Ghost

by Helen Grant

  Perhaps it isn’t that, I said to myself. Perhaps he thinks there’s something wrong about me, and he’s asking these questions to find out, like in books, when someone has a bump on the head and you ask them what their name is and who the prime minister is, to see whether they can remember. There were other possibilities too, but those loomed in the recesses of my imagination with such murky enormity that I hardly knew how to examine them.

  At last, Tom broke the silence. “All right,” he said slowly, “I know this seems like a – an obvious question, but what year is it?”

  Now I thought he really must be testing me; it was such a strange thing to ask.

  So I said, “1945.”

  “1945,” said Tom, and there was a sort of flatness in his voice.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I thought he would say something then, but he was silent for a very long time after that, seeming to be lost in thought.

  At last I said, “Why did you ask what year it is?”

  He didn’t answer the question. He looked at me and then he asked one of his own.

  “Is there anyone else living here, besides you and–?”

  He was going to say Mrs. McAndrew, but he stopped when he realised that she wasn’t living here anymore.

  I shook my head. “It’s always been me and Grandmother.”

  “Always?” he said. That seemed to impress him in some way, good or bad, I couldn’t tell. “You mean you’ve been here...a long time?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Ever since I can remember. Since I was a baby.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “Well, I’m seventeen. I’ll be eighteen in April.”

  He thought about that. “So where did you go to school?”

  “I didn’t go to school,” I told him. “Grandmother taught me.”

  “She home-schooled you?”

  I nodded, a little uncertainly. I’d never heard Grandmother call it that. “She taught me everything. Reading, writing and arithmetic...and later on, Latin–”

  “Latin?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And Greek.”

  He seemed so surprised at this that I said, “Didn’t you study Latin and Greek?”

  “No. I–” He hesitated. “My school didn’t really do those.”

  “Oh.” There seemed nothing I could say to that that wouldn’t sound critical. It couldn’t have been a very good sort of school.

  He didn’t seem concerned. He was more interested in other questions.

  “Didn’t you get lonely? I mean, if you were home-schooled, how did you make friends?”

  “I don’t have friends,” I said, truthfully.

  It was strange but not unpleasant, talking to Tom McAllister like this. It was a new experience, being asked so many questions. Grandmother did ask me things sometimes, like how the weather looked today or whether I had fed the chickens yet, and she used to test me on things I was supposed to have learnt as part of my studies. But nobody had ever asked me questions like these before – about myself, and my life. There was no reason for Grandmother to ask me those questions because she knew it all already, and there had been nobody else to ask me. Perhaps, I thought, if I had had friends that was what they would have done.

  I began to feel something new and warm towards Tom. I couldn’t say that I was happy, not when I was grieving for Grandmother. But it was good to be sitting here with him. I hoped he would stay longer. I wished he would keep looking at me. His eyes were the colour I had always imagined the sea to be, a soft shade between pale green and blue. I wanted us to keep talking, so I went on.

  “I couldn’t have friends,” I explained. “Grandmother said it wasn’t safe for people to know that I was living here, because of the War...”

  I stopped. I knew that I wasn’t good at working out what people were thinking from their expressions, because I’d only ever had Grandmother to practise on, but even I couldn’t miss the look that crossed Tom McAllister’s face when I mentioned the War again.

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  He seemed very reluctant to say anything.

  “It’s something about the War, isn’t it?” I said. “Just tell me.”

  “Look,” he said eventually, “Your Grandmother told you it’s 1945, right? And there’s a war on. World War Two.”

  “Yes,” I said. I waited, but he looked away. He seemed to be having problems putting whatever he wanted to say into words.

  “Grandmother said it might finally end soon,” I said. “There’d be peace. Is that it? Is it ending?”

  He glanced at me, but the gaze of those blue-green eyes couldn’t hold mine for long; it danced away, over the dusty staircase and the chequered tiles below.

  “Sort of,” he said at last.

  I wondered if he was trying to be diplomatic, to break a very great piece of news to me slowly, so that it would be less of a shock.

  I just came out with it and asked, “Has it already ended?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, that’s–” I began to say how wonderful this news was, and it was, of course it was, but then I remembered that Grandmother was gone. She had not lived to see the day we had both longed for. There was a terrible irony in the fact that her death had come such a short time before it.

  “When?” I asked instead. “When did it end?”

  This time, when Tom didn’t reply right away, I began to feel impatient. He was undoubtedly trying to be kind, but now I really wanted to know.

  “When?” I repeated. “A week ago? A month?”

  He made a strange face, a kind of grimace.

  “Tell me,” I persisted.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not sure I should be the one to explain all this. Don’t you have anyone else, anyone at all?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve always lived here, with Grandmother. Nobody else.” I hesitated and then I added, “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to, apart from her.”

  “What, ever?” He seemed thunderstruck by this information.

  “Yes.” I didn’t count people I had only seen, from a distance. “I don’t know anyone else. You’ll have to tell me.”

  “Oh shit.” He put his head in his hands.

  I had no idea what that meant – I’d never heard Grandmother use that word and I’d never come across it in books either – but it didn’t sound like a good thing to say.

  I put out a hand and touched his wrist. It was another first; reaching out and touching someone other than Grandmother. His skin was warm under my fingertips, and I felt the heat come into my face.

  “Please,” I said. “Tell me.”

  And he did.

  “Look,” Tom began, “You’re not joking, you’ve only ever spoken to your grandmother before?”

  I nodded.

  “So everything you know about – everything – is what she told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, um, what she told you is mostly true, I mean, partly true. There was a war and it did end in 1945. Only...that was a while ago.”

  “A while ago?”

  Tom’s gaze slid away from mine, as though he were looking for a way out.

  “A long while ago,” he said, eventually.

  I opened my mouth to say that that couldn’t possibly be true, because Grandmother wouldn’t have lied to me. Not that much. Saying the War was coming to an end soon, when in fact it had just ended, wasn’t such a big lie; she might have been breaking it to me gently. She wouldn’t have lied to me for years though.

  Then I thought about the trips I had made down to the edge of the estate. Everything was always so peaceful. I had seen no actual proof of what Grandmother had told me. Perhaps Tom was telling the truth. Perhaps Grandmother had lied to me.

  Thinking like this was horrible. It w
as as though the truth I had always lived with was guttering like a candle flame, plunging me in and out of darkness.

  It’s only Tom’s word, I said to myself. I don’t have to listen. I could tell him to go.

  I couldn’t do that, though. Even if it were Tom who was lying, I had to know what his story was.

  “How long ago?” I said, and even to my own ears there was a cold hardness in my voice.

  There was a very long pause before Tom answered.

  He said, “Seventy-two years.” When I didn’t reply, he sighed, and said, “It’s 2017.”

  I found my tongue. “I don’t believe you.” I really didn’t. It was too much to take in. I wasn’t so much shocked as numb. What Tom was saying was utterly impossible.

  “Why would I lie to you?” said Tom. He didn’t sound annoyed. He sounded sort of sad.

  “I don’t know,” I said with sudden anger. “I don’t know you – I don’t know anything about you. You might have a reason of your own.” Something occurred to me. “You haven’t gone to fight. You might not be an objector – you might be a deserter.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Tom. Now he sounded angry. I had virtually accused him of cowardice. “You can’t be a deserter if there’s no war to desert from.”

  “You say there’s no war on,” I pointed out. “Why should I believe you? If you were telling the truth, Grandmother would be lying, and she wouldn’t do that.”

  Even as the words came out of my mouth I felt a chill stab of doubt that I tried to suppress.

  “But she did, didn’t she?” said Tom. “There’s no war because it ended seventy-two years ago. And she knew that, because she’d been in the town, so you can’t say she didn’t. She deliberately lied to you.” Then he seemed to relent; his voice softened. “Look, she probably had her reasons. Maybe she thought she was doing it for the best...”

  I couldn’t look at Tom any more. I put my head down, hugging myself, and let my hair fall forward over my face, hiding me.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said again. I wanted that to be true. I wanted to keep on believing in Grandmother. And seventy-two years? That was impossible. It was a whole lifetime. Thinking about it was terrifying; it made me feel as though I were crumbling into fragments inside. It went through my head that perhaps there was a Langlands ghost after all, and it was me. How else could time flow so differently in the outside world, so that it had passed the point where I was fixed by seventy-two years?

  Tom was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “Look, I’ll prove it to you. I’ve got my mum’s car outside, that’s how I got here. I’ll take you into the town and I’ll show you.”

  I was shaking my head before he had even finished speaking. All those years, wondering what it was like outside the Langlands estate – the people, the cities. I had longed to see the sea, that expanse of water they said was so great that you could faintly see the earth’s curvature on it. Now suddenly I didn’t want to go, not then, not as abruptly as that. At that instant, it felt as possible as hurling myself from the highest tower of Langlands house, knowing that I would be shattered to pieces when I hit the ground.

  “No,” I choked out.

  “Well...” Tom hesitated. “If you don’t want to come out, I guess I could go, and come back with something that’ll prove it. I could get a newspaper and show you the date.”

  His words sent that chill doubt stabbing more deeply into me. Why would he offer to bring proof if he’s made all this up?

  I had a brief impulse to tell him to go away and not come back at all. I could try to forget the hurtful things he had said about Grandmother lying. Then I thought of my last trip down to the edge of the estate. If I sent Tom away, I would eventually be driven there again when supplies ran out completely, facing a long trek into an unknown situation. Whatever the truth, I had to know it. And if Tom said he could bring proof–

  “When will you come back?” I said.

  “Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. It depends when I can get the car. It’s not mine, it’s Mum’s. And I have to work, with Dad. I’ll come back as soon as I can.” He paused. “There’s one thing. I don’t want you shooting me by accident when I come back. Can you leave that thing somewhere?”

  He nodded at the rifle.

  “It’s not safe,” I told him. “Other people came before you did. Soldiers. The door was locked then, but they might come back.”

  “Soldiers?”

  I nodded. “Two of them.”

  “That’s not–” Tom stopped. He put up both hands and rubbed them over his face, massaging his temples with his fingertips. Then he looked directly at me, with a strange expression on his face; he was smiling but his brows were drawn together in a sort of frown.

  He said, “I’m starting to think I’m off my head after all. You’re living in 1945 and you say there’s a war on. And soldiers have tried to get into the house. And you say you’re a ghost. If I come back, are you even going to be here, or am I imagining all this?”

  “I didn’t say I was a ghost,” I said, although the idea gave me a little ripple of unease. I had been thinking almost exactly that a few minutes before – that perhaps I was the Langlands ghost. It seemed no more bizarre an explanation than anything else I could think of.

  “Yes, you did,” said Tom. “When I came into the house. I said, are you a ghost? And you said, Yes.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought you said Ghost, not a ghost. That’s my name.”

  “Your name is Ghost?”

  Something in his tone stung me. “It’s a nickname. My real name is Augusta.”

  “Augusta?” Tom put his head back and stared up at the ceiling, but he was smiling. When he looked back at me again, he said quite gravely, “Ghost is better.”

  Then he stood up. “I’ll come as soon as I can. When I drive up, I’ll sound the horn three times, okay? Then you’ll know it’s me, and not to shoot me.”

  I nodded. I watched as Tom descended the stairs. He crossed the hallway with its black and white tiles, and when he got to the front door he paused for a moment with his hand on it, and half turned, as though he had forgotten something. But then he changed his mind. He left without saying another word, and the door closed heavily behind him.

  2017, Tom McAllister said.

  After he left, and the sound of the car engine had faded into the distance, I sat for a very long time on the staircase, with the rifle across my lap. I had a strange dull feeling inside me, a heaviness in my chest like the suffocation of burial.

  Grandmother was dead. That was the one stark and terrible fact. Whatever the other truths, she would never explain them to me. I wanted to grieve for her, but the other things, the unanswered questions, seemed to stand in the way. Was it possible that she, whom I loved and trusted, had lied to me all my life, and that I was hearing the truth from someone I barely knew and had no particular reason to trust at all?

  Seventy-two years.

  It seemed impossible. I would consider the possibility that Tom McAllister was telling me the truth, and then I would stumble against that monstrous claim, the years that amounted to over seven decades, and I couldn’t believe it. It had to be a lie.

  I’d have known, I told myself.

  How? said an insistent little voice at the back of my mind. You’ve never left the estate.

  After a while, this internal argument overtook the miserable heaviness I felt. I wanted to believe Tom; I didn’t want to believe Tom.

  It seemed strange now to remember how I had hidden in the attic and watched him and his father arrive at Langlands. I had been so desperate to set eyes on a new face. Back then, just a few months ago, the idea that I could sit beside someone my own age and talk, that we would sit close enough to each other that I could put out a hand and touch him, that we would look into each other’s eyes – that would have thrilled me. Now I looked ba
ck at that time and it was as though I was seeing it through the wrong end of a telescope. It seemed so far away that it might as well have happened to someone else. Losing Grandmother had taken the joy out of everything.

  It wasn’t just that. I didn’t know whether to trust him or not. It was the same as with Grandmother – I didn’t know whether I should be grieving for the person who had protected me all my life, or raging because she had deceived me all that time. I didn’t know whether Tom was my saviour or the perpetrator of the most preposterous lie ever, with his own sinister intentions. And the worst of it was, I couldn’t believe in both of them. It was one or the other: the dead woman or the living man. I swung from one extreme of belief to the other, and while the pendulum swung, I dared not give in to any emotion. I choked them all down, and felt as though I was suffocating myself.

  I can’t wait until he comes back. I have to know.

  I thought there was perhaps an hour of proper daylight left, and I knew better than to think that I could go very far in that time. If I dared try for the town again, I would need to make a morning start. But I could think of one thing I could do.

  Five minutes later, I was bundled up as warmly as possible, and running down the track. There was no need to pace myself, because I knew I would only be going as far as the gate. I ran, too, to try to outpace the feverish thoughts that kept running through my head.

  When I got to the gate and that strange grille that lay across the road, there was still enough light to see what I was doing, but only just.

  The map in the library had shown a building here, some kind of lodge or gatehouse, much smaller than the main house. As I came down the hill, it should be to the left. The map, like everything else at Langlands, was dated no later than 1945. I thought, in fact, that it had had 1938 marked on it. I had never seen any sign of a lodge there when I had been down here before, and I had assumed that the map was wrong; now I wondered whether it was the time that was wrong, not the map itself. If over seventy years had passed, anything might have changed.