Ghosting

by Jonathan Kemp

  GLORY IN THE FICTIONS OF SELECTIVE MEMORY – WE FORGET BECAUSE WE MUST AND NOT BECAUSE WE WILL.

  TECHNOLOGY IS THE FUEL CAPITALISM BURNS. HUMANITY IS THE FUEL TECHNOLOGY BURNS.

  She has no idea if the words are original or appropriated. Some mean nothing to her at all, and some move her profoundly.

  IS IT MADNESS OR REASON THAT BEST EXPRESSES THE TRUTH?

  THE TRUTHS OF MY GRIEF ARE AS PURE AND INDISPUTABLE AS THE AXIOMS OF MATHEMATICS.

  WE ARE ALL RECIDIVISTS; IT IS SIMPLY A QUESTION OF DISCOVERING OUR CRIME.

  Linden appears beside her, holding out a bottle of wine.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she says, refilling both their glasses.

  ‘It’s just wallpaper.’

  Linden laughs and says, ‘I meant about Given.’

  Grace thinks he seems a bit full of himself, but she doesn’t like to say. Handsome is as handsome does.

  ‘He seems nice enough,’ she says.

  ‘I think Luke’s got a bit of a crush on him. Have you noticed the way he looks at him?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have,’ she says, looking away, over Linden’s shoulder, to where she can see the two young men outside, standing close and deep in conversation. Given’s back is to her, but she can see Luke’s face, aglow with attentive love. She hopes her own infatuation isn’t so apparent.

  ‘I fucking hate all this secrecy,’ Linden says.

  ‘What a tangled web we weave,’ Grace says, spotting Given break away from Luke and enter the gallery, making his way towards them. Her gaze lingers on Luke’s crestfallen face. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she says, and takes a sip of wine.

  ‘So, Grace,’ Given says, ‘what do you think of the work?’

  ‘She thinks it’s just wallpaper,’ Linden says.

  ‘Well, it is, isn’t it?’ Grace says.

  ‘It is, Grace,’ he says with a smile. ‘But imagine if walls could talk. What might they say about what they’ve observed?’ Turning to Linden, he asks if he can have a word in private.

  ‘Don’t fish for compliments in polluted waters,’ she says, as he leads Linden away, and through a door in the back wall. ‘I like that one.’

  Just before eight o’clock, people begin to move inside for Luke’s performance, gathering around a white enamel bath in the centre of the room, half-filled with water. From a winch in the ceiling hang two metal chains, ending about a foot above the water. A slow, deep pulse of electronic noise starts, and Luke appears from a door at the back of the gallery, wearing nothing but a black leather harness. Down each arm and each leg run a row of horizontal white feathers piercing the skin, with two on either side of his forehead. With measured steps he walks towards the bath, and as he gets closer Grace can make out the full scarlet red of his painted mouth. His eyes are intense, his face more serious than she has ever seen it. She avoids looking directly at his genitals for as long as curiosity and desire allow.

  Stepping into the bath, he grabs the two chains and attaches them to the harness. The chains begin to winch him up slowly until he is suspended above the bath, his toes just clearing the surface of the water. He starts removing one of the feathers from his forehead, dropping it into the bathwater below. One by one he removes each feathered needle, and blood begins to run down his face, his chest, his arms, his legs, dripping into the bathwater, where it blossoms into scarlet plumes; and all the while the room is filled with a slow metallic music, like a sleeper’s heartbeat. As the feathers collect on the water’s crimson meniscus, all Grace can see is a five-year-old Hannah sitting there, razor in hand, with Jason by her side, covered in blood.

  The sound of applause snaps Grace back to the present. Luke is now back on the ground, walking slowly towards the door from which he’d appeared, Icarus partially visible between the straps of the harness. Time has passed, of which she has no memory; a cigarette burn in the fabric of her consciousness.

  And her eyes are wet with tears.

  Please, not here.

  What is she doing here? What is she hoping to find?

  Making her way outside, she reads a strip of wallpaper by the door: MY BODY IS A CEMETERY PACKED WITH WEEPING GHOSTS.

  She lights a cigarette, unable to rid herself of the image of Hannah with a razor in her hand; her defiant face. She considers whether she shouldn’t just go home; but the thought of being alone terrifies her. As she’s grinding out her cigarette butt, she sees Luke walking towards her, changed back into his clothes. She asks him where the toilet is and he says, ‘Come with me,’ leading her back into the gallery into a small office with a desk and a computer, shelves filled with books and ring binders. He points to a white door. ‘Through there,’ he says.

  She returns to find him pulling open the desk drawers in search of something. He says, ‘I know there’s some booze in here somewhere – ah!’ And he holds up a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam and plants a kiss on it.

  He picks up the leather harness from the sofa and places it on the desk, so she can sit down. He sits next to her, and she stares at the marks on his forehead where the feathers punctured the skin, wondering if it had hurt. He pours them both some bourbon and asks what she thought of the performance. She still finds it hard to look at him, impossible to hold his gaze – though in truth that’s all she wants to do. She looks down at the carpet as she tells him what Hannah did to Jason.

  ‘I’ve no idea why she did it. I only left them for a minute to answer the phone. Luckily they were only minor cuts. He didn’t need stitches and there were no lasting scars. Thank God. So, I found the performance a bit harrowing.’

  ‘Does Jason remember it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Just over a year, so young enough not to remember, I hope.’

  ‘My earliest memory is from around three years old. I can remember moving into a new house.’

  ‘I can remember being in a pram, which is very young, but only vaguely. I hope he doesn’t remember, but I’m scared to ask him. If he’s forgotten, I’d rather he didn’t know she did that.’

  Luke says, ‘And what do you think of Given?’

  ‘All right if you like that kind of thing,’ she says.

  ‘I do like that kind of thing!’ He moves in closer. ‘Oh, fuck, Grace, I’m so in love!’ he says, letting out a hopeless laugh and beaming with joy. ‘Don’t you think he’s the most beautiful man you’ve ever laid eyes on?’

  She feels a pang for something lost: the man she thought was a dream come true, once upon a time; her prince, her knight in shining bloody armour.

  ‘And he’s hung like a fucking canal barge,’ he says, and she looks at his mouth as he speaks, at those lips she used to love kissing.

  ‘But you mustn’t tell anyone,’ he says.

  She suddenly feels protective towards him, wondering whether or not to tell him. A fleeting cruelty makes her want him to suffer, to see his heartbreak, his tears; reveal to him the truth about his wonderful God’s gift.

  ‘Why don’t you want anyone to know?’ she says.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s him,’ he says. ‘I wanna tell the whole fucking world, shout it from the fucking rooftops, but Mr Closet Case out there is worried about people knowing. God knows why! It’s not as if anyone would give a shit.’ He takes an angry glug of bourbon and looks at her. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided: tonight I’m gonna force his hand. If he won’t tell Linden, at least, I will.’

  The door opens and as if on cue Linden’s head appears. ‘There you are,’ she says to Luke. ‘There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll be right back, Grace,’ he says, standing up and heading for the door. ‘Don’t move.’

  She resolves to leave as soon as she can. The memory of Hannah’s sly cruelty has unnerved her. She thinks about that time, around the age of eleven, when she’d caught her tormenting their cat. She’d cornered it at the foot of the stairs, where it hissed and wailed with fierce terror. When Grace had asked wh
y she’d done it she’d replied, with a shrug, ‘I don’t know.’ And, although she’d said no when Grace asked if she’d done it before, there was no way of knowing for sure.

  Them she started faking suicides. Grace would find her collapsed on the floor with a pill bottle in her hand, none of which she ever actually swallowed. She only stopped doing it when Grace threatened to take her to a child psychologist. Then she took to running away instead. The whole family would be out looking for her. More than once the police brought her back, one time after finding her on the hard shoulder of the motorway, thumbing a ride. There seemed no way of controlling her. She did just as she pleased.

  The minutes pass, and, fed up with waiting for Luke to return, Grace leaves the office, spotting him straight away, on the other side of the room, talking to a smaller young man in tight black jeans. She makes her way over, and by the time she gets there Luke is bidding the man goodbye. ‘I was just about to come back and get you,’ Luke says to her.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘He wants me to go over to Berlin and perform at this live art festival in a couple of months. All expenses paid, plus a good fee. It’s a really brilliant festival. I’ve been before, but never to perform. I’m psyched about that.’

  ‘Will you do the same thing?’

  ‘I doubt it. I never do the same piece twice.’

  A small tattooed girl with a large black beehive appears and announces, as if someone has died, that there is no more wine. Luke introduces Grace, and the girl kisses her on both cheeks and says, ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Frankie.’

  ‘I love your tattoos,’ says Grace.

  ‘Thanks, they love you too,’ she says.

  Her strapless dress reveals across her chest a skull and crossbones wreathed in red roses, a scroll beneath it bearing the words Sapere Aude. Grace asks what it means.

  ‘Dare to know,’ Frankie says.

  ‘Dangerous to know, more like,’ Luke says, placing his arm across the girl’s shoulders.

  ‘Too right,’ Frankie says, sinking her teeth into Luke’s upper arm and snarling like a dog.

  ‘Let’s go to the Golden Heart,’ says Luke, downing the dregs of a bottle of beer. ‘Wait here while I collect my bag and tell the others.’

  As he walks away Frankie says, ‘Why are all the hot men gay? Such a waste! Mind you, from what I hear none of that goes to waste!’ She cackles and Grace smiles, remarking that she likes Frankie’s dress.

  ‘I used to have one a bit like it. I made all my own dresses when I was your age,’ she says. ‘And my hair was just the same as yours, back then. It’s a bugger to do, isn’t it?’

  She remembers how Paul and Hannah used to sit and watch her backcombing her hair; how she’d turn to them when it was spiking out from her head and pull a witchy face and they would squeal and run away as she chased them. The memory makes her smile.

  Frankie’s attention visibly shifts to a tall man in a baseball cap who is just that second walking by. ‘See you at the pub, Grace, yeah? Lovely to meet you!’ she says, blowing a kiss as she runs to catch up with the boy.

  Luke reappears with Linden, who says, ‘Given’s going to join us there.’

  ‘I think I should be getting back,’ Grace says, afraid of what might happen if she stays. She doesn’t want to be there when the shit hits the fan. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ says Luke, holding out his arm. ‘Come for one.’

  And before she can resist they’re off, the three of them, Linden taking her other arm.

  The Golden Heart is crowded, inside and out. It’s a balmy night, and the sky is only just beginning to darken, revealing stars that seem brighter than usual. Luke and Grace stay outside while Linden goes inside to get drinks. A loud peal of laughter causes a sudden sting of paranoia: perhaps everyone can tell how lovelorn she is. She tries to shake the thought away, but like a persistent wasp it keeps returning.

  An hour later she and Luke are walking down the dimly lit backstreets of Hackney Wick on their way to a squat party, with Linden and Given and a band of others closely behind. She feels as though she’s run off to join the circus; the quick, sharp humour bubbling around lifts her spirits. She hasn’t laughed like this for aeons. She feels drunk and in love, and, even though a tiny voice keeps berating her and commanding her to go home, she ignores it, following Luke like an enraptured child dancing to a piper’s tune.

  The party is in an old red-brick garage with a two-storey flat above. They enter through a large covered forecourt filled with old sofas and rugs. Men and women, some, to Grace, looking like no more than children, sit around drinking and chatting. A grey-haired man in a tartan suit approaches Luke and embraces him with a kiss. Next to him is a shorter man with bleached hair, in jeans and a T-shirt. Luke introduces them to Grace as ‘the two Richards’.

  ‘Or the two Dicks,’ the blond one says with a laugh. ‘I’m Dick One and she’s Dick Two.’

  Giving Grace a wild-eyed Joker grin, Dick Two says, ‘Is this the woman we need to thank for your very existence?’

  Luke says, ‘No, this is Grace; she’s a friend.’

  ‘Enchanté,’ he says, taking her hand and kissing the back of it.

  ‘Likewise,’ says Dick One, repeating the gesture.

  Dick Two removes something from his jacket pocket, holding out to Luke two small clear plastic bags of white powder. ‘One of these is ketamine and the other’s cocaine but I’m too fucked to tell the difference,’ he says.

  Grace’s mood shifts to panic at the mention of drugs. The berating voice inside tells her smugly that she should never have come. She turns a deaf ear to it, determined to stay in a buoyant mood. Showing no sign of her internal conflict, she watches Luke take one of the bags and tease it open with expert ease. He licks the tip of his little finger and jabs it inside; sticks his finger into his mouth. ‘That’s the K,’ he says, closing the bag and handing it back. Holding up the other, he says, ‘May I?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ says Dick Two. ‘And count us in.’

  While Dick One goes off to get drinks they sit down at an empty table. Grace looks around for Linden and Given and the others they arrived with, but they’re nowhere to be seen. As Luke starts to cut lines of cocaine, Grace once again feels the rub of discomfort, but then Dick One returns with four glasses of punch, and the four of them clink cheers, and she smiles and takes a swig to ease her mood. ‘Don’t use the bogs,’ Dick One says, ‘they’re rank. I went to reapply my lippy earlier and I dropped it, and what I picked up thinking it was my lipstick was in fact a dried-up old cat turd. Luckily I noticed before it actually touched my lips.’

  ‘Pay no attention to her,’ says the other, ‘she’s taken far too much ketamine. Any minute now she’ll be in Ancient Egypt, thinking she’s Cleopatra.’

  Dick One stares at Grace wide-eyed and says, ‘I love your pashmina!’

  She looks at his tight yellow T-shirt and reads the slogan across his chest: Not Gay As In Happy But Queer As In Fuck Off. She gives him a smile and says, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How many lines am I cutting?’ Luke asks, and they all look at Grace.

  ‘Go on,’ Dick One says, ‘it’s quality stuff.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ she says, imagining a police raid.

  ‘Eminently sensible,’ says Dick Two, returning the bag to his pocket.

  She watches the three men lean and sniff in turn, and wonders what kind of world she’s tumbled into. ‘Have any of you ever taken heroin?’

  ‘What do you think I am, a drug addict?’ Dick Two says in mock horror, clutching at invisible pearls. ‘I didn’t have you down as a junkie, Grace, but I can get you some, no problem.’

  ‘I don’t want any! I was just curious,’ says Grace, horrified.

  ‘Ah, the oysters were curious too,’ he says, running his hand through Luke’s hair and twisting it around a finger. ‘Anyway, Heartface, you were amazing tonight, just amazing,’ he says. ‘I wanted to rush over and lick your wounds – provide succour, if
you’d let me.’ He strokes Luke’s face.

  ‘Behave,’ Luke says, pushing the man’s hand away.

  ‘So when are you next getting naked in public? I mean, performing,’ Dick Two says with a helium grin.

  Across the room Grace sees Frankie chatting to Baseball Cap and for some reason it makes her smile. She feels attuned to all this bright energy around her. It is the fullest, truest smile she’s offered for a long time. ‘What is this drink?’ she says, emptying her glass. ‘It doesn’t half taste weird.’

  ‘It’s Mandy Punch,’ says Dick One. ‘Has it kicked in yet?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Vodka with mandy in it, innit, babes.’ Seeing the blank look on her face, he adds, ‘MDMA. Ecstasy.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ says Dick Two, clapping his hands in glee.

  ‘I don’t take drugs. I’m sixty-four!’ she says.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he says, ‘I’ve always said Ecstasy should be available free to the elderly. Old age is no place for sissies. That’s when you need them most. Just relax and enjoy the high.’

  She stands up, clutching at her handbag as if one of them might try to steal it. ‘Can you call me a taxi, please, Luke?’ she says. ‘I want to go home now.’ She walks away and makes her way out on to the street, panicked and furious. There is no traffic, and the night is still, the only sound the muted beats from the party and the rumble of speech that comes from too many people all talking at the same time.

  Luke appears. He says, ‘Grace, are you OK?’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing, giving me drugs?’

  ‘I didn’t know there’d be mandy in it! You’re OK, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want to take drugs!’ Drugs killed my Hannah.

  ‘Listen! Relax!’ He approaches her and wraps an arm around her shoulder. ‘You didn’t have much of it; you’ll be fine, I promise.’

  ‘What will it do to me?’

  ‘Well, how do you feel?’

  She takes a deep breath. It’s nice to feel his arm around her. Despite herself a smile pushes its crafty way on to her face. So this is it, she thinks. This is what the drugs do. For the first time since arriving at the private view she doesn’t feel out of place, or misplaced. She feels aroused and more alive than she’s felt in years, perhaps in her entire life, all her previous anxieties now gone, replaced by an alert and invincible joy. Looking up, she sees a street-lamp’s orange light plash across the grain and mottle of brickwork, and, above that, the full moon pushing through bone-thin cloud. Imagines she can hear its lunar tick.