Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  ‘Well, no, not quite. I mean it is still there, it’s just that it doesn’t work without help.’

  Marie took deep breaths, calmed herself down, hung on to those words: It is still there. So that was OK, then, wasn’t it? If it was still there, then she hadn’t just been entered by something else. Something he’d strapped on specifically f0r the job.

  ‘You understand what I mean when I say prosthetic?’ J.D asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’m a trained nurse. It means artificial.’

  ‘Yes. But in this case it’s an implant.’

  ‘Not a transplant?’

  J.D. smiled, more to himself than Marie, though she noticed that he was amused. If there was something funny about this, she hadn’t discovered it yet. ‘Not a transplant, no. It’s a penile implant. A device that I can inflate and stiffen with fluid. Very like the original in fact. Except with this one I have a reservoir of fluid and a small pump implanted lower down.’

  ‘Lower down?’

  ‘In my scrotum.’

  Marie wanted to cry. Men were always a disappointment. In theory you had to, eventually, meet one who was straightforward and uncomplicated, a strong, gentle man. But in reality they never happened along. It was always the same, you thought you’d got a man, but what you’d got was a bundle of problems. They were such pricks. Ha bloody ha.

  Celia listened. She was good at that. She sipped at her coffee in Betty’s, then she replaced the cup on the saucer and placed her hands in her lap. She didn’t interrupt, let Marie explain all the intricacies of organic erectile dysfunction, and the various methods that the medics had introduced to deal with it. She managed to encourage Marie with various facial contortions, but not a sound came out of her mouth until Marie had finished.

  ‘Poor man,’ she said. Then she added, ‘And poor you.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve been an experiment, Celia. A sacrifice to modern technology.’

  ‘I do understand,’ said Celia pensively, ‘from other friends, and from a catholic reading of the classics, that there are men in the world who do not have the ability to make a woman feel good about herself.’

  Marie laughed. ‘You can say that again. But thank goodness we can talk about it. I feel better already.’

  ‘You’ve forgiven him?’

  ‘No, but I’ve forgiven me.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Marie. You have a good grasp of what’s important. I’ll buy you another coffee.’

  ‘You know the fairy story about the frog and the princess. Where she kisses the frog and he turns into a handsome prince? That’s never really been my experience. The story is always there, somewhere, at the back of my consciousness. So as I come across these frogs I have the right attitude. I mean, I expect them to turn into princes. But they don’t.

  ‘What happens is precisely the opposite. Whenever I kiss a frog, the frog gets decidedly worse. D’you think there’s something wrong with my kisses?’

  Celia asked a waitress to bring them more coffee, then turned back to Marie. ‘I’m sure there isn’t, my dear. It’s the men, they make as much sense as a square toilet seat.’

  Marie and Sam arrived at Edward Blake’s office fifteen minutes before the cabinet minister was due. Blake’s blue-rinse secretary was not in evidence, maybe she’d been given the day off, or perhaps she’d already found something better.

  Blake let them in and locked the door behind them, leaving the key in the lock. ‘You don’t want us to be disturbed?’ asked Marie.

  He snorted, leading the way through the reception area to his own inner office. ‘I presume you’re here to ruin me,’ he said. ‘I can’t say that the prospect of visitors arriving during the actual operation fills me with joy.’

  ‘The cabinet minister has already been in touch, then?’

  ‘Five minutes after you left him. Fie got me up in the middle of the night.’

  Marie smiled. ‘Life’s hard sometimes.’ She placed a video cassette on Blake’s desk, tapped it once with the tips of her fingers, and sat back in her chair. Blake fixed his eyes on the cassette, stared at it for so long that Marie wondered if he’d forgotten they were there. She glanced over at Sam, and he smiled but didn’t speak. He was wearing a black trilby and he tipped it forward so it fell over his eyes. This was Marie’s show, and he was only there because the cabinet minister’s barrister had requested his presence.

  When the other party arrived, Blake made the introductions. Robert ‘Bobby’ Neville, the cabinet minister, looked completely different with his clothes on. Almost respectable. His hair was sleek and black. Marie was now among the few who knew the truth: that he was a natural redhead.

  His barrister was all bustle and feigned good humour, overweight and anxious to get the proceedings under way. Keen to show that he was worth his two-thousand-pounds-a-day fee. It was he who introduced a professional cough, just loud enough to gain everyone’s attention.

  ‘As far as I can ascertain,’ he said, ‘we are primarily gathered here to negotiate the purchase of a videotape.’ He picked up the cassette that Marie had left on Edward Blake’s desk. ‘In fact, this must be the object in question. My client’ - a glance towards the cabinet minister - ‘is prepared to offer a nominal sum for the purchase of the tape, so long as the proceedings can be finalized immediately. He is not prepared to enter into protracted negotiations. Our bid is five hundred pounds, cash.’ He flicked a catch on his briefcase and extracted a plain brown envelope, which he waved at Marie.

  She shook her head.

  The barrister smiled and extracted another envelope. ‘One thousand,’ he said. ‘But that’s final.’

  Marie shook her head again. ‘No deal,’ she said.

  ‘My client is in a position of some privilege,’ said the barrister. ‘I can assure you that the police will not look lightly on an attempt to extract money from him by means of blackmail.’

  ‘No one’s blackmailing him,’ said Marie. ‘I don’t want his money. The videotape’s not for sale.’

  ‘But I thought—’ said the barrister.

  ‘Never mind.’ Marie cut him off. ‘We’re here as a kind of industrial tribunal,’ she said. ‘To discuss the redundancy of one of Edward Blake’s employees, Miss Joni Prine.’

  Blake got to his feet. ‘Now, just a minute,’ he said. ‘Joni’s got nothing to do with this.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Marie. ‘Joni Prine has been made redundant, and she is due a substantial payment to compensate her.’ She paused to let her words sink in.

  It was the barrister who got the message first. ‘I think I see,’ he said. ‘The lady in question is obviously due some compensation, and my client, the right honourable Robert Neville, is here as a representative of government, unofficially, of course, to see that fair play is observed. He is not to be asked to contribute financially, and at the conclusion of the meeting he can leave with the videotape in his possession. Am I on the right track?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Marie. ‘Give or take an inch here, a tuck there.’ She smiled as if she’d swallowed a mouthful of sugar.

  ‘Quite,’ said the barrister. ‘What terms were you going to propose to compensate the lady in question?’

  Marie took a breath. ‘Mr Blake is about to receive an insurance pay-out in excess of two million pounds,’ she said. ‘Joni Prine, who has been an invaluable aid in building up his present business, requires to be settled in her home town of Sunderland. We estimate that a one-off payment of one hundred thousand pounds should cover her moving expenses and allow her to purchase a moderate property for herself and her daughter.’

  The blood began draining from Edward Blake’s face. ‘Another one-off payment of the same amount,’ continued Marie, ‘would ensure that Joni’s daughter receives a decent education. And a final, smaller one-off payment, say fifty thousand pounds, would allow Joni’s elderly and frail mother to spend her remaining days free from financial constraint and worry.’

  The barrister looked at Edward Blake. Blake’s features were i
mmobile, but his whole body was shaking. ‘What is your response to the proposals, Mr Blake?’

  Blake brought his body under control and let a thin smile cross his lips. ‘I’ll not pay a penny,’ he said. ‘Joni Prine is a slag and a thief who’s never been in my employ. And no one can prove otherwise.’

  ‘OK,’ said Marie, ‘the alternative course for us is to solicit offers from the tabloid press for a certain videotape. One way or another Joni will be compensated.’

  Robert ‘Bobby’ Neville leaned forward and touched Blake’s arm. He smiled with a mouthful of teeth. ‘Edward,’ he said, ‘I do believe you’d like to reconsider the proposals to compensate the lady.’

  Blake glared at the cabinet minister with undisguised hatred. ‘A quarter of a million,’ he said. ‘I’m screwed for a quarter of a million, and the rest of you go home with everything intact. Is that justice?’

  No one replied. Sam Turner made a squeaking sound from underneath his hat, but he didn’t actually say anything.

  ‘I’m not going to fall for this,’ said Blake. ‘If I go down you all go down with me.’

  ‘What you have to realize, Edward,’ said the cabinet minister, ‘is that the tobacco industry will immediately pull its cash out of your operation. And even if you are lucky enough to retain a new client, there will be very few politicians willing to listen to your arguments. If that tape ends up with the tabloids you’ll be joining the dole queue.’

  ‘We’ll be there together, then, minister. There’s no way that I’m going to pay everyone’s fare out of this.’

  Bobby and his barrister went into a whispered conference. Scratching of chins. Shaking of heads. Slow dawning of resignation on their faces as they came out of the huddle. Bobby looked at Edward Blake and said, ‘Fifty-fifty?’ Blake took his time, let the minister sweat for almost a minute. Then he said, ‘You’re a fucking prince among men, Bobby.’

  The barrister did his cough again. He rubbed his hands together. ‘Well, then, everything seems to be settled, er, amicably.’ He collected the videotape and put it into his briefcase.

  ‘A moment,’ said the cabinet minister. ‘What happens if for some reason Mr Blake doesn’t honour his part of the commitment?’

  ‘We’ll go to the tabloids,’ said Marie.

  ‘So there’s another copy of the videotape,’ said the cabinet minister, almost to himself.

  ‘Ten, actually,’ said Marie. ‘Lodged with different solicitors and banks. Just in case anything happens to Joni Prine or to anyone connected with her.’

  Marie got to her feet. ‘Coming, Sam?’ she said. She waited until her boss had shaken hands with the other gentlemen in the room, smiling and nodding his head, occasionally raising his hat, but still not speaking. Then she followed him out of the office and down into the street where they both collapsed against the wall of the building.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think they’d buy the whole package.’

  ‘It’s true what they say,’ said Sam, when he’d got his breath back, ‘if it wasn’t for the government we’d have nothing left to laugh at.’

  *

  A quick celebratory coffee and back to work. When she had spoken on the telephone with Charles Hopper, secretary of the Fulford Players, he had sounded as though he might be helpful. Marie had expected him to get back to her, but there had been no word from him. She decided to visit his house rather than telephone again. You got more information from a man if you could establish eye contact.

  He lived in a three-storey Georgian town house off the Fulford Road. The place was well maintained, the mortar sharply pointed, the windows cleaned, and the three steps up to the front door had been recently scrubbed. The weather was electric. When Marie had started out the sky in the east had been black; now it was clear over there, but the air was heavy with pressure. There were sudden gusts of wind, shaking the trees and sending people running for their hats, then just as quickly the wind would die away and leave behind it an apparent calm.

  The bell jingled merrily inside the house, but no one came to answer the door. Marie rang again and waited long enough for a man to get out of bed, find a dressing-gown and descend from the top floor. But there was no sound from inside the house.

  She walked around the side, to the back of the building. Startled herself momentarily when she saw her own reflection in the glass of a conservatory. She wasn’t totally put at ease, either, when she realized that it was her own reflection. Her practised eye detected that she was packing several pounds more than she had at her last visit to the bathroom scales.

  She peered through the windows. The place was dust free. There was an easy chair in front of a television, a small table to the right of the chair. One wall was covered with books. And nothing was out of place. The surface of the table was uncluttered, polished. There was a framed photograph of a man, presumably Hopper himself. The floor of maple panels was naked apart from a rug. Charles Hopper was an unusual and fastidious man. Either that or he had a housekeeper.

  Oh, hell, though, putting on weight. As soon as you take your eyes off it, it starts to creep back. Soon as you relax. She’d been so involved with J.D., so intrigued by him, she hadn’t noticed the fat making its comeback. Now it had several days’ advantage, which meant she’d have to suffer for twice as many weeks to get back to normal. She’d read an article by a Christian saying you could pray yourself slim, that Jesus would dissolve all the fat and leave you trim and ready to fight the devil. You just had to believe.

  Marie didn’t.

  And it also confirmed something she had known all of her life. Jesus had no weight problems whatsoever. If he had been a fatty he’d never have got Christianity started. Or if he’d been a fatty and somehow managed to get Christianity started, we’d have heard about it big time. Like Robbie Coltrane, say. It would have been a feature.

  But then the whole script would have been different. If he’d been fat they might not have crucified him, they’d have found some other way of getting rid of him, maybe drowned him in a barrel instead. Because you can’t have a fat man on a cross, it would make the whole thing top heavy, end up toppling over. You just couldn’t found a religion on a scenario like that. But if they’d drowned him in a barrel the iconography, everything, would have been different. Instead of wearing crosses round their necks, people would have barrels.

  People with stigmata would never have been heard of. Never have been thought of. Hysterics the world over would not bleed from their hands or their sides. Instead you’d get occasional cases of bloated fanatics, their lungs filling up with fluid.

  And the last supper would’ve been a fat man’s supper. The last banquet,at which bread and wine would simply have been incidentals among a gluttony of nourishment; hors d’oeuvre, cheeses, meats, succulent steak, beef, mutton pork, veal, lamb, roast and boiled potatoes. They would have had stew, mince, broth and soup, a variety of suet puddings. And all the disciples would have been fat as well In fact Christianity would have been a fat person’s religion A society of bellies and fleshspots getting together to race through the fish course and the entree so they could bite, champ, munch, crunch, chew, sip, suck, and swill their way through a mountain of pastry, sweets, doughnuts, pancakes, mince pies, blancmange, and ice cream. While on the side would be chocolate, liquor and liqueurs, claret and coffee to ensure that everything was well washed down.

  Holy Communion as we now know it wouldn’t exist. It would have taken on a totally different face. When the priest asked the congregation to come forward to taste the body and blood of Christ, a vast catering conglomerate would go into action to feast the faithful.

  Marie smiled. Religion would really mean something then.

  ‘You looking for somebody?’ The woman’s voice dragged Marie back from her reverie. She turned to face a stout woman in a turban which was designed to hide a mixture of pink and white plastic hair-curlers. She was standing at a wooden gate which connected her garden to the garden of Hopper’s house. The woman�
��s face had been scrubbed with the same relish and zest as the front steps of the house, and, Marie concluded, with the same hands.

  ‘Yes. I’m looking for Charles Hopper. Do you know if he’s at home?’

  The woman’s top lip curled slightly. ‘If he was at home he’d have answered the door. Who’s looking for him?’

  ‘My name’s Marie Dickens.’ She stepped forward and offered the woman her card. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dawson’s the name. Clara Dawson.’

  ‘I spoke to Mr Hopper on the telephone a couple of days ago,’ Marie said. ‘He was helping us with an investigation. Do you know when he’ll be in?’

  The woman studied the card, narrowing her eyes to read the small print of the address and telephone number. ‘You’d better come in for a minute,’ she said. ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’

  She opened the gate and Marie followed her into a small cottage that was attached to Hopper’s house. Clara Dawson’s legs were criss-crossed with varicose veins.

  The door led directly into a Formica kitchen. The surfaces were all clean, and a whistling kettle gleamed its aluminium sheen from the top of a gas hob. A solid pine table took up the centre of the room, and the floor was covered with earth-coloured tiles. On the door of the fridge was a photograph of the woman, taken perhaps twenty years earlier. In the photograph she was surrounded by five small children, each of them with a striking resemblance to her, and she peered out at the camera with a permanent expression of amazement.

  She noticed Marie looking at the photograph. ‘They’ve all gone now,’ she said. ‘When they’re that age you think they’ll never leave, then you wake up one morning and they’ve all flown.’ Marie couldn’t tell from Mrs Dawson’s expression or tone if she was happy or sad at the loss of her brood. ‘You got any, yourself?’ the woman asked.

  Marie shook her head. ‘Don’t suppose I shall have now. Left it all too late.’

  They lapsed into silence.