The Ghost (18 page)

3rd July, 1976

Cook lay starfished, on his stomach, in swimming trunks, too close to the black-and-white TV. Esther's needles ticked and tapped as she – absurdly – worked through a pattern for a winter sweater. Rusty sprawled, panting, in a puddle of shadow near the kitchen step, as the midday sun blared in through the sitting-room sash window. Earlier, as he propped open the loose frame with two slender sterilised-milk bottles, Cook had suggested closing the curtain to keep the room cool.

“Shutting the curtains on a day like this?” said Esther. “People will think we're tapped!”

“But no-one can see in, nana! It's the back yard!”

“Makes no difference! You don't sit in the dark in the middle of July!”

The television spoke of ladybird plagues, heatstroke, failing crops. The temperature had been locked at around 32C since the end of June. Today – at 35C – was emerging as the annual high. A hirsute man in a heavily patterned jacket insisted there were “questions to be asked” over why the Met Office warning of a possible drought had been ignored. Water was rationed, communal bathing encouraged (in no more than five inches of bathwater). Grimy cars became a badge of upstanding citizenship, as detector vans with coathanger-like ‘pipe monitors' stalked the streets. Neighbourhood standpipes were installed, drawing clucking queues of pail-bearers. Toilets were to be flushed with dishwater, lawns left thirsty.

“It's like the bloody war, this!” said Esther, fanning herself with the knitting pattern.

For Cook, the heat was just a backdrop to the invasion of insects – eddying and fluttering through the dead air, crunching underfoot. Out on his bike, he had to be careful to keep his mouth closed, or risk an involuntary gulp of aphid or ladybird.

“Turn it over, Dor!”

Cook thumbed in the channel-change button.

“…known as ‘The Black Panther' has been continuing at Oxford Crown Court. Neilson faces four murder charges, as well as attempted murder, GBH, robbery, kidnap and firearms possession. He was apprehended after the kidnap and murder of heiress Lesley Whittle, who was held in a deep storage drain at Bathpool Park in Kidsgrove, before being…”

“Bloody hell. Get the telly off!”

“…maintains that Ms. Whittle's death was an accident and that she was not pushed off a ledge but died after…”

Esther dived forward and twisted the on/off dial. She set down her knitting and trudged off into the kitchen, tutting.

Cook unpeeled himself from the carpet. “Nana? What's ‘GBH'?”

The front-door letterbox clattered. Rusty, too hot to fuss, stayed in the shade, ears pricked, clunking his tail against the table-leg. At the door, Mountford (polo shirt, long trousers, sandals) sat on the step, lapping at an ice-lolly. He looked up over his shoulder as Cook appeared.

“Hey, Dor. Get your bike!”

Brereton (T-shirt, testicle-crushing shorts, socks, sandals) hovered by the kerb, astride his bicycle. “Yeah. Come on! Let's go! Unless your mum says you've got to stay in again!”

“Shut up, David,” said Mountford.

“It wasn't my mum!” said Cook, pulling on a T-shirt.

Esther appeared with a pair of suitably inappropriate trousers. “And don't forget your shoes, Dor!”

Brereton sniggered and took a swig from a bottle of strawberry-flavoured fizzy pop.

“It's okay, Mrs. Cook,” said Mountford. “We're just going to call for someone.”

Esther was already halfway back into the sitting-room. “Alright. Keep away from you-know-where!”

“We will!” called Brereton, smiling.

*

‘You-Know-Where', as they all knew, was a concept open to interpretation. Given recent events, Esther was most likely referring to Tesco, but she could have had several other places in mind: the school playground, accessible through a widely known but unrepaired split in the wire mesh at the corner of the car-park; the Lyons Maid factory, where Cook and friends were regularly gifted ‘reject' tubs of buttery ice-cream by an ex-Bethesda pupil; and – their first planned stop-off today – the clay-extraction zone known as the marl-hole.

The three boys cycled side by side, in ragged formation. Brereton and Mountford dawdled, oppressed by the heat, while Cook took point, forging forward, tipsy with excitement. They freewheeled down an undulating tarmac slope, onto the upscale estate, down the side of the tightly shorn lawn, and into the back-garden of the blue-painted house, where they laid their bikes flat on the decking. John Ray opened the door before they'd had a chance to knock. He was, as ever, overdressed – in long-sleeve burgundy cardigan and heavy corduroy trousers.

“C'mon, John,” said Brereton. “We're going to the marl-hole! You can join our gang!”

“It's too hot.” Ray ran a palm across his matted white hair, sweeping it away from a flushed forehead. “I need my cream.”

“Put some on, then!” said Cook, leaking more irritation than he'd intended.

“And it's way too bright. It's dangerous for me when it's bright.”

“Have you got any sunglasses?” said Mountford, a little bored.

“My mum has. They're in the drawing-room.”

Drawing-room!

“Put them on, then!” (Cook again – calmer, brighter.)

“I'm not supposed to go out. Darren is at work and my mum and dad…”

“Come on, John!” said Brereton. “You've got to come with us if you want to be in our gang. Find the sunglasses. Get your bike out!”

Ray turned, stalled a little, and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the back door open.

“It's hot out here!” called Brereton. “Have you got any Jungle Juice?”

Cook and Brereton screeched with laughter. Mountford smiled and tinkered with his bike-chain, before wiping oily fingers on Cook's sleeve.

“Oi!!” Cook was on him – wrestling, grunting, reaching for his own chain-ring, planning to smear oil into Mountford's hair.

John Ray's reappearance stopped and stunned them all. His hair and cheeks were covered by a silk head-scarf knotted under the chin; his skin was shiny with liberally basted sun-cream, eyes concealed behind a pair of vast, circle-framed sunglasses. He looked like a scaled-down parody of his mother – the woman Cook had glimpsed at the church on Christmas Eve. Ray dawdled in the doorway, suspended in multi-state reality – on the threshold, between in and out, light and dark; neither young nor old, male nor female, dead nor alive. He was crepuscular – creature of shade, enemy of light. He needed to be concealed and protected. He shouldn't be out at this hour, not at any hour. He wasn't built to be out at all. He was an outsider, caught in the unblinking glare of the outside world – easy prey for the blinders and brutalisers. His flesh wasn't willing and his spirit was weak. The bullies called him ‘The Ghost' – because of his skin, his hair, his spectral pallor. But it was also because they were scared of him – more scared of him than he was of them. And that was his tragedy – he didn't know it. He didn't yet know that fear was more powerful than love.

“Excuse me, Mrs Ray,” said Brereton, laughing. “Can John come out to play?”

*

To the marl-hole, and its petrified mud-flats, cracked barrels of chemical waste, patches of fibreglass insulation (‘itching powder'), powered-down (but not off) industrial vehicles, jutting nails and lurking hooks. In this heat, it was a lunar wasteland – the earth blistering beneath wilting weeds. Cook, Brereton and John Ray tore wooden sticks from a splintered selection of planks near the central work-hut, while Mountford uprooted a metre-long iron pole from a prehistoric gateway which led through to the oil-works. They prised the lid from a small barrel near the hut and disovered scrapings of tar, liquefied by the weather. The three with wooden sticks dunked them into the barrel, with a vague plan of constructing flaming torches. Brereton took out his matches and tried to ignite the gloopy tips, but they wouldn't catch. So they swished and whipped the sticks through the air, flicking the tar at each other – into hair, onto cheeks, over ears, somehow avoiding eyes. Ray took a splash across his sunglasses and Mountford called a halt.

They ate meat pasties, drank cans of Tizer and cycled to the old butcher's shop, propping their bikes in the side-entry. Mountford held the gate open as they wriggled through to the yard.

“Is this the den?” said Ray, as they filed in through the door-flap.

“Yeah!” said Cook. “We've got a game you have to do before you can be in the gang.”

They scrambled through to the main room. Sunlight seeped through the tainted walls and windows, tinting the squalor in honeyed yellow. Cook pointed to the staircase leading up to the first-floor window.

“We'll all go outside and wait by the window. You have to go up the stairs and wave to us. Then we know you're brave enough to be in the gang.”

“But you can't start until we're all outside or it doesn't count!” warned Brereton.

John Ray took off his head-scarf and sunglasses. He studied the room, looking back to the entrance, forward to the staircase, up and around at the first-floor window. He cringed at the drifts of plaster and rotting rafters.

“Okay!” he said.

Brereton, Cook and Mountford back-tracked, out into the yard – still with its undisturbed wheelbarrow, cement bags and scaffold tubes.

“Go and stand outside,” said Brereton. “I'll scare him when he comes out!”

Cook and Mountford squirmed through the gate, back out into the street, sniggering. They stood on the corner, directly beneath the first-floor window.

“Ready!” shouted Mountford.

No answer.

They listened, expecting the sounds of scurrying, running, swearing. Then, Cook heard Ray's footsteps, heavy on the brittle stairs, thunking their way to the top.

“Hello there!”

Cook and Mountford spluttered with laughter at the formality. They looked up and saw Ray, pale face at the window, hands waving.

“Okay, John!” shouted Mountford. “Now you have to come back out.”

Again, the thunking – this time coming down. Then more nothing.

Then Brereton.

“Wooooooaaaargh!”

Then John Ray, wailing and squealing.

Brereton emerged through the gate-gap first, holding it open for Ray, who stumbled forward onto the scalding pavement, sobbing and re-concealing himself behind scarf and sunglasses.

Brereton and Cook were breathless with laughter, but Mountford stooped down in consolation. “Are you okay?”

Ray squatted against the yard wall, sniffing and whimpering. He shook his head, pulled out his blue-and-white handkerchief, mopped his eyes, blew his nose. He quivered and snuffled, chin firmly on chest, hands on head, fingers ruffling the head-scarf.

“Sorry, John,” said Cook. “We didn't think it would frighten you like that.”

John Ray slowly raised his head. “Am I in the gang now?”

Later, they all sat flat against the entry wall, in the cooling afternoon shade, eating ‘99' ice-cream cones. Ray had recovered, even brightened.

“My dad told me about Tesco.”

Cook glanced at Mountford. “Yeah?”

“Yes. He says your details were taken and their new computer system will remember you if you do it again.”

“He's not supposed to talk about it,” said Mountford.

“I know,” said Ray. “But he always does.”

“Talk about what?” demanded Brereton.

“We got caught nicking.” Cook expected mockery, but Brereton kept silent, extracting the chocolate Flake from his ice-cream and gnawing at the edges.

“Why didn't you tell me about it?”

Mountford laughed. “Why? Are you sorry you didn't get caught with us?”

Brereton shrugged, screwing the Flake back into its hole. “Wouldn't have got caught if I'd been there.”

“That's impossible!” insisted Ray. “They have people dressed like shoppers who watch everyone – and there's cameras, too. They film the whole shop so they can check up on every minute.”

“Let's go back inside,” said Cook. “Now you're in the gang, you can see the den.”

“Yeah,” said Brereton. “We were only messing about. Promise we won't scare you again.”

The boys finished their ice-creams and squeezed in through the gate. As they opened the flap at the back-door, Ray had to crouch to avoid a strip of sunlight. Cook saw him squint and cower, noting his keenness to follow Brereton and Mountford back into the dark. At the staircase leading to the cellar, Mountford flicked on a small pocket torch. He shuffled down the steps, casting an anaemic glimmer, stalked by shadows. Cook followed, then John Ray, then Brereton. They stooped, in single file, through the lower passage and out into the trapdoor room where the blackness leered – loud and untameable, beyond the reach of any residual light.

“SHHH!” hissed Brereton.

They all froze.

“Listen…”

Brereton held the tension for a few seconds, before launching a long and fulsome fart.

No-one laughed – apart from Brereton. “Fuck off, David!” said Mountford. “Tell John about the rules.”

They squatted down in conference – a circle of four.

“This is where the gang hangs out, John,” whispered Brereton. “We keep all our stuff down here and have secret meetings.”

“The things you steal?”

Cook caught a look from Mountford.

“Yeah,” said Cook. “Stuff we bring from home, too.”

“You are in the gang now,” said Brereton. “But we still have to do a swearing-in ceremony.”

“Yeah,” said Mountford. “And then you'll be in our gang forever and nothing will happen to you. We all have to protect you. And you have to protect us.”

Ray laughed at this – a cynical tremor from an older, wiser soul. The sound sent Cook's mind tumbling forward, through the years ahead, extrapolating the adult from the child. He saw the future John Ray as a man-sized boy – scaled but not grown. Internally, he would mutate, but on the outside remain, without blemish or blossom – a freeze-framed caricature, suspended in agony. He was more specimen than human – something to be preserved, kept safe, turned to stone. But he was not a display piece. His strangeness would be forever undimmed – there was no need for it to be illuminated.