Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “The pit. Over in Priest’s Field.” Came a voice from near the door. Ann Bulling carrying a fly swat, hit those three bluebottles who then buzzed and span on the table near me until they fell quiet. “Hasn’t he told you?”

  “A pit? What for?” Buck wriggled off the piano stool to stand by me. His sister stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Burying dead animals of course.”

  Will had told them stories from his time in Turkey, when because of the heat, injured horses and mules had to be quickly disposed of. And Mollie clearly hadn’t forgotten.

  All at once, the faintest smell of decay, or more precisely, rotting flesh trailed into the room, from where I had no idea. But the strangest thing of all was that no-one else seemed to have smelt it. I sniffed then used my handkerchief to waft it away.

  The old woman tutted and pushed the piece of paper closer for Will to continue his writing, then turned to Buck.

  “Our pit’ll be for water, me bor. We’ve had not a drop for two months and our well’s almost dry. It’s a tragedy what’s happened. Just when we needed extra help.”

  “We’ll pay you properly for any water we’ll use,” I said, aware of Will’s disapproving glance. Aware too, that Silver’s carcass money was hidden in one of his boots. “That’s only right.”

  I heard Mollie snigger. She’d replaced Buck on the stool and rode it as she might a pony. “Who was the nigger then?” She was obviously still thinking about the murdered man the police had mentioned. Or wanted to add some tension. “Did he help dig this pit as well?”

  Walter Bulling’s old frame seemed to freeze.

  “We never had no nigger here,” he growled back at her. “All lies. But I bet Lord Helvin did and is busy saving his own skin. Rather see our boy swing, he would. Toffs are all the same, see?”

  “Stanley didn’t look as if he could do anything bad,” Mollie spoke out, catching us all by surprise. “He actually smiled at me. Twice it was. And he’s old enough to be my father.”

  Silence.

  Buck tittered then saw my expression. My warning finger over my lips. As for Will, he continued testing the pen nib. Lost it seemed, in another world.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Bulling have been good enough to take us all in and give us paid work,” he said as if he’d not heard a word. “Moreover, your mother and I should be able to save something from our wages. That wasn’t the case twenty-four hours ago, if you remember.”

  Mollie muttered a forbidden swear word learnt at school and thought no-one heard. But I did. And remembered that as well.

  “Are we ready?” said the farmer to Will. “We’ll have the date written down first, please. Can you write numbers? I never asked.”

  “Of course,” I said, aware of Buck staring at the paper as if he too saw it representing a road to either Hell or salvation. “And we can both help with any accounting relating to your pigs.”

  As I spoke, I glimpsed again my convent classroom and sister Theresa advancing with her wooden ruler to rap my knuckles after yet another wrong answer to a sum. Although I’d finished there aged fourteen, having to wear gloves for a while to disguise the bruising, I nevertheless could still tackle fractions and equations. Things I’d in turn taught Will. Hence his last job at the Verderers’ Court, keeping accurate records of all the herds and flocks roaming the New Forest, had been a success.

  “It’s 28th July 1920,” Ann Bulling reminded us, standing over her husband. “Wombwell Farm, Longstanton Road. Hecklers Green, near Diss, Norfolk. This agreement between Walter Isaac Bulling and Ann Bulling formerly Stott, and Will Parm…”

  “William,” I corrected her. A stern glnce followed. It was then I realised this shrivelled vole of a woman was the one who cracked the whip and made the big decisions. “William Bernard Parminter.”

  “Who fought for the King at Gallipoli,” said Buck with pride. “Worth three men at least.”

  “We’ll decide that,” said Ann Bulling, confirming my thoughts about her. “We’re not the Bank of England, you know.”

  “This agreement,” said the farmer scratching the few stray white hairs that had lain flat under his hat, “begins at noon today and continues until the evening of October 25th. If the job isn’t done by then, we’ll claw back half your pay.”

  I gasped. Saw Will’s pen nib dig a dark hole in his paper. Bigger and bigger. “We don’t know the size of this pit,” he protested. “Nor if the rock-hard ground

  will allow us to dig it sufficiently within that length of time.”

  He gripped his pen as if it were a knife. I went over to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. Felt muscle trembling beneath my fingers. The children shuffled closer together as they usually did before a storm.

  “We can sign for now,” I said. “Who knows if it mightn’t rain tomorrow?”

  But even I didn’t believe that.

  “Plenty more to take your place,” snapped Ann Bulling. “They come calling every day. Just like you did…”

  “But they don’t have a man who got decorated for bravery,” said Buck, flushed from the heat. “Who was the best shot in his regiment, and… and who’s still got a pistol called Billy…”

  Silence, in which the pig smell from outside seemed even stronger. Sour-sweet. Also, something more familiar I couldn’t quite place. Another fly had come in from Somewhere and landed on Will’s hair. He slapped it away and got up to stand by Buck. You’ve got us into enough trouble already, son, so just tell everyone that what you’ve just said is a downright lie.”

  “It is,” burbled our son, and from the way he pressed his grubby knees together, I could tell he needed what was known as the stank.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. “And let’s get out of here.”

  “To where?” sneered the old woman. “The moon? Plenty of work there.”

  Another silence in which Buck came over and held my hand. Meanwhile, Will was back at the table, pen once more in his hand. The inky hole he’d made resembled the bullet hole in Silver’s beautiful head.

  “What about accommodation? Just to make sure we’re not expected to live outdoors.”

  Mrs. Bulling chuckled. A joyless sound, and her husband with not a tooth to be seen. “Those two,” she pointed to the children, “will have Stanley’s room. I’ll need help to change his sheets, mind, seeing as he may not be back for a while. As for you, Mrs. Parminter - may I call you Sarah? - there’s the room next to ours. Not big, I grant you, but big enough seeing as you won’t be in it ‘cept to sleep.”

  She was enjoying herself, I could tell.

  “And my husband?”

  “In with me,” said Walter Bulling. Needs must. I can’t sleep by mesen, and the wife snores like buggery.”

  “Don’t I get my own bed?” whined Mollie, looking as downcast as I felt. “I am twelve.”

  “We’re not a bloody hotel,” broke in the farmer. “Besides, Stanley’s could take three bodies if necessary.”

  Bodies…

  Despite the cloying warmth of the room, and the stickiness under my hair, I shivered.

  “Well, I’m sleeping outside.” Mollie’s blue eyes alight with the thought of it. The rebel.

  “The foxes’ll get ye. Or the wolves. They’re hungry enough.”

  She suddenly stood by Will and grabbed the pen.

  “Just sign it, why don’t you? Hurry up! And all this bad stuff about Stanley. I think he’s got a nice face.”

  Will elbowed her away. Wrote his name, then held out the pen for me to add mine. My letters skewed with worry. Next came the Bulling’s turn to make their mark, but before the ink was even dry, I felt imprisoned, not only by my pusillaminity, but imagining that water pit growing bigger every day, finally swallowing us all up.

  And that’s when I decided to begin my diary.

  30. NICHOLAS.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 7a.m.

  The spectre of losing my faith had stalked me off and on since my ordination twenty-three years ago. The most testing time being
when Catherine found certain printed material hidden in my underwear when I’d first stayed with her and Stephen after their move to Wombwell Lodge. Close on its heels came last night once I’d handed our Piotr’s phone number to that fake and failure called John Lyon.

  So what faith was it that could so easily lift from my shoulders at times of crisis? It offered the Virgin birth, a raft of miracles, a vengeful death and a joyful resurrection. What more could any keen ordinand want? Yet all these seemed utterly irrelevant to my worldly problems as I contemplated the wash basin in my bedroom, aware that beneath the pristine green lawn outside the window, the worm was beginning to turn. C.S Lewis’s ‘cosmic sadist’ was also sounding more like common sense.

  Even though it was a cold November morning, before the radiators had warmed up, I found myself sweating. Unpleasantly so, where flesh meets flesh under-arm and between the upper thighs. Not only had I an important meeting with the Chair of the Diocesan Trust at nine o’clock, but also two equally necessary ones, grown from events of the last few days. Notwithstanding lunch with the Bishop.

  I’d never been much of an actor; always passed over by my drama teacher for even the most minor of parts in boarding school productions.

  “You’re always Nicholas,” she’d said. “You could never let anyone else in.”

  So it been ever since, although my love for Jesus and my fellow men shone continually in my eyes while keeping three churches full of eager Young Wives, Sunday School kiddies who liked colouring in scenes from the Bible, coffee mornings and lunches for the lonely and newly-retired. No, there’d never been the time or indeed the inclination to be anyone else.

  Until now, after Catherine had climbed on her high horse to dismantle it all. Had shown me with some delight on Saturday morning, not only a copy of Doctor Lovell’s searing plea in vain to our grandfather, but also the brutal reply.

  “Your Bishop will be informed,” she’d threatened as she’d left. “You’ll see.”

  As for Miss Wrinkly Stockings in Bakery Lane who’d quite taken to me - Hugh Wilson-Potts, retired viola player - once I’d apologised for my thoughtless threat, she’d

  chatted at some length about that beleaguered doctor. Because she lived so close to where he’d performed so many good deeds, it was incumbent upon her to keep an eye on what the Crown Estate seemed to have forgotten existed. However, when I’d asked to look at

  the contents of that old beige file she’d taken, she’d refused. So, no mileage there. However, she’d spotted someone who could only have been my sister hurrying from that same house on Sunday morning. “Mucky she looked. As if she’d been busy amongst the cobewebs. And she certainly didn’t want to see me. Not with that nasty expression on her face.”

  Bitch. What had she and her young chauffeur been up to?

  I tore my nightshirt from my leaking body, wiped my face and the rest in its soft winceyette. Ran the cold tap and splashed my hot skin until it stung. Glanced up at the small mirror above the sink and saw not Nicholas Beecham at all, but a sorry, damaged bear trapped in a cage.

  John Lyon would see her in quite a different light if he knew what I knew.

  He’d also seen Vivienne’s car. I should have removed the number plate as soon as I’d driven it into the barn. But then she and Piotr had been on my mind.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  *

  My careless shaving cut still bled into my dog collar, but I was too late to clean it. I had to be prompt for my meeting with Clive Jordan-Wood over in Melton. I also had to appear as a smoothly-cruising swan on water, while beneath there lurked two predators. My own busy sister and George Chisholm. As for Piotr, I wasn’t yet sure of his loyalties, but the omens weren’t looking good.

  Five minutes later, under a sky clogged with rain-bearing clouds, I was driving along Vicarage Road, waving and smiling at several of my parishioners on their way to collect their daily newspaper. Jim Foster-Brown whose mother had slipped into the arms of God only last week. Grace and Ernest Pickles with what looked like a rat at the end of its lead and then, just before the roundabout whose five roads infiltrated Suffolk’s countryside from every direction, was Neville Gray, my incompetent predecessor. A man who’d never forgiven me for stepping rather too nimbly into his shoes.

  Speed up…

  Too late. He’d seen me, and stepped off the kerb, black-gloved hand raised not in any gesture of benediction, but of control. He wanted me to stop and to this end, planted himself in front of my car.

  “Glad I’ve seen you, Nick,” he said, once I’d let the window down a mere inch.

  “There’s some funny stuff flying around about you at the moment, and of course, one tries not to listen…”

  Funny stuff?

  He’d always cut the English language to suit his own lax cloth; to encourage a younger, more ‘hip’ generation on to the hassocks, and I wasn’t about to start playing along.

  “What stuff? I am in rather a hurry.”

  He clamped both sets of gloved fingers along the top edge of my window and I had the strongest urge to prise them off one by one, hopefully breaking them in the process. Then executing a sharp turn, knocking him out of my life for ever.

  “Your young man, what’s his name? Pedro? Patrizio?”

  “Piotr.”

  “Well, the Bishop’s just phoned to ask if I knew anything about him.”

  My empty stomach which had already begun to shift, seemed to turn right over, while those black, woollen fingers still possessed my window.

  “Why?”

  He paused for a cyclist in a yellow cagoule to pass by. The rider stared back at us.

  “I said, why?”

  “Apparently his conscience is driving him mad. That’s what he said. Anyway, Leslie will be contacting you.”

  Leslie?

  Few would use the Bishop’s Christian name in such a casual way, but then where was Neville Gray now? On the scrap-heap.

  “Is there proof it was him? Anyone can pretend to be someone else. The world’s full of mischief makers… “

  “He seemed to know all about you. That’s what Leslie said.”

  “Well I can’t think what prompted him to make such a call. Since I first employed him after my wife died, we’ve had an excellent relationship. Now, if you’d please allow me to continue my journey. I’m already late.”

  With that, and still fighting the urge to kill him, I wound the window up a quarter of an inch. Just enough to cause discomfort and force him to withdraw.

  “Leslie also said he’d babbled on about someone called Catherine before ending the call.” The man brought his mouth close to the glass. Steam blurring his face. “That’s your sister, isn’t it?”

  *

  Even now I can’t recall what I did next, except that I phoned the Diocesan Trust Chair, Clive Jordan-Wood to say that unfortunately due to my continuing stomach upset, could he kindly re-arrange my meeting with him for later in the week? I also stutteringly, called the Bishop again, with the same excuse. The ‘diarrhoea’ word kept both calls brief.

  Then, at eleven-thirty exactly, I found myself in in the land of seagulls where a large road sign ALDEBURGH WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS stirred my already heaving insides.

  These huge, yellow-beaked creatures circled far too close above my cap the moment I’d parked the car and begun walking towards the very end of the sea wall. The very place Vivienne and I had stood on the first day of our honeymoon. Then the sun had sparkled in the waves. Now, an icy, salty wind nipped at my ear lobes and strafed my cheeks.

  I just needed a few minutes peace to think things through, but even here, despite the gulls having flown leaving a solitary fisherman holding his rod steady against a grey, restless sea, there was none.

  Cosmic sadist alright…

  Soon, hunger was making me dizzy but finding a café was too risky. The less I was seen the better. Everything had changed. I must be even more vigilant and careful from now on, which was why I could neither mention Gray’s bomb
shell to John Lyon, nor ask him or the police to trace from where Piotr might have phoned the Bishop. Perhaps Mr. Failure had already spoken to my exalted employee and heard all about my very necessary ‘Operation Crab.’ Perhaps not, but that didn’t stop me running back to the car and exceeding the speed limit to reach my next destination.

  *

  North SeaTerrace consisted of a row of small weather-beaten houses, whose blinds and curtains at the rear seemed drawn tight against the winter morning. This was helpful, as the row of six lock-ups in a nondescript alleyway lay immediately behind their walled gardens. They appeared no different from when I’d last looked. When sibling trouble had begun to brew, and mine looked no different from the rest. All were fronted by up-and- over doors in subtle stages of delapidation. Rust the main culprit, with a weed or two adding a stronger colour to the overall drabness. A fresh dog turd which I might have missed at night, had been dropped adjacent to number 4.

  Mine.

  Silence save for the now-distant gulls. Almost too silent, I thought, holding my breath while inserting the key which Piotr had returned to me on Sunday evening.

  However, even on that inhospitable morning, I noticed something about it.

  This slightly sharper, shinier version was a copy.

  Sly bastard.

  And when the padlock eventually clicked open and I nudged the door upwards on to the damp semi-darkness within, I knew then that my fragile world, so carefully constructed since my ordination, had just fallen apart.

  31. STANLEY

  Wednesday 28th July 1920. 11a.m.

  The heat didn’t make me almost lose consciousness but The Monkey’s head, perched on a table between me and the young cop whose name I weren’t even going to try and remember. While in the Police Station in Diss, it had bin wrapped in a grey, wet cloth lying in folds around its neck, and now it faced me. A mix of chemicals and bad flesh snaked up me nose, making me sneeze.

  “Bless you.”

  I blinked.

  No-one’s ever said that to me before.

  “Your parents have come clean about emloying this poor fellow,” said the cop, rolling up his shirt’s sleeves, loosening his collar and opening a navy-blue notebook. I noticed the hairs on his forearms, soft and much lighter that what were on his head. How he almost seemed too young to be shaving. “Until his murderer is found, the local and national newspapers will be kept at bay. We need every chance to bag the right villain.”