Walking with Ghosts

believe you are that old. He must have been out of his mind to come here, to your room. You are a filthy wrinkled cow. He couldn’t; he just couldn’t. If you are desperate he will help you out with the neck of the gin bottle. The Internationale unites the human race. In the morning. The Guardian tells you: All-day opening in English and Welsh pubs.
    Television pictures. The Berlin wall is pulled down. You return home to find a long black cape on the living-room floor. Diana is in bed with the sailor. You scream. You pull him out of bed by his leg, drag him across the carpet, along the corridor, down the stairs. You scream and tear your hair. You stand and scream until Diana slaps your face. She is only having fun. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on it, Dora. You have no right to interfere.’ She stands at her bedroom window and watches the sailor limp along the avenue. She is naked apart from a T-shirt. She turns adult eyes on you. Eyes you have never seen her wear before. ‘You... you... God.’ She stamps her foot in frustration. ‘We hadn’t even finished.’
    You go to your first AA meeting. You stop drinking. There are no more parties. Just you and Lady Day.
    Diana goes to Czechoslovakia to fight for democracy. You watch the demonstrations on the television. She does not return when she said she would. One hundred and seventeen Czech policemen have been injured. She is not among those arrested. You wait for three and a half black weeks before she writes to Billy from Prague. ‘Having fun. Tell Dora not to worry.’ Alexander Dubcek has become chairman of the Federal Assembly. Vaclav Havel is President.
     

23
     
    J.D. had been playing poker last night. Might be playing still. Marie had slept fitfully. Alone. She thought she would never get used to having a man in her bed again, but it had only taken a couple of nights. Now, when he wasn’t there, she found it hard to adjust. She dragged herself to the bathroom and stood under the shower. J.D. must have altered the settings because it was hotter than usual and the water velocity swifter, drumming her flesh.
    Gus, her late husband, had installed the shower. From time to time Marie thought of leaving this house, moving somewhere else, somewhere new, where Gus hadn’t fitted the shower, or painted the ceiling, where he hadn’t built a corner unit. Somewhere he hadn’t left a print.
    But she didn’t move, because it would be pointless. The man had left his mark on her. There was never a gap of more than a few days when she didn’t think about him. After the initial shock of his death, a kind of dazed withdrawal, she had pulled herself together for the funeral. Everyone had gathered around, Sam and Geordie, and especially Celia, and walked her through it. Literally. Held her up by the elbows.
    That had been the easy part.
    Later she had gone on a quest for Gus, a tense period of restless behaviour, a kind of madness. She would see him in the street. She would see someone, some thing in the street, which wasn’t Gus, which could not possibly have been Gus, but which, in her madness, she thought was him. There was a day when she followed a man she believed was her dead husband. She saw him in Parliament Street and tracked him through Marks and Spencer and along the Stonebow, and caught hold of him outside Sainsbury’s, touched his shoulder, and sucked in her breath as he turned towards her face which belonged to a stranger.
    In her desire for a miracle she would hallucinate him. Reading a book at the small table in the living room, lost in the plot or the syrupy lives of the characters, unaware of real life, real events, she’d look up and watch Gus materialize opposite her. It was as if he were real. As if she could reach out and touch him. He’d be wearing the green sweater, the one that had lost a thread near the collar, and she’d want to reach out and take it from him, mend it before it got worse.
    And at night, in deep sleep, he’d lead her through a dreamscape of fantasy and contradiction. She dreamed that he had died in her dream, that in reality he was still alive. She simply had to wake up and everything would be all right. Morning after morning she’d awake with incomprehension, total disbelief, that he wasn’t there beside her. In those moments before waking she could feel him next to her, hear his breathing. She’d say, ‘Gus.’ And then a little louder, trying it out, hoping to hear him reply from the bathroom or the stairs.
    But