Walking with Ghosts (14 page)

‘How’d you know that?’

‘Is it true?’

‘Yes, it’s true. Acquainted isn’t how most people’d put it, but even they’d understand what you mean. Are you from the police?’

‘No.’

‘And Eddy. Mr Blake, well, I call him Eddy. Will he find out I’ve talked to you?’

‘Not from us. Anything you tell me is in strict confidence.’

‘Did you bring the money?’

‘Fifty pounds. I’ve got it here.’ He tapped his jacket pocket.

‘Hand it over, then.’

‘After the interview. First, I ask the questions, then, when you’ve answered them, you get the money.’

‘I already told you everything on the phone. Fuck, that walk up the stairs was worth fifty quid. I showed you everything but the Post Office tower. How do I know you won’t get the answers you want and then just leave me here, take the money away with you?’

Geordie looked at her. ‘You don’t, Joni. All right to call you that?’

She didn’t smile. She looked him right in the eye. ‘I don’t give a fuck what you call me, Geordie, so long as I get that fifty pound note.’

The baby began to cry, and Joni repeated the dummy and raspberry jam trick.

‘How long’ve you known Edward Blake?’

‘ ’Bout eighteen months.’

‘What is your relationship?’

‘He’s a sugar daddy. I service his fantasies. Sometimes I’m his princess, and sometimes I’m a slut.’ She giggled. ‘Actually, I’m a slut all the time.’

‘D’you dress up?’ Geordie asked, hearing an element of fascination in his tone that he’d hoped to suppress.

Joni smiled. ‘Sometimes. I’ll show you if you like.’

He shook his head. ‘Not really necessary. What I was getting at—’

‘—I think it’s fairly obvious what you’re getting at. Yes, he comes round and fucks me once or twice a week.’

‘Is that all?’

She put her hand up to her face. ‘He’s rough from time to time. Last week he gave me this black eye. Knocked me over a chair, and hurt my ribs.’ She pulled up her V-necked, off-white sweater to reveal bruising under her left breast.

‘Was that an unprovoked attack?’

‘What?’

‘Did you give him any reason to hurt you?’

She nodded her head. ‘Yeah. He pays the rent, gives me money. Jacqui was crying all the time. He doesn’t like that. But he never touches her, he takes it out on me.’

‘Did you report it to the police?’

Joni laughed. She laughed so loud the baby started crying again. Geordie didn’t laugh, but he couldn’t stop himself smiling when he remembered what he’d asked her. When she stopped laughing he asked her, ‘Do you think he killed his wife?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘If he killed her, he could kill me. I don’t get that kind of vibe off him. Also, the way she died, his wife, I mean, she starved to death, didn’t she? He’s more physical than that. He likes a bit of rough and tumble. If she’d been beaten to death, strangled, something like that. If she’d been stabbed, I might’ve thought he could’ve done it. But not starving someone to death. He wouldn’t do that. Not Eddy.’ She shivered. ‘Starving someone to death? That’s Creep City. I’ve met some weird fuckers in my life, but I’ve never met anyone who’d do a thing like that. Jesus and Mary, that’s worse’n Hitler.’

There were lots of things Geordie could have said about Joni Prine, but he contented himself with one. As he walked along the street after leaving her house he glanced back once and shook his head. ‘She’s piss-poor,’ he said.

The register office was around the corner in Bootham. Geordie walked up the steps and followed a short corridor round to the right. Behind the glass partition was a receptionist with a face like a vampire, about the same age as him. Peroxide hair, blue and cerise eye shadow, and freshly applied cerise lipstick to match. She gave enough of a smile to encourage Geordie to state his business, but not nearly enough to crack the stark white porcelain foundation which caked her face.

‘How do you go about getting married?’ Geordie asked. She glanced behind her quickly, then looked him in the eye. ‘First you get a girlfriend,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘And you take her out dancing, and buy her jewellery, and take her to fancy restaurants, and you tell her you’re earning about twice as much as you’re really earning, and that your boss is going to die soon and leave you the business.’ She smiled again and took a deep breath, obviously prepared to go on if no one stopped her.

‘Yeah,’ Geordie said. ‘Am I the first customer today?’

She shook her head. ‘Let me put it like this - you’re the first customer today who looked like he could take a bit of fun.’

‘Only I’ve heard that more people live together, don’t bother getting married at all, even when they have kids. So I thought maybe you was bored. Not getting enough customers.’

‘It’s not true,’ she told him, leaning forward on her elbows. ‘The people who come in here, they nearly all want to get married, or register a birth or a death. This morning I’ve had five people registering deaths, six births, and you’re my first marriage. Who’s the lucky girl?’

‘Janet,’ Geordie told her. ‘We’ve been living together, but now we’re gonna have a baby, so we want to get married.’

‘Romantic.’

‘We wanna do it as soon as possible.’

‘'Very
romantic.’ She consulted a calendar. ‘This year?’ Geordie shook his head. ‘This week.’

‘Oooh, la la.’ She clasped a hand to her breast. Silver nail polish. ‘I’ve gone all of a flutter.’ A door opened behind her and an older woman in a sober suit walked into the office. The vampire girl shuffled on her seat, then looked back at Geordie and came with an altogether different tone of voice. ‘The minimum notice is three days, sir. This is Wednesday, so the earliest we can do you is Friday. And it’s £72.50 for the special licence.’

‘Friday’ll be fine,’ he told her. ‘What time?’

‘You have to fill in this form,’ she said, passing it over to him. ‘And read the accompanying notes, which explain the procedure.’

‘Thanks.’ He picked up the form and walked away to a small table. He took his pen out of his inside pocket and began reading the questions, scratching his head from time to time in an effort to recall a date or the correct spelling of a word.

When he’d finished the older woman had disappeared, and the vampire girl was alone again. Geordie handed her the completed form and leaned over the counter towards her. ‘What I’ve heard,’ he said, in little more than a whisper, ‘in the old days they used to have wives and concubines.’

17

Diana is cross-legged on the carpet. She teases a lock of hair from the mass and pulls it forward, inspecting it myopically. She should wear glasses, but is too vain. You wonder if you should suggest contact lenses, but it would be of no use. She does what she wants to do.

‘I dreamt I got a letter from Billy,’ she tells you. ‘He sent his love.’ She continues to inspect her hair. She is not kind, Dora. Your daughter is not kind to you. If she says Billy sent his love in a letter in a dream, then Billy must have done so. Diana would not make it up. Diana would not say she’d dreamt that Billy sent his love if Billy had not sent his love. It is something you can rely on, this scrap of information. Something incontrovertible. Billy sends his love to you in a letter in a dream. He sends it from London, where he practised to become a bouncer, or Bradford where he lived in an Asian community. The land of the purdah. The land he ran to in an unconscious flight from the image of his mother. The land from which he will never return, except, possibly, for your funeral.

‘No, he didn’t say much,’ Diana tells you. ‘He’s not in Bradford any more, I can’t remember where he is. Closer to home.’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘D’you remember Dotty?’

‘Yes.’ You have a vision of a small spotty girl, aged twelve or thereabouts.

‘Was at school with me,’ Diana reminds you. ‘She’s gone into a convent. She’s a bride of Christ.’ Diana shrieks with laughter. She is like you, Dora. She does not waste her time on God. You do not know what she does waste it on. You cannot ask her. She will only go through her Ms routine: Men, marijuana, music, menstruation, masturbation, macrobiotics, madness, magazines, monotony, money, magic, myopia, mutilation, moussaka, and madeira. She will mortify you with her Ms.

You wonder if Billy writes often. In dreams.

‘Not a lot,’ Diana tells you. ‘Twice, maybe three times a year.’ She looks at you and a shadow passes over her face an internal shadow, such as you have not seen from her since she was a child. ‘It doesn’t seem as though you’ll get well again, Dora?’

You shake your head. There is a discernible tremor in Diana’s voice. Something inside her is trembling. You are unnerved. You are always unnerved when she is like this. It is not a common occurrence. Even as a child she was sure of herself, certain that her own perceptions were reality, and that reality was something to overcome. Whenever her voice wobbled you could take her in your arms, crush her into your body. Only when her voice wobbled. At no other time.

You hold out your arms and she scrambles towards you on her knees. Your frail arms pass around her back and you press them against her until they ache. She is trembling, Dora, your daughter. This big girl of yours. This woman.

You tell her you might live for ever, but there is no conviction in your voice. You know that you are dying. And Diana knows as well. And she knows that you know. It is not possible to play games with Diana. She lives in the hard kernel of the truth.

She is convulsed by sobs, speaking only in the small intervals between them. ‘I don’t want you to die, Dora.’

She does not need a reply. You stroke her body, you make sounds of encouragement. You coo like a bird. Like a silly old bird.

‘You’re all I’ve got, Dora. You and Billy. I can’t face it if you die, and Billy is only there in dreams. I don’t know what’ll happen to me.’

You tell her it will be all right. A woman’s life is like that. No one can see into the future. Sometimes it is bad, sometimes it is very bad. But the good times come round again, often when you least expect them. You cannot afford to be weak. Not too weak, anyway; and certainly not all the time. Life is good. In the end life is good. Whatever they take away from you, there is always so much left. She will probably marry a rich old man, have children of her own. You laugh, Dora, hoping she will laugh with you. Yes, why not? Children of her own. She is only twenty-seven. Stranger things have happened.

‘I wish we were a normal family,’ she says. ‘I wish Father was still alive.’

You have not been a good mother. You never approached perfection.

‘But that’s not what I mean,’ Diana tells you. ‘I wouldn’t want you to change, Dora. You’re my mother, and I love you. Only I don’t know what drives me. I don’t know why I’m like I am. I don’t know why I’m different, Dora. Do you understand? I don’t know why I’m not normal.’

She loves you, Dora. That is what she said. It is another incontrovertible fact. Your Diana has never been one to mince words. If she says love, she means love. You pull her to your face and feel the warmth of her entering your body.

Her life has not yet begun, you tell her. You had exactly the same fears at her age. It is not hopeless. It is never hopeless. You will always be with her. You will live inside of her. Long after you are dead you will still live inside her. She will never be able to shake you off. And there will come a time for her when she turns a corner, when the past, when everything that has hampered her will fade away. The physical past will no longer be there, it will be spiritualized, and she will be able to take from it whatever she finds useful. That is how it is in life. It is like the sea. It comes and goes in waves, now turbulent, crushing, frightening, exciting, full of passion, and then it is calm, peaceful, empty, boring, slow, and silent. You only have to remember that the waves come and go, come and go. There is constant change. Life and death. Life and death. It is the rhythm of the universe.

She kisses you, Dora. She really kisses you. She reaches up her face to yours, and you feel her lips on your cheek She gets to her feet and stands back, hands on her hips.

You tell her there is a song by Lady Day, ‘I’ll Never Be The Same’, and she goes off to find it. Buck Clayton and Lester Young together for the intro, then Billie holding back, intentionally lagging behind the beat all the way. Recorded in 1937, one of the happiest years of her life, and you can hear it in her phrasing, in her harmony. How she takes hold of banality by the throat and coaxes from it a kind of nectar.

‘You were always a bloody philosopher,’ Diana says. But she is smiling. She used to smile like that during your time with Smiley. At least at the beginning. During the first few weeks.

You were both in love with Smiley. For you he was a man, a man who had pulled you out of yourself, given you the key to your sexuality. But for Diana he was a dream. For Diana he was a reincarnation of Arthur. He was exactly what you and she were looking for. Nothing. A heaven-sent nothing. A spaceman filling up the spaces in your lives.

Smiley was comparatively fresh in those days. He had died an existential death the day the Russians moved into Czechoslovakia, but as yet the smell of death had not consumed him. He had removed his body from the Party, but there was no way he could recover his soul. And it was his body that came to you and Diana, a cadaver, an empty projectile wrapped in a paisley-patterned cravat.