The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 22

I hurried off early to my work, calling on my way for the keys, and with Brian for my companion descended once more into the crypt, and drew and measured with an absorption that gave me no time that day to listen for sounds real or fancied. Brian, too, on this occasion seemed quite content, and slept peacefully beside me on the stone floor. When I had worked as long as I could, I put away my books with regret that even then I had not quite finished, as I had hoped to do. It would be necessary to come again for a short time on the morrow. When I returned the keys late that afternoon, the old clergyman met me at the door and asked me to come in and have tea with him.

"And has the work prospered?" he asked, as we sat down in the long, low room into which I had just been ushered, and where he seemed to live entirely.

I told him it had, and showed it to him.

"You have seen the original, of course?" I said.

"Once," he replied, gazing fixedly at it. He evidently did not care to be communicative, so I turned the conversation to the age of the church.

"All here is old," he said. "When I was young, forty years ago, and came here because I had no means of mine own, and was much moved to marry at that time, I felt oppressed that all was so old; and that this place was so far removed from the world, for which I had at times longing grievous to be borne; but I had chosen my lot, and with it I was forced to be content. My son, marry not in youth, for love, which truly in that season is a mighty power, turns away the heart from study, and young children break the back of ambition. Neither marry in middle life, when woman is seen to be but a woman and her talk a weariness, so you will not be burdened with a wife in your old age."

I had my own views on the subject of marriage, for I am of the opinion that a well-chosen companion of domestic tastes and docile and devoted temperament may be of material a.s.sistance to a professional man. But my opinions once formulated, it is not of moment to me to discuss them with others, so I changed the subject, and asked if the neighbouring villages were as antiquated as Wet Waste.

"Yes, all about here is old," he repeated. "The paved road leading to d.y.k.e Fens is an ancient pack road, made even in the time of the Romans. d.y.k.e Fens, which is very near here, a matter of but four or five miles, is likewise old, and forgotten by the world. The Reformation never reached it. It stopped here. And at d.y.k.e Fens they still have a priest and a bell, and bow down before the saints. It is a d.a.m.nable heresy, and weekly I expound it as such to my people, showing them true doctrines; and I have heard that this same priest has so far yielded himself to the Evil One that he has preached against me as withholding gospel truths from my flock; but I take no heed of it, neither of his pamphlet touching the Clementine Homilies, in which he vainly contradicts that which I have plainly set forth and proven beyond doubt, concerning the word Asaph."

The old man was fairly off on his favourite subject, and it was some time before I could get away. As it was, he followed me to the door, and I only escaped because the old clerk hobbled up at that moment, and claimed his attention.

The following morning I went for the keys for the third and last time. I had decided to leave early the next day. I was tired of Wet Waste, and a certain gloom seemed to my fancy to be gathering over the place. There was a sensation of trouble in the air as if, although the day was bright and clear, a storm were coming.

This morning, to my astonishment, the keys were refused to me when I asked for them. I did not, however, take the refusal as final I make it a rule never to take a refusal as final and after a short delay I was shown into the room where, as usual, the clergyman was sitting, or rather, on this occasion, was walking up and down.

"My son," he said with vehemence, "I know wherefore you have come, but it is of no avail. I cannot lend the keys again."

I replied that, on the contrary, I hoped he would give them to me at once.

"It is impossible," he repeated. "I did wrong, exceeding wrong. I will never part with them again."

"Why not?"

He hesitated, and then said slowly: "The old clerk, Abraham Kelly, died last night." He paused, and then went on: "The doctor has just been here to tell me of that which is a mystery to him. I do not wish the people of the place to know it, and only to me he has mentioned it, but he has discovered plainly on the throat of the old man, and also, but more faintly on the child's, marks as of strangulation. None but he has observed it, and he is at a loss how to account for it. I, alas, can account for it but in one way, but in one way!"

I did not see what all this had to do with the crypt, but to humour the old man, I asked what that way was.

"It is a long story, and to a stranger it may appear but foolishness, but I will even tell it; for I perceive that unless I furnish a reason for withholding the keys, you will not cease to entreat me for them.

"I told you at first when you enquired of me concerning the crypt, that it had been closed these thirty years, and so it was. Thirty years ago a certain Sir Roger Despard departed this life, the Lord of the Manor of Wet Waste and d.y.k.e Fens, the last of his family, which is now, thank the Lord, extinct. He was a man of a vile life, neither fearing G.o.d nor regarding man, nor having compa.s.sion on innocence, and the Lord appeared to have given him over to the tormentors even in this world, for he suffered many things of his vices, more especially from drunkenness, in which seasons, and they were many, he was as one possessed by seven devils, being an abomination to his household and a root of bitterness to all, both high and low.

"And, at last, the cup of his iniquity being full to the brim, he came to die, and I went to exhort him on his death-bed; for I heard that terror had come upon him, and that evil imaginations encompa.s.sed him so thick on every side that few of them that were with him could abide in his presence. But when I saw him I perceived that there was no place of repentance left for him, and he scoffed at me and my superst.i.tion, even as he lay dying, and swore there was no G.o.d and no angels, and all were d.a.m.ned even as he was. And the next day, towards evening, the pains of death came upon him, and he raved the more exceedingly, inasmuch as he said he was being strangled by the Evil One. Now on his table was his hunting knife, and with his last strength he crept and laid hold upon it, no man withstanding him, and swore a great oath that if he went down to burn in h.e.l.l, he would leave one of his hands behind on earth, and that it would never rest until it had drawn blood from the throat of another and strangled him, even as he himself was being strangled. And he cut off his own right hand at the wrist, and no man dared go near him to stop him, and the blood went through the floor, even down to the ceiling of the room below, and thereupon he died.

"And they called me in the night, and told me of his oath, and I counselled that no man should speak of it, and I took the dead hand, which none had ventured to touch, and I laid it beside him in his coffin; for I thought it better he should take it with him, so that he might have it, if some day after much tribulation he should perchance be moved to stretch forth his hands towards G.o.d. But the story got spread about, and the people were affrighted, so, when he came to be buried in the place of his fathers, he being the last of his family, and the crypt likewise full, I had it closed, and kept the keys myself, and suffered no man to enter therein any more; for truly he was a man of an evil life, and the devil is not yet wholly overcome, nor cast chained into the lake of fire. So in time the story died out, for in thirty years much is forgotten. And when you came and asked me for the keys, I was at the first minded to withhold them; but I thought it was a vain superst.i.tion, and I perceived that you do but ask a second time for what is first refused; so I let you have them, seeing it was not an idle curiosity, but a desire to improve the talent committed to you, that led you to require them."

The old man stopped, and I remained silent, wondering what would be the best way to get them just once more.

"Surely, sir," I said at last, "one so cultivated and deeply read as yourself cannot be biased by an idle superst.i.tion."

"I trust not," he replied, "and yet it is a strange thing that since the crypt was opened two people have died, and the mark is plain upon the throat of the old man and visible on the young child. No blood was drawn, but the second time the grip was stronger than the first. The third time, perchance-"

"Superst.i.tion such as that," I said with authority, "is an entire want of faith in G.o.d. You once said so yourself."

I took a high moral tone which is often efficacious with conscientious, humble-minded people.

He agreed, and accused himself of not having as much faith as a grain of mustard seed; but even when I had got him so far as that, I had a severe struggle for the keys. It was only when I finally explained to him that if any malign influence had been let loose the first day, at any rate, it was out now for good or evil, and no further going or coming of mine could make any difference, that I finally gained my point. I was young, and he was old; and, being much shaken by what had occurred, he gave way at last, and I wrested the keys from him.

I will not deny that I went down the steps that day with a vague, indefinable repugnance, which was only accentuated by the closing of the two doors behind me. I remembered then, for the first time, the faint jangling of the key and other sounds which I had noticed the first day, and how one of the skulls had fallen. I went to the place where it still lay. I have already said these walls of skulls were built up so high as to be within a few inches of the top of the low archways that led into more distant portions of the vault. The displacement of the skull in question had left a small hole just large enough for me to put my hand through. I noticed for the first time, over the archway above it, a carved coat-of-arms, and the name, now almost obliterated, of Despard. This, no doubt, was the Despard vault. I could not resist moving a few more skulls and looking in, holding my candle as near the aperture as I could. The vault was full. Piled high, one upon another, were old coffins, and remnants of coffins, and strewn bones. I attribute my present determination to be cremated to the painful impression produced on me by this spectacle. The coffin nearest the archway alone was intact, save for a large crack across the lid. I could not get a ray from my candle to fall on the bra.s.s plates, but I felt no doubt this was the coffin of the wicked Sir Roger. I put back the skulls, including the one which had rolled down, and carefully finished my work. I was not there much more than an hour, but I was glad to get away.

If I could have left Wet Waste at once I should have done so, for I had a totally unreasonable longing to leave the place; but I found that only one train stopped during the day at the station from which I had come, and that it would not be possible to be in time for it that day.

Accordingly I submitted to the inevitable, and wandered about with Brian for the remainder of the afternoon and until late in the evening, sketching and smoking. The day was oppressively hot, and even after the sun had set across the burned stretches of the Wolds, it seemed to grow very little cooler. Not a breath stirred. In the evening, when I was tired of loitering in the lanes, I went up to my own room, and after contemplating afresh my finished study of the fresco, I suddenly set to work to write the part of my paper bearing upon it. As a rule, I write with difficulty, but that evening words came to me with winged speed, and with them a hovering impression that I must make haste, that I was much pressed for time. I wrote and wrote, until my candles guttered out and left me trying to finish by the moonlight, which, until I endeavoured to write by it, seemed as clear as day.

I had to put away my ma.n.u.script and, feeling it was too early to go to bed, for the church clock was just counting out ten, I sat down by the open window and leaned out to try and catch a breath of air. It was a night of exceptional beauty; and as I looked out my nervous haste and hurry of mind were allayed. The moon, a perfect circle, was if so poetic an expression be permissible as it were, sailing across a calm sky. Every detail of the little village was as clearly illuminated by its beams as if it were broad day; so, also, was the adjacent church with its primeval yews, while even the Wolds beyond were dimly indicated, as if through tracing paper.

I sat a long time leaning against the window sill. The heat was still intense. I am not, as a rule, easily elated or readily cast down; but as I sat that night in the lonely village on the moors, with Brian's head against my knee, how, or why, I know not, a great depression gradually came upon me.

My mind went back to the crypt and the countless dead who had been laid there. The sight of the goal to which all human life, and strength, and beauty, travel in the end, had not affected me at the time, but now the very air about me seemed heavy with death.

What was the good, I asked myself, of working and toiling, and grinding down my heart and youth in the mill of long and strenuous effort, seeing that in the grave folly and talent, idleness and labour, lie together, and are alike forgotten? Labour seemed to stretch before me till my heart ached to think of it, to stretch before me even to the end of life, and then came, as the recompense of my labour the grave. Even if I succeeded if, after wearing my life threadbare with toil, I succeeded, what remained to me in the end? The grave. A little sooner, while the hands and eyes were still strong to labour, or a little later, when all power and vision had been taken from them; sooner or later only the grave.

I do not apologize for the excessively morbid tenor of these reflections, as I hold that they were caused by the lunar effects which I have endeavoured to transcribe. The moon in its various quarterings has always exerted a marked influence on what I may call the sub-dominant, namely, the poetic side of my nature.

I roused myself at last, when the moon came to look in upon me where I sat, and, leaving the window open, I pulled myself together and went to bed.

I fell asleep almost immediately, but I do not fancy I could have been asleep very long when I was wakened by Brian. He was growling in a low, m.u.f.fled tone, as he sometimes did in his sleep, when his nose was buried in his rug. I called out to him to shut up; and as he did not do so, turned in bed to find my match box or something to throw at him. The moonlight was still in the room, and as I looked at him I saw him raise his head and evidently wake up. I admonished him, and was just on the point of falling asleep when he began to growl again in a low, savage manner that waked me most effectually. Presently he shook himself and got up, and began prowling about the room. I sat up in bed and called to him, but he paid no attention. Suddenly I saw him stop short in the moonlight; he showed his teeth, and crouched down, his eyes following something in the air. I looked at him in horror. Was he going mad? His eyes were glaring, and his head moved slightly as if he were following the rapid movements of an enemy. Then, with a furious snarl, he suddenly sprang from the ground, and rushed in great leaps across the room towards me, das.h.i.+ng himself against the furniture, his eyes rolling, s.n.a.t.c.hing and tearing wildly in the air with his teeth. I saw he had gone mad. I leaped out of bed and, rus.h.i.+ng at him, caught him by the throat. The moon had gone behind a cloud; but in the darkness I felt him turn upon me, felt him rise up, and his teeth close in my throat. I was being strangled. With all the strength of despair, I kept my grip of his neck and, dragging him across the room, tried to crush in his head against the iron rail of my bedstead. It was my only chance. I felt the blood running down my neck. I was suffocating. After one moment of frightful struggle, I beat his head against the bar and heard his skull give way. I felt him give one strong shudder, a groan, and then I fainted away.

When I came to myself I was lying on the floor, surrounded by the people of the house, my reddened hands still clutching Brian's throat. Someone was holding a candle towards me, and the draught from the window made it flare and waver. I looked at Brian. He was stone dead. The blood from his battered head was trickling slowly over my hands. His great jaw was fixed in something that in the uncertain light I could not see.

They turned the light a little.

"Oh, G.o.d!" I shrieked. "There! Look! Look!"

"He's off his head," said someone, and I fainted again.

I was ill for about a fortnight without regaining consciousness, a waste of time of which even now I cannot think without poignant regret. When I did recover consciousness, I found I was being carefully nursed by the old clergyman and the people of the house. I have often heard the unkindness of the world in general inveighed against, but for my part I can honestly say that I have received many more kindnesses than I have time to repay. Country people especially are remarkably attentive to strangers in illness.

I could not rest until I had seen the doctor who attended me, and had received his a.s.surance that I should be equal to reading my paper on the appointed day. This pressing anxiety removed, I told him of what I had seen before I fainted the second time. He listened attentively, and then a.s.sured me, in a manner that was intended to be soothing, that I was suffering from a hallucination, due, no doubt, to the shock of my dog's sudden madness.

"Did you see the dog after it was dead?" I asked. He said he did. The whole jaw was covered with blood and foam; the teeth certainly seemed convulsively fixed, but the case being evidently one of extraordinarily virulent hydrophobia, owing to the intense heat, he had had the body buried immediately.

My companion stopped speaking as we reached our lodgings, and went upstairs. Then, lighting a candle, he slowly turned down his collar.

"You see I have the marks still," he said, "but I have no fear of dying of hydrophobia. I am told such peculiar scars could not have been made by the teeth of a dog. If you look closely you see the pressure of the five fingers. That is the reason why I wear high collars."

Another One in from the Cold.

Marion Arnott.

For one moment, for one awful moment, she thought Gavin was going to say, in that clipped and brooking no argument way he had, "We're not putting up with any of this nonsense." But of course he was talking to BBC Scotland, not to her; and the busy BBC man was more than his equal in not brooking argument. Their time slot, he said firmly, would be on 11 November, sandwiched between the dipping of the flags, and the Last Post. Gavin smiled as if satisfied, but grumbled all the way across the glossy polished paving which ran the length of the Cloth Hall.

"They really don't have much idea, do they, Kate? Patrick's story should be a feature on its own, not just a mention in the Armistice Day slot. We've come all the way to Ieper for his burial. We should read parts of his letters letters from ninety years ago. Ninety! It's so short-sighted to keep the ceremony so . . ." he flapped a hand ". . . general and unspecific when they could make it more personal and . . ." flap, flap ". . . specific."

"The ceremony is supposed to represent everyone," she said mildly, "and we're laying a wreath, Gavin. They're going to film that. And they'll be at the funeral next day."

"Yes, but . . ." He broke off. "Well, you have been rather underwhelmed by the whole thing from the start. Surprising considering he was your relative."

His breath in the cold air formed little puffs of cloud, like smoke signals. I-AM-REPROACHING-YOU, the signals read. She responded with a white puff of her own, sighing out I-DON T-CARE on a long breath, but derived no satisfaction from it since he didn't notice. His arm swung up, pointing. "Look! This is where Patrick stood. You remember the photo Patrick and the mule, halfway between the b.u.t.tresses? Of course the water jets weren't there then. Go and stand in front of them. I'll take your picture."

She did not want to stand where Patrick had; it did not matter that she would stand before a rebuilt magnificence of creamy stone and fluttering pennants; in her mind's eye she saw smashed ruins and hillocks of broken stone, sullen grey fading to colourlessness, and Patrick grinning and holding a mule by a rope. The Famous Kicker! he had written in flowing copperplate on the back of the photo postcard.

This mule today kicked a Private, then a Corporal, then a Sergeant, then a Second Lieutenant. I always stand well to the front!

Cheer-ho!

Patrick.

March, 1917.

She blinked away the image and stood half-paralysed by the same creeping unease which had squirmed inside her since their arrival in Ieper. It was like nausea, only warmer. She had felt it on the Ramparts, at the Flanders Museum, and now at the Cloth Hall, and it made her want to run away, to run and run and run. She had told Gavin about the squirmy feeling but he said that at only two months gone, nothing could possibly be moving yet, that she mustn't get broody. She mustn't.

"Kate!" He flapped his hand at her.

She steeled herself and crossed to the rectangular pond sunk into the stone. Its honour guard of thin water jets arched high and crystal cold into brilliant blue sky; she stood in front of them, trying to smile, but she could feel the gothic facade of the Cloth Hall pressing close behind her, its pointed churchy windows and gilded curlicues much too close and not how they should be. They were not right: too whole, too new, too clean. Where was the mist of dust which had thickened the air and lain fine in the creases of Patrick's tunic? It had hung like a thin sepia veil over the ruins of the great hall in 1917, and again on the day they arrived in Ieper. She had seen it.

"What mist?" Gavin had said when she mentioned it. "The air is clear as a bell."

Then she had known and understood; now she struggled to stand still for the photo. She wanted to run. She wanted to be sick.

"Say cheese, Kate! Smile a while!"

In a sudden light wind, the tall jets hunched over, s.h.i.+vered, and broke into icy rags and tatters. Bright water sprayed across her face, startling her into laughter. Gavin's camera whirred happily.

"That's more like it, Kate. You don't laugh often enough. Not much at all these days."

He slipped an arm round her as they walked away. "You have diamond droplets on your eyelashes." He fished out a handkerchief and dabbed the spray from her eyes. "You're the prettiest girl in town when you're smiling and sparkly." He drew her closer. She was embarra.s.sed by a surge of relief at the return of tenderness. "By the end of next week it will all be over and everything back to normal."

He was quietly insistent. All-be-over was scheduled for next Friday lunchtime, a quick and unremarkable medical procedure, but he did not trust her acquiescence. He did not want children; neither did she. But still he must constantly be rea.s.sured that she was going through with all-be-over; that they would continue with the life they had planned together, their cycle of travelling, meeting up with friends, lounging at their summer house in Eire, buying expensive items for their stately Victorian flat in Glasgow. The flat and its pale deep rugs and polished floors were his major arguments against children: imagine sticky fingers! Roller blades! The danger to the Rennie McIntosh gla.s.s! He laughed to prove the joke, but he meant it all, and watched her constantly, looking for changes in her, wordlessly demanding that she be as she had always been.

"You should have a special time next weekend," he said, to reward her smiles. "What kind of pampering would you like?"

I would like, she thought, to be allowed to be a little affected by about-to-be-over, just a little; and I would like not to be affected by this place. But neither was likely and she could not share the unease with him.

They were still walking in the shadow of the hall, a shadow deep and dark, even on this bright day. The chill seeped up through the paving, wrapped round her and slid inside the collar of her jacket.

Mum, Patrick had written, Thanks for the scarf and mittens.

Just the ticket out here. The cold gets everywhere.

March, 1917 "You've gone quite pale," he said.

"I'm cold."

"There's a cafe," he said. "Let's have a hot chocolate. Warm us up."

She smelled the chocolate in the air, wafting round her face, warm and rich; she felt fingers of cold ruffle the hairs at the nape of her neck. She retched. Gavin let go of her suddenly.

"Morning sickness. You haven't had that before," he said accusingly.

"It's the chocolate. The smell is over sweet."

He swept her past the cafe. "I thought we'd agreed we're not having any of that nonsense!"

But it wasn't that nonsense, of course. It was something else entirely, something that only Great-Great-Auntie Rowan would understand.

Rowan lived in a white croft which dreamed by the side of the loch at Inverash. Kate visited her for a month every year in the summer holidays. There she could look up to the sky and study the frail white elegance of trailing clouds, and down at still water and see the pale shadows of sky; she could look into Rowan's eyes and see traces of a blue clear as the summer loch, clouded now by great old age, and hear her say, "Patrick had the same blue eyes, like mine, like yours."

As a child, Kate, standing on tiptoe, had puzzled over the old photographs ranged along the tall wooden mantelpiece, trying to see the blue. But the smiling boy in the stiff new uniform was a composition in shades of shadow; even the tartan trews and diced cap, which she knew to be bright coloured, were grey and greyish and darker grey. The eyes, though, had a curious lightness, and smiled mischief directly at her wherever she stood in the room. The other brothers, Alexander and Charlie, stared sightlessly into the distance, but Patrick sought her out. Even aged seven, she knew that Patrick knew her. And being only seven, she thought nothing of it; Rowan was comfortable with Patrick and Charlie and Alexander, and therefore so was she. She looked at their photos and their battered old school books. ("That's a Latin grammar," Rowan said of the one with the blue cloth cover and the gold stamp. "That was Patrick's. He was clever. He was going to the University at Glasgow, but then the war came.") For years, Kate had thought the war ended in June 1917, because after that date, Rowan had nothing to say about it. But time was a confused concept at Inverash. Every Sunday afternoon, Rowan and she went to the rowan tree at the gate to polish the sixpenny pieces nailed to its bark. In June the blossom hung low in thick creamy cl.u.s.ters and, while Kate polished, Rowan used to pick some and thread it into Kate's hair while she told the story of the sixpences as if for the first time.

"The boys carved their initials there before they went away. There, see? C. A. P., one on top of the other, 1914. And after Charlie and Alex were killed, and Patrick lost, all three in 1917, my father used to sc.r.a.pe the initials clean of lichen every now and then. Mother had a sixpence which Charlie had in his pocket when he was killed. It was new-minted, a 1917 coin, and somehow she could not bring herself to spend it. And whenever she got another 1917 sixpence, she could not spend that either, so she kept them in a jam-jar on the windowsill. And then one warm June night, two years after the war was over, she woke to find Father gone from the bed and heard banging and cursing. He was out at the gate in the moonlight with the jar of coins, a hammer, and long thin nails, and he was hammering sixpences into the initials to make them permanent. And with one bang he'd cry 'My sons! My sons!' and with the next a curse word, and the blossom, all ghostly white in the moonlight, showered from the tree and lay in his hair and round his feet. He hammered in a new date too: 1917. Mother was afraid that night, for he hammered like a devil in h.e.l.l, he who had been a tower of strength, never shedding so much as a tear for his sons, but going about his business as usual, straight-backed and quiet-spoken. She brought him back to bed eventually and the floor and the quilt and the pillows were thick with the little flowers and their heady perfume. It was days before Mother was able to get all the blossom shaken out of the bedding, a week before the scent faded,'' Rowan said.

And days before it faded from her hair too, Kate remembered. On Sunday nights, after the polis.h.i.+ng, she always stood at the bedroom window, brus.h.i.+ng the rowan flowers and pollen out of her hair. She looked out over the loch, bright silver in moonlight, or black silk in the dark, and at the lacy silhouette of the rowan tree at the gate, to try and make out the sombre gleam of the initials of three boys, two dead and one lost. Sometimes "A" and "C" and "1914" were obscured by hanging flowers, but "P" and "1917" were further down the trunk and winked gently through the warm gloom.

Rowan often stood with her, checking that her hair was properly brushed and her teeth cleaned before bed, talking about the boys.

"What do you see out there?" she asked once.

"The tree and s.h.i.+ny sixpences."

"Maybe if you look hard enough you'll see the boys. They're around here somewhere. Charlie and Alex at any rate. Where Patrick is, I cannot tell. He was lost. Missing in action, presumed killed."

While Rowan talked, Kate listened to the quiet darkness, to the lap of the water on the s.h.i.+ngle.

"They used to come tearing down the hillside, whooping like apaches, and run along the loch side, laughing. The sound carried for miles across the water the minister used to say he could hear them in his wee white church on the other side. And when they got to the gate, they scuffled to get in first, leap up, and smack the branches of the tree. Such a sight they were, elbowing one another out of the way. It still makes me laugh."

Kate was a teenager before she realized that Rowan could never have seen the boys playing since she was born long after they were killed. "That's right," Rowan agreed. "I was the result of the night Father hammered in the sixpences, which is how I got my name. I was either Rowan or Despair, my mother always said. Rowan was prettier." She stirred the tea in her cup and smiled. "But all the same, I've heard Charlie and Alex laughing. I've seen them often too, tearing down the hillside. I still do. Never Patrick though."

The verdict of the family was that Rowan was a little crazy but harmless, contaminated by the grief of her parents and thinking their memories her own. Kate never argued the point but she knew Rowan wasn't crazy. On warm summer nights when the loch was a black disc with a yellow moon floating in it, she too sometimes heard the thud of running feet and the silvery giggles of young boys, very faint, as if coming from a long way off. It might have been a dream, or the effect of Rowan's talk, but Kate thought time had no meaning here, for it overlapped and sprawled backwards and sideways and didn't know that its proper place was marching forward in a straight line.

Gavin enjoyed being a celebrity, which was why they ate at Cafe Franz each night. They had been identified as the relatives of the soldier brought in from the cold after ninety years missing; this fact conferred a certain status among the habitues of the Armistice Day ceremonies. Cafe Franz was the haunt of the British who came with little wooden crosses and poppies and wreaths as gifts for the dead they had come to visit. They huddled round the red-and-white checked tablecloths which covered small round tables, removed their Aran sweaters when the room warmed up, and did their best to relive the Great War. Kate loathed it all.

From floor to ceiling the walls of the cafe were hung with ancient photographs of smiling boys in khaki and grim-faced men in khaki; worst were the ones, men and boys, who tried to smile beneath their haunted eyes. In khaki. In puttees. In kilts. In British Warms. Even in turbans. Then there were the photos of the ga.s.sed, the wounded, the sh.e.l.l-shocked, in trenches, in casualty stations, in ambulances, on trains. Their dead eyes gazed palely down at the company gathered in their honour. Kate could not meet that gaze and fiddled with her knife and fork while Gavin told yet again the story of Patrick's reappearance: the man digging up his garden to make a patio; the sudden summer storm which raged all night; the heavy clay soil which s.h.i.+fted and heaved and thrust up the detritus of war: the bullet casings, a tin cup, a toothbrush, a thin white bone which turned out to be a finger beckoning (how Gavin enjoyed telling that, his hand raised, his finger curled in a summons), a hand emerging, an arm extending, stretching, reaching . . .

"Every year it happens," the man in the Manchester United T-s.h.i.+rt said. "The earth pushes them up and we bring them in from the cold." He drained his pint. "They want to be found."

Gavin nodded. "Yes. Patrick came to the surface on the anniversary of the day he was killed the seventh of September 1917."