My Brother's Ghost (4 page)

Tom was beside me, kneeling. He stretched out a hand towards a tattered envelope with photographs in it. ‘Black,’ he said. The rain came rattling harder against the glass. Downstairs I heard a door slam, Rufus barking. ‘Pool,’ said Tom.

Important Things

‘B
LACKPOOL
,’
TOM HAD SAID
, and I knew what he wanted. I removed a photograph from the envelope. It was smaller than the rest, black and white. It showed a skinny boy with wet hair in swimming trunks shading his eyes from the sun. Beside him a smaller scowling girl, barefoot in a sundress. On the back was written in our mother's hand:

‘Thomas and Frances

Blackpool 1952.'

This battered green tin box was my consolation, Tom's too at times. It contained my important things: a little turquoise bracelet, present from Mum, a Japanese fan that Dad had brought back from his travels, a tiny yellowing paper plane that he had made, a brooch with Grandma's photo in it. And so on. The box itself had belonged to my dad. It had his initials, R.F.F., painted in white letters on the side.

Once there had been four of us, you see. Our dad had been a soldier. He died in the Korean war in 1953. Five months later Mum died giving birth to Harry. After the funeral we moved down to the Midlands and came to live with Marge and Stan. Yes, once there had been four of us, then three, then briefly four again, then three again… now two.

I fell asleep, dozed off on the bed though it was still light outside, Harry not yet back from his friend's. I had the dream again, the familiar simple mystifying dream. We're on the beach. Dad's in the water, swimming, waving. Mum's in a deckchair fast asleep. Tom is missing from the scene. I'm running from a distance, anxious.

Running Away

C
ANADA WAS BAD NEWS
. Caldicott Road was worse. In that town in those days misbehaving children were commonly threatened with two unpleasant possibilities. One was the rag-and-bone man, the other Caldicott Road. Caldicott Road was a children's home. I had
been
in a children's home once before, after Mum died and before Marge and Stan came up to fetch us. I remembered the experience too well: awful food, lumpy beds, a disinfected unhomely smell, the sense of being abandoned.

It was eight o'clock that same evening. Marge was out cleaning offices. Stan had nipped round to the allotments for half an hour. Harry and I were supposedly in bed.

I packed two bags, one for Harry. I had explained to him that we were going to visit Auntie Annie. Annie was our other auntie, the one we almost never saw. She and Marge weren't speaking. (It's just occurred to me, she would have been at Tom's funeral too. What else have I forgotten?)

Tom appeared as we were getting our coats on, his face serious and frowning. ‘Not,’ he said. And some time later, ‘go!’ But we were going anyway. I was worked up, frantic and afraid. Stan might come back at any minute. I was defiant too, another handful of sixpences in my pocket.

‘Stay!’ said Tom. He was in the hallway now, his arms out wide as though to stop us. We squeezed past him.

Harry and I left the house, left Rufus too, chained up in the yard. (He'd been chewing again.) I could not take Rufus, I needed both hands for the bags and Harry.

Tom pursued us for a time down the street till suddenly he was no longer there. The street lamps had begun to glow. Dark masses of cloud hung in the sky before us. I hurried Harry along. Auntie Annie lived out on the Wolverhampton Road. I thought that we could find our way there, hoped we could. But this journey of course had more to do with leaving than arriving.

In Tugg Street we met Mrs Starkey on the steps of her shop, putting up her umbrella. Spots of rain had begun to fall.

‘Hallo, dearies – you're out late!’

Harry started on about Auntie Annie but I kept him moving. The rain fell heavier. We took shelter in the paper shop doorway. Harry was getting restless. For a time we stood just staring out into the glistening empty street. A dog came trotting purposefully along; a man went by on a motorbike. Light shone from the windows of the houses. There was the faintest sound of a piano playing.

The rain eased. I popped a peardrop into Harry's mouth and on we went.

I have a good memory – you will have noticed! – especially for those days. (As we get older, a brighter light, it seems, illuminates our childhood.) I can remember such details of our running away that it startles
me
. A small cat glowering at us from the bottom of a privet hedge. Harry spotting a penny on the pavement outside the chip shop and stooping to pick it up. Tiny hopping frogs on the towpath of the canal.

The canal, yes, I remember the canal. But the next bit is not so clear, not clear at all. It was a short cut, you see, between two bridges, one road and another. It was well-lit from the lights in a nearby factory car park. We went along the towpath (I remember) more slowly now. Harry had begun to flag, my leg was aching. The frogs hopped out. Some plopped into the water, I suppose. Harry maybe crouched to see them. But was I in front of him then or behind? Did I crouch too? Was it the slippery ground that did it or my weak leg sliding away beneath me? Or both? Or neither? Well, whatever it was it hardly matters now. What happened was, I fell into the canal.

Drowning

I
T TAKES MORE TIME
to drown than you would think. There's time, for instance, after your fight with the water is lost, to experience many things. To begin with, though, there's simply panic and shock. I may have slid into that canal like a canoe with barely a ripple, but there were ripples now and waves. I was thrashing and whirling about, desperate to regain the bank, and sinking.

The water was cold, foul-smelling, covered in scum. I disappeared beneath it. There was a pounding in my head, bright fractured light behind my eyes. I sank.

And rose again. I was coughing and spluttering. Slime and bits of weed were clinging to my hair and face. I sucked more air into my lungs and swallowed water. I sank again.

I was so weighted down, you see: my waterlogged clothes and shoes, my bag still over my shoulder, my heavy calipered leg, the stolen sixpences even.

The heaviness was winning. My struggles ceased. Time expanded.

I saw in quick and flickering succession, inside my flooded head, the image of Harry on the bank – poor Harry – poor, orphaned Harry (then there was
one
). And Dad, his mouth all comically puckered up, teaching me to whistle. And Dora, my tiny one-armed Bakelite doll. I saw Mrs Harris on a stepladder hanging paper chains. Leaping Rufus. A patch of sunlit sky. A little boat at sea. I saw my mother buttering bread. I saw Tom.

I saw Tom. I
did
see Tom. He was there in the water with me. And shouting (in the water,
under
it).

‘Swim, Fran, swim!’

But Tom must know I couldn't swim, even without this… heaviness.

‘Fran!’

Tom's gravelly voice was a shock in my ear. My drifting foot grazed the bottom or, more likely, some submerged pram or other bit of rubbish. I tensed my leg, kicked and rose again. One final effort. My head broke the surface.

‘Yell, Frances!’ Tom shouted. ‘Yell, yell, YELL!’

I rolled upon my back for a second and glimpsed the blue-black sky. And yelled.

The Hospital

I
WAS RESCUED FROM
the waters of the Tipton canal by thirty-seven-year-old Mr Arthur Finch, a self-employed carpenter of 109 Brass House Lane, West Bromwich. (I have confidence in these details. I still have the newspaper cutting.) Apparently Harry had raced back up onto the bridge seeking help. Meanwhile Mr Finch had come along the towpath on his bike, heard my cries and dived in fully clothed. His wife, Mrs Muriel Finch, was reported as being unsurprised by her husband's behaviour. He was always a hero in her eyes, she said.

One other thing, while I remember: Mr Finch, having got me onto the towpath, dived in again, convinced as he was that someone else was in there. He had heard
two
voices, you see.

I experienced nothing of the rescue itself, being unconscious even before my saviour reached me. (Those yells were literally my last gasp.) When I came round some hours later, I was in a hospital bed. The ward was dark, with pools and patches of light, green and yellow walls, two rows of beds along its length.

I lay quite still, staring up at the ceiling. After a time I noticed a huddled figure at the side of the bed. It was Marge, fast asleep with her glasses askew and her handbag in her lap. The bed felt cool, the sheets stretched taut like the sails of a ship, the pillow thin and hard. A baby was crying somewhere. There was the sharp sour smell of disinfectant. I drifted off.

Dreaming. And in my dream I was drowning again, only this time in the sea. And Dad and Harry were looking for me, up and down the beach. And I was there. There! But they never saw me.

I woke again. Streaks of grey and pinkish light at the windows. Marge's seat was vacant. A nurse passed down the centre aisle carrying a tray. Tom was watching me from the end of the bed.

Tom, my other rescuer (no place for him, though, in the
Warley Weekly News
). He moved and stood beside me. Smiled, leant over, and put his hand on mine.

I felt it – did I? I did, though half asleep and woozy from the medicine they'd given me. It wasn't much of a touch, hardly ‘substantial’, more like the flimsiest, frailest piece of cloth falling on you; a feeling of graininess, texture. Not much, but something, surely, more than mere empty air.

The nurse came back and approached the bed. She stood where Tom was standing, took my pulse. Tom moved aside. He watched the nurse, waiting for her to leave. He gazed out of one of the rapidly brightening windows. He turned his collar down.