Walking with Ghosts (18 page)

He has gone to Sally Bowles and you indulge yourself in a year or more of enforced domesticity. You spend time with your children, you take them out at the weekends, you read to them, you buy them new clothes and alter the old ones. You make dresses for Diana, sprawling over the carpet with paper patterns, cutting, sewing, rainbow silks and satins. The three of you toddle off down the avenue to the theatre, a box of Cadbury’s Bourneville Selection passing to and fro in the dark. You try everything to make it feel like an ordinary family, a normal family. But there is no man there, only the ghost of one. The father of your children strung himself from the pear tree. You cannot alter it, Dora. You are different. Billy and Diana are different. They know what people say. They take the jibes from the other kids at school. Billy screams out in his sleep. Diana never speaks about it in words of more than one syllable.

You were all born a generation too early. What was acceptable in 1990, and what will be commonplace at the turn of the century (far too late for you), is still barely thinkable in 1980. You are a victim of history. You nudged too far ahead of your time, on to the spearhead ledge where saints and martyrs stand. The ledge where all personal magic is anachronistic; where the only possible redemption is grace.

You dared to think that Philip was grace, and that Philip’s world might hold a nook for you. You had courage, Dora, in those days. Or was it something else? Bravado? Madness?

The doorbell rings. You are reading a first-year essay, poised above it with your red pen. It is an essay you have read a million times before, penned by different hands; it has no originality, no resonance, no life. It is Wednesday evening, the last time you looked at your watch it was after ten. You glance at it again. It is still after ten.

You open the door to a slim young man. Very young. You guess he is not much more than twenty. He is dark with quick, penetrating eyes. When he speaks you catch the rough edge in his voice, intimations of Arthur and an origin in the working class.

‘Are you Dora?’ he asks. ‘My name’s Philip. Smiley sent me.’

‘Smiley? Is something wrong?’

‘No. He gave me your name and address. I’m starting a campaign to free Rachel Lloyd. Smiley thought you might be interested in helping.’

You know about Rachel Lloyd, Dora. She has been arrested in Argentina. What does he mean, a campaign? Why should Smiley give your name to him?

Philip shivers on the doorstep. ‘Is it too late to come in?’ he asks.

You show him into the kitchen, offering coffee, still not sure if you want to be involved in this scheme.

‘Milk,’ he says.

‘Milk?’

‘Yeah, just a glass of cold milk. If that’s all right?’

You go to the refrigerator, asking him how he thinks you can help. When you turn back he has seated himself at the table and is unbuttoning his coat. He looks even younger in the artificial light. Perhaps he is not yet twenty. His eyes flash around the room.

He places a sheaf of papers on the table. ‘I’ve got together as many facts as I can,’ he says. ‘There’s something about her history in there, previous research, et cetera. It’s obvious they’ve got her on a trumped-up charge. They must need a scapegoat.’ He pauses to drink milk from his glass, leaving a white film on his upper lip. ‘Christ, that’s really good.

Smiley wants to help, but he’s tied up at the moment. We thought you could handle the university end of things. I’m working on the trade unions and trying to push it through my Labour Party branch, but it would be good if the university was involved.’

‘Do you have a petition?’

‘Yeah.’ He points to the sheaf of papers. ‘It’s all in there. We need to get some bread together to start a campaign fund. Smiley thought you could help with that.’

‘Money?’

He nods his head. ‘Bread, yeah. If you want to help you could have a party or something. Charge admission. The petition form has a section for donations to the campaign fund. We don’t need a lot. Something to cover expenses, and if we get more we can send it to Rachel. She’s probably being starved in prison.’

A party, Dora. Why not? It would bring people to the house. New contacts. As well as providing money, er, bread?, for the campaign fund.

‘You invite the university crowd,’ he says. ‘I’ll bring a group from the Labour Party, well, Young Socialists. We’ll ask everyone who comes to sign the petition and give a donation to the fund.’

‘OK.’ You laugh, and realize that you have not laughed like that for a long time. Not a real laugh.

Philip looks around the room as he prepares to leave. ‘It’s a nice place,’ he says. ‘A really nice place.’

And a fortnight later he is there again, together with his friends from the Young Socialists. Smiley is there with Sally Bowles. The University Socialist and Labour Societies, and the trappings of the party, wine, bottles and kegs of beer, and for you, Dora, a special treat and indulgence: a bottle of gin.

You drink far too much of the gin. Smiley’s fault, of course. You would not have drunk so much if he had stayed away, or at least left his Sally Bowles at home. But she js there, looking ravishing, and young, and clinging to Smiley’s arm, her eyes flashing.

The party works anyway, despite you, Dora. Someone takes over the record player and plays silly pop songs, which seem to be exactly what everyone wants. They drink, they mix, they dance, they talk and laugh together, and no one leaves until well after midnight. Then they come to you, singly, and in couples. They have to leave, but it has been wonderful. Really enjoyable. Their faces are shining, their eyes sparkling. They are not putting on an act, being merely polite. The best party for a long time. You must do it again, Dora. People should mix more. There is not enough social life in this town. It really has been wonderful. Everyone is pleased.

When they have gone there is only you and Philip. He makes coffee for you in the kitchen and brings it through to the living room. He drinks milk. He rubs his stomach thoughtfully, nursing his ulcer. You don’t believe in his ulcer. He is far too young to have an ulcer. But maybe you are wrong. Your head is difficult to hold. The coffee seems to help, but you have drunk a lot of gin.

You never get to know Philip. He reveals himself all the time. He is naive, even endearing, but there is no substance to him. He is a leader. People follow his lead because he is open-ended, vacant. It is possible to make of him whatever you will, to project on to him qualities that you wish were there. But there is nothing. In reality he is a simple soul: he fucks (will you ever be completely comfortable with that word?), he coins platitudes, he takes. You can never resist him.

You could talk to him all night and still not find his core, because he has never found it himself. When he leaves your bed he leaves nothing behind, not even a memory. The sheet is cold next to you. It is as if he has never been there. He is an escapologist like Houdini and Dylan Thomas. His kisses fade on contact. You make him real by discussions about with a third person; everyone wants to talk about him. But when everything has been said he has slipped away into the mists of Argentina, or Rachel Lloyd, or marriage, or, finally, he has disappeared, gone, vanished.

For some weeks (was it months?) he used your bed like a urinal. He comes to it on impulse, relieves himself, and goes away. Eventually he comes no longer, marries his Jude, and leaves an epitaph tacked to your soul:
Christ, Dora, I like old women. They’re so grateful.

But the parties go on. The parties go on for ever. And the gin bottle becomes a fixture. It leads you from one Saturday night to the next. You experiment with marijuana, taking small drags and aping the reactions of the rest of the group. It does not do anything for you. The young men hover around like flies, and you do not brush them away.

They are all Philips in different shapes and sizes, young bucks eager to flex their new-found sexual muscle. They bring a kind of warmth with them, even a kind of meaning. But they do not stay. They never stay for long. You do not have what it is they seek. You only have the semblance of it, the remains of it. You are a teacher, a practice ramp. They always take their proficiency elsewhere.

Even Cecil did not stay for long. And you could have loved her, Dora; she was different enough, odd, even ugly enough. You could have loved her if she had not been jealous of your past.

You slept through the eighties, Dora. You slept with everyone. You were unconscious, dreaming. Life was a nightmare, a succession of unfulfilled promises.

That day.

Diana comes home from school early, refusing to return, ever. The other kids say her mother is a cow. She stands and screams until you slap her face. There is a fire in the York Minster and an abducted Nigerian exile is found in a crate at Stansted. You need a drink.

Remember. An ex-sailor draping a black cape on the carpet. His friend called Scottie. You lie naked on the bed The sailor and Scottie sit on either side of you. Scottie has a full day’s growth of beard, and earlier in the evening y0ll fed him figs and asked him to kiss you on the cheek. Things have progressed since then. Terry Waite has been kidnapped in Beirut. The sailor watches you and Scottie undress each other; he sits like Buddha at the end of your bed, waiting for his turn. Now they are both saying thank you. They have to go. They have never met anyone like you.

When was it? A stuttering revolutionary called David. What the hell, Dora, you might be able to cure him. Of stuttering? Of spots? Of impotence? He’s got everything. He curses you, having read somewhere that language turns women on. His cock lies in the palm of your hand like a dead mouse. You are the ugliest woman he has ever slept with. He cannot believe you are that old. He must have been out of his mind to come here, to your room. You are a filthy wrinkled cow. He couldn’t; he just couldn’t. If you are desperate he will help you out with the neck of the gin bottle. The Internationale unites the human race. In the morning. The
Guardian
tells you:
All-day opening in English and Welsh pubs.

Television pictures. The Berlin wall is pulled down. You return home to find a long black cape on the living-room floor. Diana is in bed with the sailor. You scream. You pull him out of bed by his leg, drag him across the carpet, along the corridor, down the stairs. You scream and tear your hair. You stand and scream until Diana slaps your face. She is only having fun. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on it, Dora. You have no right to interfere.’ She stands at her bedroom window and watches the sailor limp along the avenue. She is naked apart from a T-shirt. She turns adult eyes on you. Eyes you have never seen her wear before. ‘You... you... God.’ She stamps her foot in frustration. ‘We hadn’t even finished.’

You go to your first AA meeting. You stop drinking. There are no more parties. Just you and Lady Day.

Diana goes to Czechoslovakia to fight for democracy. You watch the demonstrations on the television. She does not return when she said she would. One hundred and seventeen Czech policemen have been injured. She is not among those arrested. You wait for three and a half black weeks before she writes to Billy from Prague. ‘Having fun. Tell Dora not to worry.’ Alexander Dubcek has become chairman of the Federal Assembly. Vaclav Havel is President.

23

J.D. had been playing poker last night. Might be playing still. Marie had slept fitfully. Alone. She thought she would never get used to having a man in her bed again, but it had only taken a couple of nights. Now, when he wasn’t there, she found it hard to adjust. She dragged herself to the bathroom and stood under the shower. J.D. must have altered the settings because it was hotter than usual and the water velocity swifter, drumming her flesh.

Gus, her late husband, had installed the shower. From time to time Marie thought of leaving this house, moving somewhere else, somewhere new, where Gus hadn’t fitted the shower, or painted the ceiling, where he hadn’t built a corner unit. Somewhere he hadn’t left a print.

But she didn’t move, because it would be pointless. The man had left his mark on
her.
There was never a gap of more than a few days when she didn’t think about him. After the initial shock of his death, a kind of dazed withdrawal, she had pulled herself together for the funeral. Everyone had gathered around, Sam and Geordie, and especially Celia, and walked her through it. Literally. Held her up by the elbows.

That had been the easy part.

Later she had gone on a quest for Gus, a tense period of restless behaviour, a kind of madness. She would see him in the street. She would see someone, some
thing
in the street, which wasn’t Gus, which could not possibly have been Gus, but which, in her madness, she thought was him. There was a day when she followed a man she believed was her dead husband. She saw him in Parliament Street and tracked him through Marks and Spencer and along the Stonebow, and caught hold of him outside Sainsbury’s, touched his shoulder, and sucked in her breath as he turned towards her face which belonged to a stranger.

In her desire for a miracle she would hallucinate him. Reading a book at the small table in the living room, lost in the plot or the syrupy lives of the characters, unaware of real life, real events, she’d look up and watch Gus materialize opposite her. It was as if he were real. As if she could reach out and touch him. He’d be wearing the green sweater, the one that had lost a thread near the collar, and she’d want to reach out and take it from him, mend it before it got worse.