Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (9 page)

Would a knife have any effect on a ghost? What were ghosts made of? Minty devoted quite a lot of thought to this. Before she saw one, before one
touched
her, she believed them composed of shadows and smoke, vapor and some cloudlike intangible substance. Jock’s hand had been firm, exerting a strong pressure, and the seat of the chair he sat on had been warm to her touch. Was he the same person he’d been when he was on the earth? A thing of flesh and blood, not like a black-and-white photograph, a grayish moving image, but brown-haired, pink-skinned, his eyes that same dark blue? Blood—would he bleed?

She would try it. If it failed to work she’d have lost nothing. She’d just have to try some other way. Imagining it as she ran her second bath of the day, she saw the knife go into the ghost body and the ghost dissolve, disappear in a wisp of smoke or melt into a clear pool like water. There would be no sound, no cry or gasp, only a vanishing, an acknowledgment of being beaten, of her victory.

Thinking of it like this almost made her want to see him. She had her bath, using the big golden sponge that had once had a life of its own, attached to some rock in the sea. When she was done, she washed it out in hot water, then cold. One day Jock had asked if they could have a bath together, the two of them get into the water at the same time. She’d said no, she’d been shocked at the suggestion. It wasn’t what grown-up people did; it was for little kids. Besides, if she’d shared a bathful of water with him she’d only have had to take another bath on her own afterward. He never seemed to think of that.

For a moment, naked, she half wanted to see him. She opened the bathroom door, stepped outside, crossed to her bedroom. He was nowhere. In the clean clothes she’d wear for the evening, an evening of a hygienic meal, an hour of television, two hours of cleaning up, she went downstairs into the dark hall. The ghost came in darkness or in light, nothing seemed to make a difference to that. She felt it with her, all around her, though she couldn’t see it. As she was peeling her two potatoes and carving her home-cooked cold chicken, his voice came singing, like music heard from a long distance away:
Today I started loving you
again . . .

Chapter 7

ONCE SHE HAD said yes, Zillah thought she and the kids would move in with Jims and arrangements would be made for the wedding to take place later, say six months later. Jims had different ideas about that. The proprieties must be observed. The chairman of the South Wessex Conservative Association had said only last week, apropos of some local pop singer, his girlfriend, and their baby, that couples living together outside marriage should be banned from owning property and have their passports and driving licenses withdrawn. Jims could think of no surer way of losing his seat at the next election than by letting Zillah move in with him. Besides, he’d engaged the services of a PR company and the woman acting for him was doing her best to get photographs of Zillah and himself into national newspapers. That slum in Long Fredington would be an unsuitable background and his duplex in Great College Street an improper one. He took a three-month lease on a flat in a purpose-built block in Battersea with a view of the river and the Houses of Parliament from the front windows. Jims, who knew about these things, said this struck just the right note. It was more
serious
than Knightsbridge and less raffish than Chelsea; it was dowdy but solid, besides having a suitably political air. As to her possessions and property in Willow Cottage, he recommended she set fire to the lot, then revised this advice, remembering the owner of the house, his old pal Sir Ronald Grasmere.

Much as she’d have liked to tell Jims she was now a widow, Zillah didn’t quite dare do this. The first thing he’d have wanted to know was when did she hear of Jerry’s death and why hadn’t she told him before. So she plucked up the courage needed to tell him a lie he wouldn’t much like but would mind less than the truth. “I wasn’t actually ever really married to Jerry.”

“What d’you mean, darling, ‘really’ married? Did you have one of those funny affairs on the beach in Bali like Mick Jagger?”

“I mean we weren’t married at all.”

He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn Park—but not many and not for long. The PR woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for several years in a “stable relationship” with the children’s father. Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah’s marital or nonmarital status and not to mention the children, counting on Jims’s relatively low notoriety quotient to make it unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on Zillah’s beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leaned negligently over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand lightly caressing her long black hair.

But when Malina changed her mind about Jims’s fame and suggested they might describe Eugenie and Jordan as her niece and nephew, children of her sister tragically killed in a car crash, Zillah drew the line. So, rather surprisingly, did Jims. Malina must remember, he said, that he wasn’t all that well known, he wasn’t a
celebrity.

“Temporarily,” said Malina briskly.

“If I get a post,” Jims said, dropping his voice, “it will of course be rather different.”

All this was making Zillah nervous. “My children won’t go away.”

“No, darling, and we don’t want them to.”

“It might be wise,” said Malina, “not to give any interviews to the print media for a year. Could we have your first husband tragically killed in a car crash?” Reluctantly she was forced to relinquish this favorite scenario. “Well, no, maybe not. But by then,” she added coyly, “another wee one may be on the way.”

Zillah thought the chances of another wee one slender in the extreme. She had no experience of interviews or journalists but was already frightened of them. Still, she had long ago cultivated the art of banishing unpleasant thoughts from her mind. It was the only form of defense she knew. So, every time a picture of Jims as shadow minister of state at the Home Office or under-secretary for health came into her head and she had a vision of a reporter appearing on her doorstep, she thrust it away. And whenever a voice whispered in her mind’s ear, “Tell me something about your previous marriage, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith,” she plugged it up. After all, she
knew
Jerry wouldn’t reappear. What surer way could there be of making plain your intention to disappear than by announcing your death?

Jims bought her an engagement ring, three large emeralds mounted on a square cushion of diamonds. He’d already given her a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach and now gave her an American Express platinum card for Mrs. J. I. Melcombe-Smith and told her to buy any clothes she liked. Wearing her new Caroline Charles green suit with the bead-encrusted bodice, she dined with Jims in the Churchill Room at the Palace of Westminster and was introduced to the leader of the Conservative party in the Commons. Seven years ago Zillah would have described herself as a Communist, and she didn’t know if she really was a Conservative.

“You are now, darling,” said Jims.

After dinner he took her into Westminster Hall and down into the Chapel of St. Mary Undercroft. Even Zillah, who took very little notice of such things, had to admit that Sir Charles Barry’s stonework was impressive and the lavish fittings magnificent. Obediently, she looked at the bosses showing St. Catherine martyred on her wheel and St. John the Evangelist boiling in oil, though she was squeamish about such things and St. Lawrence being grilled made her feel a bit sick. She’d take care not to look up during the marriage ceremony. Against all this rich and brilliant color, she decided, an ivory wedding dress would be most effective. Because she’d fixed on the single-woman option, she was determined to push aside the memory of her marriage and was almost reconciled to a church ceremony.

It was a pity the children couldn’t be there. She rather fancied Eugenie as bridesmaid and Jordan as page. They’d have looked so chic in black velvet with white lace collars. Apart from these frivolous considerations, she was seriously concerned about her children. Their existence was one of those not exactly unpleasant, more disturbing facts she couldn’t banish, though she tried. That is, she tried not to think about them except as the two people she was closest to in the world, possibly the only people she loved, for her affection for Jims hardly came into that category. But the circumstances were too awkward to allow her to forget the troublesome aspects. For one thing, they constantly asked when they were going to see Jerry again. Jordan had a disconcerting habit of declaiming loudly out in the street or, worse, when Jims brought an MP friend to call, “Oh, I do want to see my daddy!”

Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point. “My father hasn’t been to see us for months,” or, quoting the babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, “Mrs. Peacock says my father is an absentee dad.”

The last address Zillah had for him was in Harvist Road, NW10. Sometimes she got out the piece of paper on which he’d written it down and just stared at it, thinking. There was no phone number. At last she phoned Directory Enquiries. Without a name they couldn’t or wouldn’t help her. One afternoon, leaving Mrs. Peacock with the children, she went up to Harvist Road on a Bakerloo Line train to Queen’s Park. The place reminded her of her student days when she and Jerry had shared a room in a house near the station. They’d been very happy for a while. Then she got pregnant and they married, but things were never the same.

“Needles and pins, needles and pins,”
said Jerry, quoting his old granny,
“when a man marries his trouble begins.”
They were on their two-day honeymoon in Brighton. Then he said, “I quite like being married. I may do it a few times more.”

She smacked his face for that but he only laughed. Now she was looking for him to find out if he was willing to stay dead. His name wasn’t on a bell at the street number he’d given her. When she banged the lion head knocker an elderly woman came to the door and said, “I’m not interested in double glazing,” before she’d even spoken.

“And I’m not selling it. I’m looking for Jerry Leach. He used to live here.”

“He called himself Johnny, not Jerry, and he doesn’t live here now. Hasn’t since last year. Months and months. The answer to your next question is no, I don’t know where he’s gone.”

The door was shut in her face. She walked across the road and sat down on a seat in Queen’s Park, gazing at the green expanse. A black girl and a white girl, walking past, looked curiously at her short-skirted linen suit and high heels, put their heads together and giggled. Zillah ignored them. It was evident that Jerry didn’t want his whereabouts known. She must make up her mind he’d gone forever. What would he think when he saw her and Jims’s photograph in the paper? Perhaps he didn’t read them. But he’d be bound to find out sooner or later if this thing Jims called a reshuffle took place before the wedding. Because by then Jims might be a minister and on account of his youth and good looks and
her
youth and good looks, a target for the media. Jerry was a rotten provider and generally hopeless with money, and unfaithful and callous, but not wholly bad. He was the last man to try and rubbish her chances. If he saw she’d made a good marriage and done well for herself, he’d most likely laugh and say, “Good luck, girl, I won’t stand in your way.” Besides, he’d be relieved she wouldn’t nag him any longer for child support. Not that he’d ever given her any, there being no blood in a stone.

That silly joke of his kept running through her head. She hadn’t thought of it for years until Eugenie came out with it the other day.
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve
were drownded. Who was saved?
Perhaps he actually
was
dead. But no. She reminded herself that whatever she pretended or told Jims, Jerry was her legally wedded husband. She’d have been the first to be officially informed. He was her husband and she was his wife. Uneasily, she remembered that for some reason, now forgotten, Jerry had required and got the old form of marriage service from the
Book of Common Prayer.
There had been a bit about whom God had joined together let no man put asunder, and keeping only unto him as long as they both lived. Moreover, she was going to have to go through all that again at St. Mary Undercroft, where she didn’t exactly know but could guess that they’d have the same old service. And the vicar (or whatever—the canon?) would say those awful words about answering as they would at the dreadful day of judgment that no just cause or impediment stood in the way of their getting married. Zillah didn’t really believe in the dreadful day of judgment but the sound of it struck superstitious terror into her just the same. Jerry, wherever he was, was six feet and 182 pounds of just cause and impediment. Why did she always have to marry men who wanted their weddings to be in church?

After a while she got up and wandered back to the tube station. The trouble with thrusting unpleasant thoughts from your mind is that the thrusting can never be absolute and each time they come back it seems to be with redoubled threat. There were her parents to worry about too. She hadn’t yet told them Jerry was dead. Nor had she informed them that the official version of their relationship was that they’d never been married at all. Ostensibly, they’d be giving the wedding reception. Jims, of course, would be paying. She wondered how she was going to stop her mother telling the leader of the Opposition, not to mention Lord Strathclyde, how she used to take little Zillah with her when she went making beds and washing dishes up at the big house and the five-year-old was sometimes allowed to play with seven-year-old James.

The train came. The carriage she got into was full of yardies from Harlesden drinking lager out of cans, reminding her of the world she’d soon be leaving behind forever. At Kilburn Park she moved carriages and went on to Oxford Circus. The best remedy she knew for nerves and depression was shopping, a taste she’d never till now been able to indulge. It was amazing how quickly she’d taken to it and how much she enjoyed it. Already, after only a few weeks, she knew the names of all the designers, was beginning to get a good idea of what their clothes looked like and how one differed from another. If only academic subjects were so easily learned she might have got herself some qualifications by this time. Married to Jims, she wouldn’t need them.

Emerging from Browns some hour and a half later, laden with bags, she felt enormously happy and carefree, wondering why she’d been down in the dumps earlier. She took a taxi back to Battersea. The children were having tea, the table presided over by the babysitter.

“Mrs. Peacock says you’re going to marry Jims,” said Eugenie, “but I said you can’t because you’re married to Daddy.”

“My mistake, Mrs. Leach, I thought they knew.”

“Mummy marry Daddy,” said Jordan. “Marry him tomorrow.” He picked up his plate and banged it on the table, overturning a mug of orange juice in the process, which set him off screaming, “Jordan wants Daddy! Wants him now!”