Simply Heaven (60 page)

It’s not so difficult to haunt an old person. There you go: I’ve said it. If Beatrice were younger – if she were eighty, even – my crude disguise would be unlikely to fool her for more than a moment. I am relying on her hundred-year-old senses. That, and shock tactics, and the fact that somewhere, buried deep even in that gnarly old heart, must be a conscience of some description.

So I just stand there, hands hanging down by my sides, and wait until she notices me.

It doesn’t take long. Nessa directs her gaze over to where I am standing by the simple expedient of crossing the room and walking round behind me, pretending all the while that everything is as it should be. And I don’t find it hard to fill my face with contempt and dislike, for that is what I feel. An evil, evil old woman: ruthlessness slathered over with the cosmetic unguents of age and aristocracy. A creature beyond my comprehension: one who would kill to maintain the
status quo
.

Beatrice’s eyes follow my friend, who continues chatting about the weather and the time of year and what Beatrice might like to eat in the morning without once glancing in my direction. She is, of course, pretending that I’m not there. And as she rounds the foot of the bed, Beatrice catches sight of me out of the corner of her eye and her head jerks round to take me in in all my glory.

Nessa stops talking. Goes into the wardrobe and busies herself with organising the clothes.

‘Boo,’ I say.

The effect is gratifying. If eyes really had stalks, Beatrice’s would be standing out a full inch from her face. The mouth, teeth removed to a tumbler at the bedside, has formed a round black O of shock and fear.

You weren’t expecting that, were you?

‘Lucy says hello, Beatrice,’ I say.

This is the first time I’ve seen her without a hat. It’s only now that I realise that she is almost bald. A bald, pathetic, vicious old woman. I saw the expression on Lucy’s face. She didn’t die well, and that’s the fate Beatrice wanted for me.

The mouth attempts to form words but nothing comes.

‘She says she’ll be seeing you soon,’ I tell her. ‘Very soon. Both of us. We’ll be seeing you soon.’

Nessa emerges from the wardrobe, crosses the room carrying a navy print two-piece, humming a tune. ‘Cheek to Cheek’. Good choice, Nessa.

A little smile on the corner of her mouth, she drapes the clothes over the back of a chair, turns and says: ‘And which shoes would you like, Mrs Wattestone? The navy courts?’

Beatrice gapes, chokes on her words.

Nessa approaches the bed. ‘Are you all right there, Mrs Wattestone?’

‘Gah,’ says Beatrice, jabs a finger in my direction, ‘gak – g-
gaah
.’

Nessa shakes her head, comes closer. ‘Are you having a bit of trouble with your breathing, there, Mrs Wattestone? Want another pillow?’

Beatrice finds her voice. ‘Can’t you – can’t you
see
it?’

Nessa looks up, stares directly into my eyes. ‘See what, Mrs Wattestone? What is it? Is there a spider?’

‘It’s – it’s
right there
…’

Nessa pantomimes peering into the gloom behind me. ‘Nope. Sorry. What is it I’m looking for?’

I fold my arms, gaze down at Beatrice sorrowfully. ‘
She
can’t see me, Beatrice. Why would
she
be able to see me?
She
doesn’t know I’m …’ I take a step forward. A slightly risky move, but I reckon she’ll recoil, which she does.

I bend slightly at the waist, the better to show her the black around my eyes. ‘…
dead
,’ I snap.

The word has the effect I’ve been expecting. Beatrice lets out a tiny shriek, drops back against the pillow. Nessa makes a show of fussing around her, raising her up and tucking an extra pad in behind her back as she gawps wordlessly at me.

‘Oh, yeah, Beatrice,’ I assure her, ‘I’m
dead
all right. And you know what else?’ I step back into the safety of the shadows and fix her with a long, steady, triumphant gaze.

‘You’re going to hell, Beatrice,’ I say. ‘There’s no going to church or dominating the county’s going to save you from this one. You’re going to hell for the rest of eternity, and you know what else?’ I’m not entirely sure if I haven’t gone too far. Beatrice’s face looks like landslip.

‘We’re going to be right there with you,’ I say. ‘What do you think about that?’

‘Mrs Wattestone? Are you OK?’ asks Nessa.

‘Don’t you see it?’ stutters Beatrice. ‘
Don’t you see it?
’

‘She can’t see me, Beatrice,’ I say. ‘Why would she be able to? It’s not like she
knows
what you did, is it?’

‘It’s … it’s …’ stammers Beatrice.

The struggle is delightful. What can she say? How can she tell Nessa she’s seen me? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to knowing I was dead?

‘…
ghost
,’ she chokes.

Nessa stands back, lets out a braying, unsympathetic laugh. ‘Oh, Mrs Wattestone, you do crack me up, you really do! What would you be seeing a ghost for?’

‘Gah,’ says Beatrice, ‘gaaah.’

‘It’s not like you’ve got anything to have a guilty conscience about, is it?’ asks Nessa.

Silently as I came, I slip back behind the curtain.

And lying in the dark on my nest of mink coats, under a blanket of beaver lamb brought through from the wardrobe, waiting like a princess in a fairy-tale for my prince to rescue me, I see a ghost of my own.

I suppose I should have expected it, really. Even though I know I’m only dreaming, that the unease with which I lie is as bound to give me nightmares as if I had eaten a truckle of stilton. But it seems to me that I wake up to find the room filled with an eerie green light, and Lucy Wattestone, in cocktail dress and three-inch heels, perched on the end of the bed fiddling with a diamond ear clip. Not Lucy as I have known her, but the Lucy I have seen in a silver photo frame in her daughter’s drawing room. Thirtysomething, slim. False eyelashes and half a dozen rings like knuckledusters on long, slender fingers.

I struggle to sit upright. Am relieved to find that I am not, at least, subject to the paralysis that assailed me when Andy visited. But my voice sounds blurred to me, as though I have a mouthful of cotton wadding.

‘Lucy,’ I say.

She gives me a bright cocktail smile that matches her clothes, and says, ‘Have we met?’

‘No, no.’ I try smacking my lips in an attempt to clear the fuzziness. ‘But we’ve already slept together,’ I try a joke.

Lucy frowns, high, pale forehead wrinkling, then dismisses the comment. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she asks, ‘you’d happen to have a cigarette, would you?’

I shake my head. ‘I’ve had to give up. Sorry. Bad for the baby.’

‘How funny. Is that the latest fad?’

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ I tell her.

‘How long have I been dead?’ she asks bluntly.

‘A while. A bit over thirty years, as it goes.’

‘God.’ She looks appalled. ‘I wasn’t alive for much longer than that.’

She looks over her shoulder at the depression in the bed where her body has lain for all that time. ‘I could
so
do with a cigarette.’

I give her a Gallic-style shrug.
Desolé, madame. Il n’y en a plus
.

‘Don’t tell me you’re still getting cravings after thirty years.’

‘You have no idea. How powerful nicotine is. Nobody does, until they have to give it up. Mind you, I miss most things. Sunrise. Deodorant. Bacon sandwiches.’

We take a little time to think about all the things.

‘How’s Edmund?’ she asks.

‘He’s—’ what do I tell her? That he’s a broken man?

Don’t be stupid. She’s a figment of your imagination
.

‘He never really recovered from you,’ I say.

‘Oh dear,’ she says. Then: ‘Well, sort of – I suppose at least he didn’t just forget me.’

‘No, he never did that.’

‘I don’t know whether I’m glad or not. Life has to go on.’

I think: I’d better level with her. ‘He had a son.’

She looks like I’ve just slapped her. ‘Oh.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Can’t be helped. Might have expected it really. That bloody Beatrice wouldn’t have got rid of me without following the whole thing through. Are you
sure
you don’t have even
one
little cig?’

I shake my head.

‘And he had it – sorry, him – with that poisonous little shit Mary Fulford-Ffawkes, I suppose?’

I nod.

‘Oh. I’d sort of hoped he – oh, well. I don’t know. I just wish I’d realised, you know, beforehand. I just thought she was a horrible little suck-up, waiting for Edmund to divorce me. I thought she’d give up eventually. Always hanging about here with that
creepy
little poof Hilary Crawshaw.’

I quell the urge to correct her vocab. It’s not an inaccurate description, in the circs.

‘And Mathilda?’ she asks suddenly.

Mathilda. Mathilda. Oh, right …

‘She’s great. Oh, Lucy, she’s
great
. You’d be so proud of her. She’s had a hard time of it, but she’s grown up so – such a wonderful person. And she’s had a daughter!’

‘A daughter! So she got married? I’m a grandmother?’

I sort of gloss it over. ‘Yes. Well, yes. And she called her after you!’

‘Oh …’

And her face is long and tragic. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish – I wish I could have seen that. I wish I could have … it was the last thing I thought about. Before … you know. I tried to send her my wishes. Beam her my … I couldn’t be there to protect her. I wish … I loved her, you know … so much I thought it would burn me up.’

‘She loved you,’ I assure her. ‘So, so much. There’s not a day goes by she doesn’t think about you. But, look. She’s got Rufus. Rufus protects her. He always will. And she’s got me now.’

‘And Rufus is …?’ She realises, says: ‘Oh.’ Then she says: ‘And you’re the inconvenient wife?’

I nod. Feel myself blush.

‘So history repeats itself.’

And I say: ‘No. Not this time. And, Lucy, we’re going to get you justice too. That’s why I’m here now. That’s why I came back. I’m here for you as much as I am for myself. We’re going to save Rufus, and we’re going to save Edmund as well. By the time this is finished, they will have nothing left.’

And then she shocks me. Because instead of thanking me, instead of congratulating me on my courage, my sense of fair play, she looks grave. Leans forward and says, in a voice filled with accusation: ‘You fucking hypocrite.’

I recoil. ‘What?’

‘You fucking little hypocrite. Do you think I don’t know about you?’

I don’t say anything.

‘What’s the difference, Melody? What’s the difference? You’re the same as them and you think I want to be indebted to
you
? Go on then. What’s the difference between
his
family and
your
family? What gives you the right to point the finger at
them
?’

‘Oh God,’ I stutter.

‘What?’ asks Lucy. ‘Oh, yes. I suppose you think that just because I’m
dead
I’m going to be grateful? You’re a liar. A betrayer. A deceiver.’

She is a figment of your imagination. She’s a projection of your conscience
.

And Lucy Wattestone sits upright, throws her shoulders back so I see her collarbones poke through thin white skin, and opens her mouth to sing. Only the sound that emerges is high-pitched, it’s grotesque, it’s irritating, it’s –

Electronic.

It’s ‘Delilah’. It’s my phone. And I’m scrabbling about in the dark, cold hands feeling the dead caress of animal pelts as I grope for the handset. My hand lights on it as the tune goes into its final crescendo. I hit the yes button just as it’s about to cut out.

‘Nessa?’ I say.

But it’s not Nessa. A voice I never thought I’d hear again speaks at me out of the darkness.

‘I’m not dead, you dozy mare,’ it says. ‘I’m running a drain clearance franchise in Hobart.’

My head sings. ‘Andy?’

His next word is as full of sarcasm as any I’ve heard in my life. ‘Surprise!’ he shouts.

‘What – what are you—’

‘I knew you were dramatic, Melody, but this one really takes the biscuit, even for you. Did it never occur to you that there was something odd about the fact that my family never once asked you where I was?’

‘But—’

‘No,’ says Andy. Like,
naouw
. ‘I’m not bloody
dead
. I’m just in Tassie, which is the nearest bloody equivalent. Some bloody joke, huh?’

‘But you—’

‘Yeah, well,’ says my not-dead ex, ‘now you know, OK? But don’t think that means you’ve got a standing invite, because there’s Buckley’s chance I’d be there if you even thought about coming. Matter of fact, if I ever hear you’re on your way here, I’m getting the first plane out.’

I cut him off with a short, hysterical laugh. ‘You’re alive!’

‘Well done, Einstein. Now we don’t have to string this out any longer, do we? I’m alive, you’re alive, how dja do, yada yada, have a nice life.’

‘But why are you calling me
now
?’

Andy inhales, then exhales noisily. ‘Same reason I’m in bloody Hobart, fucknuckle. Your brother told me to. Not your dad as well this time, so I suppose I’d better be grateful for small mercies.’

‘But they—’

He feigns the way people talk to irritating small children. Speaks slowly and enunciates very clearly. ‘No. That’s what your brother wanted me to tell you. They never killed me, OK? If you weren’t so fond of slamming the phone down on people, you’d have worked that out by now.’

‘Andy,’ I say, ‘I thought you were
dead
.’

‘Oh, good grief. Yes, I
know
you bloody did. And I’ll tell you another thing. If I wasn’t so fond of my kneecaps, I’d have let you stay that way. I wouldn’t say it was more than you deserve. Have you any idea what it’s
like
in Hobart? Half the population’s got no teeth and the rest look at you funny if you’ve got all your fingers.’

I’m being a bit slow on the uptake. ‘But I don’t understand. If you hate it so much, why don’t you go somewhere else?’

‘GAAAAAH!’ shouts Andy. ‘Because your father and your brother put the acid on me, OK? When you went running home to Mummy? They gave me a choice, mind.’