Fog Heart (6 page)

‘Uh, yeah.'

That made no sense. ‘Where?'

‘Right here. In the living room.'

‘What do you mean you saw him?'

‘He was sitting there and I saw him. You know, like seeing a ghost, kind of thing.' A squiggle of a laugh. ‘But it wasn't just my imagination, Oliver. I did see him. He was right there, like a real, living person. It really happened.'

‘Just – sitting there? Then what happened?'

‘He was gone. I don't know how to explain it. I mean, it wasn't like I saw him disappear or fade away, and I didn't blink. But he was there, and then he wasn't.'

‘That's it, is it?'

‘Well, pretty much.'

‘Are you okay?'

‘Yes.'

‘You don't sound it.'

‘It scared me at the time. I'm better now, though.'

‘You just imagined it, love.'

‘No…'

Oliver could tell that she didn't want to argue, but neither was she willing to concede the point, and he didn't want to upset her any more than she already was.

‘You should have had somebody come and stay with you.'

‘I went out, I had to get out of here for a while,' she told him, almost breathlessly – now that she had started, she wanted to talk about it. ‘I went over to Jeffrey and Mark's. They were the nearest. They gave me a drink and calmed me down, and later I fell asleep on the couch. They were very kind to me.'

Those two. Of course they'd take care of her. Oliver would be surprised if they didn't tell her she was right, she
had
seen a genuine ghost, encourage her all the way.

‘Ah, well. Good.'

‘They really are very sweet, Oliver.'

‘I know, I know. Well, you're home now.'

‘Yes.'

‘And everything's back to normal?'

‘More or less. There is one other thing.'

‘What is it, love?'

‘Daddy was trying to say something to me.'

‘He spoke to you?'

‘He was speaking, yes. But I couldn't hear anything. I saw him moving his hands and mouth so seriously. You know, like when you're in the middle of explaining something to someone.'

‘Yes.'

‘But there was no sound at all.'

‘Don't worry about it,' he said. ‘If—'

‘But I do know one thing.'

‘What?'

‘It was about you.'

That was a bit of a facer. ‘Me?'

‘Yes,' Carrie said firmly. ‘He mentioned you.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I've been going over it in my mind ever since, the way his mouth was moving, and the one thing I can make out is your name. It's very clear. I even checked myself saying your name in a mirror to make sure. The movement is distinctive. It's the one word I know I saw him say.'

He had no idea what to think. A phone call, a matter of simple consideration, really, to let her know where he was and to make sure she was okay – something a lot of husbands wouldn't bother to do – and now it was becoming a distraction.

‘What did he say about me?'

‘I don't know. All I got was your name.'

‘Well, that seems a little odd but—'

‘You're all right, aren't you?'

‘Of course. Fine. And, as far as I know, I haven't been in any danger so he couldn't have been trying to alert you or warn you about any – I don't know, an accident. Whatever.'

‘That's good. Oliver, I'm so glad you believe me.'

That was annoying, but it was his own fault. The way he was talking to her could be taken as tacit acceptance of the entire incident, as if he were automatically confirming her belief in it as an actual ghostly visitation. He meant no such thing.

‘I believe you
think
you saw him,' he said carefully. ‘And that it seemed real enough at the time. But was it your father, appearing from beyond the veil? I rather doubt that. I'm sure there's some more mundane reason for what happened.'

He could tell that she was disappointed. She didn't say anything for a few moments.

‘It doesn't matter how we account for it or how we describe it,' Carrie told him finally. She sounded quite sure of herself by now. ‘The important thing is what it means.'

Oliver had had enough. It was not the kind of thing he would have expected from Carrie, normally a sensible and pragmatic woman. He promised her that he would discuss it with her when he returned to New York, and managed to get her off the subject.

Her father. Talking about Oliver? Meaningless. Which was why he was annoyed that it bothered him so.

He hung up a minute later, and stood there feeling deflated. It was a huge room, a loft, with skylights painted a translucent white. There was a stark, harsh quality to everything in it. An industrial stench from the chemicals. Racks of material drying. Looms and spinners. Vats and baths, carboys and flasks, tubes and condensers. Gas burners. Ovens.

He went to Myra. Marthe. Whatever.

Her nipples were hard with anticipation.

He took her by the hair, turning up her face slightly so that her hair fell back to one side. Veronica Lake. Brilliant cheekbones and a good jawline. Cold fire in the eyes. You could do almost anything with a woman like this.

‘Wo ist dein Vater?'

‘Tot.'

‘You looked at me.' Nothing. ‘You looked at me while I was on the phone.' Still nothing. ‘Didn't you,
Hündin?
'

A tiny nod. He slapped her once. He allowed her to savour the sting for a few seconds. Then he held the back of his hand close to her face. Marthe rubbed her cheek against it. She kissed and licked it, sucked his knuckles. Never taking her eyes from his now.

‘Und wer ist der Sklave hier?'
he said softly.

She smiled, and then began to laugh.

*   *   *

It had been a mistake to shut everything up. Carrie opened the curtains and pulled up the blinds. That's better. Sunlight on a gorgeous Saturday morning in May, things to do, an apartment to clean. Oliver would be home later.

Carrie put on some music, loud, and went to work. It wasn't as if the place were a mess. Conchita had been in on Tuesday, as usual, and all that was required now was a light dusting. A trip to Zabar's. Then a bath and shampoo, fresh sheets, pillowcases. Stop – before the list gets any longer.

Oliver had been quite concerned on the phone yesterday. He didn't entirely believe her, but that was to be expected. He was one of the last people in the world who'd believe in such a thing happening. He had picked up on it right away and made her tell him about it. Carrie had intended to wait until after he got home, after sex, after dinner and after a few drinks, when they were both lazy and utterly relaxed.

But now she was glad that he had pushed her. It was out in the open, her spooky little incident, and by the time he got home the Big Deal would be no big deal at all. Oliver took things in his stride, he was quick to adjust. Calm, cool, sensible. He would try to convince her that it had just been her imagination. She wasn't buying that, and she hoped they wouldn't argue about it.

Carrie came to the shelf where her opal sat. Her father had found it on one of his excursions into the Australian interior. It was a stunning piece, the size of a dinner dish and roughly the same shape. A thin layer of dazzling blue opal in the middle of barren brown rock. She called it the Lake on the Moon.

A good man. Once in a great while, when he was pleased about something and feeling mellow, he might have a cigar with a glass of fine brandy. Otherwise, he didn't drink or smoke. But his heart had given out when he was a spry fifty-five. God, it still hurt to remember. Michael Brewster, her father.

Growing up, Carrie had glimpsed snatches of Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi, Karachi, Dublin and (smelling of another low political move) Lagos. And then Harare, Zimbabwe. And finally, London. But by then Carrie was an adult. And along came Oliver.

It amazed her how quickly she had adjusted to that ghostly incident. When Carrie had walked through the door the next morning, she felt a tremor of fearful anticipation, but she was determined not to surrender to it. She was back home. It was her home, and everything would be all right. Somehow.

And it wasn't a minute later when she suddenly found herself visualizing the image of her father again, and she could see in her mind one of the words he had spoken. Oliver.

Carrie dusted the opal carefully, Lake on the Moon. She did the rest of the living room, threw some clothes in the hamper and neatened up the kitchen. She put on the kettle to make a cup of tea, and scanned the
Times
while waiting for the water to boil. Nothing grabbed her attention.

It was so tantalizing, to think of communicating with someone who was dead. Reason told her it was so unlikely. Where
was
the other side, anyway? Even as a child Carrie had found unconvincing the idea of heaven and hell. It was equally difficult to believe in limbo where certain unhappy spirits were trapped after death, appearing at times to the living. Was she supposed to think that her father had been languishing somewhere out there, for the last six years, before suddenly visiting her?

She made a small pot of Palm Court tea and placed it on the table in the nook, letting it steep. Carrie had been brought up nominally as a Catholic, but her parents had never been diligent practitioners. She had been taught the basics, received all the childhood sacraments, and had absorbed a little Church lore. It was something of a hit-or-miss education; she had never had the faith crammed into her head. And that was perhaps unfortunate. Carrie might now have a much clearer understanding of the – mythology concerning death and an afterlife.

In her widowhood, Carrie's mother had become more involved with the Church. She was a regular attender for the first time in ages. No doubt there was comfort in it, for those in need, along with social contact. But Carrie would never discuss it with her mother. Religion, death, Daddy. It wouldn't be comfortable, and it probably wouldn't do either of them any good. Carrie did have a brother, Jim, a few years younger, but he was a Marine, away on embassy duty in Buenos Aires. They weren't that close.

The music finished, but she couldn't be bothered to get up and put something else on. The tea was ready. She sipped it and set the cup back in the saucer. As Carrie looked up, and sat back against the bench-seat, she saw her father sitting directly across the table from her, three feet away.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, smothering a ragged noise that was partly a scream and partly a cry of anguish. She shrank back as far as she could, as if she wanted to sink right into the woodwork and the wall. Her whole body trembled violently.

The look of pain and sadness in his face was unbearable. He opened his mouth, starting to speak, but then faltered – seeming to lack the strength. One hand reached towards her. The cup fell over with a thin clatter.

‘No,' Carrie wailed. It was wrong, somehow. She slid along the seat into the corner of the nook. It was a bad decision, she realized dimly, and now she had nowhere to go. This was her own father, he wouldn't hurt her, and yet it seemed all wrong for him to be there. She didn't want to feel his hand on hers.

He couldn't, anyway. His arm stretched across the table and covered the thin ribbon of spilled tea, but fell short. And then it disappeared. He was gone. A gasp of relief. But Carrie felt bewildered with shame and guilt, as if in some way she had failed him. Tears ran freely down her face.

It was real, it actually happened. Her father was trying to communicate with her. The second time now, in a matter of just a few days. And she couldn't handle it. Carrie had reacted to him with fear and abject weakness. She felt pathetic, so inadequate, and she couldn't stop crying.

The spilled tea was smeared along the table.

Daddy.

5

It wasn't the greatest apartment in the world but, God knows, he'd lived in far worse. It occupied the upper floor of an older building just off Orange Street, barely within reasonable walking distance of Yale.

The second bedroom served as his office/study, but his books spilled over and took up space throughout the apartment. He had accumulated thousands of volumes, including many valuable firsts of Anglo-Irish pedigree. The hardest part of this tinker's life was packing and transporting books. But they were indispensable. They couldn't be locked away in storage somewhere. The secret of mental balance for Charley was to be found in a houseful of good books – and a decent drink now and then.

Jan looked in at him, gave a nod of no apparent meaning, and wandered off. Well, she was like that. Quiet, you might say. A woman who kept to herself but could socialize if it was required. The girl next door
manquée.
They first met while undergraduates at Northwestern. They had an affair of the heart, if not of the groin, and then were apart during the first year of his post-graduate work in Dublin. With his MA in hand, Charley returned to the States long enough to marry Jan, pack up their things and bring her back to Ireland. He got a part-time lecturer's post at University College Galway, and spent the rest of his time working on the Dunsany thesis for his Ph.D. Rented a lovely little house outside the city. Ravenswood, by name.

Jan had never done anything with her BA in English. Liked to read those windy historical novels but never wanted to teach. She had picked up some basic computer skills along the way, and usually managed to land a clerical job wherever they were living, like the one she currently had at a mail-order firm dealing in computer parts. It offered a middling wage, always handy, and where there was no challenge there was no stress.

Just as well. Jan was a different person after Fiona's death, and she never quite came all the way back from it. He had recovered, in time, gathered himself and carried on – still essentially the same Charley O'Donnell. But Jan, not quite. Something in her was permanently lost, a sense of confidence, perhaps, her faith in life itself. She became less a participant, and more a passenger seeing out the ride.