Some Old Lover's Ghost (16 page)

It was four o’clock when I reached the hospital. The place was huge and confusing, like all hospitals. My brain, still numbed by cold, lost me three times on the way to Tilda’s ward. When I got out of the lift, carrying the rather pathetic bunch of daffodils I’d bought in the market in Oxford, I saw a middle-aged woman standing beside the drinks machine. Patrick Franklin stood beside her. I remembered sewing the prawns into the hem of Toby’s coat, and my heart sank and I knew that my face was fiery red.

I wanted to go straight back into the lift, but it was too late, Patrick had already seen me. A small, mocking smile played around the corners of his mouth. I ignored him, and held out my hand to the middle-aged woman.

‘Mrs Parker?’

Melissa Parker was in her late fifties, smartly dressed, her greying hair smoothly waved. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m Rebecca Bennett. We spoke on the phone this morning.’

‘Miss Bennett! How good of you to come.’ Melissa’s voice was Home Counties, with none of Tilda’s gentle East Anglian lilt. She shook my hand.

I took a deep breath. ‘Patrick,’ I said, and he nodded to me. I had been mistaken about the smile, I thought; he was glowering.

‘How is Tilda?’

‘A little better. My daughter’s with her.’ Melissa glanced at
her watch. ‘I must go – we really should try to contact Josh, though no doubt he will be maddeningly unavailable, as usual.’ She looked flustered.

It clicked, then. Patrick’s father – Tilda’s son – was Josh Franklin, the travel writer. Every now and then one sees an article by him in a colour supplement, accompanied by a photograph in which he is pounding across salt flats or squatting in a tent, surrounded by nomads in exotic rags.

‘Matty!’ called Melissa suddenly. ‘Matty! Over here!’

I looked around but could see only a couple of nurses, bustling purposefully down the corridor, and a girl in black leggings, black top, and DMs. She had a nose-ring and little purple plaits in her chestnut hair, and couldn’t possibly be related to smart, conventional Melissa Parker. Yet she strode across the lino towards us.

‘Grandma’s asleep,’ said the girl with the nose-ring. ‘Can I have a Coke, Mum?’

Matty Parker looked about sixteen. She was several inches taller than her mother, and she had, beneath the thick kohl and mascara, clear grey pellucid eyes, just like Tilda’s.

‘We haven’t time,’ said Melissa. ‘Your father will be home.’

‘I’ll drink it in the car. Go on, Mum.’

‘Have you an address for Josh, Patrick?’

‘There’s a twenty pence in your coat pocket. Can I have that?’

‘I’ll phone Laura, in Delhi.’

‘I only need another fifteen.’

‘She should be able to get a message to him.’

‘So thirsty—’

‘Mother will not be sensible. She is eighty, Patrick. She really – oh, Matty, do be quiet! And why you had to wear that – that
thing
…!’ Melissa’s voice wobbled.

I said, ‘Here you are,’ and fished in my pocket and found some change. Melissa said tearfully, ‘There’s really no need,’ and Patrick explained to me that he’d used up all his change in the car park. The coins clanked inside the drinks machine.

Matty said, ‘Mum doesn’t like my nose-ring, Patrick. Or my tattoo. Have I showed you my tattoo?’ She pulled aside several layers of black T-shirt to reveal a skinny arm ornamented from shoulder to elbow with a jade-green Celtic knot.

‘Delightful,’ said Patrick.

‘I’m going to sue.’ Melissa dragged Matty to the lift. ‘She isn’t eighteen. It’s against the law, isn’t it, Patrick?’

I heard Matty’s, ‘Grandma likes it,’ and Melissa’s final despairing, ‘Just
too
bad—’ as the doors closed, swallowing them. Then I was alone with Patrick.

I waved the daffodils at him and said quickly, ‘I’ll leave these with the nurse,’ and headed up the corridor. Tilda was asleep behind green flowered curtains; I left her to what peace and privacy can be had in a hospital, and deposited the wilting flowers and a scribbled note with the sister. I’d hoped that Patrick would be gone by the time I came back, but he was standing opposite the lift, lolling against the window sill, hands in pockets.

He asked me whether I was driving home straight away, and I had to explain what had happened to my car. ‘Pig of a day to break down,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift. I must go back to London tonight.’

I couldn’t think of a polite way of refusing him. We left the hospital and walked to his car. I’d expected something macho in British Racing Green, but Patrick drove an oldish Renault. He drove fast and skilfully, though, and the silence was deafening. He still seemed cross and brooding, and dark shadows were smudged under his eyes. I was aware of his hands, resting lightly on the steering wheel, and the small golden hairs on the backs of his wrists. The silence was intolerable: I had to speak.

‘About the prawns – you must think me mad—’

Again, that twist to the corners of his mouth. ‘Not at all. It brightened a very dull evening.’

‘I don’t usually do things like that—’

‘No?’ He glanced sideways at me. ‘How disappointing.’

I could think of nothing to say to that. I gave up attempting
to explain, and voiced my other worry. ‘I hope I didn’t upset Tilda. I mean – I hope that it wasn’t what we talked about that made her ill.’

Patrick changed down a gear to take a tight corner, and shook his head. ‘It was to do with you, but only very indirectly. She was sorting out material to give you, and she came across some pictures – sketches, watercolours, that sort of thing. So she went into Oxford to buy frames – at least she didn’t drive, thank God, she took the bus – and then she got out the stepladder and hung the pictures.’ His voice was grimly amused. It was dark outside, and the treetops linked together overhead, their branches briefly golden as the headlamps lit them. ‘She was taken ill overnight. Just wore herself out, the doctor thinks.’

Silence seized us again as he drove onto the motorway. I was exhausted; it had been a long, tiresome day, and I could have fallen asleep. He’d offered me a lift, though, and I felt that I should make an effort.

‘I thought that Melissa’s daughter was rather … surprising.’

Patrick gave a crack of laughter. ‘Aunt Melissa had everything just right until Matty came along. Married the right husband, lived in the right house, had two daughters who were credits to her. Then – wham – Matty, the troublesome late baby. Tilda adores her, of course.’

Very late, I thought. Melissa must have been well into her forties when Matty was born.

I wanted to ask him about his father, the illustrious Josh Franklin, but the humour had gone from his eyes and his mouth had settled back into grim lines. I didn’t even attempt conversation for the remainder of my journey. I let my eyes close, wishing I could sleep yet unable to relax because of his nearness. I wandered into that state between wakefulness and sleep, where the bleep of the indicator whenever Patrick changed lanes mingled with a patchwork of random and disjointed thoughts. When we reached my flat, I asked, certain that he would refuse, whether he would like coffee.

He glanced at his watch. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

Hell, I thought, as I unlocked the door of the flat. I realized how hungry I was. I’d had a cup of tea at the garage and a Mars bar in Oxford, that was all. I peered in the fridge.

‘Would you like an omelette?’

He blinked. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble—’

‘It’s no more trouble to make two than one. And I’m starving.’

I beat eggs in the kitchen while he prowled around my front room. The egg mixture bubbled pleasingly in the pan – one of my better efforts – and I took the plates and cutlery through.

‘You don’t mind eating here, do you? Only the kitchen’s rather cold.’ I put his plate on the arm of my one comfortable chair.

‘I’d eat on the pavement if someone else cooked for me.’

I put on a CD, as a precaution against silences. I guessed that Patrick, like Max, would like Bach. He sat down at last, and seemed to relax a little.

‘Tilda’s illness must have been very worrying for you.’

He tore his chunk of bread in half. ‘Aunt Melissa phoned in the middle of the night.’

‘It’s what might have happened,’ I said.

‘Quite. I was working late anyway, so I just drove down to Oxford straight away.’ He grinned, and the smile lightened his face, making him look more approachable. ‘God – when I was twenty I used to be able to miss a night’s sleep and hardly feel the worse for it. I must be getting old.’ He finished his last piece of omelette and stood up. ‘Thank you, Rebecca, that was just what I needed. I must go, I have to be in court tomorrow.’

After he had gone, I could not, to my surprise, settle to anything. I’d thought to have a hot bath and collapse quickly into bed, but though I soaked for half an hour in the Chanel bubble bath that Lucy Lightman had given me for Christmas, I no longer felt sleepy. So I cleaned the kitchen with untypical thoroughness, handwashed some clothes and flung them over the rack in the bath, and looked through bank statements and cheque stubs to make sure I had enough cash in my current account to pay for the repair to my car. And all the time I thought not of
Toby, but of Patrick. I couldn’t work out why I was thinking of Patrick – he was, after all, morose, unwelcoming, and sarcastic, and I still couldn’t recall the episode with the prawns without doubling up with embarrassment. He was physically attractive, it was true, but though it was six months since Toby and I had split up, I did not yet feel ready for another relationship. I had no idea what Patrick thought of me, but I guessed that he had been reasonably pleasant tonight because of my professional relationship with Tilda. Yet whenever I closed my eyes I saw his face, and I struggled to find a comfortable position for my hot, aching limbs.

I fell asleep eventually in the early hours of the morning. I was woken by the sound of a footstep on the stairs. I opened my eyes. The room was a complete, velvety black. I wanted to reach out and light the candle on my chest of drawers, but I was unable to move. A creak as the door opened, and then a rustle of fabric told me that
he
was in the room. I wanted to scream, but could not. I lay very still, eyes shut, praying that if he believed me asleep he would go away.

I felt the bedclothes peeled off me, one by one. The coverlet, the scratchy blankets. Outside in the night, an owl hooted. I was shivering violently, and though I tried to whisper
No
, no sound came out. He lifted my nightgown, bared my body. Then he lay on me. His weight suffocated me; I tried to struggle, to scream, to push him away, but I was paralysed. He was forcing the breath from my lungs. I tried to move my head from side to side, to make even the small movement of opening my eyes, and as I found my lids and prised them apart, I felt tears slide from my face. My sobs repeated the rhythmic movement of his body. I gasped for breath.

When I awoke, he still lingered. There was still the weight of his body on mine, an incubus. I didn’t know whether I had cried aloud, but I reached up my hand and touched the tears that beaded my lashes. It was only when I fumbled for and found the light switch, rather than a candle, that I convinced myself that it had only been a dream. Light flooded the room,
extinguishing the ghost of Edward de Paveley, who belonged, after all, to another time. Yet the image of the servant’s attic remained with me, and I focused on the television, the laptop, the CD player, as if to reassure myself that it really was 1995, and not 1913.

I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. My hand shook as I filled the kettle, and tea leaves scattered from the spoon to the work surface. But I took my mug and sat down at my desk, and switched on my laptop. I had left Tilda in the London of the early 1930s, trying to forget Daragh Canavan. Though Tilda’s ghosts might now haunt me, they compelled me too, drawing me into their story.

The train lurched into Liverpool Street Station. Out of the clouds of white steam a small figure appeared, screamed, dropped her suitcases and ran down the platform.

‘Roland! Tilda!’

Tilda hugged Emily as Roland dashed up the platform to collect his sister’s cases. ‘Em, you look marvellous. It’s been so
long
. I moved into the new room yesterday.’

Celia had married, and Emily’s letter telling Tilda that Mrs Potter had at last agreed to let her work in London had arrived the day that Anna had offered Tilda Celia’s old room. It was a large, spacious room, easily big enough for two, at the front of the house.

Roland hailed a taxi to take them back to Pargeter Street. After he had hauled his sister’s suitcases upstairs, he glanced at his watch.

‘I’ve to work this evening, I’m afraid, Em. The theatre critic has appendicitis.’ He stooped and kissed Emily. ‘Tilda has something organized, haven’t you, Tilda?’

‘Max is taking us to the theatre and to supper.’

‘Terrific. I’ll be off then.’

Tilda helped Emily unpack. ‘I’ve simply masses to tell you,’
said Emily, flinging stockings into a drawer. ‘Oh heavens, what shall I wear tonight? You look so
chic
, Tilda. I’ve my old blue thing or my old red thing. I’m going to buy a black dress – Mummy won’t let me buy black. And I’m going to sign up at a secretarial agency, and find a boyfriend. Who’s Max, Tilda?’

‘I wrote to you about Max.’ Tilda arranged Emily’s dresses on hangers, suspended them from the picture rail, and considered them. ‘The red, I think, Em. The navy blue is rather—’

‘It makes me look like a parlourmaid,’ said Emily glumly. ‘A rather fat parlourmaid.’

There was a knock at the door. When Tilda opened it, Max, outside, tapped his watch.

‘We ought to go.’

‘Roland can’t make it. He has to review a play.’

Max grinned. ‘I know. A left-wing prose-poem in a church hall in Brompton, poor blighter.’

They went to a musical and then to supper afterwards. Emily howled through the play, Max slept. Since the previous September, Max and Tilda had been to a play or concert almost every week. Max chose the programmes: part of Tilda’s education, he explained. He took her to Shakespeare and Shaw, Bach and Mozart. She discovered that the more you educated yourself, the more you realized you didn’t know. Max made her book lists, which she ploughed through, abandoning the dullest with a howl of rage but entranced by the best, turning page after page, falling asleep over the book in the early hours of the morning. At first, Tilda’s discussions with Max had sometimes degenerated into argument: Max exasperated by what he saw as her contrariness, Tilda provoked by his lack of patience. But almost imperceptibly their quarrels had lessened, animosity replaced by mutual respect, and then by friendship. Occasionally when the weather was fine they went for walks in the countryside, taking the train and hiking over field and coast. Max was good company and utterly unforthcoming, which suited Tilda. She did not enquire about his family because she did not want him to enquire about hers. There was a skin of pain and shame that she could not slough off.