The Time of the Ghost

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “1. Elephants eat porridge in Rome,” the ghost read. “2. It is miles round the temple yard.” Oh, dear! she said. You’re just guessing. I’ve got you into trouble. She hung over Ned and watched him miraculously finish five wild sentences at the same time as Howard completed his five careful ones. They both got up and went to hand their books to Himself together.

  Himself took Howard’s book with a simple grunt. But he looked up at Jenkins, no doubt because of the way his freckles shone yellowish in his ashy white face. “Are you feeling well, Jenkins?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jenkins.

  “Hm,” said Himself. “Then your pallor must be the result of inspiration. No doubt your sentences exhibit your usual wild creativity.” He made as if to open the exercise book.

  No! cried the ghost.

  Howard seized Jenkins by the arm and leaned toward Himself with a cheerful, cheeky grin. “He needs some fresh air, sir. I think Latin disagrees with him.”

  “That, or school breakfast,” Himself said. To everyone’s relief, he laid Ned’s exercise book down on top of the growing heap and put out his hand for the one the boy behind was holding out to him.

  Howard shoved Jenkins in front of him out of the open door into the seething, racing crowd in the corridor. The ghost went with them. Because of the jostling and the fizzing, she found it easier to hang in the air above the smooth head and the sandy one. She heard Howard say, “Seriously, Jenk, what’s up? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Jenkins gave a short gulp of a laugh. “Not exactly seen,” he said. “Come on, Will. We’ve got to go through the hedge again. But quick.”

  She felt Howard stop short. The two made a still island in the fizzing crowd. “Semolina?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Jenkins. “I think so. And I think it’s urgent. Come on.”

  So it had worked! In the greatest relief, the ghost sped back to the sisters to wait for them.

  And there in the kitchen was Phyllis, a harassed, grave angel. Cart, Imogen, and Fenella were standing in a sullen row in front of her. Someone had hidden the broken chair under the table, but there were still cornflakes, thick as autumn leaves, making a trail through to the living room.

  “I’m not discussing the rights and wrongs of your meals, Imogen,” Phyllis was saying. “It’s just unpardonable the way you keep annoying Mrs. Gill. She complained yesterday, and she’s complained again this morning—”

  “And so do I complain,” said Fenella. “Mother, Mrs. Gill takes food away every day in her green and orange bag.”

  “I’m not discussing that either, Fenella.” Phyllis turned to Fenella. She had her eyes shut with displeasure. This must have been why she failed to notice the two knots at the front of Fenella’s hair. “What you four girls—” She had not noticed Sally was not there either. “What you girls don’t seem to understand is that it’s almost impossible to get staff for the kitchen these days. I can’t afford to have Mrs. Gill annoyed. If she were to give notice, I should be absolutely stuck.”

  This scene again, the ghost said dismally. Then she realized that she need not stay and listen to it. It was almost the first advantage she had found in being a ghost.

  She whirled off again. She had meant to go back to Howard and Jenkins, who must be pushing their way into the secret path in the hedge by now. It might be that she could warn them about Phyllis somehow. But she found herself with Oliver instead. Oliver, in the bleak gray sunlight, was rooting around in the kitchen garden. He was engaged in digging, gently and not too actively, in the nice soft, dungy earth where the rhubarb grew. The hole was already quite large. Broken pink stalks and dying rhubarb leaves lay all round Oliver’s massive, meditative form. He put out a huge three-clawed foot, parted the earth, set another clump of rhubarb toppling, and then turned, mildly interested.

  The unpleasant Mr. McLaggan was standing three feet away, flourishing a rake at him. “Shoo! Get out of my rhubarb, you brute!”

  Oliver meditated on Mr. McLaggan for a second and turned back placidly to demolishing rhubarb again.

  “Gerrah, you brute!” Mr. McLaggan shoved at Oliver with the rake. It met Oliver’s side. Mr. McLaggan leaned on it with both Wellingtons braced and pushed. Oliver, rather wearily, put his fourth foot down for balance and looked round again at the leaning, pushing Mr. McLaggan. The rake did not seem to affect him at all. After a moment, annoyed at being interrupted, he let out a gentle rumbling. Mr. McLaggan hastily took the rake away and stood back. Oliver went back to his digging.

  Mr. McLaggan waved the rake in the air. “You! You may have a lucky foot!” said Mr. McLaggan. “But that won’t help you when I go to Mr. Melford. You’ll get what’s coming to you then, foot or no foot!”

  The ghost whirled on. Oliver could look after himself, but she was not so sure about Howard and Jenkins. She meant to go back to them. But perhaps because of what Mr. McLaggan said, she found herself with Himself instead.

  Himself was in a large smoky room filled with other men and some women. It must be the staff room, a place she had never before even seen the inside of. But she did not see much of it. Her small ray of attention was focused entirely on Himself. He seemed to have recovered his temper. Anyway, he was laughing, with his teeth closed on the stem of a smelly black pipe. In the blue smoke from his pipe was the flapping shape of an exercise book.

  “Listen to this,” said Himself. With his other hand, he was stirring a cup of coffee. He had a particular, obsessive way of stirring coffee, with the spoon held between his finger and thumb, and the finger and thumb nodding, nodding, making the spoon go round and round and round, like a machine. “Jenkins,” said Himself through his teeth, stirring and stirring. “That boy is some kind of misguided genius, I think. He can conjure a howler out of the air. Listen.”

  Still stirring, Himself tried to spread the floppy book out one-handed in the air. It half closed. The page he was trying to read flipped over, revealing another. This was a page Jenkins had evidently forgotten to take out. On it was one of Ned’s good-bad drawings, one of his best: Himself as a great black eagle, tufty of head and fierce of eye, chained to a perch by one claw and holding a book in the other.

  “Hm,” said Himself, staring rather grimly at it.

  The ghost had a glimpse of the man Himself was talking to doubled over, laughing. But her attention was on Himself and Himself’s finger and thumb, nodding, nodding, sending spoon and coffee smoothly swirling in the cup, round and round and round…

  It was dragging her away, that nodding and swirling. Through it was appearing a great white leg, mummified in plaster. She had a sense of people round her, doing things. Someone, a stranger, was leaning over her, calling her “dear.”

  “Will you move your hand if you can hear me, dear?”

  She lay there, considering this, as grimly as Himself had considered Ned’s drawing. She had been dragged away—dragged seven years away—she was sure of it. That was Monigan’s doing. Monigan did not want her prying about School. Something was happening, or about to happen there, which was important. If she was there, she might even have a chance to get the better of Monigan. So she must go back. At once.

  She set herself to go. The person was still leaning over her, entreating her to move her hand, but she did not dare obey. Anything like that would keep her there. She pushed and strove and thrust instead, to get herself seven years back in the past again. It was far more difficult than pushing Ned’s hand. She felt like Mr. McLaggan leaning on the immovable Oliver. Monigan was resisting her. To Monigan, it was not a question of moving seven years in one direction or another. The time at School and the time in the hospital were running side by side to her. This was what it meant to be a goddess. It was an easy matter to stop a ghost moving from one band of time to another.

  As soon as she realized this, the ghost struggled harder than ever. For this meant, whatever Cart said, that she had a chance of changing the past. As far as Monigan was concerned, the next thing in the past had not happened yet
. And she must get there. She must.

  She felt Monigan yielding, bit by bit. At first she gave way peevishly. Then with a shrug. The final yielding was in a rush, with nasty amusement. She felt Monigan think, And much good will it do you! And she was back with a jolt, confused and anxious. Am I too late?

  She almost was. Phyllis had gone. In the kitchen Ned Jenkins, still very pale, had the double page out of his exercise book spread on the table. Round it were spread other papers: a letter from Sally, a school essay of Cart’s, a poem in Imogen’s writing, and a scrawl in Fenella’s. Evidently they had been trying to decide whose writing the ghost’s was. Cart, Imogen, Fenella, and Howard were leaning over the papers, but rather as if they had stopped being interested in them.

  “So all we can tell,” Howard was saying, “is that it’s not Ned’s writing. It could be any of yours. You all write a bit alike, even Sally.”

  “Well, it’s not Sally,” Imogen said firmly. “You all heard me talking to her on the phone.”

  “And the ghost went away, anyway,” said Fenella.

  “Having set us all by the ears,” Cart said crossly. Unlike Himself, she was not yet in a good temper, though at least she was dressed now. She was a blue bolster in jeans today—and the jeans were much larger and wider than the old patched jeans of seven years ahead.

  Ned Jenkins raised his pale face. “I think the ghost’s back.”

  Fenella looked up to deny it and paused. “Yes, he’s right. It’s here again. I can feel.”

  Imogen suddenly became hysterical. She backed away from the table, shaking her hands as if they were wet. “What do we do? Do something, somebody! I’m not going to live with a ghost all my life! I refuse to!”

  “Shut up, Imogen,” said Cart. “That ghost is in trouble. Of course we’ll do something—particularly as it’s obviously one of us.”

  “Or thinks it is,” said Howard. “What do we do?”

  “What can we do?” Imogen demanded, shaking her hands wildly. “Even exorcism didn’t work!”

  “That was too religious,” Fenella said gloomily. “We’re not religious enough for it to work.”

  “Then,” asked Howard, “anyone got any ideas that aren’t religious?”

  In the silence that followed, Ned Jenkins murmured, as if he hoped no one would hear, “I could try writing again.”

  “Yes,” said Cart. “But—” She stopped. She stared at the ceiling, and her eyes bulged slightly. “Wait,” she said. And she was suddenly off at a gallop. Cornflakes crunched as she raced to the living room. Things fell over. There were thumps and sharp bangs. Then suddenly she was back, red and breathless, hurling fat paperback books onto the table. Thump—The Odyssey—thump—The Iliad—thump—Virgil’s Aeneid. “There!” she said. “Somewhere in these there’s a way to make them speak—it tells you how to make a ghost talk—I know there is! Do either of you two know which book?”

  “Who, us? No,” Howard said blankly.

  “I’ve never read the things,” said Jenkins.

  “Oh!” Cart was feverishly opening first one book, then another. “I thought you two were supposed to be having a classical education. I know it’s in one of these somewhere. He made a ghost speak—whoever he was—by letting it drink blood.” She gave up her feverish search and threw the books back on the table. “I can’t find it, but I know it, anyway. Let’s try it. Everyone go and get some blood. Quick!”

  “Blood? Where?” said Howard and Jenkins, gazing dimly at one another. “And why?” added Howard.

  “Thickhead,” said Cart. “If the ghost can talk, it can tell us how to help it.”

  “Don’t be so stupid,” Fenella said severely to Howard. “People are full of blood. Cut yourself. Then go and see if they’ve got any in the biology lab.”

  “You silly fool!” Imogen said to Jenkins. “I never go past any of the little boys without seeing at least two of them with nosebleeds. Go and get them, and make them bleed here.”

  “Yes,” said Cart. She fetched the enamel bowl from the sink and dumped it with a boom on the table. “Get everyone to bleed in this. Tell them all contributions welcome. I’m going to raid Mrs. Gill for some. Hurry. Break will be over before we’ve got any at this rate.”

  Howard and Jenkins caught the idea at last. “General call for blood!” Howard said excitedly. “Come on, Jenk!”

  Everybody scattered, except Fenella. Fenella climbed on the table and knelt there, leaning over the bowl, where she commenced hitting herself rhythmically on the steep bridge of her nose. The ghost went with Cart, through a whirl of banging doors, once more to raid Mrs. Gill. She was rather nervous of what Cart intended to do to Mrs. Gill.

  Cart stood with her back to the silvery metal of the school kitchen door. She had a blurred polite smile on her face, as if she did not mean Mrs. Gill too much harm. “Oh, good,” she said.

  On the table there was now a silvery tray, out of which stood the rounded, glistening hulks of two ox hearts. The tray was swimming nearly brim-full with weak blood from them. The sight cheered the ghost as much as it seemed to cheer Cart. No one would have to bleed Mrs. Gill now. Cart went over to a white cupboard and helped herself to a thick white jug. It looked as if her method with Mrs. Gill was halfway between Imogen’s and Fenella’s. Mrs. Gill, who was slicing brassy yellow lumps of margarine into a mixer bowl, turned her face and her cigarette to watch Cart, but she did not say anything. Cart did not say anything either. She gave Mrs. Gill another smile and held the tray so that blood poured out from one corner into the thick jug.

  Naturally, the two slippery ox hearts began to lumber down the sloping tray, bringing a wave of blood with them. “Bother!” said Cart. She put the jug down on a chair, pulled the chair over to hold up one corner of the tray, and used her free hand to hold the slippery brown hearts in place.

  “And just what are you two doing now?” said Mrs. Gill.

  “Only getting some blood,” Cart said airily.

  “And dirtying lunch.” Mrs. Gill threw down her lump of margarine and advanced, wiping her hands. Having done that, she took the cigarette out of her mouth, showing she meant business. “Out,” she said. “This minute.”

  Cart was keeping a wary eye on her. “In just a moment,” she said. “Which two of us do you think this is?”

  “You know who you are as well as I do,” retorted Mrs. Gill. “Did I say ‘Out,’ or did I not?”

  She was now near enough to grab the tin, and she reached out to do it. Cart let go and backed off hastily with the nearly full jug.

  “And see you bring that jug back!” Mrs. Gill said.

  “Are you accusing me of dishonesty?” said Cart, and backed out between the thumping doors again. The ghost did not like the last glimpse she had of Mrs. Gill’s face.

  Back in their own kitchen, Fenella was kneeling by the bowl, wiping her upper lip with toilet paper. One of her knots of hair was red and sticky. “I managed a bit of a nosebleed,” she said. “But it’s not one of my best.”

  “Every little helps,” Cart said cheerfully. There were now a few bright red splashes in the wide bottom of the bowl. Cart emptied her jugful in it. It made a watery mixture.

  “It looks a bit weak,” Fenella said doubtfully.

  “We’ll thicken it,” said Cart. She took a steak knife from the untidy rack on the sink and held her left wrist out over the bowl. She began prodding at it with the steak knife. “Oh, I forgot,” she said as she prodded. “What he did in whatever book it was, was to keep other ghosts off with his sword, so that only the one he wanted got to drink.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Fenella. She climbed down and fetched a mighty triangular carving knife out of the table drawer. She stood waving this back and forth across the bowl while Cart prodded. “Unwanted ghosts keep away!” she intoned. “We only want our ghost here.”

  “Ow!” said Cart. “It isn’t only that it hurts—I can’t seem to get any blood out at all. Yet I know the ancient Romans were doing it all the time. They used to
commit suicide like this regularly in their baths. Do you think there’s something different about modern veins?” She stabbed at her wrist and was rewarded with a swelling red blob. “Ah! Ooooh-ow!”

  “Squeeze it.” Fenella suggested critically, waving the knife. “Before it sets.”

  Cart had just succeeded in detaching several red blobs from her wrist into the bowl when Imogen crashed in through the back door. She had two small boys each by a shoulder. One was holding a red-smeared handkerchief to his nose. The other had his head bent carefully over a paper cup. “I promised them tenpence each,” Imogen said. “Go on. The bowl’s there. Bleed in it.”

  The boy with the handkerchief obediently shuffled across and bent over the bowl. The one with the paper cup looked round and selected Cart as the one in authority. “There’s a lot in here,” he said, holding out the cup. “It’s worth at least a pound.”

  “Nonsense,” said Cart, giving the contents a brief glance. “I’ve just given more than that for nothing.”

  “Blood donors always give it free,” said Imogen. “I told you.”

  “They get a cup of tea,” the boy argued, clutching the cup defensively. “One pound, twenty. It’s my blood, after all.”

  “But that little drip’s not worth one-twenty,” Cart said. “Proper blood donors give at least a pint.”

  The boy glowered at her, still obstinately hanging on to his cup.