Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) (12 page)

I reckon among ghosts the nameless and disembodied hauntings of particular stretches of road, clearings in forests, bare hill-tops. I have twice met with powerful examples of this phenomenon. The first occasion was on a North Welsh ridge crowned with an ancient earthwork; the second was in the Balearics on a lonely coast road, near a village where a temple of Diana had once stood. On each occasion it was dusk with a waxing moon, and I felt that sudden inexplicable dread that makes the hair of one’s scalp rise like the fur of an angry cat and one’s legs run with no sense of effort, as if they were skating. Previously I had thought that when Shakespeare wrote about the haunted ship in
The Tempest
:

… not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad and played
Some trick of desperation… Ferdinand
With hair upstaring – then like reeds, not hair –
Cried ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here!’

he was writing poetical nonsense. Since then, I know that he was giving a not exaggerated account of a disagreeable physical fact. The Greeks had a word for this sort of dread – ‘panic’ – meaning the fear that suddenly struck them in the woods or on the hills when the God Pan was loose. In Ferdinand’s case it was not Pan, of course, but St Elmo; and the only way I can account for my two hauntings is that both places had once been the scene of horrific religious rites, and that the rocks and stones still periodically sweated out that horror.

Haunted houses, again. They seem either to enclose a sharp individual horror that centres in some particular room, or else a general feeling of misery, sorrow, boredom or vice pervading the whole building. Sensitive people can tell the difference between a happy house and an unhappy one as soon as they cross the threshold. But, in our epoch, most of them would be ashamed to tell the house-agent: ‘I’d rather pay a thousand pounds than rent this place – it has an evil atmosphere.’ Instead they would say: ‘I’m afraid, you know, that my husband would find that dressing-room far too small, and there isn’t enough space for his books in the sitting-room. Besides, the garden is much too large for just the two of us.’ But perhaps haunting of the disembodied sort is a matter of degree. Every house that has had a previous occupant is, in a sense, haunted.

That horrible flat in Heliopolis, which Mr Angelides the house-agent found me when I went to Egypt to write a book. Antonia and I rented it for a month from an Assyrian widow, because it was the only vacant one to be had – the top flat of a modern block built by a Belgian firm. It was crammed with gaudy furniture in bamboo and red brocade; and I remember particularly a glass bookcase containing Hebrew books and a small French legal library. Hassan, our Sudanese servant, said at once that he didn’t like the place and, later, complained that there were
afreets
about. I told him that it was only for a month, so he did not give notice; he slept out, of course. But the sense of evil grew thicker and thicker as the days passed. Soon the afreets were almost visible, as tall bright phantoms that appeared between sleeping and waking, or as little black creatures, seen only from the corner of my eye, that did nasty things at dusk in the shadow of the sofa or bookcase. The most alarming phenomenon was the sudden whiff of burning that constantly spread through the flat even when there was no fire in the kitchen. Hassan afterwards told me – I don’t know how truly – that the Assyrian husband had been burned to death in the flat some months before, and that it had since been used as a brothel. But even this was not enough to account for the strength of our impressions. Perhaps someone had been monkeying with black magic there; black magic is a means of reviving and focusing ancient evil, and anyone sufficiently idle, cruel and curious can achieve horrible results with little effort. Since it was not worth while to attempt a reclamation of the flat, we cleared out after ten days and took a room in a hotel.

But that charming château which she and I and a couple of friends once rented near Rennes. Though five of the chimneys were full of bees, and there were crickets behind the library fire, bats in the attics and rats in the cellars, the atmosphere was excellent. One day I found an ancient sheet of cooking recipes in a box full of rubbish, which I began to decipher and translate. There was one for
Blanc-Manger
, which began: ‘On the evening before, put two pieces of fish-glue as big as your thumb (or else gelatine) to melt on the embers. The next morning bring it to the boil. Take one and a half
quintons
of sweet almonds and half a
quinton
of bitter almonds…’ Late that night, when I was crouching over the kitchen fire, blowing up the embers with the bellows to heat a coffee-pot, I said to myself: ‘“Melt the fish-glue on the embers…” but gelatine, I think, would taste nicer… and I wonder how much a
quinton
of almonds is…’ When suddenly a woman’s voice behind me called out sharply ‘Marthe!’ ‘
Oui, Madame
,’ I answered automatically. But, of course, no one was there. And as I do not believe in the absolute reality of time this did not greatly surprise me. It may have been a cosmic coincidence. Somehow, by thinking about the fish-glue and the embers and the almonds, I had strayed into another level of time. Marthe’s mistress, seeing me squatting over the fire in the half-light with my back turned, naturally thought I was Marthe. She must have got a shock when I stood up and she saw a tall, pale man in black corduroy trousers. In fact, I was probably her ghost, not she mine…

On the whole, I decided, ghosts are an unimportant and far less mysterious phenomenon than many others – for example, poetry and love. People who manage their lives well leave only gracious emanations behind them. It is the wastrels, the bores and the deliberately evil who give a place a bad name: those and the self-tortured victims of their own folly. One should sternly disregard the ghosts that they leave behind, as one disregards drunks who stop one in the street and begin a rambling hard-luck tale mixed with threats and hiccoughs. In neither case should one show either sympathy, embarrassment or alarm.

Perhaps this brutch in the field by the Doctor’s house was no more than a concise record of all the misery and shame and desperation of my affair with Erica – I had managed that part of my life very badly indeed – which had lain dormant for I don’t know how many centuries until revived by our sudden meeting. No: wait a minute! Apparently the farmer had neglected the drainage of that field for some weeks before my evocation. But that still made sense – Erica’s coming had revived the brutch strongly enough for him to avoid this corner, though he hadn’t formulated his reasons for doing so until I’d come along and it had flared up. However, it was stupid to be speculating on the nature of this brutch until I could form some general theory about Erica. How did she get here, what was she doing here? She seemed real enough, or at least as real as I was: she had pulled my head down and kissed me with firm, warm lips. I could hardly dismiss her as a cosmic coincidence. Yet See-a-Bird evidently knew nothing about her, and had stubbornly refused to believe that I’d seen her enter the Nonsense House.

On the other hand, she might easily be using that place as her hide-out. Once she had bluffed her way in – and no more shameless gate-crasher than Erica had ever existed – who in the outside world would be any the wiser? Apparently what the elders did and said, and whom they entertained, was nobody’s business but their own. I didn’t suppose that it even figured in the barber-shop gossip. Perhaps, when the right moment came, I ought to tell Sapphire about the meeting, after all.

The last of the cigarette stubs had been burned in the fire and we could talk again. Sapphire turned to me, and said gently: ‘I have been thinking about the brutch. Did you by any chance cross the park while I was away?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘just before lunch. Sally gave me permission.’

‘What were your feelings at the time?’

‘I felt rather lost without you: I was thinking about the old days, when my house still stood in the middle of what’s now your park, and when I used to take the children down to the sea for a bathe, where there’s now only cornland. And I also felt cross…’

‘And then you had a vision of a young woman going into the Nonsense House?’ See-a-Bird prompted me.

‘Not a vision. She was real enough.’

‘What was she like?’

‘She was wearing a sort of white… wollacombe… widdicombe… I wish I could remember that word. And green slippers.’

‘Green slippers? Are you sure?’

‘Grass-green. I noticed them particularly. All right, then: here’s a police description of the wanted woman. Fair, rather curly hair, pointed chin, long upper lip, sparrow’s egg-blue eyes, good figure, medium height, ballet-dancer’s legs, square hands – and she bites her nails when she’s cross…’

‘Then she was cross too?’

‘No, not when I saw her. On the contrary, she was feeling very gay. If you’re interested, I can tell you more about her. She has a scar on her scalp where a man once tried to brain her with an ice-pick; and a bullet-graze low down on her ribs where a woman once tried to shoot her with a small automatic pistol. She was educated at Geneva; smokes
Gauloises
cigarettes for choice; is an expert fudge-maker and a champion figure-skater; has a code of morals peculiarly her own; and says she lives in that Nonsense House of yours by the mill. She knows all of you, claims to have read Fig-bread’s and Starfish’s poems, and plans to visit us soon. Her name’s Erica Yvonne Turner, though she doesn’t use the Yvonne, and I wonder you haven’t told me before that she’s been brought here. I used to know her well. Rather too well; but perhaps you’re aware of that, which is why you’re keeping me in the dark about her.’

They all looked puzzled and a little scared. Sapphire said to Sally: ‘It’s a brutch all right: something, I’m afraid, that he’s brought with him accidentally. In a dream perhaps? No, I don’t think so, do you? At his evocation another spirit, a woman’s, must have clung to his hair and made the time journey in his company. A case of the sort is quoted in the third
Book of Magic
, in the Aldeboran chapter, you remember. But I don’t at all like the sound of those green slippers and I’m surprised that we saw no trace of her when his wraith manifested itself. Perhaps she hid at the back of the pit?’

Then she said to me: ‘I swear in the Mother’s name that we know nothing about all this. Do
you
think this woman can have been bold enough to come with you?’

‘Clinging to my hair? It’s possible. She’d get into anyone’s hair. Why, that girl once bluffed her way into the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, for a bet, by slipping her arm through the Archbishop of Canterbury’s and pretending to be his daughter.’

That seemed to convince them all and they got up to go. As we went through the park to the Doctor’s house they were discussing ways of catching and deporting Erica. When we reached the corner of the mill-field Starfish suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘That’s what your mare shied at, Sapphire,’ he said gravely.

‘What is it?’

‘A cigarette stub, but it’s wrapped in paper, not leaf.’

They all hesitated to touch the ill-omened thing, so I picked it up and said: ‘Yes, didn’t I tell you that Erica Turner smokes
Gauloises
?’

They shrank away. ‘It must be burned quickly. And afterwards we’ll have to purify your fingers.’

‘But the brutch?’

‘The field must first be fumigated with sulphur thrown on a bonfire of wild-olive and then swept in both directions with a birch-broom.’

‘But suppose Erica goes on dropping stubs all over the village just to annoy you?’

‘If, as you say, she’s lodged in the Nonsense House,’ Sally said, ‘we’ll have to wait until midnight, when the Elders will have gone home; I’ll deal with her then.’

I dropped behind and furtively picked up the other stub where I’d thrown it down just outside the orchard; then I crushed them up together and burned them at the back of the dining-room grate. Sapphire purified my fingers with rose-water in a silver bowl and a short prayer.

We settled down for a pleasant evening around the fire. There seemed to be a general agreement to drop the subject of the brutch, and Sally asked no more leading questions and gave no more tart answers. From the friendly way she behaved towards me and Sapphire I decided that Erica had been making mischief as usual, and that there was no truth at all in that love-and-jealousy story.

I asked whether the leave-taking ceremony at Court had gone off well.

‘Most propitiously,’ Starfish replied. ‘The King’s dignity was superb; anyone would have thought that he was only going on a short holiday.’

‘But what is going to happen to him?’

‘He’s going to die, of course.’

‘And why?’

‘Because his term ends this Friday when the moon is full.’

‘Will he kill himself?’

‘No. His other self will kill him.’

‘Doesn’t that come to much the same thing?’

‘Not at all. As we say: “The right hand cannot be thrust into the left glove”.’

When I’d worked that out, I asked: ‘Tell me, who’s the next king to be?’

‘His other self, who reigns until midwinter; the left hand to his right hand.’

‘Perhaps I’d understand that better if Sapphire would consent to explain what a nymph of the month is.’

‘It’s like this,’ Sapphire said. ‘The king’s reign begins at mid-winter and he has thirteen consorts, who are called nymphs of the month. All are commoners but myself and one other, and we’re all Queen in turn and share his bed during our respective months, and put him through his paces. The ritual is rather complicated and one can’t afford to offend the Goddess by omitting any detail. In the seventh month he dies, and his other self reigns until the thirteenth month, when he dies too.’

‘And your month is the sixth month?’

‘It ended nine days ago. We’re now in the seventh.’

‘So last month you were the Queen?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the King was your lover?’

‘Not in a carnal sense. The sixth month is the month of enforced chastity, so he and I lay in a bed with a labra – a double-bladed axe – between us. He’s not allowed to have his hair or nails cut or to wear new clothes, and has to go about with a thorn-broom in his hand and keep to magicians’ diet. But now he’s having a glorious time again: the Queen gives him whatever he asks for – it’s unlucky to refuse him anything, even if it’s against custom.’