Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  Marie turned towards him to tell him he could be with her tomorrow, the next day, he could be with her whenever he wanted. But in the turn she forgot what she was going to say. Instead, she said, ‘Are you married?’

  She looked at him, her mouth open.

  J.D.’s eyes surveyed the room. ‘Used to be,’ he said. ‘But she lammed off with another woman.’

  ‘They don’t make them like they used to,’ Marie told him.

  7

  Sam’s footsteps on the stairs. He opens the door quietly, expecting you to be sleeping. You never sleep, though, only close your eyes. Barney raises his head. He keeps you company; sits upright, ears cocked like an ornament.

  Sam comes to the chair and takes your hand. What does he want, this strange young man? Well, young for you. What does he want with your thin and pale hand, your diseased and decaying body? Why does he care?

  ‘Penny for them,’ he says.

  You shrug your shoulders. You don’t need a penny.

  ‘A kiss, then,’ he says, bringing his face forward. You feel his lips on your nose, the aroma of digested coffee and peppermint toothpaste.

  You shake your head. He makes you feel like a girl, and you don’t like that. You are not a girl. You are a living corpse.

  He kisses your cheek. He is better looking than Dylan Thomas. There are no tickly bristles, no smell of figs, nothing moralistic or priest-like about him. He has no expectations. Is it possible? He leaves you free.

  His face is all smiles. His eyes are wide. He is playing a game. You push him away, not too roughly, telling him he must guess. Your voice croaks, and something moves in your throat. Something that should not be there. Something that is growing.

  The past,’ he says, going straight to the mark. He has found you out. He knows your mind. He would like to Protect you against the past, drag you out of it into the light of the present. But it is your life, Dora, you can’t leave it behind. Not even for Sam.

  ‘The children?’

  You shake your head.

  ‘Arthur?’

  ‘Yes.’ For a moment you feel as though you will weep. J tear comes to your eye and hovers behind the lid. But it dissolves there and slips back inside you.

  Sam squeezes your hand and places his head on your lap. He wants to reach back through the years for you, wishes he could pluck you out of the horror and hold you close to him in the here and now.

  You stroke his head. You run your white fingers through his hair. Your life is overshadowed by a pear tree, but grace has been sent to you, late and lovely.

  ‘Arthur’s dead,’ he says. ‘He’s dead and gone, Dora.’

  Dead? Arthur?

  What a cruel thing it was.

  Money was the problem. Money was the barrier. You could not leave, not with two children and no money.

  Money? Surely not? But it was a barrier then. You had to think of the children. If it had been now it would not have mattered. Now you would have taken the chance, starved if necessary.

  You earned a little. Private tuition, coaching the children of the rich. Arthur did not take it into account. You were supposed to use it on clothes for the children. You put half of it in a biscuit tin, high up in the larder behind the Kilner jars. Only mice moved up there.

  When enough pennies and twenty pence pieces and pounds had accumulated in the tin you changed them for five pound notes, ten pound notes, and eventually a twenty pound note. You remember the twenty pound note, you remember the first large, twenty pound note, bringing it home and standing on the chair in the larder to reach the tin. It crackled as you folded it neatly into four and hid it out of reach. The tin was as light as the dream it , represented.

  Was it you, Dora? Was it really you? The woman is tall and thin, already the fine skin around her eyes is beginning to crease. Her three-year-old daughter is playing in the garden, her baby son is sleeping in his cot, her husband out at work. The sun is in the living room, and the back of the house is in shadow. She stands in the doorway, moving from one foot to another. She rattles a few coins in the pocket of her apron, her head cocked to one side. She is listening. All her senses are alive.

  She takes a chair from the kitchen and stands it inside the larder door. In a moment she is on the chair and reaching up into the dark of the topmost shelf. She glances at the three ten pence pieces in the palm of her hand and drops them into the biscuit tin. A moment later she is back at the door, moving from foot to foot, her listening head cocked.

  That was the first time you put money in the tin which you had not earned yourself, Dora. Those three ten pence pieces were saved from the housekeeping money. You bought bones instead of meat. You were learning to survive.

  Dora Greenhills. Guilty.

  If anyone else had done it, Dora, you would have been the first to forgive them. But you could not forgive yourself. You were a thief. You were faithless. Your self-respect, your dignity, they ebbed away like the murky waters of the Ouse. You submitted to Arthur’s beatings with something approaching the joy of a penitent. When his white and hairy forearms took you from behind, cutting your lungs off from the world, and the fist of his free hand pummelled your kidneys, then, and for a time afterwards, you were released from guilt. You were a Catholic during those years, Dora. You were a Catholic and Arthur was your priest.

  But your will was not broken. Every week something went into the tin. You changed your coins to notes, and the notes into higher denominations, until finally you had enough to buy a broken-down house on the banks of the River Foss. A house surrounded by factories and shaken by lorries, a house with no garden and only poky, grimed windows. A house of your own. Paradise.

  The switchboard operator put you through. Arthur had that note of impatience, something approaching anger in his voice. He didn’t like you to ring him at work.

  ‘Dora? What is it? I’m busy at the moment.’

  ‘I’ve left you.’ The line buzzed into silence.

  ‘What are you talking about, Dora? Can’t we speak about this later?’

  ‘No, Arthur. I mean it. I’ve left the house. It’s no good trying to find me. I’ve only taken what’s mine, or what the children will need. Goodbye.’

  ‘Dora—’

  You have taken little. Your small collection of records by Lady Day. ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’.

  ‘Dora-’

  You put the telephone down. Guilt is tangled with relief and another, wilder, emotion. Irresponsibility? You do not stop to analyse your feelings. You are liberated. Free. You have released yourself. You walk along the narrow, grey streets of your new neighbourhood, Diana and Billy at your side. There is a smell of cement and foam rubber in the air. Diana has something in her eye and wants to go home, but to her proper home, where she lives with Daddy. Billy wants to look at the boats on the river. You take in great gulps of air and sand, and you swallow them down.

  8

  William wondered if he was going off. A large black bruise had formed itself on his inner right thigh and it was the middle of the night and he was in the street where Dora lived. It was dry but there was the ghost of a storm lingering in the air.

  Going off. It was a phrase he’d come across in a magazine called Harpers & Queen, which he’d found abandoned in the launderette. An article about serial killers. They killed to a pattern, but all the time there was a psychosis growing inside their minds, and eventually the psychosis took over the pattern and they lost it. They went off. Killed randomly, indiscriminately.

  William had read the magazine from cover to cover. He’d started with the article about serial killers, then he’d read an article about the best schools for posh people’s children. There were so many articles he couldn’t remember them all. One about Rolex watches, how the cases were made out of a single piece of metal. Another about how at Christmas a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold every five seconds. He’d read all the adverts for skin clinics and cosmetic surgery, for introduction agencies and body-management clinics, home gyms and health
farms. In this magazine you could find everything you’d never need, from clowns to stretch limousines.

  But he’d come back to the article on serial killers and read it again. He’d torn those pages out of the magazine and taken them home with him. The other articles held you for a moment, but this one was compulsive.

  Going off.

  A strange expression. Not like going off on holiday. Not like that at all.

  William only came here in the middle of the night. For the last weeks - was it months? - there had been a light in her room. It was as if she didn’t sleep. As if she sat up all night waiting for someone to release her.

  He went around the back of the house and climbed over the wall into the garden. The shed was still there, on his right. The fruit bushes in the centre of the garden, and the climbing rose on the trellis. Up near the house was the pear tree, and William walked underneath it and leaned against its sturdy trunk.

  He was shaking, but soon regained control of his body, forced it to become still. His will-power dominated flesh and blood, extinguished emotion. An owl began to hoot but shut down in mid call. William ruled the night. The natural world quivered.

  He stood in silence. Thoughts of Dora welled up, the sense of her proximity turned his mind. His head was a cauldron of rage. He fabricated an image in which he waded knee-deep in her blood.

  He waited for the ghosts.

  9

  Dora was awake upstairs and Sam was down in the kitchen making a pot of tea. He wanted to go to an AA meeting. Now- But it wasn’t possible. There were no midnight meetings in York. And even if there had been one, he wouldn’t have gone. He couldn’t leave Dora alone.

  Still, when the feeling came on it was difficult to shake.

  He’d go to the meeting tomorrow. There was nothing to drink in the house. All the pubs were closed. All the supermarkets. Booze was out of the question.

  Except he knew maybe a dozen places he could get something to drink right now. A dozen places? At least fifty.

  He rang Max, his sponsor. ‘You’re not in bed?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m in bed. I’ve got the light on, and I’m reading a book about Edward Hopper and watching the midnight movie and talking to an alcoholic on the telephone.’

  ‘Just so long as you’re not under pressure, Max.’

  ‘Pressure? Hell, I’m looking for a priest, here.’ He laughed. ‘You want to come over, Sam? Or shall I come over there?’

  ‘No need. I just wanted to talk to someone who was winning.’

  ‘That’s me. And you. How’s Dora?’

  ‘She’s great right now. Marie was with her for half an hour tonight. We’re gonna have some tea and a chat.’

  ‘Make hers how she likes it, but put sugar in yours. And Use a big mug. Tell her I asked about her. Give her my love.’

  ’Thanks, Max. You’re a lifeline.’

  ‘Hey, Sam, we sponsor each other, remember. How many times do I ring you?’

  ‘Plenty, I guess. You can go to sleep now. I’m not gonna drink tonight. One drink’ll be too much, and a hundred won’t be enough.’

  He heard Max laughing as he put the phone down.

  Sam made the tea like Max said, and took it upstairs to Dora. Tea with sugar was something he’d never get used to. But it was medicine. Something you had to take to remind yourself not to drink Scotch.

  Barney got to his feet when Sam entered the room.

  Dora was propped up with pillows. Her eyes were shining with anticipation. No pain for the time being, just Dora feeling good and looking forward to spending time with Sam. She stretched out a hand to him as he sat by the bed, and he took it in his. The thinnest hand in the known universe.

  ‘Tell me about the day,’ she said. ‘About the world and what’s happening.’

  ‘We’ve got a guy working with us, a writer. J.D. Pears. Everyone calls him J.D.’

  ‘Everyone except Marie,’ Dora said, laughing. ‘She calls him Mister Right Now.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s taken with him. The temperature goes up every time they look at each other.’

  ‘That’s nice for her. She’s usually so down on men. Expects more of them than they can give.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s healthy,’ said Sam. ‘Keeps her out of trouble. J.D., on the other hand, appears kind of green. Like he’s got no idea what a woman in love will do.’

  ‘Well, he’s going to find out. She’s itching to get her hands on him.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Sam, shaking his head. ‘I promised Jill Sheridan she’d get a thorough investigation into Edward Blake. I hope Marie’s gonna concentrate on it.’

  Dora stroked the back of his hand. ‘She will, Sam. She might be counting the hours until knocking-off time, but she won’t shirk the job. You know that.’

  ’Yeah, I know. And I’m glad for Marie. She’s had a tough since Gus was killed. And J.D. seems to like her all right. But he’s a gambler.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Means what it says. The guy’s a gambler.’

  ‘Horses?’

  Sam shook his head. ‘Five card draw. Plays in some heavy games around town. Including one patronized by Edward Blake.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Sam?’

  ‘It came out in our talk. I had to tell him about Blake, because he’s gonna be with Marie and Geordie, inquiring about the guy. And he said he knew him. Then he had to tell me where he knew him from. The two of them play in a Tuesday game in Patrick Pool.’

  ‘Isn’t there some conflict of interest there?’

  ‘I wondered about that,’ said Sam. ‘But J.D.’s not particularly friendly with Blake. And, anyway, he’s only tagging along as an observer.’

  ‘He’ll be OK, Sam. Marie’s not looking for a husband, you know. She’s just found someone irresistible.’

  ‘And he plays in a band. Drums. Band called Fried and the Behaviourists.’

  ‘Freud, surely?’

  ‘No, that’s what I said. Freud and the Behaviourists. But it isn’t, it’s fried.'

  ‘As in egg?’

  Sam nodded. ‘He’s a real character. Talks like someone who’s just walked out of an American crime novel, sometimes like a man in a western.’

  Dora squeezed his hand and closed her eyes. She smiled, and Sam knew she would be asleep in a moment. ‘J.D.?’ she Said, opening her eyes. ‘Is he fried?’

  Sam left a long gap there, so she’d have to go back, look at that last sentence all over again. He said, ‘Can I get back to you on that one?’

  She closed her eyes and Sam watched her. She shoo^ gently with laughter; she was radiant like an overblown plant at the end of a glorious summer. A rose with heavy lush petals, in those final hours before they begin to fall. ’ When her breathing eased into a regular pattern, he let g0 of her hand and left the room.

  J.D. was probably OK, but you could never take coincidences for granted. If J.D. owed Edward Blake money, and if Blake wanted to know how the investigation was proceeding this would be an easy way of finding out. Sam didn’t think that was what was happening, but he couldn’t discount it either. Not at this stage of the game. J.D. Pears would have to be watched, and by a more critical eye than Marie’s.

  He slipped Bringing It All Back Home into the CD player and selected track eleven. Didn’t know why, but he listened to the words until the beginning of the second verse. Then he smiled. He’d tell Marie tomorrow, or the next day. Maybe the day after that. Whenever there was an opening so it didn’t sound like he was preaching. The highway is for gamblers.

  Marie thought things through, anyway. She didn’t need Sam to tell her to use her sense. And if passion had the upper hand at the moment, she wouldn’t appreciate Sam getting in her face. He knew better than to do that. Catch Sam Turner standing in the way of a tenacious hormone? No way, he’d heard the music himself from time to time; it’d be easier to stop a bull.

  Something else he’d learned from J.D.: Blake was on the Millennium Committee. The guy moved in exal
ted circles. He was perfect for the villain of the piece. As a lobbyist he paid MPs to put pressure on ministers, so that his big-money clients could screw the electorate. He was a moral scumbag-But would someone like him go the extra yard and kill his wife?

  Sam shook his head. He didn’t know the answer. But he know that you can’t rule anyone out. And when some-was killed with violence, statistically the perpetrator was the person they were married to.

  Sam took the CD out of the player and put it back in its case. He went quietly up the stairs and stood by Dora’s bed. Her eyes flickered for a moment, then opened. She said: ‘Sam, I’d like to see Billy again.’

  Her son, Billy. She hadn’t seen him or heard from him for years. Sam had never met him. ‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘Maybe Diana’ll have an address? But if he doesn’t want to be found, I won’t be able to do much about it.’

  Dora had gone back to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t been awake. She knew too much to argue.

  An hour later Sam was sitting in a chair downstairs, the television with the sound switched down to drooling level, wondering if he should go to bed. He pressed the buttons on the telephone without lifting the receiver. Practising.

  10

  She was white, looking thinner than normal, especially her face, her eyes wide and dark. ‘I feel sick,’ Janet said. Geordie panicked momentarily, a quick flutter at his breast, a tightening around his hairline. Then he breathed again. Something she’d eaten, or too much work.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’ he asked. ‘I’ll give Marie and J.D. a bell. They can manage without me for a day.’

  ‘No.’ Janet shook her head. ‘I’m going to work. We’re expecting deliveries. It’ll be chaos if I’m not there.’

  ‘But if you’re being sick—’

  ‘I’m not being sick, Geordie. I feel queasy. It’ll pass.’ Geordie was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, Janet with her back to the wash basin. She went over to him and touched his face, and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead.