‘Take it all, Hector,’ I murmured, threading my fingers through the tendrils of his hair, as fiery as the flames in the grate. ‘Whatever I have is yours. And I want all of you.’
He slid an arm under my waist and, pulling me toward him, showered my face, neck and breasts with soft, cool kisses that caressed my skin like summer rain. Then with an impatience I couldn’t begrudge - that I welcomed - Hector pushed his way inside me, easily, tenderly.
The sensation of something cold and hard at the centre of my being disturbed me for only a second, then I embraced it. Aware now of every movement Hector made, his body so chill and separate from mine, I couldn’t recall when I’d felt so aroused. Whether this was because of the physical oddity, or because I was excited by the idea of a ghost lover, I couldn’t say. I knew the man in my arms was long dead, yet I’d never felt so alive. My mind couldn’t encompass the paradox, but my body could. I abandoned all thought and surrendered to the driving rhythm of Hector moving inside me.
My excitement built quickly, till I cried out, clutching Hector’s back, pulling him down, deeper inside me. Then he pulled back and thrust hard, his pale eyes fixed on mine. I stared into the depths of a bottomless pool of icy water and wanted to drown there.
As he reared up over me in the flickering firelight, Hector’s expression changed. I pressed my palms against his chest and with a surge of irrational joy, I felt the beat of a pounding heart beneath the yielding, white flesh. He closed his eyes, cried out, then I felt him shudder inside me. For one alarming moment, he seemed to fade and I was aware I could see the bedroom through him. Then as he sank down on top of me, it was as if gentle waves had begun to lap around and over me.
I clutched at what was left of his body. ‘Hector, please! Don’t leave me! Not yet. Stay!’
The liquid that seemed to flow over me began to solidify and Hector’s form took shape again in my arms. Eventually he opened his eyes and, propping himself up on his elbows, looked down at me.
‘I lost concentration. For a moment only. I’m sorry.’ His pale forehead creased with anxiety. ‘But you, Ruth? You’re... content? You weren’t disappointed?’ he asked, his voice low and frayed with emotion. ‘You felt something?’
‘Felt something?’ I took his beloved face in my hands. ‘Good God, Hector, it was extraordinary. I’ve never experienced anything like it!’ His sudden grin was a disarming mix of vulnerability and triumph. I felt strangely moved.
Something else was starting to move. Thus it was I made the startling and very gratifying discovery that ghosts require no recovery period. Hector looked surprised, then, as he realised what was happening, he smiled and moved his hips against me experimentally. I moaned with pleasure.
‘Well, that does it,’ I murmured, running my hands up over his chest. ‘I’m through with mere mortals...’
When I woke the following morning, Hector was gone. As usual. There was no trace of him on my body or in the bed, no sign of any fire in the grate. Nothing. I was heartbroken. Could he not have left me something to prove I hadn’t dreamed our encounter? If a ghost can conjure spontaneous combustion, surely he could manage to leave a note on the pillow?
Depressed, I got out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown. As I did so, my eye was caught by a pile of clothes stacked on the dressing table stool. All the garments I’d shed the night before, from my pretty lace bra to my baggy tracksuit bottoms, had been folded neatly. Beneath them, my shoes had been placed side by side, under the stool, as if ready for inspection.
My lover might be a ghost, but first and foremost, he was a soldier.
Chapter Twelve
Now I was upright, I realised how hung over I was. Craving caffeine, I stumbled downstairs and found the kitchen in a chaotic state. The work surfaces were littered with dirty pans and empty wine bottles and the air reeked of stale booze and bacon fat. A bunch of wilted chrysanthemums, still in their paper wrapping, sat on the worktop. (Tom’s exhaustive knowledge of Tigh-na-Linne didn’t appear to extend to the storage of vases.) I picked up the flowers and, scattering petals like confetti, dumped them in the bin.
I put the kettle on and went to the fridge for milk. There wasn’t any. Furious at my domestic incompetence, unable to face black coffee or the clear up, I switched off the kettle, drank a glass of water and fled to the sitting room, which was just as depressing and smelled worse - of spilled brandy and burned wool.
I kneeled down to examine the damaged Persian rug. Admittedly, it wasn’t in the first flush of youth and showed signs of wear, but a black hole was another matter. I wouldn’t be able to forget how the hole got there, so I rolled up the rug and put it out in the hall, registering as I did so that Tom had at least had the sense to put the fireguard in front of the fire before leaving. Or perhaps that had been Hector?...
I’d managed not to think about Hector for several minutes, but now memories came crowding in, one after another in relentless succession. My response to each one was the same. A single word. Impossible. Whatever I thought about and in whatever way, my response was simply, “Impossible”.
A ghost had saved me from a nasty assault.
Tom had been injured by a jealous and vengeful ghost.
I’d had a sexual encounter (of a lengthy and most enjoyable kind) with a ghost.
A ghost appeared to have fallen in love with me.
I appeared to have fallen in love with a ghost.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was slightly inclined toward the latter because even if the extraordinary events of last night had actually happened, there could, of course, be no future in a romantic relationship with a ghost. Any kind of relationship with a ghost. What was it the poet had said?...
.
‘It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.’
.
The memory of Hector sitting at the piano, quoting those words from Janet’s song cycle brought me to the brink of tears, but still I held out. Drawing curtains, opening windows, plumping cushions, pulling dead leaves off houseplants, I kept busy and didn’t dissolve until I found myself sitting by the phone, hoping it would ring, hoping it would be Hector.
When the phone did ring I jumped off my chair and my pathetic snivelling became a wail. I clapped my hands over my ears and ran to the sofa where I curled up in a ball and waited for the noise to stop. When it didn’t, I started to think perhaps it was Hector, though there was no reason he’d ring when he could show up in person and talk to me (unless of course this was to be the supernatural equivalent of dumping by text.)
Pulling myself together, I approached the phone, willing it to stop ringing before I got there. Then I lost my nerve and pounced before Hector could hang up.
‘Hello?’
‘Ruth? Good morning. It’s Stan.’
‘Stan?’ As my eyes welled up again, I considered two courses of action: slamming down the phone or unburdening myself to an insomniac professor, three thousand miles away.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’
I’d already soaked the tissues I had in my pockets, so I dabbed at my eyes with the belt of my dressing gown and said, ‘No. I - I was just thinking about making some breakfast.’ My voice was tremulous and a certain amount of sniffing was unavoidable. ‘I had a late night last night.’ The memory of why I’d got to sleep so late last night nearly set me off again, but I dug my nails into my palm to distract myself with pain. ‘It must be the middle of the night for you. Can’t you sleep?’
‘Oh, I had a couple of hours. That’s enough for me. I was lying there thinking about my visit and realised I was too excited to sleep.’
‘Oh... I see.’ This was clearly not the moment to tell Stan I was going to withdraw my invitation.
‘Ruth, forgive me, but are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’
‘No, this is fine. Really.’
Evidently unconvinced, Stan persisted. ‘You sound upset. Has something happened?’ I was considering how best to reply, when he said,
‘Have you seen the ghost again?’
I laughed. That seemed a more socially acceptable response than howling. ‘Yes, I’ve seen the ghost. I’ve seen rather a lot of him lately.’ And that was enough to bring to mind a vision of Hector’s pale, naked body, gilded by firelight. As a consequence, I missed Stan’s next remark. ‘I’m sorry - what was that you said? The line isn’t too good at this end,’ I lied.
‘I was asking if you’d managed to establish the identity of your ghost?’
‘Oh, yes. I know who he is. Or rather was. He was actually very easy to identify. There’s a memorial window at Tigh-na-Linne. Made of stained glass. It’s strange and very beautiful. There used to be three. The one that remains was installed in memory of Hector Munro who died in 1915 at the battle of Loos. The window is a representation of him as an archangel. Michael, I think.’
‘The Glass Guardian.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘This window sounds as if it could have been the inspiration for Janet’s piece, The Glass Guardian. She wrote a chamber opera for children with that title. It was an early work of hers and she later withdrew it. Critics dismissed it as immature, even naïve, failing to realise she’d written the piece to be performed by talented amateurs and children. It’s a quaint little story about a young girl who has an imaginary friend. But the friend isn’t a child—’
‘He’s a dead soldier who befriends the girl and protects her from harm.’
‘Why, yes! Of course, you must know the piece.’
‘No, I’ve never heard it. But I think I know why Janet wrote it.’
There was silence at the other end of the line, apart from a long whistling sound. Then Stan said eagerly, ‘The friend was Hector? The man in the window? Your ghost?’
‘Maybe he was Janet’s ghost as well.’
‘So the Glass Guardian actually exists!’ Stan exclaimed, delighted.
‘Oh, yes, he exists all right. Do you know any more about the opera?’ I swallowed and said, ‘I mean, do you know how it ends?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not a piece I’m familiar with. I’ve never seen it performed. But I remember reading a contemporary review. The soldier is searching for his lost love—’
I groaned. ‘Oh, no...’
‘Yes, I know it sounds a little corny,’ Stan explained, misunderstanding. ‘But the plot is no sillier than most opera. The young girl tries to help him find the woman, but it takes years and eventually they discover that she’s dead, by which time the girl has grown up. The Glass Guardian realises that, in fact, the love of his life is under his nose.’
‘But... he’s a ghost. There can’t be a happy ending. Not unless she dies.’
‘Or he comes back to life, I guess. I don’t remember the details. I know the piece wasn’t successful, partly because Janet refused to tag on a happy ending. She said she didn’t see the need to compromise, just because her intended audience was young. She believed children were made of sterner stuff. Of course, in that respect, she was way ahead of her time. Janet was contemporary with Enid Blyton, but artistically, she related more to the psychological complexity - the darkness - of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, of Peter Pan and The Water Babies. She believed children could get to grips with concepts of death and immortality just as well as adults. Better than adults, in some cases... Janet’s younger brother died in infancy, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. He died of scarlet fever. When he was four, I think.’
‘So she would have had to come to terms with the darker aspects of life at an early age.’
Even earlier, it suddenly occurred to me, than I did, with my mother dying when I was eight. Had Hector comforted Janet when she lost her brother? When, as an adult, Janet had laid a place at table for “Heckie”, had she known my imaginary friend wasn’t imaginary?...
‘Ruth, are you still there?’
‘What? Oh, yes. Sorry, I was thinking about Janet losing her little brother. And all the sadness this family has known.’
‘Ah, but so much love too.’
‘Love?’
‘Well, that’s the other side of the coin, isn’t it? Your great-grandparents lost three beloved sons and they installed those memorial windows. Janet wrote In Memoriam as an act of love and remembrance for the fallen, who included her three uncles. She took on the role of mother to you after her sister died. Now that can’t have been easy for a single, professional woman, who by all accounts was pretty reserved. Janet must surely have loved her sister - and you - very much. There’s been a great deal of sadness in this family, but there’s also been a great deal of love.’
‘Stan, you have such a wonderfully positive take on life! Is it to do with being Canadian?’
He chuckled and said, ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know! I’d have to think about that. But it’s always seemed to me that shadows can only be cast - in life, as well as in art - where a strong light exists to throw them. I suppose I’ve always been inclined to look for the light. And I usually find it. It’s just that, when darkness descends, we don’t always remember to look for the light.’
‘Do you think it’s loss that conjures up... this ghost?’
‘Our Hector? Maybe. I suppose it’s possible Janet saw him when she was a child, grieving for her brother. Perhaps she saw him again after her father died.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because that’s when the watershed in her work occurs. She found a new musical voice. It’s almost as if In Memoriam was written by someone else.’
Someone else.
There was a wordless version first. The lyric came later.
With the phone clamped to my ear, I stalked across the room and sank down on to the sofa. My mind racing, I struggled to frame a coherent sentence. ‘Stan - the music... Is it really that different?’
‘Why, yes! That’s why I was so interested to hear that the autograph scores varied so much. But Janet wouldn’t be the first composer to have undergone a life-changing experience that fed back radically into her work. The death of her father might have been a crushing blow. Janet could have gone under or she could have re-invented herself. I think the key to what actually happened could well be Frieda - about whom we know nothing at all. But I’m prattling on and keeping you from your breakfast. You must be famished.’
‘No, I seem to have lost my appetite.’
‘Well, I won’t detain you a minute longer. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve looked at flights and they’re filling up rapidly, so I was wondering if it would suit you if I flew out to Glasgow on December 10th? I might spend a couple of days seeing Edinburgh and Glasgow and then I’d come over to Skye. Would that fit in with your plans?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure that’ll be fine. I hadn’t really thought - I mean, I don’t actually have any plans. I find myself rather at a loose end here. The sooner you get here the better really.’
That wasn’t at all what I’d meant to say. Recovering, I added quickly, ‘I mean, the long-range weather forecast is bad. Well, bad by our standards. The UK grinds to a halt if we have anything more than a moderate snow fall. It’s quite pathetic.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. Being snowed in on the Isle of Skye would be the icing on the Christmas cake for me. I’d feel like something out of Agatha Christie. And I’d stand a better chance of meeting this Hector.’
‘Doesn’t the prospect alarm you?’
‘Oh, certainly! I’m a devout coward. But it would be a privilege to be terrorised by a real Scottish ghost. So don’t go hiring any exorcists now, will you? Not until after my visit anyway. I know it’s selfish of me, but I trust you’ll bear up under the strain.’
I laughed and said, ‘Stan, you’ve achieved the impossible. I didn’t think anything would make me laugh today.’
‘Well, when those shadows encroach, just remember to look for the light.’
‘I will. Thank you.’
‘I’ll be in touch with more travel details nearer the time.’
‘OK.’
&n
bsp; ‘Once again, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you, Ruth.’
‘You too, Stan. Take care.’
And he was gone.
I sat on the sofa, dazed, staring out the French windows, dreading Hector might appear. Longing for Hector to appear. It was very cold with no fire in the grate and then I remembered the window I’d opened earlier to air the room. I got to my feet and closed it, then stood and looked out at the garden. It was bleak and almost devoid of colour now the wind had stripped the autumn leaves from the trees. Autumn never lasted long on Skye. It was winter already.
As I continued to stare out the window, the garden gradually became a blur. I thought my eyes must have filled with tears again. Blinking several times, I found I still couldn’t see the trees. Then I realised it was snowing. My heart leaped, as it always did, at the sight of the first snow of winter. It wasn’t just a flurry either. This was serious snow, large flakes that were settling so that the grass was beginning to disappear.
As snow erased the garden, I tried to face up to my future, which to me looked as bleak and blank as the garden outside. I knew what I ought to do. I ought to cancel Stan and walk away from Tigh-na-Linne, away from Hector and Tom. I needed to go back to London, get a job and look up my old friends. Date some mortals, that’s what I ought to do. No question.
I stood and watched the snow fall until the lawn had completely disappeared. A robin came and posed on the stone birdbath, completing the Christmas card effect. I wondered why Christmas cards with robins in the snow always looked so naff, when a real robin in real snow made you stand and stare and feel grateful.
Hey, look at me, Stan - I’m looking for the light. And finding it.
Christmas on Skye... Log fires. The cosy fug of the Aga. Freezing walks by the sea. Mugs of cocoa. Stars hanging like brilliant jewels in the blackest of night skies. The majestic Cuillin mountains covered in snow. Drams of Talisker raised to the memory of Aunt Janet, my father and David. Absent friends.
The Glass Guardian Page 14