Walking with Ghosts

by Baker, John

  Without a hint of fear or emotion, and in one movement, William took hold of the body of the rat with his left hand. He lifted her clear of his chest. Her teeth were still clamped to his throat. Holding her body horizontally, feeling her long scaly tail winding its way around his forearm, he brought up the knife in his right hand and severed the body from the head.

  Mother rat’s warm blood spouted like a cloud-burst over his face and chest. He laughed wildly as it flowed between his lips and raced along his tongue, feeling rivulets of plasma running into his eyes and watching while his world turned a scarlet hue.

  16

  Janet was sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightgown. ‘It’s happened,’ she said. Geordie looked at her and tried to guess what it was that had happened. She wore a pair of scuffed slippers, and the right one was dangling from her foot, looking as though it might fall off. He looked at her face, but couldn’t read it. She said, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Geordie couldn’t respond. It was such a mechanical word. He had to think what it meant. He knew what it meant, of course, but he had to translate those two sharp-sounding syllables into a meaning with a human perspective. He looked at the lamp by the side of the bed, the soft light coming from it. He licked his lips and tasted salt. A dry stickiness inside his mouth. ‘A baby?’ he said.

  Janet allowed herself a smile. ‘Not yet, but that’ll be the end result, if we let it.’

  ‘Let it?’

  ‘Yeah. If we want it.’ She flicked her foot and the slipper fell to the carpet, bounced, rolled over, and was still.

  Geordie picked the slipper up and took it over to her. He knelt in front of her and put it back on her foot. He looked up at her. ‘If we want it?’

  ‘You’re like a parrot,’ Janet said. ‘You repeat everything I say.’

  ‘Because I can’t believe you’re saying it. “If we let it... if we want it...” What d’you think? Don’t you want to have it?’

  Janet was beautiful. Most of the time Geordie thought she Was beautiful. But sometimes her face turned to stone. It Was at times like this. When she wasn’t sure about something. When she felt insecure. Geordie walked forward on his knees and got up on the bed with her. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him. He tried to turn her face towards him, so he could kiss her, but she pulled away.

  ‘No, Geordie, don’t.’ She kept her face away from him but didn’t move his arm from around her shoulders. ]-je could feel the stiffening of her body beneath the flimsy material of the nightgown. ‘Before I did the test I was fairly sure I’d caught. And then when it was positive, I was glad about it. I’d never thought it would happen, and it was like a confirmation of something. It felt like an achievement, that it was something I’d gone out and done. Like pass a driving test or getting a raise at Christmas. I was going to ring you at work and tell you over the phone.

  ‘But then I thought you wouldn’t like the idea, and the next thing I knew I was crying my eyes out. And everything I’d thought before was swamped. Instead of passing a driving test it seemed more like a biological accident. Something that happens to women whether they want it or not.

  ‘And it’s the kind of thing, you tell the guy, the father, and he waves goodbye and heads for the horizon very bloody quick.’

  Geordie tightened his grip of her. ‘So why am I still here?’

  ‘Because you’re stupid,’ she said. ‘You’re not a real man.’

  He turned her towards him and kissed her wet face. She didn’t resist this time. She laughed between the tears.

  ‘I know it’s your decision,’ he said. ‘But if it was up to me there’d be no question about it. A baby, Christ, Janet, that’d make us into a real family. What’re we gonna call her?’

  Marie had the car so Geordie walked to Portland Street. He was twenty minutes early and called in at Cassady’s secondhand record shop to see if he could find some Irish music for Sam. There was a Bonnie Raitt GD playing. A song about an Angel from Montgomery. Geordie knew it wasn’t Irish and knew that Sam’d love it, so he told the guy behind the counter he’d take it.

  The guy smiled. ‘Sorry, it’s mine. Not for sale.’

  ‘You got any more like it?’

  ‘Not here. I’ve got them all at home.’

  ‘What about Christy Moore? Irish singer, you got anything by him?’

  ‘Not on CD. There’s a couple of tapes on the shelf over there.’

  ‘I wanted it on CD,’ Geordie said. ‘Sam’s got a cassette player in the office, but at home he’s only got CDs.’

  The guy shrugged. ‘They’d brighten up the office.’

  Geordie held his hands up and backed away from the counter. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You giving me the hard sell, now.’ The guy laughed. ‘D’you want ’em or not?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three-fifty each.’

  ‘All I’ve got,’ Geordie told him, ‘is this valuable gift voucher bearing an engraved portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and personally signed by the Governor of the Bank of England.’ He handed it over the counter. ‘I’m completely at your mercy.’

  The guy put the two cassettes into a brown paper bag and handed Geordie three pounds change. He winked. ‘All the time I spent in salesmen’s school’s beginning to pay off.’ Geordie pocketed the change and left the shop. He took in a lungful of exhaust fumes and followed a zigzag path through the stationary traffic in Gillygate.

  Portland Street was quiet. The house with the shabby curtains at the upstairs window was not particularly inviting, and looked as though it might be unoccupied. He walked down the short path and glanced around. There was no one else in the street.

  He pressed the bell and listened for the ring inside the house, but heard nothing.

  After a moment, though, there were footsteps on the stairs, and the door was opened by a girl with blond hair and a black eye. ‘Doesn’t work,’ she said. ‘The bell. It’s never worked, not as long as I’ve been here.’ She looked past Geordie, up and down the street. ‘D’you wanna come up?’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment to see Miss Prine,’ Geordie said. ‘Joni Prine.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. That’s me. You’re Geordie Black. I’ve been waiting for you, saw you come down the street. There’s nobody else in, anyway, apart from old crusty knickers at the front.’

  Geordie followed her up the stairs. Her legs were blotchy, but she wore a short skirt so she could share them with the world. She turned to face him on the first landing. ‘Got an eyeful, did you?’

  Geordie blinked and nodded. There was no point in denying it. It was an eyeful he could have done without, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  A baby was crying in the room. Not a full-scale yell, a half-hearted attempt to bring the world to its cradle. It wasn’t a breathless cry, and Joni Prine wasn’t fazed by it. While Geordie was still reeling from the pungent odour of unwashed nappies and ammonia, she plucked a dummy from the cot, dumped it into a huge jar of raspberry jam, and stuck it into the child’s face. The crying stopped.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ Joni said, collecting a mound of clothing from a worn sofa and plonking it on the threadbare carpet.

  Geordie placed himself in the space thus vacated, and Joni Prine placed herself right next to him, seemingly oblivious of her skirt riding up to the rim of her pants.

  ‘And?’ she said, turning to face him.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Geordie. ‘And what?’

  ‘And what you here for, love? It’s not a café, is it? How’m I supposed to help you?’

  What Geordie was really grateful for, was that she hadn’t offered him a drink. Tea or coffee. He knew she was trying to confuse him with sex and legs and the way she’d handled the baby, and now sitting so close to him that their thighs were touching. And she could do all that, and think she was getting away with it - Geordie didn’t mind what she thought. ‘What I said on the telephone,’ he said. ‘We’re investigating a claim by Edward Blake, and we understand that you are acquainted with him.�
�

  ‘How’d you know that?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. Acquainted isn’t how most people’d put it, but even they’d understand what you mean. Are you from the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And Eddy. Mr Blake, well, I call him Eddy. Will he find out I’ve talked to you?’

  ‘Not from us. Anything you tell me is in strict confidence.’

  ‘Did you bring the money?’

  ‘Fifty pounds. I’ve got it here.’ He tapped his jacket pocket.

  ‘Hand it over, then.’

  ‘After the interview. First, I ask the questions, then, when you’ve answered them, you get the money.’

  ‘I already told you everything on the phone. Fuck, that walk up the stairs was worth fifty quid. I showed you everything but the Post Office tower. How do I know you won’t get the answers you want and then just leave me here, take the money away with you?’

  Geordie looked at her. ‘You don’t, Joni. All right to call you that?’

  She didn’t smile. She looked him right in the eye. ‘I don’t give a fuck what you call me, Geordie, so long as I get that fifty pound note.’

  The baby began to cry, and Joni repeated the dummy and raspberry jam trick.

  ‘How long’ve you known Edward Blake?’

  ‘ ’Bout eighteen months.’

  ‘What is your relationship?’

  ‘He’s a sugar daddy. I service his fantasies. Sometimes I’m his princess, and sometimes I’m a slut.’ She giggled. ‘Actually, I’m a slut all the time.’

  ‘D’you dress up?’ Geordie asked, hearing an element of fascination in his tone that he’d hoped to suppress.

  Joni smiled. ‘Sometimes. I’ll show you if you like.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not really necessary. What I was getting at—’

  ‘—I think it’s fairly obvious what you’re getting at. Yes, he comes round and fucks me once or twice a week.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  She put her hand up to her face. ‘He’s rough from time to time. Last week he gave me this black eye. Knocked me over a chair, and hurt my ribs.’ She pulled up her V-necked, off-white sweater to reveal bruising under her left breast.

  ‘Was that an unprovoked attack?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you give him any reason to hurt you?’

  She nodded her head. ‘Yeah. He pays the rent, gives me money. Jacqui was crying all the time. He doesn’t like that. But he never touches her, he takes it out on me.’

  ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  Joni laughed. She laughed so loud the baby started crying again. Geordie didn’t laugh, but he couldn’t stop himself smiling when he remembered what he’d asked her. When she stopped laughing he asked her, ‘Do you think he killed his wife?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘If he killed her, he could kill me. I don’t get that kind of vibe off him. Also, the way she died, his wife, I mean, she starved to death, didn’t she? He’s more physical than that. He likes a bit of rough and tumble. If she’d been beaten to death, strangled, something like that. If she’d been stabbed, I might’ve thought he could’ve done it. But not starving someone to death. He wouldn’t do that. Not Eddy.’ She shivered. ‘Starving someone to death? That’s Creep City. I’ve met some weird fuckers in my life, but I’ve never met anyone who’d do a thing like that. Jesus and Mary, that’s worse’n Hitler.’

  There were lots of things Geordie could have said about Joni Prine, but he contented himself with one. As he walked along the street after leaving her house he glanced back once and shook his head. ‘She’s piss-poor,’ he said.

  The register office was around the corner in Bootham. Geordie walked up the steps and followed a short corridor round to the right. Behind the glass partition was a receptionist with a face like a vampire, about the same age as him. Peroxide hair, blue and cerise eye shadow, and freshly applied cerise lipstick to match. She gave enough of a smile to encourage Geordie to state his business, but not nearly enough to crack the stark white porcelain foundation which caked her face.

  ‘How do you go about getting married?’ Geordie asked. She glanced behind her quickly, then looked him in the eye. ‘First you get a girlfriend,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘And you take her out dancing, and buy her jewellery, and take her to fancy restaurants, and you tell her you’re earning about twice as much as you’re really earning, and that your boss is going to die soon and leave you the business.’ She smiled again and took a deep breath, obviously prepared to go on if no one stopped her.

  ‘Yeah,’ Geordie said. ‘Am I the first customer today?’

  She shook her head. ‘Let me put it like this - you’re the first customer today who looked like he could take a bit of fun.’

  ‘Only I’ve heard that more people live together, don’t bother getting married at all, even when they have kids. So I thought maybe you was bored. Not getting enough customers.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ she told him, leaning forward on her elbows. ‘The people who come in here, they nearly all want to get married, or register a birth or a death. This morning I’ve had five people registering deaths, six births, and you’re my first marriage. Who’s the lucky girl?’

  ‘Janet,’ Geordie told her. ‘We’ve been living together, but now we’re gonna have a baby, so we want to get married.’

  ‘Romantic.’

  ‘We wanna do it as soon as possible.’

  ‘'Very romantic.’ She consulted a calendar. ‘This year?’ Geordie shook his head. ‘This week.’

  ‘Oooh, la la.’ She clasped a hand to her breast. Silver nail polish. ‘I’ve gone all of a flutter.’ A door opened behind her and an older woman in a sober suit walked into the office. The vampire girl shuffled on her seat, then looked back at Geordie and came with an altogether different tone of voice. ‘The minimum notice is three days, sir. This is Wednesday, so the earliest we can do you is Friday. And it’s £72.50 for the special licence.’

  ‘Friday’ll be fine,’ he told her. ‘What time?’

  ‘You have to fill in this form,’ she said, passing it over to him. ‘And read the accompanying notes, which explain the procedure.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He picked up the form and walked away to a small table. He took his pen out of his inside pocket and began reading the questions, scratching his head from time to time in an effort to recall a date or the correct spelling of a word.

  When he’d finished the older woman had disappeared, and the vampire girl was alone again. Geordie handed her the completed form and leaned over the counter towards her. ‘What I’ve heard,’ he said, in little more than a whisper, ‘in the old days they used to have wives and concubines.’

  17

  Diana is cross-legged on the carpet. She teases a lock of hair from the mass and pulls it forward, inspecting it myopically. She should wear glasses, but is too vain. You wonder if you should suggest contact lenses, but it would be of no use. She does what she wants to do.

  ‘I dreamt I got a letter from Billy,’ she tells you. ‘He sent his love.’ She continues to inspect her hair. She is not kind, Dora. Your daughter is not kind to you. If she says Billy sent his love in a letter in a dream, then Billy must have done so. Diana would not make it up. Diana would not say she’d dreamt that Billy sent his love if Billy had not sent his love. It is something you can rely on, this scrap of information. Something incontrovertible. Billy sends his love to you in a letter in a dream. He sends it from London, where he practised to become a bouncer, or Bradford where he lived in an Asian community. The land of the purdah. The land he ran to in an unconscious flight from the image of his mother. The land from which he will never return, except, possibly, for your funeral.

  ‘No, he didn’t say much,’ Diana tells you. ‘He’s not in Bradford any more, I can’t remember where he is. Closer to home.’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘D’you remember Dotty?’

  ‘Yes.’ You have a vision of a small spotty girl, aged twelve
or thereabouts.

  ‘Was at school with me,’ Diana reminds you. ‘She’s gone into a convent. She’s a bride of Christ.’ Diana shrieks with laughter. She is like you, Dora. She does not waste her time on God. You do not know what she does waste it on. You cannot ask her. She will only go through her Ms routine: Men, marijuana, music, menstruation, masturbation, macrobiotics, madness, magazines, monotony, money, magic, myopia, mutilation, moussaka, and madeira. She will mortify you with her Ms.

  You wonder if Billy writes often. In dreams.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Diana tells you. ‘Twice, maybe three times a year.’ She looks at you and a shadow passes over her face an internal shadow, such as you have not seen from her since she was a child. ‘It doesn’t seem as though you’ll get well again, Dora?’

  You shake your head. There is a discernible tremor in Diana’s voice. Something inside her is trembling. You are unnerved. You are always unnerved when she is like this. It is not a common occurrence. Even as a child she was sure of herself, certain that her own perceptions were reality, and that reality was something to overcome. Whenever her voice wobbled you could take her in your arms, crush her into your body. Only when her voice wobbled. At no other time.

  You hold out your arms and she scrambles towards you on her knees. Your frail arms pass around her back and you press them against her until they ache. She is trembling, Dora, your daughter. This big girl of yours. This woman.

  You tell her you might live for ever, but there is no conviction in your voice. You know that you are dying. And Diana knows as well. And she knows that you know. It is not possible to play games with Diana. She lives in the hard kernel of the truth.

  She is convulsed by sobs, speaking only in the small intervals between them. ‘I don’t want you to die, Dora.’