The Ministry of Ghosts

by Alex Shearer

  ‘I’m here about the job,’ he said. ‘The one up in the window.’

  ‘Oh, another applicant!’ Mrs Scant said. ‘The second in two days.’

  ‘Your sign there,’ the boy said, ‘that says Saturday Girl or Boy Person Required for Saturdays. I’d like to apply for the job.’

  ‘Is it another jobseeker down there?’ Mr Copperstone’s reedy voice came piping down the stairs, followed by his elderly limbs and the rest of him.

  ‘It is, Mr Copperstone,’ Miss Rolly answered.

  ‘Then let us have a look at the fellow,’ Mr Copperstone said. He proceeded to do that.

  ‘So it’s a boy this time, is it? Might one ask your name, young chap?’

  ‘Tim,’ the boy said. ‘Tim Legge. I live just round the corner. Well, a couple of corners, really, and then down a lane. We’ve got a shop there. The Legge Works. We started off on wooden legs but now it’s bats. They play with our cricket bats in the test matches.’

  ‘Oh, cricket!’ old Mr Copperstone said. ‘I used to watch a lot of cricket when I was a younger man. You can’t beat cricket. You can sit down and sleep through it all day long.’

  ‘We made bannisters as well once,’ the boy said. ‘But you can’t play cricket with them. Not generally speaking. Though I suppose you could if you had to. Anyway, I’m on my way to school and I’m probably going to be late now, but I wanted to get my application in quick and beat the rush. I’m specially interested in the good wages, as I’ve got to earn some so as to buy somebody a birthday present.’

  ‘How kind and thoughtful,’ Miss Rolly said. ‘Who are you buying a present for? A sibling? Your dear mama?’

  ‘No,’ Tim Legge said. ‘Me.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘It’s a sort of tradition,’ Tim said. ‘Every year, round about the time of my birthday, I get myself a present. I feel I deserve it. And there’s only a few months to go. So I need to save up fast. So what are the hours and when can I start?’

  ‘Now hold on, young man,’ Mr Gibbings said. ‘It’s not quite that simple.’

  ‘Yes, don’t you want to know what the job is first?’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘Before making a formal application?’

  ‘Then we may need to take up references,’ Miss Rolly said.

  ‘And have a cup of tea,’ Mrs Scant put in.

  ‘And we already have other applicants under consideration,’ Miss Rolly said. ‘A rather personable young lady, whom we are quite partial to. In fact she is top of the list right now.’

  ‘Though she is the only one on it,’ Mr Gibbings pointed out.

  ‘Be that as it may –’ Miss Rolly said.

  ‘All right, what is the job?’ Tim Legge said. ‘Tell me a bit about it, then I’ll whack in my application.’

  ‘It’s to do with ghosts,’ Mr Gibbings said, and this time he was very solemn, and very serious too.

  ‘Ghosts and catching them,’ Miss Rolly said. ‘It’s not work for the faint-hearted or for those of a delicate constitution or for mummy’s boys.’

  Tim Legge looked indignant.

  ‘Who’s saying I’m a mummy’s boy?’ he demanded. ‘You show them to me and I’ll knock their front teeth out.’

  ‘Well, there’s no call to go to extremes,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘I’m sure that we don’t need to be doing any dentistry as such –’

  ‘Just saying that I’m not no mummy’s boy,’ the boy said. ‘And I’m not afraid of a few ghosts either. I eat ghosts for breakfast, I do.’

  ‘Don’t you have cereal and toast then?’ Mrs Scant said. ‘Washed down with a nice cup of tea?’

  ‘I think he was speaking metaphorically, Mrs Scant,’ Mr Copperstone said.

  ‘Oh, was he now?’ Mrs Scant said wonderingly. ‘Just fancy. I never heard of boys doing that before.’

  ‘So where are the ghosts then?’ Tim Legge demanded. ‘You just show them to me, and I’ll sort them out. I’ll bag them up for you in no time and chuck them in the skip.’

  ‘No, no,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘You’re grasping the wrong end of the stick, young man. We need a Saturday Boy –’

  ‘Or girl –’ Miss Rolly interrupted.

  ‘Quite so. We need a Saturday Boy or Girl to find a ghost for us. For – in case you didn’t read the brass plate – we are the Ministry of Ghosts here. But sadly neither we, nor our predecessors, have been able to find a ghost in over two hundred years. If we don’t find one soon, we’re to be closed down.’

  ‘And redeployed to the Sewage Department,’ Mr Gibbings said.

  ‘That is, those of us who are not being forcibly retired,’ Mr Copperstone said.

  Then they all began to talk at once.

  ‘And we’ve only got three months to do it.’

  ‘And according to Grimes and Natterly’s Manual of Ghost Hunting –’

  ‘Which you are no doubt familiar with.’

  ‘It is on the school curriculum, one assumes –’

  ‘Children are more sensitive to the presence of ghosts than adults –’

  ‘And can even lure them –’

  ‘Acting as a kind of bait, or temptation, as it were.’

  ‘So you just get us a ghost, young man, and not only will you be able to buy yourself a birthday present –’

  ‘We’ll send you a card too.’

  ‘So how’s that?’

  They fell silent and waited for some reaction from the untidy boy on the step.

  ‘What’s the wages?’ he said.

  ‘National minimum,’ Mrs Scant said.

  ‘I wouldn’t work for less,’ the boy said. ‘No way.’

  ‘Nobody should be expected to,’ Mrs Scant agreed. ‘You should never work for less than the minimum. Stands to reason.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ the boy said.

  ‘So will we,’ Miss Rolly said.

  ‘Now I know what the job is, I’m not so sure as I want it,’ Tim Legge said.

  ‘Well, we may not want you,’ Miss Rolly pointed out. ‘For we already have one other applicant, and may yet have several more.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ Mrs Scant said.

  ‘Very early,’ Mr Gibbings agreed. ‘Early days and early in the day. All the pupils from your school might yet apply. Who knows?’

  ‘Well, I was here first,’ Tim Legge said.

  ‘Second, actually,’ Miss Rolly said.

  ‘All right, I want to apply for the job then.’

  ‘Then leave us your card and we shall consider your application and we will be in touch,’ Mr Copperstone said.

  ‘Don’t have a card,’ Tim said.

  ‘Oh. That is inconvenient.’

  ‘Just leave us your name then,’ Mr Gibbings said.

  ‘Leave you my name? But what if I need it and I’ve left it with you? No one’ll know who I am!’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘Don’t they teach you at your school that when you leave your name you don’t actually leave your name, all you do is leave your name. That girl said exactly the same thing.’

  ‘What girl’s that?’ Tim said.

  ‘She said her name was Thruppence.’

  ‘Thruppence Coddley?’

  ‘That was her.’

  ‘Who never smells of fish?’

  ‘Only strawberries, apparently,’ Mr Gibbings said.

  ‘She’s in my class,’ Tim said.

  ‘How do we know you’re not in hers?’ Miss Rolly asked.

  ‘Same difference,’ Tim said.

  ‘Is it though?’ Miss Rolly said. ‘How do we know it’s not a different difference?’

  ‘Aren’t we splitting hairs here?’ Mr Copperstone said.

  ‘Might be, might not,’ Tim Legge said cryptically. ‘And anyway, you can’t trust her,’ he continued. ‘Thruppence Coddley will never find a ghost for you. She couldn’t find a wooden leg in a wooden leg factory.’

  ‘Why not?’ Miss Rolly said, feeling that she should champion Thruppence Coddley’s corner.

&nbs
p; ‘She just couldn’t, that’s all. She wouldn’t know where to start. Girls aren’t good at finding ghosts. It’s boys that are good at that. Especially boys called Tim. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Mrs Scant said.

  ‘Then there you go,’ Tim said nonchalantly. ‘I guess it’s true that we all learn something new every day. Anyhow, time’s pressing on –’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘I have ever found that to be the case, despite my advanced age … Time has pressed me on for several years now, and I dare say it will continue to do so, until the end –’

  ‘And I’d better get to school or I’ll be late and get into trouble. Not that I mind a bit of trouble personally,’ Tim said.

  ‘But all things in moderation,’ Mrs Scant said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tim said. ‘You don’t want to have too much trouble or you won’t have time for anything else. So I shall leave you my name like you said, and then if I do need it for anything, I can always nip back and you can return it. Or if I forget it, you can tell me what it is.’

  Mr Copperstone sighed.

  ‘Mr Gibbings, would you take a note of the young man’s name and address and telephone number?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  He did, and the brief doorstep interview was over.

  ‘Okay, well, you’ll let me know then will you, guys?’ Tim Legge said.

  The four civil servants stared at him in a kind of incredulous horror. Guys? Had this boy just addressed old and eminent Mr Copperstone and forceful Miss Rolly and young Mr Gibbings and the ever purposeful Mrs Scant as guys? Guys! What was the world coming to? Guys, indeed. It was unheard of, unprecedented, unbelievable.

  ‘Y-yes, yes. I-I suppose we will,’ Mr Copperstone managed to stutter.

  ‘Okay. Gotta go. Catch you later then, guys. You all chill, now. And don’t forget, if it’s ghosts you want, then I’m the dude. And if you ever want a new cricket bat, my dad’ll give you a discount. High fives then, eh, guys!’

  Tim Legge would definitely have given the assembled civil servants high fives all round, but they seemed not to know what he was talking about, and just stared at him in open-mouthed bewilderment.

  ‘No? Okay. Suit yourselves. Catch you later then. Gotta split!’

  With that, and with his backpack, his sticking-up hair and his general air of being made from several irregular bits of cardboard randomly stuck together, Tim Legge went on his way, and he started to whistle as he went.

  Mr Copperstone looked at his underlings.

  ‘Guys? Dudes? High fives?’ he said. He shook his head slowly and sorrowfully. ‘It wasn’t like that in my day. Whatever are we to do?’

  ‘How about a cup of tea, sir?’ Mrs Scant said.

  ‘A champion idea, Mrs Scant,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘Then, perhaps, we can convene in my office to discuss our next step.’

  They did indeed convene to do so. Yet somehow – as ever – the promised tea did not appear. Nobody liked to mention it. But it was certainly a mystery, Mrs Scant and her tea. She was always about to make it, she was always offering to make it, and she frequently seemed to think that she had made it. But the kettle never quite boiled somehow, the cups never got as far as the tray, the biscuits remained in the packet, and the tea just never arrived.

  It made you wonder sometimes. It really did. Just what was going on.

  11

  The Successful Candidate

  When weekends came, the Ministry of Ghosts seemed a hollow, bereft, lonely and deserted place.

  Saturdays, public holidays, long Sunday afternoons, they all took their toll, and appeared to leave a little more dust on the windows, a little more darkness within, a little more discolouration on the ancient, brass nameplate.

  Few people passed along Bric-a-Brac Street between Friday night and Monday morning. The schools were closed, as were any neighbouring offices, and those seeking pleasure and entertainment and shopping opportunities would not have selected the Bric-a-Brac route, for there were far more interesting thoroughfares in other areas, where the bright shops sparkled with window displays, and where the cinemas offered the choice of a dozen films.

  But in Bric-a-Brac Street there was silence. No sight of Mr Copperstone. No sound of Miss Rolly. Not a glimpse of Mr Gibbings. Not a word from Mrs Scant. Of course, they must have had lives of their own, homes to go to, meals to cook and to eat, hobbies to pursue, friends and relations to visit, bookshelves to put up and holes to drill in walls.

  Yet it was also hard to imagine them away from the place, so steeped were they in its dusty aura. The Ministry of Ghosts and those who worked there seemed inseparable in some ways, as if the place and the people had grown into each other and had become one.

  Tick, then tock. The clock in the hallway tolled the passing of the time. It marked the minutes and mourned the hours with a weary chime. Motes of dust still hung in the sunlight, slowly falling. Where did all the dust come from? When did the cleaners arrive to vacuum it all away?

  Tock, and then tick. Little by little, minute by interminable minute, the long, long weekend leaked away. Outside, away from Bric-a-Brac Street, were crowds and commotion, gaiety and laughter, movement and vitality and the throb of life. But here, just shade and shadow, and some inner rooms, impenetrable to sunlight, and occasionally, from the direction of the basement, the meow of a cat. Boddington, no doubt, with a weekend’s supply of food and water left for him somewhere, you would suppose, and with his own personal cat flap in one of the doors, allowing him to escape on his adventures.

  As for the ghosts – the ghosts that the Ministry had been set up to find – where were they? Were they all merely illusions in the minds of the credulous and the gullible? Were they little more than stories, to be told around campfires, with the small flames burning, and the woodsmoke rising, and the darkness behind you, and the fear growing, and your spine tingling, as the storyteller wove his fantastic cloth of impossible, improbable, yet dazzlingly colourful yarns?

  Ghosts. Maybe there was not a single one, and never had been. And all this work, this seeking, this believing, this fear, this appeasement, this terror of the unknown and this eternal wondering about what lay beyond life’s end – it was all for nothing.

  In truth, maybe all that lay on the other side of life was peace, and quiet, and silence, and the long shadows, and the dust falling – something like the inside of the Ministry of Ghosts, during those long, monotonous, everlasting weekends.

  Suddenly now, a sound is heard. A telephone is ringing. It echoes throughout the building. Its noise is heard in every room. Who can it be? Who would call the Ministry of Ghosts so late on a Saturday evening?

  Down in the basement, Boddington swivels his yellow eyes. What’s that? Who’s there? What do they want? What’s happening? Is it news? Disaster? Celebration? Change? The ending of an old era? The start of a new? Isn’t someone going to pick up the phone? Isn’t someone going to answer? You can’t expect a cat to –

  The telephone goes on ringing. The curtains try to muffle the sound, but cannot silence it. Hush, hush, the dark wood panelling seems to say. Not here. Not now. This is the Ministry, and is not to be disturbed.

  The phone falls silent. The whole building seems to sigh its relief. But before it can settle back to its slumbers, the phone starts to ring again. It’s even louder now, surely, like a cock crowing in the early morning, commanding the hens, the chickens, the farm, the farmer, the countryside, the whole county, to wake up, up, up – now!

  Can’t someone do something to stop it? It’s all surely a mistake anyway. A wrong number. A hoax call. A prank. An automated call from one of those infernal businesses that are always ringing up to sell you new windows or insurance. It can’t be a real call. Not a real call. No one ever telephones the Ministry of Ghosts at this hour, not at a weekend. They haven’t done so for years, for decades, not once in living memory, nor in the memory of the dead either – if memories they still have.

  For heaven’s
sake – STOP!

  And it does. It’s like a toothache ending. The bad molar taken out. Relief. Pain gone. Silence resumes, like a settling bird, finding a branch now and folding its wings. It tilts its head, closes its eyes, puffs up the cushion of its feathers. It sleeps. The whole building sleeps. Desks and carpets and tables and chairs. All asleep. Look into my eyes; you feel yourself grow heavy; your eyelids feel heavy; there is nothing you can do; you cannot help yourself; you must sleep, sleep, sleep.

  And when the building wakes, it is Monday morning again. The weekend is gone to wherever it is that weekends go. The rubbish truck that removes the residue of old weekends has come and collected the waste and has taken it to the tip. There it rests, with all the other weekends past, perhaps one day to be recycled, and turned into fresh, new time.

  * * *

  ‘Mr Copperstone, sir.’

  ‘Mrs Scant. Good morning to you.’

  ‘At your desk already, sir?’

  ‘Such is the fate of the man at the top, Mrs Scant. The last to leave and the first to arrive, and always the one to go down with the sinking ship. Not that we’re sinking yet – I hope.’

  ‘I certainly hope not, sir. Did you have a good weekend?’

  ‘Quiet, Mrs Scant, but pleasant enough. And yourself?’

  ‘Yes, very nice, sir. Quiet too, but all very restful.’

  ‘That’s it, Mrs Scant. Recharge the batteries, eh?’

  ‘Try to relax, sir, that’s it.’

  ‘Ah. Do I hear voices?’

  ‘Miss Rolly and Mr Gibbings, by the sound of it, sir. They often get in at the same time.’

  ‘Good, good. Then we’re all here and all punctual and ready to get down to another hard day’s work.’

  Mrs Scant looked doubtful. She might have asked Mr Copperstone how many years it had been now since he had last done a hard day’s work. But that would have been tactless, and not very sensible, so she refrained and simply enquired,

  ‘Shall I make a pot of tea, sir?’

  ‘If you could, Mrs Scant. That would be greatly appreciated.’

  So off Mrs Scant went to put the kettle on, greeting Mr Gibbings and Miss Rolly on her way.