Ghostheart (11 page)

‘Perhaps he was a spy,’ David said, and he smiled, and the tension was broken.

‘Perhaps,’ she replied, and tried to engage in the levity he was attempting. It worked, just a little, but nevertheless that aura of mystery prevailed.

‘The mysterious Mister O’Neill,’ David said.

She was elsewhere for a moment, and then she looked up and saw David once again massaging the back of his neck. It seemed like a nervous habit now, something he couldn’t control.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Sure … why d’you ask?’

‘Your neck,’ she said. ‘You keep rubbing the back of your neck.’

‘It aches sometimes,’ he said. ‘Just a little.’

Annie glanced at her watch. It was gone two o’clock. There had been no customers, not one, despite turning the sign when she’d left for sandwiches. Perhaps the rain kept them away. Perhaps the unspoken thought that at such a time as this she didn’t wish to be disturbed. Sullivan would have said the latter.

‘You don’t have to go to work?’ she asked.

‘No,’ David said. ‘I’m on leave. Work is so unpredictable, and sometimes we’re away weeks at a time. They like to give us breathing space every once in a while.’

Breathing space
, she thought, but didn’t say a thing. The atmosphere had changed, and Annie felt that she’d walked along the edges of something deceptively simple, and yet somehow profoundly complex. Later, thinking back, her single most enduring thought, resonating like a bell in the cool crisp air of a still Sunday morning, was that she did not know a thing – not one thing – about her father. Such a simple question –
What did your father do?
– and she had been lost in a host of half-formed imaginings that had no connection to reality.

And then David said, ‘I should go,’ and rose from the chair. A while back he had released her hand and she hadn’t even noticed. The lifeline was disappearing.

‘Are you busy later?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I have someone coming to see me,’ she said.

‘A date?’ he asked, but there was nothing suggestive in his tone.

‘No,’ she said, and smiled. ‘No such thing. Tonight I have my reading club.’

‘A reading club?’

‘Yes, a reading club, first meeting tonight.’

‘And anyone can come?’

‘No, not anyone … a very select group of initiates, only the very best people – you know?’

David nodded, seemed distracted. ‘Then another time,’ he said.

‘Yes … another time. You know where I am.’

‘I do,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry about what I said.’

Annie smiled. ‘I’m not … not anymore.’

He seemed to relax a little. ‘So another time it is then?’

Annie hesitated for a second. ‘Yes, another time.’

David smiled, seemed pleased. ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and started towards the door.

She went after him, slowly at first, and even as he reached the sidewalk she was there at the window watching his back as he walked away. He didn’t turn, and for some reason she was glad of that. She wouldn’t have wanted to appear desperate or lonely – or hopeful. Hope was an over-rated commodity, too over-rated by far.

She thought of the possibility that something might happen here, and for a moment she was caught in a brief question-and-answer with herself.

Should I?
Perhaps, perhaps not
.

Could I?
I think I could
.

Will I?
I … I hope
…

And then there was Sullivan’s voice:
Coincidence my dear, is
bullshit … Your thoughts are almost exclusively responsible for the situations you get yourself into
.

David Quinn disappeared at the end of the block, and Annie turned to survey the store. For the first time the walls seemed to be closing in upon her: the place seemed so small; so many shadows, so little space.

She shook her head and went to the counter, and there on the surface sat the sheaf of papers that Forrester had left with her five days before. She reached for the telephone and called Jack Sullivan, shared the time of day with him and then reminded him to come down at six before Forrester arrived. He said he would,
promised
he wouldn’t drink too much and forget, and she hung up the receiver.

The store was filled to bursting with silence. The rain had stopped and, but for the sound of her own gentle breathing, there was nothing. Nothing at all.

Forrester arrived punctually. Sullivan was already in the kitchen, out of sight. He wasn’t drunk, he hadn’t forgotten, and if anything he’d been early. Annie was grateful for that, more grateful than he could tell from the nonchalance of her greeting when he appeared at the front door.

‘Good day?’ he’d asked.

‘Quiet,’ she’d said, deciding before he’d even arrived to say nothing of David Quinn. Irrespective of whatever doubts she herself may have had about David, Annie O’Neill was considerate enough to take Sullivan’s feelings into account. Though there could never be any possibility of a relationship between herself and Sullivan she knew that he held her close in his thoughts. His feelings were avuncular, paternal almost, and if she started to change her patterns too rapidly he would become concerned. His presence at the store before Forrester arrived, the fact that he had made it at all, said all that needed to be said about how much he cared for her welfare.

‘So the mystery man arrives at seven,’ Sullivan had commented as he passed the counter and made for the kitchen. ‘I’ll be back here, out of sight, and then if there’s any trouble I can leap out and wrestle him to the ground.’

Annie had smiled. ‘The guy must be seventy Jack … I really don’t think there’s gonna be any trouble.’

‘Charlie Chaplin fathered his last child when he was eighty-two … even when we’re on our deathbeds we’re still up for that.’

Annie had waved him away, and though she honestly believed that Forrester presented no threat at all, she nevertheless felt a
sense of security in the fact that Sullivan would be on hand to help her.

And then Robert Forrester arrived, the same topcoat, a similar bundle beneath his arm, and though he merely smiled and nodded towards her as he came in, Annie felt a slight feeling of disquiet invade her thoughts.

Did she dream something? Something about herself and Sullivan and a child? She couldn’t remember, but seeing the old man standing there, his character-scarred face, his white hair, she felt the images of the things she’d read come flooding back. The horror of Dachau, the brutal murder of hundreds of thousands of human beings in some desolate and godforsaken place …

‘Miss O’Neill,’ Forrester said. ‘It is good to see you again.’

‘And you Mr Forrester,’ she replied, and smiled, and felt that the smile she wore was perhaps the most unnatural expression she’d ever managed.

He walked towards her, set his bundle on the counter, and then asked if there was somewhere they could sit.

‘Of course,’ she said, and showed Forrester to the small, plain deal table set to the back right-hand corner of the store, the table where she sat late into the night once a month to update inventories and dream her dreams.

The exit to the kitchen was no more than fifteen feet to her left, and though she could not see Sullivan she knew he was there, knew he would at least hear every word she and Forrester shared at this most awkward and strange rendezvous.

Forrester set his package down on the table, removed his coat and threw it across the back of the chair, and sat himself down with an exhausted sigh.

‘You want something to drink?’ she asked.

‘A glass of water perhaps,’ he said, and took a handkerchief from his breast pocket. He wiped his face, his forehead, his mouth, and then twisting the handkerchief between his fingers he closed his eyes for a moment and lowered his head.

‘Are you okay Mr Forrester?’

He smiled without opening his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘Sometimes I get a little breathless when I walk. I took a later train, had to hurry a little to meet our appointment.’

‘You shouldn’t have hurried,’ Annie said. ‘I wasn’t going anywhere.’

He opened his eyes. ‘We were never late,’ he said. ‘That was one of the primary rules of membership … never late. If you were going to be late you didn’t come at all. Better never than late, if you like. Your father was a stickler for punctuality and professionalism.’

Annie sat down. ‘I wanted to ask you something –’ she started.

Forrester nodded. ‘Could I have some water first my dear?’

‘Yes, of course … I’m sorry,’ she said. She stepped back into the kitchen, filled a glass from a bottle of Evian in the refrigerator, winked and smiled at Sullivan, and returned to the front.

Forrester took the glass and nigh on emptied it with one swallow. He breathed deeply several times, and then set the glass down.

‘A question?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Annie said, sitting down once more. ‘My father … what did he do?’

Forrester frowned and smiled simultaneously. ‘What did he do? You don’t know?’

Annie felt awkward for a moment. ‘I feel like I should know,’ she said. ‘And I can’t believe I didn’t know when he was alive, or that my mother didn’t tell me after he died, but for the life of me I can’t remember the damnedest thing.’

‘Your father was first and foremost an engineer, a planner. His career encompassed some quite significant jobs that were carried out in New York throughout the ’50s and ’60s. He was a meticulous man, a perfectionist, and he was employed by some of the most influential organizations in the state. Had he not passed away I think he would have been responsible for some very memorable things.’

‘An engineer,’ Annie said.

‘Of sorts,’ Forrester replied, and lifted his glass to drain it.

‘More water?’ she asked.

Forrester waved his hand. ‘No, I’m fine,’ he replied. He reached for the bundle of papers on the table, and from it withdrew another single sheet of paper.

‘Another letter for you,’ he said. ‘I have two or three more somewhere, but it takes time to find them among everything.’

He handed the page to her and she took it, once again feeling that sense of tension in her chest. Was this all that there ever would be of her father? A few words from a stranger, a handful of seemingly confusing letters?

Once again, scrawled across the top of the page was the legend
From the Cicero Hotel
.

‘You said this hotel was pulled down,’ Annie said. ‘Was this something he was working on?’

Forrester half smiled – a strange expression. ‘In a way,’ he said. ‘In a way I suppose you could say that.’

Annie waited for him to explain but nothing was forthcoming. Forrester once again performed that small introductory motion with his hand and indicated the letter.

Annie looked down at it.

Annie felt tears welling in her eyes. There was something so powerful in the words, and though she would never have been
able to explain it there was something that touched her more closely than she could have believed possible.

‘What does he mean … do not believe everything?’ she asked. ‘What does he not want her to believe?’

Forrester smiled. ‘I am not sure I can answer that question as precisely as you might wish Miss O’Neill.’

Annie shook her head. ‘Is there something he did? Something that people said he did?’

‘He was a good man,’ Forrester said. ‘A very good man, and though there were people that spoke badly of him there were many more who in some way owed their lives to him.’

‘Their lives?’ Annie asked, fighting back the urge to cry. ‘Whose lives? And who were these people who spoke badly of him?’

Forrester nodded. ‘He fought for people. He made life difficult for those who challenged him. Once you earned his friendship there was nothing that could take it away … and I am proud to say that I earned his friendship, his trust, and he also earned mine, and from the day we met I never found another human being so deserving of respect.’

Annie looked down at the letter once more. The handwriting was fluid, elegant almost, and she thought to consult a specialist, to have it analysed, to see what she could learn about her ancestry from this small fragment of reality. She set it aside on the table.

‘So you read what I left with you?’ Forrester asked.

Annie nodded. ‘I read it … I have it back there on the counter.’

‘So tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’ she asked.

‘What you thought … what you felt.’

‘Fear … fear that such a thing could happen to a human being,’ she said without thinking, without any sense of self-consciousness. ‘And that people don’t understand love –’

‘Elena and Jozef,’ Forrester said. ‘A union made in Heaven and burned in Hell.’

‘Elena and Jozef,’ Annie repeated, and was quiet for a time, her mind almost empty of thought.

‘And what else did you think?’

‘I wondered if it was true … a true story,’ she said.

Forrester shook his head. ‘I’m not sure … and I don’t know that anyone will ever know all of it.’

‘You have more,’ she said.

‘I have more. I have brought you a further two sections here,’ he replied, and indicated the bundle of papers on the table, ‘but I don’t believe it was ever finished.’

‘How much more is there?’ she asked.

‘Three or four more chapters perhaps.’

‘And you have all of it?’

He nodded in the affirmative. ‘All that was actually written I think. I wanted to have you read it little by little,’ he said, ‘and then there would be a reason for us to continue our discussions.’