The Anatomy Of Ghosts

18

When Susan woke her, Elinor Carbury told the girl to open the window as wide as it would go. The sky was cloaked with high grey clouds. The air was cool and smelled pleasingly of damp earth. The rain had been heavy for much of the night but by dawn it had quite fallen away. She asked after her husband and learned that Dr Carbury had not risen yet.

Elinor decided she would take her breakfast downstairs. It would only be civil, she told herself, for otherwise Mr Holdsworth would breakfast alone. She was not habitually a vain woman but she changed her cap and ribbons twice before leaving her room.

The Carburys’ dining parlour was a small square chamber overlooking the open court on the west side of the Master’s Lodge. Holdsworth was already at table with a bowl of tea in his hand. As she entered, he rose and bowed. They asked after each other’s health, and speculated with polite insincerity that the noise of the storm had prevented Dr Carbury from sleeping well. Elinor inquired, very delicately because she did not wish to seem unduly forward, about Mr Holdsworth’s plans for the day.

‘I believe I shall go to Barnwell again, ma’am.’

‘Are you expected?’

‘No.’

Grim-faced, he drank the rest of his bowl of tea. Elinor continued to crumble the roll she had been failing to eat; her own tea was untouched.

He looked up suddenly and caught her staring at him. He drew in a breath and seemed to come to a decision. ‘If I am to understand the nature of Mr Oldershaw’s delusion, I must speak to him directly, without any intermediary or interpreter or eavesdropper. If I am to move at all in this matter, I must begin with him, whether he is mad or not. But Dr Jermyn is opposed to this. No doubt he has his reasons.’

‘You will probably not find Dr Jermyn at Barnwell.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He and Mrs Jermyn come to church in Cambridge every Sunday. They attend Holy Trinity. She is most devout, and she will make a particular point of it this Sunday, for Mr Revitt is preaching, and all the Evangelicals will be there in force. Afterwards they generally dine at Mrs Jermyn’s parents’ in Green Street.’

He smiled, taking the hint at once. ‘I’m obliged to you, ma’am.’

Elinor began to smile back, and then made herself look serious. Mr Holdsworth’s manner could not be said in any way to be flirtatious, and yet it was almost as though he were flirting – or rather attempting to flirt – with her. She reminded herself sternly that he was but recently a widower, that he was a guest in her house and moreover that he was a tradesman in humble circumstances. And then she thought also of her absurd behaviour yesterday afternoon when she had looked at him through the gate of the Master’s Garden, and when he had inexplicably and no doubt accidentally touched her hand.

‘If you see Mr Frank this morning, and if – if he gives you the opportunity, pray give him my compliments.’

‘You may depend on me to do so, ma’am. And may I wait on you later today when I know the result of my visit to Barnwell? In case there is news?’

She nodded and began to crumble another roll. ‘Of course.’

He thanked her again for her kindness and left the room with a want of ceremony that verged on rudeness. Elinor became aware that her plate was almost entirely obscured by a mound of crumbs.

The streets were quiet, and they smelled sweet because the rain had settled the dust. Most of the people Holdsworth encountered were on their way to church. He pulled his hat low over his eyes and kept his head averted from the passing carriages that rumbled past him, splashing through the puddles from last night’s storm. He did not want to encounter Dr and Mrs Jermyn on their way to Holy Trinity. As he came into the village, he saw and almost immediately recognized a small figure limping in front of him. He accelerated and drew level with him.

‘Mr Mulgrave – good day to you.’

The gyp bowed. ‘And to you, sir.’ He showed no surprise at the meeting.

‘Are you going to see Mr Oldershaw?’ Holdsworth asked.

‘No, sir. I see him next on Tuesday, I believe. But it’s cooler this morning after the rain, and I thought I would walk over with my account for Dr Jermyn.’

‘I thought he was at church.’

‘Indeed he is, sir.’ Mulgrave’s dark eyes were full of malicious intelligence. ‘Saw him and his lady on the road not ten minutes ago.’

‘What happens at the doctor’s house on Sunday? Do the people go to church?’

‘A parson comes in to read prayers in the morning, sir, and in the evening Dr Jermyn often takes some of the gentlemen to church. The more sober ones, sir, if you take my meaning.’

Holdsworth nodded. They walked on in silence, with Holdsworth shortening his stride to fit with Mulgrave’s.

‘You work for quite a number of gentlemen, I apprehend?’

‘Oh yes, sir. A man must make ends meet the best he can. And it is not always easy, however hard a man works, because not all gentlemen are prompt payers. And some of them run up bills they can’t hope to pay.’

Holdsworth glanced at him. ‘When I kept a shop, I could not help but notice that gentlemen have a very different view of money from the rest of us. Indeed, some of them appear not to have any view at all, nor indeed any money. Yet that did not stop them spending what they had not got.’

‘Young gents ain’t so bad. You can always have a word with their tutors, and they generally knows what’s what. The trouble is the older gents. That Mr Whichcote, for example.’ Mulgrave turned his head and spat on the roadway. ‘Trying to get money out of him is like trying to get a pint of blood out of a veal cutlet.’

There was another silence. They covered another hundred yards of their road.

‘I like a man who pays his way,’ Holdsworth observed, jingling the loose coins in the pocket of his coat. ‘You may know that I am here on Lady Anne’s business.’

Mulgrave looked sharply at him.

‘She has a mother’s tender feelings for her son’s plight,’ Holdsworth said.

‘As is very natural, sir.’

‘It is indeed. She wishes me to talk to him as soon as possible, to see how I may best help him. However, I find that Dr Jermyn is fixed upon a certain method of treatment that does not allow of a patient to have a private conversation with his own mother’s representative. It is most vexatious.’

Mulgrave shook his head solemnly. ‘Dr Jermyn can be very set in his ways, sir.’

‘I shall of course write to her ladyship and obtain the necessary permission,’ Holdsworth went on. ‘But that will take time. I have very real grounds for believing that I can be of material assistance to Mr Frank in his plight, and I would not wish to extend his distress by another minute if I could help it. Nor would her ladyship, I am sure.’

The two men walked along, side by side, with Holdsworth jingling the coins in his pocket.

‘Her ladyship is not one to forget a service,’ he said. ‘Nor for that matter am I.’

They were now only a few hundred yards from Dr Jermyn’s gates.

‘They know me here pretty well,’ Mulgrave said. ‘I come and go for Mr Frank, and I’ve been here before many a time, for other young gentlemen.’

‘So they will make no difficulty about admitting you at the gate this morning?’

‘Lord bless you, sir – why should they? Did you meet Mr Norcross?’

‘I believe that was the name of the attendant in Mr Frank’s room.’

‘Just so, sir. George Norcross is my brother-in-law. He’s in charge when Dr Jermyn is away from home. I’ve always found him most obliging and reasonable.’

‘I should take it as a great favour if he would allow me to speak privately to Mr Frank, or at least to attempt to do so. So would her ladyship.’ Holdsworth abandoned the coppers in his coat pocket, inserted two fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a half-guinea. ‘I wonder whether this might help? And another when I have seen Mr Frank.’

Mulgrave stopped, and so did Holdsworth. Mulgrave looked at the coin between Holdsworth’s fingers.

‘Mr Norcross would not wish to imperil his position, sir.’

‘That goes without saying.’

‘However, the man that opens the gate, seeing us together, and knowing your face, might think it all quite in order. If we arrived together, he might assume we’d come together.’

‘He might indeed.’

‘Nothing is certain in this world, sir,’ Mulgrave said piously. ‘I cannot answer for Mr Norcross, for example. And even if you were to see Mr Frank, the poor gentleman may be too disordered to talk sense to anyone.’

‘That is entirely understood. But there is half a guinea for both you and Mr Norcross whatever the outcome. If I am able to talk privately with Mr Oldershaw, whether or not his wits are disordered, there will be another half-guinea.’

Mulgrave nodded. ‘You can’t say fairer than that. And on the nail?’

‘Her ladyship would insist on it.’

‘So that makes half a guinea apiece now,’ Mulgrave said with the air of one making an interesting arithmetical discovery. ‘And another half-guinea apiece if all goes well.’

Mr Norcross was taking his ease in a small parlour next to the butler’s pantry. He sat in an elbow-chair by the open window with a pipe in his hand and a jug of ale on the sill. He had removed his wig and his coat, and unbuttoned his waistcoat. When he saw Mulgrave in the doorway, he sat up and made as if to stand.

‘Pray do not disturb yourself, George,’ Mulgrave said quickly. ‘I brought Mr Holdsworth with me because he begs the favour of a private word.’ Here Mulgrave winked in a knowing fashion. ‘If you’re quite at leisure, that is. As you know, he comes on her ladyship’s business.’

Holdsworth lingered in the passage, examining a large basket containing vegetables newly brought in from the garden. Mulgrave murmured confidentially in his brother-in-law’s ear. Mr Norcross nodded and slowly rose to his feet. The top of his skull was a dome of grey bristle. He had no visible neck, and something about his appearance reminded Holdsworth irresistibly of an unwashed potato. He put on his coat in a leisurely way, clapped his tye-wig on his head and came over to Holdsworth. It was almost as if without his coat and wig he had not been able to see his visitor beforehand.

‘Mr Holdsworth, sir,’ he said. ‘I hope I see you well.’

‘Well enough, thank you.’

‘Always glad to oblige her ladyship,’ Norcross went on. ‘And a gentleman like yourself. However, there’s ways and means.’ He tapped his nose at this point and nodded. ‘I don’t think I see you standing there, sir.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Norcross appeared not to have heard Holdsworth either. ‘When Mr Mulgrave came this morning, there you were at the gate at the same time. And the porter knows Mr Mulgrave, of course, he knows he’s coming up to see me, and that’s all right, and so he thinks you’re with Mr Mulgrave, as you happen to be exchanging the time of day with each other. And along you come, up to the house, I shouldn’t wonder, and you see the gentleman working outside and you slip away before I have a chance to clap my eyes on you. You want a private conference with Mr Oldershaw, and no doubt you turn the matter over in your mind and think maybe he’s working in the garden with the others. And as chance would have it, you direct your steps behind the stables, which is where the kitchen gardens are. If you did that, I shouldn’t be surprised if you was to catch sight of Mr Oldershaw among the lettuces and suchlike. But you could put it another way, and say I shouldn’t be surprised in any case because I wouldn’t know anything about it. Do you follow me so far, sir?’

‘Perfectly,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Will an attendant be watching over Mr Oldershaw?’

‘Yes, sir. Of course. We look after our gentlemen very carefully here. I should think an attendant will be in the kitchen garden the whole time. I expect he will be sitting on the bench by the door, or keeping an eye on one or two of the other gentlemen working there. He’ll see your black coat, and maybe he’ll think you’re one of the doctor’s colleagues. After all, you was here with him only yesterday, so that would be a natural mistake to make.’

‘How is Mr Oldershaw today?’

‘Quieter than yesterday, that’s for sure.’

‘Is he capable of rational conversation?’

Norcross shrugged. He pulled out a watch. ‘I am doing my rounds upstairs now,’ he informed them. ‘That’s why I didn’t catch sight of you.’

Without a word of farewell, he walked away, his heavy body rolling from side to side as though his thighs were made of granite.

Mulgrave joined Holdsworth in the passage. ‘This way, sir.’ He directed Holdsworth to a side door to a gravel roadway. ‘Follow the path past the stables, sir. The kitchen garden’s beyond.’

A groom looked curiously at Holdsworth as he passed the entrance to the stable yard but made no move to stop him. On the edge of the lawn, five or six elegantly clad gentlemen were trimming the grass along a belt of trees. Another man was standing on the bowling green, reading from a volume of Thucydides in a loud and carrying voice as if addressing a large but invisible public meeting. Two attendants chatted in the shade near by.

Holdsworth opened the gate into the walled kitchen garden. A third attendant sprawled on a bench near the door with a newspaper spread open across his knees and a pipe on the seat beside him. He looked up and then away, as if satisfied that Holdsworth was not one of the inmates absconding from his allotted work.

Three men were at work among the vegetables. Two of them, both middle-aged, were hoeing weeds. At the far end of the garden was Frank Oldershaw, a solitary figure on his hands and knees.

Holdsworth walked down the brick path that bisected the enclosure. Frank’s coat and waistcoat were draped over a wheelbarrow near by. He was kneeling in the freshly turned earth in black silk breeches and a fine white shirt. In his hand was a little fork with which he was harvesting radishes. He must have heard Holdsworth’s footsteps on the path but he did not look up.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Would you allow me a few words?’

There was no reply.

‘We met briefly yesterday,’ Holdsworth went on. ‘I give you my word, I shall not act in any way you do not wish.’

Frank paused in the frantic digging. Still he did not look up.

‘If you do not wish me to be here, if I do anything that is not agreeable to you, you have only to call to that attendant and say I am troubling you, that I have no licence to be here. The doctor has no knowledge of my visit. He has forbidden me to talk privately to you.’

For the first time, Frank turned his head and looked up at Holdsworth. Despite the quality of his clothes, he hardly looked the gentleman now. The face was smeared with mud, the hands grimy, the fingernails broken. He was still on his hands and knees, and he swayed slightly to and fro, as though the weight he supported was too much for him to bear.

‘I must finish this row,’ he mumbled, ‘and the next. Else they will not give me my dinner.’

‘There is time enough for that,’ Holdsworth said. ‘Let us talk a little.’

Frank stuck his little fork in the earth, rolled his body over and squatted on the brick path. ‘I am so tired. I could sleep for ever.’

‘It is because they drug you.’

Frank nodded. ‘To murder grief.’

‘What? Do you grieve? Why?’

Frank shook his head but did not answer.

‘They tell me you saw a ghost,’ Holdsworth said, speaking casually, as though seeing a ghost was of mild interest but nothing more. ‘I suppose it was Mrs Whichcote’s?’

Frank let his head fall forward to his breast.

‘So it was? How did you know it was she?’

‘Who else could it be?’ Frank muttered. ‘Where else would Sylvia walk?’

‘Why? Because she died there?’

With his forefinger, Frank drew a circle, a zero, in the earth.

‘Tell me, pray – why did you go outside that night? Were you going to the necessary house?’

Frank shook his head. His face filled with flickering animation, the muscles twitching and dancing under the skin. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘Wanted air. Nothing mattered.’

‘You went outside,’ Holdsworth said. ‘You wanted air, and nothing mattered. I see.’

Frank shook his head with a vigour that was almost manic. ‘You don’t. You’re stupid. I could do anything. Don’t you understand? I was free. I was God. I was the Holy Ghost.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘And now I’m mad. My wits are disordered, do you hear? I do not understand anything. Nor do you. You’re a perfect blockhead.’

Holdsworth stood up. A shift had taken place in the conversation. Frank had spoken to him as an angry young gentleman talks to an inferior.

‘I am the Holy Ghost,’ Frank went on in a quieter voice. ‘And so I saw a ghost. Quod – quod erat demonstrandum.’

‘Are you happy here?’ Holdsworth asked after a pause.

‘I hate the place and all who live here.’

‘If you wish, perhaps you may leave.’

‘I cannot go home,’ Frank said. ‘I will not go home.’

‘Is that why you attacked Mr Cross? To stop them sending you home?’

Frank lowered his head and drew another circle in the earth, another zero. ‘Poor Cross. The fit was upon me – I could not help it. I can help nothing now. It would be better if I were dead. I wish I were.’

Holdsworth had felt the same way himself when they brought first Georgie home and then Maria. Unhappy people spoke a common language. He would have given his life for Georgie. Hadn’t Maria known that? He would have given his life to save hers too, but instead he gave her a wound the size of a penny piece and a desire for death.

Forgive me.

‘Tell me,’ he said to Frank. ‘What if I could persuade her ladyship to order Dr Jermyn to release you into my custody?’

‘How can I trust you? You would take me back to my mother. You would take me somewhere worse, for all I know, worse than this.’

‘I cannot force you to trust me. So let me appeal to your reason.’

‘I have no reason.’

‘You have enough reason for this, sir, I think. At all events, let us suppose you have. If I ask her ladyship to release you into my custody, and if we find somewhere quite retired where we shall live – will that not be better than this? As for this matter of trust – consider it from my perspective. I can only carry out this suggestion with your mother’s agreement. If anything happens to you, if anything at all undesirable occurs because of this move, then her ladyship will lay it solely at my door. Simply for reasons of self-interest, I cannot afford to do you anything but good. Even if there is nothing I can do to cure you, at least you will be away from here. You will be away from Dr Jermyn and his moral management.’

Frank drew another zero in the earth. ‘I do not want to see my mother or Cross or Whichcote or Harry Archdale or my tutor or any of them. Anyone at all.’

‘That would be entirely understood. If you permit me to raise the matter with her ladyship, I shall say that you and I must live in seclusion. That would be a necessary precondition.’

Frank looked up sharply. ‘What if I shouldn’t want to be cured? Have you thought of that? What then?’

Before Holdsworth could reply, there was a sudden commotion behind them. Holdsworth and Frank turned. Two men had come into the kitchen garden – Norcross and Jermyn himself. Norcross had a mastiff on a short leash. The other attendant leaped to his feet, his newspaper fluttering to the ground. The only people who appeared quite unaffected were the two middle-aged patients, who continued with their work as if nothing had happened.

‘Shall I write to her ladyship?’ Holdsworth said in an undertone. ‘Yes or no?’

‘You, sir,’ Jermyn called. ‘Come here this instant or I shall order my man to unleash the dog.’

‘Yes,’ Frank whispered. ‘Quickly.’