Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘The specific details have yet to be sorted out. And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.’

‘I’m getting to it,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m trying to find out how much you know and how much you understand about Bell’s other plans for when she dies.’

‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t you? I mean, you really don’t?’

‘Perhaps you should spell it out.’

‘I’m wary,’ Merrily said. ‘I think I’d rather be speaking to her stepdaughter than her lawyer. I mean, what does your father say about all this?’

‘Dad? Dad says be kind to her, never exploit her – and keep me the hell out of it.’ Susannah’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about my dad?’

‘Music producer… bewitched by Bell’s obvious charms… maybe liked unusual music, but couldn’t handle the extreme lifestyle which, in her case, went with it.’

‘He lives in Sacramento now, has three children, plays golf.’

‘Your mother was his first wife?’

‘Whom he left for Bell, but that’s all well in the past. My mother’s second husband, if you want the full nepotism bit, is David Sebald, brother of Peter Sebald, one of the original partners in the firm I’m working for.’

‘But you and Bell—’

‘Never got on all that well with David’s other kids, so I used to spend quite a few weekends with Dad and Bell. Who was so completely out of it most of the time that I sometimes felt, at the age of about fifteen, like her step mother . Like I said, we’ve always accommodated each other. I’m not judgemental.’

‘Mmm.’ Bringing Smith, Sebald one of their wealthiest private clients would have done Susannah no harm at all with the firm.

‘That’s to say, where no criminal law or local statutes are infringed, I don’t question her behaviour,’ Susannah said. ‘This town’s full of eccentrics.’

‘You must be worried about her, though.’

‘Put it this way, my private life would have been a whole lot easier if the firm had been based in Birmingham.’

‘Because then Bell would have come to visit and gone home the next day. But this being where it is, she doesn’t want to leave. Not ever, in fact. Do you know what I’m saying?’

Through the long window, the town glittered on its hill, the sun gilding the pinnacles on the church tower and coating what you could see of the castle walls with crusted honey. No motor vehicles visible. A living dream of Olde Englande.

‘That’s pretty ridiculous.’ Susannah finally looked unnerved. ‘You must realize that.’

‘If I started dismissing ideas that seemed ridiculous, I wouldn’t get very far in this job.’

‘Then it’s a ridiculous job.’

‘It’s apparently been estimated,’ Merrily said, ‘that one in three people has had a paranormal experience, and one in ten has seen a ghost. It all makes perfect sense to Bell.’

‘You’re saying she’s become completely insane?’

‘No, I don’t think she— OK, it’s not good, it’s not healthy, it’s spiritually… a bit squalid, frankly. But it’s not insane. In fact, it’s all been worked out very practically.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Susannah backed away, folding her arms. ‘But if there was any truth in what you’ve just outlined, she’d… in my view, she’d be guaranteed certifiable.’

‘Then how do you explain it? How do you explain her nocturnal perambulations?’

‘She’s a night person. In every sense – her albums are dark and doomy, she likes to mix with goths and weirdos and she’s a bloody exhibitionist.’

‘An exhibitionist who wants to protect her private life and won’t talk to the media, except the local media?’

‘That’s not so unusual. It’s part of the star-mentality. They like to have it both ways.’

‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s led what she calls a temporary kind of life. She says she was diagnosed at an early age with a congenital heart defect and she’s lived her whole life with the angel of death standing outside the door, sharpening his scythe. I don’t know if that’s true or not—’

‘I’d like to get her to a heart specialist, but she won’t. She has a fear of dying in hospital.’

‘Or anywhere but here. She’s moved from place to place – she’s had the money to do that – and she can’t settle anywhere. Until she arrives in the place of her dreams. Literally. All right, whether she had been dreaming about Ludlow for years is anybody’s guess, but she’s convinced herself she had. And she comes here and she connects. It’s a town where you can walk from century to century, and it’s not been over-cosmeticized. It’s as it was. And for Bell the atmosphere everywhere is dense with… eternity.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s pretty and it’s a good place to work. I can understand her falling in love with it.’

‘For Bell, those streets up there sing. Especially at dead of night, when she’s on her own. They sing, she sings…’

‘Oh, please—’

‘OK, you don’t get it, you don’t feel the density. That’s fine.’

‘Well, hey, I’m sorry.’ Susannah threw up her arms. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a bloody airy-fairy artist, merely a humble solicitor. We just grease the wheels that keep the world turning, and I’m really sorry but we don’t have time to drift off into the ether. Unlike poets. And priests, apparently.’

‘I’m not saying I can feel it on that level, or anywhere near.’

‘She walks around at night in unorthodox clothing and she sings sometimes. Wow.’

‘She’s feeding herself into the fabric of the town. I realize this is bollocks to you, but to her it’s everything and she doesn’t know how much time she has left, and when that time’s up she wants to…’

‘… To be a ghost?’

‘To be a ghost here . Catherine of Aragon, Prince Arthur, Marion de la Bruyère… Belladonna.’

Susannah snorted and turned away. Saul Pepper’s regular daughter, with a solid job and no weird, music-business links.

‘Did you bring this paper in here this morning?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, you actually showed this to her?’

‘It’s all over town. Someone would have told her, sooner or later.’

‘And what exactly did she say?’

Susannah turned round. ‘She became… distressed. She told me you were in the house, upstairs. That she’d invited you into her house, and you were betraying her. I told her to let me handle it. I didn’t want her wailing and screaming at you, like one of her albums. I told her I’d get rid of you, make sure you never bothered her again.’

‘And how would you have done that? Some kind of injunction?’

‘I’d’ve had you restrained. Gone to a higher authority.’

Merrily put her head on one side. ‘God?’

‘Don’t be stupid. After I spoke to you the other morning, I wasn’t satisfied that you’d taken any notice.’

‘Damn right.’

‘So I spoke to some other people in the Church, and I was referred to your superior, the… Director of Deliverance?’

‘What?’

‘Canon Clarke? I’ve got it written down at the office.’

It felt as though the room shook.

‘She told me that you’d now virtually resigned from your official position,’ Susannah said, ‘because of personal problems. She said you were overstressed. She said if I had any more trouble I should contact her immediately.’

‘I see.’

‘She said we could deal with it between us. I hadn’t realized she was a barrister.’

‘That must’ve been a comfort to you.’

‘If you want the truth,’ Susannah said, ‘I had the feeling of some personal friction, and that’s why I decided to talk to you myself. And now I’m wishing I hadn’t.’