Walking with Ghosts

appointment.’
     

26
     
    Alice Trimble came in from next door to sit with Dora. Sam had sat up with her since before dawn. They had talked about Geordie and Janet and how they would begin the day as single people but end it as a married couple.
    There was a sense in which Janet wouldn’t have minded if they got married or not. As far as she was concerned they were married already. But that would never be enough for Geordie. Sam wondered if anything would ever be enough for Geordie. He’d known complete rejection, by his family and by society at large, and he’d known the horror of that when he was still really a child. It had marked him. If the whole fucking tribe had taken a knife and opened Geordie up from gullet to groin, cleaned him out and sewed him back up again the cut wouldn’t have been deeper. If fate had been twisted slightly, this way or that, Geordie could have gone screaming mad from his experiences. He might have turned to the bottle or some other drug, or he might have decided to wreak vengeance with physical violence on himself or others.
    The point where that might happen had passed now. Janet was a great slice of redemption in Geordie’s fate, because she was able to see beyond his damage, through to the core of him. She was able to drip-feed him tiny doses of confidence and dignity, and he was able to accept them and build on them. More importantly, he was able to return them to her. To love her. The deprived and neglected kid, half starved, who had walked into Sam’s life just a few short years before had almost disappeared now. When he stood next to Janet at the civil ceremony today there would be no lack of magic, no lack of absolute spiritual intensity. If there was a god, or anything resembling a guiding hand in the universe, He, She, It, and the whole host of accompanying angels would be belting out a tune to celebrate that small part of Geordie, that tiny piece of all of us, which is big enough to carry us through.
    ‘What are you talking about here,’ Dora had said. ‘Spirit, the soul, will-power, some primitive instinct of survival?’
    Sam had tried to think of an answer for several fractions of a second, but caught himself doing it. ‘Gimme a break, Dora. I’m a PI. Ask me about distressed damsels, something I can get my teeth into. Philosophy’s for the clever guys. All I know is people usually give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.’
    She’d given him that smile he suspected he couldn’t live without. Then, shaking her head she’d said, ‘Sam Turner, master of disguise.’
     
    Since no man could show any just cause why they might not lawfully be joined together, the deed was done. Tricky moment there for Sam, though. He was next to Janet’s mother, and she did a real good shuffle, like she was going to stand up and tell the whole room that this detective kid just wasn’t good enough for her daughter. Fortunately, she didn’t do it, so Sam’s two and a half year record for not hitting a woman remained intact.
    Janet was a dream. She’d concentrated on the outside, the blue silk dress, her hair and make-up, the small bouquet of Sweet Fairy miniature roses, but she was as if lit from inside. There was a real warm glow going on somewhere deep within her, and it showed in her face, her eyes, the way she walked and talked, even the way she sat there, next to Geordie, listening to the registrar.
    But if Janet was composed and serene, Geordie was a mumbling wreck. Sam had seen the kid in some pretty tough situations since they’d been working together. But even the time when Geordie had got himself shot he’d not acted up as badly as he did during his wedding ceremony. When he was asked if he wanted this woman, he looked at the registrar with incomprehension for several seconds before blurting out: ‘Pie Glue.’
    After the ceremony they had a photo session in the garden behind the register office. The photographer was a Norwegian woman Sam had met socially, and he smiled to himself as she tried and failed to squeeze a civilized expression out of Janet’s mother. There was one group shot with the whole gang: Geordie and Janet at the centre, and arraigned around them were Sam, Celia, Marie and J.D. ‘If that one turns out we’ll have a blow-up for the office wall,’ Sam told the photographer.
    The reception was at George Forester’s house. Forester was one of the solicitors who retained Sam’s firm for routine jobs, and he