Pat Barker - The Ghost Road

He could hear the girls getting undressed in the room overhead: the thump of shoes being kicked off, snatches of conversation, giggles, almost — he convinced himself — the sigh of petticoats dropping to the floor. Sarah's momentary nakedness, before the white shroud of night-dress came down. He got up and went to the piano, stroking the keys, singing under his breath.

Far, far from Wipers

I long to be,

Where German snipers

Can't get at me.

Damp is my dug-out,

Cold are my feet

Waiting for Whizzbangs

To put me to sleep.

The door opened. He turned and saw Sarah, a white column of night-gown, a thick plait hanging down over her left shoulder.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, closing the piano. 'Have I been making too much noise?'

'No. I just wanted to see you.'

Incredibly, impossibly, the sound of girlish whispering and giggling continued overhead.

'Cynthia,' Sarah said, closing the door. 'She's pretending I'm still there.'

She knelt on the hearthrug, and began feeding the few remaining sticks of wood into the fire. Then, carefully, so as not to douse the flames, she dropped shiny nuggets of coal into the fiery caverns the dying fire had made. A hiss, for the coal was damp after recent rain, and, for a moment, the glow on her face and hair darkened, then blazed up again.

'We seem to keep missing each other,' she said.

'You mean we're kept apart.'

That amazing hair, he thought. Even now, when it was all brushed and tamed for bed, he could see five or six different shades of copper, auburn, bronze, even a strand of pure gold that looked as if it must belong to somebody else.

She turned to look at him. 'It's her house, Billy.'

'Have I said anything?'

The firelight, gilding her face, disguised the munitions-factory yellow of her skin.

'We could get married by special licence,' he said. 'At least I suppose we could, I don't know how long it takes.'

'No, we couldn't.'

No, he thought, because after the war things'll be different, I could be getting on in the world, I might not want to be saddled with a wife from Beale Street. I have to be protected from myself. Sarah had a great sense of honour. About as much use to a woman as a jock-strap, he'd have thought, but there it was, Sarah was saddled with it. 'I love you, Sarah Lumb.'

'I love you, Billy Prior.'

She leant back, and he unbuttoned her night-dress, pushing it off her shoulders so that the side of one heavy breast was etched in trembling gold. He slid to the floor beside her and took her in his arms, feeling her tense against him. 'It's all right, it's all right.'

And all he wanted, at that moment, was to hide his face between her breasts and shut out the relentless ticking of the clock. But a voice above shouted, 'Sarah? Cynthia? Time you were asleep.'

'I'll have to go.'

'All right.'

But his hands refused to loosen their grip, and she had to pull herself away.

'Look, tomorrow night she goes to the spuggies. I'll tell her I've got a headache, and see if I can stay here.'

* * *

Next morning, after they'd all gone to work, he went upstairs to Sarah's room, exhausted after another bad night measured by the chiming of the clock. He needed to lie in the bed where Sarah slept, to wrap himself in these stained sheets, for even in this fanatically clean household the girls' skins sloughed off, staining the sheets yellow, and no amount of washing would get the stains out. He didn't mind. He would lie happily here, in the trough made by her body during the night, smelling the faint smell of lavender and soap.

On the bedside table was a photograph of himself, taken when he was first commissioned. Unformed schoolboy face. Had he ever been as young as that? Undressed and in bed, he squinted at the half-drawn curtains, wondering if it was worth the effort of getting up to close them. No, he decided, he would simply turn his back to the light.

He turned over, and for a second closed his eyes, his brain not immediately interpreting what in that brief glance he had seen. Then he sat up. On the dresser stood a photograph of a young man in uniform, a private's uniform. Not Cynthia's husband — he knew his face from wedding groups. He got out of bed and went to look. Johnny, of course. Who else? Sarah's first fiancé.

The usual inanely smiling face half whited out by the sun. Behind him, a few feet of unbombed France. And why should he begrudge this? Because I thought I'd taken his place . He hadn't even thought it, he'd just assumed it. She'd talked only once about Johnny and then she'd been drunk on the port he'd been plying her with to get her knickers off. Loos. That was it. Gas blown back over the British lines. He peered again at the unknown face. The whiting out seemed almost to be an unintended symbol of the oblivion into which we all go. Last night, he'd wondered what colour Sarah's skin had been under the jaundice produced by the chemicals she worked with. This man had known. He'd known this Sarah — picking up a snapshot — this happy, slightly plump, hoydenish girl struggling to keep her skirts down on the boat-swing. What you noticed in Sarah now was the high rounded forehead, the prominent cheekbones, the bright, cool amused gaze. Always the sense of something being held back. He'd been looking all along at a face scoured out by grief, and he'd never known it till now.

* * *

'Nice walk in the fresh air,' Ada said, spearing black felt with a hat-pin. 'Just the thing for a headache.'

'I won't be in the fresh air, Mam. That room gets awfully stuffy, you know.'

Ada bent down, thrusting her face into her daughter's. 'Sarah, go and get your coat.'

Sarah looked at Billy and shrugged slightly.

'I'll come too,' he said, standing up.

'Are you sure?' Ada asked. 'The spuggies aren't everybody's cup of tea.'

'Wouldn't miss it for the world.'

They walked down the street together, Ada leading the way, sweeping along in her black skirt, for in the matter of skirt length she made no concessions to the present day. She glided along as if on invisible casters.

'I suppose she does know contacting the dead's a heresy?' Billy asked. 'The Vicar wouldn't like it.'

'Oh, she doesn't believe in it. She only goes for the night out.'

The meeting was held above a shop that sold surgical appliances, a range of products whose advertising is necessarily discreet. The window, lined with red and green crepe paper left over from Christmas, contained nothing but a picture of a white-haired man swinging his granddaughter above his head.

They went up a narrow staircase into a tiny room. A piano, a table with a vase of flowers, five or six rows of chairs, net curtains whose shadows tattooed skin. They couldn't find four seats together and so Prior found himself sitting behind Sarah.

'How's your headache, Sarah?' Ada asked.

'Bit better, thank you, Mam.'

How's your ballsache, Billy? Bloody awful, thank you, Ma.

A man walked up and stood on the rostrum, looking carefully round the room. Counting the penny contributions to tea and biscuits? Assessing the general level of credulity? Or was he perhaps not a rogue at all but simply mad? No, not mad. A small, self-satisfied man with brown teeth.

Prior followed his gaze round the room, as the blinds were drawn down, shutting out the sun. Women, mostly in black, a scattering of men, all middle aged or older, except one, whose hands and face twitched uncontrollably. Too many widows. Too many mothers looking for contact with lost sons — and this was an area where they'd all joined up together. Whole streets of them, going off in a day.

And this man, smoothing down his thin hair, announcing the number of the hymn, had known them all — birthmarks, nicknames, funny little habits — he knew exactly what every woman in this room wanted to hear. Fraud, Prior thought, and that he deceived himself made it no better.