The Word Ghost Read online

  Christine Paice is a poet and writer. She has published two collections of poetry: Mad Oaks and Staring at the Aral Sea. Her children’s book, The Great Rock Whale, was published by Hachette Australia in 2009. Christine’s work has been published four times in the Black Inc. Best Australian Poems series and she won the prestigious Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize in 2009 with The Ministry of Going In. In 2010 Christine became the University of Wollongong’s inaugural Janet Cosh Poet, resulting in the work Collecting the Collector. Christine facilitates creative writing and poetry workshops, and also works as a creative writing mentor. She lives with her family in Willow Vale, New South Wales.

  the

  WORD

  GHOST

  CHRISTINE PAICE

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Christine Paice 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 826 3

  eISBN 978 1 74343 506 9

  Bible quotes are reproduced from The Holy Bible, New International Version ®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Excerpt from ‘East Coker’ from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot. Copyright 1940 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © renewed 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, all rights reserved, and Faber and Faber Ltd, UK

  Internal design by Squirt Creative

  Typeset by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For Dad, Ali, Angie and Mary Paice

  and Paul and Dorothy Whitcombe

  Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

  The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

  Of dead and living . . .

  T.S. Eliot, from ‘East Coker’, Four Quartets

  Contents

  PART ONE

  MIDDLE ROOM, BRIGHTLEY VICARAGE, 24 JULY 1827

  GIRL ON A BICYCLE

  LARGER IN MY MIND

  CLOSER TO MILTON CLOSE

  CLOSER AND CLOSER

  STUDYING DAVE

  CROSSING THE LINE

  UP TO GOD KNOWS WHAT

  NO STARS

  SOMEWHERE IN A FIELD, BRIGHTLEY, JULY 1973

  THE BACKWARD-FACING HOUSE

  WOO HOO

  ON THE PATH TO BRIGHTLEY, 1973

  STEAK AT LAST

  BRIGHTLEY VICARAGE, AUGUST 1973

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  A PUB AND A HOUSE AND A HOUSE AND A PUB

  LITTER RAT TURE

  THE SEPTEMBER RESCUE PLAN

  NOT QUITE AS I REMEMBERED

  UNDER THE HEDGE

  CASE OF THE RISING MIST

  MIDDLE ROOM

  LOVELY EGGS

  THE SWINGING LEG

  CHURCHYARD, BRIGHTLEY

  EARLY NIGHT

  WHILE SHE SLEEPS

  PITCH-BLACK, FREEZING COLD, STILL ONLY AUTUMN

  CRISPS ON MY FINGERS

  MIDNIGHT, CHURCHYARD, BRIGHTLEY

  GOODBYE, MAGGIE

  DRIVEWAY, BRIGHTLEY VICARAGE

  MARMALADE AND DUST

  NOT THE KIND OF MAN TO MEET YOUR MOTHER

  ATOMS AND STONES

  KITCHEN, BRIGHTLEY

  GREAT DANES AND DISCONNECTIONS

  THE NOVEMBER RESCUE PLAN

  DECEMBER AND DONKEYS

  THE INVITATION

  WINDOW, MIDDLE ROOM

  WARMING UP

  PART TWO

  LIKE THE NIGHT SHE COMES

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  CHRISTMAS

  A TRAY IN BOTH HANDS

  MEAT AND TWO VEG

  WASTREL

  TEA, EGGS, CAKE, PAMPHLETS

  OUT WALKING WITH ALGERNON

  EARLY EARLY SPRING 1974

  KITCHEN

  SHE CHUCKED HIM

  WARDROBE, BRIGHTLEY

  MIDDLE ROOM, MIDNIGHT

  SKETCHING AFTERNOONS

  MOSS, SCARF, VITAMINS

  GRAVES, GHOSTS AND FLORA

  BRIGHTLEY, SPRING 1974

  HIM

  BRIGHTLEY LIGHTS

  BEHOLD ALL WONDROUS THINGS

  MIDDLE ROOM, BRIGHTLEY

  THE HARD CHAIR

  THE MADNESS OF MAY

  NOT SAFE IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY

  DOG, GHOST, BOYFRIEND

  THE GREAT ROMANTIC FOOL

  DREAMING AND WRITING

  BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON

  HERE I GO AGAIN

  CLOSING TIME

  LAST WALK

  VOID

  VANDALS AND THIEVES

  TEA WITH EVERYTHING

  SHADOWS

  CLEANING UP

  ARRIVALS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MIDDLE ROOM, BRIGHTLEY VICARAGE,

  24 JULY 1827

  Let me see him, Mama, let me see him.

  Let me see him.

  Please. Please. Mama? Papa? Papa?

  Augusta, allow the doctor to do his work.

  Step away from the bed, Augusta.

  She did not step back.

  That was the last I felt.

  The weight of her body.

  Begging me to live.

  Look, Mama, look! He is calm. He is still.

  The voice of my sister, every word I could still hear.

  But I could not move.

  Algernon? Algernon?

  My soul flew from the place where they had laid me.

  For years my soul and I watched

  Patterns of leaves falling

  Shadows of night

  Blue grey dawns.

  Then a voice. Through the void.

  How long has it been, my dear one?

  She was counting.

  One hundred and forty-six years precisely.

  Then another voice. Through the darkness.

  Take me with you.

  Do not. Leave me here.

  I shook my head.

  She was a scream in the night.

  A jump in the dark.

  A wild fling of her arms.

  She was vigorous. Vigorous.

  Do not leave me here, she said.

  Still, I could not leave her.

  I took her hand.

  Together we left the darkness.

  Girl on a Bicycle

  You never do know what’s coming your way in the days before it comes. It was April 1973, England. I was nearly sixteen years old. My trousers were flared. I rejected politics, biscuits and bombs. I accepted Walnut Whips, David Bowie, Deep Purple and Dave. It was spring and these were the days of Dave. All my cells were bursting under my skin and I knew I was alive because I was in love with Dave. I believed that Dave was coming my way because I really, really loved him and he was alive and well and sitting at the bus stop at the top of my road.

  My grandmother’s ghost watched over us in Wye. Ghost, spir
it, call it what you like, the part of her that stayed alive in us. She was the only dead person I knew then. She had been dead for five long years and her ashes were buried in the churchyard opposite our house. Dark red roses grew from them and climbed the church walls in summer. Everyone else in Wye was still living. Especially Dave. Dave Dave Dave Dave Dave. I hadn’t met him yet, but I considered that a minor detail. I knew I loved him and I carried that certainty with me to school every day, along with my geography atlas and tennis racquet.

  I liked to call myself Abraham, but I believed I lived in a modern and forward way. Old Testament Abraham lived for a long time, and I wondered whether the name Abraham might give me the virtues of a long life and a son called Isaac. I could become the founder of my own great nation but I was not overly concerned with how I was going to do this in the spring of 1973. Not when I could see Dave every day waiting for the bus, big flop of ginger hair down to his shoulders, long legs halfway across the pavement, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Each morning he watched me cycle past the bus stop on my way to school, his head to one side, hands in his pockets. He looked as if there might be something he wanted to say, but was considering his words carefully before he spoke. I was always heading out of Wye. He was always going in the opposite direction.

  All right then. My whole name was Rebecca Abraham Budde. My eldest sister, Maggie, called me Abes, but to everyone else I was Rebecca, middle daughter of the Reverend Robert John Budde and his wife, my mother, Mrs Ruth Budde. I had two sisters, one older, one younger, no parrots, dogs or cats and one old car, the redoubtable Hillman Minx, column gears, bench seats, grey and white in colour and nothing else remarkable about it except a tank-like solidity and its age. The Hillman Minx was made in the same year as me, and like our car, I considered myself young but had yet to prove I was redoubtable.

  Maggie, my older sister, was named after the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, but she hated being called Margaret.

  ‘Mum, I will never ever answer you if you call me that. Call me Suzanne. Why can’t I be Suzanne?’

  ‘Because, Maggie, I am not a fan of Leonard Cohen and never will be. The man sounds morbidly depressed. Your father and I like your names and will be using them when we address you.’

  ‘Mum, Leonard Cohen is a genius and I love the name Suzanne.’

  ‘He hadn’t written the song when you were born.’

  ‘I will not answer to Margaret.’

  ‘I think we understand that now you’ve told us for the fiftieth time.’

  So Emily and I called her Maggie, as she was taller and stronger than us. Maggie was five foot eleven inches, tall and thin like my father, with a shock of brown wavy hair and bright blue eyes. Aloof and independent, she reminded me of a Siamese cat. Striking to look at but liable to walk away while you were calling her in and saying come on puss come on lovely come and have your tea. Mum said she thought Maggie would do very well if she had her own Mediterranean principality to rule over. Maggie had no objections to calling me Abes.

  ‘She likes the name, it suits her, what’s wrong with it?’

  No matter what we all liked to be called, the truth was my sisters and I called each other all kinds of names all the time—idiot, fat bum, big nose—depending on our moods and current irritations with each other. Emily, at eleven years of age, was the youngest person I knew. She called me Rebecca when she was happy and when she was unhappy she didn’t call me anything at all. It was an arrangement that worked well for us both.

  My father sometimes called me Abraham. He had to be in the right type of mood for that. Life had to have a certain good-humoured swing to it for him to be able to stride round the house asking my mother, ‘Where is Abraham?’ Middle daughter, possibly fruitful, but not yet keeper of any covenant with anyone, let alone God.

  Emily Anne Budde was my youngest sister. Middle name chosen in honour of the Queen’s daughter, first name chosen on pure whimsy. My mother said she simply liked the name and there was nothing wrong with that. My mother was an avid reader and spent a long time in eighteenth-century England, a place I was unfamiliar with.

  I preferred the modern up-to-the-minute nineteenth century and the company of Jane Eyre in the gloomy rooms of Thornfield Hall, which we were studying at school. Come on, Jane, let’s see what Rochester’s up to. And I drag old Jane with me over the wild springing heather, being careful not to touch that awful old shawl she insists on wrapping round her shoulders. No wonder you haven’t got any friends, Jane. It’s the shawl. No one likes the shawl.

  Tall springy athletic Susan Greengage was my best friend at school. She was a mop of blonde tightly curled hair on top of a pair of long legs. She always carried a tennis racquet or a ball and was in the same class as me. Good old Sue was very bright indeed, but she hated English literature and only looked as if she was breathing when we went outside for sport.

  ‘Rebecca? Rebecca?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Catch this.’

  ‘No.’

  Sue sat down on the netball courts with me at break time. ‘Why doesn’t Jane Eyre ride places?’

  ‘Mr Rochester has the horse.’

  ‘No, I meant why doesn’t Jane Eyre ride a bicycle?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Jane Eyre doesn’t ride a bicycle because they weren’t invented then, were they?’

  Sue bounced the ball nearer and nearer and nearer my face. The bell rang and in we trooped for another bout of education with our teacher’s large bosoms and rippling upper arms gleaming with muscle. Our physical education teacher was very tall, walked like a man and had very short hair. Sue loved her, but then Sue could run like an antelope down the wing and keep control of the ball, unlike me.

  ‘Budde, you’re in goal today, not wing defence, you’re useless on the wing, useless. Budde, are you wearing the correct sports uniform? I’m cracking down this term on correct uniform.

  Come on, Budde, stop dawdling.’

  My Latin teacher, we called him Claudius, taught us to understand where words came from. Roots of verbs and nouns tumbled through my head. I thrived in my Latin class, and drooled over Herr Schmidt, our German language teacher. He was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and everyone in the fifth form wanted to study German. It was 1973, for God’s sake, none of us girls cared about the war. We’d won it, hadn’t we?

  My mother wanted to entice me into another family full of girls.

  ‘Why don’t you at least try Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca? I’m sure you’ll like it. Poor Mrs Bennet, I feel sorry for her with five daughters.’

  ‘Mum, one Jane at a time. Jane Eyre needs me. She has no friends.’

  ‘Oh well, you’ll read it when you’re ready, I suppose. You could try Dickens if you get tired of unrequited love.’

  ‘Dickens can wait. We’re doing Great Expectations next year.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re the best expectations to have.’

  ‘Mum, I’m staying at Thornfield Hall. She gets him in the end.’

  Larger in My Mind

  The minor detail of never having met Dave was growing larger in my mind. I loved Dave and accepted Dave, but would he love me? I wasn’t sure. I knew nothing about him and only a few things about myself. I knew I hated mustard and ham. I rejected Lucifer and apartheid. Although I rejected politics in general, and didn’t know much about South Africa, I knew apartheid was wrong. I rejected Rod Stewart, Leonard Cohen and chocolate. Maggie loved all three. I rejected Mr Rochester for humiliating Jane. I rejected acne and rain.

  Unlike Emily, my younger sister, I accepted baked beans on toast, fish fingers and return bus fares. I accepted anything written by the Brontë sisters apart from Anne’s poems that we read in class, and which seemed sad and full of God and flowers and death but no men.

  I accepted the Thames, narrow paths along the banks, boats, swans and Wye on Thames, the small town by the river. We had been in Wye for ten years and we accepted Wye an
d Wye accepted us. We lived in the first house you came to down the main road from the rest of England, and it was the largest house in the village. Four bedrooms, two toilets and a massive great garden that stretched at least twenty yards to the fence of our nearest neighbour. It didn’t matter how many times you told them, we don’t own the house, it belongs to the Church of England, we just live in it, most Wyovians believed we had millions of pounds stuffed in our socks and coat pockets.

  From our front gate you could see the grey majestic outline of Bowater Castle, about three miles down the road. Leave Bowater Station on the ten o’clock train and you’d be arriving at Paddington Station thirty minutes later, after a quick change at Hampden Village on to the main London line. Golden fields of wheat and grass grew out the front of our house in the summer and turned to brown fields of mud in autumn and winter. Poplar trees lined the roads in and out of town. If you walked out through our front gate, crossed the main road to Bowater and walked for twenty minutes along the hard brown path winding in front of you, you’d reach the River Thames flowing, mostly sluggishly, along.

  Every weekday morning at ten past eight I cycled past Dave with my school uniform on and my satchel fastened to the metal tray at the back of my bike with two octopus grips that I obsessively checked and rechecked before I left the garage at 8.05 am. I was precise with my timing. Every day I turned right at the top of my road towards Hampden High, my school, and there was Dave, heading left to Bowater High, watching me and my thin legs pedalling along. I wasn’t sure if the expression on his face meant he was smiling at me or not so I didn’t smile. I just checked that he was there . . . yep, there he was.