The Book Ghost

by Lorna Gray

  Abruptly, I approached the desk and claimed the support of the cool wood by settling back against the rim with my hands on either side of my hips. I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. But I had seen the way his body had jerked once in a single uncontrollable start as I had moved closer, and I knew he had watched me when I had sought this place against the desk as a compromise between distance and reaching for him.

  This felt very close to him anyway, because he was just there beside me and he still had his fingertips out upon the desktop after returning my advent calendar to its place.

  Now he said in a very strange voice, ‘Archie is talking to you through Jacqueline’s book?’

  The hard wood of the desk was running in a line behind my thighs and beneath my hands. I gave a hasty shake of my head. ‘No. I’m confusing you. I don’t know what this is. Archie wouldn’t try to keep hold of me like this. It’s too cruel. And I’m not speaking about the sort of conversations my mother and grandmother have in a darkened room with a few shattered souls either.’

  I drew breath and found it steadier than I had thought. I was able to say firmly, ‘This is too close to being internal. I only say I don’t know what they want from me because I haven’t got a better word for what this is.’

  ‘You think you have to do something?’

  There was a sudden twist of a deeper kind of puzzlement in Robert’s voice.

  He made the room stretch into focus where before I had only been aware of him, myself and the stairs. That was the moment when I vividly recalled what he had said about conflict and his lack of fitness to bear it.

  I found I was turning my gaze to him to tell him quite plainly, ‘Until this moment I hadn’t grasped how I could prove this experience, even to myself. But it occurs to me that while Mr Lock was doing the typesetting, the misspelling on the printed pages said all sorts of things. Now I’ve put my hand to the task, the error has clarified to say one thing and one thing only. Ashbroke.’

  I waited for a strangely stretched run of seconds while he turned something over in his mind. The sudden sense of space between us was emphasised by the coldness of this wood-lined office on a Sunday when I hadn’t lit any of the fires. And what was it he had said last night? That he was growing to believe that he ought to be allowed to worry about me without feeling ashamed?

  Well, unexpectedly, when he finally spoke, it wasn’t to retract that generous statement. It was to touch something deeper inside me that rippled into certainty.

  He remarked, ‘It just so happens that when I took the proof copy of Jacqueline’s book home the other night, it was to do my own research. That quote the family used on the uncle’s epitaph – “A man dies not while his world, his monument remains” – I’ve read it somewhere before.’

  ‘On a grave?’ I found that, suddenly, my heart was beating very rapidly.

  For the second time in as many days, I was powerfully aware again of every inch of the contact between my body and this dark furniture and the floor beneath my feet. And he was still standing near to me, with his fingertips touching the desk barely inches from my left hand so that the wood became the link that connected me to him in one staggering experience.

  He told me swiftly, ‘I found the original words for that memorial in a book; in a novel, in fact.’

  ‘A novel? Which novel?’

  ‘King Solomon’s Mines – the wild Victorian adventure in Africa by a man named H Rider Haggard. It turns out, after much thought, that the family memorial misquotes a line that ought to read, “Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains”.’

  There was something very beautiful about Robert’s sincerity when he added, ‘The original version is, you’ll notice, a little less about bricks and mortar than the Ashbrook interpretation. It better befits a hero who is braving untold dangers with an entirely Colonial mixture of romanticism and a tendency for shooting exotic animals first and then admiring them afterwards. Have you ever read it?’

  For once, I was actually able to say that I had. ‘A long time ago. But clearly not thoroughly enough to be able to hunt out the quotation at a moment’s notice. My uncle has a copy on his shelves at home, doesn’t he?’

  Robert gave a nod. ‘I dredged the idea from my memory late on Friday, borrowed the book yesterday and finally found the exact line very early today. It seems you aren’t the only one who rose early to work this morning.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. It must be something to do with all the excitement of last night.’

  I caught his swift sideways glance. Then he said rather more seriously, ‘I can tell you that the original passage doesn’t stop with that line. The original text goes on to say something very meaningful about the way a man’s name becomes lost as time marches on, but the air he breathed and the words he spoke still exist. The author was writing about the parts of human life that transcend the physical limitations of what we can control or fix into living memory.’

  ‘A man’s name becomes lost?’

  He caught my emphasis on the particular kind of loss. ‘Does that mean something to you?’

  And then I was shaking my head. ‘Not really,’ I said, because it was the truth, and yet at the same time I was feeling again the weight of that odd and formless pursuit, both up the stairs just now, and previously on my own hunt through those graveyards.

  My hands were gripping the lip of the desk when I conceded, ‘It doesn’t really mean anything that you can quote the original book. The Ashbrook people clearly didn’t retain much of the principle of the passage you read. Their monument declares that Walter’s legacy was physical and real and continues to dwell in the material things that he and his father created.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘But all the same, names do matter, because even though his children are recorded, his orphaned niece Harriet is emphatically missing from the epitaph that was inscribed for him.’

  At that moment, I was conscious of many things – Robert’s eyes upon my profile, the polished wood bearing my weight, his nearness and my seriousness. He watched me as I in my turn watched my left hand gingerly ease its grip upon the tabletop. I had been holding the wood tightly enough to turn the knuckles white.

  I added, ‘Last Friday, the morning after my obsessive but futile race around churchyards, I finally did the intelligent thing and asked Jacqueline where Harriet’s parents were buried. They’re somewhere in Norfolk; in or around King’s Lynn. Presumably, Harriet’s body was returned to them.’

  He didn’t make the obvious remark about being able to guess where my next bus trip would take me. I found I had no choice but to lift my head and ask at long last, ‘Is that what this is? Am I supposed to find Harriet’s grave and finally correct the uncle’s neglect to the point of satisfying even an Ashbrook’s idea of permanence in this world?’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  Abruptly, I was amused. ‘I have absolutely no idea. I doubt it.’

  I drew breath and stretched a little to ease the stiffness in my shoulders. Suddenly, it was as if all the time since my early start had been passed in a clouded dream and this was my first moment of waking.

  I admitted in a better voice, ‘This isn’t what you deserved from me this morning, is it? You wanted to creep in to rearrange my advent calendar while I remained oblivious in the print room. Then you were going to stage your arrival with a knock at the door and follow it by hinting that you ought to be invited in for a cup of tea and a happy chat about the future.’

  ‘Well, in actual fact,’ he replied steadily, ‘when it comes to cups of tea, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I presume you realise that your aunt used to do both your job and mine? She’s set a high bar for both of us. Today, I’ll make the tea.’

  There was something very dry there. It was the comfort of being teased. Then I put my hand out to cover his where he still reached to touch the tabletop.

  He didn’t move much but every nerve of
mine was sensitive to his concentration upon my touch. There was a temptation to ask why he was helping me to discuss this madness. But I knew why. Because I needed him to.

  I told him simply, ‘I love you.’

  And those three words should serve as a sufficient explanation for why, a short while later, I returned alone to the print room to collect the test print.

  It wasn’t entirely a question of courage that made me do it while he went to set the kettle upon the hob. It was also a sense that he had acted just now to shield me from the oppressive feeling I had left stranded on the stairs. I didn’t intend to test his protection by steering him directly into its path.

  Chapter 22

  The kitchen occupied the space at the head of the stairs between my bedroom and the storeroom. We were higher now than the ribbed roof of the printworks, which meant that the narrow windows on this floor hadn’t been bricked up. While I laid out the printed sheets on the wide table, Robert drifted along to the partially open door for my bedroom.

  It amused me to watch the way he lingered on the threshold and used the lightest of pressure to ease the door ajar just enough to peer in at the clutter and books and general homeliness. He must have sensed the drift in my attention. He turned his head and I raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Did you imagine I’d be living up here in forlorn squalor while you revelled in the comfort of my uncle’s house?’

  The attic room had changed a lot since he had last seen it. The mattress still lay on the floor beneath the front window, where he and my uncle had placed it, but I had added a rug and the small round table where my handbag rested at night. The thin partition wall was hung with pictures and there were a few pretty ornaments and vases on the mantelpiece. After a moment of thought, Robert drew something out of his pocket and stepped in to set it carefully beside the tallest vase.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked, as he rejoined me.

  ‘A tiny ceramic hedgehog that was once yours, but has lately come to me by way of a drawer in your advent calendar. I thought I should return it.’

  For a moment I thought he was making the point that he didn’t want his own mantelpiece cluttering with idiotic trinkets. Then I grasped a small hint of a gentler truth. After all this talk about lasting monuments, he had thought I might appreciate the return of a few harmless tokens of my own. He knew that the little hedgehog, all of half an inch high, had been a childhood treasure.

  Now, although he didn’t mean it to, the gift forever carried the memory of his presence here on this day too.

  Robert was studying the printed sheets I had spread across the table. If I had ever wondered about his fitness to do this job, I only needed to observe his concentration now. It was some time before his eyes flicked up to catch me watching.

  Oblivious to the way he had made my heart miss a beat, he said, ‘You are aware that there are other errors in this text beyond the misspelling of the name Ashbrook?’

  He didn’t require an answer to that. Instead he returned his attention to the test print while I took up my teacup and retired to a place against the wall.

  His finger lightly tapped a line of text. ‘There’s the epitaph on the family memorial.’

  After moment he added, ‘Do you know, I’d love to understand how those few lines from a Victorian adventure story came to hold such special importance for this Walter fellow that his children should have very specifically chosen to adapt it for his memorial.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, straightening from my lean against the wall. ‘It’s simple enough to observe that the book has a good deal to say about Africa. Perhaps Walter liked it, or knew the author or something. It was published during Walter’s lifetime, wasn’t it?’

  ‘But after Harriet’s, I believe.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  I saw his mouth give a little downturn at the corners. ‘Nothing, probably.’

  ‘So are you trying to tell me that the African connection means that I’m actually being called to restore Walter’s name? Perhaps I’m meant to prove that his memorial is dedicated to the herd of diminutive giraffes? Jacqueline will be delighted.’ My voice didn’t need to convey my disbelief.

  After a pause he began very tentatively, ‘Lucy, don’t take this the wrong way, but Archie doesn’t have a grave, does he?’

  I set my teacup down on the kitchen sideboard with very careful precision to show that I was prepared to accept the question. ‘No grave. He was lost with his ship. It went down with about half the crew so technically he’s buried at sea. His name will be listed on a war memorial at some point.’

  ‘More memorials?’ Robert had straightened from his bend over the papers. He reached out a hand to stem my instinctive protest before telling me, ‘No. I’m not trying to accuse you of creating this urgency for finding Harriet’s grave out of the loss of Archie. I’m trying to suggest that you might be interpreting the pressure you feel in a certain way because of your own history.’

  ‘Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Robert’s reach across the table had just barely touched my sleeve. Now he let his hand fall. He stood there, very much focussed upon this methodical process of unpicking my thoughts. It was an odd experience, seeing him work with me like this. It showed how much he had kept away from me before.

  His attention returned to the papers. He was marking up the few errors I had missed with a pencil. Because above it all, and regardless of how many complications I thought I was finding within the pages of Jacqueline’s book, it was undeniable that we were also swiftly approaching the deadline for publishing it. And I knew now just how much it mattered to Jacqueline that we helped her to achieve her goal.

  I told him this. And then, as his hand marked a circle around another misspelled variant of Ashbrook, he remarked quite as if it didn’t matter, ‘Every turn of yours keeps bringing us back to the issue of Harriet’s loss, doesn’t it, even when these misspellings by your own hand clearly mention Ashbroke. If it were me, I might truly begin to think that my errors referred to an Ashbrook, not Harriet Clare.’

  He added thoughtfully, ‘But you’ve had all these conversations with Jacqueline. You know how much your last visit to that house left you preoccupied with the issue of the child’s neglected name. And now it has spread to this building too, and the depth of your reaction frightens you, doesn’t it?’

  His uncompromising question made me fold my arms. I told him, ‘Frightened seems a strong word to use.’

  ‘It seemed to be a strong feeling just now. So?’

  After a moment when I still didn’t have an explanation, he said simply, ‘Listen, Lucy, I have to admit that I know what I saw in your eyes as I lifted you from your fall on the stairs at the Ashbrook house. It was there again today when you stepped into your office and I know that look. I’ve seen it before, and it is not one I would ever have expected to find in you.’

  Now he had shocked me. He was speaking about the experiences of his fellows in the prison camp again, I knew he was. A chill ran over my skin like a breath of air.

  I whispered, ‘The dead aren’t ghouls who can stalk us on a whim, I know that. If they were, I needn’t have worried so much about accepting the balance in my mind between living this life and remembering those who have left me. This isn’t about reaching out.’

  I struggled to find a better explanation. I told him, ‘Perhaps this feeling I have is the effect of war and loss and being forced into a closer acquaintance with my own mortality or something like that, but my world is nothing like my mother’s or my grandmother’s. When they extend a hand to a wandering soul, they do it kindly and generously and in the fullness of their faith. But this isn’t a conversation. This feels invasive. The darkness is in my mind and it already knows my thoughts. It feels dangerous.’

  I bit my lip defensively as if, despite my better words, I were summoning it after all.

  But nothing danced about on the stairs outside my ki
tchen door.

  After a moment while Robert’s gaze followed mine to the head of the stairs, he quoted softly, ‘Truly, the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life which can never die.’

  I felt my muscles adjust into puzzlement. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing really. Another misquote from that African adventure, worthy of our friend Walter. It suggests that the ghosts of this world are all around us in the words and actions of those who have gone before. You don’t need to reach out. Because the air Harriet breathed is still here.’ He turned back to me and straightened.

  ‘And that, by the way,’ he added as I sharply stopped my intake of breath, ‘is meant as a word of comfort. There are things she will have left behind for us to find, even if she didn’t mean to.’

  I let out my air with a faintly guilty smile and he reached out that hand again to lightly give a reassuring touch to my elbow.

  The touch steadied against my arm when he stepped around the corner of the table to move nearer. He said seriously, ‘I know you aren’t about to take off on a madcap journey across one hundred and fifty miles and four changes of train into Norfolk without exhausting a few local possibilities first, so what are you going to do? Will you ask Jacqueline’s vicar to let you take a look at the parish registers?’

  I shook my head. We already knew that Harriet wasn’t buried in either of the nearby churchyards. I admitted, ‘I thought I might begin with the newspaper. For the death notice.’ Then on an entirely different note, ‘Robert?’

  His attention had strayed to the crease between his thumb and forefinger on his free hand where, in the moment before, his palm had run against a sharp edge of one of the sheets of paper. A thin line had been scored there. Now I was close enough to share his examination of the mark. He found the cut had barely broken the surface, dismissed it and then returned his attention to me. ‘Sorry? Yes, of course. I will have time to help you tomorrow, Lucy.’