Walking with Ghosts

letter in a dream. He sends it from London, where he practised to become a bouncer, or Bradford where he lived in an Asian community. The land of the purdah. The land he ran to in an unconscious flight from the image of his mother. The land from which he will never return, except, possibly, for your funeral.
    ‘No, he didn’t say much,’ Diana tells you. ‘He’s not in Bradford any more, I can’t remember where he is. Closer to home.’ She shrugs her shoulders. ‘D’you remember Dotty?’
    ‘Yes.’ You have a vision of a small spotty girl, aged twelve or thereabouts.
    ‘Was at school with me,’ Diana reminds you. ‘She’s gone into a convent. She’s a bride of Christ.’ Diana shrieks with laughter. She is like you, Dora. She does not waste her time on God. You do not know what she does waste it on. You cannot ask her. She will only go through her Ms routine: Men, marijuana, music, menstruation, masturbation, macrobiotics, madness, magazines, monotony, money, magic, myopia, mutilation, moussaka, and madeira. She will mortify you with her Ms.
    You wonder if Billy writes often. In dreams.
    ‘Not a lot,’ Diana tells you. ‘Twice, maybe three times a year.’ She looks at you and a shadow passes over her face an internal shadow, such as you have not seen from her since she was a child. ‘It doesn’t seem as though you’ll get well again, Dora?’
    You shake your head. There is a discernible tremor in Diana’s voice. Something inside her is trembling. You are unnerved. You are always unnerved when she is like this. It is not a common occurrence. Even as a child she was sure of herself, certain that her own perceptions were reality, and that reality was something to overcome. Whenever her voice wobbled you could take her in your arms, crush her into your body. Only when her voice wobbled. At no other time.
    You hold out your arms and she scrambles towards you on her knees. Your frail arms pass around her back and you press them against her until they ache. She is trembling, Dora, your daughter. This big girl of yours. This woman.
    You tell her you might live for ever, but there is no conviction in your voice. You know that you are dying. And Diana knows as well. And she knows that you know. It is not possible to play games with Diana. She lives in the hard kernel of the truth.
    She is convulsed by sobs, speaking only in the small intervals between them. ‘I don’t want you to die, Dora.’
    She does not need a reply. You stroke her body, you make sounds of encouragement. You coo like a bird. Like a silly old bird.
    ‘You’re all I’ve got, Dora. You and Billy. I can’t face it if you die, and Billy is only there in dreams. I don’t know what’ll happen to me.’
    You tell her it will be all right. A woman’s life is like that. No one can see into the future. Sometimes it is bad, sometimes it is very bad. But the good times come round again, often when you least expect them. You cannot afford to be weak. Not too weak, anyway; and certainly not all the time. Life is good. In the end life is good. Whatever they take away from you, there is always so much left. She will probably marry a rich old man, have children of her own. You laugh, Dora, hoping she will laugh with you. Yes, why not? Children of her own. She is only twenty-seven. Stranger things have happened.
    ‘I wish we were a normal family,’ she says. ‘I wish Father was still alive.’
    You have not been a good mother. You never approached perfection.
    ‘But that’s not what I mean,’ Diana tells you. ‘I wouldn’t want you to change, Dora. You’re my mother, and I love you. Only I don’t know what drives me. I don’t know why I’m like I am. I don’t know why I’m different, Dora. Do you understand? I don’t know why I’m not normal.’
    She loves you, Dora. That is what she said. It is another incontrovertible fact. Your Diana has never been one to mince words. If she says love, she means love. You pull her to your face and feel the warmth of her entering your body.
    Her life has not yet begun, you tell her. You had exactly the same fears at her age. It is not hopeless. It is never hopeless. You will always be with her. You will live inside of her. Long after you are dead you will still live inside her. She will never be able to shake you off. And there will come a time for her when she turns a corner, when the past, when everything that has hampered her will fade away. The physical past will no longer be there, it