Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  It swung closed almost straight away, with a little thud.

  ‘In we go,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘I haven’t felt this excited since I was a boy.’

  ‘What about last night?’ I said.

  ‘That was a book,’ he said. ‘This is a tomb.’

  It wasn’t a good word to hear echoing under the ground. I pushed the circular door open with one hand and kept the torch firmly gripped in the other.

  At first I thought the small, low, stony space was empty. But that was only because the beam of the torch was shining straight ahead. When I got a little further forward, I began to see things to either side – raggy, bony, skully things.

  I gave a yelp, as if I’d just jumped into very cold water. It sounded high and a bit ridiculous. It also made Mr. Gatward flinch away.

  ‘They’re here,’ I said.

  After a moment’s pause to tell myself to stop being silly, I crawled into the middle of the crypt. There were shelves on three of the walls, and on each of them a corpse was laid out.

  Mr. Gatward’s ragged breathing seemed to fill the whole room, and to give it that huge expanding-contracting feeling that you get when you’re about to faint.

  Unlike the house, the crypt was dusty and cobwebby. The palms of my hands and knees of my jeans were getting dirty.

  The skulls looked quite small and not really threatening. Of course, I imagined them picking themselves up and flying towards me, empty mouths open. But then they didn’t, and I began to see them for what they were – dead things.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘Do you mind if I have the torch?’ I did, but I managed to unclench my fist enough to hand it over.

  ‘I think this one is Emanuell.’ The light hit the body to our left. It was smaller than the others. About Jack’s size. ‘It’s definitely the body of a boy of the right age. This one…’ The light flashed round to our right, ‘is a woman. Look at her grave clothes. And her hair.’ The shiny silver strands seemed out of place. They looked much newer than everything around them. ‘So that’s probably Margerye. Which would make this…’ The torch beam landed on the skeleton right in front of us, ‘Meet William Jonson.’

  Even though we’d been talking about them so much, what they did and what they believed, there had still been a gap between me thinking of them as people in history and me thinking of them as people who’d really lived, had bodies, died. This made it all seem so specific. Like us, they’d been in one place and one time. Like us, they’d done lots of things to escape that.

  Mr. Gatward moved in for a closer look, leaving me in the half-dark.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, and went to his side.

  Along the edge of the shelf was some writing, carved into the stone. I was going to point it out to Mr. Gatward, but he’d already spotted it. ‘Let me read it,’ he said. ‘Ah yes. “Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.” That’s, “And we look for the resurrection of the dead.” Nicene Creed. The house rules for good Catholics. Well, you wait on, William. We won’t disturb you again, I hope.’

  We paused for a minute. I don’t know if Mr. Gatward was praying, but his eyes were closed.

  It was only when we’d turned around, ready to crawl out again, that we saw the writing on the floor.

  ‘My God,’ said Mr. Gatward, ‘it’s her.’

  The letters were upside down, so we had to move to where we’d come in to be able to read them. ‘ELIZABET IONSON.’ And then below that, ‘ET VITAM VENTURI SAECULI’.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.

  Mr. Gatward sounded choked as he translated. ‘“And the life of the world to come,” he said. ‘It’s the next line. After the one about resurrection over there.’

  We looked at the floor beneath our feet. The words weren’t carved in stone. What we were standing on looked more like the flat outside of a ceramic pot – a jelly mould from Victorian times, or something of that sort. The light from the torch wasn’t great for colours, but it looked a rich, golden kind of brown. This took up about the space you would dig for a grave.

  ‘It is her?’ I asked. ‘She can’t be buried here.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like a Table Stone – the kind they have in churchyards. But I’ve never seen one like this. It’s been fired in one huge piece.’

  I had been right that it looked like pottery, but that didn’t help with the huge disappointment.

  ‘So this is her gravestone?’ I asked. ‘Her body’s under here?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’d have to see if we can lift it up.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing that.’

  Mr. Gatward wanted to see if I’d change my mind.

  ‘Why is hers different from theirs,’ I asked. ‘Why isn’t she just out on a shelf, wrapped in some bandages.’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘Maybe because she was different. I don’t know.’

  He seemed to have shrunk a little.

  ‘Shall we go?’ he said, and handed the torch back to me.

  ‘One second,’ I said.

  Mr. Gatward stood in silence whilst I did something I didn’t really understand myself. I cleared my mind and tested to see if I could feel Lilian’s presence in the crypt. If her body had been buried beneath the floor, it would be a different place, it would give off different sensations. I was working my instinct rather than anything I believed in my conscious mind. I reached out to Lilian. But rather than feel her here, I felt something else – it was like the opposite of Lilian. I don’t mean that she was good and it felt evil. Nothing like that. More that this was precisely the space where Lilian wasn’t.

  ‘I’m ready now,’ I said.

  Mr. Gatward went first, leaving me to pull the circular door shut behind us.

  Chapter 39.

  ‘Even so,’ said Mr. Gatward, as we climbed into the chapel. ‘Even so, it’s terribly exciting.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

  ‘No one in almost five hundred years has known the things we’ve known.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  We had stopped in the middle of the aisle. Mr. Gatward was looking around him. I gave him the torch, and he began to pick out particular details.

  ‘That’s how history is. You think you’ve found a solution, but you’ve only found another mystery.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as the beam of light hit the painting above the altar. It was Jesus on the cross.

  ‘And this one’s easy enough to solve. We lift the lid, and she’s either there or she’s not.’

  ‘I don’t want to disturb it,’ I said. ‘I think we shouldn’t.’

  Mr. Gatward turned the torch on my face. ‘My dear, but then we’ll never know. We’ll never be certain.’

  ‘You just said, we’d only find another mystery.’

  ‘Maybe we will,’ he said. ‘The mystery of when she died, who buried her, why she was interred rather than – as you said – simply laid in the crypt. Perhaps her body was disfigured by an accident. Perhaps they had no body, so created her a fitting gravestone – one that had been fired in great heat.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ I said, ‘we’re not disturbing it.’

  ‘Mrs. Jonson!’ cried Mr. Gatward, shining the torch on the grille in the floor. ‘It would be a matter of moments. A team of strong men. A few crowbars.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘If you try to force me to do something I don’t want to, we’ll only end up falling out.’

  Mr. Gatward put his hand to his mouth.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said in a high voice, then turned on his heel and scurried up the steps and out of the chapel.

  I knew that he’d rushed away to calm his emotions, to stop himself getting thrown out.

  When I came into sight of the front of the house, someone shouted my name.

  It was Peter. He was standing on one of our kitchen chairs, just at the spot where P.C. Hollerhan had lifted him up.
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  ‘I think that’s sorted,’ he said. ‘Come and have a look. Can’t see it at all.’

  I went straight to him.

  ‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘What if a car comes?’

  Peter climbed down off the chair. I handed him the keys then took his place.

  ‘The signal seems to be fine, even though it’s lower down.’ he said. ‘I’ve been using Jack to go up and down to the TV, reporting back. He got more and more excited.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ I asked. ‘He’s meant to be looking after Mary.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Peter. ‘I’m doing this for all of us.’

  ‘How long have you been out here?’

  ‘Only about five minutes.’

  It was another marker of the growing distance between us – I couldn’t care less about anything on television. My life was full of things that made TV programmes completely not worth watching.

  ‘I am pleased,’ I said, faking it. ‘I’m going to check on Mary.’

  As soon as I walked through the door of the house, I shouted, ‘Jack! Jack!’

  He didn’t reply.

  I hurried up the stairs, turned right and straight into our bedroom. Mary was there, absolutely fine, still sleeping.

  ‘Mum!’ shouted Jack. ‘Come quick.’

  He didn’t sound like he was scared or in pain. I closed the bedroom door and called, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the attic, Mum. Quickly.’

  Across the upstairs living room I went, then up the spiral staircase.

  There was a thump on the ceiling, and immediately I heard Jack say, ‘Oh no.’

  I got about halfway up the stairs before Jack shouted. ‘Wait. Wait.’

  There was another thump. It sounded like Jack was stamping his foot.

  ‘Don’t come in!’

  I stopped. Jack had that kind of voice people get, when they shout to you to stop you coming into a room where they’re wrapping up a present for you.

  ‘What is it, Jack?’

  Another thump, louder than the two before. Then Jack gave a grrr of frustration.

  ‘But I wanted to show you,’ he said. ‘And it’s not working.’

  ‘Can I come up now?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  As I came up into the room, Jack was standing a couple of rungs up the ladder out onto the roof. I was glad to see the skylight at the top was safely shut.

  Jack jumped and landed, making the thump.

  Then he ran across to me and said excitedly. ‘Mum, I was flying! I was flying across the room from over there to over there.’

  He pointed to the ladder and then to a spot about five or six feet nearer to where I was.

  ‘Like this,’ he said, and ran back to where he’d been where I came in.

  Another thump, but Jack followed it by going on tiptoe and pretending to fly across the room.

  ‘I was about this high,’ said Jack, his hand marking a level about two feet off the floor. ‘It was brilliant. I was almost steering.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Dad kept asking me to go down and look at the TV, to see if the picture was there. I tried to jump as far off the bottom as the record was, which was there.’ He pointed to the floor, close to the ladder. ‘Every time, I broke the record more and more. I was going really really far and not touching the ground. I was flying.’

  I believed him, even though I didn’t want to. I knew I believed him because I was already feeling jealous.

  ‘What did it feel like?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I wanted it to,’ said Jack. ‘It felt creamy.’

  ‘Try again,’ I said.

  Jack went back to the ladder. He was about to jump when I heard Peter come to the top of the stairs in the hall.

  ‘He’s fine, isn’t he?’ Peter said loudly.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said, just as Jack jumped.

  ‘I told you he was fine,’ said Peter, just as Jack didn’t thump down as he should have done but floated sideways towards me.

  ‘Look! Look!’ he shouted. His arms were out to either side, wavering, as if we were trying to keep balance.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Peter.

  Jack was halfway across from the ladder and still not touching the floor. His face was beaming with pride.

  ‘He’s – ’ I didn’t want to say flying but I didn’t know what else to say. ‘He’s just showing me something,’ I said.

  ‘So, everything’s fine, isn’t it?’ Peter said.

  ‘It’s all fine,’ I said, just as Jack flew into my arms.

  ‘I can fly!’ whispered Jack. ‘Daddy doesn’t know. I want to surprise him when I can do it really well.’

  ‘I’m going to have a look at the TV,’ said Peter.

  I tried to calm Jack down, but there was no chance. He’d just done the impossible – and fulfilled one of his life’s dreams.

  ‘You have to be very careful,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’

  ‘But, Mum, when I’m really good at it, I can fly everywhere. I won’t even need to go in the car.’

  ‘I think, probably, that it will only work in the house. Please promise me you won’t go too high.’

  It was such a ridiculous thing to be saying.

  ‘I promise,’ said Jack. ‘Can I do it again?’

  ‘One more time,’ I said.

  But it didn’t work again, although Jack tried and tried.

  ‘Maybe after you’ve had a break,’ I said. ‘I think we need to do something very normal. How about you come with me to the shop? You can have whatever you want.’

  Bribing kids isn’t good, I know. But sometimes there’s nothing else.

  ‘Okay,’ said Jack.

  Mary was already stirring when I went to check on her again.

  It took me about ten minutes to get ready. We left Peter happily reunited with his two hundred channels. I did ask him if he wanted to join us, but I think he was quite happy where he was.

  I got a bit of a shock when I opened the door as Mr. Gatward was standing in the porch.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if I could come in,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you can,’ I said.

  ‘I am sorry about what I said. It’s entirely your decision how we proceed.’

  ‘I know it is,’ I said. ‘That’s why it’s okay.’

  ‘I’d like to have a serious look at the family papers today,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘Start to find some supporting evidence for the improvement in the family finances, after 1580.’

  Chapter 40.

  Jack helped me push Mary’s buggy along. All he wanted to talk about was flying. ‘Then I’ll teach Jameel,’ he said. ‘And then we can have fights in the sky like jet fighters. If we can fly, we can be superheroes.’

  Talk of superheroes always made me think of Carpet Superheroes – and Jack had done a lot of talking about superheroes round about the worst time. This time, I smiled to myself. Carpet Superheroes woman couldn’t fly, could she?

  ‘Jack,’ I said, ‘you can tell Jameel about flying, but please don’t talk about it with Dad. He doesn’t believe in it, and it’ll only make him annoyed. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jack, who wasn’t listening.

  After this, I let him run on ahead, zooming and imagining. ‘Stay off the road,’ I shouted. I was still preoccupied with what we’d found or maybe not found in the crypt. It wasn’t possible that Lilian had died like any other woman, then been buried in some secret ceremony. I hadn’t paused in the house, like I had standing on Lilian’s grave, but I knew that her presence was much stronger in the house than anywhere around the chapel. In fact, her presence seemed to run out just about where the smooth wood turned to rough in the secret tunnel. The house was where she was alive.

  Mary enjoyed the trip out. She was looking all around her, taking in the hedgerows bright with flowers and loud with birdsong. I remembered that this was the sort of thing we’d been looking for, when we d
ecided to move to the country. In London, she’d have been gazing at wheelie bins, litter and graffiti. It was another bright, summer day but the air felt close, as if a storm wasn’t far off. I wished I could enjoy the sunshine without being preoccupied with other things.

  When we got to the common, the two boys we’d seen before – the older one and the ginger one – were out there playing football.

  ‘Why don’t you go and say hello?’ I asked. ‘I’ll get you something and bring it over.’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, suddenly wanting to hide in my armpit.

  ‘They look very friendly,’ I said.

  Jack had a quick glance around me.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  I wasn’t sure if the village shop would still be open, but it was before twelve and Mrs. Willows was there behind the counter.

  I said hello then turned to Jack. ‘So, what would you like?

  ‘Beer,’ he said

  Mrs. Willows laughed, a little nervously.

  ‘He means ginger beer,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No, beer beer,’ said Jack.

  ‘If you mess around, Jack, you won’t have anything.’

  ‘Alright then, ginger beer,’ said Jack, as if it was a punishment.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘Please,’ he said, as me.

  I picked a couple of cans out of the fridge and took them up to pay for them.

  ‘You didn’t come all the way just for these, did you?’ asked Mrs. Willows.

  This was annoying – it made any question I might casually ask seem less than casual.

  ‘Oh, we were just out for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘You told me I could have anything,’ said Jack.

  ‘Break the bank,’ I said.

  Mrs. Willows took the money and gave me my change.

  ‘I did have one question,’ I said, deciding that I might as well be honest. ‘Do you remember selling a copy of Mr. Gatward’s book to Matthew and Gracie Dearie, when they first came here?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember their first visit.’

  She was inviting a follow-up.

  ‘You remember their second visit, then?’

  ‘How could I forget it?’ Mrs. Willows said. ‘They walked in, told me they were buying the farm, then took every copy of Hidden Histories that we had in.’