Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

  The door of the garden shed was warped and stuck. With a hard tug, it opened. Inside were only old rusty garden tools and in the corner a small litter tray. Jack must have been kept in here sometimes. Against the back wall of the shed there were faint footprints in the dusting of soil and grit of the floor. Jenna hunkered in front of them. Paul’s. They must be Paul’s. She felt a little throb of the heart just looking at them. She remembered his footprints on Rossnowlagh beach. Was that all he was going to leave – his footprints, so easily erased? She put her palms gently over them, closed her eyes and wished that the maker of these would come back to her.

  Over all this, the house sat solid and silent. Jenna peered over the higher sill of the kitchen window. She could see mugs and washing up liquid. There was a loaf of bread sitting out on the ledge above the fridge.

  She had to get inside. She stood back and looked up at the back of the house. There were no windows open anywhere. There was a pane of glass in the back door. A good crack with a stone might do it. She gave the door handle a shake – and was amazed to find it unlocked. She smiled wryly. Such a thing as remembering to lock the back door was probably a detail too far for Paul.

  Inside the wrapping, the bread was dotted with blue patches of mould. In the fridge there was a carton of milk. Jenna unscrewed the top and wrinkled her nose. She poured the curdled contents down the sink and washed it away. At the door into the sitting room she called his name, then stopped. They were photographs. The floor was strewn with black and white photographs. Behind the chair was a damaged and torn photograph album. She picked it up. It was a plain traditional album with leaves that used photo corners. Some leaves still hung, bent and torn, from the ripped spine. Her fingers lingered on the name written on the scuffed cover. It was her own, written in a graceful, cursive hand.

  Shocked, she picked up the scattered pictures and sank into the chair. They were all of herself. One by one, she looked at them. Here was the one taken last Christmas, by the sofa in this room. Paul had surprised her when she looked round, the gold cross for her mother hanging from her fingers. Her hair was longer then, tossed from her shopping trip with Dianne. She was wearing the denim jacket and the scarf lay in a heap on the floor beside her. Heat flooded her face as she remembered touching his bare foot and the intimacy of kneeling beside him as he sang ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ for her.

  Here were the ones he had taken the day he had searched for her at the university. She was laughing, mouth wide and eyes sparkling as she twirled the scarf above her head. Something like a sob escaped her as she lifted the next one. She was sitting on the grass, cross-legged. She could hear him now. “You look like a frog!”

  She slumped back and covered her face with her hands. He could put together a collection like this and then walk out of her life. Something wasn’t adding up. Urgency surged through her. Carefully, she folded the covers over the pile of photographs and set them on the sofa. She had to find him, had to. Then she saw the guitar. It was lying beside the chair, caught awkwardly against the side of the sofa, as if it had fallen. She picked it up by the neck and set it carefully against the wall where she knew Paul usually kept it.

  Paul would never let his guitar fall like that. He would certainly never leave it there. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  A mug was on the low table at the window. It was half full of cold coffee, with a skin of milk. In the hall, she called his name again, high and frightened. His phone was on the hall table. Little wonder his mother couldn’t get an answer. It was ringing here until the battery went dead.

  On the stairs she felt the full force of the emptiness, the abandonment around her. The soul of him was gone from here. The bedroom at the front of the house, where she should have sensed him most, was cold and stale. The dressing table was bare of brushes and creams. Dianne might never have been here. Even the wardrobe was empty. She looked at the bed, and felt heat throb within her. He would have made love to Dianne here. Slowly, she swept her hand across the cover. It was snow white with a small border of green leaves and pink flowers.

  What would it be like?

  When finally she turned to the door again, her eyes caught on a silver handle on the floor, protruding between the wall and the dressing table. She picked it up and turned it over. It was a brush; an expensive brush with an engraved back. Entwined in the bristles were blonde hairs. Jenna set it on the dressing table and shut the door tight behind her.

  The single bed in the smaller room had been slept in. The quilt was thrown back and there was still a depression in the pillow. This is where he slept. A bottle of water was on the windowsill with a packet of strong painkillers beside it. Jenna’s mouth was dry and fear for him was rippling over her skin. She knelt beside the bed and pulled the pillow towards her. With her head laid gently in the hollow that his head had made, she pushed her hands beneath the quilt to spread her fingers in the place where his body would have spread its warmth.

  Where are you, Paul? What has happened here?

  In the boxroom, the beetle still peeped from beneath the leaves in the photograph on the wall. She closed the door again. She didn’t want to find any more photographs.

  As she came down the stairs she saw the post in a heap beneath the letterbox. It was mostly junk, a few bills and a postcard from Austria. After the usual ‘having a great time’ message, the sender had scrawled, “So when are you coming back to the big smoke, Skipper? The aristos and eds miss you.”

  Skipper? The signature was illegible.

  She found a pen in the kitchen. On the back of one of the junk mail envelopes she wrote, “Paul, phone me as soon as you get back. Jenna.” She looked at it. It said nothing of how she was feeling, alone in the echoes of his house, in the deserted, musty kitchen. Nothing of the fright, the conviction that something was very wrong. Even if he would treat her like this, he would never go away without reassuring his mother. She took the pen again and scribbled, “I want to talk to you.” She chewed the pen. That’s stupid. But she didn’t want to cross it out. That would look even more stupid.

  The bolt on the back door was stiff as she worked it shut. When she slammed the front door behind her, she stood in the driveway and looked back. Now she wished she had brought something away with her, something to link her to this house that had been so full of him. The very air had tasted of his vigour and enthusiasm. Now it was diminished, forsaken, just bricks on a common street. On an impulse, she picked a bunch of daffodils from amongst the shrubbery and grass.

  Buses were running but traffic was sparse this Sunday morning. As she walked down the street to her own house, the bells on the church at the top of the road started to ring. It was the beginning of a new Sunday and yet she felt as if a long day had passed since she had left at dawn. Her footsteps slowed, her head lowered in thought as she inhaled the scent of the daffodils in her arms. Then she turned and went back up to the church. The flowers would last. Small gods or big ones, there was no-one else to ask.

  30

  HAZEL HAD GLEANED nothing from her phone calls to the hospitals. Now, she was even more concerned. So was Jenna.

  “No sign at his house either. It’s deserted and it looks as if he hasn’t been there for quite a while. Although the back door was open and I was able to check inside.”

  “The back door was open?” Hazel sighed in exasperation at her son. “That’s just typical! Was everything in order? Did you see anything unusual?”

  “Everything was fine.”

  “Did you lift his post?”

  “Yes, I did.” Jenna hesitated. Don’t hide everything. It won’t sound right. “There was just some junk mail and stuff and a postcard from a friend in Austria. I threw out some sour milk as well. And his phone was still in the house. No point in keeping trying to ring him.”

  There was a silence. Jenna didn’t know what to say next. Then Hazel spoke, her voice tense with worry.

  “What do we do now, Jenna?”

  “I think… wait. It’s all we can
do.”

  Jenna arranged the daffodils on the mantelpiece below the picture of the robin. Then she put the razor shell beside the daffodils. Upstairs, she took the black woollen hat from her teddy bear and brought it down to her chair. She pulled her legs up and curled into a ball with the hat on her knees.

  Not long ago, they had been together. He had been so good, so kind, so gentle. He had pulled her through a trauma as no other could have done. He had held up her family effortlessly, with an unerring instinct for what to say and when to say nothing. He had answered her cry with a generosity of spirit that was a revelation. Then he had walked away. She buried her face in the soft wool and cried out again, silent and pitched far, calling on the strength of the thread that she knew bound them together, for she had felt it do so.

  You kept the photos of me. You put them in an album. You wrote my name on it.

  Exhausted from her restless night and dawn rising, she fell asleep. Several hours later she woke, stiff and sore. Slowly she raised her head. Nothing had changed except that the room was dimming into evening; the shell still sat beside the daffodils, the hat was fisted tight in her fingers. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to quell the choking loneliness and fear.

  I’ve buried my halo, Paul. Come and see.

  This was the world without him, and now she knew she couldn’t bear it.

  Later, showered and in her towelling robe and pink slippers, she sipped a mug of coffee and tried to watch the news. A small sound outside her window made her look up. She turned off the television and listened again. Another noise, like a soft bump against her front door. Not a knock. Just a soft bump. She lifted a corner of the curtain and peeped out. There was a figure sitting on her steps, leaning forward, head hanging. The figure was wearing a black coat.

  She flew to the door.

  Paul raised his head and looked up over his shoulder at her. His face took away any words she might have spoken. His hair was unkempt and a week’s growth of beard made him strange, different to her eyes. And yet… and yet…

  In the light from her hallway, his eyes looked full of pain, the pupils large, a furrow of desolation marked on his brow. He opened his mouth to speak but it was just a hoarse whisper.

  “Are you drunk?” asked Jenna. Why did I ask him that?

  He put a hand on the wall and pushed himself to his feet, turning to face her, two steps above him.

  “My dear Jenna…” he coughed and cleared his throat. “… I don’t drink. Not a drop. Hadn’t you noticed?”

  She came down the steps, her slippers soft on the cold ground. “I’m sorry, I…”

  He leaned close and opened his mouth. She felt a puff of his breath on her cheek. He looked at her seriously.

  “Smell anything?”

  “No.”

  “Not even bad breath?”

  She shook her head.

  Suddenly he swung round in the street, arms flung wide.

  “Maybe I am drunk!” He raised his arms high and looked up. “I’m drunk on the night, on the stars, on God, on life…”

  He spun back towards Jenna and stopped. His hands stretched out towards her and his voice tripped on a sob.

  “Save me, Jenna.”

  She stood motionless, eyes fixed on his pleading figure. His hands dropped helplessly to his sides. Slowly he turned from her and began to walk away. Without knowing she formed the word, his name came from her lips, feather-soft. It reached him. As if no dogs barked, no babies cried, no traffic passed, it reached him. He stopped, his back still to her. She said it again, stronger.

  “Paul.”

  He swivelled on one foot, saw her lift her arm and hold out an open hand to him. Everything paused; nothing breathed. Then in four strides he reached her, ignored the open hand and went straight into her arms, allowing himself to be enfolded, caressed. This is what it must be like to be a mother, Jenna thought, stroking the back of his head, crooning, comforting, instinctively finding the universal sounds that wrap around the hurt and fear of a child.

  He buried his head in her shoulder and his arms came round to hold her so tight that he almost stopped her breath.

  She made him tea and a cheese sandwich. He sat in her chair and devoured it. She made him another. When she came back with this one, he had stopped chewing and was staring at her mantelpiece, at the daffodils and the shell and the robin. She sat on the sofa and watched him.

  “The daffodils are from your garden. I put them there and tried to make you hear me calling you.”

  “What time?”

  “About three.”

  He nodded. “You were at my house?”

  “This morning.”

  The shadows under his eyes blended into the darkness of stubble on his skin. Normally he was a mixture of dark and pale, with sea-blue eyes dancing behind the long fringes of his lashes. She had never seen him like this. He was defeated, distressed and achingly vulnerable.

  “Where have you been, Paul?”

  He dropped his head back in a gesture of exhaustion and didn’t reply. Instead, eyes closed, he extended his arm towards her, palm open.

  “I need you, Jenna.”

  This time she made no mistake. She took his hand and knelt beside him. “I’m here. I’m here now,” she said gently.

  His eyes opened and he turned his head to her. For a moment their gaze locked. Then he put his hand behind her head and twined his fingers in her hair. His other hand came round and found the warm skin of her shoulder beneath the collar of her robe. She felt a sensation totally new. Waves of something she couldn’t identify rolled through her body making her throat constrict and her legs tremble beneath her. Despite his fatigue and the dusting of beard that darkened his face, he was Paul, he was back, and he had come to her first. She drew in a breath that was pure power. Power over him and over herself. It helped her to draw away.

  She pulled him to his feet and took off his coat. He let her, passive, even submissive, as if all his energy to think for himself had gone from him.

  “You’ve still got the pink slippers,” he said suddenly, surprising her.

  She steered him to the door, certain in her movements.

  “Never mind my slippers. You need a shower and a good sleep. Come on. You know where the bathroom is. We can talk tomorrow.” He did as he was told, allowing her to take over, to direct him. Halfway up the stairs, she spoke to his back. “I’ll sleep on the couch this time. You need a bed.”

  He stopped momentarily and put a hand to the bannister to turn round. She gave him a little push. “Go on.”

  She found him a towel. Before he closed the bathroom door, he called her name, his voice stronger than before. She paused.

  “You’re not sleeping on the couch tonight. And neither am I.”

  She looked back. His eyes were brittle-bright. She felt as if her voice was coming from very deep in her throat. “I’ve only a single bed.” But it was a faint whisper and the last word was almost inaudible.

  Jenna couldn’t sleep. She lay on the couch in her bathrobe and waited. There was an inevitability about this night. A certainty. It filled the house, from the badly fitting back door to the fraying mat on the street step; from the hallway to the roof tiles. Longing pulsed in the air and Jenna could feel the rhythm in her own body.

  She waited. Merely a breath would tilt the scales on which she stood.

  She waited. Her life was about to change beyond redemption. How could fear and joy be melded into the one coin, struck from the one die? And how could that coin spin on its edge for such achingly long minutes?

  When she saw the faint glimmer of his body in the doorway, she thought that only he could descend those stairs without making a noise. Then she remembered. Paul Shepherd always gets what he wants. Maybe, this time, so would she.

  Silently he came to her side and dropped onto his heels. His hair was wet and tossed, a towel slung loosely from his hips. As he looked up into her face in the dim light, she could see the longing open and free, pooling fr
om the dark planes of his cheekbones into the deeper shadows of his eyes, tense in the muscles of his shoulders.

  If she moved now, there would be no going back. His gaze was like a blue magnet. Slowly, she put out her hand and her fingers gently touched that amazing mouth beneath the new dark hairs. He closed his eyes. With her index finger, she traced his upper lip, from one corner, up over the first curve of the bow; down into the dip; up again over the swell of the other curve until her finger came to rest lightly at the other corner. His mouth opened and he captured her fingertip gently. She felt the moisture of his tongue as his eyes opened again. He took hold of her hand and separated the fingers with great care. He kissed each one slowly, absorbed as if they were the most important things in the world at that moment. Then his mouth moved down into the hollow of her palm.

  Jenna swung her feet to the floor and sat forward a little, concentrating. Her hands moved over his shoulders, reached over to explore a little way down his back, traced the edges of his shoulder blades.

  He was so thin, but truly perfect still.

  She turned her attention to his mouth once again, her head tilted slightly to one side. She feasted on the sight, never before so softly attainable. Only one word slipped from her, a whisper on the edge of breath, “Yes”. His lips were soft and beautiful and moist and yielding. Then like a thunderbolt everything changed and she was being devoured, consumed, scorched. The gentle waves in her body grew into a raging storm.

  He broke away and stood quickly. He bent over her and slid one arm round her back, the other under her knees and lifted her.

  It was the beginning. The beginning of the end.

  As he turned at the top of the stairs, she clutched his neck more tightly, hiding her face. “Paul, I’ve never… I…”

  He pulled back. “I know.” He kissed her full on the mouth, long and soft. “What do you feel?” he whispered then.