Ghost Children
Between them they dragged Gregory out of the car and into the devastated garden. His face was swollen and the colour of a fresh bruise. Angela bent over him, pinched his nose, opened his mouth and covered it with her own. She blew air into his lungs for as long as she could and when she was unable to carry on Christopher took over.
When the ambulance came there still seemed to be no life inside Gregory’s body.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Forty-Eight
Angela hardly left the intensive care unit for a day and a night. She sat at Gregory’s bedside and watched him breathe. His face behind the oxygen mask was the colour of blue Stilton.
Each time she moved forward to speak his name or to stroke his bristly hair she was reminded, by the slight pressure against her thigh, of the two cartridge paper notes she had found and stuffed into her trouser pocket. She’d unpinned the one addressed to her from the front of his suit jacket. The other, to his solicitor, she had discovered on the kitchen table propped against a half-empty bottle of Tia Maria.
Since he had been pulled from the car Gregory had not spoken or opened his eyes in response to loud sounds or bright lights. A doctor had jabbed a sterile needle into the soft flesh under his heel but he had not moved his foot.
The hospital chaplain was on his rounds. He approached Gregory’s bedside and asked Angela if she would like to join him in a short prayer for her husband’s recovery. It would have seemed discourteous to refuse so she closed her eyes and the chaplain said in a voice hardly louder than a whisper: “Lord, we pray that your servant, Geoffrey will recover and take his place once more in your most blessed world. Amen.”
Angela said, “Amen.” She was too polite to point out that the Chaplain had called Gregory by the wrong name.
After he had moved on to the next bedside she got up stiffly and went to meet Christopher.
♦
Christopher had called in to see Storme and was astonished and delighted to see that she was sitting up holding a bright pink teddy bear. He hung over the high-sided metal cot and stroked her cheek. He longed to pick her up, but she was still tethered by wires and tubes. Somebody had brushed her hair and gathered it high on her head in an elasticated hair band covered in white satin cord. Her cheeks were flushed pink and he thought that she looked at him with shy recognition. She turned the bear upside down and pulled at a loop on the bear’s foot where the washing instructions were printed.
Staff Nurse Fox stood in the doorway waiting to give Storme her medication. Christopher asked, “What will happen to her, when she’s better?”
“She’ll go to foster parents,” she said.
“Good,” said Christopher. He kissed his own fingers and touched Storme’s head with them and said, “Goodbye, chick.” He knew that Staff Nurse Fox was impatient for him to leave.
♦
Crackle ran through the quiet Sunday streets of the city centre in a denim shirt and jeans. He’d sold his leather jacket the night before for twenty pounds. The money had bought him a tiny piece of crack which he’d taken in the public toilet outside the bus station. He needed to take more but none of the dealers would give him credit or even let him over the doorstep. He’d rung other crackheads, but nobody wanted to know him. He’d tried to talk to Tamara on the phone, but Ken had put the phone down on him after saying that if he came to the house or tried to contact Tamara the police would be called. He’d been up all night without sleep, having the door slammed in his face. But he knew that Ken drank in the Man at Rest every Sunday dinnertime without fail, and he stopped running and went into a phone box outside the Town Hall and rang Ken’s number. Tamara answered at once, and though she’d sworn on her dad’s Bible that she would put the phone down immediately without speaking if Crackle rang, she found that she couldn’t do it. He sounded desperate. He told her that he was in his shirt-sleeves, he needed a coat, food and drink and crack money. To cheer him up Tamara told him that she was pregnant. She said, “Dad wanted to pay me to have an abortion, but I said, ‘No’.” There was silence on the other end of the phone, but she knew he was still there, she could hear him breathing.
“Meet me at Veronica’s, Tam,” he said. “This baby’s been sent for a purpose.” Crackle left the phone box and stood for a while watching a gang of council workers construct the Christmas tableaux in the square. This year’s theme was Peter Pan. As he watched, a cut-out Captain Hook was hauled up to the prow of a plywood pirate ship and fastened into place with strong bolts. He walked out of the square, past the row of cherry trees, whose branches were festooned with small twinkling lights.
He passed the Pizza Hut, where a prosperous-looking black family were eating at a table in the window. He took a tortuous detour to avoid passing the Man at Rest and eventually came in sight of the prison and the hospital, and, just beyond them Veronica’s, where salvation lay. He could tell it was open; there was a folding sign on the pavement which said, Beef⁄Lamb⁄Pork⁄4 Veg⁄Pie⁄Ice-Cream⁄£2.39!!!
A double-decker bus went by and Tamara shouted, “Crack!” from an upstairs window. He ran towards the bus stop to meet her. She jumped off the bus before it had come to a stop, and ran along the snow-flaked pavement with her arms outstretched. The wind pressed the long black dress against her thighs and outlined her pregnant belly. The word ‘love’ came into his mind, but the words he said to her were to do with the more urgent need he had, which was to stop the craving in his body. He was in agony.
“Did you bring some money, Tam?”
“No, I only had the bus fare,” she said. She had searched the house before she left, but Ken had taken every penny out with him; even the little jug on the kitchen shelf in which he saved his twenty-pence pieces was empty.
Crackle let go of her and kicked at a metal litter bin.
“I’ve brought the book,” she said to his back. She took the child benefit book out of her bag and he snatched it out of her hand and walked away from her, his round shoulders hunched against the cold. She followed him into Veronica’s. It was busy for once and they had to wait for a table to be cleared of gravy-stained plates. Eventually, after a young girl smeared a grey cloth over a table for four, they sat down. Crackle couldn’t keep his body completely still. His brain was figuring, working out. Who would buy the benefit book? It was worth seventy pounds. If he asked for fifty, would he get it? No, he’d ask for thirty. He would need to start phoning soon. Tamara pretended to read the menu written above the serving hatch. She wanted to talk to him about the letter, and the new baby and Storme, but she was afraid that if she did he would explode. She felt like one of those bomb disposal men she’d seen on the television. One false move and she would be destroyed.
♦
Christopher met Angela at the main entrance to the hospital. She greeted the dog first, then straightened up and took her cigarettes and lighter out of her bag.
“How is he, then?” he said, stroking her shoulder.
“No change.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She was having difficulty in lighting her cigarette. He took it from her and put it between his lips, lit it and handed it back to her. They walked across the road to Veronica’s. Angela was upset as they passed the window to see that Tamara and Crackle were inside, sitting opposite the only two vacant seats at a table for four. She said, “Let’s go somewhere else, Chris,” but he had already opened the door for her and was waiting for her to go in.
“Do you mind?” said Christopher, nodding towards the empty chairs. Crackle shook his head and Christopher and Angela sat down. Tamara bent down and patted the dog’s back. Angela said, to break the tension, “How’s your little girl?”
“She’s been took by the Social Services,” she said, looking down at the dog, “but I’m going to have another baby. I’m six and a half months, I only just found out.”
“Congratulations,” said Angela, automatically. She felt Christopher stiffen beside her. The dog got to its feet and Christopher shouted, “Sit!??
? so loudly that other people in the café turned to look at him, their faces bulging with food. The dog turned around three times, then sat down at Christopher’s feet.
Christopher said, “I’ll buy that baby you’ve got inside you.”
He looked at Angela and she looked back at him and nodded.
Crackle said, “How much?”
“He ain’t serious, Crack,” said Tamara.
“Yes I am,” said Christopher, quietly.
“So, how much?” said Crackle. He wriggled in his chair.
Angela took her cigarettes out and pulled one out of the packet and lit it and inhaled, hungrily.
Tamara clutched at her belly as though guarding the child inside. Angela’s cigarette smoke drifted across to her and she waved it away. Christopher took a wad of £50 notes from the inside pocket of his jacket, and peeled some away, and laid them on the table.
Tamara said, “I want to keep the baby, Crackle.”
“No you don’t, Tam,” said Crackle. “You’re no fucking good at it. You ain’t a proper mother. I know what a proper mother is.”
Angela thought, I won’t be any good at it either, I won’t be able to love somebody else’s baby. She stared at the money on the table, hoping that Crackle would push it back to Christopher, but he picked it up and counted it.
“Two hundred and fifty quid,” he scoffed. “That ain’t enough.”
“You’ll get that every week until the baby’s born, and on that day, you’ll get three thousand pounds, and we’ll; never see either of you again.” |
Tamara looked at Angela hard-faced and said, “I am a proper mother, and when this baby’s grown up, it’ll know and it’ll come looking for me, just like Storme will.”
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Forty-Nine
Christopher waited until Angela was in the bath before going out into the garden. He listened to the sounds of her washing herself, then pushed the terracotta pot aside. He took a chisel from the shed and levered up the flagstone. Using all his strength he lifted it, then dragged it and leaned it against the fence. He recovered the shoe box from the earth, dragged the flagstone back and dropped it into its place.
He took the shoe box into the shed and put it into the old brown shopping bag that his grandma had used daily for thirty years. He hadn’t been able to throw it away. There were indentations of her fingers on the leather handles. He hung the bag on the back of the shed door, closed it, then put the terracotta pot back in place.
He looked up at the bedroom: the curtains were shut. Angela was drying her hair. He could hear the whine of the hairdrier she’d brought with her and laid out on top of the chest of drawers, together with her jars and bottles and brushes and cosmetics. It had delighted him to see her mark her territory in his bedroom.
When Angela had dried her black hair and dressed herself, she went into the living room and stroked the spines of his books. When they had lived together seventeen years ago she had been surprised by the number of books he had brought home. Hardly a day went by when he didn’t produce a book from the pocket of the voluminous donkey jacket he wore to work. He spent most of his short lunch breaks in second-hand bookshops. She’d once laughed at him and called him, Jude the Electrician.
She looked along the top row: Beckett, Barnes and Bennett, stood next to Haggard, Heroditus and Hardy. She began to rearrange the books and put them into strict alphabetical order. When he came in and saw her he was moved almost to tears.
♦
There was a funeral about to take place at the Waterloo Road Cemetery. Christopher and Angela sat in her car and watched as a beetle-black hearse with a wreath-covered coffin inside drew up outside the arched door of the chapel. Behind, looming over the tiled roof, was the tall red-brick crematorium chimney from which grey smoke drifted. A muddle of gravestones surrounded them on all sides. In the distance a small mechanical earth digger dipped in and out of a rectangular hole, making a grave by removing dark brown earth and piling it into a heap at the side.
They had brought flowers with them: stargazer lilies. Their perfume was intoxicating in the confinement of the Volvo. A procession of cars drove slowly up the inclination of the drive. Angela felt Catherine’s warmth beside her but she couldn’t see or hear her.
“Catherine’s here, Chris,” she said. “Can you feel her?”
“No,” he said. “But I wish I could.”
Christopher watched as the man operating the digger climbed out of the cab and walked off among the gravestones in the far distance. He said to Angela, “Stay inside the car, Angie.”
He picked up his grandma’s bag from the back seat and got out of the car. He walked over the brow of a gentle hill and wandered amongst the ancient gravestones, looking for a resting place in consecrated ground for the little one he’d found in the ditch. He found a large enough niche under a crumbling statue of an angel holding a prayer book. He gathered bits of old masonry and piled them around the gaps until the bag and its contents were hidden.
He didn’t know what to say, apart from “Rest in peace, chick.” He stood for a few moments, memorising the location, though he doubted if he would ever return. A new life was beginning for him. There was only Catherine to say goodbye to now.
As he drew nearer to the car he could see that Angela was watching him anxiously. He hadn’t told her about the baby in the ditch. He wouldn’t now. It was a secret he would take with him to his own grave.
They waited until the mourners and the coffin had gone inside the chapel and the door had been closed. Then Christopher led Angela around the back of the building to a door which said ‘No Admittance’. They stood on either side of the door. They heard a man’s echoing voice, then music and tentative singing. “Are you cold, Angie?” said Christopher to her. He could see that she was trembling. He pulled her towards him, the orange pollen from the lilies he was carrying stained the front of her navy coat.
“Have you thought of what to say?” she asked him.
“Nothing good enough,” he said. “Have you?”
“No,” she said.
When they heard the car doors slamming at the front of the building and saw the mourners drive off, Christopher knocked on the door. It was opened by a young man with his hair in a pony tail. He was wearing a brown overall over his sweatshirt and jeans. He looked astonished to see them there.
“You want the other door,” he said.
“No,” said Christopher, pushing past him and pulling Angela with him, “this is the right place. Please, just give us one minute.”
It was hot inside the white painted room. At the far end, set into the wall was a glassed-in roaring bonfire; the incinerator.
Christopher and Angela walked up to it and laid the flowers at its base. Christopher said, “You’re our Catherine, and we’ll never forget you.” Angela closed her eyes and tried hard to summon up a picture of Catherine’s lovely face. She had it for a moment, but then it started to elude her and by the time they were leaving the incinerator room together it had gone.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
February
There was an east wind blowing on the night Tamara went into labour in the rambling Victorian house where Christopher and Angela now lived. The doors and windows shook as the baby fought to take its place in the world. The wind howled around the corners of the house and through the branches of the trees in the garden.
Christopher and Angela wandered through the half-decorated, uncurtained rooms. The dog followed them. The wind hurled leaves, twigs and snowflakes at the windows. After three hours they climbed the stairs, leaving the dog asleep in the kitchen. They went into the bedroom, where Tamara lay on the bed in a tangle of sheets crying for her mother. Christopher asked the midwife, “How much longer?”
“A while yet,” she said.
They went into the room they had prepared for the baby and checked once more that everything was in its place. They heard a loud crack as a branch split from a tree. Christopher pulled up the nurser
y blind with its Winnie the Pooh design and they looked out. The wind was making patterns of swirling snow.
Crackle sat downstairs at the table in the large kitchen, smoking and fiddling with the rings on his fingers. Gregory had been drawn up next to him in a customised chair with a built-in tray. He was assembling a jigsaw meant for six-year-olds. Occasionally he would whimper and hold out a piece to Crackle and Crackle would slot it in place impatiently, saying quietly, “Fucking baby.”
The baby boy cried the moment he left Tamara’s body. He was still attached to the milky green cord when Christopher crouched down at the side of the bed and cupped him in his hands. Angela looked at the tiny infant. It was like looking at a miniature Crackle; there was the same frowning brow. Tamara strained up to see her son, then dropped back in exhaustion. When she next woke up she heard the baby crying in a distant room.
Next morning, after the midwife had gone, Crackle counted and recounted the money Christopher had placed on the kitchen table and stuffed the bundle of notes into the pocket of his jeans. He put on his new leather jacket and zipped it up. He watched Angela hold a drinking cup with a spout to Gregory’s lips.
“Here’s your tea, Greg,” she said.
“Right, I’m off,” Crackle said. “I’ll be back for Tamara next week.”
Christopher couldn’t put the baby down. He cradled him in his arms, wrapped in a white shawl. He went to the top of the stairs and listened. He hoped that Crackle had taken his money and gone. Crackle opened the kitchen door. The dog woke up and followed him out into the hallway. When it saw Christopher with the baby it began to growl at the back of its throat. Barking and snarling, it crept up the stairs. When it reached the top it leapt into the air and snarled at the baby. Angela screamed.