The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones (8 page)

“So he wouldn’t go for me?”

“He wouldn’t see you, Alice, but, if he could, no he probably wouldn’t. The only thing you would have in your favour is extreme unavailability.”

“I can be available anywhere,” she protests.

“Yes, but not enough for him. He doesn’t have a psychic bone in his body.”

“So how did you get yours?”

“I haven’t a clue. It was something I had from the moment I was born, I think. Certainly since I can ever remember. I would refer to people I had seen, and find out that everybody else hadn’t seen them. I would describe entities, and merangels, and star travel ers, and strange green beings standing in the corners of rooms, and everyone thought I simply had a fanciful imagination which I wasn’t able to check, except Mum who knew exactly what I was on about because she has some of it too. Nothing like as much as me, but she gets inklings and premonitions, and sometimes she can move herself into higher states and explore people at their different psychic levels.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s normal. I suppose it is probably beautiful, but it is just what I see, that's al . I suppose grass is beautiful if you have been brought up in a desert. I find it more annoying because it gets very distracting and people get irritated with me for not paying the appropriate attention to them and start shouting at me. I don’t see it as a blessing or as a gift.”

“But it means that you can see me.”

“Yes, it’s not al bad.” Alice recoils at the understatement. I smile. “That is a great blessing,” I add.

“Real y?”

“Real y,” I emphasise, fil ing my thought with as much sincerity as possible to match the fact that I mean it.

“I’m glad. I think we can become great friends.” A worry crosses her face. “How long are you here for?”

“Another three weeks, then we are back over Christmas, but I can fly down anytime if I can get hold of the money.”

“I shal be very lonely when you are not here.”

“You can come up to Brussels.”

“I told you, I have to stay around here. It is my home.”

“It is ironic, though,” I observe. “You ran away when you were alive, and you won’t leave the place now that you are dead.”

Her eyes darken. “The issues that drove me away when I was alive no longer exist. They have become immaterial … ”

“ … literal y …”

“ …literal y.”

Pause.

“So what am I missing in Brussels?” she continues.

“We don’t actual y live in Brussels. We live in Tervuren, which is on the Eastern border of Brussels. I go to university at Leuven. Mike wil be joining me there this year.”

“What do you do there?”

“Much as we do here. We see friends, pick up girls, women, or whatever. We eat, we drink, we play computer games, we go out to boîtes, we sit in cafés. The usual.”

“Have you had many girlfriends?”

“Quite a few.”

“So I’m not your first.”

“No.”

“Do you have a French girlfriend? You speak French extremely wel , you know. You do not have any accent at al , not even a Belgium one, thank God.”

“No. I broke up with Natalie this week. In fact, we haven’t formal y broken up, but she has moved on.”

“You could tel her about us.”

“I could if I wanted to freak her. And I might.”

“It must be strange to realise that you have lost your boyfriend to a ghost.”

“I have lost her to some smoothie mock-artistic lecher. Is that better do you think?”

“A lot more normal.”

“True.”

“So, Paul, are we boyfriend and girlfriend?” She cackles, but it is sweeter than that. “I want to know what to tel people when they ask.”

“Say that we are seeing each other, which is something in itself.”

“Very funny. What I am asking is are you exclusively mine?”

“No.”

A tension slides into the air, and my ears begin to hiss, the hairs on the back of my neck etc..

“No,” I repeat calmly. “I am not the exclusive type.”

The menace wavers. I cannot see Alice at al , even though she is centimetres away from me.

“Go away then,” she storms through the ether.

I get up. “If you wish.”

She materialises immediately. “Don’t go,” she pleads.

“OK.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I got jealous.”

“That’s the bit I cannot cope with.”

“It won’t happen again.”

I don’t reply.

“Do you forgive me?” she presses.

“Natural y.”

She beams. “Thank you. I promise it won’t happen again. You have needs I cannot satisfy. I understand.”

“It’s not that. It’s more that I never belong to anyone.”

“Only to yourself.”

“Not even that.”

“You don’t belong to yourself?”

“Not as often as I would wish.”

Alice inclines towards me as if leaning against me. “Tel me. Which body part have you chosen?”

“Your pelvic bone.”

She splutters. “You are being serious? Why my pelvic bone? Should I be flattered?”

“Nobody else had it, and nobody else was likely to want it. They thought I was being tasteless.”

“You were.”

“Yes, but I am getting to know you.”

“They don’t know that, I presume.”

“They definitely don’t know that.”

“D’acc. My pelvic bone it is. It should at least cause a stir. I wil watch Julia’s father find it. See if he recognises what it is. How much wil you win on your bet?”

“€10,000.”

“€10,000?”

“Exactly. The odds were very good on a pelvic bone.”

“What wil you do with the money?”

“I haven’t thought about that yet.”

“Wil you share it with me?”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I wil ask you to give it to some friends who are very hard up but who want to buy a house together. It wil be a chance for you to meet them. You wil like them. And I can watch.”

“In that case they can have the lot.”

“You would give them al the money?”

“Natural y. I only want to win to make a point.”

“You want to do that for me? I am touched. Thank you.”

“Shit!” I exclaim.

Alice starts. “What?”

“I had better get back to Mike. Do you mind?”

“Wil you come by again tomorrow?”

“Certainly. Same time? Or you could come over to Valflaunès.”

Alice pul s an infuriated expression. “How many times do I have to tel you …. ?”

“ …. that you must stay in Freyrargues?”

“Exactly.”

“OK. I just thought it might be easier, more relaxed. I am not sure how we would square Mike. He would freak out for a while, but he would get used to it. We could even sleep together.”

“I would like that but, no, I real y cannot leave here.”

“OK.”

“But thank you for the thought,” and this time she kisses me on the lips although I can stil not feel it.

* * *

The rest of the day I spend catching up with real life – e-mails, voice-mails and music sampling – while Mike tidies up. I don’t have to incentivise him this time around – Sarah is coming here tomorrow. We’l be able to eat off the driveway, never mind the floor.

I have 674 e-mail messages and 23 voice-mails, which tel s me how badly I have neglected the outside world over the last few days. Mike has 3,286 e-mails and his voice-mail service has resigned, which goes to show that he’s much more of a feely-touchy guy than I am, a characteristic difference between us that is obvious when you examine our respective musical tastes. Mike likes smoothie-woothie, wriggle your hips and lick your lips – lerv – stuff. I go for jingly-jangly, bam-bam-bam, jump-up-and-down-and-twitch – hate – riffs. About the only place we meet is around Amy MacDonald who is ecstatic enough for him and spiteful enough for me. We control our own playlists, and Mike won’t even disclose to me his log-in code lest I wipe out some of his more vacuous, slurpy bytes, or add some more chal enging tracks of my own to churn his brain over should it seize up mid-session. Needless to say, most of our friends share his taste, and anything quirky or original gets label ed as “one of Paul’s”, meaning that it should be spared no more attention.

Having sorted out the Brussels side of things, I do actual y tidy the upstairs which, admittedly, is not too much of a mess.

Mike does the downstairs. That’s a fair split, isn’t it? There’s even going to be time to go down to the beach at Carnon.

There’s nothing like a late afternoon sail into the sunset, and then into Montpel ier central, almost certainly col iding with a few friends as we go.

* * *

And back this morning at 10:00 a.m. to catch up with Alice who, even for a ghost, is looking deathly pale.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

She shakes her head sharply. “Nothing.” (That means “dig it out of me”).

“There must be something wrong.” A sadder shake of the head this time.

“Come on.” I encourage her, and leave it at that and wait. Most people in the world, my world at least, crack and start talking before I do. I could probably sit next to someone and remain silent for days. With too many people to mention I might even prefer it.

“I have been watching my parents together,” she volunteers, sotto voce, eventual y, “and I have realised something.”

“What is that … ?”

“That it wasn’t my fault that I was kil ed.”

I do my stunned-by-a-basebal -bat impression. “Why would it be your fault?”

“Al this time I have thought it was my fault – that I drove him into strangling me – that he couldn’t help himself – that it was me in charge …. ”

“ … but his hands … ”

“ … yes, but I have been taking responsibility for those too.”

“And?”

“And now I know that it is him. Utterly him. Nothing but him. It is what he does. He becomes violent when anything doesn’t suit him or when he feels bad about anything. That is why I provoked him – to pretend that I had some power to control myself in front of him – that I wasn’t going to lie down meekly and be flattened by him as he usual y expects me to be. But that, of course, encouraged him to want to overpower me at al costs. I have stood up to him more and more lately, wel when I was alive, and I am sure that my resistance drove him to breaking point as I was standing there screaming at him. But it was his breaking point, not mine. It was a vicious spiral, but it was his vicious spiral. That is the bit I have not understood until now. I have always blamed myself, but I am not to blame, he is. I am just a child, even now. He is my father. It is his job to protect me, not to murder me. Having realised that, I am freed to hate him, to real y, real y hate him, and that makes me sad, it makes me desperate, but it also makes me feel good.” Suddenly she beams at me. “OK, Papa

– prison time,” she adds in a sing-song voice.

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes blaze at me, and I am not talking figuratively. “I’m sure – absolutely sure – and you have got to help me.”

“Why me?”

Alice spits with exasperation. “What do you mean ‘why me?’? Don’t you want to help me?”

“Of course I want to help you, but how?”

“You’l work it out.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to take the police to my real body, outside Montauban.”

“How do I get them there?”

Alice glares at me. “Are you
trying
to think of solutions? Papa needs to be stopped before he kil s someone else, before he hurts someone else – and that wil be tomorrow. He hurts people every day – people who stil love him. You won’t believe what I saw yesterday.”

“What did you see yesterday?”

Alice is back to shaking her head again. “It’s insane!”

“What’s insane?”

“The way he hits Maman.”

“He hit your Maman?”

“He hits her al the time. He used to hit me, as you know. If in doubt, punch it, that is the way he deals with al his problems. He is a monster!”

“What happened?”

“Maman simply curled herself into a bal , as she always does, and waited for him to stop. She should stand up to him so that he hits her in the face, then the whole vil age wil know.”

“Or he strangles her.”

“Yes, he might do that, but it would be better than having to live with him. Believe me, I have been there. She can come and join me here. We could move back into the house and haunt him. He couldn’t hit us then. That would be funny!” and she goes off into a hysterical cackle which careers manical y way the other side of comedy. I can foresee what she wil be like in twenty years’ time, or two hundred.

“OK,” I concede when she has final y exhausted her humour, “I’l help you.”

“Wil you?”

“Yes.”

“Wil you real y?”

I mock-glower at her. “Alice, you are pushing it.”

“Sorry.” Then cutely, “thank you.”

“So what do we do?”

“We have to show him up.”

“How do we do that?”

“I’ve been thinking. Do you know why he hit Maman yesterday?”

“No.”

“Because he had been fucking Mme. de Bel etier. He felt guilty and, feeling guilty, he decided to relieve his guilt by beating Maman. Good, isn’t it? Why can’t he be like M. Scala. From the looks of things, he has been cheating on his wife, regular as clockwork, for years and years and years. He looks more married to Jeanette Martinet than he does to his wife.

But, every time he leaves Jeanette, he goes directly round to M. Leclerc the florist and buys Mme. Scala a huge bunch of flowers, and then he goes to Mme. Sagret the green grocer and buys her exotic fruit, and then he goes to Mme. Lafonte the chocolatière, and then he goes home, presents everything to his wife like a knight from Les Beaux and makes romantic love to her too, for hours. Obviously, it doesn’t look too bright from where I stand, rather gross in fact, they are old people in their sixties, but stil , it has style, and it has kindness and it has respect, and it has love. M. Scala real y loves his wife. He just has other needs too. I don’t know if his wife knows about it al , but perhaps she doesn’t care. Jeanette may get fruit, but I don’t think she gets any flowers or chocolates. That would give the game away. So the roles are reversed.