A Greyhound of a Girl (9 page)

ou're my grandmother,” said Scarlett.

And the woman, Tansey, nodded.

Yes.

Mary should have been scared. Her mother's grandmother was dead. She'd died years ago, long before her mother had been born. She'd died when Mary's granny, her mother's mother, had been a little girl. Mary knew all this.

But she wasn't scared. The way her mother and Tansey were looking at each other, she thought—she knew—there was no need to be scared. At all.

But she was curious.

“How does that work?” she said.

Scarlett jumped.

“God!”

“Sorry,” said Mary.

“No, no!” said Scarlett. “It's just a bit of a shock!” She laughed. “A nice one!”

“You hope,” said Mary.

“Yes,” said Scarlett. “Of course! Sorry, Mary, what was it you wanted to know?”

“Well,” said Mary. “How does it work, like? How can Tansey be your granny?”

“Can you guess?” said Tansey.

“Guessing isn't fair,” said Mary. “Just tell me.”

“Well,” said Tansey. “I'm a ghost. It sounds a bit daft, but I'm the ghost of your great-granny.”

She looked at Mary. “Are you surprised?” she asked.

“Not really,” said Mary. “If you
are
my great-granny, then you have to be a ghost or something, like. Because she—
you've
—been dead for ages.”

“Clever girl,” said Tansey.

“Prove it,” said Mary.

“Prove that you're a clever girl?”

“No,” said Mary. “Prove you're a ghost.”

“All right, so,” said Tansey. “Just a little thing. Look now.”

Mary and Scarlett watched Tansey disappear. They watched as she faded, and became see-through. They
could see the tree trunk behind her—through her. She was nearly gone. But just when Mary began to think they'd never see Tansey again and she started to feel a bit frightened, the fading stopped. The color came back, and the hair and the eyes and the features of her face. Tansey coughed, and became a solid woman again.

“That was cool,” said Mary.

“What does that mean?” said Tansey.

“What does what mean?”

“‘Cool.'”

“She means great,” said Scarlett. “Or impressive.”

“Oh, then, grand,” said Tansey. “The fading bit is easy enough, but coming back can be a bit tricky.”

“Is that why you coughed?”

“That's the reason,” said Tansey. “It feels like my lungs are filling up with air. As if I'm alive, you know. It's always a bit of a shock.”

Tansey turned to Scarlett.

“You look nice,” she said.

“She is nice,” said Mary. “Kind of.”

The two women with her smiled and, now—suddenly—Mary felt scared. She stepped back, and nearly tripped on
the root of a tree that had broken through the concrete path. She steadied herself, and looked again.

“What's wrong?” said Scarlett.

Mary said nothing.

“What's wrong?”

Mary looked from one woman to the other. She felt as if she was going to cry.

It made no sense.

“Mary?” said Scarlett. “What's the matter?”

“You look the same.”

Scarlett smiled.

“Well,” she said.

“That's what I was always told! That I looked just like my grandmother!” She turned to Tansey. “Like you—”

She stopped smiling, and she understood why Mary was worried.

“You look
exactly
the same,” said Mary.

“Yes.”

“And what's wrong with that?” Tansey asked. “Sure, wasn't I a ringer for my own mother? God be good to her.”

“Change yourself,” said Mary.

“Mary, don't be rude,” said Scarlett.

“I'm not being rude,” said Mary. “She's too like you, Mammy. I'll mix you up.”

Then a thought hit her. “That's what she wants.”

“What do you mean?” said Scarlett.

Mary grabbed Scarlett's arm. “Come on, I want to go home.”

It was important—vital. Mary had to separate them, get her mother home as quickly as possible.

“Wait,” said Tansey. “Wait.”

There was no sound from anywhere, not even a car far down the street, or someone's shoe on the footpath at the corner, or a distant siren—a police car or an ambulance. There were just the leaves above them, whispering, and the branches groaning. For the first time, Mary knew what a frightening street she lived on—if she let it, or if she wanted it to be.

But she didn't want it to be frightening. So she didn't run. And she let go of her mother's arm.

She looked from Tansey back to Scarlett. They were still exactly the same. Even their dresses, the old-fashioned dresses, looked as if they came from the same shop. Only the boots were different. If Mary had just arrived, it would have been the only thing she could have been sure about:
one of them wore red boots that belonged to her mother. But it wasn't necessarily her mother who wore them.

“Mammy?”

Only one woman spoke.

“Yes?”

The woman with the red boots.

That calmed Mary.

There were other little differences—she could see that now. The wind shifted a branch above them and the streetlight lit the two women. The dresses weren't the same at all. Her mother's was newer, less faded, with zips. Her hair was darker—her mother's color. The little black freckle just beside her mouth was exactly where it should have been. She was definitely looking at her mother. Tansey—the ghost—was different enough now, and herself.

“It's weird,” said Mary.

“What's weird, Mary?” her mother asked, gently.

“You look older than her,” said Mary.

Scarlett looked at Tansey.

“That
is
weird,” she agreed.

“I can't help that,” said Tansey. “I was only a young woman when I died.”

“But it was years ago.”

“I don't think that matters,” said Tansey.

“You don't, like, know for certain?”

“Ah, sure,” said Tansey. “Who knows anything for certain?”

“It just doesn't seem fair,” said Scarlett. “You're sixty years older than me, but you look gorgeous.”

“I'll be honest with you, girl,” said Tansey. “Give me the wrinkles and the sore teeth any day. I loved my life when I lost it.”

“I wasn't being serious,” said Scarlett.

“I know that,” said Tansey. “But I was.”

She smiled—Mary thought she did.

“As serious as death,” said Tansey. “Just so you know.”

Mary had gone from terrified to sad, without really noticing.

“You said I was your grandmother,” Tansey said to Scarlett. “But, you know, I'm not. The blessed flu took hold of me just when I was only starting to be a mother.”

“
The blessed flu
,” said Mary. “You sound like a grandmother.”

“That's a lovely thing to say,” said Tansey.

She said nothing for a while. Then she looked at Scarlett.

“Your mother was only a little thing when I died,” she said.

She turned to Mary. “Even younger than you.”

“I know,” said Mary. “Much younger.”

“And I always wondered,” said Tansey, “while I still had my health, what it would be like to watch my daughter grow and become a mother.”

She smiled again.

“D'you know what?” she said. “You're the ringer for your granny.”

“How can I be?” said Mary. “I'm only twelve.”

“Your granny was a girl too once,” said Tansey.

“I'm cold,” said Mary.

“Ah, now,” said Tansey. “You sound like her too.”

“Okay,” said Mary. “But listen. This has to stop.”

“What has to stop?”

“This you're-like-your-granny stuff,” said Mary. “You're like your granny, you sound like your granddad, your cat barks like your granny's dog.”

“Mary!”

“You're cheeky like her too,” said Tansey. “But fair enough. No young one wants to be told she looks like an old one.”

“That's not it,” said Mary. “This is stupid. I'm cold. I'm going in.”

“Mary!”

“I'm not being cheeky,” Mary told Scarlett. “I'm
not
. It
is
stupid. You look like your granny and I look like mine. So what, like? Your granny is a ghost and mine is dying. And that's the only thing that isn't stupid.”

Scarlett spoke quietly. The branches above grabbed at her words.

“What do you mean, Mary?”

Mary pointed at Tansey. “Why is she here? Why is she here now?”

She turned to Tansey. “What do you want?”

“I want to speak to Emer,” Tansey said. “I need to speak to her.”

“Why now?” said Mary.

She didn't know why she was talking like this. It was as if she was listening to someone else—the woman she was going to be in the future.

It annoyed her, and impressed and frightened her—and reassured her. Because she knew she was right. Her world was suddenly full of the dead and the dying, people she loved and people she was supposed to love—and people
she didn't know, even if they did look like the people she knew she loved. She needed to know. There was a dead woman two steps away from her, shimmering at the edge of Mary's life. She was the mother of her granny—she was supposed to be.

Tansey hadn't answered.

“Why now?” Mary asked again. “Have you spoken to her before, since you died?”

“No, I haven't,” said Tansey. “I let her be.”

“So, why
now
?” said Mary.

“She needs me now,” said Tansey.

he lay on the bed. Her eyes were closed. She was asleep.

But she wasn't.

She was afraid to sleep. She wasn't sure what sleep was anymore. The luxury and the need were gone out of it, and the warm, reassuring fact that she'd wake up when it was over.

There'd been times when she was asleep, lots of times, since she was a girl, when she'd wake suddenly, her head would jump on the pillow, because she'd fallen in her dream—out of her dream—off a cliff, off a roof—a sudden fall, and horrible. But she'd wake, and stay awake for a while, and it would be grand. She'd know where she was. The wall was where it should be, and the window. And, later, her husband, Gerry, would be lying
on his side of the bed, even—it seemed—years after he died. She'd feel him there, and the terror would disperse before she had time to think of it.

The terror now was that she'd fall but wouldn't wake. She'd keep falling, and the fall would never stop.

She wasn't tired. She couldn't really remember what tiredness felt like, or the glory of a good ol' stretch and yawn.
There's enough of you to stretch, God knows
. She wasn't sure why she was so afraid. She liked her life, even without Gerry—once his absence became bearable and the memories could be sweet. But she knew, she'd always known, there'd be an end. She'd seen her mother die. She'd been sitting on her lap when that started, when death pounced and took her.