Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘OK now?’

‘He always was.’ Merrily held out the cigs to Bell. ‘You do nicotine these days?’

‘Only vice I’ve ever given up, Mary.’

Merrily lit up, inhaled and let out the smoke on the back of a sigh. It was not comfortable, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the yew.

‘But not, I assure you,’ Belladonna said, ‘because I didn’t want to die. That would be…’

‘Positively hypocritical, in your case.’

Bell laughed. ‘Am I right in thinking you and Jonathan are…?’

‘God, no.’

‘That was emphatic.’

‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’

‘How quaint. Is he as quaint when he’s on tour?’

‘He’s so quaint that old ladies want to buy him.’

‘I see.’

‘You?’ Merrily lowered the cigarette; the smoke was making her bad eye smart.

‘Me, what?’ Bell said.

‘Jonathan?’

‘Makes you think that?’

‘I think he’s awfully interested in you.’

‘Most men are. But some are also frightened, and he, I suspect, is frightened.’

‘Jon?’

‘Just because he looks like a mad biker with a taste for rape and plunder… Actually, on reflection, most men are scared. And most women hate me. And children peer at me from behind the bushes.’

‘Except…’ Merrily snatched a shot of nicotine and went for it. ‘Except for Robbie Walsh?’

Belladonna looked at her, full face in the shivering candlelight, and Merrily saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, blots of dried blood on her jawline, dirt still scraped across one cheek, a pinkening lump on her forehead above the proud, aquiline nose.

Ludlow is my heaven.

Oh God, something was very wrong here. This woman was not normal. Merrily became aware of the garment that Jon Scole had described as a nightdress. It was probably satin. Shapeless as an operating gown. She glimpsed a ribbon under one of Bell’s arms.

Merrily tightened up, gripping her knees.

Bell said slowly, ‘Who told you about Robbie and me?’

‘Couple of people who saw you with him. Around the castle.’

‘I gather some people have been saying he committed suicide. And therefore I must have helped him nurture his depression.’

‘Who’s saying that?’

‘He wasn’t depressed. Absolutely not. Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. Jonathan’ll confirm that. He was happier than any child I ever saw.’

‘While he was here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because he was here. He had a passion for history.’

‘A passion for Ludlow. And your interest in him is…?’

‘I have a friend who was his uncle. He feels he… he feels more than a bit responsible.’

‘We all feel that.’

‘Did Robbie come here with you? To this tree?’

‘Oh yes. I think he was very much in love with Marion.’ Bell leaned her head back against the tree, stretching her neck. The garment was torn on one shoulder, strands of the white fabric making loops. ‘Schoolboy crush. If Robbie was going to have his first crush, it would have to be someone from the Middle Ages, wouldn’t it? Only a small part of him was living in the present. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’

‘I think we’ve all experienced it.’

Bell let out a small, exasperated hiss. ‘I don’t know about you. Only what Jonathan’s said, and Jonathan’s prone to the most awful hyperbole.’

‘I think,’ Merrily said carefully, remembering Jane’s advice, ‘that we all have heightened experiences in a town this close to its own history.’

‘Yes.’

‘And although I never met Robbie Walsh…’

‘He’d describe scenes to you… like a sighted person interpreting for the blind. He’d read the names on all the plaques outside the old houses so many times that he knew them all off by heart – by heart, Mary, the town was in his heart. He knew who’d lived in every house, and he’d describe them to me. And he’d come here and he’d describe Marion.’

‘Oh? What did she look like?’

‘Quite small. Brown hair, brown eyes – passionate, angry eyes. Robbie was an adolescent boy, he wasn’t sophisticated, his terminology was simple. He was in love with Marion because she was everything you rarely find any more. She was… all feelings. All strong passion and impulse, in comparison with all the apathetic, jaded kids he had to mix with. Can’t you feel her, Mary? Now? Here?’

‘I can feel her confusion,’ Merrily said, and it was true. ‘I can feel her uncontrollable rage. And her despair.’

‘This was possibly the time of night she did it… hacked the bastard down and took a dive. Out of the window just above us. No tree here then, just stones. Marion plummeting down with a scream of terminal anguish. Her body bouncing as it lands, breaking, finally coming to rest—’

‘Coming to unrest,’ Merrily said.

‘—Where we’re sitting now, blood issuing from her mouth.’ A fluid thrill, like oil, under Bell’s voice now. ‘Oh, you do understand, don’t you?’

‘I understand Marion. Marion’s easy. She was both the betrayed and the betrayer. She’d let the enemy in. She didn’t see a way out, except through one of these windows. Jemima Pegler, however… that’s much more complex. And so’s Robbie Walsh. This friend of mine, he took me to see his mother, Robbie’s gran. Because she said she was seeing him around the house and around the town…’

‘He asked you to help her, as a psychic.’

‘Something like that. She said she was seeing Robbie reflected in mirrors and shop windows. And… in the water.’

‘She drowned…’

‘I was there that night,’ Merrily said. ‘And you came down to the river, with a bunch of… goths, it looked like.’

Bell stared at her, her arms in the ragged sleeves lifting what had lain on her knees – a black instrument case, too big for a violin, too small for a guitar.

‘And you seemed to know who it would be,’ Merrily said. ‘Who they’d found in the water.’

‘What are you suggesting…? Oh, look, all right… It was one of the band heard it was Robbie’s grandmother. Couple of them were in the town, and they heard someone—’

‘The band?’

‘It’s a young band, called Le Fanu, who come here sometimes. They’ve been influenced by my music and they come down some weekends and we play. They’re… my support mechanism, if you like. We hang out and we get a little stoned sometimes and… we’re putting an album together. Look, I hear stories that I’m flooding the town with fucking goths, but it’s just Le Fanu and their hangers-on.’

‘And was… one of them involved in a stabbing incident?’

Something squirmed, some creature, rattling twigs in the undergrowth on the other side of the path. Bell let out a breath.

‘Yes, yes… He was a roadie, and he doesn’t work for them any more. It was a very minor incident, I…’ She hugged the case. ‘… I don’t mind being considered mad – I am mad – but I won’t be accused of importing violence, do you understand?’

Her voice was breaking up now and she was trembling.

‘You’re shivering. You’re cold.’

‘I like being cold, you must’ve heard that. Cold as the grave.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Mary, are you writing a fucking book about me, or something?’

‘I’m—’ Merrily had to break off, take a breath. The cigarette lay dead between her fingers. Her spine was starting to ache, and her bum had gone numb. If she wasn’t careful she was going to come out with the truth. ‘I just think some of the things being said about you are probably all wrong. Jon—’

‘Jonathan’s an idiot. Him and his ghost-walk – irrelevant, an irritant.’