Maker of Footprints

by Sheila Turner Johnston

  “You fell. Or fainted or something. Don’t move for a minute.” He moved to push himself upright, but she held him back.

  “Stay still.”

  The darkness of his hair against the cream fur was somehow memorable, a nugget of this moment preserved in textured colour.

  He lay obediently, a puzzled frown between his brows. “I missed the bannister!” he said suddenly. He looked at her, amazed. “I missed the bannister. I reached for it and then…” He frowned again. Jenna bent to thumb away the lines creased above his wide blue eyes. Beneath the coat he gripped his left arm, his eyes unfocused as his fingers traced the flesh. His gaze flew up to her again and she waited, still stroking his head, silent, watching the first drops of blood creep from his nostrils.

  “My arm didn’t go where I told it to.”

  Minutes later he stood up carefully and Jenna slipped the coat onto him.

  “OK now?”

  Her throat felt rusty, unused. In the pockets of the coat she found several tissues to soak up the blood that ran from him. It stopped more quickly this time. She wound her arms round him and tried not to feel the weakness in his arm as he gathered her in.

  There was everything to say, and nothing.

  It was just an accident. Maybe you tripped.

  Yes, maybe.

  You must have a bruised behind!

  Wait till I try sitting down!

  You were awful to Max.

  Now I won’t have the fun of letting you catch me.

  There was the unspoken to speak.

  It can’t be yet. It can’t be. We’ve had no time.

  Frantic kisses: eyebrows, lips, ears; a tight, tight embrace as if there were one body and not two.

  We’re going to find a doctor today.

  No!

  Rocking, rocking, rocking.

  I’ll have to do more of the driving. But that’s OK. I’m a bad passenger.

  We’ll fall out.

  Making up’ll be fun.

  We’re going to find a doctor today.

  No!

  Yes!

  Then the last, dragged out from its deep, long-bolted dungeon.

  Will you be with me when I tell my mother?

  35

  UP IN A lift, along a grey corridor, past wide lobbies with wheelchairs and patients’ trolleys, past notices telling everyone to wash their hands and how to phone the Samaritans, in a small consultant’s room with a washbasin, boxes of latex gloves on the wall and a couch covered with paper from a roll at one end, Jenna heard with her own ears confirmation of what Paul had told her.

  To please her (“That’s another first,” said Jenna), Paul submitted to further tests. She heard words that she had never heard before; heard of remission and aggression. Then there were the words ‘prognosis’ and ‘grave’ and Paul shaking his head at every suggestion of treatment. When risks and limited benefits were explained, Jenna could only agree with him.

  In the warm sunshine of an afternoon in May, they left the hospital gates and took a bus to the centre of the city. On a bench in the grounds of the City Hall, they ate some sandwiches and watched the buses snaking their way round to their forest of stops. People queued, or jogged after them, or tapped their feet and looked at their watches.

  Several pigeons bobbed round the bench and Paul threw down a crust. A fight broke out and the pigeon with the crust was chased by three others who gave up when the crust was airborne in a clatter of wings over the statue of Queen Victoria.

  Paul was being moody. This afternoon’s appointment wasn’t one to be happy after.

  “Buses,” he said.

  “Cars,” she replied. She was used to this.

  He looked out across the crowds and up along Donegall Place.

  “Shops.”

  “Children.”

  “School children.”

  “Homework.”

  His mouth twitched a little. “Maths!”

  She groaned. “French!”

  He looked round at the magnificent façade of the City Hall, the white stone, the pillars, the green dome. “Beautiful.”

  “Photograph.”

  “Luke.”

  “Luke photographed the City Hall?”

  He nodded. “Many times. I gave him several projects to do on it.”

  “He’s very cross about you.”

  “I know. He waved his crutch at me and said…” he rumpled his hair to mimic Luke “… ‘Shit, Paul, that’s not fair! Why aren’t you mad?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I was mad. It’s just that it makes my head hurt and it hurts enough already.”

  An ambulance raced past, was held up by a white van, squeezed round it and blared through the traffic lights. Jenna thrust her hands into her pockets and frowned. “What’s it all for, Paul? You and me.”

  He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve fallen in love big time, and now…” she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Am I supposed to know the answer to that?”

  “Send me an e-mail from the after-life when you find out.”

  “Straight to your Dad’s computer!”

  How could they be funny? How could they make jokes and feed pigeons and look in shop windows and go home and decide what to have for dinner? Knowledge lumped on her shoulders like a bag full of stones. The fact that his mother refused to believe it added to the burden. Nonsense, she had said. You always suffered from headaches. Take some aspirin.

  Paul had been quiet for a long time after they had visited Hazel and come home with an apple tart and a chocolate cake. Then he told Jenna, “I think we should let my mother believe what she wants. In the end it’ll be easier for her. We’re alike and I understand her. She’s reacting just the way I did. Leave her alone for now.”

  It was the middle of the night when he spoke. They did a lot of talking in the dark hours. The daytime was for living, seeing, doing, filling as much time as they could together, pulling back on time, straining against the passage of days and the weakness of flesh. But at night, lying wrapped up together, the soul was thin-skinned. There was a lifetime of sharing to be parcelled into those nights, those dwindling nights.

  When she scolded him for not telling her of his illness because, if she had known, she would have given in to him earlier, he snorted with derision.

  “No, you wouldn’t! You would have run away a lot further.” He stroked his hand along her side. “Anyway, once I accepted it myself, I tried to put you out of my mind. It didn’t work.”

  There were times when he went away on his own for there were thoughts that even she could not help him with – or rather, thoughts that he spared her. Then she worried as he became more unsteady and could not drive any more. Yet she knew that it was good and necessary for him to be alone. Despite their love and closeness, Paul Shepherd was a man owned by no-one.

  At times also, she had to be alone herself, to take deep ragged breaths of fury, to rage, to walk and walk and walk and wonder how she would get through this. It’s all right for him, the bastard! I’m going to be still here with a whole life to live round the gaping void of his absence. And then the roaring anger would fade as she realised that that was how her life would have been anyway, barren and cold, if he had not come to her that night. It was better, inexpressibly better, to have known him and loved him, to have become soft and vulnerable because of him. To have delighted in a conjunction of physical, mental and emotional joy was to hold forever a strength in the heart.

  Donald and Cora’s inevitable disapproval was overlaid by shock and distress at what awaited Paul. Jenna talked to her father for a whole afternoon, holding nothing back, dissecting goodness and badness, trying to put into words that made sense how she was torn apart by joy and grief, made ragged by the twin claws of love and fear.

  Now he knew what had tormented her mind when she sat in his study before, when they had talked about boundaries and dragons and when she had refused to promise that she would rema
in his little girl. He gave her no answers and she respected him more for that than if he had uttered trite phrases and glib assurances. In the end, there was a trace of salt on his own cheek when he hugged her.

  “Life’s not fair, young lady. Life’s not fair. And it’s not black and white either.” He sighed. “Some people think it is, but they’re the people who haven’t lived.”

  Jenna rested her head on his shoulder and absorbed the scent of her father, a scent that had been so familiar to her all her life. “They’ve stayed in the cage,” she replied.

  “Yes, they’re safe…”

  “But bored!” She raised her head to smile.

  Cora was more forthright. She whisked a feather duster round the living room. “What do you mean – he won’t take treatment? Of course he’ll take treatment. Lasers or surgery or something.”

  “It’s dangerous, Mum, and wouldn’t help much…”

  Cora lifted a wooden elephant, a present from a missionary on furlough from Zambia, and swatted it with the duster. “So a brain tumour isn’t dangerous? What’s the man thinking of? He needs to think of you, Jenna.” She pummelled a cushion and then sat down abruptly, the feather duster dangling from her hand. “Really! My son has been nearly killed, my daughter has given up university in the middle of her course. She’s living with a married man, and…” she waved the feather duster “… she’s not making him get himself cured.” Jenna took a breath to speak, but Cora’s breath was quicker. “You know what Mrs McCormick said to me the other day? She said it must be lovely living in a manse. You’re all so good; it must be so calm.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Nobody makes Paul do anything. And I think you’re losing your duster.”

  Cora lifted it. Half of it was missing and Jenna’s cat was shaking feathers from her whiskers.

  Luke had an exam in the afternoon and Donald went to collect him. Luke was still finding his leg stiff and he tired easily. He was pleased to see Paul. After tea, Donald and Paul went for a walk alone. Jenna didn’t know which of them had suggested it; it just seemed to happen. She never knew what they talked about. All Paul would say later was, “I like your Dad.”

  Then he and Luke began to talk photography and Paul’s cameras were retrieved from the car. Heads together, they sat on the floor of the lounge and discussed portrait photography. Paul explained soft boxes and umbrellas and how to disguise the subject’s double chin, or big nose.

  “But the very best light to use is natural light,” he said. “If you can, place your subject outside, or in light from a window.”

  Luke put a table lamp on the floor and crawled round Paul, moved the lamp, looked again, shuffled further, his long legs hitting the television stand. Only Jenna noticed Paul’s slightly slower movements, his constant checking of his left arm, flexing of his fingers.

  Luke rocked back on his heels and set the camera down. “Yeah, I see what you mean.” He pulled at the carpet, mussing it, quiet. His Adam’s apple worked in his throat.

  Paul punched him on the shoulder nearly overbalancing him. “Cheer up! Did I tell you I’m leaving you all my cameras and stuff?”

  Luke scrambled to his feet, his hands clenched by his sides. “Shit, Paul! Won’t you even try?”

  Then he fled from the room. Cora was appalled. “I’m so sorry, Paul…”

  Paul raised a finger and silenced her. I wish that worked for everyone, thought Jenna. How does he do it? Supporting himself on a chair, he pulled himself to his feet. “He needs an explanation.”

  He touched Jenna on the shoulder as he passed her to follow Luke. It was a habit she loved. He touched her at every opportunity, lightly, fleetingly, a tactile symbol of his passionate allegiance.

  They stayed the night. Sleeping arrangements were never discussed. What her parents did not mention, they did not have to confront. Jenna was the last to bed and she stood in the hall in the soft light from the lamp above the family portrait. It seemed like a lifetime ago. She barely recognised herself now. That was a different girl. Her long untrimmed hair spilled across her shoulders. Her hand rested casually on her father’s shoulder where Paul had asked her to put it, her nails pink with the varnish that Dianne had applied. That was a portrait of Missy. This afternoon her father had called her ‘young lady’. She doubted that his old name for her would ever cross his lips again.

  Just at that moment, she felt a strange sensation. There was a settling inside her, a faint feeling that something had subtly, minutely changed. She felt a tingling in her nipples, a new sensitivity. Her hands cupped her breasts and her lips curved into a woman’s smile. She had wondered; now she knew. There was still time to wait, just to be sure, before she told Paul.

  The middle-aged man who strode through baggage reclaim was ruler-straight and distinguished. His small leather case was of the highest quality as, it was obvious, was he. In no doubt that this was Toby, Jenna moved to greet him. He shook her hand formally and his glance slipped to her still-flat stomach before returning to her face.

  “You are as lovely as he said you were. You are well?”

  “Paul told you?”

  His beard dipped. “Indeed, my dear. With great excitement. How is he?”

  “It’s… things are moving a bit faster now.” She swallowed and Toby put his arm round her back as they crossed to the car park. “He wanted to come, but he was so sound asleep I couldn’t bear to try to bring him round. I left him a note in case he wakes.”

  “Has he pain?”

  “Not as much as we feared. And he has quite a cocktail of pills now. He’s mostly sleepy and a bit unsteady.”

  Toby nodded and did not speak again as Jenna slipped Paul’s car into the rush hour traffic. Having to do all the driving now was just one of many things that made life stressful. When they arrived, Paul was in the hallway leaning on the door frame. He was irritated.

  “I wanted to go, damn it, Jenna!” He hurled something that landed behind the telephone on its shelf. It was the note she had left on the table beside him as he slept on the sofa, his head pillowed on the black and red cushion.

  “Charming as ever, I see.” Toby appeared behind Jenna, his voice calm and tinged with humour. He held out his hand and Paul took it, still grumpy. Jenna was hanging her coat on a peg when Toby let Paul’s hand slip and pulled him into a bear hug, slapping his back. When he released him, Toby’s eyes were moist.

  Jenna made a snack while the two men talked. Toby wanted to know everything that had been said at his most recent hospital visits. Paul told him sporadically, sometimes searching for words as if he couldn’t quite pick the correct ones. Jenna wasn’t hungry and was content to sit in a corner of the sofa listening, putting in her own comments now and then. Paul occupied ‘her’ chair and Toby seemed relaxed at the other end of the sofa. What does Toby see, I wonder? Paul was thinner, the beautiful planes of his face attenuated and angular, his natural pallor now an unrelieved white. But his eyes were still so blue, so very blue. They still danced with life and love when he was awake, as they sparkled now, his irritation easing away in the pleasure of seeing an old friend.

  Finally there was no more to tell. Toby, legs neatly crossed, became quieter, thinking, distracted. Jenna filled the silence by offering sandwiches, another drink. Paul’s eyes had closed again and his face was still in the light of the early summer evening outside.

  “You are very brave, Jenna.”

  She shook her head. “No I’m not. I love him. That’s all.”

  He nodded. “That is indeed all.” He lifted his bag from the floor and snapped it open. “I would like to do a few checks myself, if he will allow it. Just minor, you understand.”

  “Do you even go on holiday with your stethoscope, you old quack?” Paul’s voice made them both swing round. His eyes were open again. “Come on then. You can’t do me any more harm.”

  Later, when he snapped his bag shut again and sat, Toby seemed uneasy.

  “If you want to say something, say it,” said Paul, irritation creepi
ng into his voice again.

  “You haven’t asked about Dianne.”

  Paul’s eyebrows rose. “Why should I?”

  Toby sat forward and spread his hands. “Why indeed?” His stance was uncharacteristically tense. Jenna watched him, alert. There was something going to be said. “She is well again. But…” Toby stood up suddenly and spoke quickly, firmly. “I have decided to tell you something that I should not tell you because it is not my position to do so.”

  Paul frowned. “About Dianne?”

  “About the abortion.” Jenna’s eyes flew to Paul. Don’t upset him please! His fingers tensed on the arms of the chair. Toby continued, resolute. “Despite all her outward confidence, she wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of the father of the baby. She was fairly sure but not totally. Unknown to anyone, she asked for tests to be performed on the foetus.” He pointed to Jenna. “Paul, this young lady is the mother of your child. Dianne’s was not yours.”

  Jenna’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. Then she dropped to the floor and slid to Paul’s side. His head had gone back, loose against the chair, his eyes shut tight, his breathing fast. Jenna gripped his hand and dropped her forehead to his arm. Toby sat down again quietly, leaving them in their silence. When Paul pulled himself forwards, Jenna looked up into his eyes. There was nothing more to say. Except one thing.

  “Luther’s?”

  Toby shook his head. “Already I have spoken where I should not. And only for your sake. I can say no more. Dianne said she hadn’t told you and I could not live with that.” He coughed. “As a friend.”

  It was past eleven o’clock that night when Jenna pulled the car into the pavement in a leafy avenue in south Belfast. All the way across the city, Toby had spoken of the beautiful buildings, the new developments, the flurry of night life. Not by one word did he refer to having said goodbye to Paul. Jenna had left them alone. She had sensed that she should give them that.

  This was the home of an old friend with whom Toby had trained many years ago and where he was staying the night. The street lighting rippled in the swaying shadows of cherry trees, in full leaf now, their flowers long shed. Across the road, a woman patiently held a slack lead as her poodle lifted its leg against a tree.