Ghost Moth

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Ghost Moth Page 12

by Michele Forbes

“Hugh Drummond, where have you been?” Cissie McGee’s whisper was a razor blade.

  “I told you—I have rugby training Wednesdays!”

  “Rugby training! But this—is—it’s the opening night!”

  “It’ll be great—don’t worry.” Hugh rushed off to check that all his props were in place. Cissie McGee sighed loudly with exasperation.

  Katherine stood quietly, watching everything, hardly visible to anyone in the dim light. She needed to focus on what was happening. She needed to watch Charlie Copeland and James McCauley and Rosemary Wylie and Hugh Drummond and the Cigarette Factory Girls and Cissie McGee in order to keep her mind from splitting. She needed to pay attention to every detail around her in order to distract her from what she knew she had to do. And as she ran her hand along the front of her costume, she could feel where some of the buttons would not close properly, as though her abdomen had swollen a little since the costume fittings. Glancing through a gap in the scenery flats, she could just about make out Mrs. Davenport, Miss Robinson, Mr. Creaney, and Miss McGrath taking their places at piano, violin, flute, and percussion, respectively, in the tiny orchestra pit at the front of the stage. They were smiling and nodding to one another as they organized their music sheets on the stands. Those in the audience were settling themselves. It had been decided that Katherine’s mother, her sister, Vera, and her brother, Frank, would come to see Katherine perform Carmen on Friday, the second-to-last night of the show, as George would be off duty from the Fire Service then and could accompany them. Tonight, however, he would be working and would call on Katherine at home after the show.

  Katherine felt a rising pressure in her chest. She knew things could no longer remain as they were. She knew what she had to do. She had to tell George that it was over between them. And tonight she would tell him. Tonight she knew she would not see Tom, as he was taking his mother and sister out to the Grand Central Hotel for his mother’s birthday. So she would go straight home and she would have time to talk to George. But the more this thought took position in her mind, the more she felt her body tightening with a sickening dread.

  Cissie McGee began issuing orders from the prompt corner again. Immediately, Katherine turned her head to listen to Cissie, who said if anyone, for any reason, did not have a costume check before the performance, they would, unfortunately, have to wait until after the show and approach Miss Harper then. Cissie McGee stroked her thorax apprehensively as she spoke. It was Miss Harper who was to take over all the costume requirements now that the show was up and running. Well, almost up and running, Cissie added, giving a short, nervous laugh.

  Katherine looked at Miss Harper, who now stood beside Cissie McGee. Miss Harper’s dark brown hair fell softly onto her shoulders, highlighting the sweet cherub curve of her face, and in her hands she held a small black notebook. It was Tom’s. The one he had used to record Katherine’s measurements. The one whose pages he had made the fire lilies from. Oh, Tom. Katherine’s thoughts began to race. She felt her blood was jangling in her veins, her heart tight and heavy, her breath lost to her. Everything as it once was, she said to herself. No—now everything was not as it once was and never could be, no matter how badly she wanted it to be. Now everything had changed.

  “I was hoping to find you here.”

  She was suddenly startled by Tom’s voice. She turned to him, her breath catching in her throat.

  “Tom—you’re here?” She felt the blood drain from her face.

  “You like the costume?”

  “What are you doing here, Tom? Why are you here?” Katherine’s tone was slightly desperate now. “You told me you wouldn’t be here tonight!”

  “Plans fell through,” he said with a composure that pricked her a little. “Mother wasn’t feeling well. Anyway, tell me what you think of the costume.”

  Katherine stared at Tom.

  “It’s lovely,” she said eventually, a slow chill seeping through her veins.

  “That’s it? That’s all you can say?” He feigned disappointment to humor her. “And after all the time I spent!” He laughed quietly. She said nothing. He looked at her. In the half-light, he could see the growing concern on her face. He reached out and lifted up her chin a little.

  “Katherine, are you all right?”

  She did not answer him.

  “Don’t worry, Katherine—all the material and the beads and the—they were from an old stockpile of my father’s stuff I discovered in the storeroom. It cost me nothing. Don’t look so worried.” He stroked her hair, attempting to reassure her. “And I know you don’t exactly look ‘make do and mend’ but what the—I wanted to make it for you.”

  She felt her body as a leaden weight. She could not deny to herself how her heart had opened like a glorious flower at seeing him. But now there was a darker edge to everything. Now as she looked at Tom, she felt the overwhelming weight of her intentions. In admitting to herself what she would lose, she wasn’t so sure that she wanted to lose it anymore. Or, perhaps in truth, she wasn’t so sure that she could deal with the consequences. She could feel her courage slipping, as though the floor itself had tilted and she had nothing to hang on to. The courage she had fought so hard to find. The courage she knew she needed in order to tell George. She couldn’t hold on to it.

  Tom took Katherine’s hand and pressed something small into her palm.

  “Take Mr. Agnew’s keys to the tailors’ rooms. Meet me there after the performance tonight.”

  The tender pains of reasoning shook her; the pulses of shame and desire shuddered through her. And then, while her mind and heart were arrested by and flooded with this sweet confusion, he kissed her. But this time, she pulled away.

  “I can’t, Tom. I won’t,” she heard herself saying.

  A loud, tense voice came from the stage; it was Cissie McGee calling out to the cast. “Five minutes to ‘curtain up,’ everyone!”

  For the first time, she saw Tom’s expression take on a gravity that almost frightened her, so deep was its measure. “You will,” he said, looking directly into her eyes.

  She could not contain her distress.

  “Tom—I can’t. This was all an awful mistake. All of it. All an awful mistake. I can’t.” She felt her stomach lurch. “It’s just not possible!”

  “An awful mistake? What are you talking about?” he asked, putting his hands on her waist as though to hold her steady. “And why is it not possible?” He took her face in his hands.

  “Katherine, we were meant to be together.”

  Suddenly, the music started. Miss McGrath, a dark-haired, heavily built girl of about seventeen, hit the cymbal so loudly that three elderly ladies in the front row jumped in unison out of their seats, covering their chests with their hands as they did so, as though to hold their hearts in.

  Katherine took a deep breath. She was shaking. She found herself taking the keys from Tom and slipping them into the pocket of her costume.

  Tom smiled at her as he left.

  She turned her head to catch Rosemary Wylie strutting confidently toward the downstage entrance, her high heels giving her the extra height she did not need. Charlie stood beside Cissie McGee, fidgeting with his cravat. He kept talking to her. It was all too ambitious, he was saying, all too ambitious. They had never tackled more than a medley of popular opera arias before and now here they were staging Carmen and there was just too much to remember. Charlie pushed his glasses back into position on the bridge of his nose.

  The Cigarette Factory Girls bustled onto the stage and shook their felt hats to the tambourine.

  And then it was her turn to step out of the shadows and enter as Carmen. As soon as she stepped into the light and onto the stage, there arose, all at once, a unanimous swell of “Oooohhh” from the auditorium as the audience saw her costume.

  It was how the bubbling stage conversations amid the cast members had all slowly wound down to a halt and how the orchestra, section by section, seemed to fall to sleep—first the strings, then the wind, then
the lonely percussionist, all droning to a final stop. Rosemary Wylie had been the last to turn her head, and a low groan emitted from her throat like wind from a corpse.

  It was only now they all saw Katherine’s costume clearly for the first time. While every other character in the production had had costumes adapted from hand-me-downs and any possible pieces of material—curtain, upholstery, industrial fabric—any pieces that could be reshaped and refitted to suit their parts—uniforms for the soldiers, shawls for the street hawkers, Don José’s pantaloons, Escamillo’s waistcoat, Micaela’s gold leaves—anything “make do and mend”—Katherine’s costume had been so beautifully tailored, so exquisitely and meticulously assembled, so expertly decorated that it drew from the cast not the reaction of appreciation but the embarrassment of inappropriateness.

  Her costume was everything that Tom had said it would be the evening they had lain together in the tailors’ rooms. Ottoman silk and soft bouclé wool, the colors of salmon, mandarin, coral, and cherry. The bodice fully boned and lined with lemon sateen. Tiny silk buttons. Beaded embroidery and silk-thread tassles along the edges of the bolero. An intricate arrangement of pleats and gores along the skirt. A silk vermilion braid trimming the hem in a long, scandalous line.

  Charlie Copeland was the only one who broke the silence. “How lovely you look,” he whispered loudly to her, his head poking out from the downstage entrance.

  She could not begin singing until the excited murmurings from the crowd had settled.

  A woman in the front row, wearing a flat turquoise hat, began frantically scanning the program page she was holding in her hand to find out who had designed such a magnificent piece of couture, and then she turned to her companion.

  “A dream tailor, don’t you think?” the woman said, her eyes wide with admiration.

  5

  August 1969

  IT IS THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING and George returns home exhausted and unsettled. Katherine is in bed but still awake and she hears him slip off his boots in the hall and hang up his jacket on the hook just under the stairs. She hears him give that singular, unproductive cough he gives whenever he feels anxious or worried or defeated, and even from up in the bedroom she can already smell the burned air and smoke that has followed him home. George moves up the stairs, stepping cautiously so as not to wake Katherine, yet he is relieved when she lifts her head from the pillow to look at him.

  George lies beside Katherine on the bed, not getting into it, but lying on top of the blankets, stretching out on his side, his legs straight, his toes curled slightly. The night’s events still surround him with all their confusion and uncertainty. He looks at Katherine, then casts his eyes down like a dog waiting for instruction. He squeezes his eyes tight, as though he is blocking something out or as though there is some griping pain gnawing at him. When Katherine lifts her hand to touch his cheek, his world immediately loosens. He begins shaking his head and talking in rapid, whispering bursts like a man possessed.

  “It was totally unprofessional of me—I should have stayed out where the other men could find me—but—I just acted on impulse—I didn’t check myself—I don’t know why—”

  “George, what is it? Slow down. What happened?”

  “It was—we didn’t have the manpower—there was so much trouble everywhere last night, we were overstretched—we were called to a house fire—Willowfield—had nothing to do with the mess that was going on in the city—the petrol-bomb attacks—nothing. And it was only because I knew the layout of the house—”

  “George,” Katherine says gently, “slow down, love.”

  George takes a deep breath, then continues.

  “Those houses in Willowfield, I know the layout, that’s why, I know the layout like the back of my hand.” It is as though he is trying to rationalize his behavior to himself as he explains the evening’s events to Katherine.

  “But I didn’t even tell any of the men I was going in. For some reason, I just grabbed a breathing set and headed straight for the kitchen at the back, why I don’t know, some gut feeling, I just headed straight for it, through the living room, past the stairs”—he is reliving the geography as he speaks—“and I could see nothing, not a damn thing, I was as blind as a bat, the house was so thick with smoke, not a damn thing. And the heat was so fucking intense. But the kitchen sink, it was so cold, so icy cold in that heat. And I brushed against the cloth hanging beneath the sink and I just knew. There, in among the pots and pans, her soft leg, then her sock and her shoe.”

  George stops talking for a moment, his eyes staring into the distance, and then resumes as though there has been no hiatus.

  “She was hiding there . . . underneath the sink. And I guessed when I lifted her out that she was probably no more than three years of age.”

  He smiles now.

  “I was so pleased to have found her. So pleased. I had been no more than two, three minutes in getting to her. I could hear muffled shouts coming from outside—two firemen had been ordered to go in by the back lane. And I carried her on through the house. Blind. Careful not to hit her head or her arms against the walls. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to tell her that everything was okay.”

  George’s pace grinds down. Katherine raises her body a little, moving in toward him.

  “The paramedics were ready outside to take her. And it was only when I pulled off my mask I could see her properly, see her long brown curls and her little mouth and her cheeks all dirty.”

  George lifts his head to look at Katherine.

  “But her dress was spotlessly clean.” He looks pained now, bewildered. Then, almost in an instant, his recollection is flushed with an intense anger. His voice rises.

  “And that fucking idiot just standing there gaping at me when I came out of the house, that young Barton fella, couldn’t put out a fucking fire to save his own life, never mind anyone else’s—standing there with that cartoon face of his, delighted with himself, banging his lips together like a fucking ventriloquist’s dummy! I couldn’t bear to look at him!”

  “George, stop. Everyone was doing their best, just like you were. That’s unkind. James Barton’s a good lad. He was only pleased that you’d rescued her. And the thing is, you had rescued her—that’s wonderful!” Katherine reasons with him.

  George looks at her with a quiet despair. “She was dead, Katherine. I knew it as soon as I’d touched her.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the child’s mother screaming into my face as though it was my fault that she’d left the child alone in the house. Christ!” George shakes his head. “But I shouldn’t have gone in on my own without an order. Why did I do that? I shouldn’t have gone in. I could have put other lives in danger. I could’ve . . . It’s just not the way it works.”

  “Oh my God, George.” Katherine slowly rises onto her knees on the bed and puts her arms around George to comfort him. “Oh my God.”

  They hold each other in the dark.

  “Who, or what, do I think I am? I’m only a damned retained fireman for God’s sake.”

  “You reacted to the situation, George, that’s all. You did your best.” Katherine speaks quietly as they embrace.

  “Well, my best wasn’t good enough.” He whispers it, as though he feels the fall of an ordered world.

  “And you’re tired,” Katherine says gently.

  George rubs his brow with his hand. “The station will call again shortly; I’m sure of it. There’ve been baton charges with the RUC in Cupar Street. The Arkle Bar has been petrol-bombed. There are buses and cars burning everywhere. The city’s gone to hell.”

  “Oh my God, George,” she says. She kisses him affectionately. “Try to sleep, even for a little bit, in case they call you back in. We’ll talk this through in the morning. This is a terrible thing that happened, George, but you’re not to blame yourself, because you did your best. C’mon, love, try to get some rest.”

  She pulls the blankets over them both, George still in his uniform shirt
and trousers, and as they embrace, they feel the unalterable, durable presence of each other.

  “Try to sleep,” Katherine repeats softly to George. They curl into each other and attempt to settle. George gives another unproductive cough, then another, though he still cannot seem to clear his throat.

  The air in their room hangs silently, although it is as if, at any moment, the sounds of the unsettled city, on whose rim they lie, will drift into their ears and line the insides of their skulls with brittle pictures. The relief that dawn may bring will be a little while yet.

  “George, do you think everything is going to be okay?”

  Out of the stillness, George is a distant voice. “With us?”

  Katherine inhales quickly, slightly taken aback by George’s words, and lifts her head to him. “No, George—I meant—the violence in the city—I meant everything that’s going on in the city.”

  “Katherine,” George says quietly in the dark.

  Katherine shuffles in the bed, edgy now. “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the Milk Bar in Lombard Street?”

  Katherine’s response is flat, confused. “What?”

  “The Milk Bar in Lombard Street.”

  Katherine turns away from him. “George, what are you talking about? It’s late. Go to sleep.”

  “The night I asked you to marry me, we went there.”

  Katherine turns around to him again, “No, George, we didn’t go anywhere that night,” she says with assurance. “And what has this got to do with anything? You need to rest. You’ve been through enough tonight. What has you thinking?”

  “No, that night, I remember, I showed you the ring and you put it on and then we went out together. We walked into town and went to the Milk Bar, and do you not remember how giddy we got? And you sat on the high stool at the end of the counter, clinking your nails against your glass of tonic water and swinging your legs like a schoolgirl. And we laughed. Remember? We laughed at nothing.” George’s voice is now strangely light.

  Katherine feels her pulse lift. “No, George, I was late getting home that night and we didn’t go anywhere. Remember? You waited for ages. Talking to my mother.”

 

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