Ghosts in the Morning

Chapter 8



‘Andy, it’s me. What are you doing tonight?’

‘I, um, I , um, hi Anita, I um, I don’t know, why, what –’ I glanced at the bedside clock, rubbing my eyes. I must have overslept, I was usually awake early, perhaps a little too much wine...

‘Good, so you’ve nothing planned. Right, we’re going out.’

‘What, I, well, no I hadn’t planned to, look I’m just awake, I’m-’

‘I’ve got a taxi booked for seven, so I’ll pick you up on the way at about quarter past.’

‘What? On the way...I mean, on the way to where?’

‘To town, Andy, obviously. You know, we mentioned it at lunch the other day, said we’d have a night out together. It’ll do you good.’

‘But, but – ’

‘Righto, must dash, I’ve got to pop in to town and get my hair done, maybe get a new frock. I’ll see you later, make sure you get yourself tarted up, Andy, us girls are on the pull tonight. Well, I am, anyway,’ Anita laughed, then the phone went dead.

In the bathroom mirror I frowned at the face staring back at me. I looked old. I felt old. The puffy pillows beneath my eyes were ringed with thick, grey circles of smudge. I looked like a ghost, looked like I was from the grave. Ghosts in the morning; that’s what I used to call the working mothers that I saw every morning when my boys were young and I was dropping them off at nursery. The mothers that had the children of two and three years-old - the tantrum years. You could see the stress, the lack of sleep, the pressure of keeping a marriage together, etched into the faces of those mothers as they fought to keep their kids calm while they waved goodbye. You could almost hear their thoughts – ‘please God, please don’t let him scream now, please, I have to get to work’ – as they dashed back to their cars to fight their way through the traffic to their jobs. They would smile and wave to their little ones, desperate to keep the facade, desperate to display to the world that everything was fine, but the surface was thin, translucent. They were functioning on a physical level only, going through the motions, but they were too tired, too numb. Now they were just shadows of the bright young things they used to be. Ghosts.

I didn’t have to rush off from the nursery, I didn’t have to rush off to a job. Graham’s wage was enough, kept us comfortable. Sure, the kids were still stressful, but I had the luxury of time, I could stay that little bit longer to reassure them if they were upset. As the kids got older, and the nursery journey morphed into the school run, you could see the transformation in the mothers. Older now, yes, but they had changed, they looked less tired now. Now, they were just busy. Impatient. I saw their children doing everything they could to distance themselves from their mothers, trying to look cool in front of their mates, like they weren’t bothered, and I wanted to shake them, to tell them how lucky they were that their Mums were picking them up.

I never had that. Primary school was a five minute walk from home, and Mum was happy for me to do this on my own ever since I could remember. When it came to secondary school, I was on the bus, Mum always said that she couldn’t understand the point of kids being taken to school by their parents – ‘these kids are so pampered these days, no wonder the little buggers don’t know how to look after themselves’. But when I went to the home, it was worse. Most of the girls in the home went to the school that was nearby, just a short walk away. Not me, though; Social Services in their infinite wisdom felt that it would be more disruptive for me to change schools. My school was definitely too far away to walk to, but the problem was that Jersey’s patchy school bus service didn’t cover the area near the home.

So, each morning, I was dropped off outside school in the minibus that belonged to the care home. It had the name of the home emblazoned down each side of the minibus. The caretaker, Mick, would drive me right to the school gate, leering at me with his good eye. I often wondered how he was allowed to drive considering he had a glass eye, but nobody ever said anything, and he never crashed. When we pulled up, I used to try and sneak out of the minibus, and then walk away to distance myself from it, pretend I had just walked up to the gate, but after a while I gave up. All of my classmates knew where I lived, I heard the names they called me, the whispers about the care-home girl. Sometimes they didn’t even bother whispering, sometimes they just shouted names at me, and sometimes they hit me. Eventually, with a little guidance from Anita, I learned to hit back.

I sat on the toilet and sighed at Anita’s assumption that I would go out with her tonight. Then I saw the spot of blood in the toilet. Great, my period had started too, no wonder I was feeling a little miserable. Perhaps I should go out with Anita, try and cheer myself up...or maybe I could just sit on the sofa, cuddle a bottle of wine and watch whatever talent show was on.

In the kitchen I rubbed my eyes as the strong coffee brought me back to life. I drummed my fingers absent-mindedly on the table. I missed cigarettes. I hadn’t smoked for years, but I still felt that familiar craving whenever I had a cup of coffee. Felt it too with wine, if I were honest. Perhaps I should start smoking again, perhaps it would help keep my weight down, but I knew if I started again I would never stop, and I didn’t want to be a smoker, I didn’t want to be beholden to those little sticks again, and I didn’t much like the smell of stale smoke on clothes these days .

‘What the hell, maybe I will go out with Anita tonight,’ I said to myself, out loud. I spoke to myself out loud quite often these days, it seemed. ‘Yes, f*ck it, I will go out!’ I shouted at the empty kitchen.

It felt good to roar. I was still angry about the previous night’s dinner party. I was still angry with Graham, too, and I was glad he was out, I didn’t want to see his stupid, doleful face right then. He had gone to the gym, probably, he did that sometimes after a heavy night’s drinking. As if he could undo the damage by jogging on a treadmill for sixty minutes. It never did any good, never made any difference, his pot belly never shrank. In fact he was probably putting himself more at risk of a heart attack. You saw it all the time - fat, middle-aged men popping their clogs at the gym or on the squash court because they still thought they had “it”, still thought they were eighteen, their little brains in denial at the physical realities facing them in the mirror each day.

‘Who were you shouting at?’ Graham was stood there, sweat circles under his arms and under his man boobs.

‘Er, no-one.’ I hadn’t heard him come in. I stared at his face. ‘What’s that on your lip?’

He touched the thin strip of downy hair on his top lip. ‘That, um, it’s a moustache. Well, the beginnings of one, anyway. It’s for Movember, a load of us guys at work are doing it this year. You know, Movember, it’s a charity event, it’s to raise awareness of prostrate cancer – ’

‘I’ve heard of it, Graham, I know what it is, I’m not stupid,’ I snapped. ‘And it’s prostate cancer, not prostrate,’ I added, coldly.

‘Well, I’m just saying, there’s no need to bite my bloody head off – ’

I turned my back and poured some more coffee. Movember – that meant there would be men all over the place growing moustaches, all thinking that it was somehow funny, that looking stupid was some sort of post-modernist ironic joke, whatever that meant.

‘I hate moustaches,’ I muttered but Graham had already headed upstairs for a shower.



***



‘I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were going to come tonight, Andy.’ Anita’s voice was slightly slurred, this being the third bar we’d been to.

‘Why, what do you mean?’

‘I just know how it is with some of my married friends. You know, not easy to get a night out, what with all the married commitments, child commitments and all that.’

‘When have I ever let you down, Anita?’

‘I wasn’t saying that, Andy, don’t be so touchy. Blimey, you really have changed, haven’t you? You seem a lot more spikey than your old self.’

‘I’m sorry, Anita, I didn’t mean to snap at you, I just – ’

‘Hey, Andy, calm down, don’t worry. I’ve told you before, you don’t need to apologise to me. I like this new Andy, I really do, it was about time you stuck up for yourself a bit more, it’s good that you seem to have grown a pair of balls. Metaphorically speaking, of course.’ Anita nodded towards the bar where a tall, blond guy in a well-cut suit was sipping a pint. ‘I tell you what though, I certainly wouldn’t mind getting a hold of his balls.’ She laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle booming across the table.

I pointed at Anita’s glass. ‘Another glass of wine?’ I had to shout a little, the music in the wine bar had just been turned up a notch.

‘Yes, um, hold on, no, no.’ Anita spread her arms expansively. I noticed a hint of bingo wing wobble on her ebony-tanned arms. Only a little, though, just the merest suggestion that age was beginning to exert its inexorable authority. Anita was in good shape, and she had dressed well too, sexy but not tarty; a clingy silver frock that fell just above her knees, hinting at the shapely thighs above. The dress had tasteful black stripes accentuating the curves of her waist, and plunged invitingly to her admirably pert cleavage. My designer dress - deep burgundy red, extra large size – clung in all the wrong places. I felt overdressed, it seemed like I’d made too much effort, I hadn’t known what to wear. I was out of touch, I didn’t go out much to pubs, wine bars or clubs these days. I wanted to be small underneath the gaudy wine bar lights, but I felt like a hippo with make-up.

‘No, not wine. Let’s have a cocktail, Andy, yes, let’s go for it,’ Anita said, and gently banged her fist on the table. ‘We haven’t been out together like this for ages, we should treat ourselves. How about a Sex on the Beach?’ She winked at me but I saw her gaze drift back to the blond guy.

At the bar, the barman managed to ignore me for a full ten minutes. Too many young, pretty things to serve. Finally...

‘What do you want?’ snapped the barman. He was big, confident. Arrogant.

‘Um, can I have a Sex on the Beach and, um, a, um –’ The barman started to drum his fingers on the counter, and I felt my blood rising. ‘Two of those, actually,’ I spat angrily, and the barman looked at me curiously.

Anita had company at the table; the blond guy who had been standing at the bar earlier was now sitting in the chair next to Anita. In the chair opposite sat another man. Younger than the first guy, but he was blond too, and had a passing resemblance to the other guy.

‘Andy, you’ve been ages, I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I thought maybe you’d got lucky at the bar and left me to fend for myself.’ She winked to show me she was joking. ‘Anyway, this young man is Brad. And this one here is Tom.’

‘Oh, okay, hello Brad, hello Tom.’ There was no spare chair but neither man got up, their eyes were fixed on Anita. I put the cocktails down, and walked across to the next table.

‘Is this chair spare?’ I said, to the young couple who were busy staring into each other’s eyes. The man cupped his hand to his ear without moving forward, forcing me to lean closer. ‘I said, is this f*cking chair free?’ The man jumped in his chair a little and frowned, then rudely flicked his hand at me, which I took to be a yes.

‘Andy, Brad was just telling me that he’s a pilot, he gets to fly all over the place, isn’t that exciting?’ Anita said.

‘Oh, right, yes, very exciting,’ I said flatly. Brad clearly wasn’t interested in talking to me, so I didn’t see why I should pretend to be interested in him.

The volume of the music increased again and I gave up trying to speak or listen, as Brad and Tom chatted and laughed with Anita. In truth, I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be at home, alone, with a glass of wine and some crap TV programme.

‘Come on, Andy, let’s go!’ Anita sounded excited. She turned to Brad. ‘Where’s your brother?’

‘He’s coming, I think he’s just gone to the loo.’

‘But, but, where are we going?’ I asked. ‘Look, I think I’m just going to head home, I’m a bit tired – ’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ Anita said, and took hold of my arm. ‘We’re going clubbing, Andy, a bit of a boogie and all that. You know that new club that’s opening soon – Mizzi’s or Millie’s or whatever it’s called – ’

‘It’s Mizzi’s,’ Brad said. I could see him staring at Anita’s cleavage.

‘Mizzi’s okay, yep, well, guess what Andy? It’s opening night tonight, invite only. VIP night. And my little friend here –’ Anita patted Brad’s cheek gently – ‘he knows the guy who owns it, so he can get us in free. And we won’t have to queue or anything. Oh, here’s Tom, come on, let’s go!’

I sighed. I wanted to go home but Graham was there, and he would no doubt be sitting in the lounge, stroking his stupid, wispy moustache and watching some crappy film. Some pathetic action movie, where he’d have the surround sound turned up so high that the room would shake with each explosion. Or worse still, a horror film, with all that unnecessary gore. I hated horror films, they were different to the ones we used to see as kids, the ones where they were clever enough to let your imagination do the work. Now, they just showed gruesome violence, usually against some young, innocent looking girl or girls. Torture porn, I’d heard it called.

‘Oh, what the hell,’ I said and followed Anita, Brad and Tom into a taxi.



***



I hadn’t been to a nightclub for over ten years. The last time was Anita’s hen do. Her first one.

That night we had ended up in a club called ‘L’Auberge du Port. It translated as ‘The Inn of the Port’. An unusual name given that, although it wasn’t too far from the sea – but then, nowhere in Jersey was far from the sea - it was nowhere near any port. I think it may have been something to do with the fact that the club was popular with sailors and fishermen. It was that kind of club; tacky and tawdry, full of leery guys and women who drank too much, or had few morals, or both. It felt like a cattle market with disco lights and hence had earned the dubious nickname of ‘the abattoir’, the French word for slaughterhouse.

We had ended up in there on Anita’s insistence – ‘yeah, I know it’s a bit of a dive, but come on, it’s obvious we’re not on the pull, and we’ll have a laugh. Besides, the DJ’s pretty good’.

It had been a strange night – we had danced round our handbags like throwbacks to another age, we had drunk shots of tequila like over-excited teens on a holiday in the Med, and against all of my usual sound judgement I had ended up in a slow, swaying dance with a guy with lovely, tanned, smooth young skin. He told me was a surfer, and the tequila must have had an effect as I found myself locking my lips onto his and we snogged ever so briefly, before I pulled away and rejoined the girls. I felt a frisson of guilt bubbling beneath the alcohol but a few minutes later I saw the surfer dancing close to another girl, and I promptly dismissed it. I remember heading for the bar – it was my turn to get another round of shots – and I was chuckling to myself, a little edge of elation pulsing through me at my daring snog.

At the bar, I had scrambled for my purse and then suddenly I happened to glance at the man standing next to me. Immediately my blood went cold. It was as if the room had gone silent, the thumping bass stilled. The barman had been on his way to me, but stopped and turned to serve someone else. The man standing next to me was Jonnie, from the care home. He hadn’t changed much; he was still scrawny, and his face still looked emaciated. He still had acne too; red, angry spots peppered his face like shotgun pellet-blast of tomato puree. He recognised me straight away, too, I hadn’t filled out so much then, I still had the semblance of a figure.

For a moment that lasted an age, we stared at each other. Neither of us said a word. Jonnie actually looked scared. I could see him growing redder, his spots glowing even brighter under the fluorescent bulbs, and I wanted to throw the tequila in his face, and to grind the glass into his weaselly cheeks, his nose, his eyes, I wanted him to bleed, and I wondered if he could feel the burning anger that was scorching from my eyes. Eventually, he warily nodded at me, as a sad, nervous look scuttled across his face, and then he was gone, scurrying away into the darkness of the club. Anita had bounded alongside me then, oblivious to the confrontation and had shouted at the barman for more tequila. I carried on drinking but I felt sober for the rest of the night.

‘L’Auberge du Port’ was gone now. It had been torn down and replaced by a development of luxury apartments, the sort that had been springing up all over the island in recent years. Imposing and impersonal, these developments had private driveways and large, electric gates to keep the hallowed gated communities within separate from the plebs without.

The nightclub we found ourselves in now – ‘Mizzi’s’- was a world away from L’Auberge du Port. There was nothing tacky here; the touch of serious money was apparent in the elegant subtlety of the professional interior design.

‘Hold this for me, Andy, please, I’m just going to dance.’ Anita passed me her glass of champagne as the pulse of dance music throbbed around us. She followed Brad onto the dance floor and started to gyrate her hips to the beat. It was hypnotic, Anita was a good dancer, and Brad looked clumsy and awkward as he tried to find the rhythm. He settled for a simple uncomfortable sway of his hips, whilst alternating his feet up and down.

Tom was standing next to me, clutching an overpriced bottle of trendy lager, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was waving to a young girl at the bar. I assumed it must have been someone he knew, because she spotted him and waved back. She had glossy hair and glossy teeth that shone under the neon lights, there was no contest.

‘Er, excuse me a moment, I’m just going to say hello to a friend,’ Tom said, and disappeared towards Miss Glossy.

I stood there at the edge of the dance floor, feeling awkward. I wanted to go home, I didn’t want to be standing on my own in a club, feeling like the lonely, fat girl without any friends. I waved my hand towards Anita, trying to catch her attention. She saw me, and cupped her hand, beckoning me onto the dance floor. I shook my head vigorously, no way was I joining her out there. I doubted I could move much in my dress, and besides, I didn’t much feel like dancing.

Two young lads were standing nearby and I could see them sniggering about something. I wondered if they were laughing at me – the fat girl in a dress that made her look like a jam blancmange – but perhaps I was just being paranoid. I walked to the bar and put down Anita’s glass, it was time to go, Anita would be fine.

Anita was suddenly at my side. ‘Andy, babes, where are you going? We’re having a great time, aren’t we? This club’s great, don’t you think?’

‘No, Anita, we’re not having a great time, you’re having a great time. And no, I don’t think this club is all that great, actually. I just want to go home.’ I was annoyed at Anita for dragging me to the club, and I tried in vain to keep the anger out of my voice.

‘Well, thanks a lot, Andy, just because you’re a bit grumpy, you’re just going to go off and leave me on my own.’

I felt my blood rise. ‘Leave you on your own! That’s a bloody cheek, Anita, considering I’ve just been standing on my own for twenty minutes, like some fat gooseberry, while you...while you get all cosy with bloody Biggles over there.’

‘We were just dancing, Andy, it’s hardly like...’

‘Oh, whatever, Anita, whatever. I’m going home. You’re a big girl, you’ll be fine,’ I hissed, and turned away, heading for the exit. From the corner of my eye, I saw Anita give a nonchalant shrug and walk back towards Brad. I felt a rage inside me, Anita didn’t even bloody care.

At the exit, I looked back and saw Anita dancing with Brad, closer now, her hands were on his shoulders, his hands were on her hips. I barged past the doormen. ‘Alright, love, calm down, bit of common courtesy don’t cost nothing,’ I heard one of them say but I kept on walking, I didn’t turn around again.

Outside, away from the serpent queue that slid towards the club, it was quiet. The club was situated on the outskirts of town, and the taxis hadn’t yet begun to gather. I pulled out my mobile phone, thought about phoning a cab, but I decided to walk for a while. There was another taxi rank about half a mile away, the walk would do me good. I needed to calm down, I could feel my breath puffing through my nostrils, I felt like a raging bull. I needed to breathe slowly, needed to order my thoughts. I hated arguing with Anita, she was one of the few good friends I had, we didn’t usually disagree. Perhaps that was because I usually just went along with her opinion, I didn’t confront her, she had always been stronger than me. But lately...

The night was still, it was mild for the time of the year. I looked up. The moon was about a third full, and there was the odd twinkle of a star dotted in the patchwork quilt of the sky. The road here was abutted on both sides by fields with trees at their edges, their branches reaching out like an old man’s fingers. The fields were surrounded by electric wires to keep the cows in. I jumped and swore as a car backfired in the distance.

Then I saw something ahead. No, not something – somebody. It was a man – tall, broad – walking towards me. He was drunk, stumbling from side to side, as if one foot was heavier than the other. As he got closer, I saw that he was clutching a bag of chips. His hand was dipping into the bag like a piston, shovelling chips into his mouth, there was grease and what appeared to be tomato ketchup on his chin.

He suddenly stopped and squinted at me. ‘Hey, love, hello, hello, hello, I wonder if, do you, um–’ He paused and smiled a lop-sided smile. A tinge of recognition played at the edges of my haze of my anger, but I couldn’t think why. ‘Sorry, love, sorry,’ he slurred. ‘I’ve had a drink or three. Um, thing is, right, basically, yeah, can you tell me, love, am I going the right way for Mitti’s?’

‘You mean Mizzi’s?’ I spat at him. I stared again, there was definitely something familiar about him, I knew him somehow...

‘Yeah, whatever, look, is it this way or what?’ His voice was still slurred, but it was laced with rudeness now.

Suddenly I remembered. It was the rugby player, from the pub when I met Anita for lunch, the one I had confronted. ‘Don’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one, be like shagging a bouncy castle,’ he had said. A coincidence, bumping into him like this, life was full of them. I thought of a story I had read in the newspaper, many years ago; an Israeli man had been on a business trip and had arranged for a prostitute to come to his hotel room. When he opened the door to let her in, he had suffered a heart attack – because he had found himself staring at his own daughter. Coincidences...

‘I know you,’ I said coldly.

‘What, hey, what? What the f*ck are you on about? Look, do you know where the bloody club is or what?’ The easy drunkenness had disappeared, maybe he sensed my tone, I could see a curl on his smeary lips.

‘I said I know you, you bastard. The other day at the pub. The Hound’s Tooth.’

He shook his head, his drink-addled brain trying to seek clarity. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, and I don’t know why you’re calling me a bastard. You’re a f*cking fat cow. But to be honest –’ his speech was slurred, it came out as ‘honiss’ – ‘to be honest, yeah, I don’t give a shit what you’re on about. I’m going clubbing. You f*cking fat cow.’

He walked past me, in the direction I had come from, his shoulder banging against mine.

The blood began to course through my body like a torrent. ‘Don’t fancy yours much, bit of a chunky one’. I looked around. There was a gate in the field, held in place by two pillars of granite. At the bottom of one of the pillars there was a block – granite - perhaps the owner of the field used it to hold the gate open when he was driving through.

I picked it up.

The rugby player was several yards away, still rocking from side to side. He had tossed the chip bag at the side of the road. I could hear him humming to himself. He didn’t hear me.

I felt the surge of blood and anger pulse again and I lifted the block high above my head. There was a dull, damp sound as the granite met his skull, but he didn’t fall at first. He turned, a look of glazed shock on his face. Blood was trickling down his face, mingling with the tomato sauce on his chin.

I lifted the block again and smashed it. There was a crack - perhaps his nose bone - and he fell. Again and again, I lifted the stone. Again and again, I brought it down.

In the distance, I could hear a car. It seemed to be heading this way. I walked quickly down the road a few yards, and then I squeezed between the electric wires. A brief buzz as the low voltage current fizzed through me, then I was through. I would cut through the fields, head to the town centre, it wouldn’t be hard to find the way.

I was still clutching the granite block. I could see a dark spot on its edge – blood. There was a small piece of hair stuck there too. I crossed another field, and heard running water. A stream. I followed it down for a few yards, saw where it pooled deepest. I dipped the edge of the granite block in and rubbed at the dark patch with my palm. The hair dislodged and drifted downstream then I threw the block into the deep part of the stream.

Ten minutes later, and I was back on the tarmac pavement. I had reached the lip of a hill overlooking the edge of the town centre. Looking down I could see crowds of people jostling on the streets, drunken laughter mixed with raised voices. Black taxis had begun to swarm, like voracious ants, plucking revellers from the streets like picnic crumbs, then swallowing them whole in their rear-hinged jaws. I walked down the hill, and spotted an illuminated light on top of a taxi.

I waved my hand and the taxi slowed to a halt. I climbed in and gave the taxi driver my address. The taxi driver wasn’t in the mood for conversation and neither was I.