My Brother's Ghost (2 page)

Rufus

T
HAT NIGHT I TRIED
to talk to Harry. I told him about Tom. That I had seen him again, here at the house. That Auntie Marge had not seen him. That when I got to the window straight after tea, he was no longer there. Harry said little. He wasn't talking much in those days anyway. ‘No, no!’ when Marge came after him. ‘Milk,’ sometimes to me at breakfast. And now, ‘Tom – see Tom.’ Harry's life I think at that time had just curled up into a ball. He was somewhere inside, sitting it out.

As soon as Harry was asleep, I crept out onto the landing and into Tom's room. Auntie Marge and Uncle Stan were downstairs with the radio on. Yellow foggy light from the street lamp lit up two thirds of the room and cast the rest into shadow. I stood uncertainly beside Tom's narrow bed. His things were all around me: Meccano models, balsa wood planes, his green Cubs' jumper with badges down the sleeves, marbles, cigarette cards… shoes. I sat on the bed and felt like an intruder.

I shivered. Already Tom's room was colder than the rest of the house and had begun to acquire that musty, unlived-in smell. A double-decker bus went sailing past the window. I sat there with my hands in my lap. Then the shapes in the room dissolved, and I began to cry.

The next day, Sunday, Harry and I went to Sunday school. We sang ‘Ye Holy Angels Bright’ and did a Bible quiz. I spent our collection money in Starkey's Sweet Shop. When we got home Auntie Marge smelled the sherbet on us, gave me a clout and sent the pair of us to our room. No tea, she said. No toys. Not a sound. Uncle Stan came in later, sheepishly, with a couple of biscuits. (Of course next morning she found the crumbs and
he
got a telling off.) The afternoon passed. It became darker in the room. (No light on.) Harry dozed off on his bed. I stood for a while at the window staring down into the yard. Presently, out came Rufus snuffling around, looking for amusement. I watched, and suddenly there was Tom. He was following Rufus here and there across the yard. Rufus had hold of an old deflated ball and was shaking it like a rat. Tom held out a hand, crouched down beside him, attempted to ruffle his furry neck. And Rufus, dim
un
seeing Rufus, no sixth sense (hardly five), went bounding through him.

Bad Times

I
WILL SAY SOMETHING
here about polio. It is not, after all and thank goodness, a disease that any of us has cause to fear these days. But in those days… well, there were two others in my school with calipers on their legs. There was also a boy, I seem to remember, who had it and was so ill he just stayed home.

Polio – poliomyelitis – is a virus. One of its many unpleasant effects is to paralyse certain muscles. You needed then to wear a metal and leather brace, a ‘caliper’ as it was called. This helped your weakened leg (or legs) to support your weight. I had caught polio when I was six and had been wearing a caliper for about a year and a half.

Rosalind Phipps was just a nasty child, I can see this now. Though maybe she had her troubles too. (What went on in
her
house, I wonder.) She was a bully to me, she and her spiteful gang. ‘Frances Frogarty,’ they would chant in their sarcastic sing-song voices. It drove me crazy. I had a temper. I would rise to the bait and Rosalind knew it. Then having got me all worked up she would somehow cunningly duck out of sight, leaving me to suffer the consequences with Mrs Harris, Mr Cork or whoever. Also she would say bad things about Harry (her little sister and Harry went to the same nursery), or worse about our parents. ‘You only live with your Auntie!’ I wanted to punch her.

So I was having a bad time at school and Harry and I were having a bad time at home. Auntie Marge had no interest in children, no maternal instincts I heard her say on one occasion. When Tom was around he often managed to deflect her anger. Without him we were horribly exposed. She was impatient, humourless, cruel.

The following week, the week after the funeral, it snowed for the first time. Harry stood in wonder at the bedroom window. ‘Snow,’ he whispered. He had woken me up to see it. My enthusiasm was less than his. I was thinking more of the ice that would surely follow, the slippery pavements, my clumsy leg.

At eight o'clock in came Marge in her blackest mood. She threw the blankets back from Harry's bed, wrinkled her nose and yelled. (He was on my bed already, behind me.) ‘I'm sick of this!’ She snatched the wet sheet from the bed and the rubber sheet beneath and hurled them to the floor. ‘Sick, sick, sick!’

Two nights later I woke in the half light, the curtains partly open, a clear sky, a moon, light bouncing up from the frosty snow. Harry was stumbling out of bed, feeling his way with Tom beside him. They left the room. I followed. The lino beneath my feet was freezing. The clock downstairs struck twice. I could hear Rufus groaning in his sleep.

I found Harry in the bathroom, his pyjama trousers around his feet, having a sleepwalking wee. Tom was there. Somehow I knew better than to interfere. Tom glanced at me over his shoulder. He had a hand on Harry's shoulder. (Could Harry feel it?)

I left. Minutes later Harry came back to bed, his eyes half shut, alone. I fell asleep then and dreamt my usual dream or one of them. Mum and I were at the seaside tucking our dresses into our knickers, splashing in the waves. Dad was in the distance… calling.

The next night Tom came again, and the next and the next. He arrived at different times: twelve-thirty, two o‘clock, three. He got Harry up, or Harry got himself up, and led him to the bathroom. Each night Harry had a wee. Each morning Harry's bed was dry.

I struggled to make sense of what was happening. Tom was taking Harry to the toilet. How did he accomplish this? Could Harry feel Tom's hand upon his shoulder? (Rufus after all had leapt straight through him.) Could Tom
communicate
with Harry? Was Harry hearing more than I was? For I was hearing nothing, not a sound. On that second night, for instance, Tom returned to the bedroom and stood at the window. The moonlight caught his springy tousled hair. His collar was still up. Harry had dropped straight back into sleep. I sat up in bed and called Tom's name, an urgent whisper. ‘Tom? Tom!’ He turned to face me. Once more his mouth was open. He spoke, or tried to. Once more the plate of glass between us. No sound.

But the next night there was a sound, though one I'd rather not have heard. It was a slow growling sound, like something played at the wrong speed. ‘Frr.’ For the first time, I remember, I was really afraid. I pulled the bedclothes over my head and held my breath. ‘Frr.’ When I peeped out later, Tom was gone.

The thing is, it was Tom who was making this awful noise, all the while with a serious, almost hopeful look in his eyes as though he expected
me
to understand it. Well, I believe I may have sensed something then or begun to. It
was
my brother I was hearing, seeing – yes of course my brother, my loving brother, my graceful, quiet, clever brother. But then again, not quite my brother now. It was my brother's ghost.

The Fight

I
T'S OCCURRED TO ME
(just now, as I write) that really so far I have not described exactly what it was that Harry and I
saw
when we saw Tom. The main thing is, you see, Tom was never transparent or wispy like the ghosts you sometimes get in the movies. He was no apparition. You might walk through him, but you couldn't see through him. (At least, we couldn't. Others it seems couldn't see him at all.) So you could say the way he looked to us was completely normal. The only exception to this was sudden movement, quick changes of direction. At such times Tom's outline, the edges of him, would quiver and blur like a swimmer under water or someone seen in the distance through a heat haze.

Mrs Harris was an average sort of teacher. She did her best for me, I suppose, though I was not among her favourites. I was a prickly child altogether. I had no winning ways. Consequently, when the fight happened it was hardly a surprise to me when Mrs Harris took the wrong side, blamed the wrong person.

It was December now, Christmas and my birthday approaching. We decorated the classroom with silver paper chains and cotton wool snowmen. Mrs Harris brought some twigs of holly from her own garden. We made cards for our mums and dads, or, added Mrs Harris hastily, our grandmas, cousins, aunties – anybody really. I made mine for Harry.

In the last week of the term we had a Christmas dinner in the hall. Some of the teachers joined in wearing party hats. Bad luck brought me to Rosalind's table.

I was not in the best of moods to begin with. Auntie Marge had had a go at us that morning about something or other. Tom had not been near us for two or three days. My leg was aching. So whatever it was that Rosalind said or did – it was something – I
was
ready for her. I pushed her off her chair. A bowl of Christmas pudding and custard followed her to the floor. She aimed a sly kick at me, and I fell on her.

There was a satisfying whoosh of air from Rosalind. My heavy calipered leg was a help too on this occasion. I would surely have punched my enemy then. I would have bitten her. But Mrs Harris in her crooked party hat dragged me away.

The following morning Tom walked with me to school. On the way, at the corner of Seymour Road and Tugg Street, he completed his first spoken word. ‘Frr… ances,’ he said.

Remembering

M
Y MEMORIES OF WHAT
happened to us all those years ago are unreliable at times, obliterated even. But I remember that first walk with Tom completely. Every detail. It's like a film in my head.

I remember the glistening blue-brick pavement, the rusty railings and the ivy outside the Rolfe Street Baptist Chapel, the belching smoke from one of old man Cutler's allotment bonfires. I remember him too, in his off-white painter's overalls and his pork pie hat, poking at it. I remember colliding with Herbie, the bread man, in the first shock of seeing Tom. I remember the pleasure and relief in Tom's face when he got that first word – my name! – out. Above all, though, I remember my feelings.