John Banville - Ghosts

‘Coo-ee!’ he called now, in soft singsong. He was leaning out over the bannisters, his face upturned, with a wide, lipless grin. ‘There you are. Don’t be shy, Professor, it’s only me.’

Professor Kreutznaer slowly descended the stairs; Felix, still grinning, stood and watched him approach, beating out a little rhythm on the banister rail with his fingertips. How silent the house seemed suddenly.

‘What —’ the Professor said, and had to clear his throat and start again. ‘What are you doing here?’

Felix expelled a gasp of laughter and pressed spread fingers to his breast and assumed an expression of startled innocence.

‘You mean here?’ he said, pointing to the floor under his feet. ‘Why, nothing. Loitering without intent.’

‘I mean on the island,’ the Professor said.

Felix merely smiled at that and moved to the window and leaned there looking out brightly at the sunlit scene: the sloped lawn and the bridge over the stream and the grassed-over dunes in the distance and the far strip of sea. He sighed. ‘What a pleasant place you have here,’ he said. ‘So peaceful.’ He glanced over his shoulder and winked. ‘Not like the old days, eh? Although I suppose there is the odd fisher-lad to bring you up your kippers.’ He took out his dented gold case and lit a cheroot and placed the spent match carefully on the window-sill. He nodded thoughtfully, smoking. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a spot like this would do me very nicely, I must say.’

The Professor stood and listened to the unsteady beating of his heart, thinking how fear always holds at its throbbing centre that little, thin, unquenchable flame of pleasure.

‘Why have you come here,’ he said.

Felix blew a big stream of smoke and shook his head in rueful amusement.

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘The captain was drunk, our boat ran aground. We are castaways!’ And lightly laughed. ‘It’s true, really. A happy chance. Are you not pleased to see me?’

The Professor continued to fix him with a dull glare.

‘How did you know where to find me?’ he said.

Felix clicked his tongue in mock annoyance.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why you won’t believe me!’ He chuckled. ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

At that the Professor produced a brief bark of what in him passed for laughter. They eyed each other through a swirl of lead-blue smoke. The Professor raised his eyes and Felix touched a hand shyly to his dyed hair.

‘I thought you’d never notice,’ he said and put on a coy look and batted his eyelashes. ‘You know me, Professor, mutability is my middle name.’

‘What do you want from me?’ the Professor said.

‘Want? Why, nothing. What did I ever want? Amusement. Diversion. The company of a great man.’

Felix turned away smilingly and put his face close against the window and peered down at the garden. The wind swooped outside, the sunlight flickered.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how is the art market behaving these days? Volatile, is it?’

There was the sense of something beating in the air, as if after the tolling of a bell.

‘I think I’m dying,’ the Professor said.

He heard himself say it and took a step backwards in surprise and a sort of gulped dismay, as if from the windy edge of a high place. Felix at the window glanced at him absently over his shoulder.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Dying? Yes, well.’ He turned to the window again and smoked in silence for a long moment. ‘This truly is a grand spot,’ he said. ‘I really do like it. In fact, I like it so much I think I’ll stay for a while.’

Again that bell-tone beating in the air.

‘No,’ the Professor said.

Felix was peering hard out at the hillside where a bedraggled figure was sitting under a tree in blossom. ‘Montgomery!’ Felix cried out softly, ‘why has your man got pointed ears?’ He turned to the Professor smartly, with a bright smile. ‘No, did you say?’ he said. ‘My my, that’s not very hospitable. I only mean to stay for a little while. Until I find my feet again — I’ve had a few reverses lately. Nothing serious, you understand; nothing on the scale of some I could mention.’

They stood and contemplated each other, Felix with his meaning smile and the Professor grimly staring.

‘You can’t stay here,’ the Professor said.

‘Oh, come,’ Felix cried, ‘we shall fleet the time carelessly as we did in the golden world — oops!’ He clapped a hand to his mouth and raised his eyebrows high in mock dismay. ‘What have I said? — dear me, Professor, you’ve grown quite pale.’ He put his head on one side and contemplated with pursed amusement the old man standing hunched and scowling before him. ‘By the way, I went down to Whitewater the other day,’ Felix said pleasantly. ‘The daughter is in charge there now — quite the chatelaine. You pay a pound and they let you wander around at will. Very trusting, I must say — but then, they always were, weren’t they. I wanted to see if the gilt was still on the Golden World. What an amazing work it is — never ceases to surprise me. It’s so —’ his voice sank softly ‘— so convincing, I always think.’ His cheroot had died; he placed the butt beside the spent match on the window-sill. ‘I spoke to the lady of the house. She was most kind, most helpful.’

The Professor nodded grimly.

‘She told you where I was,’ he said. Felix only smirked. The Professor heard himself breathing and felt that silken ripple in his breast. ‘You can’t harm me,’ he said.

Felix reared back with an astonished smile.

‘Harm you?’ he cried. ‘Why would I want to harm you? No: you are going to be my golden goose, after all.’

He winked then and turned briskly and set off down the stairs, skipping swiftly; halfway down the flight he paused and turned back. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I hope you appreciate how discreetly I’ve behaved here, though you wouldn’t even condescend to shake my hand.’ He wagged his head reprovingly and chuckled and went on down the stairs.

When he was gone, the Professor stood motionless, suspended for a moment, as so often these days, waiting for something that did not come. Idly he tried the bedroom door. It was locked.

CROKE, NOW, try Croke, he is the real thing, the homo verus of myth and legend. He stepped out on the sunlit porch and stopped with a sour look and sniffed the day. Sea stink and the thick pungency of drenched grass and a sort of buttery smell that he supposed must be the smell of gorse. He did not much care for the countryside, trees and weather and suchlike. He was a city man, born and bred. A walk by the canal of an October morning, swans gliding on their own reflections and the sun on the gasworks and the air delicately blued with petrol fumes, that was enough of outdoors for him. He descended the porch steps and turned right along the flagged path past the rose bush and the rain barrel and the bluebottle-coloured mound where the coal-ash from the kitchen stove is dumped. Stunted apple trees grow here, standing in lush grass, and there are fruit bushes and a thick clump of nettles jostling greenly to attention, their webbed ears pricked up. Smell of roses, then of lilac, then of something sweetly dead. A cloud abruptly palmed the sun. Water was dripping nearby, or was it a bird, making that plip, plip noise? He arrived at the iron gate that led from the corner of the lawn into the yard behind the house. The cobbles were still wet in patches. He watched his hand grasp the bar of the gate and for a moment he was held, staring at that withered claw h. could hardly believe was his. Nowadays he avoided looking at himself too closely, not caring to see the dewlapped neck and grizzled chest, the sagging tits, the quaking, varicosed legs. The years had worn his skin to a thin, translucent stuff, clammy and smooth, like waxed paper, a loose hide within which his big old carcass slipped and slid. He would not need a shroud, they could just truss him up in himself like a turkey and fold over the flaps and tie a final knot. He smiled grimly and the gate opened before him with a clang. A wash of sunlight swept the yard and as he stepped forward falteringly into this sudden weak blaze the god unseen anointed him and he felt for a moment an extraordinary happiness.