What do you give a ghost for breakfast?
She’d always arrive with damp hair begging for the top of the milk.
Slight Kiwi accent too. How weird after all these years. Nice smile though. Cute if you like that sort of thing.
That scent.
No air kisses though.
Call me Kezia.
Of course this is not quite what happened. Life disappoints us all and I am no different from you. So I admit I am improvising, a little. Details are missing. Maybe Katherine overwhelmed me; she could be too much you know. When my courage failed me, I lay low, licked my wounds and waited until I could face her again. I discovered my dark corners so to speak. No doubt she knew more about dark corners than me. She retreated into dust even when she was alive. She told me that she coiled into herself. Despair wrapped up in rage. ‘Now I am dead, I can uncoil’. Part of her attractiveness, the cobra within.
‘Just look into my eyes.
Beneath the darkness, yellow peril, I swear. .
‘I don’t want to write, I want to live! ‘
Nowadays so much Time has passed between our meetings and the quiet hours of my later life, my after- Katherine –life as I it, that I must confess my memory isn’t what it used to be. Yet in a deep down essential way, my shortened version tells you as much as the longer version ever could. Katherine, I am sure, would prefer the shorter version. After all it was her nature. She was thrifty with words. Hated verbiage. She said it strangled truth. ‘Cheap’ she said. I can still hear the emphasis in her voice. Nothing cheap about her but she could be vulgar you know. Earthy to her toe nails. That’s why everyone enjoyed her company until she turned savage on them. When Alice Temperley asked her about love, well the answer she heard sent her home in a taxi and the next time we saw her, she’d changed more than her hair. Sometimes I still hear her roaring about this town, black leather, boots and special parcels. Blame Katherine. Her words climbed into your head, like tentacles, they rearranged what you thought was there. Alice claimed to be grateful though. Mouse to femme fatale within a week.
Katherine tolerated me, but only just and maybe because I had something she wanted. So without any more preamble, here’s the longer version and then judge for yourself. Be kind though. She wasn’t. But I survived to tell a tale.
I did meet Katherine Mansfield a number of years ago, under very curious circumstances and maybe for time we were friends. She would come around to eat and share adventures, , always in need of something but looking pretty well considering, In fact none of the old pictures do her justice. Even with wet hair she held the floor. I think she loved to turn her head towards you as if she needed to hear your words purely, so you felt flattered, acknowledged. I remember Tom Hills walking away from one of our parties as if he were a Greek God, and Margery, little Margery Wall, telling me she became a Gothic heroine under Katherine’s tuition. I was even popular for a while. People who didn’t even like me would drop by and send cards, appear unprompted and gaze over my head looking around the room, fooling no one. They were looking for Katherine. Weren’t we all?
Katherine spoke in a husky way as if she was about to pounce and when she left I could have followed her perfume trail all the way back to where she spent her dead time slumbering, waiting for her next opportunity to return.
Katherine found me one Monday morning, sheltering from the rain with Cleo a white terrier I helped walk for my neighbour. Cleo turned her head and sniffed at the air. And as if by magic there was the most beautiful woman I had even seen.