He reached behind him for the bottle of Four Roses and poured me another large glassful. Then he said, 'You've been bearing up to this pretty well, all things considered. I was saying that very thing to Keith only this evening, that you were bearing up well. But it's bound to break out, now and again, that grief you're feeling deep inside of you. Nobody blames you for it. It's just one of those things. I lost my brother Wilf, drowned off the Neck one night, what, eighteen years ago now; and believe you me it took me many a long month to get over that feeling of sadness, and loss.'
'Mrs Edgar Simons told me tonight that she'd seen her late husband, too.'
George smiled, and turned to smile back at Keith. Keith, who was pouring himself another Michelob, smiled in return, and shook his head.
'Don't you go taking no notice of what the Simons widow tells you. Everybody knows what her problem is.' He tapped his forehead to suggest that she was 78 cents to the dollar.
'She didn't give old man Simons too much of a life when he was alive,' put in Keith. 'He told me wunst that she locked him out of the house all night in his long-Johns, because he felt like exercising his conjugal rights and she sure as hell didn't. Now, a man wouldn't go back to a widow like that, even if he was a ghost, now would he?'
'I don't know,' I replied. I was feeling confused now. I was even beginning to doubt what I had actually seen in the garden of Quaker Lane Cottage. Had it really been Jane? It seemed difficult to believe: and even more difficult to recall exactly what her face had looked like. Elongated, like a saint by El Greco, with crackling hair. But couldn't that crackling hair have been nothing more than the electrical discharge that Keith called corposant, St Elmo's Fire? It flickers, he had said, like a burning brush.
I finished my second drink, and declined a third. 'I won't be able to crawl back up that hill, let alone walk up it.'
'You want me to come up there with you?' asked Keith. But I shook my head.
'If there's anything up there, Keith, I think I'd better face it alone. If there is a ghost, then it's my ghost, and that's all there is to it.'
'You should take yourself a vacation,' said George.
'Jane's father told me that.'
'Well, he was right. There's no use in sitting alone in an old cottage like that, brooding about what might have been, and what's past. Now, you're sure you're going to be okay?'
'You bet. And thank you for listening. You really calmed me down.'
George nodded towards the whisky bottle. 'Nothing better for jingling nerves than the old Four Roses.'
I shook hands with both men and went towards the door. But as I reached the hallway, I turned and said, 'One thing more. Do either of you know why Granitehead used to be called Resurrection?'
Keith looked at George and George looked at Keith. Then George said, 'Nobody knows why for sure. Some folks say that it was named for the new life that folks here were going to lead, when they first landed from Europe. Others say that it was just a name. But I personally prefer the story that it was named on the third day after Easter, when Christ rose out of the tomb.'
'You don't think it was named for anything else?'
'Like what?' asked George.
'Well… the kind of thing that I think I saw tonight. The kind of thing that Mrs Edgar Simons says she's been hearing. And Charlie Manzi, too, down at the market.'
'Charlie Manzi? What are you talking about?'
'Mrs Edgar Simons says that Charlie Manzi keeps seeing his son.'
'You mean Neil?’
'He only had one son, didn't he?'
George blew out his cheeks in exaggerated astonishment, and Keith Reed let out a long whistle. 'That woman,' said Keith, 'she sure has a whole bunch of bearings loose. You shouldn't take any mind of her, John; not any mind at all. No wonder you thought you saw something, if you'd been talking to her. Wheweee, Charlie Manzi, that's something. Seeing Neil, you say?'
'That's right,' I nodded. I felt embarrassed now, for believing everything that Mrs Edgar Simons had told me. I couldn't even think why I had listened to her, the way she had babbled on, and the way she had driven. I must have been overtired, or half-drunk, or just plain stupid.
'Listen,' I told George and Keith, 'I have to go now. But if you don't mind, I'll stop by when I come past here on my way to the shop tomorrow. You don't mind that, do you?'
'You're welcome, John. You can stay for breakfast, if you want. Mrs Markham and I whip up some fair old buckwheat cakes between us. She does the mixing and I do the baking. You stop by.'
'Thanks, George. Thanks, Keith.'
'You mind how you go, you hear?'
Nine
I left No.7 and walked out into the drizzling night again. I turned right, to make my way back up Quaker Lane; but then I stopped, and hesitated, and looked downhill, towards the main highway, and the house where Mrs Edgar Simons lived. It was only a little before 10 o'clock, and I doubted if she would mind if I paid her a visit. She couldn't have too many friends these days; and there were few neighbours on the main Granitehead-Salem highway. Most of the big old houses had been sold now, and demolished, to make way for gas stations and food markets and shops selling live bait and tricksy souvenirs. The old Granitehead people had gone with them, too old and too tired and not nearly wealthy enough to be able to relocate themselves to one of the fashionable waterfront houses that bordered Salem Bay.
It was a good ten minutes' walk, but I reached the house at last — a large Federal mansion, foursquare but graceful, with rows of shuttered windows and a curved porch with Doric pillars. The gardens which surrounded it had once been formal and well-kept, but now they were wild and hideously overgrown. The trees which surrounded the mansion itself had remained unpruned for nearly five years, and they clung around the house like spidery creatures hanging onto the ankles of a brave and exquisite princess. This princess, however, had long ago faded: as I walked up the weedy shingle path, I saw that the decorative balconies had corroded, the brickwork had cracked in long diagonal zigzags, and even the decorative basket of fruit over the front porch, a design especially favoured by Samuel Mclntire, was chipped and stained with bird droppings.
The Atlantic wind whined across the gardens, and around the corners of the house, and chilled my already-soaking back.
I went up the stone steps into the porch. The marble flooring was crazed and broken, and the paint was flaking from the front door as if the woodwork were suffering from a leprous disease. I pulled the bell-handle, and I heard a muffled jangling somewhere within the house. I rubbed my hands briskly together to try to keep myself warm, but with that wind whipping around the corner it wasn't easy.
There was no answer, so I rang again, and knocked, too. The knocker was fashioned in the shape of a gargoyle's head, with curved horns and a glaring face. It was enough to scare off anybody, even in daylight. What was more, it made a dead, flat, sepulchral sound, like nails being driven into the lids of solid mahogany caskets.
'Come on, Mrs Simons,' I urged her, under my breath. ‘I’m not standing out here all night.'
I decided to give it one last try. I slammed the knocker and jangled the bell, and even shouted out, 'Mrs Simons? Mrs Edgar Simons? You there, Mrs Simons?'
There was no reply. I stepped away from the door, and back down the porch steps. Maybe she had gone out visiting, although I couldn't think who she would want to visit at this time of night, in the middle of a furious gale. Still, there didn't appear to be any lights in the house, and although it was hard to tell in the darkness, the upstairs drapes didn't appear to be drawn. So she wasn't downstairs, watching television or anything; and it didn't look as if she were upstairs, asleep.