Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  After a week you capitulate. On the Friday you telephone Arthur at work. He is not there. You are ready for anything. You will prostrate yourself in front of him, let him trample on you.

  There will never be a way out after this. This was your final fling, Dora. It cost five years of your life. It smashed your self-image. There is nothing left now. You will have to beg. You will take whatever comes.

  Billy climbs over the seats on the top of the bus. Diana sits by the window bouncing up and down in anticipation. The bus shunts from stop to stop, taking you home, back to Arthur. The children are overjoyed, but inside of you doors closing. You look at Diana’s profile, and you think, She’s my daughter, and I’m going to hate her for this.

  The children run ahead along the avenue. Then they run back again, complaining that they cannot get into the houSe The door is locked.

  ‘I’ve got a key,’ you tell them. ‘Don’t worry.’ You stumble over a mound of post. Diana and Billy push you aside running through the house.

  ‘Daddy. Daddy. Where are you? We’re home.’ They climb the stairs.

  You recognize Arthur’s handwriting and pick up the note on the kitchen table. It is like a joke. You read it twice but it does not make sense: If anyone is interested, I’m in the garden.

  You open the back door, Dora, and step outside. The garden is deserted. Arthur is not there. You walk along the path and try the door of the shed, but it is locked.

  A sense of relief floods your body. Arthur must be out somewhere. It is better like that, somehow more acceptable that he comes back and finds you returned. You leave the path to collect a few fallen pears, stuffing them into your pockets, ducking under the low boughs of the huge tree. Something catches your shoulder and swings. You raise your hand to your face, expecting a branch to fall, but it is Arthur’s foot which comes towards you. You step back, and again you step back, raising your eyes to take in the full picture. Your hands are in your mouth.

  Arthur is hanging by his neck. His clothes are dripping wet. His head is dragged to one side, and he is swinging, ever so gently, swinging backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

  Involuntarily you take a step towards him, but freeze to the spot as the full horror of it hits you. If anyone is interested, I’m in the garden. The words of his note jangle in your head like a mantra. In the garden. In the garden. If anyone is interested.

  You can see the flies around his eyes. The sockets where his eyes used to be. Their quick movement gives animation to his features. They crawl in and out of his nose and run the ridge of his teeth. It is as if he were laughing. Laughing at you, Dora, laughing and swinging, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

  He has used the washing line. You recognize it, and glance the posts to confirm it. But your eyes do not wander for long Arthur is a hypnotist. He demands attention.

  Even when you feel the movement behind you, you cannot tear your eyes away from him. You stand there transfixed until Billy’s scream sends the birds clapping away over the rooftops. Then you turn and pull him into the house, collecting Diana with her saucer eyes on the way.

  ‘Is it Daddy?’ she says, as you push her into the kitchen.

  12

  J.D. went for the sandwiches and Marie stayed behind the wheel of the Montego watching the entrance to Edward Blake’s office. With J.D. out of the car, she snapped into a different mode. Work mode. Surveillance.

  In the few days since he’d arrived on her horizon she’d drawn J.D. deep into her life. He hadn’t needed a lot of coaxing, either. He’d been a willing victim. But his presence certainly undermined the job.

  Marie wanted to hear all about him, and to tell him about herself. His insights into her and into life in general were off-beat and fascinating. Last night she’d been to see his band in the Bonding Warehouse. Almost unbearably loud country blues and electric feedback. J.D. beating out the rhythms like the march of a chain gang or the chattering howl of a strike in the night. He staggered off the stage at the end of the set and put his arms around her. His face slick with sweat, his eyes hollow with dope. Take me to bed,’ he said. ‘Get me out of here.’

  The sex was disappointing. Probably, Marie thought, because their bodies had not yet grown accustomed to each other. The closeness was good, but the act itself seemed somehow mechanical, leaving her with a sense closer to division than to consummation.

  This morning Marie had wanted to be on the job by eight, but J.D. couldn’t get out of bed. He wasn’t a morning person. ‘Why such a rush?’ he said. ‘We’re only going to be sitting outside the guy’s office.’

  ‘This is how we work,’ Marie told him. ‘The early bird gets the worm.’

  ’Mornings. Christ,’ he muttered. ‘Fucking mornings. The early worm gets eaten alive.’

  They’d arrived at eight-thirty, and hadn’t seen Edward . j p took a walk round the car park and found the ’s car, so they assumed he was in the office. And they’d spent the whole morning talking about five card draw.

  JD had slowly woken up. ‘What you have to know,’ he said. ‘You have to know the odds. Be able to calculate them. There are over two and a half million possible hands every time you deal the cards.’

  ‘So you have to be a mathematician?’

  ‘No. The game’s exciting because, although there’s all those possible hands, you’re only going to end up with one of them. And to win the pot your hand doesn’t have to be the best one. It wins if all the others round the table think it’s better than theirs.’

  ‘So it’s a confidence trick?’

  ‘Yeah. Everyone in the game is a con-man. You can’t be sure of anything. Nothing is what it appears to be.’

  ‘Sounds like hell,’ she told him.

  But he laughed. ‘No. It’s like life.’

  It was good to be with him. Except when she was working. Marie loved the feeling she got from the job, the buzz. Even on a long surveillance it was always there, the anticipation, the expectation of a pay-off. Geordie and Sam complained about surveillance jobs; they couldn’t stand the hanging around, the boredom. But Marie didn’t mind the negatives. She loved every aspect of the job.

  Edward Blake came through the front entrance and walked to his Beemer. Pin-striped suit, incongruous looking sky-blue satin tie. He used a remote to deactivate the alarm and open the driver’s door, and he was inside and heading out of the car park within a couple of minutes of his appearance.

  Marie looked around, but there was no sign of J.D. Her heart seemed to slip sideways at the thought of leaving him behind, but it didn’t stop her. She moved into first and joined the stream of traffic a couple of vehicles behind Blake’s car. They crawled forward, pedestrians passing them and disappearing into the distance.

  She glanced at her watch as they joined the inner ring road, and spoke into her small Sanyo voice-activated system ‘Twelve thirty-eight. Blake left his office ten minutes back and is travelling from Museum Street along St Leonard’s Place. Traffic bloody slow as usual.’ She put the recorder down, then picked it up, and spoke again: ‘Lost J.D. along the way. Which means he’s got twice as many sandwiches as he needs, and I haven’t got any.’

  The Beemer indicated left in Gillygate and turned into Portland Street. Marie followed it into the cul-de-sac, reckoning that if she stayed with the traffic in Gillygate she might be in the Montego for several weeks. Not a pleasant prospect. Next time she came this way she’d remember to pack a camp stove and a chemical toilet.

  Blake took the only parking space in the street. Marie drove down to the end and watched through her mirror while he found a key and opened the door of a house which appeared to be rented out as flats.

  While she was backing out of the cul-de-sac, she saw Blake standing at an upstairs window. He was alone, framed by shabby curtains, and obviously at odds with the environment. He consulted his watch and looked out along the street. Then he had another go at the watch, but must have got the same time again, unless he was counting the seconds.
/>   Marie reversed up to the junction and was attempting an illegal three point turn, when she was stopped in the middle of the road by a girl running in front of her. The girl could not yet have seen her twentieth birthday, she was loaded down with three supermarket carrier bags, and in a hurry-Blond hair with dark roots to match her black eye, a V-necked white woollen sweater, and tight jeans cut off just below the knee. An expanse of gooseflesh calf, then black plastic high-heeled sandals. When she got to the house she looked up and attempted a wave at the window where Blake had consulted his watch. Then she put her bags down on the step, opened the door with a key, collected the bags and stepped inside.

  Marie reached for her tape recorder.

  JD got to the Pancho Villa Sundance sandwich bar and joined the queue. He was awake now, and less grumpy than been with Marie that morning. It was nothing to do with Marie. He was like that in the morning. That’s how the day started, grumpily, and then as it wore on it got better. By the evening there was not a trace of grump left.

  In normal life, where there was no relationship to worry about, he wouldn’t let himself be seen in the morning. He would work. He would stay in his room in front of his computer and write. Two thousand words, minimum, before he’d inflict himself on the world.

  He glanced up at the menu board and decided what to order if he ever got to the front of the queue. One chicken and paprika, one giant turkeyburger with trimmings, and an apple pie with cream. Oh, yes, and Marie’s tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo, though God knows how anyone could exist on that for the whole day.

  One of the guys behind the counter kept sizing him up. It’s like, you know you’ve seen him before somewhere, but you don’t know where that was. There’s something familiar about him, he could be a relation. But it might be he’s just someone you pass in the street, you’ve never actually been introduced. If it was a woman you’d smile at her, take a chance. But as it’s a guy, sexual orientation unknown, you content yourself with sneaking the odd glance, hoping you’ll remember where you met.

  It doesn’t come, though. J.D. was second in the queue now, hoping the little guy wasn’t planning to inject salmonella into his turkey burger.

  The woman at the head of the queue finished paying for a shipping order, packed into seven, yes, J.D. counted them twice, seven Pancho Villa Sundance thermal carrier bags, collected them together and struggled out of the shop. He looked down at the little guy with the raised eyebrows and said, ‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’

  The little guy blinked twice.

  ‘Please?’ J.D. said. Hoping he’d got it right.

  ‘It’s the beard,’ the little guy said. ‘Without the beard, you’d be J.D. Pears.’ Then he smiled.

  ‘Wimp?’ J.D. said. And he knew who the guy was. They’d been to school together back in the time of Ted Heath. J.D. looked at Wimp and was swamped by a host of images that had not entered his consciousness for a quarter of a century. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’, men on the moon, Lee Marvin’s ‘Wanderin’ Star’, Decimal day, and Jimi Hendrix. ‘Voodoo Chile,' he said. ‘Remember that?’

  Wimp did an imitation of Hendrix, picking with his teeth at the strings of an imaginary guitar, and the thin man behind J.D. in the queue sighed heavily and shuffled his feet.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Wimp. ‘And Ned Kelly. Jagger playing dressing-up games.’

  ‘I knew your face,’ J.D. told him. ‘I was in the queue here, getting closer and closer, saying who is this guy? But I couldn’t put the face in the right place. I’d’ve got home tonight, maybe even in bed just dropping off and I’d’ve remembered it then. Jumping out of bed, man, screaming round the bedroom in me jimjams, “Wimp, hell it was Wimp sold me a fucking turkey burger and I didn’t recognize him.” ’

  ‘Took me about ten seconds,’ said Wimp. ‘I saw you looking through the window, and it was like a face I knew, couldn‘t quite place it, but when you came through the door I‘d already clocked you.

  The thin man behind J.D. coughed and looked round at the people behind him for support. ‘Christ,’ he said, glancing upward at a ceiling in the advanced stages of flaking.

  ‘So, what’re you up to?’ J.D. asked.

  Wimp turned round in a complete circle. He held his hands out. ‘Sandwiches,’ he said. ‘Temporarily.’ He looked over J.D.’s shoulder at the queue. ‘Look, I’ll get your order, then I’d like to talk. You got time?’

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘Yeah. Just a few minutes. I’ve got a break coming.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Outside, there’s a bench over by the green. It won’t take long.’

  ‘OK,’ J.D. told him.

  ‘What was it you wanted? Lemon chicken.’

  ‘One chicken and paprika, one giant turkey burger with trimmings, an apple pie with cream, and a tuna salad in pitta bread without mayo.’

  ‘You been rehearsing that?’

  ‘Jesus,’ the thin man said.

  J.D. turned round. ‘He’s not coming, man, uses a place round the corner, the service is better.’

  He’d taken the first bite out of the turkey burger when Wimp arrived and sat on the bench next to him. ‘I’ve read your books,’ he said. ‘They’re good. Specially Fungal Fatigue, that was my favourite.’

  You want to talk about my books? Wimp, my ego’s as big as the next man’s. When people want to talk about my books I forgive them everything and join in. Only just now I‘m with somebody else, like a woman, and this is her sandwich in the bag, and she’s waiting for it.’

  Wimp put a hand on his shoulder to hold him down. ‘No, it’s something else. Christ, J.D., you’re just the same as you was at school. You haven’t changed a bit. Apart from the beard, you’re exactly the same. Fuckin’ weird.’

  J.D. sighed. ‘Can we just get to it?’

  ‘What I do,’ Wimp explained. ‘I work in the travel business.’

  ‘A travel agency?’

  ‘Yeah. I was with the big one for ten years. Last year some of us went to Nepal. Just checking it out. We were thinking of doing some more tours. There’s a lot of money to be made out of that area.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said J.D. ‘Sandwiches aren’t your main thing?’

  ‘I told you. Sandwiches is temporary. I got hold of this dope while we were in Nepal. Temple balls. It blew my brains out.’

  J.D. laughed.

  ‘S’not funny, man. The stuff took me apart. It was more like acid, something like that. I don’t do heavy dope, never have. Grass, yes. Even used to grow my own, when we had a conservatory, when I was married. And this stuff, this temple balls stuff was too much. Wasted me. I had a nervous I breakdown.’

  ‘In Nepal?’

  ‘No, in York. I was in the hospital, shuffling round a mental ward in carpet slippers and a dressing gown. I thought I’d never get out. I was terrified.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said J.D. ‘I never heard of dope that could do that.

  ‘You sure you wasn’t on anything else?’

  Wimp shook his head. ‘It’s me, man. I can’t take it, that’s all. The other guys I was with, they smoke it all the time, they bake it in cakes, slip the odd shavings in their mother-in-laws’ coffee. You know, the usual stuff. I wanna get rid of it.’

  ‘You brought me to this bench to unload dope on me?’

  ‘That was the first thing I thought, when I saw your face through the shop window. J.D. Pears sent from Jesus to take this fuckin’ dope off my hands. Was I right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said J.D. cagily. ‘I’m only a poor writer. What’s deal?’

  ‘I’m not on the make here, J.D. All I want is what I wanted in the first place, some good old-fashioned, mild, dope. A straight exchange.’

  ‘How much have you got?’

  ‘A weight.’

  ‘All right. So if I come up with a weight of something gentle, you’ll take it away and gi
ve me a weight of Nepalese temple balls that’s guaranteed to blow my mind, and the minds of all my friends, and make me the most popular guy in town?’

  Wimp nodded. ‘That’s the deal.’

  ‘No catch?’

  ‘No catch, J.D. D’you wanna do it?’

  ‘Let me think a minute.’

  ‘Think all you want.’ Wimp was quiet for two seconds. He looked back at the sandwich shop. ‘So, have we got a deal? You gonna go for this dope?’

  J.D. pursed his lips and slipped the remains of his turkey burger back into the bag. He gave Wimp his right hand, said, ‘Press the flesh, my man.’

  J.D. got back to the place he’d left Marie in a B-registered Montego. And neither of them were there. A Montego is not a small car, and Marie was not a small woman. He scanned the street and the car park where Edward Blake’s Beemer had been. No one was hiding. They’d all skipped.

  All right, so he’d been longer than planned, but he was back now, and he’d remembered the tuna salad in pitta bread. ‘Fuck,’ he said to the spot where the car had been, ‘if I d’ve known this was gonna happen I’d’ve put mayonnaise on it.’

  *

  The Montego, with Marie at the wheel, edged its way along the main street of the village of Osbaldwick. The houses to the left were fronted by a beck, and access to each of them was over a series of individual bridges. She crossed one of the bridges, the Montego passing under a canopy of mature pear trees, before emerging at the gothic arch and weathered door of a stone-built cottage. There was a garage attached housing a cool white Rover. The Montego shuddered to a wheezing halt as Marie switched off the engine.

  As she approached the house the door was opened by a slender vision dressed in a silk purple body with matching jogging pants. A petite, wraith-like face, perfectly made-up, gave her a wide-eyed smile, and said, ‘You must be Marie Dickens. Did you find us OK?’

  Marie put on the best face she had, and shook the woman’s tiny hand. How did they do it? These women? Didn’t they eat? Weren’t they haunted day and night by fantasies in chocolate and cream? Or was the pain of denial sweeter than sugar?