The House on Cold Hill

16

‘Hey!’ Ollie called out, immensely relieved to see the old man again. He was standing at the bottom of the drive between the entrance pillars, pipe clenched in his mouth, staring up at him, squinting against the intensely bright sunlight. Ollie ran the last few yards as if terrified the old man would walk off. ‘I’ve been trying to find you, but it’s not easy!’

‘No, well, it wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘That’s for sure.’

He looked exactly as he had last week, with his rheumy eyes, his pipe and his gnarled walking stick.

‘I never got your name?’ Ollie quizzed him.

‘Oh, I like to keep meself to meself.’ He nodded with an almost sage-like expression on his face.

Ollie proffered his hand. This time the old man took it and shook it, weakly, with bony, clammy fingers. ‘I needed to come and find you again, Mr Harcourt, you see. There’s things you need to know about your house.’

‘That’s why I was trying to find you. I wanted to ask you more about what you told me last week. Would you like to come up and have a cuppa, or a cold drink?’

The man looked afraid suddenly and shook his head vigorously, almost in a panic. ‘Oh no, thank you, I don’t drink nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I’m not coming up to the house. Not going near that place, thank you very much.’ He stared at Ollie levelly, his eyes filled with an almost immeasurable sadness. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, that’s the truth. I don’t know. Have you seen her yet?’

‘The lady?’

‘Have you seen her?’

Ollie suddenly had the idea of taking a photograph of the man. If he showed a photograph, then someone would identify him.

He didn’t think the old man would give permission if he asked him straight out, so while they talked he sneaked a glance at his iPhone, which he was holding in his right hand, and swiped the camera symbol up with his thumb. Just as the old man appeared, blurrily, within the camera viewing screen, the phone rang. It was Caro.

Ollie couldn’t believe his luck!

Seizing the chance, he raised the phone and pressed the red button to kill the call, but pretended to answer it. ‘Hi, darling!’ he said. ‘I’m just chatting to a lovely gentleman in the lane. Call you back!’ While he was speaking, the camera viewfinder returned, and still holding the phone up, he took a clear photograph of the man, before pocketing the phone. Then he said to the old man, ‘Apologies, my beloved.’

‘So,’ the old man said again, more insistently. ‘Have you seen her? Have you?’

‘I think both my in-laws may have done.’

Suddenly, gripping his stick with a clenched fist, he looked around, wildly, with fear in his eyes. ‘I have to be on my way now, I have to be off.’

‘Wait, please, can’t you tell me more about this — this thing you saw here? The lady? Is it something we need to be worried about, do you think? There was a big piece on ghosts in the Sunday Times I’ve been reading. It talks about imprints in the atmosphere, energy they’ve left behind, that sort of thing, trapped in a space — time continuum. There’s tons of stuff on the web, all kinds of theories. One is they’re the spirits of people who don’t realize their bodies are dead and haven’t found their way to the next plane. Earthbound souls, I think is the expression. Or that they have unfinished business. They’re spooky, but does anyone actually need to be afraid of them? I mean — can ghosts ever actually do anything?’

‘What about that Hamlet’s father?’ the old man replied.

‘That was a play, it was fiction, just a story,’ Ollie said, surprised to have Shakespeare thrown at him by this man.

Abruptly, the old man turned away, just as he had done the previous time they’d met. ‘I have to go now,’ he said, and started walking off.

Ollie hurried after him and drew level. ‘Please — please just tell me a bit more about her, this lady.’

‘Ask someone to tell you about the digger.’

‘You mentioned it last time — tell me what about the digger?’

‘The mechanical digger.’

‘What digger do you mean?’

‘No one leaves your house. They all stay.’

‘All stay? What do you mean?’

‘Ask about the digger.’

‘What about the digger?’

But the stranger quickened his pace, striking the ground with his stick, staring fixedly ahead in silence, his face livid with anger, as if he resented Ollie’s presence.

Ollie stopped and watched him walk on, feeling confused by the encounter. He turned to go back up to the house, but instead of the long driveway, he was suddenly staring at the front of their old home, their Victorian terrace in Carlisle Road in Hove. He walked slowly towards the front door, feeling as if it were the natural thing to do. As he reached the porch, the door opened, and there was Caro, smiling happily.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘We have a visitor!’

It was the old man. He appeared in the doorway, looking very comfortable, as if he had come to stay and was settling in nicely, and raised his pipe in the air. ‘Mr Harcourt, nice to see you, welcome home!’

Then a steady peep... peep... peep... peep intruded.

His alarm clock.

He had been dreaming. A weird dream — or a nightmare.

Caro leaped out of bed instantly. ‘Got to get in really early today,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a completion going on this morning and I have to go and see a client who’s in the Martlets Hospice.’

As he heard the sound of Caro in the bathroom, Ollie sat up, remnants of the strange dream still going around his head, and silenced the alarm repeat. 6.30 a.m. God, it had seemed so real, so vivid.

He reached out for his phone to check Sky News, as was his ritual, and saw to his surprise the red low-battery warning. He was sure it had been fully charged last night. Then he realized that the camera app was running.

He wondered if he was still dreaming. Out of curiosity, he clicked on Photos. There was a new image in the bottom left of the screen.

And now for sure he knew he was dreaming.

He jumped out of bed and ran over to the bathroom, his heart pounding. Caro was stepping out of the shower, one towel wrapped round her body, another, like a turban, round her head.

‘Take a look at this!’ he said, urgently, and held up the screen. ‘Tell me I’m not dreaming, please?’

She peered at it for a moment then said, in the acidly pleasant-but-dismissive tone she sometimes adopted when she was required to be polite about something she really did not care for, ‘What a sweet little old man. Why did you photograph him?’