Fireside Gothic

by Andrew Taylor

  The magic has more to do with a sense that this is a special day, when nothing is allowed to go wrong. When you are given presents, good food and a licence to enjoy luxuries and activities that lie beyond the reach of most of us for 364 days of the year. When people are kind to each other and there is a sense of holiday.

  The illusion is strongest in infancy, and most of us lose it gradually during childhood. But we cling to it, we fool ourselves, as long as possible. In the end there has to come a day when we are forced finally to acknowledge the truth: that Christmas is a day like any other, potentially neither better nor worse, but actually almost always worse because it trails in its wake the ghosts of its lost magic.

  For me it was that Christmas at Sacrist’s Lodging: that’s when at last I accepted that a Christmas Day could be as miserable as any other.

  The morning began when we went downstairs to find Mr Ratcliffe making tea in the kitchen. On the mat by the back door were the hind legs and tail of a mouse; Mordred had already celebrated Christmas in his own special way.

  We wished each other happy Christmas. Mr Ratcliffe was wearing an ancient suit, once a uniform black but now shiny and even green in places, in honour of the day.

  He gave us cups of strong, sweet tea, with very little milk in it.

  ‘I thought we would go to Matins and then the Eucharist afterwards,’ he said. ‘I don’t usually eat before taking communion, if I can avoid it. It seems rude somehow.’

  ‘What about Christmas dinner, sir?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘Mrs Veal will have something for you at lunchtime, I’m sure. Don’t worry about that. I’ll have mine at the Deanery.’ He hesitated, and I guessed that he had remembered the Dean also entertained to lunch those members of the choir who had not left immediately after the morning services. ‘We’ll meet again in the evening, I expect, when you are back from the Veals’.’

  Mordred sauntered into the room and picked up the remains of the mouse. He wandered into the hall.

  ‘I’ll let him outside, shall I?’ Faraday said in a rush.

  He dashed after the cat. I heard him fumbling with the front door with clumsy urgency, as though trying to escape.

  I suppose that was what we all wanted – Faraday, myself and even, perhaps, poor Mr Ratcliffe: to escape.

  There was no snow that Christmas.

  It was very cold. The grass around the Cathedral was a hard, sparkling white, and frost clung to the leafless branches of trees and bushes. The flagged paths were treacherous – any moisture had turned to ice overnight.

  Mr Ratcliffe strode slowly along, his stick tapping the pavement. ‘Beautiful,’ he said over his shoulder to Faraday and me, trailing behind him. ‘Quite beautiful.’

  The College was crowded with groups of people making their way to church. On Christmas morning, the Cathedral had one of its largest congregations of the year, even though the King’s School wasn’t there to swell its ranks.

  We sat in the presbytery, the rows of seats on either side near the high altar, to the east of the choir stalls. Above us were the pipes of the organ and the wooden cabin of the organ loft, clinging like a growth to one bay of the choir aisle.

  I don’t remember much about the services except that they seemed to go on for ever and that I seriously thought I might faint or even die from hunger. It must have been hell for poor Faraday to see the choir processing through the chancel gates, filing in two by two, and peeling off into their stalls in the choir.

  Hampson Minor led them in, with the head boy’s medal resting on his surplice. He looked larger and pinker than before, as if his promotion had inflated him a little further than nature had done already. His eyes darted about the chancel. I guessed he was looking for Faraday. As he turned to lead his file into the choir stalls, he found us. For a fraction of a second he paused. Beside me, Faraday stiffened like a threatened animal.

  The moment was gone. The choir flowed smoothly into the stalls and the service began.

  I had attended many services in the Cathedral – the school used it as its chapel – but I had never been there on Christmas Day. The Bishop was there enthroned, a gaudy, overstuffed doll with his mitre and crozier. Each seat was full.

  I concentrated on not fainting from starvation; on standing, sitting and kneeling; on mouthing the hymns in a soundless but visually convincing way, a skill I had perfected in my first term; and, most of all, on thinking about what Mrs Veal might provide for our Christmas dinner.

  But I did notice when the choir sang the anthem, the ‘Jubilate Deo’. The first part was sung by Hampson Minor alone: I could see him, his mouth an O of surprise, his face pinker than ever with the effort. Then, one by one, the rest of the choir joined in, and then the organ thundered into life and they all made a dreadful racket until it was time for us to kneel down and pray again.

  Faraday leaned towards me undercover of shuffling as the entire congregation was sinking to its knees.

  ‘He muffed it, the silly ass,’ he muttered. ‘The end of bar sixteen. He couldn’t hold the E flat.’

  For the first time, I saw Faraday smile.

  Mrs Veal had bought us Christmas cards, and I felt guilty that we had not thought to do the same for our hosts. Mr Veal carved the beef and the ham. We ate late – Mr Veal had plenty to keep him busy after a service – but Mrs Veal took pity on us and gave us a preliminary helping of Yorkshire pudding and gravy.

  In his capacity as head verger, Mr Veal was a figure who inspired fear and mockery in equal parts. Now, however, Faraday and I saw the domestic Veal, his dignity put aside with his verger’s gown. In private, with a good meal inside him, a glass of port in one hand and his pipe in the other, he revealed himself as almost genial. I remember he told us a story about one canon who grew so fat that it was only with difficulty that he could squeeze into his stall; in the end they had to make a special chair for him. He laughed so hard that his face became purple.

  The Christmas dinner was the only time that I saw Faraday looking really happy. The Veals were kindly people: they gave us food, warmth and a welcome. Perhaps there was a little Christmas magic after all.

  ‘A lot of queer stories about the Cathedral,’ said Mr Veal on his third glass of port. ‘And I could tell you a few, if I had a mind to. Have you heard about the bells?’

  ‘But there aren’t any,’ Faraday said. ‘Not in the Cathedral. Only the clock chimes.’

  ‘Ah. Not now. But there were bells, once upon a time.’

  ‘Get along with you, George,’ said Mrs Veal. ‘Save it for later. I need to clear the table and these boys need to get back or Mr Ratcliffe will be wondering where they are.’

  ‘He knows about it, all right,’ Mr Veal says.

  ‘Who does, dear?’

  ‘Mr Ratcliffe. He knows about the stories.’

  5

  In the evening of Christmas Day, we made mugs of cocoa together and sat around the fire in the sitting room at the Sacrist’s Lodging. Like Mr Veal, Mr Ratcliffe had drunk a few glasses of wine with his dinner and was unusually expansive.

  Mordred condescended to join us. He sat on the chair nearest the fire, head erect, with his back to us. It was Mordred who started Mr Ratcliffe on ghosts.

  ‘I am afraid he’s a little stand-offish today. You wouldn’t think it, but he doesn’t like being left alone in the house. We abandoned him for most of the day and now he’s sulking.’

  ‘He doesn’t look as if he’d notice if he was alone or not.’ My scratches still rankled. ‘I don’t think he likes people.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, patting his pockets for his oilskin tobacco pouch. ‘But he finds us convenient, and not just for food and warmth. Perhaps we help to ward off the ghosts.’

  ‘Ghosts?’ Faraday said. ‘What ghosts?’ In those three words his voice modulated from a rumble to a squeak.

  ‘Do you know any stories about them, sir?’ I said. ‘Will you tell us one?’

  ‘Mordred used to see the ghost next door,’
Mr Ratcliffe said, nodding towards the party wall that divided this part of the Sacrist’s Lodging from the other. ‘He was just a kitten then, and he didn’t know what to make of it. In fact, that’s why he lives with me. He kept coming over here to get away from the ghost, and in the end the Precentor said I might as well keep him.’

  ‘Have you seen it, sir?’ I asked. By this stage of my life I had my doubts about the existence of God but I was more than willing to keep an open mind about ghosts.

  ‘Yes, several times over the years.’ Mr Ratcliffe had given up on his pockets. Still talking, he rose from his chair and eventually discovered the pouch wedged between the seat and the arm. ‘Of course I didn’t realize it was a ghost at first.’

  ‘What did it look like?’ Faraday said.

  ‘Like a cat.’

  ‘A cat?’

  ‘Yes, a little grey cat. One used to see it in the corner of the big room upstairs occasionally. Quite harmless. It’s probably still there, for all I know. It comes and goes.’

  ‘What did it do?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing very much. It just sat there. Sometimes you saw it moving across the room. You always glimpsed it out of the corner of your eye, if you know what I mean. But Mordred was different – he saw it directly. He behaved as if it was another cat, arching his back and so on. But then it simply terrified him, and he wouldn’t stay in the same house. So he moved here, next door. But it was odd, really – the grey cat never seemed to notice his existence at all.’

  ‘Perhaps it thought Mordred was the ghost,’ Faraday suggested with a giggle. ‘Perhaps he was trying to pretend Mordred wasn’t there.’

  Mr Ratcliffe struck a match and paused, considering the remark, the flame flickering over the bowl of the pipe.

  ‘Anything is possible, I suppose,’ he said at last, and sucked the flame deep into the pipe. ‘We may haunt ghosts as much as the other way round.’

  ‘Or they may not even know we’re there,’ I put in, feeling that Faraday was having too much of the limelight.

  ‘Some of the time they certainly know we’re there.’ The light was dim and Mr Ratcliffe’s features disintegrated in a cloud of smoke. ‘Or some of them do. That was undoubtedly the case with the blue lady. She always behaved very cordially to me. On the other hand, one should not generalize from the particular.’ He must have seen our expressions, for he added hastily, ‘I mean that one ghost who behaves like that does not necessarily mean that they all do.’

  ‘Please, sir,’ Faraday said, sounding like a little boy, ‘who is the blue lady?’

  ‘She is at the Deanery,’ Mr Ratcliffe said. ‘I used to go there a good deal when I was younger.’ He glanced at the piano that dominated the room. ‘Not in this Dean’s time, or even the one before. There was a lady – the Dean’s daughter, as it happens – who played the violin and wanted an accompanist.’

  ‘Was she the blue lady?’ I asked.

  ‘She was entirely flesh and blood.’ Mr Ratcliffe gave a cough. He turned away from us and blew his nose. ‘But I often went up to the Deanery drawing room in those days, and I sometimes met the blue lady on the stairs.’

  ‘How did you know she was a ghost, sir? Could she have been someone staying there?’

  ‘Oh no. She wore a dress with panniers under the skirt. Eighteenth century, I imagine. Besides, I encountered her on one occasion when I was with Miss … with the Dean’s daughter, and she didn’t see her.’

  Faraday leaned forward, his head resting on his hands. ‘What happened, sir? Did she speak? Did you?’

  ‘No,’ Mr Ratcliffe said. ‘We hadn’t been introduced, you see. So I bowed – and she bobbed a small curtsy. It was always like that – I must have seen her three or four times. The last time I glanced back and she was looking up at me. I thought she might be going to say something. But she didn’t.’

  ‘Did you ask the Dean about her?’ I said.

  Mr Ratcliffe shook his head. ‘It would not have been wise. But I did ask his daughter if the Deanery was said to be haunted, and she said no, but that her mother had been obliged to dismiss a housemaid who was making up silly stories to frighten the other servants. Stories about a lady in an old-fashioned dress.’

  Faraday’s mouth had fallen open in amazement. He looked more like a rabbit than ever.

  ‘It all seems so pointless, sir,’ I said. ‘The cat – the blue lady.’

  ‘Why does it have to have a point?’ Mr Ratcliffe said. ‘Which is to say, a purpose that we in our present situation are able to understand. It’s true that in some cases one can speculate about that. In other words, there may be a possible factual basis that might underlie a ghostly phenomenon.’

  ‘He means there is a real story to explain the ghost,’ I told Faraday, as much to display my superior understanding as to enlighten his ignorance.

  ‘One or two of our own ghosts come into that category. Take Mr Goldsworthy, for example. On the other hand, the real story may not explain the ghost – it may be the other way round: that the ghost is our way of trying to explain something puzzling or disturbing that actually occurred. Something we somehow create ourselves.’

  Mr Ratcliffe paused. He peered through his pipe smoke at Faraday and me. He had been a schoolmaster all his life and he knew boys.

  ‘It is getting late,’ he said. ‘You two should go to bed.’

  ‘But, sir,’ Faraday said. ‘What about Mr Goldsworthy?’

  Mr Ratcliffe smiled at him. ‘I’ll tell you about him tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Oh, sir.’ Faraday sounded about nine years old. I scowled at him, though I was as keen to hear about Mr Goldsworthy as he was.

  We said our good nights. Mr Ratcliffe stayed by the fire, smoking and reading. I went outside to use the lavatory while Faraday carried the cups into the kitchen and stacked them in the sink.

  It was colder than ever outside. The air chilled my throat and tingled in my nose. Above the black ridge of the Cathedral was the arch of the sky, where the stars gleamed white and silver and pale blue: they seemed to vibrate with the cold, shivering in heaven.

  Afterwards, I went upstairs. Faraday went outside in his turn. By the time he came upstairs, I was already in bed and reading my book, a novel called Beric the Briton by G. A. Henty. I ignored him while he undressed. I heard his bedsprings creak as he climbed into bed and the sharp intake of breath as the cold, slightly damp sheets touched his skin.

  ‘I say,’ Faraday said. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  I lowered the book. ‘What?’

  He was lying on his side, curled up with his knees nearly at his chin. All I could see of him was his face. He looked more rabbit-like than ever.

  ‘Did you hear it outside? The – the singing, or whatever it was?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It was when I came out of the bog,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps the Rat was having a sing-song,’ I said. ‘He got drunk on the Dean’s wine. It was obvious, the way he was going on this evening.’

  ‘It wasn’t him, honestly – it came from outside, from over there.’

  Faraday’s hand emerged from under the covers and pointed to the right of our beds: towards the College, towards the Cathedral.

  ‘Someone coming home from a party,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ He was frowning. ‘It was just four notes, very high-pitched and far away.’

  Very quietly, Faraday sang them to me: La-la-la-la. The third la was longer than the others. His voice behaved itself for once, and the notes sounded pure and true. As far as I could tell.

  ‘You sure you didn’t hear it?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Go to sleep.’

  He sang the notes again, even more quietly. ‘It’s in a major key, I think. Starts on an F sharp, perhaps?’

  ‘Shut up, will you?’

  I reached up and turned off the gas at the bracket on the wall.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ he said to the darkness, ‘it’s meant to be happy but it�
�s going to be a sad tune.’

  I lay awake listening to the sounds of the night, wondering whether Faraday would start crying again. He hadn’t mentioned the business with the postal order during the day but it must always have been there, squatting in the forefront of his mind like a toad and waiting for its moment to spring. His plight made mine seem trivial by comparison, which I suppose was another reason I didn’t like him very much.

  Faraday’s breathing slowed and fell into a regular rhythm. I heard Mr Ratcliffe locking up and coming up the stairs. The Cathedral clock tolled the hours and the quarters. The clock was in the west tower, not the shorter central tower. It had a modest chime for such a large church, like a big man with a small, high voice. We boys called it ‘Little Willy’.

  The silence deepened. Once, as I was dropping off to sleep, I thought I heard again, at the very edge of my range of hearing, the four high notes that Faraday had sung to me. La-la-la-la.

  6

  For most of Boxing Day, we were left to our own devices. Mr Ratcliffe went out after breakfast to call on a former servant at the King’s School who now lived in one of the almshouses attached to the parish church. He would go directly on from there to have lunch with an old friend in a village a mile away from the town. He did not expect to be back until evening.

  Time passed slowly for us. We were in a sort of limbo, neither at home nor at school. Faraday and I kept together because we had no one else to be with and nothing else to do.

  In the morning we stayed at the Sacrist’s Lodging, reading under the disdainful gaze of Mordred. I finished Beric the Briton and looked along Mr Ratcliffe’s shelves for something else to read. Most of his books were about boring things like music or architecture. There was some poetry, equally boring, and the sort of books we had at school, like Shakespeare. In the end I had to settle for Oliver Twist.