The following day, Mr Blundy spent longer than normal on the telephone with his door closed, but by mid-afternoon, Bob Grafton’s pipe was back to making its contended popping noise as he and I drew up a couple of statements of claim. At knocking off time, I asked Nelly if she’d like to come down to Skeldergate and look at The River House. She said yes, after a bit of thought. My courage had returned, you see, and I was sticking to my strategy of trying to draw Nelly into the adventure.
It was a fine night, but cold. As we walked along Coney Street, our voices echoed off the fronts of the closed shops, and I could see that Nelly was feeling self-conscious about being out with me even though I’d billed this as an investigation of strange phenomena rather than anything more romantic. Either way, I was feeling a bit lightheaded, and as we walked past Woolworth’s, I said: ‘You know, the George Inn used to be on this spot. The Bronte sisters stayed here.’ Nelly smiled, like somebody being polite to an idiot. Well, I was in unchartered waters now. I was on an after-work date with Nelly Drew.
It was a funny place for it, mind you: Skeldergate: all shadows and more like a sluice than a street. As we walked along it, I could see the river – a black moving road – in the gaps between the houses. We took up position before The River House, and I let Nelly in on what I’d heard the night before, having only given her a rough idea until then. As I spoke to her, I was thinking about how women, when they fancy you, give you serious looks because they’re wondering what it might be like to spend their whole future with you. They don’t frown at you, with a look as if to say, ‘What the hell are you on about?’ which was the way that Nelly often looked at me, and the way she was looking at me now. But then she very unexpectedly complimented me.
‘You’re sensitive,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘That has often been said.’
‘Has it? Who by?’
‘Certain…people.’
‘Come off it,’ said Nelly.
I eyed her.
‘So now you’re saying I’m not sensitive.’
‘I mean… psychic.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘how do you know?’
‘I don’t know. But it looks like it. Have you ever had any similar experiences?’
‘One, yes. When I was a kid. Have you?’
‘My grandfather,’ she said, and she folded her arms and looked down before adding, ‘Possibly…I’ve felt his presence.’
‘He’s dead is he, your granddad?’
‘There’s no need to sound so enthusiastic about it.’
We were both looking at The River House.
She said, ‘Tell me about when it happened before?’
‘I was on holiday at Blackpool,’ I said, lighting up a rollie, ‘and we were staying at this guest house on the front. At home – and usually on holiday as well – I shared a room with my brother. But this time, me and our kid were to have our own rooms. Well, that was a big treat but when I saw mine I wasn’t so keen. It had this off-white wallpaper that was blistered, as though something was trying to come through the bloody wall. There wasn’t much in the room except this very high bed right in the middle, with a string hanging down directly above the pillow. That was the light switch. Now, the moment I entered this room I decided it was both empty and full – full of a lot of people who’d spent a holiday in it and then died. Are you with me?’
‘Go on,’ said Nelly.
‘The first night I was lying in bed watching this cord swinging about two feet above my face because of the draft from the window. I said, “Show me” when the cord was on the upswing, and it stopped. It was held there for about a second; then it carried on swinging. I was eight years old or so.’
‘Were you scared?’ said Nelly.
‘I was,’ I said, flicking my rollie into the Skeldergate gutter, ‘but not very. I mean, it would be quite depressing if things like that could never happen, don’t you think?’
We’d turned away from The River House now, and were facing each other. I could see exactly what she was thinking: that’s rather a good story of his; I agree with the moral he’s drawn, and I might have to do something about it, like kiss him.
Unfortunately, rather than do that, she said, ‘Geoff, you should know that I have a boyfriend and we’re going to get married later this year.’ I do believe the matter had been in the balance for a moment, and that it might have been again if I’d had the gumption to speak up.
The next day, Mr Blundy asked Nelly to postpone the mass-booking at the Viking Hotel until the 11th of the following month, which would be the 11th of November. He also told us we’d be taking on an articled clerk: his own son, Marcus.
Marcus Blundy was the same age as me, but he’d been to St Peter’s School, York, the ‘Eton of the North’, and did not appear to be an exception to the rule about public school people. He had longer hair than me, wider flares, and whereas I had £10 in Luncheon Vouchers every week he had £15, and he called Nelly ‘Nell’ as if he’d known her for years. It wasn’t that his dad indulged him, and Mr Blundy twice stepped in when Marcus tried to get me to draw up affidavits for him on the grounds that he himself had more important things to be getting on with. But Mr Blundy was spending less and less time in the office and more and more in The Grapes. It wasn’t until after the events at The River House on November 11th, however, that I thought: we’ve lost the old Mr Blundy for good.
It was raining in Skeldergate at seven o’clock on that night. I was pacing the street in my rally jacket with collar up and fag on the go, keeping a sort of vigil.
Mr Blundy hadn’t been in the office all day. At five o’clock, Bob Grafton had come up to me and – whispering so’s not to let Marcus Blundy hear – said, ‘It’s the night of the hotel booking. I reckon it’s connected to the Morley trust.’ I said, ‘I know’ on both counts. He said he was minded to see whether anything might occur in The River House, since that was one of the properties mentioned in the trust, and I told him I’d been wondering the same thing. He said, ‘Would you go along and take a look? I’d do it myself only I’ve a Law Society function in Leeds that I can’t get out of.’ I told him I’d been thinking of going anyway, so there you are: a true meeting of minds. Nelly was now out of the picture, which bothered me more than I’d expected. But I was still curious, and what had happened with Nelly made me feel reckless into the bargain. Well, I was entitled. Everyone around me was rocking the boat, so I thought I’d get in on the action.
The river was moving fast that night, as if it very determinedly following a fixed intention. It was rising too, coming up the slip roads that ran between the houses on that side of Skeldergate. The Sea Cadets weren’t about. Nobody was about. At seven-thirty or so, a woman came clattering along the central gutter of Skeldergate wheeling a kid in a pushchair. He was about two and a half, but sat crossed legged like an intelligent middle-aged man. He looked very languid even though soaked, and his mother wheeled him past me, the kid said, ‘Why is the river like that, do you think?’ His mother replied, ‘Because it’s rained and rained and rained and rained and….’ And she kept saying that until they disappeared into the darkness towards Ouse Bridge.
It was at about five to eight, and I was setting about another roll-up in the shadowy doorway of the bike auction place, that the cars began to arrive, parking either side of The River House. First came two black Ford Granadas – the stylish, streamlined ones, not the boxy models that came later; then Mr Blundy’s Jag pulled up, and him in it. A few seconds later came a still better Jag: a black XJS, successor to the E-Type (under the bonnet, the best twincam ever to come out of Coventry), and the number plate was personalised, which you didn’t so much in those days: MOR 1EY. Out of this stepped a good-looking couple, both very sleek and dark, like their car. The man could have been the son or, more likely, the grandson of John Morley, and I recalled that the surviving family members had walked away loaded from the sale of the business to some outfit who’d shifted production abroad.
But even the XJS wa
s trumped by the next motor: a black Rolls Royce Phantom Limousine – the kind of thing the Queen rides around in. It was customised at the back, so that the rear doors were taller than they otherwise would have been. I thought: What is this? The bloody Earl’s Court Motor Show?
The door of the River House opened, so there’d evidently been someone in it all along. Mr Blundy was glad-handing everybody, looking not at all like himself, but too eager to please – and nervous with it. It seemed to be the job of some men in black suits to hold black umbrellas over the more important members of the party, and under these umbrellas, things were being carried into the house: paperwork – some ledgers and files; photography equipment, shining silver flasks. I heard the man at the door greeting his visitors by name. I heard ‘Dr Duggan’ (this was a woman), ‘Professor…’ somebody or other. The glamorous couple got a deep nod – more of a bow – and, ‘Good evening Mr Morley…Mrs Morley…’
I then noticed that the umbrellas were congregating around the rear door of the Limo. It opened and there sat a creature – all right then, a man – so old that he seemed to have gone round the clock and become young again. I saw a small baby’s head coming out forwards from the great bulk of a hunched-back that seemed to be propped directly on top of two shaking, bandy legs. He wore a black double-breasted pin-striped suit, and it slowly came to me as he emerged from the car: he is beautifully dressed. He was smiling as he found his footing in Skeldergate, and I thought: this old boy’s happy just to be alive. He moved three paces from the car with some assistance from the umbrella men. He then remained absolutely motionless for ten seconds or so, and the umbrella men were very good about it, very patient, since they too stood stock still. I could then see from the trembling of his mouth, that he was about to smile again, and also to speak. His voice, when it came, was quite firm: posh-northern.
He said, ‘Let’s…see…whether…we…can’t…meet…our…young…friend…halfway.’
The umbrella men smiled at one another. It was a joke of sorts, but evidently not a very good one, even if you knew what he was talking about. Within five minutes, the umbrella men had got him through the front door of The River House, which was then slammed shut, and I was back to square one except for the 50 grand’s worth of cars standing outside being rained on. I listened to the distant traffic of York for a while (I was in a state of shock, I suppose) when the front door of The River House was opened once again by somebody who was talking to someone else just inside the door. This time, there being nobody in the way, I could see in.
A wooden staircase lead directly up from the front door, all bare with no carpet and not even any varnish on the wood. Many candles were burning on every stair. A man came out of the door, which was pushed to behind him. He was making for the Limo. When he got there, he opened the rear door and took out two pressurised black cylinders, each about the size of a Thermos Flask. I thought: oxygen? The man returned to the house, tapped on the door, and it was opened for him. He went in, and the door closed once more, but quietly.
Standing in my doorway, I said to myself, ‘They didn’t slam it.’
I waited two minutes; then I crossed Skeldergate towards The River House, and I knew what I was doing: I was compensating for not having been a man with Nelly Drew. I pushed the door, and it opened, but just then a gust of wind came, and the candle flames all bowed to the right. At first this looked like disaster – it was the most frightening thing that had happened so far – but as I pulled the door to behind me, the flames settled back to the vertical, so that they were now pointing the way upstairs. I saw a tape recorder among the candles on the fourth stair up, and another half a dozen steps beyond that. The spools were still turning, so the creaking of my boots as I walked up was being recorded, and possibly also the beating of my heart, but there was nothing to be done do about that. The reels turned completely silently, I noticed, and you only get that with the top-of-the-range models. But at the same time they were more than that: beautiful somehow, and all of a piece with the house and the candles.
The landing was a wooden corridor, the floor covered with candles, and more tape recorders. I heard low voices to the right. I came to the closed door of what might have been the main room in the house. It would overlook the river. From inside I could hear a fast low muttering: somebody saying, ‘The temperature of the room at twenty hundred hours’ and the sound of particularly fast typing – a sound I knew from attending court: they had a stenographer in there keeping a record. I heard somebody say, ‘Mr Chadwick, are you quite comfortable?’ Well, the old boy was Chadwick: the one being preserved by the first of the Morley trusts. I thought that it was either doing a very good job of that, or a very bad one. It was him who spoke next, and his voice was stronger now; all other sounds in the room stopped as he said:
‘Master…Young Master…Morley…’
And then his voice cracked, and broke into a sort of really delighted laughter, or perhaps pure amazement. ‘I am so happy that you have come in…’
I heard a scream – one of the women; then a very loud and un-ladylike thud; then the sound of concerned male voices. I thought: she’s bloody fainted. But Chadwick was carrying on regardless. He said, ‘Tell us your impressions of our city of York – your city – after all this time, Master Morley.’
The waterfall sound came. It stopped abruptly and a boy’s voice – posh northern – was all that remained, and it was saying, ‘The motors cars in the streets…’ and then, in a sort of very rapid whisper, ‘Criss-cross criss-cross, crisscross criss-cross.’
A new voice, a man’s – not Chadwick’s – said, ‘Many more than when you were…here’, at which yet another voice said, ‘Please… Mr Chadwick only will speak to the child.’
Through the door, I could hear somebody crying – one of the women.
Chadwick was saying, ‘Please, a little…’ and then a hissing noise. Was that the oxygen?
The singing noise came again, and the boy’s voice: ‘Chimneys…but no smoke…no smoke…no smoke…Open the door.’
And those last words caused a sort of flurry in the room.
‘Open the door,’ said the boy’s voice again.
I would say that I was experiencing all this time a feeling a falling – of racing towards some unknown destination at uncontrollable speed. I looked along the corridor at the candles. Was I meant to open the door? I put my hand to the handle. I withdrew it, since it seemed to me that the boy was telling them to open the door in order to reveal me. I was not having that, and I was down the stairs and out of the door.
I never did tell Bob Grafton what happened in The River House. Well, he never asked – not properly. The reason was that first thing the very next day, he had a row with Marcus Blundy over the drawing up of a lease. He spent the morning in the office moaning at Mr Blundy (‘But Bill…’ I kept hearing him say, through the closed door), then he went home. A couple of days later, he came up to me and said, ‘Oh yes, about The River House’, and I told him I’d seen some sort of social event in there, which was only half a lie. It seemed too big a thing to tell him what I’d actually seen, and I couldn’t tell Nelly either. It seemed to me that I had lost her. She and her bloke had started viewing show houses on the new estate at Dunnington.
A couple of days after the revelation of The River House, and still dazed by the whole thing, I went to the reference section of York Library and asked for the ‘Morley’s Mints’ file. There wasn’t much of it, and I wondered whether one of the shadowy lot connected with In Re Morley had made off with half the papers.
What remained was a picture of the factory dated 1925 and proudly labelled ‘Taken From The Air’. Well, it was no prettier from the air than it had been from the ground. There was also a brief Yorkshire Evening Press interview with John Morley himself from about the same time. He was ‘proud to be associated with the city of York’ and ‘looking forward to expansion in the future’. In the file, unconnected to that article, was a picture of Morley wearing evening dress standing o
utside what looked to be the Mansion House in York. Alongside him was a much younger woman, dark haired and a real looker. The caption read: ‘Mr and Mrs John Morley arrive for the Lord Mayor’s luncheon.’
The information I’d been looking for, however, came in some pages cut from a children’s magazine of the 1960s called Get To Know. The thrilling theme of this particular issue was ‘Get to know…York’, and, in among all the usual stuff about the City Walls and the Minster, the writer had for some reason gone to town on Morley’s Mints, setting out a long series of facts on the firm, all beginning ‘Did you know…?’
‘Did you know…Morley’s factory, on the banks of the river Ouse, is the tallest building in York.
‘Did you know…The founder of the firm, Mr John Morley, was very interested in research into the paranormal. (In other words, ghosts!)
‘Did you know…The face on the packets of the mints called ‘Little Jack’s – which were very popular with children when your grandfather was young – was that of Mr John Morley’s own son. This little boy was christened John like his father, but known to all his family as Jack. (Turn to page 15 to see a picture of one of these packets).
‘Did you know…Little Jack Morley was one of three brothers. He was a very brilliant boy. He sang solos in the Minster choir, and he was too clever for the York schools! (So he was taught privately by a retired headmaster living in Blake Street). But his story is a sad one. The house in which he lived with his family overlooked the river Ouse. One stormy winter’s day in 1922, he fell from a second floor window into the river below. Or did this strange little boy jump? He had been quite alone in the room, and the nanny looking after him swore in a court of law that the window had been firmly shut, and that it must have been opened from the inside.
Ghoul Brittania Page 17