Spirit Read online

  ‘He’s a rabbit,’ said Aunt Beverley, turning round in her seat, smoke issuing out of her nostrils. ‘He’ll have the time of his life in Hollywood. They’re all rabbits there.’

  Moe gave a vulgar chuckle, and for the first time in her life Elizabeth realized that she understood a grown-up joke. It was extraordinary. It was just like the day she had suddenly realized what ‘mairzy doats and dozey doats and little lamsy divey’ actually meant. She stepped away from the car feeling extremely adult.

  She stood beside her mommy and waved as the car turned out of the driveway and then turned behind the trees. The sun sparked once from its chromework, and then it was gone.

  ‘Well, Elizabeth,’ said her mommy. ‘It’s just you and me now.’

  Elizabeth looked up at her. Mommy gave her a wink.

  That Sunday was humid and still and very, very hot. The church bells sounded like buckets of treacle being banged slowly together. Mommy and Elizabeth walked to St Michael’s and knelt at their usual pew. The doors were left open in a futile attempt to keep the church cool, but all the ladies flapped their gloves and all the men were quietly boiling in their Sunday suits. The service ws taken by the Reverend Skinner, a white-haired retired priest from Danbury with a shrivelled, monkeylike face. He led the congregation in a special prayer for Dick Bracewaite, and hoped that God in His infinite mercy would find it in His heart to forgive him for what he had done. Not many people said amen to that and Janie McReady’s parents got up and walked out.

  They sang ‘Lead Kindly Light’ and ‘Nearer My God To Thee’. The Reverend Skinner gave a long and scarcely-audible sermon on the text of idolatry. ‘Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk! They have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him and consumed him, and have laid waste his habitation.’

  Elizabeth, in her yellow-and-white-striped cotton dress, so stiffly starched by Mrs Patrick that it crackled whenever she sat down, discreetly sucked a humbug and thought about the scarecrow in the cucumber field. She imagined him drowsing in the summer sun, and the cucumber field all wobbly with heat. He probably didn’t care that he couldn’t walk, because he was too darn comfortable drowsing in his field.

  But she imagined a crow, too – a huge black crow, lazily flapping its wings on the warm up-currents, always circling the cucumber field, waiting for the scarecrow to close his eyes, and so the scarecrow never could.

  Elizabeth was almost dozing off herself when she saw a small white figure walking past the church doors, so bright that her outline seemed blurred. A thrill of excitement ran down the back of her legs, and she was tempted for a split second to touch her mommy’s arm and whisper, ‘Look! She’s here!’ But she couldn’t be sure that it was the same girl, and she didn’t want her mommy to get excited, not if it wasn’t the same girl. Yet who else would be walking around the streets during communion, except for Catholics or Jews. She didn’t know any Catholics in Sherman; and the only Jews she knew were middle-aged.

  She watched the doors for a long time but the girl didn’t pass again. After a while she squeezed her eyes tight shut and said a prayer for Peggy’s soul, and for mommy’s sanity, and for herself, too, because it didn’t matter about muffs and peckers, not to her. All she wanted was her sister back home.

  After the service they left the church and talked for a while to some of their friends. Mrs Brogan was holding the stage, as usual, a big loud woman in a big loud dress and big feathery hat. Elizabeth and her mommy had to elbow their way past them. They had almost reached the gate when Mrs Brogan called out, in a grating, mock-sympathetic cluck, ‘How’s your trouble, Margaret, dear?’

  Mommy hesitated. Elizabeth could see that she was tempted to just keep on going, to pretend that she hadn’t heard, but for all of her illnesses, mommy was made of pricklier stuff than that. She turned around and faced Mrs Brogan and said, in a very high voice, ‘Oh yes, Mrs Brogan? And which particular trouble was that?’

  Mrs Brogan’s face subsided into her double chins. ‘I was referring to Laura, of course. And that repulsive Mr Bracewaite. Such a terrible business. Terrible. I was just saying how tragic your life has been, dear, what with Peggy and now Laura. I don’t know how you manage, I really don’t. Well – I know there are times when you can’t manage, but surely we all have those.’

  Mommy took two or three steps back towards Mrs Brogan and Mrs Brogan flinched. When mommy spoke, her voice was hushed and deadly serious, like a snake sliding swiftly across a shingle slope.

  ‘I’ll have you know that all of my daughters are alive. All of them; and all are well.’

  Mrs Brogan stared back at mommy for a long time, her lower jaw visibly quivering behind the net of her Sunday hat. Then at last she said, ‘No offence was intended, Margaret.’

  ‘No offence was taken, Mrs Brogan,’ mommy replied.

  They walked home through the heat, hand in hand, one white glove in another. There were times when Elizabeth thought that her mommy was one of the prettiest, most characterful women in the whole world, and this was one of them.

  ‘Do you really believe it?’ she asked. ‘Do you really believe that Peggy is still alive, somehow?’

  ‘Yes. I do now. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘She doesn’t look the same. She’s older.’

  Mommy shook her head. ‘I don’t think that matters. It’s her, whatever age she is, whatever she looks like.’

  ‘But how can we be sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. I’m her mother.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘But what? I may be her mother but I’m insane? I’m not insane. I was never insane. I was grieving for your sister, that’s all. Grief is a kind of insanity, I suppose. But I’m not so grief-stricken that I can’t recognize my own baby when she comes calling for me. God, I gave up everything for my children, my stage career, my movie career, my singing career. I could have had the whole world spraddled at my feet. So don’t tell me I don’t know my own baby when she comes calling for me. I gave up too much.’

  They crossed the street and walked down towards the house. The glare of the sun was so intense that everything was brighter and more richly-coloured than Elizabeth could have imagined possible. Wizard of Oz colours, chrome yellow and emerald green and gorgeous crimson.

  They had nearly reached the front door when Elizabeth said, ‘Spraddled?’

  There was a moment’s pause between them, and then they both burst out laughing. Seamus opened the door to find them leaning against the verandah rails, helpless as scarecrows.

  That night Margaret Buchanan opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Something had disturbed her sleep but she didn’t know what. The window was wide open but the night was so hot and so still that she felt as if she were melting, literally melting, and that all they would find of her in the morning would be a thick pink waxy stain on the sheet, and her nightgown, and her hair.

  Outside, the sawing and chirruping of crickets was absurdly loud, but there was no breeze at all, not even a hesitant breath of it. No traffic, no distant airplanes, no homegoing feet.

  She sat up in bed and wiped her perspiring forehead with the sheet. She listened and listened, with sweat trickling down her sides, but all she could hear was that endless amplified chirrrp-chirrup-chirrrp-chirrup, and the crackling of her horsehair mattress.

  She climbed out of bed and went to the window. The moon wasn’t up yet, and the darkness was absolute. All the same, she stood straining her eyes, as if she expected to see a white girlish figure walking across the lawns in front of the house. She touched the window sash, and she could feel the unevenness of the paintwork with her fingertips. She touched the nets, and she could feel their upraised patterns, flowers and baskets. She often touched ordinary things these days, as if to reassure herself that she was ordinary, too, and that her life wasn’t being lived out on some Monty Woolley stage set.

  She turned back to the bed and groped around until she found her silver ciga
rette-case. She opened it up, took out a cigarette, found her lighter, and was about to light up when she thought she heard somebody laughing in the corridor outside her room. A high, girlish giggle.

  Her first thought was: Lizzie, still teasing me for saying ‘spraddled’. But then there was another giggle, and it didn’t sound like Lizzie. It didn’t sound like Lizzie at all. It was far too young, far too back-of-the-throat, the way young children laugh. Children of five, like Peggy.

  She walked round the bed, touching the bedknobs to make sure that she didn’t bump into it and bruise herself. She opened her bedroom door, and put her head out, and listened again. The landing was silent, and as dark as the end of the world. Complete, swallowing blackness. Margaret closed her eyes tight, as if that would make her hearing more acute. But all she could hear was the house creaking in the heat, her own heart beating, and the endless crickets.

  I’m imagining things. Ever since Lizzie told me that Peggy was still alive, I’ve been imagining things. That little girl yesterday, who stood in the rain smiling at me, she wasn’t real. She was wishful thinking. If she were really Peggy, why did she run away? Peggy would have run towards me, and hugged me, all giggles and curls. She wouldn’t have led me into the rain, and made me look such a fool.

  She opened her eyes. The landing was still dark and silent. There. It was all my imagination. It was just another of those things that I always wanted and could never have, like a brilliant career on Broadway, with the crowds carrying me shoulder-high through Times Square, while dawn appeared like a greasy-grey hangover, and even the trash-collectors put down their pails and applauded.

  She turned back into her room and the girl in white was standing by the window, not saying anything, not moving at all. Margaret couldn’t see her face, but the first pale light from the rising moon shone on her dress, and on her hair, so that it gleamed in a silvery halo.

  Margaret went cold. She crossed her arms over her breasts and she could feel her nipples hard and her skin covered in goosebumps. She wanted to say something but her lips felt as if they had frozen. She had been quite convinced that Peggy had somehow returned to her, in another guise; but now that she was confronted with this silent, silvery-haired girl, her conviction seemed to drain away, and she felt a chilly sense of fear. Peggy was dead, after all. Peggy had drowned. How could she ever come back, even in another body?

  ‘What do you want?’ Margaret whispered.

  The girl said nothing. Neither did she move.

  ‘What do you want?’ Margaret repeated. She was so frightened that she believed she was going to faint. The darkness was overlaid with more darkness; the stars with even more stars. ‘What do you want? Are you real?’

  The girl spoke. Her voice was high and clear, and yet it was oddly-accented, too, each word rising in emphasis at the end, almost as if it were a tape-recording played backwards. ‘I came to see you, mama.’

  Margaret clamped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes filled up with salty tears. At last she managed to take her hand away and say, ‘Peggy? Little Clothes-Peg? Is that you?’

  ‘I came to see you, mama,’ the girl repeated.

  Margaret managed to take one step forward, and take hold of the bedrail. ‘Are you really Peggy?’ she asked the little girl. ‘Please don’t try to trick me. I couldn’t bear it if this was a trick.’

  ‘I came to see you, mama.’

  Margaret stared at her. ‘Are you a doll? Is that all you are? What are you? Tell me what you are, you’re frightening me!’

  She dropped to her knees on the rug. She was sobbing so grievously that her lungs hurt, and she could hardly speak. The littel girl came away from the window and stood very close to her – so close that Margaret could hear the rustling taffeta of her party dress, and even smell – what? She thought it was funerals at first, the smell of dead flowers, three days after Peggy’s funeral, when all the hothouse roses and orchids had started to droop and decay. It was similar, but it was another smell. It was the smell of dead flowers in the changing-rooms of the EI Morocco, on Monday morning when you came back to work. Dead flowers mingled with cigar smoke and sour Isabey perfume and weekend-old laundry.

  Sordid but exciting. A lost career, distilled into a single smell.

  Margaret lifted her head. The girl was very pale, but she was smiling. Her face looked as if it had been caked with white stage powder. ‘I came to see you, mama,’ she said, although her lips didn’t move.

  Margaret wiped her eyes with her fingers. ‘Peggy, is it really you? Or am I going mad? Please tell me if it’s really you.’

  The girl giggled. ‘You have to say – what you have to say is — what it is you want most – in all the whole world.’

  ‘Darling, you know what I want. I want us all to be together. I want to hold you in my arms. I never meant to lose you. I’m sorry I lost you. I’m really so sorry.’ Tears were streaming down Margaret’s face now, and dripping onto her nightgown. ‘Oh Peggy, you don’t know how much I missed you, you’ll never ever know.’

  The little girl stood close to Margaret and stroked her hair. Margaret couldn’t actually feel her fingers, but she felt her hair rising up with every stroke, as if it were charged with static electricity.

  She felt cold, too: she couldn’t stop shivering. She would have done anything to wrap a blanket around herself; or find her bathrobe. And yet – only a few minutes before – she had felt so hot that she thought she was going to asphyxiate, like a barbershop customer with his head wrapped in hot towels.

  ‘You can have what you want,’ the little girl breathed.

  ‘What?’ said Margaret.

  ‘You can have whatever you want. All you have to do is to follow me.’

  Margaret sat back and stared at her. She had been very frightened before. Once, when one of her boyfriends had got catastrophically and violently drunk, screaming at her, hitting her, she had seriously believed that she was going to die. But tonight – faced with this pale-faced manifestation of Peggy – her fear was so comprehensive that she felt as if she couldn’t move, or speak, or do anything ever again, except kneel on this rug and wait for the whole world to rotate underneath her, so that this moment would no longer be.

  Eight

  Elizabeth heard the kitchen door slam. She didn’t know how she heard it slam, or why she knew what was happening, but she was out of bed and searching for her slippers an instant after it had happened. She dragged her pink bathrobe from the hook on the back of the door, and quickly struggled into it. She opened her bedroom door in time to see her mommy, in her nightgown, fleeing barefooted down the stairs.

  ‘Mommy?’ she called, in alarm. ‘Mommy? Where are you going?’

  Her mommy didn’t answer. Elizabeth heard her running across the living-room, her bare feet slapping on the parquet. Immediately she started to run after her. Something was seriously wrong. She could tell. Mommy’s bedroom door was still ajar and there was a strange smell of electricity in the air.

  Just as Elizabeth was running down the stairs she heard the front door open, locks and chains. By the time she reached the hallway it was wide open, and her mommy had gone. She ran outside, onto the porch, and saw mommy hurrying around the side of the house, towards the swimming-pool.

  ‘Mommy!’ she screamed. She was really scared now. ‘Mommy, come back!’

  She debated with herself for a split second if she ought to call Mrs Patrick, or maybe Seamus, but if mommy were going to do anything stupid, it would take them far too long to get here. She ran down the steps and hurriedly followed her mommy around the side of the house.

  The moon illuminated the garden as if it were a stage set, constructed of artificial bushes and painted trees. Even the sky looked as if it had been painted. The surface of the swimming-pool, instead of looking liquid and sparkling, was pearly white, and steam was rising from it. Elizabeth’s mommy was walking towards it, more slowly now, both hands lifted, her nightgown billowing as she walked.

  ‘Mommy, please!’


  At first Elizabeth couldn’t see why her mommy was walking towards the pool so raptly, because she was walking in her line of sight. But then she reached the edge of the pool and stopped, and then took two or three steps to the right, and Elizabeth saw that the Peggy-girl was standing on the far side of the pool, white-faced and smiling. Elizabeth was already halfway across the lawn, but the girl’s sudden appearance made her feel as if her knees had turned into jelly, and she stumbled twice and nearly fell over.

  The girl wasn’t calling or beckoning. She was standing quite still, with her feet together, her arms down by her sides. But there was an expression on her face which was utterly compelling. It was an expression of triumph; but also an expression that was close to ecstasy, like a Michelangelo saint. She was the wrong age to be Peggy. She didn’t even look like Peggy. Yet Elizabeth was still quite sure that it was her – and her mommy must have been, too, because she suddenly called out, ‘Peggy! Wait! Don’t go without me, sweetheart. Not this time.’

  The girl took one step nearer, then another. Then she actually stepped down into the pool. Elizabeth was about to scream out and tell her not to when she realized why the surface of the pool looked so milky and opaque, and why it was steaming. The pool was frozen over, and the girl stepped down onto solid ice.

  It was summer, the hottest night of the year, and the pool was frozen over.

  Elizabeth watched in fright and fascination as the girl glided to the centre of the pool. She seemed to be able to move without putting one foot in front of the other, as if she were skating. Without a word, her mommy stepped onto the ice, too, and walked towards her dead Peggy with stiff, uneven steps. She was barefoot, but if she felt the cold she showed no sign of it.

  ‘I knew they hadn’t taken you away from me,’ said her mommy. ‘I knew you’d come back.’ Her voice was high and lyrical, almost like singing, and the chill of the frozen pool made her breath smoke.

  The Peggy-girl said nothing at all, but kept on smiling that joyful, triumphant smile, her eyes misted over in the same way that the surface of the pool was misted over. Elizabeth reached the edge of the pool and held onto the cold chrome handrail. She thought of stepping onto the ice, too, but she didn’t know how thick it was, and whether it would bear their weight. She remembered too vividly the ice cracking beneath her knees, and Peggy staring up at her, trapped.