all the beloved ghosts

by Alison Macleod

  I change the subject. I tell you that today is my niece’s ninth birthday. I explain that she rang me early this morning, her time, worried that Friday the 13th made her birthday unlucky. I could almost feel her sleepy warmth. ‘How on earth could today be unlucky?’ I asked her. ‘It’s the anniversary of the day we got you.’ Four thousand miles away, in her wordlessness, I heard her relief. ‘Do you want to speak to my mom?’ she asked. Then she dropped the phone and disappeared in a happy tattoo of footsteps.

  I tell you this because it reminds me that life – the running, reckless love of it – is never undone. Not by grievous errors of the past. Not by acts of deception. Not even by nights like tonight. I tell you because it is a small article of faith, and perhaps the only one that will remain to you.

  Avoid acting alone.

  The latest BBC alert arrives, and I have to stretch the text with my fingers so you can read it without your specs. It tells us that, in the weeks and months to come, there will be armed SAS in plain clothes on the streets of London.

  But not yet, not tonight, and contrary to the best advice, it is better that we are alone; that I present no overt physical threat; that I can be honest when I tell you there is no one waiting behind any corner. I hadn’t planned to see you in the Waitrose in Edgware Road. I was only after a bar of Fair Trade dark chocolate, 85% cocoa, select outlets only. I ask you: what were the chances?

  You drop the carrier bag and reach into your coat pocket for what I imagine must be a closed-circuit alarm on a fob. When the fob doesn’t appear, you turn your trouser pockets inside out with your one free hand. It’s not easily done.

  For the first time, your expression of strained tolerance fails, and I see you assess me properly. I am of average height. I am middle-aged. I wear a good mac and earrings that glimmer in the sodium light. You see it is unlikely I will catch you in a headlock or wrestle you to the ground. I do not carry an umbrella I can turn upon you. My coat pockets don’t bulge with any hidden can of Mace. I can see you believe me when I say I didn’t set out to follow you; that it simply seemed wrong to turn away.

  The last thing you want is a scene.

  I realise of course that you are comforted by the knowledge of the specialist protection unit parked outside your home in Connaught Square, only a few minutes from here. They will come looking for you. That’s what you explain. Before setting off, you leaned your head through a tinted window and said you were only popping out for a ready meal. The lead officer tried to dissuade you, but you summoned your famous grin and slapped the bonnet of the vehicle.

  You’d like to give me the chance to reconsider my actions.

  I suppose that’s something like an official pardon. It must be difficult to remember it’s a power you no longer have. It must be difficult to remember a great deal.

  The wind is sharp. You try to button your coat, an optimistic manoeuvre in our present circumstances. But try you do, and a boarding pass slips from your pocket. We bend simultaneously. I hear your knees crack – too many games of squash over the years.

  I wish I didn’t remember this kind of trivia. How strange it must be to leave miscellaneous traces in countless memories. Do you ever pick up the guitar these days? I want to ask. I read once that you used to do a good Mick Jagger impression, though, frankly, it’s hard to imagine.

  I’m good at imagining, by the way.

  You retrieve your shopping and on we walk. You explain you arrived home this evening after a stopover in Dubai. Everyone was out or away (or estranged, I silently add). In spite of your housekeeper’s best efforts, there was nothing you fancied in the fridge.

  You’re telling me, in your own uneasy way, that it was an entirely ordinary evening until I approached. You were simply another citizen with a need for comfort eating. Pasta. Carbs. It’s allowed, isn’t it?

  ‘You wanted fresh air,’ I say, nodding. ‘Or you did once you heard the sound of gunfire.’

  You turn to me, startled by my uncanny grasp, not only of your hand, but of such privacies.

  Your pulse is racing again but I continue. ‘The gunfire from rue Bichat – streaming through your open laptop in your kitchen.’

  Writers. Sorry. We know more than we decently should.

  ‘Before tonight,’ I continue, ‘it was hard enough for you. I get that. Sometimes, when you’re alone at home, you see faces at the windows. They’re cast in soupy green, as if they’re coming to you through night-vision scopes.’

  You stop short, and – given my grip – I have no choice but to do the same. But I don’t spare you the details. ‘When you saw them again, you hit every switch you could. You lit up the kitchen like an operating theatre. You had to close your eyes and count to four as you breathed in and six as you breathed out. You had to remind yourself that the faces are only a trick your mind plays; that it rarely lasts for long. You felt hot, sweaty. You grabbed your overcoat and paused only to speak with Security outside.’

  As I narrate these things – my prerogative, I’m afraid – your eyes widen and fill.

  I pass you a tissue from the Boots mini-pack in my pocket.

  ‘It’s only the wind,’ you claim as you dab at your face. Suddenly you look oddly vulnerable in the night. Old. ‘The wind,’ you repeat, ‘and the long flight.’ Your hair is silvered and sparse. Your face is drawn. Your eyes seem too small. Something flickers across them – guilt or shame – and then it’s extinguished. Whatever happened to ‘Bambi’ and his bright eyes?

  You clear your throat and compose your public voice. ‘Listen. You seem like a perfectly nice woman. I assure you, there’s no need for any awkwardness. You’ve simply made a mistake. Let’s walk back to my house, and I’ll arrange for one of my detail to give you a lift home. No harm done.’

  Which is where I have to disagree.

  In a city square up ahead, someone lets off a firework and, in the white flash, I see the tendons rise on your neck.

  Conduct the arrest carefully, respectfully, and with, at most, a reasonable and proportionate use of force.

  Naturally, you’re lost for words as I tie my right hand to your left with the navy-blue fabric belt of my mac. It’s absurd – I know it is – but the act of holding on tightly is bringing on my RSI.

  For some reason, the sight of me winding and tying our wrists together, palm to palm, brings to mind – yes, for us both – the image of a bride and groom as their hands are bound by the priest with his stole. As you wait, I thank you for your patience. I thank you for not running away in the brief interlude in which you might have tried. Of course you fully believe I would give chase. You know your knees are bad. Best, you decide, to go quietly, until a better plan presents itself.

  I stow our hands in your coat pocket. More room in there than in mine. You’re embarrassed, I’m embarrassed, but we do our best to ignore our new, enforced intimacy.

  Up ahead, a caff is still open. I nod to the misty window. The night weighs heavily, the line of your shoulders drops, and against my every expectation, you dip your head and follow.

  After the murk of November in Harrowby Street, the light inside is yellow, so yellow it seems almost viscous. Your hand sweats in mine, as if I’ve led you into an interrogation room, not a Turkish café. The place is deserted apart from one old man, his cough and a gym-pumped waiter who is thumbing his phone screen. Like everyone else tonight, the waiter bows his head before the blurred-out bodies of the bewildered dead. In the foreground of our TV and phone screens, they lie where they fell.

  How can it be? Only hours ago, these bodies were people who argued, laughed, yearned, looked up at the moon, worried about rent, scooped children into their arms, sipped coffee, hailed taxis and embraced. They argue with us now, rapping at the glass of cafés like this one. They have names, they say. They have homes where books lie open, where beds dip to their shape and clothes carry their scent.

  Yes. I see them too.

  So does the old man. That’s why he turns away from the glass, pops a pinch of snuff
into his mouth and shuts his eyes tight.

  We stare at an empty booth. ‘No place cards,’ I joke. ‘Do you think it’s boy-girl-boy-girl?’

  You turn, your expression pained.

  You need to understand: there is no protocol. No modus operandi. No clear-cut way forward.

  We slip into the booth, side by side. The knot at our wrists prevents any other arrangement. Direct eye contact is of course difficult.

  The waiter arrives.

  ‘Two espressos,’ I say without consulting.

  You stare ahead, glassy-eyed. You need a shave. Your breath is faintly stale. You still clasp your carrier bag with the unrequited fettucini. Our shoulders touch, and we sit without speaking, like unhappy teenagers in love.

  Inform the subject of what is being done as soon as is reasonably possible, explaining the reason for arrest, and what offence it is you believe he/she has committed.

  It’s not as easy as I thought, coming out with it.

  I’d like to think you’re someone who can read between the lines. I’d like to spare you the familiar shock of the words.

  So allow me to digress.

  ‘I followed you once before on a September evening in ’95, when you were on your way to victory. 1995. Think of it. Isis was still an Egyptian goddess. “Terror” was something I’d once studied in French History. I remember my sister applying for a job that had something to do with what she called the “Information Super Highway”. I thought it sounded dull, a non-starter. We were living in innocent times.

  ‘My then-husband and I had been to the same performance as you and Cherie at the Aldwych Theatre: Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink. It wasn’t Stoppard at his best – as you might recall – but, for the first time, the play didn’t matter. You and Cherie were only a few rows ahead. The country was basking in your glow. London was lush with what seemed an endless summer. H. and I were fresh-faced with young love.

  ‘You won’t remember, but during the interval, in the tiny upstairs bar, as H. queued for drinks, I spotted you. Or rather, everyone spotted you. How could we not?

  ‘I can still see Cherie . . . She was sheltering with friends in a corner near the bar. She had on a pale-gold lamé jumpsuit with a halter-neck. Her hair was a dark confection, her lips were very red and she was laughing over her G&T. You were out for the evening with another couple. Everyone must have wanted to be your friend that summer.

  ‘You stood with your party but also apart, your body angled towards the room, as if you were its presiding spirit. You were taller than you appeared on our small telly at home. Your eyes were bright blue, not brown as I’d thought. Your jacket was unbuttoned, and I noticed you had a slight paunch. It made you look worldly somehow. Until that night, I’d thought you to be one of those eternally boyish, weedy sorts. I remember you smiled warmly at the recognition in my eyes, happy to confer upon me your gaze; happy to enjoy a long, smoky-eyed moment of flirtation.

  ‘I confess. I was, fleetingly, proud. When I told H., even he was proud. We were young. You and Cherie were almost young. England, you said, would be young again. It would have “soul”. I remember you weren’t afraid of the word. Through my telly screen, you told me, “I have complete confidence in the beliefs I hold dear.”

  ‘Well, that was no lie.

  ‘After the Stoppard, H. and I loitered by the lobby doors, like giddy younger siblings. We followed you the distance of three streets to the steps of your private club. I can still see you, Cherie and Co. walking along the pavement in a wide row of four, as if London was yours that night. You had only to appear on the steps of the unmarked club for the door to open from the inside. We never saw the doorman. We never saw the hand.

  ‘That night seemed perfect, as light and golden as Cherie’s jumpsuit.’

  An indictable offence is one that can be tried in a crown court, in front of a jury.

  The waiter slaps the bill on the table, though we’ve hardly touched our coffees. He wants to close up, and he makes no secret of it.

  You ask if I would do you the favour of getting to the point. Talk of your early years as Leader – of all that hope – seems to have hit a nerve. Though tempted, I don’t turn to observe the discomfort on your face. I look straight ahead, for you are entitled to a degree of privacy. Even here, in a cheap leatherette booth, in the glaring light of a backstreet caff, I want to ensure you have that.

  I too find it difficult: the loss of so much hope; the knowledge that something too big for me to name or describe – a new, dread reality that bounces off satellites and travels in hair-thin fibres beneath ocean floors – has overcome our ability even to imagine it.

  You were meant to be a checkpoint. Instead, you waved it through – whatever ‘it’ finally turns out to be. You opened the gates with a lie.

  You’re quite right. Writers lie. Yes. We do.

  I begin again. I say: ‘We all have blind spots. You wanted to be decent. I understand that. You wanted to be loyal. Sometimes, it’s hard not to be a people-pleaser. I err that way myself. And who would want to risk a Special (capital S) Relationship (capital R) at a time like that? Who, under such desperate circumstances, would want to look like a person – a statesman – who was prepared to cut and run?

  ‘Far easier – when it came to it – to overlook the dubiousness of the Intelligence; to trust Intelligence to be – yes, I’m with you – intelligent.’

  I pause. ‘I’m trying to imagine your thinking. Did the British public actually need to know that North Korea, in all likelihood, possessed a greater stockpile than Iraq? No, they did not. You took an executive decision. Someone had to. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but could anyone have predicted a war that would never end? Could anyone have foreseen such—’

  ‘Chaos.’ You finish my sentence. I look up. Your face looks clammy; your eyes, depthless.

  At the till, our waiter is still staring, slack-jawed, at Paris on his phone screen.

  ‘It’s warm,’ you say. ‘May I take off my coat?’

  I shake my head. ‘He wants to close up.’ I drop a fiver on the table, and the waiter stares as we sidle out of the booth, a pair of urban oddities. He’s too young to recognise you, and you have no choice but to retract the famous-person smile you were about to offer.

  In the event that you do act alone, be aware it is your word against theirs.

  Our footsteps echo too loudly in Seymour Place. My phone is ringing in my pocket. I check – it’s Evie, my niece, on Facetime – and swipe the Decline button, though I immediately feel the loss of her there in the windswept street.

  I draw breath. It is important to marshal the facts. ‘You had firm information, or you said you did. You had shockingly clear intelligence. Forty-five minutes to take cover. Yet MI6 admitted to the UN’s Mexican Ambassador that the evidence was neither clear nor firm. With respect, if MI6 found themselves able to update the Mexican Ambassador, would they not have seen fit to tell you? And in the meantime, on the Arabian Peninsula, the troops were battle-ready.’

  You stop on the pavement. ‘Define “battle-ready”.’

  I sigh and tug you on.

  Our hands are stowed once more in your coat pocket. My own still buzzes with BBC alerts. Now and then, you flinch, as if one of them has given you an electric shock. The elegant Georgian homes of Seymour Place flicker with the night’s news. Through the thin panes, we hear the shots ring out again and again.

  I continue. I try to speak plainly. ‘That spring, Lord G. couldn’t make the legal case – and then, lo, he could.’

  We turn into George Street. You remind me that your Security team are out looking for you. You close your eyes in a display of polite weariness. ‘Any professional person is entitled to change his view.’

  ‘Especially after a trip to Washington?’

  You roll your eyes. The mood between us has shifted. You are over the shock of my appearance in your evening. You won’t dignify my question with an answer. After so many years, it’s banal to your ears.

  Ev
en so, I press on. ‘Whether Lord G. endorsed or didn’t endorse, what does it matter? One can’t “disappear” the truth.’

  You smile, humouring me. ‘Which in your view is?’

  I repeat the obvious. ‘No UN Resolution. Which in turn meant’ – I might have added jazz-hands were I not one hand down – ‘you blamed Chirac. Played the anti-French card. Created a distraction. Then seized the moral high ground, and did what you were going to do all along.’

  At the crossing, a car stops for us. You nod your thanks to the driver.

  For years, you’ve hidden in plain view.

  A civilian may conduct an arrest if a breach of the peace is or was committed in his/her presence.

  Who was not present? The action, after all, was dubbed ‘Shock and Awe’.

  That first night, thirty-six Tomahawk cruise missiles exploded over Baghdad. Each released its own arsenal of cluster bombs. Each cluster exploded into ‘submunitions’. It rained fire.

  On my television screen, Baghdad, a city I had known only through The Arabian Nights, lost every mystery. It seemed impossible that a sole palm tree in the foreground could stand untouched by the apocalypse.

  Perhaps you understand why I couldn’t simply walk away with my bar of chocolate. I smiled at you in that theatre bar. I voted. I cheered.

  The civilian may conduct an arrest if he/she has reasonable grounds to believe that such an arrest is necessary to prevent the person being arrested from making off before a constable can assume responsibility for him.

  I didn’t mean to blurt it out. I meant to remain detached.

  ‘You’ve made off so often and so well that people get the door for you on your way out. But tonight – be honest – you don’t want to go home. You would have shaken me off by now if you did. After all, who else but me knows about the panic attacks in the night? You need – you badly want – someone to understand it’s exhausting to be you. Denial is draining. You know that better than anyone. But what, you ask yourself over and over, is the alternative? Can anyone ever tell you that?’