Fireside Gothic. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ west wall rises sheer, a cliff of stone pierced with openings: first the doors, then a great window which doesn’t let in much light because of the stained glass. Then, higher still, bands of Norman arcading line the inside of the tower. The first set has a walkway that runs behind it. The next one, further up, is blind, its arches and pillars flattened against the tower wall behind. Above that still, 120 feet above the ground, is the painted tower ceiling, above which the tower rises, higher and higher, stage by stage, to the lantern that perches on top.

      Sometimes one of the younger masters would take a party of boys up to the top as a treat. You went up a spiral staircase in the south-west corner, crossed the width of the tower by the walkway behind the lower arcade, climbed another set of stairs, and then another, until your legs felt twice as heavy as usual. Finally, you came to a wooden door that led on to the leads, more than two hundred feet from the ground.

      Up there was another world, full of light, where a wind was always blowing. You felt weightless, as if floating in a balloon. Far below were the streets of the town and tiny, foreshortened people scurrying through the maze of their lives, oblivious of the watchers above. Beyond the town stretched the Fens as far as the eye could see, their flatness dotted with the occasional church tower or tree or house, which served to emphasize the monotony rather than relieve it; and at the circular horizon, the sky and the earth became one in a blue haze; and it no longer mattered which was which.

      I had been up to the top of the west tower only once, about six months earlier before the end of the summer term. It had been a bright, clear day. There was a story, the master said, that a day like this you could see almost every church in the diocese from here. I tried to count the churches I could see. But I soon gave up and thought instead about Jesus in the wilderness, and how the devil took him up to a high place and tempted him.

      If I had been Jesus, I would have struck a deal with the devil. In return for my soul, I wanted not to be at school; I wanted to live at home with my parents; and I wanted to have a dog called Stanley.

      I remembered all that as I stood by the stove with my bloody hands. I was still thinking about it when I saw the man. He was walking from left to right, quite slowly, along the walkway behind the lower arcade, perhaps ninety feet above our heads. The light was so poor I couldn’t see him clearly. When he passed behind one of the pillars he seemed to dissolve and then reconstitute himself on the other side.

      ‘Can you hear it?’ Faraday said.

      Irritated, I glanced at him. ‘What?’

      ‘Those notes.’

      ‘Shut up, Rabbit.’

      I looked back at the arcade. The man wasn’t there any more. It was conceivable he had put on a bit of speed and reached the archway at the northern end. Or he might have stopped behind a pillar. Or, and perhaps this was most likely of all, he hadn’t been there in the first place. The Cathedral at dusk was full of indistinct shapes that shifted as you tried to look at them.

      Faraday nudged me. ‘There it is again.’

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘The four notes I heard last night. Remember?’ He hummed them, and they meant nothing to me. ‘It’s like the start of something.’

      ‘You’re potty,’ I said. ‘Come on, I want some toast.’

      There was an odd sequel to this a few hours later, when we were having our evening meal at the Veals’.

      While we ate, Mr Veal was in the parlour with us. He had begun to relax in our company, as we had in his.

      ‘This place would fall apart at the seams without the Dean and me,’ he said with obvious satisfaction. ‘Some of these clerical gents would forget who their own mothers were. Heads in the clouds. And your masters aren’t much better.’

      I told him about the glorious ratting we had had at Angel Farm.

      ‘So you missed the rain this afternoon?’ he asked, for the minutiae of the weather’s fluctuations fascinated him, as they did most grown-ups.

      ‘Just about. It was beginning to spit as we were going back to Mr Ratcliffe’s, so we cut up through the Cathedral.’

      ‘We’ll have worse tonight,’ he said. ‘Mrs Veal feels it in her bones. Her bones are never wrong.’

      ‘I saw someone up the west tower,’ I said.

      ‘Up the west tower?’ Mr Veal shook his head. ‘Not at this time of year.’

      ‘Well, I thought I saw someone.’ I shrugged. ‘But it was already getting dark. I could’ve been wrong.’

      ‘No one was up there today,’ Mr Veal said. ‘There wouldn’t be. You can take it as Gospel, young man. Not without me knowing.’

       8

      That evening Mr Ratcliffe made cocoa again. The three of us – four, if you counted Mordred – sat close to the fire.

      The weather had changed during the afternoon. It was still cold, but clouds had rolled in from the south-west, bringing with it a wind that blew in gusts of varying strengths with lulls between them. The wind carried raindrops with it, and the promise of more to come. It rattled doors and windows in their frames. It sounded in the wide chimney.

      It was Faraday who reminded Mr Ratcliffe about his promise.

      ‘Please, sir – you said you’d tell us about Mr Goldsworthy.’

      ‘Did I?’

      ‘Yes, sir. You said there was a real story about the ghost.’

      ‘Real? To be perfectly truthful, Faraday, I can’t be absolutely sure which parts of the story are real and which are not. I don’t think anyone can after all this time.’

      ‘When did he live, sir?’ I asked.

      ‘Nearly two hundred years ago. He was the Master of Music, one of Dr Atkinson’s predecessors. He was a composer, too. You remember the anthem we have on Christmas Day? The “Jubilate Deo”? He wrote that.’

      Faraday’s face was in shadow. But he shifted in his seat as if someone had touched him. It was the anthem that Hampson Minor had sung in Faraday’s place.

      ‘He died as a result of a fall,’ Mr Ratcliffe went on, ‘and he’s buried in the north choir aisle. There’s a tablet to him on the wall more or less opposite the organ loft.’

      ‘But – why is he a ghost?’ I said. Into my mind slipped an image of Dr Atkinson, who was small, red-faced and irascible, draped in a sheet and rattling chains like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

      ‘If he is,’ said Mr Ratcliffe. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’

      ‘Has anyone seen him, sir?’ Faraday asked, leaning forward. ‘They must have done. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have said he was a ghost last night.’

      ‘You must be patient.’ Mr Ratcliffe began the elaborate ritual of cleaning, filling and lighting his pipe. ‘Did СКАЧАТЬ