Someone had once given Auntie a boxed set of stereo LPs of something called Porgy and Bess. Minty couldn’t remember why, a birthday maybe, but Auntie hadn’t anything to play them on even if she’d wanted to, so the records were as good as new. If Minty had been on speaking terms with Sonovia and Laf she could have asked their advice, they had a thing that played CDs, but she wasn’t, so that was out. In the end, she bought wrapping paper with wedding cakes and silver bells printed on it at the paper shop next to Immacue, wrapped up the LPs, and took them with her to Josephine’s wedding.
The dry cleaners didn’t open that Saturday morning. They put a notice in the window that said: Closed for Wedding of Proprietor. The marriage ceremony in the Ecumenical Church of Universal God the Mother, Harlesden High Street, was followed by a reception at the restaurant where Ken cooked, the Lotus Dragon. It was all very enjoyable with dancing and tambourine-playing in the church and a four-woman rock band, while a smiling green dragon, operated on the principle of a pantomime horse, cavorted in when lunch was in progress and made a speech in Cantonese. Minty had quite a good time, at least at the start. She’d hoped to secrete the bum bag with the knife in it under Sonovia’s blue dress, but the outline of it showed through and it looked funny. For some reason she expected Jock’s ghost to turn up. Once she’d seen the empty chair next to hers, she was sure of it.
“Why’s there no one sitting there?” she asked Josephine’s best friend from Willesden.
The best friend said Josephine’s mother was supposed to be coming over from Connemara but she’d had a fall yesterday and broken her ankle.
“They oughtn’t to leave that chair there,” said Minty but nobody took any notice.
Josephine said the empty chair reminded her of absent friends. She looked quite nice if a bit flashy in a scarlet chiffon salwar kameez and a big, black, ostrich-feather hat. Ken wore a gray morning coat and topper. There were red lilies all the way down the table and green dragons on the napkins.
They ate shrimp toast and spring rolls, followed by Peking duck. Even Minty ate it, she had to. During a long argument as to why not Beijing duck between the best friend from Willesden and Ken’s brother, who could speak quite good English, Jock’s ghost came in and sat in the chair next to Minty. He was dressed as she’d sometimes wanted him to be but had never seen him, in a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie with white spots.
“Sorry I’m late, Polo,” he said.
“Go away.”
He never answered her. He just started laughing, as if he were a real living person. She wouldn’t look at him, but she heard him whispering, “I went into the garden and met a great she-bear…”
Someone a long way down the table was taking photographs. While the flash blinded them, she picked up from the table the knife you were supposed to use if you couldn’t handle chopsticks. Holding it down by her thigh and between them, she thrust it upward into his side through the shirt. She expected blood, ghost blood that might be red like living people’s or might not, but there was none. Instead of vanishing speedily, he seemed to blur like a reflection shuddering when the water surface is disturbed, then to melt and trickle away. The chair beside her was empty once more.
So it worked. Even a blunt knife got rid of him. But would it be forever? She laid the knife back on the table. It was quite unmarked as if it had passed through no more than air. People were looking oddly at her. She managed a bright smile for the cameras. Dozens of them seemed to have appeared, flashing and snapping. Would the ghost show on the photographs? If it did, filling the empty chair, they were sure to put it in the Sunday papers.
Ken’s brother made a speech, and so did Josephine’s sister. More and more drinks came out. Minty thought it was time to leave, though no one else did. She’d seen a sign saying LADIES, so she followed the arrow, passed through a room where all the wedding presents were laid out on a table, though she couldn’t see hers, and escaped by the back door into a dirty yard. It took her quite a long time to find her way back into Harrow Road, and by the time she did she was shivering, frightened of running into Jock’s ghost.
Just as Laf and Sonovia had for years put their Mail through her letter box when they’d done with it, so Laf regularly popped round with the Evening Standard, the Mail on Sunday, and the Sunday Mirror. Only he hadn’t for the past two Sundays and Minty didn’t expect he would this week.
Next door, the Wilsons were arguing hotly over just this question. Both still in dressing gowns, lingering over a protracted breakfast of bagels, Danish pastries, and coffee, they failed to see eye to eye as to continuing their quarrel with Minty, or “sending her to Coventry,” as Sonovia called it.
“I don’t want you taking those papers in there this morning, my deah, and that’s that. I want them for Corinne. She’s stopped taking a Sunday paper and I’m sure your own daughter’s got more right than the woman next door.”
“And for another,” said Laf, “you want to keep up this row you’re having, though God knows why you do, with a poor girl who’s daft as a brush and doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.”
“I like ‘girl,’ I really do. Minty Knox is a mere nine years younger than I am, as you surely should know. As for ‘daft,’ she knows how to borrow a person’s clothes and accuse her of keeping a dirty home. And I’ll tell you something else, she’s enough sense to wear a money belt under her clothes. I saw it when she tried my dress on, a bag on a belt round her waist.”
“Well, good luck to her. It’s a pity more women don’t in a neighborhood like this. There wouldn’t be so many handbags snatched and muggings and all. As soon as I’ve got my things on, I’m going to take that page you want for Corinne out of the paper and pop the rest round to Minty. Bury the hatchet, that’s what I say.”
“If you do that, Sergeant Lafcadio Wilson, you can find someone else to cook your roast pork for Sunday lunch. I shall take myself round to Daniel and Lauren and my dear little granddaughter. So you’ve been warned.”
The more she thought about it, the more Minty wanted to see the Mail and the Mirror. No one would take all those photographs if they didn’t mean to get them in the papers and one of them might have Jock in it, must have, even if in shadowy or transparent form. It would be proof to show people, she thought vaguely, people like those Wilsons and maybe Josephine. When she’d stuck the knife into Jock she’d seen Josephine looking at her under that big black hat as if she were mad, an awful stare with her lip curled up.
When it got to half past midday and Laf still hadn’t come, Minty washed her hands, put her coat on, and went round to the paper shop, the one opposite the cemetery gates. There she bought three Sunday papers. Going home, she passed Laf and Sonovia’s gate and smelled the rich, savory aroma of roasting pork, inviting for others but enough to make Minty shudder. She dragged her thoughts away from the bubbling fat, the spitting crackling, and the browning potatoes-you could never get a roasting pan really clean-and went indoors and washed her hands. Maybe she’d have another bath in a minute.
That the papers contained no pictures of Josephine’s wedding, not only none of Jock taking his seat in the empty chair but none at all, was a bitter disappointment. Minty had to content herself with front-page photographs (and more inside) of someone called James Melcombe-Smith MP to a Ms. Zillah Leach. The bit of print underneath said,