‘I appreciate the gesture,’ Thom returned genuinely.
The phone rang on my desk. It was a booking for a school trip. Mrs Evans insisted on dealing with these, so as instructed I put all the details into the diary. The three of them, still chatting across my desk, finally began to move along. As they did, Thom glanced my way and in the next moment Carla-Louise followed his eyes. Perhaps it was merely because I had dropped my pen while scribbling down the information. On finding it under the desk, I came across a package addressed to the correct curator: Thomas Rues. I could no longer see him, and I wanted to run it round to his office now while I knew he was busy. Typically, a number of other things suddenly needed doing and it was gone five o’clock before I could leave the desk.
I hoped to find his office empty and leave the package there. With his door closed I didn’t want to knock. Instead, I tried out Frances’s technique; peeling back the corner of the sign that papered over the little window. I had to go up on tiptoes and crane my neck to see. He was in there and alone, sat at his desk with his back to me. He seemed to be writing something with his left hand. With his right, he was pivoting a metallic looking ball, about the size of a small orange, around his hand and between the ends of his fingers in slow rhythmic movements. He did this so sinuously and precisely, like the object defied gravity. I’d seen jugglers do similar and very skilfully too, but it was nothing compared to this. He paid no attention to it with his head inclined towards the paper he was writing on. Surely he was ambidextrous as well as incredibly gifted. It was quite hypnotic watching this orb dance around his wrist and flow upward across the back of his hand, seemingly of its own accord. I could see hardly any movement from him as it looped his fingers in constant innovative patterns. A true Nijinsky of juggling; and one to rival Moschen, since he was doing it blind.
I’d never been remotely interested in learning more about this enigma of a man, but this gave rise to curiosity. I noticed then the shadow of his hand cast by the ceiling lights. I felt like an idiot for having questioned its existence. How ridiculous I’d been! As if he possessed a shadow like Peter Pan’s that could detach itself for some mischievous adventure. I was glad I hadn’t gotten so carried away with all this, aided by Stacey’s silliness, to have gone looking for yet more evidence of him being a ghost. Or worse, asked him about his missing shadow!
However, the answer to one mystery now left another for solving. His shadow seemed to become involved in the dance. The ball left his hand but did not drop to the desk. Between his hand and its shadow, the ball moved independently between them as if suspended on invisible wires. It was certainly some sort of chicanery. I must have been under the spell of the ballet, because on wanting a closer look I found I had a grip on the door handle, pushing it down slightly.
‘Alex!’ Mrs Evans called in a concerned pitch from down the corridor. She snapped her fingers at me, breaking my trance. I fell flat on my feet and backed away from the door without another glimpse inside. I walked her way before waiting to see what she wanted. She didn’t speak; her droopy eyes just moved between me and over my shoulder.
I held up the package. ‘It’s for Thom.’
‘It’s best not to disturb him when he’s working,’ she spoke anxiously, continuing to peer curiously behind me. I wondered if at any minute she might ask what I saw. She seemed itching to tell me something, but each time I thought she would speak, she took a deep breath and remained silent. That must have been difficult for her to do.
She took the package from me insisting she’d get it to him herself.
‘He’s been expecting it,’ I informed her, anticipating some relief at not having to go in there and speak to him. Strangely, it felt closer to disappointment. I couldn’t figure out if that came from some newly aroused fascination with Thom’s eccentricities, or a simple desire to defy Mrs Evans.
She beckoned me to go with her into the staffroom in such a way I felt escorted. With a glance at Frances who was sitting with a cup of tea on the sofa, she remarked that it was time for my tea break. I took advantage of my captivity and made myself a drink. Mrs Evans was staring at me suspiciously, which she broke by gasping a sound towards Frances and repeating the following:
‘In his twenties, indeed!’
‘Sorry, Doreen?’ Frances was as confounded as me by this outburst.
‘Thomas!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve been hearing that people generally think he’s in his twenties!’ She looked at me and strenuously pronounced, ‘He’s thirty-five!’
‘Oh,’ I said, not really knowing what to say to this odd assertion. ‘Well, he doesn’t look it.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t matter,’ she averred. ‘He’s too old!’
‘For what?’ Frances took some offence here I believe.
‘For–’ She glanced at me having clearly lost her cover. ‘For anyone to think he’s only twenty-odd. A young girl for example, like Alex here. Well, she might think he was a nice young man for courting. But–’
I couldn’t believe she was running with this merely because I thought he looked younger than he was. I still didn’t believe he could be over thirty anyway. It was easy to doubt everything that flew out of this woman’s mouth.
‘–But he’s too old for a boyfriend to a twenty-one-year-old girl,’ she continued. ‘Don’t you think, Frances?’
‘I don’t think age has much to do with it, unless it’s against the law. My Terry is seven years my senior, it makes no difference to me.’
‘Seven years is not much when you’re older, I agree.’
She changed the subject and after a few minutes seemed to have forgotten accosting me altogether with her strange warnings. Placing the package for Thom on the coffee table, she sat at Frances’s side.
‘Did I mention that Tess’s mother was here yesterday?’
‘Doreen,’ chuckled Frances. ‘I was with you when she arrived. She came to collect her things.’
‘Oh, yes, of course you were. Did you see how nervous she was of the place?’
‘I don’t blame her considering.’
‘She told me that Tess’s hair has grown grey at the roots, just in the front, and she still won’t say what she’s so afraid of.’
‘But–’ Frances paused and looked to me. ‘You won’t let any of this worry you, will you, Alex?’
I shook my head.
She continued, ‘But her mother’s convinced now that it wasn’t anything ghostly. She thinks that whatever happened here was very real.’
‘Well, you know what I think. It’s obvious to me it must’ve been–’
‘Doreen!’ She shook her head. ‘You remember Rebecca?’
Doreen’s eyes darted to mine and she closed her mouth.
Very soon, she started relating some newer gossip she had, about a married couple she knew and how they were close to finalising a divorce.
‘Not the sort of thing you did in my day…’
I got up to leave, giving Frances a sympathetic smile as I closed the door behind me. I wasn’t surprised that she liked Mrs Evans just because I didn’t. She liked everyone.
With only an hour left of my shift I stopped in the corridor outside the staffroom, where the run of windows overlooked the main courtyard. The lamps were on outside. A group of teenagers hung around out there, having lured some of the geese through the alley with bread. I watched, resting my hot cup of tea on the bricked window ledge. I could feel the cold air coming off the sheet of glass in front of me: the steam from my tea hardly touched it. It looked sharply cold out tonight, undoubtedly due to the cloudless day. The teens looked like smokers where their breaths were thick with vapour.
I noticed two burly deliverymen wheeling a crate through the alley on an industrial trolley. Following behind the men was Thom, who opened one of the connecting doors for them. The deliverymen were trying to wheel the crate over the step, but the wide trolley repeatedly wedged itself in the doorframe. I noticed their heavy breaths now as they panted away. Thom seemed to be tellin
g them to unload the crate there. As he spoke, I observed that not a line or curl of smoke issued from his mouth, as it did from the others. Did he have breath? I could see that his chest rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum. I wasn’t going to let that ghost talk carry me away again. After all, there was his shadow, doing nothing unusual, outstretched behind him just as it should be under the lamplight. The deliverymen took the heavy looking crate at each end and laboured to lift it, placing it down just inside the door. Thom signed their paperwork before tipping them with a folded note, and they left. It surprised me to see Thom, athletic as he was, lift that crate effortlessly as if it contained hot air and carry it through to a storeroom on the other side of the building. The teens paid no attention to him as he then crossed the alley back towards his office.
I looked up to the sky to think carefully on the things I’d been seeing lately. I caught sight of the moon moving into the frame of the courtyard’s tiled rooftops. Wearing that same tired expression, her features carved out by those lunar maria, against a background of inky blue. I went to pick up my tea, and not watching what I was doing, I knocked my hand straight into it. I felt the heat on my knuckles and anticipated a thorough scalding. Instinctively I looked down – it sat there upright, brimming with tea, as if I’d imaged it. A shadow had fallen across the window ledge.
‘Have you taken your medication today?’ Thom’s voice made me look up.
‘I’m not on medication.’
‘Then that’s the problem, right there.’
He looked at the tea. Those profound eyes stole back to meet mine. ‘Did you burn yourself?’
‘I… No, I didn’t.’
‘You’ve not got your car?’ He changed the subject but his tone remained concerned. ‘Excuse me, your stepbrother’s car?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Confiscated, was it?’
‘No.’
‘And how will you get home?’
‘Bus.’
He pulled a half-tormented face; the other half expressed that I was in the wrong. ‘Can I give you a lift?’
The offer floored me. ‘That’s okay, but thanks.’
His head turned towards the staffroom and back to me.
‘Goodnight,’ he rapped out, before walking away.
Mrs Evans came out. She was about to upbraid me, but luckily the teens in the courtyard caught her eye.
‘What the hell are they doing!’ she spat, rushing down the corridor. I slipped back to my desk and didn’t witness them undergo her lectures.
On the bus home I found I had a missed call from Mark. I wasn’t in the mood for his excuses. Though having had him pass sentence on me, it got me thinking. I became to my surprise overcome with guilt. Had I judged Thom as harshly as Mark had judged me? I had hit him with the jeep, so his reaction wasn’t so undeserved.
I rang the bell for my stop. It was a ten-minute walk home. I hurried since the mist had followed me from the Cray. Even though it was only half past seven, it made the streets look and feel more dangerous. I felt watched. The roads were so quiet that I could hear the surveillance camera at the end of my road turning in my direction as I approached, like some Orwellian truth.
By the time I reached home I’d decided to make a concerted effort with Thom on Thursday. There was no denying I’d been impatient, even unfriendly towards him.
I threw my keys on the kitchen counter and tugged off my jacket when the phone rang: it was my sister, Holly. With six years and four hundred miles between us, the little contact we had was precious. In a good imitation of a Glaswegian accent she told me that her boyfriend had proposed.
‘And you’ve accepted?’
She laughed hard. ‘Course I have, Dodo. I love him.’
‘I was just checking. Congratulations! But I guess this means you won’t be moving back.’
‘Well, I asked Euan for his thoughts on long distance marriage but he drew a blank. You know you’re always welcome up here,’ she added sincerely. ‘Hello? You still there? Why so quiet? Did I catch you in a funny mood?’
‘No, it’s nothing, just…’ My mind was wandering back to Thom. I realised how troubled I really was over my behaviour towards him. Though I could admit I’d seen things I couldn’t explain, I wasn’t sure how much came from the influence of others. The way they looked at him, and talked about him–
‘What’s up?’ she probed.
‘I don’t know. I think I’m just bored, Holly. Sometimes I think I invent things to keep my mind active.’
‘Like what?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I suppose I just want something to happen.’
‘I know what you mean. That’s why I went travelling. Just be careful what you wish for.’
Nine
JEALOUSY
‘Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.’
– Cicero
I happily discovered Mrs Evans had Thursday booked off on annual leave, but I also learned I’d be stuck in the shop all afternoon. Susan (whom Stacey had begun calling ‘silent Su’) said that Doreen wanted me to cash up today, as I’d not yet done unsupervised.
Whenever I passed through the Cray’s corridors, I expected to bump into Thom. Despite some nervousness at the thought of seeing and hearing him, I knew I’d feel better once I had; once I’d said hello genuinely, and responded to a question without sighing irritably. How curiosity had nuzzled up to me so suddenly on this subject! Deciding to get it over with already, I stepped round to his office with the intention of just saying hello. It was empty. I wandered a few galleries, the Great Hall, and– well, wasn’t it just the way of things? All those times I dreaded seeing him and yet saw him nearly every time. Now I was here determined to see him and he’s not around.
I began questioning my motives for wanting to see him, while musing on what sort of man I thought he was. Why would a mature, intelligent, successful man like Thom care whether some twenty-one-year-old girl like me was nice or not to him? Why would he want me seeking him out? As if better company wasn’t available. Perhaps the special attention he seemed to pay me wasn’t so marked. Perhaps it was just in his character with everyone – except Mrs Evans, who disliked him, and Stacey who said he terrified her.
Having just balanced the till, I caught sight of a familiar man standing in the shop doorway. I felt his stare on me. Disappointment replaced my nervousness the moment I looked over to him.
‘Hello, Mark,’ I said coolly.
He wore guilt, embarrassment and apology rolled into one powerless expression. Edging forward he returned an uncomfortable ‘Hi.’
There was no need to ask how he knew I worked here. It was clear that along with an in-depth account of my history, Stacey had given him this information, and probably drew him a map. Though I didn’t show it, it surprised me he’d come here to face his demons.
He was stylishly dressed and had gelled his hair – a clear effort to look good. He smelt good too. This wouldn’t make any difference with me.
‘I’m so, so, sorry,’ he said cringingly. ‘Alex, I made a stupid mistake.’
‘Very stupid.’ I raised my eyebrows, and determined to be civil, but only to the point of genuine understanding.
‘I’m sorry for just turning up like this as well, but I had to tell you in person how sorry I am. How are you?’
‘I’m very well, thanks.’ I smiled, reiterating his question, to which he replied the same though in a lesser degree of contentment. Once we’d done with the exchange of tedious, and a little awkward, greetings I referred back to what this was about, as it seemed he was going to take his time skirting around it and I wanted to go home.
‘Well, Mark, I appreciate your coming here to apologise, but–’
‘I did call but got no answer. I thought you might’ve been too angry with me. I deserve it. I can’t believe I ruined things.’
It was clear that his apology was not for misjudging and mistreating me, but for losing something for himself through
that. It wasn’t for any part that had actually offended me. Therefore, I came to the material point.
‘The fact is, Mark, if you hadn’t heard another account of me from Stacey you wouldn’t be here right now. I would never have known why you treated me like that. You would have qualified a mistake.’ – He hung his head while I lectured him. – ‘It’s bad enough to judge someone on gossip, but you punished me too with insults.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said penitently, biting on his thumbnail. ‘I tried not to judge on what I’d heard. I honestly took you out with the intention of getting to know you, because I wanted to come to my own conclusions. I really liked you – a lot. And you liked me too?’
What! Did he think I was going to stand here and massage his ego?
‘I wanted to see you, Alex, for who you really were, but all the things I’d heard kept playing in my head.’
‘Then you should have said something.’
‘I agonized over that all evening, but it just seemed so uncomfortable to ask–’
‘Uncomfortable for you,’ I butted in and then bit my tongue.
‘Well, yeah.’ He shifted awkwardly. ‘But it would have been uncomfortable for you too, to mention stuff like that. Obviously, now I know I could have said something and we’d have cleared it all up straight away. Look, I didn’t mean to judge, but to be honest it scared me, the things I got told. Some of it was so disgusting! And, well, he said you dated for a long time.’
‘Well, you got me there,’ I said, ‘because if dating Owen for four months wasn’t long, it certainly felt it. But considering I was sixteen and he was my first boyfriend, I don’t think it’s too bad a timeframe to realise what kind of person I was with. And didn’t you become suspicious, Mark, that he dated this disgusting girl for a long time?’
‘I did wonder, but thought he was probably a bit of an idiot.’
‘Ironic.’ I smiled. ‘But while I’m sure there’s no one better for a reference than an ex, you’ve probably realised by now that Owen can’t be counted on for the truth?’
Halton Cray (Shadows of the World Book 1) Page 8