Christmas with the Book Lovers

by Victoria Connelly

  ‘At his spookiest best,’ Lara said from the floor. ‘This is the one with the “lungless laugh”, isn’t it?’

  Bryony gave a shudder. ‘It’s creeping me out already.’

  Josh laughed and picked up the book, which had been resting on his lap, and opened it.

  2

  Callie had enjoyed her fair share of audio books in her time, but nothing could compare to the pleasure of being read to aloud, and Josh Nightingale was obviously a connoisseur. He read with a passion, an intensity, but also with a lightness of touch which allowed him to highlight the more humorous or poignant passages of the story.

  When he’d finished, he closed the hardback to rapturous applause and greeted his family with a smile and a modest nod of his head.

  ‘Mulled wine, I think,’ Eleanor said, getting up from the sofa.

  ‘At last!’ Josh cried.

  ‘Have to make a good start and earn it first,’ she said.

  ‘How many stories do you read in an evening?’ Callie whispered to Sam.

  ‘Three or four. Some are longer than others and are shared around the room. Although Grandma doesn’t read them anymore. Her eyesight isn’t terribly good.’

  Callie glanced towards Grandma Nell who was smiling at Josh from her chair, obviously enjoying the evening in her own quiet way.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Sam continued, ‘we’ll get together beforehand and choose who’s going to read what. At other times, it’s more informal and we pick and choose on the night, sharing the book between us all.’

  ‘Well, I’m loving it,’ Callie confessed. ‘You were brilliant, Josh!’

  ‘Thank you, kind lady!’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Chuck another log on the fire, Dad,’ Lara said from the carpet.

  ‘You’re closer than I am,’ Frank said.

  ‘Yes, but I’ve just had my nails done – look!’

  ‘I thought you were a poor student,’ Polly said.

  ‘I am! We do each other’s nails.’

  ‘When you’re meant to be studying?’ Josh teased.

  ‘You can’t study all the time,’ Lara protested.

  Frank got up, shaking his head good-naturedly at his daughter. For a few moments, everyone watched in happy silence as he threw a couple of fat logs onto the fire and gave it a good stoke. The logs crackled and the flames rose. It was a wonderful sight.

  ‘Didn’t we ban M R James at Christmas?’ Eleanor asked as she came back into the room a few minutes later with a tray full of mulled wine in crystal glasses.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Josh said, standing up to help pass the glasses around. ‘Nothing beats a bit of M R James at Christmas.’

  ‘Josh is right,’ Grandpa said. ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without the master of the ghost story.’

  ‘Hey, Sam,’ Lara said. ‘Remember that old edition you had of M R James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary?’

  ‘Of course I do. It was a first edition.’

  ‘What happened to it?’ Frank asked.

  ‘I sold it. Under pressure from you lot,’ he said, wagging a finger at them all.

  ‘What?’ Frank said.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘Tell Callie about it, Sam,’ Polly said.

  ‘Oh, must we remember that horrible time all over again?’ Eleanor said. ‘I still have nightmares about it.’

  Bryony shook her head. ‘You’ve never known a book cause so much trouble.’

  ‘I think it was haunted,’ Lara said.

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ Josh said. ‘A book can’t be haunted.’

  Lara frowned. ‘Why not?’

  Silence fell. Nobody seemed to have an answer to that.

  ‘Grandpa Joe, didn’t you used to have a paperback copy of the book?’

  ‘Not as nice as that volume you managed to get your hands on,’ Grandpa Joe said. ‘And it wasn’t haunted.’

  ‘Oh, Grandpa!’ Sam cried. ‘My edition wasn’t haunted!’

  Grandpa Joe gave a naughty chuckle. ‘That’s what you say.’

  Sam shook his head and then smiled at Callie. ‘When we were young, Grandpa read the stories from a paperback edition out to us, sitting around the fire at Christmas just like we are now.’

  ‘They used to scare me to death!’ Bryony said.

  ‘Me too,’ Polly said. ‘All those demons with hairy hands, and strange eerie laughter coming out of the mist.’ She gave a theatrical shudder at the memory. ‘But we’ve kind of got used to them now.’

  ‘M R James himself used to read his stories to a few invited guests each Christmas Eve in his rooms at King’s College in Cambridge,’ Frank told them. ‘That might have been where our fascination for ghost stories at Christmas began. It’s known that the carbon-monoxide from gas lamps in Victorian times produced hallucinations and that led to a rise in the popularity of ghost stories.’

  ‘Really?’ Callie said. ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Well, luckily, we’ve got electricity today,’ Eleanor said.

  Callie rested her hand on Sam’s arm. ‘Are you going to tell me about this haunted book, then?’

  ‘Yes, tell Callie about how you came to have the book,’ Frank said. ‘I kind of wished I hadn’t retired from the family business and that I’d been given this job myself.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam said taking a sip of mulled wine. ‘I got really lucky with this one. ‘It was a day in early February when Mr Roache first got in touch with me at the shop. He was eighty-seven and lived in a hamlet between Castle Clare and Foxearth. It was pretty tricky to find, actually. I thought it might be some sort of elaborate joke by the time I’d turned down the third dead-end lane and been chased off by an angry Labrador, but I eventually found the place. It was a magnificent sixteenth-century property. All beams and leaning walls. He was having to leave it. Moving to Devon to be closer to his family, I think. Anyway, he was selling off a lifetime’s collection and the library was extensive. It was quite a job.’

  ‘Tell her about Mr Roache,’ Bryony said.

  Sam grinned. ‘He was a character straight out of Dickens. He was tall and wiry and had these long bony fingers which would grab me by the elbow and steer me towards the shelves. “This one,” he’d say. “This one.”’

  Lara laughed. ‘So funny!’

  ‘Yes, for months after, this lot would keep grabbing me from behind and hollering “This one, This one”! Very unnerving!’

  Callie giggled.

  ‘Anyway, he was obviously passionate about his books and seemed anxious that they find good homes. It took several months to catalogue them all and we did get good homes for them. Many of them stayed together which seemed to please him.’

  ‘Get to the good part – go on!’ Grandpa Joe urged, sitting forward in his chair.

  ‘Yes, one afternoon, after I’d packed up the last box of books, I felt Mr Roache’s bony fingers on my elbow again but instead of whispering, “This one,” he said, “This way.” So I followed him into a room that he’d been using as a study. It was a beautiful room which this enormous Victorian desk and a massive globe and wonderful old framed maps on the wall. Anyway, there on the desk was the book. I recognised it at once. M R James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Beautiful. First edition from 1904. Lovely thing.’ Sam paused.

  ‘What happened next?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Mr Roache moved to the desk and picked up the book and handed it to me. At first, I assumed he’d just found it and wanted me to sell it as I had the other books but he said, “This one. For you.”’ Sam shook his head at the memory. ‘I told him I couldn’t afford it and he assured me it was a gift. He’d been watching how I handled his other books. He said I did it with “a particular care” and he said he knew I’d appreciate this one.’

  ‘A very nice gift,’ Frank said.

  ‘If it wasn’t haunted!’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Yes, tell me more about the haunted bit,’ Callie encouraged.

  ‘Let me tell you about the book first,’ Sam insisted. �
�What a book. It’s the one with those four fine illustrations by James McBryde. You know the artist died before completing the rest?’

  ‘A great shame,’ Grandpa Joe said. ‘Beautiful pictures.’

  ‘Yes, they have a lovely light feel about them. Totally unique,’ Polly said. ‘Although the one of the demon with the long hairy hand still gives me nightmares.’

  ‘Yes, much too spider-like for me,’ Bryony said.

  ‘McBryde was a friend of M R James’s and it’s thought that James only published the book as a showcase for his friend’s artwork. Well, the illustrations alone are worth buying the book for.’ Sam paused. ‘As books go, it’s very plain to look at on the outside, but that’s something I’ve always rather admired. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. It’s a beige-coloured cloth cover – kind of the colour of wet sand – with the title Ghost Stories of an Antiquary at the top and “M R James” in capitals at the bottom and all this space in between which modern book covers simply wouldn’t allow.

  ‘I’ve always wondered if McBryde would have illustrated the story called The Mezzotint had he lived. You know the one about the picture which keeps changing?’ Polly said. ‘I’d love to have seen a representation of that.’

  ‘I’m kind of glad one doesn’t exist. I think that would creep me out too much to see it,’ Bryony said.

  ‘Back to the book,’ Sam said. ‘The pages were butter-soft and wonderfully mottled with age as you’d expect from a book over a hundred years old. Part of its charm.’

  ‘And the smell?’ Callie prompted.

  ‘Ah, I was just coming to that,’ he said. ‘It had a wonderfully comforting scent of familiarity. A woody, wholesome scent that makes you feel happy in an instant. It spoke of decades of wonderful reading, of moments of stillness by a good fire.’

  Callie nodded knowingly.

  ‘The dedication in the book is to “all those who at various times have listened to them”. The stories are meant to be read aloud,’ Sam explained. ‘That’s what James originally did at the Chit-Chat Club in Cambridge.’

  Grandpa Joe cleared his throat. ‘He writes so well about the English country house and the English country gentleman – the rather fusty old bachelor academic who spends most of his time poking around old churches or cathedral archives.’

  ‘Fusty old bachelor – sounds like Josh!’ Lara said.

  Josh grunted and threw a cushion at her.

  ‘Hey!’ Eleanor warned.

  Callie placed a hand on Sam’s arm. ‘So, are you going to tell me why your family thought this book was haunted?’

  ‘Well,’ Sam began, ‘the first Christmas we read from the book, strange things seemed to start happening...’

  3

  Sam took a long sip of his mulled wine and continued.

  ‘We started with the first story in the collection: Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook.’

  ‘It’s about a fusty old bachelor,’ Grandpa Joe said.

  ‘Modelled on Josh,’ Lara teased. Luckily for her, there wasn’t another cushion near Josh for him to chuck at her.

  ‘Throw in an historic building and an old book and you’ve got the perfect Jamesian recipe,’ Sam said.

  ‘That’s the spidery hand one, isn’t it?’ Bryony said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about that hand again please,’ Bryony begged.

  ‘So, what happens to this fusty old bachelor?’ Callie asked, desperate to get on with the story.

  ‘We turned all the main lights out that night,’ Sam said. ‘I’d always wanted to read by candlelight.’

  ‘Bad for your eyes!’ Grandma Nell cried.

  ‘Yes,’ Sam agreed.

  ‘And bad for the imagination,’ Bryony said. ‘Like those gas lights in Victorian times. I kept thinking there were things crawling out of the corners of the room.’

  ‘So I read the story. It’s set in a tiny old town in the foothills of the Pyrenees in France where an academic called Dennistoun is poking around the cathedral. The sacristan is showing him around and won’t leave his side.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t there some horrible laughter coming from somewhere in the cathedral?’ Lara asked.

  ‘That’s right. The sacristan keeps his back to the wall and looks uneasy all the time.’

  ‘And what does Dennistoun make of it all?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Well, like all idiots in stories,’ Josh came in, ‘he doesn’t seem to be aware of the danger he’s in.’

  ‘Are you sure we’re not spoiling the story for you?’ Sam asked. ‘I don’t think I should tell you much more in case you want to read it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want you to go on after what happened last time,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘What happened?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Well, suffice to say that Dennistoun tempted fate and was visited by a demonic creature with hairy hands and piercing eyes,’ Sam said.

  Callie shivered.

  ‘Why do these silly old academics poke their noses into the past all the time?’ Bryony asked.

  ‘Because there’d be no story if they didn’t,’ Josh pointed out.

  Bryony nodded. ‘Good point.’

  ‘But the Christmas we read those stories, we began to wonder if some of those demons were real, didn’t we?’ Sam added.

  ‘Yes, when you finished Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, Mum got up to warm up some mulled wine,’ Josh said.

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘I really don’t want to remember it again.’

  ‘Go on, Mum!’ Polly encouraged. ‘Callie’s going to spontaneously combust any second now if we don’t tell her!’

  It was true. Callie found that she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, her eyes wide and her mouth dry in anticipation.

  ‘I would love to know,’ she admitted.

  ‘Well,’ Eleanor said, taking a deep breath, ‘I went through to the kitchen. I didn’t put the main lights on. I just had the little one on above the Aga where I was warming the wine. I got the glasses out of the cupboard and put them on the tray and noticed one of the glasses had a smear on it so I took it to the sink to wash. You know there’s a big window by the sink which looks out on to the garden? I noticed the security light had come on and I saw something moving in the shrubbery. I couldn’t really make out what it was, but it was pretty large and ...’ she stopped, staring into the fire as she shook her head.

  ‘What?’ Callie prompted.

  ‘It had these brilliantly bright eyes. They looked as if they were burning,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘You’d been at the wine ahead of everyone else, Mum!’ Josh teased.

  ‘I swear I hadn’t touched a drop.’

  Callie looked closely at Eleanor. Her face was pale as she recounted the story and she looked totally earnest.

  ‘What happened next?’ Callie asked.

  ‘I waited to see if the creature would come out into the open but it didn’t.’

  ‘And that’s when we heard you scream,’ Josh said.

  ‘I did not scream!’ Eleanor insisted and Josh laughed.

  ‘Just kidding, Mum!’

  ‘It’s not a matter to kid about. There was something out there in the dark.’

  ‘But it turned out to be a stray dog, didn’t it?’ Lara said.

  ‘A stray dog did show up the next day,’ Frank said. ‘We found it in the field when we were walking our two dogs and rang the local rescue who came to take it. But it came home with us and ate as if it hadn’t eaten in days, poor thing. I really think that’s what you saw in the garden that night, darling.’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘I still think there was something else out there. The stray dog was white and what I saw was black.’

  ‘It could have been Black Shuck!’ Grandpa Joe cried, getting excited.

  ‘Oh, what’s Black Shuck?’ Callie asked.

  ‘The ghostly black dog that’s said to roam around the countryside of East Anglia,’ Polly explained.

  ‘Most counties of England have a big black beast s
tory,’ Frank pointed out.

  ‘I’ve never heard of Black Shuck,’ Callie said.

  ‘Well, there was something out there that night,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘What do you think it was?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ve had more than one sleepless night pondering that question,’ Eleanor confessed.

  ‘And she’s kept me awake more than one night with her pondering and pacing,’ Frank added and everyone laughed.

  ‘But that’s not the only thing, is it, Mum?’ Lara said.

  ‘Something else happened?’ Callie asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Eleanor said. ‘But, first, more wine.’

  She got up and left the room, coming back a moment later with a jug filled with mulled wine, the scent perfuming the room as everyone accepted a top up.

  ‘Only a little for my Nell,’ Grandpa Joe said.

  ‘Spoilsport!’ Nell said with a little giggle.

  ‘See – you’re getting merry already,’ Grandpa Joe told her.

  ‘If a person can’t get merry on Christmas Eve, when can they?’ Grandma Nell said.

  Finally, when Eleanor was back on the sofa, she began.

  ‘After everyone had left that night, I was tidying a few things away. I like that quiet time in the kitchen after a get-together, just pottering around, washing the glasses and loading the dishwasher. Anyway I was taking a tray of clean glasses to put away in the dresser in the room next to the kitchen. You know the room, Callie?’

  ‘I’ve never been in there but I know where you mean.’

  ‘I opened the door and put the tray on the table in there, ready to load the glasses into the dresser, when I realised how cold it was. Now, it’s not a room we use a lot and it’s a little colder than the rest of the house but it seemed unnaturally cold in there that night. As cold as a cathedral,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Like the cathedral in Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook?’ Lara suggested.

  ‘Was there a horrible laughter coming from the dresser, Mum?’ Josh teased.

  ‘No, there wasn’t a horrible laughter but I did draw the curtains and I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was being watched.’