The Migration of Ghosts

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  The boy turned his head towards her. The movement pulled the yellow-black skin so tightly over the cheekbones that she could see the cavernous hollow beneath and a faint mocking pulse of life in the neck. His mouth opened to release a fetid breath, but no sound came out from between lips cracked like parched mud-flats. A few misshapen teeth stuck out at odd angles. His eyelids had been bitten by insects but the eyes beneath were huge and dark and compelling. He said nothing but an exchange had taken place. The brief contact enabled her to break free. She said goodbye and clambered back into the scorching interior of the car.

  Five minutes on down the road they were involved in a hold-up. The thrusting black muzzle of the gunman’s pistol penetrated the driver’s window. First of all he had danced in the road in front of them waving them down. When the driver tried to swerve round him, he fired a shot which hit a billboard advertising Shell petrol at the side of the road. He wore ill-fitting military brown, green and yellow camouflage trousers and T-shirt, like a badly painted stage set. Adrenalin empowered the jitterbugging aggressor with energy as he looked through the window at the occupants of the car.

  ‘I want your money. Give me your money now.’ His eyes were popping from their sockets. Globules of sweat flew off his forehead as he glanced up and down the road for other vehicles, gesticulating wildly with the gun. The driver stared straight ahead, terrified.

  ‘These people do not have money,’ muttered the driver weakly, doing his best to protect his passengers. The gunman re-materialised miraculously on Charles Hay’s side of the car and spotted the Rolex watch on his victim’s wrist.

  ‘Give me that watch. You are telling lies,’ he protested furiously to the driver. ‘How do you think Nigeria is ever going to get ahead as a country if people like you tell lies. We will never get anywhere.’ He seemed genuinely outraged as he pocketed the watch. He took and stuffed in his trouser pocket the handful of banknotes which Susan Hay was proffering from the back. Still glaring at the driver, he slammed his open hand down on the roof of the car. The thunderous noise inside the car made them all jump. He backed off waving the car on like an official. When they dared to look back he was jumping over the dried-grass bank at the roadside. It was all over in less than two minutes.

  Charles Hay felt relieved to be in the City of London again. After their return from Nigeria he decided to take some exercise by walking to work early in the morning. The streets were still deserted. The route from his Barbican flat took him past the Lloyd’s building. Although he was sixty-seven years old, he approved of the new Lloyd’s building which wore its glass and tubular-steel intestines on the outside. As he looked up, the transparent bubble of the lift, also on the outside, was descending down the side of the building, giving the impression that the occupant, a man in a dark suit with his head bent forward, was being slowly hanged.

  It occurred to Hay, mischievously, that the more transparent the new buildings in the City of London looked, the shadier the dealings that went on inside. An inverse ratio of glass, light and windows to dark dealings. Or rather sharp dealings. Dealings that moved with such speed as to be invisible and lethal. Bomb-damage dealings. He kicked away some fragments of glass from underfoot to the sound of tinkling arpeggios – shards that had been hurled to the street in a recent bomb attack on the City.

  When he had started work in the City as a young man, the place had mostly consisted of sombre granite edifices containing offices with panels of opaque glass in the doors as if they were all occupied by private detective agencies. Creaky old lifts with folding latticed iron doors connected the floors. Now a series of increasingly flirtatious buildings had arisen amongst those ponderous and impenetrable blocks of stone: delicate angular structures of dark glass reflecting bronze sky and clouds, from which you could no more guess what went on inside than you could guess what a blind man was thinking from the reflection in his glasses. Other new buildings that had sprung up made him feel as though he were walking through kids’ puzzles grown large. Lego sets. Everything had become a game. Business had become fun – as he had always felt it should be. At last he felt in tune with the times.

  Despite his age, the modern architecture suited him. There was something insubstantial about the new buildings that matched his own swift and lightly conducted business manoeuvres. Contracts in Nigeria were fulfilled and overnight the company moved on to explore the possibilities in Colombia. The architecture somehow reflected this new phantasmagoria of commerce. Now you see it, now you don’t. A fly-by-night affair; houses of glass cards thrown up overnight by sleight of hand, full of sharp angles and sharp practice. Tomorrow they might disappear and be replaced by another set of transparent hexagons, pyramids and domes. After all, he pondered as he continued his brisk walk to work, everything was fragmenting these days: the Soviet bloc, the old monolithic ideas, grand notions of a fairer world, all these were disintegrating. It was important to keep up with what was going on. Nowadays it was as if the City of London had changed sex. Having once been a solid and patriarchal affair of granite and stone with all the solemn weight of imperialism, it had now become a sparkling bitch in glass petticoats with see-through flighty underwear. An alluring transvestite city, light-headed and capricious but concealing dangerous muscle. After centuries, the feminine partner in the business tango had finally decided to reveal herself.

  Charles Hay was head of Hay Oil Incorporated. He lived and breathed the new rarefied atmosphere of the City. He was always in his office immaculately dressed by seven o’clock in the morning, sitting behind his desk in a faint haze of after-shave. Manicured hands in double-cuffed shirts with monogrammed gold cuff-links flicked through the day’s business papers. The fey tilt of his head when he listened to the reports of his senior executives gave no indication that he could move, in transactions, with the speed and unpredictability of a funnel spider. He cared about appearances. More than anything else, he cared about appearances. That also stamped him as one of the modernists in his field. He understood the primacy of image.

  The public image of his company beamed out regularly in television advertisements which consisted of a slow camera pan round magnificent white Palladian buildings to the accompaniment of a Bach cantata and ending with the words ‘Hay Oil’ in classically simple script across the screen. If there was something slightly fake about the advertisements, the impression that the perfect marble pillars and white cornices were a façade, a film set rather than the real thing, it was intentional. The Parthenon in Athens had been suggested as a location for the advertisement but the original turned out to be too chipped and grubby for Charles Hay’s taste.

  The offices themselves, another gigantic concoction of glass, were in Lombard Street. Everything inside the entrance lobby was elegantly faked. Marble-clad floors. Artificial streams and waterfalls. Mock palm trees festooned with lianas. Stuffed parrots. Tapes of tropical birdsong. The air too was fake, warm and humid on a bright cold spring day. There were fake smiles on the lips of secretaries as their metronome heels clicked over the marble floors on their way to the lifts.

  The private life of Charles Hay was kept well away from public gaze. Having stayed a bachelor for most of his life, he had married Susan late when she was twenty-three and he was forty-five. Now, twenty-two years later, her appearance was still slender and girlish. The bone structure of her face remained as striking as it had been in her modelling days. Her reddish nut-brown hair hung straight in a schoolgirl cut. There had been, until recently, a sense of mischief in her brown eyes.

  Susan Hay, her husband discovered soon after their marriage, was intelligent as well as perverse. In the first flush of his infatuation, he had taken pleasure in watching her argue spiritedly at dinner parties. She had the habit of playing devil’s advocate, always taking the unexpected side in a dispute. He rather admired this coquettish defiance, the lack of concern for convention. It amused him. That was at first. Later, he found that she could be infuriatingly stubbor
n. Once she turned up at his office on a bicycle wearing an old mackintosh. He was irritated by such behaviour. Her eccentricities began to exasperate him. He bought her a cottage in the country and they fell into the habit of a discreet estrangement although this had never been fully discussed.

  Neither of them wanted a divorce. Susan no longer really knew how to earn her own living. It suited her better to remain in the country and read or scribble her own poetry and go for long walks. People were surprised that she still mentioned with pride the fact that she had gained four O levels as if it were a recent achievement. Sometimes she strummed a few chords on a guitar over and over again, having made no progress after the first few lessons. Her abilities, for some reason, never developed. There was something bleak and austere about the cottage. She kept the grey floorboards bare apart from a few hippy cushions and an old settee. There was no sign of the wealth to which she had access.

  Charles never contemplated divorce. That would have been contrary to his public image of perfection. When it was necessary, Susan was happy to appear at his side looking stunning, although he always felt a little wary in her company. She sometimes contradicted him in public with an air of childish defiance which he no longer found charming. Once, at dinner, he had laughed politely at someone’s joke and she had embarrassed him by asking out loud, ‘Was that laugh genuine or was it false?’

  But many people congratulated him on his beautiful and wayward wife. She undoubtedly possessed talents that would reveal themselves in time. Hers were the qualities of a deer, fleet, delicate and elusive. It pleased him to realise that other people still found her captivating.

  In the offices of Hay Oil, fastidious standards were maintained. One section of the public relations team was employed solely to keep an eye on the appearance and demeanour of the workforce. All instances of slovenliness were reported to Charles Hay personally. Anyone with a marginally unclean collar, bitten fingernails, scuffed shoes, dandruff or any other hint of lack of personal hygiene was liable to be hauled up in front of him. His office was known as the ‘incinerator’ because of the scorching interviews that took place with offenders.

  Shares in the company prospered. Minor protests about company policy abroad were always met with swift denials and an enormous public relations offensive to deflect criticism and disseminate images of an environmentally responsible and concerned parent company.

  Hay, still sprightly for his age, ran up the flight of steps in front of his office building. By the time the morning mail arrived he had already done an hour’s work. His devoted middle-aged secretary came in triumphantly waving the invitation that he had been hoping for all year. The invitation was for Mr and Mrs Charles Hay to attend the Guildhall banquet at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his annual speech. As he studied the invitation a glow of satisfaction radiated through him. It asked Mr and Mrs Hay to join the Chancellor at the high table. This year was the first time that he had ever been invited to sit on the high table with the Chancellor. It meant that under the television lights he would be publicly visible, sitting alongside the new Mayor of London, the Governor of the Bank of England and other City luminaries. It was the supreme accolade for a businessman, an acknowledgement that his business practice was appreciated by the New Labour Party now in power, a party with which he felt considerable affinity. It was an honour which he had craved for years.

  Nine months had passed since their return from Nigeria. On consulting his diary, Charles Hay was surprised to realise that he had not seen Susan once during that time although they had spoken often on the phone. In fact, it was not unusual for long periods to pass without their meeting. Both of them were quite content to let matters drift on this way. Since their return, he had tried more than once to arrange an amicable meal together. She would agree to come up to town and then, a day or so later, he would find a message on his answerphone saying, ‘Can we have a rain-check on the meal, sweetie? I’ve got a bit of a cold.’ Or some other excuse.

  He telephoned Susan to give her the date of the banquet and ensure that she would be present at his side.

  ‘Of course, darling. Wild horses wouldn’t stop me being there. It’s wonderful. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Wear the green Versace dress that I like, Susan.’

  ‘OK.’ She laughed. ‘If you want, darling.’

  Recently one or two of Susan Hay’s neighbours in Sussex had tried to get hold of Charles Hay because they were worried about her. They thought she did not look well. But when he called she insisted that she was fine and joked about how nosy neighbours were in the country. She had been seen walking alone on the Sussex downs, always wearing the same dirty old mackintosh. She was thin and walked with her head cast slightly to one side. What the neighbours did not know was that, on one occasion when she had walked all the way to Lewes and sat, exhausted, without moving, on a bench for hours, the local police had questioned her, mistakenly thinking that she was a vagrant. She had thought it was hugely funny.

  Sometimes, in the cottage, Susan stayed for hours in a rocking-chair covered with a shawl. The remains of brown rice meals stayed on the table for days. At other times, she sat on the floor and arranged her body in the same foetal position as the boy she had seen in Nigeria, staying cramped up like that all afternoon, without eating or moving, through dusk and until after nightfall. She did not understand why she did it, but it satisfied her in some way.

  As a child, Susan had been put for a few months into an orphanage when her mother suffered a nervous breakdown. Whether or not this was the cause of her interior self becoming barren, a wasteland, nobody knew. When people spotted her walking on the downs, she seemed to carry the aura of the orphanage with her, as though she were part of a parade of orphans, thousands of them, invisible, walking in pairs around the grounds of their institutions, hand in comfortless hand. Acquaintances hesitated before approaching her and then turned away pretending they had not seen her. She would either ignore them or make some painful attempt at conversation.

  Her reclusiveness intensified. Despite what everyone had recognised early on as her undoubted potential, these barren areas where nothing reached fruition, these patches of wasteland, of arrested development, still existed inside her. After their return from Nigeria, in the spaces where those budding gifts might have grown, a strange and powerful god gradually emerged to stalk the clearings; a god so extraordinary and so attractive that she became bound to him and mastered by him. He began to rule her with a rod of iron until there was no distinguishing between her and himself. She welcomed this implacable god of starvation, who opposed all fertility, excess and fecundity, as her deliverance and abandoned herself to a ruler of the utmost severity.

  ‘Charles.’

  ‘Patrick.’

  Conversation hummed amongst the guests in evening dress under the vaulted dark wooden beams of the Guildhall. The Lord Lieutenant of Essex, hooked nose, red cheeks, grasped Charles Hay’s shoulder and shook him by the hand before continuing to push his way, beaming, through the people milling around outside the great banqueting hall.

  ‘Better find out where we’re sitting,’ the Lord Lieutenant called back over his shoulder. He winked and nodded towards his wife as he went to consult the list of placements.

  Through the swing doors, uniformed employees of the catering company were visible inside the banqueting hall, moving quietly to and fro, putting the final touches to the décor. Bowls of roses entwined with glossy laurel leaves decked each table. Every crystal wine goblet and every solid silver fork was checked. Television crews climbed to the best vantage points for filming, ensuring that the three great crystal chandeliers would not interfere with camera sight-lines.

  In the lobby, the familiar faces of political commentators and financial analysts showed themselves, mingling with people, ready to interpret at the drop of a hat the implications of the Chancellor’s speech for the nation.

  The Chancellor himself mixed freely with the guests, aware that eyes were upon him. He threw h
is head back and laughed at someone’s joke, the wavy black hair worn swept back and his dark-brown eyes somehow giving the impression of an Italian opera diva confidently about to sing her most famous aria. He caught Charles Hay’s eye for a second in a glance of affable recognition as he bent his ear to listen to his partner in conversation.

  Enjoying the effects of this brief but precious moment of communication with the Chancellor, the exquisitely groomed Charles Hay elbowed his way politely to the street entrance to check on Susan’s arrival. He had sent the chauffeur with the car down to Sussex to ensure that she would be on time. The evening air closed in on him, chilly and dank, as he stepped outside into the relative dark of the street. Brightly lit cars and taxis pulled up in turn. There was no sign of Susan. A twinge of annoyance hardened the lines around his mouth as he went back inside.

  Dinner was announced. Guests were invited to take their places. With a growing sense of disbelief, Charles Hay made his way to the high table and sat down next to his wife’s empty place. Within minutes, the dinner was under way. First there was the loyal toast to the Queen and then waiters and waitresses in their black-and-white uniform scurried about making sure that glasses were filled again for the toast to the Chancellor. Charles Hay, humiliated by the empty space next to him, tried to look relaxed as he sipped occasional spoonfuls of pink crab soup.

  The Chancellor rose to speak. The hall fell quiet in a hush of anticipation. All attention focused on the attractive sensuous features of the minister. In the body of the hall, heavy linen napkins dabbed at mouths and were laid aside, glasses were put down and evening dresses rustled as guests leaned back to listen. The Chancellor ran his hand through his thick black hair with practised diffidence before embarking on his speech. Apart from his voice on the microphone, the only sound came from whirring cameras and the tinkling of a glass here or there.