Part 4 (1/2)

”Not where I'm taking you!” She displayed a picnic hamper and flung him forth to the miracle of a single remaining taxicab. And they arrived under a stormy sky at the Pere Lachaise cemetery. The great gates were swinging shut. The nurse waved a handful of francs. The gate froze.

Inside, they wandered at peace amongst ten thousand monuments. So much cold marble was there, and so many hidden souls, that the old nurse felt a sudden dizziness, a pain in one wrist, and a swift coldness on the left side of her face. She shook her head, refusing this. And they walked on among the stones.

”Where” do we picnic?” he said.

”Anywhere,” she said. ”But carefully! For this is a French cemetery! Packed with cynics! Armies Armies of egotists who burned people for their faith one year only to be burned for of egotists who burned people for their faith one year only to be burned for their their faith the next! So, pick. Choose!” They walked. The ghastly pa.s.senger nodded. ”This first stone. Beneath it: faith the next! So, pick. Choose!” They walked. The ghastly pa.s.senger nodded. ”This first stone. Beneath it: nothing nothing. Death final, not a whisper whisper of time. The second stone: a woman, a secret believer because she loved her husband and hoped to see him again in eternity... a murmur of spirit here, the turning of a heart. of time. The second stone: a woman, a secret believer because she loved her husband and hoped to see him again in eternity... a murmur of spirit here, the turning of a heart. Better Better. Now this third gravestone: a writer of thrillers for a French magazine. But he loved loved his nights, his fogs, his castles. his nights, his fogs, his castles. This This stone is a proper temperature, like a good wine. So here we shall sit, dear lady, as you decant the champagne and we wait to go back to the train.” stone is a proper temperature, like a good wine. So here we shall sit, dear lady, as you decant the champagne and we wait to go back to the train.”

She offered a gla.s.s, happily. ”Can you drink?”

”One can try.” He took it. ”One can only try.”

The ghastly pa.s.senger almost ”died” as they left Paris. A group of intellectuals, fresh from seminars about Sartre's ”nausea,” and hot-air ballooning about Simone de Beauvoir, streamed through the corridors, leaving the air behind them boiled and empty.

The pale pa.s.senger became paler.

The second step beyond Paris, another invasion! A group of Germans surged aboard, loud in their disbelief of ancestral spirits, doubtful of politics, some even carrying books t.i.tled Was G.o.d Ever Home? Was G.o.d Ever Home?

The Orient ghost sank deeper in his x-ray image bones.

”Oh, dear,” cried Miss Minerva Halliday, and ran to her own compartment to plunge back and toss down a cascade of books.

”Hamlet!” she cried, ”his father, yes? A Christmas Carol Christmas Carol. Four Four ghosts! ghosts! Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights. Kathy returns returns, yes? To haunt the snows? Ah, The Turn of the Screw The Turn of the Screw, and ... Rebecca Rebecca! Then-my favorite! The Monkey's Paw The Monkey's Paw! Which?”

But the Orient ghost said not a Marley word. His eyes were locked, his mouth sewn with icicles.

”Wait!” she cried.

And opened the first book...

Where Hamlet stood on the castle wall and heard his ghost-of-a-father moan and so she said these words: ” 'Mark me... my hour is almost come... when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames... must render up myself...' ”

And then she read: ” 'I am thy father's spirit,/Doomed for a certain term to walk the night' ”

And again: ” '... If thou didst ever thy dear father love... O, G.o.d!... Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.' ”

And yet again: ” '... Murder most foul...' ”

And the train ran in the night as she spoke the last words of Hamlet's father's ghost: ” '... Fare thee well at once...' ”

” '... Adieu, adieu! Remember me.' ”

And she repeated: ” '... remember me!' ”

And the Orient ghost quivered. She pretended not to notice but seized a further book: ” '... Marley was dead, to begin with...' ”

As the Orient train thundered across a twilight bridge above an unseen stream. Her hands flew like birds over the books. ” 'I am the Ghost of Christmas Past!' ”

Then: ” 'The Phantom Rickshaw glided from the mist and clop-clopped off into the fog-' ”

And wasn't there the faintest echo of a horse's hooves behind, within the Orient ghost's mouth?

” 'The beating beating beating, under the floorboards of the Old Man's Telltale Heart!'” she cried, softly.

And there there! like the leap of a frog. The first faint pulse of the Orient ghost's heart in more than an hour. The Germans down the corridor fired off a cannon of disbelief.

But she poured the medicine: ” 'The Hound bayed out on the Moor-'”

And the echo of that bay, that most forlorn cry, came from her traveling companion's soul, wailed from his throat.

As the night grew on and the moon arose and a Woman in White crossed a landscape, as the old nurse said and told, and a bat that became a wolf that became a lizard scaled a wall on the ghastly pa.s.senger's brow.

And at last the train was silent with sleeping, and Miss Minerva Halliday let the last book drop with the thump of a body to the floor.

”Requiescat in pace?” whispered the Orient traveler, eyes shut.

”Yes.” She smiled, nodding. ”Requiescat in pace.”

And they slept. And at last they reached the sea.

And there was mist, which became fog, which became scatters of rain, like a proper drench of tears from a seamless sky.

Which made the ghastly pa.s.senger open, ungum his mouth, and murmur thanks for the haunted sky and the sh.o.r.e visited by phantoms of tide as the train slid into the shed where the mobbed exchange would be made, a full train becoming a full boat.

The Orient ghost who stood well back, the last figure on a now self-haunted train. ”Wait,” he cried, softly, piteously. ”That boat! There's no place on it to hide! And the customs customs!”

But the customs men took one look at the pale face snowed under the dark cap and earmufis, and swiftly flagged the wintry soul onto the ferry.

To be surrounded by dumb voices, ignorant elbows, layers of people shoving as the boat shuddered and moved and the nurse saw her fragile icicle melt yet again.

It was a mob of children shrieking by that made her say: ”Quickly!” And she all but lifted and carried the wicker man in the wake of the boys and girls.

”No,” cried the old pa.s.senger. ”The noise!”

”It's special!” The nurse hustled him through a door. ”A medicine! Here!” The old man stared around. ”Why,” he murmured. ”This is-a playroom.” And she steered him into the midst of all the screams and running.

”Children!” she called.

The children froze.

”Story-telling time!”

They were about to run again when she added, ”Ghost story-telling time!” She pointed casually to the ghastly pa.s.senger, whose pale moth fingers grasped the scarf about his icy throat.