Chapter 18
The Ghost
‘Hello? Wilbur? It’s me … you.’ He waved at his baby self. Then moved a little. The baby’s eyes followed him, there was no doubt about it. ‘I’m the ghost of you. Yes. You are me and I am … the Ghost.’
He could no longer think of himself as Wilbur, but as a ghost of who he had been.
‘I was once you … My life is over now. And what happens at the end of life is you get to travel through your life.’
The Ghost smiled broadly. Then the baby began to cry.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Ghost soothed. ‘I’m so sorry.’
His mother went to the kitchen and tipped out her purse.
And then, with great worry and care and trembling hands, she meticulously put every single coin, even every halfpenny and farthing, into separate piles to be counted.
The Ghost stood beside her and pointlessly told her that one day he was going to buy her a house.
‘Oh, George,’ she said, softly, as the tenderness got the better of her. ‘I wish you were here. I wish you hadn’t left me alone with another mouth to feed.’
She stood there a while, lost to emotion, and then brought her attention back to Dougie.
‘Now, listen. I’ll be back later. I will be back at nine when I finish at the Queen’s Head. You look after Wilbur.’
‘But what if he’s hungry?’
‘He won’t be hungry.’
‘What if I’m hungry?’
‘Dougie … you had your dinner.’
‘Mashed potatoes! Jimmy Gower gets steak and kidney pie.’
Edith sighed. ‘Good for Jimmy Gower …’
Two minutes after Edith left the house, the Ghost was watching his brother trying to cope with a crying baby.
‘Wait there, Wilbur,’ he told the baby tenderly. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
And then he thundered up the narrow staircase. The Ghost looked behind. Saw Dougie’s shoes in the kitchen, the sole hanging off one and the leather dusty and cracked.
Dougie stepped down the stairs seconds later, delicately this time, with a toy train, precariously holding the front and three carriages, letting the two in the middle dangle a little in the air.
‘Do you know what this is?’
The Ghost watched the obliviousness of his baby self.
‘This is the Duke of Gloucester! The greatest train there ever was! A three-cylinder express passenger engine! The first in all the world!’
The baby gave a little cry and clenched his tiny hands, his face red. It was probably a bit of colic, but it passed.
‘No!’ said Dougie. ‘It’s all right, I promise you.’
All his life Wilbur had thought the train was something his mother had saved for, because, of course, he’d never had a recollection of this day or of what his brother proceeded to confess.
‘I got it from Redgates! It’s a giant toy shop.
I saw it in’t window ’cause it’s on the way to school.
And I know stealing is wrong but it’s also wrong that a little bairn didn’t get a toy like all the other bairns did just ’cause Adolf shot their dad out the clouds.
I told Mam that a kid at school was moving house and clearing out his toys and I dunno if she believed us but she let me keep it. ’
The Ghost stared down at his young six-month-old face looking up with wide-eyed gurgling love at Dougie and the train.
‘You’re smiling!’ Dougie said, with a tenderness that surprised the Ghost. ‘Wilbur, that’s a smile on yer face!
The moment ended with a hard knocking against the door and Dougie placing the train on the floor and the baby back in the cot.
‘Back in a minute, Wilbur! I’ll see who it is!’
And who it was happened to be the man Dougie hated more than any other in the world.