Ghost

by Helen Grant

  Tom, said my conscience, but I dismissed it easily. If anything had been going to happen about that it would have happened ages ago.

  “Augusta,” Grandmother began, “I have something to say to you, and I hardly know where to begin.” She hesitated, and a clouded look came into her blue eyes, as though she were listening to some silent call that I could not hear. Then she went on. “I ask myself very often whether I have done the right thing, keeping you hidden here for so long, without the company of any other people. No, don’t interrupt me, my dear. It’s true, I do ask myself about it. I’ve told you before that I have tried to do everything for the best, and so I have, but you may not always agree with me.”

  It was certainly true that I hadn’t always agreed with her, but I tried to say something reassuring anyway. She hardly seemed to hear me.

  “In two months’ time you will be eighteen years old,” she said, “And no longer a child in anyone’s eyes. A great many things will change then, Augusta. A great many things,” she repeated.

  “What things?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “In good time, my dear.”

  I gazed at her in perplexity and then confusion hardened into an unpleasant suspicion. “I’m not going to have to go and work in a factory, am I?”

  I saw her give a little jump at that; had I hit upon the truth?

  “No,” she said. “Not that.”

  “But the War–” I began.

  “The War won’t always – won’t always affect you the way it does at present, Ghost.”

  “You mean it’s going to end?” I was stunned.

  “I suppose...” said Grandmother, and hesitated again. Then she said, “Yes, I think we can say that it may end.”

  I seized the hand that she had laid over mine. “But that’s amazing! You really think it’s going to end? So we won’t have to hide here any longer – we can just go out – and go into the town and–”

  “Augusta,” she said sharply, and with difficulty I reined in my excitement. “Nothing has changed yet. Until it does, we have to continue as we always have. If we need anything from the town I shall go. If anyone should have to come here again, you must stay out of sight. Nothing can change yet, you understand me?”

  “Yes, Grandmother.” In truth, I was barely listening to what she was saying; I was too preoccupied with the idea that our solitary life here at Langlands might be about to change. We might be able to go out; others would be able to come in. We could visit all the things I had read about but never seen: the town; Edinburgh, the capital; the sea. Amazingly, out of this maelstrom of exciting ideas, one question suddenly thrust itself forward into my consciousness.

  “But Grandmother, what does the War ending have to do with my being eighteen?”

  A brief flicker of emotion passed across Grandmother’s face. I would have said it was dismay, but I could see no reason for her to be alarmed at the question, which seemed quite reasonable to me. She said, “Only this, my dear – that there are certain truths that will be easier for you to cope with once you have become an adult.” She put up a hand. “No, don’t ask me anything else today. Please just remember what I have told you. Will you do that for me?”

  “Yes,” I said, rather unwillingly, since there were a thousand other things I would have liked to ask.

  But Grandmother said, “Kiss me,” so I kissed her gently on the cheek that was so soft and papery, and then she got up and turned to preparing the vegetables for lunch as though we had never had any conversation at all.

  I had so much to think about that it did not occur to me until later that although she had said she had something to tell me, she had not really told me anything at all. Things would change when I turned eighteen; the War might end soon; I should remember that she had always acted for the best. What did that add up to?

  I resolved to wait for a suitable moment and ask her some more questions, starting with what makes you think the War is going to end soon? That was the burning question, because if she was right, and it was coming to an end, everything about our lives here was about to change. But I never got to ask her any of these questions, because a few days after the conversation in the kitchen, Grandmother drove into town and never came back.

  I remember it was another of those clear bright February mornings, with brilliant sunshine but so cold that it made your lungs ache to breathe the outdoor air. We were starting to run low on a few things – sugar, soap flakes – and since the track through the forest was clear at present, Grandmother had decided to stock up before the snow came again.

  When she left, I was sitting in the kitchen with my books. I didn’t take any particular notice of her departure. I was still very preoccupied with thoughts of what would happen if the War ended, and how we might possibly predict such a thing; an ordinary trip into town for soap flakes seemed comparably uninteresting. I didn’t go out to the gravel drive at the front of Langlands to see her off.

  I worked until lunchtime, and then I put the books away and made myself something to eat. I boiled a brown egg from the long-suffering chickens and cut myself a slice of Grandmother’s home-baked bread. Then I made tea and stood by the kitchen window with the warm cup cradled in my hands, watching a robin hopping about outside. I wondered when Grandmother would be back, and whether she would bring anything more interesting than the essentials.

  After that, I went out to the log pile and lugged some firewood inside in a basket. I never liked that job very much anyway, but it was worse at night when I couldn’t see properly and would bark my shins on piles of cut wood or the chopping block; better to get it over and done with by daylight.

  I peeled the vegetables for dinner and left them on the range in a pan of cold water. Finally, I fetched the mending basket and embarked upon the tedious task of sewing on buttons and repairing rips in various articles of clothing. After some time spent on this, I realised that the strong light from outside had gone. The sun had moved and the shadows had lengthened. I was starting to struggle to see what I was doing. I cast off the thread on the petticoat I was mending and stuffed the whole thing back into the mending basket.

  I was beginning to feel a little impatient for Grandmother’s return. Where was she? I would have expected her to be back by this time.

  I wasn’t alarmed – just a little frustrated. We hadn’t agreed anything about cooking the evening meal if she were late back.

  When the sun sank behind the trees however, and twilight closed in on the house, I began to be really concerned. I fetched my coat and went out to the front of the house, shivering in the freezing air. The gravel area where Grandmother would normally have parked the car to unload the shopping was empty. Pulling my coat more closely around me, I went to the place where the drive passed under the trees and gazed down the track, straining my eyes for any sight of headlights approaching through the gloom. Nothing. I listened, too, hoping for the sound of the car’s engine purring up through the forest, but all I could hear were the wind moving lightly in the trees and the occasional sounds of birds.

  I went back to the house, troubled. I told myself that there was probably no cause for alarm. Perhaps the car had developed a fault and Grandmother had had to stay in town for a few hours while it was repaired. Or had she had to go further afield than usual, and I hadn’t taken it in when she told me? I racked my memory until I wasn’t even certain myself. And all the time night was coming closer, and the Langlands estate was becoming darker.

  Eventually, I couldn’t fool myself any longer. The sun had gone down; it was pitch black outdoors, the moon a mere sliver obscured by clouds. Something was really wrong. I was afraid Grandmother would not be back that night at all. Several times I went back to that spot on the edge of the forest to look and listen again, but there was still nothing. It was so utterly dark under the trees that gazing into them was like being struck blind. I had never really been afraid of the dark �
�� how could I be, when so much of Langlands was unlit at night? – but now it began to play on my nerves. I began to think of the ancient mausoleum buried in the undergrowth and its ugly contents, and to imagine how terrible it would be if the shades of the dead were walking out there among the damp black tree trunks.

  I went back into the house, closed the door behind me and leaned against it, thinking. The hallway was lit by a single candle I had left burning on top of one of the pieces of heavy old furniture. Shadows danced over the panelling and the paintings, the pair of silver pheasants on the hall table and the stuffed stag’s head on the wall. The stag’s glass eyes gleamed dully. I could hear the sound of my own breathing, and other things: the tiny creaks and groans that came from the old house itself.

  So far as I could remember, I had never in my life spent the night alone in the house. Grandmother had always been in her room at the end of the passage; if anything had happened, such as the night the chimney had fallen through the roof, she was close enough to hear me call. Now she was not here, and I had no idea why. The unlit passageways and echoing rooms of Langlands House no longer seemed friendly; they felt like a series of cold dark caverns in which anyone or anything might lurk.

  At last, I made a decision and locked the door on the inside. I would spend the night in the kitchen, in the comforting warmth that at any rate suggested safety. If Grandmother did come home and found the front door locked, she would try the back one and I would hear her, and open it.

  I fetched a blanket from my room, and I drew an old wooden settle that stood against the wall of the kitchen closer to the iron range. Then I wrapped myself up as snugly as I could and did my best to sleep.

  I awoke the next morning with a headache and stiff limbs from spending the night on the settle. I felt cold, too. I put out a hand and touched the range. There was still some warmth in it, but not the heat I expected; usually Grandmother would have packed the wood carefully to keep it going overnight and fed it again in the morning before I was downstairs. I had not imagined it; she really hadn’t come home, and I was still alone.

  I unwrapped myself from the blanket and did my best to get the range going properly again. It would be a while before there was any hot water for tea, and my fingertips were waxen with the cold. I made myself some breakfast with the last of the loaf and some of Grandmother’s blackberry jam, and then I set about the usual morning chores: feeding the chickens, fetching in more firewood. I went about these tasks mechanically, trying not to think about the situation. These things needed to be done; I must do them. There was nothing else to do but to wait and see; perhaps Grandmother’s car had broken down so catastrophically that she had had to stay in the town, and she would simply turn up later today. It was not as though there was any way she could let me know if such a thing had happened after all; Langlands had no telephone. I tried not to dwell on the other, more sinister possibilities.

  The day seemed to pass with agonising slowness. At a little after two o’clock I went to stand at the bottom of the gravel area again, and gazed down the track that led through the forest. There was a savage bite in the air and the sky had taken on a lurid shade that meant snow. Under the trees was only earth and mud so far, but out in the open, fine white flakes were already drifting down. If enough snow fell, Grandmother would be unable to get back to Langlands, however much she wanted to.

  By nightfall she had not come home, and the snow was inches deep. With the darkness came wind, and the snow banked up against the walls and inside the stone porch.

  I spent the night in the kitchen again, although I barely slept. I fed the stove while hot tears splashed onto the backs of my hands as I worked. There was no denying it now: something very serious had happened to Grandmother. Even if the car had broken down, she would never have spent two nights away. She would have paid someone to bring her back to Langlands. She might even have abandoned the provisions and walked back. She would never willingly have deserted me.

  It was hard not to conclude that her disappearance was to do with the War. Perhaps she had been mistaken; perhaps the War was going to end all right, but not with Peace, with conquest. Perhaps the enemy had landed on our shores at last, and finally made it as far inland as our lonely corner of nowhere. What was going on out there, beyond the border of the estate? I felt sick thinking of the possibilities, but I was desperate to know.

  On the second morning alone, I tried to open the kitchen door to go and feed the chickens, and couldn’t; the snow was too deeply piled against it. I went out through the front instead, where the stone porch had given at least a little protection, into a cold white world. It was a struggle to wade through the snow and go around the house to the chicken coop.

  I had wondered about going down the drive a little way, to look for clues as to what might be going on in the outside world, but I could see that it was really impossible. Instead, once I had finished the necessary chores, I climbed up to the attic and looked out of the window, kneeling at the very spot where I had lain on the bearskin and caught my first glimpse of Tom, months before. I could see nothing but the black and white of trees in the snow. There were no tell-tale plumes of smoke rising beyond the forest, no ominous shapes in the pearlescent winter sky. This told me nothing useful, of course; Langlands was so remote that the city of Perth itself might have been burnt to the ground and we would have seen nothing. All that I knew was that I was now utterly alone.

  The snow lasted for a week, and then rain cleared much of it. When the rain had finished, everything was sodden. Even when the sun reappeared it had a pale, watery look to it.

  I had taken to living almost exclusively in the kitchen during that week. Now I looked around me and saw that I was living in a mess. Cups and plates were piled up, waiting to be washed; at first it hadn’t seemed worth heating water for one person’s things and then there was suddenly so much to wash up that I couldn’t face it. The table was littered with bottles and jars and the sticky spoons with which I had scraped out the last of their contents. The floor was a gritty mess of gravel and mud that I had trodden in from the grounds.

  I looked down at myself. The hem of my dress and my shoes and stockings were spattered with mud. Even my fingernails were grimy.

  Supposing Grandmother came home now and found you like this? I said to myself. I had virtually given up hope that she would ever do that, but the thought stung me. It was no use going on like this. I had to do something. But what?

  In the end, I tidied and cleaned the kitchen, and then I heated water so that I could wash myself. I dressed in clean clothes, selecting everything for maximum warmth, and then I put on my coat and a knitted hat. There was a single apple left in the bowl on the table; I put that into my pocket.

  I secured the kitchen door and then I let myself out of the front one, locking it behind me. It felt strange doing that; I couldn’t recall ever having done such a thing in my life. I had never been far enough from the house to lock it up.

  There were muddy leaves in the porch. It looked as though nobody lived here at all. I stepped over them and went out onto the gravel. A few days ago, when everything had been covered in snow, every step I took would have been marked by footprints; now my passing left no trace.

  I followed the sweep of the drive until I came to the place where the gravel ended and the track began, winding its way into the forest. Under the trees, the atmosphere was dismal. Trees had fallen, and as long as they were not obstructing the way, they had simply been left to grow green and mossy. Near the place where the track began was the crumbling remains of a wall, and that too was growing a damp-looking coat of moss. Further down were rusting metal posts and curled wire where stretches of fencing had been. Water dripped from the branches of the trees, leafless, dank and black. There was no wind today. All I could hear between the trudging of my own feet and the sound of my own breathing was the drip-drip of that water.

  I was used to being alone, or if not a
lone, to having the company of only one other person. I had never been in a crowd of people in my entire life. And yet now the isolation bore down on me. The quiet in the woods seemed ugly and expectant, like the silence of a tomb waiting to welcome an occupant. I began to mutter to myself under my breath, trying to reassure myself.

  “Cold in here...very cold...What will I see when I reach the end of the forest...?”

  After a while, I lost heart and fell silent. I tried whistling, but my lips were unaccountably dry. It seemed to take a long time to get down to the edge of the estate.

  At the edge of the forest, there was a straight piece of track leading straight to a kind of gateway: the gate was open, but you couldn’t just walk right through because there was a shallow square pit with a series of bars laid across it. It was not entirely impassable to people; if I had wanted to, I could have balanced carefully on the bars and crossed like that. However, there was a small gate at the right-hand side with no such obstacle, so I went through that instead. Then I stood under the shelter of the trees at the forest’s edge, and surveyed the land in front of me.

  In spite of the recent rain some of the distant hills were still ghostly white with snow. The fields were dotted with compact shapes that I identified as sheep, but I could see no human figure anywhere in the landscape.

  Everything that I saw was still and peaceful; even the sheep moved slowly and gently, cropping the wet grass.

  What did you expect to see? I said to myself. Then it occurred to me: supposing I had seen Grandmother’s black Austin with its gleaming nose buried in a hedge or ditch, a still figure slumped behind the wheel? I shivered. But there was no sign of anything untoward anywhere in that whole peaceful view: no discordant sounds, no more traffic on the distant road than I had ever noticed before, no column of smoke anywhere on the horizon. All the same, I hesitated to leave the cover of the trees.