The Monument: a ghost story
Page 4
terms of the restoration were quite clear to her; she did not expect to find herself pregnant again, or to have her affections transferred onto some new child; no, she wanted her own first-born son, bodily, in her arms again, as though he had merely been abducted, and would now be returned in perfect health.
Of course, every day that this did not happen, she became more and more impatient. She could not sleep for waiting up; she could not eat more than a scrap a day for the excitement. When her husband called her, the answers she gave to his excitable news were brief, so that she could get him off the line and resume her waiting.
Each morning she would set out to look for her son. At first she visited his diminutive grave, intending to find him laid upon the small mound; but, disappointed, she spent hours poring over the site instead, in case he should appear. After a week of such excursions, however, she realised her mistake: it made no sense that he would be in the cemetery— the old woman had taken him, and she lived on the mountain. Without doubt, he would be there— he might be there at this moment.
In a panic, she pelted up the steep side, and scrambled to the base of the monument: the child was absent. She explored every knoll, peered beneath every tree-root— nothing. So now this became her haunt: at every conceivable hour, at almost every opportunity, she would leave her house and hurry up the mountain-path, alarmed to think of her poor boy left, forlorn and exposed, on the top. But you will not be surprised to learn that each time she came down alone, and angry, and confused.
Her close neighbours became accustomed to the sight of her scurrying off at all times of the day and night, and felt deeply sorry for her, though they had no idea what possessed her to perform such a strange rite. A young woman, whose baby was known to have died, left alone by her husband, with no friends or family to call, was a just object of pity, and some overtures of friendship were made towards her; but these were tersely rebuffed. What could Niamh possibly want with the neighbours? Why were they bothering her? How could she waste any time talking to them, when her son might be back at any minute?
Soon her hunched, determined posture, fierce, forward gaze and swift, impatient pace became familiar to everyone. Some now remarked, with some surprise that they had never remarked it before, how much older Niamh was than her husband; others claimed that the crazy, stalking woman must be Niamh’s mother, or elder aunt, and that the girl herself had gone abroad with her spouse. A couple who seldom visited the town, and spotted Niamh at a distance, supposed her to be some aged spinster, and observed to each other how active she was in spite of her years.
One unlucky neighbour happened to encounter Niamh as she was coming down from one of her jaunts, and their encounter turned the tide of local sympathy. This hapless mother was perambulating along with her toddler at her side, when Niamh came upon them. The lady hallooed cheerily, and then, in a more confidential and sympathetic tone, asked how she was feeling? —This Niamh ignored, and made to pass them, but as she did, the toddler grasped at her skirt, and stopped her progress. Niamh turned, and bent over the child. The mother smiled, and in a sing-song voice enjoined the boy to introduce himself; but in the meantime Niamh had reached out and pinched the boy’s tongue between her forefingers. The mother’s shrieks almost rivalled her baby’s, and as the injured infant was being safely gathered into his mother’s embrace, Niamh skulked off. No real damage was done to the boy, but thenceforth Niamh was universally regarded as little better than a maniac.
Jamie, meanwhile, felt very distant from his wife— when he had the leisure to feel anything at all. His schedule was so demanding that it was only with a sort of nagging, sideline apprehension that he noticed her long silence, and that he knew nothing of how she was, even though he spoke to her almost every day. He himself was doing so much, that he chose to credit the adage that ‘no news is good news’ where Niamh was concerned. In truth, he was so worried about his own situation that he could hardly spare worry for hers— and indeed this worry on his own account was well placed, because the tide was turning for him, too.
His song was so popular that you could not escape hearing it if you wanted to, and after half a year of this the public taste was thoroughly saturated; it was up to Jamie to produce another hit to ride the wake of the first; and ultimately, no producer with his eye on the money would expect him to do less than compose an endless string of immortal melodies. This Jamie endeavoured to do (fully believing he was capable), and quickly brought his talents to bear— but his first success had set up a difficult target, which he failed to score upon again. Everything he now wrote failed to impress; what managed to pass into the public audience was soon criticised to scorn, considered derivative and insincere; it quickly became obvious that Jamie’s repertoire consisted of one good song, and a host of pale variations on it. Perhaps his genius had expired with the first effort, or perhaps his judging listeners had relapsed into the unappreciative ignorance that had bound them for so long before; in any case, his career abruptly failed, he was no longer welcomed, adulated, supported or even funded, and in a panic of despair he fled home.
I will not attempt to portray his state of mind during that journey; it was too fluctuating, too ranging from extreme to extreme to be condensed into a paragraph; suffice to say that the drop from the high pinnacle of fame is so swift and easy that it obliterates ambition, energy, creativity, self-esteem, and even that seed so requisite to survival, hope. In fairytales, when some wretched mortal strays into the fantastic wonderland or enchanted palace, or finds the pot of golden wealth, or spouse of supernatural beauty, we are led to understand that, when spouse, pot, palace, wonderland suddenly vanish forever, the mortal has had a narrow escape, and is left intact, the disappointment no worthless memento of the adventure; but when such transformations befall us in reality, the splendid dream, when snatched away, tears out part of ourselves too; we do not instantly recover, we do not believe we have been lucky; no, we are wrenched with loss, and cannot abide it.
So in short, Jamie was stripped of himself entirely; but as he sank and sank in despair, he was saved by the idea of the one thing his success had not touched, and could never take away. The very thought brought hot tears from his eyes, and suddenly the flight, which had seemed too swift before, now seemed unbearably tardy. He must get back to Niamh: Niamh was his mainstay, his harbour, his strength. The words of their vow were a chain, both to bind them, and wrap about them like mail to fend off the world: ‘You’ll always be there to come to, when I need you’ —and for certain, he needed her now.
Misery had yielded to excited, needy love by the time he reached his home town by the sea, in the shadow of the mountain. He burst through his front door, full of adulation, to find the house empty. His tears continued to run at the sight of so many familiar things, but also with frustration that the anticipated reunion must be longer delayed. Niamh had mentioned, in passing, that she sometimes walked up to the monument, and he concluded that she might be there; so, since he felt too restless to wait, he set out to find her.
Hurrying through the streets towards the wood that clustered around the base of the hill, he breathed to himself the fortifying words: ‘Niamh, you’ll always be there to come to, when I need you,’ and with each repetition, he felt as if he was conquering his disaster, drumming down the pain of his failure. Niamh would make all right; the sight of her, her face, her embrace, would make him calm, make him safe again. He was desperate for that solace, that security, and the knotted sylvan path, the difficult incline, the sharp wind that forced down the slope against his face, were like doubting critics— frustrating, but never impeding. Again and again he panted ‘Niamh’ and their mantra, until he attained the top, and raced into the clearing.
The trees sank back at left and right— the obelisk towered ahead; the gale blew full and hard against his face: his lips parted in a smile to issue a gasp with her name; the air rolled the droplets from his cheeks, and his eyes focussed lovingly —and then opened wide and wider till their red rims showed; his pupils dwi
ndled to tiny points; the colour was blasted from his cheeks and the forming smile stretched, dragged square to show his teeth, as his jaw unclosed to articulate a formless, wind-snatched sound, and his hand reached towards the figure beneath the monument.
The end
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