Spirit Read online

  ‘So, what if I was a schoolkid? I’m still very annoyed that you didn’t realize that I was desperately in love with you.’

  Lenny gave her a sly grin. ‘I did realize. Especially later, when you sent me those swimsuit pictures. You were very cute, Lizzie. But let’s face facts, you were a tad young for me, weren’t you?’

  ‘I wasn’t too young to have my heart broken.’

  They walked some more, right to the very end of the Millers’ property, where it tangled into silver birches and traveller’s joy. The more Elizabeth talked to Lenny, the more she found herself liking him. She had always liked his looks – those kind of hurt, self-deprecating eyes, and that very straight nose, and that cleanly-defined jawline. His face had strength and sensitivity.

  ‘You’re not married yet?’ he asked her. ‘I’m surprised at that. You were always writing those romantic stories.’

  Elizabeth blushed and said, ‘Well . . . just because a girl is romantic, that doesn’t mean that she can always find the right man.’ She finished her cigarette, and crushed it out on the ground. ‘I dated a couple of guys when I was at high school. John Studland, you remember him?’

  ‘Dark curly hair, tall. Did a terrible Charlie McCarthy impersonation.’

  ‘That’s the one. He was nice. He was really nice.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘All my boyfriends were nice. I dated a boy in Hartford called Neil Bennett. He was nice, too. He was so nice that I almost married him. He gave me a diamond engagement ring and everything.’

  ‘What was the matter with him?’

  ‘Too nice. I like men with a bit of danger.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ laughed Lenny. ‘Like who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elizabeth blushed. ‘I haven’t met one yet. Well, I’ve met one or two authors who seem a bit dangerous. Felix Rushmore, the man who wrote The Tongue Tells No Stories; and Haldeman Jones, who wrote Babylon.’

  ‘And you think they’re dangerous, these two guys?’

  Elizabeth shrugged. She felt embarrassed. ‘They live right on the edge, if you understand what I mean. They experience everything they can, like poverty and violence and the dope culture, and they put it all there on the page.’

  Lenny flicked his cigarette butt into the trees. ‘I bet they never ran up a beach with a tin hat and an M-1 rifle and Jap machine-guns going dogguh-dogguh-dogguh ail around them.’

  Elizabeth looked at him narrowly. There was something in his face which appealed to her strongly. A woundedness: a vulnerability. ‘No,’ she said, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her coat. ‘I bet they never did that.’

  She asked him home for supper and he said okay, sure, he’d love to. She was quite surprised because he had seemed so defensive, at times even mocking. She walked back to the house on her own because she wanted to pay a few visits – first to see Molly Albee’s mother and then to Sycamore Street to see Bindy Morris, who used to be a friend of Laura’s. She suddenly realized as she walked along Putnam Street that she badly missed Laura – especially here, in the old home town, where they used to be so happy together.

  She stopped on the corner of Putnam and Oak. This was where she had first seen the Peggy-girl, on that hot afternoon when Lenny had left for boot camp. She stood there for a while, looking around. Three or four automobiles went past but none of them was driven by anybody she knew.

  She was walking back along Oak when she saw a girl in a white dress standing on the stump of the sawn-off oak, about two hundred feet away; simply standing there with her arms by her sides. She had her back turned, but Elizabeth was pretty darn sure who she was. She started to walk quickly towards her, even though she didn’t really want to. She had to. She had to find out who this Peggy-girl was, and what she wanted, and why her father was afraid of her.

  She walked faster and faster, her heels rapping on the sidewalk. The girl in white remained where she was, not moving, her dress ruffled by the breeze.

  ‘Peggy!’ called Elizabeth, as she came nearer. ‘Peggy!’

  The little girl didn’t respond; although a small dog jumped up at Elizabeth and barked at her and began to trot alongside her.

  ‘Peggy!’ Elizabeth called again.

  She had almost reached the stump when the little girl turned around. She wasn’t smiling and she wasn’t serious. She didn’t have a face at all. She didn’t have a head at all, only her empty hair.

  Elizabeth stopped and stared, her whole skin-surface prickling with fear. The faceless girl remained where she was.

  ‘What are you?’ Elizabeth whispered. ‘What do you want? If you were really Peggy, you wouldn’t frighten me like this, would you? Or maybe you would. Maybe you think it was my fault, that you fell in the pool and drowned? Maybe you’ve always blamed me?’

  The little girl leaned towards her. Elizabeth took one step back, and then another. How could a little girl exist without a face? Sheer cold panic began began to rise up inside her and there was nothing she could do to stop it. This was so irrational, especially here in Sherman, as familiar as her own breath. This was so darn frightening.

  The small dog looked at her quizzically, and then at the Peggy-girl, and nervously yapped. The Peggy-girl leaned further and further over, until she was leaning at an angle at which nobody could have kept their balance, Elizabeth took two more steps back, and said, ‘No, Peggy, please don’t. Please don’t scare me.’

  At that instant, a dry autumnal gust of wind blew across Oak Street. It tossed up gum wrappers and empty cigarette packs and showers of leaves. It blew Elizabeth’s hair across her face, and fluffed up the dog. Then it caught the Peggy-girl, and blew her around and over, so that she curled and swooped and then she was nothing more than a swirl of soft white fabric, like a blown-away silk scarf, which flew up into the air, and across the street, fluttering and tumbling. But as a stronger gust of wind caught it, it flew apart into dozens of separate pieces, and Elizabeth realized that they weren’t silk, but paper, dozens of sheets of paper. She hesitated at first, but then she hurried across the street and gathered up six or seven of them. They were all thin, barely more than tissue, more like Bible-paper than anything else. They were all blank, too, although one edge was slightly plucked and ragged, as if they had been torn from a book.

  Riddles, she thought. Peggy’s asking me riddles. A girl with no face; a girl who can be blown apart by the wind, into dozens of sheets of blank paper. She’s asking me riddles, and yet she’s trying to tell me something, too – something which she didn’t have time to tell me back at the house. I have the feeling she wants to warn me, besides. All of these appearances seemed to have a pattern, and a concealed meaning, like the signs of a coming storm.

  The wind got up even more that evening and by six o’clock it thundered. Edna the nurse gave father his supper and tucked him in for the night. Huge fat raindrops pattered on the windows, and the gardens outside were suddenly tungsten-white and then plunged back into blackness.

  Seamus stood by the kitchen window staring out. ‘Blue lights every evening,’ he remarked.

  ‘That’s right, Seamus,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Blue lights every evening. But how do you know?’

  Mrs Patrick was buttering the potatoes. ‘He talks such babble these days.’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I don’t think he does.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mrs Patrick demanded. ‘Blue lights every evening, he’s always saying that. So where’s the sense in that?’

  ‘It comes from a story,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘It was the Snow Queen, who lived in Finland, and who burned blue lights every evening. It was a fairy tale way of explaining the Aurora Borealis.’

  Mrs Patrick looked baffled, so Elizabeth added, ‘The Northern Lights. You’ve heard of the Northern Lights?’

  ‘I’ve heard of all kinds of things,’ said Mrs Patrick. ‘That doesn’t mean to say that I believe them. I’ve seen all kinds of things, too.’

  Elizabeth said, ‘You haven’t seen a girl, have you? A little g
irl, aged about ten, all dressed in white?’

  Mrs Patrick looked at Elizabeth seriously. ‘There’s been enough trouble in this family, don’t you think, without imagining more?’

  ‘Well, I suppose.’

  ‘Are you going to visit your mommy tomorrow?’ It was obvious that she wanted to change the subject.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  ‘Let’s pray she recognizes you,’ said Mrs Patrick. ‘These days she can’t always tell the difference between people and furniture.’

  ‘There are quite a few people like that,’ she told Mrs Patrick. ‘You should meet my boss.’

  ‘He’s a harsh man, is he?’

  ‘She’s not a man, she’s a woman. But, yes, she’s harsh. You could use her tongue to sandpaper the floor.’

  ‘Well, you know what I think,’ said Mrs Patrick. ‘Every act of harshness you commit when you’re alive, that’s one more birch for your back when you get to Purgatory.’

  The doorbell rang and Seamus went to answer it. When he had gone, Mrs Patrick said, ‘Don’t go troubling the poor boy, will you, asking him questions and suchlike? The things he says, they may sound as if they have some meaning, but they’re nothing but moonshine. Goblin conversation, that’s what his father used to call it.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I don’t actually agree with you. I believe that Seamus knows very much more than you think. He has a funny way of telling us about it, that’s all.’

  ‘Whatever he knows, he can keep it to himself, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

  ‘Who said anything about being frightened?’

  ‘When I mentioned the little girl, you definitely didn’t look happy.’

  ‘What are you saying, child? I’ve never seen such a little girl, never.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs Patrick. But I’ve seen her. I’ve seen her as close and as clear as you are now. And if I’ve seen her, I’m surprised that you haven’t.’

  Mrs Patrick opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but then she closed it again. At that moment there was a knock at the open kitchen door, and Lenny came in, wearing a smart blue suit and a blue polka-dot necktie.

  ‘Something sure smells appetizing,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only plain and simple,’ said Mrs Patrick.

  ‘You won’t catch me complaining,’ smiled Lenny. ‘I’m a plain and simple kind of guy.’

  Mrs Patrick looked at Elizabeth with a heavily meaningful expression. ‘I’m pleased about that. Some people have a way of being far too fanciful, don’t you think?’

  They ate supper in the breakfast-room, because the dining-room was far too chilly and there was no fire. Mrs Patrick served her bean-and-vegetable soup, made with Great Northern beans, followed by roast chicken and apple tart. Lenny had brought a bottle of red wine and they toasted each other’s health, and made a wish for better days.

  After supper, Elizabeth and Lenny went into the living room, where they sat on the big worn-out velveteen couch and talked about everything that had happened to them since the war. Seamus came in and stacked more logs on the fire, and the flames sparkled in Elizabeth’s wine glass.

  ‘You were at Guadalcanal, weren’t you?’ asked Elizabeth.

  Lenny sipped his wine and looked away. ‘I don’t talk about it, generally.’

  ‘Was it bad?’

  ‘I try not to think about it. I lost a whole lot of friends. I was totally convinced that I was going to die, and that’s a feeling I never want to have again, ever.’

  To change the mood Elizabeth found the big brown-leather photograph album, and showed him pictures of herself at High School, on vacation in California, and posing on campus at Hartford.

  ‘I like this one of you crossing your eyes,’ Lenny grinned. Then, ‘Who’s this? That can’t be Laura, can it?’ He was pointing to a colour photograph of a stunning young blonde girl sitting beside a swimming-pool in a red swimsuit.

  ‘That’s Laura all right. That was when she got her first movie part. She played a chambermaid in Hotel Ritz. All she had to say was, “Make up your room, sir?” ’

  ‘She’s grown up real pretty.’

  ‘Let’s put it this way, she doesn’t lack for boyfriends.’

  ‘Has she been in any more movies?’

  ‘Just little bits and pieces, chorus girls, hatcheck girls, waitresses, dancers, that kind of thing. This year, though, she thinks she’s going to get her big break.’

  ‘Well, luck to her,’ said Lenny. ‘With those looks, she deserves it. And who’s this?’

  Elizabeth leaned against his shoulder and peered at the photograph he was pointing to. It showed herself in New York, standing on the corner of Central Park South, opposite the Plaza hotel. It was summer and she was wearing a yellow poplin blouse and a white calf-length skirt. Just behind her a young girl was standing – close enough to look as if she might have been asked to appear in the picture, but not so close that she and Elizabeth seemed at all intimate. The girl was very white-faced, and she was dressed all in white. She must have moved when the photograph was taken, because her face was blurred, and her eyes were nothing but two dark smudges.

  Elizabeth felt a cold prickling in the palms of her hands. ‘I don’t know who that is,’ she told Lenny. Just some girl.’

  ‘But, look,’ said Lenny, ‘she’s in this picture, too.’

  He lifted the book so that Elizabeth could see it better. And, sure enough, he was right. The same white-faced girl was standing in the background. She was further away, her face half turned, but it was unquestionably the same girl. The strange thing was, this photograph showed Elizabeth’s father, about a month before he suffered his stroke, standing outside the New Milford Savings Bank.

  ‘She sure gets around, this girl, doesn’t she?’ said Lenny. ‘Look, she’s in this one, too; and this one; and this one.’

  The little girl was turning to look at Elizabeth as she stood by her father’s De Soto outside the country fairgrounds in Danbury; she was running across the street, her hair flying, as Elizabeth posed outside the florists in the middle of Oak Street; she was standing in the distance with a blurry frown on her face when Elizabeth was sitting on the beach at Hyannis with her college friend Mimi.

  ‘Is this just a coincidence, or what?’ laughed Lenny. ‘She’s everywhere. She’s in every single darned picture. In Sherman. In Danbury. In New York. On Cape Cod. She’s even here in California, when you went to see Laura. And you’re trying to kid me that you don’t know who she is?’

  ‘I swear I have no idea. I don’t know how she got in all those pictures. I mean, I don’t see how she could have done.’

  She closed the album and put it down on the polished oak coffee table. ‘I don’t understand it. I’ve looked through those photographs dozens of times, and I’ve never seen her before.’

  She kept staring at the album. She felt like picking it up again, to see if the Peggy-girl was really there, but she had the strongest intuition that she would be, and so she left it where it was.

  Lenny said, ‘It’s impossible. This album starts around 1946, right? If that was the same girl in every picture, how come she never got any older, and how come she was always wearing the same dress? Come on, admit it. It’s a trick. It’s something you do to tease people.’

  ‘Lenny, I promise you, it isn’t a trick, and it isn’t a joke.’

  He picked up the album and opened it. He looked at the first page and said, ‘There – she’s not in these pictures, is she?’ He turned over the next page, and then the next. He stopped, and pressed his fingertips against his forehead, like a man who has a sudden twinge of migraine.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘She’s not in any of these pictures, either. I could have sworn – ’

  He leafed through page after page, turning them
quicker and quicker. Then he sat back and stared at Elizabeth. ‘She’s gone.’

  Elizabeth carefully took the album, laid it on her lap, and looked through every single page. At last she closed it, and stared at Lenny in utter dread. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she asked him. ‘First of all she was there, and now she’s not.’

  ‘There must be some kind of an explanation,’ said Lenny. He looked around the room, and up at the chandelier. ‘Maybe it was an optical illusion, you know. Reflected light, something like that.’

  ‘You know it wasn’t.’

  He hunched forward. ‘Yeah, I know it wasn’t. I’m going nuts, that’s what it is. I’m going nuts and you’re going nuts. It’s sexual deprivation that does it.’

  Elizabeth took hold of his hand. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. 1 saw that little girl today.’

  ‘You saw her? Where?’

  ‘She was standing in my father’s bedroom. I don’t know how she got there. I just looked up and there she was. She talked to me. I could hear her, as clearly as I can hear you. She said she was going to protect me. Then she collapsed. Well, not really collapsed, but folded up, shrivelled up, and disappeared. Right in front of my eyes, I swear it.’

  Lenny eyed her for a long time, and then he said, ‘You ever hear of reefers?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of reefers. But I’ve certainly never smoked one, if that’s what you’re trying to suggest.’

  ‘Okay, I’m sorry. I’m finding this hard to get to grips with, that’s all. Tell me all about this girl.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell. She appeared, and talked to me, and then she tried to touch father. That’s when I got angry, and I tried to grab her arms, but she folded up right in front of me, while I was holding her wrists. In the end, all I was left with was a flower, made out of frost, which melted.’

  Lenny was staring at her as if she had just said something in a foreign language. ‘You were left with a flower, made of frost?’

  Elizabeth, embarrassed, slammed down the album. ‘You saw those pictures for yourself. She appears, and then she vanishes, no warning, nothing! I saw her again on Oak Street, after I came around to your house! She was standing on the oak stump, as real as anything except that she didn’t have a face. Hair, but no face, as if-1 don’t know, as if her whole head was made of glass.’