CHAPTER 21
The church clock was striking twelve noon as the truck pulled into Newhampton market square and, with a hiss of brakes, drew to a halt.
Jess thanked the driver, John, climbed down from the cab and shut the door. She hadn’t been here before and didn’t have a plan as to where she was going next. It hadn’t mattered to her which way the truck was going as long as it was far away from The Navigation, but she had had the wit to establish early on that neither was John heading in the direction of Wellingford. Taking her back to where she had started would have been a cruel irony, but thankfully she was now fifty miles further away than ever.
She was still coming to terms with the morning’s events and hadn’t spoken much on the way, preferring to doze with her head against the window, but no sooner had her feet touched the pavement than something loomed large in her mind.
She felt in her inside pocket and pulled out the banking wallet. There was a paying-in slip attached to the bundle of cash on which was printed “JD & TP Morley T/A The Navigation”, together with bank account details and the address of a NatWest branch. The sum of £1,220 was handwritten in the amount box.
She couldn’t rationalise her behaviour in picking it up. It had just been in the heat of the moment. She hadn’t been thinking. She had never stolen anything in her life and felt a sickening guilt about it. No matter what they had done to her, and she was still not quite sure what that was, she hadn’t yet processed the bizarre sequence of events that led up to it, she felt ashamed, and despite having a desperate need for it, the money did not belong to her and she couldn’t keep it. She had to give it back.
She looked around at the people and the cars and the buses and the general bustle of life at midday in an English market town and surmised there would be a bank nearby. Within five minutes, she found three, all within fifty yards of each other, and one of them was a small NatWest.
There was only one other customer inside and he had just finished his business at the glass-fronted counter when Jess wandered in. The woman cashier greeted her with a smile. “I’m so sorry, will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back,” she said, before disappearing behind a partition.
Jess was suddenly nervous. Nervous that maybe word had got out that she had taken the money and that the woman would soon return with the manager or the police and she would be arrested and … She stopped herself and her racing mind. If they thought she had stolen it, they wouldn’t expect her to turn up at a bank fifty miles away. Unless they had tracked down the driver of the truck.
She slid the wallet under the counter and quickly retreated onto the High Street. Best no questions are asked, she thought. The cashier would find the cash in the wallet to be £20 short of the amount written on the payslip, and Jess had no idea what would happen about that but decided they would work it out. She had calculated she was owed at least £50 for the last few days’ work so convinced herself that taking £20 was more than fair and less than she deserved. Anyway, she would be hungry later and needed to buy some water too.
The High Street led onto London Road and Jess soon found herself standing on a road bridge spanning a wide river, looking downstream, just as she had on the day she left Wellingford. She watched the current drift slowly and it drew her in again, beckoning her to join it on its journey. Another new start, she thought.
Both sides of the riverbank featured grassy areas with cultivated flowerbeds and pathways with a succession of park benches, and there were many people out on a summer’s day, young mothers pushing prams and older people simply enjoying the fresh air.
She opted for the far side and followed the path from the bridge down to the riverbank. The water was home to a large number of ducks, geese and swans who milled around, endlessly searching for sustenance, although she thought they all looked pretty well fed despite various signs urging people not to feed them.
She made her way to an empty bench facing the river and decided she might eat something before starting on her journey. She had bought a sandwich and a bottle of water from a shop in the High Street, so placed the brown paper bag on the bench, laid down her tent bag and threw off the straps of her rucksack, placing it on the grass next to the tent.
She sat down wearily on a bench that bore a black plaque, she noticed, as many of them did:
In Loving Memory, Able Seaman William Jarvis
b. 12 September 1910 d. 26 June 1982.
She wondered who he might have been.
A woman stood by the water’s edge and, despite the instructions to the contrary, threw crusts of bread amongst an assemblage of assorted waterfowl who snapped and gobbled hungrily at the food. She appeared elderly and dishevelled and poorly dressed in a woolly hat, heavy ill-fitting overcoat, black socks and most incongruously of all, dirty old trainers.
Jess suddenly felt overcome with a profound weariness, and then, from nowhere, a surge of despair took hold and she felt her body sag and tip forward until she had to support her head with her hands. She wanted to shut out the world, shut out the sound of the ducks and geese clacking and the ripples and splashes and plops of the water and the cries of the little children playing in the park and the cars and sirens and wind. She wanted to go to a dark silent place where no one could harm her, where she would be safe. She knew where that was, and it seemed strangely alluring. The only option?
She closed her eyes and as the ambient sounds blended into a muddled roar, she felt calmness, a serenity and composure that was somehow empowering. She started to drift off into a bubble of subconsciousness, but something burst it. Someone was speaking.
“Are you all right, dear?” Jess sat up with a start. The old woman who had been feeding the ducks was sitting on the bench next to her. She hadn’t heard her walk the twenty feet from the riverbank or felt her sit down, so lost had she been in her own thoughts. The woman was very old, thought Jess, easily over seventy or maybe even a hundred, she couldn’t tell. But she had a kindly face which radiated genuine concern, and Jess, ever polite, felt compelled to respond.
“Oh … er, yes.” She sat up and pushed back her hair. The old woman went on, still obviously concerned.
“It’s just that you looked a bit, you know, tired.”
Tired was one way of putting it, thought Jess, and although she was touched by the woman’s apparent concern for her wellbeing, especially one who herself looked like life had dealt a poor hand, she was not minded to explain how she felt or why. She decided to change the subject and nodded at the birds still quacking and honking on the river.
“They’re a hungry lot.”
The woman turned her head to the river to follow her gaze.
“Oh yes,” came the brief affirmation and Jess thought that might be the end of the exchange. “Mind you,” the old woman continued after a moment, “they ain’t got much else to worry about, have they? Just finding something to eat and looking after the little ‘uns.”
Jess nodded but couldn’t think of much else to say.
“That’s the girls, of course,” the old woman went on, “it’s them boys that cause all the bother. Always fighting with each other, all trying to be top dog,” she declared with satisfaction at the euphemism. “Some things never change,” she added, a resigned weariness in her voice.
They sat quietly for a moment watching a swan family, mother, father and seven cygnets, glide gracefully up the river. Jess decided she might as well have her sandwich so opened the brown paper bag, pulled out a triangular carton and tore off the perforated seal. She pulled out one half of the sandwich but then felt a wave of discomfort about taking the first bite. The old woman wasn’t showing any interest, but Jess had already judged her to be poor and therefore probably hungry too, so she thought it only polite to offer. She leant over, proffering the open sandwich carton.
“Would you like a sandwich?” The old woman turned in surprise and her eyes lit up with delight.
“Ooh, thank you, dear. I was feeling a bit peckish.” She reached into the carton and pulled out the other half, which she waved in the direction of her avian audience who quacked and clacked and hooted in unison. “I gave my last crust to that lot!”
She took a large bite out of the corner and sat back chewing contentedly. Jess watched her for a moment with mild amusement, but then decided she wasn’t hungry after all and put her half back. She would have it later, for supper.
Apart from the occasional “mmm” as the old woman chewed and swallowed, they sat in silence until she had finished, signalled by a brisk brushing away of dropped crumbs from the front of her overcoat.
“Would you like some water?” asked Jess, offering an unopened plastic bottle.
“Naah,” she replied, “I’ll just want to wee.” Jess smirked at the thought and put the bottle back in the bag. The old woman sighed and sat back, her tongue working to extract the last morsels of sandwich from the back of her teeth, and then smacked her lips.
“You know. I was your age once,” she said, looking at Jess. “Seems like a long time ago. But it feels like yesterday. I don’t know where the time goes!” She left the question hanging before declaring, “I think it goes faster and faster the older you get.” Jess thought there was probably a scientific explanation to prove this could not be true, but the woman had evidence of her own. “You get on with your life and then before you know it, whoosh! It’s all gone.” Jess didn’t know how to respond to this but needn’t have worried, as it seemed the old woman was content to talk out loud.
“We didn’t have much when we was young,” she went on. “Father was away for months at a time, workin’ on ships and that, and I had to look after me little brothers after mum died. But we was happy.” She smiled at the reminiscence. “We managed, we made do, you couldn’t do anything else.” Jess wondered where this was going.
“And don’t fret about stuff you can do nothing about, me Dad always said,” she said proudly. “And don’t give up.” Her tone had suddenly become authoritative and thoughtful and Jess recognised the change. The old woman had stopped babbling and had become incongruously erudite. “That’s what he said when he went away: ‘Never give up’.” She remained silent for a moment as the thought sank into Jess’s head.
“And when he came home, ooh … he’d bring us sweets from India and tea from China and beads from Africa! Then he was off again.” Jess smiled, charmed by the image of a loving father bringing home presents from his travels to exotic places, seeing his young sons and his daughter acting out the part of surrogate mother, and wondered what age this old lady had been. Sixteen? Seventeen, maybe? She could only guess.
“But one day” – the old woman had turned serious and Jess sensed a foreboding – “he never came back.” Jess looked at her uneasily, expecting the worst. “They said his ship was missing and I thought, well, that’s it, might as well jump in the river!” Jess’s heart sank and she tried to imagine what it could have been like for her, a teenage girl, both parents gone and little mouths to feed. She was not the only one to have suffered hardship, had to battle adversity, when everything seemed stacked against you and you had lost all hope.
“But he never gave up,” she said defiantly, pride welling up inside her, and then with some elation, “and we never gave up neither! And, ooh … it must have been two years, he came walking up the backyard with his duffle bag over his shoulder as if nothing had happened!” Jess’s eyes widened and now she couldn’t tear them away from the old woman, whose voice was gradually rising in a crescendo.
“And I ran, and I flung meself into his arms and he lifted me up high and I hugged him, and it was as if I was on top of the world!” she trumpeted, raising her eyes to the heavens, visibly moved at the memory.
Jess closed her eyes as the image of the young woman and her heroic father embracing loomed large in her mind and she battled to hold back the tears as they welled up inside her. The old woman’s euphoria subsided as quickly as it came, as reality brought her back to earth.
“They’re all gone now,” she said quietly, “there’s no one left. Just me.” But there was pathos in her words as she put one hand on her coat where her heart might be and patted it. “But they’re still in ‘ere, I talk to them every day. It’s what keeps you going.”
Jess looked at her again, unsure of what she meant. The old woman sensed it and looked into her eyes.
“Love,” she declared. “That’s what keeps you going. You don’t need nothing else.” Her smile washed over Jess like a warm, comfy blanket and something stirred inside her. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was. She wasn’t sure she had ever experienced it before. She always thought she had loved her mum and had cried when she heard the beatings her mum had endured at the hands of her husband, the man she loved, but who Jess hated. So what did it mean? Then she thought of Leila and the meaning was clear.
“I bet you got a lotta love in you.” Jess looked up and saw the old woman was addressing her personally. “You’ll be all right.” The old woman was smiling at her, reassuring, determined. “Love will keep you strong and keep you going. And in the end, you and yours will be all right. You’ll see,” her words delivered with such certitude that despite the absence of any justification, Jess was compelled to believe her.
Jess fought back her emotions. She wasn’t used to showing them and they rarely rose to the surface, but she had been profoundly moved by this old woman and her simple story and she wondered what it might mean to her. For her. She decided it was time to go. Time to move on. She still had a long way to go. She rose to her feet and picked up her rucksack.
“Are you off home now, dear?” the old woman said. Jess smiled at the unintended irony and wondered where the old woman lived, where “home” might be. She noticed again the plaque fixed to the back of the park bench: Able Seaman William Jarvis, and the inevitable thought crossed her mind. She shook it off.
Er, no. I’m just going for a walk.” Well that was certainly the truth.
“Oh, then have a nice walk, wherever it is you’re going to.”
“Well, must be off. Nice to meet you. Bye,” she said awkwardly and headed downstream as the old woman called after her.
“Bye, dear. Take care. Don’t go talking to no strangers!” and then she sat back on the bench, smiling. Happy and contented.
Jess had only gone twenty yards when something made her stop, and instinctively she turned around. The bench was empty. The old woman was nowhere to be seen.