Ghost Children

by Sue Townsend

  He was kicking at the front door now and shouting for her. “Tamara, Tam, I know you’re there. I got to talk to you.”

  She went out on the landing and saw Ken at the top of the stairs. He had a duster in his hand, and was rubbing it automatically along the banister rail.

  “Shall I just go and talk to him?” she said.

  “Stay where you are,” Ken ordered. “You’re finished with him for good. You promised.”

  Tamara nodded, but she knew that she would never finish with Crackle. She was his woman for life, his handmaiden. It didn’t matter what bad things he did. He wasn’t like ordinary people, he had been chosen by Satan to do Satan’s work on earth. The day after their wedding she had asked him when Satan wanted them to begin this important work. For some reason he grew angry and said that there would be a sign one day.

  She knew he was a crack head: that he would need to go to a crack house for a few days each week. But he’d got it under control, he said. Satan approved of crack: it was part of his plan to rule the world.

  When the noise at the front door stopped, Tamara ran to the bedroom window and watched through a chink in the net curtain as Crackle stomped through the slush on the pavement. She longed to run down to him. He looked sad all on his own.

  Ken saw her face and said, “You’ll get over him.” He didn’t know that Tamara belonged to Crackle. Handmaidens had to stay with their men.

  “What’s going to happen then, Dad?” she said.

  She wanted to know what was inside her dad’s head. She followed him down the stairs, pausing occasionally when he stopped to dust the wooden treads on either side of the stair carpet. “We’ll try and get Storme back. We’ll get a solicitor and do it properly. You’ll grow your hair and let the blonde come back and I’ll stop drinking and get a grip and go to work.” Tamara said automatically, “And will we be happy ever after?”

  Ken pulled Tamara towards him and tried to hold her. It was years since she’d allowed him to show any affection to her. He felt her stiffen with embarrassment, and he quickly let go of her again and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, though tea was the last thing he wanted. There was a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the living room, next to the tropical fish tank, but he was going to the hospital to see Storme, and he couldn’t turn up there drunk. Staff Nurse Fox had already had a go at him. He would just have to pray hard to Jesus and ask him to lessen the pain of being sober.

  Tamara went into the living room, and switched the television on using the remote control. There was a satellite dish attached to the pebble-dashed front wall of Ken’s house. He was able to receive eighty-seven TV channels. When he came into the room with the tea Tamara was pressing the plus sign of the remote control and working her way through all of the eighty-seven channels. The constant flickering of the screen annoyed Ken, but he kept quiet.

  “There’s nothing on,” she complained.

  She eventually stopped at a shopping channel and watched an American woman in a leotard demonstrating a metal rocking device called ‘A Tummy Trimmer’ in front of a screaming studio audience. The woman had a figure so perfect that it looked moulded out of plastic. The camera closed in on the woman’s face. She was smiling through unnaturally white, gritted teeth and saying, “I’m so excited by this product.”

  Tamara grew excited herself at the prospect of owning a Tummy Trimmer.

  “I might get one of them,” she said to Ken.

  “Why?” he said. “You’ve got nowt on you.”

  “I ‘ave,” she said. “I’ve got a belly lately.”

  Ken looked at her thin ankles, showing beneath her black jeans. They reminded him of the bleached bones they had in glass cases in museums.

  “Don’t be so bleddy daft,” he said. “You’re nowt but skin and bone.”

  “No, look, I have got a big belly.” She really wanted a Tummy Trimmer. She got to her feet and hauled up the folds of her baggy black jumper. The top button of her jeans was undone. The yellow zip was halfway down, and her belly was distended. Ken was surprised by the size of it. He said, “You look pregnant.”

  “I told you I’d got a belly.” Tamara laughed. “Will you send for a Tummy Trimmer for me, Dad? I’ll have it for Christmas, shall I? Then you won’t have to go shopping.”

  “But why is your stomach so big, Tam?” Ken couldn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed it before.

  Tamara said, “I dunno, but I can’t be pregnant, I’m on the pill.”

  “Then you ought to go to the doctor, that’s not normal. Are you still having your monthlies…?”

  Ken was sufficiently worried to overcome his normal reticence about mentioning menstruation to his daughter. He had never acknowledged to Cath, his wife of twenty-one years, that she bled for a week every month.

  Tamara tried to remember the last time she’d had a period: was it weeks, or was it months ago? She didn’t take her contraceptive pills in the normal way. Crackle had told her that if she took a pill every day instead of for twenty-one days, she wouldn’t have a period at all. Crackle hated his women to bleed; it was one of his things.

  Tamara sometimes forgot her pill. She usually remembered to take two instead the next day to make up for it. She had only a sketchy idea of how anything worked, including her own body.

  Ken went upstairs and had a wash and a shave, and changed into his second-best suit. When he looked into the living room, to tell Tamara that he was leaving to go to the hospital, she was still watching the American woman who was now claiming that the Tummy Trimmer had changed her life for the better. Crackle had mentioned her big belly yesterday; that must have been the reason that he hadn’t wanted sex or asked to see her dance naked for Satan, like he used to.

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Thirty-Five

  Early that morning Christopher went to the bank and requested to see his account manager, Lucca Fiorelli. He’d had letters from him describing the various specialist investment and insurance services the bank had to offer, but Christopher had never replied to his letters, or spoken to Mr Fiorelli on the phone. Everything had changed since Angela came back into his life. He would have to do something about money. He looked around. The banking hall was like a cathedral: there was stained glass, soaring ceilings and Victorian mouldings. He craned his head back and examined the painting on the domed ceiling: plump women draped in gauzy materials surrounded a pool on which lily pads and petals floated. He half-closed his eyes and pictured Angela, relaxed and smiling. Happy to be with women of her own kind. While he waited, he looked at the tiny photograph of Lucca Fiorelli in a brochure entitled ‘Here to Help’ which he’d picked up from a stand next to the seating area.

  He read the writing under Lucca Fiorelli’s handsome face. Apparently his account manager was the great-grandson of Italian immigrants. His great-grandfather, known as ‘the Okie Man’, had sold ice cream from a customised three-wheeled bicycle. Fiorelli was quoted as saying, “My great-grandfather was a good example of the small businessman’s facility to resource the community.” Christopher frowned over this sentence: what did it mean?

  Lucca Fiorelli put his head round his office door and said, “Mr Moore?” He looked disapprovingly at the dog.

  Christopher said, “It’s as good as gold.” The younger man hesitated a moment, then gestured that they were both to come in. His office had recently been refurbished. The walls were panelled in dark red mock mahogany. The room smelled of chemicals, like a dry-cleaner’s shop. Fiorelli settled himself behind his paper-free, grey plastic desk and pressed buttons on a computer pad. He frowned at what he saw on the screen. “You’ve had no movement on your accounts for over a year, Mr Moore; nothing in, nothing out. You haven’t answered any of my letters.” He looked at Christopher, waiting for an explanation, but Christopher couldn’t think of how to explain to this young man in the sharp suit what his life had been like for the past year, so he remained silent.

  “You asked to see me urgently. How can I help?” Fiorelli w
as bothered by Christopher’s stillness.

  “I want some money, please,” said Christopher.

  Fiorelli laughed at the boldness of Christopher’s statement. He said, “I don’t deal in overdrafts, Mr Moore.”

  Fiorelli was forever anxious to detach himself from what he called, ‘the dog’s-body work’. He liked to think of himself as being a creative financier. He was hungry for promotion. He had attended a course on body language at the weekend, and paid for it himself. Christopher said, “I don’t want an overdraft. I’ve got some first editions in a safe deposit box in this bank.”

  “First editions of what?” asked Fiorelli.

  “Books,” said Christopher.

  “Oh, books,” said Fiorelli, unimpressed.

  Christopher drew Book and Magazine Collector from his inside jacket pocket. Inside it, on a separate sheet of paper, was a list of the books in the safe deposit box. Christopher handed Fiorelli the sheet. He took it and frowned over the first title.

  “Erewhon?” he said. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a novel by Samuel Butler, a first edition.”

  “I don’t have time to read novels,” said Fiorelli.

  “That’s a pity.”

  “Is it?”

  “Didn’t you read novels at university?” asked Christopher.

  “No,” said Fiorelli, “I was too busy getting educated.”

  He read further down the list. The only title he recognised was Watership Doom ; he’d seen the film. “Watership Down” he said, aloud.

  “It’s worth two hundred and twenty-five pounds,” said Christopher. He found the relevant page in Book and Magazine Collector.

  Fiorelli nodded, flicked at the list and said, “So, what’s your guesstimate of this lot then?”

  “About five thousand pounds,” said Christopher. Fiorelli raised his eyebrows.

  “Can I ask you what you’ve been living off for the past year?”

  Christopher said, “We’ve been living off my redundancy payment. It was in a building society, but it’s all gone now.”

  “We? You’re married are you?” Fiorelli looked at Christopher’s personal details on the screen. Under ‘Marital Status’ it said ‘Single’.

  “By we, I meant me and the dog. I’ve got more valuable books at home,” he added.

  “Have you got any more assets outside of this bank that I don’t know about?” Fiorelli was getting interested.

  “My house at Curlew Close belongs to me, I paid seventy-nine thousand pounds for it, a year ago, in cash. It’s purpose-built for the executive lifestyle,” he said, quoting from the estate agent’s brochure.

  “Very nice,” Fiorelli said. He lived in a similar house.

  “It’s a horrible house,” said Christopher. “Nobody’s been born in it, and nobody has died in it. A year ago I didn’t care where I lived. Now I do. I’m going to sell the house.”

  “Things have changed have they?” Fiorelli prompted.

  “Yes, everything has changed.” Christopher stood up. “I need some money, today, right now.”

  “I’ll put somebody on to it for you, perhaps you’d like me to update your personal insurance, though, in view of your life changes?”

  Christopher shook his head. “No,” he said. “There’s no point. I won’t die without her, and she won’t die without me, and if you look on your computer again you’ll find there’s a trust fund already set up for the children. I did that in 1979.”

  “How many children have you got, Mr Moore?”

  “None yet,” said Christopher, clipping the lead on to the dog’s collar and pulling it to its feet. “So, if I go to the counter I can draw some money out, can I?”

  Fiorelli said, “Yes, go to the counter. I’ll phone through. How much do you need?”

  “I don’t know,” said Christopher. Then he said, “You know about foreign exchange rates. At current market prices, what would a Romanian baby cost me?”

  Fiorelli laughed, picked up the phone and said to Christopher, “No seriously, Mr Moore, how much do you need?”

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Thirty-Six

  Christopher found it was easier than he’d expected to see Storme again. He simply took the lift up to the seventh floor and went on to the ward and asked Staff Nurse Fox if he could see her.

  “Are you a relation?” she asked.

  “I’m her other grandfather,” he lied.

  She appraised him quickly. “She’s asleep, don’t wake her, she had a bad night.”

  As they walked towards Storme’s cubicle, Staff Nurse Fox wondered how such a well-dressed, softly spoken man could have produced a scumbag son like Crackle.

  Storme looked clean against the white sheet she lay on. Somebody had cut her fingernails and her toenails, and brushed the wisps of hair showing underneath the dressings which covered most of her head. He noticed for the first time how long and dark her eyelashes were against her cheeks. It worried him that her body did not look at peace. Her limbs twitched occasionally, and her eyeballs moved under the closed lids.

  “Do you think she’s in pain?” asked Christopher.

  “She’s well sedated,” said the staff nurse, cautiously.

  “Poor little chick,” said Christopher. He asked when she would be better.

  “They’re very resilient,” was all she’d say.

  He wanted to see what she looked like when she smiled.

  “Who else has been to see her?” he asked.

  “Only her other grandfather,” said the staff nurse.

  “Will her mum and dad be prosecuted?” he asked. He couldn’t bring himself to say, “My son.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What will happen to her, when she’s better?”

  “I can’t answer any of these questions,” she said, growing impatient with him. “It’s up to social services.”

  “And the police?” he asked.

  “Deliberate cruelty is difficult to prove. Babies can’t talk,” she said.

  “Perhaps she did fall out of her cot?” he tested.

  “Perhaps,” she said, but he knew she didn’t believe this, from the little downward movement she made with her mouth.

  “Can I sit with her for a while?” he asked.

  “No, I’m sorry, in the circumstances…”

  “You think I’ll hurt her,” said Christopher, angrily.

  “It’s Mr Parker-Wright’s instructions,” she said, coldly. “Her family can’t be left alone with her.”

  “Somebody should be with her all the time,” he said. “She shouldn’t be left. What if she wakes up and there’s nobody here?”

  “We’re in and out of here all the time,” she said, stung by his inference that the nursing staff were neglecting Storme. She adjusted a catheter projecting from the baby’s groin. “We can’t spare a nurse to sit with her for twenty-four hours a day. We’re short staffed. She’s well monitored,” she added. He looked through the window of the cubicle, down the corridor. Most of the cots and beds had an adult next to them, an Asian toddler with a leg in traction was surrounded by a phalanx of relations.

  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to go now,” she said.

  Storme threw her right arm back and Christopher saw the name that was written inside the transparent plastic bracelet she wore on her wrist.

  “Storme Natas.” He’d never known her surname. He waited for a moment to see if she would wake up, but her eyelids remained closed. He hoped that she was dreaming about an innocent world where there was no pain.

  Staff Nurse Fox steered him out of the cubicle and down the corridor towards the lift. She wanted him off her ward. There was something about his intensity that made her uneasy.

  The dog strained forward on its lead when it saw Christopher walk between the parting automatic doors at the main entrance to the hospital. It was hungry. Christopher had forgotten to buy a tin of dog food the night before, and the only food in the house was a packet of dried tortellini
. They had shared this sparse supper in front of the gas fire in the living room, breaking the strict rule that the dog was only to be fed in the kitchen. Christopher needed company. He hadn’t wanted to leave Angela behind in her coldly tasteful house.

  He crossed the road separating the hospital from the café, and saw Angela in the far distance ahead of him on the pavement. She was wearing her little ankle boots, and was walking more confidently now that the snow had melted.

  A smallish man wearing a navy cashmere overcoat and an astrakhan hat slowed down on the opposite side of the road, and watched Angela go into Veronica’s Cafe; he then walked away in the opposite direction. As the man in the hat passed them, the dog growled at him. Christopher said, “Sorry,” and yanked the dog away. The man stopped and looked up hard into Christopher’s face before hurrying away in the direction of the city centre.

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Thirty-Seven

  When Christopher arrived at Veronica’s, Angela had placed a saucer on top of the cup to keep his tea hot.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” he said. Angela was reluctant to leave the warm café where she felt safe, but he was insistent. As soon as they were outside on the pavement he embraced her. He took her arm when they crossed the roads. She knew she should have shaken him off. She’d been born in the city and so had he. Between them they knew hundreds of people. They were certain to be noticed by somebody. She said this to him and he frightened her a little by saying that he didn’t care any more.

  They walked towards the city centre and passed dangerously near to the market place and the Lowood’s Linens shop. Christopher tried to put his arm around her waist, but she was too wide, and he contented himself with hanging his thumb on the decorative belt on the back of her overcoat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “We’re going to spend the day together,” he said.