‘My God,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Did anybody find out what it was?’
From the back of the notebook Miles produced a photocopy of a blurry charcoal sketch. ‘This is what the anthropologist drew, less than an hour later.’ The sketch showed a woman in a black coat running to the left foreground. Her eyes were deep black smudges of terror. This was a woman who was running for her life. Her hat had flown off and was lying on the beach. Fifty feet behind her was a massive shape, black and bulky, hung with seaweed and encrusted with shells.
‘It could have been a hoax,’ said Laura.
‘Yes, you’re right, it could be a hoax,’ Miles agreed. ‘The anthropologist swore on oath that what he had seen was real, and so did the woman, but they could have invented the thing together; or somebody could have dressed up like Shellycoat just to scare people, although it’s hard to imagine how he managed to tear a dog in half. However, two interesting facts came to light. One was that a local lad named Angus Renfield had drowned the previous spring at the same spot, and that his favourite story was Sir Walter Scott’s description of Shellycoat. Apparently he used to try to frighten his pals by covering himself in weed and chasing after them along the beach. The other fact was that a fishing-boat returned to St Andrews shortly afterwards with a damaged trawl-net. The crew discovered that a huge hole had been torn or bitten out of it. In one part of the net, they found twenty or thirty mussel-shells, in an overlapping pattern, all interwined with coarse, greasy hair. These shells, if you held them up and shook them, made a distinctive clattering sound.’
‘That’s a pretty scary story,’ said Laura.
Miles lit another cigarette. ‘It’s impossible to authenticate, although you can still see the shells in the library at St Andrews University. I have a photograph of it somewhere. But this isn’t the only instance of a fictional or mythological being coming to life. People have reported seeing Dickensian characters, Joycean characters, Raymond Chandler private eyes. A nurse at a drug clinic in London says she was totally convinced that a man who came for treatment was Sherlock Holmes.’
Oh, come on,’ said Elizabeth. ‘She must have been helping herself to the medicinal brandy.’ She wanted to laugh but the serious look on his face completely silenced her.
‘No, the nurse wasn’t drunk and she wasn’t imagining things, but somebody was. Somebody was imagining that they were Sherlock Holmes. Somebody dead. Their spirit hadn’t survived in the form in which they actually lived. When you think about it, why should it? Your imagination is completely free from the constraints of your body. Somebody had imagined that so strongly that they took on a perceivable form.
‘There is vast psychological power in the collective unconscious. Jung knew that, and used it to help people with schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. It’s like one person being knocked down in an accident and dozens of other people rushing to help . . . medics, nurses, doctors, surgeons, anesthetists, blood donors . . . not to mention the community that built the hospital and paid for the emergency services in the first place. The only difference is that the help you receive from the collective unconscious is psychological rather than physical.’
‘If this is true, how come the whole world isn’t populated by fictional characters?’ asked Laura. ‘Why aren’t we shoulder-to-shoulder with the Hardy Boys, or Huckleberry Finn, or Anne of Green Gables? Just think of it! I could be Scarlett O’Hara when I die!’
Miles poured himself some more coffee. His expression was still serious. ‘I don’t think all spirits take on the shape of fictional characters. I don’t think that very many spirits survive the moment of extinction. In almost every case that I’ve come across, the deceased person died a traumatic death. They almost always drowned or suffocated, or suffered a long period of oxygen deprivation in some other way. I don’t have any idea how it happens, but oxygen deprivation seems to be one of the necessary conditions for the imagination to be released. This is why so many people report out-of-body experiences when they’re clinically dead for a short period of time. There have been far too many reports to be dismissed; especially since they’re all so similar. The sensation of floating to the ceiling and looking down at your own body . . . the sensation of moving away towards a bright light. Seeing parents and friends who have predeceased you. This is the human imagination leaving the human body, and after that has happened, it can take on any form it wants to, provided it has the will, and the strength, and the need to do it.’
‘I’m finding this very difficult to believe.’ said Elizabeth.
‘I’m surprised,’ Miles replied. ‘You’re a writer yourself . . . you should be quite familiar with the power of the human imagination. Believe me, in the backs of our minds there is another world, with other people in it. They exist because we want them to exist. You have only to close your eyes and think of them, and there they are. You can actually see them. You can actually describe them. You can hear them talking and smell their perfume. To all intents and purposes they’re real. They’re really real.’
Elizabeth was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, ‘Is there any way to get rid of them? I mean, if we can make them up, surely we can unmake them, too.’
‘You’re talking about getting rid of Peggy?’
She nodded.
‘But Peggy’s your sister,’ said Miles. ‘She may not look exactly like your sister any longer, but that’s who she is. You can sense it for yourself. What if Laura here were in a fire, and her face got all burned, and she had to have reconstructive surgery so that she wound up looking like somebody different? You wouldn’t want to get rid of her, would you?’
‘This is different. Peggy’s liable to kill people. Besides, she’s dead already. Whatever this Peggy-girl is, whether it’s Gerda or Peggy or somebody else altogether, the Peggy that I knew is lying in the cemetery and she’s not going to come back.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Miles replied. ‘What’s lying in the cemetery is Peggy’s material body, that’s all. Her essential being, what she actually was, is still with us, and will remain with us.’
‘You’re saying I can’t get rid of her?’
‘How can you get rid of Gerda from The Snow Queen? Burn every copy and brainwash everybody who’s ever read it? Once a character has been devised, he or she can never be undevised.’
‘But she could ruin my life! If every man I ever meet is liable to be frozen to death, how can I have any kind of relationship with anybody?’
‘I guess you could try living as far away from Sherman as possible.’
‘Oh, I see! I have to go live in China because my dead five-year-old sister doesn’t like me going around with men who have sex on their mind!’
Miles lit a third cigarette. For a moment, his face disappeared behind the smoke. Then he blew it away, and nodded, and said, ‘Yes . . . it may actually come to that.’
‘And what about me?’ asked Laura.
‘I guess the same thing applies,’ said Miles. ‘After all, there’s every reason to think that your Peggy killed the Reverend Bracewaite, isn’t there, even though you didn’t actually see her do it.’
Elizabeth said, ‘There’s really no way?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. Spirit-forming isn’t exactly a known science, after all. You have to believe that a fictional character can actually exist before you can work out how to be rid of her, and that’s not a leap of faith that many people are prepared to take.’
‘I’m not sure I’m prepared to take it myself.’
‘You’ve seen Peggy for yourself.’
‘I know. But maybe it isn’t Peggy at all, maybe I’m deluding myself. And that black shape that froze poor Dan to death, what could that be?’
‘The Snow Queen,’ said Miles, matter-of-factly. ‘When a spirit becomes a character, she can conjure up all of the other characters that make her what she is.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But the Snow Queen wasn’t black, like that. The way that Hans Andersen described he
r, she was white. She wore a cap and coat entirely of snow, and she was tall and slender, and she was dazzlingly white.’
Miles said, ‘For sure, that’s what he wrote in the story, but he was writing for children, wasn’t he?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Hans Andersen wrote for adults long before he started writing fairy stories for children. In fact, he didn’t particularly enjoy writing fairy stories, but they were so successful that he didn’t have any choice. When they were first published, a lot of critics said that his stories were too morbid for children. They read like children’s stories, but they’re aimed at adults. He was a Scandinvian. You know, gloomy and dire. The Snow Queen was based on one of the daughters of Loki, the great Nordic incarnation of evil. Loki was like Satan to the Norse people. He frightened them so much that they wouldn’t make any sacrifices to him, or build any temples in his honour, in case he appeared to thank them. His first wife was called Embers and his second wife was called Ashes. Even today, when Danish housewives hear the fires spitting, they say that Loki is beating his children.
‘His third wife was called Augur-boda, which means Anguish-boding. She had three children, the first of whom was Hel, the queen of the underworld, who gave her name to the English word “Hell”. Hel was thrown out of the celestial kingdom of Odin, and according to legend she was given “nine unlighted worlds to rule, a queen and empress over all the dead.” The people who lived in Hel’s palace were criminals and sinners, and anybody who had died without shedding blood. The Norse people had the greatest contempt for anybody who died in bed. You were supposed to be warlike and valiant, and die by the sword.
‘Hel was supposed to have been responsible for the Black Death. The Danes said that she mounted her white, three legged horse and travelled the length and breadth of Northern Europe, spreading disease. She was also supposed to be responsible for any death by freezing or frostbite. In other words, Hel, the daughter of Loki, was the original model for the Snow Queen.’
Laura said, ‘She’s only a legend, though, isn’t she?’
Miles blew out smoke. ‘Your sister Peggy is only a fairy story.’
‘You’re trying to suggest that Peggy has been reincarnated as Gerda; and that Hel has been brought to life, too?’
‘You want my serious opinion?’
‘Of course!’
‘Then my opinion is that it’s all impossible, that none of it could happen, and yet it has.’
Elizabeth stood up, and walked to the window, and looked out of the snowy yard. The black Labrador was standing by the frozen birdbath, watching her with garnet-coloured eyes.
‘How do we put her to rest?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Miles. ‘I’m an author. I’m a psychologist. A dabbler in this and a dabbler in that.’
‘I have to put her to rest. She’s going to haunt us for ever, if I don’t.’
Miles looked at Laura, and made a face which meant, what can I do, I’ve told you everything I know. Laura said, ‘Maybe you should move out to California, Lizzie. I’m sure that Chester would give you some screenwriting work.’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t want to run away. Why should I? Loki, Hel, they’re only stories, aren’t they? Stories can’t hurt you.’
‘Lizzie,’ said Miles, as gently as he could. ‘I think you ought to understand that they can; and often have done; and will again; and that of all the stories your sister could have chosen to imagine, The Snow Queen is one of the most frightening. The name of Loki may be unfamiliar to you, but the name of Satan isn’t, is it, and we’re talking about the same kind of manifestation. If Peggy has imagined herself to be Gerda, then she has imagined the Snow Queen, too, because the Snow Queen is essential to Gerda’s struggle. Without the Snow Queen, Gerda is nothing more than a little girl who presses hot pennies against frosty windows so that she can see the street outside.
‘You’ve seen the Snow Queen. You’ve seen her for yourself, and her name is Hel.’
They buried their father with the simplest of ceremonies. A biting north-westerly wind was blowing from Canada, and sizzles of fine snow blew over the open grave.
Elizabeth and Laura were amazed how many people came. Mary Kenneth Randall, the novelist, in a wheelchair, pushed by an ever-complaining black woman. Eugene O’Neill, the playwright, looking old and cold and miserable. Ashley Tibbett, the essayist, emaciated and yellow and dying himself from lung cancer. The humorist S.J. Perelman, who used to challenge David Buchanan to martini-drinking contests at the Algonquin, and usually won. Marianne Craig Moore, the poetess who wrote The Pangolin. Frederic Nash, better known as Ogden, but on a day like this short of any witty verses.
Somebody else came, a little late. A huge black Cadillac trundled up to the cemetery gates, as silent as any of the hearses, and a stocky wide-shouldered man climbed out. He wore a black overcoat with an astrakhan collar and he walked with a silver-topped cane. The Reverend Bullock was already intoning the words, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . .’ as the man reached the graveside. He took off his hat and stood bareheaded while David Buchanan’s casket was lowered into the frozen ground. His hair was no longer the colour of peanut-brittle, more like rusted steel; and his moustache was droopier; but it was Johnson Ward all right, no doubt about it, the once-notorious author of Bitter Fruit.
He waited until the ceremony was over, and then he stepped forward and dropped something into the open grave.
Elizabeth circled around the back of the mourners.
‘Bronco,’ she said.
‘Little Lizzie,’ he said. ‘My favourite balloon-popper.’
He kissed her, and he still smelled spicey-clean. ‘I’m so pleased you could come,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you since – ’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Not since we buried your little Clothes-Peg. Maybe we should stop meeting at funerals.’ He looked down at the grave. ‘That father of yours, he was so dear to me, do you know that? It was a joy to write for a publisher like him, even if he couldn’t pay much money. He cared so much for what he did.’
He took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose. ‘Do you know what I threw in his grave? The pen he lent me, the first time I ever met him. A woman came up to me in Jack & Charlie’s and asked me for my autograph. That was the first time that anybody had ever asked me, and I didn’t even have a pen, so Davey lent me his. I offered it back to him, but he said, no, keep it. You can give it back to me when people stop asking for your autograph any more. Well, they don’t. They don’t even know who I am, half of them. Those days are long gone; and now Davey’s gone, too, and he can have his pen back.’
Elizabeth took his arm. ‘Surely you’re working for us now, aren’t you? Margo said you were writing a new novel, all about Arizona.’
Bronco shrugged. ‘I’m supposed to be, in fact, I’ll probably have to. I’ve spent the advance already.’
‘When’s it due?’
‘The end of the year. Not much hope of that.’
‘How much have you written?’
He lifted his leather-gloved hand, as if he were framing a cinema shot. ‘I’ve written, “The Sun Worshippers, by Johnson Ward”. Then I’ve written, “Chapter One”. Then I’ve written,
“Pearson sat in the middle of a day with no shadow. He had women on his mind. Women and liquor, but mostly women.” ’
There was a long pause. They were walking downhill from the gravesite now, arm-in-arm. The wind blustered in their ears.
‘Is that all?’ said Elizabeth.
Bronco gave her a keen, tired, paternal look. ‘That’s it, little Lizzie, balloon-biter extraordinaire. But don’t you tell Rossi, or she’ll have my guts for banjo-strings.’
‘You’re blocked, that’s all. You can get over block.’
‘Unh-hunh, this isn’t block. Billy’s been calling.’
‘Billy?’
Bronco glanced over his snow-dandruffed shoulder. ‘I told you about Billy. He was my brother, the one who died.
I met him in Cuba and now he keeps appearing in Phoenix. How can I write when my dead brother keeps pestering me?’
Elizabeth pulled Bronco to a halt. ‘Are you serious?’ she demanded.
He stared at her and his eyes were wild. Of course I’m serious, for Christ’s sake. He never leaves me alone. Vita thinks I’ve gone crazy. I think I’ve gone crazy. I try to write and he sits in my room and stares at me, and interrupts me, and talks to me, and tells me how careless I am, I shouldn’t have let him die, I shouldn’t have made any money, I don’t have any talent, I’m a failure. He’s always there, goddamnit.’
‘Have you spoken to anybody else about it?’
‘I have a gardner. I’ve talked to him about it. Actually I had to, because he saw me arguing with Billy, and asked me what was wrong.’
‘Did he believe you when you told him who Billy was?’
They had reached the funeral cars. Laura and Lenny came over, Lenny clapping his hands against the cold.
Bronco said, ‘Funny thing . . . I only told him that Billy was my brother. But he said, “You shouldn’t go messing with dead people. Dead people will try anything”.’
‘Somebody must have told him that your brother had died. Maybe Vita.’
‘But what would you assume if you saw me arguing with somebody in the garden and I said it was my brother? You’d assume it was another brother, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t think that it was my dead brother!’
Laura came up and took hold of Bronco’s arm. ‘My favourite risqué novelist,’ she said, kissing his cheek.
‘My,’ smiled Bronco. ‘You sure have grown, little Laura.’
Now Margaret Buchanan came down the shovel-cleared pathway in a wheelchair, wrapped in a dark plaid blanket. Seamus was pushing her, although Seamus didn’t look well. His cheeks were as pale as kitchen soap and his eyes were red-rimmed. He wore a black woolly hat that gave him the appearance of a big, mollycoddled toddler. He stopped beside them but he didn’t say anything. A shining drop swung from the end of his nose.
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