The Silence of Ghosts Read online

  Hilary told us that we would have been welcome to stay longer but that she has some visitors coming tomorrow for Christmas. They are old college friends, one she played hockey with on wet, muddy fields, the other an old school friend who had gone up with her in the same year.

  Rose took me to the little hotel, the Lakeside Inn, where they have a telephone. I rang my father. He sounded pleased to hear from me at first, and I told him I was getting on well with my leg; but when I suggested coming down he grew angry.

  ‘Don’t you realize there’s a war going on?’ he shouted. ‘You of all people should know that. London’s being badly hit. They have a new bomb we call Satan, a monster that wipes out everything in its path. Just yesterday our Air Raid Warden told us they have over three thousand unexploded bombs round the city. Your mother and I can get to Russell Square tube in time, once the sirens go off. But you’d never make it in time. You’d be hobbling and mincing along when the first bomb landed on your head. The little shelter we put up in the living room was far too inconvenient, so we gave it to some friends. Don’t even think of coming here.’

  I said a few words to my mother, wishing her a Happy Christmas. Of course, I said nothing to either of them about the hauntings. They would have visitors, she said, a group of able-bodied young men on leave from the RAF. They wanted to do their bit, she confided.

  ‘There won’t be room for you,’ she added, ‘but once this ghastly bombing is finished, I’m sure we can round up some petrol. Or you might get a seat on a train. You could wear your uniform. That will guarantee a place, that and your leg.’

  I told her about the leg and how much Rose had helped me.

  ‘That’s absolutely wonderful, darling. You should give her a box of chocolates or something nice for her mother, if she has one. We wouldn’t want to see her socially or anything, of course; but it’s nice to show your appreciation.’

  We talked about Octavia and I explained how well her hearing aid was working. I remained silent on the subject of the voices Octavia could hear. My mother is quite superstitious and would have hysterics if she knew what has been happening.

  Of course, without telling my parents that we needed to leave Hallinhag House, and why, I couldn’t ask for sufficient funds for a hotel, either. Our dilemma was solved when Rose invited me and Octavia to stay with her and her mother. I leapt at the chance and gave her money to buy whatever is needed for Christmas lunch. One of her patients, a farmer, has given her a splendid turkey, so grateful was he for her attention, and her mother has made stuffing from breadcrumbs and lamb sausage and a Bramley apple pie with fruit from Dr Raverat’s garden, where he keeps a fine tree full of apples and songbirds. There is even to be a pudding, made from Rose’s great-grandmother’s recipe. I wished I could go back to the house to salvage a bottle or two of port, something we had always used in our family recipes.

  For all that her mother is well on in years now, I can see where Rose gets her looks from. She’s a dainty woman whose features have remained well marked throughout a long life. Her skin has suffered from years of working in kitchens, but she hasn’t lost the twinkle in her eye and she has a slim figure any woman of her age might envy.

  She has noticed how Rose and I are together, for we make no secret of it. Once, she came in on us while we were holding hands, and I could see she’d taken note of it. I could see she was upset by it, too, but she said nothing and has made no fuss. But how will she be if we announce our engagement, as I hope we will before long? A one-legged man cannot be much of a catch in her eyes, however politely-spoken and well read he may be.

  She has started work on a teddy bear for Octavia. His name is to be Bertram, he will have tan-coloured fur, black buttons for eyes and smart trousers of corduroy. Octavia is to be kept in the dark.

  I am driven mad by my feelings for Rose. I want her with me all the time, not politely but passionately. I know next to nothing of women, and I believe she is as innocent of men. I love her, and love gives me the most exquisite feelings; but I also lust after her, and it is very hard to be with her, admiring her with great propriety while wanting her bodily. If I’d sailed longer waters and not come to grief as I did, I’m sure that by now I would have sated my curiosity in such matters. Sailors seek out houses of ill repute in every port they enter, and I do not doubt I would have succumbed to the same temptations as my shipmates, even if there would have been better favoured premises for us officers. But I’m glad now that never happened.

  One part of me is determined to marry Rose after Christmas, then to return to London with her and Octavia. Or we could marry in London and come back up here to the Lakes. Rose has a fondness for the little church in Martindale, and that would exclude any sort of society wedding. There wouldn’t be much food to go round anyway. Her mother could bake a small wedding cake and we could rent one of the cardboard covers I’ve heard about, to make it look tall and fully iced outside. There’d be another disincentive for a society bash too, the difficulty many people would face in travelling far with petrol rationing.

  Another part of me feels that something must be done first to rectify the situation in Hallinhag House. All we’ve done so far is run from it. Hilary hasn’t been able to do a thing, and I have a feeling she now wants to back off. I have thought of speaking to the vicar at St Peter’s in Martindale. It’s his province after all. Could he perform an exorcism?

  Octavia’s role in all this is considerable, for nothing ever happened here until she arrived. I’m worried that, if we don’t cleanse the house from the things that inhabit it, Octavia may somehow be trapped. None of this makes any sense, but I would not be surprised to find that the ghosts find her and remain with her.

  The house itself is closely bound up with my family, and I’m sure that, once we can establish its history, it may turn out that the ghosts are Lancasters and that the thing on the stairs is linked to the family as well. I have spoken to Hilary about the history of the house, and she tells me Hallinhag Wood was known in the eighteenth century for foreigners. They would come for weeks at a time, and, as far as she could tell, they stayed at Hallinhag House. A name came up frequently: Sir William. Was he an ancestor of mine? I wonder. I’ll have to get hold of the family records when I get back to London.

  I think we should attend midnight mass in Martindale tomorrow. I may introduce myself to the vicar. If it’s still the Reverend Harris, he won’t recognize me. I’ve changed since I last saw him, and he has never seen Octavia. He’s middle-aged, maybe sixty by now, and his wife was a quiet woman who loved Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ and got the congregation to sing it as often as possible. His sermons were always interesting, filled with quotations from the Romantic poets and references to nature.

  Monday, 24 December – Christmas Eve

  There was a delivery of post early this morning. Among a last flurry of Christmas cards Rose’s packet of photographs arrived, their delivery evidently hastened by the urgency of the season. Mrs Sansom had several cards from old friends, and one from the vicar. There were plenty of cards for Rose, some with robins, most from grateful patients. A couple were from friends who had volunteered to nurse at the front. They were both in North Africa. Their cards were witty: one showed a camel with a robin on his head. The other depicted Santa Claus delivering plum puddings to the German army, each one with a grenade inside. Perhaps that was not much in keeping with the spirit of the season, but none of us would weep if Santa really did make such deliveries. One thing I do know, watching Rose’s face as she opened the card (from someone called Pru), was that if she’d been parachuted into German lines, she’d have dusted herself off and set out to find their wounded and succeeded in nursing them back to health.

  She and her mother were busy right up to lunch. With so much devoted to tomorrow’s feast, stocks of everything are low. But Rose’s mother had been given a dozen pullet’s eggs fresh this morning – a welcome Christmas present from a nearby chicken farmer for whom she cooked from time to time. She made devilled eggs with
plenty of mustard and served them up with leek and onion soup and sautéed salsify with parsley root (we aren’t to call it Hamburg root again till after the war). She told us she grew the salsify and parsley root in the back garden. Hitler will never win so long as there are women like Rose and her mother around.

  After lunch, Rose’s mother went off to take cards and presents to some of the neighbours. Rose was concerned about her going out in the cold and offered to go in her place, but her mother tutted and fussed so much that we let her go, with a strict warning about getting back long before curfew.

  When she left, Rose sent Octavia off to play with some of her old toys, and we went to the parlour. Rose made coffee and sat with me on the sofa while we both sipped from teacups. Rose finished her cup and got up to make another. It was instant coffee, but for all that it was very welcome.

  When she came back, Rose brought with her the packet of photographs that had arrived that morning.

  ‘They came back quickly,’ she said.

  ‘He must have wanted to get everything wound up before the holiday season. And he’ll have guessed that some of us might like to see our snaps.’

  She found a kitchen knife and opened the packet nimbly yet carefully. I watched her do it with the same neatness I had observed when she cleaned and bandaged my wound.

  One by one she put the photographs on the kitchen table. One of Firefly, one of me on board, one of herself just before she got on board, taken by myself, several of the shoreline, all blurred by our movement, then some of Howtown. So far, all seemed as it should be. But as I lifted a snap of Dr Raverat’s car and turned it over, I found a photograph that soured my stomach.

  The photograph showed Octavia as she had been that day, smiling if not grinning. She wore the same frock I remembered her wearing, a light blue coat over a pale green dress. Of course, there was no colour in the photograph, but the contrast looked quite clear in black and white. There was nothing untoward about her, save for that slightly confused look in her eyes. The horror was standing next to her. The girl we had met with Octavia in Howtown was there where she had been when Rose took the snap. But she had changed utterly. She was wearing the ancient grave clothes we saw her appear in with Hilary Mathewman, and her jaw was bound up with a dirty white cloth. Her eyes were closed with pennies and her face had been covered by a thin veil. This veil had come away from the face and lay crumpled beneath the chin, and there were spiders and traces of dusty spider webs. Her face had deteriorated in death, and her shrunken hands were twisted where they fell in front of her. Her mouth was partly open, and some upper teeth protruded. It was the same girl, of that I had little doubt, and her presence next to Octavia sent a shudder across my heart. Rose stared and stared at this apparition.

  ‘Were we talking to a corpse all the time?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a corpse,’ I said. ‘Just a ghost.’ The image of her dead body was caught somehow by the camera. She was turning to dust before our eyes. But a moment’s thought told me that she had not been dead for very long. It was long to us, but not far from the day of her death, whenever that had been.

  We gazed at the image for a while, then I extracted the photograph from the heap and threw it into the kitchen fire. At that moment Octavia wandered in, looking for an apple. We showed her the photographs, and when she rather fearfully asked what had happened to the shot Rose had taken of her and Clare, I explained that it had suffered from over-exposure and the studio hadn’t printed it. She just shrugged her shoulders and took a russet to eat outside.

  Tuesday, 25 December – Christmas Day

  Rose borrowed a four-seater cart with a horse and a farmer’s boy to drive it down to Martindale. The little church was packed. I wore my uniform and saw other men and women in theirs, all of us with heavy coats to keep out the cold. There wasn’t enough fuel to keep the interior of the church much above freezing. But the tiny choir sang lustily and processed with the priest and his deacon, this latter carrying the processional cross above all our heads.

  As it turned out, the Reverend Harris was no longer at St Peter’s. He had been called to the role of Navy Chaplain in Barrow-in-Furness, where his wife ran a successful charity shop for the WVS.

  His place at St Peter’s had been taken by a much younger man, who performed the service impeccably. The church was candlelit and the altar twinkled as if with jewellery set ablaze. Octavia brought her hearing aid, and though she could not make out the words, something of the music got through to her for the first time, and she went through the service entranced. She and I had not yet spoken about the events at Hallinhag House, but she seemed much less perturbed than I had thought she would be.

  Afterwards Arthur Cobbit, the sacristan, who remembered me once I introduced myself, told me that the new priest was called Oliver Braithwaite. He was from Durham originally, where he’d studied at Cranmer Hall. I knew nothing of the niceties of theological colleges, and I couldn’t elicit from Arthur any hints as to how the Reverend Braithwaite might view an exorcism.

  ‘When you see him later, will you please tell him I need to speak to him most urgently?’

  ‘Can you say what it’s about?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ I said. ‘But it’s something that won’t wait.’

  ‘Well, there’s Holy Eucharist tomorrow morning, Mr Lancaster, at eleven o’clock bang on. Would that suit?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It’s a distance from Pooley Bridge to here, with my leg.’

  He glanced down as if he hadn’t noticed it before, but I knew well that rumour of my condition would have made its way round the district weeks ago.

  ‘I’ll tell him, sir, though I can’t promise anything, it being Christmas Day and such.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be at Mrs Sansom’s, will you? And that it is more important than he can hope to imagine. Tell him, if you like, that there have been disturbances at Hallinhag House.’

  This brought Arthur up short. He knew what I meant. His manner changed.

  ‘I see, sir. Yes, he shall want to know about that, sir. I’m glad you’ve asked him. You could not have asked a better man.’

  Despite the cloud hanging over us, Christmas lunch went off exceedingly well. We had a visit from Hilary Mathewman, without her guests, from the village policeman, who is thought to have taken a fancy for Rose’s mother some years ago, from some nephews and nieces of Mrs Sansom, cousins of Rose’s, who piled in to the cottage unceremoniously. John – Rose’s deaf cousin – became instant friends with Octavia, and spent some time helping her with her hearing aid. Their parents arrived about an hour later, sending the children upstairs to play in one of the bedrooms. There were tiny presents for everyone. Rose had even thought to get some for me to give. Mrs Sansom gave Bertram Bear to Octavia, who was wide-eyed and ecstatic. I explained that Mrs Sansom had made him, and Octavia gave her the biggest hug I have ever seen. Not far away, the lake turned to rust and slipped into a dark red that was cut through with streaks of turquoise and jade and amber. The water seemed to sing as the light played on it, as if on the strings of a musical instrument. They have electricity in Pooley Bridge, and our celebrations continued well after sunset.

  We had eaten a small tea and were washing up and putting the pots and pans away for the second time that day when there was a knock at the door. Mrs Sansom – who now allowed us to call her Jeanie – answered and found the vicar standing on the step in a flurry of snow. He came in and gave his greetings to everyone, and they felt very privileged to receive a Christmas visit from a man of God in person. They had only ever seen him at a distance before, and there was as yet no consensus in Pooley Bridge as to whether he’s a stuffy prelate or a down-to-earth man of the people. From his accent, which I had heard in church, I was inclined to think the latter. It came my turn to shake his hand, and when I did he leaned towards me and said, ‘We have to talk.’

  The question was, where? This winter has been the coldest in living memory, so I could scarcely ask
him to step outside on Christmas Day. But we could hardly talk about the subject facing us while everyone else was still in the cottage.

  ‘I’m not sure where . . .’

  He smiled, rather like a child with a new toy, and whispered. ‘Come to Dr Raverat’s in about five minutes. We’ll sort something out then.’

  Five minutes later, Rose and I knocked on the doctor’s door. It was opened by the vicar.

  ‘Raverat isn’t home,’ he said. ‘He’s had to go to visit one of his patients, Harry Niblock, out at Roe Head. I may have to follow him if I can get a lift. He thinks Harry may pass away tonight.’

  ‘Why didn’t he ask me to go with him? He won’t pass on without trouble,’ Rose frowned darkly, furrowing her brow.

  The Reverend Braithwaite looked sharply at her.

  ‘Are you Rose the nurse?’ he asked.

  ‘Didn’t you know? I’m sorry, of course you haven’t met me before. I didn’t know your name till this morning, when Dominic asked the sacristan.’

  Braithwaite smiled his gentle smile again, and I felt a liking for him. Rose broke into a smile too.

  ‘Come in, both of you. Dr Raverat said we could use his study for our little chat.’

  It was then he noticed my crutches and Rose’s support.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . .’

  ‘There’s no need for a fuss,’ I said and walked in. I had made it down an icy pathway without slipping and felt rather pleased with myself.

  Raverat had left some coffee on the stove. It was a little stewed, but we were grateful for it all the same.

  ‘Where did the doctor come by this?’ I said, holding out a mug for Rose to fill.

  ‘Oh, doctors and priests find ways of getting round the rules and regulations,’ he said. ‘In the countryside, farmers and old ladies find plenty of work for both of us to do. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you? Are you thinking of getting married?’