by Ben Stevens
A Ghost
1
2001
The day was already bright when Ethel Burrows entered her kitchen at seven-thirty that morning. Taking the kettle from beside the toaster and placing it under the tap, she looked through the window at her tidy garden as the water poured.
A herringbone-patterned patio was before the large lawn that had a flowerbed on either side. The small circle of friends Miss Burrows had acquired over the years would, in the summer, sit on deckchairs placed on this patio, drinking tea while talking about their past and their present, and not dwelling on their future by a mutual, unspoken consensus.
On occasion Miss Burrows and her friends would indulge in a gin and tonic, which had the effect of causing their conversation to become a little deeper than would otherwise have been comfortable. Old memories resurfaced, along with longings and desires that remained unfulfilled and were not relieved by their twilight years.
The kettle overflowed and Miss Burrows stopped staring out of the window. Briskly drying her hands on a dishcloth placed on the towel rail of the oven, she tutted as she yet again read the poem that was printed upon it. The last two lines she always found particularly annoying:
I read the obits. and know I’m not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and I go back to bed.
Daphne had given her the dishcloth one Christmas, the others all having a little giggle over the poem as they read it. It set Miss Burrows’ teeth on edge with its suggestion that some sort of battle had been won merely because a person realised they weren’t dead – and furthermore that in celebration of this fact they merely returned to bed.
On two occasions she’d opened the bin with the intention of throwing the wretched thing away, and had only just prevented herself from actually doing so. Daphne was a regular if sometimes unwelcome visitor, and for diplomacy’s sake Miss Burrows had to keep the towel on display. Miss Burrows could never have told the woman that she hated the dishcloth anymore than that she referred to her as ‘Dappy Daphne’, when she was alone and found that she was talking to herself in spite of her best attempts not to.
Having made a pot of tea she put some stale bread into the toaster. She’d bought a fresh loaf the previous day but would not consider using this until the previous one was finished. Thrift was a lesson that needed to be practised along with modesty and honesty, three virtues she sadly noticed disappearing from a world which had recently entered its 21st century.
She smeared butter and marmalade thickly on the toast and finished the small pot of tea as she ate. Tea contained something that staved off cancer, she’d read in The Daily Express yesterday, and was very good for you. Coffee had fallen from grace. Not that she’d ever believed in any of this scientific twaddle, of course, but she couldn’t help but feel a little proud that she was a life-long tea drinker, had always despised coffee, and at a healthy, copus mentus seventy-five years of age was perhaps an advertisement for the virtues of this typically English beverage.
There was one chink in her righteous armour, however, and that was the demon weed: one cigarette after breakfast and usually two in the evening. Miss Burrows produced a packet of Benson and Hedges and a small lighter covered in mother-of-pearl. She laid the cigarette and the lighter side-by-side on the kitchen table, and took her cutlery to the sink to wash it up. This done, she produced a glass ashtray from a cupboard and returned to the table.
She smoked in a curious fashion, making quick, stabbing motions with her mouth on the filter three or four times before exhaling the accumulated smoke. She stubbed out the cigarette with a third still remaining. Emptying the ashtray into the bin, she then washed and replaced it in the appropriate cupboard.
Miss Burrows walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway. At the foot of the staircase was a small, round wooden table with a telephone and a local directory placed upon it. The telephone rang quite frequently, for which (she supposed) she should be reasonably grateful.
What with this and her circle of friends she was never really alone for any significant length of time, unlike so many whom were her age and, like herself, did not have a family. Above the table was a mirror, and she quickly ensured that her appearance was as it always was before she left the house.
She walked the short distance to Teddington train station to catch the eight-twenty to Waterloo, and reaching her platform she waited standing although seats were available. Eight-twenty passed, both by her watch and the clock that hung from the roof of the platform, and muffled cursing came from a smartly-dressed man who repeatedly looked at his watch, as though by doing so he could somehow make the train magically appear.
The train arrived ten minutes late, and the smartly-dressed man moved to the same carriage as Ethel, almost pushing in front of her before he remembered his manners and stood back to allow her to enter first.
‘Thank you,’ she said tightly, annoyed at the child-like petulance visible on his face. It was a cliché but still – it was true: in the old days things really had been different. Taking a seat she produced a paperback from her small brown handbag. There was the sudden peel of feminine laughter and she looked up at the young couple seated opposite. The man whispered something and the woman laughed again.
Miss Burrows looked hurriedly back at her novel, but could find no distraction there for the brief but oh-so-glorious segment of her past suddenly remembered. She could still perfectly recall his voice; that soft Carolina drawl that had so thrilled her. Even now it caused goose-bumps to appear on her arms; she’d never heard another voice like it. She had liked to lie beside the small lake, the grass tickling her provocatively bare legs as she swooned to the sound of the man talking.
He’d been a persuasive suitor...
Jack had taken her complete affection, as well, and what’s more had died with it. There’d never been another man in her life before or since.
The train reached Waterloo within twenty minutes, and she left the station and walked the short distance to the solicitors’ firm where she’d worked as a secretary and receptionist for more years than she cared to remember. The senior partner, Mr Moore, was a quiet and hard-working man originally from Yorkshire. He was most gratified that his longest-serving employee had no apparent desire to ever retire.
The work suited Miss Burrows perfectly; she derived the necessary amount of satisfaction from her job and so avoided retirement and the inevitable, desperate attempts to fill the void this left in a person’s life.
She reached the office block where the solicitors’ firm was housed, and giving a courteous greeting to the other employees whom she saw in the small kitchen made herself a cup of tea before commencing work.
At one o’clock she left the office to buy a sandwich. This she ate seated within the Jubilee Gardens by the River Thames, her gaze frequently drawn to the Millennium Wheel turning slowly to her left, wondering if she would ever summon sufficient courage to be able to sit in one of its carriages.
Two couples walked past her bench, and she heard the familiar twang of an American as he talked with a comically cliché’d awe about all things British…
In her youth she’d dreamed of going to live in America. It had seemed quite possible at one point, but the war had put paid to that.
If Jack hadn’t been killed then maybe…
It was useless to think so – yet still she couldn’t help herself. She remembered him dressed in his dashing pilot’s uniform, a young man of twenty-two posted to the air-force base in Teddington, Surrey, 1943.
On her mother’s advice she’d at first rejected Jack Cundy’s advances, after they’d met at a local dance. Her mother had warned Ethel by saying, ‘I’ve heard it said that these American boys are a bit too flush with their money, and a bit too fresh with their hands…’
Jack Cun
dy had, however, been remorseless in his pursuit of Ethel, and his devil-may-care grin and wholesome good looks had finally won over the eighteen-year-old girl.
So Ethel had secretly walked with him in Home Park, where they’d scratched their initials into a red-bricked building by the Thames. They’d spent hours just sat by a small lake, Ethel coughing as she tried, against Jack’s advice, smoking one of his Lucky Strikes. Finally they did something that might well have shocked Ethel’s mother into her grave had she ever known about it, and thus their union was sealed.
For two glorious, sunlit months Ethel and Jack were inseparable, spending every spare moment together and talking about their future. One lazy afternoon Jack tickled her neck with a blade of grass as he said, ‘Honey, when the Allies win the war I want you to come and live with me in America. I want to marry you, y’see’
‘Oh Jack,’ was all Ethel felt able to say in reply.
The airman described his home state of South Carolina and the farm his parents owned with poetic beauty as Ethel lay watching the sun sparkle on the water, the sky above vast and gloriously blue, the young man’s words feeding her dreams. When the time came to return home – and to her mother’s constant criticism of her first boyfriend – Ethel could have cried…
Miss Burrows smiled thinly, and looking at her watch immediately stood up. In the midst of her reminisces her lunch-hour had passed by extremely quickly. Back at her desk she was kept busy typing letters and attendance notes, and aside from answering the telephone she spoke only to thank the office junior who brought her a cup of tea.
At five o’clock sharp she said goodbye to Mr Moore and the others, walking quickly to Waterloo in order to catch the twenty-past-five train. Reaching her platform she entered a carriage, and sitting down opened her book.
The train had just left Clapham Junction when she heard something that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. A thousand memories were stirred by the sound of a voice that was perhaps a little gruffer than it had been before, but was still otherwise exactly the same.
Feeling her face flush for the first time in over fifty years, she cautiously stole a glance in the direction the voice had come from.
She immediately looked away, staring out of the window in a complete state of shock. ‘This is it, old girl, you’ve got dementia,’ she told herself. Either that or she’d just seen a ghost that had aged in accordance with conventional human existence.
It was him, it was Jack – but Jack had died long ago. Cautiously looking back she started as the man’s china-blue eyes met her own and then moved away without the slightest trace of recognition. Doubt reared momentarily in Miss Burrows mind, but then she was certain.
It was him.
Jack’s hair was still full enough to be swept back in the style Miss Burrows remembered so well, and his eyes sparkled with the pleasure of one who loved life whatever it brought him. His thin figure was clothed with youthful abandon in light-blue jeans and a white shirt. He was having a conversation with a man seated opposite about the weather, and despite the mundane topic he laughed frequently.
And, my God, it was that laugh. It refreshed the memories in Miss Burrows’ mind of the sun and the park, when they had lain next to each other by the small lake as Jack talked expansively about his plans for their future.
With anticipation causing her body to actually shake she almost rose to greet him, but then realised that she could not. Somehow the man did not recognise her, despite all that had passed between them. She had thought that he was dead – maybe he was dead – for all these years.
The train stopped at Teddington and Miss Burrows nearly missed her stop due to her reluctance to leave. As it was her handbag got caught in the automatic doors as they closed, and only the quick actions of a man standing close by prevented an embarrassing situation from becoming possibly dangerous.
She walked slowly home, her eyes fixed straight ahead and not really seeing anything. She let herself into her house and immediately found her cigarettes and lighter, something she’d never previously done this early in the evening, always waiting until after dinner before she smoked.
With uncharacteristic untidiness she dropped her handbag onto the kitchen floor, and her hand shook slightly as she held the kettle under the tap.
Two cups of tea and a cigarette later she felt a little more composed; she picked up her handbag and hung it on a hook on the door. For a long time she sat there, her eyes blindly focused on the sink, and then finally on the window above that and the garden outside. Leaving the dirty ashtray on the table, she walked out of the side-door and onto the garden patio.
The featheredge fencing on either side of her garden was low, nearly a foot shorter than herself, and Miss Burrows saw the Indian man whose name she could never quite remember busy weeding his lawn to her right. He looked up and smiled at her, his small and podgy frame like some kind of horticultural Bhudda as he diligently maintained his lawn. He was approximately the same age as Miss Burrows. It was obvious that gardening was his favourite past-time, as since his wife had died the previous year he seemed to spend every spare moment outside.
Miss Burrows thought that she understood his reluctance to stay inside his house.
‘Hello, Miss Burrows.’
‘Hello Mr P…’
The greeting was out before she could stop it, and she felt ashamed as the pause lengthened and so informed the man the obvious.
His smile only widened as he said, ‘Mr Piravana.’
‘I’m terribly sorry.’
The man chuckled – a gloriously rich and fruity sound.
‘Please do not worry: it was okay the first time. I’m known to several just as Mr P.’
The smile faded as he looked more closely at Miss Burrows. The well-aged but slightly stern-looking face bore the mark of some recent strain, and her eyes seemed to have trouble staying on one particular place for any length of time.
‘I hope I’m not being too inquisitive, but is everything… okay?’ he asked quietly, slight hesitation surrounding the last word.
The low buzz of a light aircraft sounded overhead, and the rich scent of a garden breathing during a lovely summer’s evening intoxicated the elderly woman’s senses.
She spoke without conscious thought. ‘I’ve had a shock, Mr P. I saw someone today whom I’ve not seen for over fifty years. In fact, I thought he was dead… I mean, I was told in a letter that he was dead, killed during the war.’
She noticed the man looking at her with some concern. He’d walked over to the fence while she was speaking, leaving his weeding trowel forgotten on the lawn.
‘It is definitely the same person?’ he inquired.
‘It is, it must be – I could not have made a mistake. I… I knew him very well, you see.’
Mr Piravana nodded confidentially.
‘I do see.’
They stood for a while in silence, Miss Burrows appreciating both the evening and her neighbour’s company.
‘You should talk to him,’ suggested Mr Piravana.
‘Oh, but I couldn’t. Supposing it’s not him?’
Then she remembered the laugh and the china-blue eyes, and she slowly shook her head. ‘It is him.’
Her neighbour momentarily looked back at his garden, and as he faced her again his sensitive face was a little bleak.
‘Did you miss him a lot, over the years?’ he asked.
Miss Burrows nodded sadly. ‘Dreadfully, more than I can say.’
‘I don’t know quite how to say this, but sometimes when you miss someone so badly you can see them... Sometimes I think I see, you know, my wife...’
He recovered himself as the first trace of water appeared from his deep-set eyes.
‘I don’t think I am making myself clear…’
‘Oh, but you are. I know what you mean exactly, but this was definitely real – I heard him talking.’
Mr Piravana smiled faintly.
‘Then it is all right. I never hear Debby talking
, at least not when I am awake. It would appear that you have been misled, and so if you see him again you should talk to him.’
With this the man returned to his gardening, smiling with pleasure as he extracted the weeds from his beloved lawn. Entering the kitchen, Miss Burrows peeled some potatoes and put two lamb chops under the grill.
After she’d eaten her dinner and washed the dishes she sat in the living room and watched the news, and when this had finished continued reading her book. It was a factual account of one man’s attempts to try and discover what had become of his brother, during the mass emigration of the Irish to America during the potato famine.
She suddenly stopped reading and gasped out loud.
Ghosts indeed.
A brother.
All the time she’d spent fondly recalling the warm drawl of Jack Cundy’s voice she’d never once thought to try and remember what he’d actually said, beyond the whispered plans and promises that had so thrilled her teenage heart. Only now were some of Jack’s more ordinary words recalled by Miss Burrows after all these years; but perhaps the book had been necessary to jog her memory.
He’d never mentioned his family much – Ethel had in fact been given the distinct impression that he didn’t really get along with them – but he had revealed that he’d a brother and a sister.
She thought that the brother had been his junior by a couple of years, but after all this time she couldn’t be completely sure… Rupert, she suddenly remembered – that had been his name: Rupert Cundy. Jack had never said anything about the similarity in their appearance – the complete similarity...
Before she went to bed Miss Burrows had one last cigarette in the kitchen – she did not smoke anywhere else in the house – and looked out of the kitchen window at the night sky. When – if – she saw the man again she could introduce herself; perhaps Rupert would even remember her from his dead brother’s letters posted from Teddington during the Second World War.
Handsome Jack, killed during a bombing raid over Hamburg shortly after he’d left Ethel and England. It was she who’d discovered this at the end of the war, concerned that she’d heard nothing from him. A letter sent to the address he’d left her had received a short reply a month later from Jack’s parents, stating tersely that he’d been killed in action and briefly describing when and where it had happened.
