Dial-A-Ghost

  Oliver was quite hurt that she should ask such a question. ‘Of course she would be welcome. Of course. A ghost wrapped in a flag would be... inspiring.’

  After lunch (which was a sandwich for Oliver in the garden) the other ghosts said they would rest, and Oliver and Adopta climbed up the hill to look at the place where the two hikers had frozen to death.

  ‘I can’t feel them,’ said Adopta. ‘I’m afraid they may just not have become ghosts. Perhaps it’s as well if they had bad frostbite. But I think you ought to ask your factor to put up a proper cross or a little monument. It seems rude not to have anything.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve got a factor. What is it exactly?’

  ‘It’s a person who runs an estate and tells the shepherds and farmers what to do.’

  ‘How do you know about factors? I mean you wouldn’t have had them in the knicker shop or at Resthaven.’

  Adopta shrugged. ‘Sometimes I know things that I don’t know how I know them, but please don’t start on again about how I’m really someone else because I’m a Wilkinson and I’m me.’ She glanced round at the wide view, the heather-covered hills, the river. ‘Pernilla would love this. She feels so trapped in the shopping arcade.’

  ‘Who’s Pernilla?’

  ‘She’s a Swedish ghost – she came to look after some children and learn English, and some idiot in a Jaguar drove her home from a party and crashed.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her to stay? And Mr Hofmann too. Anyone you want, there’s lots of room here.’

  ‘Could we? Oh Oliver, that would be great. Only we’d better do it properly through the agency or—’ She broke off and pointed excitedly at a field below them. ‘Look! Sheep! Hundreds of them. Come on!’

  But when they reached the field every single sheep in it looked fleecy and cheerful and well.

  ‘I could kill one for you, I suppose,’ said Oliver. ‘But I don’t eat mutton and—’

  ‘No, that would be silly. It might not become a ghost and then it would be a complete waste of time. You can never tell, you see. You can get half a dozen animals that just lie there dead as dodos and absolutely nothing happens, and then one suddenly rises up, and you’re away!’

  The day ended with a great honour for Oliver. He was invited to the Evening Calling for Trixie. They did it near the sundial and everybody linked hands and bowed to the north and the south and the east and the west and told Trixie that they wanted her and needed her and would she please, please come.

  When it was over, Oliver asked if there was anything that Trixie had particularly liked.

  ‘Something that we could put out for her, perhaps?’ he said.

  Grandma and Aunt Maud looked at each other. ‘Bananas,’ said Grandma. ‘She’d have sold her soul for a banana. All of us would in the war.’

  So Oliver ran back into the house and fetched a banana – a long and very yellow one – which they put on the sundial where it could be seen easily from above, and Aunt Maud was so happy that she rose into the air and did the dance that she and Trixie had done when they were Sugar Puffs – a thing she hadn’t done for years.

  Oliver fairly skipped along the corridor that night on his way to bed – and when he got to his room he had a surprise. While he was out with Adopta the others had done out his room. The man stuck full of arrows was gone, and so was the deer having its throat cut, and the rearing horses. Instead Aunt Maud had brought in some dried grasses and put them in a vase, and they’d hung up a cheerful picture of a garden they’d found in one of the other rooms.

  And Oliver’s inhaler was once again beside his bed.

  ‘You won’t need it,’ said Uncle Henry. ‘The air here is excellent and anyway asthma’s something you grow out of. But it might as well be there.’

  Although ghosts usually haunt by night and sleep by day, they had decided to keep the same hours as Oliver, but when everyone had settled down, Oliver still sat up in bed with his arms round his knees.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Adopta sleepily.

  ‘I was thinking about how much there is to find out. About ghosts and ectoplasm and why some people become them and others not, and why some people see them and others don’t . . . I mean, if you eat carrots you’re supposed to see better in the dark, so perhaps there’s a sort of carrot for making you see ghosts? And if you really knew about ectoplasm, maybe you could change the things that ghosts are wearing. I bet it’s the flag that’s bothering your Aunt Trixie. Imagine if you called her and she could immediately put on a raincoat or a dressing gown. And wouldn’t it be marvellous if people could decide whether to become ghosts or not.’

  ‘And decide for their pets,’ said Addie. It was always the animals that mattered to her.

  Oliver nodded. ‘I tell you, someone ought to start a proper research institute to study all this.’

  ‘Not one of those places where they try to find out whether we exist or not. Ghost hunting and all that. Tying black thread over the staircase and sellotaping the windows. So rude.’

  ‘No. This would be ghosts and people working side by side.’

  Oliver’s mind was racing. He hadn’t wanted Helton, he was going to try and give it away. But now...Why not a research institute here – there was room enough.

  ‘I wonder if I’ve got any money?’ he said. ‘I mean serious money for labs and people to work in them.’

  ‘Why don’t you write to your guardian? He seems a nice man, exploring places and trying to find the golden toads. I expect the lawyer’s got his address.’

  Oliver thought this was a good idea, but thinking about letters made him remember the one thing that still troubled him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Addie, seeing the change in his face.

  Oliver shrugged. ‘It’s silly to fuss when everything’s turning out so well, but I had these friends in the Home...’

  He explained what had happened and Addie frowned. ‘Was it always Fulton who posted the letters for you?’

  ‘Yes. He used to take everything down to Helton Post Office. He said it would be safer.’

  ‘Hm.’ Addie had never liked the sound of Fulton. ‘Why don’t you try once more when you write to your guardian and we’ll take the letters to the box at Troughton?’

  Oliver nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That sounds sensible. That’s what we’ll do.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The ghosts whom the kind nuns had adopted had been at Larchford Abbey for several days and the nuns were just a little bit disappointed and hurt. They knew that people needed time to settle in to a new place and they had made it clear to the ladies at the agency that they wouldn’t bother the ghosts and that they didn’t expect the ghosts to bother them.

  All the same, a little friendliness would have been nice. They had looked forward to a glimpse of the child in her nightdress playing merrily in the bell tower or the old lady floating about in the rose garden, and having heard that Mr Wilkinson was fond of fishing, they had half expected to see him by the river, casting with a fly or tickling trout.

  But there had been absolutely no sign of the family. Not one wisp of ectoplasm in the orchard, not a trace of a voice singing to itself in the dusk.

  The ghosts were there all right. Oh yes, they were definitely there. Blood had oozed through the old abbey floor and they had found several sets of footprints with three toes. From time to time, too, there came the smell of frying meat – rather strong meat which did not seem to be absolutely fresh – and now and again they heard a gurgling moan, but no one had come forward to introduce themselves or to thank the nuns for giving them a home.

  ‘One must do good without thinking of the reward. One should not need to be thanked,’ said Mother Margaret.

  ‘Do you think we ought to write to the agency?’ asked Sister Phyllida. ‘I mean, there may be some little thing they are too shy to mention. Something we could put right?’

  But Mother Margaret thought they had better wait a bit longer. ‘After all, we don??
?t know very much about... ectoplasm and that sort of thing. Perhaps there are changes when people travel, which have to right themselves.’

  ‘Like air sickness. Upset stomachs and so on. Yes, that could explain a lot. Some of those bloodstains do look a little disordered,’ said Sister Phyllida, who was the one that had been a nurse.

  It wasn’t just the Shriekers’ bloodstains that were out of order. The Shriekers themselves were in a ghastly state. They were lying on the floor and kicking the air with their mouldering feet, and every time they thrust their legs out, they bellowed and whooped and howled and squealed.

  They had remembered that it was the anniversary of their Great Sorrow. On an April day just like this one, the terrible thing had happened which had driven them mad with guilt and turned them into the ghastly, tortured and revolting creatures they now were.

  ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ moaned Sabrina. ‘How could we have done it? How could we have been so cruel to our flesh and blood?’

  ‘It is right to punish,’ whined Pelham. ‘People must be punished for doing wrong.’

  ‘But not like that. Whipping would have been all right, taking food away would have been all right. Thumping and scourging and walloping would have been all right, but not what we did.’

  She began to moan again and roll about on the floor among the owl droppings and scrabble her feet in the filth. Even as she did that, the guilt and sin made her little toe go all wibbly and Pelham slapped her hard on the behind and said, ‘Stop it! I too suffer. I too feel my guilt and my sin, but you have hardly any toes left and enough is enough. We must act. We must be revenged on the world. We must see that no other child is left unharmed to remind us of that ghastly day when our—’

  ‘No!’ shrieked Sabrina. ‘Don’t mention that name. Don’t dig the knife deeper into my bosom.’

  ‘You haven’t got a bosom any more,’ said Pelham. ‘It’s all skin and bone and—’

  They began quarrelling again about whether or not Sabrina had a bosom. Then they sat up and tried to pull themselves together.

  ‘It’s true that we have to rid the world of children,’ said Pelham. ‘It’s not till the sobs and moans of other parents mingle with our own that we shall get some rest. But there don’t seem to be any children here, and in the meantime...’

  He glided over to the window and stood looking out at the fields and stables and orchards which the nuns had tended so lovingly.

  ‘In the meantime what?’

  Pelham’s scarred face was a grimace of hatred. ‘Meanwhile, there are little lambs gambolling—’ he spat out the word. ‘And puppy dogs playing... and baby goats – ugh – leaping for joy.’

  Sabrina came to join him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you know what they call baby goats. They call them kids . . .’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Bend over,’ said Fulton Snodde-Brittle – and the small boy standing in front of him in his study bent over.

  ‘Right over,’ said Fulton, and the child doubled up over the arm of the leather chair. His name was Toby Benson and he was just seven years old.

  Fulton went for his cane, and then frowned and put it back. Canes left marks and the school inspector was due in the next couple of weeks. Not that it mattered – by then he and Frieda should be living in Helton Hall and the school could go to the devil. Still, might as well play safe. He fetched his gym shoe out of the cupboard and bent it back. You could get quite a decent thwack with that, but it wasn’t the same. Everything had become namby-pamby nowadays.

  ‘You know why I’m going to beat you, don’t you?’ said Fulton.

  Toby sniffed and a tear ran down one cheek. ‘Yes, sir. Because I was eating sweets in the gym, sir. My mother sent me—’

  ‘That’s enough,’ roared Fulton, raising his arm.

  But when he had finished, and the little boy had hobbled out, Fulton didn’t feel as cheered as he usually did after beating a child. His mind was on Helton Hall and what was happening there. Oliver had been alone now for nearly a week and he had hoped to hear that he had been taken ill or gone off his head. Perhaps they should phone and find out what was happening? He went down to find Frieda, who was in the school kitchen telling the cook to remove one fish finger from every one of the children’s helpings laid out for lunch.

  ‘But that’ll just leave one, Miss Snodde-Brittle,’ said the cook. ‘One fish finger’s not much for a growing boy.’

  ‘Are you telling me what growing boys should eat?’ said Frieda, towering over the poor cook. ‘You don’t seem to be aware that over-eating is very bad for children. It makes them fat and gives them heart disease. Now let me see you take the extra finger away and put it in the freezer for next week. And I thought I said one tablespoon of tinned peas. She bent over a plate and began to count. ‘I find it very hard to believe that twenty-three peas make up one tablespoon. I do hope you can count because—’

  But at this moment Fulton appeared by her side and said he wanted to speak to her.

  ‘I’m going to telephone Miss Match,’ he said, when they were alone in the study.

  So he dialled the Helton number and after a very long time Miss Match’s voice could be heard at the other end. She had forgotten her hearing aid and her voice sounded croaky and cross.

  ‘Helton Hall.’

  ‘Ah, Miss Match. It’s Fulton Snodde-Brittle here. I’m just ringing up to find out how Oliver is. How has he been?’

  There was a pause at the other end. Then: ‘I’ve never given him any beans. It’s the wrong time of year for beans. Beans come later.’

  Fulton tried again.

  ‘No, not beans to eat. I want to know how he’s getting on. Have you any news?’

  ‘No, of course I haven’t got any newts. Can’t abide the things – slimy little nasties.’

  Frieda reached for the phone. ‘Let me try,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a more carrying voice.’ She put the mouthpiece to her lips. ‘We want to know how Oliver is,’ she shrieked. ‘How is he in himself?’

  There was another pause. Then Miss Match said, ‘Barmy. Off his head.’

  A great smile spread over Frieda’s face.

  ‘Barmy?’ she repeated. ‘You mean mad?’

  ‘Mad as a hatter,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Talks to himself, runs about waving his arms, won’t come in for meals.’

  ‘Oh that’s wonderful – I mean that’s terrible. But don’t worry, Miss Match. We’ll be back soon to take him off your hands.’

  She put the phone down and the Snodde-Brittles stood and grinned at each other. ‘It’s worked,’ said Fulton. ‘Oh glory – think of it. Helton Hall is ours! We’ll give him another three or four days to go off the deep end completely, and then we’ll get a doctor and have him put away.’

  Frieda flopped down in the armchair. The thought of owning Helton was so marvellous that she almost thought of telling the cook to leave the second fish finger on the children’s plates. But in the end she decided against it. Happiness didn’t have to make you stupid.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When the Wilkinsons had been with Oliver for a week, they called up the ghost of the farmer from the lake.

  Oliver had been worried about this, but it turned out to be a very good thing to do. They called him up the way they called Trixie, telling him he was wanted and needed and that he should not wander alone in the Land of the Shades, and gradually there was a sort of heaving on the lake, and then a kind of juddering, and slowly the spirit of Benjamin Jenkins, who had run the Home Farm at Helton a hundred years ago, floated up and out of the water.

  He couldn’t have been nicer. He was simply dressed, in breeches and a checked shirt, and carried a gun over his shoulder because he had meant to shoot himself if the drowning didn’t work, and the first thing he did in his pleasant country voice was to thank them for calling him up.

  ‘I was getting a bit bogged down in there,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t make up my mind about coming out.’

  Eric and Mr Jenkins took to each othe
r at once, and in no time at all they were telling each other how badly they had been treated by the women they loved.

  ‘Her name was Fredrica Snodde-Brittle,’ said the farmer. ‘She used to ride through my fields every morning on a huge horse and I was always there, holding open the gate for her. I was so sure she’d come to care for me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought about Cynthia Harbottle. I used to carry her satchel all the way to the bus stop.’

  The farmer sighed. ‘She was so haughty. She said no Snodde-Brittle could marry a common farmer.’

  Eric nodded understandingly. ‘Cynthia was haughty too. She used to blow bubble gum in my face.’

  Fredrica hadn’t done that because bubble gum wasn’t invented in those days and anyway the Snodde-Brittles were too haughty to chew, but she had done other things, and soon Eric and Mr Jenkins took to wandering away into the woods, feeling very much comforted to know that they were not alone.

  With Eric so much more cheerful, his parents could settle down to enjoy themselves. Uncle Henry went fishing, borrowing a rod from the lumber room and sitting peacefully by the river for hours on end. He didn’t catch any fish – he didn’t want to – he just liked to sit and be quiet and forget all those years when people had opened their mouths and showed him their teeth even on a Monday morning. And if anyone came and saw a rod stretched by itself over the water, they probably thought it was the branch of a tree.

  Aunt Maud, meanwhile, took up her dancing again, hitching up her long tweed skirt and twirling and swirling on the rim of the fountain, and Grandma did housework. Miss Match never came upstairs, so that no one noticed a hoover snaking along the floor by itself or a feather duster shaking itself out. Even the budgie became a useful bird, helping the swallows build their nests and hardly saying anything silly at all.

  There was only one thing which puzzled the ghosts. Why had Miss Pringle not told them that they were going to Helton instead of the nuns? And who was it that had offered to have the ghosts at Helton in the first place? Who had gone to the agency and offered them a home?