Kissing Toads

by Jemma Harvey

  In the interests of good relations with the staff . . .

  ‘To your ex and mine!’ Cedric raised his glass. ‘May their new wives give ’em the clap, may their balls shrivel like pickled walnuts, may their todgers drop off and—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a cool – a very cool – voice somewhere behind me. ‘I’m looking for the producer.’

  It was, of course, Kristof Ashley.

  It’s the sort of thing that happens in stories, but only because it happens in real life too. Art imitates Life, Life imitates Art – the vicious circle goes on and on. If there’s someone you don’t want to see, they’re bound to make an entrance at the worst possible moment. The psychic researcher was rapidly becoming a sort of recurring bogeyman for me, as ill-timed and unwelcome as one of his own phantoms. There I was, sitting in the kitchen, swigging port at barely five o’clock with a questionable eccentric whose dental work was worthy of an orc, whatever the calibre of his profile. And knowing Ash, he’d caught every word of that toast. Yet again, my compassion wasn’t showing.

  ‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘Again. Hi.’

  Ash evidently hadn’t been told whom to expect.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s you. Hello. Again.’

  ‘A beautiful stranger.’ Ash’s elfin looks were having their inevitable effect on Cedric. ‘Only not so strange to you, right? This ain’t your ex, is it?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Sit down, love –’ this to Ash – ‘have a port. We’re drinking to the men who broke our ’earts – may they rot! You got an ex like that to drink to? Nah, you’re the sort what does the exing, anyone can see that. I only hope you ain’t a lying, cheating bastard like my Neville, or the creep who dumped angel here.’ I wished he wouldn’t go on about my being dumped. It was bad enough knowing I lacked compassion without looking completely pathetic as well. ‘Look into my eyes. Fucking allspice! I take it all back. If you’re a liar, baby, you can lie to me any time.’

  Ash looked only mildly startled. Presumably he was as blasé about advances from gay chefs as he was about besotted poltergeists. He leaned back in the chair, stretching out his legs and accepting the proffered glass of port, though he didn’t drink it.

  Cedric fetched a sigh which was probably intended to be soulful but sounded more like lustful. ‘So what’s your job on the telly team?’ he asked. ‘Bet you’re on camera – they wouldn’t want to waste that face behind the scenes.’

  ‘I’m a psychic researcher,’ Ash explained. ‘I’m not a TV person; I just give expert advice. Most of my work’s quite different.’

  ‘Like what?’ I inquired, politely curious.

  ‘I lecture, write for a magazine on paranormal science, that sort of thing. I’ve done a couple of books. I also get called in to investigate supernatural phenomena.’

  ‘A ghost-buster!’ Cedric and I said almost simultaneously.

  Ash’s lip didn’t even twitch. ‘I’ve heard that one a dozen times. This week.’

  ‘Do you come across many real ghosts,’ I asked, attempting to take him seriously (and failing), ‘or are they all fake?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by fake,’ he said, taking himself seriously enough for both of us. ‘The ghosts are so often inside people, manifestations of their subconscious. Deep-seated unhappiness, suppressed trauma, forgotten fragments of memory – all these can show themselves as ghosts, creeping out of the dark places in the mind to cause freak behaviour patterns, the physical and metaphysical stigmata of the soul.’

  It sounded like bullshit to me, but perhaps that was just the long words.

  ‘Bit of a psycho, aren’t you?’ Cedric said smartly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Psycho. Person what pokes around in people’s heads. Like Freud and that. Psychoanalyst.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ For once, Ash looked nonplussed.

  ‘What do you expect to find here?’ I persisted. ‘Human ghosts, or . . . ghostly ones?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve yet to learn the nature of the phenomena.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there are plenty of icy draughts, creaking floorboards, unexplained drops in temperature. But then, it’s an old building.’

  For the first time that I could recall, he smiled. It was an unexpectedly attractive smile. Or rather, in view of his elfin good looks, an expectedly attractive one. ‘Old buildings always carry their own atmosphere and special effects,’ he said. ‘The phantoms of the past can live on in many ways. A lot depends on how you define a ghost.’

  ‘Meaning?’ For all my scepticism, I was becoming sincerely interested.

  ‘I mentioned atmosphere. A house absorbs a certain resonance from incidents that have occurred there. You must have noticed how even a new place can feel instantly welcoming or inexplicably depressing – the legacy of the people who’ve lived there. I remember many years ago visiting an old manor with my aunt, a very down-to-earth, matter-of-fact sort of person. She became uncomfortable as soon as we went in. After about fifteen minutes she was so pale and faint she declared she would have to leave. She knew nothing of the manor’s history, but in the Victorian age it had been an orphanage where the children had been treated with notorious cruelty, probably sexually abused. They’d dug up several small skeletons in one of the cellars. That was a classic case of an “atmosphere” ghost, and my aunt, though she didn’t know it, was what some people call a sensitive. Atmospheric ghosts are fairly common, though rarely so potent. Very few phantoms pop up as an apparition draped in a sheet, moaning round the corridors at midnight. Apparitions are pretty unusual.’

  ‘Have you ever seen one?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Ash said. ‘But I’ve met people who have. Normally very young children, or the old, or the sick. I sometimes think you have to be close to death, at one end of life or the other, in order to acquire that kind of specialised vision.’

  ‘Young children are close to birth, not death.’

  ‘But what comes before birth? I see our whole existence as a period of life that intervenes between two phases of unlife. Birth and death are not enduring states, merely forms of transition.’

  ‘Bloody philosopher, aren’t you?’ said Cedric, who was obviously feeling left out.

  ‘It goes with the territory.’ Ash sipped his drink, more, I suspected, for politeness’s sake than anything else.

  I was feeling slightly woozy. My lunch break had disappeared in routine chaos and the port was very strong.

  ‘I saw a ghost once,’ Cedric offered. ‘When I was a kid. Me mum took me to see round this stately ’ome, don’t remember the name. I got bored, wandered off, the way kids do, and suddenly I was in this little room all by myself, and there was a funny old biddy in a long dress all bunched up behind –’ (‘A bustle,’ I supplied –) ‘bending over a desk. Think I spoke to her, but she didn’t say nothing, didn’t even look at me. Then people came calling for me, and I turned round, and when I turned back she’d gone. I asked me mum, “Where’s the funny old lady?”, and I remember the guide going all pale and shushing me, but they never told me who she was, or what she was doing. I only realised she was a ghost years later.’

  ‘How old were you?’ Ash said.

  ‘Dunno. Six. Seven.’

  ‘Sounds fairly typical,’ Ash concluded. ‘As I said, children see things other people don’t, though they’re usually even younger at the time.’

  ‘Might of been,’ Cedric said. ‘Four or five, maybe. Ain’t never seen anything here, mind, though the castle’s supposed to have more spooks than a Stephen King graveyard. And there’s this here haunted maze they’re always on about. You going ghost-hunting in the garden, then?’

  ‘I’ll look around,’ Ash said. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’ He turned to me. ‘Perhaps we should . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I stood up, too quickly, and nearly overbalanced. Damn the port. ‘Have they given you a room?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Ho
pe it’s haunted!’ Cedric said with a cackle. ‘Don’t want to disappoint you, do we?’

  ‘It’s . . . purple,’ Ash said with visible restraint.

  ‘That’ll be the Basilisk,’ Cedric said. ‘Boss’s wife, see? She done the place over herself. I love it – totally OTT – but can’t stand her. Don’t know if you do prayer, but you might want to take it up, just to pray she don’t come home. It ain’t the dead that cause the trouble here, believe me: it’s the living.’

  ‘It always is,’ said Ash.

  As we left the kitchen, I decided I was starting to feel more comfortable with him. Perhaps it was the drink. Or the way he’d said: ‘It’s . . . purple.’ Or the absence of Cedric, who, despite a certain goblin charm, was someone you wanted to take in small doses, at least to begin with. I talked to him about the show, and the history of the maze, and the castle and its inmates. Not surprisingly, I discovered he was being employed by HG rather than us, though at the Major’s recommendation.

  ‘I’m to liaise with you,’ he said, sounding non-committal. I inferred he didn’t like the idea, and started feeling paranoid again.

  ‘I understood you were going to contribute to the programme?’

  ‘If appropriate, yes. But I’m not under your orders. If you were planning any dramatic exposés of the dark side of human nature . . .’

  ‘I wasn’t planning anything,’ I snapped, suddenly hurt. ‘My job keeps me too busy for that. All I want to do is get the series made before any of the egos involved decide to murder each other.’

  The smile flickered again. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  It seemed to be a ceasefire, if not precisely détente.

  We’d been at Dunblair nearly three weeks, though it seemed like a year, and Easter was almost upon us. Dorian was back from school, pink-faced from early trials with the sun lamp, the crew were bunking off for the holiday, and Crusty suggested Russell and I repair to London to audition actors for the lesser historical roles. Delphi declared she too was heading home, to be measured for her wedding dress, and, as an afterthought, to spend some time with Alex. She had finally chosen a designer, Maddalena Cascara, niece of the legendary ‘Lucky’ Luciano Cascara and inheritor of both his label and his vast and slightly dubious fortune. They had already had several hours’ worth of telephone calls to discuss details like length of train, depth of cleavage, and the exact shade of white to set off Delphi’s St Tropez tan. ‘Of course you’re going to London,’ she said to me. ‘You have to come with me to Maddalena’s. We need to talk about bridesmaids’ dresses too. I’ve decided I’m going to have you and Brie; definitely no cute kids, not after Christmas. I’d rather have just you, really, but one bridesmaid looks so sad, like you’ve only got one friend.’

  ‘What about Pan?’ I suggested.

  ‘She’s an inch taller than me,’ Delphi said. ‘It’s fatal to have taller bridesmaids. Either they look gawky, or the bride gets upstaged. Anyway, she’s into alternative fashion at the moment. I’m not having a bridesmaid in grunge. Maddalena’s in London over Easter so I fixed up for us to have a consultation on the Saturday and we can do a follow-up on Tuesday.’

  ‘I’ll be busy doing auditions . . .’

  ‘Don’t be frivolous,’ Delphi said. ‘This is important.’

  Ash and Nigel were both staying at the castle, one to pursue his historical researches, the other to absorb atmosphere. Assorted minions were going to get ahead with those elements of gardening that were too dull to film at length – digging out weeds and so on – personally supervised by HG, with Crusty and Mortimer Sparrow to help, guide and advise. Dorian, I discovered, offered qualified approval of his father’s latest enthusiasm: he clearly considered gardening a suitable pastime for an elderly man.

  ‘It’s better than giving any more concerts,’ he confided, having invited me up to his lair to admire his Internet connection. ‘He’s sixty-seven – sixty-seven! – and he goes on stage in tight leather trousers, prancing about and wriggling his crotch. Honestly, it’s awful. Some of the critics write horrible things about him: “Not so much vintage as antique”, “Time God went to heaven” – that sort of stuff.’ There was evidently a protective aspect to Dorian’s embarrassment. ‘I like it when he just stays quietly here, pottering round the garden.’

  ‘What about bringing us lot in?’ I asked. ‘Wasn’t that taking pottering a bit far?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure to begin with . . . but I like you. I like you very much.’

  I blinked. ‘Th-thank you.’

  ‘D’you want to see my website? I invented this game, it’s a kind of whodunnit, set in the castle.’ More three-dimensional plans pivoted in front of me. ‘I got over six thousand hits last year. The images aren’t good enough, but I’m improving them all the time. That’s what I’m going to do when I leave school. Dad wants me to go to uni but I don’t see the point. I can do all the graphics without that.’

  ‘You might have fun at university,’ I said. Dorian was plainly much brighter than his Gordonstoun education would have led me to presume.

  ‘I have fun here,’ Dorian said, focusing on the computer console with the dedication of a true geek.

  There was no answer to that.

  We left on Thursday morning, driven to the airport by Jules, who was the person available at the time. Staff duties were flexible at Dunblair, and Dougal McDougall was away visiting his daughter in Aberdeen. Elton and Sting decided to come too, piling into the Bentley with Delphi, Russell and me – and the luggage Delphi considered essential for a short trip home, which filled the boot and overflowed into the back seat. (‘I’m taking clothes home to bring back different ones,’ Delphi explained patiently. ‘I can’t wear the same things every day.’) Russell was in the front seat with Jules, Delphi and I were in the back, hemmed in with assorted hand baggage and exuberant dogs. It was a big car, but not big enough. Fortunately, Delphi was brought up with large dogs and merely shoved Elton on to the floor when he began to moult on her coat, ordering him to sit! in a tone of voice honed with childhood practice. Elton obediently sat, mainly on my feet, while Sting hogged my share of the seat. ‘They really are beautiful,’ Delphi cooed.

  Crusty was there to see us off.

  ‘When you get back,’ he said, ‘it’s down to the real work. Want to get the historical bits filmed as soon as possible, then we can concentrate on the garden. Call me with the cast list. Nobody high-profile, it’s too expensive and we’ve got enough stars already. Don’t need great actors here, just competent ones. It’s prime-time TV so there’ll be plenty of candidates. Russell knows which agencies I use.’

  I nodded, trying to look efficient. I’d hardly ever dealt with actors before, but I didn’t intend to say so.

  ‘Good hunting,’ Crusty said, and we drove off.

  Delphinium

  At the mews, I got a welcome home I hadn’t expected. A ball of white fluff leaped at me, barked, bounced up and down several times, then shot round the room like a turbocharged powder-puff before assaulting the dangling strap on one of my bags. When more or less stationary, the fluffball looked suspiciously like the puppy Alex’s nieces had been given for Christmas.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said accusingly.

  I like dogs. Elton and Sting are ravishingly beautiful, besides being a pair of big soppies, but they’re a major responsibility. And London isn’t a dog-friendly environment. I like horses too, but I wouldn’t want one in the house.

  ‘This is Fenny,’ Alex said blithely. ‘You remember him? At Christmas? The girls found him a bit too much for them, so I said we’d have him. Isn’t he a popsy?’

  ‘I thought he was a bichon frisee.’

  Alex ignored this, scooping up the puppy and allowing it to lick his face.

  ‘Is he house-trained?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nearly,’ Alex said ominously.

  ‘What did you say his name was?’

  ‘Fenny. Short for Fenris. It comes out of some book or other. I thought we
could change it for something more suitable, like Snowy or Tin-Tin or—’

  ‘Dogmatix?’ I quipped. Alex is a great reader of comic books, which he calls graphic novels. Early in our relationship I’d read a couple, just to please him, but happily we’d long got beyond that stage.

  ‘The problem is, he already answers to Fenny. I rang the dog psychologist but she said it’s too late to try anything new. The change of parent is destabilising enough; another name could really traumatise him. Bichons are awfully sensitive.’

  So am I, I thought. ‘Put him down for a minute. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  ‘Of course we are. Isn’t Fenny pleased to meet his new mummy?’

  ‘I’m not his mummy,’ I said. ‘I’m his . . . his mistress.’

  Alex giggled.

  I gave up. ‘Can you bring my bags up? The cab driver left them downstairs.’ And, as I walked into the bedroom: ‘This place is a mess. What’s happened to Anna Maria? Is she off sick?’ Anna Maria’s the maid who comes in twice a week to tidy up after Alex; having been spoiled rotten all his life, he’s incapable of putting anything away himself. She’s from somewhere in Eastern Europe, probably illegal, and a treasure.

  ‘She left,’ Alex said. ‘She objected to darling Fenny – can you believe that? Still, we didn’t want the ugly old cow, did we?’ This to the dog, who whiffled into Alex’s shoulder.

  ‘She left?’ Anna Maria was my maid, whom I’d brought with me when I’d moved into the mews. Good cleaners are gold dust. I’d rather have lost my second-best pearls. ‘Alex, how could you? You don’t let a maid like that just leave. What happened?’

  ‘It was her choice,’ Alex said petulantly. ‘I didn’t fire her or anything. She said she was going, and went.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just because poor Fenny had a little accident on the Bokhara, and I asked her to clean it up . . . After all, cleaning up is her job.’