Later, I met Elizabeth, the girlfrom the hall – which is curious because, when I saw her from the staircasethat first time, she wasn’t yet a ghost, nor fully grown up, and besides I seemto have gone farther back in time and place after seeing her, back to a muchearlier period, perhaps only a few years after I actually died in 1918. Which iswhen I met Coral, and after that eventually all of them who were already here.But now, saying this, I’m not quite sure when I did meet each of them thefirst. Also, and I can’t deny or explain this, I do feel in addition that Ispent some time elsewhere. By which I mean I was somewhere that wasn’t thehouse, though I have no notion where, but I wasn’t unhappy there. It stays forme a mystery.
A memory – which I cannotremember. Haven’t I said I am silly? What can we expect of me but an inadequate– what do they say? – take on events?
I apply that philosophy too tothose awful things that have started to infest the landscape and the gardens.The Zomb-things, whatever they are. They frighten me so much. Once, one peeredright in at a window on the ground floor, in the part that remains of the olddining room, and it pressed its broken nose to the glass, drooling. ButElizabeth came in and comforted me. Elizabeth is very kind, although sometimesshe calls me ‘Daphne’. This is because she once painted a picture, or made a statueof Daphne, from the Greek myth, as Daphne was turning into a laurel bush. Ibelieve I have that correctly. Elizabeth said the Zomb couldn’t see me, that ithad neither a mind nor a soul. She reminded me I’d caught glimpses of suchthings in new-flickers on the Tea V, before the pictures failed. And while shetalked, it, the thing, wandered off.
Elizabeth called it Ugg, and mademe laugh. She is smart and clever, what Constance used to say women shouldbecome. I wish I could somehow hold Elizabeth’s hand for comfort. But none ofus, alas, can touch, not a chair, not a tree, not each other. The last fleshlyhand I remember holding, I’m afraid, is his, Captain Ashton’s, who may not havebeen a captain at all. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t even know hisfirst name. Perhaps he died in the War. Or the other war that apparently followed.Or perhaps he lived. Whatever it was that he did, he went elsewhere. How sadthis is. I have said enough.
4
Coral
MissArcher murdered me. This is quite true. It is all I need to say.
Despite that fact, I would expectyou will wish me to expound my claim, to provide evidence, and failing that, ashow can I provide anything of such solidity, being murdered and dead, and, too,as constantly I was informed in my former life, I am only a child; failingthat, as I say, I must argue my case.
I have no idea how I should dothis. Nobody will believe me. The others here, all grown men and women, do not,I am sure. Nor will any other, nor you, whomsoever you are.
Certainly Miss Archer, who was,you understand, my governess, as they used to say in popular fiction, ‘did mein’. I was ‘done in’. I am done.
Now I shall start weeping again.
Miss Elizabeth says that a ghostcan shed tears, it is allowed. She says she too has wept. Laurel, however,never weeps. Laurel is very strong and brave, a shining example to our weakfeminine sex. My Father would have said that of Laurel. He had said that of myown lost mother. “How brave she was,” he said. “Never a complaint. Her eyesreleased no single salty drop. A paragon among women.” (I used once to believea paragon was a bird, but it would seem it is not). “Take note, Coral,” hewould add, with his usual benign sternness, “of the bright example you muststrive to follow.”
“Yes, Papa,” I would answer.
I was six when first he saidthis, and afterwards I was seven. I had lost her, you see, my mother, when Iwas a child of five years and nine months. Now I am fourteen. I have beenfourteen for almost a century and a half. I have tried very hard to be what hasbeen expected of me. And I have failed.
Thesituation that annoys me the most is that of my dolls. I had two that I wasparticularly fond of. And when I returned to my home after the rather curiousexperience I had following what I have to assume was my death, I found thesedolls both propped up in one of the rooms, a room of display as I afterwardlearned. Supposedly it recreated a nursery of the time of our Queen, Victoria,although, to me, I confess, who spent her early years in just such a place, itwas very unlike the original. However, seeing the dolls I ran towards them, toembrace them, my two wooden friends, that, I confess, I had retained into myfourteenth summer. Yet when I reached them I could not touch, let alone holdthem. Of course not. I am a ghost. My hands passed straight through them. Iwept then, again. Despite all my handsome and patient father’s counsel, I neverreally could control my tears.
I had begun to cry on the day ofmy mother’s funeral, when I was told I might not attend, for that would beunsuitable. Until then I did not think I had fully believed Mama had perished.My current nurse had told me gently, her own eyes wet, that Mama had gone toHeaven to be with God, and I railed against God, saying He did not need her asI did. My father, naturally, admonished me. After that hour, often, I wept.
The case of the dolls was worsein its way. My mother vanished from my life. But, returning, the dolls were andare here. It was some while before the consequences of my spectral state wereconfirmed and explained to me by Laurel, and later, Elizabeth. The
