by Eva Ibbotson
‘It’s disgusting,’ said Rick when Humphrey had finished. ‘Ghosts have as much right to be around as anybody else. Something must be done.’
‘What?’ asked Humphrey, looking at Rick admiringly. He already thought him incredibly clever.
‘I shall think. Do you suppose I could meet your family?’
‘Of course,’ said Humphrey, gliding over to Maurice Crawler’s bed.
‘My goodness,’ said Rick. From the fat hump which was Maurice’s stomach there rose two huge, black, scaly wings. For a moment they flopped up and down while the Hag did her early morning stretch. Then they parted to show a huge, crooked nose, squinty eyes and masses of black and tangled hair. At the same time, the smell of burnt tripe crept sickeningly into Rick’s nose.
‘This is my mother,’ whispered Humphrey proudly. ‘Mummy, this is Rick.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Rick politely. All the same he couldn’t help being glad he hadn’t met Humphrey’s mother first.
As soon as she was properly awake, the Hag flew up to the ceiling to wake her husband. The Gliding Kilt had fallen asleep across the horns of a large, stuffed gnu. He looked rather peculiar as he began to appear, with his kilt caught on one horn and his sword, which he’d not bothered to take out because he was too tired, dangling downwards from his chest.
‘Where are his legs?’ whispered Rick to Humphrey.
‘He hasn’t got any,’ said Humphrey proudly, and explained about the Battle of Otterburn.
Waking George was a problem because they were afraid he would start to scream at once and disturb the other boys in the dormitory. So they borrowed Rick’s pillow and found George, who had rolled under the bed of a boy called Terence Tinn and put it over him straight away. Winifred, the sensible girl, woke by herself and came gliding down between the beds, not letting out a single wail even though she was longing for a wash and her bowl was being perfectly beastly.
Most of the ghosts managed to pile on to Rick’s bed but the faithful Shuk had to stay on the floor with Aunt Hortensia’s head because the Hag didn’t approve of dogs on the blankets. Though he was getting fond of the ghosts already, the Head gave Rick a bad moment. It never looked very good before breakfast and today, with one eye gummed up and a couple of cockroaches playing hide and seek in its left ear-hole, it really wasn’t very appetizing at all.
‘Where’s the rest of Auntie?’ complained the Hag. ‘Here’s this nice boy going to help us—’
But at that point Hortensia’s large, yellow feet appeared hovering in the air above them. She’d spent the night on a gigantic wardrobe with her phantom coach and came down grumbling that she’d got cramp in her stump.
‘Right. Is that everybody?’ said Rick.
The ghosts nodded.
‘Humphrey has told me that you’ve been turned out of your home,’ Rick went on.
‘That’s right.’
They had forgotten to whisper. Suddenly Maurice Crawler lifted his head, and let out a yell of terror. ‘Things!’ he gabbled. ‘Googly, ghastly things!’
Rick jumped out of bed and went over to him. ‘Do be quiet, Maurice. You’ll wake the others.’
‘Stumpy Stumps,’ said Maurice wildly. ‘Hateful Heads. Black Bats—’
‘You’re bats,’ said Rick sternly. ‘You’ve been having a nightmare. Now be quiet. Close your eyes and go to sleep again.’
‘Rather a rude boy,’ said Aunt Hortensia’s head, when Maurice had begun to snore once more.
‘We had hoped to be able to stay here,’ said the Gliding Kilt, ‘but I see now that it wouldn’t do. Too many children give me indigestion. Not you, of course,’ he added politely to Rick.
‘Well I’ve been thinking,’ said Rick. ‘It isn’t just you that have been driven out of your homes.’ And he explained about the whales and the cannibals and all the other things that were on his mind. ‘I think you ought to find a place where all ghosts can live safely.’
‘Somewhere dark,’ said the Hag wistfully.
‘Somewhere damp,’ said Aunt Hortensia, rubbing some dried skin off the end of her stump.
‘Somewhere with owls and bats and rats,’ said Winifred, who loved animals.
‘Somewhere with lots of thunderstorms,’ said George.
‘Somewhere with other ghosts for me to play with,’ said Humphrey.
‘What you need is a ghost sanctuary,’ said Rick.
‘What’s a sanctuary?’ said Humphrey.
‘It’s a place where people can be safe and no one bothers them. In the old days if someone was being chased by soldiers, or by anyone, and he went into a church, that was a place of sanctuary. No one could get at him there.’
‘I wouldn’t like a church,’ said Winifred nervously. ‘You practically never find ghosts in a church.’
‘No, I know. I’m only explaining. I mean, they have bird sanctuaries for puffins and cormorants, where they can make nests and breed and no one is allowed to shoot them or collect their eggs. And you have them for Native Americans in America.’
‘But Native Americans don’t lay eggs,’ said Humphrey.
Rick sighed. ‘What I mean is, they have sanctuaries. Only they’re called reservations, where the Indians can go on living the way they’re used to and no one bothers them. And that’s what you need. A sanctuary for ghosts.’
‘A sanctuary for ghosts,’ they all repeated, and nodded their heads. What Rick said made sense. It was a wonderful idea. What’s more it made them feel good to think that they were looking for somewhere that all ghosts could be happy in, not just they themselves.
‘I wish it could be here,’ said Humphrey. He didn’t at all like the idea of leaving Rick.
There was a sudden shriek from the next bed. It was the new boy, Peter. He had woken up and found himself looking straight into the Shuk’s single, saucer eye.
‘Go to sleep,’ said Rick. ‘It’s just a nightmare.’
All the same, he saw that it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to all the boys in the dormitory that they’d had the same nightmare. And soon now it would be properly light and Matron, who looked like a camel, would come clucking in, which could be awkward. Of course he could tell the ghosts to vanish. But telling a ghost to vanish is a bit like telling a friend to get lost. It just isn’t a thing you want to do.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s Sunday. I’ll take you over to the gym – it won’t be used today. And I’ll go and see a friend of mine, someone very clever, and we’ll make a plan. O.K.?’
‘O.K., dear boy,’ said the Gliding Kilt. ‘Er, does your gymnasium have parallel bars? And a vaulting horse?’
‘Yes. All those sort of things.’
‘Oh, good,’ said the Gliding Kilt, following Rick down the dormitory. He was not one to boast but when he was alive he had been very good at sport indeed. Tossing the caber, hurling the Clachneart and all those other clever Scottish things had been nothing to the Gliding Kilt.
Five
The friend Rick went to talk to about the ghosts was the daughter of the school cook. Her name was Barbara and she was plump with thick, long, chestnut-coloured hair, the sort of dreamy, brown eyes you get in well-fed dairy cows and a smooth, pinky-brown skin with lots of dimples. She did everything very slowly and never got excited, and if she wasn’t interested in what people were saying, she just quietly fell asleep.
Although Norton Castle School was a boys’ school, the Crawlers let Barbara do lessons with the boarders. This was not because the Crawlers were nice – they were exceptionally nasty. It was because Barbara’s mother was a very good cook and they were afraid of losing her. Barbara never seemed to do any work, or take much notice of what the teachers were saying but whenever they asked her a question she knew the answer backwards and when there was a test she wasn’t just top but so far ahead it was almost funny, like finishing half an hour early in a maths exam and getting one hundred per cent.
Rick found her in the kitchen helping her mother to make castle puddings. But she c
ame away when she saw Rick had something on his mind and they went to talk behind an old willow tree which grew near the back entrance to the school.
It didn’t take long for Rick to tell his story. Barbara didn’t sneer or say he’d been dreaming but she did look very surprised. ‘Ghosts,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought it!’
‘So you see we’ve got to find them somewhere to go,’ Rick said. ‘Only how do we do it?’
Barbara picked a long piece of grass and began to chew the stem.
‘Westminster,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Go to London. To the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. That’s where the Government is. You’d have to go to the top for a big thing like that. To the Prime Minister.’
‘Write a letter, you mean?’
‘No,’ said Barbara. ‘Go. Take them. Keep them invisible till you get there, then insist on seeing your Member of Parliament. Everyone’s allowed to see their Member of Parliament. It’s a law of the land. Make him take you to the Prime Minister. Then show him the ghosts. No one will believe you otherwise.’
‘Goodness.’ Rick was a bit overwhelmed.
‘Well you can go on messing about trying to get people to do things here but no one’s got the money for a start. A ghost sanctuary would cost thousands and thousands of pounds. Only the government could afford it.’
‘It’s over two hundred miles from here to London,’ said Rick. ‘It’s all right for the ghosts – they’ve got a phantom coach and anyway they can glide. But what about me? I can’t walk that far.’
Barbara’s large, peaceful forehead screwed itself up into dents and grooves.
‘You’d have to do it in stages. From here till Grange-on-Trant you could go in Uncle Ted’s milk lorry. That’s about thirty miles. Then you could get a bus to Lonsdale – country buses are cheap. Over Saughbeck Moors you’d have to walk or hitch maybe, and then perhaps you could do the last part by train. I’ve got a bit of money.’
‘Me too,’ said Rick. ‘I’ll manage.’
‘Do you want me to come with you? I will if you like,’ said Barbara, picking two more bits of grass and starting to chew again.
Rick took the bit she gave him and thought. It would be nice to have her. Sort of calming. Then he shook his head. ‘I think you’d better stay here and cover up for me. And look, see if you can get the key of the school office and be in there between seven and eight each evening. Then if I’m stuck I can ring you up.’
‘Right. Do you think I could see them before you go?’ said Barbara. ‘I’d awfully like to.’
‘Sure,’ said Rick, and led the way to the gym.
The ghosts were having a marvellous time. The Gliding Kilt was hanging from the parallel bars doing a very difficult arm exercise. Aunt Hortensia had discovered the trampoline and was bouncing up and down, her nightdress ballooning over her stump, her horny feet twitching with pleasure. George was standing on his skull.
‘Look at me, Rick!’ shouted Humphrey the Horrible, and promptly fell off the rope.
‘Goodness,’ said Barbara, staring wide-eyed. ‘I must say I’m impressed. What’s that disgusting smell?’
The Hag, very pleased with what Barbara had said, stopped doing press-ups and came over to talk to her. ‘It’s wet whale liver. One of my husband’s favourites,’ she said shyly. ‘I was wearing it when we met.’
Rick introduced Barbara and all the ghosts came down to hear what had been decided.
‘A good plan,’ said the Gliding Kilt, twirling the sword in his chest approvingly. ‘Always go to the top if you want things done. When do we leave?’
‘We thought at dawn tomorrow. That’s when the milk lorry goes into town,’ said Rick.
‘At dawn, at dawn,’ shrieked Humphrey the Horrible, excitedly, bouncing up and down like a yo-yo.
‘Sooner you than me,’ said Barbara as she and Rick left the gym together. ‘Definitely sooner you than me.’
Neither of them noticed a tiny, black bat which had been dozing in the rafters and now flew out after them and vanished from sight. Even if they’d noticed it they couldn’t have known that this particular bat was the grandson of Susie the Sucker, one of the most famous blood-sucking vampire bats in the whole of Britain. And that before night had fallen, news of Rick’s march to London would have spread like wildfire across the river, through the forests of Saughbeck and on, on to the edges of the sea.
Rick did not exactly enjoy the journey in Uncle Ted’s milk lorry.
Getting the ghosts ready had been a most exhausting job. The phantom horses were feeling frisky after their rest and didn’t want to be harnessed. Aunt Hortensia, whose bunions were shooting, slapped the Shuk for dribbling on her head and this made Humphrey so furious that he refused to sit in the coach and insisted on travelling with Rick inside the milk lorry.
‘I promise I’ll stay vanished,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
‘Even your elbow?’
‘Even my elbow.’
And now it turned out that Uncle Ted wrote poetry.
I like to see the butterflies
I like to hear the bees
But best of all I like to eat
A sausage roll with peas,
he shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Did you like that?’
‘Very nice,’ said Rick politely, looking anxiously up at the sky. Later he learnt to make out where the ghosts were even when they weren’t visible – it’s a sort of knack, seeing invisible ghosts. But now he could only hope that the phantom coach was keeping up with the lorry and that everybody in it was all right.
‘What about this one,’ said Uncle Ted, who was obviously very proud of his poetry:
Water’s Dark
Water’s Deep
Some Fish Wriggle
Some Fish Sleep
‘Fishes don’t sleep,’ whispered Humphrey in Rick’s ear. ‘Not properly. Because they don’t have eyelids. Or eyelashes. I know because Uncle Leonard the Loathsome took us down—’
‘Shh!’ said Rick. He turned back to Uncle Ted. ‘Have you made up a lot of poems?’
‘Oh, two or three hundred,’ said Uncle Ted casually. ‘Hey, what’s that noise?’
‘George scream – I mean, your tyres screaming,’ said Rick nervously. What was going on up there?
‘Funny. We weren’t going round a bend or anything,’ said Uncle Ted.
Altogether, Rick was extremely relieved when Uncle Ted stopped the lorry and set him down just before they came to the first of the great bridges which span the River Trant.
‘The bus goes right past here, you can’t miss it. And give my regards to your grandmother. Hope she’ll be better soon,’ he said, making Rick feel terrible for a moment. Having to tell lies to people who have been kind to you is not pleasant.
Meanwhile, back at Norton Castle School, Barbara was knocking on the door of Mr and Mrs Crawler’s study.
Mr Crawler, the headmaster, was small and pale and weedy, and seemed to get smaller and paler and weedier with every week that passed. Mrs Crawler, on the other hand, got steadily fatter, louder and pinker-looking. The boys used to wonder whether she chewed bits off her husband while he slept.
‘Come in,’ she called now.
Barbara crossed the plum-coloured carpet and walked to the big double desk where the Crawlers sat. Above Mrs Crawler hung an alligator with a pleasant smile. Mr Crawler was sitting under a sad-looking water buffalo. Barbara couldn’t help thinking how odd it was that you could shoot and stuff animals whereas everyone would make an awful fuss if you shot and stuffed people who were mostly not nearly so nice.
‘Yes?’ said Mrs Crawler sharply when she saw Barbara. She was not the sort of person to waste time being friendly to the daughter of the cook.
Barbara had a difficult job to do. She had to invent a reason for Rick having vanished from school and she had to make sure that the Crawlers would not ring Rick’s mother to check. Rick’s mother had not got any tougher since she hadn’t been able t
o put sellotape on Rick’s ears, and he worried about her. So now she said that Rick’s godmother had arrived very suddenly and unexpectedly that morning. ‘In a large silver grey car with the letters RR on the bonnet,’ said Barbara cunningly, knowing what snobs the Crawlers were.
‘A Rolls Royce,’ said Mrs Crawler, impressed.
His godmother was American, Barbara went on, and only in England for a few days and she wanted to take Rick up to London and get to know him. ‘It’s all in the note,’ she went on, holding out a piece of paper.
‘Well, that seems to be in order,’ said Mrs Crawler, when she’d read it. She turned to her husband. ‘She asks us to choose a present for the school. Anything we like.’
‘A cricket pavilion,’ said Mr Crawler, who was not a modest man.
‘Don’t be silly, dear, we need a new dining hall far more.’
They were still arguing, getting crosser and crosser, as Barbara tiptoed quietly to the door and left. She didn’t exactly enjoy forging notes – in fact it gave her a stomach-ache. But when people were as silly as the Crawlers there was no point in getting too upset. And really, a ghost sanctuary was so important.
Six
Meanwhile Rick and the ghosts were standing on the great Iron Bridge which spans the River Trant. Below them the river flowed, broad and grey and placid. Factories ran down to the water’s edge; there were warehouses and smoking chimneys and barges loading coal. Bits of white scum floated on the surface of the water and there was a very strange smell.
‘Delicious,’ said the Hag, sniffing it up in her long, crooked nose.
Rick couldn’t agree. He thought the river smelt terrible – dirty, polluted, like a great drain.
He sighed and turned to the place where he hoped the ghosts were.
‘Well, we’d better plan the next—’ he began, and stopped in amazement.