Fireside Gothic. Andrew Taylor

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ