Ghosts Know (9 page)

“I hadn’t thought of describing her then. Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Wayne grinds his knuckles against the name on his stubby neck. “What fucking doesn’t?”

The woman hoots with laughter and tips the dregs of wine into her mouth before shying the bottle into the canal. “If you can’t be bothered giving me the information,” I tell Wayne, “I expect the police can. Do we know how the investigation’s progressing?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Wayne says, and his skin twitches his eyes thinner.

Was I ever this irrational at his age? His fierce grimace prompts me to ask “Aren’t you fond of the police?”

“They’re the law. They fucking think they are, any road.”

“They’re more likely to track down your girlfriend than Frank Jasper is.”

“Never mind trying to make out he’s useless. He found you and nobody’s forgetting.”

“Do you really believe that? I thought you were a little more intelligent.”

“Stop sounding like a teacher or you’ll be in the fucking hospital.”

“Aren’t they on your list of friends either?” A backward glance shows me that the drinkers are out of sight around a bend in the canal. We’re alone all the way to the bridge at Oxford Street, but I’m not about to put on speed—I won’t have Wayne thinking I’m afraid of him. “Believe me,” I say, “Frankie knew about my photograph.”

“Don’t call him that. He’s not your friend, and I saw Marg give him Kylie’s book.”

“Can you honestly say you watched him every single minute after that?” When the boy’s lips work as if he doesn’t know whether to spit or speak I say “Remember you’re dealing with a professional.”

“I know you’re one of them. You got us thrown out of your show before Frank had a chance to say about your photo.”

“Ah, so now you’re saying he did know about it in advance.” As Wayne bares his stained teeth I say “It was nobody but you who got everyone thrown out, Wayne.”

“Don’t you fucking try and pass it on to me.”

We’re nearly at the steps up to the bridge. “I’ll leave you here,” I tell him.

“I’m not done with you, boy. Nothing like.”

Suppose I shove him in the murky water? It’s my impression that he’s capable of doing that or worse to me. If he attempts to block my way he’ll end up in the canal, and I won’t be caring whether he can swim. I’m
readying myself for a furious lunge when he glances up the steps. “Fucker,” he mutters.

He may have me in mind or the policeman who’s tramping down from the street. “Better not find out you’re hiding any other shit,” Wayne advises me before he dodges under the bridge.

“I’d nothing to hide in the first place,” I call after him. The policeman watches me until we pass on the steps, and I give him the kind of wearily amused look adults share about children. Perhaps he thinks responding would be unprofessional, since his scrutiny doesn’t falter. I’m tempted to send him after Wayne, if only to make it clear where his attention ought to be, but I don’t need the police to help me deal with teenagers. I just hope Wayne knows I’m equal to him.

The Dressing Room feels like an outpost of the Palace. It’s a few hundred yards away on Oxford Road. Floor-length curtains are tied back on either side of the long polished bar, behind which footlights magnify the shadows of the acrobatic topsy-turvy bottles on the wall. When I step out of the glaring sunlight I have to blink to be sure Hannah Leatherhead isn’t in any of the booths furnished with theatre seats and overlooked by mirrors surrounded by light bulbs, or at one of the circular tables around which upholstered stools sprout like fungi in a pantomime. She isn’t at the bar either, where the barman and his ogrish shadow move to greet me. “Same as ever, Mr Wubbleyou?”

He always seems to be understudying the comedians whose posters and photographs are among the multitude that decorate the walls. “You must be psychic, Benny,” I tell him.

“Cobber’s Piss it is.” He pours me a large glass of New Zealand white and leans across the bar. “Here’s another one you can’t put on the air. What do you call a Pakistani that’s been run over by a steamroller?”

“I wouldn’t dare to guess.”

“A flat pack,” he says much louder than he asked the question. “Eh?”

He laughs into my face until I feel compelled to respond with a guilty titter. “Lord help us, Benny, where did you dig that up?”

“Made it out of my own head,” he says with a reproachful look.

I stop short of remarking that it’s nothing to be proud of, and he’s eager to add “What do Muslims buy their dinner in the street off?’”

“I’ve a terrible feeling I’m about to hear.”

“The Allah cart,” he says with all the pride of a father displaying a photograph of a favourite child. “Eh?”

“That’s dreadful even for you, Benny,” I tell him, apparently to his delight, and take refuge in a corner booth.

Three girls around a table are sending texts from their phones and saying rather less to one another while they sip drinks in lanky glasses. A rapid tapping like a woodpecker’s belongs to a young businessman busy at his laptop. An elderly man with a stick at his side keeps reaching for a tankard in between drawing lines of various colours around words and phrases in a newspaper. Beyond him the street door is outlined by sunlight, which shivers whenever a bus goes by. I’m letting my gaze drift across the display on the walls outside the booths—posters for plays that saw their final curtain long ago, portraits that I could imagine have been browned not just by age but by the historical cigarette between the actor’s lips or elegantly elevated with two fingers, comedians feigning lugubriousness if they aren’t owning up to their offstage selves—when I see Frank Jasper.

He’s between a picture of a clown with an ambiguous mouth and a group portrait of seven dwarfs. Though this suggests he’s little better than a circus act, I’m infuriated to find him here at all. What has he written above his autograph? I lurch out of the booth and shove my face close to his as I read his flamboyant script.
For everyone I’ve read and everyone I have
to
… I can’t help feeling this could be aimed at me. Whatever sound it provokes me to make, Benny calls “Nothing like a laugh, eh, Mr Wubbleyou?”

“Nothing like one is right” I’m still glaring into Jasper’s glossy eyes as I say “How did he creep in?”

“You’d have to ask the management. I’m just the lad that mans the pumps. Better than pumping a man, eh?”

“Seriously, Benny, I don’t think he does anybody’s image any favours.”

As I speak Jasper’s face takes on a saintly radiance. I’d be enraged by the idea that he’s forgiving me, but the glow like a spotlight comes from the street, along with a crescendo of traffic. “He’s never messed up your image, Mr Wubbleyou,” Benny says.

I’m about to ask whether he heard Jasper on my show when a new voice asks “Is this about your picture, Graham?”

It’s Hannah Leatherhead. She’s wearing a white lace blouse and a beret of the same material, and equally white slacks that emphasise the generous breadth of her hips. Her face is broad as well, and the tips of her auburn page-boy hair seem to indicate her wide although slightly tentative smile. “What do you think I was saying about it?” I wonder aloud.

“Pardon me, that was intrusive. I won’t mention it again.” She glances around the room, presumably in case anyone heard her referring to the photograph I signed for Kylie Goodchild. “Where are you sitting?” she says, and almost as immediately “Let me buy you another drink.”

Though my glass is far from empty, Benny says “I’ll bring it over.”

“I’ll have the same,” says Hannah.

I see him think better of using his name for it. As Hannah sits across from me in the booth he brings us two glasses so nearly full that the feat looks theatrical. “Settle up when you’re done,” he says. “Is she fond of jokes, your lady friend?”

“Benny,” I warn him.

“I wasn’t going to say you’re one.” He keeps up a reproachful look while he says “I was only going to tell her why they call it windaloo.”

“They don’t, Benny.”

“No offence, eh? A bit of fun never did us any harm,” he says to Hannah. “I think Mr Wubbleyou’s scared to have me on his show.”

“I don’t believe he’s scared to have anybody on.” As he ambles back to the bar she murmurs “I wanted to tell you how impressed I was with the way you dealt with Frank Jasper.”

“Well, thank you. Some would disagree.”

“They must only hear what they want to hear.” She sips her wine and says “So what’s your game plan, Graham?”

“Which game is that?”

“Your career. Where do you see yourself in say five years?”

“National radio wouldn’t be bad. Maybe television if they think I’ve got the face for it.”

“I’d say you had an honest one, and I’m not often wrong. I just wonder if you couldn’t put your skills with language to more use somewhere else.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” I say and drain my first glass. “Even my girlfriend doesn’t know, but I’m working on a novel.”

“You won’t want to reveal your plot, I suppose.”

“You could say it’s about appearances. How nobody’s what they seem to be, even to themselves.”

“Any publisher in sight?”

“I don’t want anyone to see what I’m doing till I’ve finished.”

That’s true even of Christine, but I feel guilty over telling Hannah about it before her. As I make a start on my second glass Hannah says “Some of the writers Derek’s had on his show say that too.”

It’s my cue to ask “How do you find Mr Dennison?”

“He’s the man for the job.”

This is even more unwelcome than it’s unexpected, and I try to douse my feelings with a drink. “You’re happy working with him, then.”

“I wouldn’t work with anyone I wasn’t. Are you ready for another? This is my treat.”

It seems increasingly less like one, and I can’t find anything to say while Benny brings me a third glass. Having also given me a solemn look—for all I know it may mirror my expression—he says “Is it time for a joke yet?”

“I’ve had enough for one day, thanks.”

Not much of the remark is aimed at him, but it appears to fall short of Hannah. As he carries off my empty glasses I say “You weren’t thinking of some kind of competition for Dennison.”

“I don’t think I’m with you, Graham,” Hannah says and adopts a hopeful smile rather too reminiscent of how Benny waits for a laugh. “We don’t go in for those at the BBC.”

“This one.” I let go of the glass to jab a thumb in my general direction. “I mean me.”

“You’re the competition, that’s true enough.”

“And I take it that’s how you’d like me to stay.”

“Not exactly, Graham. Wouldn’t you like to develop your skills as an interviewer? The ones we heard you using on Frank Jasper.”

“I could suggest it to our new owners, I suppose.”

“What’s your instinct about them?”

“None to speak of till I meet them.”

“Sorry, I should know by now you don’t like to give away too much.” Hannah abandons her attempt to prompt a smile and says “Do you think they’ll let you be all you want to be?”

“I’ll find that out, won’t I?”

“If you’re happy with how things are progressing that’s completely fine, Graham.”

I’m starting to feel as though, having lost my way at some stage of the conversation, I’m wandering ever further from it. I don’t know whether a drink will help, but down it goes. “And if I’m not?” I wonder.

“Then I’m here.”

I won’t let myself be tempted to assume too much—I may already have fallen into that trap. “Well, so you are.”

“I don’t know if you want to share any thoughts about my proposal.”

Barely in time I stop myself from saying that I didn’t know she’d made one. “Do you mind if I ask what that is?”

“I’d mind if you didn’t. I’d think you mightn’t be serious.” Hannah rests her open hands on my side of the table and leans forward to murmur “An interview show, and perhaps you could take calls from listeners.”

“You don’t think Mr Dennison would feel I was trying to take over from him.”

“You would be. He’s of a mind to move on.”

I’m astonished that I could have misunderstood so much that she’s been saying, and then I’m enraged; Wayne must have left me confused, and Jasper’s picture may have made me worse. I have to regain some calm before asking “When is he looking to do that?”

“If it weren’t until I have someone who can take our lunchtimes forward, that would be ideal.”

Her smile is on the rise again, encouraging me to ask “Do you think you have?”

“That’s up to you to say, Graham.”

I take a moment to envisage my likely future with Frugo, my programme growing riddled with more adverts while I’m expected to manufacture contention on demand, whatever my beliefs. If I’m partly responsible for promoting this image of myself, that’s all the more reason to leave it behind. I mustn’t let excitement rob me of caution, and I say “Can we talk about a salary?”

“I’m sure we’d have to tempt you away with more than you’re being paid now.”

“Well, if that’s definite I don’t see how I can’t be.’”

“That’s prodigious, Graham.” Her smile gives up its prudence, and mine does in response. “Let me talk to someone about numbers and then you must come in and see us,” she says. “Another glass to celebrate before I go?”

“I shouldn’t.” Since her smile doesn’t waver I add “But I will.”

At least she has one this time. Benny glances at our faces but apparently can’t trust what he sees until Hannah says “Go on, Benny. We’re in the mood.”

Although I’m not responsible for whatever he inflicts on us I say “Careful.”

“You don’t look like you are,” he retorts, presumably about the wine, and turns to Hannah. “What did the boy with the turban say to the nurse who was looking for nits?”

“I’m agog,” Hannah says and disconcerts me by adding “I’ve never been more of one.”

“She’s a laugh, your lady friend. You want to take a leaf out of whatever you take them out of.” I’ve a sudden uncomfortable premonition that he’s going to declare it’s a bush, but instead he tells Hannah “Sikh and ye shall find.”

“That’s painful, Benny,” I protest, but he laughs until Hannah gives him enough of a smile to satisfy or at least placate him. As he bears our drained glasses like trophies back to the bar I raise my latest glass and clink it more or less accurately against Hannah’s. “Here’s to our future,” I say. “We’ll have to think of a name.”