short story: the eminence's ghosts

Well, this was a surprise. I already had the outline for Sarah Harper And The Ghosts but needed a writing exercise of about 6k words to keep me in the typing habit until November starts.

So here's the ghost's father's version of events. He wrote it longhand after decades of relying on secretaries. Enjoy the punctuation! I did.

Having seen my career memoirs and thoughts cloth-bound and offered for general purchase, to the satisfaction of my publishers, I now begin to write up incidents that ought not be published until after the last person involved is no longer available for comment.

It is to be hoped that readers are also familiar with my mundane biography - my career in the diplomatic services and in administrative roles in the Orient and the South Sea Islands, under various aegides, and my perhaps equally important work funding and facilitating various of the Arts once back at home - but perhaps enough time will have passed that the reading public are no longer acquiring handsome cloth-bound Collected Correspondences of such and such and A Year Among whoever it was, and instead reading only exciting paper-backs.

A toast to you, then! May you always have a convenient dry shelf next to you as you read in the bath.

To establish, therefore - at the time of this story, I was about eight years retired. My wife Rachel and I and our two grown daughters, Judith and Janet - who were renamed Ditty and Nets within weeks of going to school for the first time and have not answered to their sensible birth names since - Ditty once introduced herself to an Archbishop as ‘Ditty’ - lived then, as now, in a large house in Middlesex that had been left to my wife by a great-uncle.

We have always hosted all sorts of folk, because the house is so capacious. At this time we had in residence my secretary Oliver, who was helping compile my study full of papers into a thematic career review - a young person named Lily Chester - a poetess at the dawn of her career named Sarah Harper.

Also occupying the house, although the girls did not know it, were our son George and my wife’s nephew Lewis, who had died together in a car accident twelve years previously. They were - had been - are - seventeen. I was very glad they had come home, glad they had each other, and not inclined to do anything that would remove them from the house.

Rachel and I very rarely discussed George and Lewis’s presence - I believe we had agreed to tell the girls about them only if we were ever asked directly.

Miss Chester and Miss Harper were both, separately, friends of my daughters’. They had not encountered each other before their visit to our home - they moved in very different circles.

At this time, my daughters were wholeheartedly engaged in a fad for spiritualism - Miss Chester was invited by them as a medium and a source of enlightening chatter. Rachel and I had, of course, each read in our youth various battered texts on Theosophy and New Thought and so forth - we recognised her enlightenment as a dilute version of those emulsions.

Sarah Harper, on the other hand, was a young woman of real promise - I had read two of her slim collections of verse - my daughters both leave whatever book or pamphlet or even magazine they happen to be reading lying about the place. It is an untidy habit - but it has meant that I have been exposed to several fascinating aspects of youth culture that would otherwise have passed me by.

My wise wife Rachel said once that she would rather girls be untidy than secretive.

Miss Harper, as I say, was and is a fine poetess.

Miss Chester, on arrival, appeared to be a bundle of affectations tied together by ribbon. She was rather cooing - lived entirely in the moment - and never spoke of her family or means of support.

We had been concerned, when Ditty and Nets told us they were inviting a medium to stay, that she would upset the boys. It was clear in the first half-hour of her visit that this would not be a problem. She was no more a medium than a leg of lamb is. As she sat on two seats of a three-seat settee and described her train journey, George perched on the back of the settee and examined her complicated hair-do closely - pointing at and commentating on the sections that were growing out of her own head and the sections that, in his opinion, had been purchased.

It was a thorough relief that she didn’t hear or see him.

My secretary or assistant, Oliver, was young - had been sheltered by an all-male education - was thunderstruck by Miss Chester. My daughters did not care for him, which I don’t think was entirely based on his appearance. Oliver excelled at reading and at sorting resources and references - could not or would not engage in the types of conversation they preferred, in which one skipped lightly and humorously between topics - he also noticeably preferred to stare at a corner of the ceiling while he composed his thoughts - Nets called this ‘spooky’.

I regret to say that the boys also did not like him - they were seventeen and quick to summarise people. I had told them very specifically to remember that he was a working adult, not their peer - not to hide or move his things, nor do any other silly tricks.

I thought it odd that Oliver adored Miss Chester - I found her stagey when she was being classical and abrasive when she was being modern. Perhaps it was entirely a physical attraction, or perhaps he saw her as an unsorted puzzle.

There was an uneasy imbalance in the house in the days between Miss Chester’s arrival and Miss Harper’s. The girls took over the sitting room - reading out to each other pieces of their spiritualist books and booklets - playing records of music and sounds that were sold as having the capacity to thin the veil - snacking between meals. Rachel had her own reading of course - I believe she was engaged in botany and garden design at this time - and the weather was pleasant enough that she could spend daylight hours reading in the upper garden instead of the sitting room. Oliver and I were in my study most of the days - turning my cases of correspondence and working notes into the memoir - published by Fabshaw and Horring two years later - he was noticeably distracted by the music and giggling that occasionally reached our work from the sitting room.

George and Lewis drifted about between the upstairs rooms, irritable and confined - playing with the lamps and taps.

Rachel and I hoped that Miss Harper would be as calm and cool as her poems - would be a settling influence on the household. She arrived with very few bags and a neat grey coat - very like the version we had imagined from reading her work. She moved more slowly and thoughtfully than Ditty, Nets or Miss Chester - treated our furniture as though she were visiting a museum - closed doors carefully.

The boys liked her instantly. George approved of her lack of decoration, and Lewis said he liked that she always checked the seat she was about to occupy so that he had time to move out of it - she signalled her intended movements, somehow, crossing a room - it was very peaceful of her.

Quite apart from her talent - if one can separate them - I found Miss Harper one of the most pleasant young women I had ever met. It was a tremendous satisfaction to me that my wife - of course by far the best woman anyone has ever met and one pities those who have not - liked her too.

We agreed on the evening of her first visit - discussing the day privately as was usual for us - that we would find a way of supporting her in her endeavours. The neatness and plainness of her belongings and turn-out that I and the boys found so soothing - Rachel assessed as being a matter of frugality. I said that I thought she would dress similarly if she were a millionairess - Rachel said she hoped so but wouldn’t it be interesting to know.

We had, of course, supported the Arts in various ways before. It seemed that every year of my career brought more income from various advisory positions - as my expertise accumulated - and our expenses did not increase. Ditty and Nets found young artists in their travels and brought them to stay at the house to amuse them - when the young artists did not have family support we contacted their places of education or training and established scholarships that they would be found to qualify for.

People do much better work when they are free only to do their proper work, I have always thought.

On the first full day of Miss Harper’s visit, Rachel and I kept Nets back after breakfast as the other three went through to the sitting room - asked her what style of assistance she thought appropriate for Miss Harper. Nets hugged us - said we were splendid, and that she was sorry but it was probably only going to be financial - that Sarah already had all the contacts she would need - that the reviewers had properly Noticed her - that she only needed actual money to live healthily and not take on horrible shop jobs - that it probably wouldn’t even be for more than a few years before publishing really started to keep food in the cupboards.

Nets had visited Miss Harper’s rooms in the city, you see.

It really is awful how young folk are expected to get by.

Well, people in this situation are often proud - as you would be - and there is generally less back-and-forth if one thinks in advance of an actual job one can overpay them for - they can think you are out of touch or unaware of how much anything is worth - no harm is done. There was a sculptor we paid - demure young man - to draw all the garden statuary for our insurers. There was a student of architecture we paid to do something similar - noting the types of wood used in the wainscoting, I think, estimating replacement cost - he found a latch to a hidden compartment, exposing another of Rachel’s great-uncle’s enterprises - a separate story.

And, of course, when one is working overseas the rules for gifting and patronage are different again - so I am in the habit of being very obscure about it all - it is a fun pastime - even discounting the artworks and books and plays one sees that would not have been possible without it. I do hope we can continue to play it for many years.

And then there is the house - excessive for four people but the boys cannot leave it - in these days of smokeless heating and refrigerators we do not even have live-in staff - a specialist cleaner comes each quarter to manage the upholstery and the rest of the time we tidy up after ourselves - hosting the girls’ young friends is no extra effort if the girls set an example.

In any case, on the second full day of Miss Harper’s visit, Rachel and I invited her into my study - Oliver absent, posting letters or something - and put it to her that if she were to unmask the adventuress Lily Chester it would save us at least £5,000 on money the girls would give to predatory mediums, and would she like to take the risk of sabotaging the evening’s planned séance for £3,000. My wife put it a little more gracefully than I do now - I was there to nod and smile and fidget with the cheque book. Young lady artists are sometimes jumpy about accepting financial suggestions from me - as they should be - shows they’re the right sort.

George and Lewis were hovering about the mantel in my study as we put this idea to Miss Harper - they thought it a marvellous idea, in their slangy way - I wish they had kept the slang they used in life, but they acquire new words from the girls - I don’t know where the girls learn them.

Miss Harper agreed, with a thoughtful expression, that it would be manageable and that she would take it on - as the other three had gone down to the lake she said she would at once go up to Miss Chester’s room, with our permission - thought she would bring down anything that seemed out of place even if she did not recognise the devices that a fraud would use.

The boys slipped out with her and went up the stairs - I thought only to observe - they returned before her quite giddy with pride - said they had managed to push open the relevant drawers and move curtains and shawls out of the way to make it easier for our guest to find things - apparently they had watched Miss Chester unpack, at which I expressed disapproval, but Lewis said he had only been wondering if she had changes of hair-piece for different outfits - I was about to ask if she did, as it had never occurred to me before - Miss Harper returned with a tray of items and a solemn expression.

There was, of course, a device that would rap on the underside of a table - spring-mounted and quite light - a strap meant to attach it around the leg, above the knee I imagine from holding it at different angles - not home-made, a manufacturer’s stamp - I wondered aloud to Rachel if one could send off for their catalogue. I applied it to my leg to see how it operated then bent the spring slightly from its little eyelet - perfectly ordinary sabotage.

There were a variety of small glassine pouches of pre-prepared ectoplasm. Rachel prodded one with the end of a pencil and declared it corn-starch.

The boys suggested that I add ink from my ink-bottle to it, so that it wouldn’t show up in the dark - of course I could not reply to them directly with Miss Harper present so I said as though thinking aloud that it would have to be something she wouldn’t notice until it was too late - Rachel suggested we add something that would give off a smell, and disappeared to the kitchen.

There was an clever little device - no bigger than a deck of cards - to wind-up and play a very tiny record, just like a child’s music-box but with a proper needle record instead of the metal toothed drum. I liked it very much, and said so - same manufacturer’s branding on the chassis - I wrote the company down and vowed that I would write off for their catalogue of products - wonderfully inventive.

Rachel returned with a jar of bacon-grease from the kitchen and very carefully added a spoonful to each of the little pouches, mixed it throughout and sealed them up again. I showed her the tiny record-player - she looked at it more carefully and pointed out that it had cogs on a spindle - designed to cause the record to play after a long delay - went off to find a cog from her sewing machine table that would sabotage it without damaging.

I made sketches of the little machine while she was gone - Miss Harper read the spines of my book-shelves - the boys played at passing through my valet-stand and lining their arms and heads up with my coat and hat so it looked as though they were dressing up.

Rachel returned with an extra cog and a tiny rasp, and made it fit on the spindle of Miss Chester’s record player to add more delay - she is terribly clever at fiddly things like that - so that it would start making sounds after five hours instead of half an hour.

The last implement on the tray from Miss Chester’s room I only mention out of completeness - I had not immediately identified its purpose - Rachel assured me that, though clockwork, it was not related to mediumship or any other fraud, and once I had looked at it from a different angle I realised she was entirely correct - as she always is - went to wash my hands - glad to hear her laughing in the study behind me as I left - the boys complaining bleakly that they did not understand and that we were all mean. I imagine Rachel found a way of explaining it to Miss Harper without enlightening the boys.

Well, Miss Harper returned the sabotaged items to their places in Miss Chester’s room and the tray back in our hallway - we all read quietly until the swimmers came back up to the house - Rachel assembled a meal for seven with her usual expertise. The young people dined very well and we kept the lights turned up to put off the development of a séance atmosphere.

After dinner we listened to a recorded lecture on the formation of stars. I was determined to encourage a practical frame of mind before the planned demonstration. Ditty and Nets, to their credit, listened properly - though Ditty was sitting on the back of the settee and braiding Nets’ hair at the same time - she seems to be able to listen longer if she is also doing something knotty - her schoolteachers used to dislike this intensely but I have never seen the harm, if it is something quiet. Miss Harper also seemed to be listening but I found her harder to ‘read’.

I remembered that she had written a poem on stars - or the space between stars - I forget now - and asked her to read it aloud to us all after the record finished. Miss Chester excused herself and went to her room during the poem. On her return, she drifted prettily about the sitting room - I saw her put the little record player behind a clock as her hands brushed lightly on everything - it was well done, but I was looking.

Miss Chester applauded when Miss Harper finished reading out her poem, which made her blush and Ditty and Nets laugh. She took up the thread of universality and knowableness and so forth - spun it into her general assertions about the power of the human imagination - our ability to access realms - her voice lowering and becoming more elegant as she began her performance - I remember wishing she had been a real actress and regretting that we had decided to unmask her so abruptly.

Ditty went and turned down the lights, and all the girls and Oliver took their places - Rachel and I exchanging glances across the round table but joining them - Miss Harper looking very pale - the boys arguing about whether to knock things over - George said it would serve her right and Lewis said it would prove her right, and dragged George by the collar out of the door. George managed to turn the lights up again with a last flail as he went out of sight.

At the moment the lights came back up, the rapping device attached to Miss Chester’s leg, under the table, must have failed in such a way as to pinch her - I had really not intended that - she yelped and jumped, and the little packets of ectoplasm fell out of her sleeve.

My daughters both let go of our hands and leaned over the table to look at them. Nets started to say something reproachful - then the little record player started to tick louder and louder and started to play its record but then sped up, stopped and made a crunching sound - spat a cog and part of its chassis out onto a side table.

Ditty and Nets were aghast, of course. They had really believed that their new acquaintance would contact spirits, or the dead. I tried not to look at anyone. I saw Rachel patting Oliver’s hand, which was shaking.

Miss Chester threw a tantrum - it seems odd to say it of a grown woman but that is what she did - irritably claiming that she only ever wanted to be entertaining - that it was downright mean of Sarah to spoil the fun - that it must have been her, nobody else had any reason to be sly, everyone else had the right to be here and would have been up-front about it - that she would claim for repairs - that these were tools of her performance - and so forth, quite nastily.

It reminded me suddenly, as I continued not to look at anyone, of one of my overseas postings - an outburst a native had given under similar distress - a newly-arrived corporal with an interest in stage magic had watched this mendicant’s sleight of hand with great enjoyment and then imitated the trick at once, right there in the market place, thinking to convey that they were brothers in conjuring - the native fellow had screeched awfully and called down tremendous curses on the young corporal’s head - he was perfectly fine, of course, retired covered in gold braid three years before I did - only sorry that he had spoiled the show by joining in. I remember he tried to soothe the old conjuror with a gold coin from his own ear - didn’t help.

I began listening again as Nets interrupted Miss Chester - a story about what her schoolfriends had done to a girl who played similar pranks with hidden clockwork, and lied about them - really quite inventive - I’d forgotten how much justice children can do to each other when you leave them to it - Ditty was similarly scathing.

George and Lewis came back in through the wall at this point, recognising the girls’ voices raised in anger.

Oliver put his hands very flat on the table and interrupted the girls to say that entertaining was a perfectly good way of making a living and he personally would like to thank Miss Chester for investing in the tools to put on a good show as well as training her natural talents.

I thought that was jolly nice of him - and brave.

There was a pause - he added that perhaps Miss Chester would find a more appreciative audience in the actual theatre - this was weaker, as I knew for a fact he had not been to a theatre in his life apart from the pantomime at Christmas.

Miss Harper, however, nodded at this - said that some of her creative friends were engaged in modernist performances with very demanding lighting and fancy effects about the set - that Miss Chester’s technical assistance would be valued - Miss Harper wondered if perhaps that would suit her better than the risk of working in people’s houses.

Lewis clapped - said this was probably the nicest way of telling someone to get a job he’d ever seen - he and George fell about laughing - Rachel and I controlled our expressions with great difficulty. Rachel recovered before me - agreed with Miss Harper, began a soothing story of a performance we had attended - very fancy spot lighting to draw the eye - masterful control of atmosphere.

Subject to my wife’s voice, Miss Chester began to calm down - adjusted her frilled sleeves and went to fetch the pieces of her little record player - Ditty and Nets poked at the little envelopes of ectoplasm on the table with interest - looked rather like cats for a moment. Nets opened one and recoiled at its smell. Miss Chester noticed her reaction - came over and said that it wasn’t supposed to - sniffed it and looked furiously at Miss Harper again.

Rachel patted Oliver’s hand some more and suggested that he and Miss Chester go to my study, open a fresh note-pad and start listing off her skills and tools so that we could write to theatre directors in the morning. Oliver perked up tremendously at this idea - time with a pretty girl and a new project! - the boys made sick noises and I glared at them.

Miss Chester swept out of the room, snatching up her ectoplasm - did not look at my daughters - Oliver followed her, already taking his favourite pen from his jacket pocket. Miss Harper apologised to the girls - very low little voice - clearly expecting to be booted out of the house - said she did not like to see her friends lied to but regretted her methods. Clever young woman. Nets said they had been silly to take Lily seriously after the others had let them down - I interrupted to ask what these others had been, while George and Lewis latched onto the words silly and Lily and danced around singing them - Ditty patted me, said it would wait for another day.

Ditty and Nets went up to their rooms to collect up spiritist books - another fad over.

In the sudden quiet, Rachel thanked Miss Harper for her assistance in exposing the fraud - hoped she would not end her visit - we watched her visibly come to a decision and then she said - still in a very small voice - “Actually, you do have ghosts here. I’m very sorry to tell you. They helped me find the things. They’ve been here the whole time.”

The four of us stared at her - Rachel and I and George and Lewis I mean - and Rachel asked what she meant. She pointed directly at Lewis - smiled at him - described him exactly as I saw him, his hair tufted on the left, collar half out, drifting a little above the rug - looking stunned. She smiled at George too - described him as I saw him, clutching Lewis’s arm above the elbow, shirt untucked, socks without shoes - looking delighted.

Rachel moved round the table and sat next to me - held onto my arm and put her face against my shoulder. I told Miss Harper who the boys were - that I was delighted she could see them - the boys yelping and capering, clutching each other’s arms - told her that Rachel and I could too, but we had assumed this was because we knew them well. I told her when they had died. I told her that I was glad they were here. I believe I was crying.

Miss Harper looked tremendously relieved - clearly had expected to be called a lunatic - said she had often been able to see the departed but not made it a topic of conversation since her early childhood - had agreed to help expose Miss Chester because she found it distasteful personally - wondered why Ditty and Nets could not see the boys.

Rachel said, rather muffled, that George had been away at school when the girls were small, and then the girls were away at school when George and Lewis came back to our home. We had always assumed they had not been sufficiently acquainted. It was a regret.

Miss Harper asked - to the boys directly - whether they had ever attempted to contact anyone else - any visitors - whether they knew how to make contact. George said they didn’t want anything to change - clung on Lewis very tightly - Lewis nodded.

I told the boys again that I was glad they were in our home. Rachel reached out for them, her face still in my shoulder - George moved a vase of flowers closer to her, instead of touching - I looked away and coughed a little. Told Miss Harper that we must pay her nonetheless - the actual mediumship irrelevant to her service - that it was an honour to support such a sensible young person - something about supporting the arts. Phrases I had grown accustomed to. Told her - attempting jocularity - she had saved us money on whatever other silliness Ditty and Nets would have fallen prey to afterwards.

Rachel said - emerging from my now damp jacket shoulder - that there would be some other form of silliness. Miss Harper made some respectful noises about the girls not being silly, and while Rachel listed off their most recent fads I felt about in my pockets for the cheque I had written her - pushed it across the table.

She unfolded it - began to explain to us what a difference it would make - described the jobs she had been doing in shops and offices - writing time snatched in the evenings and on the omnibus. She told us about her little kitchen - tragic little cupboards - George and Lewis listened, baffled - never known people not to live in houses like ours. She told us about the new writing-chair she would buy first - then a new blanket - then her plan to make a long list for the grocer and buy so much they would have to send it after her - her plan to buy new shelf lining paper for her cupboards - a record player.

Lewis jumped in there with a recommendation for a particular model of record player - Rachel and I laughed - the spell broken. We were still very moved. Rachel repeated that she hoped Miss Harper would stay as long as she had planned - that we would love to host her again in a year - whether or not the girls were still her friends.

Well, she did - they were - we saw her again the next year - better nourished and still as thoughtful and elegant - a better wool coat in the same cut - George and Lewis still seventeen. My secretary Oliver had been going down to the city for one weekend a month, that whole year - returning with his satchel stuffed with theatre programmes. He later married Miss Chester - for their wedding gift we ordered them a filing cabinet with a trick drawer.

I hope we will continue to host - I do think it keeps me alert to have young people around.

I suppose, when this is published, we are all somewhere beyond comment - wherever that is - I hope we come back here. I look around at the house - I know my wife is in the sitting room engaged in her most recent interest, cubist painting - can hear our daughters bickering happily on the lawn.

George is reclining just above my study armchair listening to a record - the boys suggest music and magazines for me to purchase - Ditty and Nets can’t imagine why I listen to young people’s bands - Lewis is dancing about, still seventeen, playing an imaginary guitar - I hope we all come back.