Ages passed before the bus came, or it seemed like ages, though it was only ten minutes. As if making up for time, it raced along Harrow Road and down Edgware Road, dropping her off at the bottom at exactly three o’clock. By this time she was an old hand at buying her own ticket, showing it to the usher, and making her way alone to a seat. Ten people were sitting in the auditorium. Minty counted. She sat in a seat at the end of a row, so that no one could sit next to her on the right, and unless the place filled up, which it wouldn’t, nobody would choose to sit on her left. The present occupants of the cinema all looked older than she and were isolated except for a couple of pensioners, man and woman, seated in the very front row. She was pleased to find herself almost alone in the whole block of seats on the right-hand side. It was much better going to the cinema in the afternoon than with Laf and Sonovia in the evening.
The auditorium darkened and advertisements appeared on the screen. Minty had often before watched such commercials with puzzlement, for she understood not a word of them and not an image. The noise they made was loud and the voices that uttered incomprehensible words raucous, while music pounded and brilliant colors and explosive lights flashed across the screen. They were succeeded by something romantic and dreamy, accompanied by a soft sonata: the first trailer of films to come.
To her annoyance, a man had come in and was edging along the row in front of her. He probably couldn’t see where he was, the place was dark as pitch but for the pastel colors on the screen. He turned light-dazzled eyes in her direction and she saw it was Jock’s ghost. There seemed nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t follow her and haunt her. He wasn’t wearing his black leather jacket today, it was too warm for that, but a stripy shirt like one of those she’d ironed that morning and a linen jacket that looked new. Where did ghosts get new clothes from? She’d never thought of that before.
He sat down, not directly in front of her, but in the seat in front of the one next to hers, and took a packet of Polo mints out of his pocket. How long would he stay? Would he get up again and vanish through the wall as he’d done the night before in Auntie’s room? Minty was more angry than she’d been for a long time, perhaps than she’d ever been. Fear of him had almost gone, it was all anger now. He half-turned his head, then looked back at the screen. The romantic film trailer faded away and a violent one came on, the sort that shows high-powered cars in brilliant colors and blazing lights crashing into other cars and careering over precipices while maddened men crane out of their windows, firing guns. The ghost took a mint out of the packet and put it in his mouth. Carefully and silently Minty lifted her T-shirt, unzipped her trousers, and pulled the knife stealthily from its plastic sheathing and the strapping round her leg. She laid it on the seat beside her, zipped up her trousers, and pulled down her T-shirt. She thought she’d been quiet but she must have made a little sound.
Jock’s ghost turned round again, more fully this time. As he looked into her face in the dimness and the roaring noise, his eyes opened wide and he began to get to his feet as if he were afraid of her instead of her of him. More swiftly than she could have believed she’d do it, she snatched up the knife and, rising, thrust it into where she guessed his heart was. If a ghost had a heart, if a ghost could die.
He didn’t cry out, or if he did she couldn’t hear it above the car crashes and the guns and the beat of the music. No one could have heard anything with that noise going on. But maybe he hadn’t made a sound, perhaps ghosts didn’t. It took both hands to pull the knife out. There was something reddish brown on it that looked like blood, only it couldn’t be, ghosts didn’t have blood. It must be whatever ghosts had in their veins that made them able to walk and talk. Ectoplasm, maybe. Auntie had talked a lot about ectoplasm in her last years. Minty wiped the dirty knife on the upholstery of the seat next to her. It still wasn’t clean, of course it wasn’t, it would have to be put in a pan of water and the water brought to the boil before it was really clean. But there was no water here, no stove, and no gas. Shuddering, she unzipped her trousers and pushed the knife back against her leg, thankful for the plastic wrapping which kept it from contact with her skin.
Jock’s ghost had fallen to the floor and disappeared. Or at any rate, she couldn’t see what remained of it. She didn’t want to. And she didn’t care to remain where she was with the dirty stuff wiped off on the seat next to her, but she did want to see this film. Fastidiously, shrinking away from contact with that seat as she passed it, she moved to the aisle end of the row, walked a few yards up the aisle, and picked herself another seat. It was in the central block and there was no one in front of her and no one behind.
Sleepy Hollow hadn’t frightened her and this one didn’t. It was a disappointment. If these film people had had her experience of ghosts they’d know more about making things frightening. She wished she’d gone to The Green Mile, but it was too late now. Anyway, if she had, Jock’s ghost mightn’t have been there and she wouldn’t have had the chance of banishing him once and for all. When the film was about three-quarters of the way through she got up and left. The man in the back row left too, so she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t liked it.
Outside it was still hot and sunny. She looked at her hands to see if there was any mess on them but she’d wiped what there was off on the seat when she’d wiped the knife. Still she shivered because when she lifted her fingers up to her nose she could smell something that was like blood but stronger, she thought, more bitter and unholy. Spots and splashes of it were all over her clothes but they weren’t noticeable to anyone but herself because her trousers were dark red and her T-shirt was a red and blue and yellow pattern. Not that Minty much worried about anyone seeing; it was for herself that she cared. She’d never been concerned about what other people thought of her. They ought to be thinking about what she thought of them.
But she didn’t want to get on a bus. Sitting with that ghost juice on her would somehow be worse than walking in the fresh air. For one thing, it would be all around her, close to her, pressing on her, and for another she’d smell it more. The stench of it began to make her miserable, to make her want to tear her clothes off and plunge into water, any water. That wasn’t possible. So she walked. Up Edgware Road in the heat and the smell from the Middle Eastern takeaway restaurants, along the start of Harrow Road and through the underpass into Warwick Avenue. There was no longer any fear of meeting Jock there.
This was familiar territory, home ground. The people you passed never took any notice of you and they never sniffed, trying to smell you. Everyone sweated, there was no escaping it, but she hated it happening to her, the feel of the beads of moisture breaking out on her upper lip and forehead, the trickle of it dripping down her chest like tears. It wouldn’t smell, not with all the deodorant she used. But how could you be sure you hadn’t missed out a little bit of skin surface? She imagined the sweat leaking out of that little bit inside her armpit and that awful meaty, oniony smell breathing on to the air. Almost crying now with the filth that covered her, her own perspiration and the splashed ghost juice, she let herself into the house. She ran upstairs and fell into the bath. It was half an hour later that she boiled the knife. The clothes she’d worn were beyond saving, far far beyond washing. She wrapped them in newspaper, then in plastic, and put them into a black waste bag. Knowing they’d be there, albeit outside, for another four days, sent her out again. The heat met her, it was like opening an oven door. She walked slowly, shrinking her body to keep the sweat in, and dropped the bag into the big council rubbish bin a few yards up the road.