Chapter Extract from ‘Restless Spirits’, a good fun ghost story, by Maurice Holloway

 

They died in 1870. Albie had been a footman; Miss Trinity, the mistress of the large country house which had been owned by her fiancé, Daniel Washbury, a wealthy industrialist. Lizzie, Albie’s fiancée, died soon after.

In this scene they’re reminiscing about the time the house was being readied for use as an American military hospital during the Second World War. Trinity is speaking . . .

 

‘Remember the day the Americans arrived? So many new things for us to see. Oh my. All those handsome young men . . .’

            ‘And pretty nurses.’ Albie smiled.

            ‘. . . not that I paid them any attention, of course.’

            ‘Nor me.’

            ‘Didn’t you want to try your charms on them?’

            ‘No. They would have seen right through me. Ha, ha!’

            Trinity tutted. ‘I remember that joke from last time we discussed the hospital.’

            ‘And your favourite: Which ghosts haunt hospitals?’

            ‘Surgical spirits! He, he, he!’

            I remembered it clearly. They were the first people we had seen since Mr Jacob closed the house many years earlier. Everything about them was different: clothes, accents, language, the equipment they brought with them. It was as if they had stepped from the pages of a fantasy tale. All together there were thirty-six beds to begin with. The study was left as an office for the man-in-charge: Colonel English.

            Once the beds had been set up, all sorts of bottles and pipes and stands and bowls arrived along with boxes and crates of other equipment. This was followed by men and women; the doctors and nurses, who began sorting it out.

            It was the night they arrived Trinity and I realised we had a problem.

 

‘There’s a m-man in my b-bed, Albie! Do something!’

            I was at a loss. ‘What do you want me to do, miss? I can’t tell him off or shoo him out; he won’t hear me.’

            She stopped flapping. ‘I wish we were the haunting type of ghosts then we could run around going woo-ooo, woo-ooo!’

            ‘How do we know we’re not? We’ve never tried it. Have a go now.’

            She laughed as she called, ‘Woo-ooo, woo-ooo! He, he. I sound like a sick owl.’

            ‘Like a sick ol’ what?’

            ‘Pardon. Oh, I get it. Um, right, like a sick oul’ ghoul?’

            ‘Very good, Trinity. That’s the spirit! Ha, ha!’

            She groaned. ‘Yes, good fun, Albie but what are we going to do?’

            ‘There’s plenty of bedrooms in this house just along the landing. Take your pick.’

            ‘You can’t say there’s, or there is, because the following noun: bedrooms, is plural so you must say: there are bedrooms.’

            ‘Oh, Trinity, do stop that!’

Her need to correct everyone’s grammar can be infuriating.

            ‘Can I sleep in your bed, pleeease . . .’ she said in her little girl voice.

            She flustered me. ‘I beg your pardon! I-I-I . . . I’m flattered you would want . . . to . . . you know. After all this time of knowing each other.’ I smoothed my hair. ‘I mean, I don’t know what to say.’

            ‘. . . and then you can find another room. It is such a comfortable bed. And I am the mistress of the house in a manner of speaking.’

            ‘Oh! Yes, of course. I knew that’s what you meant. Well, I suppose so but we’ll have to sort something out in the morning.’ I turned to the wall behind her bed. ‘I’ll try this way then. G’night.’

            I was half-way through the wall when she shrieked again. I rushed to my room.

            ‘Albie, Albie! There’s another man in my bed!’

            ‘This is a very inconvenient habit you’re developing, Miss Trinity. Anyway, to be accurate: there’s a man in my bed, not yours. He was sitting up looking around trying to ascertain where the sound came from.

            ‘I think he heard you. Look, it’s the Colonel. He must have decided to take this room. And that’s probably the Captain next door.’

            ‘Hmph. To be truly precise, Albert, there’s a man in Daniel’s bed. So there.’

            ‘So, as we are being correct; you’re the mistress of the house, so you get rid of him. I’m going to find somewhere to sleep. So there!’

            I stormed off back through her room where I’d been heading to the one beyond. I don’t know how long after I’d arrived in the bedroom that someone slapped my face.

            ‘Albert Hapless! Stop staring and close your mouth! What would Lizzie think of you? Shameful!’

            When I’d walked in, I was stopped in my tracks, mesmerised. Four chattering, giggling young ladies in various states of undress were sitting or standing as they laid clothing on the two large beds from small valises. They wore the smallest drawers I’d ever seen, no corsets, only a sort of top to cover their . . . modesty. Legs were fully on show. I had never seen such a quantity of female skin. I was thinking how soft, white and curvy it looked, imagining . . . . And that’s when the clout almost knocked my block off. My cheek burnt.

            ‘Albie! You’re opening and closing your mouth and no sound is coming out. You look like a fish. Avert your eyes!’

            Another smack on the other side of my face. I turned my head to focus on my attacker.

            ‘Trinity! Stop hitting me. If I wasn’t a ghost my cheeks would be bright red instead of pale and rosy as they usually are.’

            ‘From embarrassment I hope! Such reprehensible behaviour. We’re leaving.’ She grabbed my hand, dragging me through the wall into the next bedroom.

            ‘Oh no! Don’t look, Albie. Come with me.’

            I peeped. More girls. One was actually . . . . My arm was yanked almost from its socket.

            ‘I said, don’t look!’

            ‘Did you see what they were wearing, Trinity?’

            ‘Or not wearing, Albie!’

            We stood in the passage, doors on either side.

            All I could think to say was, ‘Um.’

            ‘Now, it looks as if we aren’t going to be sleeping along here tonight. The staff have commandeered the bedrooms. Where are the servant’s quarters? We’ll have to sleep there. Lead on Macduff.’

            I smiled to myself. Of all the books I’d read in the library, Shakespeare’s were my favourites. I’d read his plays countless times. After all these years I was going to get my own back and put Trinity right.

            I faced her, hands on hips, trying to look assertive. ‘Actually, the correct quotation from Mr Shakespeare’s Macbeth is, “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’”

            ‘Never mind that. Please lead the way, Albie.’

            She flapped her hand in front of me.

            ‘We’ll check the bedrooms properly tomorrow morning to see if any are unoccupied but for tonight you’ll have to sleep like a servant on a small hard bed.’

            I said that tongue in cheek, knowing it didn’t make the slightest difference to us where we slept; hard, soft or even a bed of nails were all the same to a ghost. The comfort was all in our heads.

            We wound our way along the back corridor and staircase. There had never been carpet here; servants didn’t need such luxury, only bare floorboards. I recalled a few occasions when I’d had to run this route in the middle of the night, summoned from my sleep to help a drunken Sir George who’d fallen from his bed.

            ‘Gosh, these passages are very narrow aren’t they. How on earth did a woman pass through here with her crinoline?’

            I laughed. ‘Servants don’t wear such things, Trinity. Members of the household, or their guests, crinolined or be-suited, never passed that door back there.’

            ‘I will accompany you tomorrow, Albie, to ensure you do not take surreptitious peeks at the young girls.’

            ‘As if—’

            ‘I saw you.’

            ‘Please don’t tell Lizzie. Here we are. This is the housekeeper’s room; it’s larger and had a better bed. A window as well. In you go. I’m next door in the butler’s old room.’

            We separated until the morning.

 

I opened one eye to peer at the sky through the window; not that the weather made any difference to Trinity or me; we don’t get wet so rain doesn’t trouble us. Outside was pale, pre-dawn grey. I wondered what the Americans made of the English climate. Was it much different to their own?

            I lay, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling, thinking about the days when I dreamed of this being my room, when I finally achieved the position of butler with Lizzie as housekeeper running the whole place. Everything would have been perfect – happy upstairs and down.

            Scratch, scratch.

            My eyes popped open. I turned my head to the window, then the door.

            Scratch, scratch.

            I sat up, looking around the room: bare walls, simple floorboards left for years without polish, no furniture. Even the cobwebs had cobwebs.

            Another scraping sound had me looking at the floor beneath the window. I was about to turn away when something moved.

 

©Maurice Holloway

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Later we share the fun our friendly spirits have with the American ghosts, just one of many funny adventures of Albert Hapless and Miss Trinity Hope.

 

Click here for full details of ‘Restless Spirits’ and all my other books.

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