Walking with Ghosts

him.
     

7
     
    Sam’s footsteps on the stairs. He opens the door quietly, expecting you to be sleeping. You never sleep, though, only close your eyes. Barney raises his head. He keeps you company; sits upright, ears cocked like an ornament.
    Sam comes to the chair and takes your hand. What does he want, this strange young man? Well, young for you. What does he want with your thin and pale hand, your diseased and decaying body? Why does he care?
    ‘Penny for them,’ he says.
    You shrug your shoulders. You don’t need a penny.
    ‘A kiss, then,’ he says, bringing his face forward. You feel his lips on your nose, the aroma of digested coffee and peppermint toothpaste.
    You shake your head. He makes you feel like a girl, and you don’t like that. You are not a girl. You are a living corpse.
    He kisses your cheek. He is better looking than Dylan Thomas. There are no tickly bristles, no smell of figs, nothing moralistic or priest-like about him. He has no expectations. Is it possible? He leaves you free.
    His face is all smiles. His eyes are wide. He is playing a game. You push him away, not too roughly, telling him he must guess. Your voice croaks, and something moves in your throat. Something that should not be there. Something that is growing.
    The past,’ he says, going straight to the mark. He has found you out. He knows your mind. He would like to Protect you against the past, drag you out of it into the light of the present. But it is your life, Dora, you can’t leave it behind. Not even for Sam.
    ‘The children?’
    You shake your head.
    ‘Arthur?’
    ‘Yes.’ For a moment you feel as though you will weep. J tear comes to your eye and hovers behind the lid. But it dissolves there and slips back inside you.
    Sam squeezes your hand and places his head on your lap. He wants to reach back through the years for you, wishes he could pluck you out of the horror and hold you close to him in the here and now.
    You stroke his head. You run your white fingers through his hair. Your life is overshadowed by a pear tree, but grace has been sent to you, late and lovely.
    ‘Arthur’s dead,’ he says. ‘He’s dead and gone, Dora.’
    Dead? Arthur?
    What a cruel thing it was.
    Money was the problem. Money was the barrier. You could not leave, not with two children and no money.
    Money? Surely not? But it was a barrier then. You had to think of the children. If it had been now it would not have mattered. Now you would have taken the chance, starved if necessary.
    You earned a little. Private tuition, coaching the children of the rich. Arthur did not take it into account. You were supposed to use it on clothes for the children. You put half of it in a biscuit tin, high up in the larder behind the Kilner jars. Only mice moved up there.
    When enough pennies and twenty pence pieces and pounds had accumulated in the tin you changed them for five pound notes, ten pound notes, and eventually a twenty pound note. You remember the twenty pound note, you remember the first large, twenty pound note, bringing it home and standing on the chair in the larder to reach the tin. It crackled as you folded it neatly into four and hid it out of reach. The tin was as light as the dream it , represented.
    Was it you, Dora? Was it really you? The woman is tall and thin, already the fine skin around her eyes is beginning to crease. Her three-year-old daughter is playing in the garden, her baby son is sleeping in his cot, her husband out at work. The sun is in the living room, and the back of the house is in shadow. She stands in the doorway, moving from one foot to another. She rattles a few coins in the pocket of her apron, her head cocked to one side. She is listening. All her senses are alive.
    She takes a chair from the kitchen and stands it inside the larder door. In a moment she is on the chair and reaching up into the dark of the topmost shelf. She glances at the three ten pence pieces in the palm of her hand and drops them into the biscuit tin. A moment later she is back at the door, moving from foot to foot, her listening head cocked.
    That was the first time you put money in the tin which you had not earned yourself, Dora. Those three ten pence pieces were saved from the housekeeping money. You bought bones instead of meat. You were learning to survive.
    Dora Greenhills. Guilty.
    If anyone else had done it, Dora, you would have been the first to forgive them. But you could not forgive yourself. You were a thief. You were