The Ghost (15 page)

December, 1975

Every Christmas Eve, Cook was routinely woken at 11.30pm by Lily and Esther for a bleary force-march to the Catholic Church near Bethesda School. He trailed along, numb-limbed and heavy-lidded, behind his mother and grandmother as they pitched and listed, slurred and cackled, laden with port and lemon. Today, they were joined by Tom and Uncle Russell, both generously refreshed with the brackish bitter they had once insisted Cook sample – to his disgust and their delight. As they approached the steep incline at the top of the oil-works road, there was a synchronised stumble-and-stop, as all four adults seemed to simultaneously doubt their ability to tackle the challenge. They milled and fretted like refusing horses until Cook, laughing, shouldered into the back of Russell, who lurched forward, delivering a shove to Tom which sent him wheeling into front-runners Esther and Lily – and momentum was restored.

The church was deep and tall and splendid: kaleidoscopic stained-glass windows; looming walls lined with solemn effigies clutching emblem shields; a colossal, vaulted apse with rim of hand-woven tapestry. Despite his sleepless delirium, Cook was always jolted by the supernatural contrast as he slipped away from the scruffy streets, inhaled by the sighing organ. He could faintly remember the subject of the tapestry from a school trip to the church (Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven?) and knew a little of communion and confession, but he had no real understanding of the human context. It was all just a soothing escape – a temporary drift.

“Dor-Dor!”

As Cook shuffled into a pew, he felt sticky hands tug at his jumper. In the row behind, Rebecca Goldstraw squirmed on her mother's lap, arms outstretched and flailing, reaching for Cook, trying to hurdle the wooden seat-back and fling herself into his care. Lisa sat beside her mother, hair parted and woven into two shoulder-length pigtails. Her light-brown eyes were cloudy with fatigue, but she offered Cook a wide, sincere smile and, as usual, his stomach flipped.

“C'mere then, young lady!”

Uncle Russell hooked his hands into Rebecca's armpits and raised her up and over into the small space at the end of Cook's bench. She immediately set about scaling Russell's knees in a renewed effort to get to Cook, but Lisa diverted her with a chocolate bar, posted through a carved slot in the back of the seat. Cook watched as Rebecca investigated the lurid pink chocolate, nibbling suspiciously at the edge. He saw that the scar on her chin had now become a feature – an embossed blemish which underlined the base of her face.

The congregation rose and, prompted by the organist's impatient stabbing at a pair of opening chords, mumbled its way into song. Cook normally mouthed and mimed his way through, eyes on the floor. But this time he knew the words, having practiced the hymn at school assembly for the past few weeks.

As the song ended, and the organ reverb receded to deferential silence, Cook heard a familiar sniffing and snuffling. He looked across the aisle and saw John Ray, with father Frank, brother Darren and – half out of Cook's eyeline – a small, pale woman in a thick fur hat. Frank and Darren stared ahead, stern and savage, while John flicked and dabbed at his nose with the blue-and-white handkerchief. Cook was suddenly light-headed with a loathing that seemed to have no source or anchor but which enclosed the whole family – sickly classmate, hateful brother, brutal father, mousey mother. John pocketed the handkerchief and turned his head, catching Cook's eye. He offered a dutiful smile of recognition, his bleached features an eerie beacon in the unsteady candlelight. Cook pretended not to notice and shifted his gaze to the altar and the priest's halting eulogy.

After the service, the tipsy worshippers hobbled away to reconvene outside, on a raised porch by the front doors. Tom was the first to light up, dragging deeply on an unfiltered cigarette and respectfully expelling the smoke away from the church, high into the frosty air. (Lily flapped at it, coughing theatrically.) There were hair-ruffles and cheek-pinches, overlong bear-hugs and hardly necessary Merry Christmases. As he searched for Lisa, Cook was startled by an eruption of bellowing, libidinous laughter from Tom and Phil – the man who, it seemed, had signed off on the reject-smashing session at the pot-bank. The shock rattled Cook's bones and made him crave his bed and his hot water bottle. He wandered away from the group, around the side of the building.

Rebecca Goldstraw was crouched over a small puddle near the church's side entrance. She had removed her shoe – a pink, buckled sandal – and was repeatedly filling it with water, emptying it back into the puddle, and refilling it again. Cook walked towards her, away from the huddle and hustle of the porch. He was surprised and calmed by how quickly the adult world faded – how it slid backward as he moved forward, through the untended scrubland at the fringes of the church grounds, into the early-morning dark.

As he approached Rebecca, she looked up and, overcome by excitement, raised the shoe above her head and slammed it into the surface of the puddle, splattering her grinning face with muddy water.

Cook chuckled. “Oh no! What a mess!”

“Dory!” squealed Rebecca.

Cook flinched, but was grateful at least for the progression from ‘Dor-Dor'.

“Look!”

Rebecca lunged for Cook's hand and yanked him away from the puddle. She pointed at a tangle of bramble near the entrance to a small graveyard.

“Comic!”

Cook knelt down, in the gloom, on the frosted grass, and reached into the weed-patch carefully, wary of thorns. He pulled out a flash of colour – a torn-away section of a magazine. It was faded and dew-matted, with creases worn into perforated edges. There was a front cover – mostly legible – with a few relatively unsoiled front-section pages. The cover image featured a young woman, shot from the side, wearing white underwear, stockings and suspender belt. She was topless, with her right breast exposed, nipple strategically obscured by the elbow of her right arm. Her head was turned – painted eyes glaring into camera, shoulder-length brown hair blow-dried and centre-parted. In her right-hand, she balanced a hand-held microphone, grille close to her open mouth. A cover-flash announced:

As Cook's eyes adjusted, he could make out a calligraphic logo, top-right
(‘The Journal Of Love')
and a rack of wordy cover-lines which traced the ‘S' shape of the woman's shoulders and back.

Cook ruffled through the pages, browsing the tableaux of bodies – scrawny, dumpy, sweaty, always hairy. He gaped at their shaggy plumage – the furry chests and frizzy chins, the flourishing pubic afros. Faces leered and grimaced, as if in alarm or pain. Tongues extended, probing at overlit flesh. Unclipped nails clawed into cellulite.

“Becky?” Lisa's voice, calling her sister.

“Rebecca!”
Mrs Goldstraw, more urgent.

Cook buried the magazine deep inside the bramble, but the density of the weeds made it difficult to obscure.

“Dory!” said Rebecca. “Funny lady!”

Adults were arriving – Tom, Phil, Mrs Goldstraw. Even Esther had made the effort, accompanied by Uncle Russell. Rebecca was scooped into her mother's arms.

“How many times have I told you? Stay close to me!”

Mrs Goldstraw was half-sobbing with fury and relief. She turned to Cook. “What do you think you're doing? Bringing her down here? She's only three!”

“He's
only nine!” bellowed Uncle Russell, loud enough to make Mrs Goldstraw cringe.

“Russell!” (Esther).

“I didn't bring her here!” said Cook. “I found her!”

Lily appeared. “Dorian? What's going on?”

“Comic!”

Rebecca writhed in her mother's arms, pointing down at the weeds. Russell stamped at the brittle stems, beating out an opening. As he reached in and retrieved the magazine, Rebecca reached out – to
The Journal Of Love
– with both arms. Russell lifted it out of her range, and Mrs Goldstraw snatched it up. She briefly noted the content and jerked away her hands, as if the magazine had suddenly burst into flames. It sploshed into the puddle next to Rebecca's shoe.

“Dorian, where did you get that from?” Mrs Goldstraw's tone remained indignant, but with a softer, enquiring edge.

More adults gathered – murmuring, clucking, tutting, their alcoholic breath swirling.

“I found it!”

“Where?” (Lily).

“In there! Well – Rebecca found it and showed me.”

Mrs Goldstraw scoffed loudly at this.

“He's nine years old!” (Lily again).

Cook looked up and searched the spectators' faces, looking for Tom – but he was disappointed to see his dad leaning in to Phil's ear, whispering something that sparked a snigger.

“Well then, he should certainly know better than this!”

“Than what?”

“Than showing dirty books to a young child!”

Barely suppressed laughter from Tom and Phil.

“It's just as well,” announced Mrs Goldstraw to the crowd, “that we're moving away from here!”

Cook stumbled forward and snatched the magazine out of her hand.

“Dorian!”
Uncle Russell made a grab for the pages, but Cook was too quick.

“Alright, then. Look!”

Cook kicked at the grass by the bramble. He dug in the heel of his shoe, scraped a small pit in the soil and drove the magazine into the hole, mashing it down as deep as it would go. Uncle Russell reached down to pull it back out, but recoiled as Cook frantically smothered the paper with a scattering of large stones.

“See! Look! It's not mine! It's gone, it's gone! I got rid of it!!!”

IN HIS LAST WEEK
at
Widescreen
, Cook had expected his impending absence to be conspicuous. But, apart from the odd email expressing – with questionable sincerity – how much of a privilege it had been to work with him, there seemed to be little pre-emptive melancholy from either direct colleagues or wider work associates. He was presented with a
Modern Toss
leaving card – a scrawled homunculus shouting into a telephone mouthpiece, with a speech-bubble exclaiming, ‘I can't come in to work today, so fuck off!' It had been signed by all the staff, apart from publisher Laura who, perhaps strategically, was away ‘on a course'. Most signatures were accompanied with sly little tessellations – doodles, emoticons, kisses, slashed dividers. It was a florid but duty-bound display and Cook looked forward to abandoning the card to a litter-bin once he'd anointed his exit at the bar opposite the office.

It was hardly a conscientious demob. He dawdled through a nominal to-do list and tinkered with an over-detailed handover document, to be passed on to freelancer Nigel Smith, who would cover while the magazine found a permanent replacement. Smith, ever the predator, had scented Cook's lameness well before his
Talking Pictures
appearance, and had been openly circling since the tetchy editorial meeting. Now, on a salary hike after dropping his retainer to
Movie
, he swooped.

Writing came – small reviews, a think piece on the futility of certification in the digital age, a pithy side-bar on Bergman. But the words oozed out, overbaked and redundant, to be shuffled into boilerplate sentences. He was fading – from view, from thought, from connection. Even the technology was tired of him. When his security pass began to insist on multiple swipes, the IT guy questioned the need for anything more than a temporary replacement, and Cook concurred with minimal protest. (Meekness, he felt, was an attitude he would be wise to embrace.) He sensed a collective holding of breath – an impatience for his influence to drift into history. He had become the guest who would have to leave before the party could relax.

At the pub, his backpack bulging with sentimental stationery and gifted hardbacks, Cook chaired a stilted conference with a modest pack of colleagues and industry allies.
Widescreen
art director Warren Plant demolished several bottles of artisan ale and, to Cook's relief, hijacked the farewell banter with a frank assessment of his current girlfriend's sexual appetite.

“She says she's ‘OCD',” slurred Plant, his fermented rasp barely an inch from Cook's ear. “And I tell you, Dorian, she is fucking
thorough!”

Cook pushed out a guffaw, but sex was now lost on him and he was lost to it. The penis-enlargement email had recently ended, in a near overnight shutdown. He had found solace in its absurdity – the offers of swollen girth and surging volume had become more than just commentary on his insecurities. But as the backbeat of his dread quickened from pulse to patter, the sudden silence carried a ghastly implication – his untouchability was now so comprehensive, he was being spurned by spam-bots.

Most of the attendees drifted away, leaving only back-slaps and cliches. (“You'll be able to enjoy films more now you don't have to write about them!”)

Last to leave – oddly – was Henry Gray.

“Anyone would think you're the one who's moving on, Henry,” said Cook, as his Ed-in-Chief lolled over an empty glass, childishly twanging his bottom-lip against the rim.

“You're not ‘moving on', Dorian,” said Gray, lifting his head. “You're escaping. Ends as new beginnings – that's all bollocks.”

Cook winced away the dregs of his pint. “Are you still excited about film, Henry? Or is it just a job?”

“I
love
films,” said Gray, a little defensive. “Good guy kills the bad guy, saves the girl. But I can't stand ‘film'. Too much fucking reality.”

“And perspective?” said Cook, grinning at the
Spinal Tap
reference, which was lost on Gray who, keen to underline the profundity of his sign-off words, was already rising to leave.

Then, a handshake – too firm and lingering – and, echoing the rehearsed consolation of Cook's GP, that shoulder double-tap.

Cook stayed for another, wallowing in the solitude of a dark and unpopular corner near the toilet door. He pulled a freesheet from a wall-rack and flattened the front page across his table. Towards the end of the front section, slotted into a page-deep side-column, he found what he feared.

ELLIE: POLICE PRESSED ON ENQUIRY

Cook gulped at his drink. There was nothing insignificant about this for him. He stared at the police-issue picture of a young-looking, near-forty woman leaning self-consciously against a door-frame, smiling but sad-eyed, long brown hair stacked over one shoulder. Their correspondence had never evolved into a meeting, but there was something familiar about her expression – a hint of accusation, a knowing glow of sympathy. For a second, he was carried away and gently settled alongside her, in fragile limbo, hovering out of reach, neither dead nor alive. Like Cook, Eleanor had slowly degraded – from earthly constant to apparition of thought. He hoped there was still life inside him – and her, despite Detective Chief Inspector John Barrett and his unsuccessful enquiries.

Cook's phone convulsed against the wooden table-top. A placeholder image of a silhouetted head-and-shoulders appeared on the screen, below the words ‘Dennis Mountford'. Anxiety stampeded over him. As the phone ground out its silent alarm, Cook gathered his coat and backpack and squirmed through a cluster of baying broker types. Outside, he tapped the answer icon and cautiously lifted the phone to his ear. There was a voice – Dennis Mountford's voice, spluttering, half-sobbing against the background drone of traffic.

“Dorian! Dor! Is that you? Someone's been to Jake's school! They were talking to Jake and his friends and one of the older kids said something and he left.”

“A man?”

“What? Yes! A man!”

“Did the kids say what he looked like?”

“No! I don't know. I'm rushing back home. I was at a job with no signal. I'll find out.”

“What did he want?”

“He was asking Jake about me. Said he knows me.”

“It's probably nothing.”

“
It is not fucking ‘nothing', Dorian!”