The Girl From Barefoot House (22 page)

It was no use beating about the bush with Louisa. ‘It
was Mrs Kavanagh, Lily’s mam, to say me father died yesterday.’

‘Oh, my dear! But …’ the heavy brows puckered ‘… I could have sworn you told me your father was already dead.’

‘I did. I told everyone he was dead. Mrs Kavanagh is the only one who knows the truth.’ Josie swung her legs off the window seat and rested her chin in her hands. ‘It’s funny, but it’s only today, now that he’s dead, that I’ve thought about him as me father. He was also me Uncle Vince, you see, Auntie Ivy’s husband. I told you a bit about them, too. Me father and me uncle were the same person.’

‘How extraordinarily interesting,’ Louisa remarked. She lit a cigarette. ‘Tell me more. For instance, was your mother a willing accomplice in the deceit?’

Josie smiled. It was just the sort of reply she would have expected from Louisa who, unlike most people, would never come out with expressions of sympathy and shock. ‘No, he forced himself on her. He tried to do the same with me, but I kicked him in the stomach.’

‘Good for you. You should have aimed for the balls, much more painful.’ She flicked ash on the floor. ‘So, why are you mooning around because this despicable individual has died? I would have thought it a cause for celebration.’

‘Oh, I dunno.’ Josie turned to stare at the lights across the water. Louisa was reflected in the window, watching her with interest. ‘It just feels unnatural not to
care
that your father’s dead. I feel as if I’m missing out on something.’

‘I can never understand why we are automatically expected to love our relatives,’ Louisa said irritably. ‘I respected my father, but I never loved him. I felt sad
when he died, that’s all. Mom, now, I miss her still.’ Her face creased tenderly. ‘She was my best friend. I was an only child, so I have no idea how I would have felt about siblings. As for my children, I expected to love them – I
wanted
to love them – but when they were born they were such an ugly little pair I asked the nurse to take them away.’ She smiled ruefully as she attempted to get off the bed. ‘I’ve rather missed being a doting mother. Come, let’s go downstairs and you can make us some coffee. We can continue this conversation there.’

Eighteen months later Louisa suffered another stroke, only a mild one but she had to stay in bed for weeks. She was a fearsome patient, browbeating mercilessly the private nurse, Miss Viney, who came to see her twice a day – the only person she would allow to give her the bedpan. At other times Josie was ordered from the room, while she dragged herself to the commode, which only Miss Viney was allowed to empty.

Mr Bernstein and Lily were forbidden to visit. On Saturdays Phoebe and her husband, Alf, spent the day at Barefoot House, so Josie could have time off, to go dancing or to the pictures with Lily. The rest of the time she stayed in because Louisa couldn’t be left on her own.

‘I’ll be all right,’ Louisa growled awkwardly, the stroke having slightly impaired her speech. ‘Ask that stupid nurse in.’

‘I’ll do no such thing. The poor woman’s terrified of you. I don’t want to add to her misery. Do you feel better now that you’ve got the telephone next to the bed?’ Josie had arranged for the telephone company to move it.

‘As long as you continue to answer it. I don’t want to be stuck with one of my girls. But it’s nice talking to Mr
Bernstein or Thumbelina. Did I tell you she’s just married husband number seven? He collects oil wells the way some people collect stamps.’

For something to do, Josie attacked the front garden. She dug up the dead bushes and the dried yellow grass, and broke down the crusty, clay-like soil. Alf removed the trees, sawed the dead wood into logs and stacked them in the garage.

‘They should keep the fire going a treat,’ he said. He was a tall, robust man with the strength of an ox. ‘See you through the winter, that lot.’

Josie knew nothing about gardens. She’d assumed everything had to be grown from seed, and was thrilled to discover you could buy plants partially grown, and a ready-made lawn in the form of turfs, from a place called a nursery. Alf said there was one of these magic places not far away.

She spent her twentieth birthday pushing and pulling the rusty garden roller she’d found in the garage over the hard earth to make it smooth enough for a lawn, nearly dislocating her arms in the process. As soon as it was done, she drove to the nursery, bought dozens of hardy plants which she put in the car, and ordered turfs and a wooden bench for Louisa to sit on when the garden was finished, to be delivered next day.

That afternoon she planted the border, putting a handful of bonemeal in the hole with each plant as the woman in the nursery had suggested. The day was hot and the sun burned down on her back, so she was exhausted by the time she finished. Despite this, she was outside early next morning, impatiently waiting for the lorry to arrive, and had already begun to lay the turfs before the driver had finished unloading. At eight
o’clock that night, Barefoot House could boast a neatly laid lawn, surrounded by a border of bushes and tiny flower plants. There was a bench beneath the window of Louisa’s room. Josie went inside to tell her the garden was finished. ‘You can come and look now.’

‘Do you think I haven’t looked already? You’ve been bobbing up and down outside my window for weeks.’ Louisa had only been allowed out of bed a few days and was in a dreadful temper. She longed to go shopping or to the pictures, but was too weak to walk more than a few yards. She flatly refused to go merely for a drive. ‘It would be too fucking boring.’

Josie took her arm, noticing how thin it was again, and how bent her back had become, and how slowly she shuffled from the house, barely able to lift her feet between each step. She led her to the bench and helped her sit. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ Louisa asked acidly. Her tongue was as sharp as ever.

‘Look at the view, smell the fresh air, enjoy the atmosphere. It’s a beautiful evening, Louisa.’ Josie sniffed appreciatively. Apart from two boys some distance away, playing football, the beach was deserted. The tide was receding in a ruff of creamy-white froth, and the gleaming ribbon of wet sand left in its wake was getting wider and wider. Gulls rode the waves as lightly as bubbles.

‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I’d like my cigarettes, though.’

‘I thought it would be nice for you to sit here early in the morning,’ Josie said when she returned. ‘Or late at night, when it’s dark, round September, like. If I put the bench by the other window, you can see the lights across the water.’

‘Is that all you’ve got to think about?’ Louisa said in a
cold voice. ‘Where I am to sit come September?’ She lit a cigarette. ‘At your age, you should be concentrating on young men, clothes, movies, having a good time. I thought of little else when I was sixty, let alone twenty. As for gardening, it was furthest from my mind, along with similar stultifyingly boring pursuits.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

Louisa gave her a contemptuous look. ‘Oh, I am. And Marian and Hilary will be delighted. You’ve increased the value of the house no end. What shall you do next to get rid of your excess energy? Paint the windows, the door, decorate inside? Everywhere could do with a lick of paint, and we can both sit and watch it dry. Where’s Ronald?’ she asked unexpectedly, and peered around the garden, as if expecting Ronald to pop up from behind a newly planted bush.

‘I gave him up.’

‘Why?’

Josie squirmed. ‘We didn’t get on.’

‘Liar! You gave him up shortly after I had my stroke. You told him you couldn’t see him again because of me. He was heartbroken, according to Mr Bernstein. He had hoped one day you would get married.’

‘I would never have married Ronald,’ Josie said truthfully. ‘Why are you getting so ratty, anyroad? I’d have thought you’d be pleased about that, too.’

‘Your loyalty and devotion do you credit, Josie, but they are entirely misplaced. I am not worth it.’ She stared at the river. ‘You know, I can hardly see.’

‘You should wear—’

‘I know,’ Louisa interrupted testily. ‘I should wear my long-distance glasses. Or is it the short-distance ones? I can never remember. Any minute now, I’ll need a hearing-aid, too. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to
hear. I’m breaking down, Josie. I can scarcely walk. I hardly sleep. The only thing that works perfectly is my brain.’

‘Louisa,’ Josie said gently.

‘Oh, take your sympathy, girl, and stuff it where the monkey stuffed its nuts,’ Louisa said so nastily that Josie flushed. ‘Fetch me my lizard handbag. It’s on the floor beside the bed.’

The large handbag having been brought, Louisa rooted inside and took out a large brown envelope and two small white ones. She handed Josie a white one. ‘I had intended giving you that on your twenty-first birthday, but circumstances have changed.’

It was a letter, addressed to her, written in Louisa’s hardly discernible scrawl. Josie read it with difficulty. Her jaw dropped when she understood the message it contained. ‘You’re giving me a month’s notice!’ she said, completely taken aback.

‘Got it in one,’ Louisa chuckled. She handed Josie the other white envelope. ‘Now read this.’

At first the typed enclosure, full of meaningless figures, was equally difficult to make sense of. ‘It’s a plane ticket to America,’ Josie said after a while. ‘To New York. Louisa, what on earth is this all about?’

Louisa was staring at the river again. Now it was almost dark, the boys had gone and the water shone a greeny-silver. The moon had appeared, not quite full, and there was a sprinkling of early stars. Except for the rustling tide, the silence was total. ‘When I first came to live here, we used to go skinny-dipping in the moonlight. Do you know what that means?’

‘I can guess, but, Louisa, this ticket. And why do I have to leave?’ Her voice trembled.

‘I’ve always been a very selfish person,’ Louisa
continued as if Josie hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ve used people all my life, men in particular, women if I felt in the mood. I dropped them the minute they’d served their purpose, satisfied my need.’ She shifted irritably on the bench. ‘I shall need a cushion for this. Not now, dear. Some other time will do,’ she said when Josie made to get up. ‘I shall only have you one more month, so sit down and hold my hand.’ Josie did, and the skin on the hand felt soft and shiny, like old silk.

‘I should never have taken you on,’ Louisa sighed. ‘The girls were right, but for all the wrong reasons. They thought you couldn’t cope. I knew you could, but that’s not why I insisted. I wanted you for your bright face, your fresh blood, your young soul. I hoped they might rub off on me.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I’m like a fucking vampire. I should have let the girls show you the door. You would have eventually found something better to do than dance round after an egotistical old woman for three years. No, don’t argue.’ She wagged a gnarled finger.

‘For the first time in my life, I am making a sacrifice, so consider yourself lucky because I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay so much it hurts.’ Josie felt the frail hand tighten on her own. ‘But leave you must,’ Louisa said firmly. ‘It’s time you started to live, my dear. I’ve had you far too long. As for me, I’m dying.’ She laughed a touch bitterly. ‘But I’m a stubborn bitch. I shall put up a fight. I could last for years, getting blinder, deafer, more and more impossible and ill-humoured with each day. There is no way, Josie, that I will allow you to sacrifice yet more years of your young life to watch me die.’

‘But I want to stay, Louisa,’ Josie wailed, and was rewarded with a look of utter contempt.

‘Well, you can’t,’ Louisa snapped. ‘You have just been given your marching orders, and I want you out of this house by the end of June. The plane ticket is a leaving present. You can get a refund if you want, use it as a deposit on a flat. Otherwise, Thumbelina is off on a belated honeymoon early in July, and you can stay in her grand house in New York. You won’t be alone, the staff will be there.’ She chuckled. ‘I promised her you’re not the sort who’ll take off with the silver. There is a heap of American currency somewhere upstairs. I always thought I’d go back one day, but that’s not likely now.’ She removed her hand. ‘I would appreciate a cup of coffee, dear, though inside, I think. It’s getting chilly out here.’

As she helped Louisa to her feet, Josie felt a flood of gratitude mixed with sadness and something else, possibly love, for the impossible, cantankerous, surprisingly kind old woman. ‘But who’ll look after you?’

‘That, dear girl, is no longer any of your business,’ Louisa said brusquely, and refused to discuss the matter further.

‘What’s this?’ Josie picked up the large brown envelope, surprisingly sealed with red wax.

‘Nothing much, just a few notes I’ve made.’ Louisa looked at her enigmatically. ‘You’re not to open it until nineteen seventy-four.’

‘Why then?’ Josie asked, surprised.

‘It will be obvious at the time.’ She grasped the window-sill and began to make her way inside. ‘Do you know, my dear, I can already smell the flowers in my new garden.’

‘There aren’t any yet, just leaves. They need a good watering. I’ll do it in a minute.’ The plants looked rather sad, she thought, as if they realised she would soon be going.

‘Then I can smell the leaves.’ Louisa squeezed her hand.

‘I’ll come and see you the minute I get back,’ Josie promised as they went into the house.

‘You will do no such thing,’ Louisa barked. ‘I don’t want to see or hear from you in a long while. If you must know, it would upset me. Perhaps this time next year.’ She laughed gaily. ‘Yes, this time next year. Come and see how your garden grows, Josie dear.’

‘Oh, Jose. I won’t half miss you,’ Lily said sadly. ‘I wish I could come with you, but they’d never let me off work a whole month. Anyroad, I couldn’t afford the fare.’

‘I wish you could come, too, Lil. Still, I’ll only be gone a month, and you’ve made new friends over the last few years. You had to, didn’t you? You haven’t seen much of me.’

‘Yes, but you’re me
best
friend, Jose.’ They were sitting together on Lily’s bed in the house in Childwall. Josie was spending two days with the Kavanaghs before flying to New York, having left Barefoot House for ever.