Eight Ghosts

by Jeanette Winterson

  For over an hour, she circled the Great Tower, avoiding the more modern outposts of cafés and ice-cream parlours at the edge of the grounds. She ran through her lines. They’d lodged, these lines and scenes, in a way lines had not for many years. She needed no prompt, her voice was loud in the air; her theatre voice, an already effortless English accent, reached from deep in her abdomen. Spit flecked the cool air, her arms and hands animated and wild, even while holding the bottle. She stood at the entrance to the castle, under the coats of arms, looking up at the Great Tower, and in a tempest of words found Ophelia.

  ‘He took me by the wrist and held me hard,’ she shouted.

  Again: ‘He took me by the wrist and held me hard.’ This time better. More spite, less bewilderment.

  Again: ‘He took me by the wrist.’

  In the words she found an ire, a fury that broiled. She danced around in the night, frenzied in performance, and at the last, threw the empty wine bottle at the ground. It smashed loudly, shatteringly, and with delight she spat on its shards.

  ‘I did repel his letters and denied his access to me,’ she shouted, and left Maya behind for good, left her drunk and alone in the empty cottage.

  She was on her knees, close, so close to the glass. She panted, exhausted by her efforts, and saw boots coming towards her, boots but no sound upon the gravel. She heard a voice, American, a shimmer to his words. Southern perhaps, a touch of the confederate about it.

  ‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’

  He stood there, concerned, rocking on shined boots. An airman’s uniform, slick oiled hair, a face like a matinee idol, the kind of face men no longer possessed. She pushed herself up, dusted off her hands.

  Were she Maya, she would have raged. She would have threatened. ‘I was told there was no one here,’ she would have said. ‘They signed a piece of paper. They signed an NDA. Heads will roll for this. I tell you heads will roll!’

  She would have said that, but the words, the very idea of the words, did not come. He walked towards her. She instinctively retreated, but didn’t appear to move any further from him.

  ‘Nothing to be frightened of, ma’am. I’m US Airforce. We’re here to protect.’

  ‘I’m not frightened, sir,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing in you that could cause me fear. Surprise, perhaps, yes, but nothing else. You lack the height.’

  He laughed, something almost see-through about the sound, as though, like a duck’s quack, it would not echo.

  She looked down at her dress. It was dirty, her knees were pitted with gravel, her fingers filthy. She straightened her back, brought her hands to her hips.

  ‘Does the gentleman not introduce himself?’

  ‘My apologies, ma’am. They call me Edward.’

  She put her head to one side, an askance look.

  ‘They call you Edward? Is that not your name, sir?’

  ‘That’s what they call me,’ he said. ‘And you, ma’am? How am I to address you?’

  ‘You can call me Ophelia.’

  His eyes narrowed; he put his head on one side.

  ‘And is that not your name, ma’am?’

  He took a few paces closer. He smelled of sandalwood and brier. He held out his hand. She looked at it. She took it and he kissed it. The touch was light but present, evident on her skin, a slight warmth from his lips.

  ‘You sound American. Are you American, Ophelia?’

  ‘I am not,’ she said. ‘Or if so, I am not aware of it.’

  He looked downcast for a moment, lonesome, then looked back at her.

  ‘I thought I detected a trace, but perhaps I am mistaken. I miss the sound of American women.’

  He offered the crook of his arm.

  ‘The view from the castle is so beautiful on a clear night. You can see France, the lights on the mainland shining. Would you like to see the lights, Ophelia?’

  ‘There is melancholy in lights glimpsed from a distance,’ she said. ‘A party to which one has not been invited.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  She paused, but soon slipped her hand into his arm. They walked towards the castle. They saw France, its pin lights and glow. She leant her head on his shoulder and listened to him talk of how he had wished for company, real company, as the night wicked away and the sun blanched the crest of the tor.

  She woke in darkness, the whole of the day gone, dressed still in her Ophelia shift. It had not been uncommon, and she did not censure herself too much for it. She made coffee and ate a slice of mango. Her phone was in a cupboard; full immersion, no distractions. She read the script from start to finish, the words familiar as song. She ate another slice of mango and took a bottle of wine from the fridge, went out to see if she could find Edward again.

  He was sitting on the wall, long legs dangling. She did not fall for men. They fell for her. Ophelia, though, different. A different age. A different time. Ophelia felt safe with him; saw refuge and safety in his arms. She did not question it. There was nothing to question. He held out his hand.

  ‘My lady,’ he said in gentle mockery. ‘Woulds’t thou walk with me a time?’

  He jumped down from the wall. She laughed as he stumbled.

  ‘I would be honoured, sir.’

  ‘Well, to the castle we shall walk, and the elders there we will meet.’

  ‘There are others, sir?’

  ‘None as dear as you, ma’am, but more than you can imagine.’

  With her arm in his they walked the incline, round the back of the Great Tower, entering it through a small door. It was chill, like the castles of her youth, but loud and flickering with torchlight. There was music playing, the sound of laughter and scuffles of feet. He led her impatiently through the chambers to the source, the heat rising with every corridor they traversed. Before the Great Hall, five men were playing cards and drinking whiskey, smoking filterless cigarettes, dressed like Edward. The men ignored them as they passed.

  The Great Hall was sweltering, smoke-filled, men-and-women choked, the whole chamber at feast. Children scampered under tables, women pleasured men, a fight broke out and then rescinded. Red and blue and gold gleamed in the guttering light, food piled on tables was eaten or discarded to the straw beneath. The costumes were inconsistent. An airman danced with a girl in a wimple; two of Wellington’s men were embroiled in a drinking competition with a medieval friar; a king talked sagely with a fat man dressed in Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt which read: ‘I know I’m old, but at least I saw all the good bands’. Edward took her to a table and called to a young lad who brought them goblets and a jug of wine.

  ‘The finest wine you’ll ever taste,’ he said.

  She sipped from the goblet and it was like drinking for the very first time. A shiver of taste, damson and plum, then a hint of liquorice, of cinnamon and spice, then tobacco and chocolate. Men blew kisses towards her, but she demurred. Edward laughed his unechoing laugh and pointed out those he knew, their stories gruesome and tragic. He poured more wine and leant in closer to her. He smelled different tonight. Something smoky to him, something like diesel.

  ‘And so how did you get here?’ he said.

  ‘I followed you, sir,’ she said.

  He wagged a finger.

  ‘A fine answer. Now. Let’s dance!’

  Some of the airmen were playing trumpets, the assembled crowd dancing to toneless jazz. Edward held her close and she fell into those arms in a way she would never before have considered. His shirt was dirtier than the previous night. There were smudges on his skin. They danced and drank until, exhausted, they sat back at their table. He put his hand on hers and looked into her eyes; swimming, his eyes, fluid. They kissed. And oh, the collapsing world. A kiss, like the wine, that felt like the very first of its kind. When they broke their embrace, it felt as though she had been plucked from the sea, just at the moment of drowning.

  He poured them more wine and was about to say something, but became distracted. She looked to where his ey
es had flitted. A woman in a long red dress was walking through the hall. Ophelia watched her pick up a goblet, drain it and make her way towards the back of the room. As she reached the staircase, she turned and fixed Edward with a pale gaze. Then she disappeared into the darkness.

  ‘Who, pray, is the lady?’ she asked. ‘Her face could make a tyrant weep.’

  He looked down at his goblet, put his fist around the stem, shook his head.

  ‘It is a sad story, hers,’ he said. ‘She loved a man of privilege and position, but she was not of a high birth. They met in secrecy, lived as man and wife as much as was possible. He was sent to war, a war from which he did not come back. To join him, she threw herself from the castle walls. And now she is cursed to walk the Great Tower every night, waiting for some thing to set her free. The cruelty is, she doesn’t know what that thing might be. We can all leave’ – he extended his arm to the whole room – ‘whenever we like. But not her. Or so the story goes. She’s yoked to the place. Trapped. Imagine that.’

  He looked down at his wine and finished it. He put his hand back on hers. His face changed from sadness to levity.

  ‘So, Ophelia,’ he said, ‘how do you like our little house of debauchery?’

  She poured more wine.

  ‘I like it well enough, sir. Well enough indeed.’

  She dreamt she was banging on the doors of the castle, demanding entry, shouting for admittance. She woke to the same sound. At the door to the cottage was her assistant in a state of some alarm.

  ‘What’s the emergency?’ Maya asked, her assistant pushing past her, looking in each room. She stopped in the kitchen. Maya followed. There were ants on the mango. Bottles on the floor, coffee spilled on the table.

  ‘I’ve tried for two days to get hold of you,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve been here,’ Maya said. ‘Preparing. Getting into character.’

  Her assistant passed her a phone. On it was a video of her smashing a wine bottle, shouting into the wind, talking animat edly to herself, trying to force her way into the castle, collaps ing in a heap by its door and then hauling herself back up.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ her assistant said, ‘they didn’t post it anywhere.’

  Maya watched herself in the night, her hair untamed and wild; her dress almost black in places.

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘This is preparation. And you’ve ruined it. Ruined it. The whole thing.’

  Maya swept the debris from the table to the floor. Her assistant shook her head.

  ‘You need help, Maya.’

  ‘I need no such thing. I need you to leave and I need to prepare.’

  The assistant picked up her phone.

  ‘I’m going to have to tell the producer. You know that. You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘You must do whatever is in your heart and in your conscience,’ Maya said, ‘but now, leave. Out! Out!’

  The assistant left. Maya went back to her bed. She slept until darkness fell.

  Ophelia took a bottle of wine and opened the door. ‘Oh my lord. Edward!’ she said.

  Edward was standing by the wall, his tunic on fire, his face blackened with soot and ash, his hair smoking. He put his hand to his face.

  ‘You see flames?’ he said.

  She ran to him, shook the wine over the flames, but they remained ablaze. He shook his head. A single tear cleaned a trough down his cheek.

  ‘I’d hoped it would not happen this time. That our love would dim your eyes,’ he said. ‘But no.’

  He walked towards her, put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Our world is cruel, Ophelia. The few that can see us, see us as we would like to be seen. In our pomp and grandeur. As we ourselves see each other. But it never lasts for long. The veil always lifts, and you see us as we really are. As we were at the moment of death. It’s why we do not seek communion with the living. The disappointment is all too livid.’

  He wiped his hand across his cheek. Some skin shed, scattered to the ground.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said coming to her, ‘so let’s go. The boys have promised something special tonight. Some new number they’ve been working on. It will be brilliant or terrible. Either way, it will be something to behold!’

  He laughed but it came only from one side of his mouth. It sounded pained.

  He crooked his arm. She put her hand through the flames. They were warm, like a child’s breath, but did not burn or catch. They walked and they talked as though nothing had changed.

  In the antechamber before the Great Hall, his fellow airmen were missing limbs. All were charred black. She could see one of their jawbones beneath scorched skin. At their usual table, the boy who brought the goblets and the wine was missing most of his skull. Wellington’s men were open-gutted, the girl with the wimple riddled with pox. They seemed not to notice; their din and dancing as loud and as spirited as before. The woman in red walked past their table again; battered and bruised, bones broken and misshapen under her skin. Ophelia watched her pass. Suddenly, the woman turned and hissed at Ophelia, her face as red as her dress, her teeth smashed like old rock.

  Edward was now entirely in flames, his skin blistered and cracked. He leant his hand across the table and she took it; she took his hand and was not afraid. Not afraid at all. And then was.

  Ophelia began to cry. Cry with heave and weight in the stomach. To have lost him. To have had this time, and now to lose it so utterly, so damnably. She could not look at his face. Could not look at those around her, their deathly forms, their pain and suffering. She cried and she felt his hand on hers.

  ‘Ophelia,’ he said. ‘We have loved, have we not?’

  ‘Oh yes, Edward,’ she said. ‘We have loved. Oh we have loved, sir. And I am broken. I will die without you. I know that in my heart. Without you I will die.’

  ‘You do not fear death?’ he said. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘I have been nearer to death than anyone,’ she said. ‘Death has been a silent companion my whole life. One cannot fear such a close and constant kin.’

  He sipped his wine. He leant in to her.

  ‘Let me tell you what I can see. I see three men dressed in robes eating chicken legs. A soldier kissing a serving wench. A child stroking a kitten. Tell me, what do you see?’

  She looked around the Great Hall. She saw three corpses gnawing at bones. A man with a chest wound bleeding on a slit-wristed woman, a boy with an umbilical cord around his neck holding a rat. She smiled.

  ‘Oh, Edward,’ she said. ‘I can see it.’

  ‘See what?’ he said.

  ‘I see the possibility,’ she said, suddenly light. ‘I see what needs to be done.’

  ‘Oh, Ophelia,’ he said, his face creasing. ‘Oh, my love, no. I forbid it. I absolutely forbid it.’

  She smiled and drank the last of her drink. She kissed him passionately on the mouth, her eyes closed and in remembrance of that first kiss, and ran to the staircase; Edward following behind, limping on his broken legs, dragging himself slowly after her.

  A top the battlements she could see to France. She decided to head in that direction.

  ‘Let in the maid, that out a maid, never departed more,’ she said.

  Oh the lightness of that rush! Oh the joy of that descent! Oh the sweet swell of love in amongst the breeze!

  She woke in the dark. There was distant, melancholy light. She shifted and looked around. She was in a bedchamber, one she’d seen before in the Great Tower. Rough stone walls and tapestries, a fire dying in the grate. She heard movement outside and then Edward was there, as he had been before: spruce and neat, a matinee idol in his airman’s uniform, his hair oiled and perfectly parted, skin smooth and white. He sat down on the bed. He shifted a strand of hair from her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for this gift. This wonder. This salvation.’

  She tried to kiss him, to push herself up. He placed his hand on her chest.

  ‘You must rest,’ he said. ‘Stay t
here awhile.’

  He got up and walked back towards the door as a woman wearing a white dress came through it. The woman placed her arm around Edward’s waist.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, in the direction of the bed. ‘The years I have waited. The years I have waited for this moment.’

  Edward put his arm around the woman’s shoulder. He smiled. From the bed, she pushed herself up to standing.

  ‘Edward?’ she said. ‘Edward?’

  ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Yes, it’s late,’ the woman said. ‘It’s late and it’s time to walk.’

  Their hands in each other’s hands, they smiled at her and thanked her one last time. And then they left. They left her alone and aching. Alone, aching and wearing a long red dress.

  The family therapist recommended a break, I write on the school’s stern Term-time Absence Form.

  I don’t write: since the fire I can no longer face the family home and even my daughter is desperate to leave it. I don’t need to: the school already knows about the fire. The firemen came to the school the day the kitchen went up, looking for Alison and her key. And afterwards, there were many more officials at school because arson is a crime and social workers and teachers have to be made aware. Though I think that arson is a big word for a fire in a bin; even if school books were the tinder.

  Before the books were burnt, the teachers marked them, so they also think they know Alison. They know the Alison of the past six months, the pierced, pink-haired girl called ‘Ali’. They know her books: the large, illiterate scrawl and the satirically wrong answers and the fantastical diary entries in the margins apparently written by an extra on Home and Away, ‘Can’t stay single any longer . . . Angie lent me her push-up bra’. Ali, who scrawls the word Life in Gothic letters in red then scribbles out in big circles. Ali, who writes ‘Ha! Ha!’ under the teacher’s bad marks, and then sets fire to the book.

  I do not write, on the Term-time Absence Form, I feel the need to drive away from this version of my daughter, because the school believes the pink-haired girl is the real Alison, not a version. The school doesn’t know the girl she was before, just eighteen months ago, the girl with plaits and a checked summer dress and arms full of library books; the girl with top marks and perfect spelling and round, careful, much-commended handwriting. That Alison has never appeared in this school, or at least, did not appear for more than a few months at the very beginning. I think that Alison’s nice little friends from before – Oh, Eleanor, Martha, Nicola, of the skipping rope and gold stars, how I miss you! – do not believe in that Alison either, any more, so violent have the new Ali’s verbal assaults been upon them, so far from arson and push-up bras are they.