Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

George is disappointed that his story hasn’t raised even a smile from Katherine, so subdued has she been since her swim. He turns to her. “Darling, what’s wrong? You okay?”

“Yes. Yes. I’m okay.” But Katherine’s sense of preoccupation is growing even as she speaks to George, intensifying moment by moment.

“Maybe rest when you get home. You had a bit of a panic getting out of your depth in the water, love; it’s bound to have shaken you a little. You had a bit of a shock.”

“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” Katherine says. “George?”

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you didn’t see the seal?”

“No, love, I didn’t see it. This place isn’t really known for seals. Maybe it was seaweed or driftwood or something. . ”

“I love seals,” offers Elizabeth; “they’re so cute.”

“Maybe it was somebody’s big gy — normous plop!” Elsa giggles.

“I don’t understand it. . ” Katherine mutters to herself.

“How could you not have seen the seal? He was right in front of you. . He was right there. . ”

“How are your legs?” George asks.

“They’re still really itchy,” says Elsa.

“No, Elsa love, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to your mother.”

Elsa frowns. George immediately registers his daughter’s mood and responds to her. “Well then. And how are your legs, Elsa?”

Elsa’s frown tightens.

Katherine, says in a faraway voice, “George, let’s go home. I really want to go home.”

George takes her in. “Okay, love,” he says tenderly, and starts the car. “Everybody ready?” His voice lifts cheerily, but he receives a low groan as an answer from the children. Flicking the right indicator on, George now steers the Morris Traveller off from the side of the road, narrowly missing a passing car as he does so. He gives the horn a toot, then drives on.

Katherine shivers and adjusts the towel around her shoulders again with one hand, trying to hold Stephen with the other. Everyone in the car is quiet now. Stephen snuggles into Katherine as she lets her head rest back against the car seat.

Soon all of the children drift into their own world. George hums to himself as he drives.

Sitting wrapped in her towels, Katherine feels as though she is still in the cold, deep sea. Thoughts are lapping all around her now, stirring up from the deep, rising to the surface. Thoughts she now cannot stop. She closes her eyes. Thoughts of someone that she has blotted out throughout her married life but which — if the truth be told — have never gone away.

Thoughts of him.

As the Bedford family car turns the sharp bend onto the street where they live, Katherine sees Mr. McGovern standing outside his grocer’s shop in his white nylon shop coat. She gives him a small wave from the back of the car. Mr. McGovern waves back to her as though he is putting up his hand at school, his arm long, his palm flat to the air.

When the car pulls to a stop in their driveway, George turns to Katherine.

“You look very pale, love.”

“I’m fine. I just feel very tired, that’s all.”

George carries in the picnic bags and the blankets and asks Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa to help with the swimsuits and towels. Their reluctance makes them pick poorly at the items, like magpies at clumps of moss. Maureen carries one towel only, holding it disdainfully from one corner, as it is damp, sandy, and streaked in jam. Elizabeth takes only her swimsuit. Elsa trails the biggest towel along the ground, gathering pieces of dirt as she goes.

“C’mon, girls, smarten up there now.” George is half jovial, half annoyed. He lifts Stephen, who is chewing on a jam piece that he has found on the floor of the car, and takes him into the house. Maureen and Elizabeth answer their father with a sullen look, but their tempo remains unchanged. As they walk, they deposit thin trails of silty sand, as though they are spilling out of themselves.

Stephen heads straight for Katherine, who is standing in the kitchen, still wrapped in towels. With a piping complaint, Stephen grabs at her.

“Okay, pet, just give me a moment,” she says in a daze.

“Mama up!” Stephens pulls on Katherine as though she is a bell rope.

“Wait now.”

“Up!”

The telephone rings in the hall and Elizabeth goes to answer it. A moment later, she calls to her father, “Daddy, it’s the station!” George drops the bag he is carrying on the kitchen floor and rushes to take the telephone from Elizabeth. His work as a retained fireman makes frequent demands on his free time, a fact that has always bothered Katherine, as if — she often complains — his job as a civil engineer isn’t demanding enough.

Maureen enters the kitchen, carrying a bag from the car. Katherine turns to her.

“Maureen, take Stephen for me, will you?”

Without waiting for Maureen’s reply Katherine moves swiftly out of the kitchen, as though propelled by some pressing need. She passes George in the hall and goes upstairs.

“Come here to me, mister,” she hears Maureen call after Stephen.

Upstairs, Katherine walks quickly into her bedroom and closes the door behind her. Laundry has been left on the end of the bed. George’s shirts are ironed and hanging on the handle of the wardrobe door. Katherine opens the wardrobe, kneels down, and, rummaging through the blankets and linen that are stored at the bottom of it, eventually pulls out a small box covered loosely with a cloth. She pulls the cloth off the box and opens it. Inside the box there is something covered in waxy paper. She opens the paper and reveals a small porcelain statuette of an old man, a needle and thread in one hand, a piece of cloth in the other. The smooth, bald head of the statuette had broken off when she had let it slip from her hands the day George was helping her move out of her mother’s flat. She holds both pieces in her hand and looks at them.

As she lifts the paper in which the statuette had been wrapped, she feels the jolt it gives. She opens it out. She invites it in. It is a music sheet containing some of the music and lyrics from the opera Carmen . Before she sang at every rehearsal, she would take out her little handheld mirror and her lipstick from her handbag and ease orange-red across her lips. Then, folding her music sheet in half — this piece of paper in front of her — she would push it against her mouth to remove the excess. Scattered all around the page like a swarm of orange-red insects are her rosebud lipstick kisses. A sheet music full of kisses, little signals of orange-red love, each one a promise that she would nurture the spirit of her dreams until they came true. She reads: “Si tu ne m’aimes pas, Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime; Mais si je t’aime, si je t’aime prends garde a toi!” She looks at the bottom of the music sheet where a short translation of the lyrics is written in a very neat hand: “Love you not me, love you not me, then I love you—” But she cannot continue reading. Her mind flashes with an image grim and disturbing. No, don’t go there (and yet she feels the need to). No, not that. She blots it out.

The bedroom door opens and George steps a little into the room. “Katherine, you should get dressed, love. You’ll catch your death—” He is stopped in his tracks when he sees what Katherine is holding in her hand. He knows immediately what it is. “That was the station—” he says to her, but he cannot hide his anxiety at what he sees.

“I gathered that,” says Katherine quietly.

“There’s been a lot of trouble in the city.”

“Oh.”

“So they’ve called me in — I’ve been instructed to liaise with two other retainees before touching base.” He stands looking at Katherine. “Please, Katherine, don’t. . please. Let it go.”