Abbie said to Arthur: ‘I don’t think she believed me.’
Arthur said to Abbie: ‘It’s just as well. She has to find out sooner or later. She has to know. Can we forget Alexandra and can you take some notice of me?’
Abbie said to Arthur: ‘Why does she have to know? What are friends for? Not to speak the truth, that’s for sure.’
Arthur covered her mouth with his hand. They were rolling about on the heavy old bed in marital bliss. The sheets were white, starched and ironed. Abbie and Arthur lived in Elder House, an old rectory next to a disused church a couple of miles from The Cottage. The church bell still hung in its tower and on stormy nights, depending on the way of the wind, it would suddenly peal out. Then students from many lands would run out into the corridors of Elder House in terror of ghosts and spirits. Arthur and Abbie would calm them. In the morning over the breakfast table Abbie would read them the scene in Jane Eyre where Miss Ingram and her friends, roused by the mad wife’s shrieks, run out into the corridors and encounter Jane, flitting about in her white nightie. The students would eat their traditional English breakfast – sausage, bacon, egg, mushrooms – while they listened. Impressed by their own reactions, they would sign up for yet another course.
These were experiences to last them all their lives. Arthur and Abbie would just have a little fruit, a little yoghurt, and some black coffee. They could have had the bell removed easily enough, or de-gonged as a dog is de-barked, but preferred not to.
Abbie and Arthur ran a residential school for would-be English teachers from foreign lands. Bored with teaching, they went on teaching. They had no choice. They could not sell Elder House – no one wanted it – so they made the best of what they had. They were good at that: a stoical couple.
Presently they slept. Downstairs the help still laboured, laying-up for breakfast, clearing away the students’ late-night coffee and biscuits. She was lucky to have the job. The countryside is pretty, Arthur would say, because there are so few people in it, and the reason there are so few people is because there are so few jobs.
Abbie went into a cave and saw Ned behind a pane of glass, smiling at her. He sat on a rock like a merman. His legs had fused into a tail. Waves lapped up against the glass. She waved. He waved back. Abbie moved on, as if she were in an aquarium and there was something more interesting to see further on. It was a casual encounter, like a one-night stand.
Abbie woke Arthur and told him what she had seen.
‘Ned won’t like having a tail,’ said Arthur. ‘No chance of a leg-over now.’ He went back to sleep.
‘It wasn’t a dream,’ said Abbie. ‘It was a vision. I woke up before I had it.’
She woke Arthur again.
‘All that wailing and screaming on Saturday night, all that commotion,’ she complained. ‘Ned being dead was the least part of it. Even calling the ambulance was just to keep Lucy quiet. The reason I went to see the body was to convince myself he was dead.’
‘Did it?’
‘No,’ said Abbie. ‘Not at the time. I believe it now I’ve seen him in the aquarium. He’s in a different place from ours.’
She began to cry. Arthur woke up enough to comfort her.
‘You’re something,’ he said. ‘Try and either wake up or go to sleep.’ She woke up.
‘And what did Vilna mean by saying Ned was so good at it? What does Vilna know?’ demanded Abbie. ‘She’s a monster. She’s competing for the status of most-bereaved. She’s the kind who moves in after a death and squabbles over who’s the closest, who’s suffering most. It’s disgusting. She’s ghoulish.’
‘If she’s a monster and a ghoul,’ said Arthur, ‘why have her as a friend?’
‘Because there are so few people round here to talk to,’ complained Abbie, and fell asleep. He, of course, could not.