Harold kept the shop open until 4:00 in the afternoon, and considering it was early March, and the weather had been so bad, he was visited by quite a reasonable number of buying customers. He managed to sell a huge and hideous ship's telegraph to a gay couple from Danbury, Connecticut, who excitedly took it away in the back of their shiny blue Oldsmobile wagon; and a serious silver-haired man spent nearly one hour going through his engravings and unerringly selected the best.484Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKShoNqgnyj
After he had locked up the shop, Harold went over to the Broken Heart (Lord have mercy!) for a cup of black coffee and a doughnut. He liked the girls behind the counter there; one of them, Suzy, had been a friend of Nancy's, and she knew just how to talk about Nancy without upsetting him.
"Good day's business?" she asked Harold, handing over his coffee.
"Not bad. At least I managed to unload that ship's telegraph that Nancy always used to hate."
"Oh, that thing you bought up in Rockport, when you went out buying on your own?"
"That's the one."
"Well," said Suzy, "you'd better make sure your taste in acquisitions improves, or she'll come back and haunt you."
He gave an awkward grimace. Suzy looked at her, her head tilted to one side, and said, "Not funny? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."
"It's all right," he told her. "It wasn't your fault."
"Really, I'm sorry," Suzy insisted.
"Forget it," he told her. "I'm just having one of my moods."
He finished his coffee, left Suzy a dollar tip, and walked across Ol' Spithead Square into the chilly afternoon. He felt like getting into his car and driving all night, as far away from Massachusetts as possible, back to St. Louis, or even further. In spite of the constant wind, in spite of the ocean, Harold felt that Salem and Ol' Granitehead were small and dark and constricting and old. A great suffocating weight of history pressed on him here, layer upon layer of ancient buildings, long-dead people, mysterious events. Layer upon layer of prejudice and argument and pain.
He drove southwest as far as Cornwallis Street, and then crossed into Salem, passing the Star of the Sea cemetery. It was oddly sunny; and sharp reflections of light glanced off windows and car windshields and yachts. A distant airplane glittered in the sky like a needle as it circled in to Beverly Airport, five miles away.
On the car radio, WERO was playing I Heard I'll Love You Forever. He drove as far as Charter Street, opposite police headquarters, and then made a right to Liberty Street, where he parked his car. Then he crossed the road to the Peabody Museum, located on East India Square.
Salem had been revitalized in the same way as Ol' Spithead, and East India Square, newly created, was a clean, brick-paved enclave, with a fountain in the center shaped like a Japanese gate. Running west from East India Square was a long mall of fashionable "shoppes." In contrast, the original 1824 building in which the Peabody Museum had been started, East India Marine Hall, overlooked the square like an aged relative who had been freshly scrubbed and clean-cut to attend a grandchild's wedding-party.
Harold found Michael Trotter in the Maritime History department, sitting in the full-size cabin of the 1820 yacht Olympian Glory, reading a sub-aqua manual. He knocked on the woodwork, and said, "Anybody home?"
"Hi, Harold," said Michael, putting down his book. "I was just thinking about you. Refreshing my mind on diving for absolute beginners. It looks like the weather's going to hold for tomorrow morning."
"Well, if the storm gods answer my prayers, it's not."
"There's nothing to be scared of," said Michael. "In fact, when you're diving, it's very important not to be afraid, or at least to try and control your fear. I mean, we all get afraid. We get afraid of suffocation; we get afraid of dark water; we get afraid of being tangled up in seaweed. Some divers even develop a phobia about surfacing. But if you're reasonably relaxed, there's no reason why you shouldn't have the time of your life."
Yet, Harold remained unconvinced, and he said so.
"You don't have to worry," Michael reassured him, taking off his glasses, and blinking at him. "I'll be right beside you the whole time."
"What time do you finish here?' Harold asked him. "There's something I want to talk about."
"We close at 5:00, but then I'll have about twenty minutes' clearing up to do."
Harold looked around. Already the light was fading through the museum's arched windows. Another night was coming; another time when the dead of Ol' Spithead might appear to their loved ones; and another time when Nancy might appear to me. I was going to stay in Salem tonight, at the Spouter Inn, but I wasn't at all sure that Nancy's visitations were limited to Harvest Mills Cottage.
"Come and have a drink at Mulligan's Tavern," Harold suggested. "I'm going there now. Why don't I see you there about six?"
"I've got a better idea," said Michael. "Go down to Red Hen Mall and introduce yourself to Pauline Champion. She's going to be keeping log for us tomorrow, so you might as well get to know her now. She runs a fashion shop called Satin & Calico, about the sixth shop down, in the arcade. I'll meet you there when I've finished up here."
Harold left the Peabody and walked across East India Square to the Mall. It was growing colder now, as well as darker, and he rubbed his hands briskly together to keep myself warm. A small party of tourists wandered past, and one woman said loudly, in a twanging Texas accent, "Isn't it marvelous? You can just feel the 18th-century atmosphere."
Satin & Calico was a small, elegant, expensive little shop selling high-collared Princess-Diana style dresses with bows and ruffles and muttonchop sleeves. An extremely svelt black girl directed him to the rear of the ship with a long blood-red fingernail; and there he found Pauline Champion, tying up a gift parcel for a tired-looking Boston matron in a molting mink.
Paline was tall, with curly brunette hair, and a striking high-cheekboned face. She wore one of her own linen blouses, with a ruffled lace bodice, but it did nothing to hide the fullness of her breasts, or the slimness of her waist. She wore a charcoal-gray calf-length skirt, and fashionably small black boots. Pixie boots, Nancy always used to call them.
"Can I help you?" she said, when the Boston matron had flustered out of the shop.
Harold held out his hand. "Hi. Harold Winstanley. Michael Trotter told me to come down and introduce myself. Apparently we're diving together tomorrow."
"Oh, well, hi!" she smiled. She had eyes the color of glazed chestnuts, and a little dimple on her right cheek. Harold decided that if this was the quality of the company he was going to be keeping when he went diving, then he might very well become something of a sub-aqua enthusiast.
"Michael told me you bought that watercolor of the G.B. the other day," said Pauline. "He totally forgot about the auction, you know; he was here, helping me to put up one of my display. He was so mad when he came back here and told me you'd brought it. 'That damn stuffy guy!' he was shouting. 'I offered him $411 and all he did was tell me I could borrow it.'"
"Michael's very involved with this theory about the George Badger, isn't he?" Harold said.
"You're permitted to say 'obsessed' if you want to," smiled Pauline. "Michael won't mind. He admits he's obsessed, but that's only because he's convinced he's right."
"What do you think?"
"Don't know. I think I agree with him; although I'm not too sure about all these ghosts in Ol' Spithead. I've never actually met anyone who's ever seen one. I mean, it could be a kind of mass hysteria, couldn't it, like the witch-trials were?"
Harold looked at her carefully. "You know about me, and the murder charge they made against me?" he asked her.
Pauline blushed a little, and nodded. "Yes, I read about that in the Evening News."
"Well, whatever it says in the Evening News, let me tell you one sure fact, apart from the one sure fact that it wasn't me who murdered that woman. The other fact is that one of those ghosts was there that night. I saw it with my own eyes; and it's my belief that it killed her."
Pauline stared at her for a very long time, obviously trying to decide whether Harold was a freak or a fruitcake. She probably wasn't aware of it, but her body language clearly revealed her trepidation: she crossed her arms across her breasts.
"Right," Harold said without smiling. "Now you think I'm a maniac. Maybe I shouldn't have told you."
"Oh, no," she stammered, "I mean, that's quite all right. I mean, I don't think you're a maniac at all. I just think that...."
She hesitated, and then she said, "Well, I just think that the existence of ghosts is kinda hard to swallow."
"I know that. I didn't believe in them either, until I saw one."
"You really saw a ghost?"
Harold nodded. "I really and truly saw a ghost. It was Mr. Donald Baylor, the dead woman's late husband. He was like---I don't know, electricity. A man made out of high-voltage electricity. It's hard to describe."
"But why did he kill her?"
"I don't know. I haven't any idea. Maybe he was getting his revenge for something she'd done to him when he was alive. It's hard to say."
"And you actually saw him?"
"I actually saw him."
Pauline swept back her curls with her hand. "Michael always saying that Ol' Spithead is haunted. I don't think that any of the rest of us really believe him; at least we haven't, up until now. Michael's a kind of an odd duck, if you know what I mean. Very deeply into the Salem witch-scare, and Cotton Mather, and all the odd occult sects that kept cropping up in Massachusetts during the 18th century."
Harold leaned against the counter and folded his arms. "I'm not the only person in Ol' Spithead that's been seeing ghosts. The guy who runs the Ol' Spithead market, that's my local store, he's been seeing his dead son. And, if you ask me, a whole lot of people in Ol' Spithead have been seeing their dead relatives for a long time, but not saying anything about it."
"That's what Michael believes. But why shouldn't they say anything about it?'
"Would you, if your dead husband or wife turned up on your doorstep one night? Who'd believe you? And if anyone did believe you, the first thing you know you'd have newspapers and TV and ghost-hunters and rubberneckers all gathering all around your house like a buzzard flock. That's why it's all been so secret. Ol' Spithead people---I mean the old Ol' Spithead people---they've known all about it for years, maybe hundreds of years. That's what I think, at least. But they're purposely keeping silent about it. They want tourists, not psychic con-men."
"Gee," said Pauline, at a loss for words. Then she looked at Harold, and shook her head, and said, "You've really seen a ghost. A real live ghost. Or real dead ghost, I should say."
"Let me warn you," said Harold. "If, God forbid, it happens to you, you'll wish it hadn't. They're extremely dangerous, and powerful."
They chatted for a little while longer. Pauline told him about the shop and how she had come to open it. She had studied fashion and textiles at Salem State, and then, with a $150,000 legacy from her grandfather, and some extra finance from the Pajackok-Merchants Bank, opened up a small fashion shop out at Hawthorne Square Shopping Center. Business had been so good that when a lease had become available in the middle of Salem itself, she had "seized it with all ten claws," as she put it.
"I'm independent," she said. "An independent business lady selling my own designs. What more could I want?"
"You married?" Harold asked her.
"Me? No way? I don't even have time for boyfriends. Do you know what I have to do this evening? I've got to drive over to Hartpool to collect a whole lot of lace day-dresses that are being hand-sewn for me by two old New England spinsters. If I don't do it tonight, they won't be in the shop in time for tomorrow, and tomorrow's Saturday."
"All work and no play," Harold remarked.
"To me, work is play," she retorted. "I love my work. It's my whole life. It completely fulfills me."
"But you are coming diving tomorrow."
"Damn right. I like to prove that I'm as good as a man in other areas as well."
"I never said you weren't as good as a man."
She blushed. "Don't patronize me."
At that moment, Michael came into the shop, carrying an untidy collection of papers and books. "Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, trying to rearrange his papers and scratch his ears at the same time. "The Director wanted to make sure that everything was ready for the Ralph Hays exhibition tomorrow. Do you want that drink now?"
"Yep," said Harold. "How about you, Pauline? Do you want to come?"
"I've got to be in Hartpool by seven," she said. "Then I have to get back to press all the dresses and price them."
"Drop into the Hawthorne on your way back, then," Harold asked her. "I'll still be in the Tavern."
"Sure will."
Michael and Harold left Pauline at Satin & Calico and walked over to Liberty Street to collect Harold's car. "She's an interesting girl, Pauline," said Michael. "Underneath that sexy exterior she's got herself a real tough business brain. That's women's lib at its best. Can you guess how old she is?"
"Oh, twenty-four, maybe twenty-five."
"You didn't look at the skin closely enough, or the figure. She's just turned twenty."
"You're kidding!"
"Hey, wait 'till tomorrow, when she's in a swimsuit. Then you'll see."
"Are you----pursuing her?" Harold asked him.
Michael shrugged. "She's too hot for me. Too much of a go-getter. I prefer the dreamy young college-girl types, you know, mulled cider in front of the fire, poetry by Rod McKuen, Boston on the stereo."
"Did you ever get stuck in your era."
Michael laughed. "Probably."
They managed to arrive at Mulligan's Tavern at the Hawthorne Inn just as one of the tables in front of the fireplace was being vacated. The Tavern, a warm oak-paneled room decorated with pictures of ships and maritime chinaware, was crowded with homegoing businessmen and shop people. Harold ordered Chivas Regal, Michael, a beer.
"I've got to tell you something," Harold said. "Something which I didn't want to say anything about, for personal reasons, I suppose."
Michael sat forward in his chair and laced his hands together. "Let me guess: Nancy's ghost has been visiting you."
"For the past three nights now," Harold answered him. "The first night, I didn't see anything, but I heard her swinging on the garden-swing. The next night I actually saw her there. Last night, after you'd left, I saw her again. She came into my bedroom."
Michael looked at him with concern. "Wow," he exclaimed. "No wonder you didn't want to tell me. Not many people do---at first. Did she say anything to you? Did she give you any kind of message? Were you able to communicate with her in any way?"
"She---spoke my name a few times. Then she asked me to make love to her."
"Yes," Michael nodded. "Several people have had that experience. Go on. What else did she do? Did she actually make love to you?"
"I had---well, I don't know what to call it. I had some kind of a sexual experience. It was extremely cold. I'll never forget how cold it was, like in The Exorcist. It all ended when I saw her she must have looked in her car crash. You know---blood, bones---it scared the living shit out of me."
"Is that why you're not going back to Ol' Spithead tonight?"
"Can you blame me?!"
"No, no, I can't. I want you calm for tomorrow, anyway, when we dive. Anxiety leads to stress, and stress leads to mistakes. You don't want to drown your first time out."
"I wish you'd quite being so goddamn optimistic about this dive."
A waitress in a black tuxedo vest and black bowtie brought us our drinks. While Michael sampled his beer, Harold took out his Bic ballpen and said, "There something else. I kind of written message, burned on the sheets of the bed. It was still there this morning."
Harold wrote on his cocktail napkin in the letters that had appeared on his bed, copying them as precisely as he could. SALVAGE. He pushed them over to Michael and he looked them over carefully.
"Salvage?" he asked. "Not 'savage' or 'save'?"
"No. It's definitely salvage. It's the second or third time the letters have appeared. Once they were scrawled on my bathroom mirror, and once on the side of my tea kettle. It's salvage. Nancy wants me to salvage the George Badger."
Michael pouted his lips skeptically. "You really think that?"
"Michael, when you see one of these ghosts, you're aware of feelings and thoughts that you've never had before in your life. It's an intuitive experience, as well as a sensory one. Nobody said, 'This means that you're supposed to salvage the George Badger.' They didn't have to. I knew!"
"Listen up," said Michael, "I know that I'm given to drawing radical historical conclusions, but I really think that you're jumping a whole lot of logical steps here without any substantive reasoning at all. To find and raise the George Badger we've got to be analytical and theoretical."
"Do you have anyone close to you who's recently died?" Harold asked him, in the softest of voices.
"No, thank God."
"In that case, trust what I'm saying. I've seen my own dead wife, right in front of me. I've had sex with her ghost, if that's what it was. I'm already beginning to realize that there's another existence right alongside of ours, and it's crowded with pain and self-doubt and fear and longing. Maybe if we raise the George Badger, like you've always wanted to do, we can find a way to ease that pain, and settle that doubt, and calm all those fears and longings, forever."
Michael looked down at the table. He puffed out his cheeks. "Well," he said, with no trace of sarcasm, "you sounded almost religious there, for a moment."484Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyfx9VlVng6
"This is religious, isn't it? It's all tangled up with religion?"
Michael looked doubtful. "To tell you the truth, I don't know what it is. If you've really seen those apparitions, then you know more than I know, at least in terms of practical experience."
Harold raised his glass. "Here's to tomorrow's dive. I don't want to go, but it looks like I'm going to have to."
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