EMMA AND SYLVIA

in memory of Hilda Mynott

There was a ghost living inside that house. It misplaced books, dropped pencils and twitched the living room curtains. Over dinner, hours after our arrival, that's what everyone was talking about. Even my dad, who I knew full well never believed in anything supernatural, was strangely animated and kept asking about this novel of Agatha Christie that disappeared last month and was found on a wrong bookshelf on Friday. My mom, too, seemed to humour Sylvia's story, and could barely relieve the tension by playing another round of "Massachusetts". To me, the whole thing was vaguely intriguing, a feeling strongly compounded by ginger beer which kept scratching against my white underage throat.

I was intrigued because everything about the place looked odd and smelled peculiar, and thankfully, this was the way I remembered it from the previous time. The previous time, which was also the first time, took place more than four years ago, and back then I got lost amid the graphic drawings and nineteenth-century photographs, as well as multiple narrow passages that led to tiny rooms with carefully compiled treasures. These treasures could be anything: Japanese cups, Agatha Christie books, Egyptian statuettes and, yes, blocks of English cheeses.

That first time we stayed for one night, and they put me into their small guest room on the ground floor. The room looked like something taken from a picture of an exemplary countryside hotel in Yorkshire. Sylvia said I would be 'perfect' for that room, and the great hug that followed seemed to infuse me with the richness of her perfume. I remember waking up in the morning due to a soft nudge on the door (never a knock), and Emma coming in with a cup of black tea with lemon. Last night, she had asked me if I took lemon in my tea, and for some reason I had said yes. Ever since that moment, this one episode from years ago, I knew I would want to come back. 

I never said this to my parents. Somehow, there was never the right time. In fact, if it were not for the trip to America, I could outlive my memory and never bring up that tea with lemon again. My parents were planning to retrace their honeymoon trip to California, and I begged to be left behind. America seemed vast and neurotic, and I said I wanted to stay. They explained this would only work if I knew some ‘magical place’ that could accommodate me for two weeks, and since 'on my own' was out of the question and since I had no real friends apart from a few schoolmates who bored me and found me equally boring, I suggested the house in Whitley Bay. That night, my dad called Emma, and she said they would be happy to have me for as long as I wanted.

Which was how we came to discuss the ghost of Whitley Bay that evening when my parents dropped me at Emma and Sylvia's.

They were mother and daughter, but you could easily mistake them for two sisters. The age difference had been washed away by years of living together. Long years that would yield similar tastes (Red Leicester, detective stories) and constant arguments. These arguments were so innocuous and so routine that I would soon perceive them as regular small talk that kept it all together. Physically, too, they were similar; perfect and plump. In fact, the only thing about them which I found remotely flawed was Emma's right eye that kept getting moist in the wind as well as for no reason at all. A mysterious health condition that had Emma dry it with a piece of tissue she always carried with her (an act both delicate and strangely moving, and every time I tried and failed to look away).

After my parents had left, Sylvia asked me what I was planning to do, and seemed relieved when I said 'nothing much'. Swiftly she joined Emma in the living room, while I was left to study the extensive library. Which was all Agatha Christie in various editions, including a couple of rare books bearing the name of 'Mary Westmacott' (which Sylvia was especially proud of). I read the first paragraph of Dumb Witness, the 'lost' book we had been discussing over dinner (somehow, I wondered who had been the last to touch it). Eventually, I went into the living room where Emma and Sylvia acknowledged my presence with dignified silence. They continued watching Coronation Street which was soon followed by the latest adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Later, in my room, I wrote to my parents about Coronation Street, and my mom replied: "Aren't they special? Please don't be put off by anything".

That night, I could not fall asleep. I put Dumb Witness away (the writing was too heavy-going) and placed it on the bedside table. Cowardly, I did not close my eyes and kept peering through the dark, staring at the wardrobe by the window. I thought I saw shadows moving across its barely visible mahogany surface and could hardly convince myself they were produced by random car lights or the rare silhouettes of people moving against the lampposts. I distinctly remember the door of the wardrobe being nudged from the inside, soundlessly, which made it even worse. It may have been the beer and it may have been the cheese, but the ugly visions were teasing me until long after midnight when I fell asleep out of sheer desperation.

In the morning, it almost felt like I had fallen asleep due to another nudge, which was the nudge that actually awoke me. This was Emma coming into my room with a cup of tea with lemon. At which point I realised she must have kept that slice of lemon in her mind all this time. She would of course continue nudging my door every single morning of my stay in their house.

It was a quiet, uneventful life in Whitley Bay. I did not mind it one bit, and enjoyed those meandering walks along the beach. I even enjoyed losing forty pounds playing old-fashioned slot machines that you could never beat, or lose to, enough. There was one weekend trip to York, filled with small cafes that served tea cakes with butter, and that was all. The trip was a fairly bizarre affair. Emma, who was not much of a walker, never declined a steep climb, which resulted in a tired smile and another watery eye. And then there was Sylvia dropping into every other clothes shop on our way. There was a certain kind that she liked, and in the end I began to identify them by scent. The ones she favoured smelled of lavender soap. For some reason, I came to my room that night and wrote this down in my notebook.

Interestingly, in all my time in Whitley Bay they rarely talked to me beyond asking about my parents (my mom's reports from America were sketchy and contained millions of exclamation marks) and what sort of music and TV shows I preferred. They did talk a lot to each other, though, and never minded having these petty arguments about nothing at all. Like the time when Sylvia bought cheap beef at the local market and it turned out tough, and Emma couldn't stop pestering her daughter about the wrong seller she apparently had chosen.

Other than the Bee Gees toy, of course. The one that sang "Massachusetts". The Bee Gees toy was a revolving platform holding the dancing figures of Barry, Robin and Maurice that had the vocal chops but little in the way of physical resemblance. The voices had this annoying, slightly chipmunk quality to them but Emma and Sylvia never tired of pressing play. I had to wonder how the toy had not stopped amusing them years ago.

Once during breakfast (very conservative, even if I could always have a slice of shepherd's pie if I wanted to) I asked about the ghost, and Sylvia's eyes sparkled for a few seconds. She said the ghost had first appeared five or six years ago, and so far she had noticed nothing malicious about 'his' behavior. The spark, however, was soon suppressed by Emma pouring too much milk into Sylvia's coffee. I deemed it too pushy to ask again, and too preposterous to mention the moving shadows in my room. Besides, I always felt that this reticence would at some point give way, and Sylvia would say something to me. Something disturbing, something that I would perhaps not be too happy to hear.

I was in fact able to fall asleep smoothly enough two nights after the first incident. Part of me believed the reason was Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness which I had decided to give up after another futile attempt to get into the plot. I returned the book back to its room, and then, all of a sudden, the shadows disappeared, or else I made them disappear the way an impressionable boy would. I slept well that night, even if regardless of how sound my sleep was, Emma's nudge did the trick. I sometimes had to wonder how she did that - so quietly, so effectively.

And then there were all these evenings when I entered the living room and watched TV with them. There may have been quiet a few of such evenings as once, over breakfast and the TV set playing The Weakest Link, Emma mentioned knife crime in Tyne & Wear. This did not fully register at first, but somehow I kept coming back to this thought and this thought kept leading me not to the Whitley Bay beach but, rather, to Emma and Sylvia’s living room. Like everything else in that household, TV evenings were polished down to a smooth ritual. Each had a remote control and each knew exactly what to click, and when. Over those three or four hours, they barely noticed my presence. Something I did not mind, and if Coronation Street became too unbearable, I always had the elaborate doll house to look at (Emma called it their 'pride and joy'), or the immaculate line of Russian dolls on the mantelpiece, or the way their feet wiggled almost in tune on those ultrasoft poufs which they always offered to me and which for some reason I always declined.

But like I said – since the very first day it felt like it was all coming down to one final evening, which of course did happen at the end of my stay. My parents wrote from New York to inform that they would be picking me up tomorrow, and Emma and Sylvia threw one last dinner. The usual gluttonous one, only this time perhaps even more so. "My God", my dad said to me once, after the first visit to Whitley Bay. "I know they are old friends and everything, but don't you ever get a feeling they intend to bloody kill you with all that food? Honestly, they just don't know when to stop". This was true, and if I said I never especially cared for boiled broccoli, Sylvia would explain that boiled broccoli made your hair curly. Likewise, boiled carrots improved your eyesight, and boiled Brussels sprouts made your skin smooth. By the end of the first week, I had started eating every last piece on my plate - and felt I could take on anything as long as I could wash it down with a glass of ginger beer (the only alcohol allowed in the house).

This time, there was less silence and less petty bickering which I had in any case ceased to notice long ago. They did not question me about my stay (they either believed I had enjoyed it or else they did not care), but at some point Emma asked me what I was going to be in life. I said I was going to be a writer. "A writer", mused Sylvia, and asked me a question which seemed at odds with what I had just said. "Do you have a girlfriend? And have you been brokenhearted?" I think I blushed, or maybe I mumbled something. In actual fact, I think I did both.

When we finished the inevitable dessert (chocolate sponge cake) and it was time to take away the dishes, Sylvia put on a Pogues compilation. "A great band", she said. "The guy never spent a day sober since he was 14. You know, there's that song, "Sally MacLennane". I once got drunk to it". At which point I noticed one incredible thing: Sylvia had not followed Emma into the living room. Instead, she was sitting at the table, right next to me, and observing my face with what I felt was intent curiosity. Then she said:

"Sally MacLennane"… It played when I was at this Newcastle club with Brandon. Brandon... Everyone was in love with Brandon. He had a million girlfriends. You know, he looked like David Bowie in mid-70s".

I nodded. I knew. I swallowed.

"Brandon did not have that red and blue scar across his face, but the red hair was styled that uncanny way. You know, short at the front, long at the back sort of thing".

She showed me. I heard the muffled sounds of TV from the adjacent room and smelled the lavender soap which was currently all over my face.

"Anyway, we stayed after the concert of some noisy electronic band who probably took themselves too seriously, and shared drinks. The place was full of people. There were Brandon's friends with us, and also this girl. I do not remember her name, but everyone called her ‘Braindead’. God, she was stupid." Sylvia knocked a few times on the table. I kept extracting that last sip from my glass. "She had no idea about the haircut. Braindead, she probably did not know who Bowie was. Well, anyway, we had a few Gin & Tonics and got a little tipsy".

She stopped talking for a while but she kept looking at me all the time, quite happy inside her memory. Me, I was thinking about Emma and how she was sitting in the living room, watching Coronation Street all on her own.

"We threw some darts, we had some more drinks, we discussed a few bands. It was Brandon who told us about the Pogues. But then it was time to go, and he went with Braindead. I stayed for some time. He chose to go with her. I went on my own. Ah well."

I was flushed but I strained to smile awkwardly - I sensed it was the one situation in life that demanded an awkward smile. We sat in silence all the way through "Waltzing Matilda", and I could not figure out whether she wanted me to say something or not. And then, fearing she would go, I did the first thing that came to mind, and pointed her in the direction of the Agatha Christie book. She asked me if I believed in ghosts. I said I did not know, and then I lied that I had wanted to read this novel but had been too scared to touch it. "I understand", she said, looked at the book, pressed the Bee Gees play button, picked up a few plates and went to the kitchen. Seconds later, through the fake sounds of "Massachusetts", I heard her enter the living room.

Tomorrow, half an hour before leaving the house, I would go to the shelf with the Agatha Christie book and place it on the small coffee table, by the window. I would half cover it under a newspaper, and tiptoe outside. But that would be tomorrow, because currently I joined Emma and Sylvia for one last TV evening. Sylvia seemed excited as it was time for a classic Miss Marple episode. "Do you like Miss Marple?" Emma asked. Adjusting my feet on the pouf, for the first and final time, I said my parents preferred Midsomer Murders. To which she replied: "Too many murders". "Yes", Sylvia agreed. "Too much blood".