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Authors: Pamela Oldfield
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and then I thought I saw a punt, which has now vanished. Unless I’m seeing things – or going quietly mad!’
Mrs Brannigan’s expression changed. ‘You’re not psychic, are you? Some people are, you know, but often they don’t know it. My aunt lived next door to a psychic. She was quite famous and people paid her to contact their dear departed.’ She shuddered. ‘Can you imagine? A seance. That’s what it was called. I think she called herself a psychic medium.’
‘But surely a punt couldn’t be a ghost. A ghost is the spirit of a person, isn’t it? The punt I saw – or thought I saw – was empty.’
Mrs Brannigan folded her arms across her chest. ‘Whatever it is I want nothing to do with it. It gives me the shivers. More likely a trick of the light. Mind you, people pay to visit haunted houses and nothing bad happens to them, so I daresay they’re not dangerous or anything.’
‘Just the spirits of people who cannot find rest, even after they die. That’s how they’ve been described. It’s rather sad, I suppose.’
At that moment Mr Brannigan called from the kitchen door to say he’d lost a sock and his wife said, ‘Oh! Hark at me, chattering away. I quite forgot. We’re going out tonight to hear a talk about Africa, given by a friend of ours. Poor Lydia – she sings in our choir and her husband’s a missionary or some such.’ She paused for breath.
Marianne said, ‘How very admirable.’
‘Oh it is, isn’t it? But poor Lydia – she cannot bear the climate for more than a week or two so she cannot stay with her husband. Their grown-up daughter takes her place at the mission. They’re a very devout family. Well, enjoy your coconut creams, Marianne. We’ll chat some other time.’
Slowly Marianne made her way back into the house. She returned the boat house key to the drawer in the desk and wondered how to spend her evening. She boiled an egg and cut three slices of bread, and buttered them. It was strange eating alone at the kitchen table. Her thoughts reverted to her conversation about ghosts and spirits and she wondered if the man the children had seen really had been a ghost. Could it have been their father’s ghost, she wondered. Maybe his spirit had returned to the last place where he had seen his children playing . . . Or, as Mrs Brannigan suggested, nothing more than shadows and her fertile imagination.
‘No.’ Neil could never have seen his children playing because they were only babies when he and Leonora left and they would not have been old enough to play in the garden – although they were probably outside in their prams whenever the weather permitted.
She washed up after her frugal meal and then spent twenty minutes playing the piano – a very small medley of tunes she had learned as a child – and searched the bookcase for something to read. Finding Mrs Matlowe’s choice of reading not to her taste, she trimmed a few dead leaves from the roses that Mrs Matlowe had placed in a bowl in the hall.
Finally, in desperation she went up to her room and wrote a letter to her closest friend who had been at school with her.
Imagine me , she wrote, in my somewhat spartan room – a frayed carpet, one upholstered chair, a bed which creaks, a very small fireplace with a coal scuttle to match and a view over a haunted boat house! I’m beginning to feel like someone created by Jane Austen!
She rolled her eyes. Perhaps she was being over-dramatic. Alice would laugh, remembering how prone Marianne had been to exaggerate.
My employer is rather odd and very strait-laced, but her beloved son is dead and she has sole care of his twin girls who I am attempting to educate. They, the twins, are very sweet and the neighbours seem pleasant enough and to top it all this is Henley-on-Thames and in a few weeks it will be time for the regatta – sorry, the Henley Royal Regatta, to give it its new title – and the entire area will be filled with spectators for the various races. All
Mrs Brannigan’s expression changed. ‘You’re not psychic, are you? Some people are, you know, but often they don’t know it. My aunt lived next door to a psychic. She was quite famous and people paid her to contact their dear departed.’ She shuddered. ‘Can you imagine? A seance. That’s what it was called. I think she called herself a psychic medium.’
‘But surely a punt couldn’t be a ghost. A ghost is the spirit of a person, isn’t it? The punt I saw – or thought I saw – was empty.’
Mrs Brannigan folded her arms across her chest. ‘Whatever it is I want nothing to do with it. It gives me the shivers. More likely a trick of the light. Mind you, people pay to visit haunted houses and nothing bad happens to them, so I daresay they’re not dangerous or anything.’
‘Just the spirits of people who cannot find rest, even after they die. That’s how they’ve been described. It’s rather sad, I suppose.’
At that moment Mr Brannigan called from the kitchen door to say he’d lost a sock and his wife said, ‘Oh! Hark at me, chattering away. I quite forgot. We’re going out tonight to hear a talk about Africa, given by a friend of ours. Poor Lydia – she sings in our choir and her husband’s a missionary or some such.’ She paused for breath.
Marianne said, ‘How very admirable.’
‘Oh it is, isn’t it? But poor Lydia – she cannot bear the climate for more than a week or two so she cannot stay with her husband. Their grown-up daughter takes her place at the mission. They’re a very devout family. Well, enjoy your coconut creams, Marianne. We’ll chat some other time.’
Slowly Marianne made her way back into the house. She returned the boat house key to the drawer in the desk and wondered how to spend her evening. She boiled an egg and cut three slices of bread, and buttered them. It was strange eating alone at the kitchen table. Her thoughts reverted to her conversation about ghosts and spirits and she wondered if the man the children had seen really had been a ghost. Could it have been their father’s ghost, she wondered. Maybe his spirit had returned to the last place where he had seen his children playing . . . Or, as Mrs Brannigan suggested, nothing more than shadows and her fertile imagination.
‘No.’ Neil could never have seen his children playing because they were only babies when he and Leonora left and they would not have been old enough to play in the garden – although they were probably outside in their prams whenever the weather permitted.
She washed up after her frugal meal and then spent twenty minutes playing the piano – a very small medley of tunes she had learned as a child – and searched the bookcase for something to read. Finding Mrs Matlowe’s choice of reading not to her taste, she trimmed a few dead leaves from the roses that Mrs Matlowe had placed in a bowl in the hall.
Finally, in desperation she went up to her room and wrote a letter to her closest friend who had been at school with her.
Imagine me , she wrote, in my somewhat spartan room – a frayed carpet, one upholstered chair, a bed which creaks, a very small fireplace with a coal scuttle to match and a view over a haunted boat house! I’m beginning to feel like someone created by Jane Austen!
She rolled her eyes. Perhaps she was being over-dramatic. Alice would laugh, remembering how prone Marianne had been to exaggerate.
My employer is rather odd and very strait-laced, but her beloved son is dead and she has sole care of his twin girls who I am attempting to educate. They, the twins, are very sweet and the neighbours seem pleasant enough and to top it all this is Henley-on-Thames and in a few weeks it will be time for the regatta – sorry, the Henley Royal Regatta, to give it its new title – and the entire area will be filled with spectators for the various races. All
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