The Hungry Ghosts. Anne Berry
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the stability of the island. Under my father’s auspices order was restored. And for his exceptional contribution to his monarch,Queen Elizabeth the Second, and to the British government of the time, he was awarded the OBE, and made an Officer of the British Empire.’
I listened, rapt, as Nicola Safford’s clear, well-modulated voice, echoed off the stone walls of the thirteenth-century church, revealing yet more admirable facets to her father’s character. Finally softening her tone, lowering her gaze, and blinking back tears that very nearly convinced me, she spoke of the love she had for her father.
‘I was so grateful…grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate the veneration in which I held my father, grateful to be close to such a fine man, doing what little I could to ease his passage through those final years.’Her last words,delivered at a slower pace,the volume swelling, the pitch deeper, resonated like the closing chord of a great symphony. Nor do I think I imagined the slightly awkward moment that followed, in which the impulse to applaud had to be quelled by the mourners.
Nicola Safford’s address had certainly pushed Lucy’s perturbation to the back of my mind. But if I thought I had heard the end of Alice, I was mistaken. In fact it was just the beginning. Later, when the service had finished, and my charge and I joined the little queue, to pay our condolences to Myrtle Safford and the children, Lucy took up the same refrain. Where, she wanted to know, was Alice? She could see Harry, Jillian and Nicola, but surely Alice should be with them. It would have mattered to Ralph that his youngest daughter was here. Alice would have wanted to attend too. Even, more ominously, what had they done with her? There was no doubt about it, I had a Miss Marple kind of curiosity awakening inside me.
I soothed Lucy as best I could, easing her forwards in her chair and plumping up the cushions behind her, checking that she was comfortable. Then, as we neared Harry Safford, I promised her that I would make inquiries about Alice. I shook her nephew’s clammy hand, reminded him of my name, told him how sorry I was for his loss, how beautiful the flowers were, and how moved I had been by the service. This over, I had the distinct impression that Harry had already dismissed me from his mind. But once set in motion I am like an ocean liner: it takes considerable effort to stop me. I leaned in towards Harry, resolved not to move on until I had questioned him on behalf of my charge. I took a deep breath. Suddenly I felt nervous. How ridiculous, I told myself, as I sent out the first scout in search of Alice.
‘Your Aunt Lucy is feeling a bit anxious,’ I told him, pushing my rimless spectacles more firmly up my nose with a fingertip.‘She wants to know where your sister Alice is?’ Did I imagine it or was there a flicker of something in his cold, bluish-grey eyes. Recognition? Anger? Or perhaps even fear?
‘Alice?’ he queried with a dry little laugh.‘Really? Who is Alice?’ He placed crossed hands over his rotund belly, almost defensively.
‘Forgive me. I thought that Alice might be your sister,’ I explained. ‘Your Aunt Lucy seems convinced you have another sister. Alice?’
‘Well, my aunt is mistaken,’ Harry said curtly, looking at my charge with undisguised displeasure. He bent over the fragile form of Lucy and bellowed, ‘What rubbish are you talking now, Aunty, getting Ingrid all upset? Ralph would be ashamed of you making up such silly things.’ I detected, though subtle, a slightly lazy ‘r’ in his speech.
‘I’m not upset,’ I assured Harry Safford. ‘It’s just that your aunt seems so certain. She keeps saying that Alice should be here. She seems concerned that something may have happened to her.’ Harry arranged his features in an expression of extreme bafflement. But I was not to be so easily thwarted. I pointed my next words.‘To Alice I mean. That something may have prevented Alice from coming.’
‘What is all this nonsense, Aunt Lucy?’ Harry blustered, his face reddening, more with annoyance, I guessed, than embarrassment.
‘Why is Harry shouting at me?’ Lucy wanted to know, hunching further down in her chair. ‘I’m not deaf. But then he always was a bully.’
Now it was my turn to colour. The old, like the very young, do not screen their words, parcelling them up and sending them out in acceptable packages for this world to receive, as most of us do.
‘I’m sorry,’ I apologised on behalf of Lucy. ‘She’s a bit tired, and probably a touch overwrought with the emotion of the day.’
‘It’s quite understandable,’ Harry said shortly, eyes unblinking, giving me a perfunctory smile. He turned away from us then towards his mother and sisters, ruffling back his short ash-grey hair in an impatient gesture.
‘It’s just that Lucy appears to be quite fractious about…well…about Alice you see,’ I persisted.
Reluctantly Harry turned back. But this time he recruited his sisters to add weight to his own voice.
‘Aunt Lucy has been bothering Ingrid with foolish stories about someone called Alice,’ he said, with the air of a parent whose tolerance is being pushed to its absolute limits. Again, I thought I saw a furtive glance pass between Nicola and Jillian.
Jillian, a large lady, whose considerable height was diminished by her width, gave a slight shiver before speaking. She tossed back her startling, shoulder-length red hair, greying at the roots. ‘Poor Aunt Lucy,’ she said at last. ‘She gets very muddled.’ She reached out a hand tentatively and touched her aunt’s bony shoulder. It was hard for me to read the expression in her flint-grey eyes, with her large, square-framed glasses reflecting back the bright sunshine at me. She did not, I observed, have her sister’s dress sense. The variation in shade, however slight, from the black tailored trousers, to the dark navy jacket, was disconcerting. Added to this, the jacket appeared rather snug and the trousers at least one size too large.
‘That’s right,’ Nicola chimed in, her tone liberally soaked in pity, ‘poor Aunt Lucy hardly knows what day it is, bless her.’ She shot me a swift appraising look, critically taking in my own cheap black suit, practical flat shoes, and hurried attempt to pin up my straight salt and pepper bob.
She was a little shorter than her sister, and slimmer in build. From a distance her outfit had looked smart, but close up it was stunning. The knee-length black dress with matching jacket, delicate gold flowers stitched into the fabric, had the unmistakable sheen of heavy silk.The outfit was finished off with inky stilettos, a designer’s golden tag glinting at their heel backs. Her hairstyle was eye-catching too. The overall shade was altogether more natural than her sister’s, a deep mocha-brown, aflame with red and gold highlights. It was cut into irregular bangs that suited the fine bone structure of her face. But bizarrely her hands, I noticed, were those of a nineteenth-century scullery maid, rubbed red and raw. Now she fixed me with her own inscrutable eyes, just the colour of the slab of liver I had purchased for Lucy from the butcher’s that week.
‘You really shouldn’t be concerning yourself with Aunt Lucy’s ramblings, Ingrid. Surely you’re experienced in caring for the elderly? You should know what to expect.’ And I could have sworn there was a warning edge to a voice that had an unsettling, forced brightness in it.
‘Of course,’ I said, understanding that the conversation had been brought to a close.
I pushed Lucy onwards, briefly shaking Myrtle Safford’s hand. The matriarch of this family was a tall woman with a proud but guarded face, gimlet eyes, glittering jewels, and outdated clothes which nevertheless screamed quality. However, I barely had time to express my sympathy, before her children whisked her away to speak to a less troublesome mourner. My thoughts in turmoil now, I steered my charge to a quiet spot in the churchyard, beneath the shade of an oak tree encircled with a wooden seat. I tucked a cheerful tartan rug I had brought with me about Lucy’s knees, and told her gently that she must be mistaken about Alice. Was she perhaps thinking of someone else, from her husband’s side of the family? Another niece or perhaps the child of a friend? When she said nothing, I crouched before her, my hands resting on the arms of her wheelchair, levelling my gaze with hers. For a moment her sharp blue eyes had a promising intensity about them. She opened her mouth and took a shaky but deliberate breath.
‘You see, Ingrid, Alice is…is…’