Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  I hear an engine and look to me left and see the blue minibus rumbling up the hill towards me. Even at this distance I recognise the driver cos of the mad ginger hair sticking up like a busby, or a hive as I used to think of it at times, and picture the thoughts and bits of advice and stuff leaving it like buzzing bees. I stand up and give a wave and the van stops and the window goes down and Ebi shouts in his Cofi accent:

  —The boy! A fock yew up yur tewday for then?

  Christ: the decibels. The man is incapable of speaking at anything less than a bellow. —Fancied a walk. Thought I’d drop in.

  He gives me a look, and his light blue eyes go all kind of knifelike and watery. A sign that he’s thinking.

  —That’s all? Yew-a sure now?

  —Aye.

  —Definitely definitely? Hand-on-heart promise?

  —Aye, Ebi. Nice day and just fancied a bit of a walk, that’s all. Stretch the ahl legs like.

  He looks at my face and then gives a little nod. —There we are then. Am off to Llanilar to pick up some new chook-chooks.

  —Ah. Fox again?

  —Aye, fockin Reynard took another few last night, didn’t he? Can’t see how he’ve been getting into-a pens meself. Got em like Fort Knox I yav. Crafty cont, aye.

  —Where was Ralphie?

  —Ad im inside. Leave im outside and he’ve taken to woofin at every shadow, fock knows why. Spooked by somethin last week. Keeps everyone awake he does. Can’t stop him, so he’ve been sleepin in-a laundry. He puts the van into gear and revs the engine. —Anyway, dinner in half an hour! Soup! Leek and tatws!

  He gives me a salute and drives off. Kind of roars off, really. Nothing that man does is ever less than loud; he even snores like a jumbo taking off. He first came here in recovery, he told me, but he relapsed on release. Went back up north to the mountains, got a flat in Porthmadog with a mate, also in recovery, opened a bottle. Less than a month later his mate was dead; Ebi found his corpse. So he came back down to Rhos, cleaned up, and got a job here as general oddjobber. He’s not a member of counselling staff or anything but he was hugely helpful in that way. I remember one night, a weekend night it was, we were all sitting around the barbecue pit and the stars were all shining and I had this feeling like I’d finally fuckin kicked it, finally learned to accept and not rage. And Ebi started singing. The firelight on his face and that head of hair of his all red and mad and his head tilted back, giving it laldy to the Milky Way. The song was ‘Calon Lân’. He sang it in Welsh and then in English, kind of, cos the words then didn’t really fit the tune, but I remember them clearly, in Ebi’s translation, cos that night I wrote them down and I’ve still got them somewhere:

  I don’t ask for a luxurious life

  the world’s gold or its fine pearls

  I ask only for a happy heart

  an honest heart, a heart that’s pure

  a pure heart full of goodness

  is fairer than the pretty lily

  none but a pure heart can sing

  sing in the day and sing in the night

  Pure lovely, man. Except, except, how to keep a pure heart, out in the world when you’re released, clean, into it only to find out that it’s anything but pure? When it’s governed by an infatuation with money, obsessed with money to the point that people with money enough to support them through a thousand generations are encouraged to make more, always more? So obsessed that it will be taken from the poor so that the already rich can have more. More than they could ever need. So obsessed that they will kill to make more, lay cities desolate so they can further insulate themselves from the world. Pure heart? And they’ll say in public and totally without shame or irony that they are proud to belong to a Christian country. Christian? Under those cunts it’s barely even fuckin civilised. Their podgy, unlined, never-known-struggle faces, their dead fucking eyes unlit by any imagination, their sober-suited insistence on Doing The Right Thing, their tax-avoiding Bullingdon Club restaurant-smashing fucking stinking hypocrisy, their fucking fucking fucking fuck—

  The glow, Adam. Christ, man, remember that glow. And Ebi’s face in the firelight as he sang those words. What takes root in your head is your choice only and nowt else. Pure heart.

  I walk down to Rhos proper, to the buildings, like. It’s cool in the trees and I can hear bees. The swallows zip and zoom through the shadows. The sun hits me, I mean it feels like a proper biff, when I leave the trees and come out behind the Second Stage house. Used to be a working farmhouse, it did. God, imagine living here, working these hills. Must’ve been a hard, hard life. The garden looks brilliant, all the colours; they’re doing a good job with the upkeep. I wonder if them slow-worms still nest behind the compost heap. Probably: I mean I don’t see why they’d move. Safe from the cats there, they are. But then nowhere’s truly safe from a cat. I remember Quilty bringing back a dead bird that left my hands covered in soot when I took it off him; he’d been down a chimney to get it, the mad wee bugger. I put chicken wire behind the compost to protect the lizards from the Rhos cats but they dug beneath it so I had to dig it down, embed it deeper into the soil. So then they just reached their paws through. So then I had to get a smaller mesh. Don’t know if it worked, if the lizards are still there or if the moggies (and the maggies) have wiped them all out. I hope they’re still there. And no one can blame the cats for doing their thing. Funny, tho, how all the feral cats in these hills find Rhos, how they gravitate here. Cats have a knack for knowing which houses will take them in and look after them but I like the fact that the wild ones in this area would end up at Rhos, as if similar souls were acting like magnets to each other. And Christ how they were doted on … people hiding the bacon from their breakfasts to feed them with. They’d arrive all skinny and bedraggled and in a couple of weeks they’d be porkers, like rugby balls covered in fur. I remember one, a real bruiser tom he was, big rip through his ear, scars all over his face, proper lion in miniature, kind of a bluey colour as if there was some real pedigree in him, there was this aura around him, the way he moved, prowled, the light in his eyes. He had a collar on so someone must’ve owned him, once. But the wild life called him with a loud voice I suppose and he could do nothing but listen. Wonder if he’s still around. Cool animal he was; whenever I watched him walk that song would go through me head, ‘Stray Cat Strut’. And then Quilty came out of the town at night-time just when I needed him; sitting on my bed I was one night crying and thinking, again, that to stop breathing once and for ever might be the better option and then there was this shape at the window, against the glass, grey-striped and ghostly with mad yellow eyes. I heard him miaowing behind the pane. It’s the world, man; it sends you these gifts every now and again, usually when you’re least expecting it. No, fuck that, cos you never expect it. But still they come.

  I smell cooking as I pass the Second Stage house. I’m hungry but it can wait; first thing I want to do up here is see Sally. That’s always the first thing I want to do up here so I circle the First Stage building and head towards the polytunnels and there she is, outside, sat on a chair, mug in one hand and thin roll-up in the other as always. I whistle and she looks up and her face breaks into a grin. There’s a black cat at her feet, his legs tucked beneath him. He looks like a furry curling stone. He blinks.

  —Look at you! Sally shouts, and I actually do; I look down at meself, see the clean jacket, the clean jeans over the abscess-free legs. —Aren’t you looking smart?

  I give her a great big hug. Small flowers caught in her hair and compost in her clothes.

  —What brings you up here?

  —Weather. Nice day. Fancied a walk.

  —I’ll put the kettle on.

  I follow her into the polytunnel. Flowers here, young flowers which will be planted outside soon, and vegetables; tomatoes like Christmas baubles. Some thin vines across the curved placcy roof but there’s no green on them and certainly no fruit.

  —See the grapes haven’t taken then.

  —No, she says. —And
they won’t, either. Don’t know what I was thinking of, hoping for grapes in Wales. Be better off growing laver.

  She busies herself with making tea. The cat comes in and stretches and yawns and I see his pink tongue and his white teeth, the fangs like needles and the side ones, the carnassial teeth (aye, I read, these days) like a tiny mountain range. I tickle his head and then he slopes off behind a bag of compost. Multipurpose, it says on it, but I can think of only one thing that it might be used for.

  —You haven’t come to tell us you’ve won the lottery, then?

  —I wish. But I don’t even do the lottery. Why?

  —Funding. Cuts are starting to bite. Same old story innit? Nothing changes. Except it gets worse, aye.

  —Not a danger of going under tho, I say, and it’s not really a question.

  —What, closing down?

  —Yeh.

  She holds crossed fingers up on both hands. —Not yet. But God the struggle for money you wouldn’t believe. And not just that; we’ve got to endlessly fucking justify the tiny bit of funding we do get. All the time, form after form after form. Cos we generate no money, that’s what it is, although we save one fuck of a lot. A few quid spent on this place saves a few thousand in the NHS or the police service or whatever. Try telling them that, tho. See how far you get.

  Them: I know exactly who she means by them. She gives me a mug of tea and leans against a bench full of salad pots and rolls another smoke. I get me own baccy out and do the same. Still got the packet that Benji gave me. Nice one that man.

  —Economically it makes no fucking sense at all, she says. —I mean, just for a moment forget care and compassion and all that kind of stuff; just pretend that they don’t matter and look at it from a purely economic perspective. We save money. We save lots of fuckin money. We’re cheap as rehab goes anyway and we’re successful with it; eighty-nine per cent are still clean two years after leaving here.

  —I know that, Sal.

  —Course you do, sweetheart. An the amount of money society has been saved from you alone. She licks her Rizla and lights up and blows out smoke in a snort. —No sense. Only in ideological terms does it make any sense. But we’ll be alright when that 350 mil a week comes back, aye? Lying fuckers. Anyway. You haven’t come all the way up here just to listen to me bang on. How’ve you been?

  And how have I been? What can I say? —Alright.

  —Staying clean? I know I shouldn’t ask like but. Can’t help worrying, can I?

  I must hesitate for a split second because I see her facial expression react to fill the gap; the eyes kind of fill with something and the lips go upside down like an n. She just says: —Oh no, in a voice gone small, and instantly I go on the defensive but I must be honest at all times:

  —No, no, listen, it’s not what you’re thinking. No smack or crack, nothing like that.

  —You had a drink?

  —Not even that, no.

  —What then?

  I tell her about the rave thing on the mountain by the lake. The white pill and how it did nothing but keep me awake so I’m guessing it was pure caffeine and nothing else.

  —And you were disappointed?

  —No. Can’t say I was. More relieved than anything, to be honest.

  —Yeah but where did the desire come from? I mean you weren’t to know it was a dud when you necked it. Could’ve been anything. Dread to think what’s passed off as E these days.

  —Aye I know. But I felt … I don’t know what I felt. Bored. Like I needed a reward or something. You know how the junkie mind works, Sal. I’ll never do it again.

  —Never say ‘never’. Day to day, boy. Control is the key. And where was your sponsor?

  —Off on holiday. And I saw something. In the sky.

  Fuck. I’ve done it again. Without any conscious intention those words have just leapt out. Why is this? It’s like them words, just them words and no others, are wild creatures inside and I can’t control them or keep them in. They just spring out.

  —What d’you mean?

  —Like a shape in the sky, I say.

  —A cloud?

  —God no. I know what clouds look like, don’t I?

  —Kind of a UFO? There’s been loads of them seen recently. Lights and discs and stuff. Giant white cigars, one person said on the Cambo News letters.

  —Nothing like that. This was kind of like a woman.

  —In the sky? A floating woman?

  —Aye, yeah. We were up on this ridge like and the sun was coming up and it wasn’t raining but the air was kind of wet? Know what I mean?

  —Awyr glas, she says.

  —What?

  —Welsh for ‘blue air’. That’s what we say round here cos the air’s nearly always saturated. Who’s ‘we’?

  —What?

  —You said ‘we were on the ridge’. Who’s the ‘we’?

  —Me and two others. Some big feller and a woman.

  —What was her name?

  —Who, the woman?

  —Was she called Emma?

  —How’d you know that?

  —She’s been blogging about this, she has. Have you not read it? It’s ‘trending on Twitter’, as they say. I can hear the quote marks in her speech but I’m glad to see she doesn’t do the fingers-in-the-air thing. —My Jess pointed it out to me.

  I want to ask her how her daughter is but the other words won’t let me, won’t give me room. She jumps into my mind, tho, Jess does; last time I saw her she was on the prom, with her mates, late at night, massive heels on her feet and a tiny silver dress. She didn’t see me, but I wanted her to.

  —So what was it, this shape? I ask. —What’re they saying online?

  Sally stubs her smoke out in a plant-pot overflowing with dog ends and other rubbish. —Shadow or something. God knows. An atmospheric phenomena to do with a concentration of water molecules in the air. She smiles at me and then says: —That’s what someone said online, anyway. I dunno, people see funny things all the time, Adam love. Overactive imaginations. You were sleep-deprived cos of the caffeine. You were dreaming awake.

  —Hallucinating?

  —Kind of. Not like when on acid or anything, you were just dreaming while awake. Or half awake. Your mind needs to sleep.

  —Aye but all three of us saw it. How could we all have the same dream?

  —Maybe you didn’t. Maybe one of you saw it and mentioned it to the other two and now all three of you think you saw it. Or believe that you did. Power of suggestion.

  —No, it wasn’t like that, I say but I’m not entirely sure anymore.

  —Or maybe it was just a shadow or something like I said. I doubt it was a ghost or anything.

  —Who said anything about ghosts?

  —I wouldn’t worry about it, cariad. And get yourself up to the kitchen for some soup. I’ve got to go down to the stream for watercress.

  —Shall I come with?

  —No, no, go and see the others. I know they’d love to see you. Floating woman. Daft bugger, you.

  She gives me a hug; that smell again of flowers and soil. I squeeze her very tight. In the same way that I never used to feel the sun I never used to feel people either; they were just things, objects, useful in only two ways: can I score off them? Can I rob off them? And that was it. Useless to me otherwise. Now, tho, I squeeze Sally until I feel her breath whoosh onto my neck.

  —Ow!

  —Sorry.

  She lets me go. —Someone’s had their Weetabix. Now go and have some soup. I’ll see you soon.

  I’m dismissed. I leave the polytunnel, back out into the sunshine. A breeze has sprung up now and is setting the polythene flapping with a rhythmic thumping sound. At the woodwork sheds I turn and see Sally heading down the valley side, away from me, with a bucket under her arm. The watercress grows wild down by the river. It was up here that I tasted the stuff for the first time and I’ve loved it ever since; on butties, with cheese and Marmite. It was not the kind of thing my folks would’ve recognised as fo
od, mainly because it’s not a spud, or meat. Me dad would’ve considered someone who ate leaves as highly suspicious and to be avoided. If not battered. To him, there was a direct link between a taste for salad and for taking it up the arse. Couldn’t have one without the other. You are what you eat, that was one of his phrases, so if you eat fruit … God almighty. Sometimes, when I think back, I’m amazed that I lasted as long as I did before becoming a junkie. Surprised I wasn’t jacking up in me cot.

  On the way back up to the Second Stage house I see a feller come out of First Stage and cup a flame in his hands to light up. Must be new cos I don’t recognise him, but then, not being a rezzie meself anymore, I hardly ever do see the First Stagers; socialising with them is discouraged. They’re taking the first steps towards relearning living skills and they’re delicate, them steps are; it’s so easy to stumble and fall over when taking them. Like learning to walk all over again. I look at this feller as I get closer to him and I see the shirt-sleeves buttoned up tight on the cuffs to cover, what, healing abscess holes, trackmarks still leaking maybe, any number of things. See the inky-dink tattoos on his neck and face and hands; notice that on one side, there’s a bite taken out of his ear. It’s healed in a scallop-shell shape. One of his eyes stays fixed; it could be false. And it’s not as alive as the other one is, doesn’t reflect the sky like the other one does.