Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

“You’re so like your father, Paul,” she said, soft, meant only for him. “He wouldn’t have been easy to live with either.”

  “I’m not hard to live with!”

  Her voice stayed low and serious. “I can see the strain in Dianne. She’s not settled and she’s not happy. All evening, the air between you two could be cut with a knife. Work at it while she still loves you.”

  He shook his head. “Apart from you, no-one ever has.”

  Adam revved the engine impatiently. Hazel turned and put one foot into the car. She looked up at Paul again. “Don’t be silly, son.” She lifted her finger in a gesture he remembered well. “And anyway, apart from me, how many people have you bothered to love?”

  Paul slammed the door.

  When he came back into the house Dianne was rattling plates as she cleared the table. “We’ll have to do these ourselves,” she said. He watched her.

  “Well, it’s the butler’s day off.”

  “Oh give it a rest!” she snapped.

  “I will if you will,” he shot back.

  There was dangerous tension in the air. Paul’s irritation was making his head ache. Jack was beginning to tire and abandoned the ping-pong ball to sit on the arm of the sofa. Paul gave the kitten a quick pat and began to lift dishes while Dianne dealt with the remnants of the meal. After a long silence she said, “I want that cat to go.”

  “He’s staying.”

  “You had no right to take him without asking me.”

  “I don’t need your permission to do anything.”

  She flung round. “You do because I live here too!” The silence stretched out again between them. Paul continued carefully stacking dishes. Then she said it. “There’s a solution to that, of course.”

  He looked round. “Luther wants you back.” It was a fact.

  Dianne raised her hands and dropped them again in frustration. “Paul, you are twenty-nine years old. You have talent to burn. You had a great career, a reputation most society photographers would die for.” She raised her voice. “What are you doing here? I’m no use to you here.”

  Paul turned and leaned back against the sink. “More to the point, I’m no use to you any more, am I?”

  She tossed her head. “No, you’re not. I deserve better.”

  He crossed his ankles. “Why do you think Luther wanted to marry you? He needed all the help he could get. Marrying you would have opened doors again for him and his wretched family.”

  “I was doing that for you!”

  His mouth curled in distaste. “You never do anything that isn’t for yourself.”

  “You are horrid! I hate you!” Dianne swung into the sitting room. Paul followed her, trying to get his prickling annoyance under control. She sat down on the sofa and knocked Jack onto the floor with a sweep of her arm. It made it easier for Paul to say what he wanted to say.

  “I’m going to move into the spare room. Tonight.”

  She looked up, her mouth a thin line. “Very well. Perhaps that would be a good idea.”

  He made an effort. “Dianne, it’s not just you. I don’t make anyone happy…”

  Dianne let out a sudden squeal of rage. She was looking down the side of the sofa. She plunged her hand down and pulled out a handbag. One of the shoelace straps had been bitten in two; the chewed ends dangled bizarrely from each side. Dianne thrust it towards Paul.

  “Look what that cat has done!” she yelled. “It’s a Fendi.” Before Paul could move, she reached down the side of the sofa again and swept Jack into the air by the scruff of his neck. Dangling from her fingers, he wriggled in distress as, swinging him high, she stormed into the kitchen. Paul strode after her.

  “Careful with him!”

  Dianne opened the back door and hurled the kitten across the back path. There was a thump and a high pitched cry. Paul reached Dianne in a fury.

  “What the hell have you done to him? If you’ve injured him I’ll…”

  She turned round and spat, “You’ll what?”

  With all the force of her arm she flung the door shut.

  “Stop!” Paul had seen what Dianne did not. Jack had rolled quickly to his feet and was running back through the door. There was a silent resistance as the door stopped before it latched. Jack was so small there wasn’t even the sound of a snap to account for the strange angle of the kitten’s head as it lay caught in the sharp edge of the door.

  Paul swore and pushed Dianne roughly out of the way. Her hand was over her mouth, her eyes huge and all her rage vanished. “I didn’t mean to do that. Paul? Paul? I swear. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Paul opened the door gently and, as he lifted him, a night breeze rippled the fur on Jack’s motionless back.

  “He’s dead.” Paul’s voice was hoarse as he examined the little body. “His neck’s broken.”

  The look he turned on his wife was one that made her back away in fear. His hand itched to hit her. He was giddy with the desire to lash out; blinded by a broken dam of annoyance and frustration. Control came slowly. He would not hit her. He would despise himself. Instead he filled his lungs and roared.

  “Go to hell! Go back to England where you belong! One or the other. Get out of my sight!” Dianne was trembling, her arms crossed in front of her in defence against his rage. “Now!” he roared again.

  Dianne turned and fled.

  22

  PAUL STRODE DOWN the central corridor of the university. He had taken many graduation photographs when he had a studio in England, but he had never been in a university before. He had no idea there would be so many cars and so many people. He had driven round the entire campus once. Finally, he had bounced the car onto a patch of grass and abandoned it impatiently.

  Inside, there were people everywhere: students, older people who might have been lecturers, mature students, catering staff, cleaners. Paul’s eyes swivelled and searched, stabbed into corners, scanned above heads. Notice boards, shiny notices, tatty notices, notices in Chinese. He passed a clattering snack bar and went in, searched, swung out again. People laughing, arguing, poring over notes. Sitting, standing, squatting, thumbing mobiles.

  Paul went on and on and on. He passed the chaplain’s room. He spun back and veered into it. A man, there on his own, looked up and smiled. “Hi…”

  “Jenna Warwick. I’m looking for Jenna.”

  The man’s smile widened. “Yeah, she’s about. Why don’t you ring her mob…”

  “It’s switched off.”

  “Ah. Well, she doesn’t have much on a Wednesday so she’s usually in the library. That would explain…”

  “Where’s the library?”

  The man came to the door and pointed. “It’s back that…”

  Paul didn’t hear the rest.

  This library was big. Not like the one Christopher used to take him to every Saturday. Adam liked books on cars and aeroplanes, with lots of pictures. Paul went for stories. He would creep into a corner and sit alone. He didn’t need pictures, they were all in his head: shooting rapids; leaping across the rooves of skyscrapers. The trembled thrill at his core was physical. He still felt it sometimes: the curl of the squirrel’s tail; the slash of a shooting star; a nugget of snow cupped in the twist of a holly leaf.

  And now. Knowing she was here somewhere – he might be about to see her, to find her. He put his hand on the end of a book stack. Round this shelf? Maybe over at that table? Round this corner? He wished and searched. Hunted and wished. It had worked before. In that study booth? Maybe down these steps, reaching her hand up to fetch down a book? His rapid steps, his darting eyes, the swing of his coat, were pulling looks his way.

  Momentarily he lost his sense of where he was. He turned too fast. Dizzy, he dropped into a chair and covered his face. How many damn shelves were in this place? He squeezed his eyes shut within the blackness of his palms and wished again, urgently, furiously. She was a studybug. She had to be here. Had to be.

  Jenna trudged up the main drive from the shore. She had meant to be i
n the library by now, but a prickly restlessness kept her on the move, sent her down to look over Belfast Lough from the patch of grass and rock near the bus stop. She hitched her bag up on her shoulder as she wandered to the main steps, up and into the long corridor. She slowed. Maybe she should give it a miss today. Head back into town and window shop. Maybe drop in and see Dianne. She could ask about Paul, casually. “So how’s that husband of yours? Set up his studio yet?” She turned back. Slowed again. The less she knew of Paul the better. She frowned, working it out. It was eight days since he had slept on her sofa and vanished in the early morning. Eight days and still he lived in her mind like an inset in a picture. Yesterday was his birthday. She shook her head. No, she really had to work today. She turned back and headed for the library.

  When Paul lifted his head from his hands he saw the rows of computers at the other side of the room. He stood up and scanned them. She wasn’t there. He slumped against the bookstack and felt the familiar rush of the tide of loneliness threatening him again. It lapped at his feet and began to rise.

  Then he saw her. She was wearing her cream coat, her canvas bag slung from her shoulder and bumped against her hip. She walked towards the lines of computers, edged her way past chairs, stopped to lean over and chat to a male student across a divider. They exchanged a laugh. She found an empty seat and shrugged off her coat. Another student waved across at her. She waved back as she sat, dumped her bag on the floor. Her hair skimmed her ear and she tucked it back out of the way as she bent to her bag and pulled out a file.

  Now that he’d seen her, he stayed where he was, a smile hovering. Watching the screen, she tapped keys. Then she opened her file and flipped a few pages. She set it down and began typing. She looked back at the page, her fingers paused over the keyboard. Then she typed a bit more. She stopped, sat back and flexed her fingers on the edge of the table, frowning at the screen. Paul’s smile widened. He was watching her in her world, a place he had never been. There was intimacy in this. He was close, seeing her as she was when he was nowhere in her universe, far from her thoughts. Her fingers rattled on the keys again, slowed, stopped. She leaned forward and put her chin in her hand.

  She’d bought him a birthday present. How pathetic can you be? Hi, I bought you a book. Oh, no reason. I just saw it and knew you’d like it. It’s nothing, really. Of course, maybe I got your birthday wrong? Couldn’t quite remember what you’d said. Liar.

  She lifted her chin from her hand and shook her head to clear it, to concentrate.

  She’d moved her head and her hair had fallen from its niche behind her ear to feather round her jawline. He began to move towards her. Enough of this.

  At last she was beginning to get somewhere. This paragraph actually made sense. Hmm. She began to type again, rapidly now.

  She was four seats along in the row. He called her name.

  She looked round at the first sound. The inset flared and became the picture.

  “Come with me, Jenna.”

  She felt a flush creeping from her neck and into her cheeks.

  Heads bobbed up around her.

  “I’m working,” she said in a loud whisper.

  “Come with me,” he said again, clearly. More heads turned. He glanced round, then back. “If you don’t come with me, I’ll sing ‘Hound Dog’ again. Loud.”

  She stood up, scarlet, and began to edge past the three chairs between herself and Paul.

  “Bring your stuff.”

  “Paul, I’ve just arrived,” she hissed.

  He mimed playing his guitar and took a deep breath. “You ain’t…”

  “All right!” Furious, she gathered up her things. The student she had spoken to earlier had tipped his chair back, arms crossed and a grin on his face.

  The first giggle tickled Jenna’s throat when they were passing the security gate on the drive down to the shore. Paul slowed for the junction with the main road as the giggles became laughter. He eased the car into a rare gap in the traffic, moved up a gear and glanced round.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are!”

  His face relaxed into a smile. If she lifted her hand she could touch the crease of his coat at his elbow. Her laughter died and she didn’t speak again until, a few hundred yards further on, he pulled into the park at the Lough Shore.

  Silence flooded the car. He turned in his seat, towards her. It was happening again. Rossnowlagh; when he stopped the car and told her he wasn’t twenty-nine. He was now. She tilted her head slightly in question.

  “What is it?”

  He pulled the door handle. “I’ve something to show you.”

  She opened her own door. “Right now? That whole exhibition was just because you want to show me something?”

  As they slammed the doors, he looked at her over the roof, slight puzzlement between his brows. “Yes. So?”

  He went to the boot and opened it. She followed. Inside she saw two tripods, a camera lying loose and a bag, the zip partly open to show the dark cap of a lens.

  There was also a shovel and a green towel, folded into a ball, wrapping something.

  Paul picked the towel up carefully, held it in his palm. Jenna watched his long fingers pull the folds apart, drop the corners to hang below his hand. Shock knocked her speechless. Jack was curled in a ball as if asleep by a fire. Paul’s finger stroked over the ear, gently down the shoulder, followed the line of the curved leg and touched the curled white paw. But there was no purr, no yawn, no flexing of the toes in pleasure, no pink tongue flicking across the nose.

  Jenna put her hand on the fur and felt the stiff coldness of him. “What happened?”

  “He chewed a Fendi handbag.”

  She looked up, her hand still on the black fur. “That was a death sentence?”

  “It turned out that way.” He began to fold the towel over the kitten’s body again. “His neck was broken.”

  “But not by you.”

  “Not by me.”

  She turned and walked across the car park towards the sea. A short path ran beside the stone wall of a raised flowerbed. There was a long bench running the length of the curved wall on the side that faced the sea. She sat in the middle of it. She heard him lock the car and follow her.

  When he sat beside her, she saw he had brought the bundle and the spade.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He was cute little guy.”

  “The best.”

  “Luke will be sorry too.”

  “Yeah.”

  He had left space between them. “Why did you tell me now? You could have told me some time, phoned even.” She shrugged. “He’s only a cat, after all.”

  His head swung round. “Yes, he was. But everything…” he swept his hand round, encompassing the sea, the land, herself “… everything is also what you make it.”

  “And what did you make of Jack?”

  He pulled one knee across the seat to face her. “Company.

  Fun. Something that loved me.” His elbow was on the back of the seat, hand on his chin, one finger crooked at his lips as he thought. “Something connected to you.”

  She looked away quickly, across the stones and the short beach ridged with seaweed. There weren’t many birds about, or people. It felt cold and barren. She couldn’t decide what to say, except that he shouldn’t say things like that.

  He stood. “So I want you with me when I bury him.”

  She looked down at the concrete slabs under their feet.

  “Where are you going to bury him?”

  He put his foot on the seat beside her and in one leap was on the top of the wall, standing on the scrub of the winter flowerbed. “Reach me up the spade.”

  Jenna took a quick look up and down the path. The only person about was jumping across stones further along the beach. She lifted the spade and pushed it up onto the wall. She lifted the folded towel up also. Then she held out her hand to him. “Help me up.”

  Swiftly his hand reached down and clasped her wrist. She wrap
ped her own hand round his and stepped up. Her palm slid into his as she got her balance beside him. Then she let go. Paul scraped clear a patch beneath the brown leaves and bark that crusted the soil. It was good soil with only fine and dormant roots and he was able to dig deep. When he stood back, Jenna placed the small bundle in the hole. Then she took the spade from him and filled in the hole herself. Paul bent and pulled the bark and leaves across the fresh soil. When they stood back, no one would have been able to tell that Jack lay beneath.

  They sat on the edge of the wall, their feet hanging over the seat below. Across the rumpled surface of the grey lough, a cargo ship nosed its way towards the open sea. A dog trotted by on the rough beach, the stem of a frond of seaweed gripped proudly in its teeth.

  Jenna watched the ship, the scent of the sea strong in her head, her hair blown across her face. “Had to be a door,” she said.

  Paul looked back towards the city, where two huge yellow cranes stapled the shipyard to the city. “Yep.”

  “Dianne?”

  “Yep.”

  “Having a row?”

  “Yep.”

  Neither spoke for a minute.

  Then Jenna said, “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “So don’t be too hard on her.”

  He didn’t reply to that. They sat for another while in silence. Then Paul jumped down and held up his hand for hers. She pushed it away.

  “I jumped the fence at home. This is a doddle.”

  She jumped down, turned and pirouetted proudly in front of him, ending in a mock bow. He put his hands in his pockets and grinned.

  “The circus for you!” Abruptly, he stopped talking, his eyes still on her face. His hand came up and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Tucked it behind her ear. “I want to photograph you,” he said.

  She twisted her head away from him. “Don’t be daft!”

  “It’s not daft.” He looked up at the sky, checked the clouds. “The light’s OK and you look brilliant.” He took a few steps backwards and then turned to sprint back to the car park. “Stay there!” he called over his shoulder. When he came back, he had a camera slung around his neck and a tripod tipped over his shoulder.