There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union

by Reginald Hill

  In the distance I heard the siren of a police car. I heaved a sigh of relief and turned towards the door but he was there before me. I was tempted to rush at him and force my way past, but it hardly seemed worth the risk of possible injury with my salvation so close.

  ‘It’s nearly over, Mr Stuart,’ he said, taking a step towards me.

  What he meant, I didn’t know. But I decided not to wait and find out. I turned and ran back across Ellie’s flat and through the door facing me. It was a stupid thing to do, I realized at once. It led nowhere but into a tangle of support scaffolding against an internal brick wall. I turned back. He was standing framed in the door of the set.

  ‘What do you want?’ I demanded, trying unsuccessfully to keep my fear out of my voice.

  ‘No need to run from me,’ he said gently. ‘You must know I couldn’t harm you directly.’

  ‘I know no such thing!’ I retorted. ‘I’ve seen you attacking Morland, remember? That looked pretty direct to me!’

  ‘Only with a rolled-up script,’ he said, as if that made sense. ‘And in any case, Morland is to some extent part of myself, isn’t he? The cynical, grasping, commercial bit. No, you’ve nothing to worry about from me, Mr Stuart.’

  Against my will, I let myself be reassured. If his lunacy had rules of non-violence I wasn’t going to complain. Besides the police siren was very near now.

  I said, ‘OK then. What are you going to do? What for instance are you going to say to the police when they arrive?’

  ‘Me? Nothing. I shan’t even be around,’ he said, faintly surprised.

  ‘You mean you’re not going to give them all that crap about me deliberately murdering Wanda?’ I said, getting bolder.

  ‘No need to,’ he said. ‘It’s all there for them to discover. It could take them a few chapters. And it may need a bit of tidying up in the re-write. But they’ll get there in the end.’

  Suddenly I was no longer afraid of this idiot!

  I said to him, ‘You know, old chap, I really do wish you’d hang around and have a talk with the police. I think my best insurance against suspicion would be for you to have a heart-to-heart with the officer in charge. I mean, why not take him aside and tell him all about my past, with page references, of course, and then tell him about the future you’ve got plotted out for me. Will you do that? Please!’

  I laughed as I spoke and after a while he began to laugh too. We laughed together for a while, then I stopped.

  He went on laughing.

  ‘It’s not that funny,’ I said suspiciously. ‘What the hell are you laughing at anyway?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s just occurred to me. You haven’t twigged yet, have you? You’re talking about the future. Future!’

  ‘What’s so funny about the future?’ I demanded. ‘It’ll happen, that’s for sure. And it’ll happen the way I want it to happen.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It has happened. It is happening. Haven’t you realized? You’re in a flashback. That’s what’s so funny. This has all been a flashback.’

  ’Nothing in this story is what it seems,’ said the judge. ‘You should remember that, members of the jury. These people you have been listening to, accused and witnesses alike, they are not ordinary everyday people like yourselves. Or even like me.’

  He paused, sat back, adjusted his red robe, scratched beneath his wig, then resumed.

  ‘They dress up, they play roles, they climb on to stages and address themselves to captive audiences, and very rarely are they interrupted or mocked. They are, in a sense shadows, creating and inhabiting a world of words, a universe of the imagination. All this you must take into account as you ponder what you have seen and heard in the past few days. You have been patient; you have been attentive; now you must be just. Let me remind you of what has been said. Let me review for you what has been here performed …’

  It’s a comfortable enough cell I’m in. The screws are friendly and helpful too. They tell me they like to keep their lifers in good heart. It makes it easier on everyone in the long run.

  Long run! That makes me smile. Unless my appeal is successful, this could be the longest run of my career! I made this joke to one of the screws and he laughed. He’s a nice chap. I told him that when (I refuse to say if) I get out, I’m definitely going back on the stage. That’s where the real world is. I should never have left it. You can stuff the cinema for me!

  Last night I woke up, about two or three in the morning, I suppose. I found my cell door wide open, so I took a little walk. I went right to the end of the long tiled corridor which runs by the door till I came to the corner at the end.

  Round the corner there was nothing: no tiles, no corridors, no cells; only darkness. I stood still for a while and, as often happens, eventually my eyes adjusted and gradually shapes began to emerge from the dark.

  I saw the sharp angles of mike-booms, the smooth tangles of cable, the eclipsing discs of arc-lamps, the staring blocks of cameras. I looked up, but whatever ceiling or sky arched overhead remained impenetrably black.

  I didn’t go any further, but turned round and came back. They’re not catching me like that! I’ll just go on sitting quietly here till I get the cue to make my appeal.

  Then we’ll see!

  Then, we’ll see.

  poor emma

  Emma Knightley, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly forty-one years in the world with little to distress or vex her.

  Except for her husband.

  ‘Poor Emma,’ her father would sigh when forced to a reluctant admission that George Knightley’s presence at Hartfield was by right of marriage rather than of neighbourly visit. It was not that he thought ill of Knightley. Had the Prince Regent himself won his daughter’s hand, old Mr Woodhouse would still have thought his daughter to have fared badly, which indeed few might have disputed, as the Prince Regent already had more wives than was customary in this part of Surrey.

  But against Knightley no such objection, or any objection at all, could be raised. In rank and wealth, as the owner of Donwell Abbey and its flourishing estate, he was the unchallenged first man in the hierarchy of the little township of Highbury and its environs. In character, he was sensible and resolute; in taste, he was sober and moderate; in conversation, he was pleasant and serious; in person, he was manly and handsome.

  It was only in the matter of age that any reservation of total approval could exist, and it was generally agreed that the eighteen years by which he was her senior merely gave him a maturity of experience which perfectly complemented a certain lightness and even frivolity in Emma’s own still unformed character.

  So when Mr Woodhouse sighed and said ‘Poor Emma!’ the company responded with gentle amusement, recalling how Emma’s governess and friend had become ‘poor Miss Taylor’ the moment she married the widowed Captain Weston, and Emma’s elder sister had become ‘poor Isabella’ even before she married Knightley’s younger brother, John.

  To be ‘poor Emma Knightley’ was a fate which every maid and not a few matrons in the neighbouring countryside envied heartily.

  How well the marriage had started! Emma indeed had at first hesitated to accept Knightley’s proposal. Her father’s delicate constitution had already suffered such nervous damage at the defection of poor Miss Taylor and poor Isabella, that she feared to administer it a third blow. To abandon him at Hartfield was unthinkable; and any plan to carry him with them to Donwell Abbey would almost certainly prove fatal to one who would by preference never make any journey longer than the perilous trip between his bedroom and his parlour.

  But Knightley, with that keenness of intellect and nobility of action for which he was justly famed, had solved the problem by proposing that he and Emma set up house in Hartfield, leaving their transfer to Donwell Abbey until a time of more convenience. This last phrase was a way of avoiding direct reference to what ha
d seemed imminent for many years, Mr Woodhouse’s death. A fair age already (he had not married young), and by temperament even older, he had led the life of an invalid for so long that it seemed probably that even this gentlest of blows would quickly drive him down.

  But the expected event (expected by all except perhaps Emma, and, doubtless, Mr Woodhouse himself) was not quickly forthcoming. The years went by. Knightley rode daily to Donwell Abbey to oversee the affairs of his extensive estate. But in truth there is a large difference, though subtle to perceive, between a man’s rising of a morning, and throwing back his curtains and looking out, and saying ‘All this is mine! I must not neglect to tend and improve it!’ and a man’s riding to work like any common factor and riding home again at night. Gradually, the visits ceased to be diurnal; at first they still occupied the larger part of a week, but eventually Knightley discovered he could take care of Donwell by the application of his energies there on two afternoons solely.

  Hartfield offered even less challenge to his powers of organization. His stables he had already transferred there from Donwell and these he set about developing, soon acquiring a reputation for having some of the best mounts in the country, a reputation he was not unwilling to support on the hunting field. From hunting to racing horses is a short step, and here too he did not care not to be predominant.

  Emma did not share his love of equestrianism. To her, a horse was the motive power of a carriage or a plough, no more, no less. But she was content enough with her role as Mrs Knightley, mistress of Hartfield and Donwell, and beyond any doubt first in precedence in Highbury. Only once was this right to the primacy challenged. After about ten years of marriage, the even tenor of life in Highbury was disturbed by the death of poor Miss Taylor’s husband, Mr Weston. He was a man impossible not to like and Emma mingled her genuine tears with her friend’s.

  The funeral was to be a large affair and the solemn anticipation of the event was somewhat disturbed by the news that Mr Frank Churchill was definitely going to attend. As Mr Frank Churchill was Mr Weston’s own son by an earlier marriage, this may have seemed an event more to be marked by its omission than its occurrence, but he was a man whose early arrival had always been more forecast than forthcoming. Brought up by his uncle and aunt in Yorkshire, who had sufficiently loved him to give him their name and make him their adoptive heir, he had married Miss Jane Fairfax of Highbury at about the same time as Emma and Knightley were wed. Since then little had been seen, though much had been said, of the young couple. Mr Weston’s paternal pride burnt all the hotter for being fuelled by absence and neglect, and his delight in the news that Churchill had at last come into his inheritance caused Emma to say, ‘He talks of it as a deed so noteworthy that one might almost think Frank Churchill had actually murdered his adoptive parents for their money!’

  That there had been a very great deal of money, Mr Weston did not spare to broadcast far and wide. And though he himself was naturally not in a position to see it, the evidence of wealth was ostentatiously (Emma said ‘vulgarly’) displayed in the magnificence of the Churchills’ carriage and the sombre richness of their mourning dress. Jane Churchill’s tall slender figure, stately bearing, and pale almost translucent skin, were as well suited to the occasion as any stage tragedienne’s (and perhaps the means were not dissimilar, murmured Emma). In the procession, during the service, and by the graveside, there was no denying her and her husband their right of precedence, and Emma accepted her demotion with a becoming meekness.

  After the funeral they all returned to Randalls, the Westons’ house, and gathered in the hallway, conversing in low tones, while Mrs Weston went ahead into the drawing-room to make sure all was prepared for her guests’ refreshment. After a short interval, a servant opened the double doors to reveal Mrs Weston at the end of the room, and invited the guests to come forward.

  Jane Churchill began to advance but in a second Emma was by her side, smiling brilliantly.

  ‘Nay, Jane Fairfax,’ she murmured sweetly. ‘Among the dead, you have undoubted precedence, but now we are back among the living, you must give me leave.’

  And glancing coyly at Frank Churchill, who smiled so broadly it was nearly a grin, Emma advanced to comfort her grieving friend.

  About this time, Mr Knightley began to take an interest in politics and being offered a nearby seat in the gift of a Tory lord, he was soon a Member of Parliament. This meant that during parliamentary sessions he spent two or even three days a week in London, some sixteen miles away. At first he stayed at the home of his lawyer brother, John, but not finding the large brood of his nephews and nieces conducive to mature political thought, he soon rented a small house for himself in a location convenient for Westminster. The effect of his presence on affairs of state was not visible to Emma, except in so far as her husband grew daily more opinionated. Also, as political debate seemed impossible unless accompanied by vast quantities of food washed down by copious draughts of wine, Knightley’s already portly figure grew softer as his opinions grew harder.

  Soon Emma began to feel within herself a growing disgust with both her husband’s person and his manner, but not much more than her observation told her most wives felt for most husbands, so she saw no reason to let it spoil the even tenor of her life.

  There was another cause for unease, however. Mrs Weston, after a decent period of mourning, was expected by her friends to settle into an easy widowhood not much different, except of course for the unavoidable absence of Mr Weston, from her married existence. Instead of this, her grief continued unabated, and eventually she declined into religion, to such an extent that it came as no surprise, though an incalculable shock to all decent people, when she embraced the doctrines of Rome. It was not that there was a general prejudice against the Catholic Church in Highbury, but there are limits to everything, and Mrs Weston leapt over hers with a positively unhealthy fervour. Randalls she completely neglected, except for her husband’s study which she turned into a memorial shrine.

  ‘My dear Miss Taylor,’ protested Emma. ‘Your personal faith is your own affair, but dear Mr Weston died and, we must presume, remains a Protestant. Think of how bewildering to his poor spirit all this drapery, silverware and candlewax must be!’

  Mrs Weston was not to be moved to even the ghost of a smile by her friend’s wit and Emma departed ‘so thoroughly impregnated with incense,’ she told her father, ‘that I dared not go into Ford’s to purchase a string of beads I have fancied lest the assistant there should imagine I wanted a rosary!’

  But it was not just the incense and Mrs Weston’s increasing oddity which slackened the bonds which tied them. Emma’s openness of character needed a confidante, but her pride needed the assurance of perfect discretion, and having met Mrs Weston’s personal confessor, a soft-skinned, brown-eyed priest with insinuating eyes, she had no desire to risk having her own problems incorporated in her friend’s confession.

  This left a gap in her life, for it is difficult and dangerous for a leader to create that equality which is the basis of trusting friendship. Mrs Weston had never been her social equal, but her position as governess for so many years had created a relationship of interchangeable authority which levelled out as friendship. Who was to take her place? Mrs Elton, the vicar’s wife, would have leapt into the breach, but she was a woman of such a grating manner and such ineradicable natural vulgarity that it would scarcely have been possible to tolerate her as a housekeeper, let alone a friend.

  Only one other woman fitted the part and that was Emma’s own sister, Isabella. But Isabella, married to Mr John Knightley, was resident most of the year in London, and that was sixteen miles away. At least a short visit was possible, and she proposed to her husband that she should spend a couple of nights in his town house in Westminster. He seemed oddly reluctant to allow the possibility of this, advancing a whole battalion of objections as if attacking an opposition bill in the committee stage.

  ‘Besides, who is to look after your father if you come to London
?’ he concluded.

  ‘That is all taken care of,’ said Emma tartly. ‘You do not imagine I would not ensure my father’s comfort before all else?’

  ‘No, I do not imagine that,’ sighed Knightley.

  ‘Good. Then I shall come to London and stay at my sister’s house as usual, though what she may think, knowing as she does that we have a house of our own in town now, I cannot imagine.’

  So it was arranged. But when Emma arrived at John Knightley’s house in Brunswick Square, she found her welcome not what she was used to, and the change had nothing to do with her husband’s house in Westminster.

  ‘We are ruined, dear Emma. Ruined!’ cried Isabella. ‘What is to become of us, I do not know!’

  Emma, used to her sister’s emotional hyperbole, settled herself comfortably in a chair and prepared to hear some tale of a mislaid purse, or a burnt dinner, or at the worst a law-suit in which John Knightley’s advice had proven ineffective.

  Instead she was retailed a truly distressing tale. It was not just John Knightley’s advice which had proved ineffective, but his management of a large trust fund which had been in the care of his firm for many years. It was not John’s fault, Isabella assured her sister tearfully. The day-to-day management of the fund had been in someone else’s hand, but his had been the ultimate responsibility. When it had come to his notice that large sums of money from the trust had been most injudiciously invested in doubtful shares, he had acted quickly to remedy the error. Too late! The shares had already collapsed, and though it was only through John Knightley’s efforts that the losses incurred were not more severe, there was no gratitude to be expected from the guardians of the trust.

  John Knightley himself arrived as Isabella concluded her tale of woe. He was a thin, scholarly-looking man, restrained of speech and manner, and while his wife could make a spoilt meal sound like a cataclysm, his dry, even speech made disaster sound dull. But it was confirmation of disaster he brought.