The Anatomy of Ghosts

by Andrew Taylor

  The temperature dropped lower and lower. A full bladder caused him exquisite unhappiness until at last he lost control of it and there was a new element added to his misery. The bells of Cambridge chimed, muffled and distant, marking the hours of his suffering. He slipped into a trance-like state, neither waking nor sleeping.

  A crack of metal roused him. Then another. The bolts were sliding back. He opened his eyes. It was growing light. There were footsteps behind him. He knew there was more than one person because he felt their hands on him and heard their breathing. A dark, coarse material was thrown over his head and pulled down over his shoulders. They lashed the material down with a strap passed around his neck.

  They hauled him to his feet. But his legs gave way underneath him and he collapsed. His captors hooked their arms under his armpits, one on either side, and dragged him outside. He lost consciousness from the pain of it.

  When Whichcote came to, he was again lying face down. Something was rattling and jolting his body. His limbs were no longer bound and his head was uncovered. The gag had been removed. His mouth was parched and his tongue felt swollen and alien. There was a foul smell in his nostrils and his face was moist.

  Iron-shod wheels rattled on paving stones. He retched and brought out a mouthful of sour liquid. He tried to turn himself over and sit up. He called out, ‘Stop!’ but his mouth had lost the habit of speaking and the word came out as another mouthful of thin vomit.

  He heard voices and the rumble of other wheels. The cart jolted over a kerbstone, swayed and came to a halt. The air was full of nagging voices, as vulgar and insistent as quarrelling magpies.

  He rolled over and sat up. To his astonishment, there was a burst of cheering.

  ‘Make way for My Lord Shit in his chariot!’ a man shouted.

  The cheers turned to laughter and catcalls. Whichcote looked about him. He realized that he was sitting in a handcart in front of the main entrance of Jerusalem College. The forecourt was crowded with college servants, dozens of them, men and women, waiting for Mepal to open the gates. Whichcote put his hand to his head. His wig and hat had gone. His coat was ripped and soiled.

  Oh God. He was sitting in the night-soil cart in a pool of excrement before all the world.

  All of a sudden the jeering diminished, though it did not die away. Tom Turdman let down the flap at the side of the cart with a great clatter, exposing Whichcote like a freak at Stourbridge Fair.

  ‘Look at his breeches!’ a woman screeched. ‘My Lord Shit’s pissed himself!’

  The crowd parted, making way for two burly men in black who were advancing towards the handcart.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Whichcote,’ said the older man, who had a large red face and a rounded belly that went before him like a great cushion. ‘Here we are again. I’ve got four writs against you, I’m afraid. Unless you’ve the upwards of two thousand pounds in your pocket, I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to accompany me again to Mr Purser’s.’

  Whichcote looked wildly about him, hoping against hope to find a friendly face in the crowd. He caught sight of Mulgrave only a few yards away, standing with a squat little man nearly as broad as he was tall. They were both staring at Whichcote. The other man murmured something in Mulgrave’s ear. The gyp smiled and fingered the red mark on his cheek.

  Good God, Whichcote thought, that’s where I hit the crooked little knave. And this is his revenge.

  A few paces behind Mulgrave was his own footboy near the gate, waiting admittance to the college.

  ‘Boy,’ Whichcote called, suddenly finding his voice. ‘Come here this moment.’

  Augustus seemed not to hear.

  ‘This instant, I say!’ Whichcote called. ‘Quick!’

  Mulgrave turned and laid his hand on Augustus’s arm. Mepal unlocked the college gate and swung it open. But no one entered the college. They were watching Whichcote. This was the revenge of the servants, the cruellest revenge of all.

  ‘You come along with me, sir,’ said the bailiff. ‘We’ll soon have everything pleasant and comfortable.’

  *

  The sand on the floor needed changing. The air was heavy with old tobacco smoke. The glass on the windows was coated with pale yellow-green grime.

  A waiter wandered over, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘I am engaged to meet someone,’ Holdsworth said, looking round the low-ceilinged room. The place was almost empty. ‘A pot of coffee while I wait, if you please, with two cups.’

  He chose a table in a booth with a view of the door. While he waited, he took a letter from his pocket. A groom in Lady Anne’s livery had arrived with it just as he was leaving college. He toyed with the letter but did not break the seal. He knew what her ladyship would say: that now her son was restored to himself, Holdsworth should bring him back to London immediately.

  Why not? There was no longer anything for Frank to fear from Philip Whichcote. The records of the Holy Ghost Club were destroyed. Thanks to Mulgrave, Whichcote himself was in the sponging house and it was unlikely that either he or Mrs Phear would be able to pay his debts. If Whichcote were lucky, he might find a way to flee to the continent. If not, if the worst came to the worst for him, he could anticipate only a transfer from the sponging house to a debtors’ prison, where he would grow old and die. Better to be trundling a barrow of broken-backed books through the streets of London than that.

  After all, what did it matter what had happened to Sylvia Whichcote? The unhappy woman was dead and nothing they could do would bring her back. But Frank Oldershaw was restored to himself. That was something worth having. Somehow life had to continue. One could not allow the dead to act as a brake on the living.

  Holdsworth broke the seal on the letter. But he still did not unfold it. He had hardly slept last night. Confused memories of Maria and Georgie had jostled in his mind with newer but in some ways equally confused memories of Elinor Carbury, particularly as she had appeared beside the brazier, lit like a devilish temptation by the flames. His own behaviour, his own desires, were perfectly vile to him. He lusted after a woman whose husband lay dying. And he could not altogether rid his mind of the notion that perhaps she too had a kindness for him. She had not moved away from him at once. And had not her lips parted a little when he kissed her mouth?

  The light changed. He looked up. Soresby was standing in the doorway of the coffee house. He saw Holdsworth and gave a start, as if Holdsworth were the last person he had expected to find. The sizar’s face was even more gaunt than usual. He looked not only shabby and dirty but also ill. Holdsworth beckoned him over and called to the waiter to hurry with the coffee and to bring a plate of rolls as well.

  ‘Mr Holdsworth, words cannot express my –’

  ‘Have something to eat and drink first,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Then you can search for the right words.’

  The waiter, scenting a tip, did not delay. Soresby ate four rolls and drank three cups of coffee. Holdsworth watched, remembering how, less than a month before, he himself had fallen like a ravening wolf on Mr Cross’s sherry and biscuits in St Paul’s Coffee House. It wasn’t easy to act a man’s part on an empty belly.

  ‘Mr Archdale tells me you wish to ask my opinion about what you should do,’ he said when Soresby had paused.

  ‘All I ever wanted, sir,’ Soresby said in a rush, ‘was to be a scholar. Why will they not let me? And to come so near to it and to see my prospects blighted for ever through no fault of my own –’

  ‘Is this to the point, Mr Soresby?’

  The sizar flushed. His hands were hidden under the table but he must have tugged at his fingers, for there was a familiar crack.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I – I do not know where to turn, I am beside myself. I scarcely know what I am saying.’

  ‘Mr Archdale says you wish to speak to me. What about?’

  Soresby nodded vigorously, and his ragged hair flapped on either side of his face. ‘You have seen my room, sir.’

  Hold
sworth looked blankly at him. ‘Yes. You know I have. When I accompanied Mr Richardson.’

  Soresby nodded. ‘Almost all the rooms in Yarmouth Hall look out over the lane. But my garret looks the other way. I wonder, is it possible that while you were there you chanced to look out of the window?’

  There were three in the little party that entered G staircase in New Building. Mr Richardson was there to represent the college. He led the way, followed by Augustus because he was still, in theory, in Mr Whichcote’s employ. Behind them came Mulgrave, who came for his own amusement. Mr Richardson did not know that the gyp no longer had a connection with Mr Whichcote.

  On the landing, Augustus unlocked the outer door with the keys that the bailiff’s man had brought from Mr Whichcote. Once inside, Richardson stood in the middle of the sitting room and looked about him.

  ‘Mr Whichcote writes that he wishes you to pack his brown portmanteau. A change of linen, his blue coat and his shoes with the silver buckles.’ The tutor paused to consult the letter. ‘Also, the wine in the gyp-room cupboard and his tea caddy. Mulgrave, pack the wine and tea, the boy can do the clothes. Mr Whichcote also requires some items from the study. I will deal with those.’

  Richardson took the keys, unlocked the study door and went inside. He pushed the door closed behind him. Mulgrave glanced at Augustus and winked. The weal on his cheek made his face lopsided. Augustus went into the bedroom and laid the clothes out on the bed. He wondered why Mr Mulgrave had winked at him.

  ‘Boy!’

  He looked up at Richardson in the bedroom doorway, with Mulgrave hovering behind him.

  ‘Do you recall your master having a small black valise? With his crest stamped on the leather?’

  ‘Yes, your honour. It was in the study.’

  ‘It’s not there now.’

  Augustus looked blankly at him.

  ‘It must be somewhere,’ Richardson said sharply. ‘Your master asked most particularly for it. He wished me to take charge of it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, sir.’

  The tutor bit his lip. ‘It is most vexing. Inexplicable, too. But he may have put it somewhere else. Under the window seat, perhaps, where the coals go. Look there.’

  Augustus found nothing but an empty scuttle. Afterwards the three of them searched the rooms but to no avail. Richardson spoke sharply to Augustus as they were leaving and took charge of the keys.

  ‘Take the portmanteau to your master. At Mr Purser’s in Wall Lane.’

  ‘What shall I say about the valise, sir?’

  ‘Eh? Nothing. You may leave that to me – tell him I shall call on him.’

  Richardson walked quickly away. Mulgrave had followed them downstairs. He stared after the tutor, and the weal on his face buckled as he smiled.

  ‘Well, boy,’ Mulgrave said.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You must be in want of a position?’

  Augustus nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Oh yes, sir.’

  ‘I could make use of a sharp boy. If you don’t mind hard work, you could be a gyp yourself one day.’ He took a half-guinea from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. ‘Well? Shall we shake hands on it?’

  Augustus stared at the little gold coin. ‘But sir – the money?’

  Mulgrave smiled again, and the weal changed shape. ‘You do right by me, and I’ll do right by you. Come – give me your hand.’

  On his way back from Turpin’s Coffee House, Holdsworth took shelter from a heavy shower of rain in King’s College Chapel. High above his head, the fan-vaulted ceiling was dusky with shadows. It seemed an ill omen indeed, that a midsummer day should be so gloomy at noon.

  He was not alone, for others came and went and talked among themselves. A beggar was discreetly plying his trade among them, but he sheered away when Holdsworth scowled at him.

  Rain, rain, damnable rain.

  It had been raining for several days before Georgie drowned at Goat Stairs. One evening, the boy said that rain was God’s tears, and that God must be sad indeed to be weeping so hard. Holdsworth had told his son that such foolish thoughts were better ignored and that rain was nothing more than the precipitated vapours of watery clouds. Georgie had laughed at him. He did not believe his father. Maria said Georgie should not play outside, for the rain had made the Bankside cobbles greasy and dangerous.

  ‘Pooh,’ Holdsworth had said. ‘We must not mollycoddle the lad.’

  The chapel was full of noises – footsteps, meaningless words and unattached echoes. He walked up and down, careless of other people and brushing against those who did not get out of his way.

  Had he sunk to this? Even Georgie, even Maria, had become distractions from the terrible intelligence that Soresby had brought him. He thrust clenched hands into his coat pockets, pushing at the lining. His right hand touched the corner of a folded paper, the unread letter from Lady Anne.

  The letter was no longer important. Soresby’s information overshadowed everything else. It lay festering in Holdsworth’s mind. It was an infection. A poison. But he had it in his power to suppress it, for Soresby did not understand its full significance. Besides, the sizar was vulnerable, which made him malleable if Holdsworth chose to dismiss what he said as a malicious attempt to curry favour with a slanderous fabrication.

  But would that be enough, for surely he could never suppress it from his own memory? Such a course would merely make everything worse in the long run – for him, undoubtedly, and perhaps even for Elinor. There was only one certainty about the whole black business: that whatever use he made of Soresby’s information, the result would be unhappiness.

  His head throbbed. It seemed to him that the light was oozing out of the chapel, leaving a grey mist behind. He was quite alone. He could not see his way. He was filled with a terrible presentiment of his eternal helplessness.

  So, he thought, this is what it comes down to in the end: a man’s future haunts him as well as his past.

  47

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Elinor said, hoping her face did not betray her feelings. ‘My husband is no better, but at least he is no worse. Most of the time he sleeps, or the next best thing to it. When he awakes, though, he is unquiet in his mind.’

  ‘That’s not to be wondered at,’ Holdsworth said.

  ‘Yes – but why should he want to see Mr Soresby, and so urgently? It may be the opium, of course. It can encourage strange fancies, can it not?’

  ‘No doubt that has something to do with it.’

  She looked sharply at him, catching in his tone something she did not quite understand. ‘I am glad you are come – there is something I wish to tell you.’

  But there was a knock on the door and Susan entered with the tea things.

  ‘Are you sure I am not intruding, ma’am?’ Holdsworth asked.

  ‘Not at all, sir.’ She smiled at him and instantly felt guilty, not so much for the smile as for the quite inexcusable happiness that had prompted it. He did not return the smile, and her happiness vanished as swiftly as it had come. But the guilt remained. ‘Dr Carbury’s asleep,’ she went on in a colder voice. ‘I had already ordered tea for myself. It is merely a matter of setting a second cup on the tray.’

  Neither of them spoke until the maid had left them alone. Elinor busied herself with making the tea. Holdsworth stood up and went to the sitting-room window. It was raining steadily from a sky like smudged ink. The gardens below were sodden and forlorn. The great plane tree blotted out half the sky. She was about to break this awkward silence, to tell him about the ghost, when he turned to face her.

  ‘I am come to say farewell,’ he said.

  ‘Ah – you have heard from her ladyship. So have I.’ Her hand shook as she tried to insert the key into the lock of the tea caddy. ‘She has summoned you back to London – it was only to be expected. Her will overrides us all, does it not? When do you and Mr Frank leave?’

  ‘As early as we can tomorrow.’

  ‘She said she hoped you would leave today.’
>
  ‘We could not hire a chaise at such short notice and, besides, Mr Oldershaw had already invited several of his intimate friends to another little supper party this evening. He was loath to put them off.’

  Elinor poured the tea. ‘He is such a hospitable young man.’

  ‘Do you have any commissions we may execute for you in town? Should you like us to take a letter to her ladyship?’

  ‘Thank you – I shall write to her directly and send Ben to you with the letter.’ After what had happened last night, she could not understand the alteration in Holdsworth’s manner, now so stiff and formal. ‘And you, sir – what will you do?’

  ‘That must depend in part on her ladyship. She may send me back here to continue work on the library. The survey is hardly begun. Otherwise I shall stay in London and perhaps she will set me to work on the bishop’s library in Golden Square.’

  ‘Then we are both condemned to live with uncertainty. It is not pleasant, is it?’

  She handed him his tea. Cup in hand, he returned to stand by the window. Silence settled on the room. She had hoped her last remark would lead to some word of comfort, to the merest hint that after her husband’s death there might be some other possibility than at best her becoming dependent on Lady Anne’s capricious generosity. However, as so often, when Holdsworth spoke he took her completely by surprise.

  ‘I saw Mr Soresby this morning.’

  ‘What! Is he here?’

  ‘No,’ Holdsworth said. ‘He is too scared to return with this charge hanging over him.’

  ‘But where is he? I must tell my husband. It will relieve his mind of –’

  ‘No, madam. I do not think that would be wise.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mr Soresby’s room in college is at the top of Yarmouth Hall.’

  ‘And pray what’s the significance of that?’

  ‘Because one night last February, he felt ill and in need of fresh air. Despite the cold, he opened the window.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘His room is the only one in the building that looks to the south,’ he went on, speaking rapidly in a hard, monotonous voice. ‘It’s the garret above the service yard at the back of the Master’s Lodge. One can even see a little of the Master’s Garden from the window.’