Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

‘It’s probably time for us to make arrangements for Alice to join her sisters,’ I ventured. I waited. There was no response. I took a mouthful of brandy for courage and soldiered on.‘I can hardly believe it, but Alice is in her last year at Big Peak School, and with the problem of finding suitable secondary education here I—’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’you said, uncharacteristically cutting me off mid-flow.

Had you indeed, I ruminated.You continued.

‘I’ve heard they’re opening up a new school on Bowen Road. They’re setting it up in the old British Army Hospital while they make a start building new premises on the terraced slopes above. In time they plan to demolish the hospital entirely, making way for further expansion. I want Alice to go there.’

I drew in a breath sharply.You gave me a quick glance.‘Is there a problem?’ you asked, a dangerous note sounding in your voice.

I felt stunned,as if I had been slugged over the head and temporarily my eyesight was blurred. I tried to hold onto the salient facts.You had been thinking, you had been thinking about Alice, thinking about keeping Alice here with us, despite the chaos she was causing, Ralph, you wanted to send her to a new school they were building, a school I had heard nothing about.

‘But darling,’I said,reaching for the cognac bottle,‘we don’t know anything about this school.’

‘I do,’ you fired back. ‘I’ve been to see the site. Nigel has been telling me all about it.They’re considering sending Christopher and Anita there. Actually, I’m surprised Beth hasn’t mentioned it to you.’

And so was I. Although this could not quite be classed as deception, my friend and neighbour Beth Fielding’s omission to acquaint me with this startling news came a pretty close second in my book. I tipped up the bottle and refilled my glass. ‘I see. Well. Well, well, well.’

‘Myrtle, be honest with yourself,’ you went on as I stiffened in my seat, ‘it would be a disaster sending Alice to boarding school.’ Under your breath you added, ‘I’m not at all sure it’s been a success for Jillian or Nicola either.’

I sipped my cognac, then cradled my glass, slowly swilling round the amber liquid.

‘I feel we should at least discuss it,’ was my face-saving remark.

‘We have,’ you said brusquely, rising from the table.

Tonight Alice is worse than ever. Sometimes you can almost believe she alters with the rising of the moon, a kind of moon-madness. She is like a lone wolf howling and prowling all through the night. Ralph is dealing with her. With Alice his patience is inexhaustible. Harry seeks refuge in my bed.We close our eyes and block our ears.Finally I drift off to sleep. I dream we are on our junk, White Jade , which we have moored in a pretty bay. We are floating on a cobalt-blue sea. I feel the gentle rise and fall of the boat like breath coming in and going out, the rhythmic lift and fall of the thing. The sun is shining. We are fanned by a light breeze. And we are fishing, Ralph and Alice and I. We have cast out nylon lines with hooks knotted at the end of them. We have speared wiggling maggots for bait. Time passes. Ralph catches nothing. I catch nothing.Then Alice reels in a fish. It is several inches long, and it flaps dripping over the wooden deck, the silver scales brilliant as coruscating diamonds kissed by the sun. We all point at the fish as it gulps in air, and slaps and slips about. Our faces are masks of delight. Then quite suddenly the fish starts to inflate, like a silver balloon spiked with prickles. It swells up obscenely until it no longer flaps over the deck. It is a motionless bubble. Its prickles become barbs, hooking into the soft flesh of the damp wood.

‘It is a puffer fish!’ cries Alice in dismay. ‘It’s poisonous!’ She is standing now over the gasping, hideous thing, hypnotised.Then she looks up at me. ‘If you eat my fish you will die, Mother,’ she says, and I wake.

My hands itch all day. When Alice returns from school we have a row. I do not like rowing. Some people can shrug off rows like a dog shaking water from its coat. I cannot. Brutal words stay with me…well…sometimes for a lifetime. I keep count of them. I notch them into the bark of my life, so deeply that they will never grow out. I tell Alice she cannot carry on with her deranged nights. My voice is quite calm, quite steady. I tell her they are taking a dreadful toll on her father. I tell her how hard he works, and that she is making him very ill.And when none of this seems to have any effect, I tell her that she is coming between us, that she is forcing us apart, her mother and her father. Alice’s voice rises up like a snake with its egoistic jingle-jangle, as if she really is the only person alive in the world, and not just through the long, dark nights but through the long bright days as well. My voice shifts key. I feel the ‘demon rasp’ tolling in me then, purifying, abrasive, because Alice smiles a foolish smile. The demon is full of wrath, and he spits words out at the smiling, loon-faced child.

We are in the bathroom, the same bathroom where Alice has summoned me so many times with her games. The window is open and the sky is red. I feel it bleed into me. I am dimly aware that my mouth is still working, and that my voice has grown deep and masculine, a war cry, and that my limbs are flaying. Alice is bold and stands her ground. And still she is smiling, smiling! I want to wipe that smile off her face. I draw back my hand and deal her such a blow across her grinning visage, that she is sent reeling backwards, covering the distance of several feet to the window, sliding down the wall, crumpling on the floor, while incongruously, above her head, Alice’s wondrous sunset is framed. I am transfixed by the white face looming through the long brown hair. The eye is already puffing up. The cheek is split with a deep gash. Her blood is such a vivid shade of red. It dribbles from the wound and down her chin. It drips onto her summer school uniform, flowering on the white cotton.

I think: I am wearing my wedding and engagement rings and they must have cut into her cheek, a marital knuckleduster. I think, I have committed a mortal sin, somehow or other the Mother Superior at the convent back in England will know of it. I am envious of Alice. I am envious of my daughter. Alice, who has roared through so many nights, is silent now. I cannot even hear her breathing. I watch the blood spill and grow more copious. It pools in a crease at her neck. This creates the impression, reminiscent of a horror movie, that her head has been severed from her body, and that, if you push it, it will tumble off and roll over the green, marble-effect rubber tiles of the bathroom floor. I wonder what time Ralph will be home. I have an idea he is out tonight and will not be back until late. By tomorrow it will not look so bad. Besides, a story can be told. I feel sure a story will come that fits my purpose. Alice, I know, will never tell. She will hold it all in, keep it contained. Like Iwazaru, one of the three wise monkeys, she will speak no evil. She will gag herself. I gaze unmoved at the sunset, then my eyes slide downwards and hold Alice’s.

‘At last,’ I say,‘when I come, there is something to see.’ My voice scrapes the silence. My hands have stopped itching. They are trembling now. I need something to steady my nerves.

I never really grasped why Jillian made such a fuss about boarding school.True, it was a bit of a blow the parents choosing Gran’s school, it being Roman Catholic and we being…well, heathens. But it didn’t really worry me. I knew we would have a laugh. I told Jillian so, as she sat on her bed, in the flat on The Peak. The Easter holidays were drawing to a close, and she was red-cheeked and wretched. She was flying back to England the next day and I was helping her to pack.