The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit (26 page)

Colin was supposed to be lying low in London, but if I bumped into him I would say that I’d come because the police had been up at the resort asking questions. It seemed plausible, except for the fact that he’d never told me where he lived. I would lie and say I found out from someone in the wages office.

They rented the ground floor of a house next to a secondhand car lot on Beresford Avenue. I lurked around, making out I was looking at the Ford Anglias and Toyotas until a salesman came out. Then I took a breath and walked right up to the front door of the house and pressed the bell.

The bell was actually a buzzer and the button vibrated under my finger. I swear that a bell or a buzzer ringing in an empty flat makes a different sound. I waited but no one came. I rang again. I rang a third time but this time I held the letter flap open with my fingers and peered through, listening hard, trying to detect movement inside. Anyone inside was keeping very still.

I went round to the back of the house. The curtains were partly drawn. The sun was so strong I had to shield the glass with my hand to see through, but inside I could see a very tidy lounge. There was a low coffee table with a clean ashtray, a pack of No. 6 cigarettes, and a plastic cigarette lighter all placed in meticulous order, almost as if someone had primed for a session of viewing the television across the room. An indoor aerial sat atop the television set.

Perhaps I’d expected evidence of slothful or chaotic living,
but it was all so neat. On the mantelpiece was a gilt-framed wedding photo of Colin and Terri. Colin looked young, handsome, and smart in his wedding suit. Terri looked deliriously happy. At the other end of the mantelpiece was one of those lacy flamenco dolls—with a mantilla shawl and fan—that people brought back from their holidays in Spain.

I moved to the next window, making a visor of my hand so that I could peer through the glass. This was the bedroom. There was a blue camberwick cover over the bed. I could see a dressing table and its mirror hung with necklaces and bead chains. In an alcove a pole had been affixed so that clothes could be hung. I saw a black dress hanging there—the black dress Terri had worn the night she appeared in the Slowboat, the night she had set me on fire. There were four or five other pretty dresses: in gold lamé, and blue satin, and red cotton, and black-and-white polka dots. Not exactly the purdah garments she’d complained to me that Colin kept her in.

There was nothing else to see. I don’t know what I’d expected. Signs of a struggle perhaps? There was nothing like that. I left and took a bus back to the resort.

IT WAS AS IF I’d had an appointment with Madame Rosa from the very first day I’d arrived at the holiday resort. The little white-painted caravan with its signboard tucked away between the bowling green and the office block had left its door open to me almost every day. After my fruitless visit to Colin and Terri’s apartment, I spiraled in toward Madame Rosa like water sucked down the plughole of a bath. I took
the two steps up to the caravan and held the sides of the door as if I was making a last desperate grab for the side of the bath. Then in I went.

“I was just boiling the kettle for a cup of tea,” she said, “and I suppose you want one.”

“Yes. Please.”

She pointed at a sofa and I sat down as she poured water into a pot, stirred the tea with a spoon, and covered the pot with a knitted cozy. She opened an overhead cupboard and took down two bone china cups and saucers. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.

“How did you know?”

Behind her was a table draped in heavy lace and in the middle of the table was a small crystal sphere. I suppose if I’d ever thought about a fortune-teller’s crystal ball I had imagined it to be about the size of a large grapefruit, but this one on the table was about half the size of a billiard ball. The glass—or crystal or whatever it was—was of a gluey gray consistency. Nothing swirled within. It was rather unimpressive.

She saw me looking at it. “I don’t need that to know you’ve been avoiding me.”

She was a big woman with large hips, and in her floral print skirt she took up a lot of space in the tiny caravan. She had a bandanna-type scarf tied over her hair. Her face was quite heavily made up, with an exaggerated cupid’s bow painted on her mouth in scarlet lipstick. Her eyes, scanning me now, were the color of light oak.

“You all come to see me, eventually.”

“Really?”

“The staff. Ninety-five percent of you. Not everyone
wants it known that they come and see me. But you all come. Shall I tell you how I know you’ve been avoiding me?”

“Go on.”

“Every time I seen you walk past my caravan you’ve taken a little step to the side. As if you didn’t want to come too near.” She giggled. “As if you might fall in.”

“You’re observant.”

“Observant?” She looked out of the window at someone hurrying past. “How do you think I do what I do if I’m not observant?”

I nodded at the crystal ball on the table. She snorted derision. “Milk and sugar?”

“Milk with no sugar, please. Your name isn’t really Rosa, is it?”

“It is actually. What’s on your mind?”

“Do I pay you now or afterward?”

“You can pay me now or you can me afterward, my darling. You can pay me whenever you like. You can pay me next week. Just so long as you pay me.”

The caravan door was propped open. I wondered if she closed it to signify that a “reading” was in session. I pulled some notes out of my pocket and put them on the table. She fussed around with the teapot and filled the bone china cups. I helped myself to milk. I glanced at the crystal ball again.

Something had alighted on it. It was a ladybug. Since the bug invasion had come and gone I’d only seen one or two. Now here was one of them settled on the perfect curve of the sphere and it seemed to perch not on the glass but on the arc of the light itself.

Rosa lifted the crystal from the table and held it in front
of her eyes. She seemed not to notice the ladybug. For a millionth of a second I hallucinated that the pupils of her eyes flared scarlet with black dots, but like a lot of things, I knew it was in my head. “You know who Billy Butlin is?” she said. There was a rival Butlin’s resort just a little way along the beach. “When Billy Butlin was a little boy traveling with his mother on the show circuit he threw that crystal ball at my grandmother. She picked it up off the grass and looked into it and predicted he was going to get a good spanking, which was what he got. He never did see how the two things were connected.” She put the crystal ball back down on the table. The ladybug had flown. “You’re wondering when the reading starts, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am as it happens.”

“Already done.”

“What?”

“You’ve already been read.”

“You’re joking.”

“Drink your tea. Tony says you’re a bright lad. I don’t think so.”

“Oh?”

“Look, if you want me to peer into that glass ball, I’ll do it. If you want me to read the lines on your hand, I’ll do that as well. That’s all theater. But you’re not a civilian. You’re in the business.”

“So what have I paid for?”

“You’ve paid for the reading. And I said it’s done. I read you the moment you stepped in here.”

I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg or, worse, just taking me for a fool.

“The first one, she’s bad news. She’s already put a mark on you. The other one, the one you’ve got now, I like her much better. You can make each other happy. You’ve got a good chance. That what you wanted to know?”

I thought for a moment. On the one hand, yes, I wanted to know about Terri, but I also wanted to know if she was safe. “I’m worried about her welfare.”

“Who?”

“The first one. As you called her.”

“I can’t tell you things like that. Only things directly to do with you. If I knew everything I’d have won the pools by now, my darling.”

I must have looked a little blank.

“There is another thing bothering you. Something much more serious. But you’re hiding that even from yourself.”

“Am I?”

“Oh yes. Too dark for me to see. That’s why I’m going to send you to see someone else. She’s much better than me. She doesn’t like doing it and she’ll take no payment. But if you say I sent you, she’ll see you all right. Now drink your tea and tell me about the people you come from.”

I WALKED AWAY from Rosa’s tiny caravan not quite sure if I’d been fleeced or whether she was one of the cleverest women on the planet. On the face of it I think I got just as much useful advice from the coin-operated machine on the pier. “Choose you future wisely.” Had that cup of tea just cost me £4.50? I was in no position to ask her any direct question. Perhaps I
should have asked her if Enoch Powell was right in his “Rivers of Blood” speech. But of course the future depends on whom you ask, and what people want it to be. To the Enoch Powell question Tony would say yes. Nikki would say I love you, let’s have multiracial babies.

Then it occurred to me, with forehead-slapping stupidity, that I’d let Rosa mesmerize me with tea and talk. She even had the honesty to tell me that everything she said she could have observed from the window of her caravan. She saw everyone come and go. Just a little intuition could put most of it together. And yet she seemed to see.

She told me she would arrange for me to see this other person. She would send a message when this other person was ready.

21

THE QUESTION OF WHO PAYS IS EASILY SETTLED

At last the weather broke. One day the temperature suddenly swooped down and the flags on the white-painted poles outside the resort gates started flapping with a kind of angry excitement. The rain came. Undramatic, heavy, relentless. It wasn’t fun for those holidaymakers late in the season who wanted the hot weather to continue, but I found myself walking out in it in my white shirt and trousers. I was supposed to referee a kids’ football game when the rain came. The boys ran like hell to get out of it but I stood alone in the middle of the football field and let it soak me, and it felt good. The ground was hard as bone and at first the rainwater lay in great sheets. Then it found its way between the cracks and fissures in the dry earth and slowly began to saturate the soil. I remember that it rained morning, noon, and night.

I got out of the rabbit-hutch staff accommodation. Nikki found a little flat above a shop that sold postcards and plastic buckets and spades and rubber rings. We moved our stuff in
together. It was good to get off the resort every night so that we could rediscover who we were before we’d arrived there. With the rain coming down we spent all our free time there. I even managed to get Nikki interested in books. She read Erich Segal’s
Love Story
and then
Carrie
by Stephen King and then
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury.

One day when the rain had stopped, I passed by reception and Edna, the sweet lady who worked there, came running out to say I had visitors.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“They’re waiting in here.” Edna beckoned me back to the reception desk and I followed her indoors. Two plastic chairs had been drawn up by the desk and there, waiting patiently, were my mother and stepfather. On seeing me they both stood up.

“Here he is!” my mum half shouted, flinging her arms around me and kissing me.

Ken was beaming, too. “Look at you,” he said. “Striped blazer and everything.” He turned to Edna. “He looks the part! Doesn’t he look the part?”

They were all smiles. It was in neither one’s nature to reveal to Edna, or anyone else, any of the tensions behind the fact that I was working there. So our reunion was a moment of laughter and high spirits.

Edna smiled. “We’re proud of him,” she said. “We’re all proud of him here.”

“I’ll have to get one of those striped blazers myself,” Ken said. “They’re quite the thing.”

“You’ll have to lose a few pounds first!” my mother said, laughing.

“It’s okay, they have slightly bigger ones,” I joked. “We can get you fixed up.”

“What’s he saying about me!” shouted Ken, his eyes bulging. He laughed. My mum laughed. Edna laughed. I went along with this jollity, but it was almost unbearable.

Having taken me by surprise, Ken said he wanted to take me to lunch and did I know anywhere. I knew we could get something at the Dunes pub around the corner so I suggested that. I’d already arranged to have lunch with Nikki so I told them.

They exchanged a look.

“No, that’s fine,” said Ken. “We’d love to meet her.”

“Yes,” my mum said a little too quickly. “We’d like to meet your girl, wouldn’t we?”

We had to wait for about ten minutes before Nikki was through with her activities in the ballroom. I asked my parents to wait as I went off to get her. I wanted to cushion Nikki a little.

“Really? They’re here? Now?”

“Yes. In reception.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

I needn’t have worried about Nikki. She took charge. It was as if she’d been through this ritual many times before. She utterly charmed them. She asked if they’d come far and how their journey was; she smiled and laughed at their jovial comments and paid great attention to everything my mother said.