And is this something I should be worrying about right now?
‘Little spirit,’ she calls. ‘At least tell me your name.’
I turn and look – big mistake – she’s right behind me and like a flash she’s grabbed my shoulder.
Her face is still a solid shadow but now I can see smudges of less dark defining eyebrows, the line of her nose – the curve of her mouth as she smiles.
‘Aha,’ she says. ‘Quite solid after all.’
Elder wrangling – approach two – defy expectations.
‘I am,’ I say. ‘But you’re like well psychosomatic.’
‘That’s a long word for such a little spirit,’ she says. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means because my brain thinks you’re real then my body thinks you’re touching me,’ I say. ‘But you ain’t.’
Although real thing here – I ain’t sure that’s strictly true.
‘Interesting,’ says the Shadow Lady. ‘From the Greek – psycho and . . . somatic? From the French somatique perhaps. Bad form there, mixing languages like that. Although one could argue, I suppose, that somatique is also derived from the Greek.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Haven’t done Greek yet.’
‘Oh, but you must study Greek,’ says the Shadow Lady, ‘Homer, Marcus Aurelius has some wonderful epigrams, and that’s not to mention Sappho, of course.’ There is a sudden pause and the Shadow Lady cocks her head to one side. ‘What were we talking about?’
‘Your non-existence,’ I say.
‘Alleged non-existence,’ she says, and gives my shoulder a gentle shake.
‘Are you a practitioner?’ I ask. ‘A wizard?’
‘Sorceress, my dear,’ she says. ‘Practitioner is how the gentlemen have styled themselves, as quacks now style themselves as physicians. How do you know these things, spirit?’
There are things I’m dying to ask but the clock is ticking.
‘When were you born?’ I ask.
‘That’s a personal question.’
‘Can you remember your birthday?’
‘I am a child of May,’ says the Shadow Lady, and lets go of my shoulder. ‘The first of May in the Year of Our Lord 1782, to be exact. Now you?’
‘February,’ I say. ‘The year 2000.’
‘You jest,’ she says, and then hesitates. ‘No . . . I see that you do not.’ She holds up her hand as if to examine it. I wonder what she sees. ‘I am a ghost, am I not?’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I don’t know – it’s complicated.’
‘Damn and bother,’ she says. ‘I must think on this.’
And she’s gone.
Just when I was beginning to like her – oh well.
I go up the stairs like a kid, scrambling on hands and feet, and I’m two metres from the top and thinking I might make it when all the energy drains out of me. Suddenly my arms and legs are heavy – it’s bare effort to get my feet and hands on the next step. The steps are polished and slippery under my fingers, my neck won’t keep my head up, and I’m close to the top but I can’t make my right arm lift over the threshold. I slump down and my cheek rests on the smooth wood. I can’t remember why I’m supposed to be staying awake.
36
Bedfordshire
I am sitting up in bed next to Charles while Selina, Henrietta and Phoebe are putting on their version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Mama says owes less to Shakespeare and much more to Thomas Bowdler. Phoebe is a delight as Puck and Selina stamps around in trousers, speaking in a low voice to be Bottom. Papa says that Selina would be happier if she could always wear trousers, but I do not think Mama approves. It’s certainly nothing like the play I read at school . . . only I’ve never been to school. Papa says I’m too sick to be sent away and I’ve always had tutors since I can remember.
*
Indiana keeps whining and Mama says that it is peculiar because normally she’s such a good little dog, but she keeps on jumping onto my knees and looking at me with big eyes that are slotted like a cat’s. That strikes me as curious and peculiar, but when I ask Papa he says that God has created animals in infinite variety, including dogs that have eyes like a cat. Charles says my brain is getting too hot. Any hotter, he says, and Nanny could put a kettle on my head for her morning tea. He reads me a story about a boy who lives in a tower with his family, but one day his family leave and he finds himself all alone. I ask him to stop reading because it’s such a sad story, but he says I should be patient because it has a happy ending. I snuggle down again and Indiana curls up against my side and Charles finishes the story. The boy, it seems, had a wonderful musical instrument that charmed anyone who heard it, and he took this instrument to the top of the tower and started to play. The music spread all the way to a nearby town, but it was too pure for fathers and mothers to hear – only children could listen. Many of the children were unhappy or dissatisfied, but when they heard the music their hearts were filled with joy. I ask what kind of musical instrument it is and Charles asks me what kind I think it is. Well, obviously, I say, it must be a flute like that of the Pied Piper. No, says Charles quickly, it’s a trumpet. It can’t be a flute because the sound wouldn’t carry all the way to the town. Which I’m not sure makes sense, but it’s just a story so I suppose it doesn’t have to. Charles says that the boy played his trumpet so sweetly that soon all the good-hearted children of the town had gathered in his tower and they all lived happily ever after – the end.
Is that it? Well, yes – don’t you like a happy ending? What did they live on? Pardon? If there wasn’t anybody to cook, then what did they have for tea? They had goblin servants who
