Chapter 52
The Cemetery
It was a strange thing, being a ghost amid graves.
He wondered about all the names on the headstones. What had their experiences been like? Had their lives sped and stuttered in front of them in a similar fashion? Were any of them here now?
He reached Wilbur.
He was sitting on a bench staring at a grave.
DOUGLAS JAMES BUDD
1939–1964
A beloved son and brother
NOW AT REST
Wilbur was looking a bit different now. Though in the kind of relatively smart shirt and trousers he wore at Bagdale’s, his hair was longer than it had been. He had a looser look. The shirt had two open buttons. He had a half-read book beside him, open face down on the green wooden bench.
The Society of the Spectacle because he was in his French Marxist philosophy phase.
He had just finished work. He was picking at a scab of paint on the bench that was annoying him.
The Ghost stood next to him. He knew this evening. He studied his young face to see the moment where he heard her voice.
‘Wilbur? Is that you?’
Wilbur turned and saw her. His face brightened. She too had changed. She now had short hair and a heavy fringe, some striking eyeliner, and she was wearing a black polo neck beneath a red Mary Quant-style dress with white banding at the hem and on the sleeves. Sophistication with a dash of bohemia.
But the main thing he noticed was how natural she was in her skin.
She had an ease that Wilbur lacked. An open, readable warmth.
He felt like he could look at her smile for ever and never get bored.
Simply to see her was like arriving home.
And he never had that feeling, least of all at 77 Glossop Road.
The last time they saw one another their chat had been cut short. It was in the bookshop. She had come in for a copy of Art and Illusion by Gombrich. She’d told him then that she had given up teacher-training and switched over to the art college on Psalter Lane.
Wilbur congratulated her. He told her that his Oxford dream had died but he was happy.
He doubted she believed him. He had been on the cusp of asking for her phone number but a cross-faced Mr Bagdale had walked over to him flapping a piece of paper and talking about customer orders. So the moment had passed.
In the graveyard there was no one – no one they could see – to interrupt them.
‘Hello, trouble. How are you?’
‘Maggie. Hello. It’s good to see you. I’m doing well, thanks.’
She squinted, as if looking for a truth beyond the words. ‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’
‘No. I’m just sitting here. With my book. But it’s a heavy read.’
‘Unlike the cemetery, which is so light.’
‘Ha. Exactly.’
‘I only asked because I talk to my mam’s grave. I look as mad as a hatter. And I thought you might do that to your brother. Talk to him.’
‘No. No, I don’t. That’s just you, Maggie.’
She came and sat next to him. The Ghost remembered the magic of that.
And how he had been grateful Maggie hadn’t been able to hear the sudden inopportune bounding of his heart.
He’d never known that before, the strange electric force of longing for someone who was right there.
He tried his hardest to seem entirely natural.
He smiled at her and she smiled back and they sat a little while in soft silence.
‘I often think about it,’ she said eventually. ‘That night, I mean. I’m sorry about all that happened.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. None of it. I’m sorry I tried to be your knight in shining armour and stirred it all up.’
She looked at him tenderly. Like an injured animal. ‘I think it was all stirred up.’
Wilbur said nothing and they sat in silence for a while.
‘My mam always said people go mad thinking they can change things. Sometimes things were meant to happen.’
He liked those words almost enough for them to sink in. ‘Thanks, Maggie.’
She smiled, sensing his desire to move the conversation away from Dougie. ‘Benches are our thing, aren’t they? Do you remember that day at Endcliffe Park when we were still kids and you came over and caught me drawing?’
‘It was a very good drawing, to be fair.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You remember it?’
‘I remember the drawing and the whole conversation. Not the words, exactly. But I remember it was nice to sit with you. And I had a couple of years which didn’t have many nice moments.
So I used to think of it. Just sitting on a bench in the park looking across the pond. Having a chat. Is that strange?’
‘Yes, Wilbur. It probably is. But strange is fine. So long as you aren’t a maniac.’
‘I don’t think I’m a maniac.’
‘To be fair,’ she said with a smirk, ‘that is precisely what a maniac would say.’
‘I suppose it is. Best stay away from me.’
‘I talk to my dead mam in a cemetery so I’m no one to judge.’
‘Yes. That’s definitely weird.’
She laughed. Wilbur had no idea if they were flirting. He was always bad at reading the signs.
‘What do you say? To your mam?’
Her face became serious for a moment. ‘All sorts, actually. I think everyone you meet you end up losing in some way, but if you love someone they don’t really leave.
Obviously they do. But not entirely. They live in your mind.
You keep them alive. You can lose everything but you can’t lose love. Sorry. I’m sounding mad.’
‘Not in the slightest,’ he said tenderly.
‘I was lucky I knew her well. And the way I see it, if you know someone well then you know how they would think about things. You can talk with them for ever because you know what they would say. You even know the face they would make. I sometimes even argue with her. She could be mardy as hell sometimes.’
‘What do you argue about?’
She laughed at him.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Just the way you said it. Like I’d just said something totally normal. Like you didn’t laugh.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I liked it. It means you’re like me. My biggest argument with my mam’s grave was when I quit teacher-training. But that was your fault.’
Wilbur felt his heart race at this. Either worry or excitement that he was a part of her life. ‘What? How was that my fault?’
‘Can you remember when I told you I wasn’t drawing any more?’
‘Um—’
‘You made this disappointed face. You didn’t mean to, but you did.
And I kept thinking of that while I was at college and it helped me realise I didn’t want to be a teacher.
I wanted to do art. And design. And create things.
Not just drawings. I make posters and things now.
I like it. To take something in your head and make it real. I’m doing what I really want.’
‘I’m pleased, Maggie. Really pleased.’
‘I think the trouble with life is we do things because we should. We act for outside eyes. I’m trying to live it the other way round. To do what feels right deep down even if it shouldn’t be.’
‘It sounds like a good philosophy.’
‘And in a way the art thing … It was talking to you that helped me clarify something. Can you remember? The concert?’
He nodded. Did the tiniest involuntary flinch. She realised what she had said. She looked over at Dougie’s headstone. ‘Oh God. Sorry. I know that’s when it happened. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s no bother, Maggie. I like what you said just now. About love. I just hate that when you lose someone when you’re young you’re going to have to spend more time missing them than with them.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I like that you were there that night.’
Her eyes shone. ‘Why’s that?’
‘It puts something else in the memory. Does that make sense? It helps divert my mind away from the darkness. What was that word you told me about? The art word. You know, the one that explains light and dark in old paintings.’
‘Chiaroscuro?’
‘Yes. That was it. Chiaroscuro.’ He inhaled deeply, steeling himself. ‘See, that was what you were that night. You were the only shining thing.’
The Ghost looked beyond them as an elderly woman placed some carnations beside a grave. He felt the speed of time. Maybe right here, his young self had a moment of feeling it, of not wanting things to slip away without appreciating them.