Ghosts and Other Lovers Read online

  I have heard of people dreaming epic novels overnight, and supposedly in the second before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes: time doesn’t work the same way subjectively as objectively, everybody knows that. I’m surprised Oliver Sacks hasn’t written about this phenomenon. God, what if it’s the first sign of a tumor or brain lesion or something? I can’t see going to a doctor about it, and describing my “symptoms.” This symptom’s a gift; I don’t want to lose it!

  Five

  Going there — should that be ‘going there’? — is dependent on a mental state which I can’t simply produce at will. I have to be writing, and immersed, utterly concentrated on what I’m writing — which can be anything, this journal, or a story — yet there must also be something in me which holds unhappily apart, frustrated by limits, angry, dissatisfied, waiting for the bell. It doesn’t happen when I wait for it or try to will it, and it hasn’t happened these past two weeks when I’ve been using David’s laptop to type the final draft of “Irrevocable Decisions.” I wonder if it’s because I’m typing — “keying in” I guess it’s called now — rather than writing. It doesn’t feel natural to me; I hate reading words on a screen. When I have a pen or pencil in my hand and the smoothness of paper racing away beneath, everything is different, my writing room draws closer.

  Six

  I began a new novel last night and straightaway — I’d only written a page — I heard the clock strike.

  My first reaction was not pleasure but irritation and some dismay. Oh, no, and just as I was getting started! I was tempted to ignore it. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t really an interruption — it meant I would have even more time to write. All I had to do was leave one desk and notebook and take up at another. Then I could write for many hours, not just one.

  So I went and wrote until my hand ached, and then I stopped and made myself a cup of tea. I couldn’t tell which cup I’d used before — both were clean, although there was nowhere to wash up — and the biscuit tin looked as full as the first time I’d opened it.

  I prowled my domain. There was no hurry. I could stay as long as I liked. Not since I became a mother had I known the luxury of the time I had now: time to waste, to lazily work up to writing, to get in the mood, or to slowly wind down. Nobody was going to yell at me to come and look, come and help; there was no ironing to do here, no papers to grade, no cooking or washing up. I was tired, yet the hour when I’d have to get up and go to work was drawing no closer. I could stay as long as I liked and still have eight hours in my bed.

  After a good browse among the books I wandered over to have a closer look at the pictures hanging on the opposite wall. There were two portraits: they looked like reproductions of oil paintings, but I didn’t recognize them. There were few clues to era, but I guessed early twentieth century. One showed a woman, nude, seated, presented in side view but half turned away as if to hide her nakedness. She turned back to stare out of the picture with a bold, somehow malicious stare which made me uneasy. The other portrait was of a man in an old-fashioned military uniform, sitting on a yellow chair. The chair made me think of Van Gogh, but the painting was not in his style. At first I thought I preferred this picture, but after a moment I began to suspect there was something wrong with it, or with the subject. He wasn’t a man, after all, but a woman in disguise: a deeply unhappy woman, unwillingly disguised.

  I turned away to the other paintings, which were watercolor landscapes, pleasant, uncomplicated studies of the sea and sky, with no people in them. They made me wonder about what was outside the room, so I went over and opened the drapes and, for the first time, I saw.

  It was day — early afternoon, to judge from the autumnal light, and the city that should have been there had completely vanished. Stretching away before me was open countryside: rolling downs dotted here and there with copses of trees. In the distance, shining like a silver coin, I could see a lake. I saw no buildings, no roads, nothing man-made, not even the electricity pylons and telephone poles which have penetrated everywhere in the world I know. Not only the city but civilization itself seemed to have withdrawn, leaving me utterly alone. I looked down, and the house I owned with David had also vanished. I could see no doors or windows below mine. It appeared that I was in a tower built of stone.

  I was utterly lost. Where was my family, my home, my world? Panic gripped me, and I ran for the door. The sight of my own familiar stairs when the door opened wasn’t enough for me, though — I had to race downstairs and then outside into our tiny back garden where I could see the sodium orange glow of civilization in the night sky, and smell the chilly, polluted air of life as we know it today.

  “What’s the matter?” asked David, hovering in the kitchen, his hair in little tufts like eyebrows raised in astonishment. I was so pleased to see him. Love for him surged through me, warming me and making me tearful.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Oh, I just suddenly thought how lucky I am to have you!”

  He put his arms around me, puzzled but pleased, and I began to kiss him with enthusiasm, so happy and relieved to be safely home again. One thing led to another, and then to bed.

  Seven

  It doesn’t frighten me now, the view from that window. It’s like everything else there — mine, even though I wouldn’t consciously have chosen it. But it stands to reason that if I could have a room of my own, furnished exactly to my taste, expense no object, I wouldn’t want a view of the backs of houses to go with it. The country outside reminds me a bit of the South Downs, where David and I went for our dirty weekends long ago, and a little bit of that place in Scotland where we went for our first family holiday, just after Phoebe was born — only it’s much wilder, obviously much more remote, than anywhere I’ve ever been. No rising smoke, no flocks of sheep, no footpaths, no signs of any other human habitation. There’s only me in my tower.

  Spring arrived between one visit and the next. I opened the window and breathed in the pure, fresh country air. I spent about ten minutes just watching the birds and some rabbits hopping about. I’m not so driven now; I know that when I’m there I have plenty of time to think, read, daydream — I don’t have to scribble furiously the whole time. I can plan what I’m going to write, and things I won’t. I can even daydream about things that are nothing to do with writing, have thoughts just to please myself. The time I have inside is all my own, I don’t have to juggle conflicting demands and make sacrifices and feel guilty stealing one little hour to myself. The time I spend in there doesn’t take away from the children, or my job, or David, or even the housework. I could spend the whole day writing in my room and emerge less than an hour after going upstairs, enough of the evening left to do some ironing and talk to David about music lessons for the girls.

  I wonder … this trick I’ve stumbled on: could anyone do it? Do we all have this capacity, a secret room hidden away inside us, just waiting to be unlocked? Writing is the key for me, but could it be something else for someone else? Wishing is part of it, I’m sure, but also hard work and a particular kind of concentration.

  Eight

  And pride goeth before a fall. Ouch.

  I haven’t been back into my room for three weeks: not for lack of wishing, not for lack of trying.

  It was hard, sometimes, settling down to write out here when I wanted to be writing in there, but when I did (because I knew I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t) I kept breaking my concentration because I thought (hoped) I’d heard the clock strike. Well, that was the first week.

  Finally I managed to stop hoping, to stop expecting anything and just write. I got quite a bit done — I’m well into the novel now and can see my way ahead.

  This has made me rethink my theory.

  Maybe it’s nothing to do with me. Maybe that room actually exists in some other universe, and our house just happens to be built on a border-line, and I just happened to be going down the stairs on a few of the occasions when the door between two worlds manifested itself, and it could
just as easily have been David, or a visitor looking for the loo, who went through …

  Or maybe it was a gift from God, or a passing good fairy, who kindly granted my wish until I got so unbearably smug about “my” room, at which point He, She, or It took it back.

  Oh, please, if you’re out there — whoever You are — please please please give me another chance.

  Nine

  Halfway through the novel and I’ve hit an intractable hump. Where do I go from here? Maybe I should have stuck with the first novel, which at least had a proper sort of plot. I should have outlined first, the way they tell you in books. I was seduced by the ease of those two short stories into thinking it would just kind of work itself out as I went along.

  Are the characters the problem? Maybe she’s too much like me and he’s too much unlike anybody I’ve ever met. Or it’s the situation. Meant to be difficult, it’s become impossible. There’s no obvious solution, maybe no unobvious one, either, no way out.

  But there must be a way out, if there was a way in. Just not an obvious one. Something unexpected happens, something that changes the way she looks at her life. A door suddenly opens. A clock strikes when there is no clock —

  Thank you.

  Ten

  Not just weeks, as for me outside, but months passed in there, the turning of the seasons. It was spring before, but when I went in two nights ago I found a dark, winter landscape outside the window. It was early morning. As I sat at my table and struggled to write myself back into my stalled novel the blackness outside began to lighten. The sun came up. There was snow everywhere; looking down I saw what had to be deer tracks in the snow. And as I went on gazing, my eyes roaming, dazzled, across the white expanse, feeling awed by its immense purity, I glimpsed a splash of red. It moved. As I continued to stare I made out a solitary human figure, well bundled against the weather (the red was a scarf), trudging through the snow.

  My heart raced and I felt quite giddy. I wasn’t alone! As I watched, it became clear that the figure was coming toward me — hardly surprising, since mine was the only building anywhere in sight. I debated what to do, considering the wisdom of caution — in other words, should I escape back to my own world before I was seen — but was won over by curiosity and the inability to believe that I could be in any real danger in what was my own dream. I opened the window and, when he was close enough to hear, called out a greeting.

  He replied, but I couldn’t understand a word he said. It was clear that he knew no more of English than I knew of his strange language. He mimed climbing up: would I let him in? He looked so cold, poor thing, and I was cold enough shivering by the open window, so I nodded and beckoned him to come up.

  He climbed up the rough stone very nimbly while I thought disjointedly about Rapunzel and other princesses in towers without doors. I felt very strange when he came in. I felt shy. The whole atmosphere of the room was different with someone else in it. I think he felt shy of me, too. He avoided my eye but kept up a stream of incomprehensible talk while he divested himself of backpack and heavier outer garments. He could have been talking about the weather, explaining he was a king’s son, or telling me filthy stories for all I knew. I think he said his name was Jack, or Zak, or Jacques, but that’s only if he understood what I was asking him.

  Jack — I might as well call him that — was a nice-looking, if rather grubby and stubbled, individual, a few years older than me and a bit shorter. He had shortish, fairish, gray hair and what there was of his beard was nearly white. Blue eyes, long nose, decided chin — quite a pleasant, humorous, intelligent face. He reminded me more than a little of Josh, that long-vanished Canadian, which maybe helps explains why I — but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked, and mimed drinking. His face brightened and he nodded, and dug into his rucksack and brought out food: russet apples, a small, round loaf of brown bread, a chunk of hard yellow cheese, nutty and buttery tasting. Eating together we relaxed. I liked his company (the way he looked at me; the warmth of his eyes; that physical and psychic whiff of Josh, making me feel much younger than I am) and could tell he liked mine, although our attempts to communicate anything more profound or abstract than “this cheese is delicious” were doomed to failure. I have no ear for languages: I’ll never forget that time I asked a man in a bar in Scotland if he spoke English, under the misapprehension that the language he’d been regaling me with for the past ten minutes was either Gaelic or Norwegian! I got through French at school only because there was so much less emphasis on conversation than on reading and writing. Looking at words, reading them, I can make some sort of sense. The things I hear, though, slip away. I’m struggling now to recall the words Jack told me for “apple,” “bread,” and “book.”

  After eating, the warmth of the room made him drowsy; he began to yawn and it was obvious he was having a struggle to keep his eyes open. I gestured him toward the chaise longue, mimed sleep, then pointed to the door and made him understand I would leave him to it. This won from him a burst of speech, but as I hadn’t a clue as to whether he was asking me about toilet facilities or simply thanking me, I could only shrug, smile, and wave bye-bye.

  The door was there again last night. As soon as I came in Jack rushed to meet me, wide-eyed and talking a blue streak, desperately trying to explain something to me. All I could make out was that he’d nearly given up hope of ever seeing me again and had been about to leave.

  I’d been gone only a day in my world, but that was so much longer in his. He drew me to the window and showed me that the snow was melting. He pointed to the remains of a deer carcass and I understood he’d been living off it — and my tea, made with melted snow — after exhausting the supplies in his rucksack. He’d waited as long as he could.

  But why? I didn’t understand why he had waited for me until, our eyes meeting, he reached out to touch my face.

  He loved me.

  We made love.

  Just writing those words, I feel myself swept away again. I can’t justify it. I’m happily married (and how suspicious I’ve always been of people who use that defensive phrase!) and he was a stranger.

  My stranger. My fantasy. I guess that’s the only explanation there is. Anything is possible, and everything permissible, in a dream, and the life I lead in that room is a dream.

  We spent a whole long day making love. In some ways it was the most natural thing to do — what is there, when you can’t communicate in words? There are gestures, there is touch; looks and smiles, caresses, the language of the body.

  He wanted me to go out the window and away with him. It was obvious my door did not exist for him, which is just as well, since I could hardly have taken him back here, into my real life! I know he won’t be there when I return, which is

  Eleven

  I must not go back.

  So much for my smug, self-serving belief that I could do what I wanted in my own private world without affecting anyone else.

  David came upstairs last night, looking a little green around the gills, wanting to talk. Instant guilt attack. If I hadn’t still been writing it, I would have imagined he’d just read in my journal about Jack.

  So I went down with him and we talked. It was a talk about feelings, a vague but impassioned something’s wrong/what’s wrong discussion of a kind unusual in our relationship. We had one just before we got married, I remember, and a couple when I was pregnant and paranoid, but in general we’ve both had a practical, if uninquiring, attitude toward our relationship, as to life in general; a belief in not stirring up trouble. We don’t argue very often but when we do it tends to be about something specific, not the “you don’t talk to me/I feel we’re drifting apart/what’s happening to us” blather of last night.

  And the pig of it was, I couldn’t shrug off his vague fears any more than I could make them concrete with the truth.

  “There isn’t someone else, is there, Chris? You’re not seeing someone else?”

  His na
me is Jack, and he’s not real — I made him up. “When would I have time? No, there isn’t anyone else.”

  “I didn’t think so. But if it isn’t someone, it’s something.”

  I know he found it painfully difficult to express. He’s always been supportive of my writing — for all the good it’s ever done him! — and he doesn’t want to start being obstructive now, even though he’s started to feel that it is taking me away from him, away from him and the girls.

  It’s true; I had to admit his fears were well-founded. Between my job, his job, looking after the children, doing basic housework and other chores, my writing, and — this is the part he still doesn’t know about — my secret fantasy world, there’s nothing left over for him, for us — nothing special, that is. We eat together, sleep together, go places as a family, and that’s about it. I don’t spend any more time away from him, physically, than I have in the past three years, but mentally I do. And mentally makes the difference. There aren’t enough hours in the day and never have been, but back when we first got together (both of us with full-time jobs and ongoing, if unsatisfactory, relationships with significant others) we used to focus a lot of energy on making the few hours we did have together something special.

  “There aren’t enough hours in the day,” David said last night. “I know that. We have to work, and Rachel and Phoebe need our time and attention, and there’re always other things to be done, but we need time together, just the two of us. I’m not asking you to give up writing — I’d never do that, I know how much it means to you — but something has to change. Even when we are together I don’t feel you’re really with me. Your mind’s somewhere else. It bothers me.”

  I hadn’t meant for it to happen and I didn’t want it to be true, but it was. I agreed that I would make an effort to change — we both would. We’d get a sitter and go out together occasionally and, just as important, we would spend more evenings together the way we used to — sharing a bottle of wine over dinner, listening to music, talking, making love.