Ghosting (5 page)

It’s one of those peculiar summer days when the weather can change in an instant. She had left Keith’s house in blazing sunshine but by the time she arrives at the allotment black clouds have gathered in a thick herd, blocking out the sun. Sparse, heavy raindrops begin to fall, so she takes shelter in the tiny shed, curdling its impure light with blue cigarette smoke, watching through the filthy window as the grey sky empties. The cramped, dim interior comforts her, as if she’s sitting inside her own skull.

THE JOURNEY
she’d thought was towards Pete had proved instead to be a journey away from him, from all the grief he’d caused while alive, to the other, unknown grief of losing him. That journey she’d thought she would be so glad to see the back of, despite fearing the next beating (for she knew it would only be a matter of
time, that much was bitterly predictable) would deliver things she’d never imagined. But she can’t lament that past when she could see no future.

Jason was only six weeks old when they departed for Malaysia. She was already exhausted after a bad night’s sleep. The baby’s crying had kept her awake all night. It was as if he could sense her anxiety and was giving voice to it with his constant wailing. She knew it would be days before she could relax properly, loosen her vigilance. All morning, through dressing the kids, and getting herself ready, double-checking she had all the paperwork, she hadn’t been able to shake off a terrible sense of having forgotten something crucial. Making her way through the crowds at Piccadilly Station, she could feel the irritating snag of something left behind. Going through a mental checklist, she knew it was pointless, because anything she’d forgotten, they’d just have to do without. It was too bloody late.

Hannah and Paul were buzzing with frantic energy as they boarded the train, jumping on the seats, banging on the window at passers-by till Grace snapped at them to sit down and be still. They cast a sly, fearful glance at their grandfather. Her parents were accompanying them as far as London, and she was more than grateful, knowing the children would behave in her father’s presence. Hannah looked at her nervously, clutching her favourite doll, Emily, a raggedy thing with long blue and white striped legs and plaited sunflower-yellow wool for hair, which Grace had made for her, one of a batch
she’d made from home to earn extra money. Hannah took the doll with her everywhere. Paul was breathing on the window and drawing faces with his finger in the condensation. Jason slumbered in the travel cot.

At Euston they were met by a sullen, acne-scarred redhead with jug ears called Ray, who said he’d be their escort all the way to Singapore. Just knowing she’d have some help immediately made Grace less anxious. After exchanging hugs and kisses, kisses and hugs, her parents went off to find their hotel. Her mother cried, and Grace cried, and the kids cried; even her father had a star in each eye. She promised to ring them as soon as she arrived.

It was getting on for six o’clock when they got to the RAF base in Hendon where they’d be spending the night in a transit hotel. Ray led them to a canteen, where they were served a bland meal of potatoes, carrots and overcooked lamb chops. Then he showed them to their room. Uniform plain corridors led on to uniform plain rooms, into one of which she followed Ray, and the children trailed behind her. He placed the suitcase down by the window and said he’d collect them in the morning. She scanned the cheerless room, spying, in one corner, a small cot into which she immediately placed Jason, who was beginning to stir, wanting to be fed.

Hannah and Paul mapped the room’s insignificant territory as if their lives depended on it. One adult-sized single bed, to be jumped on and looked under; two folded-out and made-up Zedbeds to be sailed like
small boats on downstream rapids; a small washbasin in one corner, with a mirror above in which to pull stupid faces while standing on the bed, by a window with dull white curtains you might like to hang on, though they probably wouldn’t take your weight; and a narrow, plywood wardrobe painted regulation airforce blue. The children pulled open its door and climbed inside, rattling the half-dozen or so wire hangers and the shadows that hung from them. Grace took off her coat and pretended not to have noticed Hannah and Paul squashed inside the wardrobe; she hung her coat and closed the door. A flock of giggles arose and flew around her head; opening the door a crack again, she said, ‘What are you two doing in there? Are you going to stay in there all night?’ She started to shut the door on them. ‘Night night,’ she said.

‘No! It’s dark!’ Paul cried, launching himself out and on to one of the Zedbeds, followed by Hannah, who did the same.

‘Come on, you two, get ready for bed.’

Hannah said, ‘Do we have to go?’

‘Yes, love, we do have to go.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re going to live with Daddy. Don’t you want to live with Daddy?’

‘No.’

She stroked the girl’s hair and said, ‘Of course you do, sweetheart. You’re just tired.’

‘Daddy’s mean,’ said Paul.

‘Daddy loves you both very much,’ Grace said. ‘And, even though he hasn’t met Jason yet, he loves him too.’

‘Well, I hate him,’ Paul said, and her heart sank as she wondered if it was too late to turn back.

‘Don’t say that, Paul. That’s not nice.’

The night before he’d left, Pete’s punch had knocked her to the floor, and she’d seen Paul and Hannah standing in the doorway in their pyjamas, ashen with fear: Paul’s hand on the doorknob, Hannah clutching Emily. In a low, calm voice Grace had said, ‘Get to bed –
now
!’ And the two of them had turned and run, just as Pete bent down to punch the love out of her.

Now, two sets of eyes looked expectantly at her, and two sets of ears waited for her to speak.

‘Get some sleep; we’ve got to be up early tomorrow,’ she said, leaning in to kiss them both.

As she lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, she tried to find the courage to take the kids to a new life. Tried to picture herself getting the children up and dressed and slipping out of the hotel. How easy would it be to disappear completely?

Do it, she told herself. Just wake them and leave. They don’t want to be with him any more than you do.

She wanted someone to tell her what to do, but knew that wasn’t going to happen, which only made things worse. By morning – after a fitful sleep, the sounds of doors banging and floors creaking keeping her awake as, with pounding heart, she lay rigid and alert, imagining intruders – she knew she had no option but to get on the
plane. As she stirred to the sound of Jason crying, she knew that it was too late, and her bones felt the full crush of an ossifying resignation.

After a rushed breakfast, Ray drove them to Kingston in sleeting rain. The weather reflected Grace’s mood perfectly. And after boarding the plane and helping her to settle the children in, Ray went to sit at the back. For the first hour of the flight Jason wouldn’t stop crying, and by the time he’d eventually cried himself to sleep her nerves were completely shredded, along with those of everyone around them. The front of her blouse was damp where she’d started to lactate. She went to the toilet to try to clean herself up, and then, while peeing, noticed specks of blood in her knickers. She cried.

Jason woke as the plane touched down to refuel in Kuwait, and when she lifted him from his travel cot he vomited the contents of his stomach over her shoulder. No sign of Ray. Feeling wretched, she crossed the tarmac, the intense humidity hanging like heavy chains around her. She bundled the children into the women’s washroom to freshen up, drenched in sweat by the time she got there. She handed the baby to Hannah and searched in her bag for a change of clothing, only to discover that in the rush to make sure she would have everything she’d need for the children she’d neglected to pack any spare clothes for herself. She removed her blouse and knickers and rinsed them under the cold tap, grateful for the cool damp against her skin when she put them back on. As she was changing Jason’s nappy,
Hannah said, ‘Look, Mummy, a ghost,’ as a woman in a black burka glided into one of the cubicles and closed the door.

She took them to the crowded waiting room, sitting Hannah and Paul down in the only two empty seats she could find. Giving Jason once more to Hannah, she poured out some orange juice from a flask and handed both cups to Paul, who managed to spill some on the jacket sleeve of the man sitting next to him. Grace apologised and tried her best to dry it off with a handkerchief from her handbag.

‘Please,’ he said, pushing her hand away and standing up, ‘control your children,’ and then, picking up his briefcase, he walked off.

She gave Paul a gentle cuff across the back of the head and said, ‘Watch what you’re doing!’ her patience whittled to nothing. She took the seat the man had left and lit a cigarette, losing herself to the clatter and rasp of languages she didn’t understand buzzing in the smoke around her. It was almost musical, she thought, this hum of voices signifying nothing to her but the sounds they made. The children sipped their drinks in silence, knowing not to try her patience.

As they were reboarding, she saw Ray ahead of them on the tarmac, and she had half a mind to give him a right bloody earful. But she thought better of it and held her tongue.

A few hours later, there was a second stop, in Colombo, and another trip to the women’s room to
rinse out her underwear and blouse. This time she also changed the kids’ clothes. They were tired and irritable, as uncooperative as monkeys, and she cursed herself for agreeing to go, for not having the courage to leave; cursed Ray for sodding off and leaving her to cope with the kids on her own; cursed Pete for being such a bastard, and her parents for having conceived her in the first place.

Fuck life.

BY THE TIME
the rain stops, Grace no longer feels like working on the allotment. A bright sun is out, making the wet leaves shimmer as she sets off back home – and just as she is passing the Prince Alfred, there he is again: Pete, sitting at a table outside the pub. And this time he isn’t alone. Sitting opposite him is a young blonde woman. Grace is stripped of all certainty but this: she can’t stand there staring at him without being noticed. She goes inside and orders a large glass of house white. She carries it outside, feeling like a spy and more than a little foolish; giddy, but alive with confusion.

All the chairs outside are taken, so she stands some distance away, casting what she hopes are discreet glances in his direction. She isn’t near enough to hear anything they’re saying, but she has a good view of his face. She’s noticed that, as she’s grown older, young men no longer look at her; no longer see her. At first it wounded her vanity and left her sad, but right now, she
thinks, it is a blessing, for it allows her to stare at his face without fear of being noticed. His every gesture draws her back in time with increasing velocity till she is sitting with him herself, gazing into the green of his eyes, giddy on the brew of his smile, succumbing to the memory of a love she’d thought was dead and gone. She feels it creeping along the tendril of each nerve, mapping her body with its heat.

He stands and makes his way towards the door of the pub, and for a split second their eyes meet. Then the blonde girl turns and shouts, ‘Luke! Get some crisps.’ He nods at her and disappears inside. A seagull passes overhead, crying with laughter as Grace hurries off, no longer sure of her own name.

Gordon is watching the news when she arrives back, and she play-acts a normality she doesn’t feel as she starts to make dinner.

‘We’ve been lucky with the weather,’ he says, watching her slicing a tomato. ‘Are those from the allotment?’

‘Yes, I picked them the other day.’

She feels the sudden urge to slice the blade into her finger just to experience something real: nip off the end, neat and swift. Putting the knife down, she breaks some eggs into a bowl.

‘Oh,’ Gordon says, holding up the paper, ‘I saw this.’ His finger rests like an indictment on the advert she’d circled that morning. ‘Not thinking of seeing this crackpot, are you?’

‘It’s for a friend of Pam’s.’

‘She doesn’t want to go wasting money on that claptrap,’ he says, returning his attention to the television.

She looks over at this man she’s spent her life with, remembering his gentleness and kindness, his devotion to her children, his sorrow when they couldn’t have any of their own. Is lying to him really the answer?

She walks over and picks up the remote control; mutes the television. They look into each other’s eyes, neither of them knowing what for. She sits down and says, ‘It was for me, that ad. I went to see him today.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Twice now I’ve seen Pete, but it isn’t Pete, it can’t be Pete. Pete’s dead. Anyway, if he were alive he’d be sixty-seven, and this man is about the age Pete was when he died. So I thought it might be a… a ghost.’

The word seems clumsy and inadequate, but what other would do?

‘And you know what?’ she went on. ‘He didn’t see Pete – the medium. That’s the odd thing. If I’m seeing his ghost, why can’t he contact him? Or is Pete resisting? Can spirits resist?’

Gordon takes off his glasses, placing them on his lap, and strokes his face with both hands. ‘Listen to yourself, Grace. You’re not making any sense. There’s no such thing as ghosts. How much did the charlatan fleece you?’

She remains silent. Lying to him
was
the answer.

Too late now.

‘Well, however much it was,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘you might as well have just torn the money up and flushed it down the drain. I can hardly believe my own ears. Why would he be haunting you now? After all this time?’

‘I knew you’d react like this.’

‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation, Grace. But you need to see a proper doctor, not some bloody witch doctor.’

She wishes she could take the words back, even though at the same time she’s glad to know now, finally, how far apart they’ve grown. Or perhaps have always been.

‘You want your head examining, you really do,’ he says.