John Banville - Ghosts

A hen was picking over bits of straw, sharp eye agleam, looking for something among the slimed cobbles. It paused thoughtfully and dropped behind it a little twirled mound of shit, chalk-white and olive-green. Croke stared in mild disgust: what in the name of God is it they eat? The dog emerged from its bed under the wheelbarrow and advanced lopsidedly a pace or two and halted, gasping. ‘Here, old fellow,’ Croke said and was startled at the loudness of his voice, how hollow it sounded, how unconvincing. He saw himself there, a comic turn, in his candy-stripes and sopping shoes and ridiculous straw hat. ‘Here, boy,’ he said gruffly. ‘Here, old chap.’

The dog, a black and white spaniel with something awful coming out of its eyes, turned disdainfully and waddled back to its lair.

Croke walked on and came to another, wider iron gate. Beyond it were the fields sloping up to the oak ridge. He took off his hat and looked at it, feeling the air suddenly cool on his forehead.

What is it called, that thing, that gold thing?

Under the gate there was a patch of churned-up mud (are there cows?) with little puddles of sky-reflecting water in it like shards of glass. He stepped across the mud-patch shakily but the ground beyond too was boggy and the wet grass clutched at his feet alarmingly. He kept going, though, clambering up the uneven slope and treading on his own squat shadow lurching along in front of him.

Unless to see my shadow in the sun ,

And something on mine own deformity.

Not that he was ever let play the king. All he ever got to do was stand around in sackcloth trews and a tunic that smelled of someone else’s sweat, trying not to yawn while a fat queer in a paper crown strode up and down, ranting. Pah. In his heart he despised the whole business, dressing up and pretending to be someone else. It was a pity no one did revues any more. He used to like revues, the old-fashioned kind, before everything got smart and smutty. He had been a great straight-man, because of his size, probably: a big, slow, shiny-faced gom with slicked-back hair standing up there in suit and tie with his brow furrowed while the little fellow ran rings around him, what could be funnier? Strange, he had never minded looking foolish like that. The funny men thought they were the ones in control; wrong, of course; that was the secret. Nasty little tykes, the lot of them, jealous, tightfisted, throbbing with grievances — and chasers too, God, yes, anything in a skirt.

He found himself thinking of Felix. He did not trust that joker, with his dyed hair and his dirty smile. Very sallow, too: was he a jewboy? Got his hands on the girl straight away, of course. They always do. That girl, now –

Oh!

He reared back in fright as a bird of some sort flew up suddenly out of the grass with burbled whistlings and shot into the sky. A lark, was it? He stood with his head thrown back, leering from the effort, and watched the tiny creature where it hung above him, pouring out its thick-throated song. After a minute it got tired, or perhaps the song was finished, and it sank to earth in stages, dropping from one steep step of air to another, and disappeared into the grass again. Croke walked on. Long ago, when he was a child, someone had kept a canary; he remembered it, perched in its cage in a sunny window. Who was that, who would have kept a singing-bird? He could see it all clearly, the cage there, and the net curtain pulled back, and the window with the little panes and the yellow light streaming in. He sighed. Melancholy, thick and sweet as treacle, welled up in his heart.

He went on, up the slope. This last part was steep and there was mud and dead leaves to make the going treacherous. He smelled wet smoke. Above him the trees were making a troubled, rushing sound. He paused to rest for a moment, leaning forward with his hands on his knees and breathing with his mouth open. His lungs pained him. What was he doing, climbing up here, what craziness had got hold of him? He could die like this, keel over like a tree and die, be here for days and no one would find him. He turned his darkening gaze to the fields falling away behind him, to the house down there, to the beach and the distant sea. White clouds sailed above his head. He seemed for a moment to be airborne, and he felt light-headed. Behind him someone started to sing.

Oh

He came off twice

In a bowl of rice

And called it tapioca

It was one of the boys. He was squatting in the middle of a clearing beside the remains of a fire, poking at the smouldering embers with a stick. He looked up at Croke without surprise. His no-colour hair was wet and plastered to his skull. His eyes were an eerie, washed-out shade of blue.

‘Which one are you?’ Croke said, still wheezing from the climb. ‘Are you Hatch?’ It occurred to him he should carry a cane, it would lend him authority, pointing with it and so on. Hatch went on looking at him with detachment; he might have been looking in through the bars of a cage. Croke, disconcerted by the child’s unwavering regard, tried another tack and pointed to the fire. ‘Go out on you?’ he said.

Hatch shrugged. ‘Pound pissed on it.’

‘I did not,’ Pound said, stepping out of the trees. Pound was the fat one: glasses, cowlick, shoes like boats. ‘He pissed on it himself.’

Unnerved, Croke grinned weakly. He opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say, and stood irresolute, feeling exposed and somehow mocked. He was secretly a little afraid of these two. Hatch in particular alarmed him, with his pixie’s face and violet eyes and pale little clawlike hands.

Pound came and stood by the fire and kicked at the ashes with the toe of his shoe. He cast a sidelong glance in Croke’s direction. ‘He must be gone,’ he said to Hatch. ‘I can’t see him.’

‘Gone to ground,’ Hatch said and laughed.

A gust of wind blew across the clearing, lifting dry husks and the lacy skeletons of last year’s leaves. In the silence Croke had a dreamy sense of slow, weightless toppling.

‘Someone up here, was there?’ he said.

Hatch stuck his stick into the ashes.

‘That fellow,’ he said.

‘Which fellow?’

‘Tarzan the apeman.’

This time Pound laughed, a fat bark. Croke looked from one of them to the other, the fey one squatting on the ground and fatty with his swollen cheeks and infant’s pasty brow. He tried again to think of something to say that would confound them, something harsh and funny, but in vain, and turned instead with an angry gesture and walked away, willing himself to saunter, the back of his neck on fire. Children and animals, children and animals: he should have known better.

He came to the edge of the trees and had to scramble down the first few yards of the slope at a crouch. He felt odd: wall-falling , his father used to say: I’m wall-falling. The ground seemed more uneven than it had when he was coming up, and the grass hid holes in which he was afraid he would twist an ankle (there must be cows, then — or horses, perhaps there are horses, after all). The house was clear to see below him but somehow he kept listing away from it, as if there were a hidden tilt to things, and when he got down to level ground the roof and even the little turret sank from view off to the left behind a steep, grassy bank riddled with rabbit burrows and he found himself toiling along a broad, sandy path with high dunes on either side.

The sea was before him, he could hear it, the hiss and rush of it and the gritty crash of the waves collapsing on the shingle. The sun shone upon him thickly. He stopped and stood there dully in the sun, his head bowed. What had happened to him? He could not understand it. A minute ago he had been up there on the ridge and now he was down here, sunk in this hot hollow. He looked about. The boys were behind him, standing on a dune, watching him. He could not see them very well; were they laughing? He felt dizzy again and something was buzzing in his head.