by Eva Ibbotson
Rick swallowed. ‘Well, what I want is... for you to take me to the Prime Minister.’
‘The Prime Minister!’ Mr Wilks thought this was the funniest thing he’d heard for a long time. ‘The Prime Minister! You’re a humorist. I see. Why, I can’t get to see the Prime Minister, let alone a child!’
‘It’s important. Honestly.’ And plucking up his courage, and ignoring the people tramping backwards and forwards across the crowded lobby, Rick began to tell Mr Wilks the story of the ghosts.
‘So you see,’ he said when he’d finished, ‘that’s why I want to see the Prime Minister. Only he is important enough to help me set up a ghost sanctuary.’
All the time Rick had been talking, Mr Wilks had been letting out little bursts of laughter, like an overcooked sausage spitting out hot fat.
‘Ghosts!’ he wheezed when Rick had finished. ‘Ghosts! A ghost sanctuary! Oh, I’d love to see the Prime Minister’s face if I told him that.’
‘You don’t believe in ghosts then?’
‘Most certainly I do not.’
‘Mr Wilks, if I could prove to you that there were such things as ghosts, then would you take me to the Prime Minister?’
‘Oh, sure, sure,’ said Mr Wilks. ‘I’d take you to the moon, too. In fact it might be easier to arrange. And now if you’ll excuse me – I’m a very busy man.’ And still wheezing, he turned and walked away.
‘So you mean it’s no good?’ said the Hag, her voice quivering with despair. ‘He won’t help us?’
Rick had got back to Hyde Park late in the afternoon. There were still people about so all the ghosts had made themselves invisible, but the pink glimmer of Humphrey’s elbow, and a smell of squashed head lice had led Rick to the dark shrubbery behind the gentlemen’s toilet and there they all were, waiting for him.
‘He absolutely refused. He said there were no such things as ghosts.’
‘Nit!’ said Humphrey furiously. ‘Wheezing Windbag. Festering Fool!’
‘Be quiet, Humphrey,’ said the Hag. All the same, the ghosts were exceedingly cast down. They had been so certain that Rick would come back with good news. Then Humphrey put his hand trustingly on Rick’s arm and said: ‘You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?’
‘Have you, dear boy? Is there anything we can do?’ asked the Gliding Kilt.
‘Yes,’ said Rick. ‘There is something you can do all right.’
‘What?’ said all the ghosts eagerly.
‘HAUNT,’ said Rick. ‘Haunt as you’ve never haunted in your life! Before this evening’s out, Mr Wilks is going to be very sorry he said there were no such things as ghosts.’
The house Mr Wilks lived in was called Resthaven.It was a large house with white bits let into the pink brickwork, like a house with measles. A long drive led up to it lined with laurels and rhododendrons. At the back there was a lawn and a summerhouse made to look like a Swiss chalet with silly, carved cuckoos on the roof, and a dog kennel which had Buster painted on the side. Buster himself didn’t seem to be around.
Rick had chosen a good night for the haunting. The Wilks were giving a dinner party. Even in the time it took Rick to creep through the laurel bushes and make his way round to the back, a caterer’s van arrived and then a wine merchant’s, and inside the house he could hear Mrs Wilks shouting things to her maid.
‘Now remember,’ he said, when he’d joined the ghosts who were waiting in the summerhouse. ‘Start off gently – just a scream or two from George, maybe the odd wail from Winifred. Then, when they get to the dining room step it up a bit. And when I give you the signal, it’s full steam ahead. O.K.?’
‘O.K.,’ said all the ghosts happily. They were looking forward to the evening very much. It is always nice to be busy.
It was seven thirty, and in the Wilks’ drawing room, which had a sage-green carpet, gold brocade curtains and very uncomfortable striped satin chairs, the dinner guests were drinking sherry and eating nuts.
All the people the Wilks had invited were Important People – the Wilks wouldn’t have bothered with them if they hadn’t been. There was a millionaire called Harry Holtzmann, who had got rich making guns and selling them to foreign countries so that people there could kill each other better, and a man called Professor Pringle who had written a book about What Was Wrong With Young People (which seemed to be practically everything). There was also the Honourable Lucy Lamworth whose father was a viscount, and a young man called Crispin Craig who interviewed people on television and smiled a lot. And of course there was Mr Wilks, looking hot, and Mrs Wilks who had a shrill voice and a head full of bubbly yellow curls.
It is difficult to say anything interesting while waiting for dinner to be ready and feeling salty inside from too many nuts, and no one was saying anything interesting. They were saying things like: ‘Hasn’t it been hot for the time of year?’ or, ‘Wasn’t that a truly ghastly film on television last night?’
And then, suddenly, there was a scream.
Actually, for George it was nothing, that scream. It was the sort of scream you might have got when torturing twenty or thirty people painfully to death, but for George it was nothing. He was just starting things off gently as Rick had told him to.
The Honourable Lucy jumped so hard that the Lamworth emeralds, crashing against her bare and scraggy chest, left bruise marks, and said: ‘What on earth was that?’
The Wilks looked at each other. Then Mr Wilks got up and went out into the hall. What he saw was a young skull sitting peacefully on top of the umbrella stand. Its jawbones were open and it was just settling down for another good scream. Mr Wilks mopped his brow and went tremblingly back into the drawing room. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘the... er... the maid’s dropped something. I think we’d better go in to dinner.’
Everybody filed into the dining room and the maid brought in the hors d’oeuvre. Hors d’oeuvre is always rather a slippery thing to eat: a little bit of olive, a slither of anchovy, that kind of thing – and for a while everyone was busy spearing it with forks. Then Mr Holtzmann turned to the Honourable Lucy and said: ‘Do your feet feel all right?’
The Honourable Lucy, who had got wind from her anchovy, burped gently and said actually her feet felt cold. Also wet. In fact, if she didn’t know it was nonsense she would say her feet were sitting in a pool of water. Crispin Craig, who was sitting opposite, said it was odd but his feet felt just the same.
After the hors d’oeuvre came the soup. One by one the guests picked up their spoons, and one by one they put them down again.
‘Does your soup taste of rotten eggs?’ whispered Crispin Craig.
Mr Holtzmann said, no, dead mice.
‘Mine’s unwashed underwear,’ said Professor Pringle, grimacing. And the Hag, invisible but working hard as she fluttered over the plates, nodded happily. It is always nice to be appreciated.
But it wasn’t till the main course (pheasant in cream with potato croquettes, sprouting broccoli and red currant jelly) that Rick, hiding in the summerhouse, gave the ghosts the signal for full steam ahead. And then it all happened at once.
Through the french windows sailed Aunt Hortensia, astride one of her horses. She had borrowed some of Winifred’s bloodstains to spatter her stump, her nightdress billowed out like an old, yellowing parachute and as she galloped up and down the dining room table her extremely nasty toenails clacked against the wine glasses like pistol shots.
‘AAOOH!’ screamed the Honourable Lucy and fell to the ground.
‘A curse on the House of Wilks,’ roared Aunt Hortensia’s head which was sitting behind her on the backside of her horse.
‘Scotland away!’ yelled the Gliding Kilt, appearing suddenly, upside down, on the chandelier.
‘I’m drowning, I’m drowning!’ screamed Lucy from under the table. It is not easy to lure somebody to a Watery Grave under a dining room table, but Walter the Wet was doing his best.
‘Ribicus, Maerticus, Furissimus,’ giggled the Mad Monk, leaping from the sideboard
and fetching Mrs Wilks a wallop with his rosary. George appeared on a bowl of chocolate mousse and began to scream properly.
Rick judged that his time had come. He threw open the french windows and marched into the dining room.
‘Now do you believe in ghosts?’
Mr Wilks was huddled in his chair, groaning and quivering and trying to wipe the soup off his face.
‘Yes,’ he moaned. ‘Yes... yes.’
‘And will you take me to the Prime Minister?’
‘I can’t just take you to the Prime Minister,’ mumbled Mr Wilks, ‘it’s very difficult to arrange.’
‘All right, then,’ said Rick – and clicked his fingers. The next second five huge vampire bats came flying into the room, their red eyes glinting.
‘Bags I that one,’ said Guzzler, looking longingly at Mrs Wilks’ plump, pink shoulder rising like a delicious blancmange out of her low-cut silver dress.
‘No, I want her!’ said Syphoner.
They began to squabble over Mrs Wilks who leapt on to a chair, started batting at the vampires with a table knife and fell forward, howling with terror, into a bowl of redcurrant jelly. Sucking Susie, meanwhile, landed hungrily on Mr Wilks’ glistening, bald head.
‘Stop it!’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘For heaven’s sake stop! I’m being murdered!’
Rick made a sign to Susie and she closed her terrible mouth obediently.
‘I’ve asked you before and I’m asking you again. Will you take me to the Prime Minister?’
‘Anything,’ gabbled Mr Wilks. ‘I’ll do anything.’
‘The Prime Minister. Tomorrow,’ said Rick.
‘Yes,’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘Tomorrow. Anything. But STOP them. STOP them!’
Rick snapped his fingers. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come on everybody. We’ve done it. It’s over.’
The ghosts didn’t really want to stop, they’d been having such a lovely time. But they thought the world of Rick by now. In a second they had vanished. The pool under the table dried up, the smell disappeared; silence fell on the shattered remains of the Wilks’ dinner party.
They were all in the summerhouse congratulating themselves on how well things had gone when a shrill little voice drifted out of an upstairs window.
‘But I don’t want you to go away,’ said the piping little voice. ‘You’re a lovely ghost. I like you. I want you to stay with me for ever and ever.’
The ghosts looked at each other. ‘Oh, dear!’ said the Hag. They had sent Humphrey upstairs to haunt the bedrooms in case any of the guests went up to powder their noses and Rick remembered now that the Wilks had a little daughter.
‘I did say ‘‘Boo!’’’ said Humphrey, gliding down towards them shyly. ‘I said ‘‘Boo!’’ quite a lot of times.’
But his parents were too pleased with the way things had gone to scold him for not being horrible.
‘It’s the Prime Minister tomorrow, then!’ said the Gliding Kilt.
Rick nodded. ‘It looks as though there’s a real chance of a ghost sanctuary at last!’
Ten
Two days later, Rick found himself walking through the door of Number Ten Downing Street which is perhaps the most famous house in England because it is where the Prime Minister lives. Beside him walked Mr Wilks and gliding quietly above him, though Mr Wilks didn’t know it, were the Craggy-ford ghosts – the Hag and the Gliding Kilt, Winifred, George, and of course Humphrey the Horrible. Rick knew better by now than to try and go anywhere without Humphrey.
The Prime Minister was in his study. He had grey hair and glasses and looked very tired. In front of him on his desk were lots of papers which he was shuffling through as they came in.
‘Ah, Mr Wilks,’ he said rather sadly, and Rick got the idea that perhaps he didn’t like Mr Wilks all that much. ‘Let me introduce my secretary. And this is Lord Bullhaven who has called to see me on... a personal matter.’
Rick didn’t mind the secretary who was just an ordinary young man, but he thought Lord Bullhaven looked horrid. He had a sharp, white nose, small sludge-coloured eyes and black hair slicked down like sticks of liquorice.
‘Now then, this is the boy with the extraordinary story,’ said the Prime Minister, turning to Rick.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rick.
‘Something about a ghost sanctuary?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rick again. ‘The ghosts of Britain – the ghosts of the whole world are in a very bad way. Everywhere they’re being driven out of their old haunts and nobody seems to care. People build motorways over them and tunnels under them and poison their rivers.’ And he began to tell the Prime Minister about his own meeting with the ghosts and the adventures they had had. The Prime Minister listened very quietly and sensibly though you could see he was surprised. But Lord Bullhaven fidgeted and twitched and sniffed in a rude and unpleasant manner.
‘It’s true, sir,’ said Mr Wilks, when Rick had finished. ‘I’ve seen some of them myself.’
‘Would you like to meet just one family?’ said Rick eagerly.
‘Well, I would but—’
Rick clapped his hands. The next second the Craggyford ghosts had made themselves visible and stood respectfully in front of the Prime Minister’s desk.
‘Cursed be your name,’ said the Gliding Kilt politely.
‘Doom and Disease pursue you all your days,’ said the Hag, curtseying. She was using one of her best smells, Rick noticed – crushed pig’s bladder mixed with unbrushed teeth, and she was holding George’s jawbones tightly between her crooked hands because she didn’t think he ought to scream in Downing Street. Winifred just wailed shyly but of course Humphrey immediately came up to the Prime Minister, laid his skeletal fingers on his knee and said: ‘You are going to find us somewhere to live, aren’t you?’
‘Well,’ said the Prime Minister. He was definitely looking shaken but he wasn’t making a fuss like Mr Wilks’ dinner guests had done. Compared to the horrible things that happen to you when you are governing Britain, seeing a few ghosts is nothing. ‘Well, I shall certainly have to see what I can do. But I really don’t know where—’
‘Might I make a suggestion?’
It was Lord Bullhaven who had spoken. His sludgy eyes had narrowed and a muscle was twitching in his cheek. ‘I have... an old estate on the North West Coast of Scotland. It’s called Insleyfarne. The army used it as a rocket site during the war and it’s been derelict since then.’
‘Insleyfarne?’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Yes, I think I’ve heard of it. I’m afraid the army was a bit trigger-happy. I seem to remember the castle’s in ruins?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lord Bullhaven grimly. ‘Completely bashed up. The trees are all scarred – there’s not a building left with a roof on. Still, it’s a very bleak place anyway – a promontory jutting out to sea. There’s always a wind blowing and the land’s too boggy to be any use. I don’t see why you shouldn’t have it for your ghosts.’
‘Oh,’ said the Hag, the whiskers on her nose twitching with joy, ‘doesn’t it sound just absolutely lovely, darlings!’
And Rick, as he thanked Lord Bullhaven over and over again, felt very ashamed. He’d thought he looked such a horrid, creepy man with his sleety eyes and liquorice hair and yet it was he who had brought their search to such a happy and successful end.
‘Well, that’s settled then,’ said the Prime Minister, turning back to the pile of papers on his desk. ‘My secretary will help you to work out the transport.’
As they turned to go, Rick shook Lord Bullhaven’s hand again and again, and the Hag, though she usually kissed no one but her husband, kindly pecked him on his chalk-white cheek. Unfortunately, Rick could not read people’s minds. If he had been able to, he would not have left the Prime Minister’s house whistling so loudly and so happily that people turned to look at him in the street, and smiled.
They travelled to Insleyfarne by train. Once the Prime Minister made up his mind to do something he did it quickly. Rick had a First Class ticket and a s
leeper so that he could get into his bed somewhere round Peterborough and not wake up again till they were over the Scottish border. What’s more, he went to the restaurant car all by himself and ordered a huge meal: soup, and steak with fried onions and chips and grilled tomatoes, and fruit salad and cream, and ate it while the fields and hedges and cows flashed past the window. There is nothing nicer than eating on a train and Rick enjoyed himself very much. He didn’t even feel guilty about eating the steak because Sucking Susie had said he needed meat to make new blood for Rose.
And while he ate he thought of what the Prime Minister had said to him just before he left.
‘I’d like all this kept secret,’ he said. ‘If it ever came out that I’d provided a sanctuary for ghosts the whole country would think I’d gone mad. And then I wouldn’t get re-elected.’
Rick didn’t see it like that.
‘Wouldn’t people think you and Lord Bullhaven were very good and kind to give the ghosts somewhere to live, and vote for you all the more?’
‘I promise you, Rick,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘if it got out that I believed in ghosts—’
‘But you’ve seen them.’
‘No one would care whether I’d seen them or not. They’d just think I was mad. If the papers got hold of it—’ He shuddered.
So Rick had promised to get his ghosts to Insleyfarne without anybody noticing and they had all sworn to stay quietly in the luggage van being invisible till they got there. Even Humphrey. Both the Hag and the Gliding Kilt had given up hope that Humphrey’s left elbow ever would vanish properly. It was like having a child with cauliflower ears or a stutter. One just had to make the best of it. On the other hand one didn’t want any of the passengers noticing a pink, cobwebby thing hanging in the luggage rack now they were so near to home.
They changed trains at Inverness and the country got wilder and wilder and more and more beautiful, and then they got out at a tiny station and there was a big khaki lorry with the letters H.M.S. on the side, waiting to take them to Insleyfarne. The driver thought it very strange, taking just one boy in a huge lorry but he had his orders to say nothing and he said nothing, even when the lorry began to fill with the smell of rotting sores, even when a huge puddle appeared from absolutely nowhere....