way, endurance,” Catherine agreed. “How much these four walls must have witnessed! Yet here they still are, basking comfortably while we scurry around on our little errands. That’s what Jack was trying to say, wasn’t it, Jack?”
“Oh, I’m the last person to ask,” said Jack, rather pompously. “Once the paint dries I disown it. I set it adrift to sink or swim.”
“Oh, it swims, it swims!”
“Certainly it does,” said Mr Frazer, on a rare visit from his study. Even in his own house he wore a suit and tie, and his bald forehead glowed with summer heat. “Do you know Gluck’s work at all?”
Colin took Ossian’s elbow and drew him aside to ask conspiratorially: “Fancy dodging out to the King’s Head later? You could pass for eighteen, easy.”
“He’s not luring you to the pub already, is he?” asked Sue, whose hearing was excellent. She rose from the sofa and drifted like a mist to stand behind them.
“Ossian and I are going to relive past times, aren’t we, Ossian? We’ve a lot of catching up to do. Don’t suppose you want to come?”
“I’d be too embarrassed, the way you drool over that barmaid.”
Colin shot her an unpleasant look. “What did I say, Ossian? A fantasy world.”
“Now, children,” said Catherine cheerfully, choosing to notice Colin’s tone. “They’re terribly fond of each other really,” she explained to the guests.
“We enjoy arguing,” agreed Sue vigorously. “It’s good for the circulation.”
“But it’s such a waste of time, darling.”
“Time’s what we have plenty of,” said Sue, taking a pastry from the tray. Ossian didn’t see her eat it, but when he looked a little later it was gone and her lips were innocent of crumbs.
Ossian was restless. He moved to the French window and stepped on to the terrace beyond. At once he was ambushed by the heat. He waded through it, hugging the wall where the sun had stencilled a stiletto of shade. A brick arch let him into the kitchen yard, where the house’s grandeur lapsed into a random shabbiness, messed with bins and sheds.
In this large house solitude was strangely hard to find and for a while he cherished the abrupt leeward silence. A windowless height of red brick leaned out against the sky to shelter him and shrank the house guests’ chatter to a querulous hum. Through the frame of the arch, the flowerbeds and lawns sloped down and out of sight. He took a breath and held it, imagined he could hold the moment too. He felt, for that precarious instant, quite content.
Then the ghosts came for him.
He smelt them, first of all. First came the scent of freshly-dug earth, the rich steam of black earth newly turned. Out in the garden he heard the slice of a bright clean blade, soil angled out by a booted heel. Instinctively, he grasped his neck and at once the earth smell became stronger, colder, a memorial fugue of growth and decay.
“Not again!” he murmured. “Can’t you leave me alone?”
Into that empty space they streamed. From jarred doors, unlatched windows they fell in soft drifts and billowed out of the loose soil where the late roses bloomed. Little by little, they became defined against each other, spiralling through the August heat. Now he saw their faces, some of them, bleached and torn faces with the skin hanging open, loose as unbuttoned shirts. One’s jaw had been smashed in with a hammer. Another was missing the back of its head; a concave scatter of bone showed where the skull should have been. Two had cords about their throats and between them stood a young man who had been run through with a sword. It had entered the small of his back and been thrust upward, its wraith of blade protruding from his mouth like an iron tongue. None had died quietly.
Ossian shrank from them. They would not harm him, he knew. They were phantoms. But their misery stirred such horror in him that he wished only to sink down and shroud himself in the long grass. They were pressing closer, muffling his face, telling him desperate stories, in whispers thin as water… He gasped for breath and pressed his body up against the wall. When he punched, the faces would swirl to nothing about his fist, then re-form and eddy, settle with infinite patience. Behind him, the door into the kitchen was open a little way. He pushed through neck-high and slipped inside, then turned to heave it shut.
But there was no need, for the ghosts had already lapsed, folded back into the complex shadows of the yard. He looked around the kitchen, shaking, and barely recognised the place. Stacks of unwashed plates towered there and the hanging knives glittered, and by the open window a set of crystal wind chimes sang in brittle whispers. Otherwise, the room was silent; but its silence was merely stifled noise, hysterical. The grandfather clock two rooms away was ticking like a bomb.
“Who’s there?” asked Ossian uncertainly, and hoped with all his heart that no one would reply.
No one did. But something began to move from the Welsh dresser at the far end of the kitchen. It was hardly more than a wash of blue-black colour. Halfway down, it reached the meat knives where they hung from their hooks – a little dusty, but still gleaming – and paused. One of the knives swung a little, as it might in a gentle breeze or if some tentative finger were testing its edge. At that moment, Ossian even saw the hand itself, a hand tanned and calloused, but not so very different from his own, blooming out of nothingness and as suddenly tucked back. Then the ghost hurried on, past Ossian and through the side door to the hall. Ossian felt no breeze, but there was a flexing of the air as the room bulged a little to let it pass. He blurted out: “What is your name? What are you afraid of?”
The ghost heard him. It bristled. The light in the hall shimmered behind it, tracing patterns of flux, and the skin on Ossian’s arm stood stiff as frosted grass. Then – no, he could not say that he saw anyone there, but he heard as clearly as if the voice had been his own:
“My name is Ossian!”
The shadow scuttled from him and was followed along the hall tiles by the clip of nailed dog feet. Ossian launched himself after, almost slipping on the polished floor.
“Careful!”
Sue was just coming in by the same door. She carried a tray of empty glasses, which she lifted skilfully as he steadied himself against the door frame. “Where are you off to in such as hurry?”
“Nowhere!” he said, looking beyond her to the hall. “I’m sorry – I was just – being clumsy.”
“I see,” Sue smiled, placing the tray with the others on the long counter. Her smile was thoughtful and somehow hungry. “You look like a volunteer for the washing up to me. No, don’t duck out. Our housekeeper’s gone home for the weekend and now the machine’s packed up in sympathy. I’m relying on you.”
Ossian still hung back. “I only came in for some water.”
“If you turn up in kitchens, you must expect to be press-ganged. It would be nice to have the company, anyway. We can compare Gordian notes – yes?” She filled the sink with an iridescent froth of bubbles and hot water.
Ossian hesitated. Then that enigmatic smile opened and engulfed him. It occurred to him again how very attractive Sue really was. “Of course,” he said, as she tossed him a damp Woodland Trust tea towel. “Ossian Purdey, at your service.”
