The Word Ghost

by Christine Paice

  ‘Yes. Yes they did. And you must be . . . ?’

  ‘Flora Shillingham. Pleased to meet you, Vicar.’

  My father leaned into her smallness and stood there shaking her hand. ‘And we are pleased to meet you. This is my wife Ruth and my daughter Rebecca.’

  Mum shook hands and I reluctantly did the same.

  ‘Call me Flora, everyone does. I’ve met the other two outside,’ she said. ‘Well, now, you might as well keep hold of these,’ and she handed over the keys.

  ‘Am I right about the house? The original house divided and then put back together?’ asked my father.

  ‘Yes. Sort of.’ Flora Shillingham sighed. She had what my mother was to call a country accent, a lilt, a tilt with the spoken word and the sighs and flourishes of bends in the road and hens in the garden. ‘So many wrong decisions.’

  Mum looked at Dad and Dad looked at the ceiling and the walls and Flora Shillingham carried on talking.

  ‘When the Church bought this place, let’s see now, it has been owned one way or the other by the Church since the early nineteenth century.’

  Mum raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, There we are, give the place a chance.

  ‘After the war—that’s the Second World War, mind, not the First—the Church thought it best to make two houses out of the original large one. So in their wisdom—’ she snorted to show us how unwise the Church was ‘they divided up the Old House and made two cottages, but no one wanted to live in the other part so they put it all back together again. Of course, now it’s not worth half its original value. But that’s the Church of England for you. It doesn’t know when to leave things alone.’ She gazed at my father and then at me and then at Mum.

  ‘So this house is seventy-three years old?’ I asked.

  My father rolled his eyes at my inability to count. ‘Not quite, dear. Add on another hundred years and you’d be right. I call this the Reunited Brightley Vicarage.’

  ‘Maybe that explains why it’s facing the wrong way,’ said Mum. ‘I do hope the kitchen’s not red.’

  ‘Oh yes, dear, the Church loves red kitchens.’

  Mum groaned. ‘Oh well, let’s go and see. How long have you lived here, Mrs Shillingham?’

  ‘Please, dear, call me Flora, everyone does. Well, I have lived in Brightley all my life.’ And when she said this she leaned forward on her toes to emphasise the point and jiggled a little as she stood there. Perhaps she was expecting a round of applause for longevity.

  ‘Goodness me,’ said Mum, trying to respond diplomatically but not managing it. ‘That is a long time.’

  The kitchen was covered in red formica. My father strode out of the front door and onto the driveway. He’d had enough of complaints. I followed him out.

  ‘How did she know we were here, Dad?’

  ‘Oh, she probably saw the car. Country people are like that, Rebecca. They know what’s going on. Hey, Maggie, wait a minute—wait for us.’

  But Maggie didn’t stop. She strode defiantly down the driveway, turned left out of the gate and headed in the direction of the pub.

  ‘There she goes,’ said Dad. ‘At home already.’

  ON THE PATH TO BRIGHTLEY, 1973

  My bones grew heavy

  Once again

  On Skylark and on Crow,

  Through Elm and Larch,

  Through Oak and Yew,

  They turn to her; they know.

  Steak at Last

  At the end of May, Princess Anne had announced her engagement to Captain Mark Phillips and my mother had been wildly happy for them both.

  ‘He seems like such a nice man.’

  ‘Mum, you don’t know him.’

  ‘You can tell they’re really suited to each other.’

  Now it was the height of summer and time was running out. Dave stopped wearing his anorak and I took that as a sign of rebellion, throwing off the shackles of normal life and preparing for the rest of his life with me. Boxes piled up in the hallway and I tried hard to ignore them. My mother had forgotten that she had anything to look forward to except more and more desperate packing of boxes she didn’t want to pack in the first place. The prospect of a royal wedding wasn’t enough to distract her. The whole of our life in Wye proved very easy to dismantle. Like stuffed cabbage rolls, ‘Hours to make and a few minutes to eat.’ It was weird how easily things came undone.

  I had the feeling that Mrs Dave was secretly pleased by our impending departure. It meant Dave could be Dave again, free from temptation, free from the fizz of Rebecca Abraham Budde. Didn’t she know I was a prophet from the Old Testament? Didn’t she know Dave and I were meant to be together forever?

  In our last days in Wye, Dave and I were hardly ever alone. Summer holidays, everyone was everywhere all the time. Dave still slid his hands under my jumper and squeezed the life out of my desperate breasts but that was it. As far as we could go. The line was firm, the line was holding.

  ‘How about you and I go out for dinner, Budde?’

  ‘Okay. Where are we going to go?’

  ‘It’s all arranged. I’ll come and pick you up on Friday.’

  ‘We’re leaving on Saturday.’

  ‘I know. You’ve got the loveliest eyes, Budde.’

  He was always on about my eyes.

  ‘Nice legs, a bit thin, but nice. I thought you had something wrong with you when you cycled past. Didn’t realise it was just your legs!’

  He needed pummelling and punching. He was always on about my thin legs.

  ‘Come on, come here . . . I love your tits, Budde.’

  ‘They are breasts. Breasts.’

  ‘I know they are and they are lovely.’

  He was always on about my breasts, but there was one unsaid thing: the fact that we were leaving Wye. Did that mean our future was only just beginning? Or was it ending? I didn’t want to think about it but it was the only thing that roamed around in my head.

  My mother sat looking at the windows where our curtains had been. ‘I don’t know why I packed them,’ she said. ‘I should have left them up for longer, the room looks so bare without them. Anyway, Dave, you look very nice—doesn’t he, Rebecca?’

  ‘Sure does.’

  Dave stood in our sitting room for the last time, looking very smart, trousers, jacket and tie and long ginger hair flicked wildly around.

  ‘You look great,’ he said to me.

  I didn’t feel great. I felt odd. I was wearing a navy blue velvet waistcoat which had once belonged to my mother over a long-sleeved white shirt and my jeans with the widest flares. I looked like a pirate, miserable and swashbuckling at the same time. A knot twisting in my throat. I should have carried a sword to slice up the misery.

  ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘The Berni Inn.’

  ‘I don’t think your father and I have ever eaten there.’

  I knew what my mother was thinking. If only my husband would take me out for dinner some times. Still, we don’t need steak to make us happy.

  ‘Well, that sounds lovely. Home by nine,’ said Mum.

  I nudged him; our last night could not be limited like that.

  ‘Mrs Budde, the last bus leaves Bowater Station at ten and we’ll be on it.’

  ‘Well, all right, seeing as it’s the last time. Do you have money for the phone, Rebecca? If you miss the bus, call from the station and your father will pick you up.’

  I couldn’t think of anything worse than being picked up by the Reverend Robert Budde after dinner out with Dave. Surely, Mother, you can understand. You can remember being young, can’t you, Mother? Can’t you?

  ‘Come on, Budde, let’s go.’

  ‘Enjoy yourselves.’

  Before we left I raced upstairs and found my favourite orange crocheted hat with a large bunch of red plastic cherries I’d sewn on the side. I stuck it on my head. More hippie than pirate now.

  This was my first-ever dinner date. I had never gone out and eaten steak. A whole steak. Not casserole
or mince, not anything diced, chopped or coated with flour. A steak in a restaurant with Dave. He had never looked more handsome. My stomach somersaulted and buzzed and I could hardly eat a thing. I took my hat off and picked up my steak knife.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Great,’ I said, chewing the meat round and round.

  We sat there, playing grown-ups. I didn’t know why everyone made such a fuss over steak steak steak. I’d never eaten such a large piece of meat before, glowing with muscle.

  We staggered out of the Berni Inn and headed for the station. There was no sign of the bus and round the back of the station was a large clump of bushes.

  Dave grabbed my shirt. ‘Come here, Budde. Mm. You taste of steak.’

  We both tasted of steak and gravy.

  We tumbled into the bushes. The dark unknown ground. No one could see us. This was the night when the line wasn’t going to count. We were alone, surrounded by leaves and twigs, my hat back on my head, plastic cherries shining in the moonlight. I wanted the whole night to fill me forever with dark secret love, but there is a limit to what you can do in the bushes at a bus station when the last bus is about to leave.

  The smell of diesel filled the air. ‘Shit, there’s the bus—come on, hurry up.’

  ‘My hat! Where’s my hat?’

  Dave raced back to the bushes and found it, the plastic cherries not quite so shiny, covered in dirt and twigs.

  Half an hour later Dave and I stood at my front door. I knew I was going to cry. I tried hard not to. I only had three words in my mind.

  ‘Write to me?’

  ‘Yeah—you write to me.’

  ‘You’ve got my address?’

  I whispered in his ear as I hugged him for the last time, I love you. As soon as I said the words I knew I shouldn’t have. He didn’t say them back. He just kissed me. One last long brilliant kiss.

  The wind spun around from the east and headed our way. Soon enough leaves would be falling. The wheat fields would lose their golden shine. The beauty of the bright red poppies was fading already and in a couple of months the fields would be full of brown wintering earth spreading for miles.

  My mother walked around the garden one last time. Dad was fiddling with the bags and boxes crammed into the boot of the Hillman, which was parked outside the large green gates. Soon the Bowater road would carry us away from Wye. I sat in the back of the car crying silently on the vinyl seat. Emily was singing the song half of England had been singing for weeks, ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’, until Maggie elbowed her.

  She elbowed Maggie back. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Well you stop singing that stupid song otherwise I’ll tie a ribbon round your mouth!’

  ‘YOU SHUT UP, I HATE YOU!’

  ‘Girls, please stop it. Both of you.’

  Maggie whispered to me, ‘You’ll be over him in two days.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Dad, when are we getting there?’ asked Emily.

  ‘We haven’t left Wye yet, have we?’ He called out to my mother. ‘Come on, Ruth.’ He tapped at his watch.

  Mum sat in the front, looking straight ahead at the roses climbing the church wall. ‘Well, that’s it then. No turning back now.’ She turned to look at our glum faces in the back seat.

  ‘If the traffic’s light we should reach Brightley by three,’ said my father, shifting through the gears, pulling onto the long road.

  ‘We’ll need to eat something on the way,’ said my mother, staring out of the window.

  I knew what she was doing. She was watching our happiness fly past at fifty miles an hour.

  BRIGHTLEY VICARAGE, AUGUST 1973

  How could I forget

  This Brightley Air

  Through which I move so easily?

  Oh, I have lost her somewhere on the path.

  But she will find me.

  And I have found her here

  In this air which I am breathing now

  So easily, so easily.

  One beautiful deep breath in.

  One beautiful deep breath out.

  The Brightley Air!

  Please note I am especially pleased

  With the warmth afforded me by this jacket.

  The End of the World

  Here it was, the dreaded place, coming for us through the trees. Brightley, Brightley, Brightley, microcosm of madness for us all. Green trees and ploughed fields greeted us. The holly hedge surrounding the front garden barely turned its head. The cypress tree in the back garden groaned as strange hands tugged at its branches and my mother leaned against it and said nice things.

  My mother loved all trees. Oaks, elms, copper beeches, horse chestnuts, sycamores, poplars and weeping willows, but in the crisp air here she believed this tree was special. The cypress tree grew ten yards from the kitchen window in the back garden and we all saw her whispering to the bark. My father strode around the front lawn, mentally measuring up the flowerbeds and wondering if he might extend them. There were no raspberries yet, only a fine line of gooseberry bushes at the bottom of the garden. We all hated gooseberries, apart from Mother.

  The woodshed stood watching us as we walked around surveying our new home. There were cows in the back field and occasional passing traffic. Emily vowed she was going to teach the cows to talk, but she soon discovered they were bullocks by bending down to take a good look at their private parts. ‘Dangling things.’ She relayed her findings to anyone who would listen. Bob Budde took to his bicycle. Ma was in love with a tree. I admired a slightly unsafe balcony.

  ‘This is the end of the world,’ said Maggie. ‘Look around, Abes, there’s nothing here. This is the place where everything ends.’

  ‘Oh, you do exaggerate,’ said my mother, but I could tell she was thinking the same thing. How do we live our lives here? None of us had any idea.

  Boxes were unpacked.

  ‘Do you want help with that, Mum?’ I asked, because sometimes my mother took half a day to decide where to place a vase, or a photograph, or the plant we loved to hate, the aspidistra.

  Brightley Vicarage had four bedrooms, one bathroom upstairs, separate toilets up and downstairs, and a damp entrance hall by the front door, which, as we now knew, faced the back garden. We each claimed the room that appealed to us most. Turn left at the landing and you’d be in Margaret’s room, turn right and you’d reach mine, which overlooked the front garden with the twelve-foot-high holly hedge and L-shaped flowerbeds. My room was smaller than Maggie’s, but it had a balcony, which pleased me no end as I had never had a room like that before.

  The bedroom carpet was green, my bedspread was green candlewick, the holly hedge and lawn were green, everything everywhere I looked was green. I had a single bed, a chest of drawers, a bedside table and an old desk by the window squeezed next to the hideous wardrobe in the corner by the radiator. I hated that wardrobe but Mum insisted I had to have it.

  ‘Learn to look after your things, which means hang up your clothes and put them away.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘And while I’m at it, you can have these.’ She handed me her precious copies of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

  ‘Why don’t you want them anymore, Ma? You’ll miss them.

  You’ll want them back, you know you will.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right, but I can’t read about English villages now I’m living in one, Rebecca.’

  I put them with all the other books I was unpacking. As a leaving present Sue had given me Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. ‘Seeing as you like Jane Eyre so much, thought you’d like to try the other sister.’

  ‘Are there bicycles in this one?’

  Punch on the arm, hug of the heart. ‘There’s more than a bicycle here. And seeing as you love sport so much, I thought you’d like this.’

  ‘Great Sporting Achievements of the Twentieth Century. Thanks, Sue.’

  ‘S’all right. I forgive you for betraying our friendship with
him. There are some amazing photos.’ And we stared at Roger Bannister in 1954, head thrown back, three hundred yards from the finish line, three hundred yards from history, about to break the four-minute mile.

  ‘Isn’t that amazing?’ said Sue.

  ‘That’ll be you one day, Sue. Susan Greengage runs the mile in less than a minute.’

  ‘Write to me.’

  ‘I will.’

  It was a large heavy book and went on the bottom of the pile of books by my bed. One day, I might get around to idly flicking through its pages. Till then I was working through the pile in no particular order. Wuthering Heights (not started), Jane Eyre (constantly). There were the two Jane Austens from Mum (definitely not now, but maybe later when I was ninety-three and fully retired from life), one well-thumbed copy of Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean that my father read and reread and thought he would pass on to me. (Not now, but when? The question remained open.) There were a couple of Famous Five adventures that I kept near me for sentimental reasons. I was now sixteen but I still loved the idea of Julian, and lashings of ginger beer—or was it lemonade? I was, of course, too old to remember.

  The book on top of the pile was one of my mother’s favourites that she had given to me when we arrived in Brightley. An inconspicuous thin grey book, a book that could easily slide under the bed and no one would know it was there, with a very simple title: Poems by Keats. ‘Try them when you’re in the right mood. You might like them one day,’ said Mum. I doubted that day would ever come.

  Sue promised to write to me, and I considered ringing her so we could chat awkwardly about nothing but sadness and the books we’d read. I missed her but I didn’t ring her. What could I say? Hey, Sue, check this out. Help me open this stiff sash window that doesn’t want to be opened! Hey, Sue, come and stand on my narrow balcony and together we can take in the sights! The sights being the house diagonally opposite ours, stuck at the end of a long path, half buried in a copse of trees. I could see it had a red-tiled roof, sloping and uneven like most of the Brightley roofs, two chimneys, no smoke and closed windows. I had no idea who lived there.