Ghost Story

by Toby Litt

  ‘I haven’t lived in a house since – since I was a child,’ she said. ‘You forget what they’re like, don’t you? You forget how many different noises they make: a flat is chamber music, a house is a symphony orchestra – or a big band, I suppose, if it has real structural problems.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Paddy. ‘God, I hope not.’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s safe – I think.’

  ‘It is full of character.’

  Paddy hesitated, then, ‘Character.’ He found the word difficult to accept, though Agatha was clearly using it with some care.

  ‘Yes, and one that’s so distinct,’ said Agatha, jealous of her relationship with the house – she knew it better, and she wanted to prove this to Paddy, ‘it almost feels alive.’

  They weren’t going to sleep for a while; that – lights out – had been a sham.

  ‘How would you describe its character?’ asked Paddy. ‘Is it a male house or a female house?’

  ‘I don’t think it has – houses don’t have to be either: some people would say they are all female, like ships are all women, or anything that you put other things inside…’

  ‘Comfort, safety…’

  ‘But this feels both: masculine in a feminine way, feminine in a masculine – it has dignity.’ Paddy after hearing this was silent, a little disturbingly – to himself as well as Agatha. ‘You don’t agree?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘It’s not at all of course – dignity is an insight, I’m sharing it.’

  ‘You are. Thank you. I’m thinking that it’s not the first thing I’d have said.’ And this was, indeed, what he had been thinking; as well as how glad he was they were having this conversation. He remembered that, at work during the week, he had been afraid of the return home, of how Agatha might be.

  ‘You didn’t say anything.’

  ‘So I can still say the first thing, which is that I think humility is a more important part of its character than dignity. It is showing itself to be a place that is happy for us to live in it, and change it, and it isn’t trying to impose itself upon us.’

  ‘That’s its dignity – it is slightly withdrawn: you have to go to it if you want to find something out. It doesn’t advertise.’

  Paddy snorted slightly, recognizing Agatha’s autobiographical irony.

  ‘You call that dignity, I call it humility; isn’t it the same thing?’

  ‘No, because dignity is more public – I don’t think the house’s humility is just for us; it feels directed outwards. That’s what’s so odd – living here makes me feel I should behave better than I do anywhere else. It moralizes me.’

  ‘Then why…’ he hesitated.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. As soon as I feel I can fit Max in with that, I will take him back. I won’t waste a night – I’ll go in the middle of the night. At the moment I know I can’t live up to either of them, not the house and not him.’

  ‘That’s your new reason for –’

  ‘It’s not a new reason, it’s the same reason as before, only better expressed.’

  ‘So, your behaviour isn’t to do with you in yourself, any more – it’s to do with this house?’

  ‘To do with what this house makes me feel about me in myself. Anyway, there isn’t a me-in-myself, there’s me in this house, and me in the street –’

  ‘Not since we moved, there hasn’t been.’

  ‘Because I’m trying to simplify things, so that I can deal with them: me-in-this-house limits the input – it heals me – allows me to heal – by not lacerating me all the time with new this and new that.’

  ‘You mean seeing mothers with their babies?’

  ‘I mean all the possibilities that exist outside but which I’m protected from here.’

  ‘Nowhere is exempt from anything that can happen in the world – that sort of safety is an illusion. If this house looks kindly, it’s because we paid for it to suit us.’

  ‘It felt kindly the moment we walked in, that very first day. Anyway, this humility you’re talking about is something we’ve paid for, too.’

  ‘The humility is the way I feel the world behaving towards us, in this house, for the time being. That could change at any moment.’

  ‘Oh, nothing is certain, I agree,’ said Agatha.

  ‘You can’t keep things out by staying inside.’

  ‘Do we always have to end up talking about this?’ said Agatha, which stopped the conversation altogether.

  This was the issue between them; how could it not be. Paddy found himself fussing, and saying the wrong thing – out of love, out of disconnection, like a parent dealing with an adolescent. There was nothing he could say which didn’t sound interfering, patronizing. He knew this, hated it. Agatha was telling him, indirectly, about her life whilst he wasn’t present. He should have accepted what she said with a bit more graciousness. He should try to listen harder, at the moment when the listening might make a difference, which was usually when it might also cause him most pain.

  CHAPTER 11

  HENRY and May came round the following morning, bringing Hope along with them; Hope, who was about the same age Agatha and Paddy’s second child would have been. ‘This is lovely,’ May said to the hall. Paddy had opened the door to them: they had driven round, for May’s sake, not Hope’s. It wasn’t raining and didn’t look like it would. Henry carried his daughter in a car seat, the handle kinked in the middle for comfort. Paddy shook his free hand. Hope was wearing a dress of pale background with tiny blue flowers on; her chin glistened with drool, slightly milky; her head lifted and lolled. Agatha was waiting in the front room, feeling awkward. ‘Oh, she’s very lovely,’ said Paddy. Then said, ‘Sorry, this is very difficult.’

  ‘Oh, Paddy,’ said May.

  Agatha could tell that the others were hugging, probably awkwardly – the front door still open to the street, and passers-by able to look in. ‘Yes,’ she heard Paddy say, answering some unheard question. She moved from the front to the back sitting room and stood beside the door – quite calmly, it seemed to herself. ‘How’s Agatha?’ she heard Henry ask.

  ‘She’s in here,’ said Paddy. ‘You can ask her yourself.’

  Agatha heard movements, feet on the tiles of the hall, and then Paddy saying, ‘Aggie?’, as he came into the empty front room. She was hidden by what was left of the dividing wall, as it jutted out. Choosing her moment, fairly sure the others had followed Paddy in, Agatha stepped into the – yes, empty – hall, and quietly as possible (‘Aggie?’ shouted Paddy) made her way up the stairs. It was only when she’d reached the first-floor landing that she realised exactly what she was doing: hiding. Paddy came out of the back-to-front room, directly below her feet – and strode wordlessly towards the kitchen. Agatha could imagine May and Henry in the front room, looking intelligently at one another, across the head of their beautiful and healthy baby. She had a choice: she could slip into the bathroom, lock the door, flush the loo, wash her face and come out completely excused. ‘Aggs?’ Paddy had turned round. Hide and seek, now, they were playing. Or she could go into one of the bedrooms and really hide – being a little genuinely strange. She wanted to get into bed and have May and Henry go away. Their growing baby she was quite keen to see, but would have done so, given the choice, without coming near them – or so she felt right now. Paddy was on the stairs; a few steps higher and he’d be able to see her feet. Knowing he would hear her, Agatha walked with as much dignity as she could into the main bedroom – and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking up to where Paddy’s head would be after he came through the door. She didn’t want to have to explain; she wanted the sight of her, the sight of her eyes, to be enough for Paddy to know immediately the right thing to do – even though she didn’t know herself. But Paddy took longer than she expected to come; he had been checking the other bedrooms and the bathroom. Agatha thought she had heard him trying the built-in cupboards – which distressed
and angered her, even though she had fleetingly wanted to climb inside the biggest of them. It showed that Paddy, infuriatingly, understood quite how mad she was being. He was a step or two outside the big bedroom when she said, quite quietly, ‘I’m in here.’ She knew this wouldn’t mean she hadn’t been hiding, but it at least showed her proved to her that she was capable of speech. Paddy, not annoyed, concerned, came in. ‘I can’t,’ said Agatha, and it was the last thing she was able to say for five minutes at least. Paddy could only sit down beside her and put his arms around her, rub his hands up and down her back; he knew this was behaviour he could only call silly after Aggie herself had – a joke wasn’t the way out of this, he had to enter her tragedy. ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it?’ She nodded into his shoulder, her nose fitting the fissure between arm and chest. ‘They’re our friends,’ Paddy said, looking over Agatha’s head towards the handles on the wardrobe – from which dangled a knitted glittery heart. Agatha made a half-suffocated rising umphle-mumble-grumfle of assent meaning yes. ‘They want to see you,’ said Paddy. Agatha thought, another sentence and he will be patronizing me – treating me like a child (which, she inwardly laughed, wasn’t at all how she was behaving). ‘They love you,’ said Paddy, starting to cry. It was, she felt, the worst thing he could say and the best – completely unpatronizing, and for himself as much as for her.

  A couple of minutes later, Paddy hugged her hard and then went downstairs. Henry had unhooked Hope from her carry-seat and was sitting in the armchair with her on his lap. Paddy looked at May, who understood immediately. She stood up, then took Hope from Henry who was only a moment puzzled. Paddy quickly told May where she would find Agatha. Another look was good luck.

  Carefully supporting the baby’s head and watching her own feet, May carried her up the stairs. Creeping along the landing, very unsure of what she’d find, May was nakedly terrified (what if Agatha attacked Hope?) – but at the door, she made her face into her bravest smile-face (smile back along the hospital ward, smile in the rain outside the crematorium). Agatha was on her feet, having heard May coming, and standing awkwardly, adolescently, with one knee resting on the corner of the bed. She had made herself stop crying, but when May wordlessly lifted Hope off her shoulder and turned her round to face Agatha, held her out and said, ‘Take her,’ she began to cry in a completely different way – her chest was uncaged, bars had been drawn back. She came away from the bed, and May brought Hope a couple of steps towards her – and next, they were lightly hugging with the baby’s face a third, smaller, between and to the side of theirs. ‘This must be so hard for you,’ said May.

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ said Agatha.

  Downstairs, Paddy was saying almost the same thing. He and Henry had been trying to find something to talk about that wasn’t Agatha or Agatha’s behaviour. They were aware of themselves as two men, and that a gender separation had just occurred for which, politically, they could find no real defence – but which, quite deeply, they believed in. There was no such thing as women’s business, officially; privately, they were glad not to have to go through the scene as a coupled quartet. Women on their own were better at dealing with something – an occasion like this. Of course there was secret women’s business, and of course, and rightly, it was something from which they were to be excluded. Henry sat down on one of the armchairs, although he kept the car seat close – rocking it by wedging his toes beneath its end and flexing them. ‘How’s it been?’ asked Paddy.

  ‘We’re coping,’ said Henry, ‘just about – it is, I’m sure you remember, quite a shock. I don’t think, to start with, you can do much more than cope.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paddy, thinking of Agatha.

  ‘I’m always a little suspicious of people who seem to be getting through it completely unscathed. It’s usually to do with money – there are couples in our antenatal class…’ Henry stopped speaking, stopped rocking the basket. Beginning again, what he hoped was more honestly, he said, ‘It must have been terrible. We were very upset to hear.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Paddy.

  ‘Agatha’s due date was so close to May’s – even though we hadn’t seen you all that much, we were very aware that we were going through similar stages at roughly the same time. And then – the worst thing, really.’

  ‘Aggie’s been amazing. I think I would have gone mad.’ They looked at one another, and Paddy smiled to assure Henry that Agatha hadn’t, really.

  ‘I remember them talking on the phone – roundabout five months. May was so excited when she got off. They’d been talking about the babies being friends, when they grew up. I hope you don’t mind me talking about this…’

  ‘No,’ said Paddy. ‘Being pregnant was a lovely time, until it wasn’t any more. We were so full of expectation.’

  ‘And May was full of Hope.’ They laughed at the feebleness of the pun. ‘By the end,’ said Henry, ‘when she was six days overdue, she was very very full of Hope. I thought her stomach might just split, it was so tight.’

  Again, they stopped talking, but this time they both tried to hear what was going on upstairs. The floorboards directly above their heads hadn’t creaked in a while. They both imagined some fairly static scene of consolation – which wasn’t far off what Agatha and May were performing.

  ‘If you do want to meet up, talk about it, give me a call,’ said Henry, who had a powerful curiosity – driven, at least in part, by the terror of hearing (during the latter part of May’s pregnancy) Paddy and Agatha’s news.

  Lunch was cooking and, eventually, after about ten minutes, Agatha had to come down and check on it. May, bringing Hope, accompanied her – but the men sensed as their partners were coming down the stairs that, if they had been wanted, either Agatha or May would have let them know – raising her voice slightly, perhaps, whilst saying something about them. Paddy had a thought, ‘Shall I show you the rest of the house?’

  ‘I’m happy here,’ replied Henry.

  ‘I’d get you a drink…’ said Paddy.

  ‘I understand,’ said Henry.

  When the food was ready, Agatha sent May to call them through. Henry took the basket, and Hope was placed in it where she could watch them eat. ‘They’ve got a kitten,’ said May. ‘But they don’t want it.’

  Henry was a little confused by this, but May pointed out the bowl on the floor. ‘Where is it?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Agatha. ‘It was in here, the last time I saw it…’

  Agatha, who was a good cook when she wanted, had made roast chicken – its crispy skin was covered in salt crystals. They sat down to eat, and began to talk about food. There were carrots, parsnips, roast potatoes and gravy but no bread sauce. Henry, especially, was full of compliments. Hope behaved herself, and for pudding they had ice-cream and biscotti, for which Agatha apologised. They talked about London – how they hardly missed it at all; how much more relaxed they felt living here. Paddy made coffee. Agatha asked Henry about his parents, who were both in a nursing home. When May asked Paddy, he said that his father was getting slowly worse. ‘He needs the oxygen almost all the time,’ he said. Agatha brought a box of chocolates out from a cupboard; Henry accepted – May refused, refused, and then accepted. Then Hope began to wail; she needed to be changed: Henry offered but it was May who went upstairs to do it. Agatha stayed at the table, thinking of varieties of nappy-contents. They talked about Christmas, what they’d done. Henry asked about the kitten, which had reappeared from under one of the units – what were they going to do with it?

  ‘I’m taking it back tomorrow,’ said Paddy.

  ‘You really don’t want it?’ Henry asked.

  ‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘Definitely.’

  ‘I think we might,’ said Henry.

  When May came down, Hope was still crying. ‘She’s very tired,’ May said. ‘She didn’t sleep much at all last night.’

  ‘Is it colic?’ asked Paddy.

  ‘I think it might be,’ said May.

  ‘We’re no
t sure if that’s started yet,’ added Henry. They decided, with a look, it would be best to leave.

  Agatha was feeling rent by their visit. She had enjoyed parts of it, but did not – despite what she now said – want it repeated very soon; and she certainly didn’t want to have to repay it. This was the awkwardness when they were saying goodbye: and of course Henry and May several times said, ‘You’ll have to come round’ and ‘Soon’ and ‘Yes, very soon.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ said Agatha, thinking the absolute-abysmal opposite; not only would it be horrendous, it would have difficulty being anything at all. It was outside the house and therefore, for her, outside the realm of possibility. They stepped over the threshold; Agatha and Paddy allowed themselves to be for a moment framed in the doorway – watching and giving small waves, hands not raised above shoulder level, towards a fairly impassive Hope. Henry and May took an embarrassing amount of time to install their new daughter in the back seat with a safety-belt wrapped around her carry-basket. They were having a discussion about something. Henry then came back to the front door. ‘I think we would like the kitten, after all.’

  ‘I’ll get the basket,’ said Paddy, and went inside. A few minutes later he came back, and handed it over to Henry.

  ‘Look after it,’ said Agatha, almost involuntarily.

  ‘We will,’ Henry said.

  He got in the car, handing the basket to May in the passenger seat. Then they drove off, with Henry giving a very delicate pip on the horn. Paddy closed the door behind them, expecting a complete collapse from Agatha – but it did not come, not until they had walked back into the kitchen to begin clearing and washing up. ‘I feel so wrong,’ said Agatha, her voice becoming a liquid wail. ‘I feel so evil – I thought –’

  ‘You’re not evil,’ said Paddy. ‘You’re hurt, we’re terribly… it’s natural.’

  ‘It’s not natural,’ snapped Agatha, ‘nothing’s natural.’