by Alex Shearer
So, all in all, the atmosphere and ambience in the Ministry of Ghosts was of a sepia-tinted hue. Life and time moved at the speed and rhythm of the slow-ticking, pendulum-driven grandfather clock in the hallway. A tick, a long pause, and then a tock. Another tick, another long pause, a tock again. While in a window corner a spider built a web, and in a basement room a cat purred.
Sometimes a letter fell through the door; sometimes the telephone was heard to ring. But mostly there was congenial silence, broken only by the sound of friendly conversation, as Miss Rolly entered Mr Gibbings’ office on some pretext in order to chat with him and to give him the benefit of her opinions on the affairs of the world outside. Or Mr Gibbings might call upon Miss Rolly, needing her advice on some Civil Service technicality of procedure or precedent – expertise which she would willingly share.
Or Mrs Scant might make an appearance and ask, ‘Anyone for tea?’ Usually getting the affirmative in reply, she would go off to make it, though it did seem to take her an interminable while to do so. Mrs Scant had to be the slowest boiler of kettles and warmer of teapots in the world.
Then, ultimately, the snoring upstairs would stop. Old Mr Copperstone would emerge to remove the sign from the door handle, and he would give every appearance of vitality and of being a man concerned in important affairs. He would summon Miss Rolly, so as to confer with her. He would ask Mrs Scant to step up, as he had several important letters to dictate. Or perhaps he might require young Mr Gibbings to attend him, so that they could informally discuss sporting matters, and which horse was looking good for the 4.15 at Ascot.
For Mr Copperstone was, in his way, devilish fond of the young fella, who much reminded him of himself in his own younger days. So Mr Copperstone would invite young Mr Gibbings to take a seat, and he would regale him with tales from his early days in the Civil Service – of those past but exciting times round at the Department of Work and Pensions, of the heady days at the Ministry of Agriculture. And young Mr Gibbings would listen spellbound, feeling – as he heard these stories – just a little inadequate, and wondering if he would ever experience the thrill of such swashbuckling clerical adventures for himself.
At length, Mr Gibbings would be dismissed, and would return to his office to put the finishing touches to the work of the day. Then, at last, five thirty would come into view, like an old, slow sailing ship, long-awaited and looked for, finally lumbering over the horizon.
‘Goodnight, Miss Rolly!’
‘Goodnight, Mr Gibbings!’
‘Mrs Scant!’
‘Mr Gibbings, Miss Rolly!’
‘Goodnight!’
They would all call goodnight to their revered superior, who would wave to them from the top of the stairs – for old Mr Copperstone, like the captain of a great liner, knew where his duty lay, and made a point of always being the last to leave his ship, sinking or not.
Soon, all was silence, save for the ticking of the clock and the mewing of the cat. The motes of dust seemed frozen in the air, as if to be held there for all eternity. Outside, the sky darkened and night came, and some said that as the chimes of midnight rang, then ghosts would walk the earth. But if that were so, then it had never been satisfactorily demonstrated to the standards of proof required round at the Ministry of Ghosts.
And so things might have gone on indefinitely. Had it not been for an unexpected caller – one with economies on his mind, a man looking to make big cuts in government expenditures.
Yes, Mr Franklin Beeston – somewhat like the Grim Reaper, only with a briefcase in his hand instead of a scythe – was on his way to the Ministry of Ghosts to cut down the superfluous corn and to trim the parasitic weeds.
4
An Inspector Calls
Mr Beeston could have driven, but that would have been an extra expense for the government, so he took the bus, and then walked.
‘Would you like me to telephone the Ministry and announce your arrival, Mr Beeston?’ his secretary, Mrs Peeve, had enquired before he left.
‘Of course I don’t,’ he reminded her – having explained this already. ‘What’s the good of a surprise inspection when there’s no surprise in it?’
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Peeve said. ‘I don’t suppose a surprise inspection would be very useful if they knew you were coming.’
‘I’d be very surprised if it was, Mrs Peeve. If you give people advance notice of surprise inspections, then they start to tidy everything up before you get there, and they try to look busy.’ Mr Beeston put on his coat. ‘No, if I gave them any warning round at that Ministry of Ghosts, they’d be up to all sorts of tricks, trying to justify their existence. They’d be off to the joke shop buying up fluorescent skeletons, and skulls that glow in the dark, and bottles of trick bat’s blood and what have you. Or hiring a ventriloquist. And they’d no doubt be rigging up hidden apparatus to make it seem like spooks were in the place, all moaning and groaning and making funny smells.’
‘Funny smells, Mr Beeston?’
‘Visitors from the world of spirit are allegedly well known for leaving funny smells behind them.’
‘Fancy. And not just visitors from the world of spirit, I’d say.’
‘Well, we shan’t speak of that for now. But I’ll be wise to them, don’t you worry, Mrs Peeve. They’ll have a hard job pulling the wool over my eyes, and if they do try to, I’ll see through it in an instant.’
‘Oh, you can see through wool then, can you, Mr Beeston?’
‘It’s a trick I learned in the army.’
‘Oh, were you in the army then?’
‘I must have been, Mrs Peeve, or I could hardly have learned tricks there.’
‘I didn’t know they did tricks in the army, I always thought it was more fighting.’
‘We’re getting off the point, Mrs Peeve, which is that on no account is anyone at the Ministry of Ghosts to be tipped off about this inspection.’
‘I won’t tell them, sir. In fact, I don’t even know if I could if I wanted to.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well, thinking you might need it, Mr Beeston, I tried to find their phone number for you, in the internal directory, but it doesn’t seem to be listed.’
‘Oh?’
‘So I tried to get their email address then, but I couldn’t find that either. But I’ll look again.’
‘They’re plainly lying low and trying to keep an inconspicuous profile, Mrs Peeve, in the hope that they’ll never be noticed and that they can go on idling their time away on this well-paid, cushy little number forever. That’s what they’re up to. They make sure they’re on the payroll though, don’t they?’
‘I assume so. I can’t see civil servants working for nothing.’
‘But I’m going to go round there this morning, Mrs Peeve, and I’m going to say to them – “Justify this department’s existence. Demonstrate your usefulness. Show me what you’ve been doing here for the last umpteen years. In other words – show me the ghosts!”’
‘Show you the ghosts? You think they’ll be able to do that, Mr Beeston?’
‘No, Mrs Peeve, I do not. I think that the Ministry of Ghosts is a redundant relic from another age that should have been done away with years ago. I’m going to put it to them straight. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the ghosts is in the … well … the seeing. So I shall want to see them.’
‘But what if they have found some ghosts, Mr Beeston, only they’re invisible? I mean, what if they’ve got the ghost of the Invisible Man round there, or someone like that?’
‘Then I shall demand to see him too! And if they can’t produce him, there’ll be hell to pay! Heads will roll, Mrs Peeve! If I find out that these four civil servants at the Ministry of Ghosts have been idling their time away at the taxpayer’s cost, thinking they have been forgotten about and that they can go on in that way indefinitely, well, I shall have a shock ready. I shall fire the lot of them!’
‘Can you do that, Mr Beeston? Don’t you have to go through t
he proper channels first?’
Mr Beeston looked rather aggrieved and disappointed, but he had to acknowledge the truth of Mrs Peeve’s observation.
‘Unfortunately you’re right,’ he said. ‘But if I can’t get them fired, then I shall have them redeployed to somewhere wet, cold and windy, where they’ll hate every moment of it.’
‘What, like the Bahamas, you mean?’ Mrs Peeve said.
Mr Beeston gave her a doubtful look and said, ‘No, Mrs Peeve. Not the Bahamas. What I had in mind was the Ministry of Sewage.’
Mr Beeston buttoned up his coat, took his briefcase (containing his lunch) and said, ‘Hold the fort, Mrs Peeve. I may be back soon. I may be back late. But I shall be back.’
‘Right you are, sir. Best of luck.’
‘Luck doesn’t enter into it,’ Mr Beeston said. ‘It’s hard work and diligence that make the difference. Luck is but a spectator, looking on.’
‘Okey-dokey, sir,’ Mrs Peeve said.
Mr Beeston gave her a withering look. He’d need to talk to her about her language at some point. Okey-dokey was not an approved Civil Service expression. He just hoped she didn’t say it down the phone to callers. If she ever said okey-dokey to someone calling from the House of Lords, there’d be red faces all round. And complaints to go with them.
Mr Beeston left the departmental building, and went to catch his bus. It turned out to be a double-decker and he sat on the upper part, gazing out of the window, his briefcase on his lap, his arms folded upon it. The bus journey took a good half hour or more, and it carried Mr Beeston into unfamiliar parts of the city, passing places he had not seen or ventured into since he was a boy. Some passengers disembarked along the route and a few new ones got on. But ultimately, Mr Beeston was the sole traveller, being taken deep into the old – even ancient – part of town. The skyscrapers and the tall office buildings of shiny glass had long since been left behind on the other side of the river. Here it was Tudor beams and Georgian frontages, mews and narrow alleyways, leading to dead ends or to even narrower lanes and hidden passageways.
The bus came to a halt and the driver’s voice called, ‘End of the line! Five minute stop then back again!’
Mr Beeston got to his feet and hobbled down the stairs – for one of his legs had gone to sleep and was having trouble waking up.
The bus driver heard Mr Beeston’s step. ‘You the last one, sir?’
‘I am,’ he confirmed. ‘I wonder if you might be able to direct me to Bric-a-Brac Street.’
‘Bric-a-Brac? Now let me see … You’re sure it’s not Nick-Nack Street you’re after?’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Or Tic-Tac Street?’
‘No.’
‘Or Hiccup Road?’
‘No, I have the address written down right here. The Ministry of Ghosts, twenty-one Bric-a-Brac Street.’
‘The Ministry of … ?’
‘Yes. Ghosts. You did hear correctly.’
‘Well, hmm … won’t the street be in your A to Z there?’
‘Yes, it is, only it’s terribly small print and hard to read, and rather difficult to follow.’
‘Well, I’m not a hundred per cent, sir, but I think your best bet would be straight on ahead down Codger Row, left at the end, then right, then you’ll be in Jumble Crescent, and I’d guess that Bric-a-Brac Street will run off there. It’s the old junk and second-hand furniture area, you see, round there. Or at least it was, once upon a time. Hence the street names.’
‘Right. Well, thank you for your help.’
‘You’re welcome, sir. Buses back on the hour, every hour until eight o’clock.’
‘And that’s the last one?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘Doesn’t the bus service finish rather early?’
‘No demand, sir. The buses were just running empty after that time, so the company stopped them. Nobody comes down here of an evening.’
‘But don’t people live here?’
‘A few. Mostly just little shops and family businesses here now. A few residentials, but not all that many. Though there is a school. I guess people here just don’t stop out late, or they have their own transport.’
‘How odd,’ Mr Beeston said, and just as he did, a man on a bicycle shot past. But it wasn’t a cyclist in bright yellow Lycra and padded shorts and white helmet. It was someone in tweeds and a flat cap, and the bike he was riding had one enormous front wheel and one very tiny back one. The front wheel was so big, and the saddle of the bicycle so high up from the ground, that it seemed the only way to get down from the bike was to take a leap and risk significant injury.
‘Good lord,’ Mr Beeston said. ‘A penny farthing!’
‘He’s a maniac, him,’ the bus driver said. ‘Seen him before. Rides that bike like he’s on a suicide mission.’
‘Right, well, I’ll get on.’
‘Just ask a local, if you get lost,’ the helpful bus driver said.
Only, once the cyclist had gone, there appeared to be no other locals – not visible ones. They had to be at work and at business, beavering away behind closed doors.
‘Does seem odd though,’ Mr Beeston again conjectured as he stepped down from the bus platform, ‘that nobody comes here at night.’
‘Maybe they’re afraid of the ghosts, eh?’ the driver joked.
Mr Beeston gave him a serious and professional look.
‘I know it may come as a disappointment to some,’ Mr Beeston said, ‘but there are no such things as ghosts. In fact it is ghosts that have brought me here. Or rather the lack of them. And I am about to see to it that the futile pursuit of these mythical items is soon to come to a very sudden and abrupt halt!’
‘Oh,’ the bus driver said. ‘I always thought of ghosts as just a bit of fun, myself.’
‘Fun?’ Mr Beeston said. ‘I’m in the Civil Service. Fun has got nothing to do with it.’
So on he went, briefcase in one hand, his A to Z map in the other. He walked on down Codger Row and then took a left, as instructed. Soon he was in a maze of cobbled streets, where old signs swung overhead in the light morning breeze, speaking of old trades and ancient surnames, and of skills in decline, or even long gone and quite extinct.
He got lost and then found his bearings again, and then he spotted the brewer’s dray trundling along behind the carthorse, and he felt more confident and more certain that he was on the right road.
Then there it was, the street name he searched for – there on the corner, the turning into Bric-a-Brac Street. The signpost was flaking, its lettering peeling away, but the name was still visible. The cobblestones of the street were worn and uneven. You could almost hear the horses and the trundling carts and the hansom cabs of yester-year rattling over them. You could all but hear the calls of the dairymaids who had brought their milk to sell in town: ‘Who will buy, who will buy?’ You could smell the past, the scent of fresh flowers brought into the markets, the apples, the bunches of herbs, of rosemary and sage, and the perfume of lavender for a lady’s chamber or a gentleman’s nosegay. All gone, and yet still there, impregnated into the fabric of the scenery.
Mr Beeston stepped gingerly along, not quite at his ease, yet not really knowing why. Then he told himself that he was a professional man with a job to do, and not prone to hysteria and fanciful notions.
He heard and then saw the man on the penny farthing again, who juddered so severely over the cobbles on his big-and-little-wheeled bike that he nearly lost his cap.
‘Good morning,’ Mr Beeston called.
But the man seemed not to hear him, and did not reply. Then Mr Beeston was there, right outside of the building, and there was its tarnished brass nameplate. (Very tarnished, he was displeased to note. Couldn’t they have done a bit of polishing?)
The Ministry of Ghosts, the lettering told him. And, somewhat unexpectedly and incongruously beneath that, further lettering read: visitors by appointment only.
Mr Beeston gave one of his out loud snorts – e
ven though there was no one there to appreciate it. By appointment, indeed! Did they expect to find ghosts that way? By making appointments with them? What a shambles. What a disgrace. And look at the cobwebs in those windows. They should be ashamed to call themselves civil servants. Cobwebs! What were they thinking of?
Beneath the words visitors by appointment only was one further piece of instruction. This said: deliveries – please ring bell.
But Mr Beeston was not a man for the pathetic ringing of tinkling bells. Oh no. Mr Beeston was a man who came with thunder and who left with lightning and who announced himself with force and drama. He wanted it to be understood from the off that here was someone to be reckoned with.
So no namby-pamby, itsy-bitsy bells for him.
Mr Beeston reached up with his free hand, and he took hold of the mildewed yet still magnificent knocker there upon the door, and despite the rust that tried unsuccessfully to restrain his efforts, he beat upon the door with the knocker to such effect that the dust flew and the windows trembled and the very cobblestones seemed to shake in fear.
The noise echoed through the building like an explosion. Old Mr Copperstone stirred from his slumbers. Mrs Scant looked up from her desk. Miss Rolly glanced up from a pamphlet she was reading on the rights of women. And Mr Gibbings looked up from the newspaper crossword puzzle, which he had been attempting to solve for quite some while.
What, each of them wondered, was that?
Maybe it was nothing serious, merely an engine backfiring. If they just ignored it … Yes, best to just ignore it. Ignore life’s little unpleasantnesses and they will usually just go away.
Boom, boom, boom!
There it was again. The same terrible noise followed by the same appalling silence – silence that betokened unexpected callers, that threatened visitors, that spoke of change to an ancient and established way of living.