The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  ‘How dreadful!’

  ‘Come on, you can’t keep moping up here like Miss Havisham.’

  ‘I go out often.’

  ‘Oh, really. Where to?’

  ‘I went to an Association Football match last month, at Celtic Park.’

  ‘Why do you say things like “Association Football”? Why not just say “football”? It’s just that people might take you for a complete pompous ass.’

  He ignored her remark and proceeded to paint a false picture as to the extent of his exploits. ‘I go to galleries, to the cinema, to concerts, to the lunchtime organ recital at Kelvingrove Museum. In November I took the tour of the City Chambers – marblework of magnificence I’ve not seen outside Italy.’

  ‘Yes, but you go with your mother, or by yourself. You’ve been single for far too long. You should try and meet someone nice. You’re a reasonable catch. You’re not bad-looking, and you possess some charms.’

  ‘Damned with faint praise indeed!’

  ‘Oh, come on. What I mean is that you’re an asshole, but you’re not an entirely unlovable asshole.’

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, draining his glass. ‘I’m afraid it is too late for me,’ he added a little mournfully. ‘One becomes inured to solitude. Do you know what I realised the other day? That I am nearer to the traditional male retirement threshold than I am to the age of thirty. Can you imagine?’

  ‘You’re not old,’ she sighed as she plonked herself down on a chair. ‘You’re just no fun any more. And I would suggest you retired years ago.’

  ‘When was I ever fun?’

  ‘At uni.’

  ‘At university people were drawn to me because I was brilliant, not because I was fun.’

  ‘You could easily meet someone. You don’t know what you’re missing. And I’m not just talking about the bedroom. I’m talking about having a partner. An ally. Someone to share your troubles with.’ Stephanie splashed some more Scotch into his glass, then a long spurt of soda. ‘I mean your . . . gift. It must take its toll,’ she ventured.

  ‘It is a burden I bear without complaint,’ Leo said serenely.

  ‘I imagine you haven’t had much opportunity to employ it. In a practical way, I mean.’

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘Well, give me an example. You never seem to talk about it.’

  ‘Modesty forbids.’

  ‘Oh, go on!’

  ‘Well, there was the case of the Monday Murders. It occurred during the period in which you and I had . . . lost touch. I was of some considerable assistance to the CID. Do you happen to know a Detective Frank Carolan?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I remember. Your name was leaked to the papers. But your involvement was denied completely by the polis. What else?’

  ‘Well, most of my other work has been for private clients. For example, I found a young man once. He had fallen out with his parents and buggered off down south. He had written a letter to tell them he was safe and well, but someone had forgotten to post it. I kept “seeing” him outside this effete café in Brighton. Locating him was rather straightforward, actually; I recognised the charming late-Georgian architecture.’

  ‘Did it pay well?’

  ‘You think I do it for the money?’ Leo snapped.

  ‘No. But did it pay well?’

  ‘It paid sod all. They were poor people who were worried sick about their son.’

  ‘So, how come you don’t need to work? After all, a joint like this doesn’t come cheap,’ Stephanie said with a sweeping gesture of her arm towards the lavish interior of Leo’s apartment.

  He poured a further dose of J&B into his glass, unimpressed by the alcohol-to-soda ratio his friend had served up. Fair play to Stephanie, he thought. She always brings the decent stuff.

  He got up and walked through the arch into the drawing room, his silk Paisley dressing gown swishing over his clothes. He sat down in his rattan chair, facing the window with his back to her. The room was shadowy, lit only by firelight and two beautiful Tiffany table lamps with leaded, coloured-glass shades. He took a long sip before speaking. ‘There was another case. A wealthy family; their daughter had gone AWOL. It involved quite extensive travelling on the Continent. The case put a great strain upon me, for various reasons, both physically and metaphysically. Thankfully, it had a happy conclusion, and the family were most grateful.’ He coughed slightly. ‘And generous.’

  ‘How much?’

  Leo didn’t reply but simply smiled sedately.

  ‘Typical bloody Scotsman: never wants to let folk know how much he’s got.’

  ‘Let’s just say it was enough to provide a stipend sufficient to protect a creature of my sensitivity from the rigours of labour.’

  ‘I thought socialists were supposed to extol the dignity of work.’

  Leo took another sip. It was at this point that he discussed with Stephanie his intention to visit Loch Dhonn.

  ‘You likely won’t be made welcome, regardless of how long you delay it,’ she concluded.

  He gazed out of the window pensively for a while. A Japanese Imari vase sat proudly on a shisham table, a defiant splash of colour in the face of the louring Glasgow winter a pane’s thickness away. To his annoyance, out of the corner of his eye he noticed a rogue sliver of wallpaper that had unstuck itself. Impatiently, he stood up and tried in vain to paste it back with whisky and soda. Stephanie came through the arch with the bottle, to regard the windswept scene with him.

  ‘Heavens release us from this ghastly weather!’ said Leo, dabbing his nose with a linen handkerchief he had produced from a pocket. ‘I often think I should follow the example of the Victorian gentlemen who would take laudanum and go into hibernation for the winter.’

  ‘At least it’ll be February soon.’

  ‘Actually, in a way I prefer January.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. For all its tumult, at least it is an honest month. February is a pretentious month.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘February has delusions of early spring. It lulls you in, then kicks you in the you-know-whats with a bloody snowstorm. When January bequeaths a splendid, sunny day – which it occasionally does – one feels truly blessed.’

  Stephanie topped up his glass again. It was time to broach the subject she had come to discuss. ‘So, did you read my note then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And, will you help?’

  ‘It’s not something I can turn on like a tap. And anyway, I lack . . . empathy for your predicament.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘I believe . . . I know that you have been unfaithful to him, too. I fail to see why Jamie’s indiscretions should be uncovered in a blaze of self-righteousness, while your own unconscionable behaviour remains a secret.’

  ‘That’s low.’

  ‘I hardly see why.’

  ‘To cast up that one time. Jamie and I had barely met.’

  Oddly, Leo hadn’t actually been referring to their night together. It did often loom large in his mind, but he had momentarily forgotten about it and its massive pertinence to the current conversation. Leo disliked Jamie, and even though he regretted his transgression with Stephanie, not only on moral grounds, sometimes he spitefully hoped that the handsome sod suspected he had slept with her.

  He took a few paces, then ventured, ‘But that wasn’t the only time, was it?’ Stephanie made an exclamation of protest, but Leo rounded on her. ‘Well, deny it then. Deny that you haven’t been intimate with at least one other man while you were in a relationship with Jamie.’

  She slumped into the rattan chair, defeated by his challenge. She resented Leo when he was judgemental like this. He had become so despondent, so devoid of passion that he couldn’t begin to understand. Couldn’t understand that sometimes stuff just happens. Her concern about Jamie was that something serious had developed with someone he had met down in London, where he spent so much time working. Or, perhaps even worse, that nothing had ha
ppened, and that her husband’s recent withdrawn state was because he had simply grown tired of her.

  She sighed, aware of her hypocrisy, aware of how flimsy her argument would sound to a third party. She’d had to try hard to get to where she was in life. All was effort, from filing off the rough edges of her Lanarkshire accent to seeking therapy when her self-esteem had been low. And as for study! She was testament to the egalitarian Scottish educational system which had been extended to the lass as well as the lad o’ pairts, to the ethos that if you endeavoured enough you would gain your just rewards, no matter what your background. She had known Leo during her initial Arts papers: Early Medieval European History and the Philosophy of the Enlightenment (a memory flashed through her mind: the autumn light flooding through the stained glass of the tutorial room, her friend eviscerating an obnoxious young doctor with his superior grasp of Hume’s religious critique). Later, she had resolved to do her LLB. She was going to succeed. To do something with her life. To make a difference. Nothing was going to stop her. She would take full advantage of the opportunities previous generations of women had been denied. And what had he achieved, exactly? Eased to the inevitable First, every avenue open to him, then drifted from one dead end job to . . . to doing nothing at all! Riven by morbidity and introspection because of some medieval outlook. Now she was rightfully reaping the fruits of her labours, and putting bad guys behind bars, to boot. She loved her life these days, and she hadn’t always loved it. And she loved her pleasures. Sometimes Leo could be so bloody sanctimonious. Why should she allow a curmudgeon such as him to make her feel shame? Yet, drawn as she was to his intelligence and the rich seam of humanity that resided beneath his dyspeptic exterior, somehow he still managed it. Or perhaps the shame already lurked within her, and Leo had merely shone a light on it.

  ‘It’s not as simple as you make out,’ she replied sulkily. ‘Everything’s so black and white in your pious Catholic world. I can’t relate to it.’

  ‘And neither is your world – or rather your situation – one I can or wish to relate to.’

  ‘Wish to.’

  ‘It would be an inappropriate use of my talents. It is impossible to explain. I cannot hope to make you understand.’

  ‘Thanks for the favour, pal.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘You know what your problem is, Leo?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got a funny feeling you’re about to fill me in.’

  ‘You’re a coward.’

  ‘Gosh, that’s a new one!’

  ‘You’re cowardly and proud. You’re so afraid of rejection that you would rather spend eternity alone than take a risk. The only love you are capable of is for these fucking trinkets,’ she said, indicating Leo’s richly ornamented abode. She stood up, grabbed her coat and headed for the door. ‘Enjoy what’s left of your whisky,’ she added.

  He made to shout something unkind after her but fortunately the words caught in his throat. On her way out she left the front door open, and almost immediately regretted the childishness of the act.

  Pompous ass, she thought.

  Leo strode into the hall and slammed the door angrily at Stephanie’s descending footsteps. He flicked the Bakelite switch up to leave the lobby in darkness. He brought some more ice from the kitchen and went into the dining room, fumbled at the back of a drawer in the sideboard, and produced his late father’s leather cigarette case, which contained the cherished items that had slowly killed him. Apart from allowing himself the occasional cigar, Leo had officially quit smoking years ago, but he petulantly lit one of the fags from the table lighter in the drawing room, piled a quantity of ice into his tumbler and drowned it in Scotch. He sat in the rattan chair and watched the rain drive in from the North Atlantic. The cigarette tip glowed orange in the gloom. The smoke was noxious and caustic to his inflamed lungs, but he inhaled it anyway.

  All had come so easily to her, he thought bitterly. Good looks, a natural way with people, easy confidence. Everything laid out. Never a doubt in her pretty head.

  He sank the Scotch, then went to the kitchen and took a large bottle of milk stout from the refrigerator. He sat on one of his oxblood sofas and used the stout to chase down another half gill of whisky. He gazed around his apartment, furnished in an elegant, old-fashioned style; a stubborn redoubt against the forces of modernity.

  ‘I’m drinking myself sober,’ he said out loud. He was mildly amused at the blunt sound of his voice breaking the oppressive silence. ‘I’m drinking myself sober,’ he said again.

  He regarded the raindrops drearily running down the window pane. He became aware of the sound of the wind scouring the back courts. His sulk started to give way to creeping doubts.

  Perhaps he was craven. Perhaps he had developed a problem with intimacy. Incredible as it would have seemed to his younger self, he increasingly considered the very notion of a relationship, of sharing one’s time and space with another human being, as wholly an inconvenience.

  As well as drinking more and more he seemed to become more misanthropic with each passing week, trapped within the prison of his own subjectivity. The simple truth – of which Leo was dimly aware – was that he was too often alone with his thoughts, and too willing to follow them into convoluted, futile ruminations, like a traveller who is led into the quagmire by jack-o’-lanterns. For some reason numerous memories of ancient humiliations and sufferings had surfaced of late, wounds which kept him awake at night brooding with resentment. And these thoughts then made him feel isolated and inadequate. Could there be anyone else in the known universe who wasted their time in such an ignoble fashion?

  He worried that he was now set in his ways and had come too much to appreciate his home comforts. More and more he preferred his own company, talking loudly in long conversations with himself or shouting grumpily at the wireless during the news. He would often amuse himself with different words or phonetic sounds, even staring at his reflection in a mirror while he mouthed exaggeratedly,

  ‘Unterseeboot . . . unterwasserboot . . . unterwasserbooten . . . unterwassermaschine . . . hunterwassermaschinen . . . hunterhosenmaschinen . . . hunterpantenmaschinen . . . hunterpantenwassermachinen . . .’

  Perhaps he was just plain bored.

  Despite his outward air of imperturbability and flamboyance he actually felt a growing desire to withdraw from the world, and often made excuses for not leaving the flat or else carefully planned each trip in order that he could chalk off as many tasks as possible in one go. He would invite old Arnstein, an antiquarian bookseller with whom he was acquainted, up to play chess at his apartment, rather than meeting him at the tearoom in Otago Lane or at the Star and Garter in Garscube Road. He no longer visited the Billiards Hall at the University Union for a few frames of snooker, and he had let lapse his membership of a famous Victorian bath house in Woodlands. There, he used to luxuriate in the torpidity of the ornate Turkish suite, stark naked but for his plum velvet smoking cap, gesticulating expansively as he engaged in stimulating social intercourse beneath the spangled dome. Or he would lounge on a draperied daybed in the cool room and read the newspapers, passing languid comment to acquaintances upon the day’s affairs. Nowadays, he barely went to so much as the supermarket, unless it was a time when he knew it would be quietest. When a Waitrose had opened nearby he had rejected it outright, ostensibly out of loyalty to his usual Sainsbury’s, but really because he was allergic to change. Indeed, sometimes he was so disinclined to venture outside that he would telephone Sanjeev’s Dairy and get the eponymous proprietor to send his son up with a boxful of groceries. He could volunteer for the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul or the Mountain Bothies Association, but something always held him back. For this self-quarantine was a recurring habit and the spells of gregariousness ephemeral, a process which Leo blamed on the increasing uncouthness of the modern world, but its origins actually lay in his avoidance of catcalls and suspicious glances after a false accusation had been levelled against him a long time ago. He knew h
is fear was by now irrational, but trauma embeds itself so deep as to become reflexive. Therefore, even all these years later part of him still feared that business being dredged up again in some chance encounter on the street, and though he generally prided himself on being immune to other people’s opinions of him, that specific allegation retained the latent power to cut him to the marrow.

  However, Leo remained resolute in going out to attend to his solemn duties: Mass and visiting his mother, who had taken a bad turn a few years back. He had suggested that they share a house, but she had demonstrated an independent spirit similar to that of her son, and maintained a degree of autonomy by opting for sheltered housing. She also held out hope that Leo might still meet someone and marry, and she didn’t want to cramp his style.

  He was going to have to snap out of this mode sharpish, now that a new case had arrived for him to solve. And anyway, ensconcing himself at home brought only a temporary sense of security. As Leo knew only too well, all it meant was that reality would be harder to face up to when it arrived. So when he did go out he checked things anxiously – the fire, the gas hob, the electric heater, the front door mortise – again and again. And why did humming ‘Happy Birthday to you’ twice, as was recommended, when washing his hands after visiting the lavatory not suffice to assassinate all the little germs? No, he had to hum it four bloody times! He obsessively kept the flat clean and tidy, with everything just so. In a misplaced orgy of feng shui, ornaments now even had to face a precise direction. Stocks of all provisions were assiduously maintained, as though there was about to be a nuclear attack. He was a Scotsman of Irish blood, yet where was his Celtic passion? What had happened to his spontaneity, his poetry, his romance? My goodness, how had he become so governed by rules, so cold and sterile?

  Yet his time wasn’t entirely wasted. He read copiously. He listened to the live concerts on Radio 3, despite disapproving of that station’s diminished adventurousness as it chased listener ratings. He wrote (in elegant but flawed penmanship – an art he had to relearn after his hands were damaged) letters to MPs, chastising them for their abandonment of socialist economic policies, or to foreign tyrants politely requesting the release of political prisoners or an end to torture, and signed fat cheques for various good causes. And at least now, unlike back then, during his disintegration, he could live with and largely enjoy his own company, even if the fire in his soul had gone out. Yes, at least simplicity had emerged from the fevered chaos of complexity. Yet clarity had been accompanied by something less palatable. A hardening round the edges, an unarticulated cynicism, a rather unsettling casting off of sentimentality.