Quiet Neighbors (16 page)

“Good,” said Eddy. “What's the other one?”

“She knows what side her bread's buttered. She lives rent-free in Lowell's house and she'd be a fool to wreck that, wouldn't she?”

“That makes three of us. He's a bit of a chick magnet, is old—”

“Dad,” said Jude. “Just call him Dad, Eddy. He'll never order a DNA test. He loves you.”

And, even though she was young and in a fix, Eddy paid enough attention to hear something in Jude's voice. “I'm sorry,” she said. “If I hadn't come along, you'd be well in by now.”

“I don't think of him that way,” Jude said. “He's just a genuinely good, kind, sweet man.”

“Up a tree,” sang Eddy. “K-I S-S-I-N—Yeah, I know he is.” She sighed. “He used to work in a care home, for fuck's sake. And he keeps his creepy porn locked up where no one can accidentally see it.”

“It's not porn!” said Jude. “It's a valuable collection of … something. Oh, I give up,” she added as Eddy blew a raspberry. “And you've no need to apologise. I've got a house and a job and a friend. I'm better off than I could have imagined a couple of weeks ago. If I can just keep my head down till . . . It's easy on the telly, isn't it? Films and all that? People get new identities all the time. But it's not the same in real life.”

“You don't need a new identity,” Eddy said. “Mum used bang on about this all the time. You can call yourself anything you want and—say what you like about this country—you never need to show your papers.”

It was Anne Tyler again, but it looked like Eddy believed it. Jude smiled and tried to believe it too.

“That's right,” she said. “I've got a home and a job and two good friends.”

“Three,” said Eddy, “counting Mrs. Hewston.”

Sixteen

Except, in Jude's mind,
there was a fourth friend and she wanted more of him.
After
some hard graft and a bit of desk work over lunch, she told herself sternly. She was supposed to be saving an ailing business here.

Spinning Yarns, the book and wool shop next door to the left, and Tilly's, the tarot and crystals operation next door to the right, had steady streams of customers. Jude could hear the Yarns shop bell ding whenever she was up in Mighty Hunters and the Tilly's wind chimes when she was up in Ladies Who, on account of the way the big front windows were always cracked open around Lowell's sign strings. She had gone to visit the proprietors, hoping to get some tips, but both of them—a retired Yorkshire social worker in the tarot shop and a young Polish mum whose husband worked at the fishery—told her the Internet was all that mattered and they only kept the shops because the rates were cheap and the rent was cheaper.

She took the last of her coffee into the dead room at two o'clock and surveyed the squatting toad, the book mountain. T. Jolly was thirty years deep. She could just dig in, throwing books over both shoulders like a burrowing mole, but she was too much of a librar
ian. She could deal with each bag from start to finish, sorting,
cleaning, pricing, shelving … Except she could see into one of the front bags from here and it was three Asda cookbooks staring back at her: vegetables, chicken, and cheese. She would know that Asda cheese cookbook at fifty paces because there were two more upstairs in Home Crafts and Gardening; one pristine for a pound and one well-crusted—with cheese, presumably—for twenty-five pence.

Nothing, Jude thought, was twenty-five pence anymore, so God only knew how long it had been there. She was going to have to tell Lowell to send some of these to the pulper. He wouldn't agree; he would—he had!—start on about jumble sales and the free exchange of ideas and sending books to Africa. As though a village school in Africa would thank him for Asda's Book of Cheese.

In the end, she compromised by starting three towers just inside the dead room door, doing a bit of rough triage. Slowly, the book mountain grew a canyon as Jude removed bag after bag from its nearest slope. The three towers soared. But it was almost closing time before she saw something that said
T. Jolly
to her eager and practised eye. She tugged, felt the north wall of the canyon threaten to slip, and spent another patient twenty minutes excavating properly. She had just freed a tantalising Brentford Nylons carrier, packed three across and six deep with hardbacks, when Lowell sidled in.

“Golly,” he said, looking at the towers and canyon. “Dear me, yes, it has rather run away from me, hasn't it?”

“Sell, pass on, RIP,” Jude said pointing. “Don't look! Or if you insist on looking, don't argue. You've lived without all of them up till now. If I'm about to give the upside-down penny black to Maureen at the Cancer, it's no worse than it sitting here turning into coal.”

“Fine, fine, no argument!” Lowell said, holding up both hands and backing away. “Do whistle if you come across anything called
Love's Labour's Won
, won't you?”

“Or
Cardenio
,” said Jude. “I'm a librarian, Lowell. I know about lost Shakespeare.”

Lowell put a hand to his breast and bowed his head, a repentant knight.

“You can make it up to me by giving me a lucky dip price for this,” she added, holding up the Brentford bag.

Lowell took a step closer, pulling his spectacles down from amongst his hair.

“Whoa! Whoa!” said Jude. “Lucky dip! I don't know what's in here and neither do you. That's the whole point.”

“A pound,” Lowell said.

“We'll call it a tenner,” said Jude. “And take it out of my wages. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

“Tush now, you're already doing so much. Even the cottage is a weight off my mind, more than anything. Dear me, yes.”

“What did you come in here just now to say?” Jude explained, trying not to speak so loud or slow he would have hurt feelings.

“Me? Oh! Ah yes indeed, quite. You flummoxed me with your hard-nosed hustling. I just wanted to ask where young Eddy had got to. I'm afraid she and I have had words.”

“What about?” said Jude. And then followed it up with, “And since I'm being nosy, can I ask something else that's none of my business?”

“My business
is
your business,” Lowell said. “Since you are bringing it back from the brink.”

“In that case,” said Jude, “it's about your pictures. The photographs you've got under lock and key. Are you really just a collector or do you sell them too?”

Lowell was standing in the shadows, but he stepped forward then. “Funny thing,” he said. “That's just what young Eddy and I were discussing so heatedly.”

Jude tried to look surprised but suspected she had failed. Not least because Lowell was wearing his spectacles and could see her clearly.

“I'm not trying to make you sell them if you don't want to,” she said. “I've only got as far as thinking you should frame them and hang them on the walls. In the corridor. Once it's cleared.”

“No,” said Lowell. “I don't think so. I don't think that would be wise.”

“Are they valuable?” Jude said. “Would it be a security risk to have them on display?”

“Not exact—No,” said Lowell. “I mean they have a value, certainly. Some of them.”

Jude knew it was more suspicious not to ask and so she forced herself. “What
are
they?”

“Early work,” said Lowell. “Victorian. Rare pieces.”

“But what
are
they?” said Jude. “Landscapes, street scenes, portraits?”

“Portraits, yes,” said Lowell. “In a way. I mean, of a sort. Figure studies, I suppose one would say.”

“Figure studies,” Jude said. She trusted the low light to hide her change of colour. “And
are
you a dealer?” she said. “Or just an admirer?”

“Neither,” said Lowell. “So far I'm a searcher, buyer, and locker-up in a drawer.”

It sounded noble.

“So you're not gathering them with a view to putting them out in a collection?”

“A book?” said Lowell, with a sharp laugh. “I'm a used bookseller, my dear. No one knows better than I the folly of publishing.”

“Did Eddy try to persuade you?” Jude said. “Is that why you argued?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Lowell. “Dear me, I forgot about her. Where is she?”

“She shouted through a while back that she was going home. She was tired.”

That was all it took. “Tired?” he said and was off, halfway to the door, shouting over his shoulder. “Lock up when you're finished, my dear, won't you? Good Lord, she shouldn't be wandering the streets alone when she's faint from exhaustion. What if she fell?”

He was gone and didn't hear Jude's answer. “If she fell on her ‘belly,' she'd bounce if it's foam and if it's feathers … soft landing.”

It wasn't until Jude had lugged the lucky bag right to the cemetery gates that it occurred to her these might not be Todd's after all.

“Pillock!” she said to the nearest gravestone, glancing at the name.

“Not you, Archie,” she added, passing on. “Me.” Then she turned back and read the rest of the epitaph;

here lies archibald patterstone, master engineer,
a true friend and a much-loved man
“sleep well, my good and faithful servant”

No wife and no kids, Jude thought, so she couldn't have run into a Patterstone descendant in the town. Yet the name felt familiar. When she was in the bright kitchen of the cottage, lifting out the first of the books, reverentially, hardly daring to hope, she remembered.

“
Archie Patterstone is dead!
” she said, then shivered. “
I will tell Dr. Glen enough is enough
.”

She looked down at the book in her hands. It was a Patricia Highsmith:
the
Patricia Highsmith—
The Talented Mr. Ripley
—and when she glanced inside the front flyleaf her heart leapt. Immediately she turned to the back and couldn't help a chirp of laughter.
It's clever,
he had written,
but it's nothing to curl up with. Neither was Miss Highsmith if anyone's asking me. Since none but me will ever read these words, I'm giving the talented Miss Highsmith this review: she needs a night out.

“Oh, Todd!” said Jude. “You've just broken every rule in the lit crit book and I love you.”

She put the kettle on, took the casserole dish of leftover pasta-bake out of the fridge to come to room temperature, put the oven on for when it did, and settled down to unpack the bag of books like a child under the tree on Christmas morning.

There was
Rosemary's Baby
(
Blimey!
),
Gone with the Wind
(
She should have saved some of this and written a sequel, doubled her wage
),
Catch-22
(
He's been on the wacky baccy and no mistake
),
The World According to Garp
(
If this is New England, God help California
), and
I Capture The Castle
(
Not exactly action-packed and I could draw a ruddy floor plan
).

And that was just in H to L. Jude began to think she was being greedy keeping Todd Jolly to herself. LG Books should have his reviews laminated and stuck to the shelf edges.

And then she found another one. It was
Lolita
, a beautiful late edition, with a sugared-almond-coloured cover, powdery surface and all, and creamy silken pages. Todd had loathed it.

This book is admired because Mr. Nabokov uses a lot of fancy words for a dirty business but a plain man can sometimes see clearer than a clever one. M. tells me Etta Bell is fading fast and her family has been sent for. This plain man is sick of the world tonight.

Jude was staring at his words with tears pricking her eyes when the knock came at the kitchen door. For one wild moment she was scared to open it. Archie Patterstone was out there, and no doubt Etta Bell too. Todd himself was feet away from the doorstep. Who had come knocking this black night?

Then the door opened. He started apologising even before his face appeared.

“Filthy cheek barging in like this, my dear, but it's as cold as a well-digger's—That is, a witch's—That is, it's dreadfully cold, but I—What is it?”

“I was miles away,” said Jude. “Well, years away. Communing with the dead.”

Lowell nodded absently. “Eddy is missing,” he said.

Jude sat down suddenly. “Packed and gone?”

“Just gone,” said Lowell. “Left everything behind and fled.”

“But she might just be out,” said Jude. “Was there a note or anything?”

“She came clean,” Lowell said. “Told me the truth about the pregnancy. My so-called grandchild. What an old fool I am.” He had been studying the floor and so, when he suddenly looked up, he caught Jude's face before she could hide the thoughts plainly written there.

“She told me too,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“I thought I took it well,” he said. “I certainly didn't say anything to make her bolt. I mean, dear me, I was terribly excited about the idea of grandparenthood, but on the other hand it was almost too much coming at the same moment as sudden fatherhood. I was perfectly happy to take things one at a time.”

“And you weren't angry with her for telling tales?”

“Not at all,” Lowell said. “She wasn't to know I would approve, was she? Plenty men my age are perfect old fuddy-duddies. I might have dropped dead from the shock of it.”

Jude had been nodding but as she tried to follow his words, she found herself frowning.

“Disapprove of … ?” she echoed. Of not being pregnant? Drop dead from the shock of a daughter turning up without a grandchild on board? What did he mean? “I think we're at cross—” she said and then the back door burst open and Eddy came flying in, muffled in a crocheted hat and a long afghan coat, looking like someone from Fleetwood Mac.

“Fuck-a-doodle-doo,” she said. “How can you live here with all these bloody corpses?” Then she caught sight of Lowell and her face fell.

“Oh,” she said. “You. I came to speak to Jude.”

“It's all right,” said Lowell. “I've told her I know. And I know you told her first. I'm not angry. I understand that you wanted to confide in a woman and someone nearer your own age than your old papa.”

“I didn't confide,” said Eddy. “She guessed the gist. I didn't tell her the details.”

“
Someone
tell me the details,” Jude said.

“Okay,” Eddy said. “So you know I'm doing a surrogacy. What else? The dads' names are Liam and Terry. I'm going back to Derry for the birth, so's they can be there and so's I'm with the same doc and midwife I've had all along. That's it, really.”

It was genius, Jude thought.

“They don't know I've taken off,” Eddy added. “They don't even know my mum died.”

“They'll understand,” said Jude.

“Course they will,” Eddy agreed.

“But it's right for you to return,” Lowell put in, beaming. “The living—the about to be born, in this case—matter more than the dead. The celebration of life must take over from mourning. Babies come before us all!” He stopped. “My dear, have I said something to up
set you?”

Jude didn't even know there were tears in her eyes until he mentioned them.