Ghosting (12 page)

THE TWO OF THEM
had been lying on the sofa, enjoying a rare evening when they’d had her parents’ house to themselves. And as he lay with his head in her lap, she began to comb out his quiff with her fingers and weave tiny plaits. When she’d finished she told him to look in the mirror, and he did, both of them laughing at the dainty, girlish plaits sprouting from his head, accentuating the prettiness of his face, making him look
feminine, she thought, his eyes suddenly conscious of their coquettish width and beauty.

‘
YOU KNOW
,’ she says, ‘you’re a dead ringer for my first husband.’

‘Really?’

‘Here, take a look at this.’ She removes her purse from her bag and hands him the photograph of Pete she’d found the other day. Stashing it there had made her feel slightly guilty, though now she feels no such emotion, only the quick, fierce need to be known.

‘Wow! It really does look like me,’ he says.

‘I could’ve eaten him on a butty!’ she says, and he laughs.

‘Have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Do you mind if I photograph it?’

‘Go ahead,’ she says, watching him position the photo on the coffee table and take a picture with his mobile phone. ‘He was a right bastard, though. Used to knock me around.’

‘Shit. I’m sorry. It must have freaked you the fuck out when you first saw me.’

‘Did it ever. Bloody hell…’
Brought it all flooding back, the fear and the love.

Brought you here.

‘I thought you were a ghost. Either that, or I was doolally tap.’

‘I can imagine. But how do you get over a thing like that, losing someone you love?’

‘You don’t,’ says Grace, ‘not really. You just learn to live with it, which is a form of getting over it, I suppose.’

You hold it like a pebble, worrying it away but keeping it warm at the same time. You get to like the smooth shape of it in your hand. It begins to comfort you.

She tells him – she can’t help herself – all about seeing him outside the shop, at the bus stop, the pub, and the ponds with Given. He looks down occasionally at the snapshot. When she’s finished she feels panicky about divulging so much; cross with herself for blathering. ‘I must sound like a stalker.’

Just then the door opens and Given enters, releasing into the room a short blast of music. ‘There you are!’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ He sits down next to Luke and they exchange a kiss.

Grace’s first instinct is to snatch the photograph up from the coffee table – for some reason she doesn’t want Given to see it – but before she can retrieve it he’s holding it up, saying, ‘What’s this? When was this taken?’

‘It’s not me, it’s Grace’s first husband.’

‘Fuck! It’s you, even down to the packet!’ He looks at it a few more seconds, before passing it over to Grace’s hovering hand.

‘Lucky you,’ he says as she snatches it. She wants to tear the thing to pieces now, but doesn’t for fear they’d think her insane. Instead, she stuffs it shamefully into her bag, not even bothering to put it back in her purse.

Given removes a fold of paper from his pocket and unwraps it, tapping white powder on to a CD case lying on the table. ‘Want a line, Grace?’ he says and she declines. All these drugs, all these people on drugs, are making her anxious again.

‘Where’s Lind?’ Luke asks. ‘I thought she was with you.’

‘I dunno,’ Given says. ‘I thought she was with you.’

‘I haven’t seen her since we got here.’ Luke’s thumbs drum his thighs.

‘Don’t you want to dance? The music’s great.’

‘Nah. Maybe later.’

Grace sips her tea, lights a cigarette, starting to feel an irrational and unspecified fear. The room seems to shudder, then settle. One look at Luke’s face, though, and all thoughts of leaving dissolve. He gives her a big, generous smile, before springing to his feet.

‘You OK here on your own while I go downstairs for a slash? I’ll be right back,’ he says, and is gone, in a flash. She looks at Given.

‘I’m going to make another cuppa. Do you want one?’

‘No, thanks.’

He’s wary of her, she can tell, as she is of him. Her resistance to his charms is grating on him. He’s unsure what to make of this strange old woman who’s suddenly entered their lives. She stands and walks into the kitchen. As she’s filling the kettle she notices a toilet there, just off the kitchen, and wonders if Luke knew that. Surely he knew that? By the time she’s used it the kettle has boiled,
and as she is filling the mug she spies a small bottle of whisky by the tea caddy. Pops a shot into her tea. When she re-enters the living room, Given is still there. She’d hoped he might have gone by now.

As she settles back into her seat, trying to think of something to say, he says, ‘I fucking loved your comment earlier: “It’s just wallpaper.” You should be an art critic.’ He laughs, and she isn’t sure what to make of it. She lets the whisky warm her as she wonders how much longer Luke is going to be, annoyed with him again, this time for leaving her with this man she just wishes would go away. ‘You don’t like modern art much, do you, Grace?’ he says.

She wants to reply that it’s him, not modern art, that she doesn’t like, but instead she says, ‘I can’t say I really understand it.’ He laughs, and she adds, ‘It’s as if almost anything can be art if the artist says it is.’

‘But for an artist that is totally liberating. It frees you up to do anything. Exhibit a urinal; cover an island in fabric. Or use your own body. Whatever.’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

‘So art becomes more of an attitude or way of being, a way of
seeing
, rather than a thing to be exhibited; a process, more than a product to be sold.’

‘I’m a bit of a Philistine, I suppose.’

‘So you live on a boat in the same marina as Luke and Linden?’ It’s a rather obvious change of subject but she is grateful.

‘Yes. You own the boat they live on, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have you seen what they’ve done to it?’

‘No, but they told me about it. Sounds cool.’

‘It’s certainly very eye-catching! Though I think some of the other residents won’t be sorry to see it go.’

‘Linden tells me she’s going to paint you,’ he says.

‘Yes. We’ve done the photos, but she hasn’t had time to start the painting. You’ve kept her busy, I hear.’

‘She’s been a treasure getting the show.’

‘I really like Linden,’ she says.

‘So do I,’ he says, giving nothing away.

‘How’s it all going?’ she says, fixing her eyes on him.

He nods slowly and says, ‘It’s going fine. You know – nothing serious.’

‘Oh? I got the impression from her that it was.’

‘It’s early days, you know.’

She thinks she can see him start to squirm a bit, and in the grip of a sudden mischief she says, ‘And what about Luke?’

‘What about Luke?’ He is losing the charm now; the mask is slipping, and she can see his eyes start to darken and steel.

‘Well, doesn’t he deserve to know?’ she says, not nastily but firmly. ‘They both do. I think it’s wrong, what you’re doing. You shouldn’t play with people’s emotions like that.’

‘I think you should back off and mind your own business, Grace. It’s got nothing to do with you. That’s what I think.’

He stands up quickly and for the briefest second she thinks he is going to hit her, and she flinches.

‘Don’t look so scared,’ he says. ‘You can be pretty fearless when you want to be. I’m going to go and find Lind. See you later.’ And he is gone.

Grace lights a cigarette and wills Luke to return. She could, she realises, be waiting hours. She considers going out to look for him, but feels too intimidated, too out of sync with her surroundings, and decides the best thing to do is stay put.

She stares at a large patch of yellow wallpaper on the wall opposite. She never saw a worse paper in her life. It is a smouldering, unclean yellow, with a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes staring upside down. It has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade; and she can make out a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, which seems to skulk about behind the front design, like something viewed through the bars of a cage. The more she stares at it, the more she discerns that this figure is a woman, and that she is crawling around frantically, trying to escape from the pattern imprisoning her.

Grace thinks about the life she’s leaving behind. This is all she can do, because to think about the future is to stare into an abyss. All those flat grey years after the breakdown, when her life became a box out of which she could not find her way, locked in a kind of numb grief that removed her from the world… The silence that grew between her and Gordon whenever they
weren’t either with the boys or discussing them. And, once Paul and Jason left home, the absence in her head of anything to say to him. The solitude, but also the relief as, increasingly, she spent nights alone in front of the television. His face whenever she mentioned Hannah; his incapacity or unwillingness to talk about her.

He belongs to another life now, a country to which she can’t return. He is a ghost now too. She lets a deep, sad regret take hold, for the love that never grew. She can’t imagine a future that would involve going back to him, but nor can she picture an alternative. She tries to conjure an image of what survival might look like, what form it might take, for her, here and now.

She stands and makes her way into the kitchen to hunt down something to eat. A packet of crisps only clarts up her already dry mouth and she has to rinse them down with water. The fridge offers up a raspberry yoghurt, and she makes short shrift of that, enjoying the moist, sweet gulps. She makes another cup of whiskytea before settling back on the sofa, wishing she had the courage to leave, feeling like a fool. Her bones ache with tiredness but her mind is whirring at a rate of knots, snapping like an angry dog, berating her for her stupidity, her brainless, idiotic stupidity. Telling Luke all that stuff, and then mouthing off at Given. It’s Gordon’s voice she hears, but it could just as well be her father’s, or Pete’s.
What were you thinking, woman?
The last word spat like an insult.

AROUND THREE AM
, Grace succumbs to tiredness, pulled into a deep unconsciousness, dreaming she’s with Luke and Pete in a bedroom and they are kissing in front of her, ignoring her, or else not caring at all that she’s there. And she can feel – almost as if it’s real, she will recall later, the emotion remaining like a mood – a mixture of excitement and rejection, a sense of being excluded, together with the voyeuristic pleasure of watching the two men undress and start to fuck.

She drifts slowly awake to an insistent worm of music that has eaten its way into her dream. Opens her eyes to find the seats surrounding her occupied by half a dozen strangers. A young man next to her says, ‘Hello,’ and she croaks a reply, checking with a quick finger to her chin that she hasn’t dribbled. Hopes she hadn’t been snoring, or talking in her sleep. She asks for some water and he passes her a bottle from the table and she blushes as her head fills with the memory of the dream – the sight of Pete fucking Luke – or was it Luke fucking Pete? Identical bodies entwined, locked into and on to each other. She looks around at all the drug-bright
young faces and feels as if she’s just been exhumed. She asks the boy the time, taking in the tattoos – flowers and vines and leaves – sleeving his skinny arms. Buds and swallows. An anchor.

He says, ‘It’s half-five. Who did you come with?’ and, when she tells him, a girl with red dreadlocks and a ring through her lip looks up from rolling a joint and says,

‘I’m pretty sure they left a while ago. Do you have their numbers?’

‘I think I’ll just go.’

An open-mouthed yawn takes her by surprise, and she slaps a hand across her mouth and says, ‘
Excuse me
.’ The boy offers to ring her a cab and she tells him where she needs to get to. She wants her bed and the comfort of its solitude. What the hell happened to Luke?

‘I’ll walk you out,’ he says.

She says goodbye to the room and follows him down and outside into an early chill, and she shudders, pulling the pashmina around her. They walk through the tented forecourt, past sofas littered with sleeping bodies, the floor a storm of empty bottles and cans she’s careful not to kick. Everything is silent now but for the ringing in her ears. Her mouth is pinched with dryness.

It is a cloudless blue-skied new day, and she remembers with a panic that she’s supposed to leave for Manchester in a couple of hours. Before Gordon gets back. But all she wants to do is sleep.

As they’re waiting for the cab, a green VW camper van pulls up with Luke in the driving seat.

‘Grace, get in!’ he shouts through the open window. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

‘No, it’s OK, thanks, there’s a cab coming,’ she says, looking at the boy, avoiding Luke’s gaze. She’s hurt and angry with him for leaving her alone.

‘It’s all right,’ the boy says, ‘I can cancel it, or someone else can take it. It’s not a problem.’

‘Come on. Don’t waste money on a cab.’

With a face like thunder, she climbs into the passenger seat and straps in. As Luke revs the van into motion she turns to wave but the boy has gone.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ she says to Luke, ‘leaving me sitting there like piffy on a rock bun.’

‘I’m so sorry, Grace,’ he says, and then she notices he’s crying.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Fucking Given!’

‘What happened?’

He smashes his fists against the steering wheel and lets out a yelp of pain.

‘Look!’ He turns to face her, revealing a right eye all bloody and swollen and a split lip. ‘He fuckin’
hit me
!’ The last two words come out in high-pitched disbelief.

‘Bloody hell, are you all right?’

‘No, I’m fucking not!’ he says.

‘Why did he do that?’

‘I just asked him what was so wrong about people knowing about us. I said, “Are you ashamed or something?”
– which really pissed him off. He said he wasn’t ashamed, it just wasn’t the right time. I asked when would be, and threatened to tell Linden right that second if he didn’t; and then he
fucking lamped me
.’

‘Dear God,’ she says.

‘Linden saw it all from across the room and came running over, and then all fucking hell broke loose.’

‘Did he hit her?’

‘No, but when she found out about me and him
she
hit him – right on the jaw!’

He lets out a laugh recalling it, and then winces with pain.

‘She turned to me and said, “He’s been fucking me, too, you know,” and then stormed off. I’ve no idea where she is.’

‘When did all this happen?’

‘About an hour ago. I went back to the gallery to pick up the van and then I remembered you; came straight back. I’m so sorry.’

‘Are you all right to drive?’

As he assures her he is, a police car passes in the opposite direction and Grace feels briefly anxious that they might get pulled over, though his driving is competent enough, she has to admit. Her heart keeps racing like a hamster in a wheel, edgy and fearful.

‘Have you got any water?’ she says.

‘I haven’t; here, have some of this,’ he says, holding out a small carton of mango juice, a straw like an antenna. She sips.

‘Christ! To think I thought I was in love with that sleazebag!’ he says in a voice shrill with pain and incredulity. ‘What a fucking twat!’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ she says, placing a quick hand on his knee.

‘Could you light me a cigarette?’ he says.

‘Where did you get the van?’ she asks, suddenly anxious it’s stolen.

‘It’s mine. I used to live in it pretty much all the time before we moved on to the boat.’

‘Were you homeless?’

‘No, this was my home.
Is
my home.’

She hands him a lit cigarette and thinks about the day ahead. Should she try to get some sleep or head straight up to Jason’s? She tries to remember where Gordon had said he was going, to work out how long it might take him to get back, only to realise he’d never actually mentioned where.

‘I’m sorry, Grace. You must be furious with me.’

‘I was when I woke up surrounded by strangers; I was embarrassed, and cross that you’d left me stranded. But I’m OK now. Thanks for coming back for me.’

She knows only too well how it feels to be assaulted by the one you love, and lets her fury go. How strange to see this image of Pete with a battered face. Almost redemptive.

‘I had no idea he was fucking Linden as well,’ he says, ‘did you?’ She isn’t in the mood to talk but knows she can’t very well ignore him.

‘She told me the other night. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not. It’s none of my business, really, is it? I hardly know you.’

‘No.’

‘Besides, you both swore me to secrecy.’

They drive in silence through the waking streets as London, in a beatific light, sighs and receives the day. She doesn’t want to get tangled in someone else’s emotions, but she knows the only way to avoid that is to avoid other people all together; be entirely alone. And she doesn’t want that, either. Not yet.

‘Of course, it all makes perfect sense now,’ he says, parking and switching off the engine, ‘Why he didn’t want her to know. He was telling her the same fucking thing. Two-faced prick!’

She notices the cuts on the knuckles of his left hand. ‘I punched a wall,’ he says, wincing as he flexes his fingers. ‘Listen, is there any chance I can crash at yours? I don’t wanna risk either of them coming back to the boat.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘I just need to stop off and pick up a few things.’

He reappears with a battered guitar case in one hand and the lace curtain in his other, like a jilted bride’s veil. ‘And I’m taking this back!’ he says, jumping off the boat, and landing with a slight stagger. ‘There’s no fucking way he’s having it now.’ They make the short journey to her boat accompanied by birdsong and their own exhausted silence.

On the boat she cleans his face, thinking about the many times she’d done it to her own. The intimacy, the proximity move her; the shape of his lips moves her, the brightness in his eyes, the clarity of his skin; each curl of each eyelash stirs something. His face doesn’t look so bad once the blood has been cleaned off, though the eye is swollen and bruised, and the lip is split. When their eyes lock, his gaze makes her melt into air. She feels a surge of love, all over again like the first time: the repetition of love like a memory replayed in all its furious glory. She knows it is hopeless, knows how it ends, but she can’t seem to make it go away. ‘See? I said you were Florence Nightingale,’ he says when she’s finished, and gives her a kiss on the cheek, making her blush. She is sixteen again, all bluster and ignorance, bold as a knife. A strange mixture of fear and desire takes hold as she turns and kisses him full on the mouth, holding his precious face in her hands, lost in knowing nothing at all. He gives a gentle push and the moment rips apart, revealing the here and now of her shame.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what – I can’t imagine what I thought I was doing.’

‘It’s OK,’ he says, at which point she bursts into tears, and he takes her in his arms. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ he says.

When her tears subside, embarrassment sets in and she gently pushes him away. ‘I’m so ashamed!’ she says.

‘Don’t be. Honestly. Try and get some sleep.’

She goes into the bedroom and sits on the bed, pushes the shoes off her tired feet; unzips the dress and
steps out of it; folds it and puts it in the open suitcase. Pulls her nightdress over her head and climbs beneath the duvet. She feels tired down to the bone but nowhere near sleepy. In the van she’d been practically sliding into a coma, but now she’s in bed her mind is buzzing, her heart banging away in her chest. She can’t stop visualising it getting bigger and bigger, imagining it bursting, like a blood-filled balloon, which only makes it beat faster. She tries to calm herself down with slow, shallow breathing, tries to empty out her mind; but it still keeps coming back to her: an unnamed guilt, a sense of having done something wrong, something irreparably grievous. She turns the pillow over and rests her hot cheek on the cool underbelly, wishing the fatigue in her bones would hush her frantic mind.

She can hear birdsong, and the windows are hung with pallid light, and from the other room the slow, sweet notes of Luke’s guitar begin to flutter through like butterflies; followed by his voice, unexpectedly high and fragile. The words she is able to discern tell of the age-old tortures and woes of love, his angelic voice full of anger and heartache. Singing that man right out of his hair. The music fills the room, floating out upon the morning, over the rooftops, the curves of the river, losing itself in the silence of the upper air.

She dreams she is on a plane, crawling around on all fours, searching for her wedding ring. Frantically looking under seats, peeling back the carpet in her
quest to find it. None of the other passengers takes any notice; it’s as if she’s invisible to them. And then she sees Gordon sitting at the back of the plane in his blue serge uniform, holding out his hand. She crawls over to him, and there in his palm is her wedding ring. Placing the ring in her mouth, he forces her to swallow it; he says, ‘You’re going nowhere, you cunt.’

She awakes with a choke to the sound of raised voices in the other room. Recognising Gordon’s, she sits up, fighting for breath. Behind her eyes two dustbin lids clatter inside her echoing skull. The bedroom door flies open and Gordon enters, shouting, ‘Grace, where are you? Who’s that man out there?’ His voice cuts through her head like a smoke alarm. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he says, his eyes wide with disbelief.

Grace climbs out of bed and reaches for her dressing gown. ‘Nothing’s
going on
.’

‘Who’s that man? And what have you done to your hair?’

‘I fancied a change.’

‘You look so different.’

‘I
feel
different,’ she says, thinking,
He must have noted Luke’s resemblance to Pete; it can’t have escaped him. It just can’t.
It gives her a pleasurable thrill to have Gordon see Luke.
See, I’m not mad,
she wants to say. She walks past him and into the kitchen, wincing from the bite of the light. She greets Luke with a smile.

‘Good morning, love.’ The memory of the shameful kiss stabs at her insides.

‘How are you feeling?’ he says.

‘Like I just got down off a cross,’ she says, swallowing two painkillers. ‘I see you’ve met Gordon. Don’t be frightened, he’s harmless enough.’

She raids her bag for cigarettes.

‘Oh, that’s right, go straight for the cancer sticks!’ Gordon says.

‘Fuck off, Gordon,’ she says. She’s never said that to anyone before. And it feels great. She wants to repeat it over and over into his face, into the face of the world.

‘There’s no need for that kind of language!’

‘If I want to smoke I’ll bloody well smoke,’ she replies, emboldened by his shock, enjoying the feeling of liberation that comes with speaking her mind, accessing a rage she hadn’t known was there.

‘Why didn’t you answer my calls? I rang a dozen times or more.’

She digs her mobile phone out of her bag, remembering she’d turned it off the night before. She switches it on. Ten missed calls.

‘I was having a lie-in. It’s not a crime.’ She fills the kettle and switches it on, wondering where this fire inside her has come from. She notices her hands are shaking and feels charged with a fearful energy.

‘But what’s going on? Why is he here?’ Gordon says.

‘Nothing’s going on! I didn’t want to speak to you; I’ve nothing to say to you right now.’ Looking down at a bowl of fruit that had looked fresh only yesterday, she notices the bananas have blackened and a green
underbelly of mould is creeping from underneath the oranges.
Stick that in a gallery, call it
Neglect.

Luke stands up and says, ‘Right, I need to hit the road. Grace, will you be OK?’ She nods and watches him pick up the lace curtain and the guitar case and start heading for the door, to leave her with Gordon and her fury.

‘Wait!’ she says, and he stops, turning to look at her. ‘Can I get a lift?’