by Helen Grant
I knew I should push him away. Probably I should slap him around the face and tell him he had insulted me. We weren’t engaged to each other, and these weren’t brief decorous kisses behind a chaperone’s back. These were hungry kisses.
I didn’t do it, though. Tom’s kisses were making me feel reckless. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to keep kissing me, to kiss me harder, to hold me more tightly.
Then his hand was inside the jacket he had bought for me, sliding under the soft shirt, and moving across my bare skin. I couldn’t help it; I jumped. We broke the kiss. I turned my head aside and I was gasping.
I couldn’t look Tom in the eyes. He leant his forehead against the wall, and I could hear the shuddering of his breath for a few seconds. Then he pushed away from the wall and stepped back.
Neither of us said a word. What could I have said? I’m sorry? I wasn’t sorry. I was confused.
I straightened my shirt with hands that trembled and then I stepped past Tom and busied myself with the oil lamp, adjusting it unnecessarily until the flame flared up too brightly.
After far too long a time in which silence stretched out between us, Tom said, “I should be going. Mum needs the car this evening.”
I wanted to say, “Don’t go,” or “Take me with you,” but instead I said, “Yes.”
I picked up the lamp and led the way back down the passage to the hall and the front door. Tom followed me closely, but did not touch me; nor did he kiss me goodbye as we stood at the door. He paused on the threshold though, and said, “I’ll be back soon.”
I had to be content with that. I watched him turn the car and drive off, and when the sound of the engine had died away I closed the door and locked it. Then I went upstairs. I meant to go to my room and change back into my old dress, but first I went along the length of the passage to Grandmother’s room. My own room had a small mirror hanging over the wash-stand, but hers had a proper cheval glass in which I could see the whole of myself, from my new shorter hair to my boots. I put the oil lamp down on the dressing table and studied my reflection. As far as I could judge, I thought that I looked modern – at any rate, I wouldn’t have stood out amongst the people I had glimpsed at the roadside today. It occurred to me that no girl or woman who looked the way I did had ever been inside Langlands before. It was a disturbing thought. Did I even belong here anymore? I turned away from the mirror. I didn’t belong in the outside world either – at least, not yet.
I went to my own room and took off my new things. The trousers had dried during the drive back from the coast, but the fabric was stiff from the salt water. I would have to wash them, I supposed. For now, I simply folded everything carefully, as though I were a lady’s maid putting away her mistress’s clothes. It did feel like that – as though they belonged to someone else altogether.
I wished there had been someone else there – someone I could talk to. If, instead of Tom, it had been a girl of my own age who had come to the house that time, looking for the truth about the Langlands ghost, I might have made friends with her. I could have asked her so many things – except that if it had been a girl who had come that day, I wouldn’t need to ask the most burning questions, which were all about Tom.
Was he angry with me when he left today?
That was one I wanted answered. He hadn’t touched me or kissed me again. We had hardly exchanged a word after I jumped and he stepped away from me. But he had said he would come back soon.
Did he really mean that? said the voice of self-doubt. Soon, that wasn’t the same as saying tomorrow or at the weekend. It was vague; it might even mean never.
How is this meant to go on? That was the biggest one. I knew how it went according to the books downstairs in Langlands’ library, books that had all rolled off the printing presses over seventy years ago. In those books, once the hero and the heroine had got over their dramatic misunderstandings (he too proud, she too idealistic), the gentleman would declare himself, first to the girl and then to her parents. A kiss might be exchanged. Marriage followed shortly afterwards, and if it didn’t, the situation was considered disastrous.
I knew what happened after marriage, too, although Grandmother had never been explicit about that.
Another thing she was going to tell me one day in the future, and never actually did, I reflected grimly.
I might not have known at all, except that there was a book in the library about it. I had found it one rainy afternoon when I was looking for something new to read; I had climbed up the ladder to look at something on one of the upper shelves, and when I pulled out the book I wanted I saw that there was another one hidden behind it, placed flat to the back of the shelf. Married Love, it was called.
I had a feeling Grandmother would not approve of my reading that book, so of course I was determined to go through it from cover to cover, and I did. The critical information was in chapter five, which began with a quotation from Saint Paul: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour.” I read all of it very carefully, and I remember thinking that whatever it said on the cover of the book, there was nothing in the mechanics of it that absolutely required anyone to be married before doing it.
And that, I supposed, was the reason why people in books were always so eager to get married; otherwise, having once realised they liked each other, they might end up doing it without being married. Then the woman would be considered “fallen” – though not, apparently the man – and if there was a baby, it would be a “love child”, which was a lot worse than it sounded.
I understood all of this, but it was as much use as having a map of Perthshire when you wanted to visit London. How did things work in 2017? I had absolutely no idea, and for that reason I could not guess whether Tom had been angry with me, or himself, or not at all.
It was a puzzle I was not going to solve that evening; the entire contents of Langlands’ library couldn’t have done that. Dressed once more in my old things, I went back down to the kitchen. I felt strangely flat, considering what a momentous day it had been: the day when I finally left Langlands and saw the outside world. I meant to make myself something to eat, but I had no appetite and it all seemed too much effort. In the end, I lay down on the bench with my blanket wrapped around me, and went to sleep with an empty stomach.
The next four days, Tom didn’t come. He had not said that he would come back on a particular day, of course, and I had no idea what other things might affect his ability to come, but as time went on a deep gloom settled over me.
He is never coming back, I said to myself, trying to make myself believe it so that the disappointment would be less when he failed to appear the next day, and the next. I went about my daily tasks: chopping firewood, feeding the chickens. But all the time I was moving to and fro, carrying things in and out or pumping water, my mind was running over and over the events of that day.
Had Tom taken my behaviour as a rejection? Or perhaps he was just tired already of being with someone who knew nothing about his world, who had to be told everything, even how to turn on a telephone. It would be easy for him to abandon the whole thing as a bad lot. He had only to stay away.
I put the new clothes into the bottom drawer of a press in my bedroom. I would take them out again when I was finally forced to walk to the town for supplies, but otherwise I didn’t want to see them. They were simply a reminder of a day that had ended in a way I didn’t understand. It hurt me to think about it, although it was nearly all I did think about.
On the fifth day I woke up to a cold sunshine slanting blindingly through the kitchen window. I sat up and looked at the kitchen clock. The hands stood at half past three. I didn’t think it was possible I had slept that long, and besides, the quality of the light pouring through the window said morning, not afternoon. The clock had stopped altogether; I had forgotten to wind it.
It occurred to me that not only did I not know what time it was, I didn’t know what date
it was, either. Somehow, I had lost track. Was it Tuesday, or Saturday? It was March now, I was pretty sure of that, but that was all I knew.
I went outside to fetch more wood for the stove and found the day was clear and bright. The air was very still and cool, and as I stood for a moment looking at the dark texture of the tree branches I heard faint sounds coming to me: the cry of a bird, the crackle of some wild creature in the undergrowth. And far off, an engine.
Hope didn’t flare up right away. I’d heard such sounds before, when aircraft went over, or when work was going on in the fields beyond the forest. But as I stood there on the flagged path that led from the kitchen door to the back of the house, I realised that the sound was growing gradually louder. Someone was coming up the track through the forest.
I put down the basket I had been carrying for the chopped wood, and wiped my hands on my skirt. Then I walked slowly to the corner of the house, where I would have a view out onto the drive. I didn’t run. It might not be Tom, after all; it could be those two people in the uniforms again. I pressed myself close to the stone corner, and waited.
I saw a flash of red between the trees before I saw the car properly. It was Tom’s, all right, or at any rate, it was Tom’s mother’s. The sound of the engine swelled to a roar as the car laboured up the last part of the drive and crunched over the gravel. As the nose of it swung towards me, I stepped back behind the corner of the wall, out of sight.
I don’t know why I did that. I should have been thrilled to see him after waiting five days; I should have run out onto the gravel with my arms outstretched. But I didn’t. I hung back.
Five days, I thought. What good reason could there be for staying away so long? Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to come back at all, and had only come now to say that he was sorry, he wouldn’t be coming again. Or perhaps I was so much less important to him than he was to me that five days was nothing; it was not soon but soon enough. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know which one of them it was. I was tempted to creep back into the house via the kitchen door, lock it up and hide until he had gone. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to what he had to say.
The car engine died and a moment or two later I heard the door slam. I stood with my back to the cold stone wall, biting my lip, not moving.
“Ghost?”
I heard him call me, and my heart sank even further. There was a hard edge to his voice. I thought he sounded angry. I had that impulse again, to run back into the house and hide.
Then I heard him call again, once, twice, the second time muffled because he had gone into the stone porch. The front door was locked, I knew that. In a second or two, he would be hammering on it.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t run away. I let out a long breath, and then I stepped out from behind the corner of the house and walked briskly around to the front, not letting myself think too carefully about what I was doing.
Tom heard my boots on the gravel and came out of the stone porch. His head turned towards me and I saw the scowl on his face, that barely flickered when he saw me.
I stopped where I was. It was impossible not to. It didn’t matter that Grandmother had lied to me, that I was doing my conscious best to reject what she had taught me about the world. It was too ingrained – the suspicion of what lay outside Langlands, the threat of danger. Tom looked angry; my instinct was to keep my distance.
“Ghost?”
He strode towards me. I stood my ground, but watchfully. I struggled for something to say, but in the end, I didn’t need to say anything. It all came spilling out of him.
“She wouldn’t let me have the bloody car! That’s why I didn’t come. She had to prove a bloody point. Five days – five days it’s taken to talk her round.”
“She...?”
“Mum. I know it’s her car but what does she expect me to do?” His brows drew together. “You know the day we went to Elie? She needed the car back for something she needed to go to, and I forgot. I just forgot. I didn’t do it on purpose. I got home and we had this massive row and that was it. She says I can’t use her car again.” Tom let out a shuddering sigh of exasperation. “Fine, it’s her car, but what does she expect me to do?” He shook his head. “I should have gone straight to uni instead of letting them talk me into working for Dad. Then I wouldn’t be stuck there having to beg for the car when I want to go anywhere.”
Then you’d never have come to Langlands at all, I thought. Perhaps the thought showed on my face, because after a moment Tom seemed to relax; the angry expression smoothed out of his face.
“Hey,” he said, “I didn’t mean to sound off at you. It was just I couldn’t get back here and there was no way to tell you. And Mum was being...” He broke off, and didn’t say what she had been. “She kept having a go at me, wanting to know where I’d been and who with. I didn’t tell her,” he added. “That’s what’s driving her nuts.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I didn’t want to get Tom into trouble, but I was glad he had kept my secret.
“Forget it,” said Tom. “Maybe we should get you a phone. Then if she goes off the deep end again and says I can’t have the car, I can let you know.”
I thought about that. “What if the phone dies, like yours did?”
He stared at me. “Of course. No way to charge it. There’s no electricity anywhere here, is there?”
I shook my head.
“What were you supposed to do if there was an emergency?” Tom asked incredulously. “Like one of you got sick, or something? Didn’t that ever happen?”
“I got very sick once,” I said. “I don’t know what it was. I just remember lying in my room on my own for a long time, and wanting Grandmother, and she didn’t come. I think she went out somewhere, to a doctor, and brought something back for me.”
“She didn’t take you with her?”
“No.”
Tom whistled. “She really didn’t want anyone to know you were here, did she? I wonder what she would have done if you’d got worse – let you die?”
“Of course not,” I said stoutly, but I felt uncomfortable. Grandmother had been so determined to keep me away from the outside world that she had kept up a lie for my entire life; she’d lied to everyone outside in a way too, by not telling them of my existence. If I had lain at Langlands dying, would she have made the decision to take me outside for help? I wasn’t entirely sure she would have. What she had done was a bitter undercurrent to my thoughts; each time some fresh realisation broke upon me, the bitterness deepened. It made me want to break down the whole artifice, to trample on everything Grandmother had taught me. And it made me want to know more than ever: why?
Five days have made me angry, but they’ve also given me time to think. If there’s anything to find out about Ghost’s parents or why her grandmother did what she did, there’s an obvious place to start looking. So that’s where we go.
Is it possible the library smells dustier than it did the last time? I don’t think it’s possible – it wasn’t that long ago – but I wonder whether Langlands has somehow given up the ghost without old Mrs. McAndrew presiding over it. The room feels dead, a tomb for books. I look at all those faded spines and wonder whether anyone will read any of them ever again. The sunshine coming in through the windows just shows up all the dust and the smears on the glass.
I leave Ghost to open the safe. The sight of all those wads of banknotes stacked up like bricks is kind of obscene. You can’t see them without thinking about all the things you could spend the money on, all the things you’ve wanted for ages that you could just go out and buy with all that cash, and that feels like stealing. The money belongs to Ghost. I don’t want to look at it.
I go over to that cabinet thing in the middle of the library and wait for her to bring the will. It doesn’t take long for her to find it, and then she’s standing next to me, turning over t
he pages until she finds the one with the signatures on it. She’s so close to me that every time she turns a page her arm brushes against mine. I try to look at the typed words but my gaze keeps sliding around to the side of her face, the soft skin and the dark hair that she keeps absent-mindedly pushing behind her ear. I guess she isn’t used to the new shorter length yet and it bothers her, the way it keeps falling forward. That makes me think of the day I cut her hair and how I suddenly wanted to kiss her. Then I want to stop messing about with old documents and just pull her into my arms and kiss her again, and I would, except I remember how she jumped last time. I don’t want to mess this up.
I try to concentrate on the typewritten pages in front of us. There are the signatures: Fraser MacFarlane, solicitor, and George Robertson, general practitioner. I don’t know either of them. I’m not surprised I’ve never heard of Fraser MacFarlane, because I’ve never spoken to a lawyer in my life, but I haven’t heard of George Robertson either, and that is strange. There’s only one doctor’s surgery in the town and I think I’ve seen every one of them over the years because whenever I was sick Mum just wanted me seen to, she didn’t wait for a particular person. Maybe he used to live in the town but he’s moved away or something. I’ll have to do some digging.
I slide my phone out of my pocket and take a photo of the two signatures so I won’t forget them. I can feel Ghost leaning over to see what I’m doing, so I show her the snap. I could use the phone to Google the names right now, but it’ll be easier on my laptop at home.
Instead, I take a step back. Snap. And there she is, captured on the screen: Ghost, half of her face pale in the sunlight coming through the windows, the other half in shadow, her dark eyes wide and serious. In that old-fashioned dress she really does look like a ghost, a beautiful one. I turn the phone so she can see the screen.
She doesn’t react the way other people would do. She doesn’t say, oh, it’s a horrible one of me, or do it again when I’m not making a face. The way she looks at it is kind of sad.