Dial a Ghost (9 page)

‘No. But they might run a school.’

The idea of scratching and strangling and smothering a whole school full of children cheered Sabrina up a little.

‘Well, all right. But I won’t stay for long.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pelham. ‘I’m all set to make those women in the agency wish they’d never been born!’

A new and happy life now began for Oliver.

He woke to find Adopta sitting on the bottom of his bed and heard the other ghosts splashing about in the bathroom and thought how wonderful it was not to be alone.

They all came down to breakfast and made themselves invisible while Miss Match brought him toast and cereal. Just as she was putting it down, the budgie said, ‘Open wide’, and she jiggled her hearing aid and said, ‘I’m not going to open wine at this time of day. Wine is for supper.’

‘I’ll bet she can’t see us,’ said Adopta – and before Aunt Maud could stop her, she flitted off into the kitchen.

‘I told you,’ she said when she came back. ‘I leaned over her and said ‘‘Boo’’ and she just went on reading some silly story in the paper. We’ve got nothing to worry about there.’

But in any case, Miss Match was only supposed to leave out Oliver’s meals. The rest of the day she spent in the village with her cousin. Fulton’s plan to leave Oliver quite alone was turning out to be the best thing that could have happened.

The ghosts simply loved the house.

‘Oh, my dear boy,’ said Aunt Maud. ‘These cellars... the fungus... the damp! It’s a bit strong for me, but just think what poor Mr Hofmann would make of this place. How happy he would be!’

‘Who’s Mr Hofmann?’ Oliver wanted to know.

‘He’s Grandma’s boyfriend,’ said Adopta. ‘He lives in a bunion shop and he’s got every ghost disease in the book, but he’s terribly clever.’

The ghosts liked the kitchens and they liked the drawing room with its claw-footed chairs, and the faceless statues in the library. They liked the hall with its huge fireplace which you could look up and see the sky, and they absolutely loved the library with its rows of mouldering books.

‘I bet there are ghost bookworms in those books,’ said Adopta. ‘I bet they’re
full
of them. Can I look later?’

‘Of course. I wish you wouldn’t
ask
, Adopta.’ Oliver sounded quite cross. ‘If Helton’s mine then what’s mine is yours and that’s the end of the matter.’

If they liked the house, the ghosts liked the gardens even more. The weeping ash tree with its drooping branches, the rook droppings on the stone benches, the yew trees cut into gloomy shapes . . .

‘It’s so romantic, dear boy, so cool!’ said Aunt Maud. ‘You can’t imagine what it is like to be here after the knicker shop.’

When they reached the lake they found Eric staring down into the water.

‘There is someone in there,’ he said. ‘Someone like me. Someone who has suffered.’

‘There’s supposed to be a drowned farmer,’ said Oliver. He had been afraid of the body trapped in the mud, but already the ghosts were making him think of things differently.

Eric nodded. ‘He died for love,’ he said. ‘I can tell because of Cynthia Harbottle. She wouldn’t go out with me even after I’d bought her a box of liquorice allsorts. It took all my sweet ration and she didn’t even say thank you. And this man’s just the same. People who have been hurt by women can recognize each other.’

‘Can you call him up, dear?’ said Aunt Maud. She was thinking how nice it would be if Eric could talk to someone else about being unhappily in love. When he talked to
her
about Cynthia Harbottle she got terribly cross. Mothers always get cross when people do not love their sons, and Cynthia had been a nasty piece of work, wiggling her behind at American soldiers and smearing herself with lipstick.

‘He doesn’t want to; not now,’ said Eric – and Oliver couldn’t help being glad. He didn’t feel quite ready yet for a drowned farmer covered in mud.

But the farmer reminded Aunt Maud of something she wanted to ask Oliver.

‘Now please tell me honestly,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘Don’t be polite. But... how would you feel if... if someone came here, someone
appeared
, who was only wearing a flag? Would she be welcome?’

Oliver was quite hurt that she should ask such a question. ‘Of
course
she would be welcome. Of course. A ghost wrapped in a flag would be... inspiring.’

After lunch (which was a sandwich for Oliver in the garden) the other ghosts said they would rest, and Oliver and Adopta climbed up the hill to look at the place where the two hikers had frozen to death.

‘I can’t
feel
them,’ said Adopta. ‘I’m afraid they may just not have become ghosts. Perhaps it’s as well if they had bad frostbite. But I think you ought to ask your factor to put up a proper cross or a little monument. It seems rude not to have anything.’

‘I don’t know if I’ve got a factor. What is it exactly?’

‘It’s a person who runs an estate and tells the shepherds and farmers what to do.’

‘How do you know about factors? I mean you wouldn’t have had them in the knicker shop or at Resthaven.’

Adopta shrugged. ‘Sometimes I know things that I don’t know how I know them, but please don’t start on again about how I’m really someone else because I’m a Wilkinson and I’m me.’ She glanced round at the wide view, the heather-covered hills, the river. ‘Pernilla would love this. She feels so trapped in the shopping arcade.’

‘Who’s Pernilla?’

‘She’s a Swedish ghost – she came to look after some children and learn English, and some idiot in a Jaguar drove her home from a party and crashed.’

‘Why don’t you ask her to stay? And Mr Hofmann too. Anyone you want, there’s lots of room here.’

‘Could we? Oh Oliver, that would be great. Only we’d better do it properly through the agency or—’ She broke off and pointed excitedly at a field below them. ‘Look! Sheep! Hundreds of them. Come on!’

But when they reached the field every single sheep in it looked fleecy and cheerful and well.

‘I could kill one for you, I suppose,’ said Oliver. ‘But I don’t eat mutton and—’

‘No, that would be silly. It might not become a ghost and then it would be a complete waste of time. You can never tell, you see. You can get half a dozen animals that just lie there dead as dodos and absolutely nothing happens, and then one suddenly rises up, and you’re away!’

The day ended with a great honour for Oliver. He was invited to the Evening Calling for Trixie. They did it near the sundial and everybody linked hands and bowed to the north and the south and the east and the west and told Trixie that they wanted her and needed her and would she please, please come.

When it was over, Oliver asked if there was anything that Trixie had particularly liked.

‘Something that we could put out for her, perhaps?’ he said.

Grandma and Aunt Maud looked at each other. ‘Bananas,’ said Grandma. ‘She’d have sold her soul for a banana. All of us would in the war.’

So Oliver ran back into the house and fetched a banana – a long and very yellow one – which they put on the sundial where it could be seen easily from above, and Aunt Maud was so happy that she rose into the air and did the dance that she and Trixie had done when they were Sugar Puffs – a thing she hadn’t done for years.

Oliver fairly skipped along the corridor that night on his way to bed – and when he got to his room he had a surprise. While he was out with Adopta the others had done out his room. The man stuck full of arrows was gone, and so was the deer having its throat cut, and the rearing horses. Instead Aunt Maud had brought in some dried grasses and put them in a vase, and they’d hung up a cheerful picture of a garden they’d found in one of the other rooms.

And Oliver’s inhaler was once again beside his bed.

‘You won’t need it,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘The air here is excellent and anyway asthma’s something you grow out of. But it might as well be there.’

Although ghosts usually haunt by night and sleep by day, they had decided to keep the same hours as Oliver, but when everyone had settled down, Oliver still sat up in bed with his arms round his knees.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Adopta sleepily.

‘I was thinking about how much there is to find out. About ghosts and ectoplasm and why some people become them and others not, and why some people see them and others don’t . . . I mean, if you eat carrots you’re supposed to see better in the dark, so perhaps there’s a sort of carrot for making you see ghosts? And if you really knew about ectoplasm, maybe you could change the things that ghosts are wearing. I bet it’s the flag that’s bothering your Aunt Trixie. Imagine if you called her and she could immediately put on a raincoat or a dressing gown. And wouldn’t it be marvellous if people could
decide
whether to become ghosts or not.’

‘And decide for their pets,’ said Addie. It was always the animals that mattered to her.

Oliver nodded. ‘I tell you, someone ought to start a proper research institute to study all this.’

‘Not one of those places where they try to find out whether we exist or not. Ghost hunting and all that. Tying black thread over the staircase and sellotaping the windows. So rude.’

‘No. This would be ghosts and people working side by side.’

Oliver’s mind was racing. He hadn’t wanted Helton, he was going to try and give it away. But now...Why not a research institute here – there was room enough.

‘I wonder if I’ve got any money?’ he said. ‘I mean serious money for labs and people to work in them.’

‘Why don’t you write to your guardian? He seems a nice man, exploring places and trying to find the golden toads. I expect the lawyer’s got his address.’

Oliver thought this was a good idea, but thinking about letters made him remember the one thing that still troubled him.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Addie, seeing the change in his face.

Oliver shrugged. ‘It’s silly to fuss when everything’s turning out so well, but I had these friends in the Home...’

He explained what had happened and Addie frowned. ‘Was it always Fulton who posted the letters for you?’

‘Yes. He used to take everything down to Helton Post Office. He said it would be safer.’

‘Hm.’ Addie had never liked the sound of Fulton. ‘Why don’t you try once more when you write to your guardian and we’ll take the letters to the box at Troughton?’

Oliver nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That sounds sensible. That’s what we’ll do.’

The ghosts whom the kind nuns had adopted had been at Larchford Abbey for several days and the nuns were just a little bit disappointed and hurt. They knew that people needed time to settle in to a new place and they had made it clear to the ladies at the agency that they wouldn’t bother the ghosts and that they didn’t expect the ghosts to bother them.

All the same, a little friendliness would have been nice. They had looked forward to a glimpse of the child in her nightdress playing merrily in the bell tower or the old lady floating about in the rose garden, and having heard that Mr Wilkinson was fond of fishing, they had half expected to see him by the river, casting with a fly or tickling trout.

But there had been absolutely no sign of the family. Not one wisp of ectoplasm in the orchard, not a trace of a voice singing to itself in the dusk.

The ghosts were
there
all right. Oh yes, they were definitely there. Blood had oozed through the old abbey floor and they had found several sets of footprints with three toes. From time to time, too, there came the smell of frying meat – rather
strong
meat which did not seem to be absolutely fresh – and now and again they heard a gurgling moan, but no one had come forward to introduce themselves or to thank the nuns for giving them a home.

‘One must do good without thinking of the reward. One should not need to be thanked,’ said Mother Margaret.

‘Do you think we ought to write to the agency?’ asked Sister Phyllida. ‘I mean, there may be some little thing they are too shy to mention. Something we could put right?’

But Mother Margaret thought they had better wait a bit longer. ‘After all, we don’t know very much about... ectoplasm and that sort of thing. Perhaps there are changes when people travel, which have to right themselves.’

‘Like air sickness. Upset stomachs and so on. Yes, that could explain a lot. Some of those bloodstains do look a little disordered,’ said Sister Phyllida, who was the one that had been a nurse.

It wasn’t just the Shriekers’ bloodstains that were out of order. The Shriekers themselves were in a ghastly state. They were lying on the floor and kicking the air with their mouldering feet, and every time they thrust their legs out, they bellowed and whooped and howled and squealed.

They had remembered that it was the anniversary of their Great Sorrow. On an April day just like this one, the terrible thing had happened which had driven them mad with guilt and turned them into the ghastly, tortured and revolting creatures they now were.

‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ moaned Sabrina. ‘How could we have done it? How could we have been so cruel to our flesh and blood?’