Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1

by Sonia Paige

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Alex spoke as if she was being very patient.

  ‘Or perhaps you’re wasting yours. Staring into your gin and tonic making small talk.’

  Alex uncrossed her long thin legs and crossed them the other way. She could wrap the end foot around the ankle an extra time so they looked like a corkscrew. ‘Go on, then,’ she snapped. ‘Tell me about the ghost.’

  ‘It’s a bit personal,’ said Duane. He took another precise sip and looked away across the lounge of the pub. It was a large hall, with rows of wooden tables stretching towards the half-glass doors that opened onto Stoke Newington High Street.

  ‘I thought you wanted to tell me?’ she asked.

  ‘Not particularly,’ He said the second word very slowly. He rested his fingers on the table. His nails were long and well-kept.

  They sat and watched goings-on at the bar, where a young barmaid seemed to be upset, and an older man, who looked like the manager, was holding his hands up and barking at her. They couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ said Alex, touching him on the arm, ‘tell the story.’

  ‘It’s not really a story,’ he turned back towards her. ‘It happened to me. In my life. The things that are most unlikely are usually like that.’

  ‘Too personal to tell?’

  ‘I have not told it for a while.’ He stood up, took off his coat and folded it neatly on the seat beside him. Underneath he was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt. ‘It’s about my house where I live, right? It’s the reason I am living there. I suppose this is a way to get to know each other. You don’t believe in those things. What they call the supernatural. Well, I didn’t. Not ’till this happened.

  ‘We were in a council flat at the time. Acton. Small and damp. There was no way they would come to do repairs, you know what I mean? Round the corner was an old lady living in a very nice little house. Needed a bit of work, but that was because she had let it run down a bit. I think she was from a rich white family that had fallen into some misfortune, and not many of them left. She liked cats, she had about six. My chick likes cats, she used to talk to the old lady. Cat talk. Over the fence in her front garden. They used to worry about the strays and they was always putting out food for them when the weather was cold.

  ‘You with me so far?’

  Alex gave a curt nod.

  ‘So this old lady took in lodgers. To her attic room. One time when it was empty she put a card in the corner shop window and this couple came. A man and a woman. White. Very polite. They saw the attic room and they liked it, see, paid the deposit. She got references from their employers, “Oh, these are regular clean hard-working people.” Everything seemed to be fine. Would you like another drink?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Up to you. I’m going to the little boys’ room.’

  When he returned he took a long slow drink from his glass and continued.

  ‘These new lodgers had only been there a few weeks when she started to hear noises from upstairs. Chanting sounds, and lots of bangs. Once she heard footsteps running down the stairs and out the front door in the middle of the night. Another time there was groaning. She didn’t like it, see, so she complained. And from being polite they got quite nasty. They said they had a right to do what they liked since they were paying rent. Told her to mind her own business and didn’t she have nothing better to do than snoop. And it carried on.

  ‘She put up with it for a while, because she was an old lady on her own. I suppose she was scared. Then she started to notice a bad smell which came right down through the house. And the noises got worse. She told my chick she started to dread going upstairs to her bedroom in the evening because the top of the house felt strange. It was like it got cold as she came up the stairs. In the end she complained again. She said if it continued she would give them notice to quit. This time they were very polite and she thought she had got the problem all sorted out.

  ‘But that was when things started to go really wrong. Soon after that, one of her cats died. She found it stretched out stiff on her kitchen floor with its eyes open. I seen it myself, it was kind of weird. It was a tabby called Tiger. It hadn’t been ill or nothing. The old lady was in tears when she met my chick at the laundrette. My chick became agitated too, “Poor Tiger” and all this, she took me round to help the old lady bury it in the garden. When we came back I had a bath, I didn’t like the atmosphere round there.

  ‘Well, what do you think happens next? Two more of the cats fall ill. The vet couldn’t understand what was wrong with them but they died too. The lady started to get really worried. She was like a mother losing her children. She had no children of her own, see.’

  Duane stopped for a moment and looked around the pub, which was filling with people. Then he leant forward to Alex: ‘You know something? Within four months every cat was dead. The noises and smells had started again and the old lady complained again. The man, the lodger – he was tall with spectacles, I seen him a couple of times going into the house – when she complained he says to her “I thought you might have learned something from what happened to your cats. It doesn’t pay to interfere.”

  ‘The old lady was scared, right, but she did not back down. She gave them notice to quit.

  ‘It wasn’t long after that she fell ill herself. Now I have to explain something. She had a niece, called… Patsy, I think it was, she was fond of the old lady. She was a social worker so she was used to dealing with things going wrong in the home. She heard what was going on and she thought the lodgers were up to no good. She knew a lady called Pearl who was a healer, know what I mean, one of these clairvoyant ladies. The lodgers had regular jobs in the daytimes. The man worked for Barclays Bank, the woman was an estate agent. So they were out all day, regular as clockwork.

  ‘So this niece Patsy invited this clairvoyant lady round one day when the lodgers were out. The lady said the place was full of “toxic energy”, something like that. She went into the attic and found pentangles and a dagger with a jewelled handle, strange things. She was there for hours, she said she done what she could. Said she gave the place a “psychic clean” and that the lodgers might not feel comfortable there now. We heard the couple left soon after. But it was too late for the old lady. She died a month later.

  ‘OK, maybe it was stress from the noise and the arguments. And maybe the cats got the cat flu. But the old lady’s family didn’t think so. The niece Patsy put the house on the market for next to nothing. She didn’t need the money and she wanted to be rid of it as quick as possible. That was my good luck. It was a few years ago, before Thatcher and the boom put the house prices up. So I bought it really cheap, and nothing will move me out.

  ‘My chick is not superstitious, but me personally I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want no shadows loitering. Before we moved in I asked the clairvoyant lady Pearl to come back in and spring clean the whole house up a bit, so to speak. She bought some banging things and she sang and she clicked her fingers and burnt herbs. She went through every room. I think she cleared out any nasty things the lodgers had left. I’m talking about the kind of things you can’t see. The house felt different afterwards. In fact, that attic room is now the bedroom for my boys. They have their toys and they sleep up there, no problem. It’s what you would call cosy. But that wasn’t the end of the story.’

  Duane paused.

  ‘Because the old lady came back one night from the dead.’

  ‘I thought I’d find you here.’ Ren had arrived. ‘Supper’s ready, drink up.’

  Tuesday 18th December 11 pm

  After Duane and Alex made love on Ren’s sitting room floor, Alex asked, ‘Does your wife mind you screwing around?’

  His smooth faced winced at her choice of words. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘I needed it.’

  He moved his arm so that she was in the crook of his elbow. ‘It was good for me too. So why worry?’

  ‘I didn’t really think about you
r wife. I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes. I’m a selfish cow.’ She smiled.

  ‘We’re not married, as it goes. But that don’t make no difference. It’s not a problem for her, she’s used to it.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘She doesn’t mind what I do. It’s like I am on a piece of string attached to a peg at the centre. And however far I roam away, I always come back to her. Two weeks ago I went to Brighton for a day and I stayed a week. When I walked in through the door she just tucked her hair behind her ears a few times, a little habit she likes to do sometimes, and goes to put the kettle on. She’s used to it now. The only thing she is still funny about is her birthday. 19th December. That’s tomorrow, as it goes. She’ll want me back first thing in the morning. Birthday presents. Her family come over. Then getting ready for Christmas, do the decorations, To Hell and Back that type of thing, know what I mean? Otherwise she don’t mind.’

  Alex smiled. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Please don’t keep saying that. You are a strange lady. You smile when you are saying things that are not smiling.’

  They were lying naked on a narrow strip of foam unrolled on the floor. It was covered with a white winceyette sheet; the upper sheet and two purple blankets lay beside them His black skin glimmered in the dull glow from the table lamp. He was stroking her shoulder while he was talking, without seeming to notice he was doing it.

  Alex had stopped smiling. ‘You never finished telling me about the old lady.’

  Duane adjusted his woolly hat, his eyes looking to the side. ‘The old lady?’

  ‘The ghost story’.

  ‘So you are interested. I thought you would be.’

  ‘The old lady had died.’

  ‘All right. About her coming to visit me after she died.’ He licked his lips delicately.

  ‘It happened at a bad time in my life. I’ll tell you from the start. You’re a good listener. You know that? I think you bark worse than you bite. You listen good. It makes me feel like my words are going into some place where they will be kept safe. I’ll tell you.

  ‘My chick did leave me once. About six years ago, when the kids were still toddling, you know. It was when she still used to try to pin me down sometimes. Force me to live up to something she wanted. It was like this. There is a hostel, see, a nurses’ hostel, at the end of our street. I used to visit there sometimes. Made a few acquaintances. It is like a warren in there. They are friendly, nurses. They like to find ways to relax and enjoy themselves when they are not busy saving lives, see.

  ‘But it became embarrassing. When I walked by sometimes down the street, they used to lean out of the windows and wave: “Hello, Duane!”

  ‘My chick said: “This is too close to home, know what I mean? This is not nice for the children. This hostel is out of bounds.”

  ‘I say “Yes, yes.” But I don’t like people telling me what to do. That I should do this or I should not do the other.

  ‘Then one night her brother is visiting. My chick is white, right, and her brother is of a very English type of a person, right? I wouldn’t say he’s racist, he’s OK towards me, but he’s never been very friendly. I think he believes that his sister could have married a better person. Perhaps a nice white man. He keeps saying “Why don’t you cut the locks off of those kids of yours? They look a sight going like that to school.”

  ‘Anyway, one evening he was visiting with his wife, and he and I leave the two of them to do ladies talk, nail varnish and sofas and so on, while we go out for a drink together. He is a greedy man and he is not let out of the pen often as his wife is religious. So he drinks more than he can take. And I’m telling him about the hostel at the end of our street and how I know some of the nurses and maybe we could go and see them. He perks up his ears so I take him over there with me for a visit. They really like him there, we have a very sociable evening, so to speak. I am not sure if he ever remembered afterwards what he got up to, with all the alcohol inside him, but he was the spirit of the party. I never knew he had it in him.

  ‘By the time we get home it is not only my chick but also his wife who is waiting up for us. He is so drunk he cannot keep his mouth shut that we have been to the hostel which was out of bounds. His wife reckons that I have led him astray. From my point of view he did not need any leading. In fact, it was I myself who had to find him in the dark in some nurse’s room, and pull him out of there to bring him back. I tell this to his wife, you would think I had done her a favour, but she does not want to hear this.

  ‘And after all the shouting when they left at two o’clock in the morning, with his wife driving, my chick left with them. She woke the boys up in the middle of the night and took them off in their nightsuits. In her brother’s car. She said she had enough. I didn’t understand what got into her. I think her brother’s wife egged her on. That woman is one of those people that are like full of virtue, right, in a very nasty sort of way.

  ‘My chick was the one that left, see. She knew better than to try to throw me out. She knew I would never leave that house. And I would never say sorry. No. If she wanted to go, let her go. I would never phone her or ask her to come back.

  ‘I was fine.

  ‘But that particular day when the old lady came back, when I saw the duppy, it had not been such a good day. My chick had been gone a couple of months. Events had taken a turn for the worse, know what I mean? One of those days when your guard slips maybe a little and things get to you. I was painting the outside of a high block in the city. On the scaffolding. I never lose my step but that day I slipped a little. It had been raining. I caught hold of a pole and it was nothing, but I didn’t like it. When I was working outdoors, my chick would always be waiting for me to come back to make sure I was OK before I have my bath and go out again. Instead I came back to the house empty. It was not the same.

  ‘But I didn’t take no notice, I didn’t care. I was fine, right? I washed and went straight out again to the pub. On the way back I was walking on my own across the common and I got picked up by our friends in blue. They put me in the back of the car and gave me a smacking.

  ‘“Where’s the ganja?” they kept asking. “We know you people always have some.”

  ‘They didn’t find any, and it seems to me they didn’t have no time to plant any because there weren’t no cells free in the station that night and they had their hands full with some geezers from a big fight outside the Duke of Rochester. In the end they let me go. I had a three mile walk to get home.

  ‘It was four in the morning by the time I got back. The house was not heated and there was no food in the kitchen. I am not usually a person who has a difficulty with sleeping, right, but that night I was restless. In the end I closed my eyes and I think I had not been asleep long when I felt very cold and woke up suddenly. There was the old lady standing beside my bed. The one who used to live in my house with her cats. She was standing there crying. I expect she was still sad about the cats. Perhaps she thought I was lonely. It made me want to cry to look at her.

  ‘Then she held out her hand and touched my shoulder through the bedclothes. It was like an electric shock. But it was a particular type of a shock because I think I fell asleep right then. I can’t remember anything after that.

  ‘That night I dreamt I was talking to my chick. Begging her to come back. Which I would never do in real life. To humiliate myself, I will not do that. Someone to see me begging, oh no. I never did phone her or nothing while she was gone. I knew that she would not enjoy herself staying with her brother. I knew that she would come back in the end. It might take months, it might take years. I didn’t care. I would not phone her.

  ‘But in the dream, there I was begging.

  ‘As it happens, my chick came back two days later. Almost like she’d heard me. She just walked in with the boys and put the food in the fridge and cooked a meal without saying a word.

  ‘She never believed I saw the old lady. She thought I was drunk. She doesn’t believe
in duppies.

  ‘But she came back to stay. And ever since then I believe in duppies. ’Cos I seen one.’

  Alex was humming the tune of Darling Clementine. ‘There’s a ghost in that song,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to remember it…’ After a pause, she sang ‘“In my dreams she still does haunt me, dressed in….” something about seaweed draped over her… “dressed in seaweed mighty fine” (that’s not quite right), then it ends: “Though in life I used to love her, now she’s dead I draw the line… ”’ Alex giggled.

  Duane was looking at her with no expression on his face. ‘You think it’s funny, yeah?’

  ‘And Molly Malone. She dies of a fever, and it goes: “Now her ghost wheels her barrow, through streets broad and narrow, singing cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh….”’ Alex’s voice was strong and tuneful.

  Duane continued to stare at her.

  ‘I’m not taking the piss,’ said Alex. ‘I’m saying ghosts are a part of popular tradition. Folk songs can be very wise.’ She giggled again, ‘But I’m not saying I believe you saw a ghost. You thought you saw one, yes.’

  Duane took a deep breath, ‘I know what I saw.’

  Alex’s face sobered, ‘But I do believe it must have been awful for you when your wife left.’

  Duane’s face cracked into a smile and he shook his head. ‘I blame her brother’s wife for all that problem. Religious types like her can do a lot of damage. Because they are always so sure they are in the right. The brother’s wife, I think she was born again. With some people, you’d think once was enough.’

  ‘Do you think all religious people are dangerous?’ asked Alex, spreading the top sheet over them both.

  ‘No, no. I do believe in God, myself. But my God, not hers. The ones that make problems, it’s the ones who like God so much they hate people. Like the landlord we used to have. He was one of them Jews so religious they always wear a hat.’