by Phil Rickman
Each of the subjects has to be interviewed by a shrink – one of the old Big Brother rules, and you can see the point of it. Not everyone is capable of confinement. A psychiatric condition can have devastating consequences in an intense, claustrophobic situation where you’re under permanent scrutiny. So here’s the shrink trying to find out what experience Ozzy’s had of being in a limited space with others.
‘What kind of secondary school did you attend?’
‘After I was expelled from Eton?’
The psychiatrist, a young, flop-haired guy, puts his head on one side, looking too wry for his years. Ozzy looks sleepy-eyed. His dark hair is longer than the last time Grayle saw him on TV. He’s wearing a purple onesie that says JESUS LOVES YOU across the chest. Yeah, very funny.
‘You never forget those harrowing, long nights in the dorm.’ Ozzy says. ‘All the competition for a bed with a wall on one side so you only had to fight off one big boy at once.’
He’s shaking his head, long-faced, a familiar, slack-eyed expression from his TV gigs. The psychiatrist nods minimally. They’re in a grey-walled room at HGTV’s London offices in Clerkenwell. Ozzy stretches in his leather chair. He’s becoming bored.
‘Thing is, you know which school I was at, cock. It’s on Wikipedia. It was just a posh comp from the days before they called them academies. My day, you couldn’t pretend you was any more than a thick yob.’
Grayle notices he’s put on more of a working class accent for this interview. Both she and the psychiatrist know his old man’s an ophthalmologist and he grew up in Wilmslow or some other upmarket enclave in leafy Cheshire.
She’s even met his mother-in-law, who still lives in that moorland farmhouse between Manchester and Sheffield and is a nice, pinked-cheeked woman, all too ready to talk, and not in a vindictive way, about the guy who held her up to ridicule for so long. Grayle’s transcribed the recording.
That lazy image – very misleading, luv. Austin has a steely determination, and he’ll never give up on an idea. Sophie and him – never suited. An astrological disaster, and I always hoped neither of them would get hurt when it fell apart. Never imagined I’d be the casualty. [laughter]
‘As soon as it was obvious the marriage was failing, I could see it in his mind – what could he take away from it? Answer was me. I could see him studying me. And then he was reading books about Wicca and the like, devising a persona for me that would sound realistic as well as being very funny. I’m not that funny, really, though I can laugh at it as much as anybody, now. He’s a very clever lad, our Austin.
The shrink – his name is Max – finally asks Ozzy some straight questions, like has he ever experienced anything he can’t explain? Ozzy, predictably, says he thought he’d told Max he’d rather not talk about his mother-in-law.
Max asks Ozzy why he’s agreed to do the show. It’s clear he doesn’t need the work.
Ozzy says he likes to meet new people.
‘Do you generally get on with new people?’
‘I get on with everybody, cock. Look at us now – it’s like we’ve been big mates since we were kids.’ He leans forward, peering at the shrink through his contact lenses – Grayle knows all these minor personal details. ‘You gonna be there the whole time, Max?’
‘Probably. Does that bother you?’
‘If it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me.’
Max blinks. Ozzy points a finger, smiles.
‘You’ll be all right, cock. Just make sure your name’s far enough up the credits.’
‘Thank you. Ozzy, can I go back to the question you avoided? Mothers-in-law apart, has anything ever happened to you that made you wonder if there were, shall we say, more things in heaven and earth…?’
Ahmed leans back in his chair, ponders.
‘Once spent a night in a room everybody thought was haunted. Possibly because of the human remains in there.’
Silence, Max lowering his chin to his chest.
‘Human remains. I see. Please continue, Mr Ahmed.’
Ozzy shakes his head.
‘Can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’ Ozzy sits up. ‘I’ve been asked – as, I’m assuming, we all have – to tell a story, round the fire on the first night. A personal ghost story. Or a story which will illustrate why I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘And which is yours going to be?’
‘Not saying. Wouldn’t be any suspense then, would there?’
And clams up. It wouldn’t surprise Grayle to learn he’s been talking to some Big Brother producer, learning about the always-stay-one-step-ahead rule. Determined to make Big Other work for him and his career.
Grayle switches off. She’s watched four of these interviews with the shrink. The former Liberal Democrat MP, Roger Herridge, is the most defensive, even though there was no mention of florists (it’s a long story). The psychologist, Ashley Palk, is dismissive, quite spiky about it really, as if she, as a professional, should not be subjected to this kind of indignity. Palk is the most obvious sceptic, edits a magazine for sceptics. Eloise is quiet but not in the least guarded, wearing her spirit on her sleeve.
Next to face Max – maybe this afternoon – will be Colm Driscoll, the hip-hop artist from Dublin who came off heroin into born-again Christianity. Driscoll now works with a charity helping young addicts in Liverpool and has agreed to go into the House in return for a substantial donation to his cause.
Which leaves only Sebold and…
HELEN PARRISH
Former deputy Royal Correspondent, BBC News.
After losing her job a few years ago, Parrish accused the BBC of ageism, which the Corporation strongly denied. Shortly afterwards, the Guardian diary column published a story, probably leaked from the BBC newsroom, to the effect that Parrish’s contract had not been renewed because of fears about her state of mind after she confided to colleagues that she’d seen what she was convinced was the ghost of the late Princess Diana.
At the time, Parrish refused to discuss it and – perhaps under the impression that her journalistic career was not yet over – turned down a substantial offer for her story from the News of the World in its final days. Probably a mistake. I’m told that her current financial situation would make our offer hard to refuse.
Made redundant by the BBC, she’s continued working, as a freelance, but it doesn’t seem to have been exactly remunerative. When asked about Diana she’s wryly philosophical but firm.
‘Ghosts? I don’t know. Agnostic. Go away.’
She thought for a long time that the Diana thing was going to be Eloise and is glad that it isn’t. As Grayle understands it, Parrish originally agreed to do Big Other after an approach from an old friend who was working for Hunter-Gatherer Television as a director. Back in April, the old friend left HGTV for an unmissable offer from the States. Defford’s people have stayed in intermittent contact with Parrish, who keeps assuring them that she’s still up for this, but the fact remains that she’s not yet signed a contract. No problem, she keeps saying, she’ll get back to them.
Defford thinks she’s just after more money. Word is she’s effectively washed up and, as this might be her last big fee, she’s pushing it to the wire. There’s always money in reserve, but Defford’s holding his nerve for a little longer.
Grayle goes out into the soft September morning. Personally, she’d feel happier if Parrish was all tied up. No one knows the details of the Diana story, but if it’s remotely convincing, it would be a significant exclusive for Big Other. This is not some flimsy New Ager, this is an experienced reporter who covered wars before landing royalty. Potentially, a very solid brick in the wall against scepticism.
Outside, the fourth and biggest portacabin is being unloaded. Behind it, Knap Hall glowers from its hollow.
It’s that time, just before the trees start to change colour, when the English countryside seems at its heaviest under warm, leaden skies. The trees are vividly green after a freakishly hot,
dreamlike summer that started late and isn’t going anywhere fast.
Metal gates have been installed a few yards inside the entrance, the posts hidden behind dark clumpy yews, centuries old. The long drive to the house is a major plus – the fact that it can’t be seen from any roads. All the same, a security firm has been on site for weeks, installing new gates and fencing. Patrolling at night, originally with guard dogs, but not now.
Apparently, the dogs got restless and made too much noise. Sometimes they howled. Do trained guard dogs habitually howl? Grayle thinks not. Well they just don’t, do they?
Nobody’s commented on it. The HGTV people seem… well, bizarrely, they seem not interested. It’s as if whatever is supposed to happen here should not be happening – is not contracted to happen – until the cameras are switched on at the end of next month. Hallowe’en, that is, the night it ends – TV is nothing if not predictable.
She’s met most of Leo Defford’s core production team now, and they tend to be scarily young. Have names like Emily and Jamie. Go bounding like puppies, in and out of Knap Hall. Woohoo Hall is what they’ve taken to calling it. Which kind of annoys Grayle. You must never let this stuff take you over, but equally you don’t diss it.
Couple of the puppies have taken her to dinner at country pubs, evidently with a view to booking a room for the night, but she’s resisted, pretending she thinks it’s just a working dinner. They discussed the programme, she avoided talking about her background. They make her feel old, these guys, so full of ambition and ideas they clearly think are new and exciting but which sound flimsy and obvious to Grayle. Except, perhaps, for Defford himself, she’s yet to encounter someone who thinks a disturbed old house is any different from a fair-ground ghost train.
Not that Knap Hall has done anything to suggest otherwise. Sometimes, around dusk, as she’s about to leave for home, she looks down at the empty house, with its blackened, mullioned windows in its pie-crust walls, and thinks she sees movement there.
Not shapes behind old glass, more a slow shifting and resettling of the whole building. Like respiration.
But that’s what dusk does.
18
Still there
Otherwise, Knap Hall is still being evasive, its ghosts indistinct.
We still have to bring its hidden history alive.
Defford. She doesn’t see as much of him now. He sends these terse texts and emails from his phone. Hidden history. Huh. Suppose there isn’t any? Does that even matter if they have the big two: Trinity and KP.
They’ve been shooting stuff in the house to use as insert-material. Pictures of the rooms stripped back to their basics, with rushes on the flags. People in rough clothing who will appear on the screen dulled by sepia and shadows. But who are they? They have no identities, no personalities, and time’s running out. If she doesn’t want to be sent in search of a reliable medium she needs to come up with something HGTV can dramatize, and fast.
From local records, libraries and the Internet, she’s compiled a list of former owners and tenants of Knap Hall, going back to the early sixteenth century when it had different names – the name Knap Hall didn’t appear till the eighteenth century – and was occupied by working farmers, yeoman-types, raising livestock and big families.
Sepia is right. They were not colourful people. History – even local history – has stepped over them. She’s talked to four local historians so far, not finding much to excite her. Knap Hall is still well overshadowed by the lustrously restored castle which once played host to Elizabeth I and her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and is now a resting place at last for Katherine Parr. All these big people, in the fast lane of history. No real surprise this place has been bypassed.
*
Down towards the main gate, some guys are assembling the prefabricated hotel block – yeah, really – that will house Grayle’s personal suite. She’ll be expected to live here during the transmission period – what Defford calls the final days. He keeps using that phrase, evidently finding it satisfyingly portentous.
Grayle walks beside the main lawn, past slender rowan trees with their blood-bright berries, thinking of Katherine Parr and Trinity Ansell, dead at a younger age than she is now. Mortality thrown in your face at every turn.
Beyond the lawn are small fields, made private by still-green hedgerows. Coming from a country of endless fences, Grayle enjoys the intimacy of hedgework. She watches Jordan Aspen-wall squatting outside his shed beside his ride-on mower, tools spread out on the grass. He’s now on the HGTV payroll till Christmas, apparently for more money than he was getting from Harry Ansell. He looks contented enough, a not unfriendly hand raised. All seems peaceful until a hostile fizzing on the ground directly in front of her sends Grayle backing off from a gang of wasps savaging an early-windfall apple…
… almost into the path of the white Discovery ripping up the drive far too fast. Leo Defford at the wheel, being a crazy English bastard and not even noticing her until the big SUV has gone crunching past.
The Discovery doesn’t stop, but Grayle feels uncomfortable being caught just walking the grounds like she doesn’t have enough work to do, even though the truth is she’s barely had a day off since early April. Probably now knows more about Trinity Ansell than either of Trinity’s shallow, showbiz biographers, both of whom raced to write final, unenlightening chapters for post-mortem editions. Grayle bought both these women expensive lunches, learning nothing significant. Neither ever met Trinity.
‘Man in a hurry.’ It’s the gardener. ‘You all right, Miss Underhill?’
‘Grayle. I’m fine, thanks. You?’
‘Lot still to do,’ Jordan says. ‘Just hope there’s time, that’s all.’
Jordan is not what she was expecting, which was either one of those private-school-educated types who write gardening columns in the posh papers, or some dark, unfriendly Mellors figure furtively fancying Trinity Ansell. Turns out to be a stocky, earnest, middle-aged local man in a plaid work shirt.
She stops at the lawn’s edge. She’s tried a couple of times to talk to him about the stories with which he’d tried to frighten Lisa, the scullery maid: said people used to think they were being followed in the passages, and they’d turn round and there’d be, like, a shadow?
Jordan said he was just having a bit of fun and, no, he’d seen nothing. He always prefers to talk about his work, particularly the Elizabethan-style knot garden he’s planted in what used to be a flat paddock to the side of the house, a smaller version of the fine specimen at Sudeley. It’s a complex mosaic of sculpted bushes with a gravel path around it, formerly used to reach an old barn. It’s geometrically exact, Jordan says.
‘So you’ll be like winding down with the fall, Jordan?’
He smiles, a tad shyly.
‘Anybody notice if I did?’
‘I guess I would. That’s not to say—’
‘I seen you taking it all in. Nobody else seems to notice much.’
‘I guess they’re all too…’
… up their own asses.
There’s a patch of quiet, the lawn dappled with shadows of trees.
‘He notices.’
Jordan’s nodding towards the house. Grayle says nothing. He means Knap Hall itself? Is that just how they talk around here, everything male or female, or does he see the house as some kind of sentient being?
People in overalls go in and out, guys with tools, guys with clipboards and cameras. Carpenters and electricians and plumbers and designers. The house is just another prop. Few of these people know just what’s going to happen there next month, and neither does Jordan – most of the planning meetings have taken place in London or at Defford’s Cotswold second home, miles from here.
‘He’s, um, he’s resisting me,’ Grayle says.
Jordan looks only slightly curious, says nothing. She decides to tell him more than she should, have one last go at bringing him out… if there’s anything to come out. She’ll grab anything now.
&nbs
p; ‘See, my job – some of what I do here – is to find out what happened at Knap Hall before Trinity Ansell? Saw herself as restoring the house to what it had been. Only it’s becoming clear she was just intent on creating some kind of small Sudeley Castle. Which history tells us really wasn’t what this house had been at all. More of a working farm.’
Jordan’s nodding slowly.
‘And the kind of people who lived here,’ Grayle says, ‘were not exactly aristocracy.’
‘Wouldn’t be doing no knot garden them days, that’s for sure.’
‘I guess not.’
‘Chance of a lifetime for me, look. I’m back on it, now, but for how long? He don’t want it, Mr Ansell. Never really paid any of it much notice.’
‘Trinity’s house, Trinity’s garden. You spend much time with her, Jordan?’
‘Never got that close to her, to be honest. She was our boss but she never made demands.’
‘What about Harry Ansell?’
‘Wasn’t his house. You ever talked to Mr Ansell you knew he wouldn’t keep the place if… well, if she went off, folks used to say. Nobody thought…’
‘Maybe it’ll be sold to some Russian oligarch when we’re through here. Who wants a well-made garden. Um… whoever lived here in the past, my boss, he wants to get some actors to appear as them? Only we don’t really know what they were like? They’re just names in the records.’
Jordan nods, expressionless.
‘So I’m looking for people who might know the real history? Stuff you can’t get out of books. I was wondering if you knew anybody might help.’
‘Dunno who you talked to.’
‘Well, nobody too local.’
Grayle lists the names of the historians she’s consulted. For two of them she had to go to university faculties, in Birmingham and Bristol. And, still, most of what they knew was about Sudeley and the town of Winchcombe, one telling her at length about how tobacco was grown in the area before it was banned to protect imports.