Spirit (27 page)

‘What about Seamus?'

‘Seamus is different. Seamus is . . . well, his whole life is a fairy story. The Snow Queen is probably more real to him than you are.'

‘Maybe he's right. Maybe she is more real than me. Sometimes it feels that way.'

They reached the Gaylordsville Clinic and Lenny drew into the parking-lot. The clinic was a drab rectangular building set back in the woods that overlooked the Housatonic River. The grounds were deserted, and all Elizabeth could hear as she climbed out of Lenny's car was the chipsping of birds, the stirring of leaves in the mid-morning breeze, and the low conspiratorial chuckling of the river.

The swing doors gave a hollow clonk. Inside, the clinic was plain and functional, with green-painted walls and maroon hessian carpets and framed posters of local beauty spots. Lenny took off his coat and said, ‘I'll wait here for you. Take
your time.' He sat down in the reception area, picked up a copy
of Life
magazine and took out his cigarettes.

Elizabeth walked along the first-floor corridor to the rear of the building. She had visited her mother frequently enough to know where she could usually find her. She was sitting by herself in the dim, glazed conservatory, a thin haunted figure in a bronze Lloyd Loom chair. Her bony shoulders were covered by a grey woollen shawl; and her face was grey; and so was her dress. She didn't look up as Elizabeth approached her. She didn't look up when Elizabeth took hold of her hand, and kissed the top of her head.

‘Mommy? It's Elizabeth.'

She dragged another chair across the tiled floor, and sat down close to her. She tried to smile as brightly as she could, and said, ‘Mommy? Look, it's Elizabeth! I've come to see you! I've brought you some of those maple candies you like!'

Her mother stared at her oddly. She was still the same mommy to look at – still pretty in her faded, off-balanced way. But while her leucotomy had relieved her clinical depression, it had taken some vital ingredient out of her personality, something that had always made her
her
. Elizabeth always felt as if she were talking to a carefully coached stand-in, rather than her real mommy.

‘Lenny brought me over,' she said, with a smile. ‘You remember Lenny Miller? He was married during the war but now he's divorced.'

‘War?' asked her mommy. ‘Is there another war?'

‘No, no, mommy. Same old war. It's been over since 1945.'

‘It's only 1943 now.'

‘It's 1951.'

Elizabeth's mommy smiled at her archly, and then laughed. ‘You always were a dreamer, weren't you, Lizzie? Always making up your stories! 1951! What will you think of next?'

Elizabeth laid a hand on her mommy's knee. ‘How are you, mommy? Are they feeding you well? Are you happy?'

Margaret Buchanan nodded. ‘I'm fine, sweetheart. True as blue, right as rain. You don't have to worry about me.'

‘Naturally I worry about you. I'd come up to see you more often if I wasn't so busy in New York.'

Her mommy flapped one hand dismissively. Oh, you don't want to worry about that. Peggy comes to see me every day.'

Elizabeth felt a chilly crawling sensation down her back. ‘
Peggy
comes to see you?'

Of course she does, every single day. She's such a sweet child, you know. So thoughtful. So eager to please.'

‘When did you see her last?'

‘She came yesterday, just after we'd finished lunch. She was talking about you. She said you ought to be careful, you ought to take more care of yourself.'

‘You really saw her?'

‘Do you think I'm as crazy as the rest of the people they have in here? Goodness me, Lizzie. She sat right where you're sitting now; she brought me hyacinths.'

‘Hyacinths? At this time of the year?'

Her mommy looked confused for a moment. She tugged up the sleeve of her dress and started to scratch furiously at her elbow, which was already red-raw with eczema. ‘I was sure I
smelled
hyacinths.'

Sitting with her mother in that dim conservatory, listening to the echoes of the clinic, the squeaking of trolley wheels, the coughing, the crying, Elizabeth suddenly remembered what the hyacinths in the garden had said to Gerda in
The Snow Queen
. They had told her the story of the three sisters who disappeared into the woods, and reappeared on biers, floating on the lake, with glow worms reflected in the water. ‘Sleep the dancing maidens, or are they dead?'

She also remembered what the answer to the question was.
‘The odour from the flowers tells us they are corpses, the evening bells peal out their dirge.'

She looked up. A young dark-haired man was watching her from the far side of the conservatory. He met her gaze for a moment, then turned away.

One of the nurses brought them tea. Elizabeth's mommy talked about New York. She was convinced that Cafe Society was still in full swing, and asked Elizabeth about La Hiff's Tavern and the Colony Restaurant, and who was dancing too close to whom on the postage-stamp floor at El Morocco. It was all still real to her, as if the past fifteen years had never happened: the days of Eisa Maxwell's society parties, where Beatrice Lillie jostled with Averell Harriman and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney; where Noël Coward danced with Princess Natalie Paley. Gone now, those days of champagne and tiaras and society column photographs by Marty Black, but still alive in Margaret Buchanan's mind, and keeping her entertained. She was still capable of talking about the house, however, and Laura's career, and she seemed to be aware that Elizabeth's father was paralysed, although she wouldn't mention it directly. Her hypothalamus had been disconnected from her frontal cortex; she was always happy.

Elizabeth smiled and nodded and didn't drink her tea. She thought to herself: is it tragic, to be so happy? Perhaps it is.

A shrill bell rang for lunch and Elizabeth stood up to leave. Her mommy reached out and held her hand, quite tightly. ‘Shall I tell little Clothes-Peg that you were here?'

‘What?'

‘The next time she comes, shall I tell her?'

Elizabeth felt her lungs constricting, as if she were going to suffocate. Panic attack, she thought to herself, stop it. She had seen the Peggy-girl herself, so she must have some reality. What made her feel so frightened was that others had seen her,
too, and with each sighting the Peggy-girl took on even more reality, until –

Until the black shape in the snow took on reality, too. The beast, the black-hooded woman
. And the thought of that filled her with such terrible fear that she started to shake and tried to tug herself away.

‘Lizzie – what's wrong?' asked her mommy.

‘I'm tired, that's all, I'm sorry. I haven't been sleeping very well. I feel, I don't know,
jagged.
'

‘You need a gentleman friend, that's what you need. You need somebody to take you out; somebody to hoof with. You should try the Kit Kat.'

‘Mommy, it's lunchtime. I have to go. Lenny's waiting for me.'

‘Lenny? Lenny Titze? Theodore Titze's brother?'

‘Lenny Miller, mommy. You remember Lenny Miller. His family live on Putnam Street.'

‘Lenny Miller . . .' her mommy mused.

She walked back along the corridor towards the reception area. As she did so, the dark-haired man stepped out of a side-corridor and confronted her. He was broadly built, good-looking in an inexplicably dated way, like a man from a 1920s magazine cover, with slicked-back hair and a casual cotton polo-neck, six o'clock shadow and a smile.

‘I saw you talking to your mother,' he said. Warmly, but slightly sly.

Elizabeth stopped, and said, ‘Yes?'

‘I saw your sister talking to your mother, too.'

‘My sister?'

‘You do have a sister, don't you?'

‘Yes, but she lives in California.'

‘I'm talking about a
little
sister. Ten or eleven maybe, always dressed in white?'

Elizabeth stared at him in dread. ‘You've seen her too?'

He nodded. ‘She comes here almost every day. She comes in, she talks to your mother, she walks away. She's
pretty:

Urgently, Elizabeth said, ‘I have to go. I have a friend waiting for me.'

‘You don't understand.'

‘I'm sorry. I think I do understand. But I have to go. Really. I'm late as it is.'

Without taking his hands out of his pockets, the man took a neat step sideways, blocking her off, his loafers scuffing on the carpet. ‘Please, wait. You shouldn't do anything rash. Your sister is something different, like me, which is why I ended up here, because I didn't have anywhere else to go. At least I have the company of humans here, even if most of them are mad.'

Elizabeth took two or three deep breaths. ‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘I've enjoyed talking to you, but I really have to go.'

The man said, ‘I'm trying to tell you something, but I'm not making a very good job of it. I'm trying to tell you that your sister is alive, in the same way that I'm alive. I'm not what I seem to be; I'm not really me. I'm what I thought I was. For God's sake, writers make worlds and stir up people's imaginations and then they want them to forget about it? How can you forget about it? George Gershwin wrote music and we were all carried away and then what? Forget it? Forget you ever heard it? Forget it ever excited you?'

Elizabeth stood stock still and frightened. She wanted to hear what the man had to say; but on the other hand she didn't. It was creeping too close to reality; it was closing the gap between what was unthinkable and what was totally terrifying.

The man said, ‘I used to believe in the green light, you know? I used to believe in that orgiastic future that year by year recedes ahead of us. We didn't get there today, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we'll run faster, stretch out our arms further . . . And one fine morning – and that's the way we beat on, boats against the current.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Elizabeth. ‘Will you let me pass?'

‘We all have to pass in the end,' smiled the man. ‘These days, though, it looks like most people pass alone. When I was younger, it was different. If a friend died, no matter how, I stuck with them to the finish.'

‘I wasn't talking about dying,' said Elizabeth.

‘Hmh. Nobody ever is.'

Elizabeth waited patiently for him to move out of the way. After a few moments, he did. ‘I'm Jay,' he told her, as she passed him by. ‘I'm Dave. That's all I have to say. I'm really Jay.' He said it with such earnestness, as if she should have recognized him, or at least pretended to recognize him.

He lifted his hands in mock-surrender. ‘There may be hundreds of Jays. Look in any bar. Look in any motel. Trashed, out-of-date, turning up at the same old parties, over and over and over. There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. We share this world, Elizabeth, with everything we've ever imagined. I mean, let me ask you something: what makes us different from the animals?'

Elizabeth blanched; and shivered.

‘Are you trying to say that you're dead?' she wanted to know. There was no other way of asking him.

He stared at her and his eyes glittered. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think that it takes a dead person to know one.'

Without a word she walked on towards the reception area. She didn't turn around, although she was conscious that the dark-haired man was watching her. Lenny was still sitting crosslegged on one of the chairs smoking, and reading an article about Korea.

Lenny looked up. ‘Hey, is everything okay? You look like you've seen a ghost!'

‘Please, Lenny,' she said, taking hold of his arm. ‘Please take me home.'

She went up to see her father first. In the grey afternoon light he was looking sickly-yellow, even his eyes were yellowish.

Nurse Edna said, ‘I'm worried about his kidneys. I may have to call in the doctor again.'

‘Is it serious, do you think?'

‘I don't know. His heart's still pumping and his lungs are clear, but if his kidneys fail – '

Elizabeth stood close beside him with her hand over her face because she could smell death.

‘Father? How are you feeling? Tell me you're feeling better.'

No response.

‘I saw mommy this afternoon. She's not too bad.'

No response.

‘She's not too bad, but she's seen Peggy too.'

Yes
. And,
Yes
.

‘There's something else. I met a man at the clinic. He talked to me.'

No response.

‘He said he'd seen the Peggy-girl, visiting mommy. Do you want to know what he looked like?'
Yes
.

‘He had dark hair, combed straight back. Good-looking but very louche. He said his name was Jay.' No response.

‘You want me to say the alphabet?'

Yes
. W, H, A, T, E, L, S, E, D, I, D, H, E, S, A –

‘I don't know. He talked in riddles. But he said he saw Peggy talking to mommy, and he said that he was the same as she was. I asked him if he were dead, too, I don't know why. He was talking to me, how could he be dead?'

A, N, Y, T, H, I, N, G, E, L, S, E

‘He said that he was always trying to reach the future. If you didn't reach the future today, you could reach it tomorrow, so
long as you ran faster and stretched out your arms farther. He said that we're boats against the tide.'

H, E, W, A, S, D, E, A, D.

‘You really think so?'

Yes
. Then
Yes
. Then
Yes
again.

He closed his eyes, and although Elizabeth waited and waited, he didn't open them again. He must be exhausted. Elizabeth stayed beside him for a while, and then kissed him and stood up. Outside in the garden, under the tarnished tureen-lid of the sky, the Peggy-girl was standing beside the tennis court, looking up at her. Elizabeth made no attempt to go closer to the window, and after a while the Peggy-girl glided away into the bracken.