My Brother's Ghost Read online

  MY MEMORIES OF WHAT happened to us all those years ago are unreliable at times, obliterated even. But I remember that first walk with Tom completely. Every detail. It's like a film in my head.

  I remember the glistening blue-brick pavement, the rusty railings and the ivy outside the Rolfe Street Baptist Chapel, the belching smoke from one of old man Cutler's allotment bonfires. I remember him too, in his off-white painter's overalls and his pork pie hat, poking at it. I remember colliding with Herbie, the bread man, in the first shock of seeing Tom. I remember the pleasure and relief in Tom's face when he got that first word – my name! – out. Above all, though, I remember my feelings.

  I felt so happy and sad… and strange. Tom just appeared, you see. (I nearly said, ‘out of nowhere’.) He spoke, only the one word. And then he simply walked beside me as he had ever used to.

  What a curious experience, to walk to school with a ghost. How odd I must have seemed, glancing sideways, dodging unnecessarily, smiling into the thin air. I was looking out for Tom. It distressed me when someone went blundering through him. But he – out of habit? – was avoiding them anyway. So it rarely happened. I felt no urge to talk yet, to interrogate him. (Where had he been?) Mainly, I believe, I was just so glad of his company. Going to school with Tom, entering the playground with Tom, merely knowing he was present in the building, had always helped me in the past. It was helping me now.

  Tom and I joined the cluster of parents and children at the school crossing. I studied Tom out of the corner of my eye. He was studying me. Both of us smiled. It came into my mind then how strange all of this must be for him. And then I had another thought: he was working it out.

  Years before, back in the days when we were a family, I recall Tom brought a maths book home. He was clever at maths, could do most of it in his head and simply put the answers down. Anyway, on this occasion his teacher had written in the margin next to an especially complicated sum that Tom had got right, ‘How did you get this answer?’ And Tom in the tiniest writing had replied:

  ‘I worked it out!’

  This became a joke in our family for quite a while, a catchphrase even. How did you…? I worked it out.

  The school bell was ringing. Mr Hawkins was out on the forecourt shovelling coke down the chute into his boiler room. Tom stopped to watch. Rosalind, Amanda and the others were hanging around at the school gates. I observed a satisfying-looking bruise on Rosalind's leg, a wary look in her eye. I walked straight past them.

  Canada

  THE WEEKS AND MONTHS went by, Christmas and my birthday with them. For a while the circumstances of our lives improved. Harry was no longer wetting the bed at all. He had also now begun to talk more, run around more. He played in the yard, when the weather permitted, with a little friend he'd made at the nursery. And I got invited to a party! What sort of party or who invited me, I'm ashamed to say I have forgotten. But I remember the dress. And I remember Auntie Marge taking me out one Saturday morning to Haywoods Outfitters to buy it.

  Marge was a terror, but not all the time. She had her better side too. She was a hard worker, cleaning other people's houses in the daytime and offices at night. Much of her wages I'm sure were spent on us. Also, although she did yell at us and hit us, she was often truly sorry for it later. She would come up to our room sometimes with tears in her eyes and attempt to cuddle us, offer us little treats.

  One more improvement: I had begun having physiotherapy for my polio-stricken leg, exercises to strengthen the wasted muscle. In time, it was suggested, I might have the caliper removed, stand and walk unaided.

  Actually, I have a confession to make about this leg. When I began my story, I had half a mind not to mention it, write myself a pair of normal legs, as it were. It was partly Harry's idea. (He has been reading my manuscript as I write it.) In his opinion the leg is just too much: no mum, no dad, no brother, a wicked auntie and to cap it all a pathetic poor old limping leg. Like Tiny Tim. Unbelievable! (according to Harry).

  Well, I do want you to believe it of course, despite what I said at the beginning. And it does seem rather ridiculous now, all those heaped-up troubles (and more to come) – like Job in the Bible. The leg's too much, says Harry. Well, it was too much, I suppose, for me at times. I was hugely sick of it and often wished it gone. But it is a part of the truth, a part of me (Ha!), so I have kept it in.

  Meanwhile, what about Tom? Tom came and went. He talked more too, in his newfound gravelly voice – haltingly, long effort-filled pauses, silences. He talked in our room at night, in the park beside me walking Rufus, in the cemetery even on one occasion, with Auntie Marge close by putting flowers on his grave. He talked to me, and to Harry sometimes… and to Rufus.

  Rufus, you see, had really been more Tom's dog than mine. Tom couldn't give up trying to get through to him. I can see him now, crouching beside that little heedless dog or racing after him across the football pitches. Tom made light of his rejections. ‘Bad dog… Rufus!’ he'd say when Rufus ignored him for the umpteenth time. But you could tell he wasn't happy about it. It's an odd thing, but I almost think that watching Tom with Rufus on those occasions was more unbearable than all of it. Tears would come to my eyes and I would feel Tom's loss – my loss of him, his of Rufus. Yes.

  Then at the beginning of March, a flurry of events. Auntie Marge scalded her arm slightly in the steam from a boiling pan. Rufus sneaked his way into the front room and attacked the padded seat of one of Marge's favourite chairs, chewed it up almost altogether. And Uncle Stan lost his job.

  The lost job was the most significant thing of course, but it was Rufus that triggered the explosion. Marge went berserk. She chased poor Rufus round the kitchen with a broom and then with a clothes line, lashing at him as he cowered under the table. Harry quivered in a corner. Tom stood powerlessly by. I threw a fit.

  I rushed at Marge and pushed her violently in the small of the back. (I could not bear the terrible guilt-stricken look in Rufus's eyes.) She toppled sideways and brought a cut glass vase – another favourite – crashing to the floor. She screamed – swore, in fact – and turned on me. I bolted through the kitchen door and ran, Rufus ahead of me. Things were back again to normal.

  That night I lay in bed unable to sleep. Harry was sleeping. Rufus was chained up in the yard below, whining; you could just hear him. Tom was somewhere else.

  Eventually I got up and crept onto the landing. A glow of light rising from the rooms below. Voices and clinking cups. Auntie Marge was doing most of the talking. She sounded calm. Stan spoke now and then. I could not make out much of what was said, and yet I felt a sudden clutch of fear. This was the first time, I am fairly sure, that Canada was mentioned.

  Ghost Talk

  THERE IS A WAY in which with time we can take anything for granted. The strange becomes familiar, the extraordinary ordinary. As the year moved on, winter into spring, Tom's involvement with us, his presence in our lives (our presence in his death?) became what we expected, what we were used to. Normal. The mystery and the matter-of-factness were one and the same. We told no one, by the way, not a soul. The secret was ours.

  Yet periodically it would come upon me how bewildering, how unfathomably odd it all was. Here was Tom, my dear dead brother, leaning over Harry's bed perhaps, or sitting beside me on a park bench, his eternal jacket collar up, smiling, frowning. And yet if I were just to reach out (which I never did), put my hand upon his arm…

  How can I convey the strangeness of him? He was so like his previous self, but then… There was the rasp and graininess of his new voice, the almost imperceptible peculiarities in his appearance. No motion, no wind in his unruly hair, no rain on his face, only that curious shimmering, shivering at the edges of him when he ran. No actual contact either, with the tree he was supposedly leaning against; the pavement, floor, grass on which he apparently stood. He was here and with us, and elsewhere.

  Elsewhere; that was a conundrum too. I came to believe that Tom was like some kind of mobile light bulb, moving hi
mself here and there, switching himself on and off. Except he couldn't always find the switch and had no map. Tom was bewildered too. He compared his condition once to a kind of dreaming. The logic of normal life did not apply. When he wasn't ‘somewhere’ – usually that meant with me and Harry – he had no memories at all. Then sometimes, randomly, he'd find himself stood watching a football match on Barnford Hill or boys fishing in the Tipton canal. Once he even got as far as Dudley Zoo; a keeper with his bucket, thrown fish in the air, the glazed and playful seals.

  Tom's talk: another conundrum. I wish you could have heard it; the telegram sentences, out-of-step remarks, huge silences. There was not much conversation, that was for sure. He rarely answered questions directly, though something might emerge days or even weeks later. Talking to Tom was a tennis match with few rallies. But at least in time the tension in his speech relaxed, the production of the words themselves was less of a strain. Tom would utter the most perplexing, unconnected thoughts serenely.

  Yet consider too what he achieved. Out of his ghostly maze he somehow made his way. He got to Harry when he was needed. And he got to me.

  The Thief

  IT WAS MAY NOW. Tom had recently seen the seals and over a spread of three or four days told me about them. (Stan surprised me in the kitchen on one of these occasions, talking to myself apparently, and gave me a funny look.) Harry had the measles, Rosalind too incidentally. Rufus was wilder than ever and had got his ear chewed up in a fight. And I was taking sixpences from Marge's Christmas jar.

  Stealing. Yes, you would have to say it was. And yet… Marge, you see, was strict about most things. Jobs, for instance. You got pocket money but you did jobs for it. Even Harry had jobs. Well, I was doing the jobs and she, quite often, for no reason in my opinion, was stopping my pocket money. So I was paying myself what I was owed, give or take a sixpence.

  Stan, though, had no job. He spent much time in his shed, making shelves and a bathroom cabinet. He helped out on a friend's allotment and got paid in cabbages and such. He walked Rufus all over the Rounds Green Hills till even the dog had had enough.

  Canada had some connection with Stan's unemployment, I knew that much. Stan had cousins in Toronto. Letters with Canadian stamps would arrive from time to time. But lately there had been a rush of them. Conversations with hints of Canada Toronto, dollars, cousin Ruth would fade into silence when I entered the room. One day Uncle Stan (in his best suit) and Auntie Marge took the train to London, leaving us with our neighbour, Shirley. They did not return till after dark. I heard Canada again from my listening post at the top of the stairs.

  Then, the inevitable: Marge found out about the sixpences, caught me red-handed in fact. (I looked as guilty as Rufus.) She of course erupted. I was a bad girl, a wicked girl altogether. A little thief. Ungrateful. After all she'd done.She was just sick of me, sick of this whole place – Street, town, country! – and would be glad to leave.

  Now out it all came. Canada. That was the place, she said, for her and Stan anyway. But not for me, no. No thieves wanted in Canada. I would stay right here (no mention of Harry). ‘Yes… see if they’ll have you in Caldicott Road!’

  All this happened one Wednesday afternoon in the half-term holiday. Harry was at his friend's house, Stan out with Rufus. I ended up in my room; Marge was banging around downstairs. I sat on my bed and scowled at the grey, rain-spattered window. I pulled my tin box out from under the bed and opened it. I spread its contents on the floor, took up a bracelet and put it on.

  Tom was beside me, kneeling. He stretched out a hand towards a tattered envelope with photographs in it. ‘Black,’ he said. The rain came rattling harder against the glass. Downstairs I heard a door slam, Rufus barking. ‘Pool,’ said Tom.

  Important Things

  ‘BLACKPOOL,’ TOM HAD SAID, and I knew what he wanted. I removed a photograph from the envelope. It was smaller than the rest, black and white. It showed a skinny boy with wet hair in swimming trunks shading his eyes from the sun. Beside him a smaller scowling girl, barefoot in a sundress. On the back was written in our mother's hand:

  ‘Thomas and Frances

  Blackpool 1952.'

  This battered green tin box was my consolation, Tom's too at times. It contained my important things: a little turquoise bracelet, present from Mum, a Japanese fan that Dad had brought back from his travels, a tiny yellowing paper plane that he had made, a brooch with Grandma's photo in it. And so on. The box itself had belonged to my dad. It had his initials, R.F.F., painted in white letters on the side.

  Once there had been four of us, you see. Our dad had been a soldier. He died in the Korean war in 1953. Five months later Mum died giving birth to Harry. After the funeral we moved down to the Midlands and came to live with Marge and Stan. Yes, once there had been four of us, then three, then briefly four again, then three again… now two.

  I fell asleep, dozed off on the bed though it was still light outside, Harry not yet back from his friend's. I had the dream again, the familiar simple mystifying dream. We're on the beach. Dad's in the water, swimming, waving. Mum's in a deckchair fast asleep. Tom is missing from the scene. I'm running from a distance, anxious.

  Running Away

  CANADA WAS BAD NEWS. Caldicott Road was worse. In that town in those days misbehaving children were commonly threatened with two unpleasant possibilities. One was the rag-and-bone man, the other Caldicott Road. Caldicott Road was a children's home. I had been in a children's home once before, after Mum died and before Marge and Stan came up to fetch us. I remembered the experience too well: awful food, lumpy beds, a disinfected unhomely smell, the sense of being abandoned.

  It was eight o'clock that same evening. Marge was out cleaning offices. Stan had nipped round to the allotments for half an hour. Harry and I were supposedly in bed.

  I packed two bags, one for Harry. I had explained to him that we were going to visit Auntie Annie. Annie was our other auntie, the one we almost never saw. She and Marge weren't speaking. (It's just occurred to me, she would have been at Tom's funeral too. What else have I forgotten?)

  Tom appeared as we were getting our coats on, his face serious and frowning. ‘Not,’ he said. And some time later, ‘go!’ But we were going anyway. I was worked up, frantic and afraid. Stan might come back at any minute. I was defiant too, another handful of sixpences in my pocket.

  ‘Stay!’ said Tom. He was in the hallway now, his arms out wide as though to stop us. We squeezed past him.

  Harry and I left the house, left Rufus too, chained up in the yard. (He'd been chewing again.) I could not take Rufus, I needed both hands for the bags and Harry.

  Tom pursued us for a time down the street till suddenly he was no longer there. The street lamps had begun to glow. Dark masses of cloud hung in the sky before us. I hurried Harry along. Auntie Annie lived out on the Wolverhampton Road. I thought that we could find our way there, hoped we could. But this journey of course had more to do with leaving than arriving.

  In Tugg Street we met Mrs Starkey on the steps of her shop, putting up her umbrella. Spots of rain had begun to fall.

  ‘Hallo, dearies – you're out late!’

  Harry started on about Auntie Annie but I kept him moving. The rain fell heavier. We took shelter in the paper shop doorway. Harry was getting restless. For a time we stood just staring out into the glistening empty street. A dog came trotting purposefully along; a man went by on a motorbike. Light shone from the windows of the houses. There was the faintest sound of a piano playing.

  The rain eased. I popped a peardrop into Harry's mouth and on we went.

  I have a good memory – you will have noticed! – especially for those days. (As we get older, a brighter light, it seems, illuminates our childhood.) I can remember such details of our running away that it startles me. A small cat glowering at us from the bottom of a privet hedge. Harry spotting a penny on the pavement outside the chip shop and stooping to pick it up. Tiny hopping frogs on the towpath of the canal.

  The
canal, yes, I remember the canal. But the next bit is not so clear, not clear at all. It was a short cut, you see, between two bridges, one road and another. It was well-lit from the lights in a nearby factory car park. We went along the towpath (I remember) more slowly now. Harry had begun to flag, my leg was aching. The frogs hopped out. Some plopped into the water, I suppose. Harry maybe crouched to see them. But was I in front of him then or behind? Did I crouch too? Was it the slippery ground that did it or my weak leg sliding away beneath me? Or both? Or neither? Well, whatever it was it hardly matters now. What happened was, I fell into the canal.

  Drowning

  IT TAKES MORE TIME to drown than you would think. There's time, for instance, after your fight with the water is lost, to experience many things. To begin with, though, there's simply panic and shock. I may have slid into that canal like a canoe with barely a ripple, but there were ripples now and waves. I was thrashing and whirling about, desperate to regain the bank, and sinking.

  The water was cold, foul-smelling, covered in scum. I disappeared beneath it. There was a pounding in my head, bright fractured light behind my eyes. I sank.

  And rose again. I was coughing and spluttering. Slime and bits of weed were clinging to my hair and face. I sucked more air into my lungs and swallowed water. I sank again.

  I was so weighted down, you see: my waterlogged clothes and shoes, my bag still over my shoulder, my heavy calipered leg, the stolen sixpences even.

  The heaviness was winning. My struggles ceased. Time expanded.

  I saw in quick and flickering succession, inside my flooded head, the image of Harry on the bank – poor Harry – poor, orphaned Harry (then there was one). And Dad, his mouth all comically puckered up, teaching me to whistle. And Dora, my tiny one-armed Bakelite doll. I saw Mrs Harris on a stepladder hanging paper chains. Leaping Rufus. A patch of sunlit sky. A little boat at sea. I saw my mother buttering bread. I saw Tom.