The Silence of Ghosts (25 page)

‘Pauline Williams. May I help you?’

I repeated my name and asked to be put through.

There was a longer pause. When she spoke again, her voice sounded wrong.

‘Mr Lancaster, em, are you sitting down?’

‘Well, yes. What’s wrong?’

‘Are you in London, sir?’

‘No, I’m up at Ullswater. We have a house up here.’

‘That’s nice, sir, I’m pleased to hear it. Sir, I have some very bad news for you.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said, ‘I was there when she died. I took her to the church, and we’ll try to bury her on Sunday.’

Another pause.

‘Do you mean your mother, sir? Were you in London last night, is that what you mean, sir?’

‘Of course not my mother. My sister Octavia. I’m ringing to let my father know what happened.’

‘I don’t understand, sir. Do you mean your sister was in the flat last night?’

‘In the flat?’

‘When the bomb fell, sir. Didn’t you know? There was a raid last night, and some parts of Bloomsbury were hit. The block your flat was in took a direct hit. Sir, your parents were at home at the time. They’re both dead, sir, I’m terribly sorry. And you say your sister is dead as well?’

I put down the phone. Raverat could sense that something was wrong. He came by my side and let me recover. It was not that I loved my father or my mother; but coming so soon on top of Octavia’s death, it seemed too much of a bereavement. They would not be missed, not by me, at least, and probably not by many others, but their deaths brought an era to an end and opened up new possibilities and new responsibilities. I wished Octavia were here with me to share them.

We went back to Rose’s cottage, where my news was heard with disbelief. Only Rose really knew how much of a weight had been lifted from me. I could be honest with her, but with the others I put on a brave face.

That night, more snow fell stubbornly like feathers from the wings of swans. Without Octavia, the world seemed empty and quieter. The snow fell and our world was deadened. Moonlight and starlight had left us. There would be little sunshine tomorrow. I wept at times for Octavia, and Rose put her arms around me, but I found no sorrow in me for my parents.

‘It’s not over yet,’ I said. Rose nodded.

‘Do you think they killed her?’

‘Who?’

‘The other children. They killed little Jimmy Ashton. I don’t think they can be trusted.’

The snow fell. We could not bear to keep the curtains shut
and we would not extinguish a single lamp. But no planes came over that night. The world was snow and ice and silence.

Sunday, 12 January

When I took my last look, snow was falling flake by flake on Octavia’s grave. It had been the very devil to dig in the first place. The sexton and his mate had been forced to burn fires to melt the frozen ground, and they had to go down several inches before reaching loose soil. Mrs Mather, who took the money for the steamers when they were running and served cream teas for the passengers an hour before embarkation, had found a lovely white dress that had belonged to her daughter Matilda, who had died at the same age as Octavia. Rose dressed her in this, and someone found a ring of silk flowers to place across her forehead. Tom Arberry and his son had carved a little coffin for her, and polished it and painted it white.

The little church was full for the burial service. Oliver read from the
Book of Common Prayer
, and though I was not touched as a believer, the words sank deeply. He read from Psalm Thirty-nine.

LORD
,
let me know mine end
,
and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live
.

Behold
,
thou hast made my days as it were a span long
,
and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee . . 
.

For man walketh in a vain shadow
,
and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches
,
and cannot tell who shall gather them . . 
.

For I am a stranger with thee
,
and a sojourner
,
as all my fathers were
.

O spare me a little
,
that I may recover my strength
,
before I go hence
,
and be no more seen
.

Throughout the service Rose held my hand. Everyone else I knew was there, Rose’s mother Dr Raverat. Oliver Braithwaite and Cecil, who had moved across to the Lakeside Inn. We had taken a circuitous route to get to the church. Old Jeremiah Timms, who runs a little coach between Pooley Bridge and more far-flung parts like Keswick and Penrith, heard of our predicament and offered us his services free of charge. He said he would drive us down the opposite bank, where the road is much better, and take us just a bit further than Aira Force. After that, we could walk across the lake – which froze over last night – and back on the eastern shore, we could walk to the church. I found the going very hard, but I was determined not to make a fuss. Rose stayed close beside me the whole way and whispered words of encouragement. I thought the ice would break and hurl us into the freezing water, but it did not.

It was a long journey back, but we were there well before dark. I went with Cecil to his hotel room. Waiting for me was a table full of papers.

‘We need to talk, sir,’ he said. ‘But first, I need to give you my condolences, again, on your father’s death. Well . . . I think you know better than most that he could be a difficult man. He was often a tyrant to work for, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘Not at all. Fire away.’

‘But he ran the business well and kept us all employed. Lancaster’s is still the finest port house in London. But now he’s gone, all the employees will be wondering what’s to happen next. Especially given the war and shipping and all that. Is it too early to ask if you have any plans, sir?’

‘For the business, you mean?’

‘Well, yes sir, if you don’t mind my asking, sir.’

‘Cecil, stop calling me “sir”. I answer to Dominic still like anybody else. The answer to your question is that I don’t know for sure. Not yet. I’m planning to get married, and I have to count that in. But there’s a very good chance I’ll take on the directorship. It’s a family business, as you know better than anyone, and I think it would be a shame to break with that tradition. So, for the moment, I’ll say it’s very likely.’

He smiled with satisfaction, but I wasn’t yet prepared to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I still had things to do. Scores to settle. Ghosts to lay.

‘You will need to get to London as soon as possible, sir. Sorry, Dominic. The business will be in trouble if it’s left with no one at the helm.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, thank you. Now, what else do you have for me?’

He took me through his research slowly. William had built Hallinhag House, using stone from the quarry in nearby Shap and slate from Stockdalebank Quarry in Longsleddale. And when it was built the ships started to arrive.

‘Some sailed as far as Barrow-in-Furness,’ he said, ‘but most docked in London.’

‘Bringing port.’

He shook his head.

‘Yes and no. Port shipments then were not very large. Sometimes the ships brought slaves from Portugal, slaves from their colonies in Africa and from Macau in China. That trade continued till the eighteen hundreds. The Chinese were all children. Most were sent on to the Americas, until 1761, when the Portuguese banned the slave trade. But in Brazil the trade continued until the 1880s at the rate of sixty thousand slaves a year.
I think our children were in close contact with slaves, here or back in Portugal, or both. Here’s a letter from William that mentions them:

The children play a game they call Maculell. It is a dance performed with sticks
,
that bears great similarity to our country Morris dances
,
but the children say they were taught this dance for entertainment by a black slave they knew in Portugal. And they do not always dance themselves
,
but use fome rag dolls with their features painted black
,
like they were black fellows from the Africas or the Brazils. They hold the dolls and speak to them as they speak to thofe others
,
and fometimes they do paint their own faces
,
as it were in a masque. And then they do sometimes dance on their bare feet
,
and the sound of their
bal mafqué,
with the clacking of sticks and the beating of their feet comes down from the attic loud enough to awaken the dead
.

‘Sir, the dance is called
maculelé
. It is still danced by the descendants of the African slaves in Brazil.’

‘Dominic, please.’

I told him about the dancing children I had seen in the house, their stamping feet and twirling and beating of sticks.

‘And is that it?’ I asked.

‘Not quite. You say you smelled something like bodies of the dead in Hallinhag House?

‘Yes, on one evening in particular.’

‘Let me explain to you what they brought in with the port. William imported corpses, mostly nailed up inside casks that had been used for port. No customs inspector ever asked a question. The corpses came from contacts of his around Europe, from France, Portugal and Spain, and they were transported to Ullswater. I believe they were kept in the attic, and that
the children lived with them. Some were mummified, others trussed up in burlap sacks. Others came from friends of William’s in Britain.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, with horror. ‘Why would anyone collect corpses? I just can’t see the point of it.’

‘They were for the children. The children spoke to them and asked questions, and the corpses answered, answers from beyond the grave. It was a power the children had or had been taught. They were “ghost talkers”: that’s what William calls them. His Portuguese correspondents call them much the same:
faladores de fantasmas
. The dead would speak, and those who had reason would write down questions for the children. “Where is the gold, where are my mother’s jewels, where did you put your last will and testament?” What’s more, it worked. Secrets were revealed that could have come from no other source. Some of William’s circle wanted more, of course. The mysteries of the universe, the secrets of the human soul. They had disinterred bodies belonging to philosophers, poets and even saints. Either the children couldn’t handle that sort of material or ghosts know no more than we do and refused to answer.’

‘And you think these mummies were kept in an attic at Hallinhag.’

‘There’s no doubt about the attic, Dominic, and there’s no doubt that it was boxed in at some point. We just have to use the architect’s drawings I found earlier and work out how to get at the attic.’

‘We’ll start in the morning,’ I said. ‘I’ll find some builders.’

Cecil shook his head.

‘Not a good idea. If they find anything, word of it will be round Howtown and Pooley Bridge in an hour, and in Keswick and Penrith in another, and before you know it the local press will force their way in with cameras and sharp-nosed reporters.
Then it will be on the radio. Dominic, while the war is on, the press are desperate for domestic stories. This would keep them going for weeks. It’s not good for the business, or your future family.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

‘Get us all together, you, me, the doc and the minister. It shouldn’t be hard work, trust me.’

‘The morning, then. We’ll do it together.’

Monday, 13 January

Waking the next morning, we found that the temperature had risen a little and the lake had shed its ice. We – Rose, myself, Dr Raverat, Cecil and the Reverend Braithwaite – all piled into the two cars belonging to the doctor and the vicar and set off south along the lake’s edge. We knew we were taking a risk, since the road was still much covered in snow and slippery with ice. We went equipped with crowbars, hammers and an axe I found in Jeanie’s shed. She asked no questions about the nature of our expedition.

We arrived outside the house without mishap. No lamps were lit, but the front door was open. I pushed it back further, and we could see that snow had blown into the wide hallway and icicles had formed everywhere.

We all got inside and I closed the door. It fell to with a heavy bang. I shivered, grateful for the light that came through the windows. It was all familiar, yet unfamiliar. Things had happened here that I will never forget so long as I live.

We were all waiting for something. A sound, the image of a dead child, dancing slaves, the beating of a drum, voices,
whispers, the high voices of children caught between death and the end of death, fear creeping across the floor on muffled feet, a pounding of feet on the stairs, cold creeping round our necks like a noose of ice, eyes in the darkness looking at us without compassion or guilt, the cold hands of ghost talkers, their whispers and the whispers of their dead . . .

I opened the door of the dining room. No one was there. But on the table I noticed a jigsaw of Octavia’s. When we had last been here, the puzzle had been half-finished. Now it was complete.

‘Octavia?’ I asked. ‘Are you here?’

Nothing. A perfect silence. Rose took me away. I was clumsy on my leg.

‘My leg,’ I said. ‘It hurts like hell.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she replied. ‘I’ll look at it once we’re done. Dr Raverat’s here. He can give you some morphia. Is it bad enough for that?’

I nodded, and Raverat came with his bag and his needle and a smile on his face as he injected me. Minutes passed and the pain was gone, but I felt a little groggy. Rose kissed my forehead. Her face spun for a moment, then cleared. She took my hand. The others were standing in the doorway.

We went all through the ground floor. Apart from the bitter cold, all was just as it had been.

We headed for the stairs. The treads creaked, and I heard whispers above my head. The doctor went first, then Oliver and Cecil. Rose and I came last.

As we got to the top, I started to feel dizzy. The morphia was making me feel drowsy. There was a chair on the landing. I sat down and felt myself spin off into a half-dreaming half-awake state, and as I did so I could see dancing figures in a haze, their faces blackened as before, turning in the dance like rag dolls
with wooden hands and wooden feet and eyes that were always turned towards me. They danced in my direction but never came any closer. I shouted at them to go back, but they kept on coming without ever reaching me.