The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

where there’s nothing but pines or palms. I don’t want to see London pink may in flower again – ever.”

“Won’t Neville . . .?”

“Neville? Oh, didn’t you really realize? Didn’t I. . .? He, I, we’ve – I mean, we’re living apart.” She rose and took the full, fuming ashtray across to another table, and hesitated, then brought an empty tray back. “Since we left that house,” she said. “I told you we left that house. That was why. We broke up.

“It was the other thing that went wrong,” she said. “If I’d still kept my head with Neville, he and I needn’t ever – I mean, one’s marriage is something. . . . I’d thought I’d always be married, whatever else happened. I ought to have realized Neville was in a nervy state. Like a fool I spilled over to Neville; I lost my head. But by that time I hadn’t any control left. When the one thing you’ve lived for has crashed to bits . . .

“Crashed was the word. And yet I see now, really, that things had been weakening for some time. At the time I didn’t see, any more than I noticed the may was fading out in the square – till one morning the weather changed and I noticed the may was brown. All the happiness stopped like my stopping whistling – but at what particular moment I’m never sure.

“The beginnings of the end of it were so small. Like my being a bit more unpunctual every evening we met. That made us keep losing our table at restaurants – you know how the restaurants are these days. Then I somehow got the idea that none of my clothes were becoming; I began to think he was eyeing my hats unkindly, and that made me fidget and look my worst. Then I got an idiot thing about any girl that he spoke of – I didn’t like anyone being younger than me. Then, at what had once been our most perfect moments, I began to ask myself if I was really happy, till I said to him – which was fatal – ‘Is there so much in this?’ . . . I should have seen more red lights -when, for instance, he said, ‘You know, you’re getting nervy.’ And he quite often used to say ‘Tired?’ in rather a tired way. I used to say, it was just getting dressed in a rush. But the fact is, a man hates the idea of a woman rushing. One night I know I did crack: I said, ‘Hell, I’ve got a ghost in my room!’ He put me straight into a taxi and sent me – not took me – home.

“I did see him several times after that. So his letter – his letter was a complete surprise. . . . The joke was, I really had been out with a girl that evening I came in, late, to find his letter.

“If Neville had not been there when I got the letter, Neville and I might still – I suppose – be married. On the other hand – there are always two ways to see things – if Neville had not been there I should have gone mad . . . So now,” she said, with a change of tone, “I’m living in an hotel. Till I see how things turn out. Till the war is over, or something. It isn’t really so bad, and I’m out all day. Look, I’ll give you my address and telephone number. It’s been wonderful seeing you, darling. You promise we’ll meet again? I do really need to keep in touch with my friends. And you don’t so often meet someone who’s seen a ghost!”

“But look, did you ever see it?”

“Well, not exactly. No, I can’t say I saw it.”

“You mean, you simply heard it?”

“Well, not exactly that . . .”

“You saw things move?”

“Well, I never turned round in time. I . . .

“If you don’t understand – I’m sorry I ever told you the story! Not a ghost – when it ruined my whole life! Don’t you see, can’t you see there must have been something? Left to oneself, one doesn’t ruin one’s life!”

A Gremlin in the Beer

Derek Barnes

Location:  RAF North Coates, Lincolnshire.

Time:  January, 1942.

Eyewitness Description:  “The crew came shuffling in, in their soft flying- boots, they were red-eyed and stiff with cold, and their normally pink and fresh young faces looked drawn and stubble-marked under the office lights. It appeared, to my not inexperienced eye, that the Gremlin was still aboard the Beaufort.”

Author:  Derek Barnes (1904–78) grew up on the outskirts of London and in his teens developed a passion for flying. After working for several years as a journalist, he became a PR in London. In his spare time he trained to fly a Tiger Moth and had almost a hundred hours in his logbook when war was declared. Barnes was called up into the RAF, but instead of being allowed to fly was trained as an Intelligence Officer to debrief crews after operations. He was stationed in Lincolnshire with a squadron of Beauforts when he first heard stories about Gremlins, mysterious and malicious spirits apparently set on causing as many mishaps as possible to pilots. According to some accounts, the phantoms had first been detected in 1918 by the newly constituted RAF, but were now back with a vengeance. Barnes’ account for The Spectator was written at the same time as a certain Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl was creating his first children’s story, “The Gremlins” for Collier’s magazine in America in May 1942. Unfortunately for Barnes, of course, it was to be Dahl’s account that would lead the writer to fame and fortune.

It has never been my way to take any part in the flying talk which, of a winter evening, takes place around the anteroom fire. Such talk is for flying men only, and not for earth-bound Intelligence Officers like me. Should the conversation turn to aircraft recognition, the flak positions down the enemy’s coastlines or the location of targets in German-occupied territory, then I speak my piece in my due turn. But flying “shop” – no! My modest thirty hours in a “Moth”, in peace-time, do not entitle me to swap yarns with boys who have flown their fifty, sixty or hundred sorties against the enemy. No, sir!

But, though I lie low, I keep an ear cocked when the chaps are talking shop, for it is often helpful when I have to interrogate the crews on their return. By quietly listening one gains an insight into a pilot’s reactions at awkward moments; one gleans a few more words of technical jargon and a scrap or two of flying “gen”. And these things go to make the interrogator sound less of an amateur and gain for him acceptance as a well-informed, professional collaborator from the flying personnel.

Sometimes the talk is not so technical. As, for instance, that night a year ago when there arose a lively argument upon the subject of Gremlins. Once again I said little, but listened with interest as well as amusement, for even these wild speculations enhanced my knowledge of the men who made them.

The existence of Gremlins is tacitly admitted by all R.A.F. air crews. Nobody has seen one, though many have felt their influence. It has fallen to my lot to paint their portraits upon the aircraft of superstitious pilots – in propitiation of the imps believed to haunt them.

A Gremlin, then, is an imp or sprite whom pilots blame when things go wrong. One type, for example, lives at the aircraft’s centre of gravity and only hurls himself forward when the machine is about to land, thus making it nose-heavy at an unfortunate moment. Others stiffen the controls, jam rudder, undercart or ailerons, dispel cloud cover when most urgently needed, or spread it plentifully between aircraft and target, thus foxing the bomb-aimer at a vital time. Yet another type – “with a long nose and wings like a bat” – as the experts assure me, spins the compass like a teetotum the moment it becomes the aircraft’s sole navigational aid.

“Old Moaner” set the ball rolling. For weeks he had been suffering from the filthiest luck which defied even his exceptional skill. And he had long adopted a comical “defeatist” line of talk to cover his disappointment. Hence his nickname. That night, by the fire, he startled us by declaring that a super-Gremlin had taken up its abode in his Beaufort within the last few days and that this was not to be confused with any common-or-garden Gremlin “such as other types have”. It was, if you please, a Universal Gremlin! It put all others in the shade, for it mucked up everything – compass, maps, ailerons, rudder, the “R.T.” undercart, oxygen, and even Moaner’s own thermos flask – all at the same time.

There was a silence while his friends absorbed this extreme claim. Somebody at last was moved to speak.