by Mary Arden
Doctor Baker was an elderly but friendly doctor, who didn’t make me take my knickers off thank goodness, and just asked me to ‘pull them down below your ‘balloon’!’
After he’d examined me he said that everything seemed to be developing, as it should, and then asked me if there was anything I wanted to ask him.
‘Well, yes, there is actually – is it safe for the baby – if we… for us… to… eh… um,’ I found that I couldn’t quite express what I was trying to ask, but fortunately he could.
‘Have normal marital relations?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied, relieved that he knew what I meant.
‘I don’t see why not, just take it slowly and try different positions and if you feel uncomfortable in a month or two’s time then stop,’ he advised. ‘Oh, and by the way, when you are hanging out the washing make sure the support pole is low. No stretching above your head.’ I hadn’t even thought about doing our washing, and would have to leave a note for Mrs Treconner to ask her where the washing line was and when I could use it.
I knew exactly when Duncan was home that evening, as the crows went mad as soon as he turned into the driveway. The first thing I did was to show him the pretty cushions, the vase of flowers and the things I’d unpacked from the crate. ‘Oh, you clever girl,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’ve made our ivory tower look like a real home.’
That night we continued our honeymoon activities, but at a slightly gentler pace as advised by Doctor Baker. And the following morning everything I’d bought in Ramsey was delivered and carried up the stairs for me. Being pregnant has its advantages, I thought.
I was just putting my new rubbish bucket under the sink when there was a loud knock on the door. It was Mrs Treconner. ‘I don’t wish to intrude dear,’ she said, balancing dangerously on the top step, ‘but I received your note about the washing line and just came to tell you that you can use it at any time.’
I invited her to come in to have a cup of coffee, and as soon as she was in the flat, she said, ‘I see that you’ve already put out your own things. I wondered what was in that crate.’
‘I thought I should use a few of our wedding presents to make us feel more married!’ I said, laughing.
‘Do call me Jean,’ she said, ‘and my husband answers to Adrian when he’s at home, but at work, they call him Professor!’ I didn’t ask her what he was a Professor of, but as he was a doctor, I assumed that it was most probably something medical.
The first week flew by, and one day, as I was bringing in the washing, I saw Jean coming towards me. ‘If you need any eggs, Mary, there’s a farm down the lane just behind our house. Mrs Humble would be glad to sell you some, I’m sure, as she could do with the extra money; sometimes she has extra milk and cream to spare too.’
I told Duncan about Mrs Humble later that evening, when we were sitting comfortably in our cosy sitting room.
‘Good idea, Mary, fresh food is better than shop-bought things any day,’ he said as he stood up to turn up the fire.
Suddenly there was a strange rustling sound, which was quite creepy, as if there was someone else in the room with us. Duncan stared at me for a moment and then checked that the door was shut. He then asked me what I thought the strange sound was, and did I know where it was coming from.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ I told him and then felt a sudden pain in my stomach, so put both my hands on it.
‘Are you alright darling?’ Duncan asked me, concerned.
‘The bump – our baby – it just moved!’ I whispered.
‘That’s good isn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course, it just surprised me, that’s all,’ I replied, and then went to the bathroom for a pee.
When I came back, Duncan’s face was completely white. ‘What is it?’ I asked him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he asked.
‘Why?’ I said hesitantly.
‘That strange rustling noise started again, as soon as you left the room,’ he said looking straight into my eyes.
‘Maybe it’s just rooks nesting in the roof?’
‘Yes, it’s most probably just that,’ Duncan agreed, or at least pretended to.
‘Why don’t I make us some cocoa?’ I suggested.
Five minutes later, just as I was about to take a sip of my cocoa, I heard an even louder rustling noise than I had heard before. A shiver went down my spine.
Duncan suddenly burst out laughing. ‘We are silly, darling, it’s just the chairs!’ he chuckled, and then explained, ‘They are made of cane, so they expand and shrink with the change of temperature when the fire is on or off.’ Mystery solved!
We might not have had a ghost in our part of the house, but I wasn’t quite so sure that one wasn’t lurking elsewhere, as I had felt a strange barrier the last couple of times I had been halfway up the big staircase that led to the bathroom in the main house. It was as if someone, or something, was trying to stop me from going up and down the stairs, whenever I attempted to get to the shared bathroom. I decided not to tell Duncan, in case he thought I was just being silly.
Humble’s Farm wasn’t too hard to find, I discovered when I went to buy some fresh eggs the next day. I went to the back door, as Mrs Treconner had suggested and knocked.
‘Who is it?’ a voice called out.
I called out that I was a new neighbour and that I’d come for some eggs. A small woman in a flower-printed overall came to the door and after looking me up and down said, ‘You’re the wife of the Navy Officer.’
‘Yes, I am,’ I smiled. He’s at RAF Andreas all day, otherwise he would have come with me,’ I explained. I then told her that we were renting the Treconner’s Tower.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘I seen you from the bedroom window hanging out the washing. You’re expecting then?’ she said, pointing at my bump. I nodded, and told her that was why I wasn’t doing any war work at the moment, but I hoped to be able to do something useful for a month or two, if she knew of anyone that wanted help.
‘I need help,’ she said, beckoning to me to follow her to where she kept her hens.
‘You do? In what way would that be war work?’ I asked her.
‘Land girl’s gone, but we’re still working on the land and I need help feeding ’em,’ she said, pointing to the hens, ‘and the farm hands too.’
Happy memories of helping the Bridges’ on their farm where Duncan and I had first started to get to know each other came flooding back to me.
She pulled herself up and walked over to the sink, where a bucket of potatoes, carrots and onions were waiting to be peeled and chopped.
‘Do you eat your own meat?’ I asked her when I noticed a plate of meat waiting to be cooked.
‘Oh yes, some days lamb, others beef or pork, it all depends on what has been slaughtered.’ My stomach heaved for a second. ‘My man Don brings in whatever is not taken away by the regulations.’
‘I just about manage on my own, but it’s hard this time o’ year what with the lambing, calving and everything else to do,’ she said. The penny suddenly dropped, she needed a kitchen maid. Well, I suppose I could tackle the vegetables, as long as I did it sitting down, and I could do the washing up too.
‘I really needs a pair of willing hands,’ Mrs Humble said, almost pleading, ‘but we cannot pay nothing, only with your dinner and free eggs.’
‘War work is free, Mrs Humble, so you won’t have to pay me,’ I said, ‘but I would have to leave promptly at two-thirty every day, as I still have our shopping to do and my husband’s evening meal to prepare.’
‘I’d only need you Monday to Friday,’ she explained.
‘I’ll ask my husband this evening, and providing he has no objection, I’ll start on Monday. May I let you know tomorrow?’ I asked her.
‘I would be ever so grateful, as we’ve asked for a land girl to replace my youngest in July, so if you could give me a hand until you feel it’s too hard on the baby, that would be a big help,’ she said smili
ng. ‘There’s no lifting or heaving work, as a girl comes here Saturdays to scrub and clean the kitchen and scullery and wash the work clothes.’ Poor girl, I thought, that sounded like real work.
That evening, Duncan said that he had no objection, as long as I promised to stop the minute I felt tired or unwell.
On the Monday morning, he walked with me to the farm, just to check everything was above board, and then he left me to get on with it.
My first job was to peel a huge pile of potatoes and carrots and then Mrs Humble asked me to chop the onions, which made cry. Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Mrs Humble prepared the meat, covering it in flour before throwing it all into a frying pan to brown. The smell was wonderful and made my mouth water. She then transferred the lot into a huge pan to which she added various herbs and stock.
By the end of my first week, I started to regret having offered to help, but a couple of weeks later I was taking it all in my stride; I now spent far less time preparing the vegetables and had all the washing up done and tidied away in no time. I even had some time to sit down and chat to Mrs Humble for a while before doing the shopping.
As my tummy had now got quite large, I needed help getting out of the bath, so Duncan would always come and help me. One night, when I was sitting in the bath, he told me that something strange had just happened to him when he was coming up the stairs. He had felt ‘something’ trying to stop him going any further when he was about halfway up the stairs and that he had suddenly felt so cold that he thought he must have left the door open, but when he turned around to make sure, the door was firmly shut. When I told him that I had had the same experience, but hadn’t wanted to tell him in case he thought I was just being silly, he laughed and said, ‘I would never think that darling, but whatever ‘it’ is, it’s a real mystery!’
The following Saturday evening Duncan said that he had to go to RAF Andreas because a VIP was giving a lecture about Trincomalee, the base in Ceylon where he was going to be posted later that year, so I decided that while he was out, I would wash my hair. When I walked up the stairs to the bathroom, I felt ‘something’ try to stop me once again, which made me shiver but after a few seconds everything went back to normal and I was able to continue on my way to the bathroom. It was unnerving to say the least.
After, I had washed my hair, I went back downstairs but halfway down my way was blocked again. This time I was really frightened, but kept walking until I got to the Treconner’s drawing room. When I went in, Adrian looked up at me and seeing the worried expression on my face, asked. ‘Did you have difficulty getting down, Mary?’ When I didn’t say anything and just stared at him blankly, he asked hesitantly, ‘was there… something… blocking your way?’
‘So you do know about it,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Come and sit down, Mary,’ Adrian said beckoning me to take the chair next to him. ‘I didn’t mention this strange phenomenon to you before, as it doesn’t happen to everyone and I hoped it wouldn’t to you either, but as it has, let me try to explain.’
When I sat down, he continued, ‘About a hundred years ago, a wealthy family lived in this house; they were very well connected and were invited by the local gentry and dignitaries to many official and private parties and dinners. As their children grew up, they were invited too. There were three boys and two girls, who were both beauties, and much sought after by the sons of everyone they knew. Then, one terrible night on their way home from a ball, there was a severe storm and the family were involved in an accident. The horses bolted at the sound of thunder and their coach overturned. The eldest daughter was thrown out of the door and thrown against a tree, breaking both her hips so badly that she never walked properly again. She hated her deformed body so much that she refused to leave the house again.’
‘Oh, how sad,’ I said.
‘Well, the story is that after a while, the youngest daughter was invited to parties on her own and this is where the trouble on the stairs all began. Every time she wanted to go down the stairs, she had to pass her crippled older sister, who would beg her not to leave her alone. This went on for months until the younger girl walked down the stairs one last time, on her wedding day and apparently, that’s when all this strangeness began.’
‘So you think it’s the ghost of the miserable older sister on the stairs?’ I asked incredulously.
‘I’m not sure what to believe,’ he replied. ‘I’m a doctor so I always try to find a scientific answer to everything but to be honest I have no idea why this keeps happening.’
‘What was her name?’ I asked.
‘Lydia, and apparently she starved herself to death after her sister had left home, so we asked the vicar to try to exorcise her ghost, and all was well for a while, but it started happening again, as soon as we began letting out the tower to young couples in the services.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked.
‘Maybe you could try talking to her?’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps you could tell her that as she is no longer trapped in her crippled body, she is free to go… to wherever spirits go or something like that.’
‘Well, it’s worth a try isn’t it?’ I said before heading back upstairs.
A few minutes later, I was sitting on a step halfway up the stairs, trying to explain to a ghost called Lydia why it was time for her to move on. It felt a bit odd talking out loud to thin air, but I gave it my best shot and told her that she could go wherever she liked; all she had to do was let go of her life in this house.
But when Duncan told me that ‘something’ was still blocking his way to the bathroom, it looked as though I would have to speak to Lydia again, so the next time I went for a bath, I sat down on the staircase and tried to talk to her, as if she was really there in human form rather than just a figment of my imagination. I told her that I understood her anguish but that it was all right for her to go now and that maybe she should try to look for her little sister, as she might be missing her now that she was also a spirit.
When I went up and down the stairs the following day, I felt no barrier, no pressure, and no presence, and thankfully neither did Duncan. I will never know what the ‘something’ really was but would like to think that if it was Lydia’s ghost, she was finally at peace now.
Duncan came home one evening looking upset and told me that he was being posted to Speke aerodrome, near Liverpool soon, where, as Commander Flying, he’d have to prepare several squadrons to fly to the Far East to fight the Japanese and then he would be sent to Trincomalee in Ceylon. Although, we both knew this day would come I had thought it wouldn’t be until later in the year. I was wrong.
‘I’ll have to go straight away for a week to get things sorted, darling,’ Duncan told me. ‘But while I’m there, I’ll try to find somewhere for us to live until I leave for the Far East.’
The week Duncan was away I filled my time by writing letters, knitting baby clothes and listening to the news. It sounded as though the war in Europe would soon be over, thank goodness. When I rang my parents, they told me we weren’t the only ones moving house, they were too. I knew they had been planning to move after the war was over to a lovely 16th century house, called Hilltop House, which also had its own home farm on the estate, but it looked as if my father must have decided to move earlier.
Duncan telephoned me every night to reassure me that everything was fine at Speke. He’d been to see an estate agent to look for a boarding house and been advised to look a few miles outside Liverpool, where the air was cleaner, and the prices lower.
One evening Duncan told me that he’d found the perfect home for us in a small seaside town called Freshfield, near Formby. He had organised a ground floor flat for us in a big house belonging to an elderly widow, called Mrs Briars, who let out part of her house to service personnel, in preference to having evacuees.
‘Mrs Briars told me that for a small extra fee her housekeeper would cook lunch for you every day, and for both of us on Sundays.’ Duncan explained that the
reason he’d chosen this particular flat was because he was concerned about me being on my own all day. ‘Mrs Briars absolutely adores babies apparently and hopes that it’s born before we have to leave!’ he chuckled.
After packing all our belongings and saying our goodbyes to the Treconners, we got on the ferry at Douglas and headed for the mainland. As we looked back at the Isle of Man, I told Duncan that I would miss everyone at Humble Farm and he said that he would miss the RAF friends he’d made at Andreas, but we both agreed that neither of us would miss the noisy crows!
When we got to the mainland we got into the car that Duncan had hired the week before and drove to our new home in Freshfield. The first thing I noticed was that the house was in a lovely tree-lined street, which looked very prosperous. There were a few tulips and daffodils about to flower in the tidy beds surrounding the front garden. When Mrs Wallace, the housekeeper, let us in, I had to conceal a smile as she looked a bit like Queen Victoria, bun and all.
Mrs Wallace took us to our flat where our landlady, Mrs Briars, was waiting to show us around the small, self-contained flat. To my delight, there was a big garden at the back of the house with fruit trees, a vegetable patch, and a washing area with a line and a big pole to hold it up.
‘You will need to make arrangements with a doctor who will advise you where a maternity house is situated just in case the baby comes early,’ Mrs Briars advised looking at my large tummy. ‘I can give you the name of mine, if you like, as he’s local.’ I thanked her and then asked if the shops in Freshfield were within walking distance.
‘Certainly,’ she replied, ‘and you should walk at least a mile a day and not sit around eating biscuits like some silly expectant mothers do.’
Duncan came to my defence and said that his wife had been doing war work right up to last week.