Walking with Ghosts

he beat you every night, or even every week. Only when you crossed him. Only when he realized that he had been wrong. The rest of the time you could love him. For a while, at least. A long while. Some years. Hoping all the time that he would change. That he would begin to see your world, as you strove to see his. Hoping that he would see the futility of the violence, that he would recognize that he could not hurt you, even if he killed you. And it was too many beatings later before you realized that you were not a wife at all. That you were a symbol. A hated symbol. That you had been replaced in his mind by some thing.
    You held your breath too long in those days. You should have raged. You had every right to rage, Dora, while Arthur was squeezing the life out of you. While he appropriated all the life forces that came into the family, all the forces of renewal and regeneration, and grew stout and red-necked. You should have gone underground, poisoned his food, sawed through the leg of his chair. It would have been worth it. He would have seen you then.
    But you were a traditional girl, like your mother before you. You believed that Arthur should come first, that he should get the best cut of the joint, that his ideas and aspirations were more informed, more valid. You believed in sacrifice, Dora. You were a mystic.
    There was a more or less hazy conviction that if you gave your life to him, he would, like God, give life back to you. But for Arthur there was no mysticism, only duty. And he was short on that. Arthur went through life explaining everything. He left a trail of destruction behind him.
    After Billy was born you decided to leave him. How long after Billy was born? A week, Dora? An hour? Perhaps it the moment of birth itself, the child being an image of release. Suddenly it was possible to throw everything off, to leave yourself vulnerable. Then it would be up to you. But it was not courage. It was desperation that drove you to leave. You had seen yourself in a mirror, seen your hopelessness the dark rings around your eyes, the pathetic smile. You could not afford to lose more weight. The midwife had shaken her head at your lies.
    If it had been courage, Dora, you would have left at once, but desperation kept you going for another five years. Five years in which Arthur grew larger, more dominant every day. Five years in which you furiously fuelled your hatred of him. Five years in which you grew bolder, more reckless, in which you listened and did not speak. It was during that time that your body coddled the seeds which now swim as eggs and discs beneath the skin. Without those five years you would still be healthy, Dora. You would still be young for Sam.
     

6
     
    Marie Dickens had drawn Edward Blake, the husband. She had not spoken to him on the telephone, but dealt with his secretary. The first story was that his appointment book was full for the next two weeks. But when, at Marie’s suggestion, the secretary had consulted her boss, it turned out that his itinerary was not as rigid as it had appeared. Marie’s appointment was fixed at three-thirty that same afternoon.
    She used the ladies room before going in to see him. A hair had appeared on her left cheek, and she plucked it and flushed it down the drain. Where did they come from? Facial hairs, Jesus. Didn’t they know she was a woman?
    He was a tall man, three or four inches over six feet, broad shoulders. His suit was silver-grey, tailored well to hide a paunch; conservative tie and shoes. He had a small but immaculate collection of chins. His hair, which was plentiful, was a couple of inches longer than you would expect. Vanity, thought Marie. And a sexual magnetism about him which he did nothing to disguise.
    His smile was disarming. It activated well over half a century of laugh lines, but in no way diverted one from the serious and deep-brown hue of his eyes. The man’s ace, however, was in the timbre of his voice. Marie had never quite worked out if that professional voice was a gift from God, or something that was developed. Many politicians had it, some broadcasters and actors, and the best doctors and salesmen. It was designed to put you at your ease, take you off guard, so that you could be severely shafted from the rear.
    Marie sat down.
    ‘I thought you might have brought me a cheque,’ he said. He could have smiled again, then. It was hard to tell.
    ‘Not part of my brief, I’m afraid, Mr Blake.’
    ‘But off the record, of