A Ghost
Story
She found them in a
charity shop, run for the local hospice. An old woman arranging
nick-nacks in the window and an unhappy looking girl in her late
teens at the till. It wasn't the sort of place where she'd normally
look for clothes but she had wandered in while waiting for a
prescription to be filled at the chemist two doors along. Everything
else on the rack was labelled, and far too small for her husband, a
tall man, and oddly shaped now, after too many years sat at a desk
looking at numbers. The jeans were new, she thought, or at least
barely worn. One belt loop was unstitched but Imelda, who helped
around the house three days a week, could sort that out. The girl
asked the old woman to price them. She handed over a fifty pound
note and got two twenties, plus change, in return. She had done a
good thing, she thought, but left the rather tatty little place with
a feeling of unease.
They were a super fit.
Comfy, yet flattering. He tucked his shirt in and they walked down
the lane to the Two Brewers for dinner. Dennis seemed more relaxed
than usual. He lingered at the bar while refreshing her gin and
tonic, and said something to Sally, the landlord's niece, which made
her giggle and blush. She watched him walk back, glass in hand. The
jeans seemed to narrow his hips, which in turn made his shoulders
appear broader. His habitual stoop had gone, or had she imagined it?
Seated, he smiled at her more than she was used to. He tipped
generously and they walked home, his long arm around her waist. They
kissed on the doorstep then he pulled her inside, slapping her
backside like a teenager. She brushed her teeth, agitated and
aroused. Stepping from the ensuite she saw the jeans at the foot of
the bed and her husband asleep, his body twisted into a awkward
shape, as if he'd been shot.
He only wore them at
the weekends, at first. He took to leaning against things with an
unconsidered air. One foot off the floor, like a cowboy, she
thought. He whistled when he wore the jeans, but not at other times.
He stood taller still when he had them on. Women noticed him, and
she noticed them noticing him. Soon he began to change into them as
soon as he got home from work. The evenings were lengthening and he
found excuses to be away from her, dogwalking, hedge-trimming. But
she told herself that nothing had really changed.
“So we've decided to
start having casual Fridays at work,” he told her. “Relax a bit.
Clothes do not maketh the man, after all. Or woman.”
“Whose idea was it?”
She watched him move in
his armchair.
“It was my idea,”
he said eventually.
She pulled the washing
machine out from the wall and smashed the pipes off the back of it
with a glass candlestick. She put her laundry into the back of the
car and drove into town. It took three hours to wash and dry
everything at the laundrette. Five pounds for parking and handfuls
of coins for the machines. She smoked a cigarette outside, watching
the clothes dance in the dryer, then threw the packet away. Folded
everything and put it back in the basket, in the boot. Except the
jeans which sat on the passenger seat as she drove half a mile to
other end of the high street. She walked in to the hospice shop and
put the jeans on the counter. The old woman recognised her as she
turned to leave.
“Didn't fit?”
“No,” she said.
“Not quite.”
“Would you like to
exchange them for anything?” She shook her head and walked back to
the car.
