Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

It’s raining now, an insistent drumming on the rooftop, runnels of rain coursing down the sash windows,the sound of spattering droplets closing in on me. It always seems to be raining here in England. It wasn’t like that in Hong Kong, was it Ralph? Except of course during the typhoon season, or when the mists settled on the Peak, and the mizzle closed in.

God alone knows what possessed Nicola to choose that dreadful wallpaper for this draughty room.White flowers plastered over a red background. It calls to mind the new regional flag they’ve chosen for Hong Kong. An uninspiring design if you ask me. It looks like one of those handheld windmills you buy at a fair, or at the seaside. Hardly something you can take seriously. It can’t be compared to the Union Jack. Now there’s a flag you can be proud of, a flag that means something.

The roof of this wretched building leaks. Why Nicola persuaded us to buy it I will never know.

‘Orchard House.The two of you will love it.’That’s what she said, as if we didn’t have any choice in the matter. And, quite honestly, looking back, I’m not sure we did.

There are buckets placed at strategic points to catch the drips. I can hear them plinking now. It is a bit like a form of Japanese water torture, waiting for the next plink, watching the buckets and pails slowly fill, wondering when the silvery skins will rupture, and the collected rain will trickle down the sides and soak into the Persian rugs. I think I can say that the state of the roof is the most weighty problem here, but there are others. Damp in general, peeling wallpaper, rotting window-frames and cracked panes, missing floortiles, banging pipes and a faulty central-heating system, to name but a few. I think we may even have a bit of woodworm on the first floor that needs treating. Oh, we have mice too. Larry, my son-in-law, claims he’s dealing with them. But I doubt it. He says a great deal, and as far as I can see does very little. And Jillian’s not much better. What I wouldn’t give for a couple of amahs to set the place to rights. I thought Nicola said that having Jillian and Larry living with us was going to make life much easier, that it would alleviate all our difficulties. What’s more, I could have done without the boy being foisted on us. Amos. What a ridiculous name for a child! It’s not even as if we’re great ones for religion. Besides, I have never been maternal. I can’t think why Jillian and Larry spent all that money trying to have a baby.When the doctor told her they had problems (something odd about Larry’s sperm, not that I pressed them for any details you understand), in my opinion she should have just accepted it. I would have. Gladly, as it happens!

I’m sorry, Ralph, but you know I never really wanted children. Not all women hanker after a family you know. We aren’t all programmed for reproduction. Some of us don’t need miniature replicas of ourselves to make our lives complete. Conversely, in Alice’s case, far from completing me, she very nearly destroyed me. I had her for your sake you know, so you can’t blame me entirely for what happened, what happened to our daughter, Alice. You were determined to have your son, weren’t you? Oh, you never put it into so many words,but the understanding was implicit.I did my best,Ralph. You must give me that. I tried my hardest to produce your boy, your heir. And if it did take me four goes, I managed it in the end. Don’t judge me, Ralph, wherever you are now.You have no idea what it was like for me producing girl after girl, producing Alice at that hospital in Ealing. I had to feel Mother’s scorn at my inability to get a son for my husband—not once, not twice, but thrice. After all, she had managed the feat first time, hadn’t she?

We didn’t put Alice’s name on your gravestone. The children wanted to make a dedication to you, a personal thank-you to their father. We talked about adding her name after theirs, but in the end we decided it wasn’t appropriate.We felt she hadn’t earned her place there. And Ralph, this once you weren’t around to make a fuss. So there it is, Jillian, Nicola and Harry, but…no Alice. If you want my opinion, and you never really did when it came to Alice, this is as it should be.

‘Is it a boy?’ I asked the midwife repeatedly. She was quite terse with me in the end.

‘It’s a girl,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve told you it’s a girl, a lovely girl.’

That was an oxymoron to me by then, Ralph. Can you understand that? I’d had Jillian and Nicola, and each of those pregnancies cost me dearly. But as a man you could never appreciate that. Besides, delivering Alice was meant to be my last messy natal performance. I deserved to have a boy. I deserved a son by then.You know what they say, Ralph, third time lucky.Well, it wasn’t for me. Having Alice was the most unpropitious thing that ever happened to me. Our daughter, our third daughter filled me with dread. But not you, oh no. You adored her, didn’t you?

The midwife was a big, hearty woman, with apple-red cheeks, and large pink hands, butcher’s hands I recall. She reached towards my chest and started fumbling with the tie of my nightie.

‘No! No, no!’ My voice was pitched too high. It reeked of panic.

‘Put her to your breast,’ she urged, still pulling at the lacing. She had a slight burr to her voice, though what the accent was I couldn’t tell you.

I thrust her hand away.‘I am not feeding it myself.I need a bottle,’ I told her succinctly. I had an image of a stray dog then, a dog I had seen on the streets of Nairobi, its dugs heavy with milk, puppies suckling frantically at them. Its eyes were rolled upwards to heaven, you could see their whites, but it lay in the gutter, and was coated with filth.

I suppressed a shudder. She stopped scrabbling at my painfully engorged breasts and nudged the baby forwards instead. I took it awkwardly, as if I thought it might bite me at any moment. I looked into the face. The wispy hair was lighter than Nicola’s. The mouth that rooted hopefully towards me was pretty enough. But the eyes unsettled me.They were the rich brown of tobacco, and preternaturally alert.They were needy too. I have been told a newborn cannot focus immediately, but as this child stared steadily up at me I had my doubts. Returning her gaze, what I felt was not a trickle of love, but a wave of cold dislike. ‘She’ meant that I would have to do it all once more. She was unnecessary, surplus to requirements. She did not even have the decency to look abashed,as Nicola had done.And quite suddenly, with the smell of disinfectant and warm sweet blood, and the distant muted sounds coming to me from far corridors of rolling trolleys and muffled voices and footsteps, I felt afraid.

‘Shall I show your husband in?’ asked the determined midwife, her tone brisk, business-like. And when there was no response, she added with unnecessary emphasis,‘To see his beautiful baby daughter?’

For a second I wondered who she meant. Then Ralph, in you came. You took the bundle carefully in your arms, studied it for a moment, and then your face lit up.You looked so delighted.

‘It is a girl,’ I explained, thinking you had not grasped this. It was the year 1956 and I had given birth to yet another baby girl.

‘I know,’you said.‘She’s beautiful.’To my amazement, your shining eyes proved the sincerity of your words. The baby seemed to sense this, following the sound of her father’s voice. Father and daughter’s eyes locked. Ralph, you looked smitten, mesmerised. I felt a pang just under my ribcage and had to turn away.

‘I think the name Alice suits her,’ you said. ‘Oh…yes, definitely. Alice. What do you think?’

I shrugged indifferently. ‘If you like,’ I said. I wasn’t really bothered one way or another. Alice would do as well as the next name.