Ghosts in the Morning (4 page)

Our Sky package had a su
bscription to some
adult
channels too. They were PIN number protected by Graham. He thought I didn’t know about it
, the subscription came out of his current account. I think Graham thought I was stupid.
I knew the PIN number too – Graham had set it as his birthday
,
but
backwards, which I assume he thought was
brilliantly devious and
clever
. So
metimes I would flick to those channels and watch the young girls writhe about on tacky beds covered in
crinkled shiny
plastic, their red-lined mouths contorted in fake ecstasy. They didn’t wear much; G-strings clinging tightly to their shaven fannies, and pulled tight up behind into their shadowy backsides.
It was strange to think that men found th
is convoluted
posturing
to be
a turn-on. What was so attractive about a woman crooking her finger in a preposterous come-hither manner, whilst shaking her bosom from side to side, or flapping her buttock fat up and down?

It was hard to tell if the girls were
in any way
exploited
by it all. M
aybe they were students
trying to alleviate the pressure of the large debts that university attendance seemed to bring, or perhaps they were just
girls who needed
or wanted the
money.
It was better than selling their bodies on the streets, I guess.
I wondered how much they were paid to bare their young bodies, and I wondered how they felt about the men who watched, all those sa
d middle-aged men beating off in front of a
television
whilst
a girl
who was
half their age
pranced around in front of a camera. P
erhaps they felt nothing
at all
, perhaps it was
just an
easy
way of earning money.

I caught
G
raham
watching one time
.
It was late at night and
I had come down
stairs
for a drink of water –
I
had a pounding headache,
I
used to get
a lot of
migraines
. I
still
get them
, just not so often these days. But
they’re bad when they happen.
Like a rusty screwdriver being dug into my forehead, then slowly twisted around
, and then pushed in some more
.
Anyway
, I needed a glass of water and some painkillers. The tablets didn’t ease the pain
that
much, but I was grateful for the smallest respite.

The television was on and
I assumed Graham had fallen asleep
in front of it,
like he usually did,
he would sprawl his head backwards with
his hairy nostrils flaring and snorting. But he wasn’t asleep. He was sat upright on the sofa,
his fading, grey jogging bottoms pooled around his feet
-
the ones with a large ragged hole on one knee. They should have been thrown out ages ago.
He was staring at the screen, where a willowy blonde was pushing up her surgically-enhanced breasts and licking her
own
nipples. Graham was stroking himself and I could see a box of tissues next to him on the sofa.
He turned slowly towards me, a look of bewildered fear on his face, and I turned away sharply towards the sideboard. I pretended to ruffle in the drawers, muttering ‘
now where are those pills
’ as if I didn’t know he was there,
as if I thought the pills that were always in the kitchen would suddenly magic themselves into the lounge sideboard, as
if I couldn’t hear him pulling up his jogging bottoms and thrusting the tissues under a cushion. I waited another second, hearing the click of the remote control.

‘Oh, right, oh, I must have fallen asleep. Huh, well I guess I’ll blame that on
Newsnight
,’ he said. His face was bright red.

‘Well, you will insist on watching those boring programmes,’ I replied, and I could hear Graham coughing nervously. We both knew I had seen what he was doing, but ne
i
ther of us
was prepared to
admit it
. W
e both felt the
cringing
embarrassment,
al
though it didn’t seem fair that I did.
 
We never
spoke of it
again
, and now, whenever I had to come downs
tairs late and Graham wasn’t in bed, I would step loudly on the stairs, and I would yawn or cough.

I scanned the movies and settled on a rom
antic
com
edy
.
Light and fluffy, i
t would pass the time, and
it
didn’t go on too late. I wanted to be in bed before Graham came home.

***

The sound of Graham brushing his teeth woke me.
I swore silently into the pillow, knowing that I would remain awake for a few hours now. Once Graham had started snoring, I would flick my bedside lamp on and read for a bit. Graham
always brushed his teeth too vigorously, the noise was like cat scratches down a post.
Worse still was
the
antiseptic
mouthwash. I could hear the glug as the cap of the mouthwash bottle was filled – he was annoyingly precise  about the measurement of the mouthwash, and I had never understood why
, it’s not like a little bit less or a little bit more was going to make any difference
– then he sucked it in through his teeth. I hated that sound. Uncle Peter used to make that sound,
he
used to suck back
the
saliva when...I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep.

Chapter
4

For once, the weather forecast had been spot on.
The storm had hit with a vengeance, unleashing its wrath across the island.

I was standing on a large rock to the west of
the
Corbi
è
re lighthouse. The lighthouse had stood proudly on the southwest corner of Jersey for
over 130 years, its concrete shell proudly withstanding the battering of four daily tides. I remembered a teacher, on a school visit, told us that Corbière translated as ‘
the place where crows congregate
’, which always seemed ironic given that the place was dominated by seagulls.
There was a flock of seagulls now, sat imperiously on the rock, arrogant in their ability to withstand the fierce wind. I tried to think what you called a group of crows, it wasn’t a congregation of crows...maybe a parliament...

This was one of my favourite places in the island.
I loved it here, especially o
n a windy day, when the swells lifted the white horses proudly into the air,
and the raspy sting of seawater blasted my face. There was no better
spot in the island to view t
he
power of the sea as
it flexed its
salty
muscle
.
It
made everything else in life seem so small, so insignificant
, the ocean put things in their rightful perspective. There were powerful people littered through history who believed themselves to be strong, superior, masters of the universe, gods even.
But
they
were
nothing, nothing when compared to the monstrous
majesty
of the sea
. It was
at its brutal finest right now.

S
pray soaked my face, and I licked my lips. Wind flapped viciously at my coat
and pushed at my back, threatening to topple me from the rock into the foamy scum below. I breathed deeply, relishing the loneliness
. The weather was unpleasant to most, and it was a weekday, so
everyone was at work or at home, tucked into their cosy, heated boxes, missing
nature’s
show.

T
hen I noticed a man clambering across the rocks nearby.
I
squinted behind him, at the direction he had come from and saw his car parked at the side of the road.
At the beginning of t
he
number plate
was a
red ‘H’
, signalling that it was a hire car. A solitary tourist. H e was walking towards me, but he wasn’t looking at me. A pair of binoculars swung from his neck and he was gazing up at the foreboding sky.
A birdwatcher then
...
a twitcher
.  People laughed at them sometimes, pigeon-holing their hobby alongside trainspotting, but that was wrong.
‘
Please don’t put the birdwatchers in a pigeon-hole
’
,
I said to myself. My laugh was whipped away by the wind. I liked birds, I loved to watch them
as they soared on the swirls and eddies of thermal currents, they always seemed to embody the ultimate  freedom. I wished I was a bird sometimes.

The man got closer, but he was still looking up. He was rotund and red-faced
,
though whether that was from the exertion of the rock-climbing
or
the howling wind,
it was hard to tell. Or maybe he was just florid-faced.
Too many whiskies for too many years, perhaps...no, not whisky, it would be real ale. Pints of real ale with his twitcher friends in pubs that smelled of wet dogs. The man had a
moustache;
thick
brown hair perched on his
top
lip like a soggy
turd
. I hated moustaches. Uncle Peter had a moustache.

The man drew alongside me, and reached for his binoculars. As he did so, the point of his elbows caught me in the side of the ribs. I flinched but the man didn’t seem to notice that he’d struck me, or didn’t care. I gritted my teeth and stared at the man. He stared back, a mixture of impatience and contempt on his face
. A cruel face, an arrogant face. He didn’t see me, he didn’t care, I was beneath him. He
pushed past me, crossing to another rock
, then
turned his back and stared out to sea
, binoculars raised
.

I am invisible
. 

I felt
the anger well, then
a quickening
as
my blood starting to pump faster through my body
.
Like with the cyclist.
M
y synapses started to crackle
and I breathed deep.
I turned my head, left and right, there was no-one around. I crossed the rock, the sound of my wet sneakers muffled by the wind, and I stepped behind the man.
The rock jutted out over the ocean’s scream. A precarious place to stand
. Unsafe, easy enough to have an accident, especially on a day like this.
He didn’t see me, he didn’t hear me.

I reached up and put my hands on the small of his back. His jacket was one of those expensive waxed ones, green and greasy with the rain and the
sea spray
. He must have felt the pressure as he started to turn. I shoved firmly.
For a brief millisecond, he seemed to hang in the air, like
a startled marionette, then he was gone. I stepped carefully to the edge of the rock. His body looked small, all crashed and broken on the jagged rocks below. The
sea
continued to pound relentlessly at the coast, growing large with the incoming t
ide,
then a huge wave swept in, white horses
rearing
on its crest and claimed the man from the rocks.

I turned around and headed
back to my car
.
And just then I remembered.  It wasn’t a parliament, no,
that applied to owls.
I
t was a
murder
of crows.

***

‘Where have you been, I’m starving?’

‘No, Graham, I would hardly say you’re starving,’ I said, pointing at his stomach. ‘
Let’s be honest,
I think you’ve got a few spare pounds there to keep you going.’

‘
Don’t be facetious, Andrea. Besides,
I’ve lost a bit of weight recently, actually,’ Graham
whined, tapping his pot belly. ‘I’ve been going to the gym at lunchtimes now and again.’

I snorted. More likely spending lunchtimes with Nikki. I vaguely remembered something about her flat being close to the office.