The Ghastly Gerty Swindle With the Ghosts of Hungryhouse Lane

by Sam McBratney

  Charlie, the middle Sweet, was a moody boy who gave a lot of trouble to his sisters. Only yesterday he played them a recording of them snoring their heads off in bed. (The sound was actually water sucking down the plug hole, but it still drove them crazy.) From time to time Charlie developed a passion for something. He would suddenly take up bone collecting, and just as suddenly give it up for airplane spotting or juggling. While his big sister believed in rights, Charlie believed in grabbing what you could get. He didn’t mind eating bruised pears. Or even no pears. He could easily buy himself a whole bag of pears and gobble them all by himself in a corner of the swimming pool. At school he was good at math but bad at spelling, although this did not worry him because he now planned to work in sound effects when he grew up.

  Little Bonnie was so sweet that she melted the hearts of people in supermarkets. However, those familiar with her will of iron and her loud screams were not fooled. (Bonnie was quite likely to refuse pears and scream for melon boats with little umbrellas sticking out of them.) Mr. Sweet usually picked her up by the heels and set her in the bath when she had one of her tantrums. Her doll Lulubelle had no mouth. Bonnie had taken off the red-thread smile in a temper because Lulubelle kept on smiling when she, Bonnie, was unhappy. When big, she expected to work at wrapping things up nicely in shops because she could now tie lovely satin bows.

  Muldoon Sweet licked Charlie’s feet when he hung them out of bed at night; acted as a horse for Lulubelle; and sat up and begged for Zoe when nobody else would obey her orders. He regarded himself as one of the Sweet kids and refused to eat dog food.

  “Geoffrey,” said Mrs. Sweet. “Look at this. Amy Steadings has invited the children down to stay with her for a few days in the country. Isn’t that awfully nice of her?”

  Geoffrey Sweet put down his Financial Times to accept the letter from his wife. “Well, I’m bound to say that she seems very fond of them for some reason,” he agreed with a frown. “How curious. Perhaps the poor woman is lonely, although I see that she has taken a lady companion.”

  Just then the Sweet parents heard an almighty scream coming from the hall. It was the sort of sound that makes you want to rush and see what awful thing has happened, and yet somehow roots you to the spot because you are terrified of what you might see when you get there. Mr. Sweet threw away his Financial Times and tried not to panic. Mrs. Sweet, therefore, made it into the hall before him.

  The sight that met her eyes made her poor heart lurch. Little Bonnie lay stretched out at the bottom of the stairs, in a small pool of blood, unconscious to the world. As Mr. Sweet arrived, Zoe was already wrapping the little blond head in a red-stained bandage, saying into Charlie’s tape recorder, “Home accidents account for some thirteen percent of fatalities every year.”

  From the third step up, Muldoon pointed his nose at the roof and just howled as if he could smell the postman.

  “Geoffrey, she’s fallen down the stairs! She may have broken her neck!”

  While the appalled parents looked on, Zoe ever so slowly straightened a Bonnie leg. “This will obviously need splints.”

  “Leave her alone, Zoe!” cried Mrs. Sweet, while Mr. Sweet rushed to the phone and seized it with hands that trembled.

  Bonnie sat up. Zoe flew into a rage.

  “Daddy, you are ruining everything.”

  “It’s only pretend,” said Bonnie. “Was I good?” Then she licked some of the tomato sauce.

  Mrs. Sweet sank onto the third step up beside the howling Muldoon. Her husband replaced the phone with a blank look on his face. He would have a thing or two to say in a moment, but not yet. Right now he was speechless.

  “She didn’t fall down the stairs?” said Mrs. Sweet.

  “No! And how am I supposed to get first-aid practice if people are always butting in?”

  “Practice?” Mrs. Sweet stared at the open first-aid kit. “Couldn’t you have told us? Couldn’t you have … warned us?”

  “People don’t get warnings about accidents, Mother. And I sincerely hope that you aren’t going to complain about the sauce, because I have to get used to the sight of blood. Everybody thinks it’s a joke, but it’s not a joke and you won’t be laughing if I save somebody’s life one day.”

  Nobody was laughing. Mr. Sweet, who looked as though he might have fallen down the stairs himself, spoke.

  “You are going on holiday. Tomorrow. I shall phone Amy Steadings tonight. In fact, I’ll phone her now.”

  “But she hasn’t got a VCR, Daddy,” said Bonnie sweetly.

  “We’ll buy her one!” said Mr. Sweet between clenched teeth. “Go and pack.”

  “And who knows,” said Mrs. Sweet, brightening up considerably, “if you’re very well behaved and don’t do silly things, there may be water in the swimming pool when you get back.”

  Then she noticed how Mr. Sweet was staring at the tomato-sauce bandage around Bonnie’s head. Perhaps water in the swimming pool wasn’t a good bet right now.

  4 …

  Why Not the Attic?

  Why not the attic, that’s what Gerty wanted to know as she polished the banister on the first landing.

  What was up there? What could be tucked away under the old straw roof that was so special and precious, eh? “There’s no need for you to go into the attic for the time being, Gertrude,” the old lady had said.

  So what secret was she hiding? Something wonderful or something dreadful? Or something priceless like a painting by an old Dutch master? Of course Gerty wanted to find out what was up there. Any normal person would!

  As Gerty caressed the face of the grandfather clock with her cloth, she seemed to love her work. Even after a hundred years and more of ticking and tocking away the lonely days, its walnut still took ever such a lovely shine. “Fit for a queen, you are,” she told it.

  Oh yes, Gerty loved that clock very much indeed. Would it fit into a van, though, she wondered?

  Now she moved up to the second landing, just four bare wooden stairs away from the tiny attic door. Maybe it was dangerous in there, and Amy Steadings wanted her to keep out for her own good.

  So just be careful, Gerty!

  The door opened. She peered into the gloom. Her hand fell upon a switch—good. Light flooded the room, and her eyes lit up like a pair of freshly minted coins.

  Over there she saw wartime gas masks and old books; over here brown photographs in silver frames lying in an ancient baby carriage with solid rubber tires. Oh my, goodies galore! Wasn’t it strange how one person’s junk became another person’s fortune? There were rolled-up rugs, frightful paintings (but with lovely frames), an elephant’s foot, a huge glass bottle called a carboy in Gerty’s book of antiques (twice as big as a balloon), sets of cigarette cards (showing Hollywood movie stars of the forties and fifties), a Hornby train hardly out of its box—and strike me pink with a yard brush, thought Gerty, there’s a fine old spinning wheel leaning against the chimney. And a rocking chair! On the rocking chair she found twelve perfect little lead soldiers. Musketeers, by the look of them, and worth a bleeping penny or two to the right collector. Pausing only to thrust the box of soldiers into her apron pocket, Gerty crawled out of the attic backward and put out the light.

  At that moment—the moment of switching out the light—something curious happened. In the sudden gloom Gerty thought she saw a kind of afterglow with an almost human shape, a dusty sprinkling of light that seemed to evaporate even as she stared through it; then it was gone.

  “How funny peculiar,” Gerty muttered as she blinked her eyes. “I’ll be needing my glasses for cleaning, soon.”

  On the first landing she opened the grandfather clock and set the box of soldiers inside. There wasn’t much room in there beside the flintlock gun and the bone china figurines by Durkheim. (Gerty had been collecting already.)

  Downstairs, after checking that her employer was occupied elsewhere, Gerty phoned a London number.

  “Now, listen carefully because I have to talk soft. The place is a paradis
e, you have no idea. Yes. I couldn’t even start to make a list of the goodies: china, lead soldiers, clocks, you name it and it’s here, ducky. When? The sooner the better—I’ll let you know. Is your cold better? Well, rub that chest with oil of eucalyptus! And don’t you dare go out without an undershirt.”

  Gerty went into the kitchen, saying, “There we are, not a speck of nasty old dust in sight. I’ve just left the vacuum up there, dear, to save all the bother of hauling it up the stairs tomorrow.”

  Frowning, Amy Steadings plucked a few strands of spider’s silk from Gerty’s skirt. “What on earth have you been doing with yourself? You’re covered in cobwebs.”

  “Coffee, dear?” Careless of you, Gerty, she was thinking. “Or tea?”

  “You haven’t been into the attic, Gertrude?”

  “Not unless you mean that little door at the top of the house. Thought there might be something in there that needed cleaning, didn’t I? Well, such a mess! You won’t be wanting that cleaned up, will you, dear? I don’t think I could face it.”

  “You didn’t … see anything?”

  “Only a lot of old junk,” said Gerty sharply. “Now, I don’t know about you, but personally I am gasping for a good strong cup of hot tea.”

  What Gertrude Moag had almost seen upstairs was the ghost of Lady Cordelia McIntyre, who really had no idea what that person with the terribly strong-looking arms was doing in Amy Steadings’s attic. Amy never allowed strangers up here—certainly not without first warning Cordelia that they might be coming.

  Or was this the new companion whom Amy had talked about getting? Very likely. The lady had an apron on; and she wore, besides, the most ghastly cloth around her head that Cordelia had ever seen.

  Fascinated—and with her Presence hidden in a pool of light—Cordelia watched this new person smile and nod as she picked up one object after another, often smoothing away the dust with a loving hand. Good gracious, she even talked to herself. And then, after popping a box of toy soldiers into her apron pocket, she crawled out of the attic and switched off the light.

  How very odd, thought Cordelia, allowing her Presence to drift through the floor until she came to the first landing. Here she used another ghostly trick of light to observe something odder still: The new person opened the front of the grandfather clock and placed the box of soldiers inside.

  Cordelia returned to the attic, where she fiddled anxiously with the phantom jewelry around her neck. Even after all these years as a ghost she was still a little nervous of uncertainty and change.

  Her husband had been with Lord Clive in old India. One day, as she bathed a scab behind her elephant’s ear, the grateful beast had patted her with its trunk and finished her on the spot. Like most ghosts, Cordelia was a quiet soul whose only ambition was to enjoy long periods of Unwakeful Serenity*—she had no time at all for that clanking of chains and wailing in the night that a small minority of ghosts seemed to go in for, and indeed she had not “materialized” for six months or more.

  Should she waken her two companions, she wondered? Her companions were Bobbie, the little ghost who lived in the chimney, and Sir James Walsingham, who lived in the carboy. They would want to be told about strangers in the house….

  Perhaps not, Cordelia decided. After all, poor little Bobbie couldn’t speak a word after choking to death during a fall of soot over a hundred and fifty years ago. And as for James, he was such a vague and grumpy sort, and so full of grand ideas, that one could never guess what he would do next. He had become an ex-human being about 1758. Among other things, he claimed that he and Mozart had once dined on the earth’s last dodo under the biggest chandelier in Europe.

  There was no need to waken James, Cordelia now saw, for he suddenly sank down from the roof at an alarming rate. Something had obviously put him into a tizzy. James always quivered when he became excited, and he was quivering now from the curls of his enormous wig to the buckles on his once-fashionable shoes. Even the lace hanky at his wrist seemed to flutter like a large moth.

  “Drat and blast, Cordelia, have I got news for you! This is going to make you gnash your teeth, or I’m no Englishman! Have you seen who’s coming?”

  “No, James, I have not.”

  “To the window then, by jove.”

  A white and rather beautiful horseless carriage had just come to a halt at the door of the house below. Five people got out, but it was the dog that Cordelia recognized first, because it reminded her of those mongrels with which men hunted rats along the banks of the Thames long ago.

  And there, too, was that little girl with the terribly loud scream. The boy got out last.

  “That’s him!” cried James. “That’s the one. He’s the bounder who put frog spawn in my carboy the last time he was here. Well, there go peace and quiet out the blasted window. Oh, for a moment of Genuine Presence, I would go down there and send them packing with a well-chosen word or two.”

  Cordelia sighed. She had expected this kind of exhibition from James. It was just this kind of behavior that got him into trouble in the first place. One evening long ago a mouse jumped out of his wig and caused his hostess to faint. Unfortunately, someone then accused him of being a bounder for harboring a rodent like that. Insults flew, faces were slapped and a duel was arranged. At the following dawn Sir James Walsingham was shot through the heart and became an ex-human being. Two hundred years later, he still hadn’t learned his lesson.

  “Calm yourself, James,” said Cordelia.

  “I don’t want to calm down. There’s trouble coming. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You haven’t got any bones,” Cordelia pointed out. “And the last time you said a few well-chosen words, as you put it, you got yourself shot. Amy is down there with them, and I am quite sure she knows what she is doing. Besides, you are being ungrateful.”

  With an almighty sniff, James went through the motions of taking snuff from the back of his hand. Then, with his hanky, he dusted away the snuff that hadn’t gone up his nose. Old habits die hard, thought Cordelia.

  “I? Ungrateful?”

  “You know very well that those children did us a very great favor when they were here before. Things are often not as bad as they seem.”

  James allowed himself to drift into an upside-down position so that his wig rested an inch or two from the floor. He often responded to criticism in this way. If people wanted to argue with him, let them jolly well talk to his feet.

  _______________________

  *This is a ghostly condition—you may like to think of Unwakeful Serenity as a kind of hibernation.

  5 …

  The Arrival of the Sweet Kids

  Gerty could hardly believe her eyes, frankly, when the white Rolls Royce drew up at the door. A snobby great Rolls! Most of the people she knew got into a machine like that when they were off to a wedding or a funeral.

  And there were more shocks in store. For a start, the dog that got out had its left hind leg in a bandage. Next came a small girl screaming, “I can tie bows, I can tie bows.” Then a bigger girl, carrying a first-aid kit the size of a small suitcase. The boy seemed to have a camera, or perhaps a small tape recorder, in his hand. Suddenly every automatic window of the car zoomed down, and the mother of this lot said to the father, “You’re pressing the wrong button, darling, if you want the windows up.”

  Strike me pink, what an outfit, thought Gerty. So these were the Sweet kids. It might be a bit of a nuisance to have them snooping about, but she’d soon lick the blighters into shape.

  “Oh, how lovely!” cried Amy as she spread kisses all around, including the doll. “I am so pleased. Shall we all have something to eat?”

  “Oh no, we really must be going,” said Mrs. Sweet. “This is so kind of you, Amy, and the children are looking forward to their stay so much. Aren’t they, Geoffrey?”

  “We are most grateful,” Mr. Sweet said gravely as he lifted a VCR out of the trunk of the Rolls. “This is a present for you, Miss Amy.”

  “Oh, bu
t I couldn’t …”

  “But you must,” cried Mrs Sweet. “It’ll keep them … occupied. We have warned them to be good.”

  “If we’re not good, you’re going to fill in our new swimming pool with great big ugly stones, aren’t you, Daddy?” piped up the smallest Sweet, but no one seemed in a hurry to answer her.

  Amy turned, smiling. “I must remember my manners! Allow me to introduce my new companion, Mrs. Gertrude Moag.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Moag,” said Mrs. Sweet. “I’m sure you’ll be of great assistance to Miss Amy. You’ve been a governess, I believe?”

  Gerty smiled as her brain whirled. Whose children had she said she looked after? “Yes, dear, I was nanny to Sir George Leicester’s triplets.”

  “I thought it was Lady Diana Rich.”

  “Hers too, of course,” said Gerty without batting an eyelid. Her gaze swooped on the smallest Sweet and her doll. “I expect you’ll want me to tell you the story of Snow White and the Three Dwarfs, won’t you, little darling?”

  “I think you probably mean seven dwarfs,” said the bigger girl. “Or maybe Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ve seen them all on video.”

  A wicked glance from Gerty lit on the eldest Sweet. Any more talk like that and you’re going to need that first-aid kit, sweetie. Gerty smiled at the boy.

  “And what do you like to do?”

  “Juggle.”

  End of conversation. Gerty now tried to cuddle the little girl’s doll, and that was when she noticed that the doll’s face had no mouth. She had seen missing eyes, missing ears and missing limbs before, but this was the first mouthless doll Gerty had ever met, and she found it quite shocking.