Ghost Children

by Sue Townsend

  “Two hundred and fifty quid, though, that’s cheap isn’t it?”

  Ken had thought that contract killing was something only the rich could afford.

  “There’s a lot of guns around,” said Raj. “And a lot of crack heads desperate for money.”

  “So I could put him away, for ever for a week’s wages?” Ken was on the sick with his nerves, but he’d be going back to work soon. He thought hard for a moment, trying to imagine a world without Crackle. “It sounds good,” he said to Raj. They walked around the corner to Raj’s car repair workshop, and Raj got one of his mechanics to make Ken a black coffee in an attempt to sober him up before he went to the police station.

  ♦

  PC Billings put the phone down, then sat at the desk she shared with four colleagues and breathed in deeply, trying to calm herself. She’d rung home to check that Carole, the baby-sitter, had picked the kids up from school as arranged, but throughout their brief conversation she’d heard her boys, five-year-old Mark, and seven-year-old James, arguing. She heard Mark shout in his shrill voice, “It wasn’t me, tell him.” Then James’s whine, “Tell him.”

  She promised Carole she would be home soon after her shift finished at eight o’clock, and reminded her that there were fish fingers and oven chips in the deep freeze, and that when she gave Mark his bath she mustn’t forget to put the anti-eczema oil in the water, else he’d be scratching all night. And another thing, would Carole make sure that James went to the loo before going to bed. He’d wet the bed again the night before.

  She lifted her head and looked around the office. She was certain that none of her male colleagues had given a thought to the pre-bedtime rituals of their children. She got up and picked up the folder marked ‘Storme Natas’. She’d thought it a peculiar surname, foreign sounding. Suddenly she realised that it was Satan spelled backwards. She was surprised the authorities had allowed them to use it. The whole case depressed her. She couldn’t get the sight and smell of that cot mattress out of her mind. At ten past four the internal phone rang and the desk sergeant told her that there was a Mr Kenneth Dixon and a Mrs Tamara Natas at the front desk.

  When they met at the police station Ken saw that Tamara had bought herself a loose black dress with a long skirt that swept the floor. It wasn’t what he’d had in mind at all. He’d wanted her to buy something pretty, something motherly. I’ve wasted forty quid, he thought. A black leather thong with a pewter beast’s head pendant hung between the swell of her breasts.

  “Take that bleddy thing off,” he ordered, offended by the beast’s green-eyed look of evil. Tamara did as she was told, slipping it off and stuffing it into the side pocket of the dress. She didn’t want to upset her dad. He was already drunk.

  She looked up each time one of the three doors leading into the front office opened. She knew that Crackle was somewhere in the police station, and she was desperate to see him, and tell him that she was sorry for running away from him. She looked at Ken, whose eyelids were drooping. He stank of drink. She slid along the plastic-covered bench and distanced herself from him. Without her physical support his head dropped back and he fell asleep with his mouth open, displaying the wire bridge-work on his teeth. Tamara had known he would let her down. She took the pendant from out of her pocket and hung it around her neck again. When PC Billings came to fetch her they had both tried to wake her dad, but he had been unable to get to his feet without falling, so they had left him sitting on the bench with his head in his hands.

  It was eight o’clock in the evening when Crackle and Tamara were allowed to leave Interview Room One at the police station. PC Billings was reluctant to let them go. But she had to get home to put her children to bed. She didn’t know which of them she found the most despicable, Crackle for his martyred protestations of innocence, or Tamara for her mindless worship of Crackle. PC Billings thought she would go mad if she ever heard the phrase ‘She fell out of her cot’ again.

  She had often felt murderous towards her own children, especially James, who whined in the day and wet the bed at night. Once, when he’d had a bad cold and she’d seen him surreptitiously wipe his nose on the sleeve of his clean school sweatshirt, she’d been so enraged that she had hit him hard on the side of his head, and knocked him off balance. She had found herself screaming at him, that if he wet the bed that night he would have to wash all his bed linen by hand.

  She switched the recorder on to check the tape and heard Crackle say, “You look shit in that dress; your belly sticks out,” and Tamara saying, “I won’t wear it again.” She then heard her own voice saying, “Tamara, social services are going in front of a judge tomorrow morning to make Storme a ward of court.”

  Tamara’s voice on the tape sounded muffled. “What’s that mean?” Crackle shouted, “It means the bastards will take our kid off us.”

  “How long for?” said Tamara.

  “For ever. If you stay with him you’ll never get her back.”

  “I didn’t touch that kid!” said Crackle. “She fell out of her cot!”

  PC Billings turned down the volume knob and quietened the rest of his tirade, then turned it up again to hear Tamara say, “I’m sorry Crackle, but I want the baby back.”

  Crackle shouted, “What you saying, Tam? You saying we’re finished?”

  “I’ll go and live with dad until it’s sorted,” she said, placatingly.

  PC Billings heard herself say, “Your dad’s sobered up now. Go home with him and forget about this scumbag, eh?” Then the tape came to the end of its reel, and there was silence.

  As PC Billings drove home she saw her ex-husband drive past her in his patrol car. He flashed his headlights in recognition and she flashed back.

  Her son, James, came downstairs when he heard her key in the lock. She could see from the puffiness around his eyes that he’d been crying.

  “You’re late!” he shouted. “You said you’d be home by eight o’clock, and it’s ten past nine!”

  Carole already had her coat on. PC Billings could tell by the set of her mouth that it wouldn’t be long before she would have to advertise for another baby-sitter again. When she’d paid her and closed the door on her she took James upstairs and tucked him into bed. But he came downstairs three times, seemingly oblivious to her mounting anger. She gave him water, she escorted him to the toilet. For what seemed like the hundredth time that week she read James and the Giant Peach to him through half-clenched teeth, turning the pages with a crack. At eleven o’clock when he’d been in his bed for ten minutes, she ran a bath and lay in it in a stupor of tiredness. Then she heard his bedroom door open and his feet on the stairs, and his shrill cry from downstairs when he couldn’t find her.

  “Mummee! Mummee!”

  As she got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her, she wished that James had never been born. She pictured herself grabbing him by the lapels of his pyjama jacket, dragging him up the stairs, throwing him into the scented bath water and pushing his head under water until air bubbles stopped coming out of his mouth and nose. However, when she saw him, skinny and frightened, she drew him to her tenderly and promised that he could sleep with Mummy, again.

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Thirty

  Angela came to Christopher’s house after work. He opened the door. She was still angry and wouldn’t cross the threshold. She said, “I didn’t kill it, Christopher, it wasn’t alive.”

  “Of course she was alive,” he shouted. “I felt her move, that Sunday.”

  She had left her car in the middle of the road. The driver’s door was open and the engine was still running. The interior light was on and Christopher could see that she’d been food shopping. There were two plastic bags on the back seat. A fresh pineapple poked out of one. Christopher couldn’t take his eyes off the pineapple’s fibrous leaves. It didn’t belong in this snow-covered landscape, he thought. It wasn’t natural. She shouldn’t have bought the thing. It belonged in the tropics. It was inappropriate to have it here i
n this cul-de-sac with snow piled against the verges.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Gregory’s got wine appreciation tonight.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?” He was furious with her.

  “I’ve got to cook his dinner before he goes out,” she said. She knew how feeble this must sound to him. A car pulled up behind Angela’s car, and a young woman tapped impatiently on the steering wheel. Angela said, “We take it in turn to cook dinner. It’s my turn.”

  “How can you cook for somebody you don’t love?” shouted Christopher. The young woman, whose car Angela was blocking, sounded her horn and Angela went to her car and drove away without looking back. As she waited to turn on to the dual carriageway she glanced into her rear view mirror and saw that Christopher’s front door had closed.

  ♦

  When she got home Gregory was at the stove, moodily stirring canned tomato soup in the saucepan she liked to use exclusively for milk.

  “You know it’s wine appreciation,” he said accusingly, as he lifted the saucepan off the stove and poured the soup into an earthenware bowl.

  “Sorry,” she said, “the snow made me late.” Then, “Gregory, your hairl”

  “The main roads are clear,” he said. “I got home on time.”

  His sideburns and the carefully constructed oiled waves he’d had for over twenty years had gone. His hair was now short and brushed away from his forehead. Without the darkening effect of hair oil she could see that his hair was almost entirely grey. He looked like a distant relation of himself.

  “I feel like a new man,” he said.

  At eleven AM Gregory had left the shop in the care of his assistant and strolled around the city centre inspecting hairdressing salons. He didn’t want to go anywhere too radical. He rejected places with distressed paintwork and spotlights. He also spurned the old–fashioned barbers’ shops where middle-aged men in white jackets imposed their views on their customers. Gregory had chosen the Upper Cut, a unisex salon where Ella Fitzgerald sang above the noise of the hand-held driers. Michelle, a senior stylist, gave him a consultation. He explained to her about wanting a new look. Together they settled on a style.

  “We call it the Prussian schoolboy,” she said, and led him towards a wash basin where his hair was washed and conditioned by a junior called Zoe. In answer to her incurious enquiries about his arrangements for Christmas, he told Zoe about his childlessness, how Christmas wasn’t the same without children, how he longed for a child, preferably a boy, to carry on Lowood’s Linens. He told Zoe things he had never told Angela. To Michelle he confessed his fear of death. As his hair fell to the floor he talked about the black void waiting for him. Michelle told him that she wasn’t too keen on death either, and didn’t know anybody who was.

  When she’d finished brushing and blow-waving, Gregory allowed himself to look directly into the mirror in front of him and was uplifted by what he saw. His head looked strong and manly; his features were more pronounced. When Michelle picked up a hand mirror and showed him the back of his head, he thanked her enthusiastically, saying, “I hadn’t realised what a good thick neck I’ve got.” He had left the shop to the mellow sound of Ella Fitzgerald singing, ‘Mr Wonderful’.

  “It makes you look older, Gregory,” said Angela.

  “Good,” said Gregory, admiring himself in the hall mirror.

  ♦

  Fifteen minutes after Gregory had left the house, the doorbell rang. Angela looked through the fish-eye peephole in the front door and saw with horror that it was Christopher. She opened the door, but kept the security chain on.

  “You’ve got to tell me, Angie,” he said desperately.

  He put an arm through the door and grabbed at the material of the apron she was wearing. The apron strings which were tied at the waist tore, and Christopher lost his footing and almost fell.

  “Go away, Chris, you shouldn’t have come here!”

  She was trying to close the door on him. She was terrified that Gregory would return and find Christopher on his doorstep.

  “You’ve got to tell me about our baby. If she’s dead, where’s she buried?”

  Christopher threw himself at the door. The chain broke and he was in the hall with the dog. He slammed the door shut and wiped his feet on the coconut that which said: Bienvenido.

  “I got a taxi,” he said. “I can’t keep away from you.”

  He looked around the spacious hall. He recognised that the pattern on the wallpaper was William Morris. The handrail, banisters and newel posts of the dog-leg staircase had been burnished to a high reddish sheen. On the wall facing the front door there was a painting of Angela’s mother and father. They were posed against the huge stone fireplace at Newton Harcourt; they were wearing evening dress, and looked at ease with themselves and their place in the world. There was an arrangement of winter flowers in a vase, on a polished table. Angela’s car keys were in a Wedgwood dish. He could see into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. The pineapple stood on a chopping board on a work surface. She’d obviously got as far as cutting the top off before answering the door to him.

  “You can’t stay here,” she said.

  “You can’t stay here, either,” he said. He followed her into the gleaming modern kitchen.

  Angela picked up a knife and resumed peeling the pineapple. A pool of juice collected on the chopping board. Christopher frowned at the pineapple and said, “There should be a season for everything.”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, and she was too panic-stricken to engage him in any further conversation. She longed for him to leave. He was as intrusive as a shard of metal in an eyeball. He wandered around the kitchen touching the laminated surfaces. The dog followed him; its paws made a desiccated sound on the vinyl tiles.

  “Will you show me your garden?” he said. He knew how much she loved it.

  “It’s under snow,” she said. “What’s the point?”

  “Please.”

  “Chris, you’ve got to go. What if Gregory comes back?”

  “I hope he does. I want him to know about us.”

  “You’re being cruel. It’s not like you.”

  She was crying and slicing through the pineapple, then lining a buttered Pyrex dish with the yellow rings.

  “I know what matters, Angie.” He tried the door to the garden. It was locked. “And in the scheme of things, bearing in mind infinity, Gregory’s feelings really don’t matter to me.” Christopher realised how awful this statement must sound to her, but he’d got this compulsion to tell the truth lately.

  “Bearing in mind infinity,” she said angrily. “What are you reading now? Patrick Moore?”

  “No, Nietzsche,” he said. He stared her down, defying her to laugh.

  “Gregory’s feelings matter to me,” was all she said. She wiped her eyes on her apron. She was desperate for him to leave. It was inconceivable to her that Gregory could come home and find Christopher in the house. They had made the house their life. Every care and attention had been lavished on it. They subscribed to two interior design magazines. They were stacked in several piles on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in what they called, ‘the family room’. Angela leaned against the draining board and wept helplessly.

  “Don’t cry, chick; I love you.”

  He tried to put his arms around her again but she moved away and turned a switch above the oven which was set high in the wall. A red glow illuminated the interior, revealing gleaming, stainless steel racks.

  “If you loved me, Chris, you’d go. You would. You don’t know how frightened I am. I’ve got to make him a pineapple upside-down cake.”

  Christopher laughed incredulously. “Why?” he said.

  “Because it’s his favourite. Because I want a quiet life. Because I haven’t given him any children,” she shouted. Christopher watched in silence as she slopped a soft sponge mixture on to the top of the pineapple circles, smoothed it with a spoon, and put in on the middle shelf of the oven.


  “Tell me about our baby and I’ll go,” he said. “Tell me in the garden.”

  She went to a key box on the kitchen wall and took a key off the hook labelled ‘kitchen⁄garden door’. Before she could put the key in the lock the dog was at the door. As soon as it was open it ran across the garden dribbling yellow urine on the snow.

  Angela went into the conservatory and put her quilted green coat on and stepped into her rubber gardening boots.

  The garden looked like a brightly lit stage set. The security lighting showed the skeleton of every shrub and tree. The snow-covered lawn was like a white sea of phosphorescence. A rustic bench was upholstered in snow. Christopher cleared the snow from the bench with his hands, then scooped some together, compressing it into a hard ball. He then rolled it along the terrace and the ball grew quickly and seemed to take on a momentum of its own.

  “Tell me about the baby,” he said.

  Angela pulled a packet of cigarettes and a pink throw-away lighter out of her apron pocket and said, “She weighed about two and a half pounds.”

  Christopher rolled the ball into the middle of the lawn and patted snow around the base.

  “Go on, I’m listening,” he said, with his back turned to her.

  “You couldn’t have called her pretty, Chris. But she was very wonderful. You can imagine, can’t you, how the cave people felt when they looked up at the moon. You know, full of wonder. Well that’s how I felt when I saw her. I shouldn’t have seen her. I didn’t want to. The thing is Chris, the thing is…” He was making a smaller ball now, his back was still turned. She couldn’t see his face.

  “There was a nurse in the room who hadn’t seen a late-term abortion before and when our little one was born she got, well, emotional.”

  Christopher turned around and placed the smaller ball on top of the larger. Making a featureless snowman.

  “Emotional, why?”

  “Because our little one was born with a pulse, Chris.”

  Christopher rested his hand on the snowman’s shoulder and looked at her.