A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  “Listen…” Drew Latham took his time getting out of the chair. “You must come and eat with us. Gil was saying only the other day, ‘We haven’t seen that Denny for ages.’ You know how fond she is of you.”

  Dennis did not reply. He could count the times he had met Gilda Latham on one hand. Once when she had come into the office with her father at the time of the merger, at Carey Lawson’s funeral, and also when he had given a talk on his machines to the Causton Library Users Association. She had gushed all over him afterwards and insisted on helping to put his slides away. It had taken him hours to get them straight.

  Now he wondered at which moment during these brief encounters Gilda could possibly have become “very fond” of him. He presumed it was a figure of speech used as carelessly as the word “love” seemed to be these days. This had turned up last year on nearly all his Christmas cards, even from people he hardly knew, only the milkman showing decent restraint.

  When home time came and people were packing up to go, Dennis decided to have another look at the Lawsons’ account. As financial advisor to the new publishing business he should have up-to-date figures to put on the table at their inaugural meeting. He typed in the password, which was “Parmain.”

  Dennis was rather chuffed with his compilation of passwords, which were all medieval French. They had been chosen very carefully to complement the business or personality of the relevant client. So a drunken landowner gambling away his estate had “Soteral.” A dress manufacturer “Asure.” The owner of a prep school “Enfancegnon.” A judge who rode with the local hunt, “Esmochior.” A greedy banker, “Termoint.” Aubain, fauconcel, dringuet, lorain – who would guess to what these words referred?

  Only Leo Fortune had been told. And Dennis had been so delighted with this clever conceit that Leo hesitated to mention that labelling the disk on which the words were kept “ENTR’OVRIR” might be a bit of a giveaway. But he agreed that the words themselves were pretty impenetrable. Having little knowledge of apples and their infinite variety, neither man noticed how near “Parmain” was to Pearmain – as in Worcester.

  On the bus going back to Forbes Abbot Polly sat and seethed. Seethed primarily because she didn’t see herself as the sort of person who travelled on buses, ever. But also because she had been humiliated by some stuffy, dried-up old boot of a man purely for the pleasure of seeing her squirm. And he would tell Mallory. Of course he would. He was the sort. She could just hear him, pompously describing the scene in his office with mock regret. I felt as her father you should know…Yeah, right.

  There were two stops in the village. The first was by the duck pond at the bend in Hospital Lane and almost directly opposite Dennis’s house. Several passengers prepared to get off. It took a little while. They were loaded down with shopping and one woman with a toddler had a pushchair, which the driver got out of his cab to help her with.

  As all this was going on Polly sat staring out of her window directly into the garage of Kinders. No sign of a car – presumably Dennis drove to work. No sign of that odious cleaner either. In fact, no sign of life at all. As the driver got back into his seat Polly jumped up, calling, “Just a minute,” and got off the bus.

  In the lane most of the disembarking passengers had wandered off but a couple remained, heads close together, talking in low voices. Polly crossed over to the pond and felt their glances follow. She sat on a little bench and observed the ducks. Uptailing, skimming, fighting. Then there was a sudden outburst of fierce quacks and by the time they died down the two women had gone.

  Polly looked about her. A man in a cheese-cutter cap was walking his Labrador further up the lane, moving away in the opposite direction. Quickly she crossed the road, opened the gate of Kinders and entered the garage. There was the large Peg-Board and keys, just as she remembered it. What a fool the man was. Even though she could see no main house keys he was still asking for trouble. You could almost say she was doing him a favour, drawing attention to the risk he was taking before anything serious took place. A man should always be on his guard. Polly unhooked the bunch marked “Office” and slipped them into her pocket.

  She made her way down the lane, the weight of the three keys pulling on the skirt of her soft cotton dress. So, there it was. She had them. No one else knew she had them. She was safe. Yet Polly still felt uneasy. Having taken them on impulse she now had to think about how soon she could safely put them back. In an hour or so Dennis would be returning from work. Of course he might not check out the board. And he’d hardly be leaving the keys of the beautiful dark blue Lexus Polly had spotted on the day of the funeral hanging there. But he was bound to lock the garage at some point. How late might that be?

  Slowly it dawned on Polly that if she was going to make use of the keys – and having stolen them she certainly intended to – she simply could not risk trying to put them back at all. Even if Dennis hadn’t noticed their disappearance, finding a safe opportunity could prove extremely difficult. And if he had, and they then turned up on the board again, he’d get seriously worried. An impression could have been taken. He might even contact the police. But if she left things as they were Dennis would probably just think he’d mislaid them. Old people were like that. Always losing stuff.

  In the kitchen, having wisely picked up a few Diet Cokes in the post office that morning, Polly took one out of the fridge, rolled the cool metal against her burning cheek, listened with pleasure to the soft hiss of escaping gas and drank deep. She removed the severe black ribbon and shook her hair out, running her hands through the glowing mass, lifting it away from her face. Then she eased her dress away from her sweating skin and splashed cold water over her neck and face, leaving the pearls of moisture to dry naturally.

  The house appeared to be empty, which suited Polly fine. The last thing she wanted was non-stop wittering. Perhaps Benny was in the church. She had mentioned that morning being on the flower rota. Polly was incredulous. If God had made her that ugly and that stupid she would not have been playing the handmaiden at his altar. She would have been pissing on him from a great height. If not worse.

  Now that she felt cooler Polly decided to sit outside. She thought first of the banks of a stream, which ran under a little bridge just a few yards from St. Anselm’s. The thought of resting her feet in the clear running water was most appealing, but in fact Polly got no further than the front door. A heavenly scent of lavender, mixed with rich perfume from a huge swag of honeysuckle smothering the porch, changed her mind. She sat on one of the wooden seats – just a shelf really – put her feet upon the shelf opposite and, for a brief moment, felt almost sorry that first thing tomorrow she would be returning to London.

  But back to business. There were two things she had to work out and the first was how soon she could safely return to Causton and let herself into the offices of Brinkley and Latham. What time had it got dark last night? Half-nine? Tennish? What time did the pubs turn out? And did it matter if the odd drunk noticed someone slip a key into a door through which they had no right to enter?

  Secondly, although she could come and go as she chose while at Appleby House, Polly decided it would be prudent, bearing in mind possible future conversations between Benny and her parents, to have a reason for her nocturnal rambling. She planned to ring her mobile using the house phone and mock up a conversation with a friend who, briefly in the area, wanted to take her out for a drink. No—he wouldn’t be coming to the house. She would be meeting him at the village pub. This invention caused Polly to laugh aloud at her own cleverness. She drained her Coke, tossed the can into a clump of honesty, looked at her watch and sighed. Another three hours to get through. Polly was already dissing her earlier notion that peace, quiet and assorted herby fragrances held any sort of appeal. They were, in fact, excessively boring. The country sucked.

  She thought about getting Benny’s radio from her room—there was still some Emma B to go – but decided she couldn’t be arsed. What she really wanted was a nice line of charlie, a Vodk
a Zhenya and the latest figures from the floor click-clicking, tackata tackata, through her hungry fingers.

  But then something happened that wiped this irritation completely. Judith Parnell came out of the house opposite, got into an old grey Mazda and drove off, turning right, presumably aiming for the Causton road. Polly watched open-mouthed. The town was at least ten miles away. Even if she had only a couple of errands to do and came straight back it should take around an hour. And in an hour…why, the whole world could change.

  Polly walked slowly towards the house called Trevelyan, the tarmac spongy beneath her feet. She made her way slowly down the side of the house, past a cloud of delphiniums and summer stock, fragrant in the blinding heat.

  The back door was heavy and quite solid enough to be at the front. It had a letter box too and a brass knocker in the form of a lion’s paw. Polly lifted it and rapped very gently – far too gently to be heard by anyone inside. Then she lifted the latch and walked in.

  The sunlight vanished as the door closed behind her. She was in a tiny hall in which three white-painted doors stood open. Polly waited, motionless, for a long moment, almost holding her breath, then quietly called, “Hello?”

  But there was only silence. Perhaps he hadn’t heard? In spite of her intense pleasure at the thought of the coming meeting, Polly was not entirely averse to extending this second-by-second delay. She had dreamed and dreamed of being with Ashley again. She didn’t count their brief exchange of closely monitored smiles the last time she saw him.

  Inevitably she had pictured their meeting. Played a few emotional variations, tried out some dialogue for style and content, wondered how soon they would touch and what the excuse – if any was felt to be necessary – would be. But of one thing she was quite sure: Ashley would be pleased, very pleased indeed to see her.

  And if there should be any awkwardness – though no way could Polly imagine any such thing – she planned to say she was there purely to ask himself and Judith over to Appleby House for a glass of wine before supper. A simple transparency. She knew Judith would refuse and guessed that Ashley would recognise the invitation for the cover story that it was and have the nous not to pass it on. Indeed, with a bit of luck, by the time she left they would have reached the sort of understanding that would render any such subterfuge quite unnecessary in the future.

  Polly pushed open the door on the left and found herself in a kitchen. She didn’t linger – what would be the point? A kitchen was a kitchen. But she did notice that everything looked pretty shabby. The cupboards had been recently painted, rather clumsily. All this was a bit depressing and Polly frowned as she stepped back into the hall. Seediness seemed to her even more unattractive than outright poverty. At least poverty was in your face and minus that awful creeping pseudo-gentility that came with keeping up appearances. That was simply pathetic. In fact, Polly decided, given the right circumstances, poverty could be quite an advantage. After all, didn’t everyone crave simplicity these days? You couldn’t open a magazine without seeing some C-list celeb clad in artfully tattered rags, squatting on an African birthing stool in a stripped-down loft in Clerkenwell.

  Momentarily diverted from just how near she herself presently was to out-and-out poverty, Polly pushed open the second door and, this time, entered a small, extremely cluttered sitting room.

  Though there were masses of books on sagging shelves there were also several wide empty spaces. Once-beautiful wallpaper (yellow and ivory toile de Jouy) was now faded, even slightly torn in one or two places. There was a darker rectangle in one corner, from the floor almost to the ceiling where for years something must have been standing. Polly, guessing at a grandfather clock, then noticed other different sized patches on the walls where presumably paintings had once hung. In the centre of the ceiling, from which depended a single light with a plain linen shade, were several holes, the Rawlplugs still inside. Polly wondered what sort of light had been replaced and guessed at a chandelier. Finally a large glass and walnut cabinet held just three pieces – a silver salt dish lined with dark blue glass and an exquisite shepherd and shepherdess in Watteauesque costumes.

  On the top of the cabinet was a large coloured photograph of Ashley and Judith. They were on a boat, leaning over the side, laughing into the wind. Their hair was all blown about and Judith’s cardigan, its sleeves knotted loosely around her neck, was flying up and out behind her like a sail. She was staring fixedly, devouringly even, at Ashley who was gazing out of the picture at the far horizon.

  Polly, not easily impressed, caught her breath at the sight of him. At the vivid brilliance of his smile; at the golden brown glowing skin and muscular shoulders. What a contrast to his companion. Coarse black hair, a thick neck and a complexion so dark and muddy Polly felt she could, in all honesty, describe it as swarthy. Plus the woman was extremely short, barely up to Ashley’s chest. Dwarfish, to be precise. So engrossed was Polly in enjoyable contemplation of Judith Parnell’s squat sturdiness that her heart almost stopped at a sudden clatter directly behind her. Jumping round, she all but fell over. No one was there.

  Then she realised the sound came from a fax machine in the final room, only fractionally bigger than a dog kennel, underneath the stairs. Polly took a step or two inside – three would really have been stretching it – and gazed about her. A small-screen monitor, a computer, disk drive and keyboard on what looked like a card table. An elderly Epson printer, a mug of pens and the Financial Times. The phone, answering and fax machines were on a broad window ledge.

  She wondered if Ashley might be in bed. Asleep presumably or he would surely have responded when she had called out. So that was that. There was no way Polly was going upstairs. That would be clumsy in the extreme. Positively crass. The game here was flirtation, casual and light-hearted. She was wooing Ashley, not hunting him down.

  But then, stepping back out on to a cinder path, she saw him at the far end of the garden, inside a fruit cage. He had a white china bowl in the crook of his arm and was picking raspberries.

  The force of Polly’s immediate reaction truly shocked her. Dry throat, quickened heartbeat, nausea. These were not familiar sensations and she was deeply uneasy when they occurred. Almost afraid. She hesitated. Nothing had happened so far. She could walk away now – walk down the path, through the wrought-iron gates, across the road to Appleby House and never look back. Ending something before it began and still in control. That would be the sensible thing to do.

  But Polly, who had always had everything she ever wanted, was ill-equipped for sensibleness, let alone self-sacrifice. The nausea passed, an upsurge of excitement took its place and she was just about to make her way towards the vegetable garden when she noticed a movement. Near the ground, between the first two rows of canes, there was a large circle of blue and white stripes, which suddenly shifted, revealing itself to be the rear end of Benny Frayle.

  Back at Appleby House Polly felt no gratitude that what might well prove to be an acutely wise decision had been taken by the Fates on her behalf. Instead she felt furious with Benny. What on earth had the woman been doing over there, monopolising Ashley? It wasn’t as if they could have anything in common. Benny had nothing in common with anyone as far as Polly could see, except perhaps one of those stumbling stammering overweight losers who turned up regularly on television quiz shows, barely able to answer the simplest question and present only as an object of ridicule.

  But by the time Benny returned with a huge amount of delicious raspberries Polly’s mood had softened. After all, there was no special hurry. Wasn’t hope deferred supposed to make the heart glad? The recollection was admittedly vague. Her mother had given her a diary one year with a quotation on every page from Shakespeare or the Bible or some famous novel or other. Tried to explain the beauty of the words and their context, hoping to lead Polly towards literature, to broaden her mind. Had even suggested she give figures a rest for a while. Fat chance. What had literature ever done for Polly’s mother? Twenty-five years in the busine
ss and still only picking up peanuts. Polly had met jobbers and brokers, some hardly older than herself, earning as much in a month.

  But then, not too long after this, when Benny was cutting some white bread and butter to go with the kippers (kippers!) for supper, Polly, previously fretting at the slowness of time passing, realised what an excellent opportunity had suddenly presented itself. No point in questioning her mother about the Parnells. Look how suspicious and snappy she’d been when Polly had merely suggested asking them around for a drink. But Benny, who had known the couple for as long as they’d lived in Forbes Abbot, Benny would not be suspicious. And she loved to talk. All Polly would have to say was something along the lines of: “How kind of Ashley to give you all these lovely raspberries, Ben. I must say they do seem to be awfully nice people.” So Polly tried exactly this, with immediate success.

  “Oh – but he’s always bringing salads and vegetables over for us, dear,” replied Benny. “Judith too. They are so kind.”

  As the evening wore on Polly discovered more and more about the kindness and niceness of Benny’s nearest neighbours. About how they always looked after Croydon and took in post and watched out for burglars when Ben and Carey had gone away. How, when Carey became seriously ill. Judith had driven into Causton to collect her prescriptions even though she had her own work and Ashley to care for. Poor Ashley, ill for months now and no one seemed able to find out what it was. Judith had tried everything under the sun, such expense. And she worked so hard.

  When there was a bit too much of Judith, which honestly meant any mention longer than a couple of seconds, Polly skilfully directed the babbling stream back towards Ashley.

  Benny chattered happily on. She welcomed the opportunity. It was the evenings when she felt most lonely – daytime could be easily filled—and she was really enjoying herself. And one of the nicest things about the conversation was how interested Polly seemed to be in everything she had to say. It was really heart-warming.