The dog slept at their feet. They talked quietly about the new life they would construct with each other, and when that would happen. Christopher offered to come to Angela’s house that night and explain everything to Gregory, but Angela said she couldn’t imagine that scenario. “It would be too much of a shock for him,” she said. Christopher asked her gently how she wanted Gregory to find out that she was leaving him for another man, but all she could say in reply was, “I don’t know.”
It began to annoy him. He patiently spelt out the options open to her. “You could write him a letter, you could telephone, or you could tell him face to face, with, or without me being there. Or, you could just disappear. We can go abroad.”
“Where?” she said. At the moment flight and disappearance seemed the most attractive option open to her.
“You’re the travel agent,” he said. “Where would you like to go?”
“Abroad, somewhere hot. But what would we do with the dog?” She knew she was prevaricating, putting off the evil hour. She answered herself. “No, we can’t go away, we can’t leave the dog. I’ll tell Gregory tonight. Drop me off at the house and I’ll come to you later.”
Christopher sighed with relief and took Angela in his arms. He told her over and over again how much he loved her. The dog whimpered in its sleep. Christopher bent down and stroked it. It woke instantly and licked his hand, then leapt on to his lap. Christopher laughed and cradled the dog in his arms. “You big baby,” he said and looked at Angela, wanting her to laugh at the dog, which was grinning and lying on its back with its paws in the air. But she was staring out at the black countryside, rehearsing the words she would use that would break Gregory’s heart.
♦
When Gregory heard the throb of the taxi’s engine he pulled the sitting-room curtain aside. He dropped it quickly when he saw that the tall man was inside the taxi speaking urgently to his wife. She stood at the open door with her head bowed, listening. Gregory heard the door slam and the taxi drive off. Then he heard Angela’s key in the door. He went into the hallway to meet her. When he saw her white distraught face he took pity on her and said, “I know about the tall man, what’s his name?”
“Christopher Moore,” she said. She looked down at the oriental rug. There were intricacies in the patterning that she hadn’t noticed before now.
“You used to live with a Christopher Moore,” he said. “Is it the same one?”
“Yes,” she said. She traced the petals of a flower with the pointed toe of her boot. “I’m going to live with him again.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“I’d better put the kettle on.”
She followed him into the kitchen and watched him filling the kettle under the tap.
“What will I do in this big house?” he said. Then, “Have you slept with him?”
“Yes.” She wanted to sit down, but thought it best, more polite, to remain standing during the coming interrogation.
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Less than a week.”
“A week!”
“Less than.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“No.”
She was like a surgeon making an incision without an anaesthetic. It was best to cut quickly and deeply and get it over with.
He hadn’t expected her to say ‘no’. It had never once crossed his mind that some day Angela wouldn’t love him.
He was seven years younger than her and more attractive. She was forty-six. She was fat. She was clumsy and vague and she hadn’t given him a child. He plugged the kettle in.
“He must be desperate,” he said. He wanted to punish her further.
“He is desperate,” she said.
She’s like a zombie standing there in her coat with her arms hanging down by her sides, he thought. He crossed to the refrigerator and took a bottle of milk from out of the deep shelf inside the door.
“What’s he like in bed?” he said.
“I’m going upstairs to get some things together,” she said.
“You’re going nowhere!” he shouted, and he ran to the kitchen door and slammed it shut and stood in front of it.
“What’s he like in bed?”
“Please, Gregory, don’t.”
“What’s he like in bed?” He was screaming now. She covered her face, hiding from the rawness of his anger. The full milk bottle hit her on the side of her head, and broke on the tiled floor. She lost her footing and fell on to the spreading pool of milk and shards of glass, then he was on top of her, crying and slapping and sobbing that he loved her and begging her not to go. She watched the blood from her forehead insinuate itself into the milk. It looked like a pink river flowing into a white sea. Eventually he grew quiet and lay with his head on her belly. She smoothed his bristly hair and, to comfort him, said, “He’s no good in bed, his penis is too small.”
Gregory lifted his head and said, “We’d better clean each other up.”
They got up and went upstairs to the bathroom and took their clothes off and examined their bodies under the bright light of the small bulbs set in the ceiling. Like chimpanzees grooming, they removed the almost invisible shards of glass from each other’s wounds. Then they climbed into the huge bathtub together and washed away the blood and the milk and the tears and the marriage.
Gregory had been sexually excited during the struggle on the kitchen floor, but the thought of the desolate months ahead of him and the stinging pain from the cuts on his hands drove all sexual feeling away. As they applied Savlon to their wounds they discussed what to do about their finances. They were both scrupulously fair in the discussion. They moved into their bedroom. Gregory put on his dressing gown and slippers and sat down on the edge of the bed and took a pencil and pad from his bedside drawer. He wrote ‘Angela’ and ‘Gregory’ at the top of the page and drew a central line between them. In the half an hour during which she dressed herself and packed the few clothes she was taking with her that night he had divided their property equitably. She agreed to his every suggestion.
She was frantic to leave ‘the house. She didn’t trust his apparent calmness and made sure that she kept him in her sight at all times. She didn’t dare turn her back on him. When she was ready, she wheeled her small green suitcase out on to the landing and parked it next to her matching overnight bag. Still watching him she went to her jewellery box and tipped the contents into her handbag, then stood in front of him and said, “Have you retrieved my car keys yet? If you haven’t I’ll call a cab.” He folded the piece of paper, drew his thumbnail down the crease, then carefully tore the paper in half and gave her the piece headed ‘Angela’.
She took it without looking at it, and put it inside her handbag. She used the phone in the bedroom to call a cab and gave a false destination. She didn’t want Gregory to overhear and find out where Christopher lived, not yet. She wanted to spend her first full night in Christopher’s arms without the fear that Gregory would turn up raging on the doorstep. He carried her suitcase downstairs and left it by the front door.
The door to the understairs cupboard was slightly ajar and she automatically went to close it, but before she did so she saw the stacked-up toys he had bought earlier that day. She saw the doll in its Cellophane and cardboard box. As she picked it up its unnaturally blue eyes opened and stared at her. She replaced it on top of the stack and closed the cupboard door.
“Who are the toys for?” she said.
“A kid I know,” he said, and his voice was thick with tears.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Forty-Four
Ken took the remote control out of Tamara’s hand and switched off the television. She sat up straight on the sofa knowing that something must be wrong. If somebody wanted to talk they usually pressed the ‘mute’ button.
“I’ve got something to t
ell you, Tammy,” he said. He went to the fish tank and fed the fish, pinching flakes from a little pot and sprinkling them across the surface of the bubbling water. He loved the way the fish swam to the surface. They were dependent on him for their seemingly pointless lives, he thought. He took the top off the bottle of Johnnie Walker and drank heavily, gulping at the amber liquid until his eyes watered. Tamara watched him apprehensively. She hoped he wasn’t going to go on about Crackle again, or make her swear on Mum’s Bible that she would never see him again.
Ken sat down opposite Tamara and put the bottle on the carpet, between his feet. He took something out of his pocket and showed it to her.
“Do you know what this is?” he said.
She took the thing from him and examined it. It was a plastic cylinder with a padded top. She’d never seen anything like it before.
“No,” she said.
“D’you see that blue sort of circle?”
“Yes.” She wondered if it was a magic trick. He used to make coins come out of his ears when she was a kid.
“Well, Tammy, that blue circle means that you’re pregnant.”
She laughed out loud and shook her head. She’d done the same thing when he’d told her that her mother was dead and in the arms of Jesus. He read out loud from the ‘Predictor’ leaflet, but she said, “You’re making it up, Dad.”
With a superhuman effort he kept his voice even. “Let’s just say that you are pregnant Tam, let’s just say. What would you do about it?”
“What do you mean do about it?” she said.
“I mean would you want the baby or would you, you know, get rid of it?”
She was amazed that he’d even asked the question. He was the one who’d always said that abortion was murder.
“I couldn’t get rid of it. It’s wrong.”
Ken shouted, “I know it’s wrong but it has to be done!” He tried again to control his voice, “Tam, if you get rid of that baby I’ll pay for the operation. I’ll give you some money and I’ll get you a course of driving lessons.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it, Dad.”
“I’ll buy you a car,” he said. “I’ll take you to Raj’s garage tomorrow.”
“I’m not pregnant. It must be wind or summat,” she shouted, stroking her stomach. She couldn’t be pregnant, not without Crackle’s permission.
Ken went into the kitchen and called the emergency doctor service. Perhaps when she’d been told by a professional she would believe that she had a baby inside her.
♦
It was a young red-haired doctor whom neither Ken nor Tamara had seen before. He was very angry at being called out to a non-emergency, but Ken insisted that he examine Tamara. Ken went outside the room whilst Tamara sulkily pulled her clothes down and lay on her back on the sofa.
“She’s about six and a half months pregnant. Why isn’t she registered with the community midwife?” said the doctor, coming out into the hall, still wearing his green waxed coat.
“She’s an ignorant little cow, that’s why,” said Ken, angrily.
Six and a half months. It was too late now to intervene in order to save the child from being born.
Tamara passed the two men and went upstairs to the bathroom and locked herself in. Then she pulled her black sweater up and held her belly with both hands and looked into the mirror over the washbasin in triumph. She couldn’t wait to tell Crackle the good news.
Later that night, when Ken was asleep, she crept out of the house and went back to the flat. Crackle wasn’t there. He’d torn her clothes up and smashed the pots and thrown everything else she’d owned in a pile on the living-room floor: her make-up and tapes and shoes, and the red coat and the hairbrush she’d used when she had long hair. He’d tried to set fire to the pile, the red coat was scorched and the bristles on the brush had melted. She sorted through the mess and found the studded leather wrist band that he’d bought her for a wedding present. It wasn’t damaged and she buckled it on to her wrist. As she was leaving the flat, she noticed an envelope propped up on top of the television. ‘Tamara’ it said. It was almost the only word she could read.
♦
Tamara hadn’t got the key to Ken’s door. She had to ring the doorbell and get him out of bed, waking him from a dream in which he was walking arm in arm with Cath in the cemetery where she was buried. He opened the door cautiously, fearing that it was Crackle on the doorstep. Tamara was shivering with cold and excitement, her eyes glittered like black ice. As soon as she was in the narrow hallway, before he could ask where she’d been, she had thrust the letter into his hands and begged him to read it to her. He went upstairs to find his spectacles, taking the letter with him. He switched on the lamp with the pink tasselled shade, which was on Cath’s side of the bed, and put his spectacles on. He opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper torn from a child’s exercise book. It was covered in Crackle’s backward-slanting, spidery scribble.
Dear Tam,
Why won’t you talk to me. I have got things to say to you that are important. Bilko has turned against me, I have got to go somewhere else to live, I want you to come with me. I don’t know who is reading this to you if it is your dad well he never gave me a chance. Just because I am not like him. Say you will come Tam. We will never get Storme back, so there is just you and me now.
Crackle.
Ken folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. He rubbed a hand over his face and got up from the bed. He went downstairs slowly and went into the kitchen where Tamara was standing by the electric kettle on the work top, waiting for it to boil. She had put a tea-bag in each of the two mugs and taken a milk bottle out of the fridge. The glass sugar bowl stood nearby. Ken said, “Right, better read it then.” He took the piece of paper out of the envelope for a second time and what she heard was: “Dear Tam, Why did it have to end like this? I am sorry but I am going away to live somewhere else. I don’t love you any more. I am sorry about hurting Storme, I didn’t mean to. Crackle.”
The kettle came to a noisy boil, then switched itself off. Tamara took the letter from Ken’s hand and scanned it. She saw her own name Tamara and near the bottom, Storme—but the other scribbled words were incomprehensible to her. She couldn’t believe what it said. “Read it again, Dad,” she said.
Ken had been dreading this, but he managed to approximate much of his previous reading.
“I can’t believe he doesn’t love me,” she said, turning her stricken face to Ken.
“He admits that he hurt Storme,” said Ken.
“He was heavy-handed that’s all,” said Tamara.
“So she didn’t fall out of her cot?”
“No,” said Tamara, then she began to cry and repeated, “I can’t believe he don’t love me no more.”
Ken tore off a piece of kitchen towel from a pine roller on the wall and gave it to her to wipe her eyes.
“We’d better burn this,” he said. “If the police found it…” She gave the letter back to him and he set fire to it in the stainless-steel sink, using his cigarette lighter. Then he washed the blackened, curling scraps down the plughole using a powerful stream of water from the cold tap.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Forty-Five
Waiting for her was an ordeal. Christopher walked through the rooms of his house, trailed by the dog. He went into the bedroom and checked it. He had remade the bed with clean sheets and a fresh duvet cover, and had positioned the pillows and their clean pillow slips symmetrically against the bedhead. He went into the largest of the spare bedrooms and began to unpack the books from the boxes, taking them to the shelves and squeezing them into any available space. He worked quickly, not allowing himself to look at the titles in case he got seduced into reading. Before long he’d cleared a large space in the middle of the room. When the shelves were crammed full, he took the residue of the books downstairs and started to fill the alcove by the fire where his television and video used to be.
He w
ent into the smaller spare room, where he kept the first editions and more valuable books. He rearranged the shelves to create more space for the books in the booksellers’ packages which he’d not yet opened. He looked forward to cataloguing and sorting his collection. He would like Angela to help him.
He found a broom and a dustpan and he swept through the house in honour of Angela. As he did so, he wondered how he could tell Angela about the dead baby he’d found. There was no question, he decided, of him not telling her. One day he intended to tell her everything, however much it frightened or hurt her. He thought that telling the truth was the greatest form of intimacy possible between two people.
When he had finished cleaning he washed himself and combed his hair and sat down in front of the gas fire with the dog. The house was so quiet that it was possible to hear the oven clock ticking from the kitchen. He could hear his elderly neighbour coughing through the party wall, and was glad that he’d escaped such loneliness.
When he heard the taxi turn into the cul-de-sac he went to the front door. He felt a flood of relief when he saw her outline on the back seat. She waved to him. He went down the path to greet her and waited at the kerb with the dog at his side. He cried out, “Angie!” when he saw the red gash on her forehead, but she wouldn’t allow him to look at it in the street.
Between them they carried her luggage inside, then Christopher closed the door to the outside world and held her without speaking until she thought he would never let her go of his own volition. She removed herself gently from him and began to give him a fictitious account of how she had hurt her head and cut her hands. Christopher wouldn’t like to hear the truth, she thought.
Gregory had been ‘extremely civilised’ she said, and showed Christopher the piece of paper where her assets from the marriage were listed in Gregory’s looping handwriting. Christopher frowned when he read the last item on the list.