The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) (47 page)

This inscription struck me as laconic and queerly worded, so like, and yet so different from, the familiar –
Requiescat in pace
. Could those who buried the dead girl find nothing to praise? Was it too great a strain on their capacity for hope to associate her with peace? Or was the rather piteous supplication “God grante that she lye stille” more for themselves than for her they consigned to the grave?

Idly I wondered whether I should ever know Margaret Clewer well enough to question her about this undesignated ancestress.

It was now time to run from the dead to the living, so I moved towards the home of the Clewers. As I approached the iron-studded door, the air was heavily sweet with the scent of the magnolias. These, as well as wisteria and clematis, clustered thickly over the front of the building, but to my fancy the great house seemed to wear them with, as it were, a shrug of indifference, as though it knew nothing could really enhance its own beauty. The gentle austerity of that beauty humbled me again, and it was with a sense of intrusion that I pulled the bell and heard the responding clang and the bark of an aroused dog.

I don’t know what I had subconsciously expected, but the smiling beribboned parlour maid who opened the door seemed incongruous.

“Dr Stone?” she asked. “Miss Clewer is expecting you.”

Obedient to her “Come this way, please”, I followed her through a large hall in which young people were playing ping-pong and noisy games of cards; the blare of a gramophone triumphing over the confusion of sounds. A heavy door through which we passed cut us off into complete cool silence, and a short flight of shiny black oak stairs, splendidly solid to the tread, led us to the door of my patient’s room. The strong evening sun streamed in and it was through a dance of dazzling motes that I first saw her.

She lay on a low wide bed drawn close up to the window, and a Golden Retriever luxuriously sprawled over the flower-embroidered coverlet that was spread across her feet.

I cannot remember how much I took in at first sight: I know the window-shelf and the tables were then, as always, crowded with flowers and great branches cut from trees, and the bed strewn with books, writing materials and needlework.

The shock with which I saw her was not without an element of recognition. Vaguely I had always expected that one day I should see a woman far more lovely than all others. Her hair gleamed in the sunshine, and her translucent face smiled up at me. I thought I should never see anything more beautiful, but I did the next time I saw her, for the variety of her beauty was unending. Changing as the sea changes with the sky, her colouring had its special response to every tone of light, just as her expression varied with every shade of feeling. It was a fluid, unset loveliness, suggesting far more than it asserted.

After this first sight of her, I was often to wonder how I should describe her, supposing I had to reduce my impressions to the scope of words. What, for instance, should I set down if I were asked to fill in her passport? Would she be allowed across frontiers if I described her mouth as normal? Normal! When it was never the same for two consecutive seconds. As for her eyes. I should not even have known what colour to call them. ‘‘Eyes too mysterious to be blue, Too lovely to be grey,’’ would not help. Many more than two colours met in those pools of light.

As I entered the room I was to know so well, two canaries in a large golden cage were singing loudly, and l could scarcely hear Margaret Clewer’s welcoming words. In her lovely, lilting, but, to my professional ear, definitely nervous voice, before she began to speak of herself, she asked me many questions as to the comfort of my house and my impressions of my new practice. I had almost forgotten in what capacity I was there when she said:

“I’ve been very silly and strained my heart, I think, over-rowing myself. I’ve got a craze for very violent exercise. Anyhow, I feel distinctly queer, and my heart seems to beat everywhere where it shouldn’t be. And so,” she added in her way – how well I was to know that way – of speaking in inverted commas, “my friends insist on my taking medical advice, so perhaps you had better see if my heart is in the right place.”

It did not take me long to discover that her heart was severely strained. There was also a very considerable degree of anaemia, and I prescribed three weeks’ rest in bed.

My verdict was received with equanimity.

“If I can’t row or ride, I’d just as soon remain in the horizontal,” she answered gaily. “I shall be quite happy with books and food and friends, and with my beautiful Sheen. Isn’t he lovely?” she added, turning the Retriever’s golden head towards me.

After paying homage, I asked if there were anyone to whom she would like me to speak about her health.

“Oh, no! I haven’t any relations. I haven’t anyone to edit me. I’m quite alone.”

“But there seem so many people in the house.”

“Oh, yes, but they’re just visitors. When I said alone, I meant independent. I couldn’t bear to be literally alone.”

The last words were said with a vehemence that rather surprised me. Her room, with its multitude of books, a violin and several unfinished sketches, seemed to bear evidence of such varied resources, and I had already diagnosed her as a person who would be very good company to herself.

As I shook hands with her, saying I would return the day after tomorrow, I noticed that, for all their brightness, the responsive eyes held a slightly, not exactly hurt, but shall I say initiated expression. In spite of the nervous voice, my first impression had been that here, if anywhere, was one who had not felt the touch of earthly years. This superficial impression was already modified. Had life already bared its teeth at this lovely girl?

“I saw you groping about among the graves,” she said, as I reluctantly turned towards the door. “Are you interested in the rude forefathers, in worms and graves and epitaphs?”

“Well, at any rate, I love epitaphs,” I replied, “and this is a peculiarly picturesque churchyard. You, yourself, must surely have a weakness for it, as you occupy a room so immediately overlooking it.”

“Yes, I am close, aren’t I?” She laughed. “No rude forefather could turn in his grave without my hearing him. But this happens to be the room I like best in the house. There isn’t any harm in being so close, is there?”

“I can’t say I consider it physically unhealthy,” I answered professionally.

She smiled her swift, slanting smile. “Are you afraid of my being troubled by ghosts, Dr Stone? Well, if it’s a nervous patient you want, I’ll see what I can do to oblige you; but first, please put my heart back into the right place.”

I told her I would do my best and return the day after tomorrow to report progress.

“Au revoir, then,” she said. “And meanwhile, I shall look out for you in the churchyard, you ghoul! You ought to come and see it by night. You can’t think how lovely it is in the moonlight, with a great white owl swooping and brushing against the tombstones.”

As I turned my back on the beautiful house I found myself walking with a light step. For the first time since I came to this friendless new country a fellow creature had made me aware of myself as a human being. Till then I had been merely the new doctor.

I walked back through the village with a sense of enhanced life. There was now something to which I looked forward.

I visited my new patient three times during the next week. Finding her physical condition very little improved, I decided that some electric treatment would be beneficial, and as I had a portable apparatus, I was able to give the applications in her own room. A long course of this treatment involved many visits, which were the occasion for the most enchanting talks I have ever known. I look back on these summer weeks as the happiest of my life. Day after day I drifted on a stream of delight. She was a magical companion, to me a real Pentecost. Her quicksilver sympathy, the lightning gaiety of her response, her dancing voice, and a way she had of appreciatively echoing one’s last words: I suppose it was all these qualities that made me for the first time in my life feel so delightfully articulate. There can never have been a more receptive and therefore stimulating mind. It was as though she understood my thoughts almost before I had decided to put them into words.

There seemed no limitations to her understanding and sympathy. Her supple mind rejected nothing, and her iridescent gaiety was like running water in sunshine, continually flinging off a lovely spray of laughter. How, I wondered, had she found time to read so widely, so richly, to store her astonishing verbal memory? Of herself she spoke very little in any autobiographical way. After weeks of frequent conversation I knew nothing of the events of her life, of her dead parents or of her friends; but almost from the very beginning she showed a tendency to discuss herself psychologically, to expatiate on her character, or rather, on what – to my amusement – she called her lack of character.

I suppose it was about six weeks after my first visit that our conversation took a turn which for me sounded the first faint note of disquiet.

In her usual rather unconcerned voice she said:

“It must be fun to be someone very definite and positive. You can’t think how uncomfortable it is to have no personality.”

I laughed. “Are you suggesting that you have none? I know of no one of whose personality one is more quickly and lastingly aware.”

I’m not fishing,” she said, with the slightest tinge of impatience. “I don’t mean that I’m too insignificant and colourless to make any impression on other people. I know I’m quite nice to look at; I’m not stupid, and I’ve plenty of responsiveness. I don’t know how to explain, but what I mean is that there is no real permanent essential Me. Of course, I’ve got plenty of facets, and your presence conjures up a certain
Me
– not too bad a one. Thank you for the self with which you temporarily endow me. But I don’t feel any sense of being a separate entity. No – I can’t find any essential core of personality, nothing which is equally there when I’m alone, with you or with other people . . . There’s no real continuity. I’m so hopelessly fluid!”

“But, if I may say so,” I broke in, “it is that very fluidity of your mind that makes it such a treat to talk to you. We were discussing Keats’s letters the other day. Do you remember where he writes: ‘The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts – not a select party’? I think—”

“No, no. I don’t mean that sort of thing at all. You entirely misunderstand me!” she interrupted, and something in her face made me realize the subject was serious to her and that the characteristic lightness of her manner hid real concern.

“I’m not worrying about my qualifications as a companion,” she continued. “You see the difficulty is that I can’t talk about myself in a serious voice. I always sound so flippant. But my flippancy is a reflex. I should like to be able to talk to you about myself really melodramatically.”

“Please do,” I urged. “I’m feeling quite serious.”

“I don’t expect I’ll be able to, but let me try,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bore, but I assure you it really is nightmarish – this sense of having no identity. You remember the very first time I saw you, I told you that I couldn’t bear to be alone?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that is because other people seem to a certain extent to hold me together – to, as it were, frame me by, I suppose, their conceptions of me. But often when I’m quite by myself I feel like – like water released from a broken bowl – something just spilling away – to be reabsorbed back into nothingness. It’s almost like a temporary dissolution – a lapsing away. Yes, lapsing is the word – lapsing back into nothingness.”

“I don’t think there is anything so very unusual about your sensations,” I said, I fear rather pompously. “I think we all of us at times feel something very like what you describe. It’s a mild sort of neurosis, and it’s in the nature of every neurosis to give the sufferer a sense of singularity.”

“I daresay,” she said, and went on as though making up her mind to take a fence. “But then, you see, I have twice had a strangely disturbing experience which has made those sensations I try to describe become a real obsession.”

“Experiences?” I echoed. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Don’t expect a ghost story. I should hate to raise false hopes. It will be difficult to describe these experiences, and I don’t expect you’ll believe me, but they are true. Anyhow, don’t interrupt. Just let me Ancient-Mariner you. The first time was when I was very young – scarcely grown up. Late one evening I was resting on my bed. I was very tired and consequently especially depressed by that curiously disagreeable feeling I have tried to describe – the ‘no-identity’ feeling. Like any other trouble it is apt to be worse when I am over-tired.

“It was dark and my window, against which the jasmine tapped, was on the ground floor. I slept downstairs then. Suddenly I had that sense we all know of being impelled to look in a certain direction. I turned and saw a dim face pressed against the window – peering through at me. I wasn’t exactly frightened – just rather detachedly aware that my heart was thumping. Just then the moon slipped free from a fleece of clouds, so that I could see the face quite clearly. It was my own face!”

“What?” I broke in.

“Yes, Dr Stone. Of that there was no doubt. One knows one’s own face. My face was gazing at me – very intently, very wistfully – and, as I stared, whatever it was that was outside shook its head very sadly. I hoped I was dreaming. I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t keep them shut, and when I looked up again it was still there, and now it wrung its hands, oh! so mournfully.