My Ghosts (5 page)

She wonders then if she’s been like those ancient astronomers, building everything on false assumptions. Wonders if she’s really some stranger’s child, not brought by the fairies but left somewhere, found somewhere. If her mother had lived until she thought Clare was old enough, is that what she would have told her? That she was a stray, taken in and cared for like Aunt Peach, but with even less reason. A kind of charity that had nothing to do, not really, with love or belonging. If so, she owes a simpler kind of debt. If that’s how it was, then nothing is certain, and even her mother’s ghostly presence might be nothing more than a wish.

There are voices downstairs, loud groans and laughter as Kez and Nan set their heavy bags on the scrubbed kitchen table. Clare thinks of how shakily she stood, at first, how easily her legs move now, and she’s suddenly sure she can make a small, closed place for herself, thinks maybe that’s all she’s ever wanted. Those beating black wings still whir softly, but an idea begins to glimmer and grow. She’s already memorized the diagrams and she can teach herself everything else in Charlie’s book, send for the other titles that are listed in the back. Kez and Nan can tack up notices in the neighbourhood, put a small sign in the window. Watches are always losing time, clocks seizing up; it won’t be a regular wage, but she’ll be able to contribute, no need to force herself into the terrible world. She’ll find her missing books, put them back on the shelf, and there’ll
be time to read and think, and it can be enough, she tells herself, why not? A quiet little life like that.

Clare swings her feet to the floor and smooths her hair; in a moment she’ll go down and tell them her plan. There will be a pause, while Kez and Nan exchange a look, but then they’ll get caught up in it, they’ll see that it’s the only solution. And she knows there are things she could ask them now, knows that they might actually tell her; perhaps that’s what holds her back. Questions and answers that can’t be unsaid, half secrets maybe kept out of nothing more than kindness.

August

Clare wakes with the answer clear in her mind; sometimes it happens like that. Or sometimes when she’s emptying a bucket out the back, or smoothing a newspaper to read. When she opens the door to her workroom off the kitchen, sunlight is falling on the table and she sees that she’s right, knows exactly what to do. One part of the escape wheel is just slightly out of true, an easy thing to remedy, and then she can move on to the mantel clock that apparently loses so much time that it’s been used as a paperweight for years.

At first she worked with the books propped open, Charlie’s and the more detailed one she sent for. She copied out some of the diagrams, making them larger, and practised with her father’s watch, taking it apart again and again, until her fingers knew what to do by themselves. Then she hung it on a nail above her work table, where she can always hear it ticking. Kez and Nan still think she should use the front parlour; they fret about her eyesight, but she tells them that the morning light
is fine in Aunt Peach’s old room, that she needs a small, bare space she can keep free from dust.

It’s mostly watches she works on, a few small clocks. She’s found that it’s usually just a matter of taking them apart and cleaning the jewels, the pivots and escapements. Carefully oiling with the proper-sized wire at each stage of the reassembly. She has a few tools, nippers and burnishers and oilers, and a small collection of springs and other pieces. If she needs to replace a cracked or missing face, Charlie finds one for her, buys it on tick, he says. Each job a little puzzle to solve, a series of small satisfactions. When she senses that the work will be beyond her ability, she simply names a ridiculous price; so far no one has persisted.

The room is cool in the afternoons, when the sun slips to the other side of the house. She doesn’t miss the shady pathways in the park, the breeze that ruffles the water of the lake, when you wade through. And she wonders sometimes if Aunt Peach found the same comfort in the voices that drift in from the street, the sounds of children running wild in the laneway. The constant chatter in the kitchen that becomes a kind of underlying music, beyond the closed door. Word has been spreading slowly and she has enough work to fill several days each week, enough money to set a little aside for the books she wants to send for. Time passes easily inside the house, and she’s only a little sad to think that maybe she hasn’t peeled away from anything, maybe this is the life she was always meant to have.

December

It’s probably Charlie’s idea. Clare’s not even sure how it happened; one moment she was thinking of the clock on her work table, the pieces laid out, clean and lightly oiled, waiting for the morning light, and then she was outside in the cold dark. Kez and Nan linking each arm, Charlie in front of her and Ben behind; like a prisoner, she thinks, but it doesn’t really feel like that. In order to move ahead their steps have to be perfectly in time, and somehow that happens easily. Her niggles of unease have no time to grow when they’re walking this quickly, and she feels something clean washing through her with the cold air.

They pass houses with lamp glow, but it must be late, no one else outside. The park gate is closed but not locked; it opens with a screech that follows them to the edge of the pond, where Aunt Peach used to throw crusts to the ducks and laugh at their bobbing heads. Charlie dumps the sack he’s been carrying, a jumble of skates and laces, and there is some discussion about the ice as they sort them out. Nan is worried, and Ben tries to recall exactly how many freezing days there have been. Kez says, “I don’t care,” and she’s out there first, the tails of her long red scarf working free and lifting as she goes faster and faster, until they can only hear the scrape of her blades, then Charlie’s, following after.

It’s cold, but soon they don’t feel it, someone always holding Clare up as they follow the path of the almost-full moon, her body remembering how it’s done. The push and the glide, sleeping muscles called on to work again; that’s all she’s thinking of. But as it gets easier, other thoughts seep in. Long cold days and the glittering skiffs of snow on the bumpy ice, her
mother laughing as she thumped down on her thick skirts, and her father warming her frozen toes in his hands. The cold lips of a boy Clare barely knew, who skated her off to a place where the black branches swept low.

Out of the dark comes Ben’s voice, calling, “Crack the whip!” and they join together, only five of them but the line feels longer, as if all the others have come back. Wee Alan at the centre, grown to a man, the sum of all their imaginings. Their mother and father on either side, Ross with his big fur hood thrown back, and even Aunt Peach, her filmy eyes grown clear in the night air. A weaving, jerking line, Clare at the end, holding tight to someone’s fingers.

And then she just lets go. The momentum carries her off in a spin, but she doesn’t fall, she holds on to her balance while the whirling inside slows down. And she tips her head back where she is, in the middle of the dark pond, far away from everyone, from the bushes and the overhanging trees. She can hear the others calling her name, and she understands then that it doesn’t really matter who they are, who she might be. With her head tipped back she watches the breath leave her mouth, heading up to the sky, black as time and stretched over everything. And the pinpoints of light that are stars, so far away they might already be gone, but still sending their light for her to see.

“Hell and damn and damn it and GOD DAMN IT!” Kez kicks at the crate and sends it into the empty street, kicks the one beside it, but it’s frozen to the snowy ground, a pain in her toe that brings new tears to her eyes, and at the same time an undignified skidding and slipping. She takes deep breaths as she settles her shawl on her shoulders, tries to tamp the roaring rage, but it’s no use; she kicks out again and this time goes right down, landing with a hard thump on her behind that shocks everything out of her. She’d laugh if someone was with her. What else could she do, sitting on the hard ground in the gloom, cold seeping in through her twisted skirts.

And there’s that boy again, standing in the shadows by the warehouse, across the narrow street. Watching her from just beyond where the street light reaches, maybe laughing at her; certainly smiling. A smirky little smile, she’s sure of it, though it’s hard to see his face properly. His hair is somehow different, and she thinks he might be a little taller, but he hasn’t changed much, he just doesn’t. He wasn’t ever a baby—well, not that
she saw, but he must have been, mustn’t he. Everyone was a baby once, and then a helpless child.

As she stands she sees the boy give a twitchy shiver; his jacket looks thin and his hands, balled up, don’t quite fit into the shallow pockets. He must be cold, but why should she care about that, even the tiniest bit. His own fault, hanging about in the almost-dark, spying on people. She won’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, no she won’t, just a quick peek before she turns the corner. Maybe he’s there, maybe he’s not; all she can see is a hazy, far-off circle of light.

Her rage at herself keeps her warm as she walks, but the heat can’t last all the way. She turns and turns again, each street smaller and darker, until she can pick out the peaked roof of their tall, narrow house. No time now to dwell on her terrible foolishness, and she gives her head a shake, as if she can flick it away. No time now because there’s work to be done, cleaning and packing, the house where she was born become like a version of itself that might appear in a dream. Everything askew and a smell of damp, raw wood from the crates they’ve filled with bedding and carefully wrapped dishes. The idea of moving was one thing, but this is quite another. It’s terrible, that’s what it is, everything at sixes and sevens, outside and in. All
mixtie-maxtie
, as Aunt Peach would have said, back when she had things to say.

Kez hangs her shawl on the hook, sits down and unlaces her boots, wraps her hands around her frozen toes, and all the while the old woman invades her mind. Her vacant eyes and her lost, trembling smile, but that’s not the one to be thinking about. She makes herself remember instead the earlier Peach, nasty old thing that she was. Some relation who was suddenly there, squatting in the middle of their lives.

There must have been arrangements, but the first Kez knew of her was the morning she opened the door to the little room off the kitchen. Looking for a place to hide from her brother Ross, who’d chased her down the stairs with a shoe in his hand. Inside, the blind was pulled tight, only a little bit of light leaking around the edges, and she was blinking her eyes, catching her breath, when suddenly something squawked up out of the murk. A witch or a horrible old brownie, with its cap all crooked and showing jutting big ears, the few tufts of hair on its head. Kez gave a scream, she couldn’t help it, and the thing gave a louder one, and another and another, the sound of a rusty wheel lurching over a rutted track. And her mother rushed in and gave Kez a clout with the spoon she was holding, as if everything,
everything
, was her fault. The last thing she saw, as she ran from the room with her palms clapped over her own jugged ears, was an old woman huddled against the wall with her feet pulled up. Her mother kneeling, holding on to the twisted hands.

Her thawing toes begin that tingle, and she has to tense every muscle to keep from hopping about like a fool. It must be the coldest winter ever, or maybe she just feels it more in her older bones, thirty-two already—no, thirty-three. It’s nearly impossible to believe she was once like the children she sees, running with their unbuttoned coats flapping, and it’s been years since she’s been skating on the pond. Years since she’s splintered a skin of ice with her heel to hear that satisfying crackle, since a walk through the snowy streets made every bit of her feel alive. This winter there’s a shiver deep in her bones, and the sleepless nights, when they come, are even more of a torment, too cold to get up and polish the silver or buff their shoes, with the stove banked in the barren kitchen.

Still, as their father used to say, things could always be worse. In one of his rare letters her brother Ross wrote of the terrible storms where he was, the howling wind and snow and how he had to tie a stout rope around his waist to take the few steps to the shed where the animals were kept. Once he had to break up the kitchen chairs to feed the fire that was all that kept them from freezing. And more than once they spent a day and a night wrapped in blankets and quilts, he and his wife telling every story they knew to keep the children occupied. She’s never seen her niece, her nephews; none of them have. But when she thinks of them, she pictures the icicle children from one of Aunt Peach’s stories. Pinched blue faces, and thin voices calling out from where they hang, trapped and shivering, from the eaves.

The kitchen is emptier than when she left; her sister Nan has been busy. As the last day looms closer they’ve packed everything they can, and the list of things they really need has grown shorter and shorter. Now down to four plates, four knives and spoons, the battered kettle, and the big cooking pot those things will be carried in when they leave. They’ve already moved some of the furniture, and Kez didn’t want to but Nan and Clare went along to see it placed. They told her that the old settee and stuffed chairs looked shrunken and even embarrassed in their new surroundings. The brighter rooms revealed all the worn spots in their two carpets, while in what they already call the old house the bare floorboards echo with a desolate, alien sound. Kez knows the money she pilfered was nothing like enough for a new carpet, so she squashes that thought right down.