Chapter 8 Jacob
Jacob
The posters were like a swarm of moths, appearing everywhere, black wings fluttering at the sides of Jacob’s vision, always there, wherever he looked.
Jacob tried to ignore them, but his stepbrother’s image drew his eyes, and sometimes, as he walked back from the children’s home, he found himself pausing, staring through a shop window at his stepbrother’s eyes staring back at him, boring into his soul.
Why did you have to come back? Of all the towns in all of England, why here? Why now?
The answer was obvious. Although James had come blowing into Brentwell like a Krampus-masked Mary Poppins, only to leave again after the damage was done, for a place to call home for a nomadic magician, it was as good as anywhere.
It was inconceivable that James wouldn’t try to contact him at some point.
It seemed that his stepbrother had visited every commercial business in town except for the tearoom, perhaps aware of the frosty reception he would certainly receive.
Maybe he was holding back, biding his time.
Maybe he was trying to send a message with the posters.
Jacob liked to hope that his stepbrother’s sudden return to Brentwell after so many years had nothing to do with his family at all.
Jacob had been seventeen and still at school during the bad days, and hadn’t seen his stepbrother—four years older—in the years since.
Jacob liked to think that the theatre shows were part of an ongoing tour, a whistle-stop at the beginning of something bigger.
There was surely no way his stepbrother was coming back to revisit the place where his cyclonic existence had caused the most damage.
The first few years in the aftermath of what had happened had been the hardest. Giving up a plan to go to university to nurse his mother through the early part of her recovery, in the end Jacob had decided to stay nearby, wanting to keep an eye on her.
Even though she was over the worst, her mobility partly returned, there were still the falls, the seizures.
She had taken a turn one day when he had been shopping in Exeter, and even half an hour on the train had felt like a world away.
He couldn’t bring himself to leave her, couldn’t let his thoughts stray far from her care.
While there was plenty of work in Brentwell, he had drifted from one part-time job to another, never able to fully commit to anything.
Driving a post van, a stint in Tesco, bricklaying …
there weren’t many local jobs he hadn’t tried, but his need to leave at a moment’s notice to tend to his mother had thwarted them all in the end.
The chance opportunity to cover for one of Aunt Marjorie’s part-time workers during a bout of influenza had opened him up to a world he hadn’t expected to enjoy.
He had taken to working in the tearoom like a cow to fresh pasture.
The money would never make him rich, but the job made him happy, and Aunt Marjorie understood his circumstances better than anyone.
And the casual, easy-going nature of the job left him with enough energy to take care of his social and moral needs.
He volunteered at the children’s home, took part in local events, and was a regular at any event where he might be able to lend a hand.
Charities and volunteer groups were always looking for help, so while Jacob had never had the time to form deep friendships or relationship attachments, he had never been lonely.
On a whim, he made a detour on the way back, stopping in at the retirement flats where Nora Shapton lived.
He peered into her letterbox and was pleased to see the bag he had put there was gone, even though the Christmas card and the jumble of letters at the bottom still remained, looking even more crumpled.
Pausing for a moment, he was just about to reach in for the card when he heard heavy footfall on the concrete steps of the stairwell through an open door nearby.
Jacob turned to make a hasty exit, but caught his foot on an old umbrella lying on the floor beneath the letterboxes, and stumbled.
As he put out a hand to catch himself on the open entrance door, a gasp of fright came from behind him.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
He tried to turn but slipped and ended up sitting on the floor.
A woman stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Short and thickset, she wore a cheap duffel coat that had seen better days, unzipped to reveal a grey sweater underneath.
As she came closer, the light in the lobby ceiling peeled the stairwell’s shadows back from her face and he realised she was younger than he had first thought, no more than forty or forty-five.
Pinned to her sweater was a name tag. There was a smaller name over the top that he couldn’t read, but beneath, in large clunky letters, it read TOAD.
‘Hello, can I help you?’ the woman named Toad said.
‘Are you delivering something? You’re not supposed to be in here unless you have the door code or one of the residents buzzes you in, but the outside door’s broken and the tenancy company are too lazy to fix it. You’re not handy with wiring, are you?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Jacob said, cheeks reddening as he tried to think of an excuse for being inside. ‘I was just … just delivering a Christmas card. To … ah … Mrs. Shapton.’
‘Nora? The dear fruitcake with the toy dog?’ The woman scoffed, but neither her words nor her demeanour held any kind of malice, only a tired sense of resignation. ‘Whatever for? She wouldn’t even know her own family. How do you know her?’
‘I just … ah … bumped into her.’
‘Poor old dear. Lost her mind years ago, but there’s nothing to be done if she won’t allow it. You should see the state of her place. You can’t even get through the door. I tidy when she’ll let me, but it soon reverts back.’
‘You must be—’
‘The home help. Clarice Toad. That’s right, T-O-A-D. Don’t laugh, I stopped laughing years ago. I look after the tenants in this building, and a couple of others. At least I do for now. Guess what Father Christmas brought me and my son this year?’
‘Ah….’
‘Yeah, another government budget cut. The dole. In other words, a kick in the teeth. When you can barely pay your rent even with a job, how are you supposed to give your son a Christmas when you lose it?’ She looked down at her feet, but seemed too tired even to cry.
‘There’s nothing you can do, sometimes, is there?
Poor lad gets enough stick at school as it is.
I do what I can, but—’ She glanced at her watch.
‘Well, look at that. It’s about now that the reduced counter gets refilled at the supermarket.
I’d better get a move on or the lad will be eating bread and marge again for dinner. ’
She started to shuffle past Jacob, shoulders slumped. Aware she was his only window into this poorer, darker world, he blurted out, ‘What’s going on with Nora and the toy dog?’
Clarice sighed. She opened her coat and pulled out a battered flask. As she unscrewed the top and took a long swig, Jacob smelled coffee.
‘How did you say you know her?’
‘I literally met her on the street,’ Jacob confessed.
‘Earlier this week. I work at the tearoom over by the church and was just running an errand. You remember that really windy day we had? I was just passing. She was distressed. The wind had blown her pram over and she’d lost her dog.
I managed to find it for her. I put some biscuits in her letterbox and was just checking to see if she’d taken them. ’
Clarice looked up. She fixed Jacob with a hard stare. For a moment he thought she meant to slap him, then her gaze wavered, and her eyes filled with tears.
‘She didn’t take them,’ Clarice said. ‘I did.’