A Ghost at the Door (17 page)

‘So what about the man you’re dating?’ he asked.

‘Engaged to, remember.’

‘Oh, that’s right. Sorry. But you’re not wearing a ring.’

‘No.’

‘I hope he knows how lucky he is. Name?’

‘Harry.’

‘Reliable sort?’

‘Next question.’

‘So where is he?’

‘Off getting stuck up his family tree, I think.’

‘Whoops. Choppy water?’

‘We’re in a relationship, stupid.’

‘Ah, I see.’ And he had. Very deliberately his hand reached out and went to hers. ‘You’re a special lady, J, deserve nothing but the best. I so hope you get
it.’

Her own hand was growing warm beneath his; she didn’t move it, not even when it closed around hers, and that wasn’t the only part of her that was beginning to react.

‘And, J, if ever you feel like getting a second opinion . . .’

Without thinking, she sprang to her feet, knocking over her beer in her haste to get away. She didn’t bother to make excuses or say goodbye, simply ran for the door. She was confused, and
not just from the beers. She knew what he was going to suggest next. For old times’ sake. That was why she panicked, because, right at that moment, she hadn’t any idea what she would
say in reply.

Harry and Alexander McQuarrel sat on the steps of the Old Library, where, more than fifty years before, his father had stood among his friends to have his Freshers photograph
taken. It was late, the towering Corinthian columns staring down upon a Peckwater Quad that had fallen almost silent as the last of the summer evening faded from the sky and the hour nudged
midnight. Lights were still blazing from the windows of students’ rooms, splashing across the grass, just as Johnnie would have remembered.

‘Why are you chasing your father so hard, Harry?’ McQuarrel asked, rolling the tumbler of port he had brought between the palms of his hands. The tumbler was excessive, but so was
the atmosphere, deep, cloistered by the walls of the quad, almost conspiratorial.

Harry clung onto his own tumbler with his one free hand and took a while before he replied. ‘It’s not easy to put into words, Alex. I never knew him well. And I know it sounds like a
pathetic cliché but I need to know more about him in order to know myself.’

‘You don’t know yourself?’

‘You think you do, until you get to see yourself through the eyes of others.’ Particularly Jemma, of course. ‘Sometimes you discover you’re not the answer to every
prayer.’

‘I’ve kept track of you over the years.’

‘Why?’

‘Natural interest, knowing your father. Anyway, it hasn’t been too difficult. I can’t remember a year when you weren’t somewhere in the headlines. I even read that you
get a personal Christmas card from the Queen.’

‘Then you know more about me than I know about my father.’

‘Johnnie was . . .’ McQuarrel eased his elderly frame on the hard stone as he stretched for the right phrase. ‘A complicated man.’

‘He seemed to have had many different lives.’

‘He was full of imagination. Quite brilliant with it.’

‘He drank.’

‘Made a fortune, of course.’

Harry swivelled so that he could confront his new friend. ‘How, Alex? How did he make all that money?’

‘He was – what’s the term? – a financial consultant.’

‘And what the hell did that mean?’

‘He gambled. Bet against the system. Spotted winners before anyone else and sold short those that were headed for a fall.’

‘But how?’

‘I told you, he was brilliant. Not only instinctively but intellectually. He came back here often, and you know what the Senior Common Room is like, stuffed full of men and women who are
the brightest in their field yet who are strangely and sometimes deliberately cut off from reality. You can’t dine off college silver every night and still claim to have the common touch. And
we do so love a gossip. So when your father arrived with a glass in hand and laughter in his eyes, and with all his tales of the outside world, we’d fall into his arms.’

‘But what would he get from a professor of Ancient Greek?’

‘Not a lot, perhaps. But I’m a biochemist, a Senior Fellow – all but retired now, of course, very much Emeritus, but alongside the academic work I was involved with various
research companies. Cutting-edge stuff. Trying to find out how we can live for ever. The graveyards are full of my failures.’ He seemed to find it a wry joke. ‘But eternal life is what
we’re promised and what many will pay a fortune for in their vain attempt to achieve it. Johnnie understood all that and had an inexhaustible capacity for turning people’s hopes and
fears into money. So he would come here, and many other places like this, and listen. And he had a very good ear. Soaked up all our braggadocio and intellectual conceits, grabbed every morsel of
information. Biochemistry, aerospace engineering, quantitative finance, computer science, we’ve got the lot. And the very best. People who advise corporations and governments around the
world, who start revolutions not from behind barricades but in boardrooms and labs and from computer silos. Johnnie knew that. He would stand beside the fire in the Senior Common Room and make love
to us all.’

‘No one minded?’

‘Oh, a few, but he handled us so gently, and we’re vain, we do so love to lift our skirts. Particularly when we’ve had a drink, and, by God, did Johnnie know how to hammer the
drink.’ He raised his glass in silent salute. ‘Anyway, he made sure we shared in his success. He would always come back with a large cheque. We’re dreamers here, Harry, but dreams
cost money and you’d be surprised what people will do to pursue their dreams.’

‘His dream was money,’ Harry whispered.

‘He was a man with many facets.’

‘A rough diamond.’

‘I found him rather polished.’

‘Alex, you said you knew me when I was eight.’

‘Around that age.’

‘So . . .’ There was a slight glitch in Harry’s voice. ‘You must have known my mother.’

McQuarrel paused, then nodded, slowly, as though it took a considerable effort, and stared deep into his glass. ‘She had a hard road to walk.’ He looked up, his eyes almost pleading
for Harry not to press him. ‘I didn’t know her well. I’m sorry.’ A heavy silence stretched between them in the darkness. ‘Don’t judge too harshly, Harry. No one
can know the truth of such circumstances, even those who are involved in it.’

As he stared forlornly into the darkness two men and a young woman burst from a staircase on the far side of the quad, spilling onto the lawn in post- or pre-coital exuberance. From somewhere
near at hand a clock bell chimed midnight. Harry glanced at his father’s wrist-watch: six minutes slow. He advanced it seven.

‘I must go, Harry. Dammit, I’ve spent so long sitting here I feel like Methuselah. Are you coming?’

Harry shook his head. ‘This is where he sat. Got drunk.’ He stared into the past. ‘I think I’ll stay awhile.’

McQuarrel rose stiffly, testing his legs. ‘Don’t be too hard on your father, Harry. It never does to disinter the dead – you’ll find nothing but corruption. Better to
move on.’

‘Jemma told me much the same, too.’

‘Then make it unanimous. I’ll see you in the morning.’ The old man began to walk away.

‘Oh, one last thing, Alex. Does the name Susannah Ranelagh mean anything to you?’

McQuarrel stopped, turned slowly. ‘No, nothing,’ he said from the darkness, and disappeared.

Jemma woke, warm, damp, her breasts cupped in his hands. ‘Oh, fuck!’ she muttered.

Beside her Steve stirred.‘Morning,’ he whispered, and kissed her shoulder. Then he began nibbling her neck.

She pushed him away. ‘Fuck!’ she said again, more loudly. She wanted to blame him but she couldn’t: it was all her fault. She’d felt so childish about fleeing from the
pub, so when he had caught up with her on the pavement outside she’d apologized.

‘Why did you run?’ he’d asked.

That was when she burst into tears. She didn’t know why, not for sure. She was confused, in need, wanted a shoulder to cry on and hands that would smooth away all her creases and cares.
She wanted Harry, the old Harry, not this new one who’d come back broken and harsh from Bermuda, but neither Harry had been there on the pavement when she’d needed him. So she’d
made do with Steve. Distraction. And it had worked, for a few hours. He had brought her back to his place and slipped off her clothes, touched her so softly she scarcely knew which part of his own
body he was using, finding those hidden places, reminding her of all the reasons why she’d been with him in the first place. It was only as she woke the following morning that she remembered
all the reasons she’d decided she should stop. She knew she would go to his bathroom, reach for his brush and find another woman’s hair embedded in it. Discover spare toothbrushes
hidden away. Yet she wasn’t angry with Steve, not as angry as she was with Harry. Steve hadn’t promised her anything other than a great time, and he’d delivered, while Harry . .
.

Getting laid by Steve wasn’t the answer to anything, she knew that, but she wasn’t any longer sure that Harry was, either. At least Steve wasn’t complicated. His hands were
back on her breasts and something was digging into the small of her back.

‘So here’s the deal, J. You can have breakfast in bed. Or breakfast in the kitchen.’

She turned, felt his body against hers. ‘After last night I’m surprised you’ve still got an appetite.’

‘I’ve got an appetite. I need an answer.’

‘Then both,’ she said. ‘I’ll take both.’

Summer was spilling across the great quad, with fingers of early-morning sunlight weaving rainbows through the spray thrown from the fountain. Harry let it settle on his cheeks.
He remembered tales his father had told about late nights that ended with his being thrown into this fountain, dressed in his dinner jacket, to swim among the spotted carp with their bulging
bellies that lurked beneath the tangled carpet of lily leaves.

‘Maybe the fish remember Johnnie,’ a voice said at Harry’s ear. He turned to find McQuarrel at his shoulder. ‘Carp can live to be seventy, apparently,’ McQuarrel
added.

‘The bloody fish know more than I do,’ Harry muttered.

‘What do they say, Harry? “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. Mark Antony’s oration over Caesar’s body. I’m
not the greatest fan of Shakespeare – overwritten, too many words – but there are moments when he gets it. I wonder what any of our lives will look like in hindsight. Flaws are cut in
stone while our merits are like footprints in the sand.’

‘So let it be with Johnnie, is that it?’ Harry said, echoing the play’s lines.

‘He never much seemed to worry about death, not that I remember. He was all about the moment and living it to the full. “Die happy,” he used to say. “It’s a
once-in-a-lifetime thing.” He did so like his
bons mots
. I hope he meant it.’

‘About what?’

‘Dying happy. It’s a rare privilege. Harry, I’m not in much of a position to preach but as a friend . . .’

‘Tell me, Alex.’

‘You should think of Jemma. A remarkable girl. I got the impression – how can I put it? – she was . . .’

‘Deeply and most sincerely pissed off with me.’

‘As you say.’

Harry’s shoulders sagged. He was having trouble carrying all this weight.

‘I hope the two of you will be spectacularly happy together,’ McQuarrel said.

‘Do you have a wife, Alex?’

The older man smiled forlornly. ‘She died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

A brush of summer breeze ruffled his hair, causing a silver lock to fall across his forehead, and his eyes seemed damp. ‘Some would say it was a blessing.’ The words came softly and
were filled with hurt.

‘But not you.’

‘She committed suicide. Been frail for many years. Not mentally feeble, you understand, far from it. Agnetta was the most determined woman I’ve ever met, but she found no joy in
life. There’s a certain type who draws the curtains on a Sunday in case Death walks by, but for her Death wasn’t a distant rumour: he was a constant companion. Like I suspect he has
been for you, for much of your life.’