The Ghost (10 page)

“Back ‘ere!”

From his crouched position, Cook saw the head of Frank Ray – Darren and John's father – emerge from the sitting room and bob through the kitchen towards the back door. Frank – mid-thirties – had a flowing crop of colourless candyfloss hair which made him look at least twenty years older. He shambled out into the garden – short and fat and slow, but with an unchallengeable aura of adultness. He unlocked a small side-cellar and began sifting through a pile of tools on a top shelf.

“How many of the bloody things did you sell?”

“Haven't sold any, dad. I couldn't…”

And then, Frank Ray – not so slow after all – was there among them, swiping his grubby fist in a wide arc of anger, connecting squarely with the side of Darren's head. Cook flinched at the bludgeoning
thunk
. Darren covered himself with both hands and ducked down low, wailing.

“I can't carry ‘em, dad! And no-one wants ‘em!”

Cook backed away, bumping into Brereton who had edged closer to the path which led to the street. But Frank now stood directly in front of the back door, blocking any passage out of the garden. Cook noted, with envy, that Howell had already managed to escape, but for himself and Brereton, the moment had passed. John, too, had disappeared – probably back into the house. The peer connection for Cook and Brereton was now severed, and there was no sense in staying, but there was clearly no question of them leaving.

Frank stood over his son, steaming in the afternoon heat. He retrieved a large iron bucket from the side-cellar and clattered it onto the floor between them. Darren moved his hands away from his face and glared, hatefully, up at his father.

“Fill that up! If you can't get rid of ‘em, I'll have to!”

Darren scrambled to his feet. For a second, Cook thought he might lunge at Frank, or at least bolt for the path. But he picked up the bucket and shoved past his father into the kitchen. There was a shudder of plumbing as he opened the tap.

“Fetch us that block will ya, lads?”

Crouching down beside the box of puppies, Frank aimed the question at both Cook and Brereton, but didn't bother to turn his head to confirm.

“Which block?” asked Brereton.

Frank petted the puppies, offering the upturned palm of the hand he had used to strike Darren. The hungry and thirsty dogs leapt and writhed, tasting the sweat on the coarse skin. Again, Frank didn't turn to face the boys.

“The one by the hosepipe.”

The ‘block' was a large chunk of wood used as a base to hack away at knotty kindling. Cook and Brereton each gripped an end, and, with difficulty, dragged the wood across to Frank. Darren re-emerged with the bucket, rim-full of cold water. He hauled it over to the box and carefully set it down, spilling very little. Frank scooped up around five of the puppies and transferred them to the water. They squealed with outrage, thrashing and splashing. As Frank lifted the others out of the box, Darren nudged the paddling dogs back into the centre. Frank tipped the remaining puppies into the water, lifted the chopping block and set it down on top of the bucket. Some water had displaced, but the puppies still had no space for air, and the wood was solid and level enough to prevent any more water from escaping. Sealing the rim – and the dogs' fate – Frank sat down on the block, carefully centering his weight to prevent the bucket from tilting. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a squashed cardboard packet.

Frank Ray lit a cigarette and smoked it with steady relish, as the dogs drowned beneath him, and his eldest son sat, morose and silent, on the doorstep.

Brereton spluttered and sobbed as he trudged away, down the path, collecting his bike.

“C'mon, Dor!”

Cook remained rooted, his back flattened against the fence, spellbound by the scuttling clamour from the bucket. The puppies' watery protests took forever to dwindle, and Brereton had long gone before they were silenced completely.

Frank Ray flipped away his cigarette, and the flash of burning ash prodded Cook into action. He peeled himself from the fence and ran, ran, ran away from this – out of the garden, across the decking, onto his scooter.

MINDS WERE MEETING – SMALL
minds, feeble minds, high minds, dirty minds, a couple of borderline brilliant minds. One mind was notorious for being rigorously closed, another freely mocked for its exploitable openness. The
Widescreen
editorial conference room was pure and bright with sparkling white right-angle chairs and an appalling oval expanse of cornea-scorching lime green table-top. But every Monday morning at ten, dullness descended like a shower of dust. Minds were meeting, but only on behalf of their matter – woozy, weekend bodies shuffling into formation for another five days of PR jousting, flatplan-tweaking and freelancer-chasing. At table-head, and so default mind-concentrator, was a badly ironed light-blue shirt containing Editor-In-Chief Henry Gray, his baldness eggish and emasculating. With precarious authority – transmitted through the occasional thrust of a Starbucks spout-cup – Gray presided over Cook (notebook tilted to conceal doodling), Nigel Smith (smarmy freelance fixture – on staff to cover absence), Alison Truman (swashbuckling sub-editor with jazz-hands for copy-blanding and sharp elbows for gala screenings), Jennifer Croucher (harpy high-priestess editor who had evolved a muddling of rudeness and directness to the level of behaviour disorder), Mark Harford (remarkably unremarkable reviews editor), Warren Plant (likeable and talented late-thirtysomething art director who would have moved on a long time ago had he not burned all his industry bridges as a cocaine-snuffling early-thirtysomething), Daisy Hillman (writer, online editor, Wes Anderson bore), and Leah Barton (picture editor and asset manager who, to Cook's annoyance, had no interest in the magazine's subject matter, and who he unwisely referred to – in pub and office – as a ‘JPEG Jockey').

Gray ran through the state of the issue, consulting with each team member. Words were too little or too late (never in abundance, never unchased), pictures lingered in approval limbo. The Reviews Intro page – due at last week's meeting – was uncomposed. (Harford was behind schedule after three days of spurious sick leave.) Croucher – red-eyed after a delayed flight back from Los Angeles – was spared the spotlight, while Plant, as ever, beamed it straight back into Gray's face, meeting exasperation on the state of the cover with a dismissive shrug at the editorial team's poor co-ordination on image-gathering.

Gray clunked an elbow onto the table and half-supported his drooping head by pinching and folding the forehead skin with nicotine-bleached fingertips. He spoke down into the table-top.

“Nigel, do we have everything for the TFF piece?”

To Cook's irritation, Smith had snaffled a dream gig covering the Taiwan Film Festival. Despite Cook's insistence of his superior knowledge of ‘world cinema', Smith had landed the prize (2400 words, five days' waddling around in beige cargo shorts, sweating a sliver of waistline flab into the tropical air) by waiving accommodation costs.

“I'm writing it up tonight,” smirked Smith. “Leah should have all the images from the PR office.”

Heads turned to Barton. She was nodding.

“How was Taipei?” asked Plant.

“Bloody hot!” said Smith with mock-laddishness, mock-confidence, mock-shock. “Some very strange telly! Good job the hotel had English channels. I caught your performance on last week's
Talking Pictures,
Dorian.”

“Yeah,” said Cook quickly, hoping to deflect. “Not my finest hour.”

“Very entertaining, though! Did they not tell you it was live?”

Gray lifted his eyes from the table – towards Smith and then Cook. The room temperature dropped a little. Cook, etching a dreamscape of fangs and fur and spirals into his notebook, didn't look up or stop doodling.

“I'm surprised you had time to watch it, Nigel. We all know about the unique nightlife pleasures in that part of the world.”

And now the minds were drawn away from their meeting and fixed onto what had suddenly become the main event. Croucher drew in an exaggerated gasp of outrage. Smith held his smile, although the expression was slipping from quizzical to defensive.

“And what would they be, Dorian?”

Cook raised his head, set down his pen, inhaled deeply and stretched his arms out wide, as if imploring his audience. He limbered his head from left to right and spoke through tensed neck muscles.

“Well, apparently there are boys who look like girls.”

The door jerked open and Laura Porter bustled in, trailing a borderline obese man in a saggy suit, laptop slotted under one arm.

“Hi, guys! Sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to introduce you all to Mark Holt. He's our new User Experience genius!”

For Porter, everyone with a degree of competence was a ‘genius'. Plant was a design genius, Croucher an editing genius. No doubt her gardener was a grass genius.

“Hello, folks!” said Holt, sitting and opening the laptop. Porter settled in next to him – too close. She brought her upright hands together as if in prayer and rapidly clapped them together in girlish rapture.

“This is so exciting!”

The guys and the folks struggled to empathise.

“What is it?” demanded Barton, determined to be the least impressed.

“Okay. What's my role?” said Holt, with caution. “I suppose I'm here to bridge a gap – between editorial and advertising. Why do you need me? Because your subscription base is declining and we have to find new ways to attract a new generation of readers. Now if I'm Johnny or Jenny Movie-Fan, then I'm getting all my movie news pretty much on demand, as and when I want it. And where am I getting it from?”

He let the question hang.

“Movie
magazine, I'd say,” sneered Plant. “Looking at the sales figures.”

Porter frowned at him.

“Online!”
confirmed Holt. “Your audience behaviour is changing. Your content is quality, but it's not enough to deliver at monthly intervals any more. I'm proposing a whole new ecosystem for the brand – a more granular subscription model, and a metered web offering integrated with mobile.”

He turned his laptop around to face the room. The screen displayed a new version of the magazine's logo, modified with an ugly, vertically stretched single ‘W' which hovered to the left of ‘idescreen' and ‘eekly' – double-stacked.

“Widescreen Weekly!”
squeaked Porter, clapping again.

The silence was violent. Plant released a barely suppressed snort, Cook registered the logo with quiet exasperation and returned to his latest doodle – a simplistic outline of a four-windowed house overlooked by a large sun with a mane of multiple straight-line rays. He sketched wide wooden boards across each of the windows and finished the scene by consuming the building in crude, curling flames.

As Holt continued, Smith leaned over and hissed into Cook's ear.

“It's Thailand, not Taiwan!”

“What?”

“Katoey.
Ladyboys.”

Cook's text-message alert bleeped loudly, drawing a look from Porter. He muted the phone, navigated to his inbox, and opened a message from Dennis Mountford.

Cook shifted the phone down below the table, out of sight, and typed a reply.

October, 1974

‘Playtime' at Bethesda Scool – a tangled uproar of doctors, nurses, cowboys, indians, cops, robbers, good guys, bad guys, killers and killed, kissers and kissed. Despite the mild autumn air, Cook had been aggressively padded, by Esther, in three tiers of unyielding polyester. Jammed sideways into a narrow passage behind the utility shed, he gulped down jagged, lung-scarring breaths. He was the chased, the yet-to-be-kissed – and a notorious ‘naughty' girl called Beverley Leonard had made him her prey.

Beverley had repeatedly faced Mr Austin for such degeneracy as standing on a chair and lifting her skirt, usually to reveal underwear. She had recently escalated her victims from pupils to teachers, and was only allowed outside for one playtime a week. Cook's hiding place, in the cramped and under-visited upper school yard, was dark and sheltered and difficult to spot in passing, but it was well known as a refuge for smokers and skivers. He compressed himself deep into a cluster of nettles and weeds, listening to Beverley's flat-footed stomp as she searched around the front of the shed. She rattled at the padlocked door – for effect – and then pounced, peering round into the hidey-hole
(“Dorian Cook!”).
But instead of dragging her target out into the daylight, Beverley wriggled in next to him. He could smell the Vosene in her dark curly hair.

“I'll kiss you if you show me your widgie.”

In a panic, Cook turned to the opposite end of the passage, but it was blocked by an impenetrable tangle of weed coiled around a rusted bicycle frame.

“I know you're Lisa's boyfriend,” reasoned Beverley, “but it's okay. I've kissed loads of boys with girlfriends.”

Cook squirmed and tried to hustle past her, but she was bulky enough to hold him back.

“I'll tell your mum!” said Cook.

Beverley laughed. “She already knows!”

Cook cowered down lower still. A nettle barb prodded the back of his neck. He yelped and sprang upright, giving Beverley her opportunity. She leaned over, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips onto his. Cook tasted authentic sweat and synthetic fruit – her chewing-gum. He endured the ‘kiss' and, as Beverley disengaged with an exaggerated puckering squeak, he reached up to frantically scrub a sleeve across his polluted mouth. Ordeal over, Cook motioned to squeeze past, but, instead of shuffling backwards to allow him a clear exit, Beverley wedged in closer and tighter.

“Let's see, then!”

Cook immediately covered his crotch area with both hands, clenching at the starchy corduroy. Beverley laughed again. “I won't do anything, don't worry! But you've got to show me! That's how it works!”

“I didn't say that!” bleated Cook. “You made me!”

“If you don't show me,” said Beverley, “then I'll say you pulled down my pants.”

This was no empty threat – the accessibility of Beverley's pants being widely recognised.

Miserably, Cook unzipped his trousers and slid them down to thigh height, revealing saggy red briefs with a white ‘Y' lining. He tucked both thumbs into the elasticated hem and pulled down, exposing his shrivelled shame. Beverley studied the curl of skin and tissue.

“Oh! You've got a really little one! But I like your sticky-out belly-button!”

Cook felt his forehead and cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment. He quickly re-covered himself and shouldered into Beverley, who at last stepped outside of the gap and gave him room to pass. Their emergence went unnoticed, due to a commotion which was drawing pupils to the central playground. Cook stumbled towards the teacher voices, zipping up his trousers. Beverley sprinted ahead, skirt swishing.

The playground was overloaded – with all the pupils in both upper and lower schools. Mr Butcher jostled the children into parallel lines according to form, while Mrs Mellor scurried up and down the groups, counting heads. As Cook joined his classmates, he saw a thick, dark cloud drifting up the connecting staircase. David Brereton, two lines up, shouted across.

“Dor! Someone's set fire to the shelter. It's brilliant!”

“It is
not
‘brilliant', Mr Brereton!” roared Butcher. “It is very serious and you need to keep in your line while Mrs Mellor makes sure everyone is safe!”

The old air-raid shelter was used by the lower school mostly as bicycle storage. It was a long, shallow concrete enclosure with a flat, stone-cladded roof and a padlocked wooden door at either end. The roof could be reached via a short leap from the middle of the staircase, but children were barred from playing either on the roof or inside the shelter. Stray footballs had to be retrieved by a teacher using stepladders, and the school caretaker, convinced that children were intentionally aiming objects up there, regularly lobbied for the roof to be surrounded by netting – or, ideally, barbed wire.

The form groups were herded out of the main gate and reassembled in the teachers' car-park. Butcher led the operation, funnelling the children, line by line, through the narrow entrance yard, muting any chatter with disproportionate threats. As Cook's class shuffled through the gate, a fire engine parked up and two firefighters in breathing masks unravelled a scorched hose, threading it in through the gate and down the staircase, which was now obscured by a rising swirl of black smoke. At the far end of the car-park, Cook could see Beverley Leonard at the head of her form group, crouched in a scrum with two other girls. As Cook lined up, Beverley turned and caught his eye. She whispered something to her companions and they sneaked a glance over before cackling and re-huddling.

“Dor!!! It was brilliant!”

Brereton had snuck in next to Cook, unseen by Butcher. He was hopping on the spot, trembling with pleasure, perhaps even pride.

“You should have seen it burning! We were in the dinner hall and we went up the stairs and all the fire was coming out of the shelter and you could feel the heat.”