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there, at the cottage?'
'In the garden. She was swinging on the garden-swing. This is the second night
she's done it. She did it yesterday only I didn't see her then.'
'But you saw her tonight?'
'Only for a very short while. She wasn't very clear. She was like a television
picture that's on the fritz. But it was her all right. I know it. And the
swing - the swing was going backwards and forwards by itself. Well, with her
on it. But if she was a ghost, she was making that swing go backwards and
forwards just as hard as if she was real.'
George puckered up his lips thoughtfully, and frowned at me. Keith raised his
eyebrows, and rubbed his chin.
'You don't believe me,' I told them.
'Didn't say that,' returned Keith. 'Didn't say that at all.'
'It's just that, well, it's something of a shock, isn't it?' put in George.
'Seeing a real genuine ghost? You don't think it could have been some trick of
the light? Some-77
times the light plays strange old tricks at night, especially on the ocean.'
'She was sitting on the swing, George. Lit up, like a blue flickering light.
Blue-and-white, like flashbulbs.'
Keith took a long drink of beer and then wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand. Then he stood up, and pressed his hands to the small of his back,
rubbing it to ease the stiffness, and walked slowly across to the window. He
parted the drapes and stood there for a long time with his back to us, staring
out at the weather.
'You know what you've just been a witness to, don't you?' he said.
'I've seen my wife, that's all I know. She's a month dead, and I've seen her.'
Keith turned around, slowly shaking his head. 'You didn't see your wife, John.
Maybe your imagination painted a picture for you, turned what you actually saw
into something you thought was Jane. But no sir. I've seen what you saw
tonight a hundred times. Used to frighten sailors to death back in the old
days. St Elmo's Fire, they call it.'
'St Elmo's Fire? What the hell is St Elmo's Fire?'
'It's a discharge of natural electricity. You see it mostly on the masts of
ships, or radio antennae, or the wings of airplanes. Corposant, they usually
call it, in Salem. Flickers, like a burning brush. That's what you saw, wasn't
it? Kind of a flickering light?'
I glanced at George. 'Keith's right,' said George. 'I've seen it myself, out
on fishing trips. Looks real eerie, the first time you see it.'
'I saw her face, George,' I told him. There wasn't any mistake about it. I saw
her face.'
George leaned forward and laid his hand on my knee. 'John,' he said, 'I
believe you saw what you said you saw. I truly believe you saw Jane, in your
mind's eye. But you know and I know that there isn't any such a thing as a
ghost. You know and I know that people don't come back from the dead. We may
believe in the immortal soul, the life everlasting, amen, but we don't believe
that it takes
78
place here on earth, because if it did, this world would be pretty damned
crowded with wandering spirits, don't you think?'
He reached behind him for the bottle of Four Roses and poured me another large
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
glassful. Then he said, 'You've been bearing up to this pretty well, all
things considered. I was saying that very thing to Keith only this evening,
that you were bearing up well. But it's bound to break out, now and again,
that grief you're feeling deep inside of you. Nobody blames you for it. It's
just one of those things. I lost my brother Wilf, drowned off the Neck one
night, what, eighteen years ago now; and believe you me it took me many a long
month to get over that feeling of sadness, and loss.'
'Mrs Edgar Simons told me tonight that she'd seen her late husband, too.'
George smiled, and turned to smile back at Keith. Keith, who was pouring
himself another Michelob, smiled in return, and shook his head.
'Don't you go taking no notice of what the Simons widow tells you. Everybody
knows what her problem is.' He tapped his forehead to suggest that she was 78
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