Sonovia’s voice called to her over the other fence, “Minty! Long time no see.”
In fact, it wasn’t very long. No more than two or three days. Knowing it would please, Minty told her, with many glances over her shoulder, about Gertrude Pierce coming into the shop, not realizing she worked there. Sonovia laughed, especially at the bit about her being amazed Minty knew her name. Some twenty years ago Mr. Kroot was reputed to have made a racist remark, though where and to whom he’d made it no one seemed to know, but it was enough for Laf, who’d never addressed a word to him since. Sonovia was often heard to say that she wished it hadn’t been so long ago but now instead and she’d have him up in court.
“Someone told me she’s going home on Saturday week. We’ll all be glad to see the back of her.” She listened, smiling, while Minty told her what had happened in the cemetery. The smile didn’t waver but when Sonovia went back into her own house, she said to Laf, “If Winnie Knox is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“She isn’t buried at all. She was cremated. You ought to remember that, you and I were there.”
“Of course we were. That’s why I said that was the first I’d heard of it. Minty had the ashes in a box on the shelf for months, but I noticed they’d gone. She’s just told me she got lost in the cemetery looking for Winnie’s grave. White roses she’d bought because she said her auntie was fed up with tulips. What d’you make of that?”
“We’ve always said Minty was peculiar, Sonn. Remember all that stuff about ghosts?”
Minty had for a moment forgotten all that stuff about ghosts. She went back into her kitchen and through to the living room thinking about Gertrude Pierce and the washing and the evil-smelling clothes she’d brought to be dry-cleaned. In the doorway she stopped. Two women were standing between the fireplace and the sofa, Auntie and an old bent person with a humped back and a witch’s face. Minty couldn’t speak. She stood there on the threshold, still as one of the cemetery statues, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were still there.
“You know very well that wasn’t my grave, was it, Mrs. Lewis? You put those roses on a stranger’s grave. How d’you think that makes me feel? Mrs. Lewis was disgusted.”
Auntie had never talked like this to her while she was alive, though Minty had often thought she’d like to but for some reason had resisted. There had been anger in her eyes, this anger that was now coming out, while she said nice things. Mrs. Lewis stood quite still, not looking at Auntie nor in Minty’s direction, staring at the floor, her gnarled old hands clasped.
“Can’t even manage a word of apology. She never could say she was sorry, even when she was little, Mrs. Lewis. There was never a word of regret passed her lips.”
Minty found a voice. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. There, will that do?” Her tone strengthened, though her fear hadn’t lessened, and the words came out in a throaty croak. “Go away, will you? Both of you. I don’t want to see you again. You’re dead and I’m alive. Go back to where you came from.”
Auntie went but Mrs. Lewis stayed. Minty could see Jock’s face in hers, the same features but wrinkled and aged as if by a thousand years. His eyes had looked like hers, defeated and tired, when they’d been to the racing and the dog he’d put money on came in last. One day he might have come to look like her if the train crash hadn’t taken him. The old woman raised her head. She was less solid than she’d been when Minty first saw her and again she was aware of that mirage effect, the watery waviness that made Mrs. Lewis’s loose cardigan and floppy skirt shiver as in a breeze. They stared at each other, she and Jock’s mother, and she saw that the eyes were not blue as she’d first thought but a dull, cold green amid the wrinkles, each one like a bird’s egg in a nest.
If she turned and walked away the old woman would follow her. For the first time, she wanted a ghost to speak, in the midst of her fear she wanted to hear what kind of a voice Mrs. Lewis had. “Say something.”
As she spoke, the ghost vanished. Not immediately but like smoke disappearing into the neck of a bottle. And then she was gone and the room empty.
Chapter 25
WHEN JIMS ARRIVED in Glebe Terrace, Natalie was waiting for him in a bedroom in a flat on the other side of the street. It belonged to Orla Collins, whom she’d met at the dinner party. Orla had had some qualms at first but these vanished when Natalie explained she was spying on a member of Parliament who’d married his wife bigamously while at the same time carrying on an affair with a man on the opposite side of Glebe Terrace. Thursday was the third evening she’d been there, but she wasn’t surprised he hadn’t turned up the previous night. Even Jims might jib at making an assignation with a lover on his wedding day.
In her own words, Zillah had spilled the beans. When Natalie arrived on Wednesday afternoon she was still in the white suit she had worn for her wedding. “I thought you might not be able to take a photograph of me,” Zillah said, “on account of your union or whatever, so I did a Polaroid.” As Natalie was looking at it, she said, “And now I’m going to tell you everything.”
She had. It was the best story Natalie had secured in fifteen years of journalism. For all that, she didn’t quite dare take Zillah’s word for Jims’s adventures with Leonardo Norton. That would have to be confirmed. She sat in a wicker armchair by the window at Orla Collins’s, eyeing, not for the first time, the photographs Zillah and Jims had taken on their honeymoon. His were of little use to her, for they were only of island views but for a single shot of Zillah bathing in the Indian Ocean. Hers, on the other hand, were a revelation. She admitted to having taken them because even then she felt jaundiced by this mock marriage. Jims and a young man whose face was turned away lay on adjoining recliners, they sat side by side on spread towels on a beach and, best of all, most damning of all, sat at a table alfresco, Jims’s hand resting on the young man’s thigh. It was interesting that Jims was always smiling at him and once into the camera, while Leonardo contrived to hide his face from view. These photographs would make it an easy matter to recognize the MP when he came down Glebe Terrace or stepped out of a car. How would he come? As time passed, as her watch told her seven-thirty, eight, eight-fifteen, Natalie considered the possibilities. Sloane Square was only three stops on the Circle Line from Westminster. He could take the tube and then a cab. Or a cab all the way. Reputedly, he had a large private income. He could drive himself and, since it was past six-thirty, park anywhere on a single yellow line. The idea of a bus Natalie dismissed as too plebeian for the likes of Jims. As for a bicycle…
At twenty minutes to nine he came by the only means she hadn’t considered. On foot. He was even better-looking in the flesh than in the Maldives pictures. Natalie, like many women taking a view never shared by homosexual men, said to herself, What a waste! To her delight, he produced a key from his pocket and unlocked Leonardo Norton’s front door. A blind was down in the window she took to be that of a living room but an upstairs window was uncovered except for an inch or two of curtain showing on either side. Any picture she might take Natalie had grave misgivings about, but she was ready with her camera. Within minutes she almost wished she hadn’t brought it with her, for the shot she got no newspaper editor would dare to use. In the two-foot-wide gap between the curtains Jims and Leonardo were locked in a passionate embrace.