the Looking-Glass Ghost

1

THE LOOKING-GLASS GHOST.2

by Robert Davidson.3

Eight o’clock on a July evening - and I had been walking all day, stopping at pubs on the way, drinking heavily. And now I was on the Strand passing the ivy-grown church. In the distance across the waters the great red sinking sun flashed its rays.4

And there before me rose an old-style Methodist chapel. I thought at once of those early preachers threatening a worse hell than any pit of fire and brimstone. My father had been Lay Preacher, I recalled, and my mind drifted to the man possessed by many devils; the one who ran mad among the tombs and cried out.5

It was now growing darker suddenly, moonless, with the wind blowing icily through the streets, driving a thin drizzle of rain before it.6

And I was dog tired, bone weary. The salty taste of the wind in my mouth. I felt as though some Nemesis were following me. A close observer would have noticed the look of terror in my eyes. The quintessence of madness, I reflected. For a moment, I felt like a man standing on the brink of a precipice, while beneath me yawned unfathomable darkness. I felt I was stymied at every turn, like a swimmer floundering in a merciless current.7

And so I decided to turn into a hotel where I would spend time drinking doubles.8

The sharp edges of the bar were becoming nicely rounded. A faint mist was obscuring the far end of the room. This was not the first drinking place I had visited that day.9

Presently, two or three working-men came in, and the atmosphere of the room seemed to grow warmer and more cheerful.10

I suddenly had a sense of Eleanor’s presence there. Then I realized that this was the pub that I had often visited with her. I hadn’t intended to come in here. I hadn’t intended to reopen the past.11

At the bar a girl perched on a stool. Large bright blue eyes that suggested an unknown world. Perhaps this was what I needed, a girl to help me forget.12

She must have felt my gaze. Her eyes flashed into mine.13

Then she winked, and without so much as by your leave, came and sat at my table.14

‘What’s a nice-looking fellow like you doing on your own?’ I gave a start like a man aroused from a dream. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me a drink?’15

‘Oh, uh – sure.’ I mutter.16

But I could not focus my attention on the girl. Memory after memory crowded into my brain, and made the past live again.17

The girl made a few more attempts at desultory conversation, saying she had a room upstairs if I was interested. I made a non-commital remark and she turned away.18

And at that moment there was a sudden influx of people into the room, chattering, and in less than no time the place was crowded.19

My mind drifted to that Indian summer I had first met Eleanor.20

Then had come into my mind the knowledge which made the night black, made my world seem a charnel-house. It was queer, I thought, how I could go on behaving just as usual on the surface, while all the time I knew inside that I was really dead. I had that dreadful feeling of moving apart in a nightmare world of my own, spiritually cut off from the people around me.21

For I had lost what was dearest to you in life. My wife, Eleanor was dead. And I was plunged into the blackest hell. No hope of ever seeing her again. I knew the utter desolation of loss.22

The girl at my table was getting impatient. ‘Well, are you coming?’ she demanded. But so deep was I in memory I made no answer.23

More people came into the room and others left.24

The girl with a toss of her head went off looking for a more promising client.25

Eventually I was to leave the hotel and to make my way through the suburb to another pub. Outside the wind was rising and the night was dark and moonless. A light rain began to fall.26

Inside the Morning Star Hotel I booked a room for the night after collecting a fresh bottle of whiskey from the bottle shop and then made my way upstairs.27

Alone in my room I was in a state of delirium as I continued drinking. I looked up and was confronted by a vast oval looking-glass filling the greater part of one wall, with the brightest and clearest glass I’d ever seen, throwing back the flickering reflections from the neon light outside my window.28

I staggered unsteadily across the room to the mirror to look at myself. And in the mirror I saw, behind myself, behind my own reflection a man standing well back in the glass. Quickly, I turned around but there was no one in the room behind me. Then I turned back to the looking-glass.29

And as I looked once more into the glass, it was not quite my own face I saw. A much older man looked back at me. At first I thought this older man might be my father, but the features were different as my father was nearly bald whereas this man has a large shock of grey hair. 30

Soon I realized that the man in the glass was an older version of myself, me as I will most probably be in about twenty or thirty years’ time. The white face gleamed with the look of a dipsomaniac. 31

I looked again into the mirror and it was as though my self had split, splintered might be the better word. My reflection seemed to take on a life of its own. It was myself and yet I was separate and distant from my self. My shadow-self, as it were.32

‘It’s myself! But as a much older man!’ And I gasped aloud my own name in a strangled voice.33

A dead white face. A face as white as wax. A pair of red-rimmed eyes. Eyes filled with a terrible hunger. A mop of coarse hair. The vague sense of apprehension which gripped me was quickening into a sharp fear.34

And then the man in the reflection moved to a position towards the table in front of the glass. A gleam of speculative interest filled his dreadful eyes. His mouth was open, his throat muscles working, but no sound issued forth.35

This amused me and I addressed the figure in the looking-glass by my own name, talking to it quite familiarly.36

‘Well, Arnold Robartes, they got you off. You’re a free man. The jury brought in a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’. They couldn’t link you directly to Eleanor’s death. And so you’ve escaped a murder rap! Dad got Owen Galbally, the best defence lawyer, and he got you off. So you’re free.’37

The man in the looking-glass again attempted to talk but although his lips were moving I could not hear what he said. His lips kept on moving. And I was trying to guess what he was saying.38

But was I free? I began to wonder. Inside myself it was as though my shadow-self was always tormenting me, saying, of course there was not enough solid evidence to convince a jury. 39

I was now wishing I could just forget everything, wipe it all from my mind, fall into a deep sleep, and then wake up and start my life afresh. But there could be no new beginning, I thought, I could never start a new life. I could never get back to where I once was.40

For in my own mind I knew that I had been the one to kill my own wife, Eleanor Robartes, in a fit of savage jealousy.41

I stared into the looking-glass and the figure in the glass seemed to nod in agreement.42

With shadows shifting, dancing in the room and the light outside flickering, it is easy to imagine movement.43

The tall figure before me held a repellent fascination for me and I felt like Hamlet confronting the ghost. I suddenly felt an urge to touch him. But when I looked again he had changed position. His mouth was opening and closing. And then he was moving backwards, seemingly deeper into the glass, his eyes blazing with a strange unholy light. His right arm was raised! 44

I felt that this man’s personality was more and more dominating me, and that, in spite of myself, I was thinking with this man’s mind, seeing with this man’s eyes. It was as though I was looking into my own conscience.45

And then as this man stood there, his eyes became fixed on a woman standing beside him in the looking-glass. And I saw that the woman was Eleanor! And I felt an unexplainable dread. Eleanor was turned slightly away and was looking back over one deathly white shoulder and seemed to be pleading with me; her eyes raking my face with a burning intensity. A mute appeal. 46

Although no sound came from the mirror her lips moved and she appeared to be beseeching me as though she were pleading with me against myself, saying, ‘Don’t do it, Arnold.’47

There was something inexorable about her gesture - a strange, frozen significance. I wanted to comfort her in some way, but I could not make her hear.48

And then the faces in the looking-glass began to dissolve and I was alone in the room. I felt as if a nail had been driven into my head. And I knew there was no way I could remain in that room for the rest of the night and so I left and found myself walking in the streets once more. Outside the wind was steadily rising, but the rain had stopped.49

I glanced over my shoulder often, like a man who fears a horrible presence at his elbow. Pools of light broken by shadows filled the streets. It was a cold wintry night and I was going about in a heavy overcoat that felt like a shroud. 50

I kept on walking in the suburb which was by now very strange to me. I was losing myself a maze of streets. All along Electra Street the plane trees were shedding their leaves. Douglas Parade was all in shadow. I kept walking. I wanted badly to distract myself in some way.51

I turned into a narrow street, attracted by the light of a curio shop. A pool of light cast by a high window flooded the cobble-stoned road. Out of the shadows came a woman. I stood for a moment, my heart seemed to stand still – so still! I could scarcely breathe. The woman faded back into the shadows for a moment and you cried out.52

‘Ah!’ I exclaimed. ‘I see you.’53

‘Of course you do,’ the woman replied. ‘I’m standing right in front of you.’54

‘Who … who … are you? I croaked. I could see her clearly for the first time.’55

‘You know only too well who I am, Arnold.’ Her voice was most matter-of fact as she said it.56

I was astounded at seeing what appeared to be Eleanor standing outside a bookshop, as if she had just risen from her coffin. Her striking high-boned face, glittering dark eyes that seemed to float beneath their lids in overly large sockets. The streetlight picked up the burnished light in her hair.57

‘Hello Arnold,’ she said almost conversationally.58

The phantasm was perfect and vivid, as if it had been flesh and blood. The eyes, dark and piercing as shards of obsidian.59

‘Eleanor! It can’t be!’ My voice stopped in my throat.60

Of course it wasn’t Eleanor. Eleanor was dead. It must be a trick of the light, I reasoned as well as the quantity of alcohol I had consumed that night. But the vision in my head was so real. The oval face, those eyes, the full pointing breasts.61

And then I was aware of a movement as a ghostly hand came to rest upon my own. Touching me, but I felt nothing. The queer thing was that I was neither frightened nor surprised. It seemed to be the most natural thing in the world that I should be walking in the street with Eleanor on a night of ghost-touched mist. We walked companionably, I shortening my stride to accommodate hers.62

We walked like that for a long moment, side by side, without uttering a word. And as we walked towards the beach, her thoughts seemed to become mine and mine hers. It was as though we had stepped into each other’s minds and dwelled there a while. She seeming to read my most intimate feelings with a subtle intelligence.63

‘You wanted me dead, Arnold.’ she said meeting my eyes with a look of stone.64

‘The jury found me not guilty,’ I said defensively.65

‘But you know that you wanted me dead. You have the killer instinct of a barracuda. You punched me and then you pushed me against the sharp marble edge of the mantelpiece.’ 66

And then she spoke as if she were an angel condemning Lucifer to the fiery furnace. ‘You never really loved me, Arnold.’ 67

‘I found you in bed with Neville Thurston.’68

The outline of her mouth hardened. Scorn. ‘That was because of you and Ruth Parker. You could never love me: you never got over your obsession for that woman.. You married me but still loved her.’69

This was true enough, I thought, though I had done everything possible to forget my first love. In my despair I had wanted to break the charm my old love had wound around me.70

I had tried desperately to rip from my heart my passion for Ruth Parker, to renounce my love, to tear her from my mind, tear her from my flesh.71

‘You harboured another woman in your heart - and never me, of that I was certain.’ Eleanor said most bitterly.72

I had loved my first love with such passion that it was impossible for me to believe that underneath she did not love me back. I did not realise then that love is never returned in kind and sometimes not at all.73

‘I had no contact with Ruth once I married you,’ I said defensively.74

‘No, but Ruth was never out of your mind. Not even when you were making love to me. A woman can sense these things!’75

It was true, I knew. My world had revolved around Ruth Parker for several years, but flighty Ruth had married Erwin Jones in the end. Erwin! The protruding ears, the matted red hair. And I had married Eleanor on the rebound.76

The terrible gnawing guilt I had always felt in Eleanor’s presence. I knew that I had not loved her enough, had not loved her deeply, but I could not help that.77

No man can control his love, I knew. This was the saddest realisation of all. A man had no control over the most important emotion of his life. You cannot command love. Love goes of its own volition.78

‘You never really opened up to me, Arnold. It always seemed to be out of a sense of duty. There was never any kind of real union in our love-making,’ she was saying. Her womanly pride had bled at of tolerating a love unvalued.79

‘I was lonely for a man’s affections. Neville courted me as you never did, he worshipped me and I was weak with longing for a man who could love me. I was tempted and I burned.’80

‘You were always holding back, always inhibited, unable to let go. For three years, Arnold, I was faithful only to you. I wanted to give you my whole heart, to be content to love you simply without reason. But I could never get close enough. There was always an inhibiting barrier, like an invisible wall between us.’81

Yes, this was true. I was never certain in the honest part of myself that I had ever really loved Eleanor. I was always conscious of a guilt because although I had married her, I could not love her as I should.82

Yes, this was true. You were never certain in the honest part of yourself that you ever really loved Eleanor. You were always conscious of a guilt because although you had married her, you could not love her as you should.83

But I had wanted marriage. To marry meant respectability, family, children. I was not suited for casual relations. I was a husband by nature, I felt. I wanted a family, a home and children. I was thirty-nine, settled in my father’s business. I had to find myself a wife.84

And Eleanor had wanted children! And so I had proposed.85

At first things seemed to go well, and on our wedding night my new bride had teased me, saying ‘I’ll probably have twins, Arnold, seeing that we’ve done it twice.’86

But as those early married years went on, there was no child. The doctors said that my sperm count was far too low. And there was no child. No child that Eleanor and I had both wanted. And it hurt deeply, it cut the very heart out of the marriage, I felt.87

But her unresponsiveness had been my own fault, I knew. I recalled making love to her when I didn’t feel like it. I had indeed been a duty for her.88

And then I had caught her in bed with Neville Thurston and I had gone berserk. They were making love fiercely without shame. Neville was a big handsome man, vital and young. I saw yourself as puny and old in comparison.89

Eleanor now looked at me and said, ‘I was lonely for a man’s affections. Neville courted me as you never did. He worshipped me and I was weak with longing for a man who could love me. I felt my life was petering out. I was so lonely without love, without tenderness, without warmth. I felt my youth slipping away. I felt I had a right to build my life without you.’ 90

I then gave way to the savage impulse which possessed me. I struck her across the face and she fell forward hitting her head against the sharp mantel edge. And I kept on pushing her. Desperate jealousy gnawed at me. The wound to my ego. When one lets go the reins - one allows blind fury to possess one utterly. I could not bear the idea that anyone else should have her. Suddenly realizing I loved her the moment I had lost her. And I ended her life! Did the devil drive all people who loved? I wondered.91

And now her ghost was standing before me in a suburban street.92

And I suddenly saw her as she had been. A lonely warm-blooded woman tied to a semi-impotent husband. She was pulsing with life and the yearning for love, and I had turned my back on her and she had gone to another man. My coldness had frozen her heart. And for the first time I began to pity her.93

We were crossing over a road and had come out onto the embankment that ran beside the river that led into the sea.94

I stopped dead suddenly. Realisng how she must have wept in the dark desperate hours of night. She had taken my silence, my reserve for coldness. And I had given her death in recompense.95

My eyes met hers. Her eyes burning, reducing me to ashes.96

‘Murderer!’ she suddenly burst out in a loud voice.97

The white face was staring at me, her eyes black pools of darkness.98

‘You are a murderer, Arnold Robartes.’ She pronounced the word coldly and deliberately. ‘I was only twenty-eight. You took my life away.’ With large eyes she looked at me. I felt her shrinking from me.99

My mind was now dwelling with the demons of conscience. I had committed the ultimate sin, I had taken the life of another human being. I felt it darkly.100

‘I did care for you, Eleanor. My jealousy showed that.’101

‘Some men must always hurt the things they care for.’102

I then asked through stiffened lips. ‘What should I do now?’103

‘Only you can answer that, Arnold. You cannot escape from yourself.’ She said in a hard, toneless voice. ‘You know in your heart that you are guilty, Arnold.’104

But I didn’t have the words to admit how guilty I felt. Maybe there were no such words. I knew I was walking on a precipice and I began to feel a great dread coming into my soul. Out of respect for her tragedy I kept silent. It was a silence that felt like a wall..105

‘You will always be alone now, Arnold, set apart from humanity in a dreadful solitude.’106

Suddenly, I realized I was red-branded like Cain. And I knew that I could never rise above my crime. In destroying Eleanor I had forfeited all my relation to the world. My crime had isolated me from the warmth of human contact. My nights were filled with hideous dreams and my days with wandering and drinking. I knew what it was to be utterly, utterly alone.107

We were now walking by the sea and were making our way up the Strand towards the open parkland to the river estuary. Eleanor was becoming all dim and shadowy as the false dawn lit the eastern sky. I turned away from her for a moment looking out across the estuary to the sea and when I turned back she had vanished from my sight.108

In the sobering light of a grey morning my true nature awoke in a coercion of conscience. I was drinking hard all day every day and by night bad dreams were a constant rat-run in my mind. Like Macbeth, I had murdered sleep and could never know rest.109

Where had you been all my life, I wondered. I realized that I now needed to act decisively. Deliberately. To make the ultimate act of free-will.110

Varying hues of violet, peach, silver and pink steadily encroached across the indigo sky. The water at Williamstown Channel flowing to the sea was dark against the early morning light deep below the pier. I would now act decisively and rid myself of my ghosts. Like the naked man among the tombs, my ghosts would pour out of myself like swine falling over a steep cliff into the sea, perishing in deep waters. My clothes were heavy. I was not a strong swimmer. It would not take long, I thought as I lowered myself down on to the pylon below. The night-dark river estuary, grim with cold. And I floating your my downward to oblivion.111

The black pall of night rolled from the suburb. A new dawn. The dull murmur of the empty sea. The sky reddened.112

© 2009 ROBERT DAVIDSON, All rights reserved 113