Ghost Children, Page 3

  Another of Gregory’s contacts had designed and built their new kitchen. The chairs and the oak table that he had done his homework on as a boy had been the only survivors. These were now incongruously surrounded by white and chrome surfaces. It’s more like an operating theatre than a kitchen, thought Angela, looking around. They had been forced to knock a wall down to make space for the towering American refrigerator which dispensed ice and chilled water from a recess at the front.

  She found that she couldn’t look at Gregory’s face: his moustache seemed ludicrous to her now, like a foreign object stuck on to his top lip. They had been married for seventeen years and there was no question of leaving him. She hadn’t the energy to start a new life.

  They were stacking the dishwasher together when the telephone rang. Gregory answered.

  “Yes? Yes, she does. Who’s speaking?” After a pause he put the phone down.

  “Who was it?” she said.

  “A bloke. Wanted to know if Angela Lowood, nee Carr, lived here. I said, ‘Yes, she does’.”

  “Yes, I heard what you said.”

  Now that she realised she didn’t love him, she found his pedantry hard to bear. She dreaded the night ahead when she would have to lie in bed and watch and listen as he went through his bedtime routines: counting the change in his pocket, before placing it on the dressing table. Checking the alarm clock against the time pips on the bedroom radio, touching the radiator with the back of his hand, taking the bookmark out of his Ken Follett paperback.

  “Who was it?” she repeated.

  “I don’t know, he put the phone down didn’t he?” His tone was irritable, as hers had been.

  They hardly every quarrelled, but the threat that they might hung over them for the rest of the evening. At twenty-five minutes to eleven, when Angela went out to put the milk bottles in the little crate on the doorstep, she saw a tall man in a long overcoat on the opposite side of the road. A barrel-chested dog stood in the snow next to him. The man and the dog were standing perfectly still in the shadow of a tree, looking at Angela’s house. Angela instantly thought, ‘Christopher’. But it couldn’t be Christopher Moore, she decided: she hadn’t seen him for seventeen years now.

  As she moved from room to room turning off lamps, she could hear the shower going and smell the grooming products that Gregory had taken to using lately. His name was on file at the Clinique counter in Debenham’s. He had recently started to send away for things like nostril-hair clippers and moustache trimmers from a catalogue called Innovations. He now went to a hairdresser called Henry’s, for his monthly trim, instead of to Ron the barber’s. He had even talked about having a light perm. Angela had been thinking for some time that Gregory’s preoccupation with his appearance meant that he was planning to leave her for a woman of normal size. When she’d left Christopher Moore she’d weighed ten and a half stone. She was now nineteen stone and Gregory was half her size. They looked ludicrous together. It was for that reason that she wouldn’t go to English seaside resorts, with their revolving racks of comic postcards. She preferred to holiday in America, where car seats, restaurant meals and Bermuda shorts were of more generous proportions.

  ♦

  It had been easy for Christopher to find her: one telephone call had given him her married name, and a second her present address and place of work. He was pleased to find that she had realised her ambition to live in a large detached house in a respectable area to the south of the city. She had put on weight, almost doubled in size, but when she had bent down to place the milk bottles in the crate and he had seen that black curtain of hair fall across her face, he had known for certain it was her. He had wanted to cross the road and speak to her, but he had not yet planned what he was going to say, so he stayed where he was. It was enough to be near her now.

  He saw a light go on in an upstairs bedroom, then a small man with a large moustache approached the window and pulled the curtains together. Christopher experienced a moment of jealous rage. His fists clenched inside his overcoat pocket. He stood in the road, watching the window, until the dog pulled him away. The snow creaked beneath their feet as they embarked on the five-mile walk home together. The loveliness of the snow light affected Christopher. Joy overwhelmed him as he gazed up at the night sky and its brittle stars. He felt as though he could float up and touch them.

  ♦

  Angela delayed going to bed for as long as possible. She stayed downstairs, plumping cushions, wiping surfaces, folding tea-towels, and finally going into the conservatory and breaking the brown stalks and leaves from the overwintering geraniums. Gregory called from the top of the stairs.

  “Are you coming to bed or what?”

  She went into the hallway reluctantly and looked up at him.

  “What are you doing down there?” he said irritably.

  “I’m not tired,” she said. “I’ll be up in a bit.”

  “You know I can’t sleep if you’re not in bed,” he said. He turned away from her with slumped shoulders and went into the bedroom. She set the burglar alarm by the front door and went upstairs.

  The coins lay on the dressing table in small towers. The bookmark had been placed on his bedside table. He looked up from his book, Airship, and said, “About time.” She held her hair back and bent down by the bed and kissed him lightly on the forehead. She saw by the way his body relaxed that he was comforted by this ritual. He switched off his bedside lamp and arranged himself on the pillow with a series of little grunts. She wanted to weep in pity for him. As far as she knew, nobody loved him now.

  She kept her back turned to him as she undressed, removing the voluminous clothes she had chosen from a catalogue endorsed by Dawn French, the fat comedienne. She kept her face turned away from the mirrored wardrobe doors. She had learnt to censor the reality of her naked appearance. She felt that she was hardly recognisable as a female human being any more.

  They had been turned down by an adoption agency ten years before because she was too fat. Now she was three stones heavier and also too old. She struggled into her nightgown and went to the window and looked out. The man who looked like Christopher had gone, leaving only his footprints in the snow.

  ♦

  “Not far now.” The dog looked up at him as though pleased to hear this information. They were opposite the University, on the main road that led eventually to Curlew Close. A collection of teenagers burst out of the side door of a pub called the Swot and Firkin. Christopher remembered that the pub had once been called The King’s Head. He pushed the door open and went inside; the loudness of the music overwhelmed him for a moment, but the young people inside seemed to be talking to each other without discernible strain. There was a young woman behind the bar wearing a t-shirt. When she turned her back to find the bottle of Guinness that he had requested, he saw that her back was emblazoned with the words, I’m Firkin tonight—Are you Firkin with me?

  He bought a packet of crisps, ripped them open and tipped them on to the bare floorboards for the dog. The dog ate anything. Christopher stood at the bar and drank in silent celebration: he had found Angela. He could still see the slim girl he’d loved inside the fat woman on the doorstep. When her hair had fallen across her face he had suddenly wanted her again in spite of everything. Scraps of student conversations lapped around him. He looked at the back of the t-shirt worn by a thin blonde girl who was collecting a tower of glasses. Get your lips round my Firkin Ass he read. It wasn’t right to make these girls wear these insulting words, he thought. He wouldn’t have let his daughter be humiliated in such a way. A wave of misery enveloped Christopher. He pulled the dog to its feet and went out into the cold night.

  ♦

  Christopher woke early the next morning. He looked at the empty space where his clock radio used to be, then got out of bed and opened the thin blue curtains. The little light there was came from the snow. The sky was still dark. If he started to walk now he would be there, waiting for her when she arrived at Heavenly Travel—the agency whe
re she worked. He dressed quickly, putting on the first things that came to hand in the wardrobe, unmindful of the weather conditions. A plaid shirt, a pair of thin corduroys, a short anorak, his old Adidas training shoes. He was too impatient to wash, or shave, or comb his hair. He threw some dog biscuits into the dog’s bowl on the kitchen floor and muttered, “Come on, come on,” as it crunched them between its powerful jaws. He ate nothing himself. As soon as the dog had swallowed the last biscuit, he attached its lead and pulled it towards the front door. His socks and shoes and the bottoms of his trousers were wet before he reached the dual carriageway. He was oblivious to any discomfort. A gritting lorry passed him and the driver raised a hand from the steering wheel in salute. You and me against the snow, it said. Christopher nodded in acknowledgment and turned on to the road that led towards the city centre. The occasional bus passed him, carrying a few early morning workers. But he wanted to walk, to make a proper journey of it, and anyway, he wasn’t ready to rejoin the everyday world, not yet.

  When he was two miles from the city the snow began to fall more heavily in large flakes that seemed to float rather than fall to the ground. The dog’s back was coated in luminous white. There were occasional drifts where the snow came up to Christopher’s knees, and the dog needed encouragement before it would plunge into the blinding whiteness. He passed people on the pavement who were warmly wrapped, and they glanced at him curiously. This odd man with his jacket open, no gloves, no scarf, nothing on his head, wearing training shoes and dragging a frozen-looking dog behind him.

  When he got to Heavenly Travel it was half-past eight by the town hall clock. A sign on the door showed that the shop opened at nine AM He looked in the windows where the Winter Sun holidays were advertised. There was a poster showing happy, tanned holiday-makers on a beach in Barbados, the sand appeared to be white and the sea to be turquoise. He pulled the dog away and they went to stand in the doorway of a jeweller’s opposite. To kill time he pretended to choose a ring for Angela from the wedding rings on display. He wondered why she had refused to marry him yet had married Lowood, the man with the moustache.

  At ten minutes to nine he turned around to see that Angela was unlocking the front door of Heavenly Travel. He watched as she went inside and passed into a back room. The lights of the shop came on, but she didn’t reappear. He would wait for another fifteen minutes he thought, to give her time to settle in before he went inside the shop. Then he would ask her to tell him about the day she had their baby killed.

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Five

  Angela was at the computer trying to find a self-catering holiday in Greece for a pair of very shy gay men. When she next looked up, she was shocked to see that the man who had taken a seat at the counter beside them was Christopher Moore. She stared at him for a moment, then excused herself to the young men and went into the back room, where she leaned her head against a shelf full of City Break brochures. She would have to wait in there until he had gone. She didn’t want him to see her like this: the size twenty-six uniform she wore. The light blue matching jacket and skirt had been especially made for her, at extra cost to the company. They didn’t flatter her. The last time he’d seen her she had been a size twelve, and he had constantly told her that she was beautiful.

  He looked terrible himself; unshaven and pinched with cold, as though he had reached the end of an arduous polar journey without the benefit of food and warm clothing. His hair was wet, and hung on his collar. His clothes were laughably inadequate for the weather conditions. His hands, which poked out of the sodden sleeves of his jacket, resembled defrosting joints of beef. There were three deep vertical furrows which ran down to the bridge of his nose, these were new to her, and she had a vision of taking a steam iron and pressing them out and making his face young again. It was him who had stood opposite her house last night and now he’d appeared at her place of work. What did he want?

  After five minutes, a colleague, Claire, came into the back room and asked what was wrong. Angela lied and said she felt faint. She would go to the staff-room and lie down until she recovered. She asked Claire to find the shy young men a holiday and hauled herself up the steep stairs to the staff-room. She spread herself over three vinyl chairs and watched Christopher on the security camera. This was trained on the Bureau de Change half of the shop, but frequently swivelled around to show the customers waiting in the holiday section. Christopher was watching the door to the back room. He was waiting for her to come out. There was something about the stillness of his body that signalled to Angela that he would stay there, waiting for her, until the shop closed, if necessary. She knew that if she slipped out of the back door to avoid him that he would turn up the following day, and the day after that, until she was eventually forced to acknowledge his presence.

  She watched another of her girls, Lisa, ask him to take his dog outside. She saw him shake his head. She guessed that Lisa was not afraid of the dog. It was Christopher she wanted outside. She knew that she would have to go downstairs and confront him, find out what he wanted.

  She pulled herself up and combed her fingers through her hair. There mustn’t be a scene. She would never get another job in the travel industry, not at her age and weight. Her long experience, her fluency in Spanish and German, and her expertise with international train and boat timetables meant nothing today. These skills were redundant now that holidays came tidily packaged, with one press of a computer key. As she walked back down the stairs, she recognised a tension within herself. A part of her was afraid of this disruption to her daily routine, another part of her was thrilled and excited by the prospect of a small personal drama. Before she reached the bottom of the stairs she knew that, whatever happened, she wouldn’t tell Gregory that Christopher Moore had visited her at work.

  She went straight to where he sat at the counter.

  “Christopher?”

  “Hello Angie.”

  “Are you looking for a holiday?”

  “A holiday?” He laughed at the absurdity of the thought of going on holiday. “No, I want to ask you a question.”

  “Go on then.”

  “What happened to our baby?”

  ∨ Ghost Children ∧

  Six

  They tried three cafes, none of which would allow the dog to come inside. Having agreed to meet Christopher for lunch, Angela grew more anxious with each rejection. She dreaded the conversation that lay ahead and they were walking east, further away from the city centre. She couldn’t be late getting back from her lunch break. She wouldn’t be able to hurry on the return journey. The pavements were icy underfoot. If she slipped and fell she knew from past experience that it would take at least two strong men to pull her to her feet.

  As they walked they talked haltingly about the dog; what breed it was, its mild nature, how it had just turned up one day and forced itself into Christopher’s life. “It limped into the workshop and lay down on the floor. A young lad I had working for me bought it a tin of dog food. It came back every day after. I kept thinking someone would come and claim it. That’s why I’ve never given it a name. I’ve never been a great dog lover but I wouldn’t get rid of it now. It needs me.”

  Like how I feel about Gregory, thought Angela.

  By now they had left the city centre behind them and were being buffeted by the confluence of winds that blew around the twin towers of the city council offices. They walked alongside the inner ring road, protected from the speeding one-way traffic by a metal fence. In the distance, at the bottom of a gentle hill, stood the city’s Ruritanian-looking prison. Security cameras were attached to the twenty-foot-high walls and Angela wondered if a prison warder was watching Christopher and herself on a screen as they walked down the hill. Opposite them now were the sprawling multi-levelled hospital buildings. The original Victorian red brick and slate infirmary was surrounded and dwarfed by the modern grey concrete blocks. Pale smoke blew at a right angle from the tall chimney of the hospital incinerator, like a long past
el-coloured flag.

  Angela said, “Can’t you tie the dog up, outside somewhere?” She was tired of walking.

  “Not in the town,” he said. “Not if I can help it, this is the kind of dog that drug dealers like.” He slowed down. “Good, it’s still here,” he said. They were standing outside a brick building that had been clad up to the first floor with black and white wooden panelling, in a grotesque parody of Tudor style. Above the black lintel of the Georgian-style door, somebody with a shaking hand had written in white paint, ‘Veronica’s Olde Worlde Tea Shoppe’.

  “I used to come here with my grandma,” he said. “After she’d been to the Outpatients over the road.” He peered in through the plate-glass window. “It’s changed a bit.”

  A miserable-looking woman, her greasy hair tied back with an office elastic band, stood behind the counter pouring tea from a battered aluminium teapot. She glanced up and Christopher caught her eye. He pointed to the dog and mimed that he wanted to bring it inside. The woman nodded and Christopher held the door open for Angela. Inside, there was a reek of rancid cooking fat.