‘Shall we go for a walk? While everyone else is asleep?’
She goes to wash and dress. I know her routine, her sounds, her movements, so well. But today I’m listening like she’s new to me. I don’t want to get used to her. I don’t want to lose her to habit.
She comes out of the bathroom, hair tied back, smiling. She takes my hand. She’s warm.
We walked under the gun-metal sky towards the oldest part of the estate. The Tudor fort is so small. Like a toy fort for toy soldiers. Time set in stone. So much time has happened here – not only months and years, not only time passing, but time happening.
Prince Charles hid here in 1646 during the English Civil War, on his way to safety in the Scilly Isles. He had his own door put into the castle. It’s blocked up now, but the outline is there. Is the door blocked up when we’re dead? Our own personal space–time door, that opens when we’re born, and opens for us once more when we die?
Go through. Don’t come back.
‘What did you say?’
‘I was thinking about the door.’
‘Go through. Don’t come back . . . that’s what you said.’
‘Did I? Oh. Someone was wandering round outside my room last night – something about a door.’
Tamara looked at me strangely. ‘I’m cold.’
‘Me too. It’s this wind. Let’s go into the castle.’
We walked through the rooms still panelled out the Georgian way, where an officer in white breeches and a cut-away coat could stand with his back towards the wood-burning fireplace and study a map of the French positions.
When Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, the news was sent by ship to Falmouth, and a rider horsed up in a gale and set off for London to tell the King.
Life and death. You feel it here. I’m not superstitious but you feel it here.
On the wall of the modest sitting room there’s a portrait of Captain Philip Melvill, governor of Pendennis Castle from 1797 until his death in 1811.
Something happened to him in India, they say, when he was imprisoned for four years in Bangalore. He suffered from extremes of emotion, so they say, a man as volatile as the weather here; a man of scudding clouds and flashes of lightning. The fog so thick on him sometimes he didn’t know his own face.
He sat in the window in a comb-back Windsor chair watching the weather and the water. The tour guides have all heard him scraping the chair across the floor.
And some say that if you move the chair away from the window at night, by morning it will have returned to its place.
You’ve gone ahead, out of the castle into the wind, your slight frame struggling to stay upright. I’m following you. We won’t live forever. We’ll both disappear back into time, through our separate doors, and if you go first I won’t be able to find you. I’ll run my hands over and over the wall where the door used to be; you coming home, you coming in, the door you opened for me, so unexpected and welcome. The door into the sun.
Now is all we have. Stay in sight of me.
TAMARA!
JAMIE!
She’s gone through the tunnel towards Half-Moon Battery. We scared ourselves silly last night with our friends, imagining we heard the sound of boots marching past in step. In a place like this, layered like a fossil record through seams of time, it’s easy to believe that time is simultaneous.
If haunting is anything, perhaps that’s what it is; time in the wrong place.
The clock was striking. You turned to me, your face soft and serious. You said, ‘I want to marry you, Jamie.’
‘You are marrying me.’
‘I woke up feeling – I don’t know – uneasy.’
‘It’s just nerves. I hardly slept.’
‘Really?’
She put her arms round me and rested her head on my shoulder.
And then I felt it distinctly; a lowering weight, a sinking motion, something pressing behind me in between my shoulder blades, exactly as if someone were leaning their forehead against me.
Tamara said, ‘I like it when you put your hands on my hipbones.’
My hands were by my sides. I didn’t tell her that, or that the space between my shoulder blades was cold and wet.
‘Shall we go?’
My arm round her now, we set off walking back to our quarters. Soon it would be the beginning of our life together. We had been together a while but this felt different. We’re both nervous, I thought. We’re both imagining things.
As we went past the Battery Observation Post, closed to visitors today, and deserted in the early morning rain, the phone started ringing. I jumped sideways. Tamara laughed, opened the door, and pulled me inside, kissing me, suddenly, passionately, under the low roof, against the long horizontal windscreen window, while the Bakelite phone shrilled on the desk. ‘It’s part of the tour,’ she said, ‘a sound installation.’
The room had been re-made to look as it would have done during the Second World War; tin hats and mugs, flashlights, kitbags, charts, radio equipment. Crackling voices barked orders through hidden speakers.
The Morse code machine beeped into life. ‘That’s new,’ you said.
DOT DASH DOT DASH DASH . . .
The staccato, urgent, high-pitched monotone coming from the metal box was producing a ticker-tape roll with the dots and dashes written on it. We both watched it, mesmerised and unsure. The beeping stopped as suddenly as it had started. Impulsively I tore off the roll. ‘Can you read it?’
‘No, but Uncle Alec will be at the party. He was in the Navy and he’s about a hundred years old. Show it to him, he’ll love it. Probably says “Welcome to Pendennis Castle”.’
We ran back through the wind and rain towards breakfast and friends and laughter and the pleasure of the unfolding day. I went upstairs to dump my wet jacket, and decided on a warmer sweater. As I pulled off what I had on, I felt the cold dampness of where the head had rested on me. But it wasn’t a head, was it? A head needs a body, and there was no-body-there.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the bathroom door.
‘Oh, the Killigrews – yes, they were all pirates. The women as well as the men. Roaring girls, the lot of them. Line died out in the seventeenth century. No men left. Not that that would be a problem for you, my dear, eh? Ha ha ha.’
Tamara’s Uncle Alec. That’s what happens at weddings. He’s trying to be friendly, I tell myself. It’s not easy that his niece is marrying a woman.
‘Kitty Killigrew dressed herself as a boy and went to sea, she did. That was just about all right, she was tall enough and flat enough to get away with it – figure more like an ironing board than an hourglass, if you get my meaning, but then, damn it if she didn’t come home and start carrying on with a girl from the village, one of the oyster pickers. Well, that wouldn’t do for a start and it certainly wouldn’t do for a finish. Times were different then, y’know.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Oh, terrible, terrible. Make your blood run cold. Not the thing for a wedding party. Not at all . . .’
‘Why are you telling it to me then?’
The uncle looked surprised, like a man who has got on the wrong train. ‘Am I? Well, perhaps I am. No truth in it at all, besides. A silly story.’
‘Can you read Morse code?’ I said, trying to change the subject. But Uncle Alec was deaf.
‘Couldn’t be happier for you, y’know, I had a friend just the same, oh, years ago; it’s always gone on, of course, ’course it has, men and men, women and women, but marriage is a bit of a surprise, don’t y’think? I mean, where does it end? If you don’t draw a line somewhere? I daresay I’ll be able to marry my dog.’
‘Poor dog,’ I said.
‘Y’what?’
I got up. I didn’t want to pick a fight with one of my new relatives.
The rest of the day passed happily. More friends were arriving. Tonight we were having the party, and the next morning, on All Hallows’ Eve, we were to be married.
We had agree
d that we would spend some quiet time together before the party. The celebrant wanted to speak to us about our commitment, and it felt right to take a couple of hours to think about our marriage together. I’d been out for lunch with my best woman and I was late.
As I was running towards the hall, I saw Tamara, up ahead of me, walking with someone; a tall young man in boots, buff trousers and a red coat.
They had rounded the corner before I caught up with them.
‘TAMARA!’
She turned. She was alone.
‘Who was that?’
She looked puzzled. ‘Who?’
‘You were with someone.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was with Sara earlier but . . .’
‘A man . . .’
‘Jamie – this was meant to be a serious time – first, you’re late, and second, don’t play jokes on me. I’m going upstairs.’
‘Tamara!’
I followed her. She went into her room without looking at me. I decided to give her a minute to cool off. My own room was just down the corridor.
Might as well unpack my wedding outfit.
I opened my wedding bag, everything pressed and folded, and separate to my other clothes. Neatly on the top of the plastic cover lay a chipped brass button – a uniform button. I picked it up and took it to the window. There was an inscription written round the edge: ‘PUER SEMPER SEMPER PUELLA’.
I went straight back to Tamara’s room. She was standing at the window looking out.
‘There’s the boy in the red coat,’ she said.
‘I can’t see anyone.’
‘He must have gone into the keep. I have no idea who he is.’
She was ignoring me, staring intently out into the grounds as though the empty space could yield something. I put the button in her hand.
‘What does this mean?’ She turned it between her fingers, frowning. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘It was in my luggage!’
‘It means “Forever a Boy Always a Girl”.’
‘What does that mean?’
She laughed. ‘Someone’s playing a joke on us. Well, you are a girl who’s a boy who’s a boy who’s a girl, or whatever happens in all those Shakespeare plays.’
She kissed me on my nose. ‘It’s probably Uncle Alec. He’s doing his best but he’s struggling.’
We were close again. She was in my arms.
The party was a success. Tamara had booked a seven-piece band called The Deloreans. Something about going back to our future.
‘I feel like I’ve always known you,’ she said.
‘You never told me you believed in reincarnation as well as ghosts.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘But I know you.’
Uncle Alec was drunk when I bumped into him later. He pulled me down into a chair. ‘They shot her, y’know, bad business.’
‘Shot who?’
‘Kitty. The girl who’s a boy . . .’
‘Who’s a boy who’s a girl . . .’
‘Count yourself lucky.’
‘I do . . . for marrying Tamara.’
‘The other one drowned herself. Dredged off the bottom of the sea. Told you it wasn’t a wedding story.’
Whether the story put a dampener on my spirits or whether I was just tired, I kissed Tamara goodnight and went to bed. I fell asleep at once; a deep and dreamless sleep.
I awoke somewhere in the dead of night. The back of my neck was clammy. I must have been sweating but the room felt so cold. I half sat up on my elbows. The air in the room was heavy with moisture. I wiped a hand over my head – why was my hair clinging to my scalp? And what was that smell? The smell of seaweed . . .
I turned sideways into the middle of the bed and that’s when I felt it: an arm. A body. A wet arm. A wet body. In spite of myself I ran my hand over the still form that lay beside me. The body I felt was soaked with water, pulpy, like something that has lain too long in water. And then I felt its face and the hollow sockets of its eyes.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. Whimpering, like something whipped, I managed to get out of bed and over to the window. I opened the curtains. The moon was bright. Looking back towards the bed, I saw it was empty. Empty.
But as I looked out of the window I saw Tamara, like a sleep-walker, making her way towards the castle.
‘TAMARA!’
By the time I caught up with her she was inside the castle gateway. The castle was dimly lit. There were flares on the walls.
Tamara looked at me, as if waking.
‘Where are we?’
Before I could answer her the tall young man in the red coat came behind us. He was carrying a cocked hat and wearing a pistol at his belt. He seemed not to see us. I went towards him, and he brushed his hand in front of his face, as though he felt my movement but not myself.
There was a sound from behind and a young woman, hidden entirely in a cloak, ran into the room and threw off her hood. Even in the dim light of the flares I could see how beautiful she was, but her face was afraid.
She threw her arms round the young man. He took out a ring and put it on her finger. Then together they kneeled down, facing each other, and began to recite their wedding vows . . . with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship . . .
‘Death will not part us,’ she said. ‘Love is . . .’
She did not finish what she had to say. A posse of men stormed the room. The boy – he was hardly more than a boy – reached for his pistol but he was speedily overpowered.
‘Run!’ he shouted.
She ran – they seemed not to care – it was him they wanted. Hands behind his back, they shoved him forwards, up the stairs. I followed. I knew they could not see me.
Upstairs, the door. The door that opens into time. They pushed him out, through, I heard a shot and smelled powder, acrid and raw. And these words:
‘Go through, and don’t come back.’
And then it was done. The castle was dark.
Holding each other tightly, we stepped out of the castle. A voice said – ‘Saw them, damn it, did you?’
It was Uncle Alec.
We were drinking whisky all three of us, long into that night. The spirits of murdered Kitty and her girl were known to walk abroad and to act again the terrible night of their parting.
‘I can see them all, y’know, ghosts,’ said Uncle Alec. ‘Have done since I was a boy.’
‘What should we do?’ said Tamara.
Uncle Alec thought a while, and then he said, ‘Invite them to the wedding.’
‘How do we do that?’ I said. ‘They’re dead.’
‘Death never stopped anyone,’ said Uncle Alec.
The morning of our wedding.
I had not slept at all, but lain wide-awake with Tamara sleeping in my arms. Is there a door between life and death? Are life and death as separated as we believe?
The morning of the wedding.
I bathed and dressed. On my table lay the button and the ticker tape of Morse code. I picked up the button, rubbed it between my fingers. ‘Come with us,’ I said. ‘Into a time that is not death.’ Then I left the button on the table, put the paper in my pocket, and went downstairs, where our guests were waiting in the hall.
The morning of our wedding.
I stood next to Tamara, holding her hand while we made our vows. As we turned to face each other, we each looked over the other’s shoulder, and we both saw, one behind her, one behind me, the young man in the red coat and the beautiful woman whose hair spread out like the sea.
It was afterwards, though, that I gave the ticker tape of Morse code to Uncle Alec. ‘Where’d y’get this?’ he said.
‘What does it say?’
‘Love is as strong as death.’
‘Who is the man in a brown cloak standing at the foot of my bed every night?’ my sister asked, aged six or seven.
I said ‘A ghost’ and Mother said ‘Bad dreams’ and Papa said ‘Absolute nonsense. Nobody cares for your made-up terrors.’
/> Papa died and we were a house of women. We grew accustomed, but not sympathetic, to Delia’s unnerving claims.
She sometimes said ‘That’s him!’ in a gallery, or in a busy street, and she would be referring to her man in brown robes. Once we rushed upstairs upon hearing her scream and she was pointing to the chair beside her bed.
‘He was sitting in my chair!’
Iam standing on the gravel driveway of Eltham Palace. Someone called Rory Kippax from English Heritage has agreed to show me around, but he is late. My taxi has gone and it’s drizzling. I am very elderly and I do not like rain, or waiting. I cannot tolerate lateness.
I shall give them until midday. Perhaps I shall cancel my membership.
Delia was fussing.
‘Something is wrong with Eltham Palace’ she said ‘nothing good will come of me going there. I’d like to stay home and work on my paintings.’
‘Oh, fortify yourself Delia. Mummy is ill, and we have been invited, and the Courtaulds expect us, so we are going. You can’t idle your life away, scuffing away at your naïve little pictures.’
Almost noon and still nobody here. I notice the huge wooden doors are ajar.
I bang on the door with my walking stick. I poke my head through.
‘Hello?’
I wander in. It’s freezing cold.
‘Hello? Mrs Charbury here, I have a visit booked!’
I peer into the lavatories.
Oh yes, I remember these ghastly silver taps. Moderne design, sharp and angled, no doubt hugely fashionable back then, but one couldn’t fit one’s hand under to get any water. Typical of those people.
I did love the heated towel rails though.
‘I don’t like it’ said Delia.
‘Oh do shut up.’
And there we were, drying our hands and prettying ourselves, when we heard Virginia say to someone or other ‘Yes, and I’ve just seen the Bush Sisters arrive. Ye-e-e-es, exactly. One beautiful and silly, one strange and ugly. One Flaming June berry, one burnt brûlée berry.’
And I know Delia heard, because she blushed and hastened her efforts with the handwashing. Poor peculiar Delia. Dumpy and glum.
I step through into the domed room with its fly’s eye roof; the pride and joy of New Eltham.
Eight Ghosts Page 8