The Great Ghost Rescue

Nine

The following afternoon, feeling as if a whole lot of very large butterflies were banging about in his stomach, Rick took a bus to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. They looked very beautiful and very impressive in the sunshine, with the Clock Tower and Big Ben standing out against a clear, blue sky, pigeons roosting on the carved stonework, and glimpses behind the buildings of pleasure boats going up the Thames. It seemed perfectly ridiculous that a boy no one had ever heard of could just march into a place like that.

But of course Barbara was perfectly right. She always was. The first policeman he spoke to directed Rick to St Stephen’s Gate and the policeman there showed him the entrance that visitors used, and there he was in a huge, echoing place called the Central Lobby which felt like a cross between a railway station and a church, filling in a green card which yet another policeman had given him. And when he’d filled it up and put in his own name, and the name of the person he wanted to see, a very grand man in a tail coat, wearing a golden chain took it and went off to find Mr Wilks.

While he was waiting, Rick looked round and what he saw encouraged him. There were a lot of people queuing up to see their Member of Parliament: a party of school children come to see how the government worked, two students, and a whole bus-load of grey-haired ladies — probably a Women’s Institute or something like that. And as one by one their Member of Parliament came to take them inside, Rick noticed that the M.P.s all had very kind and intelligent faces. He even overheard one of them say something cheering about going to have tea.

But when Mr Clarence Wilks came, Rick’s heart sank. Not that you could tell just by looking at someone but it did seem as though Norton Castle School and District had elected the only dud in the Houses of Parliament. Mr Wilks had one of those dark red, sweaty faces that looks as though it’s about to explode from trying to cram too much fat in under the skin; pale glassy eyes and that superior look that people have who think that everyone who is not grown up is half-witted.

‘What can I do for you, young fellow?’

Rick looked round the crowded hall. ‘Could I speak to you more privately, do you think?’

‘No one will hear us here,’ said Mr Wilks, leading him to a slightly less packed bit of the floor. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have long, so make it as brief as you can. You didn’t say what you wanted on your card.’

Rick swallowed. ‘Well, what I want is… for you to take me to the Prime Minister.’

‘The Prime Minister!’ Mr Wilks thought this was the funniest thing he’d heard for a long time. ‘The Prime Minister! You’re a humorist. I see. Why, I can’t get to see the Prime Minister, let alone a child!’

‘It’s important. Honestly.’ And plucking up his courage, and ignoring the people tramping backwards and forwards across the crowded lobby, Rick began to tell Mr Wilks the story of the ghosts.

‘So you see,’ he said when he’d finished, ‘that’s why I want to see the Prime Minister. Only he is important enough to help me set up a ghost sanctuary.’

All the time Rick had been talking, Mr Wilks had been letting out little bursts of laughter, like an overcooked sausage spitting out hot fat.

‘Ghosts!’ he wheezed when Rick had finished. ‘Ghosts! A ghost sanctuary! Oh, I’d love to see the Prime Minister’s face if I told him that.’

‘You don’t believe in ghosts then?’

‘Most certainly I do not.’

‘Mr Wilks, if I could prove to you that there were such things as ghosts, then would you take me to the Prime Minister?’

‘Oh, sure, sure,’ said Mr Wilks. ‘I’d take you to the moon, too. In fact it might be easier to arrange. And now if you’ll excuse me — I’m a very busy man.’ And still wheezing, he turned and walked away.

‘So you mean it’s no good?’ said the Hag, her voice quivering with despair. ‘He won’t help us?’

Rick had got back to Hyde Park late in the afternoon. There were still people about so all the ghosts had made themselves invisible, but the pink glimmer of Humphrey’s elbow, and a smell of squashed head lice had led Rick to the dark shrubbery behind the gentlemen’s toilet and there they all were, waiting for him.

‘He absolutely refused. He said there were no such things as ghosts.’

‘Nit!’ said Humphrey furiously. ‘Wheezing Windbag. Festering Fool!’

‘Be quiet, Humphrey,’ said the Hag. All the same, the ghosts were exceedingly cast down. They had been so certain that Rick would come back with good news. Then Humphrey put his hand trustingly on Rick’s arm and said: ‘You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?’

‘Have you, dear boy? Is there anything we can do?’ asked the Gliding Kilt.

‘Yes,’ said Rick. ‘There is something you can do all right.’

‘What?’ said all the ghosts eagerly.

‘HAUNT,’ said Rick. ‘Haunt as you’ve never haunted in your life! Before this evening’s out, Mr Wilks is going to be very sorry he said there were no such things as ghosts.’

The house Mr Wilks lived in was called Resthaven.It was a large house with white bits let into the pink brickwork, like a house with measles. A long drive led up to it lined with laurels and rhododendrons. At the back there was a lawn and a summerhouse made to look like a Swiss chalet with silly, carved cuckoos on the roof, and a dog kennel which had Buster painted on the side. Buster himself didn’t seem to be around.

Rick had chosen a good night for the haunting. The Wilks were giving a dinner party. Even in the time it took Rick to creep through the laurel bushes and make his way round to the back, a caterer’s van arrived and then a wine merchant’s, and inside the house he could hear Mrs Wilks shouting things to her maid.

‘Now remember,’ he said, when he’d joined the ghosts who were waiting in the summerhouse. ‘Start off gently — just a scream or two from George, maybe the odd wail from Winifred. Then, when they get to the dining room step it up a bit. And when I give you the signal, it’s full steam ahead. O.K.?’

‘O.K.,’ said all the ghosts happily. They were looking forward to the evening very much. It is always nice to be busy.

It was seven thirty, and in the Wilks’ drawing room, which had a sage-green carpet, gold brocade curtains and very uncomfortable striped satin chairs, the dinner guests were drinking sherry and eating nuts.

All the people the Wilks had invited were Important People — the Wilks wouldn’t have bothered with them if they hadn’t been. There was a millionaire called Harry Holtzmann, who had got rich making guns and selling them to foreign countries so that people there could kill each other better, and a man called Professor Pringle who had written a book about What Was Wrong With Young People (which seemed to be practically everything). There was also the Honourable Lucy Lamworth whose father was a viscount, and a young man called Crispin Craig who interviewed people on television and smiled a lot. And of course there was Mr Wilks, looking hot, and Mrs Wilks who had a shrill voice and a head full of bubbly yellow curls.

It is difficult to say anything interesting while waiting for dinner to be ready and feeling salty inside from too many nuts, and no one was saying anything interesting. They were saying things like: ‘Hasn’t it been hot for the time of year?’ or, ‘Wasn’t that a truly ghastly film on television last night?’

And then, suddenly, there was a scream.

Actually, for George it was nothing, that scream. It was the sort of scream you might have got when torturing twenty or thirty people painfully to death, but for George it was nothing. He was just starting things off gently as Rick had told him to.

The Honourable Lucy jumped so hard that the Lamworth emeralds, crashing against her bare and scraggy chest, left bruise marks, and said: ‘What on earth was that?’

The Wilks looked at each other. Then Mr Wilks got up and went out into the hall. What he saw was a young skull sitting peacefully on top of the umbrella stand. Its jawbones were open and it was just settling down for another good scream. Mr Wilks mopped his brow and went tremblingly back into the drawing room. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘the… er… the maid’s dropped something. I think we’d better go in to dinner.’

Everybody filed into the dining room and the maid brought in the hors d’oeuvre. Hors d’oeuvre is always rather a slippery thing to eat: a little bit of olive, a slither of anchovy, that kind of thing — and for a while everyone was busy spearing it with forks. Then Mr Holtzmann turned to the Honourable Lucy and said: ‘Do your feet feel all right?’

The Honourable Lucy, who had got wind from her anchovy, burped gently and said actually her feet felt cold. Also wet. In fact, if she didn’t know it was nonsense she would say her feet were sitting in a pool of water. Crispin Craig, who was sitting opposite, said it was odd but his feet felt just the same.

After the hors d’oeuvre came the soup. One by one the guests picked up their spoons, and one by one they put them down again.

‘Does your soup taste of rotten eggs?’ whispered Crispin Craig.

Mr Holtzmann said, no, dead mice.

‘Mine’s unwashed underwear,’ said Professor Pringle, grimacing. And the Hag, invisible but working hard as she fluttered over the plates, nodded happily. It is always nice to be appreciated.

But it wasn’t till the main course (pheasant in cream with potato croquettes, sprouting broccoli and red currant jelly) that Rick, hiding in the summerhouse, gave the ghosts the signal for full steam ahead. And then it all happened at once.

Through the french windows sailed Aunt Hortensia, astride one of her horses. She had borrowed some of Winifred’s bloodstains to spatter her stump, her nightdress billowed out like an old, yellowing parachute and as she galloped up and down the dining room table her extremely nasty toenails clacked against the wine glasses like pistol shots.

‘AAOOH!’ screamed the Honourable Lucy and fell to the ground.

‘A curse on the House of Wilks,’ roared Aunt Hortensia’s head which was sitting behind her on the backside of her horse.

‘Scotland away!’ yelled the Gliding Kilt, appearing suddenly, upside down, on the chandelier.

‘I’m drowning, I’m drowning!’ screamed Lucy from under the table. It is not easy to lure somebody to a Watery Grave under a dining room table, but Walter the Wet was doing his best.

‘Ribicus, Maerticus, Furissimus,’ giggled the Mad Monk, leaping from the sideboard and fetching Mrs Wilks a wallop with his rosary. George appeared on a bowl of chocolate mousse and began to scream properly.

Rick judged that his time had come. He threw open the french windows and marched into the dining room.

‘Now do you believe in ghosts?’

Mr Wilks was huddled in his chair, groaning and quivering and trying to wipe the soup off his face.

‘Yes,’ he moaned. ‘Yes… yes.’

‘And will you take me to the Prime Minister?’

‘I can’t just take you to the Prime Minister,’ mumbled Mr Wilks, ‘it’s very difficult to arrange.’

‘All right, then,’ said Rick — and clicked his fingers. The next second five huge vampire bats came flying into the room, their red eyes glinting.

‘Bags I that one,’ said Guzzler, looking longingly at Mrs Wilks’ plump, pink shoulder rising like a delicious blancmange out of her low-cut silver dress.

‘No, I want her!’ said Syphoner.

They began to squabble over Mrs Wilks who leapt on to a chair, started batting at the vampires with a table knife and fell forward, howling with terror, into a bowl of redcurrant jelly. Sucking Susie, meanwhile, landed hungrily on Mr Wilks’ glistening, bald head.

‘Stop it!’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘For heaven’s sake stop! I’m being murdered!’

Rick made a sign to Susie and she closed her terrible mouth obediently.

‘I’ve asked you before and I’m asking you again. Will you take me to the Prime Minister?’

‘Anything,’ gabbled Mr Wilks. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘The Prime Minister. Tomorrow,’ said Rick.

‘Yes,’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘Tomorrow. Anything. But STOP them. STOP them!’

Rick snapped his fingers. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come on everybody. We’ve done it. It’s over.’

The ghosts didn’t really want to stop, they’d been having such a lovely time. But they thought the world of Rick by now. In a second they had vanished. The pool under the table dried up, the smell disappeared; silence fell on the shattered remains of the Wilks’ dinner party.

They were all in the summerhouse congratulating themselves on how well things had gone when a shrill little voice drifted out of an upstairs window.

‘But I don’t want you to go away,’ said the piping little voice. ‘You’re a lovely ghost. I like you. I want you to stay with me for ever and ever.’

The ghosts looked at each other. ‘Oh, dear!’ said the Hag. They had sent Humphrey upstairs to haunt the bedrooms in case any of the guests went up to powder their noses and Rick remembered now that the Wilks had a little daughter.

‘I did say ‘‘Boo!’’’ said Humphrey, gliding down towards them shyly. ‘I said ‘‘Boo!’’ quite a lot of times.’

But his parents were too pleased with the way things had gone to scold him for not being horrible.

‘It’s the Prime Minister tomorrow, then!’ said the Gliding Kilt.

Rick nodded. ‘It looks as though there’s a real chance of a ghost sanctuary at last!’