‘Yes, sir. As crystal, Mr Bagdale. Also …’
‘Yes?’
‘My mate Charlie is looking for work. He’s very bright and he’s good with people. I just wondered …’
Mr Bagdale’s eyebrows grew closer, like feuding caterpillars. He gave Wilbur a grizzled look. He was altogether a rougher creature than his mother ever was. ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the donkey, don’t push it, lad!’
‘No. Of course, Mr Bagdale. Sorry, sir.’
‘Right.’
Mr Bagdale gave a shorter, huffier sigh and then walked away.
‘I won’t let you down, sir,’ Wilbur called after him. ‘I promise.’
The Ghost gazed around the shop, with its quaint old tables full of books that looked like antiques. He looked outside and saw the mid-morning bustle of Commercial Street.
This was 1966.
A young couple stepping out of a brand new clothing shop called Gear Box were lighting cigarettes. The woman in a colourful kaftan dress, the man in a slim mod-style suit.
Some university students. Not quite hippies, but getting there.
A young smiling man in a yellow polo neck and a fisherman’scap with the Beatles’Rubber Soulunder his arm, walking past an old woman with her hair in curlers. An old, faded poster advertising Malcolm X’s talk at Sheffield University Union. A bright sign in the council office window: ‘Park Hill Flats–Say goodbye to outside lavatories and the slums of yesterday with modern, clean living!’
A monochrome world was starting to leak colour.
He had never appreciated it really. The excitement and hope of that time. Sure, he had the excuse of grief. But the Ghost wondered: does any person in their youth truly appreciate the time they live through? Doesn’t the mundane starch of reality always turn to sugar with memory? Wasn’t that just what nostalgia was?
He turned back to himself. Still at the display table. Replacing Agatha Christie’sA Caribbean Mysterywith a book that he would soon read and relish calledWide Sargasso Seaby Jean Rhys. He was smiling, naturally, for the first time in about a year.
Sometimes you needed to nearly lose something in order to appreciate it. And Mr Bagdale’s decision to fire then keep him, within the space of a minute, had been what he needed. This had been the day that something changed inside him. The moment he stepped off rock bottom and felt ambition kindle into life.
Outside, two young women were walking by. Claudette and Maggie. Claudette was busy in chatter, but Maggie turned towards Bagdale’s. Not the display in the window, but beyond and into the shop. She was looking for someone. And then she saw him, and there was the smallest of smiles.
‘Look at her,’ whispered the Ghost. ‘Turn around. She’s smiling at you.’
Wilbur stopped. He did indeed turn around. He looked right through the Ghost to the street outside. But it was too late. She was gone.
And the Ghost stayed another moment before hearing the whistle of a train.
Why Sunsets Are Beautiful
The forwardness of life was a problem, thought the Ghost.
If days could be scattered all over, so on Monday you were forty and on Tuesday you were nine and on Wednesday you were eighty-one, that would be more helpful. You would know the fleeting nature of things, realise how many versions of ourselves a lifetime contained. It would make life’s beauty so abundantly clear. The way a sunset was so beguiling because it tells us that every day eventually sinks into night.
The Possibilities That Life Contains
The Ghost stood over himself on the floor of a flat full of beanbags and incense.
Charlie Applewood was now a student of physics at Sheffield University.
It was Sunday tomorrow. So they had dropped acid, and were listening to the Doors as the patterned wallpaper started to shift.
‘Reality is always moving,’ said Charlie with an intense focus. He had long hair now. Far longer than Wilbur’s. His mam always seemed to be upset when he grew it, so he didn’t. But Charlie’s was almost down to his waist. He wasn’t the nervy, bullied kid any more. He had left his stutter behind. ‘Everything is particles and particles aren’t still. They move around in a wave. The quantum wave function.’
Wilbur stayed staring at the wallpaper. ‘This is good acid.’
