Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

  Her eyes were huge and fixed on his mouth as if his words were physical beings, entities falling from him, circling, crowding, crawling into the crevices of her fear.

  “I was very shaken up and my head hit a metal strut, hard. I was taken to A & E and then straight in for a brain scan.” He stopped, swallowed, spoke shakily. “I’ve never told anyone this.”

  There was a cocoon weaving around them both, a withdrawing from the river, the lamps, the clustered buildings, the smell of water, the beat of the young at play.

  She touched his arm. “Go on.”

  Resolution possessed him again. He took her hand where it lay in her lap. At first she thought he was changing the subject.

  “Remember I told you about the hawk I saw at Gortin, just after I saw the red squirrel?”

  “I remember.”

  “I was afraid for the squirrel. And I knew that only the hawk would decide whether the squirrel lived or died.” She nodded. He took a deep breath and locked his eyes on hers. “Jenna, there’s a hawk in my head.”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The scan showed up something in my brain that shouldn’t be there. Deep in my brain. Something bad.”

  He was watching her intently, pain etched in every shadowed line. He was still beautiful to her. She shook her head a little and opened her hand.

  “So… they fixed whatever it was?”

  Now his words became gentle, his hand soft on her cheek, all his caring for her. “No, Jenna, they didn’t. They couldn’t.”

  Bewilderment, disbelief, worry, an inane impulse to laugh, all tangled into a knot and must have shown on her face for Paul slid closer and folded her into his arms. Her cheek was against his chest, her arms round him, her eyes wide open on the lights of the buildings across the river, his hand on her head; she was the child now and this was the way she would forever remember hearing his next words.

  “I’m going to leave you.” He dropped a kiss on top of her head and rocked her a little. “I won’t have another birthday and I won’t have another Christmas. This is as old as I get.” His arms tightened. “I didn’t feel ill for quite a while. But it’s starting. I’m starting to feel ill now.” He paused only for a breath. “Jenna, I’m dying.”

  Now there was no water, no light, no buildings. Jenna became a rotating cut-out, twirling in a vacuum from a spindle of shock. But I can feel his heart beating beneath my cheek! It cannot stop! Then she was gasping for air, gripping the railings, away from him, away from the treacherous blackness that had wiped out all joy.

  With her back to him she asked, “This is for real?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply. She covered her face. It was like being hit by a demolition ball. Even so, daggers of lightening lit her memory. He fell so deeply asleep; he was losing weight; he hadn’t time to rattle bars.

  Even Dianne doesn’t know what she did.

  Save me, Jenna!

  She stood there for several minutes until she heard him stand and his hand rested at her waist.

  “Tell me what you’ll do, Jenna.”

  There was such tension in him that his hand trembled where it touched her.

  Swear you won’t leave me.

  There were many questions to ask but just now, at this moment, there was only one thing to be said, one thing that he needed to hear, one thing that came to her as a simple fact. Slowly, deliberately, she drew close to him and took his pale face between her palms.

  “I will not leave you, Paul. What is the shock to me compared to the reality for you? I’ll hold you, and if I have to hold the hawk as well, then I’ll do that too.”

  In one movement he smothered her against him like a man clutching at a rock in turbulent seas. His voice was muffled by his arms around her and by the emotion in his throat.

  “I don’t deserve you.” He held her in an iron band as if he would engrave her body onto his. “I thought such a person as you did not exist.” Then he held her out from him, a hand on each shoulder. A twinkle of light snagged on his eyes; the shadows from his cheekbones were longer than she had noticed before. “Jenna Warwick, I love you.” He sounded almost amazed.

  She smiled faintly. She had heard what she longed to hear. Why did she feel so old? Her hood had blown away from her face again and a strand of hair tickled her nose. “Then everything else is just detail, isn’t it?”

  The journey home was a voyage of silence. Jenna glanced sidelong at Paul but he was concentrating on the late-night traffic, and did not look at her or touch her. Or perhaps he was thinking. She leaned her head on the side window and her eyes jumped from street light to street light as they passed. The tail lights of cars stretched ahead, taxis veered off to their different destinations. She looked up at the sky, through the ragged frames of clouds to tiny stars, dimmed by the lights of the city. She hadn’t taken this in; not really. Questions were stirring now; something that might be anger was scratching its way to the surface.

  Like hitting your thumb with a hammer, the crescendo of pain begins only after the blow.

  33

  PAUL’S SHOES LAY just inside the sitting room door, one askew across the toe of the other. Jenna tripped over them and spilled coffee on the sofa. She mopped up the spill with a tissue. “Why didn’t you put them an inch or two to the left? I’d have spilled the lot then.”

  He was prowling. She knew this mood. They had still said very little to each other. He pulled back a curtain and stared out, dropped it again and circled the room, tapping the razor shell against his fingers. He set it down again on the mantelpiece and pulled a daffodil from the vase, snapped the stem. He took a mug from Jenna and left it on the floor.

  “Don’t leave that…”

  He silenced her with a brief kiss and then pushed her hair back to tuck the daffodil behind her ear.

  “I’m going to sleep on the sofa tonight,” he said, adjusting the daffodil.

  She gave a little laugh of surprise. “Why? Tired of me already?” Restlessness was back again; his foot missed the coffee mug by a centimetre. “I would never get tired of you, Jenna, even if…” He drummed the back of the chair. “I’ve been waiting for you to get angry. You’re going to get so mad with me, my darling. It’s taking longer than I expected.”

  “That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”

  “‘My darling’?” She nodded and he smiled. “There are many first times this week.”

  Her composure broke like crashing surf. “And how long till the last times, Paul? How long till then? How many sentences are we not going to finish? How many weeks do we have of catching up – ‘How’s the dying going today, darling? By the way, what’ll we have for supper?’” Her voice was louder than she thought it would be. “You knew this. You knew this all along and you made me love you!”

  He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “I didn’t make you do anything.”

  The injustice of that made her gasp. “You pursued me; you tormented me; you told me you needed me. What the hell did you expect would happen?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t help it if I’m irresistible.”

  Her bag, empty of books, lay limply beside the sofa. She kicked it, sending it flying towards him, the fringe splaying in the air. He caught it easily, dropped it on the floor.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He sat in the chair again and pulled one ankle across his knee. “I’ve seen you really angry once before. It was a wonderful sight. Remember? The night at the Christmas party and Adam had just snogged Rachel in front of you. I followed you to the car park. I knew then you were a passionate woman.” His eyes darkened and his mouth twitched. “You just didn’t know it yet.”

  Jenna slumped to the sofa and hugged herself, misery prickling her skin. “Why did you do this to me? If you hadn’t come back last night, I would still be getting ready to leave, to go to Scotland and this would never have…”

  She couldn’t help it. Furious with herself and him, she slid from the cushion to the
floor, drew up her knees, buried her face in her arms and wept. Shock, devastation, and sorrow shook her from head to foot. Swiftly he dropped to the floor beside her. She pushed him away violently.

  “You think I’m a saint! ‘Saint Jenna’ you called me. The good girl who’ll do anything for anybody, the girl with the delicate conscience!” She raised her voice, hoarse. “Well, I’m not a saint. I’m not even good.”

  He was silent, leaning back against the edge of the sofa. Then he took her hand and gripped it tighter, trapping it when she tried to pull away.

  “You said you loved me.”

  She threw her head back, her eyes feeling like swollen sponges. “I do. It’s just… I don’t like you very much just now.”

  He drew up a knee to turn towards her, took her chin and she didn’t resist. “I have never liked me at all. That’s one of the things you have brought to me. A sense that maybe I wasn’t so totally unlovable.”

  She pulled away and stared at him in disbelief. “Don’t be so daft!”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  She sniffed. “You’ve never asked permission before.”

  “When Christopher was near death, I flew over to see him for the last time. My mother needed me and I hadn’t been there as much as I should have been. I stood beside the bed of this skeleton of a man, a man who had failed to accept me.” He paused, his eyes unfocused. Jenna stayed very still, her sobs suspended. “He was almost deformed with pain, even morphine wasn’t helping much by then. I leaned over him. I told him I was there.” He took a shaky breath. “He opened his eyes, looked at me, looked round the room, then in a weak but clear voice he asked for Adam. He said ‘I want to see my son’.”

  She put her hand on his arm.

  “I left the room, got the next flight back to London. I hated him. Next time I saw him he was a corpse. I came back for the funeral but that was only for my mother’s sake.” His hands balled into fists. “All through the day, while they were saying prayers over him, I hoped he was in hell.”

  “He didn’t deserve that, Paul.”

  His eyes were bright with fierce remembered fury. “Neither did I.” He gave a short bitter laugh. “I swore I’d be more successful that Christopher could ever have imagined. I was already well known but when I met Dianne I decided she was my next stepping stone to the rich and famous. And so she was. Until everything changed and…”

  “And you found you didn’t need stepping stones. You needed an anchor.”

  His eyes widened and he hooked her to him. “Jenna, you’re connected to my mind some way.”

  She played with his fingers where they hung over her shoulder. “I remember saying to my mother one night when I was quite small, that I couldn’t imagine being married. I couldn’t imagine somebody loving me when they didn’t have to. I knew my mum and dad and Luke loved me, but they had to – they were family.”

  He lifted his hand from her shoulder and stroked her hair back. “That’s it. That’s it exactly.”

  The phone in the hall shrilled. Paul groaned. “Don’t answer it.”

  Jenna blew her nose and got to her feet. “It might be to do with Luke.”

  It was her mother. “Got you at last. I was trying earlier. Where were you?”

  It was cold in the hall. Jenna gave the box of books a shove nearer the wall. “Is Luke OK?”

  “That’s why I’m ringing. He’s getting home tomorrow!”

  “Oh, great news!”

  “As long as the doctor is happy he’ll be home by teatime. We can collect you at your house on the way. I was saying to Dad that if you’ve left university, you don’t need to stay in Belfast any more anyway.”

  Jenna bit her lip. It was truly great news but she was not going back home, not yet. And she wasn’t going to tell any more lies.

  “Sorry, Mum. I’ll give Luke a ring tomorrow, but I’m staying here for the moment.”

  “But Jenna…”

  “Something very important has come up and I have to stay here. I’ll see you when I can. How’s Dad?”

  Cora’s voice rose, incredulous. “What’s more important than Luke getting home?”

  “A man.”

  Now interest was piqued. “Oh? Who is it? Is Adam back? He can come too…”

  “No, it’s not Adam. Sorry, I must go. I’ll ring tomorrow.”

  She hung up, sorry and not sorry. Her family seemed so far from her mind at the moment, even Luke. She began to speak as she pushed open the door.

  “Luke’s getting home… Paul!”

  Blood was on his hands and on the scarlet tissues strewn on the sofa round him. The tissue box that had been on top of the television was almost empty. He held one palm cupped beneath his nostrils.

  “It’s OK. I think it’s stopped.”

  She sat beside him, put an arm across his back, alarm vibrating through her. She took the last tissue and carefully wiped the trickles of blood from his lip.

  He sat back. “This happens a bit more often now. And I throw up sometimes.”

  She looked down at his blood, some of it streaking her fingers. “The red sweet wine of youth. Remember?”

  He touched her finger with the blood-reddened tip of his own. “I remember.”

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight, Paul.”

  He kissed her brow. “Neither do I.”

  Upstairs, Jenna snuggled into him as he pulled her close. His breathing became deeper, more even. Then, just as sleep crept up on her, she jolted awake again, raised herself on one elbow.

  “It’s not true,” she said with certainty. “It’s just not true, Paul. Paul? Can you hear me? We’ll go to a doctor here and he’ll tell us all that can be done and everything will be all right. This is the twenty-first century, for God’s sake.”

  He didn’t move in reply and she thought he had gone into one of his deep, almost unconscious, sleeps. She had nearly fallen asleep again when she felt him stir slightly. His throat moved against her temple as he spoke, low and determined.

  “Christopher died by an inch a day. I’m not going to be like that. I’m going to go with my boots on.”

  He eased her body against him a little and she twined her legs through his. “And how are you going to manage that?”

  “I’ve wished for it. And Toby thinks I will.”

  “Who’s Toby?”

  “Shut up and go to sleep.”

  “I still don’t like you, you know.”

  He cuddled her. “You’ve a great way of showing it.”

  Two mallards were fighting on the water, causing other ducks to bob on the ruptured surface and thrash hastily away. The dark green heads of the mallards darted and pecked each other. Squawking and splashing, one dragged the other underwater by the wing. Suddenly the fight broke up and they pelted, side by side, across the lake towards a female who turned tail and paddled furiously away.

  “Keep going, girl!” called Jenna. “They’re not worth it!”

  “Hey! You’re supposed to be supporting my suffering ego.”

  She turned and grinned at Paul who was lying flat on his back on the grass. “Your ego doesn’t need supported. It needs pruned with a machete.”

  She came and lay beside him and they looked up at a beautiful spring sky. He pointed at a cloud. “Look, there’s a dog with a bone.”

  She squinted. “It’s a cat with a mouse.”

  “No way. Jack didn’t have a tail like that. Neither does Widget. It’s a dog.”

  Not by the flicker of a muscle did Jenna let him know that she had noticed his idle mention of Jack. His mind was easing out of its cramped space, opening the gates and creeping out into the reality of his entire life. If she had helped him unfold fully into the light of his day, then maybe his twilight would be easier to bear. She turned her head away. No, it wouldn’t; no, it wouldn’t.

  A mother and two children came close to the edge of the pond. There was a boy of about four and a little girl of two. The girl held a whole slice of bread in one plump hand an
d a large purple soft toy under the pink sleeve of her other arm. She teetered and her mother gripped her shoulder, bending to her. Anxiously she asked, “Would you like mummy to hold your heffalump?”

  As one, Jenna and Paul turned and buried their faces in each other’s shoulders to muffle their simultaneous snorts of laughter. Jenna didn’t know how it happened, but her tears of laughter became tears of anguish as she gripped him, felt the warmth of him in the spring sun, heard the deep loveliness of his laugh, smelled the grass beneath him. He pulled back, still laughing, and saw the wet tracks on her cheeks and the crumpled chin. He sat up abruptly.

  “Stop crying, Jenna! I don’t need this.”

  The mother glanced round and ushered her children further away. The honking of ducks and geese, the splash of feathers and the cries of children in the playground, did not disguise the annoyance in his voice. Jenna sprang to her feet.

  “Well, I do! I do need it! Have you really thought about how I feel? Have you really?” She swiped a hand angrily across her eyes. “This is a wonderful day in the sun, enjoying ourselves, feeding ducks. And I keep…” she gestured helplessly “… thinking about the big black abyss ahead. About coming back here without you and seeing you everywhere.” She dropped to her heels on the grass in front of him. He was sitting with his arms hanging over his drawn up knees, fiddling with pieces of grass. “Why did you come back, Paul? You would have hurt me less if you hadn’t come back. I wish I’d kept resisting you.”

  He looked up, past her, where a seagull circled low, swooped down with its legs thrust out and plopped on the water in the middle a flock of ducks. There was a cacophony of squawks and a flurry of flapped wings. At first she thought he wasn’t going to reply. Finally he looked back and held her gaze.

  “Do you mean that? Because I can go away again. If I do, you’ll never see me again. Because I do care about how you feel.” He reached out to her. “Oh Jenna, I have thought so much about how you feel. I was going to leave you alone. I tried, after Luke came round, remember? And I discovered…” he gave a dry laugh “… that you were dropping your defences, just as I was raising mine.” His voice dropped, his shoulders slumped. “Maybe this is too much. I’ll go away again, if you want,” he repeated.