Puccini's Ghosts (28 page)

When I arrive quite a bit later at the Evangelical Lutherans, Luke is busy. He is counselling, I am told by a young woman who looks rather like his wife Lucy but isn’t. She wants to know if I’m all right, which is a silly question. Who seeks out a priest when they are all right? She tells me I can wait and I admit I’m glad to rest my throbbing foot. When Luke is ready there are four doughnuts left. I hobble into a hot little room full of books with a desk, and armchairs grouped round an electric fire.

Luke’s face is full of hope that he’s got me now.

Hey,
Lila
!

Then he takes a proper look. Oh Lila, oh, my. Here, sit down, you get that foot up here, now. There. You want a cushion under there? Looks real painful. You want me to fix that bandage? You sure you should be walking around? Shouldn’t you be home, resting it?

I told you I didn’t really know him, but there are things about him that could be said, I tell Luke. When you asked me about him before, I wasn’t very helpful, I realise. But there are things that one might say.

About your dad, right? That’s just fine, you can include anything you want, we’ve still got three days. But Lila, I would’ve come to you any time you asked—there wasn’t any call for…okay. Okay, now you’re here, Lila, do you mind if I just take a minute?

Before I can consider whether I mind or not he’s straight in with it: Lord, uh, this is Luke, your servant. I pray, Lord, bless all communication today that helps me give wise counsel and to listen prayerfully and to offer your hope and comfort and balm to our sister Lila whose spirit may be in trouble at this time, send her peace in your holy name O Lord Jesus Amen.

You shouldn’t give counsel and
then
listen, I say. Listening comes first, or it should, I would have thought.

Luke laughs. Lila, you’re right. I’m listening.

All right. There are things about him that could be said. For instance, he served time in prison. I didn’t know that myself till I was fifteen. It was kept quiet.

You sure you want
me
to know that?

Not that he was a criminal. It was only a bit of selling during the war. Black market. He got six months. When he came out he was a changed man. Never the same. Lost his spark.

Lila, really, it’d be kind of nice to know things I could say at the funeral. Memories of your dad, the kind of man he was. I’m not sure this is the kind of stuff you’d want me to say.

I’m talking.
You
should be listening. That’s why he was a clerk all his life. He wasn’t allowed to practise, not with a criminal record. I don’t think that was fair. He brought his wife and baby down to Burnhead and bought his house with money he inherited from his father. By that time the daughter was three months old.

The daughter? You, Lila? You mean you?

Have a doughnut. Go on. His wife, by the way, loathed him. She only married him because she was pregnant and even then only because she thought she was marrying a lawyer. It came out in the end, him being in prison, along with a lot of other things. A lot of things came out all at once, really.

Luke is looking desperate now, poor man. He thought he was going to hear about my father’s love of gardening, his kindness to small animals, his quiet faith, and he’s getting this. He doesn’t know why. Not sure I do.

I allow him a minute to think.

I guess things have a habit of coming out in the end, he says, and I nod. He goes on, I guess the truth will always out. I believe that the ultimate truth is God’s truth. The truth, Lila—

I interrupt:—will set you free? Ah, but will it? Will it, though? That’s where you’re wrong. It’s the illusions that keep us going. Illusions and delusions. Stories. Fairy tales. You haven’t eaten your doughnut.

Illusions and stories? Is it illusions that keep you going, Lila? Don’t you want to shed illusions and let God’s truth into your heart? Don’t you want to hear the greatest story in the whole world, the best
true
story of how Jesus Christ died for you?

He’s getting down to business now, not that I blame him. This is the kind of thing he does.

But that’s what I’m telling
you,
I say. A true story. Or a story about the truth, anyway. Because in this story, it comes out in the end. And my illusions, and a lot of other people’s too, they don’t survive the story. Some of the people don’t survive, either. My father only survives it in a way.

What are you talking about, Lila?

Everything comes out. The brother-in-law goes to prison.

Your father’s brother-in-law? You mean they were in it together, the black-market deal?

No, no. The brother-in-law goes for something quite different. And it kills him, prison kills him. My father takes it hard. And it doesn’t help, though this comes a little later, the wife killing herself just before her fortieth birthday.

He still hasn’t touched his doughnut.

The wife, he says. He says it so gently, as if he knew her, that I think about crying. The wife. Your mother. Your mother, Lila.

There is another long pause and I sense he wants to give me this silence for some purpose, but I don’t want it.

The wife, I repeat.

Okay. Right, Luke says quietly. So, the daughter. What happens to the daughter, Lila?

The daughter? Oh, let’s not concern ourselves with the daughter.

You say you want to tell me a story about the truth. You came here to say things about your father. Are you sure it’s not the daughter you need to talk about?

Of course I detect the therapeutic timbre of the voice. It’s counselling tone, loud and clear.

Oh, the daughter survives it, I say. And there’s nothing else I want to say, after all. Eat your doughnut. Do you like my hair? Do you have any painkillers, by the way? I seem to have left mine at home.

Sadly for me Luke does not believe in painkillers, not in tablet form. I let him run on for a while about Jesus being the best cure for just about everything he knows, and then he asks how I’m getting home. He insists on driving me back in my car himself. He takes me all the way up to the front door of 5 Seaview Villas and even comes in with me. He switches on lights and turns on the gas fire and then he has to go and take a prayer meeting at which, I am assured, I will be remembered. From the dining room window I watch him set off into the twilight, turning his collar up. He waves. It is nice of him not to mention that it is a long, cold walk back to Burnhead.

20

L
ila waited at the window of her bedroom until the house grew quiet. Outside, the sun was sinking. Long threads of cloud slanted across the sky in careless strokes of silver and the dune grass bobbed and shivered in a mist of sand thrown by the wind up the beach. Inside the house the sounds of doors, telephones and voices had stopped. Her mother had called upstairs for her to get a move on and Lila had shouted back that she wasn’t ready and would make her own way, they need not wait.

Now she had to hurry. The snap of her door latch made her jump—what if the house
wasn’t
empty? It was already nearly eight o’clock. She crept along to the bathroom. Her mother had taken one of her endless, greedy baths so Lila bathed quickly in a few inches of tepid water and when she ran more into the basin to rinse out her shampoo it was stone cold and made her head ache. She was so late and foolish and afraid. She had not even tried the dress on yet—she had to be clean first—and what if it didn’t fit? What if she tore it before she’d even got it on? Still Joe was not back. What if he walked into the house right now? She listened, her heartbeat hammering in her throat. No, she decided, she was safe; this late in the evening he would go straight to the farm from the station. He was probably already there. She took a deep breath and tried to decide whether to use the
Rodeo Princess
or pinch some of her mother’s
Shalimar
. But why had Joe left it so late? Was he coming at all? He
must
be already there, and now she was the one who was late. Could she get her hair looking all right in time?

But the dress, slipping easily over her head with an exciting noise, restored her nerve. It fitted well except for a tendency to billow up round her bust (Enid’s mum had overdone the bit of leeway) but she smoothed it down and it seemed to settle, for a moment. In any case it didn’t matter because raising her hand and lightly pressing the space between her breasts was the kind of feminine gesture that Joe might like.

She had not really noticed when the dress was on the hanger that the side seams were slit to a point well above her knees. She tipped her dressing-table mirror downwards and inspected her legs. There was quite a flash of skin when she whirled round, which of course you couldn’t avoid doing at a ceilidh, so she might sit out the wilder dances—the Eightsome Reel and Strip the Willow—during which the girls always got flung about. Anyway, the only dancing she wanted to do was a slow, gliding journey across the floor in Joe’s arms. She twirled some more. They were only legs after all, and the dress was narrow; if the slits weren’t there she would hardly be able to walk. It was meant to have slits and swing out. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just a bit unusual for round here. She leaned in towards the mirror and studied her face. The satin of the dress made her skin glow. Her dark hair, loose down her back—there was no time to do anything with it—shone like wet coal against it. Lila smiled. She would arrive like Cinderella. Joe would be waiting for her. Other people in more mundane finery would almost fail to recognise her but Joe’s eyes would light up and everybody would applaud when he took her by the hand and led her to the floor to dance. At that moment the white farm shed with stark overhead lights would somehow be draped in warm velvet and chandeliered, the accordions and fiddles transformed into a tidy little Viennese octet. By the end of the evening she and Joe would be engaged.

Meanwhile she couldn’t wait to see drop-lipped, slow-eyed Enid in her matching turquoise dress and eyeshadow, with midges stuck in the hairspray that would be gluing up her wiry red hair.

But she had almost forgotten again that Enid was bringing the sandals. She would have to go up the track in her black school plimsolls, so it was a mercy she was late, after all. Nobody would see her arrive and Enid would probably be looking out for her, so she would be able to change into the sandals outside in the field without appearing in the plimsolls at all. And if Enid had ‘forgotten’ the sandals, or actually had forgotten them (either was possible) she would dance in bare feet. She liked the idea of herself dancing barefoot, careless and free-spirited. How Joe would adore her for flouting convention.

Before Lila got close to the farm she could make out Mr and Mrs Mathieson up ahead on the track, stationed on picnic chairs behind a pair of trestle tables. Mr Mathieson was counting and thumbing through papers and did not look up; Mrs Mathieson, adjusting a cape round her shoulders and lifting a cup from its saucer, watched her approach. Lila felt her face turning red. It was bad enough the plimsolls being seen by the Mathiesons but worse, there were people milling around in the field. Terrified of being seen by Joe, she snatched glances through gaps in the hedge as she picked her way over the track. They were quite far away, lingering in groups of two and three high up near the farm buildings, mostly men and boys and some in shirtsleeves, but there were girls, too, turning and preening in their coloured dresses. In the low sunlight Lila could make out objects in people’s hands and a blue film of smoke over their heads. Of course, why had she not thought of it? The ceilidh shed was full of straw bales. People were coming outside for cigarettes, and for drink, too, she could see, watching heads tip back and dark shapes lifted to mouths. Probably beer was being sold out of crates round the back, a blind eye turned to ‘intoxicating liquor’ being swigged out here as long as it did not taint the gentility of the shed, where the urn would be simmering and the shortbread doing the rounds.

There was a sudden burst of shouting from the field. Some horseplay started up; drink was being sprayed and thrown around, people scattered roaring and yelping. A group of squealing girls moved away and then turned back and edged in close again as the boys regrouped in a rough, wide circle a distance away from the buildings. A raggedly organised mock-joust began, the boys squaring up to one another, challenging, advancing, swerving, the girls watching at a distance from which they could be sure they were still being noticed. Lila saw Billy swing across the grass in a low, loping run and take a leap onto the back of another boy and together they spun around, turning and turning until they fell and the group roiled around them, laughing. They tumbled over and over, pulling at one another’s hair and clothes, until they lost interest. They got to their feet, slapped each other on the back. Bottles were passed round. The girls moved closer around the group of which Billy was now the centre, brushing himself off and tucking in his shirt. Lila was furious.

She had reached the table now. Mrs Mathieson nudged Mr Mathieson.

‘I forgot my money,’ Lila said. ‘Please can I pay after?’

Mr Mathieson looked up from his cash box and papers. ‘I’m all cashed up now,’ he said, with a purse of his bluish lips. ‘We were just away in, we only stayed out in case we’d gatecrashers. You’re a bit late.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Lila said. ‘I couldn’t help it.’

‘Mr Mathieson just means you’re missing yourself, dear,’ Mrs Mathieson said. ‘They’ve been going over an hour. So you’ll not be needing a ticket, will she, John?’ She gave him another nudge and nodded towards the book of tickets fluttering on the table. Lila shivered and rubbed at the gooseflesh on her arms. ‘John, she doesn’t need to pay now, does she?’

Mr Mathieson scratched the space between his eyebrows with one finger. ‘Well, everybody else paid,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to raise money here.’

‘Yes, and we’ve already made what we thought we would,’ Mrs Mathieson told him. ‘And everybody else has had over an hour already.’ She turned to Lila. ‘You warm enough? I’ve a cardigan you can borrow. It’s grey, it’d go fine over your dress.’

‘No, no, I’m fine!’ Lila said, not managing to conceal the horror of the idea, a grey cardigan borrowed from an old person. ‘Thank you very much, anyway.’

‘Well, away you go in then. We’ll be right in after you.’

Mr Mathieson nodded. ‘On you go, then,’ he said. ‘I’m going soft.’

Lila was staring ahead. A single string of light bulbs had been suspended between two of the sycamore trees, making an archway in the yard. The lights glared a strangely dull electric white, caught in the sun’s last falling rays. The shed was still out of sight behind the barn. She could feel it waiting.

‘Is everybody else here? I’d better hurry. Thank you,’ she said, skirting past the trestle table.

‘Wait!’ Mr Mathieson called her back. ‘Here. You’ll be needing a tea voucher as well.’

Lila took it and thanked him even though she had no intention of having anything as ordinary as tea.

‘You have yourself a nice time now,’ Mrs Mathieson sang after her. As soon as she was out of earshot, she sighed and stood up. ‘She looks ready for a party, any road,’ she said.

Lila walked slowly under the arch of lights in the direction of the music. She was nearly level with the long side of the ceilidh shed now. Soon she would round the corner and find the wide doors standing open and a wedge of bright light hitting the ground in front of it. The music grew louder, a flippant tune she didn’t recognise; it drove on brusquely. She shivered again. The sky was changing rapidly now. The slow blazing-down of the sun would soon be over, leaving the sky empty and waiting for the inky wash of the dark.

A figure loomed towards her from the dark alley between the barn and the back of the shed.

‘Joe?’

‘Hey, you. That you?’ It was Billy.

‘Hey, where’ve you been?’ he said. His voice was not friendly but Lila felt a moment’s gratitude; even hostile recognition might help her feel less lonely and conspicuous. She felt out of place, too bright and too big and exotically plumaged, a flamingo in a flock of starlings.

‘You promised me a wee dance, didn’t you? You trying to avoid me?’

He came up close, swaying a little and staring through watery, exhausted eyes. His shirt, coming loose from his trousers, was badly grass-stained. Almost as a gesture of sympathy, he brought up one hand and took hold of her shoulder, though he seemed also to need the support.

‘You all right?’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Have you seen Joe?’

‘Joe?’ The other hand came up on her other shoulder and he pulled her against him. ‘What’s it with you? I thought you weren’t coming.’ Over his beery breath came the smell of grass and sweat. Bringing his mouth close to her face he said, ‘I was waiting on you coming.’

His arms were tight around her. Her damp hair had been spun by the wind into clumps and he worked his fingers into it, stroking, until both his hands were entangled. She tried to withdraw, though only a little.

‘Ouch! Billy!’

They staggered together and almost fell and then Billy found his footing, dragged her up straight and pushed her over to the wall. He pinned her against it, one hand cupping the back of her head. Lila knew this was something she was not supposed to allow, never mind want, but Billy sank his head into her neck with a little moan and began nudging gently at her face with his mouth, making soft cries. She gave a gasp. It was a kind of mewing, bewildered and weak. He was beseeching her, as if she were the one with the power. His lips on her neck and cheek were warm and dry and nibbling. How could she push him away when he wanted to cling to her, when he sounded how she felt so much of the time?

But this was Billy. She squirmed as his hand in the small of her back slipped lower and turned her head sharply away from his mouth. Then he pushed himself hard against her and murmured something and she felt giddy and warm again.

‘Well, excuse
me
! Am I interrupting something or can
just anyone
join in?’ Enid, emerging from the alley between the barn and the shed, stood in front of them, arms crossed. Billy sprang away. Lila pressed the palms of her hands into the wall to stop them shaking; she was trembling in case anyone, Billy included, might guess what she had been feeling. Had come close to feeling.

‘Well?’

Enid’s engorged mouth was a bright, labial mauve. Someone else’s mouth had been giving hers such a mauling that it was pulpy and tender and seemed no longer suited to speech; her lips moved as if her tongue had thickened and was pushing against the back of her teeth and trying to loll its way out. The only vestige of her lipstick that had not been sucked away was smudged across her chin and in the turquoise wreckage of her makeup her eyes were black dots. Her hair was dragged downwards in sticky tufts.

‘Did you bring me the sandals?’

‘Oh, I forgot,’ Enid said, glaring. Actually they were in a gingham slipper bag on the floor under one of the tea tables at the back of the shed, next to a box of spare tablecloths. She and Lila stared at each other. Across the yard Mr and Mrs Mathieson strolled past on their way to the shed, Mr Mathieson humming along to the dance tune as he went.

‘I forgot, sorry,’ Enid said.

From the shed they heard the accordions start up with ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’. The notes flickered and raced along, fast and fluttering. Lila knew she couldn’t possibly dance without shoes. Her feet would be trodden and crushed, the concrete floor would lacerate them.

‘Billy, you coming?’ Enid stepped forward and stood next to him.

There was hardly any light now. Lila could see only the angle of his head and a gleam from the whites of his eyes. She turned away from the sight of the pair of them, pushed herself off the wall and walked away. She did not want to watch Enid pulling Billy back into the shadows.

Inside the shed about fifty people were dancing and dozens more stood or sat round the walls, chewing through piled platefuls of food. Everyone gleamed with sweat. The kilted men danced with sombre faces as if to counterbalance their comic, elderly legs, but the women bobbed and bounced with flat smiles, mouths fixed open and showing double rows of dry dentures that shone yellowish against the white surroundings. Hairdos flopped, armpits wore dark damp grins, stockings were shredded. Lila stared past the revolving bodies. She was in the wrong place. Everyone of her age was out in the fields, probably doing the same as Enid and Billy.