Cora Warwick called up the stairs. “Are you sure you want to wear that dress, Jenna? This photo is the way future generations will see you, remember.”
Jenna turned away from the window and spoke over the banisters. “Future generations won’t know me, Mum. It doesn’t matter what I wear. Anyway, this is the best outfit I have.”
Cora came half way up the stairs. “No, it isn’t. And red doesn’t go with pink nails either.”
Jenna glanced at her hands. “I forgot about those.”
“It was very nice of Peter’s wife to do them for you but a colourless varnish might have been more practical.”
“Paul, Mum. He’s called Paul.”
Cora went downstairs again and Jenna heard the door to her father’s study being opened. She stopped listening. Paul was late. But then Adam was driving. Although it was a weekday, Adam had managed to get some time off that was due to him, to bring Paul to the village. The manse was difficult to find, coming from Belfast. Besides, as he had whispered into her ear on Saturday, it would give him a bonus opportunity to see her.
Jenna hugged the memory, watching the road from the village, waiting to see the green Volvo turn into the gate. A car was coming. Jenna tensed and then relaxed. It was black. Below her, she saw her tortoiseshell cat stroll across the driveway and wander onto the edge of the lawn. The cat sat down and began to wash her face. She must be taking a break from her kittens. They were two weeks old now, dependent and exhausting.
The cat stopped licking, paw crooked in the air, ears forward as she turned her head to the gate. The black car had slowed and was turning in. Jenna frowned. Not a visitor just now surely; some pastoral crisis to take her father away? She looked down on the roof of the car as it swung round to stop at the front door. There was a pause and then the driver’s door opened. It was Paul.
Jenna watched the passenger door, but it didn’t open. Disappointment bit into her. Adam mustn’t have come after all. Paul was alone.
He took his time. He leaned his elbow on the roof of the car and looked around. Then he walked a little way down the drive and seemed to scan the countryside around. Jenna watched her cat walk to him with a languid swish of her tail. She rubbed around his legs as he looked down. He bent and tickled her ears and Jenna saw his lips move as he spoke to her. Then he lifted her and put her onto his shoulder and Jenna saw him rub his cheek on the fur of her mottled side. The gesture brought his gaze to the house and he looked up at the window where Jenna stood, right into her eyes.
She should go down the stairs; she should hurry to open the door; she should ask why Adam wasn’t with him. Instead, she watched Dianne’s husband watching her and felt the look from his eyes as tangible as fingers on her skin.
Her mother’s voice called. “Here’s Patrick now, Jenna. Tell Luke.”
“Adam couldn’t come. Something came up at work.” Paul was sitting in the lounge ignoring the cup of tea that Cora had put on a table beside him. “Something about the price of paper and having to do re-quotes.” He waited a heartbeat then added, “He says.”
Donald Warwick stood in front of the fireplace where flames crackled around the log he had just thrown into the grate. He was dressed as Jenna would always remember him best – a still slim figure in a dark grey suit with a black stock and clerical collar. People said he had kind eyes.
“Too bad,” he said. “We like Adam.”
Jenna had perched on the arm of the sofa. This was only the second time she had met Paul and yet he was exactly as she remembered. Perfect. She tried to sense what it was that made him unique in her eyes. He was paying no attention to her. Of the four of them, he was watching Luke who was picking absently at the arm of his chair.
Suddenly Paul said, “Luke.”
Luke jumped and stopped picking. “What?”
“Why am I here?”
Luke’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t you know?”
“I want you to tell me. It’s not a hard question.”
Jenna glanced at her mother and father. They looked as puzzled as she was.
Luke rolled his eyes and sighed. “To take a picture.”
Paul sat back. “And you’re going to be the star of it.” Cora took a breath and opened her mouth. Paul continued before she could make a sound. “Your sister says you’re going to go away to university. What’s your first choice?”
“Dundee.”
“Nice place.”
Luke showed a flicker of interest. “Do you know it?”
“Not well. I had an assignment there a few years ago.”
Cora said, “Jenna says you’ve been away for a few years, Peter, and have come back to live here.”
“Paul, Mum.” said Jenna.
“We keep trying to persuade Luke not to go away,” her mother went on, straightening her skirt. “Home’s best, isn’t it? Even a troubled place like this.”
Paul was still watching Luke. “What do you think?” he asked him.
Luke said seriously, “There’s got to be a better place than this. I’m tired of it. It’s so narrow, so…” he shrugged “… pathetic.”
His father looked towards Paul. “Perhaps we should set up the portrait…”
Paul was nodding agreement with Luke. “It is, isn’t it? Pathetic.”
“Then why did you come back?” asked Luke.
Jenna watched as Paul took his time to answer. He sat forward and put his elbows on his knees. He examined the carpet. Then he looked up.
“You know those game shows where they show you something photographed so close up that you only see a tiny bit of it? You have to guess what it is. Only you can’t guess because you’re seeing too little too close. Ever seen those?” Luke nodded. Paul looked down again. He reached between his knees and drew his finger around a pattern in the pile. “When you leave your home place, you look back and you see the whole shape of it for the first time: the hollow here, the mountain there, the badness, the blackness.” He opened his hands. “But after a while you see the shining bits too. The bits that are coloured and glowing. The bits that are good and that you never knew were there. Because you were too close before.”
Nobody spoke, not even Cora. Paul wasn’t finished. “And then you think you might come back. Because of the good bits, the shining bits. And because you’ve discovered that there’s blackness everywhere anyway. You can never run away from it. So you come back to your own God and your own Devil, because they’re the two beings who know you best in all the world.” He shrugged. “But you have to go away to discover that.”
Jenna hadn’t realised she was holding her breath. Luke’s expression of utter concentration broke in a broad smile.
“You’re the first person who’s ever said anything sensible about it,” he said.
“So will you be a star for me?”
“OK,” said Luke.
They sat as they were told to sit. They smiled. And yet it was all done with great ease, great good humour. Paul moved smoothly to adjust a shoulder here, an arm there. A chair was at the wrong angle. Luke moved it. Paul managed his cameras and lenses with quick economical movements. He took many shots, talking as he did so, making them relax. Donald asked him if he had the same church connections as Adam.
“I used to have,” Paul replied, his fingers working deftly.
“Used to?” said Donald.
Paul glanced up briefly. “I had a great Bible class teacher many moons ago.”
“Ah. Are you still in touch?”
Paul raised the camera. “Not since he ran off with the organist.”
To Jenna’s surprise, her father roared with laughter. “Off-putting, I agree!”
She wondered if any of the others noticed the two quick shots that Paul took as her father’s face creased in amusement.
When his bag was packed up again, Paul seemed restless, as if he wasn’t quite finished to his own satisfaction. The lounge window looked out onto the narrow strip of lawn at the back. Paul went round the sofa and gazed out. It was mid-
afternoon and the November light was already losing its edge. Beyond a wire fence, the field rolled away from the house, its uneven surface bounded by thorn hedges.
“In the summer there are often cattle in that field,” said Jenna, coming to stand beside him. “Luke and I used to pull buttercups and long grass and the cows would come up and their huge tongues would curl them out of our hands.”
“What are those?” Paul was looking to the right where the ruins of some buildings still remained.
“They’re old huts from the war. We’re near the airfield used during the war. There are quite a few bits and pieces of old huts around here.”
“I want to see them,” said Paul.
As the front door slammed behind him, Jenna took only a moment to run up the stairs, drop the red dress on the floor and pull on a jumper and jeans. From her bedroom window she saw Paul put one hand on a fence post and spin himself over the top wire, supple as a cat. Then he was kicking through the grass. His hands were deep in the pockets of a long black coat that he must have pulled from the car.
She followed him, clambering over the fence with much less grace. One remaining hut still had part of its corrugated roof in place. Jenna picked her way carefully into it, stepping over pieces of brick and chunks of concrete hidden in grass that had long ago reclaimed ownership of this patch of earth.
Paul was sitting on an old piece of a bench that lay lopsidedly to one side. Rubbish was piled in one corner – a rusting bedstead, several old cans and buckets, a chest of drawers with one drawer missing and the others sagging like slack lips. The place smelled of damp earth and autumn leaves.
She walked past him without speaking. It seemed right. The frame of one wooden window was still in place. She stopped beside it and waited. His back was to her. Somehow the ordinary everyday rules of social chatter didn’t apply when she looked at the silent figure on the broken bench.
“Where are they, Jenna?” he asked softly.
“Who?”
“The airmen who were sent here. Are they dead?”
She turned towards him, her back to the light. “Probably.”
He looked around. “Who were they? Did they have families, children?” He stopped. “Or did they give up their immortality to the war?”
Jenna kicked aside some shards of concrete as she took a few steps away from the window. “You know Rupert Brooke?”
“No.”
“I can’t remember it all, but he said something like that.” She stopped, trying to remember. “Something like ‘These laid the world away, poured out the red sweet wine of youth.’” She tested a few words in her head before speaking again. “I think it ends ‘those who would have been their sons, they gave their immortality’.”
He turned his head slightly. “I must get some of his stuff.”
“I might have some. Left over from school. Or you’d get it on the Internet.” She lightened her voice, trying to bring him out of this mood. “But come over here. I can introduce you to one of them.”
She pointed at the wooden window frame. He read aloud, “S. L. C. 1944.” Jenna traced the weathered initials with her finger, the nail incongruously pink against the darkened grain. To her surprise he covered her hand and guided her finger over the letters again.
“S. L. C.” he repeated slowly as he did so. “Stephen? Shaun? Spencer? Sam? He let go of her hand. “You’ve touched someone else. You’ve connected with the past. You’ve made yourself more than just you.” He looked at her, questioning. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I’ve come here many times.” She moved a little, wondering whether to go on. He was waiting. “I think… we’re only moments from this man.” He was listening. “We’re only moments from the past. It’s only moments since you spoke. Just then. Before that, it was only moments since you were walking over the grass with your hands in your pockets. Before that it was only moments since you jumped the fence.” She held out an open palm. “You see? So we’re only moments from William the Conqueror, Brian Boru. The only difference is the number of moments.”
Paul covered the carved initials with his palm. “So this airman is very close to us.”
“I’ve always felt that.” She walked away, embarrassed now. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds about right.”
She turned and smiled, her arms folded against the cold. The light was fading rapidly and the air was damp on her face.
“I think you took some good pictures in there,” she said.
“You weren’t the worst group I’ve had to deal with.”
“You managed to get even Luke to cooperate.”
He walked past her to examine the bedstead. He gave it a push with his foot. “When you’re taking family portraits, there’s always one person who’s the key. If you can identify that person and make a connection, you’ve got a great portrait.”
“And Luke was the key?” said Jenna. “Mum and Dad think he’s the problem.”
He turned and raised a finger playfully. “Ah! But the problem is often the key.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“Then think in riddles!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the way to the answers. Riddles make the world go round.”
“I thought love did that.”
“The biggest riddle of all.” Suddenly he kicked the bedstead, sending it crashing onto its side. “Why is there always a bloody iron bedstead? Can’t people leave anything to rot without putting a bloody bedstead in it?”
“Anyway,” said Jenna calmly, watching the rusty springs shudder to rest, “you weren’t just making a connection with Luke. You were talking about something you’ve experienced yourself. Something true.”
He said, almost carelessly, “The truth is the only connection worth making.” His feet scuffed the loose floor as he turned again. “Did you go away to university?”
“No, I stayed here.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was easier, I suppose.”
He folded his arms and put his head on one side. “And unlike Luke, you always do what your told.”
She bristled. There was mockery in his tone. “No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.” He nodded towards the house. “I didn’t even have to look at you in there. Within minutes of seeing the four of you together, I knew who would be the hardest subject and who would be no trouble at all, because she’s a good girl and she always does what she’s told, sometimes even before she’s told it.”
A faint scrabbling of raindrops on the tin roof turned into a deafening batter as the rain began in earnest.
Jenna raised her voice, annoyance pawing at her. “You don’t know me at all. How can you say that?”
He cocked his head. “No, I don’t know you. Who are you? Apart from my brother’s girlfriend?”
This was ridiculous. “I’m Jenna!”
He was relentless, his eyes intense. “Who’s Jenna?”
“Me,” she said, the sound of the rain drumming into her skull. “Who’s ‘me’?”
She stopped. Truth is the only connection worth making, he had said. She looked up at the rust and cobwebs of the tin roof above. The rain pounded the roof as she turned her eyes back to him, her own words surprising her. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I am.”
He planted his feet apart, stood immovably in front of her. “Are you good? Are you bad?”
“I’m not bad.” The rain was beating louder, a breeze wrapping damp and cold around them, weaving through the gaping holes in the building.
“Are you good?”
She raised her voice again and made a fist, low at her side. “I don’t know!”
He kept going. “Am I good?”
“I don’t know.”
“Am I bad?”
“Only you know that.”
“But, Jenna, I don’t know that.”
“Then how can I know?”
He sto
pped. Then his shoulders dropped and he spread his hands. “Well, well. It’s an uncertain world we live in. Isn’t it?”
He walked back to the window and leaned his shoulder against the worn wood. Raindrops flew through the opening, dappling his coat. Jenna felt as if she had been rolled across thorns. Who the hell was he, anyway? Apart from her boyfriend’s brother? She took a deep breath.
“It’s an uncertain world all right.” She looked at the back of his head, stilled as he watched the waves of rain sweep the field outside. “But that’s OK, Paul,” she said suddenly, unsure why the sight of his hair ruffling in the wind should make her want to say this to him. “It’s OK not to know.”
He turned slowly and faced her. Even against the light, she could see the sadness in his shadowed eyes. “No it’s not,” he said. “It’s not OK at all.”
Jenna turned away and sat heavily on the broken bench. She put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her knuckles. She felt depressed. He was messing with her head. She thought with longing of the uncomplicated solidity of Adam.
Something tiny moved near her foot. It was a woodlouse, its legs fussing along the floor.
“Hallo, Fred,” she said aloud.
She didn’t know Paul was close until he dropped to his heels in front of her to look at the woodlouse. He touched it lightly with his finger. It changed course.
“That’s not Fred,” he said. “That’s his Uncle George.”
Jenna looked closer. “So it is,” she said. “His nose is a different shape.”
Paul made it change direction again. “And his legs are shorter.”
Jenna nodded. “Right enough. Specially the second from the back on the left.”
Paul looked up at her, balancing easily on the balls of his feet. “But the real giveaway is the socks. Fred doesn’t have any socks that colour.”
She caught his eye. His smile was lopsided and mischievous. That was when she noticed his mouth. It was a wonderful mouth, unique, mobile, all his own. As he relaxed into seriousness again, his upper lip curved high into the two arcs of a tightly strung bow. The centre was deep and expressive, his lower lip full beneath, rising to deep corners that tucked into the curve of his pale cheek.
Maker of Footprints Page 4
