Ghost Moth Read online

  “Easy girls,” George chips in. He looks at Katherine to check on her.

  “Can I have a packet of crisps, too?” asks Elizabeth gently. She has clocked Maureen’s reaction to their mother and now is a little concerned.

  “And me,” says Elsa.

  Maureen throws a packet of crisps from the picnic bag to each of her sisters.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” says George, attempting to draw Katherine out of herself. “I’ve found a few things floating in there myself. Haven’t I, Katherine?”

  Katherine doesn’t answer.

  “Like what, Daddy?” Elsa becomes interested now.

  “Only last summer, I went in for a swim—”

  “Daddy, you can’t swim,” Elsa chirps.

  “Ssssh! Let daddy tell.” Maureen is beginning to doubt her own judgment about the seaweed.

  “Elsa’s right, he can’t swim.” Elizabeth has found the little paper pouch of salt in the middle of her bag of Perri crisps and is biting it open.

  “My arms and legs are really itchy,” Elsa complains to the air, scratching herself.

  “—and just as I was coming back to shore, just by the shingly part of the beach, I lifted my head up out of the water and there bobbing up and down right in front of my eyes, was—a hand! You remember this story, don’t you, Katherine?”

  Katherine remains quiet.

  “Ugh!” Maureen grimaces. Elizabeth and Elsa’s expressions are held in a curious, hardened stare.

  “Can you believe it,” continues George “a hand.”

  “A human hand?” asks Maureen, checking.

  “Oh yes.”

  “That’s horrible, Daddy.”

  “So, I thought that I had better get out of the water quickly and go tell the police.”

  “Pl-op,” shouts Stephen.

  “But just as I stood up in the sea, the fingers of the hand started to wriggle. Like this!” George moves his fingers ominously, imitating the severed hand. The three girls visibly shrink back. Their grimaces are identical now.

  “I was petrified. I began to move quickly out of the water, but the hand began to move quickly, too.” George ripples his fingers. “The hand began to quiver and turn and then it began to swim! I moved as fast as I could, but the hand was swimming after me. I got out of the water and began running up the beach. I looked around and the hand was running after me, and then suddenly the hand jumped off the sand and grabbed me like—THIS!”

  George flings his wriggling hand out and grabs Elsa by the shoulder. Elsa’s body jolts and then she screams. All the girls scream. Then Maureen laughs. Elizabeth shakes her arms out in front of her as if to free herself from the fright. Stephen gives a nervous cry at all the commotion, but he is comforted by Katherine. After a few moments, the noise settles and the air in the car becomes once again a natural quiet.

  George is disappointed that his story hasn’t raised even a smile from Katherine, so subdued has she been since her swim. He turns to her. “Darling, what’s wrong? You okay?”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m okay.” But Katherine’s sense of preoccupation is growing even as she speaks to George, intensifying moment by moment.

  “Maybe rest when you get home. You had a bit of a panic getting out of your depth in the water, love; it’s bound to have shaken you a little. You had a bit of a shock.”

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right,” Katherine says. “George?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t see the seal?”

  “No, love, I didn’t see it. This place isn’t really known for seals. Maybe it was seaweed or driftwood or something. . . .”

  “I love seals,” offers Elizabeth; “they’re so cute.”

  “Maybe it was somebody’s big gy–normous plop!” Elsa giggles.

  “I don’t understand it. . . .” Katherine mutters to herself.

  “How could you not have seen the seal? He was right in front of you. . . . He was right there. . . .”

  “How are your legs?” George asks.

  “They’re still really itchy,” says Elsa.

  “No, Elsa love, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to your mother.”

  Elsa frowns. George immediately registers his daughter’s mood and responds to her. “Well then. And how are your legs, Elsa?”

  Elsa’s frown tightens.

  Katherine, says in a faraway voice, “George, let’s go home. I really want to go home.”

  George takes her in. “Okay, love,” he says tenderly, and starts the car. “Everybody ready?” His voice lifts cheerily, but he receives a low groan as an answer from the children. Flicking the right indicator on, George now steers the Morris Traveller off from the side of the road, narrowly missing a passing car as he does so. He gives the horn a toot, then drives on.

  Katherine shivers and adjusts the towel around her shoulders again with one hand, trying to hold Stephen with the other. Everyone in the car is quiet now. Stephen snuggles into Katherine as she lets her head rest back against the car seat.

  Soon all of the children drift into their own world. George hums to himself as he drives.

  Sitting wrapped in her towels, Katherine feels as though she is still in the cold, deep sea. Thoughts are lapping all around her now, stirring up from the deep, rising to the surface. Thoughts she now cannot stop. She closes her eyes. Thoughts of someone that she has blotted out throughout her married life but which—if the truth be told—have never gone away.

  Thoughts of him.

  As the Bedford family car turns the sharp bend onto the street where they live, Katherine sees Mr. McGovern standing outside his grocer’s shop in his white nylon shop coat. She gives him a small wave from the back of the car. Mr. McGovern waves back to her as though he is putting up his hand at school, his arm long, his palm flat to the air.

  When the car pulls to a stop in their driveway, George turns to Katherine.

  “You look very pale, love.”

  “I’m fine. I just feel very tired, that’s all.”

  George carries in the picnic bags and the blankets and asks Maureen, Elizabeth, and Elsa to help with the swimsuits and towels. Their reluctance makes them pick poorly at the items, like magpies at clumps of moss. Maureen carries one towel only, holding it disdainfully from one corner, as it is damp, sandy, and streaked in jam. Elizabeth takes only her swimsuit. Elsa trails the biggest towel along the ground, gathering pieces of dirt as she goes.

  “C’mon, girls, smarten up there now.” George is half jovial, half annoyed. He lifts Stephen, who is chewing on a jam piece that he has found on the floor of the car, and takes him into the house. Maureen and Elizabeth answer their father with a sullen look, but their tempo remains unchanged. As they walk, they deposit thin trails of silty sand, as though they are spilling out of themselves.

  Stephen heads straight for Katherine, who is standing in the kitchen, still wrapped in towels. With a piping complaint, Stephen grabs at her.

  “Okay, pet, just give me a moment,” she says in a daze.

  “Mama up!” Stephens pulls on Katherine as though she is a bell rope.

  “Wait now.”

  “Up!”

  The telephone rings in the hall and Elizabeth goes to answer it. A moment later, she calls to her father, “Daddy, it’s the station!” George drops the bag he is carrying on the kitchen floor and rushes to take the telephone from Elizabeth. His work as a retained fireman makes frequent demands on his free time, a fact that has always bothered Katherine, as if—she often complains—his job as a civil engineer isn’t demanding enough.

  Maureen enters the kitchen, carrying a bag from the car. Katherine turns to her.

  “Maureen, take Stephen for me, will you?”

  Without waiting for Maureen’s reply Katherine moves swiftly out of the kitchen, as though propelled by some pressing need. She passes George in the hall and goes upstairs.

  “Come here to me, mister,” she hears Maureen call after Stephen.

  Upstairs, Katherine walks
quickly into her bedroom and closes the door behind her. Laundry has been left on the end of the bed. George’s shirts are ironed and hanging on the handle of the wardrobe door. Katherine opens the wardrobe, kneels down, and, rummaging through the blankets and linen that are stored at the bottom of it, eventually pulls out a small box covered loosely with a cloth. She pulls the cloth off the box and opens it. Inside the box there is something covered in waxy paper. She opens the paper and reveals a small porcelain statuette of an old man, a needle and thread in one hand, a piece of cloth in the other. The smooth, bald head of the statuette had broken off when she had let it slip from her hands the day George was helping her move out of her mother’s flat. She holds both pieces in her hand and looks at them.

  As she lifts the paper in which the statuette had been wrapped, she feels the jolt it gives. She opens it out. She invites it in. It is a music sheet containing some of the music and lyrics from the opera Carmen. Before she sang at every rehearsal, she would take out her little handheld mirror and her lipstick from her handbag and ease orange-red across her lips. Then, folding her music sheet in half—this piece of paper in front of her—she would push it against her mouth to remove the excess. Scattered all around the page like a swarm of orange-red insects are her rosebud lipstick kisses. A sheet music full of kisses, little signals of orange-red love, each one a promise that she would nurture the spirit of her dreams until they came true. She reads: “Si tu ne m’aimes pas, Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime; Mais si je t’aime, si je t’aime prends garde a toi!” She looks at the bottom of the music sheet where a short translation of the lyrics is written in a very neat hand: “Love you not me, love you not me, then I love you—” But she cannot continue reading. Her mind flashes with an image grim and disturbing. No, don’t go there (and yet she feels the need to). No, not that. She blots it out.

  The bedroom door opens and George steps a little into the room. “Katherine, you should get dressed, love. You’ll catch your death—” He is stopped in his tracks when he sees what Katherine is holding in her hand. He knows immediately what it is. “That was the station—” he says to her, but he cannot hide his anxiety at what he sees.

  “I gathered that,” says Katherine quietly.

  “There’s been a lot of trouble in the city.”

  “Oh.”

  “So they’ve called me in—I’ve been instructed to liaise with two other retainees before touching base.” He stands looking at Katherine. “Please, Katherine, don’t . . . please. Let it go.”

  Katherine looks at George, her eyes now filling up with tears.

  “No, don’t, Katherine . . . please.... I can’t . . .”

  The telephone rings again. George turns away from Katherine and leaves the room to answer it.

  Katherine gathers herself up off the floor, not bothering to put away the porcelain statuette or the music sheet. She blindly follows after George. She catches up with him in the hall.

  “What time will you be back?” she asks him solemnly.

  George puts the telephone down and looks at Katherine. “I’ve no idea. I won’t know how bad things are until I get there.” He walks into the kitchen. Katherine follows him.

  “But they’ll be able to tell you at the station, won’t they? They’ll be able to brief you before you go?” she says.

  “Katherine, you know only too well it’s not that simple.”

  “Do I?” Katherine’s tone is harsh.

  “Yes, you do!” George glares at Katherine. Then, checking himself, he lowers his head. He pushes past Katherine to get the car keys from the kitchen table.

  “And why do you have to liaise with two other retainees?” Katherine pursues George, her tone becoming more strident. “When did this start?”

  “Any uniform’s a target now! Aren’t you aware of what’s going on?” He grabs the keys.

  “But there’s always trouble around this time of year,” she snaps. “Always trouble around the Orange marches—and then all that trouble with the Apprentice Boys’ parade in Derry—you just expect it.” She’s almost shouting at him now.

  “This is different—something’s building. I don’t know—it’s—it’s very tense in the city.” Georges tries to steady himself.

  “You’re overreacting, George! It’ll all blow over as usual and we’ll all be back to complaining about the unemployment and the weather and—”

  “How the hell do you know!” George barks at Katherine, pushing past her toward the front door.

  Suddenly, Stephen walks into the corner of the kitchen table with a wallop. After a moment of silence—the air heavy with what is to come and his mouth having fallen open like that of a drowning fish—he pitches into his cry. Katherine lifts him up in her arms, rubbing and kissing his head. His cry is piercing and he squeezes his eyes tightly at the unfairness of it all, making two deep, wet creases around his mouth, as though it is melting with saliva.

  “So what time will you be back?” Katherine follows George, Stephen in her arms.

  “I told you, I’ve no idea.” George strains to talk over Stephen. “Let me see the situation first—see how many of us have been called—I don’t know.” He addresses Katherine over his shoulder as he moves. Katherine pursues him back out into the hall and stands in front of him.

  “Then you’ll ring me.” Katherine is biting at her words now.

  “If I’m near a damn telephone!”

  “Of course you’ll be near a damn telephone, George. You’ll have to be in contact with the station. You’ll—”

  “Mum!” Maureen calls from upstairs. “Elsa’s not feeling well.”

  Stephen is still crying. He is feeding off the energy around him. The pitch of his cry is getting higher.

  “Mum!”

  “Wait!” Katherine shouts up to Maureen over the crying.

  “Don’t just walk off like that!” she shouts at George now. George stops.

  “‘Walk off?’” He repeats her words sharply. Then he turns squarely to Katherine. His face is hard, incredulous.

  “Don’t just walk off without—” Katherine is becoming increasingly agitated. “Don’t just walk off like that George—don’t!” Her words, like her thoughts, are fragmenting now.

  George turns away from Katherine. His lips are tight with anger. He says nothing. Katherine persists.

  “George!”

  George turns to Katherine and thrusts his head in toward her, the blood draining from his face.

  “What exactly do you expect of me, Katherine? What exactly is it that you want from me? How exactly do I disappoint you?” It all comes out in a rush. There is a moment’s silence. Katherine looks startled.

  “What? What do you mean, George?”

  George holds his look at Katherine; then, almost immediately, he moves away from her again. “Nothing, I mean nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “George, don’t say that. Talk to me!”

  George opens the front door.

  “Mum!”

  “George, come back! Don’t walk away from me like that! Talk to me!” Katherine moves quickly onto the front steps.

  “Mum—Elsa feels sick.”

  “All right!” Katherine snaps at Maureen. “George!” She moves down the steps. Stephen is still crying in her arms. “George, what do you mean?”

  George turns abruptly to Katherine, “You know what I bloody mean!”

  Katherine stops and looks at George. She says nothing.

  George holds a hard stare. “You know exactly what I bloody mean!”

  He swings away from Katherine and, opening the car door, adds between gritted teeth, “And I have a bloody job to do!”

  Stephen is pulling at Katherine. His back is arched and his head is thrown back. His face is red. He is crying to the sky.

  “George,” Katherine says quietly, and watches as he drives away.

  Slowly, she walks back into the kitchen with Stephen’s body squirming on her hip. He kneads his tiny fists into his eyes as though he were rubbin
g them out. He flings his head on Katherine’s shoulder again, a sleepy, sad cygnet tired of holding his height.

  It was true that the very life events that should have brought Katherine and George closer together as a couple seemed to have edged them further apart.

  Katherine remembers that even on their wedding day, a pensiveness had followed them like a dust breeze at their backs, creating around them the sound of an almost-detectable pulse. She remembers the church small and quaint, like a doll’s house. There were lilies in wide vases, settled in their symmetry, giving out a creamy, heady scent. There was the smell of frankincense and myrrh. There were white ribbons on the ends of the pews. Six tall candles graced the altar. As she walked up the aisle, the congregation passed their coughs along the pews as if passing a collection basket. She wore two rows of neat pearls around the lace neckline of her white silk wedding dress. George waited at the altar for her, shifting nervously from foot to foot. The priest had the pink glossiness of a skin not used to daylight.

  At the reception afterward, they danced together as tentatively as they had danced the first night they had met at the Belfast Palais de Danse, introduced to each other on the grand staircase by a mutual friend, who then fled to recover a dropped glove by the circling glass doors. But, by the end of their wedding day, it had felt as though they were still waiting for the wonderful thing to happen.

  Ever since Katherine had known George, he had always exuded a sullen determination in the way in which he approached things—a sense that life was a series of tasks that had to be done. This trait in him she had found attractive when they first met, as though it offered her stability and reassurance. However, since their honeymoon, she had noticed that there was a different edge to his determination. There was a darker, more destructive quality to it.

  Katherine remembers the evening they moved into their new house (this small semidetached two-bedroom house in which they have lived now for fifteen years). George had walked out to the back of the property, brimming with new purpose, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with a deep breath, and rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. But, ten minutes later, he had returned to the kitchen full of irritation. With his shoulders hunched and his brow furrowed, he had pulled roughly at the stacked cardboard boxes in the hallway, tripping over a rolled-up offcut of linoleum that they had purchased for the new house, and had then stomped back out to the garden with a large spade clutched firmly in his hand. Katherine had followed him, and had found him savagely hammering the back lawn with the edge of the spade.