Ghost Moth

by Michele Forbes

  Cissie McGee rose from her chair. “That’s coming up to the half hour, ladies. I’d better get organized. Everyone into costume, and don’t forget to check your props.”

  “And who would have thought that could happen to a nice man like that, eh?” Charlie Copeland settled himself against the door frame.

  “Charlie!” Cissie McGee tapped Charlie Copeland on the shoulder as she passed him. “The ladies have to get dressed now.”

  “Oh, of course. Apologies, ladies.” Charlie Copeland straightened up. “Thanks for the pencil. I’ll drop it back later.” He saluted a stiff-faced Rosemary Wylie, then said before he left, “And no doubts about it, you’ll make heads turn in that costume again tonight, Katherine.”

  Katherine didn’t respond.

  Rosemary Wylie’s nostrils flared ever so slightly.

  As Charlie Copeland and Cissie McGee left the ladies’ dressing room, they continued talking. “Well, I heard from James McCauley that there was a mud slide on the riverbank near the foundry.” . . . “Really? Are you sure?” . . . “Well, I think so. . . . Hugh Drummond said that they didn’t know how long he’d been in the water for . . . said that he could have been there for ages.” . . . “no, really? . . .” And the voices disappeared.

  Miss Harper was at the door. “There’s a policeman downstairs. He’s waiting in the kitchen at the back of the hall. Says he wants to have a quick word with everybody before the show starts!”

  Mr. Charles Boyne could be heard clearly through the closed door of the little back kitchen of the church hall as Katherine waited outside it. Directly opposite her sat Ivy, dripping flowers and tears. Katherine felt the need to say something to Ivy, the girl appeared so distraught, but could only think of asking her if she was next in the queue.

  Ivy lifted her tidy head. Her eyes were red as rubies. “I don’t want to go in. I’ll only make a complete fool of myself. I know I will.” She wiped her tears away with her cotton handkerchief.

  “No,” said Katherine softly, “I’m sure you won’t.”

  “You go in next,” she said, looking at Katherine, her tears flowing again as she spoke.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you, Miss Beacham.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss Fallon.”

  They sat together in silence, the politeness of their interaction startling them both.

  “Too sensitive for his own good,” Mr. Boyne could be heard saying through the flimsy kitchen door. “His father was the same. Never rested easy with the fact he had made his money out of the war. Uniforms, parachutes, that kind of thing.”

  Ivy blew her nose, sobbed, blew her nose again then cleared her throat.

  “All those things I said to you about him . . . ,” She lifted her head. “I’m so sorry I said those things . . . about the money issues, about the gambling.... None of it was true.” The two ruby eyes stared directly at Katherine. “I was just jealous . . . of you both. . . .” She continued, bowing her head. “He was kind to me—that was all,” Ivy said earnestly. “But that was enough to make me . . . want him.”

  The handle of the kitchen door turned and the two women froze.

  “I couldn’t deny the McKinley boy is”—here Mr. Boyne stopped for a moment—“was . . . a good employee. Like his father, a man of impeccable character. Always worked hard, too hard, if you ask me. . . . Yes, a good lad.” The other voice in the room was less distinct, but Katherine could make out the words, “Thank you for coming over, Mr. Boyne.”

  Katherine turned her head quickly from the door as it opened. She could feel a flush of intense heat hit her cheeks. Boyne stood in the doorway, looking back into the room.

  “Thought too much, that McKinley boy,” said Boyne as he tapped his forehead with the wet end of his cigar and screwed up his thick lips as a means to illustrate the perils of an elegant mind. Then he turned and moved solemnly past Katherine and was gone.

  Katherine stood up from her chair. She wanted to acknowledge Ivy’s candor in this awful situation, knowing that it couldn’t have been easy for her to say what she had said. Katherine turned to Ivy. “Thank you, Ivy, thank you,” she said to her kindly.

  Ivy straightened her back. “My name’s Celia,” she said slowly to Katherine with a look that could kill.

  When it was her turn to talk to the young policeman, Katherine found him sitting at Miss Harper’s improvised sewing table, playing with a sewing-repair kit.

  He arranged a straight line of buttons across the table, making minor adjustments to them as he talked to her. The buttons clacked a little against his fingernails.

  “Do you know, I’ve never seen an opera.” He seemed almost proud of this fact as he revealed it to her. “Never been to plays much, either, but I love a good film.” A button moved slowly and smoothly under the pressure of his finger, coming toward her like a planchette on a Ouija board, as though the button could provide for him a currency of prescience, could divine the truth and identify the lies from whatever she said. She was silent. The button moved back into place.

  “You must be a good singer.” The young policeman had a large face. His manner had an element of laziness about it, as though he had been assigned to a job that he knew didn’t need doing.

  “And how long have you been at this”—he hesitated slightly—“this opera singing, then?”

  “Not long. About two years.”

  “Long enough.” He sounded impressed. “Very good. Very good.” He began to space the buttons farther apart. “Now, my mother loves music.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose briefly with his large fingers. “Loves Beniamino Gigli. Can’t get enough of Gigli. Thinks he’s very romantic, so she does.” The young policeman lifted his gaze from the worktable to look at her. “Very popular with the ladies, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Katherine replied.

  The young policeman shot one arm up in the air, a way of freeing his wrist from the tightness of his shirt cuff, and bent his arm sharply to scratch the back of his neck. He inhaled deeply in an effort to swell his own importance a little.

  “How well did you know Mr. McKinley?”

  “Not very,” she said to the young policeman, trying to disguise the shakiness in her voice and conscious that Ivy—Miss Celia Beacham—was waiting outside the kitchen and could hear her every word. “I hardly knew him at all.”

  “Can you tell me, Miss Fallon, when you last saw Mr. McKinley?”

  “Last night,” she said.

  “And did you see him leave the hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what time would that have been?”

  “Just before eight o’clock.”

  “Right.” The young policeman remained still. He was waiting for more information. When none was offered, he continued. “And do you know where he was going after that?”

  “No.”

  The young policeman drew his lips into a tight pucker, his eyebrows pulling together. Then he shifted his position in the chair.

  “And that was definitely the last time you saw him?”

  “Yes.”

  The young policeman smiled at her.

  “That’s fine, Miss Fallon. I won’t keep you any longer. Sorry to hold you back from getting ready for the show tonight, but much appreciated. And who knows, I may just catch your performance tonight. That’s quite a costume you’re wearing!” He looked at her, leaning his body forward a little. “We’re simply trying to work out what time it happened. No reason to suspect foul play—it appears to have been an accident, a sudden fall; he was probably unconscious when he hit the water—but . . . thank you, Miss Fallon.”

  The young policeman began to rearrange the buttons on the worktable once again, then looked solemnly at her.

  “Are you all right, Miss Fallon? You look a little pale.”

  “I feel I might get sick.”

  “Oh, the old stage fright, eh?” said the young polic
eman, smiling to himself. He began to rearrange the buttons on the worktable once again.

  Katherine rose slowly from her chair. As she stood, the lemon sateen lining of her costume caught on a rough edge along one of the chair’s legs. She reached over to untangle the threads, which were tightly hooked around a splinter of wood. Her fingers were trembling. Unable to release the threads, she tugged forcibly at her costume, tearing the lemon sateen lining and leaving a gaping hole.

  After the performance of Carmen that night, Katherine put on her pearl gray woolen coat and walked from St. Anne’s church hall toward High Street. In her hand, she held Mr. Agnew’s keys to the tailors’ rooms. When she reached Mr. Boyne’s premises, she could see her distorted outline on the dark, glossy sheen of the street door. She was a broken prism of light, shards of herself oscillating around a black center.

  She felt a sudden rushing pressure in her stomach. Her face and head became tight. She instinctively moved a pace over to the corner of the building, turning her body into the wall. Seconds later, she got sick on the pavement—fast and violent retching, which left her cold and weak. She stood for a few moments to gather herself, conscious that some passerby may have seen her, hoping that no one had. She pulled a cotton handkerchief from out of her handbag and wiped her mouth, then gently brushed away the line of perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. She turned slowly from the wall. Her pearl gray woolen coat was now flecked with spots of vomit across its collar and breast. A man walked briskly along the other side of the street but did not appear to have noticed Katherine. Embarrassed, nonetheless, Katherine steadied herself. She looked down at the mess she had made on the pavement, at the spots of vomit that covered her shoes. She wiped her shoes with the cotton handkerchief and tucked it into the pocket of her pearl gray woolen coat. She put the key in the door of Mr. Boyne’s premises, went inside, and climbed the stairs to the third floor.

  She stood in the tailors’ room, where Tom had worked, lit only by the streetlamp, which cast its light into the room from outside. Everything in its rightful place, everything undisturbed. Stacked on the far table were the rolls of new cloth; above them on the shelf were boxes of tiny glass beads and cloth buttons. There on the worktable lay his measuring tape in its little tan leather case. She took off her coat and placed it over his chair.

  She noticed his black notebook under his desk lamp. It was the notebook from which he had made tiny bombs of floating fire on the night of their river walk together. She reached out and lifted it, then opened it. Inside were notes on tailoring, on materials ordered, on buttons and threads recently stocked, on the cost of suits. She could see where Tom had torn pages from its seams. Farther on there were names and addresses of clients. “Two-piece suit in striped wool: Mr. Napier”; “3 x button-down soft-collar shirts: Mr. Harris.” Katherine turned the pages, scanning their contents quickly. Near the back of the notebook and written in large soft letters was her name, together with the measurements of her chest, her hips, her waist, and her neck. Beside her name was written Carmen and the date of the opening night. But it was the writing at the bottom of the page that jangled her very bones. Written in pencil, in tiny letters, were six lines of a poem:“—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

  Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

  To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

  Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

  Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

  And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”

  And underneath the poem were the words “I have fallen head over heels in love—isn’t that what they say—head over heels, as though I have tumbled, fallen into a dream. Which I have. I can hardly describe the feeling she gives me. Everything in my life feels new again. Everything has lifted from the shadows. I have never felt this way about anyone before. K. is my salvation. I need her so much that my heart hurts.”

  And there, sitting on top of the cabinet, was the statuette. Katherine lifted it and held it carefully in her hands. She sat down on a bundle of white cotton that had been left on the seat of his chair. She felt that everything in the room was waiting. Waiting for him to come back. Perhaps if she sat quietly and still enough, she could draw him back to her. Perhaps all she had to do was wait, wait like every other object in the room was waiting. Wait until the morning was a net of silver threads that would pull him in. Pull him back to her. How could he be just not there anymore? The incoherence of it all. Wait, wait, he will come, he will come! She sat awhile longer.

  Time tired of itself.

  Maybe she could come back tomorrow and the night after and the night after that. As long as it took.

  She knew how foolish she was being, for why would he come back after she had banished him?

  She looked at the statuette in her hand. She would wrap it up in cloth to protect it and she would put it in her bag and take it home. She pulled a piece of white cotton from the seat beneath her. She looked at the cloth. It was spotted with her menstrual blood from where she had been sitting.

  9

  August 1969

  KATHERINE STANDS AT THE KITCHEN SINK. She pushes the white cotton sheets, which had been used for Madam Maureen’s tent, under the warm, sudsy water. Pockets of sheet puff up indiscriminately here and there under the force of her hand, like water lilies blooming. While the day is warm and dry, she would do well to get the sheets and blankets washed, dried, and aired.

  A flat tiredness governs her every move now. It is a plain, numbing tiredness, like the tiredness that follows shock. Perhaps tonight, she thinks to herself. Perhaps tonight I will sleep more soundly and feel better for it.

  She leaves the sheets to soak and, drying her hands, moves to the box radio, which sits on the floor in the corner of the back room underneath the television set. Turning the dial at the front, she watches the tiny yellow lights appear on its copper grid and a voice fades in.

  “. . . has today speculated on the deployment of British troops into the city of Belfast after last night’s violence, acting on the request made by the commissioner of police, Harold Wolseley. Mr. Callaghan has said that . . .”

  She goes to the back door to check on Stephen. Elizabeth and Stephen are gathering stones together in the yard. The few stones they have found have been placed in a little rough heap by the coal shed. Stephen waddles slowly back and forth from the stones to a corner of the yard as though he is a mother duck building a nest. Elizabeth is praising his every effort with a “Good boy!” Maureen sits on the garden wall, absentmindedly hammering her heels against it. Richard Marr has called and stands stiffly beside Maureen, his eyes to the ground, as though he is searching for a dropped penny.

  Katherine, satisfied for the moment that her children are fine, goes back inside. She lifts the sheets from the sink, twisting them to squeeze out the excess water, and feeds them through the mangle, which stands by the kitchen table.

  She stops turning the handle on the mangle and piles the sheets onto one arm to carry them outside to the clothes line. Into the crook of her other arm she places a small basket of clothes pegs.

  When Katherine goes back outside, she finds that Richard Marr has gone and Stephen is crying because Maureen has kicked flat his little pile of stones.

  “Ah, Maureen, why did you do that, love?” Katherine throws the sheets over the clothes line, puts the basket of pegs on the ground, and picks Stephen up.

  “She’s in a bad mood,” Elizabeth says, rolling her eyes as she builds up the pile of stones again for Stephen.

  Maureen trundles past them all and disappears into the house. Katherine kisses Stephen and puts him at her feet while she sorts out the sheets on the clothes line. She lifts up the basket of pegs, then she places a line of pegs along the sheets.

  “Elizabeth,” Katherine says quietly, “I need to go to McGovern’s to get some things. Look out for Elsa coming back, will you? I’ll take Stephen with me.”

  “Okay.”

  Kat
herine walks back into the kitchen holding Stephen. She notices water on the kitchen floor and assumes she has been careless ringing out the sheets. But looking more closely, she sees a steady trickle of water running from under the sink from one of the pipes. She will need to find someone to fix the leak. Harry Gray might be able to help her out, if she can find his telephone number. His work is always reasonably priced. Putting Stephen down, she reaches for the mop from under the stairs. The telephone rings. It is George, calling her not from the station but from a public telephone. Katherine cannot quite make out what he is saying, the noise around him is so intense.

  She says little in response to him when he tells her he does not know when he’ll be home. She replaces the receiver and then takes the mop into the kitchen. The newsreader’s voice continues from the radio.

  “In last night’s shootings in Belfast at least eighteen people have been reported wounded and four dead, one a nine-year-old boy. In a statement, Anthony Peacocke, the inspector general of the RUC, commented that it was of the utmost importance that the public should be aware that the police . . .”

  She finishes mopping up the water, but more of it is appearing on the floor. She goes to the kitchen drawer to search for the small address book that contains Harry Gray’s telephone number. She cannot find the book because the drawer is so full of rubbish. She stops looking for the book. She takes the blankets she has yet to wash and stuffs them in underneath the sink to stop the leak. She feels sodden with tiredness.

  She switches off the radio. Lifting Stephen into his pram, she walks down the road to McGovern’s shop. The cloud of gray city smoke has broken into rills, which run across the sky. She leaves Stephen in his pram on the pavement outside the shop and goes in to buy her groceries.

  Mr. McGovern is on his own. He is polishing the new glass fronts that have just been fitted on some of the shelves behind the counter. He is very impressed with how the glass fronts give a modern look to the shop. “It is worth the money,” he is saying to Katherine; “it is definitely worth the money.”