As She Left It (30 page)

That
was what Pep Kendal was on about all those times he said plenty without speaking a word. Fishbo wasn’t a jazz man from New Orleans. It was total hogwash; it was his patter, and he’d been at it so long he’d almost forgotten it wasn’t true. That accent that never faded and always sounded the same, no matter how long he lived in Leeds. All that guff about the hurricane! And then when Opal said she’d find his family, he couldn’t think up one good reason to stop her. She almost laughed. He’d rather die without seeing his own bloody family than have anyone find out he was bogus? Then suddenly she felt as if she’d never laugh again. He’d rather die than have his fantasy revealed for the pose it was until along came Opal Jones, meddling, threatening to find them. He was ill and tired and she’d made him anxious, put him under strain. And then she’d squirted poisonous chemicals in his bed, and now he was in hospital and might never get out again.

THIRTY
-
EIGHT

A
ND SO IT WAS
that, as Pep and Jimmy D arrived from the hospital, Pep leaning hard on the younger man’s arm and Big Al rushing forward to offer another, and as Mr. Hoadley belted up the road from Morley, Opal found herself knocking on the Joshis’ door and asking Zula if she could reduce the Mote Street pizza mountain by taking some supplies down to the other end, where the Boys were gathering for some kind of vigil or practise wake or something. And Zula pressed her hand to her heart and said she couldn’t believe it—she knew Mr. Fish had a bit of a cough, hadn’t seen him for weeks, knew he was in bed trying to kick it, but surely it hadn’t gone that far. Really and truly? And nothing would do but she took the pot of meat stew she was cooking for the boys’ dinner—carried it down the street with her oven mitts on, the steam wafting after her—and then came back for bags of chips and tubs of ice cream, punnets of strawberries she’d got for nearly nothing if Opal could believe that (with it being such great strawberry weather), and Sunil was packed off to the end garage for beer and some pink wine for Zula and Margaret, and then he went to get Denny, because Margaret could no more leave the men to muck up the kitchen and waste Zula’s curry that she could bear to think of her husband sitting all alone. So Denny Reid left the house for the first time since Easter, and they gathered in the music room with the door open to where the phone was in case the hospital called: Sunil and Zula, Denny and Margaret, and four out of five of the Mote Street Boys.

But not Opal. When Zula was flying round her kitchen, Opal saw a laptop open on the table and just asked, on the off-chance, if Zula would mind …

“Now?” she said.

“I want to do a bit of research on pneumonia, have something to tell Pep, stop him worrying.”

“You youngsters and your Internet,” Zula said. “But as long as you don’t find out the worst of the worst and come down the street shouting about it.”

“No, I want to reassure them all,” Opal said. Of course, what she really wanted to do was try to see if there was any word that George and Cleora Gordon or their children anyway were still in Yorkshire. There couldn’t be too many Cleoras, surely. Even in Leeds. Certainly not in Hull, anyway.

“Aye well, you crack on,” Zula said. “You can tell Vik where his dinner’s gone for me.”

Opal got herself a long drink of cold water and sat down. She was pretty sure she was doing the right thing. She had been wrong to start—dead wrong—but since she
had
started she couldn’t stop now. If he really was dying at least he could see a familiar face, hear his brother’s voice, or Cleora’s, or someone calling him Uncle Gene and reminding him of home.

“Cleora Gordon” got nothing in the UK. “Cleora Gordon” worldwide turned up seventeen hits, and Opal’s heart soared. Genealogy, it was. Just like how Sarah Fossett’s father had found Cousin Norah again. Strange abbreviations and little numbers sending you off somewhere else with more Gordons and more abbreviations, but they were all in Kingston, anyway. And then Opal began to wonder if the reason that Fishbo had joined the Mote Street Boys when he used to be in a Gordon trio was that he had stayed and George and Cleora had gone back again. There was no sign of Little George and Little Samantha in that photo at the docks. Maybe their mum and dad were just visiting and it was only Fishbo who was here for good.

The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. They wouldn’t leave their kids, and Fishbo would hardly start putting it about that he was a Louisiana jazzman if his brother was right here in Yorkshire and could blow the story sky high. She didn’t know much about the jazz scene in Yorkshire, but it couldn’t be a big one.

Then Opal wondered if Kingston was the kind of place that had online phone books, like America, or the kind of place like England where nobody knew anybody’s number and if you lost your phone your friends thought you’d dropped them and then they dropped you. “Online Phone Book, Jamaica” she typed. And “Kingston” and “Kingston, Jamaica” and all she got were towns all over Ohio and Kansas named after both of them. So she typed “Online phone book, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies” with a last gasp kind of feeling. If there was a little town in Minnesota called the West Indies, she was giving up and going down the road for some curry.

But there it was—bingo! The White Pages for Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. Opal typed in Gordon and then watched, heart sinking, as the screen filled up with them and the end of the list disappeared out of view, the little blue bar at the side showing how many screens there were. She scrolled down and looked at the Georges—over a screenful just of them!—and was scrolling back up to the top again when she saw it. Saw
them
. But only three of them.

Cleora Gordon. One, two, three.

And there was a phone sitting right there on Zula’s table. Opal told herself Zula and Mr. Joshi must never be done calling overseas and they’d never notice, then she looked up all the extra numbers to punch in in the right order to call someone that far away and she punched them in and waited, listening to the phone ring, thinking—too late—that she didn’t know what time it was over there and she might wake someone up and make them worry that it was bad news. Only of course it
was
bad news—exactly the sort of news you’d think it might be when the phone woke you in the middle of the night. And someone was answering.

“Morning!” said a woman’s voice. She didn’t sound groggy or annoyed.

“Hi,” said Opal. “Can I speak to Cleora Gordon, please?”

“That’s me,” said the woman. She still didn’t sound annoyed, but she didn’t sound a day over twenty-five either.

“Um. Are you George Gordon’s wife, Eugene Gordon’s sister? Sister-in-law?”

“I’m nobody’s wife,” said the woman with a rich, rolling laugh. “You got the wrong lady, I’m glad to say.”

The next Cleora Gordon answered the phone with the same sunny greeting, sung out. “Morning!”

“Hi,” said Opal. She raised her voice to make it heard above a babble of music and children on the other end of the line. “Is that Cleora Gordon?”

“That’s me. Who’s asking?”

“My name’s Opal Jones. But listen, are you the Cleora Gordon who’s related to Eugene and George? Little George and Little Samantha’s mother?”

“Little George?” said the woman, and her voice had risen to a shriek of hilarity. “Little George is a grandpa! Who is this?”

Opal took the receiver away from her ear and stared at it, unbelieving. She had found them. Found Fishbo’s family. Found Cleora anyway.

“Opal Jones,” she said again. “I live in Yorkshire. In Leeds. And I’m afraid I’m calling with some bad news.”

The kids and music carried on, but the woman was silent.

“It’s Eugene,” said Opal. “He’s ill. He might be dying.”

Still there was silence and then the sound of bumping and shifting as the woman took the phone somewhere away from the noise, shutting a door, dulling the happy sounds down to a mumble.

“Eu
gene
?” she said. “Eu
gene
is back in Leeds again? You jesting me? He
hated
it there. We both did.
Leeds
? And he’s dying? Who are you?”

“I’m just a friend,” Opal said. “A neighbor. He’s in hospital.”

“In Leeds?” It was like she was saying
on Mars
. “Is he visiting George?”

“No,” said Opal. “He lives here. He’s been here for … well, twenty-five years anyway.” Opal’s lifetime.

“Huh?” said Cleora.

“I know you must have lost touch,” Opal said. “I thought you’d want to know. I know he’s only your brother-in-law, but it was your name I found.”

“Huh?” said Cleora again. “My brother-in-law?”

“If you’ve got George’s number, I could get on to him. Fishbo’s never mentioned him, but if he’s still in Leeds—”

“Whoa,” said Cleora. “Back up, slow down. Who’s Fishbo?”

“They must have lost touch.”

And now the woman was laughing again.

“Someone got their boots on the wrong feet here, baby, and either it’s you or it’s me. My brother-in-law, George Gordon, stayed in Leeds when Gene and I came home. We couldn’t stand it there.”

“George? But his name’s Eugene.”

“Eu
gene
, my husband, left me for the first time thirty-five years ago and the last time I saw his no-good backside was twenty years ago now. But he told me he had gone to America. Came back here flashing green dollars at the kids and the grandkids, Mr. Big Shot.”

“Fishbo’s your husband?”

“I don’t know who this Fishbo is you keep talking. Eu
gene
is my husband. Now, he might be dead and he might be dying, but trust me he’s not doing it in Leeds.”

“Why would George pretend to be Eugene?”

“I don’t know that and I can’t tell you, baby,” said the woman. “Why would my husband pretend to live in California, USA, if he lived in England in the cold and the rain?” Opal considered telling her that England was sizzling in another day of steamy sunshine, but she decided Cleora wouldn’t believe her anyway.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Because those Gordon boys are all the same, that’s why,” said Cleora, and she was laughing again. “Stories and music and dancing and
more stories
.” She sighed and sang a little tune as she let it go.

“Right,” Opal said.

“I’ve got my kids and my grandkids and my great grandbaby,” said Cleora. “Those days are a long time ago. A lifetime ago. You tell George Cleora said hello, baby. And if Eu
gene
shows his sorry face, you tell him Cleora said plenty but you didn’t understand those bad words.”

“I will,” said Opal. “I’ll do that. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“It was nice talking,” Cleora said. “You be a good girl and stay away from bad boys.”

“I really will,” said Opal. “What’s the baby’s name? Your great-grand-baby? I’ll tell Fishbo he’s got a … ”

“Great-grand-nephew,” said Cleora. “Jeez-
um
—another Gordon boy. Just what the world needs right now. He’s called Travon. You tell Uncle George.”

But as Opal hung up the phone, she was sure she wasn’t going to be telling George he had a nephew. She would have bet a month’s pay she’d be telling Eugene he was a grandpa again. And at last she understood why Fishbo didn’t want anyone trying to find his family. It wasn’t just that Louisiana was a big fat fib; it was that he had left his wife and children. He wasn’t a single man who lived for his music. He was just another useless deadbeat bastard who never thought about anyone but himself.

Except, if that was true, where was George? Where was the brother-in-law who liked it in Yorkshire if Fishbo was the husband who hated it but came back anyway? Who visited Kingston twenty years ago and told Cleora he lived in California. Well, at least that bit sounded just like Fishbo.

She didn’t go back to Pep’s. Why should she? They were only neighbors—the band weren’t even that—and she had too much on her mind to go to some knees-up or sit-in or whatever it was.

There was tomorrow’s task, for one thing: getting a hold of a key to that room where the other half of the bed was.

Then there was the new big worry. Franz Ferdinand was following her, and he had written a threat on a picture and put it through her door. He had been on Mote Street all those years ago. Or he was just following her and someone else was threatening her—she didn’t know if that was worse or better.

And there was the even newer, even bigger worry of having maybe killed Fishbo with Shake-n-Vac. Finished him off with it, at any rate. If she really still cared as much about Fishbo anymore. He wasn’t who he said he was, and he had left his family. Opal didn’t think much of men who upped and left their families, especially when they went on and on to little neighbor girls about being like a grandpa.

And of course there was the biggest worry of all: Nicola’s outhouse was full of Zula’s cement. Nic herself was full of Mrs. Pickess’s brandy. And little Craig Southgate was gone.

So she went home, on her own, shut the doors, shut the windows, tried to think it out, tried not to think at all, very nearly poured herself a brandy until she imagined how it would feel to wake up in the morning in this sealed and sweltering house with her mouth glued up and her dry breath whistling inside her nose. She was just telling herself that she could keep the upstairs windows open when she heard him coming home. He was thumping and clattering out in the yard, and she went up to the back bedroom to look out and see what he was smashing up this time, but he was only moving stuff around in the outhouse, clearing space, bringing a ladder and a workhorse out into the yard. What was he moving in then? He lifted the workhorse into the back porch but the ladder—a bulky thing, folded in fours, looked heavy—he left in the yard, chained and padlocked around one of the washing poles.
Who’s going to run off with a great article like that?
Opal thought, then she realized that wasn’t the point. The point was that unless a ladder was chained up anyone could come along and open it, put it against a house wall, climb in, and rob the place blind or strangle someone in her sleep. And of course if Franz Ferdi had a ladder …