Party Talk
JOHN GASKIN WAS EDUCATED at the City of Oxford High School and Oxford University. In his early years, Gaskin worked for British Railways and as a banker before taking a lectureship at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a Fellow and held a professional chair in philosophy.
Since 1997 he has mainly written fiction: his most recent publications include a volume of poems and two collections of short stories, Tales of Twilight and Borderlands: The Dark Companion (2001) and The Long Retreating Day (2006). Forthcoming is the non-fiction A Traveller’s Guide to Classical Philosophy and a full-length tale of murder and haunting, A Doubt of Death. The author lives in a remote part of Northumberland, and doubts that he will ever be connected to the Internet.
“A year or two ago I was planting roses against the wall of a village church, and found strange things,” recalls the author. “A little later I was at a lunch in one of the larger houses overlooking a deserted railway, and a river . . .”
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.
– Coleridge
SHE HAD THE SWEET SMELL of faded roses that I associate with polite mortality in decay. I would have preferred talking to someone else at the Selwoods’ lunch party – after all, buffets are designed to shuffle sheep and goats – but she held me with deep-set eyes that might almost have been blind, or perhaps they were focused upon something beyond me or the house. I could not politely escape.
“You write ghost stories,” she stated in a gravelly whisper that seemed to require no movement in the mask-like tightness of her face.
“I have published a few – not real ghost stories – mere tales of the uncanny – the boundaries between chance and significance, agency and accident, eidetic imagery and actual perceptions.”
“But you do not believe in ghosts, ‘real’ or otherwise.”
“No. I have to confess I don’t. At least not as the intention of dead persons bringing about new events in the world. But I believe in the power of the living brain to influence directly other physical things in the world with results it does not expect or always understand – like the poltergeist effect.”
My analysis elicited no comment.
She was sitting at the high-backed end of an expensive Victorian chaise longue, somewhat over-clothed (as I thought) for a well-heated house, even if it was January in the Cheviots. I was aware of a large and vague wrap of material round her shoulders, a grey headscarf of dusty silk drawn tightly over her head, a garment that might have been a jacket or a coat, and a long dark skirt. I could not see her feet, but there were smears of mud on the carpet near her that appeared to have been carried in from the garden, not from the gravelled forecourt of the house where I had entered. There were black gloves over her evidently thin fingers. She gestured towards the far end of the chaise longue.
“Sit down.”
For a moment I had sight of her open mouth. “I have a tale you must hear,” she said.
I mumbled something about not wishing to keep her from the rest of the company. But the rest of the company was receding from us, intent upon itself or upon food in the adjacent dining room, and there was no one at hand to offer rescue. I settled at the far end of our chair in a position that made it easy not to look at her too intently. I must have grimaced.
“Yes, you’ll find it as hard as stone – horsehair and leather under silk tapestry. They always preferred show to comfort, even in Gosforth. It wouldn’t have been tolerated in my day. Everything was for comfort then - except for the bedrooms and the plumbing. I remember the chill of the bedrooms. I was eighteen. I’m accustomed to it now.”
She paused, as if looking back into a place to which I was not admitted. Then to my embarrassment I heard her say:
“You do not wish to hear me, Dr Smyth. But you have no choice now your glass is all but empty. Be still and I shall take you deeper than its emptiness.”
It was a ridiculous style of speaking, and I should have braced myself for a period of the sleepy half-attention in which one hopes to be able to say “yes”, “no”, “how nice” and “what a pity” in the right places – except that I was uncomfortable, it was cold near the window, and for some reason I was acutely wide awake. She was speaking again.
“I left school that spring and was supposed to be filling in time learning German before wintering at a finishing school in Switzerland where they only spoke French. I believe my father thought German might encourage me to listen to more Bach cantatas. German was not in fashion at the time and cantatas are some of the drearier manifestations of religion. I rebelled. The rebellion took the form of Thomas, the gardener’s boy who, unlike German irregular verbs, was beautiful and tempting. It was beyond my mother’s ability to come to terms with what she found us doing uncomfortably behind a hedge one afternoon.
“Tom was mercifully called up almost immediately afterwards. I was banished to the care of my mother’s aunt, a robust-minded woman of considerable experience of the world who had never married and lived in a lonely house several hundred miles away. My love was warm and strong. Home, as I discovered too late, was comfortable and safe.
‘‘Todburn Hall, as it was called before they rediscovered the old religious connection, was large and untenanted by youth or laughter. It seemed to me that my great aunt lived in a plush cocoon of velvet and chilly comfort. She tried to receive me well and be kind in the practical ways she understood, but I was vexed with life and gave her little help.”
The voice ceased, and I glanced sideways against the pale light of the window. The sun had disappeared behind winter clouds and the ribbon of river lay grey and cold a field or two away below the house. I could see only her vague silhouette against the blank glass. The spreading web of her clothes filled the end of our chair like a shadow.
But the voice had resumed – a penetrating whisper that was both clear and quiet, like listening inside the private world of some exquisitely engineered earphones.
“I was lonely, but it was not loneliness for people or company in general. It was the raw, torn-off space beside me that had been the fresh animal smell of Tom, the soft bloom of his skin, his talk, his touch, his strength. I walked by the river. I painted pictures in dark and fervent colours. I cried out in my heart. I was morose and withdrawn when my aunt tried to draw me out of myself. She knew more of life than I could then recognize or would ever know, but there were no words she could find to bridge the gap between us. Every generation thinks its own pain is unique. That is the glory and the pity of life.
“Her solution was to divert my attention with hearty activity. Having already drawn the garden and made a catalogue of its contents for her, checked the silver inventory, painted the view of the river in several unsuitable versions, and read to her a number of Oscar Wilde’s stories – the longest was missing from her collection. She later told me it was lost when she was in charge of the British Expeditionary Force’s hospital in Alexandria.
‘‘As I was saying, having completed all these tasks, I found myself one afternoon – about a month after my banishment – tidying a strip of garden against the south wall of the village church.
“A number of disused grave stones had been set close against the wall of the transept. They were old stones, much defaced, but they were close and I felt watched as I worked on my knees below them. A foolish fancy! It is the keeper of the gate that watches, not the gate.
“I was to prepare the ground and plant a dozen roses donated by my aunt – Rosa Mundi they were called. Yes, Rose of the Earth. Beauty from the dust. None survive now. Some did not survive my planting, particularly at the eastern end of the wall where the soil was mostly sand and fragments, like the ground at Xanthos. You do not know it . . .” Her voice faded away as if in exhaustion, and for a moment I hoped to see her fall asleep, but she resumed more strongly.
“Roses have deep roots, and I did not at first recognize what I was finding. The earth was dry, and in one area seamed with brown fibrous material like peat. It was in this that I dug up part of a bone. I was at the corner of the transept, where the wall turned back to join the chancel a few yards away. At the corner and just past it, one of the old headstones had been positioned leaving a few inches of dark space between its back and the church wall.
‘‘I threw the thing down there out of sight – and other bits that left no doubt at all concerning my finds. It was as I was disposing – with some distaste – of part of a broken bone with discoloured teeth still in place that a shadow moved on the wall in front of me. My back was to the path through the graveyard, and I turned sharply. I had heard no one approaching, and was feeling uneasy about concealing my finds behind someone else’s memorial. It was only a young clergyman who was watching me – probably the curate I thought. Those were the days when country livings were properly staffed.
‘‘ ‘What are you doing with those?’ he asked.
‘Planting them. My aunt, Miss Addison, is a member of the Select Vestry, and she has given them to the church. I’m doing it for her.’
‘‘ ‘No, I mean with the bones.’
‘‘ ‘I . . . well they’re only bits and pieces. I suppose they have been brought to the surface as other graves have been dug. I presumed that behind a gravestone would be a suitable place.’
‘‘ ‘Yes indeed,’ he said, before bending down to look, closer to me than appeared to be necessary. ‘You’ve finished planting?’
‘‘ ‘Yes. I’m tidying up.’
‘‘ ‘And this . . . brown stuff – it’s not like the rest of the earth.’
‘‘ ‘No. It’s a layer, about eighteen inches down. I hope the roots will reach it and gain some nourishment. Do you think I’ve gone too deep?’
‘‘ ‘I don’t know. Earth like that should not be near the surface. But your roses will certainly draw life from it.’
“He stood up and looked at the gravestone where I had concealed the bones. I had not been able to see the name earlier. The lettering was much eroded and it was the angle of the sun, now flush with the face of the stone, that showed up the antique lettering as shadows. The name was Elenor Ward. There was no mention of family or husband, merely the year of her birth and that she had died at the age of sixteen. She was commended to the mercy of God. I sensed before I was told the mercy she might have needed from men, and almost certainly did not get.
‘‘ ‘An old parishioner learnt her story when she was a child, and told me about her one day when I was standing here,’ he said. ‘She was . . .’ he hesitated, ‘to have a child by one of the village labourers, an unrepentant sinner. She wasn’t the first he’d got into trouble, but she was the last – at least in this place. He went away before the child was born. That’s her grave, not just a moved stone like the rest. She’s under there. But I’m sorry. This is morbid talk and I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Thornton, Peter Thornton. I’m assisting here for the summer.’
“I told him my name and that I was staying at Todburn Hall.
‘‘ ‘Good gracious!’ he exclaimed with what seemed to me contrived and certainly unnecessary concern. ‘That’s almost three miles away. Have you transport?’
“I explained that I had not. I preferred walking along the south side of the river and crossing at Pauperhaugh.
‘‘ ‘May I have the pleasure of walking with you a part of the way?’ he enquired. I could find no reason to refuse his company, and we strolled along pleasantly enough in the August sunshine. He showed me a short cut over the railway. It was probably forbidden, but trains were few and could be heard long before they came round the bend and could see anyone on the rails. As we walked, some dark worm of curiosity made me return to the story of Elenor Ward.
‘‘ ‘Did her child survive?’ I asked as if it were the most natural question in the world.
‘‘ ‘I was told not. None of the creature’s offspring survived. There was something wrong about him. They were stillborn. I suppose there are tales like that in most old parishes if one listens, tales embellished by time and the desire for justice in this world.’
‘‘ ‘And the father – what happened to him?’
‘‘ ‘As I said, time does not relate. My informed source was not that well-informed.’
“Then we spoke of other things. He was interested in hearing about Todburn Hall, having visited my aunt there on parochial business.
‘‘ ‘It’s a lovely reuse of Hanoverian ideas,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a little heavy in details, but so much better than that damp museum of a place the original family had down by the river. But it’s a pity, if I may say so without offence, that the main front faces north, and is so near to the road. It can gain very little light and only a lot of dust on that side.’
‘‘ ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but upstairs, like the ground floor, it’s almost entirely corridors and landings on the north – apart from maids’ bedrooms. I have a delightful room at the head of the stairs looking south. I can get the sun there all day if I want, and see it setting up the river every evening, and the morning train puffs away quite prettily in the distance round Pike Hill. It tells me the time if I’m not already up.’
‘‘ ‘Are you staying long?’ he asked as we reached the bridge.
“I said I did not know.
‘‘ ‘I hope I’ll see you again – at church on Sunday I mean.’ But that was not what he meant.
“The remainder of my walk along the gritty road to the house was not agreeable. For one thing I was tired and feeling the lack of Tom. Mr Thornton had reminded me of the need, not supplanted it. For another, there was something small down the side of my boot that irritated without being uncomfortable enough to justify undoing all the lacing.
“At the side door of the house I found what it was – a thin tooth, brown and stained. It was careless of me to have let it lodge there, and I should have thrown it away into the garden without a thought. But I didn’t. To do so felt somehow sacrilegious, at least a disrespect to the dead whom I had disturbed – as if they could care!
“Rather than leaving it on the window-sill of the porch where my aunt or a maid could see it and would ask questions, I took it to my bedroom and placed it on the chimney-piece intending to drop it back in the churchyard again on Sunday.
“That evening after supper I was sitting pretending to read. We were still enjoying the long sunsets of the north, and I did not think it cold, but Aunt May suddenly got up and closed the French windows.
‘‘ ‘There’s a chill in the place,’ she announced. ‘It’s the river air. I hope you didn’t catch cold walking home? The Rector much approves of the roses. Thank you for planting them. I phoned him about the Sunday School outing and he mentioned that his curate had met you. Such a nice young man. Pity about his father. I hope you didn’t find the planting too hard?’
‘‘ ‘Not at all. It was most interesting digging up all the bits of bone. If I’d gone on I could almost have made a man of him again.’ I don’t know if my levity was inadvertently or intentionally sarcastic, but my aunt bridled.
‘‘ ‘Oh dear! I’m so sorry. They will have been fragments from old graves that have been re-used. You left them alone? One isn’t supposed to touch things like that, although I don’t know why. We smashed up living men easily enough in the last war.’
‘‘ ‘I put them behind Elenor Ward’s headstone, and Mr Thornton said that would not be wrong.’
‘‘ ‘Elenor . . . ?’
‘‘ ‘Round the corner at the end of the rose bed. Mr Thornton said—’
‘‘ ‘Oh yes, of course. That unfortunate girl! They say she killed her lover you know.’
‘‘ ‘Mr Thornton didn’t tell me that.’
‘‘ ‘He wouldn’t. It was never proved and he’s too charitable to repeat old gossip. I should be, but I’m not. It’s more interesting than modern parish chit-chat. She and the others – there were others – had reason enough. He took his pleasure where he could get it without asking – a brutal, ugly creature by all accounts, more like a Cairo street dog than a man. He disappeared, God knows how or where, but she was blamed.
‘‘ ‘Will you take a cup of cocoa with me before we go to bed? I’m still cold, and cocoa always reminds me of nights in the desert with the wounded. I never saw a man die that really wanted to live you know, but I remember one that really wanted to die, and did, merely because his school friend had been killed beside him in the trenches near Gaza. Silly boy! Life is more than love.’
“I said I would take cocoa, partly to humour her, partly because I was becoming concerned about myself for a reason I need not mention, and I knew she normally put some mild sleeping draught in the cocoa for herself and, since it was the same making, I would gain the same benefit.
“My great-aunt was right about the chill. My bedroom had not retained the heat of the afternoon sun, and I didn’t know whether to open the window to let the summer air in, or keep it closed against the dampness of the river.
“I slipped out of my clothes and into a night-dress as quickly as possible. The tester bed was large and needed to be warmed by the heat of one’s own body. I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling through the space where the canopy ought to have been. The four posts were there, and the top rails joining them, but there was nothing more than a box-pleated frill of tapestry round the outside to look at, and a spider out of reach in the middle of the ceiling, motionless and waiting for a victim. I hoped it would not drop on to the bed.
“The room was cold, and I ought to have opened the window to freshen it, but I couldn’t summon up the will to get out of bed again. I thought about Tom. I worried about the future. I tossed about. I told myself I was tired. I insisted that I should sleep. But sleep would not come. Perhaps my aunt had been too sparing with whatever she used.
“The air felt oppressive, and there was no clarity in breathing: a cold stuffiness permeated everything. Eventually I sank into a state of semi-inertia, motionless in body and lethargic in mind. The last gleam of summer light faded away into the north leaving the walls dark, and my uncurtained windows visible only as pale oblongs hanging in space. There was no wind, and the sound of the river where it hurried over shallows was not strong enough to penetrate the room. I might have heard the harsh screech of an owl, or a curlew trilling down on the water meadows below the house, or far away on the moor, but there was nothing, and I lay in isolation from the world.
“I was not aware of falling asleep, but I must have done so, for I experienced again the walk from the churchyard with Mr Thornton. He was by my side talking foolishly. I walked with the helpless acceptance of a sleeper, except that I knew that if I could turn there would be something at my side I would not wish to see. But it was a dream. At the bridge, Mr Thornton turned away, but the other remained with me like a footstep scarcely heard in an empty street at night. The road wavered, bent upwards, and divided itself again into the windows of my room.
“I hear nothing now, but then I could sense even the smallest of creatures walking or scratching on wood or among leaves. Perhaps the spider wrought his business. But he had moved to a new place. Something was feeling along the woodwork beyond the foot of the bed – little pushings and scrapings which were not the living silence of one’s inner ear that never departs except with death.
“I was now thoroughly awake, but subject to the strangest delusion. Normally one moves without thought. I found myself thinking very intently about moving, but unable to put the matter to the test for fear of finding that I could not. The scraping had stopped, but I could detect behind the swishing of the blood in my ears some other disturbance. The blankets were becoming heavier. I do not understand how I failed to notice the beginning of that dreadful experience, but something was covering the bed. My feet were held down by a weight that was moving up my legs like a carpet of lead being slowly unrolled. I was on my back. The weight was on my belly, trapping my arms, creeping over my breasts, suffocating and sick. I wanted to shrink into the bed, to be lifted away, to die – anything to escape the horror of what was being done to me. But two things held me in being for later. One was an agonizing thrust of pain as if something had broken within me under the pressure. The other was a protracted flickering of lightening somewhere to the south, beyond the river, that lit up the whole room and let me see everything in it with the clarity and certainty of full light.
“My aunt could not have been asleep, for within seconds, even before the long undulations of thunder had caught up with its lightening, she was knocking urgently at the door. She came in before I could speak. I had fallen out of bed and knocked over a chair and small table in my struggles, but my first reaction was to look down to see if I was bleeding. Of course I was not, but embarrassment in my generation was almost as strong a motive as fear.
“She was a wise and practical woman behind the formal exterior, and must at once have seen that something far beyond thunder and bad dreams had moved me. She put her arm round me, and sat with me on the side of the bed. I was shivering uncontrollably and couldn’t tell her. To her everlasting credit she did not ask.
‘‘ ‘You’d better come back to my room for the night,’ she said after a few moments. ‘It’s got the biggest bed between Weldon and Windyhaugh, so you’ll be perfectly comfortable and safe. I’ll make tea, and you’ll take sugar in it whether you like it or not.’
“I went with her thankfully. She had an electric kettle and tea things in the room, and a little nursery light that burned in a corner. I lay close to her but did not sleep.
“With the return of light she took me back to the room to collect my clothes. It was cold, and she flung open the windows. The rain-washed freshness of grass and the honeyed smell of the earliest heather wafted in with all the sweetness of the world. Then she examined the room. It was as I had left it – bedclothes flung about and the table on its side.
‘‘ ‘What’s that disgusting object?’
“She was pointing at the chimney-piece. A funnel of dirty grey, like rotting lace, was woven into the angle between shelf and wall. Shrunk into it, but still moving, was the tip of an obscene pink worm. I thought I was about to faint; instead I was violently and horribly sick.
‘‘ ‘What’s the matter, child? You must tell me. Something happened here.’
“I told her what I could, what I had felt. But I could never bring myself to tell any other living person what I had seen. I do not know how much she believed to be real, but it was enough. Some things cannot be spoken. She found the tooth beside the pillow. I explained how I had brought it into the room, and where I had left it.
‘‘ ‘I’ll take it away,’ she said. ‘It will go back where it belongs.’
“On the Sunday she pushed it into the ground where, as she said, Elenor or another, must have hidden the body. ‘Quite
clever,’ she observed judiciously, ‘like hiding a book on a bookshelf.’
“Before Daniel, my aunt’s gardener, could be summoned to remove the web, its tenant had disappeared. The maids took my things to a small room next to Aunt May’s where later my worst fears became manifest. She was very matter-of-fact and invented an acceptable story. My father was already away in France and died in an accident without ever being told. My mother did not wish to know. I never went to Switzerland. I heard Tom was one of the few killed in the big German push across the Ardennes. His baby was stillborn a month late – or so they insisted. I did not see him. The pain was like being torn apart by stones. I never wanted to recover. I took my departure by the railway as soon as I was well enough to move. It was easy enough in the end. The darkness was deep and cold. Sometimes I see the man who must hear my story. When his time is near he has no choice.”
“My dear Harry, what are you doing? You look quite stunned! They’ve all been at the food, and you haven’t had anything yet.”
Vivienne Selwood almost rushed at me, and I stood up in some confusion with my back to the window.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been attending. I’ve been listening to . . . to . . .” I made a helpless gesture, and turned to indicate my companion in the hope of a belated introduction, but she had slipped away. “To the old lady who was sitting here. I didn’t get her name.”
“Old lady? What old lady? Really, you men do exaggerate! What was she like?”
“Well . . . very old. A dry, grey face, shrunken mouth and deep-set eyes, dark clothes and black gloves. She seemed to have no—”
I broke off, aware that what I was saying might give offence if I was describing a relative or old friend of the Selwoods’.
Vivienne laughed. She was very beautiful, and when she laughed her fair Nordic features had a power that negated argument. “I don’t think any of my guests would like to hear themselves described like that!”
She paused.
“But there may be someone living up near the old railway who fits your description. Dad told me he’d spoken to someone like that. It was last year; but he died in November, so we can’t really ask him now can we?” She laughed again. “Tony and I don’t know all the locals yet, but if she came here she was certainly an uninvited guest. You didn’t get her name?”
“No. She mentioned a clergyman – Thornton – and I think she said her aunt or grand aunt’s name was Addison.”
“There are dozens of Harrisons in this area. I believe one lived here before the Malings and there was some sort of tragedy. But do come and have some food before the farming contingent demolishes everything. Tony has some rare whisky he wants you to try, and the other Scots are dying to sound you out about the bank’s share price.”
Before following her I looked across the valley at the still perceptible line of the abandoned railway. It curved into an oblivion of hills to the south. There was no one to be seen, and the mud on the carpet had already turned to dust.