Ghosting (4 page)

‘Where’s your husband now?’

‘Back at home; we live on a narrowboat.’

‘Nice. Have you tried talking to him?’

‘Yes, but it’s impossible. He thinks I’m crazy.’

‘And are you?’

‘No, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?’ she says with a laugh.

‘Maybe he’s the mad one,’ he says. ‘Are any of us really in a position to judge?’

‘The thing is, Patrick,’ she says, watching a couple stroll past arm in arm, dressed in the moon’s muted colours, ‘I think I’m being haunted.’

‘Aren’t we all being haunted, one way or another?’

‘I don’t know about that, but I keep seeing the ghost of my first husband.’

‘Ah.’

‘Well, I say ghost, but I’ve never believed in ghosts. But I don’t know how else to explain what I’ve seen.’

‘A conundrum, to be sure,’ he says, taking a nip from the bottle he’s just removed from his jacket pocket. ‘Care for some rum? I find it helps in times of doubt.’

She wipes the top of the bottle with the palm of her hand and takes a sip. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘I believe in the power of the human mind to conjure up all manner of delusions to soften the blow of existence,’ he says.

‘You think I’m deluded?’

‘I didn’t say that. I think if you see a ghost you should follow it; learn from it all you can. You may never see another. What is a ghost, after all, but a wound that’s yet to heal?’

He leans forward suddenly, tipping his face up to the street-lamp’s weak illumination, and asks her to guess his age. The beard and greying hair make it hard to determine. Between blinks the eyes are sharp and pale; the skin tight with lines and the lips are chapped. Before she can hazard a guess he says, ‘I’m forty-two, though I’d bet money on it – had I any and were I a gambling
man – that you thought I had a good ten years more.’ He seems pleased with this, as if he has foxed her with some riddle.

She says nothing, not wanting to admit he’s right. ‘What was it you used to do for a living?’ she says.

‘Marketing. Loathed it. I can’t tell you the relief I felt on being made redundant. I always dreamed of being a poet.’

‘There’s always time,’ she says, though she doubts there is.

‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘Someone once said there are only two things a poet needs, poverty and anonymity, and I have those in abundance, so perhaps you’re right. Here’s to the both of us getting what we want from life.’ He takes another swig of rum before handing her the bottle, letting out a catarrh-shifting cough.

‘The thing is, now I can’t stop thinking about Pete – my first husband. All these memories flooding back. I can’t stop dwelling on the past, raking it all up.’

He screws the lid on the bottle and slides it into his coat pocket. ‘Ah, there’s the rub:
did I live a happy life?
But that’s a stupid and pointless thing to ask and can only lead to sorrow. Still, it nags away like a spoilt child, does it not?’ He coughs and says, ‘You don’t know how embarrassed I am to be in a position that forces me to ask, Grace, but could you spare something towards a hostel?’

She opens her purse and hands him all the money it contains: £18.57. ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ she says. ‘Will it be
enough?’ She doesn’t imagine for a second he’s going to spend it on anything other than alcohol, but she’s happy to give it.

‘Blessings light upon you. That’s more than generous. I am forever in your debt.’

As she lights him another cigarette, he says, ‘I do hope you sort things out with your other half. It’s a fuck of a life on your own.’

‘That’s just it,’ she says, gearing up to offload. ‘I feel as if I
am
on my own.’

But before she can say another word he is standing up and, with a slight bow, he whispers, ‘Goodnight, sweet lady, goodnight,’ and vanishes into the ellipses of the night.

‘GRACE?’ GORDON SAYS
, gently shaking her awake. ‘Are you all right? You were crying and whimpering in your sleep.’

She’d been locked in a nightmare about Hannah. A young Hannah pushing her frantic way through a dense bed of roses, her face and arms scratched to ribbons on the thorns that open and close like birds’ beaks, pecking at her. An earsplitting cawing that she can still hear.

‘Did you have another bad dream?’

She nods and he holds her awkwardly as tears release their painful comfort. Hannah runs towards her, trips and smashes her face on the floor; teeth scattering in a spray of blood.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ he says, ‘do you want to talk about it?’

She shakes her head and wheezes out a high-pitched, ‘No,’ before clearing her throat with a gruff bark. ‘I’ll be OK.’ Hannah’s bloodied face is lodged in her mind’s eye, refusing to budge.

It feels strange to be this close to him; he hasn’t held her in the longest time. It feels wrong, somehow. She tries
to remember the last time they were physically intimate, but she can’t. She allows herself to be comforted by him for as long as she can tolerate and then moves away, saddened to realise she can’t trust him enough to be vulnerable with him. Can’t rely on him to understand what she’s going through.

After breakfast he departs, and she tries to distract her distracted mind with the local paper. But it doesn’t work; she’s taking none of it in until, browsing through the classifieds, she spots an advert for a medium, standing out like a clue to the puzzle her life has become. His name is Keith Kent, which doesn’t strike her as much of a name for a clairvoyant. More like a game show host. She digs a biro from her handbag and circles the ad, staring at it as if waiting for it to translate into an answer. To what question, she has no idea.

She’s heard her fair share of stories about ghosts and the afterlife from people claiming to have psychic powers, some gift for contacting the other side. And she’s always thought them slightly deranged, people like that, or just liars, fabulists, con artists trading on other people’s misery.
When you’re dead, you’re dead
. But, if it isn’t a ghost she keeps seeing, what is it? And the more she thinks about it now, the more it seems to offer some comfort: the idea that, if it’s true for Pete, then also maybe Hannah still exists in some form – on some other plane, some parallel universe, some realm of the spirits.
Maybe there’s more to life than what we know,
more
than meets the eye,
she thinks, as she reaches for her mobile phone and dials the number.

‘You’re in luck, dear,’ he says, ‘because I’ve had a last-minute cancellation and could see you in an hour if you can get here.’

As she rushes to get ready she amuses herself with the absurdity of a clairvoyant not seeing a cancellation coming. Picking up the piece of paper on which she’s scribbled the address, she sets off, thinking that in normal circumstances it wouldn’t enter her head to do this. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they?

And so here she is, outside his house in Maida Vale, raising her hand to the glossy red front door, casting a glance to her left at the neat, colourful garden, the brightness of the flowers hurting her eyes. Scepticism almost gets the better of her, but uncertainty has left her doubting everything. It’s either this, she thinks, or go to the doctor. And to go to a doctor would be to admit there
was
something wrong with her, mentally; something not right in the head. And she can’t do that just yet. The smell of lithium – or rather, the memory of the smell – hits her as she presses the doorbell.

A slim, middle-aged man with extreme cheekbones opens the door. He is dressed in a lilac cheesecloth shirt and baggy white linen trousers. From a bootlace around his neck hangs a turquoise pendant.

‘Grace?’ he says, wide-eyed, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Keith, delighted to meet you. Do come in.’

As he turns and says, ‘Follow me,’ she notices his long grey hair is worn in a plait that tapers out halfway down his back. She steps inside, detecting the scent of patchouli oil and feeling suddenly unsure of what she is doing. Shutting the door behind her, she follows him along the cluttered hallway. Framed paintings and drawings cover every inch of wall space; unhung pictures and empty frames are stacked against one wall, along with piles of books.

He leads her into the front room, which is oppressively hot. ‘Once the spirits arrive, the temperature will drop, so I always pop on the central heating just before a session,’ he explains. The curtains are drawn, and the room is lit with a scattering of candles. She smells incense burning and nearly bursts out laughing.

‘You’ll have to excuse the poor lighting,’ Keith says, gesturing with a flourish to the candles. ‘We held a seance last night and a spirit in the guise of a monkey appeared unbidden and broke the chandelier.’ He points above their heads, to an enormous glass light fixture. ‘The electrician can’t come till tomorrow.’ He rolls hammy eyes.

Grace gives him a weak smile and takes in the room, which is as cluttered as a bric-a-brac shop. Above a marble fireplace hangs a large, gilt-framed mirror, speckled with age, just like the backs of her hands. Dark wooden furniture lines the room, bookcases overflowing with books, glass-fronted cabinets stuffed with ornaments; in one corner is a nest of tables. Every surface is cluttered
with knick-knacks or more books, any spare piece of wall filled with pictures. The mantelpiece is weighed down by statues and candles and all manner of objects. She spies a small statuette of a satyr with an erection standing next to a horse’s skull; Russian dolls lined up in ascending size; a small wooden mannequin with limbs akimbo. She thinks,
I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to dust in here
.

In the centre of the room stands a round table, covered in a white lace cloth, and two wooden chairs. Keith holds out one of the chairs for her and she sits down, placing her handbag on the floor by her side.

He asks if she’d like a drink and when she declines he walks around to the other chair and sits down, smoothing out the surface of the cloth with delicate strokes of his hands before placing both elbows on it and lacing his long, thin fingers in front of him. She notices a turquoise ring on the pinkie of his left hand. In the bay window behind him, a large rubber plant rises from a copper pot, flanked by busts of Shakespeare and Mozart on small Doric columns.

‘Now, Grace, have you ever visited a medium before?’

‘No, never.’

‘Not nervous, are we?’

She shakes her head and says, ‘No.’ She
had
been nervous, right up until the moment she clapped eyes on him; now she’s beginning to regret wasting good money on this.

‘Good.’ He gives a big grin.

It crosses her mind to say,
Sorry, Keith, I’ve changed my mind
, and make a swift exit. But she doesn’t want to appear rude, and besides, after seeing the ghost of her dead husband, who is she to ridicule someone for seeing monkeys in chandeliers?

‘Sometimes first-timers get a bit nervous, which can give off negative energy, and that can block communication with the spirits.’ Keith gestures, with a wave of the hand, to the air around him. ‘And we don’t want that, now, do we, dear? Besides, there’s nothing at all to be scared of; I’m just going to try and pick up on any spirits that might be present around you. Before I do that, though, I find it best to get the awkward matter of coinage out of the way first.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The money, dear.’

From her handbag she removes her purse and hands over the two crisp twenties she’d withdrawn from the ATM earlier, watching him slide them into a trouser pocket as he says, ‘Now, whilst the spirit world and the physical world co-exist, they rarely coincide. When they do, we call them ghosts. And when those we love enter the spiritual realm, they are never far from us. Yet most of the time we cannot see them, because there are enormous barriers between their realm and our own. Barriers of habit and convention; lack of sensitivity to their presence; limited powers of perception; cynicism. Whatever. Certain people, like myself, are blessed with a
natural ability to penetrate those barriers and access the spirit world at will, and communicate with those who dwell there. I’m going to try to do that now, Grace, if I can. Give me your hands.’

She holds out her hands.

‘I see you’ve been doing some gardening,’ he says, looking down at the black crescents of her fingertips.

‘I’ve got an allotment,’ she says as his cold fingers close around hers. ‘In Gospel Oak.’ He shuts his eyes and she’s unsure whether she should shut hers too, but does anyway.

He says, ‘Those beings who were most important to us while they were alive on earth usually come forward first. Or those with something to ask or impart.’

The room is silent but for the hollow ticking of the grandfather clock in one corner. From outside she can hear birdsong and the thrum of distant traffic, and she is on the brink of giggles, not sure how long she can hold off.

But then he says, ‘I’m getting an H,’ and all desire to laugh leaves her.

She opens her eyes and looks at him; his remain shut, the candlelight throwing into relief the depth of his sockets, the gauntness of his face.

‘A woman, a young woman whose name begins with H. Helen? Harriet?’

‘Hannah,’ she says, her voice an incredulous croak.

‘Your daughter?’ He opens his eyes – bright as sunlight through blue glass.

She nods. Speechless. Dizzy.

‘I’m sorry, Grace. And she’s very young, isn’t she?’

‘Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.’

‘Oh, my. Too young to be robbed of life.’

She can feel a lump form in her throat. Tries to swallow, but can’t.

He says, ‘She’s telling me you’re very sad and that you shouldn’t be sad. She wants you to know that she’s very happy where she is.’

She tries to picture Hannah happy, but can’t.

‘She’s with a dog. And I’m also getting an old woman. Is it Beatrice?’

‘Mam’s sister.’

Grace tries to think of ways he could know her, know who her parents were, who Hannah was. All she’d given him was her first name, and that only an hour ago. Despite the warmth in the room she is suddenly cold. Like some appliance unplugged, she has the feeling again of disconnection from everything; estrangement from her own being. The universe both expands and contracts simultaneously, creating a sense of insignificance that overwhelms her as she tries to imagine the moment of death: how it might feel to stop breathing, to unwind like a clock, say goodbye to life, let go; return to nothing. She pictures her corpse decomposing, until finally there is no trace of her physical presence: life measured by the slow failure or breakdown of the body, and nothing else. The thought brings both comfort and fear: the world adapting, getting on without her, as if she’d never
existed at all. Does it mean anything, this being alive, this repetitive drawing of breath, this having children, this loving or not loving; this working, sleeping, putting food on the table; this suffering, the breaking of the heart? Does it signify nothing, in the end?

Remembering the reason she’s come here, she says, ‘Is there anyone else?’

Keith pauses, head cocked as if listening for something. ‘No, dear. I’m not getting anyone else,’ he says; then his cold grip tightens. ‘Wait, yes, there are some others. Some old women. A few old women have appeared.’

‘My aunts,’ she says, dispirited, picturing them, the pixilated sisters, alarmed at how quickly she’s normalised what is happening; all of a sudden this nonsense seems real. She feels exposed and vulnerable.

‘Can you see a young man?’

He is silent for what seems an eternity, his eyes closed, his face as still as the bust of Shakespeare she can see over his right shoulder, staring blankly from its plinth.

‘No, dear.’ He shakes his head and lets go of her hands, ‘Sorry. I’m definitely not getting any young man.’

‘Are you sure?’ She can hear the desperation in her voice.

‘Positive,’ he says. ‘Why, dear, who else have you lost?’

So, out it all comes: about seeing the ghost, and how it has unlocked all these memories. Keith listens silently
as she tells him about Pete’s violence, and the circumstances of his death. As she finishes, she begins to cry. Keith stands up and walks around and gently rubs her shoulder, saying, ‘That’s right, you let it all out. I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea,’ before leaving the room.

By the time he returns, the tears have stopped and she feels calmer – and a little embarrassed.

As he places the mugs on the table, he says, ‘The spirits can be very fickle, Grace. Maybe he doesn’t want me to see him; or maybe the emotional bond between you both wasn’t strong enough. I don’t know. Are you quite sure he’s dead, dear? There’s not much I can do for you if he isn’t actually dead, but if you’d like me to try another time, feel free to come back. Just because I didn’t see him this time, it doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t another time.’

She takes a deep breath and reins in further tears. He says, ‘My better half’s a psychotherapist. I can give you his number if you’d like to go down that route.’

So I am mad,
she thinks, as he hands her a business card.

‘Perhaps Tarquin’s your man. He’s very good with grief. This ghost you keep seeing could be a manifestation of unresolved grief. You could be projecting.’

At the front door he gives her arm a gentle squeeze and says, ‘If you need to talk further, just give me or Tarquin a call, OK? Don’t suffer in silence.’

She thanks him and bids him goodbye, stepping out into the sunshine in a blaze of confusion. She digs
around in her handbag for sunglasses and slides them on before heading towards the bus stop. Everything is suddenly too bright, too sharp, too real. She catches the bus to the allotment, Keith’s words rattling around her skull like dice.

Are you quite sure he’s dead, dear?

The thing is, she can’t really be sure. His body was never found, after all. Perhaps he could have survived. But he’d be an old man by now, and the man she keeps seeing isn’t, so she’s no nearer knowing who he is or what it all means. She is more confused than ever.