Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Five

Around that time the dreams returned. Not the pleasant fantasies about bumping into Philip in the street. I tried to re-create those but couldn’t bring him back to life, however hard I tried. These are different sorts of images and they have stayed with me ever since.

It doesn’t only happen at night. They appear suddenly during the day when I’m wound up or troubled. Flashbacks, Lisa, my community nurse, calls them, but that makes you think of memory and these are more like nightmares; they have that unreal, blurry-edged feeling. I’m not sure that what I see in these flashbacks actually happened. I don’t trust them.

If there’s a knife in the scene I focus in on it immediately. It’s like I’m filming. The knife appears in close-up. Lovingly, seductively. Sometimes I think I stabbed the lad in Blyth with a knife, but I know that’s not right. In Blyth it was scissors.

We all have fantasies, don’t we? My first fantasies were about my mother coming to the kids’ home to find me. Then about sex. Now they’re about knives. Lisa asks if I think about cutting myself and I say no. In my dreams other people do the cutting. Or I cut them.

So, there’s this one flashback. I’m in the secure unit where I worked when I left college. The kids are fraught and jumpy. It seems as if it’s been raining for weeks and they can’t get out. So I say suddenly, a brainwave, ‘Right, we’ll do some cooking.’ Because that’s a new activity for them, and they’re bored out of their brains locked up in that place.

Do I ask permission? No. I’m the senior social worker on duty. Who would I ask?

The kitchen’s empty. The cook takes a break after the lunchtime rush. It’s early afternoon but outside it’s nearly dark and the scene is lit by very white strip-lights. Everything is so clean it gleams. There’s a lot of stainless steel, throwing back blurred reflections: a big central table with a shelf underneath for pans. An oven, industrial-sized. And knives. They’re kept at the back of a drawer, away from prying eyes, though the kitchen is usually out of bounds to the children.

Zoom in on the knives. There are four of them with yellow plastic handles. All wedge-shaped, but different sizes.

I don’t take them from the drawer. Naïve, I might be, but I’m not that daft. I find flour in a stainless-steel drum in the larder and some sachets of dried yeast, and we make bread. Kneading the dough on the table, the kids are calmer than they’ve been for days. I congratulate myself. I really think I’m good at this job. I imagine that in a few years I could be running the unit, taking decisions, planning policy.

I show the kids how to form the mixture into rolls, by circling it between floured palms like Jess taught me. It’s a positive decision to make rolls not loaves. They’ll be quicker to cook and these are seriously disturbed children with a low boredom threshold. But it’s also because I want the kids to taste their baking. You have to cut a loaf and there’s one boy at least I wouldn’t trust around a bread knife. So I wasn’t thoughtless or reckless. That charge was laid against me, but I tell myself it’s not true.

Zoom in on the drawer again. There are only three knives left.

Ray gave me a lift to Wintrylaw. Jess organized it.

‘He’s got a job towards there anyway,’ she said, though I didn’t believe her. ‘Just give him a call on his mobile when you need to get back.’

He had a creased Ordnance Survey map, but we got lost. The church was next to a big house, a couple of miles out of the village. I could tell that much by the map, but not how to get there. I was supposed to be navigating, but the wiggly lines didn’t make much sense. I couldn’t tell the footpaths from the unadopted roads. In the end Ray pulled over into the side of a lane.

‘You might just as well get out here,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can get much further. This is it, according to the map, like.’

He was anxious, apologetic, knowing he’d get knacked by Jess for not delivering me all the way. But I was glad to escape.

The ditches were full and the hawthorn hedges grown into crazy shapes and covered with blossom. There were two pillars smeared with lichen, the edges of each stone worn smooth by the wind, like boulders on a beach. No gate. A grass track leading through the trees, the leaves Granny Smith green, shimmering silver occasionally when turned by the breeze. On the floor white, star-shaped flowers and overblown bluebells, the vivid colours of a Moroccan rug. The sun was behind me and threw my shadow, lengthened slightly, onto the track. I took a breath and stepped between the pillars.

Of course I knew this couldn’t be the right way into the Wintrylaw estate. No cars had ever gone down this track. Perhaps once there had been phaetons, strangers on dark horses, children in donkey carts, but no cars. The track turned and below me I saw the house. The crumbling stone gleamed in the morning sunshine. I was looking down on the roof, could see the moss growing in the gutters and the grass between the slates. For a moment I believed I could see into the great chimneys to the hearths and the stoves below. I imagined high ceilings and ornate furniture.

Beyond the house the main drive swept away into the distance, and there was a little grey church. From this perspective all I could see was a squat tower; the nave was hidden by a plantation of Scots pine. Beyond that, a line of light. The sea. Standing on the grass I thought I could smell it and the tang of pine.

I walked on, heading for the church, not shy any more, not worried about meeting strangers or bumping into Philip’s family, confident that I could do him proud. I was wearing the white dress from Marrakech. Jess had been put out when I appeared in it: ‘Really pet, I don’t think that’s quite the thing. What about that nice suit we got for court?’

I knew already that a boring business suit wouldn’t have done. Not for this place. I had to walk past the house to reach the church, and as I approached it from the back I realized a crowd had gathered. I heard voices first, at least the sound of voices without being able to hear what was said, as you hear the sound of soft foreign sibilants in a market in Africa. Then I turned a corner and saw them, very English in all their eccentricities. Still the tones were muted. They weren’t those loud braying voices that I’d heard when I’d gone with Jess to the county show. Voices bred to be heard above the hounds.

There were lots of them, standing around with glasses in their hands, so again I was made to think of the hunt, of the followers waiting outside a pub for the spectacle of the master, all dressed up in his costume of red and black. Here, it is true, there was more black than red. They stood in small groups chatting. I supposed they were neighbours from the village come to say goodbye. Rural Northumberland is very feudal.

I could tell at once which of them was Philip’s widow. She was standing apart from the others, surrounded by her family and a couple of friends. She had a striking face. Very thin and gaunt, asymmetrical, with a strangely twisted nose. If that makes her sound ugly then I’m giving the wrong impression. It was a strong face which demanded to be watched. The eyes were thin and long, like a cat’s, and very dark. She wore a sleeveless black dress which almost reached to her ankles and over that a tight chiffon jacket. Her shoes were pointed, Victorian in style. It all gave an impression of fancy dress. She didn’t wear gloves, though I thought she had probably wanted to. Black, lacy gloves, reaching to her elbows. Someone had told her they wouldn’t be quite the thing, just as Jess had objected to my white frock. Her hair was platinum blonde and waved like a 1930s film star’s.

Her daughter was blonde too. Her hair lay in a sheet down her back. She had a blue straw hat with a velvet ribbon, held on with thin elastic under her chin, a navy-blue dress with little puffed sleeves and white tights. I didn’t notice the shoes because she turned suddenly and noticed me, then pointed to her mother, who stared in my direction too. With hostility I thought. Perhaps Philip had confessed about his fling in Marrakech. Perhaps she needed someone to blame for his death and had brought me here to make a scene. But she frowned as if she had no idea who I was. She asked the small boy who was kicking pebbles on the drive, staring very hard at his feet in an attempt not to cry. He looked up, glad of the distraction, but obviously he didn’t recognize me either. I stood, hovering on the edge of the terrace, feeling as insubstantial as a ghost.

I was rescued by a round man in a brocade waistcoat. He gave a few words of explanation to the widow, then walked towards me. His legs were short and he moved with a peculiar bobbing action, like a child’s mechanical toy. Something fat. A pig perhaps.

‘Elizabeth Bartholomew?’ He eyed me from head to toe. ‘I’m Stuart Howdon.’ He smiled unpleasantly.

‘Lizzie,’ I said.

‘You’re not what I was expecting.’

I wanted to know what he was expecting, how Philip had described me, but he went on, ‘I’ve told Joanna you work for me and you wanted to pay your respects. It seemed best.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Stick with me.’ An order. As if left to myself I might cause mayhem. Then he smiled again, an inappropriate grin, the result perhaps of nerves. Maybe he thought it made him appear attractive.

Girls, younger than me, dressed in black frocks and little white aprons, came out through double doors onto the terrace. They carried heavy wooden trays and began collecting glasses. The whole set-up seemed very old-fashioned, like a period drama on the television. I imagined them living in bleak cells in the attic. Mr Howdon saw me look at them.

‘A catering firm from Alnwick,’ he said. ‘It’s cost Joanna an arm and a leg, this funeral.’

Again, I wondered if he considered I was to blame.

The crowd spluttered to a silence. The hearse was moving slowly down the drive towards us. There were no flowers on the coffin. The car stopped outside the house and we formed a ragged group behind it, with Joanna and her children in the front. It pulled off at walking pace and we followed.

Once perhaps the church had been for the use of the house and the estate, but now it was clear it belonged to the village. There were notices about Beavers and Rainbows in the porch, a poster left over from last year’s harvest festival. I have a fondness for old and neglected churches. Hardly surprising, perhaps. Inside there was a fine stained-glass window. Full sunlight shone through it and I was reminded again of the colours of Morocco, of bougainvillaea and jacaranda. The vibration of the organ music made me feel dizzy. I sat on the polished pew and bowed my head. Not an attempt to pray but to stop myself from fainting.

The vicar was white-haired, rather unsteady on his feet. At first I suspected he might be drunk, but I think he’d suffered from a stroke. He had very long canine teeth, so he reminded me of a vampire. I wondered if the children had seen the likeness, even in their grief. I hoped they had and they’d feel able to share a joke about it. I imagined them looking at each other, pulling monkey faces and rolling their eyes. They were sitting on the front row, so no one would see them except the vicar, and he didn’t count. He must be used to small children taking the piss. We stood and sang ‘Jerusalem’, which seemed a peculiar choice for the occasion. There were very few satanic mills in this part of the country and even the mines and factories further south had all gone.

It was from the white-haired vicar that I heard how Philip had died. Cancer, he said solemnly in his introduction. Of course. That explained the skinhead look, his lack of appetite, his tendency to fall asleep suddenly. I had thought him very fit and a fussy eater and all the time he’d been struggling to stay alive. I learned too that he’d been a magistrate and a church warden. A stalwart member of the community, as I’d predicted. There was no mention of how he’d earned his living. Perhaps he’d been on the sick for so long that no one remembered. As with me.

The next hymn took me back to my first year in secondary school. It had been a favourite of Miss Wallace, who taught us RE. Miss Wallace had taken me under her wing, kept me back after class occasionally to ask how I was. I fell in love with her in a way. Once I’d said to her in a joking, self-protective voice, ‘Ever thought of fostering, Miss?’ I’d known of course that adoption was too much to hope for. There’d been a look of panic in her eyes and I don’t think she answered. Her kindness had been professional, like all the others’.

There’s something moving about singing with a big crowd. I joined in. ‘Not for ever in green pastures / Would we ask our way to be.’ Sometimes Mr Howdon shot me odd looks, as if I was making too much sound or hitting a wrong note, but I took no notice. He was just moving his lips, like someone miming badly on a pop video, so he was in no position to criticize.

When the service was over we went outside. Joanna was standing at the door shaking hands, but I slipped past. The sun seemed very hot. Perhaps the breeze had dropped, or perhaps I felt it more coming out of the cool of the church. The graveyard sloped towards the pine plantation and was reached through a narrow gate. I wondered how the pall-bearers would get the coffin through, but they managed without difficulty. They were six very brawny men with scalped heads. It occurred to me that they might have had treatment for cancer too, that they were there as a symbol of hope, but I overheard someone say that they belonged to a rugby club in Alnwick. Apparently when Philip was fit, he’d been a member too. We filed through the gate after them and past the old headstones to the grave. There seemed to be no recent stones and I thought no one had been buried here in years.

A hole had already been dug and we stood in last year’s leaf mould until the ceremony was over. It was completed much more quickly than I’d expected, though when the vicar dismissed us the hole still hadn’t been filled in. A mound of earth, as dark as soot, still stood there. I wished they’d use it to cover up the coffin. I’m not sure why the bare planks made me feel so uneasy, but I felt embarrassed, as if an unclothed body was lying there, and as soon as the vicar had stopped speaking I turned away. I expected everyone to wander away then. I hoped at last to discover why I was there. But no one moved. They waited as if they knew something else was about to happen. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the rooks cackling in a deciduous tree near to the church.

Joanna stepped forward. She spoke quietly, so we had to strain to hear her, but that was what she wanted. She had the range to carry her voice right back to the house if she’d put her mind to it.

‘This is where Philip wanted to be buried,’ she said, smiling sadly. ‘He was always something of a pagan. He worshipped in church every Sunday, but I’m not sure what he was worshipping. I rather suspect it was all this.’ She made a dramatic gesture with her arm which took in the spinney of Scots pine and the sky. ‘We’ve been growing an oak sapling from an acorn. Flora and Dickon watered it while Philip was away on his travels. He wanted us to plant it for him close to his grave. Perhaps you’ll allow us time to do that on our own. Please go back to the house. We’ll join you there shortly.’

She paused for a moment, like an actor waiting for applause, then gave a quick lopsided smile and took her children’s hands. The boy held out his reluctantly. He still looked close to tears. Flora gazed out at us with a clear-eyed stare.

The audience muttered sympathetically and walked slowly back to the church gate. I lingered and looked back once. The spade and the sapling must have been waiting, because Joanna was already digging with great energy. She had hitched up her long, tight skirt and was pressing hard on the blade with her Victorian shoe. In Morocco I’d pictured someone very different for Philip’s wife – a repressed and reined-in creature. This woman wasn’t the conventional wifey I’d imagined. She pulled out the spade and thrust it in again at a slightly different spot. It cut through the earth like a sword.