Walking with Ghosts

stone; and there was despair, a hollow screaming monarch of grief.
    Someone was leading neighbours out from houses on either side. The street was bustling with life, as if a circus had come to town.
    Sam knew it was a trick of light. The movement in the upper window. The head and the waving arms. A hand seemed to reach out and touch the sill, before drawing back from the heat and disappearing. Similarly, the distant voices above the howling of the fire. Ghosts. Nothing real.
    Suddenly the house was a fortress of flame.
    The siren of the fire engine or the ambulance, or both, came whining through the night.
    Marie had retrieved the first-aid box from the car, and she got Sam to slip his arm out of his jacket while she bound it tightly to stop the bleeding. The wound wasn’t as bad as it looked, but it was going to be sore for some time. While she was tying the final knot of the bandage Billy got up on his feet and walked back into the house. Sam chased after him, but the heat was too intense to follow. He tried winding his jacket around his head, but he still didn’t get close to the front door of the house before the material began smoking. He fell back into the road and looked up at the building.
    There was an aura just before the floor collapsed. The rage and despair of the blazing house ceased for a moment. Weight and time and motion were all suspended, and something akin to silence took over. The flames hid their fangs.
    Then everything fell inward and the rage and despair renewed their crackling fury. The ghost at the upper window remained in view for an instant, and was then sucked inside.
    The sirens grew louder and ambulance and fire engine both came into the street. The men in their uniforms jumped to the ground and began running back and forth with hoses and ladders and axes. Sam watched the paramedics from the ambulance tending to Charles Hopper.
    When Hopper had been loaded into the ambulance, Marie came over to Sam. A police car had entered the street behind the fire engine, and the two officers were questioning residents about the cause of the blaze.
    ‘Head them off for a while,’ Sam said to Marie. ‘I’m gonna get back to Dora. Give me an hour.’
    Marie half turned to look at the policemen. ‘You’ve got it,’ she said. ‘It was my fault, Sam. I should have left the bandaging till later.’
    He touched her arm. ‘It’s best like this. His job was done.’
     

41
     
    She returned after your operation, Dora. You did not recognize her. You opened your eyes and looked around for Sam, but there was only a strange girl. Diana, your daughter. Gradually you put the parts of her face together, and managed to speak.
    ‘Where’s your cowboy?’
    She smiled at you. ‘They’ve taken him away,’ she said. ‘He went crazy.’ He had developed an aversion to clothes. The police picked him up in a bar, stark naked, drinking stout. ‘I was fed up with him, anyway,’ Diana said. ‘He was a fake.’
    ‘Where’s Sam?’
    ‘Outside. I’ll tell him you’re awake.’ She walked to the door and then came back to the bed. ‘Sorry I didn’t come to the wedding, Dora. If I’d known you were marrying such a lovely guy...’
    Your life is spinning away from you now. The reality has been Sam and the last months. The rest was a bad dream: Arthur, your parents, the pear tree and the cement factory. You cannot remember if the parties and the drinking and the streams of young men happened or not. Perhaps they were all like Dylan Thomas, something that someone else remembered and projected on to you. But Sam, he was real, he is real, and you can hear his breath, feel his hand on the quilt. If you opened your eyes, Dora, you would be able to see him.
    Time stops now. It is no longer a linear experience. It is a spiral. You drift in it, dream-like. The images of the past are insubstantial, phantoms. When you rise to the surface, to the present moment there is Sam. Without him you are dead.
    He is dragging you back now. His voice is insistent in your ear. ‘Dora. Dora, wake up.’ His face is close to yours. You would not return from the spiral for anyone else. It takes all your strength to open your eyes.
    ‘Billy?’ You don’t hear your own voice, Dora. It is far away. Sam Turner, your man, your great detective has been out looking for Billy.
    ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I found him.’
    Sam has a black eye. You smile, remembering the time you had a black eye from Sam. Accidentally, when he couldn’t get