This House is Haunted (3 page)

In his hands, he clutched a handkerchief stained with blood.

Departing the theatre into the wet and cold night, I was still trembling from the dramatics of the reading and felt certain that I was surrounded by apparitions and spirits, but Father seemed to have recovered himself and declared that it was quite the most enjoyable evening he had spent in many years.

“He’s every bit as good an actor as he is a writer,” he pronounced as we made our way back across the park, reversing our earlier walk, the rain starting yet again as we marched along, the fog making it almost impossible for us to see more than a few steps ahead of ourselves.

“I believe he often takes part in dramatics,” I said. “At his own home and the homes of his friends.”

“Yes, I’ve read that,” agreed Father. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be invited to—”

Another coughing fit overtook him and he struggled for air as he bent over, assuming an undignified position on the street.

“Father,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders as I attempted to right him. “We must get you home. The sooner you are out of those wet clothes and lying in a hot bath the better it will be.”

He nodded and struggled on, coughing and sneezing as we leaned on each other for support. To my relief the rain came to
an abrupt halt as we rounded Bayswater Road for Brook Street, but with every step I took I could feel my feet growing more and more soaked through my shoes and dreaded to think of how wet Father’s must be. Finally we were home and he forced himself into the metal bathtub for a half hour before changing into his nightshirt and gown and joining me in the parlour.

“I shall never forget tonight, Eliza,” he remarked when we were seated side by side by the fire, sipping on hot tea and eating buttered toast, the room filled again by the scent of cinnamon and chestnuts from his pipe. “He was a capital fellow.”

“I found him truly terrifying,” I replied. “I enjoy his books almost as much as you, of course, but I wish he had read from one of his dramatic novels. I don’t care for ghost stories.”

“You’re frightened by them?”

“Unsettled,” I said, shaking my head. “I think any story which concerns itself with the afterlife and with forces that the human mind cannot truly understand risks disquiet for the reader. Although I don’t think I’ve ever experienced fear in the way that others do. I don’t understand what it is to be truly frightened, just how it feels to be disconcerted or uncomfortable. The signalman in the story, for example. He was terrified at the horror he knew was sure to come his way. And that woman in the audience who ran screaming from the hall. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be that scared.”

“Don’t you believe in ghosts, Eliza?” he asked and I turned to look at him, surprised by the question. It was dark in the room and he was illuminated only by the glow of the reddened coals that made his eyes appear darker than usual and his skin glow with the colour of the sporadic flames.

“I don’t know,” I said, uncertain how I truly felt about the question. “Why, do you?”

“I believe that woman was an imbecile,” declared Father. “That’s what I believe. Mr. Dickens had barely even begun to speak when she took fright. She should have been excluded from the start if she was of such a sensitive disposition.”

“The truth is I’ve always preferred his more realistic tales,” I continued, looking away. “The novels that explore the lives of orphans, his tales of triumph over adversity. Masters Copperfield, Twist and Nickleby will always hold a greater place in my affections than Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley.”

“Marley was dead, to begin with,”
stated Father in a deep voice, imitating the writer so well that I shuddered.
“There is no doubt whatever about that.”

“Don’t,” I said, laughing despite myself. “Please.”

I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were supplanted by nightmares. I encountered spirits where I should have undertaken adventures. My landscape was dark graveyards and irregular vistas rather than Alpine peaks or Venetian canals. But nevertheless I slept through the night and when I woke, feeling groggy and out of sorts, the morning light was already coming through my curtains. I looked at my wall clock; it was almost ten past seven and I cursed myself, knowing that I would certainly be late for work and still had Father’s breakfast to prepare. However, when I entered his room a few minutes later to see whether his condition had improved in the night, I could see immediately that he was far more ill than I had previously realized. The rain of the evening before had taken hold of him and the chill seemed to have entered into his very bones. He was deathly pale, his skin damp and clammy, and I took great fright, dressing immediately and running to the end of our mews where Dr. Connolly, a friend and physician of long standing, lived. He came back
with me and did everything in his power, I have no doubt of that, but he told me there was nothing we could do but wait for the fever to break, or hope that it would, and I spent the rest of the day by Father’s bedside, praying to a god who did not often trouble my thoughts, and by early evening, when the sun had descended again to be replaced by our perpetual and tormenting London fog, I felt Father’s grasp of my hand grow weaker until he slipped away from me entirely, gathered quietly to his reward, leaving me an orphan like those characters I had spoken of the night before, if one can truly be called an orphan at twenty-one years of age.

Chapter Three

F
ATHER
’
S FUNERAL TOOK
place the following Monday morning in St. James’s Church in Paddington and I took some comfort in the fact that half a dozen of his co-workers from the British Museum, along with three of my own colleagues from St. Elizabeth’s School where I had employment as a teacher of small girls, attended to offer their sympathies. We had no living relatives and so there were very few mourners, among them the widow who lived next door to us but who had always seemed loath to acknowledge me in the street; a polite but shy young student whom Father had been mentoring in his insect studies; our part-time domestic girl, Jessie; and Mr. Billington, the tobacconist on Connaught Street who had been providing Father with his cinnamon-infused tobacco for as long as I could recall and whose presence made me feel rather emotional and grateful.

Mr. Heston, Father’s immediate superior in the Department of Entomology, held my right hand in both of his, crushing it slightly, and told me how much he had respected Father’s intellect, while one Miss Sharpton, an educated woman whose employment had initially caused Father some disquiet, informed me that she would miss his lively wit and excellent humour,
a remark that rather astonished me but which I nevertheless found consoling. (Was there a side to Father that I did not know? A man who told jokes, charmed young ladies, was filled with
bonhomie
? It was possible, I supposed, but still something of a surprise.) I rather admired Miss Sharpton and wished that I could have had an opportunity to know her better; I was aware that she had attended the Sorbonne, where she was awarded a degree, although naturally the English universities did not recognize it, and apparently her own family had cut her off on account of it. Father told me once that he had asked her whether she was looking forward to the day when she would get married and thus not have to work any more; her reply—that she would rather drink ink—had scandalized him but intrigued me.

Outside the church, my own employer, Mrs. Farnsworth, who had taught me as a girl and then hired me as a teacher, informed me that I must take the rest of the week to grieve but that hard work could be an extraordinary restorative and she looked forward to welcoming me back to school the following Monday. She was not being heartless; she had lost a husband the year before, and a son the year preceding that. Grief was a condition that she understood.

Mercifully, the rain stayed off while we laid Father to rest but the fog fell so deeply around us that I could barely make out the coffin as it descended into the ground and, perhaps a blessing, I missed that moment when one is aware of laying eyes on the casket for the final time. It seemed to be simply swallowed up by the mist, and only when the vicar came over to shake my hand and wish me well did I realize that the burial had come to an end and that there was nothing left for me to do but go home.

I chose not to do so immediately, however, and instead walked around the graveyard for a time, peering through the haze at the
names and dates etched into the tombstones. Some seemed quite natural—men and women who had lived into their sixtieth or, in some cases, their seventieth years. Others felt aberrant, children taken while they were still in their infancy, young mothers buried with their stillborn babies in their arms. I came across the grave of an Arthur Covan, an erstwhile colleague of mine, and shuddered to remember our one-time friendship and his subsequent disgrace. We had developed a connection for a brief period, Arthur and I, one that I had hoped would blossom into something more, and the memory of those feelings, combined with the knowledge of the damage that troubled young man had caused, only served to upset me further.

Realizing that this was not perhaps a sensible place for me to linger, I looked around for the gate but found myself quite lost. The fog grew thicker around me until I could no longer read the words on the headstones, and to my right—extraordinary thing!—I was certain I heard a couple laughing. I turned, wondering who would behave in such a fashion here, but could see no one. Uneasy, I reached a hand out before me and could make nothing out beyond my gloved fingertip. “Hello,” I said, raising my voice only a little, uncertain whether I truly wanted a response, but answer came there none. I reached a wall where I hoped for a gate, then turned and almost fell over a group of ancient headstones piled together in a corner, and now my heart began to beat faster in anxiety. I told myself to be calm, to breathe, then find the way out, but as I turned round I let out a cry when I was confronted by a young girl, no more than seven years of age, standing in the centre on the path, wearing no coat despite the weather.

“My brother drowned,” she told me and I opened my mouth to reply but could find no words. “He was told not to go towards
the river, but he did. He was disobedient. And he drowned. Mama is sitting by his grave.”

“Where?” I asked, and she stretched a hand out, pointing behind me. I spun round but could see no lady through the vapour. I looked back only to discover the girl turning on her heels and breaking into a run, disappearing into the mist. Panic rose inside me; it might have developed into an hysteria had I not forced myself to walk quickly along the paths until finally, to my great relief, I was returned to the street, where I almost collided with an overweight man I was quite certain was our local Member of Parliament.

Walking home, I passed the Goat and Garter, a public house I had of course never entered, and was astonished to observe Miss Sharpton seated by the window, drinking a small porter and engrossed in a textbook while she made notes in a jotter. Behind her I could see the expressions on the men’s faces—naturally, they were appalled and assumed that she was some sort of deviant—but I suspected that their opinions would have caused her not a moment’s concern. How I longed to enter that establishment and take my place beside her! Tell me, Miss Sharpton, I might have said, what shall I do with my life now? How can I improve my position and prospects? Help me, please, for I am alone in the world and have neither friend nor benefactor. Tell me what I should do next.

Other people had friends. Of course they did; it was the natural way of things. There are those who are comfortable in the company of others, with the sharing of intimacies and common secrets. I have never been such a person. I was a studious girl who loved to be at home with Father. And I was not pretty. In school, the other girls formed alliances which always excluded me. They called me names; I will not repeat them here. They
made fun of my unshapely body, my pale skin, my untamed hair. I do not know why I was born this way. Father was a handsome man, after all, and Mother a great beauty. But somehow their progeny was not blessed with similar good looks.

I would have given anything for a friend at that moment, a friend like Miss Sharpton, who might have persuaded me not to make the rash decision which would nearly destroy me. Which still might.

I looked through the window of the Goat and Garter and willed her to glance up and spot me, to wave her arms and insist that I join her, and when she failed to do so I turned with a heavy heart and continued for home, where I sat in my chair by the fireplace for the rest of the afternoon and, for the first time since Father’s death, wept.

In the late afternoon, I fed some more coals on to the fire and, determined to achieve some sort of normality, made my way to the butcher’s shop on Norfolk Place, where I purchased two pork chops. I wasn’t particularly hungry but felt that if I lingered at home all day without food I might sink into an inexorable melancholy and, despite the early nature of my grief, I was determined that I would not allow this to happen. Passing the corner shop I even decided to treat myself to a quarter pound of boiled sweets and picked up a copy of
The Morning Post
for later perusal. (If Miss Sharpton could attend the Sorbonne, after all, then surely I could at least familiarize myself with the events of our own nation.)

Back home again, my spirits sank to a new low when I realized my error. Two pork chops? Who was the other chop for? My habits had superseded my needs. I fried them both, however, ate the first mournfully with a boiled potato, and fed the
second to the widow-next-door’s spaniel, for I could not bear either to save it for later or to eat it now. (And Father, who loved dogs, would I’m sure have been delighted by my charity.)

As evening fell, I returned to my armchair, placed two candles on a side table, the bag of boiled sweets on my lap, and opened the newspaper, flicking through it quickly, unable to concentrate on any stories and almost ready to throw the entire thing on the fire when I came upon the “Situations Available” page, where a particular notice caught my attention.