Laying a Ghost

by Jane Davitt

  “Of course.” Sinclair’s cordiality returned as he stood up. “Just let me know if I can be of any help. We’re all very pleased to see a Kelley back on the island ‑‑ and, perhaps, sitting in the church on Sunday?”

  Nick wasn’t quite sure if that was a seal of approval or a final test, but before he could form a diplomatic negative he heard the sound of footsteps and John appeared at the open kitchen door, his gaze lingering on the minister thoughtfully.

  “Good morning, Mr. Sinclair.” John’s voice was polite rather than warm. He glanced at Nick and nodded briefly. “Morning, Nick. Thought I’d just make a start on the roof, unless there’s anything else you’ve found that needs attention?”

  Nick did his best to sound casual and not to let his eyes linger too long on John. “No. I mean, yes, the roof would be great, thanks.” John disappeared again. Turning his attention back to the minister, Nick reached out to shake his hand. “I really appreciate you taking the time to come and introduce yourself. Especially since we’re neighbors. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.” He gave the man what he hoped was a friendly smile.

  “But not on Sunday?” Sinclair asked archly. He shook his head, chuckling. “I won’t press you. But you’d be most welcome, and if you’re looking into your family history, you must come over and look at the parish register some time; fascinating reading.” He made his way to the door and then paused. “Your uncle’s grave ‑‑ you’ll be wanting to see it? He left instructions regarding a headstone so there’s nothing that needs to be done, but I can show you where he’s buried. A sad loss.” For the first time since he’d arrived, he sounded natural, even regretful, as if he was genuinely sorry about Ian Kelley’s death.

  “Thank you. I never knew him, but I’m starting to wish I could have.” That was a little bit more of a lie than Nick was comfortable with ‑‑ not because there wasn’t a part of him that would have been interested to know his uncle while the man had still been alive, but because he couldn’t help dreading that he might still get the opportunity to meet the man in spirit if not in flesh. “I’ll ... I’ll come over later in the week and visit his grave.”

  Andrew Sinclair nodded and then winced at a squeal of metal on metal as John extended a ladder before leaning it against the wall a few yards from the door with what seemed like an unnecessary amount of noise. “Well, I can see you’re busy, so I’ll leave you to it.” He lowered his voice. “The islanders ‑‑ sterling people, as I’m sure you’ll find, but not always the most reliable workers. You might want to keep a close eye on John if you’re paying him by the hour. Make sure he doesn’t take advantage of you.”

  In a different mood, Nick would have laughed. He was grateful that he didn’t feel even slightly tempted to now. “Don’t worry. It may not look like it, but I can take care of myself.”

  He wondered if that had sounded even remotely convincing as he went outside with Sinclair and watched as the man walked away, heading for town instead of back to the church. When Sinclair was at least a quarter of a mile away, Nick turned and walked over to the foot of the ladder, which John had already climbed, and stood looking up at him.

  “Well, much though I’d love to be taking advantage of you, it won’t be today.” John’s voice carried on the clear, still air. “Now I’m up here I can see a few more places where you’re missing tiles and it’s not just a matter of slotting the new ones in, do you see? You have to take off the ones above as well.” He began to climb down, the ladder shaking so that Nick automatically put out a hand to brace it, and then stepped off onto the grass beside Nick. “Might be best if you get someone to look at it.” He stared across the field at the retreating figure of the minister. “Bloody Englishman,” he muttered, managing to make it sound like a combination of character flaw and insult. He nodded at the ladder. “Do you want to go up and see for yourself, then?”

  Nick shook his head. “Not really. What do you mean, Englishman?”

  “I mean he’s English, what else, and he can keep his bloody opinions about us to himself.” John snorted. “Fifteen years he’s been here, and he still doesn’t have a clue.”

  “He sounds like everyone else to me,” Nick said, and John gave him a look. “What? He does. Did you know he thinks I should get someone in to cook and clean for me?”

  “In the first place, he doesn’t sound like me,” John said testily. “He’s from fucking Penrith. And when he tells you that you need someone to do your housework, he’s thinking of you settling down with some nice, God-fearing lassie and getting her pregnant inside of the year, so if I were you, I’d stick to starving in squalor, but what the hell do I know anyway?”

  “A hell of a lot more than me.” Nick watched John’s face, trying to figure out how annoyed he really was. Maybe not really, he decided. “I don’t even know where Penrith is. Although I can’t say I’m all that interested in starving. Or squalor. You think that means I should get a lassie?”

  John opened his mouth, saw the grin Nick was having trouble suppressing, and narrowed his eyes. “It’s across the border and that’s all you need to know. And stop smirking at me like that, or I’ll send you half-a-dozen of them to make your life miserable and serve you right.” He gave Nick a decisive nod and then leaned back against the wall of the house, a grin of his own spreading across his face. “Och, go and put the kettle on, will you? After being polite to him I need something to take the taste away.”

  Nick licked his lips. “I could give you something else to take the taste away.” He met John’s eyes. Then, before John could do anything than blink at him, he turned and went inside.

  He’d done no more than fill the kettle before John appeared in the doorway, studying him in silence before shaking his head and walking over to him. “You’re not going to get much work out of me if all I’m thinking about is kissing you, you know.” He stood closer than normal, but not actually touching Nick, his gaze traveling over Nick’s face. “And after that, kissing you is all I can think about. Satisfied? Or are you waiting for me to hammer something and hit my thumb because I’m remembering you naked beneath me?”

  “I don’t know that there’s anything that needs hammering.” Nick felt pleased that he could get that kind of a reaction out of John, but it didn’t feel natural, trying to flirt like this. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even wanted to. “Speaking of which, if we’re not going to fix the roof today ‑‑ and who am I going to get to do it? ‑‑ then what are we going to do? We can’t paint the ceiling in the spare room until the leak’s fixed.”

  “When I was getting the ladder out of the garage I had a look at your uncle’s car.” John stepped back just a little. “If you know where the keys are, we can see if we can get it started. I know you don’t feel like driving it just yet, but it makes no sense letting it rust. And I left word with Niall this morning to come over and give you a price on the central heating sometime this week; I’ll call him back and tell him to bring along his brother Terry; he’s a roofer.”

  “That’d be good. Get everything done at once.” Mention of the car had brought any sense of relaxation Nick had been feeling to a grinding halt. “I think I found the keys in the desk. At least they looked like car keys.” Nick turned and headed for the sitting room, where he’d left the keys sitting out. “Maybe I can sell it?”

  John’s hand came up to touch his arm, halting him. “Maybe you can think about using it?”

  “I can walk. The exercise will probably be good for me.” But Nick didn’t sound confident, even to his own ears, and he let John turn him until they were facing each other.

  “You’re thinking it could happen again and you’d hurt yourself, or someone else?” John asked. “Or is it just that when you get behind the wheel you can’t stop remembering?” His hand rubbed against Nick’s arm, warm and strong. “It doesn’t have to be something you do today, but you can’t spend your life walking or being carried from place to place by someone else.” He took a deep breath. “But don’t
think I’m not sympathetic. I’ve spent the day jumping at every shadow thinking maybe I can see them now, too. Or is that just when I’m holding your hand, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick was grateful for the change of subject. “I’ve never had that happen before. Usually, someone can either see stuff or they can’t. I don’t know what that was.”

  “That’s not making me feel any better. Christ, it’s really not.” John shook his head. “I was hoping you’d tell me that you know just what happened, because I’m still thinking about it and sort of flinching away, if you know what I mean.” He walked past Nick and picked up the car keys, tossing them over to Nick who caught them one-handed without thinking. “How old were you? The first time?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t remember.” He followed John reluctantly out the door and toward the garage. “Too young to know that I was seeing something I shouldn’t have been. I saw things for a long time before I mentioned it to my mother, and then there was all this serious discussion about it. What I saw, when I saw it, did I ever hear things that weren’t really there? Well, how was I supposed to know? They were really there to me.”

  “There’s so many lies we tell children trying to shield them, and so much we see and pretend we don’t.” John’s eyes were a little distant. “I wouldn’t have blamed you for thinking people were lying to you when they said they couldn’t see them.” He gave Nick a sidelong glance as they got to the garage. “Did she believe you? Your mother?”

  “Oh, yeah. She was all excited about it. She thought it was neat.” At the time, Nick hadn’t understood why, although in retrospect he did. “For like the first year after she found out, every time I heard or saw something that might not have been there, I was supposed to ask her if she’d heard it or seen it.” The garage door was open, and they stepped inside into the dim light, the edges of the keys biting into Nick’s skin.

  John held out his hand for the keys, his face troubled. “I don’t know what to say. I keep getting angry with people for the way they’ve treated you, and it turns out you don’t mind so much, or maybe they had their reasons, but for the life of me I can’t see how a mother could be glad her son was going to be burdened the way you are. Neat? It didn’t look neat to me when you were curled up and shaking, trying to make them go away. I’m glad she trusted you, mind, but ‑‑” He broke off and closed his hand over the keys. “If you could, would you make it stop?”

  It took some effort to force himself to let go of the keys, but no matter what he did, Nick couldn’t find an answer to the question. “I don’t know.” He tried not to think of how he must look, during. Once, Matthew had borrowed a video camera and taped a session, and that had been more than enough for Nick. Five minutes into viewing the tape, he’d told Matthew to shut it off, and when Matthew hadn’t, he’d left the room, trying to erase the mental image of himself as a crazy person.

  Even knowing that it had been real hadn’t helped.

  “I think she was crazy.” What was that, transference? Talking about someone else instead of yourself? “When she killed the baby, I mean. Some kind of postpartum depression. Psychosis.”

  A furrow appeared in John’s forehead. “Talking to you is like skipping a stone over the water,” he said plaintively. “Kirsty, you’re meaning? Aye. And back then, they’d not have seen the signs. Poor lady.” He cleared his throat. “She ‑‑ people sort of guessed, you know, but they didn’t ‑‑ they never said anything. They maybe kept a close eye on her when your uncle was born though.” He looked at Nick. “It’s one of the stories on the island, but apart from idiots like Geordie, I can’t see people mentioning it to you. And if they do, it won’t matter now, will it? She’s at rest. Both of them are.”

  “She didn’t mean to do it. I mean, she did, but she wasn’t in her right mind. She still wasn’t, when I was talking to her. I think she’s okay now, though.” It was usually complicated, but in this case, once Nick had understood, it had been simple.

  “She said God wanted the baby back,” John told him, shuddering slightly. “I think she’d have to have been mad to believe that.” He met Nick’s eyes. “You think afterwards they go somewhere? Heaven or hell? Or just fade away?”

  Nick looked away, down at the rough dirt floor of the garage. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I can’t think about it.” If he did ... but he couldn’t. It was hard enough seeing the big picture and knowing that you were one of not all that many people who could. Knowing that there might be other pictures that you couldn’t even see ... that was too much.

  John made a frustrated sound. “With me, it’s different. I want to know. It’s bothering me that I don’t know. Last week, before I met you ‑‑” He paused and his hand came up to cup Nick’s face for an instant in a brief caress. “God, I feel as if I should’ve known you were coming, which makes no sense at all. I’m not the psychic one.”

  “No, but you’re something. I mean, there’s something there.” Nick felt sure of that. “We’ll figure out what it is.”

  John’s face was a mixture of trepidation and interest for a moment as he considered that, but then he shrugged. “I think it’s just whatever you have spilling over onto me because I’m close. Because we’re close. If you weren’t near me I doubt I’d see anything. Won’t stop me damn near levitating when I’m on my own in the dark and something goes bump, but I’ll get used to it. No; it’s just ‑‑ last week I was certain about things, and now I’m not. And I don’t know whether to thank you or thump you for that, but as it’s not your fault I’ll probably do neither.”

  “If it’s not my fault I don’t know whose it is.” Not that Nick actually felt all that guilty. Maybe his guilt was too busy lingering on Matthew’s death. At that thought, he glanced nervously at the car.

  “It’s not your fault that you can see ghosts and it seems to be catching.” John’s gaze followed Nick’s, his forehead crinkling up again. “That’s not something I’m inclined to blame you for. Making me realize every other man I’ve been with was about as exciting as cold porridge is another thing entirely.” John smiled at him. “Distracting, didn’t I say? Aye, that’ll be right.”

  Nick glanced at the car again. It was small, gray, and looked older than any car he’d ever driven in. Considering his mother’s lack of income when he’d been a kid, that was saying a lot. “Maybe it won’t start.”

  “Obviously not a skill I have,” John muttered under his breath. “No, it probably won’t. The battery might be flat, and I can see from here that the tires are low. But that’s only to be expected.” He walked past Nick, unlocked the car, and got in, turning the key and listening carefully. The engine made a strangled, coughing sound and nothing else. John tightened his lips and tried again, this time with better results, making Nick step backward as the engine almost caught. The third time it did turn over and John pressed down on the gas pedal ‑‑ the accelerator here, Nick supposed ‑‑ and the engine roared to life.

  John turned it off after a minute that lasted much longer than that, it seemed to Nick, and stepped out into a fume-filled garage.

  “Aye. Well there you go,” he said quietly. “I think it’ll make it to the garage in town and we can fill the tires and maybe get some supplies to change the oil.” He tilted his head and stared at Nick. “You’ll be needing to get it taxed and tested though, and I suppose you’ll not have any insurance ‑‑” Nick nodded, feeling reprieved. “-- but that doesn’t matter because you’re not planning to even sit behind the wheel, are you?” John finished calmly.

  “No.” Nick’s voice and his chest felt tight. “I’m not.”

  He couldn’t say anything else, so he walked to the doorway and stood there with his back to the car, looking out across all the green, with the pale blue above it. It was like some giant hand had come down and wiped out almost all signs of civilization, leaving nothing behind but grass and sky. He took a breath, letting the clean air fill his lungs and take away some of his tension on the exhale.
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  “I climbed that mountain over there when I was thirteen.” John came to stand beside him, pointing towards the mountain that dominated the scenery to the north. “Ben Dearg, it’s called. 2,300 feet above sea level. Set off in the morning with Michael, the two of us swearing we’d not come back until we’d reached the summit.”

  “And did you?”

  “We said we did in school on the Monday,” John said dryly. “But the truth of it is that a mist came down, our food was all gone, and we got no more than half way up before we turned back.” He moved away from the garage with Nick beside him. “It was another seven years before I reached the top, and that time I went alone.” John shoved his hands into his pockets, staring over at the mountain before rolling his eyes and looking away. “Michael and Sheila had got engaged and I was needing to get away. Spent the night up there, soaked through and miserable, but loving it too, the way you do when you’re that age. It’s all extremes and I was extremely heartbroken.” He bit down on his lip and then grinned, shaking his head. “It passed.”

  Nick let that sink in, looking at John now instead of the scenery. At the line of John’s shoulder, deceptively narrow for the strength underneath it, and the way his hand was tucked into his pocket. “It wasn’t Sheila who you were in love with.”

  He watched the corner of John’s mouth curl up in a small smile. “Well, of course it wasn’t. I told you that already.”

  “Did Michael know?” Nick asked it gently, not sure how sore a subject it might still be even after a number of years.

  John lifted one shoulder. “How could he not?” He turned his head to look at Nick, his eyes troubled now. “Look, I can tell you what happened if you like, but it’s not that interesting, and we’ve done nothing this morning. I’m supposed to be helping you.”

  “It’s interesting to me, but if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. Maybe you will some other time.” Nick tilted his head to the side and looked at John. “Or we could go for a walk. Down to the beach?”