Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘You keep saying “we”. It’s not your problem.’

But Lol knew already that this was a lost cause.

‘I looked up Belladonna on the Internet.’ Merrily sugared the teas. ‘Just to see what she’s doing these days. What she’s doing in Ludlow.’

‘And?’

‘Didn’t find out. Learned a lot of history. For instance, the name Belladonna isn’t actually much of an affectation. Her name was Arabella Donnachie. So she was always carrying Belladonna around with her in the middle of her name.’

‘Wonder if her parents intended that.’

‘Says not on her website. Says it was fated… all that kind of stuff. She was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Father a well-off accountant. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Walked out at seventeen to form a band, for which she was apparently later considered too weird.’

‘In what way?’

‘Didn’t say. I, erm, tried to call Mumford tonight. No answer at home, mobile off. Suppose he’s gone after her?’

‘She can take care of herself,’ Lol said, and Merrily looked up. He shrugged. ‘I had a call from Prof.’

‘Relating to…?’

‘Well… Belladonna.’

‘And you weren’t going to tell me?’

‘Choosing the moment. Did I mention that Tom Storey was at Knight’s Frome, mixing his album?’

He didn’t know if she’d ever been a Tom Storey fan. Always more of a boy’s hero, Tom – like Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton before he recorded ‘Wonderful Tonight’.

‘Normally, I keep out of the way when Tom’s there,’ Lol said. ‘He’s, um… irascible. His hair’s all white now, and his moustache seems to cover half his face. It’s like the studio’s being vandalized by the Abominable Snowman, and yet at the end of it all those guitar licks – fluid, economical, delicate—’

‘He knows Belladonna?’

‘—And, underneath it all, a sensitive man. I mean sensitive sensitive. And sensitive about discussing it, because he’s in permanent, neurotic denial. Tom will tell you – just like your friend Saltash – that it’s all crap and all in your mind. Except that Tom knows it isn’t. So when Prof said, hang on, I’m going to put Tom on the line…’

‘Belladonna.’ Big voice filling the mobile phone, making it feel twice as heavy, like an ingot. ‘Bella-fucking-donna.’

Lol had had to sit down.

‘You know what that woman did, Laurence? She had a baby. She’s in maternity when she learns she’s finally got herself a recording contract. The longed-for break. What’s she do? Kid’s born, she gives it up for adoption.’

‘At that stage?’

‘Might have arranged it earlier, I’m not brilliant on details, I’m giving you the sense of it. Gives the father up, too. Dead now, poor sod – smack. That’s the kind of woman. Carries death around like a tray of black poppies. Gives up a child for a recording contract.’

Hard to be sure how accurate this was. Lol knew that Tom felt strongly about anything child-related. His daughter, Vanessa, was Down syndrome. He treated her like a goddess.

‘But that was a long time ago,’ Lol said. ‘She couldn’t have been much more than a kid?’

‘A woman, take my word – then. Gawd knows what she is now.’

Tom talked about the albums – biggish over here, for a while, but in the States… mega. Which was rare for a British punk or New Wave artist.

‘American punks, at least they knew a few chords and they didn’t gob on the audience. British punk, Americans just didn’t get the joke. But, see, Belladonna was never funny. And she wasn’t like the rest. She talked posh. Talked like bleedin’ Julie Andrews. They loved that in the States.’

Because America had quite taken to her, Tom said, Belladonna had made a huge amount of money very quickly. And because she’d looked after it – with Daddy’s assistance – she never wound up on some sad, end-of-the-pier, 1980s nostalgia trip like some other poor bleeders Tom could name.

‘They put the loot into property. Old houses. Bought this dump looked like the Bates Motel, done it up, sold it for triple, never looked back. Daddy saw the value, Bell only bought the place on account of – what’s this tell you about her? – on account of she reckoned it was haunted.’

Lol had asked, hesitantly, what it had told Tom.

‘Tells me she don’t… she ain’t got it. She don’t feel. Haunted, to her, was like romance. This fucking, irresponsible, dilettante bitch.’

They were close to Tom’s barrier here. He’d let go of a huge but unstable laugh at this point, like a big tipper-lorry dumping gravel.

‘The house… the house wasn’t haunted enough, apparently. Or the bleedin’ spooks couldn’t stand the company and pissed off.’

‘She didn’t feel’ – Lol took a chance – ‘the way some people… feel. But she wanted to?’

Tom was quiet, Lol half-expecting him to ring off. And then,

‘Story is, she had meningitis as a kid. Teens, anyway. Came close to checking out, had some death’s-door experience, changed her life. Kept wanting to tell me about it, following me around. Sent me a card wiv… you know, a picture inside. Of her. That kind of picture. I don’t fink so. Outta my face, you crazy woman!’

‘So when was the last time you actually spoke to her?’

‘Gawd… few years ago? She wanted to work wiv me this time. Like I’d be that insane? Didn’t seem to be able to decode the phrase piss off. Kept ringing, bending Shelley’s ear, the missus – I wasn’t gonna talk to her, no way; it’s why we was ex-directory, Gawdsake. We had the number changed, in the end. Mad, sick, stupid woman. And the music… atrocious.’

‘Where was she living, the last you heard?’

‘Moves around. Always moved around, couldn’t settle. I fink – Shelley would know this – I fink, the last we heard, she was on her daughter’s back. Nah, nah, not her daughter, Saul Pepper’s daughter. The poor bastard she married. He had a daughter already. Bell went to live near the daughter, that’s the last we heard.’

‘Would that have been in Ludlow?’

‘Where?’

‘In Shropshire.’

‘Shit,’ Tom said. ‘That ain’t too far away from here, is it? Listen, you ever run into the mad bitch, you never spoke to me in your life, Laurence.’

Lol put a log on the fire.

‘The marriage to Saul Pepper ended, apparently, about six years ago,’ Merrily said. ‘He went to America to work. Has a new family now. One website says the split was amicable. Pepper said she was too’ – Merrily sighed – ‘too weird for him. In the end. Seems to have been too weird for people all her life.’

‘But not too weird for Saul Pepper’s daughter.’

‘Nor, it seems, for Robbie Walsh. Erm… what Tom Storey told you about the near-death experience – that’s interesting. The Church has a strange attitude towards all that. The most common perceived experience of an afterlife, but we’re oh so wary.’

‘You?’

‘Me, no. I’d love to have a near-death experience. Well, not too near, not just yet, but I mean most people who’ve had them – the long tunnel, the glorious light – they immediately seem to lose all fear of dying.’

‘I thought the clergy naturally would have no f—’

‘You’re kidding.’

Lol smiled. ‘Doesn’t really explain Belladonna’s music, though, does it? Her old stage act. Which was not about the delights of the afterlife as much as the trappings of death itself: coffins, biers, all that. What kind of near-death experience accounts for that?’

‘Good point. None of this adds up, does it? I mean, that’s the problem… nothing here adds up. Nothing quite connects. Pieces missing, everywhere.’