Private Universe

A Picnic and a Ghost Story

Once the breakfast things were dealt with, Charlotte gave everyone leave to take the morning off. Lunch, she declared, would be sandwiches of any cold cuts available. None of them had slept well during the night and needed the rest. For herself, she decided to go to Jack’s room and read until he woke. When she found herself nodding off in the chair and him still asleep, she locked the door and lay down on the bed beside him. It seemed silly to do it any other way. Her eyes closed and she fell asleep.

***

Jack dreamed. Hikes in the Northumberland hills and along Hadrian’s Wall. Auntie Glynnis and her arty friends and massaging middle-age shoulders and thighs. The time his Auntie Dot had tried to teach him the mandolin. A fight he’d had with a bully in school one time when he was six. He’d lost and gone to cry on the shoulder of… A girl. The face was familiar, the name on the tip of her tongue. But then she was gone and he was aboard a ship, sailing in a storm and sick from the pitching and tossing. And he was in Singapore, watching old people moving in creaky arcs of Tai Chi. And a girl, Asian-eyed with a waterfall of black hair, a girl who’d laughed at his clumsy attempts at Chinese. And fighting drills. Punching a bag again and again. Kicking, stretching, fighting in competition. Congratulations from… an older version of the same girl he’d cried on before. But then she was gone and he was climbing a hill, heavy pack on his back and rifle in hands. So important to get there, the pride his dad would feel if he did it. Weariness beyond anything he’d known before, but the placing of one boot in front of the other, again and again and again. And a woman, her face a knowing smile as she pulled back the bed sheets and invited him in. and a letter, saying it was over and she’d never see him again, nor wanted to. And he’d talked to… it was her again, the same girl, but older, grown to woman. Pretty and concerned about him, the younger one. And in there somewhere was a woman on a dirty back street. A woman he’d stabbed. But he did not want to see her, so she stayed in the darkness and he pretended she’d never been. And his mind showed him the past that had been lost to him, the good parts of it, the ones he wanted to keep. He turned away from his demons and walked in the parts of Jack that were purely, simply good.

***

And woke, when a bird called at his window, to find Charlotte on the pillow beside him, waking too.

‘Oh, Lord. How long have we both slept, I wonder? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Jack. I came to talk with you. I was reading for a while, waiting for you to wake, but then started to nod off myself. Silly not to make use of the bed when it was there, I thought. Don’t worry, the door’s locked. I don’t exactly plan to announce to Dee and her friend what we’ve been getting up to.

‘Umm. No easy or delicate way to put this, so let me just try telling you. Ah, we spoke together, all of us women of the house. We have something of a problem in you. Not an unpleasant one, but something which needed to be dealt with. I won’t have the house disturbed with jealousy and fights over you and, whilst you may have got yourself into this situation by muddling through, I can’t see that working for much longer.

‘Briefly, then, we have drawn lots for the days of the week. Each of us, if you agree, will have your company for one night, with the exception of Mrs Hawk, whose home arrangements would make that rather difficult. She will meet you in Tom Pearce’s cottage. During the days we would all expect that things would work as discretely as possible – I really do not want to let Dee know anything about this house’s odd relationship with you.

‘God damn it, Jack, but it is so hard to read you sometimes. I honestly don’t know if I’ve just given you the master key to the Sultan’s harem and free reign to do as you will there, or condemned you to some form of white slavery. Are we being horrible to you? Do you hate us for the demands we put on you?’