Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘I won’t be here tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ the policewoman said.

‘Was it suicide?’

This was an older, quieter voice. Merrily saw that there was a fifth person in the group, this woman wrapped in a grey cape so long that it was touching the pavement.

The policewoman said, ‘Do you have anything to tell us about this incident, madam?’

The woman smiled faintly, with a shake of the head, as the blue beacon light passed over her face, brushing like a strobe effect over an eagle nose and causing a glistening like hoar frost in hair that was like strands of tarnished tinsel. And Merrily recognized her. Partly from Mumford’s description, but mainly…

Pale arms outstretched, fingers clawed, sleeves of a black robe slipping back. A copper bangle like a snake…

Merrily froze, hands clasped, catching a long-ago devilish reflection of herself in a mirror: white lipstick and a black velvet hat and mascara caked on like chocolate. Heard her own mother, appalled: You’re not walking out of this house looking like that…

‘No, I thought not,’ the policewoman said. ‘So would you mind not blocking the footpath, please?’

She’s quite distinctive , Mr Osman had said, with the varying colours of her hair and the way she dresses.

And then Andy Mumford in the car: If her name turns out to be Marion, what we gonner be looking at then?

From what Merrily could remember, her name had never been Marion.

She saw Mumford getting into the back of a police car with his friend Steve, heard the church clock strike almost softly. Ten o’clock and all so very far from well.

She stood in the middle of the road, the dog collar under the zipped-up fleece tight to her throat like a stiff admonishment. Furious at herself for failing to foresee something like this and, to a lesser extent, at Saltash whose flip diagnosis had probably been right, although it could be no more proven now than the existence of ghosts.

MERRILY DIDN’T FEEL any better in the morning, Sunday. She awoke with the light and lay watching the red dawn surfing the ceiling, where the oak beams were like beach barriers. Wondering what difference it would make to a suicidal world if she just didn’t bother to get up.

Unless anyone specifically asked, she hadn’t been in Ludlow last night, and neither had Bernie Dunmore. They’d agreed this as she dropped him, around one a.m., at the Bishop’s palace in Hereford.

Bernie had told her about his time with Reg Mumford. He’d taken Reg to the Angel, in Broad Street. ‘As a damn bishop, you get out of it,’ Bernie said. ‘Out of real people. You’ve forgotten the conclusions you once came to about what this job’s about – not preaching, just pure, concentrated listening.’

In the bar, he said, Reg had been remembering his wife as she used to be and a lot of other people Bernie didn’t know. Memories dripping into the beer, most of them from a long time ago.

Reg hadn’t mentioned his wife’s death – as if that was something he wasn’t yet ready to process, Bernie said.

As for Robbie, Reg didn’t understand how the boy had come to get himself killed, didn’t see any use dwelling on it. Kids did daft things, and sometimes they ran out of luck, and that boy… face it, he wasn’t entirely normal. Reg never knew how to talk to him, never had since he was little. Phyllis, however…

Reg had been trying to lose himself in daytime telly. Looking up every so often and seeing Phyllis gazing into the mirror, where she’d found a new channel of her own: the Robbie Channel. Robbie still sitting scrunched up over the table, drawing his black and white buildings, hands all black with charcoal – holding up his hands, Phyllis said, and grinning at her through the mirror. Phyllis weeping through her mad world, which had reflections of Robbie everywhere. Sometimes trailing aimlessly around the shops – Reg embarrassed, striding ahead, then looking back and seeing Phyllis staring in some window. Look, there he is again… do you see him? Reg buying her bits of things in the shops – it was only money – but when they got home the packages were never opened.

Would have destroyed Reg, too, if he’d given in to it. But Reg had seen too much death in his time, and he’d lost all patience with her – only so much a man could take. It was Reg who, in a fury, had turned the mirror to the wall before the Bishop came, because he hadn’t wanted the Bishop to see Phyllis going insane. Only it hadn’t been the Bishop at all, it had been Andy and some strangers and Reg didn’t want to meet any more strangers. This bloody smiley feller coming up to him in the street, all chatty, then asking who his doctor was – what right did they have, treating you like a kid?

Merrily got out of bed and knelt under the window, with its view over the village towards wooded Cole Hill, under a shiny salmon sky, and prayed for Reg and whatever remained of Phyllis and Robbie. When she stood up, her eyes were wet, and she found herself thinking, irrationally, of Lol and had this image of herself running down the drive and across the cobbles in her nightdress and banging on the cottage door, screaming, Let me in! for all the village to hear.

At breakfast, Jane said, ‘Mum, you look like sh—’

‘I know, all right?’

‘You turn up for Communion looking like that, they’ll all lose their faith.’

‘Oh hell, what time is it? And what are you doing up so early?’

‘Just curious about why you were out so late. On the other hand’ – Jane put a pensive forefinger to her chin – ‘if you were to turn up at the altar in your dressing gown, a soupçon dés-habillé, it might bring in more blokes, and— You’re not in the mood, are you? What’s happened?’

‘The elderly lady.’ Merrily brought her mug of tea and sat down opposite Jane, morning sunlight piercing the top window, over the sink. ‘The woman Saltash and I were supposed to be helping? She drowned herself last night in the River Teme.’

Jane blinked. ‘Mumford’s mother?’

‘Must have happened while we were no more than half a mile away, talking to a bloke who saw Robbie Walsh fall. Her lying in the water, us theorizing about some bloody stupid old ghost story and wondering—’

‘What old ghost—?’

‘Not important. No more important than me going on to the Bishop about Saltash and Callaghan-Clarke and feeling sorry for myself.’

‘Oh God, Mum…’

‘Deliverance – the fourth emergency service. Have to laugh, don’t you, flower?’

‘I’m not laughing. Was she, you know… confused?’

‘We always assume that, don’t we? That’s what everybody would have assumed last Christmas if Lol hadn’t got to Alice Meek before the cold did. But even if Mumford’s mum was on the slide, there might have been a part of her I could have got through to, with perseverance. And I didn’t really try.’

‘But you did try. You pressured the Bishop into going back with you because he was an old mate of the Mumfords.’

‘Putting the responsibility on someone else.’ Merrily’s head felt congested; she found a tissue in her dressing-gown pocket, blew her nose. ‘Should have tried harder, instead of half-thinking, Yeah, Saltash could be right, this is probably more his show than mine. I don’t know, maybe I just—’

‘Mum, don’t keep doing this to yourself. You did what you thought was best at the time. You always do. So just, like, finish your tea, have a wash, brush your hair, get your kit and… off to work.’

Merrily looked at the kid, who was no longer a kid, and dug out a smile from somewhere.

‘There you go,’ Jane said. ‘Why, there could be as many as, like, four people in that church, just gasping for Holy Communion. Get down there and give ’em… wine.’