The Ghost rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, Wilbur, I’m surprised you didn’t bring your profit and loss account to show him. So needy. And so missing the point. He doesn’t want you to prove you’re going to be rich. He wants you to prove you are kind … He wants you to be a real person.’
Alfred studied him some more. ‘Do you love her?’
And Wilbur could answer this one sincerely. ‘As much as anything.’
Alfred nodded. He believed that.
There was a long pause. Much staring into pint glasses. Then:‘Listen, Wilbur, lad, I think Maggie is really serious about you. And she is good at seeing things, so she must see something in you.’
The Ghost caught young Wilbur’s smile then, as he absorbed the warmth of that acceptance.
‘You’re a good lad, Wilbur. But don’t take it for granted. Love is a garden. You have to keep tending to it.’
‘Yes,’ said Wilbur, trying to look like he was taking it in, rather than actually doing so.
‘You should have listened to him,’ said the Ghost, unheard through the smoky room, as Alfred offered Wilbur his final pork scratching.
The Landscape of Life
The Midnight Train rolled by some of the best times he had known.
Wilbur and Maggie on a bench outside the theatre, spending a lunch break together … Wilbur working hard late at night in the back room of Bagdale’s after Charlie clocked off …
Maggie designing an advert for the shop. A murmuration of flying paperbacks in the sky …
Wilbur and Maggie in the new house in leafy Broomhill, painting the bathroom walls avocado green …
Double-dating with Claudette and Charlie at a sit-down cabaret bar …
Maggie giving an evening talk at her old art college with Wilbur in the back row for support.
‘I had time for her,’ the Ghost said to himself, looking at his smile. ‘I had time for life.’
The happy couple on a Sunday in Robin Hood’s Bay, looking out to sea and eating fish and chips …
Maggie up a ladder Charlie and Wilbur were holding, painting the shop sign she’d said desperately needed a revamp …
Had he always acknowledged the hard work she had put in during those early days, even though she had a job of her own? The Ghost wondered if he had understood that the way the shop looked was a key part of its success.
He caught sight of himself in a jeweller’s.Mr Leslie Thomas Top Quality Fine Diamonds. Wilbur was leaning over a glass cabinet and choosing a ring … Then he was down on one knee proposingat the bench where they had once sat as teenagers. And he couldn’t hear it from the ghostly train but he distinctly remembered how it sounded – ‘Yes, oh, Wilbur,yes …’
Flower
He wanted it to slow down. Not then, but now, watching it back. He wanted those days to pass like centuries. No, he didn’t want them to pass at all. He wanted the train to pull to a halt somewhere in that patch of life and for him to stay there. He just wanted to live inside a moment of that life with her for ever, to pluck it like a flower and press it in a book, and just stay on that page until the end of time.
Confetti
He got out to watch himself in a rare moment of relaxation in the bookshop.
Flicking through a guidebook to Venice at the back of his shop, thinking about their honeymoon, just as Charlie walked in holding a copy of theBooksellermagazine.
Inside, the Ghost remembered, next to a big piece on the author Graham Greene, was a small interview with himself that he had done over the telephone. The article had reported that Bagdale’s had quadrupled its sales within a year, thanks to Wilbur. A few key decisions – such as letting people sit on chairs to read, stocking new and radical books, paying staff more and offering commission, as well as Maggie’s aesthetic overhaul – had worked wonders.
Charlie slapped the magazine down excitedly on the desk.
‘Look, Wilbur!’ he beamed. ‘You’re famous! You’re the Ziggy Stardust of books!’
The Ghost looked at Charlie. Still with his long hair, but now a short-sleeved shirt and tie too. He realised how lucky he had been. To have a friend like him. So genuinely happy to see his success.
