Walking with Ghosts (31 page)

‘Can’t wait,’ he said, ‘I’m starving,’ and he kissed both of her eyes. Janet didn’t always let him do that. Sometimes she’d say it made her feel like a doll, and she didn’t like feeling like a doll.

He opened the door and went out, looked back twice at Janet standing there watching him go. The third time he looked back she’d gone inside and closed the door. Barney went into someone’s garden and Geordie whistled for him.

There were many things Geordie didn’t understand about women. And that thing about feeling like a doll if somebody kissed you on your eyes was one of them. Seemed unreasonable somehow, kissing eyes was something important in life, that shouldn’t be denied. He’d talk to Sam about it, see what the great thinker thought. Sam’d say something like we’d never understand why people denied certain things for themselves. He’d say it was nothing to do with women, that there were plenty of men who had phobias. He’d come up with examples, like men and women he’d known who’d been totally unreasonable. Then he’d say: Go
fathom.

Geordie walked along the riverside path. There was a strong wind blowing, which suddenly abated, as if God had changed his mind and hit a button up in heaven to switch it off. There was a huge harvest moon sitting on the horizon, pale orange. J.D. said it was called a harvest moon because it helped ripen the corn, but Janet had turned her nose up at that, said it was an old wives’ tale. And Janet had taken her mother to the station and put her on a train. Geordie wondered if Janet’s mother could see this huge moon, and if his own mother could, and his brother, wherever they all were.

Barney came face to face with a duck and both of them stopped dead, staring. Barney’s tail went between his legs and the duck hissed. Geordie wished he had a camera so he could take a picture of it. Barney and the duck and that big ol’ moon shining down on them like the dawn of creation. But the only camera he had with him was his memory, and he stored it away in there, .hoped he’d never forget it. It was something he’d never be able to explain to anyone, even Janet. A moment with a dog and a duck and the moon. A scene that could’ve happened any time in history, down through the ages. If there was a picture of it, you’d be able to look at the picture and say, that could’ve happened any time, fifteenth century, fourth century, even BC.

And when you said that some people’d think you was crazy.

But fuck them. What did they know?

For the rest of his life Geordie would remember it, and when he thought about it he’d know that it happened round about the time Dora was getting ready to die, and just after the time he got married to Janet, and before it showed that she was pregnant. And he might never be able to explain it to anyone else, or to fully understand it himself. He’d just know that it was connected to poetry somehow. Poetry and music.

That was close. Though there was no sound of music, no song in his head. A faint whisper from the river, maybe? That hissing sound the duck had made.

When he was much older, and he tried again to describe it all to his daughter, he’d say,
It was the moon and the dog and the duck, nothing else. All the other thoughts came later, about the wedding, and Dora getting ready to die. But the moment itself was just the dog and the duck and the moon. It was poetry and music and ghosts.

Marie was sitting in the window. She waved as Geordie approached the house, but did not move. She passed out of sight as Geordie walked around the side of the house, to the back door. He joined her at the window. Barney put his front paws on her knees and waited for a pat.

‘I’ve got coffee going,’ she said. ‘It’s getting to be my favourite thing in the world; sipping coffee in the evening and watching the river. Have you seen the moon?’

‘The door was open,’ Geordie said. ‘I can’t believe you left the door open.’

‘I meant to lock it,’ she said. ‘When J.D. went. Must’ve forgot.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He went through to the kitchen. ‘I’ll pour the coffee.’ He found mugs and semi-skimmed milk. Looked for a jug to put the milk in, but couldn’t find one. Looked for a tray to put the mugs and the milk bottle on, but couldn’t find one. He wondered if his love-bite showed. ‘Yeah,’ he shouted through to her, ‘great moon. Barney met a duck on the path, and they were both framed in it.’

Marie didn’t answer. ‘There’s a tray beside the cooker,’ she said.

‘I thought J.D. was your favourite thing in the whole world.’

‘Things aren’t always what they seem.’

‘But you liked him. You two was all over each other.’ Marie looked up and smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We were searching for something. But whatever it was I was after, J.D. didn’t have it.’

‘And the other way around? Did you have what he was looking for?’

Marie shook her head. ‘Maybe an approximation of it,’ she said eventually. ‘If people’ve got a‘ gap in their life, it’s not possible for someone else to fill it. All those hollow places we’ve got, the bits that make us feel lonely and frightened, they’re there because we have to deal with them ourselves. It’s not a job you can give to someone else.’ She shrugged her shoulders and grinned. ‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘J.D. offered me a job as a saint, but I didn’t like the hours.’

Geordie let her words stand there by themselves for a while. It seemed like they needed space. If they’d been written down he’d have underlined them.

‘Tell me about the guy,’ he said. He placed the tray on a low table and turned a chair slightly, so that he could watch the river. The surface reflected a million winking moons. Imperceptibly, inside its ears, the corn grew ever riper.

‘It was him,’ she said. ‘He was young, small and dark with the broad forehead. Thin.’ She explained about Charles Hopper, how she had spoken to him on the phone, and then gone round to call on him. ‘I noticed this guy following me when I was halfway home. But he could have been waiting outside Hopper’s house. He looked like the guy Naiomi Leaver described, and it matches the description of the guy at the allotment.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I came in the house and he walked on by. But when I looked out the window he was sitting on the grass, by those trees. He was sitting there for about an hour.’

‘And then he went, and he hasn’t come back.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see him leave. He could be watching from farther away.’

‘What would Sam do?’ Geordie asked.

‘Flush him out,’ said Marie. ‘The most important thing is to find out who he is, where he lives. If I go for a walk, you hang back but keep me in sight, then if the guy follows me, you follow him.’

‘Better still,’ said Geordie. ‘I’ll leave now, so if he’s watching the house he’ll think you’re alone. But when you go out stick to main roads. Don’t go anywhere quiet, or where there’s no one about. We know the guy’s dangerous, and we don’t want him having a go at you.’

There was a small floating pier and a cluster of rowing boats a hundred and fifty metres downstream. Geordie sat on the pier and let his legs dangle over the edge, listened to the boats rubbing up against each other as he kept half an eye on Marie’s house. She was going to wash-up before she left the house, change her clothes, give Barney something to eat. She’d be out in about twenty minutes. Alone. Barney would remain behind as a guard dog.

No one was taking an undue interest in the house. Geordie kept an eye on the people who were strolling the path, dog owners, the odd tourist or two, mainly couples. Two lads on bikes, doing wheelies. Something that looked like a student, dressed in a black cloak, head to foot, couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Nothing to worry about there.

The wind returned with little warning. There was a rushing sound on the river, as if the fish had all come to the surface and were doing the breaststroke. A cloud blew over the face of the moon, and in no time at all the river bank was deserted.

Geordie zipped up his jacket and toyed with the idea of going back to Marie’s house. There was no point in her coming out in this weather, no one would follow her on a night like this. The wind whipped up white caps on the river and set up a moaning through the trees that was almost human. Like women and children screaming, wailing for something that had once been wonderful but was now lost for ever. The willows lashed the surface of the water and one of the women in the wind, her voice falsetto in the cacophony, was crying herself blind.

As Geordie decided to give up and go back to the house the wind dropped, the voices died into a distant dirge. Some of the light of the moon returned and a large planet - no, two of them - Venus, with Mars above it, winked down at the earth. The goddess of love and the god of war forever tied together. Over to his right a door slammed and as the elegy in the wind anchored itself to the calm he watched Marie walk from the shadow of her house into the ineffectual fire of the moonlight.

She was dressed in a lilac suit, the skirt with a stylish cut that emphasized her stride. At the neck of the jacket the moonlight picked out the satin collar of her blouse. He waited until she had passed him, let her get a hundred metres ahead, then he followed, keeping close to the wall, so he was hidden by the shadows. She walked through the Museum Gardens, which was exactly what Geordie had told her not to do. She kept the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey on her left and was hooted at by a peacock sitting on the ancient Watergate. She slowed her pace after that, so Geordie had to adjust his own to maintain the correct distance between them. There was a moment when something dark and flowing caught his attention, looked like a witch or a spectre, over to his right, by the river. Something over there flapped between two trees, but when Geordie turned his attention to it there was nothing to see. Just fancy and the moonlight.

Marie left the gardens and crossed the road to Lendal. She walked past the post office and looked in the window of Betty’s, at the people inside eating and drinking. Geordie closed the gap between them. He wished he was inside Betty’s, with a cup of that good coffee in front of him. There was a pianist in a spotlight, playing around with ‘Danny Boy’.

Marie crossed into Stonegate, walked past the Punch Bowl, and then turned around and looked back at Geordie. She looked long and hard, made sure he saw her, then left the tourist area behind by turning quickly into Back Swine-gate and the maze of passageways and arcades between there and Grape Lane.

‘Jesus,’ Geordie muttered to himself, ‘this is asking for trouble.’ And even as he said it a gust of wind returned and flung out the folds of the black cloak of the man who followed Marie into the alley. Bat-like in the moonlight, silent, but obviously not blind.

Geordie covered the distance to the mouth of the alley in a few seconds, but when he turned the corner there was no sign, either of Marie, or her pursuer. The moonlight didn’t penetrate into these passages, they were narrow, and the walls that bordered them, high. There was the occasional lamp, and as Geordie ran through the maze, there was also the occasional tourist or passer-by. After a few minutes he stopped and listened. Instead of running blindly, he reasoned, he might hear footsteps, and explore the direction from which they came. But he heard nothing.

He made his way back to Stonegate and started again. Taking a different route, and making sure he explored every alley and cul-de-sac along the way. His heart was pounding loudly in his chest, and he was breathless with anticipation and fear. The wind had returned now, and was whistling around the arcades and threatening to lift tiles from the rooftops. It was roaring and clamorous, blowing dust and mortar from the medieval walls and buildings. Geordie strained to hear any sounds above or below the wail of the wind. And there was something there, close by.

It didn’t sound like Marie’s voice. It was a long, piercing scream, the kind of anguished cry that took Geordie back, momentarily, to his time in the children’s home. He would hear cries like that from time to time in the night, from new boys and girls, or from someone dreaming of the past or the future.

But this wasn’t about the past or the future, it was of the moment. He turned into a small yard, and as he did so the scream that brought him there died a series of deaths and broke up into whimpers. There was the back of the black cloak. The man who was wearing it had the hood up, and his arms outstretched, so the cloak looked like a pair of ribbed wings. Marie wasn’t visible at first. Geordie had to move to one side before he saw her huddled in the corner of the cul-de-sac. Her face was white like the moon, her eyes large and staring up at the face of her attacker. She was transfixed and didn’t notice Geordie at all.

The cloaked man moved forward a step, and Geordie caught sight of the green rope that trailed from his right hand. The wind fell and rose again, whipping the black cloak around the figure of its wearer, and Geordie screamed something unintelligible, even to himself as he hurled himself at the man and tried to hold him back from Marie.

But Geordie didn’t make the contact he had hoped for. The black cloaked figure heard or felt him coming, half turned and ducked as the force of Geordie’s body came towards him. Geordie glanced off the man’s shoulder, and although he grasped for the material of the cloak, he found himself falling away, and landing in a heap on top of Marie. As he fell he put out his right hand to save himself, and he saw and heard his forearm snap twice as the weight of his body came down on it. There was no pain, only a sinking feeling as he realized that the hand would be useless to him in the fight that lay ahead. Then there was nightmare agony, a rush of blood from the sleeve of his jacket, and his body writhed, his head twisting up and back.