[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
very much since. Only obliquely.'
'Mrs Simons,' I said, 'this is beginning to frighten me. Can I tell you that?
I don't understand it. I don't understand what's going on. I'm frightened.'
Mrs Simons stared at me again, and narrowly missed colliding with the rear end
of a parked and unlit truck.
'I wish you'd please keep your eyes on the road,' I told her.
'Well, you listen,' she said, 'you don't have any cause at all to be
frightened, not the way I see it. Why should
Page 28
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
you be frightened? Jane loved you when she was alive, why shouldn't she still
love you now?'
'But she's haunting me. Just like Edgar is haunting you. And Neil is haunting
Charlie. Mrs Simons, we're talking about ghosts.'
'Ghosts? You sound like a penny-dreadful.'
'I don't mean ghosts in the sense that - '
'They're lingering feelings, that's all, pervasive memories,' said Mrs Simons.
'They're not phantoms, or anything like that. As far as I can see, they're
nothing more at all than the stored-up joys of our past relationships
-echoing, as it were, beyond the passing of the people we loved.'
We had almost reached the foot of Quaker Lane. I pointed up ahead and said to
Mrs Edgar Simons, 'Do you think you could pull up here? Don't bother to drive
all the way up the lane. It's too dark, and you'll probably wreck your
shocks.'
Mrs Edgar Simons smiled, almost beatifically, and drew the Buick into the side
of the road. I opened the door, and a gust of wet wind blew in.
'Thanks for the ride,' I told her. 'Maybe we should talk some more. You know,
about Edgar. And, I don't know, Jane.'
Her face was illuminated green in the light from the instruments on her dash.
She looked very old and very prophetic: a little old witch.
The dead wish us nothing but sweetness, you know,' she told me, and nodded,
and smiled. 'The people we used to love are as benign to us in death as they
were in life. I know. And you will find out, too.'
I hesitated for a moment or two, and then I said, 'Goodnight, Mrs Simons,' and
closed the door. I lifted my groceries out of the trunk, slammed it shut, and
slapped the vinyl roof of the car to tell her that she could go. She drove off
silently, her rear lights reflected on the wet tarmac in six wide scarlet
tracks.
The dead wish us nothing but sweetness, I thought. Jesus.
62
63
The wind sighed in the wires. I turned my face towards the darkness of Quaker
Lane, where the elm trees thrashed, and began the long uncertain walk uphill.
SEVEN
I was tempted, as I walked up Quaker Lane, to stop off at George Markham's
house and play a few hands of cards with him and old Keith Reed. I had been
neglecting my neighbours ever since Jane was killed, and if I was going to
continue to live here, well, I thought I ought to do something about visiting
more often.
But even as I approached George's front fence, I knew that I was only making
excuses for myself. Visiting George would be nothing more than a way of
deferring my return to Quaker Lane Cottage, and to whatever fears were
concealed behind its doors. Visiting George would be cowardice: letting the
whispers and the voices and the strange movements scare me away from my own
home.
I hesitated, though, and looked in at George's parlour window, where I could
just see the back of Keith Reed's head as he dealt out the cards, and the
lamplit table, and the beer-bottles, and a sudden blue drift of smoke from
George's cigar. I hoisted my sacks of groceries a little higher, and took in a
deep breath, and carried on up the hill.
Quaker Lane Cottage was in complete darkness when I approached, even though I
was sure that I had left the front porch light on to guide me home. The gale
blew around the house and rustled its creepers like hair, and the two
shuttered upstairs windows looked like tightly-closed eyes. A house that was
keeping its secrets to itself. In the far distance I could hear the endless
dejected grumbling of the North Atlantic surf.
64
I put down my sacks of groceries, took out my keys, and opened the front door.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]