Walking with Ghosts

we git kinsfolk calling in.’
    You take his hand. It is wet, wet and cold. Diana has got herself behind him. She tries to keep him between you, whenever he moves, she moves with him.
    ‘Ahm Capt’n America,’ he tells you. ‘Me an’ Di wuz just goin’ out.’ You can go along with them if you want, Dora. It is nothing special, a visit to some friends along the road.
    ‘No,’ says Diana.
    ‘OK. I wanted to see you. To see that you’re alive. To say that you can come home whenever you want.’
    She nods her head, but still hides behind the cowboy.
    He grins at you. ‘That’s real nice, Dora,’ he says. ‘But if you really want to help Di, you could lay some bread on us before you fly away.’
    You leave fifty pounds and promise to send more before you stumble blindly out of the flat into the street outside. You leave the tube at Bayswater to vomit. You cannot stomach it, Dora. You cannot stomach life, and circumstances, motherhood and rejection, guilt and history. You spew it up on the tiles of the Bayswater underground.
    Back in York Billy has packed his case. He has two things to say to you. Nelson Mandela has been released from prison. Billy has got himself a room on the other side of town.
    When he closes the door they have all gone. Arthur, Diana, and Billy. Lady Day sings ‘Where Is The Sun?’ You watch the pear tree putting forth its bright green leaves. It is the same every year. A mindless celebration of the coming spring.
     

25
     
    At first light William was up and about. He finished setting up the candles in the first-floor front room. Using two fingers as a measure he spaced them out on every surface in the room. The pelmets, the desk, and the rest of the furniture were festooned with candles. He didn’t light them, but he checked in the right drawer of the desk to make sure the box of matches and tapers were there. He sat on the chair and felt the quiet and peace his father must have felt when he was in his study alone, a study that was identical to this one in every detail.
    He left the room and entered the stark contrast of the rest of the house as he walked down the uncarpeted staircase to the ground-floor kitchen. It was cold and grimy in there, but William didn’t mind, he spent only a little time in the room twice a day. He melted butter in the pan and fried a couple of eggs. When they were almost ready he pushed them to one side and fried a thick slice of bread in the remains of the butter. He put the fried bread on a plate and arranged the eggs on top of the bread. Then he carried the plate up to his attic room and ate the food while sitting on a cushion on the floor.
    It was a ritual. William had the same breakfast in the same way every day. If a person ate food like that, regularly, arranged in the same way, in the same surroundings, the food was more nourishing. A person’s body digested it Properly, because a person’s body didn’t have to adjust. It knew what was coming and what it would have to do to deal with it.
    Next a cup of coffee. Then a shit. Ritual completed.
    Now the day could begin.
    After breakfast William changed the sheets on his bed and put them in a black holdall with his underwear and shirts and set off for the launderette. Fridays he used the launderette on Bootham. Wednesdays he went to the one on Clarence Street, and Mondays he walked to Clifton Green. He’d learned to use different launderettes when he was in London. If you used the same one every time people started talking to you. Being familiar. They wanted to know things: where you live, what you do for a living. William didn’t like that kind of thing. You couldn’t be too careful. Disaster might be waiting around the next corner.
    What if it happened to William? That he was destroyed, like his father had been destroyed? Who would be the avenger then? Who would keep his father alive?
    When he got back to the house in St Mary’s, Charles Hopper was waiting for him. Hopper was secretary of the Fulford Players, one of the local amateur groups which hired William to do their make-up. A busybody.
    William discouraged people coming to the house. He never invited anyone in. He had no telephone, and when a professional or amateur group, sometimes a magazine or photographer needed his skills as a make-up artist, they knew to drop him a postcard and he’d contact them the next day. Most of his clients respected his privacy. One or the other might think his behaviour a little eccentric, but he was