I asked for everybody’sattention, I’m afraid no doubt exactly as I was used to doing whenever I gave atalk at Murchester. A slight disquiet in me at broaching my idea had made meover-formal.
They listened politely, that is,the two girls did. The Knight listened only as if it were his duty to do so,standing rather than sitting just behind Elizabeth, her guard, her servant, herpale shadow. But Elizabeth, perhaps predictably, stared at me throughout, andwhen I stopped speaking, having said, I thought, what had occurred to me, inthe clearest and most precise way I could, it was Elizabeth who broke out in asort of astounded anger.
“Are you mad? Have you gonemad? Do ghosts go mad? How for Christ’s sake can you suggest sucha bloody disgusting stupid fucking madness?”
We, she and I, are the only twowho did or still do swear or blaspheme. The girls, when we do it, used to lookaway, uncomfortable, (Laurel), or then look back, curious, (Coral), but thatfaded long ago. The warrior Knight seems not to notice particularly. Well, hewas a soldier, he’ll have heard plenty worse. Or else our modern usage fails toregister with him.
“It isn’t necessarily madness,El,” I quietly said.
“It’s crazy and disgusting. You’remad.” Elizabeth let out her non-necessary breath in a fierce sigh. (How like themwe are, are we not, the Zombies, in so many remaining ways?) “Why,” she said, “didyou dream that up?”
“It simply came to me. It seemed,once I’d thought of it, an obvious method.”
She sprang to her feet and beganto pace about, a restless lioness, pausing only once, to pass her hand reassuringlyjust above the top of the Knight’s shoulder, saying only to him: “It’s all right,I’m fine. Just annoyed.”
I said, “Only think, Elizabeth,we’d be able to touch things again. People again. God knows, we mighteven start to breathe again. To eat and drink. Sleep.” I hesitated andlowered my eyes. “To kiss.”
Coral too jumped up. She ran asif to Elizabeth, stopping midway and bursting into tears – those ghost tearsthat, despite what El avers, are dry, visible only in their sounds andgestures.
“She wants to hold her dolls,”said Laurel, sadly.
“Perhaps, if we were able to dowhat I suggest we might try, she could hold them. Perhaps she would evenbe able to grow a little older, grow into womanhood.”
Elizabeth rounded on me again,agitated and nearly smoking with rage. “Be quiet, old man. You don’tknow everything!”
“Who does?”
Then I noted El’s Knight hadlifted his head and was staring at me.
He spoke. I couldn’t understand aword of the short sentence. But El turned sharply and stared in turn at him. “What?”
He repeated it, to my mind nomore intelligibly. And then, far more expressive than this, he nodded to me,one brief positive nod – as if I had advised him of immediate battle, and heacknowledged and obeyed. And then his right hand rose and made over hismailed breast that beautiful and graceful sign, which still marks the believer’sCross of Christ. And stood after, his eyes no longer on Elizabeth, but only onme. Awaiting my order to advance.
And so I added, mildly, “Afterall, it may well be feasible to smarten up – how shall I say – our newhabitations. Certainly they’re not diamonds, but perhaps they can be zircons. Agood zircon can fool a lot of people, particularly non-experts, that it isa diamond. And they’re still worth something. Zircons, Elizabeth. Still quitetough, harder definitely than air, and ghosts.”
2
Elizabeth
Ishouldn’t have lost my temper. I don’t dislike or disrespect the old man, ourlibrarian.
Why did I?
Well, it revolted me. His plan.
And anyway it was absurd. Itwouldn’t work, how could it? No.
Thinking of it later, on and on,I did suspect rather I was also frightened gutless. Even without guts. And itis vile, too. I mean, given the state of them. My God. It would be worse thanthis aimless listless never-ending limbo. Wouldn’t it? Would it?
To touch again?
To breathe and drink and sleep.And – love. To make love. Sex. But no, that wouldn’t work, would it, either?Ha. Fucking ha. Even in the missionary position – Oops, there goes my left leg!And now the right – Darling, I’ve just accidentally bitten off your ear. Or,Darling, it just fell off, honest, when I hugged you. What’s that on thefloor? Ah, I knew I’d lose my head.
Ofcourse, black humour aside, I’m thinking of him. My Knight in Shining Armour. Idon’t really know his name – something like Gaume is the way he seems tosay it – Guillaume, perhaps. Who knows, now? Even his lord, the one he reallyloves, not necessarily in any sexual way, but heart and soul, my Knight sayshis name something like H.r.o.1.d.a.r. I have a feeling I’ve heard of thislord, Norman stock with some of the old Saxon mixed in, inevitably, by 1303 orwhatever it was. Probably someone mentioned the lords of the castle-fort when Iwas here as a girl on that guided tour, and I heard the name then. It must bethat. But the nearest I seem to come to the lordly name is Rauold, orRaul. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Rauold doesn’t haunt here. Probably diedof a surfeit of good living and bad wars, aged about forty-something, whichtended to be the general rich and healthy extreme old-age-span back then,equivalent maybe to eighty-something now. And he went where most of the deadgo, that mystery place that for some reason all of us didn’t find, orcouldn’t.
I had to do a lot of translationand approximation on the Knight’s story of his lost life, but I had a funnyfeeling, between you and me, that that last fight he had, and died in, is a bit– well, scrambled. Not quite what actually happened. It goes without saying itmust be very hard to keep the facts straight if you die like that, the way theKnight did. Too sudden, too confused. Too terrible. (Not
