Ghost

by Helen Grant

  When he touched me, I thought he just meant to smooth back my hair again, but he turned my face gently towards him. His gaze was intent, as though he were studying me. I would have blushed at the boldness of staring into each other’s eyes at so close a range, except I could tell somehow that he was not thinking about kissing me; he had something else altogether on his mind.

  At last Tom said, “I think there’s a way to get Dr. Robertson to talk to us.”

  “You know,” said Tom soberly, “This is only going to work if the old man knew your grandmother back then.” He glanced at me, then back at the road ahead. “If he met her after you were born, he’ll only remember her as old.”

  “I know,” I said heavily. When I looked out of the car window I could see a faint reflection of myself in the glass overlaid on the passing landscape. I thought I looked a lot like Grandmother when she was young; almost close enough that we could have been twins. I had dressed my hair the same way she had done hers in the photograph, drawing it back from my face and securing it at the sides with clips I had found in Grandmother’s room. Of course, I hadn’t been able to find a dress exactly like the one she had been wearing in the photograph we had found. The skirt was not as full as the one in the picture, and the fabric was better suited to summertime; I was shivering a little in it. But it was near enough.

  Finding a suitable dress among the things stored in the trunks in the attic had probably taken less time than getting the right effect with the makeup. I had never worn it before, nor did I own so much as a powder compact. I had had to sort through the things on Grandmother’s dressing-table and do my best with those. A good deal of trial-and-error had shown that the judicious application of one of her darkest shades of lipstick made my lips a little thinner and more like hers. I didn’t like the effect; I thought it made me look older and somehow harder. It worked, though; it made me less like myself and more like her.

  “Worth trying though,” Tom went on. “There’s a good chance he did know her when she was young. We know he was here then, because Mrs. Campbell said so, and we know your grandmother was, because of the photos.” He gave a little grunt of amusement. “You know what Mrs. Campbell said about him? ‘Nobody could work out why he didn’t marry – broken heart, they said, only I don’t know who broke it.’ Maybe it was your grandmother. She was good-looking enough.”

  I smiled a little at that. It was strange to think of Grandmother breaking anyone’s heart. She had rarely ever spoken of my grandfather, and not at all of my father, and I had read disapproval or distaste into her silence.

  “Anyway,” continued Tom, “She trusted those two – Dr. Robertson and the other guy, the solicitor who died – enough to let them know about you. I don’t think she’d have done that if she didn’t know them really well.”

  “No,” I agreed. I shrugged helplessly. “She was so careful about it, all the time. It’s still hard to believe she told them at all.”

  “Old friends,” said Tom. “They had to be.”

  We were coming into the outskirts of the town now. I had been nervous before we set out; now I felt a little sick with it.

  “He wouldn’t talk to you before,” I blurted out. “Why should he talk to us now?”

  We turned right into a side road, and Tom let the car coast to a halt, checking that there was nobody behind us.

  “This is what I think,” he said, seriously. “Him saying no like that, it wasn’t just because he didn’t know me. Dad and I, we do jobs for older people and a lot of them have these stickers up by the door, saying no cold callers. He didn’t have anything like that. And when I mentioned your grandmother’s name he went quiet. He didn’t say who? or I don’t know anyone called that. He was thinking about what to do. I’m sure of it.

  I think Dr. Robertson knew fine well what was going on, and he was protecting her. That’s why I think the only person he’ll talk to is her...or someone he thinks is her.”

  It all depends whether I can convince him I’m her, I thought. I looked at Tom and said, “Can we go? I think I want to get it over with before I lose my nerve.”

  I listened to Tom telling me that that wasn’t going to happen, that I was going to be fine, that I looked so much like Grandmother that even if I spoke to Dr. Robertson in Mandarin Chinese he’d still think I was her. I l clasped my hands in my lap, but I could not make them be still; my fingers entwined restlessly. My mouth was dry. It was all I could do not to touch my hair; I felt exposed with it drawn back from my face so severely, but I dared not spoil the effect.

  We were stopping again. “We’re here,” said Tom, unclipping his seatbelt. He tilted his head towards the street outside. “I’m not pulling into his drive because the less warning he has, the better.”

  “All right,” I said, but it came out as a croak. I climbed out of the car and stood hugging myself in the chill spring breeze, my thin dress flapping around my legs. I had a pair of Grandmother’s shoes on too, because all I owned were lace-up boots. The shoes were a half-size too small and the toes were pointed; they pinched uncomfortably.

  Tom nodded towards a gateway framed with dense hedges, previously cut into neat rectangles but now rather overgrown. We had agreed that I would go to the door alone. If Dr. Robertson saw Tom, he might take fright and call the police as he had threatened to do before. I swallowed.

  What’s the worst thing that can happen? I said to myself. Only that he won’t speak to you. But that was bad enough; then I might never know the truth about Grandmother and myself.

  I picked my way carefully to the gateway and looked around the end of the hedge. I was used to things being old – everything at Langlands was old – but even to my eyes, the old doctor’s house looked neglected. Weeds had sprung up everywhere, and while those flourished, whatever had grown in the planters at either side of the front door had long since died and shrivelled up. The only spot of colour was the bright red of the paintwork, and that had a sad, grimy look to it. There were blinds at the ground-floor windows, rendering them opaque. I supposed that since I could not see in, nobody inside could see out either, but still I had an uncomfortable feeling, as though I were being watched.

  I took care to tread softly on the paving-stones that led to the front door, each of them surrounded by a bed of green moss, so that they looked more like stepping-stones in a scummy pond. Once I glanced back, looking for Tom, but he was wisely staying out of sight. I was on my own.

  The house had a porch with an outer door that stood open, and an inner door that was resolutely closed. There was a doorbell at the outer door, but when I pressed it, it had a spongy feel to it and I could not hear it ringing inside the house. In the end, I did what Tom had done and knocked firmly on the inner door.

  I listened, but all I could hear was my own breathing and the distant chirping of a bird. I knocked again, and this time I heard something inside the house: a slow shuffling. Dr. Robertson did not call out to say that he was on his way to open the door; based on Tom’s experience, perhaps he hoped his caller would give up and go away before he got there. I did not say anything either, because I did not wish to give him the opportunity to tell me to go away without seeing me. I simply stood on one side of the door while he laboriously approached the other side of it. My heart was thumping so hard that I was beginning to be afraid that I would pass out.

  There was a rattle on the other side of the door and then suddenly it jerked open a little way, perhaps a hand’s span, and I found myself staring at Dr. Robertson.

  Since I had met Tom, I had been closer to many more strangers than I had ever been in my life before. I had passed them on the street, I had stood amongst them in the fish and chip shop. It was still a shock to be in such close proximity to somebody new – to be looking them right in the eyes.

  Dr. Robertson was at least as old as Grandmother, and since I had never met my grandfather, that made him the oldest man I had ever seen. He wasn�
�t handsome, either. Grandmother had been beautiful in spite of her age, or so I had thought, with her fine bone structure and clear blue eyes. Dr. Robertson carried every one of his years like a burden. The flesh of his face sagged, lapped in wrinkles, and his eyes had a filmy look to them, the whites as yellow as the leaves of an old book. He looked like nothing so much as an ogre from a fairy story.

  My carefully-prepared words deserted me. Unable to say a thing, I lacked even the presence of mind to step forward to hold the door open, or step back to put space between us. I simply stood there, ramrod-straight and motionless, staring at him with round eyes.

  Silence stretched out between us. I had time to take in the hand that gripped the door, its knuckles bunched and swollen to an angry shine. The quiff of hair that was now much more white than dark, but still held a little of its former colour, like a badger’s stripe. The brown tweed tie, clumsily knotted by aged fingers.

  “Rose,” said Dr. Robertson in a voice that was corroded with an emotion I couldn’t identify.

  The next instant the door had closed smartly in my face and I was looking at its worn panels. I could not think what to do next. He had seen me, he had identified me as Rose McAndrew, and he had shut the door in my face.

  I was still standing there wondering whether to try knocking again when there was a rattle from the other side of the door as the chain was removed, and the door opened again, this time wide enough that I could see beyond the old doctor to a room at the end of the hallway where the bleak spring sunshine bleached everything to paleness.

  “Rose,” said Dr. Robertson again, and there was an almost pleading tone in his voice. “Is it really you?” He held onto the doorframe and the gaze of his rheumy old eyes moved over me restlessly, as though he could hardly believe what he saw, which I suppose was the case. “It can’t be you,” he said wonderingly. “You’re as old as I am. They said you were dead.”

  Abruptly he turned away from me and sank into a chair that stood in the hallway, its back to the wall. The gnarled hands that curled around the arm rests were trembling, I saw.

  I stepped into the house. Now he couldn’t send me away without speaking to me; I was inside.

  Dr. Robertson shrank back in the chair, as far away from me as he could, and I realised that he was actually afraid of me.

  “Have you come to take me?” he quavered, and his gaze darted from side to side, seeming to stab the air.

  I shook my head, and the ends of my hair, that I had curled so carefully to look like Grandmother’s, bounced against my neck.

  “I need to speak with you,” I said gravely. I watched him lick his lips, considering. His eyes closed once, briefly, as though he wanted to clear his vision.

  At last he put out a hand and pointed down the hallway to the coldly illuminated room at the end.

  “We’ll go to the sitting-room,” he said. When I waited, he shook his head. “You go first. I’m not young anymore, I have to take my time.”

  I went down the hallway as he had directed. I did my best to walk naturally, although Grandmother’s shoes pinched and rubbed with every step I took; I was reminded of the Little Mermaid, who felt as though she was treading on upturned swords when she tried to walk like a human girl on her new legs. Behind me, I heard Dr. Robertson struggle to his feet with a grunt of effort, and then the sound of the front door closing. I thought about Tom waiting outside; it made me uncomfortable to think of him shut out.

  There’s nothing to be afraid of, I reminded myself. I could hear the old man’s progress down the hallway behind me, and it was torturously slow, punctuated with grunts of effort. Even supposing he became furiously angry when he knew who I really was, I wasn’t in any danger; I could be back at the front door and outside before he was a quarter of the way there. All the same...

  I went into the sitting-room. The brilliant light came from large picture windows which ran the length of the room. In spite of its cold quality, it was the most cheerful thing about the room. It was very tidy, but it was the tidiness of a place that had no bustling life in it. There was a magazine lying on a little table, and it had been lined up so that it was perfectly parallel with the edge. Compared to Langlands with its panelling and wooden floorboards, there was a good deal of softness and comfort: a thick carpet underfoot, wallpaper with a velvety texture, thick drapes and plump cushions. All of it was in shades of light brown that somehow added up to an ineffably dreary effect. My eyes kept being drawn to the one visible spot of colour, a clump of yellow daffodils in the untidy garden outside the window.

  A clock was ticking loudly in the stillness of the room. I looked for it and saw beside it on the mantelpiece a framed photograph of what could only have been Mrs. Robertson. She was smiling in the photograph and I thought that she had a pleasant face under her greying curls, but still it was just as depressing as the rest of the room; the photograph had faded with the passing of years, and you could tell that Dr. Robertson had been alone for a long, long time.

  I heard the old man come into the room behind me and turned to face him. He shuffled forward a few steps, placing his hand on the back of a chair for support. The sunlight fell on my face, almost strong enough to blind me; it was a conscious effort to keep my eyes open, focussed on the old man’s face.

  He stared at me in silence for perhaps half a minute, his bushy brows drawn together in a frown.

  Then he said: “Lassie, don’t you think you’d better tell me who you are?”

  In the end we sat one either side of the little table, Dr. Robertson in a high-backed arm chair, and I on the overstuffed sofa. After telling me to sit, he fell silent, clearly waiting for me to explain myself.

  I bit my lip. There was nothing for it, though, so I told the truth.

  “I’m Augusta McAndrew. I’m Rose McAndrew’s granddaughter.”

  “Oh,” said the old man slowly. “That explains why you’re so like her.” He made a little grunt that might have been amusement or disparagement. “I’ve not seen any other lassies your age wearing a dress like that one, though, not for a very long time.”

  I said, “Are you the Dr. George Robertson who witnessed my grandmother’s will?”

  “I am,” he said – just that, not giving anything away. The way he kept staring at me made me uneasy; I was not used to that kind of scrutiny. At last he said, “You’re so alike, it’s no wonder I took you for Rose. But she’s dead, isn’t she?”

  I nodded.

  The old man made a strange wheezing sound that I eventually interpreted as a chuckle. “I thought you were her ghost, come to tell me my time’d come. You’re lucky I didn’t have a heart attack and make it true.”

  I couldn’t laugh at that; it struck me that perhaps he was right.

  After a few moments, Dr. Robertson stopped laughing and looked at me very hard.

  “You’ve come home from school to take over your inheritance, is that it?”

  “I didn’t go to school,” I said.

  “You’ve finished your studies, then?”

  “No. I never went to school at all.” I could feel the colour rising in my face as he stared at me. I had heard the way he said to take over your inheritance, his voice full of suspicion. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I added.

  “Hmmm. I don’t know what you think I can tell you.”

  “I want to know why she did – what she did,” I said, the words coming out in a rush. “Why she told me all those lies. Why she let me go on thinking there was a War on when there wasn’t. Why she made me think it was 1945 when it isn’t.”

  Abruptly I stopped, realising that I was close to tears.

  “I think,” said Dr. Robertson into the silence, “That you had better tell me exactly what Rose did, don’t you?”

  It occurred to me then that he knew perfectly well what Grandmother had done; what he wanted to know was how much I knew. Anyway, o
ut it all came – how I grew up believing there was a war on, a war so terrible that Grandmother and I had to hide from it; how I’d never even spoken to any person other than Grandmother until the day I came down the staircase at Langlands with a rifle in my hands and saw Tom in the hallway. How I never knew my parents, and didn’t know whether what little Grandmother had told me about them was true or not. How Grandmother had said there were things she was going to tell me as soon as I turned eighteen – and how she herself had driven away one day and never come back, without ever spilling the beans.

  I came to the bit where Tom and I went to the library at Langlands and hauled everything out of the safe, and I told Dr. Robertson how we found the will, with his name on the bottom of it, and how Tom had the idea of tracking him down to find out what he knew. When I got to that bit, the old man frowned, and I had the feeling he felt angry with Tom for having that idea. But I suppose he knew that it was no use being angry now, because he didn’t try to pretend any more that he had nothing to tell me. He gave a great sigh, as though he were giving up on something, and sank back into the armchair. And then he began to talk.

  “When I first met Rose, she was as like you as two peas in a pod,” Dr. Robertson said. “That would have been in the fifties, probably before your parents were even born. She was a couple of years older than me and better off; her family owned the Langlands estate. I never dared ask her to come out with me. I think she knew I liked her, though, because she was always very kind to me, even though she probably thought I was a silly boy. Then she married Angus McAndrew and just about broke my heart. When he took her off down to England it was almost a relief, not to have to see the pair of them going about together.”

  The old man cleared his throat noisily. “I’m not telling you this because I’m sentimental. I just want you to understand why I helped her, later on.”

  I said nothing.

  “Anyway, I got married myself a few years afterwards, and that was that. Just made our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary a little before she was taken.” He nodded at the framed photograph by the clock. “We were very happy together,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to think otherwise. But I did carry a torch for Rose. I don’t think you ever forget the first person you love.”