A Private Haunting (17 page)

Sometime after five Mary got home. She'd just closed the front door when she heard a car in the driveway. Her husband, back from Saturday afternoon pub football. She rushed upstairs and popped three paracetamol, switched on the shower then stared at herself in the mirror.

It was always other people who had affairs. Mary judged them, as everyone did, from a position of complete ignorance. Some she could understand and others just seemed tragic, a waste of years. Surely the guilty one (there always had to be a guilty one) must realise it and break down, knees hugged to the chest and a primal wailing no one would hear.

We were once
so happy...

Mary wasn't fussed about that. She didn't
wonder where it was all going to end up
, as the over-sympathetic sofa matrons of daytime TV would ask the conflicted caller. At the moment she was preoccupied with sex. The Dirty Sex of the Toilet Tramp, as she'd decided to call it.

Leaving the Pushwagner exhibition, she'd insisted they take different buses back to the village.
These are such watchful days
, she told Jonas, then winked. As soon as Jonas got on the waiting bus to buy his ticket she was gone. Waving him off seemed needy, too normal an aftermath of furtive sex. But when Mary got to the corner of the street she stopped to watch the bus drive past. It was only when she noticed people glancing at her that she realised she was smiling. There was a pleasant tingle in her groin. It was like being in a film.

The thrill lasted as long as the buzz of the alcohol. The journey home administered the final blows, the relentless shaking as the bus jolted along the potholed road, slamming the afternoon against her cranial walls until it was a shatter of morose pieces and a headache.

The mirror had steamed up. Mary decided not to have a shower. She wanted to face her husband. A defiant, passive-aggressive reaction that somehow made her feel better about herself.

 

All this leaning she did, leaning and watching. She noticed it again as she leaned against the frame of the door separating the living room from the kitchen. Her husband was sitting on the sofa watching cricket on the amazingly stupid eighty-inch plasma TV. She heard herself say things like
how was
your day, dear, what do you want for dinner?,
listening to his distracted replies.

In reality, she'd said nothing. He hadn't noticed her or maybe he had and was just ignoring her, no sudden fright when she said hello. His grunted reply made her feel equally invisible.

Still invisible when she sat down and rested her shoulder against his. He didn't turn, suspiciously, and ask about the alcohol on her breath or the
smell of sex
. He just edged away until they weren't touching. Mary watched the TV. A man in white kept on carefully hitting a cricket ball nowhere at all. She felt a little bit like that man in white and almost burst into tears.

Her headache had started to fade. She closed her eyes and imagined it was Jonas's hand she was now reaching for, the same cool afternoon breeze and even the endless cricket was enjoyable. Because it was all a question of the lives we choose to inhabit. If we got it right then the details might remain the same but the responses would be so very different.

‘You heard about the magazines?' her husband said.

Mary opened her eyes. Her husband had pulled his hand away. There was a cat food advert on the TV.

‘The porn mags,' he continued.

‘Yeah.'

‘What's he like then?'

‘Who?'

‘The Norwegian. Jonas.'

‘I don't know that much about him.'

‘You know he just appeared out of nowhere. A few years back.'

‘You mean he moved here.'

‘Yeah. Out of nowhere.'

‘Isn't that what most people do when they move somewhere new?'

‘He's an odd bod.'

‘An odd bod?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Says who?'

‘People.'

‘Who?'

‘Just
people
. Why are you defending him?'

‘He says they weren't his.'

‘Well he's not going to admit it, is he? I wouldn't!'

‘Yeah. You wouldn't want the police taking a look at your internet search history.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘I'm not an idiot!'

‘Have you been drinking?'

'Ten out of ten, Sherlock. Why don't you offer your services to the police and help find Lacey?'

‘I told you I hurt my leg and couldn't help out with the – '

‘You know I've got another job?'

‘Eh?'

‘Another job. I clean. I'm a
cleaner
. For the man with the porno mags. Jonas.'

‘What the hell are you talking about?'

‘You know those two things in your face. Just above the nose. They're eyes. Why don't you try opening them?'

This time she did have a shower, long and very hot. He'd followed her, of course, stood outside the cubicle and rambled on with his questions that she let stream away with the water. In time he got bored and left. After drying herself she chose her best underwear and left by the front door. He appeared again as she closed it, more ramblings cut off by the slam.

 

She'd primed Jonas about the underwear. Back in the gallery toilets, legs on his shoulders.
I'll come round later, dress
up for you
. A strangulated voice that surprised her and made him push harder.

Agent Provocateur, a black lace bra and matching thong with mesh front. She didn't know why she'd bought them and had only ever worn them for herself. Standing in front of the mirror, considering the angles, how it could be better but so much worse.
I'll come round later
... Cringe-worthy, but a relief she hadn't blurted out other embarrassments;
oh you
like that, don't you?
and
right there baby, right
there
, things they said in the film playing in her head.

She felt ill at ease as she hurried through the village. The heavy rain had emptied the streets but there was still the possibility of bumping into someone she knew, who would study her from under their umbrella and just
know
that under her jeans a pair of £50 panties chafed her bum crack. Then a bird dipped across her path, making her flinch. She followed it into the bruised sky and when she lost sight of it found herself thinking about Jonas and Lacey. A sudden uncertainty settled across her. For a moment she almost turned and went back home. Instead, she considered the best approach to End Point. Not the route to take but the attitude to assume when she got there. She decided on nonchalance, a confident walk right up to the door. She was just the cleaner, doing her job. But she didn't have the key ready in her hand and had to pause, rummaging in her bag looking for the damn thing, trying to keep the umbrella above her head and failing, rain now trickling down her neck.

When she did find the key the door wouldn't open. She panicked, felt a heat in her cheeks, sure that a crowd had appeared on the other side of the road. She waggled the key then realised the door must have been open and she'd just locked it. She finally stepped inside the house just as a car passed. Supermarket Meg stared at her from the passenger window.

 

Jonas wasn't in. She checked the living room, kitchen and back garden, noticing that the lawn was all churned up and muddy. Sudden inspiration brought a shy smile but when she went up to the bedroom to strip for the naked man waiting on the bed he wasn't there. So she had a pee in the en-suite toilet, expensive knickers at her ankles, wondering what to do next.

‘Hello?'

The voice came from the bedroom. Mary smiled. She quickly stood up and stripped to her bra and panties. A quick 360 in the mirror told her to go for it and she threw open the bathroom door.

‘Sorry,
sorry
!'

‘Christ sake!' Mary slammed the door closed and leaned against it, heart hammering. She quickly dressed and sat on the bed, shaking her head and
fuck it, fuck it, fuck it
. When she had composed herself she went downstairs and found Fletcher sitting at the kitchen table.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't know – '

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘It's my fault for creeping about.'

‘Have something to eat.' He nodded at the plastic bag on the table. ‘I always get too much.'

‘What's on the menu?'

‘Lamb jalfrezi, prawn bhuna and chicken pakora. Keema naan and rice. Pilau.'

‘Bloody hell, you got worms?'

‘Saturday night take-away.'

‘You're not supposed to take it
all
away!'

Adam frowned and looked away. ‘I told you. I always order too much. Never seem to get it right.'

Five minutes into the meal Mary knew she'd made a mistake. She should have gone back home. At least the rain gave her something to listen to, because Adam Fletcher certainly didn't want to talk. He destroyed dialogue with monosyllables, looking at Mary as if waiting for her to ask the one question he would answer.

Behind the rain came thunder, the gloom quick-falling. Adam didn't get up and switch on the light and though Mary wanted to she just sat there, thinking about the rain pounding on the sun room roof.
Like voodoo pandemonium
, she wanted to say,
don't you agree?

But Adam would say nothing. He'd just keep staring and chewing, waiting for that question.

Mary began to eat more quickly. The chicken was dry and greasy at the same time. Sticky clumps in the throat. The underwear she was wearing sickened her, the realisation that the bra and panties had only ever been seen by her and Adam, this shadowed man who was
forcing
her to eat
, even if that was ridiculous because she could get up and leave any time. But she kept on eating, avoiding his eye, wondering if to push her plate away would be to have him reach across and slap her, telling her to
sit your arse back down
and eat your dinner.

‘Why did you tell me that about Jonas?'

He briefly stopped chewing. ‘Don't you believe me?'

‘Well I…'

‘You heard about the magazines too, right?

‘I did but – '

‘What's not to believe?'

‘It just doesn't seem like him.'

‘Why? Because you know him so well. What do you really know about him?'

‘Your cousin.'

‘That's right. My cousin.'

She looked at her plate, lamb shreds, oil separated from sauce. When she looked up he was smiling.

‘You really don't remember me, do you?

And then she did.

 

As Fletcher told her, he wondered why it didn't make him feel any better. No relief followed the confession. How he had changed his name from John Hackett in 1992, just after turning nineteen. Soon afterwards Adam Fletcher joined the Marines.
Adam
because this was a rebirth,
Fletcher
after the police chaplain, the one who held his hands across an interview table.

‘You'd think it would have been difficult, but it was the easiest thing I've done in my whole life.'

He speared a piece of lamb. The curry wasn't bad. He'd had worse, cross-legged on threadbare rugs, sharing meals, fatty mutton stews that left a film on your lips, like the forced friendliness that coated those evenings in mistrust. Hearts and minds was a joke, the punch-line a group of preternaturally calm men with plastic-tied hands, an IED hidden in a turban.

‘You had New Kids on the Block posters. All round your bed. I was into the B-52s and used to take the mick. You had a Wilson Phillips tape you played over and over. Remember that?'

‘I can't believe – '

‘You dumped me for Craig Adamson. He had an American flat-top haircut. Prick thought he was Vanilla Ice!'

She stood up quickly, quick as the image that flashed in his mind. Mary in her posh underwear. He hadn't seen anything like that back then. He wanted to do things but felt guilty. Every time he imagined it he saw his aunt, slapping him on the face and calling him a dirty little boy.

He grabbed her by the arm as she reached the kitchen door. ‘I hated you. Not for long though.'

‘Let me go, John.'

‘
Adam
.'

‘Ok. I'm sorry. Adam.'

‘You didn't know about this house, did you?'

‘What are you talking about?'

Her voice was shrill. He wondered how soon it would become panic and how he would defuse it, as they'd been taught; re-establish control by slowing the situation, deconstruct into manageable pieces. He let her go and she hurried down the hallway. ‘No one knew.'

She hesitated at the door. ‘Knew what?'

‘This was my grandfather's house. A total recluse. Hated people and I'd never visited him. There was no way I was going back home after they let me go and he took me in. I used to watch people from the bedroom and none of them knew I was here. Even my aunt kept her trap shut.'

‘Everyone thought you'd left.'

‘I did. After a bit. It's not easy when you know you won't be coming back. He died years ago and left me the house. I thought that maybe enough time had passed. But here I am again and I don't think it has. I keep seeing all these faces and none of them has changed. Apart from the way they look at me. They don't see John Hackett. They don't look at me that way.'

‘I never thought you did it.'

‘For what it's worth.'

‘What?'

‘That's what you're supposed to say.
For what
it's worth I never thought you did it
. It's more poignant.'

Jonas, the exhibited man. Let them stare, let them all stare. First the startled bus driver, the same one who'd dropped him in the village less than an hour previously, eyes watching in the rear-view, following him down the slippery aisle. Then the passengers, who clocked him one by one, darting eyes as he slumped down, assessing the limp, the dirty clothes, the threat.

Don't you know he tried to kill me
?

But Jonas said nothing. Just a shout for himself, a
scream
, taking away the pain in his side, maybe a broken rib. Pull it out and plant it, grow another Jonas, a better one, one to replace the dying one, dying on his back in the mud and rain, Fletcher's hands tight around his neck.

He smoothed his hair and wiped the mud from his trousers. A stumble in the front door, the realisation Fletcher wasn't home and hey ho, out with his stuff. Big Haakon, he could hear him going on about
the
vibes, you gotta listen
to the vibes, man
. The other voice chipped in too;
never alienate the unknown
. A biblical aphorism, maybe, the Bible he'd also thrown in the street. Some people reacted poorly to blasphemy. His mother with her hand-at-mouth horror.

Fletcher's violence.

The bus pitched like the Larvik ferry before they got the stabilisers. He folded his arms and closed his eyes, shunted and shoved but somehow falling asleep, opening his eyes to wet city streets, multicolours of umbrellas through rain-dappled, foggy windows, hurrying people going who knows where but likely somewhere warm and homely, an arm around the waist, two lovers and a sweep of rain across their secret garden, all so comforting,
easing through
, like the bus now moving into the bus lane, overtaking all else as he was soon hurrying along King Street, into the shopping arcade and over-heated department store to find a toilet where he wiped away the dirt to reveal the mirror-face which may, just may, pass muster.

 

Clean-faced, Jonas found a trendy bar called
Axis
, Saturday-night-crowded but a group just leaving and he snagged their table. Four twenty-somethings in identikit ripped denims appeared moments later and asked if they could sit at the other chairs. He watched them, sipping an expensive continental lager and trying to figure out what he was doing there. In the noise of the bar the village seemed reassuringly distant. He could, if he wanted, just disappear.

He was an exile, after all. Get up that gangplank and cast off, ply the route and take the weather, a look to the horizon and the sea a mirror to walk on, back to a gentler time, collecting bonfire wood with Axel, Big Haakon's delight at his first bow-drill ember, the first time he saw Eva's face, looking back at his in
Robinet's
that July night when they first met. Her first face, so different from the last, slashed forehead to chin, head on the Saab's dashboard.

He raised his face, closed his eyes for a long time. When he looked down again, the four people across from him were staring, wondering about this stranger who they sat with but didn't join, despite the
incontrovertible
fact
of their collective presence at this sticky table.

Hey folks, we're
one
. A revelation to shout above the MOR techno.
Think about it
. He'd have them all nodding in wonder, the first time they had realised that even the simplest of connections was still a connection and with connection there could never be true exile.

The four people suddenly laughed. He looked across and caught the eye of the brunette with bad skin hidden under thick make-up. A deepening frown as her eyes flickered across his face. Only now had she noticed his swollen eye and cut lip, only
now
, meaning it was the first time she had noticed
him
, Jonas and his burst face being
interchangeable
.

So there was no connection to insist upon after all, Jonas a simple stick-man, without a face, a child's approximation in whom they had no interest other than a means to let them sit down.

‘Do you want to know what happened?' he shouted.

She ignored him.

‘
Do you want to know what happened
?'

A raise of the eyebrows and the face now turning to his, impatience trying to be cool. ‘What?'

‘I was beaten up by a man with no clothes. In the rain. Every time I got up he pushed me down. I got muddy.'

She nodded, slowly, and mouthed
ok
. As if choreographed, the four friends reached for their drinks.

‘He's called Adam and he lives there. Adam.
Adam
. Like the first man. Can't argue with that eh?'

‘Look mate.' It was the male, on his left. He had an asymmetrical haircut, anvil-shaped. ‘We're just out for – '

‘I needed to be around people. Connections, you know, like we're all sitting round this table.'

Soon after, Jonas was asked to leave. The bouncer's tight white t-shirt reminded him of Fletcher. Maybe that was why he resisted the hand on his shoulder and pulled his arm back, knocking over a drink and insisting on paying for another, dropping the fiver as he was shoved outside.

 

The rain poured. He sheltered in a Chinese takeaway until the counter man insisted he order or leave.

Jonas chose a spring roll, dripping with grease that coated the inside of his mouth. It was an ugly taste, he told the man it was the ugliest spring roll he had ever eaten in his life.
Ugly
, said the man.
Yes, ugly
. Jonas wasn't expecting art, not from a cheap takeaway, that would be absurd, but he certainly insisted on plainness. Ugliness was laziness, no care had been taken over this food and the establishment should at least strive for plainness.
Don
't you see?

The counter man didn't see. Jonas stepped out the door and was nearly bowled off the pavement by a skinny, whey-faced man pulling a little cart with a Dalmatian sitting in it. The man zipped into the next street, the Dalmatian leaning into the corner to retain his balance.

This was how the breakdown would happen. In the rain with the after-image of a Dalmatian on a cart. Maybe it had looked around with a goofy little doggy smile as it turned the corner, a Scooby Doo-like guffaw at Jonas Mortensen, the man who lingered, lingered and didn't see. He hurried to the corner and watched man, cart and Dalmatian pass a group of people leaving
The
Pickled Shepherd
. Not one turned to look at the strange procession. It might never have been. Yet they all stared at Jonas as he walked past them and into the pub.

 

Apart from a group of men in a window booth, Jonas was the only customer. He took an adjoining booth and stared at a pint he didn't want. The gantry TV was showing a baseball game and there was nothing as boring as baseball, especially baseball with the sound down. He watched anyway, watched for decades and had a thousand more beers he didn't want, and suddenly baseball made a perfect, solemn sense. Strip the pizzazz and the pose and it was a meditation, a prayer,
religion
itself
. There was liturgy in those stats, allegory in the field-positions.

Jonas understood, he got baseball! He'd watch from this holy moment on, take his place in the church. He was so engrossed he only heard the voice the second time it asked the question.

‘Can you settle a bet?'

The man peering over the top of the booth had a moustache that made Jonas think of the police. ‘What about?'

The man's eyes narrowed. ‘Where are you from then?'

‘Is that the bet?'

‘I said, where are you from?'

Another red face appeared, at the side of the booth. Jonas looked back at the TV. ‘Where are you from?'

‘Here mate, I'm from here.' The man looked down at his friend and cocked his head at Jonas. ‘Another one. They just keep on coming and coming. Telling you, we have sucked Poland
dry
.'

‘Leave the bloke alone Mickey.'

‘You think I'm Polish?'

‘Yeah. I think you're Polish. Must be a right dump. Leaving your home like that. A right…
fuckin
... dump.' There was laughter when Mickey sat back down on his side of the booth.

Fat Xavier!

Jonas almost burst out laughing. He might have been intimidated if Mickey hadn't reminded him of the pompous little owner of the vineyard in the Beaujolais. Fat Xavier didn't like
all you
Scandy-men
and sniped at Jonas for weeks. The fear in his pinched little rodent face when Jonas dumped a basket of grapes over his head still brought extreme joy, even now.

He looked back at the TV. Baseball had slipped out of focus, once again the tedium of tubby men with bats. What would it be like to be Polish? In fact, he could even be Polish. What did it matter to be Polish, Norwegian, Martian, a funny little green Martian, so far away from home that his sense of identity was sure to be stronger than anything possible on earth?

Only when you stopped moving did it matter. That's when people started asking questions. For a long time after leaving Bergen no one had. He worked construction and picked fruit in half a dozen countries and no questions, as if exile had stripped individuality and explanation, imposing a collective, instead, of stained hands and exhaustion, camp beds in fetid barns that angry men like Mickey flung open in the dawn with a near sexual relish.

The booth men were laughing at him again, Jonas who was every other who had come here and was yet to come: grafter Poles, Baltic nomads and coy Romanians, the dream curdled in the back of a locked lorry and two months at Calais to strangle the last optimism before the indifferent journey to work the fruit and building sites, wash dishes and clean toilets. Maybe they would visit a pub like this, a couple of drinks to chill out awhile, a few quid for themselves instead of being sent home. To listen to a bigotry even more demeaning for being amused rather than angry. Nothing to do but drink up. Drink up and leave.

Along the street Jonas threw up, barely breaking stride and walking on. He wandered the streets and passed the art gallery. It was hard to believe that the afternoon with Mary had happened, that he'd ever been in this city at all, this place of spring rolls and Dalmatians, baseball and bigots, buses to the whispering outposts and Jonas now waiting for his.

Mary wouldn't be there when he got home. Past 10 pm now and she said she'd be round at seven.
I'll come round later, dress up for
you
... When the B4 appeared he watched it leave.

 

The old man at the River Hotel's reception desk barely looked at him. When he finally did the pupils dilated, as if his vision was returning to the present from contemplation of a time long since passed.
We've all
got ways to go
, the old man might have said and Jonas replying
yes, I just need a night, a
night before I go on
. But the old man gave him the key without a word.

The mattress sagged. Too many dream-tossed nights. Jonas put his face to the greying sheet. A faint smell of sweat, stories and old memories. They drifted like dust in sunlight, none of them his. He closed his eyes, opened them. He saw strange faces, heard unknown voices.

Mary hadn't phoned.

He didn't know why he didn't phone her.

He wrote a text message then deleted it. Eva made him. He always listened to his dead wife.

She felt close tonight, the blue drapes reminding him of the
Himalayan Inn
, Kathmandu. It was all in the setting, a lost heyday glimpsed in tired decor, when the carpet was unstained, the grouting china-white and curtains were proud to be
drapes
. Kathmandu, the end of their honeymoon, three weeks of Annapurna dazzle-calm to three days of culture stun in the crowded poor-streets. Diesel fug and smouldering rubbish. Mopeds and street horns, multicolour night-signs of bars and bazaars, restaurants, on and on through tourist Thamel.

Just the leavings: Eva, frozen with a bottle of Everest beer clutched in her hand, face contorted in a shriek, a cockroach on the sheets. How could the world move with all these leavings, all the friction they brought to bear, slowing us down? No wonder we come to feel so jaded.

‘Drapes.'

He said it out loud, again and again, the word more odd-sounding the more he said it, separating the letters, the flat
dr
, long
apes
and lingering
ess
.
Dr-
appe-ss. Dr-
app-ess
. Eva was laughing but he suddenly felt weak, as weak as Anya on the floor of the Saab, who looked untouched but whose neck lolled horribly when the paramedics lifted her, lifted her so carefully.

Tonight, as then, no strength.

He sighed, and the room too seemed to breathe heavily. Rain pattered the window. He heard Mary knocking softly at the door, trying to get in, but this no man's land was for ghosts only. He felt no guilt about this first woman since Eva. Turn over the stones, peer in each of those dusty cupboards, the only certainty is that there never is any certainty, just an on-going chain of assumptions and who really knows if the crack in the pavement is a smile or a frown.

He only wanted to stop. He came to the village to stop. As he told Lacey,
slow
down, stop awhile.

She was young and beautiful, all the time in the world. Lacey who liked him too. No one would get it. He'd learned what to expect and how there was no way back, no matter the sad siren call of a far-gone wellbeing. He thought of End Point when he first broke in. Standing in the living room, dust angling through watery light, the slow fading light of the life of the unknown former owner, hanging around because it still had no idea where to go next.