Ghostwriting (14 page)

Then, the day before the opening night, he did get through to Caroline on her mobile.

“Caroline! Thank Christ!”

“Charles, this is most incon—”

“Don’t hang up, I beg you! Listen, we must meet.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Then we must talk. Please, listen to me! The last time we met... I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell you what happened between me and Emmeline, what she said before, before she...”

“Charles, none of that matters, now. Don’t you see, all that is in the past.”

“No, you don’t understand. You see, before she went out and—”

“Charles, I really must go now.”

He cried, “At least think of me, Caroline! Think of my sanity!”

She paused, then said, “That’s exactly what I am doing, Charles. I am thinking of you, your sanity. Can’t you see that?”

And before he could think of a reply, she cut the connection.

He hurled the receiver across the hallway, then hurried to his study and poured himself a whisky.

~

On the night of the opening he sat at his desk and stared out across the moonlit lawn to the dark shape of the willow. He had spent the day drinking in preparation of the call that would tell him that Caroline was dead. He was reconciled to the fact, knew that there could be no other outcome. And then, when Caroline was dead and he had no reason to go on living? He smiled to himself. There was a rope in the garage... His end would be entirely fitting.

He saw movement on the lawn, a fleet figure in the moonlight. He stood, swaying, and knocked over the chair. Staggering, he propelled himself to the French windows, managed to fumble them open and stepped into the warm night.

He saw movement beyond the fringe of the willow tree and crossed the lawn towards it.

He stood and stared, and saw his wife at the age of twenty, before the years and mental illness had ravaged her body and soul. She peeked out at him from behind the fronds, playfully.

“You!” he said.

He closed his eyes and relived the very last occasion on which he had seen her alive. She was drunk, tormented by the demons of her depression. She was also naked, and perilously thin, as she gestured at him with a gin bottle clutched in her fist.

You’ll regret it, Charles! Oh, you’ll regret it if you stage the damned play!

He had told her that it was his art, as her paintings were her art; she had no compunction about portraying him in less than complimentary fashion, had she?

That’s different! My paintings won’t be seen by thousands! They won’t know it’s you... Your portrayal of me is cruel.

He’d told her that
it was an honest portrait of the person she might become... But had he been lying even to himself?

You’ll regret it, Charles. Stage the play and you’ll live to regret it! I’ll haunt it, do you hear! My soul will not rest...

He’d told her she was ranting. Come inside, he’d coaxed; come inside and get warm before the fire. We’ll have coffee. I’ll hold you...

But she had run off, laughing, and he had turned and made his slow way back to the house.

~

Now he opened his eyes, and it was a second or two before he realised what he had heard.

The phone was ringing in the house.

He turned, stumbling, and ran towards the open French windows. The summons became shrill as he barged into the hall and approached the phone.

He stopped, and a cold fear gripped him. He knew what he was about to hear, as he reached out and picked up the receiver.

He heard a crackle, then silence. A voice, so faint, sounded as if from a million miles away.

“What?” he said. “Who is this!”

The line went dead.

He paced the hall, weeping, back and forth, back and forth; he saw Caroline in his mind’s eye, her beauty superimposed upon Emmeline’s emaciated, mocking face.

He looked at his watch. It was after eleven now. When would the play have ended? More than an hour ago, surely?

The phone sounded behind him like a detonation, shocking him. He grabbed it. “Yes, who is it?”

“Charles! Edward here.”

He almost cried out in despair. “What the hell do you want?”

“Charles, are you okay? You been hitting the old–?”

“I’m fine,” he snapped. “What do you want?”

“Just had a call from the US. That film company I told you about – they’ve made a meaty offer for the rights of the
Tide
series—”

He laughed out loud at the sheer banality of the communication, and slammed down the receiver.

He resumed his pacing. He wanted nothing more than to be put out of his misery. He knew with a terrible inevitability what the next hour or so would bring, and he wanted it to be over and done with.

He willed the phone to ring with the news, then wondered why he was waiting. Why not pre-empt the inevitable? He knew where the rope was stored, and the main bough of the willow would take his weight... Do it now, he urged himself, get it over with.

He hurried down the hall and through the front door. He crossed to the garage beside the house, his way lit by the full moon. He scraped open the garage door, laughing now with relief that the end was so near.

He found the old cardboard box in the corner of the garage and pulled out the looped rope, thick and rough in his grip. It was even tied into an accommodating noose, so he need not spend time trying to form the knot.

He turned and moved to the entrance of the garage, the rope heavy in his arms.

When he heard the sound of the car in the drive, popping gravel, he knew that rather than phone him, someone at the theatre – the producer or director, perhaps – had come to see him personally with the dire tidings.

He stopped by the door and stared out.

A black car, appropriately enough, faced him across the gravel. Moonlight glinted on the windscreen, concealing whoever was in the driving seat.

He steeled himself for the news, and he knew how he would react. He would tell whoever it was that he had begged her not to go ahead with the play, that he had told her she would die. Shunning responsibility, yet again...

He took a step towards the car, then stopped.

The door cracked open and the driver stepped out.

He dropped the coiled rope.

She faced him, smiling. “I told you,” she murmured. She looked at the small gold watch on her slim wrist and said, “Almost three hours, Charles, and I’m still alive. And,” she went on, “that was the first time and the very last that I’ll play the part. An understudy can take over, now.”

“Caroline,” he said.

He wanted to take her to the willow tree and show her where, almost forty years ago, Emmeline had hanged herself, and he would try to explain the guilt he had carried with him down all the years.

He would sell his wife’s early, exuberant self-portraits, he decided, and the later, haunted paintings he would ceremonially burn... and in so doing exorcise Emmeline’s ghost from the house, for ever.

Caroline came towards him. “You’re free, Charles,” she said. “You’re free, at last.”

He crossed the drive-way to meet her in the moonlight.

The author

Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short fiction and has published forty books and over a hundred stories. His latest books include the novel
The Kings of Eternity
and the children’s book
A Monster Ate My Marmite
. His work has been translated into sixteen languages and he writes a monthly science fiction review column for the
Guardian
. He lives in Dunbar, East Lothian, with his wife and daughter. His website can be found at: www.ericbrownsf.co.uk