Ghosts Know (27 page)

“Nobody’s asking you that. It’s just for our chums at home. I was going to say somebody’s missed a trick. We ought to have hooked up with the radio in our twin town for the show.”

“Maybe you can next year.”

“Why, aren’t you planning to be here? Don’t go handing in your notice just because you never thought of hooking me up. We’ll forgive you this once. And jeeps, don’t make that face or you’ll have me thinking you don’t love me any more.” Having repeated the last six words to a tune, he adds “Just be glad we aren’t on telly, folks. Only joking, Chrissy. We go together like fish and chips. I do the fishing and she’s got a bunch of chips…”

By now I’ve had very much more than enough. Though the voices in the kitchen are only just audible, they feel clamped to my ears, muffled by faulty headphones. I grope on the bedside table and raise my unenthusiastic head from the pillow to fit the elastic above my ears and pull the velvet patch over the hole where my left eye used to be. It drags the eyelid down and weighs on it, but in a few minutes if not hours I may grow unaware of the sensation; perhaps I’ll even be less convinced that the burden is pressing a lump of darkness into my skull. I kick off the single sheet and plod across the floor, which seems cramped by the lack of perspective, to shove my fists into the sleeves of my cheap silk dressing-gown. For just an instant I’m rewarded by a chill on my skin at odds with the heat of the day before I venture into the hall.

Dennison is appealing for identical twins now. Presumably at some point he’ll allow callers onto the air, but I can’t bear to listen to any more of the show that has taken my slot, even if it covers up any sounds I’m unable to avoid making. I was careful to ease my bedroom door open, but I haven’t reached the bathroom when I bump into the left-hand wall, which no longer seems as present as it used to be. At once Dennison is cut off in the middle of a syllable, making way for a different voice. “I’m sorry, Graham, did I wake you?”

“It’s time I was up,” I shout before locking myself in the bathroom. I use the toilet and brush my teeth, and then I have to wash my face. I hang the eye-patch on the back of the door and shut my eyes—the lids, at any rate—while I splash water at myself and fumble for the soap and eventually rub some of my face hard with a towel as a preamble to patting the left side as if I’m afraid to discover the socket is raw. My behaviour enrages me, and I fling away the towel and jerk up my left eyelid.

The wrinkled pinkish hollow still puts me in mind of an enlarged navel. Certainly the idea is no more grotesque than its appearance. Sometimes I’m tempted to finger it, except that doing so might irritate it or worse, and more often—right now, for instance—my fury at the sight or at the events that led to it leaves me fighting not to dig my thumb deep into the hole. I content myself with thrusting my face at the mirror, which only seems to flatten my reflection further; it looks no more substantial than a photograph. I’m glaring at it with the remaining eye when there’s a timid knock at the door. “Are you all right in there, Graham?”

“Even better than last time you asked.” I succeed in keeping this under my breath and call “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Would you like a coffee?”

“I shouldn’t think that could do any harm.”

Footsteps retreat, so softly they sound unconvinced, as I turn away from the mirror. I feel as if I’m bringing darkness with me, embedded in my head. I cover it with the patch and unbolt the door, which looks too much like a life-size image of itself, close to drifting out of focus. When I reach the end of the incomplete hall, the space fails to open out as it should, and I feel even more trapped in my skull.

My mother looks around with a smile as I enter the kitchen—with the corners of her stiff straight lips hitched up, at any rate. As usual she’s standing erect with her head held high like a burden she’s carried throughout her life and doesn’t mean to put down now. “At least you got some sleep,” she wants to think.

It’s rather that I don’t feel I have much to get up for. I’m still incapable of sleeping through the night—it feels as if I can’t doze longer than a few minutes without being jerked awake by the fear of an agonised pain in the hole in my face, or the sensation of a knife puncturing my eye unless it’s a blade clearing out the socket, or just my condition, which is eager to be recollected whenever I succeed in forgetting it, even momentarily. All too often I dream that my one eye is under attack, which is guaranteed to make me struggle whimpering back to reality, not that it offers much reassurance. The best answer I can find is “I hope you did.”

“You mustn’t worry about me.”

I do, of course. I have the unhappy impression that every time she’s confronted with my state it ages her. I don’t know when her cropped red hair began to pale and exhibit hints of grey like a sunset yielding to the night, but aren’t there more of those? I can’t avoid noticing, because even with her straight-backed stance she’s half a head shorter than me, which makes her look reluctant to meet my eye or more likely the absence of one. If she can’t sleep while she’s caring for me, having insisted, that’s another reason to persuade her to go home. I’m about to try afresh when she says “Sorry I woke you up with that.”

“You mustn’t keep apologising. Nothing’s your fault.”

“I just wanted to see what they’re putting on instead of you. I promise you it’s nowhere near as good.”

“I did hear.”

“He’s the opposite of you, isn’t he? He’s telling people what to say. I don’t know how she can—” My mother looks down as if the sight of me has proved too much for her again. “I didn’t realise,” she says, “she’d actually be on the show.”

“She didn’t sound too pleased about it either.”

“I hope she isn’t.” My mother risks a glance at my face before not precisely asking “You haven’t changed your mind since you came out of hospital.”

“About what in particular?”

“You still don’t want to see her any more.”

“I’ve changed my mind but no, I don’t.”

“How do you mean, Graham?”

“When she tried to see me I was partly blaming her. If we hadn’t had an argument I wouldn’t have been where I was that night. Now I just think it’s better for us both to stay apart. She deserves to have someone who isn’t like me.”

“She won’t find anybody better,” my mother retorts as though she’s borrowing my anger, which has subsided. “If she cared she’d have tried harder to stay in touch.”

“It depends what you said to put her off.”

“Enough,” my mother says with more satisfaction than I quite appreciate. “About as much as I said to your father when he dared to show his face at the hospital.”

“Can I ask what?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t have said, I hope. That you didn’t need anyone else while I’m here, for a start.” When I’m silent my mother turns to the agitated percolator. “And I told him—well, there’s no need to bring that up again if you didn’t hear.”

“I didn’t, but I’d like to now. I’m not fond of secrets.”

“I don’t want to distress you any more if you’ve managed to forget all about it.” My mother makes to pass me a mug of coffee but plants it on the table, apparently for fear I can’t see well enough to handle it. She brings her mug and milks them both and sits opposite me, frowning at my interrogative look. With some defiance and more reluctance she says “I told him he was to blame.”

“For what, sorry?”

“Oh, Graham, how much are you going to make me say? For how you are.”

“Angrier than does me any good, you mean.”

“No more than you’ve a right to be.” Her brave straightened smile doesn’t let her avoid saying “I mean for how you’ve ended up.”

“I don’t see how he’s involved in that.”

“I wish we could just forget him.” With enough resentment to have some left for me my mother says “He hit you in the eye when you went to stand up to him once. It was black for a week and we had to tell the school you’d been in a fight with some boy you didn’t know. Maybe if your father hadn’t done that—”

She gazes at the eye-patch and then has to look away. Do I have a vague memory of the incident? It feels too much like being told a tale by Frank Jasper. “I can’t believe it matters after all these years,” I tell my mother. “If anyone’s to blame it’s me.”

“You mustn’t say that, Graham. You mustn’t even think it. It isn’t going to help.”

“Maybe it’s what I need to remember.” When her determined smile wavers I say “If I hadn’t let my temper run away with me I wouldn’t have walked out on Chris that night. And if I hadn’t given one of them a thump down by the canal I might have got away without this.”

Though I don’t touch the site of my missing eye or even point to it, my mother winces as if I’ve done both. “I wish you’d given them a lot worse,” she declares—she might be expressing rage on my behalf, since she hasn’t revived mine. “And why can’t the police track them down?”

“I’m sure they must be doing their best.”

As I struggle to dislodge the thought that Jasper’s father may be concerned with the investigation, my mother says “Have you still not been able to remember anything else about those, I won’t call them boys?”

“I haven’t.” For an insipid excuse, which I wouldn’t give anyone else, I add “It was dark.”

In fact I can recall no distinguishing features of the gang except the names of two of them, which apparently aren’t enough. I was left with the impression that the police found this little better than racist, which I don’t suppose I alleviated by suggesting the gang could have been Wayne’s, since he somehow proved he didn’t even know them. Now my mother demands “Why couldn’t the police use some of the photos all those people took?”

“I know they tried.” As I lift my mug I’m reminded once again how objects seem to swell up whenever I bring them to my face. Once I’ve taken a sip that seems muffled by the incompleteness of another sense I tell her “Apparently the photos were too blurred to use.”

“I thought they had the works to make anything clear these days.”

“Not stuff shot by amateurs on mobiles.” My mother’s protest brings to mind how I cleaned up the recording of Jasper’s act, which could be the cause of everything that’s happened to me since, but I don’t want to think about it, let alone further back. “Anyway, if you’ll excuse me,” I manage to distract myself by saying, “I’ll get dressed.”

The other wall of the corridor seems insufficiently present now, at least until my elbow blunders against it. I’m in the bedroom and rubbing the elbow when, beyond the door that I didn’t quite shut, I hear my mother talking in a low voice on her mobile. “Jane, I don’t think I’ll be able to get to the book group or lunch with the girls for a good while, but I’ll do my very best to come to Hester’s funeral.”

As I drag some clothes on, the flattened perspective seems to turn my legs dwarfish. I’m making my way along the shrunken undeveloped hall when my mobile clanks with an incoming message. I read the number that sent it and say “You’d think we conjured her up by talking about her.”

My mother hurries out of the kitchen, trying to decide on a smile. “Don’t say it’s Christine.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I’ll have a word in my room if you don’t mind.”

This time I make sure to shut the door, and keep my voice down as well. When I’ve finished speaking I go back to the main room, where my mother appears to be waiting to learn whether she ought to be eager or anxious. “Let me try and put your mind at rest,” I say at once. “Don’t feel hurt, but I’m going to give it another go.”

“Why on earth should I feel hurt, Graham?” Before I’m forced to be
more explicit my mother says “I need to wake up, don’t I. You mean she won’t want to find me here.”

“If she’s moving back in … “

“You needn’t say any more. After what I said to her I wouldn’t blame her if she never wanted to speak to me again.” My mother lifts a hand as well as the corners of her mouth to forestall any argument. “When are you expecting her?”

“She just has to produce the rest of the new show.”

“It won’t take me long to pack.” It doesn’t, and my mother is waiting on the street well ahead of two o’clock. As her taxi to the station pulls up she says “Will you keep letting me know how you are? And try and come and see me soon.”

“Of course I will. Maybe both of us …” I interrupt myself with a loss on her cheek. As I watch the taxi dwindle along the depthless sunlit street it seems I’ve achieved all I can. I’ve succeeded in sending her back to her friends, and there’s another reason to be pleased: I’ll never have to listen to Waves again.

Christine’s voice is so close it feels like part of me. She’s saying a name in my ear—not my name. For a moment I imagine that I’m hearing her through headphones—that she’s telling me the next person I need to speak to—and then I grasp where I am. As I turn my head towards hers on the pillow, one of my knuckles catches my left eye, or rather it pokes the lid into the socket. My head jerks back, and I’m altogether too awake.

I’m alone beneath the tangled clammy sheet. Christine’s murmur was the last trace of a dream I can’t remember. I no more heard her in reality than I did when I pretended to my mother that Christine had been on the phone. No doubt I was unnecessarily afraid that my mother would see through the trick. I couldn’t simulate a call to my mobile to make it ring, but I was able to send it a blank message from itself.

The bedside clock is showing almost noon. It blinks its pair of zeros into shape as if to demonstrate that it can boast one more eye than me. It’s nearly time for the dreadful Dennison, but I won’t be listening; I wouldn’t even if Christine were producing someone else. Whatever my dream might appear to suggest, I’ve finished with her. I don’t deserve anyone except myself.

I fumble for the eye-patch but leave it where it is. There’s nobody to cover up for. I could feel there’s as little reason to leave my bed, but I mustn’t let apathy hollow me out. I kick the sheet away and tramp through my less than three-dimensional apartment to the bathroom, where I can’t help flinching as the first spikes of water from the shower jab at my face. I towel myself without looking in the mirror any more than I can help, and then I switch on the percolator before starting up the computer.