‘What do I do, Flora?’
‘It’s entirely up to you dear. I can’t help you with that.’
‘But what if I don’t know what to do?’
‘Oh, you’ll know. We only do what we can do, dear.’
BRIGHTLEY, SPRING 1974
The nut hatch and the robin
Know
Up from this damp earth
I grow
Through rich green grass
The woods, the path,
The golden wheat, the rain, the sleet
Eternal Spring is here at last
But my time on earth is flying past.
Shadows of the night are
Calling.
Him
One Saturday afternoon, ringing our shrill front doorbell, and standing there like a policeman shifting from foot to foot, there was Alex March, asking for me.
Well, well, well and what have we here then?
‘Algernon Keats, please get out of my way.’
‘This is not an advisable course of action. Sit with me by the window and we will compose something altogether lovely.’
‘Algie, Algie, Algernon. I don’t want to compose anything except my own life. My actual life. Why does everyone (okay, okay, my mother and Algernon) tell me to write, write, write.
I do not want to. Not now and not ever. Now move. Please.’
Algernon stuck his hands in his dirty old twig-filled pockets. ‘I do not like this man.’
‘Well no one’s asking you to, are they? Besides, you’ve got nothing to worry about, Algie, because I don’t even like him.’
‘Then stay here and I will teach you . . .’
‘You can come if you want to or you can stay here and compose.’
He stepped aside, but he didn’t need to; wafer-thin ghost, sometimes I could walk right through him.
My father opened the front door. He shook hands with Alex March because that was the right thing to do and my father was polite and he was the vicar.
I could hear the sound of male voices chatting in the hallway then my father called up the stairs, ‘Rebecca? Rebecca?’
I decided not to answer. I knew who it was.
‘Alex March is here to see you. Rebecca?’
I know. Algernon looked happy. He smiled, his green eyes crinkled, he looked so very lovely like that. He thought he’d won. I kissed him on his pale cold face. ‘Algie, I won’t be long, all right? I’ll be back soon.’
‘Rebecca? Come down. Alex March is here to see you.
Can you hear me?’
‘Coming.’
Algernon immediately looked so sorrowful that I almost changed my mind, but slowly, slowly down the shiny wooden banister I slid my hand. My legs bounced on each stair. My father was standing casually draped in his paternal authority, watching for signs that I was not and never would be acting like I had acted with Dave.
As soon as I heard his posh Brightley voice in our hallway, I decided that Alex March could clean his own house. Walk his own dog. I had mysteries of my own to consider and I didn’t need him to be one of them. I caught snatches of conversation as I came down the stairs.
‘Life modelling . . . Jojo loves her . . . yes, absolutely . . . family settling in . . . oh good, good . . .’
‘Ah, there you are. Rebecca, Mr March is looking for his dog.’
‘Jojo?’ He doesn’t have another one, does he? Haven’t seen him for days, you snivelling bastard. I fed him and walked him and then I didn’t see you.
‘Thought I’d enlist your help to try to track Jojo down. Coming?’
Of course I was coming. ‘Won’t be long, Dad.’
‘Tea at six.’ My father closed the door. I wondered if he was putting on a hat and coat and preparing to follow us.
We walked down the road past the church.
‘How have you been?’
‘All right. When did you last see him?’
‘Actually I haven’t seen him for days. I’m sure he’ll turn up. Sophie’s probably got him.’
‘Have you asked her?’
‘Not yet. Thought you might have had him at your place. Does your father like dogs?’
‘Not much.’
‘Dear God, a country vicar who doesn’t like dogs.’
Do people change a lot in a month? I’d said yes because I liked him. Because I didn’t like him. Because I wanted nothing more to do with him but here he was and I couldn’t spend the rest of my life gathering moss, listening to poetry, and waiting for the resurrection in Brightley. We walked along looking for his lost dog. We scuffed around in bushes calling, Jojo.
He opened the doors of the pub and the familiar warm beery smell greeted us like a long-lost friend.
‘Aren’t we meant to be looking for Jojo?’
‘One beer won’t hurt, will it?’
Amanda said, ‘Hi there, Rebecca. Still okay for next weekend? There’s a wedding on and I’m really going to need your help.’
‘Sure,’ I said. You can count on me.
‘Hello, Alex. How are you? A bit early?’
He kissed her cheek. ‘Amanda.’
She raised her eyebrows at me, but I didn’t care.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Changed my mind.’
He’d parked in the pub car park and we hopped in. I say hop, but you can’t hop into a two-seater soft-top. You have to swing your body down low and sideways. It feels like your bum is only inches above the road, which it is.
He drove to the field with the donkeys. It was getting dark.
‘This has to be one of the most unexciting places in all of England.’
‘My dog might be here. Know what this field is famous for?’
‘The quality of the grass. It’s very green. Why are we here?’
‘You’ll see.’
He lit a cigarette, tossed the match away, inhaled deeply, blew a cloud of smoke out the car window. ‘You mean Flora Shillingham hasn’t told you yet?’
‘Told me what?’
‘Brightley gets this fog, locals call it the Brightley Lights.
It comes down like a thick blanket. Conditions have to be right, moisture, humidity, temperature at night. There’s no real way of telling, but a few know. Flora’s one of them. She knows all about this stuff. You can’t see anything, literally anything at all. If I hold my hand in front of my face, I’ll barely see the damn thing.’
‘My mum told me about the London smog. She said it was almost yellow and you literally couldn’t see anything in front of you. Even double-decker buses just loomed up from nowhere through the fog.’
‘This isn’t smog. This is something else entirely. I’ve seen it once before. Everything changes really quickly. It’s like a different world.’
‘It’s not summer.’
‘No, but it’s been warm enough. The temperature will drop tonight.’
‘Come on, let’s find Jojo. I don’t care about the fog.’
I didn’t want to see anything else that was unexplainable or odd.
‘Ten minutes.’
‘Five?’
‘Ten.’
‘Let’s walk.’
Brightley Lights
We left the car parked at the top of the lane. Soon enough stars would glitter and sing. As soon as the sun started going down the temperature dropped rapidly. Amanda would be lighting the fires. Not a cloud in sight. I don’t know where he thought the fog was going to come from. Alex pulled at the old barn door and the two of us tumbled in. A damp smell of straw and animals rose to greet us.
After days without a glimpse of him I thought I needed a closer look. He busied himself lighting another cigarette, one for me, but I refused. Alex was the sort of man who always looked at home wherever he went. His bones radiated confidence. You could have sat him on the throne of England, and he would still look cool. He was the first truly cool person I had ever met, apart from Dave. Was Dave cool? I had thought so once. How did that change? How did the once-cool stop being cool and become less than c
ool? They didn’t love you anymore, that’s how.
Alex sat swivelling around in the old scruffy chair behind the old battered desk, blowing smoke rings into the chilly air.
‘Well, so far it’s been truly fascinating. What are we waiting for? Robin Hood and his Merry Men?’
‘Did you miss me?’
‘No.’
He patted the desk. ‘Come here. I won’t bite.’
I stayed where I was. ‘What are we doing here?’
He ground out his cigarette on the barn floor.
‘What am I going to do with you, Rebeccah?’
He was taller than I remembered. He studied my face intently, tilting my chin first one way, then the other. I should have walked out the creaking door but I stayed because I remembered what his mouth felt like on mine. He slowly prised my lips apart with his tongue, deeper and deeper, I could hardly breathe, and I didn’t want to breathe, one hand sliding under my coat, under my jumper, up to my breasts, the other hand pulling me closer to him.
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ He kissed the side of my face. ‘That’s all you need to know.’
He leaned against the desk and I leaned against him, his hand slowly undoing my button-fly jeans.
‘Is this what you brought me here for?’
My hand on his. His hand holding the top of my jeans.
Pulling at them, come here, no don’t, come here, no.
I pushed his hand away and slowly did the buttons back up.
‘What’s up?’ He kissed me again. The tip of his tongue against my teeth. ‘Don’t you want to?’
It was way past six. I felt strange and careless. My cheeks burning in the evening air which began to tangle up in me. My arms ached, my stomach lurched. I didn’t know what I wanted as the fog rolled in. Once it was done it was done forever.
‘You scramble my bloody brain up, you do,’ he said. Just as he said that the barn door swung open and a beautiful shining dog panted into the barn.
‘Hey. Jojo, where have you been where have you been? I knew we’d find you. Jojo, Jojo. Where have you been?’ said Alex before he kissed me again, chaste and fierce. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t bring you here for this.’
Jojo didn’t know who to lick first. How did you find me? Hello hello hello. He jumped up and put his dirty great paws all over his master, reclaiming him. Where have you been where have you been, eh, eh? He licked the back of my hand thirty times, and sniffed madly around the barn.
On one wall was a small window that overlooked the rapidly darkening field. Alex stared intently from it. ‘Ready?’
I shook my head. No. I’ll never be ready. I peered through.
Alex put his arms around me, nuzzled my hair.
It looked as if someone was turning on the lights in the field.
Alex said, ‘You okay?’
I nodded.
‘I get carried away, I can’t help myself sometimes, and you’re bloody lovely.’
A donkey brayed. Somewhere deep in the woods an owl screeched. I listened intently for the call of crows, the melancholy voice of the rooks. ‘Tell me why we’re here.’
‘Trust me,’ he said, walking out the door, Jojo racing out through his legs. ‘Nothing terrible is going to happen. It’s just incredible stuff—bloody amazing if you ask me. Come on. You like odd things, don’t you?’
Jojo shot back past us again.
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘That look you get on your face sometimes.’
I felt light-headed, like I did after a glass of champagne. There was just enough light to see where we were walking and mist was now swirling around our feet, working its way over the field. The air had grown much colder. The whole world felt muffled and quiet.
Behold All Wondrous Things
From where we stood now the barn was barely visible, but I could just see the shape of someone coming through the mist. A body, a long black dress, long hair curling, coming straight for us. Even in the dark I knew who it was. The crows stopped calling because now she was walking across the field, closer and closer. Her hair was trailing on the ground and the world tumbled towards her.
‘Do you see it, Rebeccah?’
‘I see it.’
‘Beautiful and eerie,’ he said. The mist seemed to carry its own internal light, patches of it swirled around us. Alex was trying to catch the fog in front of him with his hands. Could he see her standing there, a shape in the light?
She watched him with her dark ghost eyes. Cold air crept quietly along the ground.
Alex said, ‘This is amazing, Rebeccah. I want to paint this.’
I could hear Jojo’s breath panting as he ran madly around the field. The fog kept its white belly to the ground, clinging to the grass, the fence, a donkey’s tail, whatever it could find. Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.
Shapes were turning into people through the fog, the field was full of them. Where was he? Where was Algernon? Algie, where are you? I’m here. I called him in my mind but he didn’t answer. There was Thomas Lark, from the churchyard, and yes, there she was, Flora, another shape darting in the mist.
Alex said, ‘There you are. Look at this. It’s almost thick enough to eat.’ He kept grabbing at handfuls of fog.
Augusta grabbed his hand.
‘Wow, it’s freezing my fingers,’ he said.
She was so close now, couldn’t he feel those black, wet, snake-like curls?
‘Rebeccah!’ Alex called after me, but I could see Algie through the fog and I was running now. There was a line of ghostly men walking straight across the field to him.
‘They won’t get you, Algie.’
‘They are not trying to. They are walking in the only life they have.’
Algernon. Fog draped itself over him, his eyelashes were wet, his hair miserable, his long thin hands reached for me. ‘Miss Budde, what are you doing here?’
‘Alex March brought me, he said there was something to see. What’s happening, Algie? Augusta’s here.’
‘This is a most appropriate place for us, but most inappropriate for you.’
‘What is all of this, Algie?’
‘Here is the place of beginnings and endings,’ he said. ‘Come. I will show you.’ He held out his hand but I couldn’t reach it. It kept disappearing. ‘Stay here with me Miss Budde. Come.’
I could hardly see him.
‘I have a feeling in my heart you do not want me anymore.’
‘Algie, that not right. That’s not right.’ ‘Then come,’ he said. ‘I will show you things you have never seen before.’
‘Algie, wait, wait for me.’ But he was drifting in the fog.
Algie? Algie? I went after him, there was a flash of green through the fog, his cold hands around me, he was leading me deeper and deeper into the unknown. I could hear the rustle of a long black dress, the whistle from a soldier. Fog drizzled down through my brain, up my nose, clung to my eyes. I was filling up with fog. I hardly knew where I was anymore.
‘Found you!’ Alex thundered, his real solid body thudding into me. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’ He grabbed my arm.
‘Come on.’
‘Let me go.’ I couldn’t see Algie, I had this terrible idea that all this was my fault, because I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Algie, come back. I don’t want you to go.
This is the place of beginnings and endings, he’d said, but I didn’t know where to look, everywhere looked the same, a field of whiteness, of mad things, of everything and nothing at the same time.
‘Now, Rebeccah, don’t get carried away. It’s an adventure, that’s all.’
I was shivering madly, grabbing his sleeve. ‘Alex, you won’t believe me if I tell you.’
‘Try me.’
‘I’ve seen them before.’
‘Seen who?’
‘I mean I know who they are. I see them all the time.’
‘See what, Rebeccah? What do you see?’
More and m
ore faces appeared out of the mist. Hundreds of them, pale and silent in a white world.
He held the sides of my face. ‘The world is full of weird and wonderful things, I know, but here it’s lights and fog and you think you’re seeing things. That’s what it’s all about.’ His jacket brushed my face. ‘I think we should go, the weather’s getting worse. Come on.’
‘Wait.’
A thick blanket of fog drifted around us. I had to find him. Algie? A body bumped into me, and another. I wanted to scream but didn’t. Donkeys, donkeys lived here too, but I wasn’t sure. Did ghosts have wet flanks with steam rising from them? Something nudged me through the fog. I could hear voices rising, don’t forget us, don’t forget us. The past was breathing over me but I couldn’t find it. I didn’t know where to look. I could only see my life, everything they didn’t have and everything I still had before me. Rain grew heavier, trying to beat the fog away. The donkeys knew where the barn was, didn’t they?
Alex gripped me firmly by the hand. ‘Time to go.’
‘No!’
‘We’re getting out of here!’
He pulled me stumbling along back up the path, rain pelting our faces.
Where are you, Algie? I hated leaving him out there but I knew I couldn’t find him now. A huge clap of thunder shook the earth and Jojo overtook us, running as if the devil himself was after him. I stopped with a stitch in my side and looked up to see Augusta swaying in front of us, her hair a black river on the ground, her long black dress creased over her like a pair of wings.
Alex stared into the darkness twisting in front of his face.
‘He’s not who you think he is!’ I yelled at her.
‘Who the hell are you talking to? What is all this? Get in the car, grab the dog, grab him.’
Augusta stood there black and dark and dangerous.
Alex seized Jojo, who was yelping his dislike, and barged through Augusta as if she wasn’t there.
She swirled around and followed us. Dark beads of rain covered her like diamonds. Closer and closer she came, I could see her long eyelashes wet with rain. Black trail of feathers snaking towards us. Any minute they would open and shatter the night. It was him she was after.
The Word Ghost Page 20