The Stopping Place

by Helen Slavin

  ‘I didn’t mean it…sorry. I take it back. I take it back.’ Where were his socks? Weren’t they paired up the way he wanted in the drawer? Socks? Were socks important? They had never seemed important. When she worked at Parks and Gardens she wore odd ones, what did it matter as long you had a sock for each foot. What are you doing with my fucking socks? Eating them? Jeannie thought of the garden centre. Of the thick sappy scent of the greenhouses. The wet earth after watering. Salvation. Refuge. Don’t make me. Don’t make me.

  ‘It’s me Nathan, don’t punish anyone else. Please. Don’t. Please, me. It’s all my fault. Punish me.’

  He gave a snorting laugh. Jeannie just wanted to turn back the gyroscope of time and feel the tender touch of his hand in the small of her back, feel the sun on her face the way it had felt that day. Up the hill to the walled garden.

  ‘I’m sorry. Sorry…please Nathan…please…I am. I’m sorry. Look, I’m sorry. Look at me. Please Nathan.’ She could hear herself bleating.

  Then they sheered away from the red coals of rear lights on the dual carriageway as Nathan turned through a gate at the edge of the forest. A gate that said No Admittance. The headlights illuminated the undersides of the trees, the car bumped and clanked over the rough ground.

  When they stopped in the clearing Jeannie did not move. Nathan got out of the car, slamming the door shut. He strode around the bonnet, whitened by headlights and ripped open her door. Still she didn’t move. She knew better. Nathan reached across and released her seatbelt, then dragged her out onto the soft pine-needled floor. Jeannie felt she couldn’t see any more. Was this real? But the dirt choked her, the rotting wood of the log stack splintered into her as she stumbled and fell against it. Nathan tugged her upwards.

  ‘On. Your. Feet.’ His hands twisting the blonde rope of her hair around his hand. Handling her upwards.

  ‘You’re a witch. You don’t even know what you’ve done. You do this to me. You, Jeannie. Make me greedy. All those fucking Saturdays. The stuff I had to do to stay close to you.’ He shook her, angry. Jeannie couldn’t think, what Saturdays?

  His lips brushed her neck. ‘Like a chick you were that day. On the forest floor. I carried you back. Saved you. And you don’t fucking remember.’

  Jeannie felt a shot of adrenaline gush through her. What had he said? Remember? Carried her back?

  ‘How can you not remember any of it, you fucking ungrateful bitch?’

  Her mind sifted backwards as if her whole life was being rewound. A chick on the forest floor. They had said, it had been in the paper, a policeman had had to carry her to the ambulance. More adrenaline surged, trying to cope.

  ‘That day Jeannie. That first day, when I felt your skin, under my hand. You were given to me.’ He was looking into her eyes now. ‘Took me fucking forever to find you. They said you were going to the university so I’d transferred to York. You just run me in rings. I’m just your game. Punish you? I’ll fucking punish you.’

  His left hand slid round her waist, skimmed across a breast and then twisted her arm into the small of her back.

  ‘We’re going to play a game,’ he whispered. Jeannie wished that he would simply beat her to death or stab her, just reach for one of the logs on the stack and clonk and clonk until she was gone. It would be believable and real and manageable and, thankfully, over.

  He twisted his hand tighter into her hair. It was pulling the skin. Jeannie wondered if she could just tug sharply, let her scalp rip free and keep running. Monopoly, she thought, laughter tugging at her. He plays Monopoly. I’m the dog and he’s the top hat. Her breath seemed to want to stay in her lungs. Hiding. Nathan slapped her face, reviving her.

  ‘Come back. Back to me Jeannie. Got to be awake for this one.’ Slap. Slappety-slap-slap. ‘This is a new game.’

  As he spoke Jeannie could see the headlights making their way through the woodland towards them, the heavy vehicle bumping and lumbering. She struggled to see behind the glare and then the driver flicked on full beam. A war whoop was heard from the opened window. A thick hand banged on the car roof. Liam handbrake-turned to a stop, his face leering out at her, his eyes seeming to glint silver in the darkness. Jeannie pushed against Nathan, panicked. He held her fast.

  ‘When I release you…Run. Understand?’ His hand latched into her hair again, tugged at her head. ‘Nod your head Jeannie. That’s how to do it.’

  Down up down up down up.

  ‘Run. ’Cause this is a game called Hunter.’

  Ambrosia artemisiifolia

  ragweed

  for courage; and put it into shoes to ease a journey

  * * *

  After the woods she didn’t dream. She knew the darkness, and the monster that lived there. On the outside, she hid the scuffs and grazes. The bruises melted back into her.

  On the inside her plan was all that held her upright, kept her focused. The focus blurred once or twice when she thought about her dad. It was like an acid inside her, the desire to run home, to bang on the door and just tell him what was happening.

  But she was a grown up. She was Mrs Jeannie Flynn, successful nurserywoman with a coffee shop concession and everything, with staff who depended on her for their mortgage payments. She had students from Mr Mathieson’s course at the agricultural college apprenticed to her.

  She had contracts and obligations. She had made the choice. She had chosen Nathan and she had made promises, hadn’t she? Promises in church and even if you didn’t believe in God you could still believe in promises.

  All broken. What she had done to Dad. What she had done to Geraldine. It all had to stop. That was all.

  She made Debbie into Centre Manager. Debbie who had come from school with no qualifications and was the most trustworthy person Jeannie knew. Jeannie was careful how she went about it. She made certain that Debs could take on all the tasks, each week she concentrated on a different aspect of the business and how it was run. She wanted her to feel capable and confident. Jeannie did not want anyone to feel they had been left in the lurch. She planned to have a month clear when she could see Debs running the business. Then it would be time.

  You could see the suspension bridge from the Hanging Gardens. It was a graceful blur of spiderweb on a hazy summer day. It was a ghostly cat’s cradle in the distance on a foggy autumn day. Nathan was not going to be home till late. Jeannie walked all the way, setting off from the Hanging Gardens after work as if nothing was different. Except it was different. She was leaving her car round the back in the delivery bay. No one would notice until the morning.

  She had promised herself that she would not go anywhere near Dad’s house but in the end it was on her way. She made it so. She walked up the dirt lane that fed into the road. From there she could stand under the copper beech trees where Del Weston at the bungalow parked his cars. From there she could see into Dad’s house without being seen. He was playing the piano. Jeannie did not have long, just long enough to take a photographic memory.

  Inside the house Ted Gaffney thought he saw Jeannie out of the corner of his eye. He thought he saw her in the lane. He stopped playing. He was certain. Out there, across the road, under the copper beeches. Something was wrong. Ted Gaffney moved quickly out of the front door. But she was gone.

  It took Jeannie an hour or so to get to the bridge. By that time the rush-hour traffic had stopped and the bridge was quiet. Jeannie walked across it, aware of the emptiness beneath her. She had never liked heights. A couple of tourists had stopped to take photos, leaning, carefree, against the wire-work. Jeannie walked right across and kept going. It was going to be dark soon. If she just walked up around the houses towards Lookout Point she would have timed it just right.

  By the time she had walked up through the Edwardian and Victorian mansions with their high hedges and sweeping drives towards Lookout Point, the streetlights were beginning to wink on. As she started back down towards the bridge it seemed to her that all the lampposts bowed their heads. The air chilled quickly now the
sun had gone down but Jeannie didn’t shiver. She walked steadily, the weight of her bag digging into her shoulder.

  As a car drove over the bridge towards her, Jeannie turned to look up at the driver. In fact she realised that it would be better to be seen and so, when she heard the next car approaching she darted in front of it, across the roadway to the opposite side of the bridge. The driver pipped and braked, opened his window to shout. Jeannie ignored him. He drove on. Pippippippiiiiiip.

  She took the first shoe out of her bag and dropped it on the bridge. The second she battered against the kerb to make the heel break off. She threw the shoe over the balustrade. She watched it tumble waterwards; took out a jacket she had scrunched into her bag and threw that, the pockets weighted with a mobile phone, a set of keys. Then, she dropped the handbag where she stood. It tilted slightly and a lipstick rolled out. She watched it for a moment as it rolled across the ironwork towards the abyss below. Jeannie Gaffney did not see it fall.

  She felt it.

  Freefall.

  And when you land, bend your knees.

  Pseudotsuga menziesii

  douglas fir

  useful in matters of shapeshifting

  * * *

  Jeannie had some money with her. Not much, cash she’d squirrelled away from the till in the weeks before. She’d made certain of her running-away fund. But now it felt like a weight in her pockets. That first night away she stayed in a Novotel and slept so badly and dreamed so fitfully. Dreamed of Nathan in the doorway. Nathan blocking out the light. Nathan in bed beside her.

  Waking with a start to headlights turning into the carpark or the rumble of an articulated lorry on the A-road close by.

  Jeannie kept walking then. Walking away. Punishment. Although it didn’t feel like punishment, even when she slept under newspaper or cardboard. She stayed away from doorways and shelters, aware of others there with bags and belongings, staking their pitch. Jeannie saw a man kick at the sleeping figure in a doorway, another man piss all over him. She spent a night in the wendy house in a park playground. High up it was, like a tree house. She didn’t care about the smell of urine or the cigarette butts and spent chewing gum. She just felt he wouldn’t look in here.

  Jeannie kept walking. She washed herself in public toilets or swam in a lake in a park. Swam in her underclothes to clean them, dried herself under the driers in the park toilets.

  ‘What you doing?’ the woman clanked a galvanised bucket down. There was a powerful smell of Jeyes fluid and the water made thick steam in the cold air. Jeannie was nearly dry, scuffled herself back into her clothes.

  ‘Got no home to go to?’ The woman slopped hot water around Jeannie’s feet. Jeannie felt the mop across her shoes.

  There was the first time she grazed a supermarket. Waited until late in the evening when it was quieter, took a basket and put a few things into it. Filled her pockets with fruit because that wasn’t tagged. Ate bread rolls. Cheese. Drank water. Plastic Barbie-pink ham. Scotch eggs. Drank more water. Left her basket at the end of the aisle. Walked easily through the doors, pockets full of bananas, as the security guard chatted up the bored looking woman with streaky blonde highlights who was manning the cigarette kiosk.

  She walked, dropping down from the street to the canal path because here there were just trees and herons and moorhens. There was the reedmace and cyclists. The houseboats and narrowboats. The lock and the café in the lockkeeper’s cottage where she spent more money on tea and a sandwich and washed her face and hair in their tiny cramped toilet. Used their squeegee soap.

  The blonde was coming out of her hair now. She looked at it in the floral framed mirror in the tiny toilet. The mousier brown roots showed through, inching their way down her head. Once upon a time she would have been glad to see Jeannie back, but she wasn’t sure anymore where Jeannie was. Someone else was inside her now. Jeannie had gone off that bridge. With that shoe.

  Chainsaw buzzing again. Cut around it. Shape it out. Let it fall. Walking through the darkness and the sulphured orange or halogen blue of the night streets too tired to walk and too afraid to sleep.

  Walked miles to another city. The café caught her eye because of the curled cyrillic-style writing in the window and the blood-red awning that shaded two or three round marble-topped tables even in this cold weather, the legs ending in clawed feet, clutching at the floor. Bentwood chairs. Jeannie could not sit outside, she would be too noticeable there. She moved inside. As she pushed the door she saw the sign written in an elegant hand. Help Wanted.

  The Radetzky Samovar Café made her want to cry with relief. The black wood of the chairs, the cool marble of the table tops, the scrubbed wooden floor. The high counter with a brass rail running around it. The comforting, nourishing hiss of the coffee machine, the samovar that sat on the back counter burnished with polishing. The cups. The cutlery. Everything was other and welcoming and warm. The smells of the baked goods, the savoury snacks being dished out. Jeannie thought she might just sit in the corner forever.

  Help wanted, the sign had said. Frankly Jeannie thought she might never have read a truer word. She cleared her plate and cup to the counter top and asked the man behind the counter about the job. She spoke too quietly and she thought he hadn’t heard her over the hysterical hissing of the coffee machine as it frothed milk. He didn’t speak. Then he put two cappuccinos onto the counter top and nodded at the far table in the window.

  ‘Number 3. In the window.’

  Jeannie took the coffees and cleared away the plates and cups the two women had already finished with. She smiled, and when the older woman asked if there was any of the cinnamon cake left, Jeannie smiled again and said she’d ask.

  There were two hours until closing and Jeannie cut cake, served teas and coffees and cleared tables. As he turned the sign to closed the owner said simply, ‘We open at eight. Can you be here for seven-thirty?’

  Jeannie nodded.

  ‘I am Boris. Owner. I will pay you five pounds an hour and you keep all tips.’ He offered his hand for her to shake.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. She paused. Boris looked impatient, took a bill from the last customer and handed over the change as she thought.

  ‘You have one? You going to be too quiet like this I don’t want you work here.’

  ‘Ruby,’ she said. And the name must belong to her because it had popped into her head like a balloon. And she spent the next day clearing tables and washing up, and Boris watched her and knew she was indispensable. She wanted to be a workhorse.

  She was. A champion workhorse. Boris began to wonder who had sent him this prize. Ruby could wipe down tables forever. It cleared her head, which she needed to be as empty as possible. The Radetzky Samovar Café was golden and warm and soothed her. At night she slept in the store room amongst the cabbages and potatoes, waiting each evening until Boris and his wife headed home. She would save up enough to rent a room, but for now she felt safe in the store. He would never look for her here.

  Ruby was a force moving forward. Only there was a shard of Jeannie Gaffney left jagging out of her skin and she found herself one afternoon speaking Russian. She had heard Boris and his wife jabbering together and the memories came back of sitting in the lecture theatre on the university campus, of being in the whizzkids group for languages. Of Mrs Craven’s enthusiastic need to share her passion for Russian. Jeannie would never forget the look on Boris’s face when he spoke to her and she answered in Russian. His joy fed her own relief, the sloughing off, the smoothing over of herself, letting herself go into another tongue. This was something she had almost forgotten about. It was good to go back to it. She needed to be foreign, to be distanced from what had been, and in speaking Russian she had jumped off another bridge in herself.

  The next month one of the customers spoke to her in Russian. Ruby didn’t mind, a lot of people who came in were émigrés, like herself, people who had been forced to run away. It was only later, when he kept smiling at her that Ruby felt the hair on
the back of her neck stand up. Boris came over to talk with the customer and when Ruby arrived back at the table with his borscht and some fresh-baked bread, Boris introduced Vassily, his unmarried brother.

  Ruby chatted for a while with Vassily, who was perfectly nice and ordinary looking. His eyes were edgy and nervous, as if he wanted very much to make a good impression. At first Ruby thought she had panicked unnecessarily, that she simply had been introduced to Vassily as someone who could teach him English. It was as straightforward as that wasn’t it? Vassily had tried a few classes at the college and found it intimidating. Maybe, a couple of afternoons a week, they could sit in the more relaxed surroundings of the café and she could teach him. Yes? Maybe so?

  Yes. Maybe so. Until it became clear that Ruby’s first instinct was right, the language afternoons were just a courtship, a ritual. One afternoon, a rainy Friday. They were sitting in their usual place in the far corner of the window, the table where Jeannie/Ruby had served her first cappuccinos. Vassily had come on under her tuition and Boris and his wife were grateful. But Ruby wasn’t. This afternoon they had spoken more in English and for her this seemed a backward step.

  She felt edgy today and every time anyone walked past she gave a start. All the elbows and shoulders and backs of heads appeared to be just like Nathan. All the raincoats and gestures. Ruby looked at Vassily. He had a strong handsome face and kind green eyes that looked at her but didn’t see her.

  Ruby excused herself to go into the kitchen. She walked straight out through the back door into the rain. Later, after she had packed up her single change of clothes into a carrier bag and paid her bill at the B&B, she stopped in at a hairdressers and had her long hair shorn. A number eight she asked for, and the stylist cried. Ruby left the salon feeling liberated. As if Nathan’s fingerprints had been all over it.