{"id":12963,"date":"2025-07-04T14:18:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T13:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12963"},"modified":"2025-12-20T13:17:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:17:00","slug":"poltergeist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12963","title":{"rendered":"Poltergeist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Image: \u00a9 Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like to be Irene Hedges? Or Linda Jones or Dawn Cooper, or any of the others who are not like you; who are normal? Do they know how lucky they are?<\/p>\n

You have no idea which piece is missing from your clockwork, what has made you such an anomaly, but you wish that, just for a second, you could slip inside the skin, not of one of the more outstanding girls, not the ones who are top of the class, nor the ones at the bottom, but someone in the middle, someone like Irene Hedges.<\/p>\n

Irene Hedges, dark-haired, self-contained, in her navy-blue uniform \u2013 a polished aura of contentment \u2013 a velvety sheen.<\/p>\n

What makes you think of Irene Hedges, as you turn your rubber gloves inside out, searching for your dead mother\u2019s wedding ring? Your dead mother\u2019s already at your ear: you can\u2019t take care of anything, <\/em>she says. Maybe the ring came off while you were gardening, in which case there\u2019s no chance of ever getting it back, unless a jackdaw drops it on your windowsill like in a fairy tale.<\/p>\n

But how could the ring have wriggled loose when it was jammed beneath your knuckle? You could lose a bit of weight, <\/em>your mother often said, which would have been true if you\u2019d ever aspired to be a supermodel. Your mother kept the same trim figure throughout her life, her fingers slim and manicured, even when the skin on the hands was mottled with old age. When the undertaker handed over the ring in its little velvet bag, the safest place to keep it seemed to be on your body.<\/p>\n

Over the next few days, other objects vanish \u2014 your glasses, keys and phone, which is not unusual, except they take longer than ever to reappear, always in the first place you looked for them. A bar of chocolate you were saving for later. The birthday card you left by the door so you wouldn\u2019t forget to post it.\u00a0 The black dress you wore at your mother\u2019s funeral \u2014 you rummage round the dark wardrobe, thinking it must have slipped off a hanger. You empty out the whole wardrobe, re-ordering your clothes and shoes, bagging up everything you never wear for charity. The next time you open the wardrobe, it\u2019s hanging right in front of you.<\/p>\n

There was never a speck of dust in your dead mother\u2019s house. No smell, except for lavender polish. Every night, your uniform was laid out neatly, the labels with your name on them sewn inside every single item. You weren\u2019t supposed to wear jewellery at school, but your mother had an identity bracelet engraved with your name and address. Your briefcase had your name inside, your pencil case, the purse with your bus fare and dinner money. Being at grammar school was expensive, the uniforms made to measure by a firm that visited from Ipswich. Hockey sticks and tennis racquets had to be ordered from a special catalogue.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well,\u2019 your father said, as the three of you dithered over pictures of hooked wooden sticks at different prices. \u2018Get the best.\u2019<\/p>\n

You lost your father many years before your mother, not unexpectedly since he was a whole generation older, though from the extravagance of her mourning you would have thought he\u2019d been snatched in his prime. What you didn\u2019t know then, but were about to find out, was that your father was also your uncle by marriage. During the war she\u2019d been sent to live with her mother\u2019s sister up in Yorkshire, then afterwards she stayed on to help the aunt who had TB, or something of that kind, and once the aunt was in her grave her widower found a bride right on his doorstep.<\/p>\n

Your dead mother hated Yorkshire. Yorkshire people were two-faced, she said, you couldn\u2019t trust them as far as you could throw them<\/em>. Your dead mother corrected your dead father if he ever said \u2018nowt\u2019 or \u2018fair to middlin\u2019.\u00a0 Sometimes he \u00a0said it as a tease, which drove her wild with fury. When you were young, you thought of Yorkshire as a dim, boundless space to the north. No other place existed beyond the tight circle of your home, surrounded by the familiar territory you crossed every day to reach the universe inhabited by girls like Irene Hedges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was no point in buying the best hockey stick. Irene Hedges didn\u2019t, nor any of the others. Your team always lost anyway; and within a week the new hockey stick had vanished from the cloakroom. You spent hours searching, knowing it was not your fault that the thing you never wanted had gone missing, but also knowing you\u2019d be blamed eternally, as if you\u2019d lost it on purpose.<\/p>\n

Still no sign of your dead mother\u2019s ring. The third finger of your right hand feels naked and exposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since you lost the ring, you\u2019ve become paranoid about your purse and credit cards, and less valuable items such as your lipstick and comb, not because they\u2019ve been misplaced but, in a moment\u2019s panic, that they might have been. You make sure that the family albums you inherited from your dead mother are correctly labelled. You make an inventory of the documents you need for probate, storing them in box files, which reminds you to make sure your passport and your birth certificate, your divorce papers and your marriage certificate, are all safe in one place. You tidy your jewellery box, matching earrings correctly, checking the moonstone pendant your husband gave you is still in its little blue box. Your heart jolts when you see the case is empty, but when you check again later, you discover the chain has slipped beneath the satiny padding.<\/p>\n

Your dead mother always kept her paperwork organised \u2013 her bank statements, utility bills and council tax, premium bonds, life insurance and a copy of the will. Exactly where she told you everything would be, in the sideboard next to an unopened box of crystal wine glasses. You are proud of your own diligence in carrying out her wishes. Only one thing has not been possible. And for once in your life that is not your fault.<\/p>\n

Her wish was always to be buried with your father. \u2018I\u2019ll be with you soon my darling,\u2019 she called, tossing a rose onto his coffin as he went into the grave. They were such a tight unit, you often think having a daughter must have got in the way of their romance. Children always jarred your mother\u2019s nerves \u2013 little beggars<\/em>, she\u2019d mutter, pressing her forehead with three fingers. Too messy, too noisy, too uncontrollable; the neighbours\u2019 kids never came to play at your house.\u00a0 Now, at last the time has come for your dead mother to be re-united with the only man she ever loved.<\/p>\n

Everything seemed straightforward \u2013 a date was fixed, the arrangements slotted neatly into place. You were already on the train home to Yorkshire when the call came from the funeral director. Your mother had neglected to buy a double plot.<\/p>\n

You checked. You checked again. You hunted for evidence amongst the hoard of old utility bills, bank statements and council tax receipt. You still can\u2019t quite believe it. But it\u2019s true. Your mother slipped up. There has been a change of plan.<\/p>\n

Not many people attended the funeral; your dead mother did not have a gift for friendship and had fallen out with most of the family. Nevertheless, a pair of distant cousins turned up with memories of your mother quite different to your own. If they were surprised that she was left behind in the chapel after the service, they didn\u2019t show it . No questions were asked about why you weren\u2019t all trooping off to see her buried. No need, after all, to explain anything about the \u2018unattended cremation\u2019 that would follow within a day or two.<\/p>\n

Unattended cremation. <\/em>It sounds like the kind of thing that happens to the bodies of prisoners or paupers. And you\u2019re not sure your dead mother would have approved of the banana-leaf coffin, laid on the trolley like a giant laundry basket. Now you wish you\u2019d yielded to the impulse to check that she really was inside. A scandal has emerged at a funeral director\u2019s in Hartlepool \u00ad\u2014 corpses mislaid or wrongly labelled, \u2013 unwitting families keeping a stranger\u2019s ashes in their sideboards, or else mourning at a graveside while their loved one\u2019s cadaver lies mouldering in storage.\u00a0 Weird stories like this crop up in the news, only to vanish just as quickly, as if you made them up.<\/p>\n

You should have gone back to collect your mother\u2019s ashes. But it seemed safer to leave them where they were for the time being, while you waited for her name to be added to the headstone. No way could she have fitted in that grave as she envisaged, her dead bones mingling with the bones of your dead father. You\u2019re doing your best, you tell yourself. <\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes you imagine the lost hockey stick is your Rosebud, the secret key to your childhood, and hence your whole existence, like the sledge at the end of Citizen Kane. <\/em>Your father resembled the elderly Charles Foster Kane, as played by Orson Welles \u2013 the big bald forehead, the silvery moustache, the tender mouth, the stooping gait. You dream of him sometimes, and when she was alive you dreamt of your dead mother. Surprisingly she has not chosen to visit since her death. But then you haven\u2019t dreamt at all. You\u2019ve barely slept.<\/p>\n

There is still no sign of your dead mother\u2019s ring.<\/p>\n

You convince yourself you weren’t even wearing the ring when you thought it was lost; you must have put it back inside the blue velvet pouch that it came in. So you sneak out of bed in the middle of the night to check the box of leftover Orders of Service where it\u2019s kept, but of course there\u2019s nothing there.<\/p>\n

What made you wear the ring when you were bound to lose it?\u00a0 That\u2019s what your husband would say, and that\u2019s why you haven\u2019t mentioned anything. He\u2019d say that, unconsciously, you wanted to be rid of the damn thing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Your search turns up all kinds of oddments, at the back of drawers, beneath the bed, in coat linings and down the sides of armchairs. Postcards from exotic places, the faded ink no longer legible; hair grips and handkerchiefs; not one but three apostle spoons, and a commemorative fifty-pence coin, marking Britain\u2019s entry into the Common Market. Keys of every size and antiquity \u2013 your dead mother would be shocked at the detritus in your house, all sticky with dust and fluff. A briefcase, its leather hardened with neglect, the catch jammed shut. You can\u2019t take care of anything, can you? <\/em><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t think it actually is the briefcase you took to school. It looks similar. But it\u2019s not the same.<\/p>\n

You wipe the dust from the musical box you were given on your sixth birthday. That\u2019s where you should have kept the ring, in the tray beneath the lid that\u2019s become a rarely-visited repository for unmatched ear studs, discarded watches and the identity bracelet engraved with your name. The wooden box is shaped like an old-fashioned telly. A miniature ballerina can be seen through a window representing the screen, her figure duplicated by mirrors on three sides. If you turn the key at the base, her dangling legs quiver on their pin to the hesitant tinkle of a tune without a name.<\/p>\n

You remember choosing that box yourself, fascinated by the ballerina impaled like a butterfly in her satin skirt, one arm raised as if in salutation. Her torso fixed, her movement restricted to a sideways twitch, the ghost of the pirouette that she could execute in full when she was new. Did the child ever notice her own image in the rear mirror, trapped as yours is now, every imperfection magnified? Six years old, the birthday girl.<\/p>\n

\u2018Are you ready?\u2019 your husband calls.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nearly,\u2019 you lie, rummaging for a lipstick, and picking out a bracelet to match the moonstone pendant. Then you open the lid of the music box.<\/p>\n

The moonstone pedant. The one your husband gave you for your anniversary.<\/p>\n

You put it carefully inside its blue case. You placed the blue case slowly and precisely inside the music box, taking a mental snapshot of each and every gesture.<\/p>\n

The moonstone pendant your husband gave to you.<\/p>\n

The room tilts like a shipwreck. Your hands are shaking as you check the lining in the case a second, a third time. You tip the overwound watches, the backs of earrings, the identity bracelet, from the tray. You check inside the dressing-table drawer where you used to keep the pendant until it was moved so deliberately. And then you have to go or else be late. This is your first night out together since your mother passed away.<\/p>\n

All night long you can think of little else. On the drive to the concert, waiting at the door for your bag to be inspected, you\u2019re longing to be home to look again, because the pendant must be there. It has to be. As you find your seats in the half-empty hall \u2014 what\u2019s happened to the audience? \u2014 your mind\u2019s running back to the last time you wore the moonstone pendant, which was also the first time, your anniversary. Your husband shortened the chain so the little stone, the size of a tear drop, rested just beneath your collar bone.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re aware, as if through a camera, of the Qawwali band shuffling onstage, all in white except for the mop-haired young vocalist in a sparkly jacket. The compere whips up the sparse crowd. Dillagi, <\/em>he says, is the theme of the concert, dillagi <\/em>is a special concept that is hard to translate. \u00a0Then he explains, but you don\u2019t take it in. The plangent music circles round endlessly, voices calling and responding to the slap of the percussionjust as the pressing urgency circles round your head, to get back home. Gradually the hall fills up with latecomers who have travelled from afar \u2013 family groups and coach parties held up along the motorway. Young women in hijabs swoon as the star of the show reaches out his arms to them, his voice quavering and swooping with desire.<\/p>\n

\u2018We can go on for hours,\u2019 he says, pausing to draw breath.\u00a0 \u2018We can go on all night.\u2019 The hall surges with appreciation, the stage lights pulsating from blue to red and blue again.<\/p>\n

You make your silent prayer; let the pendant be back where it should be.<\/em> You\u2019ll give up on your dead mother\u2019s ring. That doesn\u2019t matter anymore. All you want is the moonstone. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Your mother was not impressed by your choice of husband. She preferred the first one, the one that you divorced. The more your new husband tried to charm her, the more she resisted any sign of pleasure in his company. She didn\u2019t soften in her frailty, yet her attitude shifted until there was almost a complicity between them, as if they shared a joke at your expense. He\u2019s a practical man, your husband, one whose patience has been tried by your tendency to knock over wine glasses and bump into furniture and leave CDs lying around without a case. He says being with you is like being married to a poltergeist.<\/p>\n

You make your wish again, grasping your husband\u2019s hand as you do so, and he smiles wryly back at you. This is not quite the spiritual occasion you were both anticipating, more Bollywood than Sufi ritual. Yet even as your mind puts you at a distance, your body can\u2019t resist the rhythm. You watch the modestly dressed teenagers further to the front, wriggling with excitement, and nudging one another, and comparing pictures on their phones. They remind you of the girls at school \u2014 Linda Jones, Dawn Cooper, Irene Hedges \u2014 gathered round a record player, transfixed by the heavy breathing on Je t\u2019aime. <\/em>After break time they\u2019d switch back to being sensible \u2014 prefects, midfielders and house captains \u2013 ties knotted tightly, brown hair tucked behind the ears.<\/p>\n

Not so long ago, you nearly lost your husband. Sitting by the hospital bed, you wanted to drag his body free of the magnetic pull of death, envisaged it so urgently you could barely stop yourself from grabbing hold. How quickly you forget all of that. How quickly you get back to normal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your husband\u2019s rummaging in the freezer, ice crunching: \u2018What\u2019re we having for tea?\u2019<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t care. You\u2019re reading a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions. Your dead mother has been inadvertently paid the sum of four hundred and seventy pounds.<\/p>\n

\u2018Time we had a bit of order in here.\u2019<\/p>\n

Just pay the money. Write a cheque, place it in the brown envelope, make a note of this expense in the spreadsheet you\u2019ve drawn up for probate.<\/p>\n

\u2018What have you done with the kippers? We never have kippers.\u2019<\/p>\n

Your husband loves kippers. You\u2019re not so keen, finding them sour and mummified, and the business of extricating the bones, at which he is so skilled, not worth the faff. But okay, whatever you like.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s taking all four drawers out of the freezer, re-arranging the contents systematically. You lick the prepaid envelope, resting it next to your glasses so you don\u2019t forget to post it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Look at this,\u2019 he calls.<\/p>\n

Now what have you done? <\/em><\/p>\n

‘No, come and look.\u2019<\/p>\n

There, on a ledge at the back of the empty freezer \u2013 your dead mother\u2019s wedding ring.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You close the lid on the musical box, with the single earrings, stopped watches, identity bracelet and your dead mother\u2019s ring inside. Still no sign of the moonstone pendant. But you\u2019ll never give up on it. You\u2019ll always believe that one day you\u2019ll be looking for something else and there it will be, nestling in a handbag, or down the back of a settee, or simply returned to its first resting place. That\u2019s what you pretend. That\u2019s what you hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

Ailsa Cox<\/strong> has published fiction in numerous magazines and anthologies, and twice been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Precipitation, a mini-collection in collaboration with the artist Patricia Farrell, is available from Confingo . Other books include Writing Short Stories (Routledge 3rd<\/sup> edition 2025) and, as co-author, Reading Alice Munro\u2019s Breakthrough Books \u00a0(EUP 2024). Ailsa Cox is Professor Emerita in Short Fiction at Edge Hill University. She is Associate Director of the European Network for Short Fiction Research, the editor of the journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice and the founder of the Edge Hill Prize.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: \u00a9 Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries What\u2019s it like to be Irene Hedges? Or Linda Jones or Dawn Cooper, or any of the others who are not like you; who are normal? Do they know how lucky they are? 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