The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

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