Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness

He believed, then, that if Lucheni — who had been ugly and craven by all accounts — got Elisabeth, a ghost of Helen would not be unreasonable in the least. One bereavement leaflet seemed to feel so certain of apparitions that it listed them, as a compensatory effort, against the other possible symptoms of grief: physical pain (in the chest, as if one's heart is cleaved), a sense of injustice, a broiling anger, notions of hopelessness, an intermittent or abnormal appetite, sporadic loss of function in the limbs, extreme fear of, or else longing for, one's own death. And in return, one may see or get the distinct feeling that the loved one is there, at the foot of the bed, or in the bed, or at one's shoulder, a smoky presence. One may put their fingers through it and feel the soul of the deceased, like moist remnants of dawn in the morning air.

Apart from that short-lived banishment of milk, he has never been a superstitious man; he awaited the presence as anyone would await the next step in a process. The chest pain came, the abnormal appetite, some anger promptly controlled. Confusion. In fact, it was more than this — it was clotting of thoughts, disorientation. A presence was the least a man in his position should now expect; it was not his privilege after all, it was his right.

He bartered with his solitude. The ghost did not have to be an apparition, nor strictly ephemeral, it did not have to bring lasting peace and hope, it could be real and logical, obvious almost, the outcome of a simple sum. It didn't have to creep in the dark, it could be felt in the day if Helen, who was not a night creature, so preferred.

He was open to possibility. After more than thirty years of marriage to a woman whose beliefs fired her every breath he had at least learned, for the sake of good-natured compromise, to be anything but agnostic, agreeing to believe anything in principle. And the more he lived by this compromise the more he found it served his natural attitudes. He would always favour something over nothing. He would always hedge his religious bets, preserving this something as just that, some thing, not this specific thing nor that particular thing. Helen would draw him into religious debate and he would, he always felt, evade it deftly by saying, “Helen, take it up with somebody else — in principle, I don't disagree with you. Maybe there is a god, in principle you're absolutely right, anything is possible.” He meant it, and the integrity was part of what made the argument deft, that for once he was not trying to quell her constant musing by outwitting her but was doing so by being simple and honest.

Being so busy waiting for ghosts, he failed to notice then that the confusion, clotting of thoughts, disorientation were burrowing deeper than the grief.

He lived by the leaflets. The leaflets said there was the chance of a presence, and on balance and in view of all he had been and was, he felt it was his due. But it did not come.

Entropy: this is the word his brain has been trying to hunt down for days, and suddenly it has arrived in a little whoosh of eureka.

Entropy is singularly the most interesting theory that exists, he mumbles to himself, propped in front of his drawing board at the angle, he thinks, of somebody who is always about to do something significant, but never quite does. The office is silent except for a rustling of papers in the other room, and is lit by a spill of light coming from there and outside, and a few desk lights people must have left on before they went home; the darkness stacked into the other areas is surprisingly deep and quiet.

Entropy — the theory that says everything loses, rather than gains, order. A cup of coffee will, with enough time, get cold, but no amount of time will cause it to get hot again. A house can become a mere pile of bricks of its own accord, but a mere pile of bricks will never become a house of its own accord. Everywhere nature's fingers unpick as if trying to leave things as they would be if humans never existed.

He stares at the drawing; it is not his, it was done by one of the junior architects and he has been asked to check it. Thorn-ley Library, front elevation. A simple two-storey building whose only design hurdle is, as ever, the budget; but even so he has been gazing at it all afternoon, his pencil in hand, a stream of coffees getting cold as he tries to remember what it is one is supposed to do. Should he change the lines somehow (but how?)? Should he put a tick in the corner? Now it is well into the evening and everybody — save for that mystery rustler in the next room — has gone, and he aches with inactivity.

Something makes him look up, and he sees a girl in the doorway to his left.

“Jake, would you like another drink?”

She is tall and familiar, brown cropped hair and a simple, kind face.

“A coffee, please.”

“Are you going to be here all night?”

“I have to deal with this.” He taps the drawing with his pencil.

“Well, I'm going in a few minutes, so you'll be left in peace.” She purses her lips into a smile and puts her hands in the pockets of her trousers.

“I won't be alone, there's somebody in the other room,” he says.

“What? This room?” She gestures behind her with a nod.

“Yes, I heard papers shuffling.”

With a tilt of the head she whispers, “That was me.”

“Oh, really?”

Confusion passes across him, across his skin. He can feel it these days as a bodily sensation not unlike a rash. He wants to itch at it.

“So, coffee,” she says lightly, and turns.

He leans closer into the drawing board and hovers the pencil. Entropy. A house can become a pile of bricks of its own accord, but a pile of bricks will never become a house. Entropy. The arrow of time, time can only move one way. He taps, taps the pencil on the paper.

When the girl comes back with the coffee he shoves the pencil into his pocket with the accomplished efficiency of a man who is used to having something to hide.

“Here.” She pushes papers aside and puts the mug on his desk. “What are you working on? Is there a deadline coming up?”

“Yes, yes. It's—” he sweeps the drawing with the palm of his hand and smiles. “It's not interesting.”

“I'm interested.” She buries her hands in her pockets again as if she too is hiding something. “I'm an interested secretary. Is that rare?”

“Is it very busy, being a secretary?”

“At times.” She shrugs gently and leaves the subject there.

“And what are you going to do, when you, when you're older?”

She laughs. “I am older.”

“Of course, I'm sorry.”

“I always wanted to be a vet, actually.” She sits on the edge of the desk. “When I was a child I thought I'd be a vet in a monkey rescue centre, because I always had a fascination with monkeys, and I kept sticker books of them to help me learn the different types: chimps, orangutans, gorillas, baboons, macaques, spider monkeys.” She tucks her hair behind her ear in a way that reminds him of Helen. “There are more than a hundred different types. I used to know them all.”

The words peal against the silence of the office, exotic, forgotten; he thinks momentarily of the time in America when the old word monkey came strangely into the new brown car. And he grasps the last of her list: macaques, spider monkeys. He feels himself stash them away as if they belong to a world he does not want to lose, and to things which were once important and will be important again.

The girl passes his coffee from the desk. “But I'm not sure what happened to that plan.”

“Maybe it wasn't ever a real plan, maybe it was just a fancy, an illusion.”