Phil Rickman: The Smile of a Ghost

‘The technical term is “bereavement apparition”,’ she told Mumford. ‘If anybody bothered to do a survey, they’d probably find that at least fifty per cent of bereaved people have similar experiences.’

Usually widows or widowers, or the children or siblings of someone who had recently died. But it could equally be a favourite teacher or a long-time colleague. You’d be doing something mundane around the house when suddenly you’d feel a sharp awareness of whoever had died. Or you’d actually see them passing through the hall or maybe sitting in a favourite chair. Just a glimpse, and then they’d be gone.

‘What we’re saying, Andrew,’ Nigel Saltash said, ‘is that this tends to happen with a person one is used to having around. It’s something I’ve encountered many, many times.’

He was wearing a tracksuit the colour of his hair, and his tanned skin shone. At the door just now, on auto-smile, he’d told Merrily he’d thought they ought to have a chat one-to-one. Didn’t want her, after last night, to run away with the wrong idea. And as this was his day for early-morning jogging with Kent Asprey, the fitness-freak Ledwardine GP… Oh yes, old mates. Hammered the country lanes together every Friday.

Terrific.

So there’d been no alternative to bringing him in and explaining to Mumford about the new Deliverance Advisory Group – giving Mumford an opportunity to say nothing, make an excuse and leave, call her later.

But, of course, it turned out that he and Saltash knew each other from way back, when Saltash had worked at the Stonebow Psychiatric Unit in Hereford. Reminding Mumford of all the times he’d been called across to Police Headquarters to assess some drugged-up prisoner self-harming in the cells. What days, eh? And now both of them retired. Or entering a new life-phase, as it were.

Saltash watched, with a smile conveying mild pain, as Mumford dumped three white sugars in his mug of tea.

‘Essentially, what you’re looking at, Andrew, is grief-projection. The bereaved person is carrying an image of the departed one very close, as it were, to his or her heart. We don’t want to have seen the last of them. A part of us desperately wants them still to be around, in the old familiar places. And so an area of our consciousness responds to the need. This is almost certainly what’s happening with your mother and her visions of the boy. Are we together on this one, Merrily, would you say?’

The tilted head. The smile that was a well-oiled explanatory tool.

But he was probably right. Huw Owen’s advice had always been to leave parting-callers, in general, alone. Didn’t matter whether they were hallucinations or psychological projections or something less explicable, they usually brought comfort rather than fear or distress, and so they were part of the healing mechanism, part of a phase that would pass. And if Mrs Mumford’s mind was on the slide…

‘Can I…?’ Merrily conspicuously sugared her own tea and stirred it noisily. ‘Can I just briefly go over some of it again, Andy? Your mother says she… saw him, first, in the kitchen, right?’

Mumford nodded, glanced at Nigel Saltash, then glanced away.

‘Out of the corner of an eye. Said he was standing by the fridge, like he was about to help himself to a can of pop. When she turned towards him, he… vanished. This was before the funeral.’

Nigel Saltash was nodding eagerly. Merrily wondered, despondent, if he was going to call in every week after jogging with Dr Asprey, to discuss the many areas where so-called spiritual guidance overlapped with nuts-and-bolts psychiatry.

‘And the second time?’ she said to Mumford.

‘In the back garden. Robbie’s standing by the bird bath, looking up at the house. Mam was in the bedroom, says she saw him through the window. But it was… you know, it was like a reflection in the glass. When she stepped back he wasn’t there any more.’

‘A reflection,’ Saltash said. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Same in the town.’ Mumford was mumbling now, like he wanted to get this over. ‘Near the Buttermarket. Shop window.’

‘Oh, really? Another reflection?’

‘Kind of thing. She was with my dad. He didn’t see anything. She was looking in the window and Robbie, he was behind her, but when she turned round…’

Merrily said, ‘Did she think he knew she was there?’

‘I don’t… I don’t know.’

‘I mean, does she ever think he wants to communicate with her?’

Mumford shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Does it frighten her at all?’

‘Frighten her?’ The corner of Mumford’s mouth twitched. ‘Robbie?’

‘Right.’

‘I see what you’re getting at, Merrily,’ Nigel Saltash said. ‘There’s clearly a contributory element of perceived guilt here – whether or not that guilt is misplaced. And also’ – he leaned across the table, holding his hands like bookends – ‘a desperate need to know exactly what happened.’

‘Does she know you were coming here, Andy?’ Merrily said.

‘I…’ Mumford shook his head. ‘She don’t like a fuss. Like she was very embarrassed at the size of turnout for the funeral – people from the castle, councillors, the Press. Like they were sitting in judgement, she thought. But all it was… it’s still a small town, see. They take something like this to heart. Bishop insisted on conducting the funeral hisself—’

‘David Cook?’

The Suffragan Bishop of Ludlow. Number two in the Hereford diocese. Bernie Dunmore, now Bishop of Hereford, had previously held the post. But surely David Cook…

‘—Even though it was only about a week before he went in for his heart bypass,’ Mumford said. ‘Not a well man, and he looked it.’

Mumford didn’t look a well man, either. His hair was grey and lank, his eyes baggy and wary, small veins wriggling in his cheeks. He had to be about twenty years younger than Nigel Saltash, but he seemed older. Just a civilian now – no longer Detective Sergeant, while Saltash was still Dr Saltash.

‘Look, I…’ Mumford came to his feet. ‘Might well be like you say, Mrs Watkins, imagination playing tricks.’

‘Well, that wasn’t necessarily what I—’

‘Old girl’s had a shock. She don’t want no fuss, neither do I. I just thought, as I knew you… You’ve cleared things up a bit. That’s fine. And the doc here…’

‘Glad to help an old mate, Andrew.’ Nigel Saltash sitting back, with his arms folded. Like when the driving-test examiner had told you to park and sat there making notes on his clipboard.

Merrily said on impulse, ‘I think I should probably talk to her.’ She saw Saltash raising an eyebrow. ‘So, if you want to ask her, Andy…’

‘You think you could, ah, get rid of it, Merrily?’ Saltash’s smile expressing professional curiosity.

‘Wrong terminology, Nigel.’

‘Ah, sorry. Help it on its way?’

‘Even that might be counter-productive.’

‘So you have this general policy of non-intervention, unless there’s a clear threat to the patient’s mental health.’

Patient. God.

‘Something like that,’ Merrily said.

She hated this. She hated it when lofty consultants exchanged viewpoints at the foot of the bed, like the third party was already brain-dead.

‘I have a lot to learn, don’t I?’ Saltash said. ‘On which basis, if you go to see this lady, might I perhaps tag along?’

She could see Mumford was uncomfortable about this. Saltash evidently picked up on it, too, smiling down at him.

‘Andrew, old boy… I’m retired, OK, like you? This is observation only.’ He was doing this windscreen-wiper gesture with both hands. ‘No reports, no referrals.’

‘I’ll talk to her about it.’ Mumford seemed less than reassured, which was quite understandable.