by Peter James
‘I was adopted at birth.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘That’s what my mother’s always —’ She stopped.
‘Mothers often shield their children from bad memories. Is there any chance she’s been shielding you from something?’
Lies death. Truth. Go back.
She glanced around. One of the old men at the end of the bar was staring at her. She looked back at Hugh; out of the corner of her eye she saw the old man tug the sleeve of his companion and mumble something.
‘Surely if — if I had been in this area with my natural parents — or my adoptive parents — I would have some memories?’
Hugh took the pipe out of his mouth and twisted the stem around, adjusting it. ‘You do have some memories. You knew where the stables were. You knew where the locket was buried, where the knife was.’
She nodded.
‘You’re pretty certain your adoptive parents were always in London. Do you think it might be possible that your natural mother was from around here? That you spent your first year or two here before being adopted? Or maybe, if you were adopted at birth, your adoptive mother has some connections here?’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ she said. ‘But wouldn’t I have remembered more than this?’
‘You’re remembering more all the time. You lost your natural father, then your adoptive father. That’s a heavy trip for a small child. You’ve coped with it by burying it away. You needed a hypnotist to dig it up.’
‘I thought philosophy was your subject, not psychiatry.’
He tamped the tobacco in the bowl with his finger. ‘I’m playing devil’s advocate, that’s all.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s usually an explanation for these things. If your mother won’t tell you — or can’t — what about any of her relatives?’
‘There aren’t any alive.’
‘Friends?’
‘No. I should have started this ten years ago.’
‘You don’t know your real parents names?’
LEAVE IT ALONE, BITCH.
‘I’m hoping to get them.’
‘It still might not help much, but it may tell you where they’re from.’
She drained her glass and ordered another spritzer and a pint for Hugh. Just memories. Across the room the fruit machine made a demented wailing sound and sicked up a bucketful of coins. Memories. The minty taste of the chewing gum. The woman on the horse. The locket. Blood gouting from the mastiff’s neck. She looked down at her hands, scratched and cut to ribbons. Wounds were memories. Wounds made the body remember that certain things were painful and not to do them again. Her mind was full of wounds. They hurt too much to belong to someone else.
She could see from Hugh’s expression that he knew that as well.
They ate in the small restaurant at the back of the pub. Charley picked at her prawn salad, wishing she had not ordered it. The prawns disturbed her, something about them seemed too intense, the fishy flavour, the texture. It felt like eating maggots.
A low mist smudged the beam of the Jaguar’s headlamps as they drove back down the lane, just after eleven. Rose Cottage slid by, dark under the marbled moonlight. A tiny red dot winked by the front door.
Hugh braked. She climbed out unsteadily, more drunk than she’d realised. Nelson miaowed mournfully. Hugh stood beside her. She opened the gate. The engine of the Jaguar ticked behind them. ‘Nelson!’ he said. ‘Good boy!’
The cat miaowed again and the cry echoed through the night.
‘I’ll give him some milk,’ Hugh said.
‘I’ve got dog food, if he’ll eat it. What’s going to happen to him?’
‘I’ll tell the police in the morning,’ Hugh said. ‘They’ll probably take him to a home or something. Unless you’d like him?’
‘I don’t think Ben would. You don’t want him?’
‘He gives me the creeps.’
Nelson wailed again, his solitary eye glowing.
‘I’ll run you down.’
‘I can walk.’
‘It’s no problem. All part of the service.’
As he pulled up behind her Citroën a feeling of gloom enveloped her; she didn’t want to be alone, did not want to go into the house alone. She stared through the windscreen at the dark shapes of the night.
‘I keep thinking about Viola Letters all the time.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself.’
‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘I ought to get back. I’m behind on my writing.’
‘What are you doing at the moment?’
‘Oh, I’m kicking around with the philosophical aspects of ghosts.’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What’s that to the layman?’
He smiled. ‘Maybe a quick coffee.’
She opened the Jaguar’s door and the weak interior light came on and made the night beyond the windscreen even darker. The house seemed to be tilting in different directions above her. Lights burned inside; she had left plenty on, had not wanted to come back to darkness.
Hugh got out and closed his door. The weir roared, the water tumbling as if it had never been disturbed. The moon was sliding slowly through the sky, making the same journey it had made a million billion times before she’d ever been born and would go on making aeons after she was dead.
‘Weird things, stars,’ Hugh said.
‘Do you know them all?’
‘Ghosts,’ he said. ‘I always wonder how many of them are ghosts.’ He pointed up with his pipe. ‘You’re not seeing the stars as they are now, you’re seeing them as they were hundreds of years ago, millions of years ago; some of them don’t exist any more. You are looking at light they emitted, images of themselves. That’s what I think a lot of ghosts are. Images of dead people, like video replays.’
Ben barked as Charley unlocked the front door. They walked down the passageway and into the kitchen. She switched the light on and was startled by a sharp crackle from the switch. The light flickered, then steadied. ‘There’s some problem with the electrics, still,’ she said.
‘I thought you’d had it rewired.’
‘We have.’
Ben was jumping excitedly and she let him into the garden. She filled the percolator with water and took a coffee filter out of a pack. Hugh stared around the room and up at the ceiling with a worried frown. The answering machine winked and she wondered if there was another message from Tom. She hoped there was. Sod him.
‘Do you really believe in ghosts, Hugh?’
He prodded inside the bowl of his pipe. ‘Yes. I believe in ghosts, but I don’t know what they are. I don’t know whether ghosts have any intelligence, any free will, whether they can actually do anything other than keep appearing in the same place, going through the same movements, like a strip of film replaying. I’m not sure whether a ghost could really harm someone, apart from giving them a fright by manifesting. That’s part of the thesis in my book.’
‘Have you ever seen one?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Yes. Would you?’
‘No.’ She let Ben in and sat down at the table. ‘I’d be really freaked.’
‘I don’t think it’s that frightening. We talk about reality and the supernatural as being two different things. But they aren’t.’
‘How do you mean?’ The percolator gurgled and spat; a steady dribble of coffee fell into the jug.
‘We know what corpses are, but I don’t think we know what death is. I don’t believe in death any more than I believe in life.’
‘You don’t think Viola Letters is dead?’
‘They pulled her corpse out of the sluice pond.’
‘But her spirit is the thing that matters?’
‘Bodies matter too. All the cells in them, all the tiny particles, the atomic particles and the sub-atomic particles. Genes. Electricity.’
‘Electricity?’
‘The particles in our bodies have electro-magnetic charges. When our c
orpses break down, either through cremation or burial, it all goes back into the earth one way or another, gets recycled. Each particle keeps its memory, like a tiny piece of a videotape. It’s possible that you and 1 are made up of particles which have been in hundreds of other people. You might have particles that have been in Einstein, or Michelangelo, or Boadicea.’
‘Or a mass murderer?’
‘We don’t necessarily get reconstituted as human beings. We might — or bits of us might — come back as humans, bits as dung beetles. Might even come back as a tree and get made into a table.’
‘Or an encyclopaedia.’
Hugh grinned and relit his pipe.
She tried to fathom out his argument. ‘You said the other day that places could retain memories of things that had happened.’
‘There is a view that if there has been an intense emotion in a place then somehow the electro-magnetic particles in the atoms in the walls have absorbed this — and either some people, or certain atmospheric conditions, cause the replay effect.’ He shrugged. ‘That explains a large percentage of ghosts.’
Charley put two mugs on the table. ‘Sugar?’
‘Thanks.’
‘What about the others?’
He rolled a spent match between his fingers. ‘Intelligent ghosts? They seem to use the same electromagnetic energy, but they need other energy too. They take the heat out of rooms, which is why rooms go cold; they draw energy off people; they even draw it off the electricity in a house.’ His eyes glanced around the room again, over at the switch, up at the light bulb.
She noticed him. ‘What — what do ghosts do with this energy?’ she said.
‘They can’t do very much themselves. They are energy forces but they don’t have voices or bodies or limbs. They can move objects around — poltergeist activity — and they can manifest, but if they want to do something they have to do it through a human — or maybe sometimes an animal.’
‘How?’
‘By using their physical energy.’
She stared into her coffee; dark brown, swirling, like the sluice pond; like the sludge; the old woman lying face down. ‘Can ghosts make people do things?’
‘It’s possible. There is evidence.’
‘Viola Letters was going to tell me something. Last night, when she was here, she saw an old photograph of me that she said reminded her of someone. She got quite distraught — wouldn’t finish her drink — and left.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she’d explain another time.’
‘That was all?’
‘She said that on the day her husband died, someone brought her a message. A girl. She said in the photograph that I looked like that girl.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘It — I — burned it.’
‘Why did you do that?’
He looked harder at her, and she felt her face reddening. ‘I don’t know.’
He did not take his eyes off her while he spoke. ‘Sometimes people do get spooked by photographs; the camera catches someone at a particular angle, in a certain light, and they look like someone else.’
‘Do you really in your heart believe it is possible people can be reincarnated, Hugh?’
After a long while he nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘I used to believe death was the end,’ Charley said. ‘It was easier that way. Do you think we come back time after time and go through the same things?’
‘Life’s not some slot machine in an arcade with a sign that flashes up saying “I’m sorry, you have been killed. Would you like another go?” But we might get put through the same tests each time, get faced with the same situations until we’ve learned how to cope.’
Charley felt for a fleeting instant as if she had pushed her fingers into an electrical socket. She was startled by the shock, by the jolt to her mind. ‘Do you think that the past can repeat itself?’
Hugh smiled. ‘You needn’t worry; you’re not pregnant, are you?’
She shook her head.
‘The character in your regression is pregnant. So it’s different, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly.
‘Even if your husband has left you.’
She sprang upright in the chair, her eyes opening wide in astonishment. ‘How? How do you —?’
‘Am I right?’ he said.
She sank down on her elbows, squeezing her eyes tightly shut, felt the tears trickle down her cheeks. ‘Yes.’
‘You’re going through a lot.’
She sniffed, and felt angry suddenly, angry at herself, at the world. ‘And no doubt I’ll have to go through it again in some other bloody life; and again; and again.’
Hugh poured more coffee into his cup. ‘I don’t think we’re doomed to go on forever round and round in the same spot, like some goldfish in a bowl.’ He frowned. ‘Where is your goldfish?’
‘Dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You needn’t be. It’s going to come back as the next Pope.’ She blew her nose. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be trite. I just find this whole thing so freaky. These regressions. I really don’t want to go on with them.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Do you think I should go on with them?’
His eyes rested on hers, probing, still probing. He shot a brief glance around the room, then leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘I think you’re close to discovering something; it could be very important, because you are intelligent and articulate and willing to talk about it.’ He was quiet for a moment then added, ‘I also think you are in danger. Quite serious danger.’
‘Danger of what?’
He said nothing.
‘Danger of going mad? Is that what you mean?’
‘The paranormal,’ he said. ‘The supernatural. Occult. Whatever you want to call it. It’s always dangerous to dabble.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She drove to the George and Dragon the next morning, trying to work out what time Hugh had finally left. Four? Half past? Must have been even later than that because it had been starting to get light.
They had talked through the night. About life after death. About religion. About themselves. Talked as if they had known each other all their lives. Hugh had a son who lived in Canada with his ex-wife and she was surprised; it had not occurred to her that he might have had a child. He hadn’t seen the kid for two years; a custody fight slogged on. Tom might be able to help him, she said. Tom. She had mentioned Tom as if he was some third party, a casual acquaintance.
It was strange when Hugh left. Letting him out of the front door into the dawn chorus, the way she used to let Tom out of the front door of her mother’s flat when they were dating. They used to come back after a night out and cuddle on the sofa until they were sure her mother was asleep, then they’d make love, trying to be quiet and ending up giggling, terrified her mother would wake. Sometimes they dozed, and when he left it would be first light and the milk floats would be starting their rounds.
She had felt comfortable with Hugh last night; so comfortable that if, instead of opening the door for him, they had gone upstairs to bed it would have seemed just as natural.
Get a grip girl, she thought. Fancying other men already. They say it doesn’t hurt if you are shot, not for a few moments until the shock and the numbness wears off. Then it hurts. Maybe she was still in shock, still numb? No. Then a seething pang of pain twisted inside her at the thought of Tom and Laura waking up together, and Laura making him breakfast.
The pub was empty. Vic the landlord was behind the bar reading the Sporting Life. The fruit machine was silent, its lights off; a faint smell of coffee cut through the background odour of beer ingrained in the walls and the beams. The room was cool.
She stood patiently in front of Vic as he ringed a selection in a horse race. Then he looked up at her and smiled like a man caught leafing through a dirty magazine in a newsagents.
‘Any good tips?’ she said.
‘Not usually.’<
br />
‘Those two old boys in here last night, sitting just there.’ She pointed. ‘Who are they?’
‘Regulars,’ he said. ‘Arthur Morrison and Bill Wainwright.’
‘Which was the one with the pipe?’
‘Bill Wainwright.’
It had been the other one who had stared at her the most. ‘Do you know where Arthur Morrison lives?’
‘On Crampton’s farm. Saddlers Cottages.’
‘How would I find those?’
‘Simple enough.’
The sign was less than a mile down the road. Charley turned on to a rutted farm track which went across an open field, past a large barn and through a farmyard. A black and white dog ran out and barked at the car. A few hundred yards further was a row of dilapidated brick cottages and she pulled up outside the end one, behind an old van, and climbed out.
The garden was scrubby, overgrown and largely filled with rusted junk. An old black bicycle was propped against the wall and hens clucked somewhere round the back.
She stood, her head stinging from tiredness. For a brief instant she felt she had been here quite recently, and wondered if it was with Tom when they were looking for a farm shop, or maybe Gideon when they had bought the hens.
Arthur Morrison. Arthur Morrison with his wizened glum face and half his teeth missing who sat in the pub sipping his beer from his private tankard. Staring at her. That stare.
She walked down the path, stood in front of the faded blue front door and looked for the bell. She could not see one. There was no knocker either, so she rapped with her knuckles and winced with pain from the raw wounds that were only just starting to scab over.
Silence, then she thought she heard the shuffle of feet and the clink of crockery. She knocked again, using her car key this time. A curtain twitched in the window beside her.
In the farmyard the dog barked. The door opened a few inches and a face peered out of the gloom inside, a shrivelled, suspicious face that looked even older than last night, his scalp visible through his hair like a stone floor through a worn carpet. A smell of age came out of the door with him; of mustiness, tired furniture, tired people; decay.
