Walking with Ghosts

stuff,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel any different at all.’ She got to her feet and headed for the buffet table. ‘Hope there’s something left to eat. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’ And she howled with laughter.
     
    Late at night Sam took the newly wedded couple to see Dora. They sat with her for around fifteen minutes. She laughed at their descriptions of the reception, but she quickly tired. ‘I’m not sorry about missing the party,’ she said. ‘But I’d have liked to be at the ceremony.’
    ‘I thought about you, then,’ Geordie told her. ‘I thought about my mother for a while, then I thought about you.’ Dora reached for his hand, and he gave it to her. ‘Thank you, Geordie,’ she said. ‘I thought about you as well.’ She glanced at Janet. ‘Both of you.’
    A couple of minutes later she was asleep.
     
    Sam took the two of them home in the Montego. They got into the back seat. ‘You should have gone away,’ he said. ‘Even if it was only for a couple of days.’
    ‘Too much responsibility,’ Janet said. ‘Geordie doesn’t want to go away till this case with India Blake is finished.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Geordie. ‘And your mother. We can’t go away and leave her by herself in the house. When that’s all sorted we might go to Amsterdam for a couple of days. I’ve bought a Dutch phrase book. We read it in bed.’
    ‘Not tonight, though,’ said Janet.
    ‘Not likely,’ Geordie agreed. ‘Whadda you think I am? Reading in bed on our honeymoon?’
     

27
     
    There was a moment there, when she first opened her eyes, Marie didn’t have a clue who it was in bed with her. Her consciousness had wiped J.D. out of the reckoning, totally forgotten about him, so he didn’t figure in the equation. She knew Gus was dead, so it couldn’t be him. There’d been a wedding and a party long into the night last night, so taking everything on balance, including the alcohol and the Nepalese Temple Balls, it could be just about anybody. She sneaked a look at him.
    It was J.D. with his mouth open.
    Christ! J.D. How could she have forgotten about him?
    She lifted her head from the pillow and swivelled round, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and a knife, several knives, a canteen of cutlery fell off a shelf inside her head and almost forced her eyes out of their sockets.
    ‘Yuuuuuuuuuk,’ she said, gently lowering her head into her hands. ‘Yuk, yuk, yuk.’ But no one was listening. As she sat there she recognized that her head was only one of the problems. There were so many things wrong with her she couldn’t begin to count them. She needed to pee, that was the first thing. Then the sphincter guarding her back passage seemed to have taken on a life of its own, and was currently dividing its energies between a rhythmic spasm, something akin to African tribal drums, and a bubbling intensity like the dance of hot metal being poured into a mould. Her limbs ached, arms and legs, especially the legs, thigh and calf muscles having been forced into exertions of dance never before contemplated. And then there was the inside of her mouth. She knew all the old descriptions from the politically incorrect Arab’s armpit, to the bizarre bottom of a budgie’s cage, but the imagery that came to Marie’s mind now reminded her of the photograph of the decayed body of India Blake.
    She didn’t have time to dwell on it, however, as the absolute need to pee forced her mind to organize the reluctant tissue and muscle. The journey to the bathroom was one for the Israelites, or those guys who hauled the big rocks to Salisbury plain, but she made it.
    Nepalese Temple Balls. Never. No more.
     
    Everyone would be late in the office. Geordie might not make it at all, with a honeymoon on his hands. She and J.D. had walked Celia home last night, Celia telling jokes she’d heard in the nineteen thirties and not been able to understand. Marie and J.D. still didn’t understand them now, but all three of them laughed just the same. Then Celia had gone into a medley of Gracie Fields’ greatest hits, ‘A Little Dutch Boy And A Little Dutch Girl’, ‘Little Donkey’, ‘Sally’, and ‘Around The World’.
    Marie did try to get J.D. out of bed, but decided she’d have more luck raising Lazarus. He had said that he’d come to the office with her last night, but now he was full of reasons why that wasn’t possible. He had to go back to George Forester’s house to collect his drum kit.