Ghosting (7 page)

‘I had an accident.’ Grace’s head feels dizzy from the shame, the fear of seeming mad. ‘I broke a plate. No harm done,’ she says with a smile that strains to hide her nerves, wondering if she’s believed. Nothing in her body feels as though it is working properly: rusted cogs and creaky joints.

‘Well, if you’re sure you’re OK, I’ll leave you to it…’ Pam says. Grace invites her in for a coffee. ‘Go on, then,’ she says. ‘Eric’s out metal-detecting.’

Pam moves her large frame through the door and follows Grace into the boat; watches her lift the bundled tea towel from the table and place it in the bin below the sink. She notices the hammer but chooses not to mention it.

‘So how long’s he been away?’ she says.

‘He left this morning,’ Grace replies, taking two mugs from the draining board and dropping a teaspoonful of
coffee into each. In a rush of adrenalin she tells Pam all about smashing the plate. ‘You should try it some time, it felt bloody marvellous!’ she says, going on to explain about the Polish Jew. Becoming aware of a disturbed look on Pam’s face, she looks down: she’s lifted the hammer and is gently batting the handle into her open palm as she speaks. ‘Anyway,’ she says shoving the hammer back under the sink, ‘kettle’s boiled!’

She knows it’s futile to try to explain what’s going on inside her – she can’t even explain it to herself – so she makes no more reference to it, focusing instead on giving the best impression of herself she can. And as they chat she begins to feel a bit more like her normal self again, whatever that means: enjoying this communion with another soul, even laughing once or twice. But as soon as Pam leaves it returns: that rushing tumble of liberation and panic; the creep of a leaden pain, a hurtful ache. Hemmed in by her thoughts and the walls around her, she leaves the boat and catches the bus to Hampstead Heath, needing to clear her head with its open space, to lose herself in its colours and solid air. With her heart in the grip of some eager fever, she measures out with each footfall the progress of something she is still afraid to name.

The Heath never fails to lift her spirits. Today, though, she’s too weighed down with the memories and emotions that have been stirred up. Today, the Heath’s green fuse pushes through her like a blade. She wanders restlessly, chewing on her anxiety, the world no longer
known, no longer safe. She retreats to that first day in Malaysia.

THE FIRST THING
she saw on opening her eyes was two small lizards on the ceiling directly above her, fighting noisily. At that very moment one of them shed its tail, which landed on her face, making her jump up with a scream as she swiped it away. Looking up, she saw the scream had scared them off, and remembered something from Pete’s letters about how the geckos ate the mosquitoes. A mixed blessing, she thought, wondering how the children would react to them.

The unfamiliar room was filled with muted sunshine and sticky heat. Groggy from too much sleep, she looked around in search of something familiar. The skirt and blouse she’d travelled in were hanging on a clothes horse by the window and her suitcase was by the dressing table. She heard a telephone ringing through the walls, her mind a blank exhaustion of shapeless thoughts, a tangle of confused and confusing images. She could remember friends of Pete’s, Norman Bailey and his blonde wife Marilyn, meeting her at the airport. She could remember getting out of the car; could picture Norman standing there holding open the door. After that, nothing but vague fragments of dreams in which Pete chased her through hot, swampy forests. She had awoken in sweats and tears, only to drop back immediately into the warm mud of exhausted sleep. There were also fragments she
wasn’t sure were dreams or not: someone – Marilyn? – undressing her and pulling a nightgown over her, and then a man she didn’t recognise – a doctor? – sitting by the bed; Hannah and Paul standing in the doorway of the room, watching her, eyes wide with concern and confusion.

Then it came back to her, what Norman had said just before she fainted.

Easing herself into that reality, she stared at her reflection in the dressing table mirror and said, ‘He’s dead.’ She slowly moved her head from side to side and rotated it slightly, hearing the twist and crunch of gristle. She looked at her slim arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing closely, as if seeing it for the first time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh.

A sudden cry from Jason stirred her, and she walked over to the cot in the corner; lifting him out, she began to rock him gently and sing him to sleep. Then, laying him back down, she went over to the window and drew up the Venetian blinds, just as Hannah and Paul burst into the room.

‘Mummy!’ they shrieked, rushing to clutch at her legs.

‘Shush, you’ll wake the baby,’ she said, noticing the small, pretty Malay girl who had stepped into the room after them. She said her name was Ayu, and she told Grace that an officer had telephoned to say he’d be over shortly.

When Grace found out she’d been asleep for three days she could hardly believe it. How could she have left the children with strangers for so long? She asked if she could have some tea, then sat on the bed, calling Hannah and Paul over to join her, one on each side. ‘Come on, give us a cuddle!’ she said, grateful for their warm familiarity. Everything else seemed too unreal. She kissed and stroked their heads, smelt their hair, holding them for as long as they would allow, which was never long enough.

‘Selamat pagi,’
said Hannah, the first to break away and climb off the bed, running over to the window.

‘What does that mean?’ Grace said.

‘Good morning,’ Hannah said, playing with the blind, letting it drop and then pulling it up, repeatedly.

‘Ayu has been teaching us,’ said Paul wearily, sliding out of her arms and off the bed to join his sister by the window.

‘Terima kasih,’
Hannah said.

‘That means thank you,’ said Paul.

Then he started repeating it in sillier and sillier voices, shredding her nerves until she had to tell him to stop.

‘Where’s Daddy?’ Hannah asked, but before Grace could answer Ayu reappeared to tell her the officer had arrived and that she’d shown him into the lounge. Grace asked her to take the children away and serve tea. It felt odd to be telling a complete stranger what to do – wrong, somehow – though she was grateful for the help, she had
to admit. As she hurriedly dressed, she marvelled again at how long she’d been asleep.

In the lounge, a tall, middle-aged man with grey hair and moustache introduced himself as Officer George Hawkins. And as Ayu poured the tea he said, ‘The day before you came, Pete was on a training mission at sea when a sudden storm broke. He was being winched down from a helicopter to pick up two men in a dinghy when lightning caused the safety mechanism to activate, cutting the winch line automatically and dropping him into the ocean. The conditions were so bad the other men had to return without him. They couldn’t even see him, the waves were so high. We’re hoping for the best, obviously.’

She could hear a radio somewhere playing the Mandarin version of a pop song she knew. Tried to remember the title, singing along in her head, searching for the phrase that would name it, but it wouldn’t come. She was wearing the jade bracelet Pete had sent her from Aden for her eighteenth birthday. She slid it down over her hand. It felt solid and familiar, and she gripped it and looked at it.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Robinson. Rest assured we’re doing all we can to find him. There’s a search party out there now. Do you have everything you need?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. Her stomach was rumbling from hunger, and the mosquito bites were beginning to itch. He said, ‘There’s a strong chance, of course, that he’s still alive. He was a very good swimmer.’

He looked awkward at the accidental past tense.

Pete
was
a good swimmer, it was true. A good dancer, too; Grace recalled, from a time that seemed impossibly long ago now, the memory of his body against hers as they danced. She thought about how much she’d loved him, and how it hadn’t been enough. Because all the love in the world couldn’t mend a broken bone.

She said, ‘So what happens now? Do we have to go back straight away?’

He stroked his hand down over his moustache before saying, ‘Not straight away. But eventually, if Pete doesn’t show up.’

‘Or if you find a body.’

They exchanged a long glance.

‘And how long till you give up searching, or waiting?’

‘This is the last day of the search, but we’re hopeful he could still be making his way back here if he managed to make it to shore. You can remain here for a few weeks, but I’m afraid if he hasn’t reappeared by then…’ He trailed off. ‘We’ll need the accommodation, you see. For another family.’

It was then that the tears came, though they weren’t born of sorrow so much as frustration and exhaustion, the intense physical memory of the journey she’d just completed and the sudden desperation she felt within. Then, just as quickly, the tears ran dry, and George Hawkins’ relief was palpable.

He explained there was a whole new arrivals procedure he needed to go through with her, and gave her an identity card and a handbook she never did get
around to reading; she couldn’t see the point if they weren’t staying. She knew Pete wasn’t alive – could feel the world already readjusting to his absence.

‘Ayu will come every day during the week, but not at weekends. She’ll do housework and cook meals,’ he said, handing her a piece of paper. ‘This is the Baileys’ telephone number. Mrs Bailey – Marilyn, will be over to see you later today.’

This, it struck her, was women’s stuff: grief. Let the men play their war games; leave the women to clean up the mess. After she’d seen him out she leant her back against the cool glass of the front door, flooded with a mixture of fear and relief.

SHE’S STROLLING
aimlessly across the Heath, recalling all this, when Luke steps out on to the path in front of her, nonchalant as a reed, and startling her half to death. He passes by, lost in some song playing in his headphones, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

The shadow at her feet is the only proof she’s even here. The birds are gossiping and the air is still. With a strange uplift of release, like the snapping of guy ropes, something shifts inside her, and anxiety gives way to recklessness, fear to indifference.
If you see a ghost you should follow it; learn from it all you can. You may never see another
.

She stalks him down those bosky lanes, not allowing herself to think about what she’s doing or why. She just
walks, her head as empty as her heart is full. When the voice inside her tells her
Stop, go home, leave the poor lad alone,
she ignores it. Because she can’t stop; she’s too caught up in a new sense of thrill. When he turns into the entrance to the Men’s Pond, though, she halts, unsure what to do. The sun is hot and there isn’t a cloud in the sky; he could be twenty minutes, or he could be planning to spend hours in there. She looks at her watch: 2.35. Well, it’s not as if she has anything else to do, she thinks, pushing to the back of her mind all the chores she’s been neglecting. Spotting an empty bench opposite the entrance to the pond, she heads over and sits down, nearly laughing out loud at the whole ridiculous situation. Just as quickly she feels like crying.

Is this what you’ve become?

With the sun on her skin like a caress, she pictures Luke undressing… and then Pete shedding his clothes at the foot of the bed every night; how she’d lie there and marvel at the sight of him, recalling the intensity of the pleasure he could bring. That dark charge of desire, so long dispersed, now gathers.

The sudden sound of barking draws her attention to a young man being dragged along by half a dozen dogs of different sizes and breeds, all straining at the leash. Her gaze meets his long enough to exchange a brief smile before he is pulled away: the walker walked. A chime of blue laughter makes her look around and there is Luke, leaving the pond with a tall, brown-skinned man in a red T-shirt and blue denim shorts, a tweed
flat cap on his head. She looks down at her feet: six dog-ends, crushed into pale orange commas. She busies herself rooting around in her bag, sneaking furtive glances across at them. ‘It’s insanely good. You have to go!’ she hears Red T-shirt say, and Luke is saying, ‘I will, definitely,’ as they begin to stroll along the path, away from her. She stands, more alive than she’s felt for a long time. It’s now or never.

At the exit by the tennis courts, at the bottom of Highgate Hill, the two men turn left out of the Heath and cross the road to a parade of shops. She loiters, watching them enter a green door at the side of a newsagent’s. The street takes place around her; cars pass by. Then with a jolt she sees sense, if it can be called that, and heads towards home. If it can be called that.

Making her way across the Heath, she finds herself at a fairground, its bright lights and clutter of noise drawing her into the crush, a memory of that first meeting with Pete filling her mind… the heady kisses… An impulse – a sudden, inexplicable command – directs her to the rollercoaster. She rides it three times in a row, feeling crazed but loving every minute of it, till she reaches an exhilarated rush that seems to provide some kind of release. A burst of life like a firework. The opposite of death. No longer a sad old woman, but – for too brief a spell – a teenager, falling in love for the very first time.

FOR A MOMENT
Grace doesn’t recognise the young woman, cannot place her at all. All she sees is Hannah’s face, and a wave of disorientation hits her hard. It’s the blonde from outside the pub with Luke. She is touching

Grace’s arm and saying, ‘Are you OK?’ pulling her from deep within some dark and muddy absence. Grace looks around for co-ordinates with which to locate herself. She is in the supermarket – with no memory of even having entered the shop. It’s as if she’s been magically transported here. She can remember leaving the boat, but, after that, nothing. It is the oddest feeling. She becomes aware of the tight wetness of tears on her skin, wondering how long she’s been standing there, by the fruit and veg, clutching an empty basket, weeping?

‘Would you like to sit down?’ the young woman says.

‘No, thank you,’ says Grace, more than a little embarrassed, ‘I’m OK now. Thanks.’

‘What happened to your face?’ she asks, and Grace lifts a hand to touch the scab on her cheek, remembering the fall.

She is slightly ashamed of how she’d injured her cheek. Last night, finding herself wide awake at her usual bedtime and not having any sleeping tablets, she’d swallowed six painkillers, hoping they would make her drowsy. This was on top of the bottle of wine she’d consumed and the Valium she’d forgotten she’d taken earlier. It certainly did the trick, plunging her into a full-fathomed sleep. Waking in the small hours parched and groggy, she’d climbed out of bed to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. But when she tried to stand up she had collapsed, smashing her face on the floor and passing out. When she’d regained consciousness, unsure how long she’d been out, she’d made her way back to bed.

Surveying her reflection in the mirror this morning, she had contemplated trying to conceal the marks. She’d been good at that, once. The blood had dried, forming a scab it would be difficult to hide, so she’d decided to leave it.

‘I fell. It’s nothing. Really.’ She smiles and the woman walks away, inserting earphones before disappearing down an aisle. Once she is out of sight, Grace puts down the basket and leaves the shop, the sense of being pursued so strong she very nearly breaks into a run. She makes straight for the Prince Alfred, wondering what on earth is happening to her. All certainties are gone, except those of the past and the losses that shaped them. The present and the future blur into a scratchy panic. The Alfred smells of polish and yesterday’s beer, and at this time of day – it has only just opened – there’s only
a handful of customers, mainly men. She orders a glass of white wine and sits at an empty table. The only other woman in the place stares forlornly at a half-empty pint glass. The woman’s age is indeterminate, her face only partly visible between lank falls of orangey bleached blonde hair with a good two inches of dark roots: the thin line of the mouth and the darkness of her shadowed eyes. Her shoulders are slumped as if all the world’s sorrows weigh upon them. Grace thinks about Hannah and the pain she had been numbing. She considers approaching the woman and starting up a conversation, longing, suddenly, for some human interaction, but shyness delays her. The woman finishes her drink in one swift move and walks unsteadily out of the pub, taking her stories with her.

What happens to all the pain you refuse to feel?
Grace thinks.
Does the body store it, perhaps, for a future date?

On her way back to the boat she drops into the newsagent’s for a loaf, some milk, a bottle of wine and twenty Mayfair. Unsettled by everything, and fearing she might start crying again at any moment, she needs to retreat into the boat’s haunted shell as soon as possible.

She notices a luridly decorated narrowboat she hasn’t seen before, and sitting on top reading a book is the blonde woman from the supermarket. Grace nearly turns back, but the girl has already spotted her and is waving hello, leaving Grace no option but to return the greeting and approach.

‘You OK now?’ the woman asks, closing the book and climbing down to the towpath.

‘Yes, thanks. Much better.’ Though she isn’t.

‘I’m Linden,’ she says.

‘I’m Grace,’ says Grace, scanning the designs covering the boat’s exterior: swirling spirals of vibrant colour; flowers, spaceships and anchors, stars and planets; she spots a phallus spurting like a whale. She wonders how she could have walked past it earlier without noticing it.

They both start talking at once and Linden insists Grace go first, so she says, ‘How long have you been here? I don’t think I’ve seen your boat before.’

‘We’ve been here about a week, but we did that last night,’ Linden says. ‘We were off our faces and it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ She lets out a short laugh.

‘It’s certainly distinctive!’ Grace says. There is something about the brazen, primitive lines and colours that makes her want to smile. The incongruity, the difference, seems somehow to make the world a better place.

‘Where are you moored?’ Linden says.

‘Just over there.’

‘Is it permanent?’

‘Yes, me and my husband Gordon have been here about five years now.’ Where did the time go? What did she do with it?

‘You’re lucky,’ Linden says, ‘they’re almost impossible to get.’ Grace thinks of the strings Gordon pulled to secure it.

‘We’ve got to move soon,’ says Linden.

‘Who else lives here?’

‘Luke.’

Grace feels a sudden nausea, as if just hearing his name had conjured him, the sound of it as unsettling as his presence.

‘He’s out at the moment.’

She wants to ask if Luke is Linden’s boyfriend, but instead asks where they are moving to.

‘East, over to Springfield. Do you know it?’

‘Yes, it’s lovely there.’

‘We leave Sunday,’ Linden says, which makes Grace realise she hasn’t the slightest idea what day it is, time having evolved or dissolved for her.

‘What are you doing later?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Wanna come over for a drink?’

‘I’d love to. What time?’

‘Around seven? And bring your husband.’

‘My husband’s away,’ Grace says, realising with a start how close she’d come to saying,
My husband’s dead
.

Back on her own boat, she warms up a tin of tomato soup and toasts two slices of bread. Looking at the calendar to check what day it is, she notices it’s less than two weeks till her birthday,
65 TODAY
written in red capitals against the date. She pours herself a glass of wine and lets her thoughts linger on the prospect of meeting Luke in a couple of hours, feeling a stupid excitement grow. The ring of her mobile dislodges her
thoughts and she scrambles in her bag for it. When she sees that it’s Gordon, she pauses a moment, considering whether or not to answer.

‘Hello, Gordon,’ she says in a gruff croak.

‘You sound awful!’ he says.

‘Nice to hear from you too!’ she says, sounding more irritated than she’d intended, her voice not yet under her command. She clears her throat.

‘You want to cut down on the cigarettes,’ he says.

‘Is that what you rang up to tell me?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘How’s the fishing? Caught anything yet?’ She pictures her thoughts as fishes, swimming inside the bowl of her skull; pictures herself casting a line to catch them.

‘Jerry has, but I’ve not had one bite. What have you been up to?’

‘Oh, the usual.’

‘Been to the allotment?’

‘Yes. I’m there now,’ she lies, not knowing why.

After that there is nothing to say; or rather, there is so much to say that it all remains unsaid, for fear of undoing the fine balance of their life together – even though this is happening anyway, without their knowledge, in silence and in haste. Some truth has entered undetected, like a spy under a fence, preparing to confront them both.

SHE MET GORDON
the Saturday night before her departure from Singapore. Marilyn Bailey and her husband
Norman had thrown a farewell party at which Grace had had one drink too many; one minute she felt light and happy, the next nauseous. It was the first alcohol she’d had since leaving Manchester, and, already doped up on the tablets the doctor had prescribed, she had felt it go straight to her head. Stepping out on to the clubhouse veranda to get some air, she watched the fierce violence of a sudden thunderstorm cracking the night sky with flashes of blue-edged white against rolling black. The kind of storm in which a man could drown, lost at sea, weighed down by angry water.

A young man appeared, in a tuxedo and smoking a cigarette, and introduced himself as Gordon Wellbeck. ‘I’m your escort for your flight back,’ he said, offering his hand with a shy smile. He had crooked teeth and the kind of transparent hair that suggested he’d be bald within a couple of years. She took in his strong jaw and boxer’s nose. If the light had been brighter, she might have seen the adoration in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry about Pete,’ he said.

‘Did you know him?’

He said they didn’t know each other well but had worked on helicopters together once or twice and drunk with the same crowd sometimes. From within the tales he told, she tried to extract new knowledge, a new perspective of the man she’d loved and hated with equal fire.

‘I was with him in the helicopter that afternoon. A storm just like this one appeared out of nowhere. Fast and fierce.’

‘Terrifying.’

‘Yes. They don’t last long. End as suddenly as they begin.’

‘Good. I want to get back. I don’t feel well.’

‘I’ll escort you home as soon as the rain stops,’ he said, and, oddly, as he said the words, it stopped. Grace went inside to say goodbye to Norman and Marilyn.

Riding home in a rickshaw with Gordon, she felt safe and relaxed, though through the fuzz of drink she couldn’t help thinking,
I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m a grieving widow…

The following day, unlike Ray, Gordon stuck around to help for every leg of the journey. Once the children were settled and the plane started its take-off, he offered her a cigarette and asked what she was planning to do when she got back home.

‘I don’t know. I’m moving back in with Mam and Dad for the time being but I don’t want to be there too long. I need to get Hannah and Paul into a school. I could try and go back to work, I suppose, but who’s going to look after the kids? I just don’t know what I’ll do, to be honest. I suppose I’ll cope. That’s what I do. Cope.’

She didn’t want – on some level felt unable – to think about the future; it was too uncharted, too out of focus. The weeks in Malaysia had kept it in abeyance, but now it had returned, the truth slapping her in the face. The relief she’d felt after Pete’s death had given way to a relentless panic about exactly what she would do now.
It was hard to put her faith in a future whose shape she couldn’t properly discern. ‘What about you?’ she said, to divert attention from her indecision. ‘Where are you off to?’

He told her he was returning to do a training course at RAF Manston in Kent. She asked him about himself, and learned that he was the youngest of three and the only boy. All his family still lived in Norwich, he said, where he’d grown up. As he spoke, she watched his full lips move and blushed to catch herself noticing.

He insisted on escorting Grace right up to her parents’ house, though she’d said they’d be fine once they reached Piccadilly Station. And she was secretly pleased, grateful for his help and enjoying his company. Then arrived the awkward moment when it came to the time to part, and they both realised at once that they would probably never see each other again. A moment doesn’t happen unless you allow it to, or are allowed. They both felt how unacceptable that would be, how inappropriate.

As she was considering whether to invite him in for a cup of tea, the front door opened and her parents appeared, their excited dog at their feet. And, while Grace and her mother put the children to bed, her father poured Gordon a whisky and asked about the journey.

When she received a letter from him two days later, a weird sense of
déjà vu
overcame her and she felt more excited than she had done about anything in years. The parallels with Pete’s courtship weren’t lost on her. In his
letters were the same daily routines, almost the same cast of characters in the same billet. They weren’t called ‘uniforms’ for nothing, she thought. But she looked forward to receiving the letters all the same, and enjoyed writing back. It felt more right than wrong to reply; felt like someone reaching out.

She didn’t see Gordon again until the day of Pete’s funeral service. There was no body to bury, of course, but after the inquest his parents had held a memorial service in their local church. Grace and her parents took the children, but all day she managed only five illicit minutes alone with Gordon, to talk privately. She knew her parents disapproved of the friendship, and she could only imagine what Pete’s parents would say if they knew.

But the letters continued, and the occasional visit, and when, six months after returning, Grace was given a council flat not far from her parents, Gordon came up and helped with the move. That night she let him stay, though she made him sleep on the sofa.

Then, about a year after their first meeting, as they were watching TV, the kids in bed, he proposed. He told her he was thinking of taking an overseas post, but before he made a decision about it either way he needed to know if she felt anything for him, and, if so, whether she’d marry him.

He said, ‘If you don’t feel that way about me, Grace, I’ll take the posting. And you’ll never hear from me again.’ And she remembered how Pete would croon, ‘It’s now or never,’ as they’d slow-danced around her
parents’ living room a hopeful lifetime ago. It seemed a peculiar way to propose to someone.
Marry me or I’m off
. Made it sound like an ultimatum – which she supposed it always was.

He said he’d loved her since the first time he’d seen her. ‘I only took that training course so that I could volunteer to be your escort.’

She said, ‘I had no idea you felt that way. You should have said something.’

‘You’d just lost Pete and it never seemed the right moment. I guess I took my time.’ He let out a nervous laugh.