The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Ringing in the Good News

Peter Ackroyd

Location: Acton, London.

Time: Christmas Eve, 1985.

Eyewitness Description: “He stared at her. ‘Kevin, darling, have you gone deaf?’ And as be looked at her grey mouth he wondered whose voice it was he had heard, a voice which in memory no longer seemed human at all

Author: Peter Ackroyd (1949–) is a graduate of that hothouse of the ghost story, Cambridge University, where he attended Clare College. After further study at Yale, he worked for the Spectator, serving as literary editor and film critic. Since his first publication Ouch in 1971, Ackroyd has written a series of inventive biographies and diverse fiction that has often revolved around the city of London: haunted and animated by its past and its characters, real and imaginary. This is evident in Hawksmoor (1985), about a 300-year-old doppelganger; the story of the famous Elizabethan alchemist, The House of Doctor Dee (1993); and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994) in which the ghosts of music hall characters are mingled with a series of grisly East End murders. Ackroyd’s admiration for Charles Dickens as a master of the supernatural can be traced through his novel, The Great Fire of London (1982), a reworking of Little Dorritt; his controversial biography of the author published in 1990; and also his perceptive foreword to The Haunted House (2003). It seems hardly surprising, therefore, that he should have chosen to continue Dickens’s practice of a ghost story for Christmas with one of his own for The Times, 24 December 1985, “Ringing in the Good News”, about a new father haunted by mysterious phone calls that repeatedly announce the birth of his son.

. . .the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home.

– J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough

Kevin returned home from the hospital in a state of mild imbecility; his wife, Claire, had been about to give birth for the past 12 hours and he had not slept or eaten as he waited. He blamed the delay upon his mother-in-law, Vera, whose presence always seemed to reduce his wife to a kind of nursery torpor. And it had been Vera who had eventually ordered him away.

“Kevin, darling,” she had said, patting her hair into shape (for the occasion she had tied it behind her head in a bun as if, Kevin thought, she were a nurse in a field hospital), “Kevin, darling, do go home. We can manage perfectly well.” It was the voice of the professional organizer; it never varied at weddings or at funerals, at christenings or at cocktail parties. He had been hearing it all his life and, as usual, he obeyed.

The telephone rang and he was so tired that he gazed at it incuriously before going towards it. “Kevin darling.” It was Vera again, her voice higher so that it seemed both more peremptory and more triumphant than ever. “It’s boy! It’s a lovely boy!” He said nothing in reply but when he replaced the receiver, those words still echoed in his head as he noticed how warm it was for the early autumn.

He had been hoping that, before Christmas came to end another year, he might have a child – it seemed to represent his real purpose in the world, a duty he felt bound to undertake. But now that it had happened it was more like a wonderful gift – a gift both to him and to Claire but, more mysteriously, also their gift to others. He took the telephone and danced with it in a small circle. “It’s a boy,” he whispered. “It’s a boy!”

The memory of that first exhilaration did not leave him until they returned with the baby. Then he saw how pale and tired his wife was, how bright and plump his son – in that respect, at least, the infant already resembled Vera whose energy had redoubled as that of her daughter began to fade. In sympathy with Claire, Kevin began to feel very tired as well. “Is there,” he said, “anything I can do? Shall I boil some water?”

“Kevin, darling, what on earth would we need boiling water for? This isn’t the 19th century. Why don’t you be a poppet and see to Claire’s things?”

“I only thought. . . .” He looked enquiringly at his wife, who was presenting the child to Vera. Then she said, “Mummy’s got it all arranged”.

The telephone rang and, in his confusion, Kevin picked it up without saying anything. There was someone talking faintly at the other end, and he heard the word “joy” or “toy” before putting down the receiver. “There must be a crossed line,” he told them, almost apologetically but they were not listening to him. Vera was holding the baby in the air while Claire gazed at it solemnly. So my child, he thought, has become one more reason why they can ignore me.

The dusk of early winter cast its thin gloom over Kevin as he tried without success to read Benjamin Spock’s The First Year of Baby’s Life, and when the telephone rang he rose to answer it with a certain relief; his mood of pleasurable anticipation changed to one of incredulity, however, when he heard Vera saying softly but quite distinctly, “It’s a boy. It’s a lovely boy . . .” It was the fact that she was whispering which really disturbed him. “Vera?” The dialling tone returned and he was already blushing when he called her back. “Vera?”

“Kevin, angel. I’m already out of the door. Tell Claire to wait.”

“Did you just talk to me?”

“Of course not. Why should I talk to you?” But she added: “Is there anything the matter with the baby?”

“No. Nothing’s the matter. I’ll tell Claire to expect you.” When he put down the telephone he crept to the foot of the stairs, and listened intently as his wife whispered to the child.

As the rockets of Guy Fawkes’ Day exploded above his head Kevin hurried home through the darkness, worried in case his wife already missed him; when he opened the front door he heard the telephone ringing. He raced towards it and, with his coat half-falling from his shoulders, picked it up to hear Vera shouting at him, “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” With a sudden rush of anxiety he slammed down the receiver, and stood panting in the middle of the room.

He climbed the stairs slowly, as if in pain, and found Claire lying on the bed beside the baby’s cot. “I thought it must be you,” she said without rising to greet him. “What were you doing?”

He was still breathing heavily. “I think I was talking to Vera.” She immediately raised herself into a sitting position, and piled the pillows around her. “Oh, what did Mummy want? Did she get that book on breastfeeding?” He was about to explain what in fact had occurred when a bell rang – for one moment Kevin thought it was the telephone again, and gave a start which was perceptible to Claire. But it was the front door, and when he went down to open it Vera was waiting for him on the threshold, dangling some keys. “Oh, Kevin, darling, can you be an angel and get Claire’s book from the car for me? You can’t miss it.”

“Of course.” He could not look at her, but stared down at his shoes as she passed in front of him and went upstairs to her daughter. With a nervous gesture he examined his watch: it was now 6.15. And when he returned with the book he lingered in the bedroom doorway to scrutinize Vera; she was laughing, her head deliberately thrown back as if the world were being asked to witness her good humour, but she seemed neither ill nor deranged. And yet she must have telephoned him just before coming to the door. “There, there,” she was saying now as she took the infant from its cot. “Come to lovely Vera. She could eat you, you’re so gorgeous.” And the baby, apparently fascinated by this sudden access to his grandmother’s face, stuck his tiny fingers in her open mouth.

It was an evening in late November. Kevin was turning on the television at six o’clock when the telephone rang; and as he watched the screen fill with light, casting vague shadows upon the walls, he picked up the receiver and heard Vera shrieking, “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!”

“Vera, I’m sorry if this is a joke but . . .”

“It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” To Kevin the voice now seemed hysterical, with an additional ferocity which both alarmed and angered him. He was about to shout back in panic when he looked up and saw Vera’s face at the window, her mouth flattened against the glass and rendered a luminous grey by the light from the television. He dropped the telephone. “Let me in, darling!” she was saying. “Your bell isn’t working!” He stared at her. “Kevin, darling, have you gone deaf?” And as he looked at her grey mouth he wondered whose voice it was he had heard, a voice which in memory no longer seemed human at all.

A week later, at the same time, he heard it again; he had thought of little else except those disembodied sounds, and he wanted to test his theory that Vera had somehow arranged a recording. He was quite calm but, when he picked up the receiver, his calmness disappeared. “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” He remembered what he had to say. “Can you repeat that, please?” There was a slight pause. “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” So there was someone there, listening to him, hearing his quick breathing and the sudden intake of that breath. He put down the telephone and hurried upstairs; for some reason he now feared that some terrible harm might befall either Claire or the child.

She looked defiantly at him as he entered the bedroom. “Mummy told me to rest, so I’m resting. It’s good for my milk.” But she was clearly puzzled. “Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“It was the phone.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No. I don’t think so.” The baby gave a fat gurgle of satisfaction from the cot beside her.

He went downstairs and, in order to calm himself, noted down the time and day of this latest call. But he did not need to look at his own scrawled handwriting to know that the telephone always rang at six o’clock on Tuesday evenings. This was the time when Vera had originally called him from the hospital with news of the birth. And who could have known that? Only Vera and Claire, naturally. He put his hands to the sides of his head. Then, he thought, perhaps the baby knew . . .

When the following week the telephone rang again he snatched up the receiver and shouted, “Who are you? Who put you up to this?” There was a pause, almost out of politeness, and then it began again, “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” It seemed to Kevin that these harmless words had become threatening, even sinister, like an incantation designed to raise the dead. The voice seemed about to break into laughter: he could not bear the thought of that, and slammed down the receiver just before Claire entered the room. She looked at him curiously, and in that moment they realized how ill at ease they had become with each other.

“I thought I heard voices.”

“It was the phone.” He dared not look down at it, but pointed his finger.

“Oh? I didn’t hear it ring.”

“They rang off quickly,” he replied without thinking about what he was saying.

“Who were they?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just the usual.” She said nothing, but he noticed that she was biting the inside of her mouth as she stood uncertainly in the middle of the room.

When she left him, he sat down sighing – only to spring to his feet with the thought that perhaps the telephone had never rung, that the voice was only within his own head. All at once he saw himself as the centre of an illness which might infect his wife and child. He went over to the telephone and began minutely to examine it; he did not know what he was looking for, but he wanted to feel its weight and bulk in his now trembling hands. Then suddenly it rang again and with a yell he dropped it to the floor; from the spilled receiver he could hear Vera’s voice oozing out. He wanted to scream abuse at it but instead he carefully picked it up, holding it a little way from his ear.

“Kevin, poppet. What is the matter? What was that bloody noise?”

“Nothing.” He cleared his throat. “It’s just the phone.”

But apparently she had not heard him, since she began hurriedly to discuss the arrangements which she had made for them all at Christmas. Oh God, he thought as she talked at him, will I be able to endure all this until Christmas?

On the following Tuesday, at six o’clock, it rang again; but he remained seated and would not answer it. Claire and her mother were shopping for presents, and the noise of the bell seemed to fill the house. But he sat very still.

When at last it stopped, he went to the cupboard under the stairs, took out a can of paint, a brush, and then began solemnly to daub the telephone until it was entirely blue – a bright blue. For some reason this exercise calmed and satisfied him. It had become a battle of wills, the next round of which would be fought on the following Tuesday, which was Christmas Eve.

They were all sitting together on that day, Vera rocking the baby in her arms, Claire watching her, and Kevin pretending to doze. At six o’clock, the telephone rang. He looked up at them quickly to see if they had heard it, too, and when Claire muttered, “Now who can that be?” he got up from his chair in relief. “It may be for you,” he said to his mother-in-law, “Why don’t you answer it?”

“Don’t be silly, darling, with a baby?”

“Could you get it then, Claire?” He coughed. “I’ve got a frog in my throat.”

She glanced at her mother before slowly picking up the telephone. And then there came the voice again: “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” Kevin stiffened and stared down at his infant son, not daring to say anything. But Claire laughed. She handed the receiver to her mother: “Oh Mummy it’s you!” Vera listened as the baby tried to grasp the telephone and the voice came again. She laughed also, but clearly she was abashed. “I didn’t realize,” she said, “how military I sound. I’m sorry.”

Kevin was astonished at their response, and even more so when his wife walked forward to embrace him. “What a wonderful Christmas present! I knew you wouldn’t forget baby’s anniversary! Is it like a singing telegram?”

“No.” He didn’t really know what to say. “Not exactly.”

Vera was smiling at him. “So that’s why you painted the phone. We thought you were going dotty, darling.”

And Kevin laughed with them, for all at once he realized that the voice had been neither menacing nor inhuman. His suspicions had been absurd; the only evil had resided in his own fear. It was Vera’s voice, but, somehow, it had never left the telephone and had become an echo of that joyful mood he had experienced at the first news of his infant son. “So you don’t mind?” he asked his wife.

“Why should I mind? I was waiting for you to show some sign.”

“Sign?”

“You know.” It was her turn to become abashed. “About little Tom.”

Tom was laughing now, and Kevin took him from Vera’s arms to hold him up to the light. The two women rested the telephone between them, listening once more to the refrain, “It’s a boy! It’s a lovely boy!” as Kevin realized that these words also represented the spirit of Christmas itself. And at each Christmas they returned.