I continued to follow people home to see how they lived, haunted one or two bars at night, and generally drifted from place to place. I never visited another seance parlour again; I knew they would make me feel uncomfortable after that last time. Because it would torture me so, I also stayed away from Andrea and Primrose for a while, my mother too, but for different reasons.
Another day, taking a break from my roving, I hung around a picturesque graveyard, maybe with the idea of meeting some friendly ghosts. (I was never tempted to visit the crematorium’s “place of rest”, because there was no grave, just a tiny plaque with my name on it, among many on a wall, the ashes in a closed recess behind. Nothing sentimental there then.) I found a bench by a gravel path deep inside the cemetery and sat looking out over the many headstones and tombs, angels with high wings and outstretched arms, white crosses stained by lichen, one or two plots well tended, many others sadly neglected. With its Gothic mausoleums, markers and occasional monuments, the place had a quiet brooding atmosphere, which I found peaceful rather than sinister.
It was here, while hoping for a little peace and quiet from the harsh world outside, with the sun high in a clear azure sky, that my father came to me for the last time.
He was standing beneath an old oak tree whose thick leafless branches still managed to cast him in shadow. How long he had been standing there, I couldn’t be sure, for only when I sensed that eyes were watching me did I glance in his direction. At first, he was merely an insubstantial shadow among others, but as my gaze became more intense, his form took on a clearer definition, although his lower legs and feet remained invisible.
I didn’t move, I just stared back at him, wondering if I should join him beneath the oak. After a while, it was he who came to me.
By the time he reached me, he was fully formed, so much so that he could have been a normal man who’d stopped for a chat. He stood on the gravel path that ran between the plots, smiling down at me, and he wore the same clothes as on the previous occasions he’d appeared to me: old-fashioned double-breasted suit, too creased to be smart, and plain white shirt, dull, red tie. For the first time I noticed his shoes, brown brogues with swirls of tiny neat puncture patterns decorating the upper leather; they were slightly creased also, but at least polished.
“Hello, Jimmy,” he said in a pleasantly gruff but quiet voice.
The sun was behind him, his white hair a halo round his head; it was difficult to see his features.
“It’s you—Dad,” I said for some reason. Of course it was my dad.
“Yes, it’s me. Can I sit with you for a little while?”
I shuffled my butt towards the arm at the end of the wooden bench, making room for him. The past times we’d met had been traumatic, the last one particularly horrendous. But today, in this morbid but tranquil setting, I felt completely at ease with him.
“This time I can hear you,” I said, only now appreciating the fact. “You can speak directly to me.”
“You’re closer to us.”
I didn’t ask him to elucidate. Instead, I thanked him for helping me when Moker had attacked my family.
“We were weak,” he replied regretfully, shaking his head. Looking at him in the clear light of day (his image wavered only occasionally) I could see our resemblance. Perhaps he was how I would have looked eventually if I hadn’t died.
“I brought many souls with me,” he went on, “in the belief that our collective force would defeat the poor beast.” He sighed unhappily. “Unfortunately, when we stormed into the body, the soul there was so foul, so malign, we couldn’t stay. It was too overwhelming, too frightening—too corruptive. I’m sorry I fled with the others, but we were combined, there could be no separation from them.”
“You bought us time, that’s the point. Enough time for Andrea to recover and take her best shot with the poker.”
My father smiled again. “We were still there, although our usefulness was spent. We tried to give your wife strength.” His expression became serious. “But you know, what you did afterwards was very foolish.”
“You mean taking over Moker’s dead body?”
“You could have been tainted by the evil left inside him.”
“If there was any, it helped my anger at my ex-friend. Maybe it enforced the hatred I felt for the friend I thought I had.”
“Murder is never a solution.”
“D’you understand what Oliver Guinane did to me?”
The ghost nodded. “To want revenge is still wrong.”
“Huh! Seems to me I was deceived most of my life. His betrayal with my wife tipped me over the edge. I’d reached breaking point. And let’s be frank here—you were the one who started the ball rolling as far as betrayal was concerned. You walked out on me and Mother when I was just a kid.”
“I explained everything in the letters I wrote to you, letters your mother never let you see.”
We were interrupted by an old lady we hadn’t noticed coming along the path. She was slightly crooked and somewhere in her late seventies drawing towards eighty, and wearing an old coat with a scraggy synthetic fur collar that drowned her meagre frame (probably it fitted her well before she started to shrink). Held tight against her shapeless chest was a potted plant. As she drew level with the bench, she gave my father a cheery smile that revealed perfect porcelain teeth above bare lower gums.
“Nice day,” she greeted him in a croaky voice that was as cheerful as her incomplete grin.
My father smiled back and gave a small acknowledgement with his hand. She trundled on her way, perhaps to visit and chat to a late husband, or maybe a dearly missed friend. Perhaps she wanted to tell them she wouldn’t be long.
But I was puzzled. She could see my father, but she couldn’t see me. How’s that for irony? He was more dead than I was, surely? I mean—what was the expression they used? Oh yeah—he had “passed over” whereas I was still earthbound, so didn’t that mean he was more dead than me? Shouldn’t there be some kind of priority? I shrugged it off.
My father seemed to have enjoyed the brief encounter with the old lady, but the half-smile left his face when he turned back to me.
“Son, you saw the letters your mother kept from you for years when you were growing up. I wrote to you regularly after I left even though I never received replies. I never gave up, but eventually I died.”
“You still deserted me—us,” I reminded him.
“No, I didn’t, I didn’t desert you. Your mother made me leave.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. You must have realized over the years that she wasn’t… well, she wasn’t quite right in the head.”
I thought of the evening I’d found Mother ripping up photographs of me and destroying letters from my father that I’d never been allowed to see, let alone read. And that was because I, too, had left her by dying. No rational person would ever react in that way, and especially not with such venom, such loathing.
“She could be a bit cranky, sure,” I said.
“Perhaps you’re in denial. Sons should love and respect their mothers, no matter what. Before you were born she was already making my life impossible with demands and strictures. I had a decent job, but she was never happy with what we’d got, she always felt she’d lowered her own high standards by taking me on as a husband— high standards that had never existed, incidentally. She was from a very humble background, her mother and father good plain people, her father a postman, her mother a part-time cleaning lady. It was only when they died within months of each other that your mother started to take on those grand airs. I suppose there was no longer anyone around to remind her of her working-class beginnings.”
He sighed, lost in memories for a little while. “At one time she was courting a reasonably wealthy young man, an assistant manager at a big chain store, his family quite well to do. But he broke off with her after a year or so, found someone else apparently. But it was that year with him and all its possibilities that aroused those airs and graces in her. She took me on the rebound and regretted it almost immediately. I won’t embarrass you about the physical side of our marriage; I’d only comment that her pregnancy with you was a surprise to us both.”
I remained silent. Truth is, I had nothing to say.
“When you came along I’m afraid she became even more difficult to live with. Now nothing was ever good enough for either of you. She disliked the house we lived in, felt the area was too working class, and she wanted to make plans for you eventually to be taught at a private school. I did my best, Jimmy, but it was never good enough.”
