Walking with Ghosts (27 page)

You walk back towards the house and Sam comes to meet you. He drapes your coat over your shoulders and takes your hand. You walk for a long time in silence, under the trees in the avenue, over the road to the park, alongside the lake.

‘You came back,’ he says.

‘You came for me.’

He laughs and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I wanted to meet you halfway.’

33

Over the years, piece by piece, William had refurnished the first-floor front room of the house in St Mary’s. The size of it had started him off, the height of the ceiling, the proportions. It was now an exact replica of the room his father had used as a study when William was a child.

Some of the furniture had been easy. For a long time he had carried in his mind a picture of his father’s favourite chair. The chair had a shield-shaped back, made of carved and inlaid mahogany. Although he looked for it in antique and second-hand shops he never found an exact replica until he managed to draw a picture of it for a dealer in Harrogate. The man looked at the picture and smiled. ‘I’ll find you one,’ he said. ‘Now that we know what we’re looking for.’

It was a chair in the style of Hepplewhite, and was the first piece of furniture in the transformation of the first-floor room. The desk came next, and through the same dealer. It was a writing-table, not a desk, French with reproduction Riesener marquetry, ormolu mounts and Sevres plaques from the end of the Louis XV period.

Those two had been the most expensive items William had purchased in his life, and they had depleted his funds considerably. After that he had had to resort to desperate means to put money back into the bank. The bookcase and shelving had been discovered in a second-hand shop in York, and he had got them for a song. William smiled at that, the thought of buying things with songs. William knew a singer, a professional singer - he’d done his make-up for him from time to time - who bought everything with a song.

In another second-hand shop he’d found the picture of the sailing ship. And the pens and the penholder almost completed the room. There were some books missing, books, the titles of which had gone from his memory. His father had had some large books, some of them so big that Billy, the child, had been unable to lift them.

For the carpet he had again had to use a dealer. It was Polish, with bold arabesques and long curved serrated leaves in reds and blues. Called Polish, but probably made, the dealer had told him, in Istanbul, back when it was Constantinople. An original would have been impossible to find, and would have cost more than a small country. But the dealer knew a woman who could make up a passable copy for three hundred pounds.

Black woman. She spoke with a Leeds accent but lived out at Escrick with her three children. She’d trained as an interior designer, but had turned to working with her hands. William couldn’t remember her name now, but he could remember her face, and that she was thirty-five years old. He’d remember her name later.

He got a headache after he’d met her. An early indication that she was like Dora.

The same woman had decorated the room for him. The wallpaper that his father had used was no longer available. It was lemon coloured, with tiny blue florets, and the woman had mixed pigment and painted directly on to the wall. For a while William had not been happy with it, because he knew it wasn’t wallpaper. But eventually he forgot about it, and now it felt exactly as he remembered the room when his father was still alive.

And there were times, more and more recently, when his father was there in the room. It was a ghostly presence, but none the less real for that. He couldn’t see his father when he was in the room. But he could feel him. ‘It makes me feel cold,’ he told himself, trying to analyse it. ‘Yet sustains me.’

That room and the attic room were the only furnished rooms in the house. William lived in the attic. The remainder of the house was a wasteland. There was a kitchen downstairs, somewhere to heat water or fry sausages, but it was not a pleasant place to be.

William sat in the room he had furnished like his father’s study when he was depressed, or when he wanted to feel close to his father, or when he needed to think. Today he needed to think over what Sam Turner had said to him. And he needed to think about his mother.

She was going to die at last. It was a flaw in the universe that she had managed to live so long after she had caused his father to die. Now, if he could believe what Sam Turner had told him, Dora was going to die soon. It would be good when she died. The world would be a better place. When he was still a child, living at home with Dora and his sister, Billy was the smallest. He was the smallest in the house, and he was the smallest at school. The smallness made him angry. And when he felt his anger it made him physically bigger and powerful. When that happened he could make Dora disappear, and Daddy come to life.

Now, if she died soon, that would become a reality. She would disappear from life. And if she disappeared from life his father would find it possible to live. Because they were opposites, those two. They had always been opposites. She was stupid, aggressive and intrusive. Billy, as a child, after the death of his father, had hated her, and now William, the man, hated her. His father had been loving, gentle, intelligent, and interesting. She should have died, and his father should have been the survivor. That would have made sense, had meaning. Now, after all these years, meaning was coming back?

William had told Sam Turner about the funeral. He’d wanted to show Turner what kind of woman Dora was, that was one thing. But he’d also felt able to talk to the man. He’d never see Dora again, but it was useful to have a go-between, then at least she’d know that William hadn’t forgiven her.

Funeral? Fiasco, more like.

Dora was not going to take Billy with her. She and Diana were going to go to the burial alone, and leave Billy at home with a neighbour. But Billy wouldn’t hear of it. He was going to be there, to listen to the service, to sing the hymns. To watch his father being sent up to heaven, to be there with the angels.

‘Billy, there won’t be any hymns,’ Dora had told him.

‘I don’t care. I want to go.’

The three of them left the house at ten o’clock that morning. There was a priest and some people who had worked with Billy’s father, but there was no coffin. The coroner’s office had forgotten to send it. The priest had telephoned, and someone was trying to sort it out. After sitting in the church for nearly an hour, all the other people left. Then the priest explained to Dora that the coffin would arrive, but he couldn’t wait for it. He had to be somewhere else. Some of his parishioners were sick. They were waiting for him. He’d return as soon as he could.

They went to the churchyard and found the hole in the ground. The gravediggers were still finishing it off, putting pieces of wood by the edge to stop the earth running back in. They walked off when Billy and Diana and Dora arrived. They didn’t say anything.

It was cold there. There was no sun, and the wind was whistling through the shrubs, round the gravestones. The hole had been dug at the very edge of the graveyard, under the wall where everything was in shadow. In the centre of the graveyard, there were graves with marble angels, and others with white and green pebbles and tiny wrought-iron barriers. Billy would have liked to see his father’s grave in the centre there, where there was light and air. But it seemed it had to be here in the gloom.

No bells rang in the church. Billy stood with the women and watched the earthworms in the newly dug soil. From time to time Dora or Diana shivered with the cold. Stamped their feet. Billy didn’t shiver or stamp his feet. He gritted his teeth and waited.

The hearse ordered by the coroner’s office came through the gate and drew up a hundred metres from the grave. Two men got out and loaded the coffin on to a wheeled gurney, which they pushed along the grass path to the edge of the grave. The plain wooden box containing his father’s body rocked and teetered as if it might crash to the ground. The main man nodded at Dora, glanced at Billy and Diana. Then the two gravediggers returned, one of them flicking a cigarette end into the bushes.

The priest returned, breathless, and commended Billy’s father’s body to God.
Trusting that thou wilt in all things surely ordain what is best for thy creation; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.

‘Do you want to say anything?’ the priest asked Dora. She took Diana’s and Billy’s hands and stepped forward. She said the Lord’s prayer: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven...’ She said it right through to the amen. Then she stepped back again, and looked at the priest and the gravediggers and Arthur’s coffin. Billy pulled his hand free from his mother’s grip.

They had a green rope which they put around the coffin so they could lower it into the hole. It seemed heavier at one end than the other, and it swung dangerously for a moment, as though they would lose it, banging against the top edge of the grave. But they controlled it and lowered it to the bottom. They threw the ends of the green rope down there too.

They stood quietly for a moment, then the main man said they’d be off. ‘We’ll leave you with yours,’ the priest said to Dora. She nodded at him.

After a while Dora collected a handful of earth and threw it into the hole. Billy heard it rattle on top of the coffin. Diana did the same. Billy watched his sister, thinking she Would have to copy Dora, pretend she was grown up.

And that was it. They walked away from the grave, and the gravediggers began filling it in before they’d reached the gate of the graveyard. The priest came out of the church then, and stood there while they walked past him. He had a black cassock on, and he had his hands tucked inside the sleeves, like a muff.

He called round later in the day, to see if he could be of service. Dora swore at him.

The church service had been different for Arthur because he had ‘laid violent hands’ on himself. That’s what they called it. Billy would never go into a church again after that day. If he lived to be a hundred he would never forgive them. The church was happy to give the proper service to idiots and lunatics, murderers and rapists, almost anyone who needed to be buried. But not William’s father, who was a truly good man.

William carried the candle into the room next to his father’s study. The room was unfurnished and faced the back garden. There was nothing covering the floor, just the bare boards. Along the wall behind the door was a long chest, and inside the chest was a busybody. Only he wasn’t busy any more.

Charles Hopper, secretary of the Fulford Players. His hands were tied behind his back, and his legs were trussed with the same rope. It was green, and new, and could have been used to hang out your washing on a windy day. Except William never hung out his washing. He took it to the launderette.

Charles Hopper had mad staring eyes. When William opened the lid of the chest, those eyes started blinking, and Flopper made sounds in his throat. He couldn’t speak, though, because of the clear parcel-tape over his mouth. He’d peed himself. William could smell it, and it was just as well he’d thought to put some newspaper in the bottom of the chest before he put Charles Hopper in there. Sooner or later, when Charles Hopper stopped all his blinking and making noises with his throat, William would have to dispose of the body, and then he’d have to clean up the mess in the chest. Not a pleasurable task. Not something to cheer a chap up on a rainy day.

That was the kind of thing his father might have said. William smiled at the thought. His mother would never have said anything like that. She would have said something about history. Something dry and uninteresting, like about her own father or her mother. Or all that nonsense about Dylan Thomas. ‘You’re ten today, Billy. I remember my tenth birthday. Your grandmother had made me a dress in green satin. I wanted to climb a tree, but it was completely out of the question for a girl...’

History. That’s all she knew.

Whereas his father would take him on his knee. He’d lift him clean off the ground with his strong arms and hold him there. Billy would struggle and squirm, but his father was invincible. A man of iron and steel.

Then he would take Billy by the hand and they’d go to the park with a ball, leaving the women at home. They’d kick the ball around on the green, and other boys would join in for a time. And the other boys would be jealous because they didn’t have a father with them who took them out with a ball. Billy would feel sorry for them, because they bad to put up with the history and all the silly talk, and then go to the park by themselves.

And that’s what Billy had to do himself, later. After his father was taken away from him.

He engaged Charles Hopper’s eyes and held the contact for a few seconds. He widened his own eyes and reached for the lid of the chest. He pulled it forward and balanced it on the thumb of his right hand. Charles Hopper glanced away from William’s eyes for a moment, saw that the lid was going to fall, and appealed to William with his own eyes There was a silent eloquence about him. A supplication in his gaze worthy of any of the saints.

William smiled and took his thumb away from the lid of the chest, letting it fall heavily into place. It crashed downward, plunging Charles Hopper back into darkness and isolation.

It was a nuisance having Charles Hopper in the house. It was necessary, of course, as it was necessary and inevitable that Hopper would deteriorate, become weaker, and finally die. It would follow the same course as the woman, whatever her name was, India Blake. The woman he’d kidnapped for the money. William hadn’t planned on the woman dying. He’d intended to let her go after the ransom was paid. But when he got the money he realized that he couldn’t let her go. She’d seen him. She knew him. If she identified him the floodgates would be opened.