’t that right?”

  He nodded. “But she forgave me later, before she died. She saw I was following my…” He stopped and dropped his eyes. He rubbed his hands together slowly. “You’ll have to tell Mum. First Luke and Outer Mongolia. Now you. She blamed Adam’s brother for Luke’s plans. Now she thinks Paul’s not so bad after all. So do I. He’s been a real tower of strength to all of us through this. At least Mum can’t blame him for you dropping out. But she’ll go up the walls.”

  Jenna slumped back in the chair, silent. The very mention of Paul’s name was an arrow twisted in her side.

  “Remember last week?” she asked. “When Luke came round and you weren’t there and I phoned you?”

  “Very well.”

  “You had to learn to put your family first. Maybe I’m learning to put it… not last, never last. But down the list a bit.” She looked at him anxiously. “Do you know what I mean?”

  Donald reached forward and took both her hands in his. “I do. I know exactly what you mean. You’re my daughter after all, and I’m proud of you.” He squeezed her hands. “Whatever you do.” He paused. “But answer me one thing. I know Adam hurt you very badly and I don’t want you to do anything impulsive. Are you still hurt? Has this anything to do with him?”

  She met his eyes. “No, Dad. This has absolutely nothing to do with Adam Shepherd.”

  She hoped he would leave it there, but still he held her hands.

  “You talked to me before about doing the right thing or the wrong thing. About rules. I’ve often puzzled over what was in your mind then.” He looked away at the untidy lines of books on the shelves under the window and asked again. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. This has nothing to do with Adam.”

  Leave it there, Dad. I can lie to you and I will.

  To her relief, he released her hands and sat back. “OK. Now go and tell your mother. I’ll hide in here.”

  She stood and put her arms round his shoulders from behind his chair. “Where you always hide!” She kissed the top of his head.

  When she heard what Jenna had done and planned to do, Cora reacted with shock, as Donald had done. She set her embroidery frame down on the arm of her chair and switched off the television. The bird of paradise was nearly finished. She put her hand over her eyes for a moment and sat still. When she looked up again Jenna noted the lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth, lines that had been there before but not carved so deeply as they were now. She spoke slowly, remembering something.

  “When Luke was still in a coma, I was sitting with him one morning. On my own. Paul came in. I think he was surprised to see me. I was in the chair and he sat on the stool. We didn’t have much to say, but I told him how much we appreciated how he was helping us.”

  Her mother had got his name right. She hadn’t called him Peter or Patrick this time.

  She went on. “I think I said something about it being difficult being a mother, a parent. I tried to keep my children safe, and I failed this time. I wasn’t with him when he needed me.” Her voice broke and her chin tightened.

  “You couldn’t have been, Mum. How could you?”

  Cora took a deep, steadying breath and went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Paul leaned back against the wall and put his two feet up on the end of the bed. On the covers! He said I’d reminded him of a butterfly he’d seen once in a park. He’d held out his hand close to it and after a while the butterfly landed on his fingers. He said he’d had to keep his hand open or he would have hurt it; that when you close your fingers too tight on something, it struggles to get away. You might even kill it.”

  Jenna waited but her mother picked up her needle again. “And then what?” she prompted.

  “He said people have wings too. They just don’t know they have. But Luke would probably have found his after what happened. I told him he’d make a great dad. But he just got up, touched Luke’s hand and left.” She waved her needle at Jenna. “He’d left a mark on the covers too.”

  “Do you know what he meant?”

  Cora drew a long green thread through her needle and bit it with her teeth. “I think I do. Strange man,” she mused. “So do what you must, love. What’s Luke’s phrase? ‘Chill, Mum.’” She leaned back and pushed her needle through the cloth. “What’s Outer Mongolia compared to losing Luke altogether? Scotland’s a day trip. I think you should do what you feel is right.”

  “I thought you’d be upset. I’m glad
you’re not.”

  Cora stopped her needle and looked up over her glasses. “Oh, I’m upset all right. But I’ll deal with it. The world’s taken a tumble round us this past while. I’d rather it did all its tumbles at once and then calmed down again.”

  Jenna’s torch picked a lonely path across the field, but she craved solitude and quiet after leaving her mother. The scent of an early spring night rolled through the holes and crevices of the old hut. Some beams of moonlight helped guided her round the end of the broken bench. The dry leaves of last autumn rustled under her feet as she switched off the torch and picked her way to the clouds and stars set in the gap of the old window. She leaned her head against the carved initials in the loose wood and imbibed through her skin the world of trees and dew, owls and bats, and rustlings in the grass.

  The ease with which she was turning her life upside down was unsettling. She’d expected a struggle, to have to argue and persuade and finally to leave, heroic in her determination. She put a hand on the cold smooth wood of the ledge and leaned out to follow the dart of a bat above the silvered grasses. This was the spot where Paul had stood, looking sad and thoughtful. The wind ruffled his hair and the rain speckled his shoulders as he told her that it wasn’t all right not to know. It was here that he had first started to get under her skin, to dissect her, to make himself memorable in her heart.

  Now, Paul invaded every aspect of her life, even gently brushed the lives of her family. Everywhere she turned, he had been there before her, or his mind came alongside hers as if his fingers lay upon her head again.

  She folded her arms tight against the cold and looked up at the stars, at the moon edging the clouds with silver braid. Everything was in place for her to leave. She filled her lungs with the damp green air of night, felt the ghosts of dead men stand beside her. Was she making a new start or was she running away? Maybe it was both.

  She bit her lip. The decision she had to make now was inescapable. Would she leave, silent, along the new road that was rolling so smooth before her feet? Or, before she went, would she go to Paul and tell him how he complicated her heart and mind and soul?

  She had to make a choice and she did not know which one would hurt her more.

  29

  THE NEXT DAY, Jenna began to pack. She wouldn’t leave until Luke was further on the way to physical recovery and his tentative attempts to resume work for his exams had become firm evidence of his fitness to sit them. Nevertheless, a restless discontent nipped at her.

  She put all her books and files into a box in the hall. She phoned Max and asked him to put a notice up in the university saying they were for sale. When he heard what she was planning to do he told her he thought she was an idiot.

  “Maybe I am. But while I’m finding out, could you ask around for some cartons and boxes for me?”

  “Sure. How’s your brother, by the way?”

  “He’s on the road to recovery. Thanks for asking.”

  “Good… Um, Jen?”

  “What?”

  “We haven’t seen each other for a while…”

  “I have been otherwise engaged, Max. And you knew where I was.”

  “I, well, I met this girl…”

  She rolled her eyes. She could write the script. “Look, I know what you’re going to say. We didn’t exactly click, did we? But thanks for some fun. Have a good time. Maybe I’ll drop you a postcard. And good luck with the dissertation.”

  “Yeah, cool.” His tone relaxed. “If I get some boxes I’ll leave them round.”

  And that was that. Later in the morning, there were two calls from surprised and concerned friends. Jenna tried to stop the hope from rising each time she heard the phone ring. That way the crushing disappointment was easier to bear. That was the theory anyway. Word had spread that she had dropped out. She was polite but determined, sorry to say goodbye but promising to meet up again before she left.

  In the afternoon she visited Luke again. He was sitting out in the chair, crutches lying on the floor under the bed beside him. He was leafing through a huge red file of notes. As soon as she came in he raised his eyebrows.

  “Did you tell them?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “They’re not happy but they won’t make waves. In fact Mum wants to go over with me to help find a flat.” When Luke groaned, she pointed out, “It’s a small price to pay for no big waves. And don’t scratch that scar.”

  “I’m not scratching it. I’m just feeling it. Stop nagging.”

  Jenna shoved the tissue box and a bottle of raspberry squash out of the way and dumped her bag on the table. “Has Paul been in yet?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Haven’t seen him in a week now.” He slammed the file shut and hoisted it towards her with his good hand. “Ask me some questions from that. I’ve been revising all morning.”

  That evening, Jenna got a takeaway, curled in her chair and watched a film. She didn’t hear a word of it. When she finished and cleared up, which involved crumpling the wrappers into the bin, she lifted the razor shell from the window ledge and ran her fingers along the roughness of the mottled halves, feeling the sharpness of the edges, tilting the inside towards the light to see the luminescence of the pearly surface. She closed her eyes and touched the cool shell to her cheek. She felt the tightness of longing in her throat. Surely he couldn’t vanish again? Surely he could not leave her like this? For the first time, a tear for Paul and all she knew she had probably lost, traced a path over her fingers and ran down the mottled shell. The trauma of Luke; the decision to leave home; the strange man who would not leave her mind and heart, – in the dusk of her sitting room it all hit her suddenly with a force of tonnes. She gave in to the tears. Just this once and then never again over Paul.

  She stretched out on the sofa on her stomach and thought of the night he lay there sleeping and how, in her mind, she had gone past the barriers of wisdom and flown free with him beyond the cages of convention. She buried her face in the red and black cushion and remembered how he once threatened to eat it.

  One other time she had wept, in a cold car park. Paul had told her to find things that are worth tears. She had found that. He had also asked her a question – is it your heart or your pride that is hurt? Then, she didn’t entirely understand him. Now she did, all too well. She pushed her hands under the cushion and pressed it to her salty cheeks.

  The tears were cleansing and when she sat up and blew her nose, she was thinking more clearly than she had in days. There were too many puzzles about his behaviour. She could not leave without talking to him again, without asking, telling, searching, explaining, making him explain. The decision was made. She tucked the cushion into her stomach and doubled over it. Just to see his smile and hear his voice and know herself alive to the ends of her nerves…

  The landline rang.

  It was Hazel. Crushed, and unsteady from her weeping, Jenna stood in the hall with a foot on each side of her box of books. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand.

  “No, I’ve just got a bit of a cold, that’s all,” she laughed shakily.

  “A lemon drink and a good sleep will work wonders.”

  The magic solution to everything. But why was Paul’s mother ringing her? Her voice seemed brittle, as if she were making an effort to be casual.

  “I just wondered if you’d seen Paul lately?”

  Jenna frowned. “No. Why?”

  “Well, I’m sure I’m worrying unnecessarily, but he seems to have disappeared.”

  “He does that sometimes, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he usually keeps in touch with me. He drops in or rings every few days. And now he’s not even answering my phone calls.” Her voice was tight with worry now. “That’s very peculiar.”

  “But he often doesn’t answer his phone.”

  “He always answers if it’s me,” she said firmly. “Or gets back to me if I leave a message.”

  “Maybe he’s gone over to stay with Adam. Or
see Dianne.”

  “I’ve tried both of them. Adam says he hasn’t heard from him in a month. Dianne hasn’t been well – I didn’t know that – and seemed very upset when I told her I couldn’t find him.” Her voice dropped. “I think I’ll ring round the hospitals.”

  Alarm was rising through Jenna. She shoved the box out of the way to concentrate more easily. “Have you been at his house?”

  “No…”

  “I could check it in the morning.”

  “I haven’t a key. He has a key to my house but he never gave me one of his.”

  “I’ll go anyway.”

  Sleep was far away that night. Jenna hugged the teddy bear with the black hat but it gave her no clues although she wished very hard that it would. Wishing worked for Paul; why could it not work for her? After some hours of drifting consciousness, Jenna rose and dressed. A taxi left her outside Paul’s house as dawn rose over the rooftops.

  Paul’s car was gone. A wagtail scuttled up the drive in front of her as she examined the house. Droplets of morning dew sparkled on the untidy grass and shrubs and on a pile of stones in one corner of the front garden. Knots of daffodils were in bloom; purple and yellow crocuses carpeted a patch near the gate pillar, a triumph over neglect.

  Jenna tried the doorbell first. As she expected, there was no answer. Cupping her hands round her eyes, she peered through the glass into the sitting room. The reflections made seeing detail difficult. There seemed to be bits of paper strewn on the floor at the far end, near the door into the kitchen.

  Frowning, she went down the side of the house to the back. Inanimate over winter, the garden was letting spring creep up on it. The grass was greening through the dew and tight buds of new growth tipped the branches of the bush where the robin had perched last Christmas. The unkempt flowerbeds were stirring into life. A flurry of blackbirds and sparrows clattered into the air. From the neighbouring garden, over the straggling hedge, the laden branches of a cherry tree in full and glorious bloom, swayed in the light breeze. Jenna reached for a branch, pulled it down and marvelled at the beauty and complexity of the heavy pink blossoms. She let it bounce back upwards. Unlike many men, Paul would appreciate those.