Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Another half-hour dragged by. Dennis, deciding not to drink any more so as to stay alert, thought it best to leave. Resigning himself to no change – he just could not seem to catch the barman’s eye – he went outside and got in the car.

More time passed. There was an exciting moment when some people opened the street door leading to Brinkley and Latham but it was just the family from the top-floor flat.

Dennis switched on the radio, sticking to music so he didn’t get involved in some gripping narrative and lose concentration. It started to get dark. He began to feel not only tired but extremely self-conscious. What on earth was he doing playing detective at his time of life? How undignified. How foolish. Colouring up now, recalling his earlier enthusiasm, Dennis decided enough was enough and slipped his key into the ignition.

A cab drew up outside the bank. Holding his breath, Dennis also cursed under it for the cab was blocking all sight of whoever had got out. What’s more, if it didn’t drive away sharpish they’d be through the street door and safely inside. Dennis scrambled from his seat and eased his way between the cars, ready at any second to duck. He craned his neck slightly – all discomfort gone now – so that he could see better.

Mr. Allibone did not need to crane his neck. Having just taken one of his casual glances from the sitting-room window he had both Dennis and the passenger from the taxi clearly in his sights. She turned round, Dennis dodged down, she put a key in the door and went inside. Very interesting.

Dennis climbed back stiffly into the Lexus. He gripped the steering wheel to stop his hands from shaking and sat very still for a while, wishing with all his heart he had never embarked on this enterprise. He felt an intense desire for sleep, for oblivion. For the simple happiness he had once known as a child. He put the car into gear and drove away.

Kate was stuffing a large duck with apricots and hazel-nuts. She’d brought her food processor down and Benny had produced soft white breadcrumbs and ground the nuts. She was as delighted with the machine as a child with a new toy and questioned Kate eagerly about its exact capabilities.

“It’s a miracle!” she exclaimed. The kitchen at Appleby House was totally gadget free. Carey thought two or three good sharp knives could cope with anything and had been deeply puzzled when Benny once requested a potato peeler for her birthday.

Kate, still nursing a certain amount of resentment over the journey down last night, was filling up the bird more forcefully than was strictly necessary. Mallory had disappeared for nearly two hours, then made things worse by lying clumsily about being dragged into helping at the charity shop. Kate had finally driven away from Parsons Green into the worst traffic imaginable. The misery of their row the previous week still fresh in her mind and determined not to go down that road again she could not even give vent to her feelings, so the duck was for it. A final fistful of stuffing, a savage shove up the bottom, pricked all over and into the oven it went.

“There’s lots of potatoes ready to lift,” Benny was saying. “Shall I get some in?”

“I’ll do that. And we’ll need vegetables, courgettes maybe?”

“Dennis is very partial to broad beans.”

“And what about you, Benny. What do you like?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s just so lovely for us all to be having dinner together.”

Benny’s happiness was palpable. Kate, looking at her open, radiant face, thought how marvellous to be so uncomplicated. All that joy simply because two or three friends were gathering to sit down and eat. Impulsively she moved around the table and gave Benny a hug.

“It just wouldn’t be the same, coming down, if you weren’t here.”

“Oh,” cried Benny, trembling with pleasure. She wasn’t used to being hugged.

“And that is the most gorgeous outfit.”

Benny had on a peacock-blue silky jacket and matching skirt. She was even wearing earrings and had abandoned her usual T-bar sandals for shiny court shoes.

She had taken great trouble with the dining arrangements too. Kate had decided to use the oval Sheraton table with a beautiful inlaid key design around the edge, and Benny had arranged summer-flowering jasmine and tea roses in the centre and put out Carey’s most beautiful Venetian glasses. There were tall ivory candles in the candelabrum, which she had spent all morning cleaning, along with the cutlery, polishing so hard she could see her face in the spoons. The reflections were elongated, as in a fairground mirror.

“Perhaps, Kate, after dinner, we could look at the manuscripts?” Benny had already learned not to call them books. “Maybe read bits out?”

“That’s an idea.”

Kate had been astonished when the postman delivered a heavy canvas bag, drawstrung and stencilled with black letters, early that morning. Astonished and then depressed, for there was something ominous about the rapidity of this in-flux. Instinctively she felt the contents of the bag were not new books. Not freshly written, hot from a gifted author’s fingertips but tired and grey, exhausted from doing the rounds, maybe stained by the occasional tea ring. She had come across plenty of those in her time and they were nearly always unreadable.

“I’d better get moving.” Kate picked up her sunglasses from the dresser. “Courgettes and beans, right?”

“Broad beans.”

“Keep an eye on the duck, would you? You might need to pour off some fat.”

Left alone Benny remembered she had promised Mallory to make some Pimm’s. Carey had always loved a glass at lunchtime in the summer so Benny started to feel quite sad as she sliced up a cucumber. For distraction she turned her thoughts around to the previous Sunday when she had attended the Church of the Near at Hand with Doris.

Message-wise the visit had not been a success. In spite of Doris’s enthusiastic decoding of the telephone receiver’s strange behaviour Carey did not come through. Doris suggested the reason could be she was in a queue. Benny doubted that. Carey had never queued for anything in her life, even when there were things worth queuing for, so she certainly wouldn’t be starting now. Perhaps she just didn’t fancy the medium, who had been a great disappointment, striding about all in black and looking like the wicked queen in Snow White. Benny had been hoping for someone more ethereal, perhaps in gauzy garments and with a delicate, uplifting voice. This woman had sounded quite common.

But, as promised, the tea was delicious and the congregation friendly. Benny had met the medium’s little girl, though met was perhaps too precise a word. A plain, shrinking little soul, she had been timidly talking to Doris, accepting cakes and a drink of squash. But when Benny said “hello” she ran away. Doris explained later that it had taken her months to get Karen to take as much as a biscuit. Her mother disapproved of too much mingling.

In spite of her disappointment Benny decided, after talking it over with the man in charge of the service, to give it another go. Fortunately the times didn’t clash with St. Anselm’s so, with a bit of luck, the vicar would never know.

In the vegetable garden Kate found an old wicker basket lying on its side by a wigwam of runner beans. She picked some courgettes, warm and shiny in her hands, half hidden behind glowing yellow flowers. There was summer savory to go with the beans and mint for the potatoes. The earth was pale in the heat and bone dry. She traced the hose, snaking between rows of newly planted broccoli, to its source and turned on the tap.

Moderating the flow, Kate watered dreamily in a silence broken only by the heady thrumming from the orchard of hundreds of wasps and bees. The gentle splash as the water soaked the ground and the rich vanilla fragrance of bean flowers combined to effect a trance-like involvement in the moment that wiped all else from her mind.