My Friend Walter (4 page)

And so we were. I sat in the front all the way but I could not resist looking over my shoulder into the back seat. Sir Walter Raleigh was there. I could not see him but I knew he was there. Somehow I could feel him, and more than once Aunty Ellie had to open a window. ‘I smell cigarette smoke,' she said, tutting and shaking her head. ‘Must've been Winnie. I never knew she smoked. It clings to the clothes, you know. Filthy habit. Never smoke, Bessy dear, you hear me, never. Can't think why anyone ever invented the filthy habit.'

Mother noticed it too, as I climbed into bed that night. ‘Better wash your hair tomorrow,' she said as she kissed me goodnight. ‘It smells of cigarette smoke. 'Spect there were lots of people smoking at the party, were there?' I nodded. ‘Did you meet anyone
interesting?' Mindful of who was probably listening, I replied: ‘Just one.'

‘Who was he?'

‘He's called Walter,' I said. And Mother went out. I heard her talking to Father in the passage outside the bathroom later. ‘She met a friend called Walter,' she said.

‘Boyfriends already,' said Father. ‘Funny name, Walter,' and their bedroom door closed.

‘Are you there, Sir Walter?' I whispered.

‘I'm here.' The voice came first, then the cloaked figure appeared sitting in the chair under the mantelpiece where I kept my collection of china owls.

‘Where you going to sleep?' I asked.

‘Like your owls, ghosts don't sleep much,' he said. He leaned heavily on his cane and stood up. ‘Good night, dear cousin, and may God bless you always for your kindness to me. I shall not forget it.' And he came over to my bed, took my hand and kissed it gently.

‘Goodnight, Sir Walter,' I said.

‘I am called Walter to my friends and family. You are indeed my family and I trust you will always be my friend.'

‘Yes,' I said. And my friend Walter walked out
through the door and was gone as suddenly as he had come. Downstairs Humph began to bark furiously and to scratch at the back door, and only I knew it wasn't the fox he was after.

LIVING WITH A GHOST HAS ITS DIFFICULTIES, I discovered, even if he is your friend. Of course I knew he would be as good as his word and not appear suddenly out of nowhere and frighten Gran half to death; but it was disconcerting, to say the least, not to know if he was in the room with you or whether he was listening in. It would be, he said, far too tiring for him to show himself to me all the time, and it was true that if he appeared too often and for too long he would become hazy at the edges. It seems ghosts need time to recharge themselves, so to speak.

So between us we had to devise a code, an exchange of signals. I would cough twice – that was to ask if he was there – and if he was he would open a
door, or drop something on the floor. Much to my disappointment he never seemed to use china or glass for this. More often it was a pencil or a newspaper that fell casually off a table, to Humph's great delight. He would pounce at once and carry it off in triumph either to bury it somewhere or to chew it to pieces in his basket. But if I wanted Walter actually to appear, we agreed I would cough four times. It would work out well enough, we thought – just so long as I didn't develop a real cough. Of course all this secrecy, all these signals, were really more for Gran's benefit than anyone else's. I didn't dare think what might happen if she ever found out about Walter.

But find out she very nearly did. She couldn't walk very easily because of her ‘creaky knees' as she called them; and she couldn't see very well, on account of her reading too much in the dark when she was little, she said; but her ears worked perfectly, too perfectly at times, for it was Gran who said she'd overheard me talking in my room one evening. I said I must have been talking to myself.

‘She's always talked to herself, Gran,' said Mother, ‘ever since she was little. Bess has been telling herself stories ever since she could talk, you know that.'

‘Yes, but then I heard a man's voice,' Gran went on. ‘Clear as daylight, it was.'

‘I probably had my radio on,' I said. I'm quite good at thinking quickly when I have to.

‘Well, it didn't sound like a wireless to me,' Gran said. And luckily an argument developed as to whether a wireless should be called a wireless any more, or whether it should be a radio or a transistor; and the question of a man's voice in my room was forgotten. It was too close for comfort though, so my friend Walter and I decided that in future we should talk in the house only in an emergency, and then always in a whisper.

As it turned out, though, it was Humph not Gran who proved to be the greatest danger. Humph seemed to be able to sense Walter's presence whenever he was in the room, and he would stiffen, hackles raised, and set up a furious barking with intermittent thunderous growling. Once or twice he even bared his teeth – something he had never been known to do before. No one could understand it. At first they put it down to the fact that Will was still away at camp, and that perhaps Humph was missing him. Mother became so worried she called in the vet who examined Humph carefully and pronounced that he might have a middle ear
infection, causing him to lose his balance and hear things that weren't there. So poor old Humph had to have drops poured down his ear three times a day.

In the end though I managed to find a way around even this problem. I ‘borrowed' some scraps of meat from the larder and I told Walter that the only way to Humph's heart was through his stomach, which was quite true. So now Walter would appear from time to time and offer him some meat scraps, and of course he soon had him eating out of his hand. But I'm afraid this didn't work out exactly as I had intended. Now, whenever Humph smelt or perhaps sensed my friend Walter was anywhere near, he would wag his tail enthusiastically. Of course that caused a draught which would make Gran's ankles cold and so he would often find himself inexplicably put out of the door. Poor Humph. It wasn't fair.

Mother was delighted, though, with Humph's apparent recovery, and full of praise for the young vet. She went on and on about how clever he had been in his diagnosis. ‘Wait for the bill,' was all Father said.

Father seemed somehow preoccupied and sombre all this time, quite unlike himself. I thought it was because Will was away at first – they got on like a
house on fire, those two. They laughed at the same jokes, and were always off rabbiting and fishing together. He liked me, too, of course, but not quite in the same easy way; and I always wished he would. I didn't mind quite so much now because I had a friend of my own – and what a time we had the two of us.

It was like letting a bird out of a cage. Walter wanted to see everything, go everywhere and do everything. First he wanted to go fishing. So I lent him Will's fishing rod and we spent long hours together down by the river that runs through the marsh field at the bottom of the farm. We'd be alone there. Just so long as I kept an eye out for the ‘horrible Barrowbills', we could talk freely. (The Barrowbill brothers – identical twins – farmed on the other side of the river. ‘The Horrible Barrowbills', we always called them – horrible because they were always shouting at us if they found us on their side of the river. They even fired a shot at Humph once to frighten him away.) But horrible or not, they never came near Walter and me.

Once Walter had mastered the complexities of Will's reel he fished like an expert, delighting in every catch and cursing his ‘devilish luck' if he ever let one off the hook, and that wasn't often. He built a small fire and
cooked two of the fish in the hot ashes for me. I tell you, nothing had ever tasted that good to me before. But our fishing expedition got me into dangerous difficulties at home.

It came as a bit of a surprise to Father when I brought back a bag full of sea trout. ‘What's come over you, Bess?' he said. ‘You've never shown any interest in fishing before.' I could tell he was quite impressed and it seemed for a moment to lift him out of his gloom. ‘I'll come down with you one night,' he said. ‘River's just right for sea trout. Shy fish, your sea trout. Best to go after him in the dark, but I'm a bit tied up just at the moment.' And I saw glances exchanged between him and Mother. Something was wrong, I knew it was; but I had neither the time nor the inclination to worry about it. I was far too busy looking after my friend Walter.

Next he wanted to go riding – he insisted on it. I did my best to discourage him because Sally hadn't been ridden for a while and she could play up a bit with an inexperienced rider. ‘She can be awful wicked,' I said. ‘She'll run away with you if you're not careful. She's done it before. And what if the horrible Barrowbills see you, anyway?'

‘You forget that we spirits have our ways,' he said. ‘All they'll see is a galloping horse. They'll not see me, not unless I want them to. And I'll not show myself to anyone except you, remember?' Walter showed himself more often these days. He said he found the country air invigorating, that it didn't tire him so much to show himself now as it had done back in the Tower.

So no one saw Walter riding out on Sally except me, and I saw them both as they thundered past through the high thistles, with Walter bent low over Sally's neck, his cloak whipping about behind him. Herons and ducks lifted off in alarm as they galloped towards the river, and I could see from the way Sally moved that she was enjoying being ridden. She was collected and controlled. She was being ridden by a real horseman and she knew it.

Afterwards we swam in the river together and lay on the bank in the sun. Walter smoked his pipe and he talked and talked, as if he'd had no one to talk to for hundreds of years.

‘I have had an eternity, cousin, an eternity now to think on the errors of my ways, and they were many and unforgivable. I see now, dear cousin, and for the
first time too, that my gravest error was ever to leave the farm and the countryside.'

‘Why did you leave, then?' I asked.

‘I did not wish it,' he sighed. ‘I was sent away from home as were all young men of rank in those days. I went to Oxford first, but I cared neither for books nor the grey men of the cloisters who were my tutors, and I left for the wars. That's what a young man did if he wanted to make his mark in this world. And I wanted to make my mark, cousin.'

‘What do you mean?' I asked.

Walter wasn't always easy to understand and he seemed to know it. ‘I speak of ambition, cousin. Walter Raleigh had to be great in the land, he had to be powerful, and rich and admired. And to be that he had to go to Court. And so I went to Court and was noticed at last by good Queen Bess, Queen Elizabeth; and she favoured me with her love and her attention.'

‘Was that when you spread your cloak in the puddle for her?' I asked. He nodded and smiled.

‘That was the start of it, I grant you. I was always one for the grand gesture. So I became Captain of her guard and was soon rich beyond dreams, as powerful almost as the queen herself. Truly, cousin, the world
was at my feet. Then I met and married Bess Throckmorton, your ancestor and my dear wife, and she won my heart. She was suddenly more important to me than all the world, all the gold and all the glory. But the queen would not have it.'

‘Couldn't you marry who you wanted to?' I asked.

‘Aye, so long as the queen wanted it too, and she did not want it. I think she would not have minded if I had not loved Bess so well. But she knew I did and that made her mad with me. She sent me to the Tower.'

‘Is that why they cut off your head, because you married someone she didn't like?'

Walter laughed. ‘No sweet cousin, no; but I was never again to be so high in the esteem of my queen, nor never again so high in the land.'

‘So why did she cut off your head?'

‘'Twas not the Queen that destroyed me.' His brow lowered as he went on. ‘'Twas the monstrous king that followed her – King James. He it was that had me tried for high treason and condemned as a traitor – Walter Raleigh a traitor!' His eyes blazed. ‘And 'twas this same villainous king who robbed my family of all we had. He it was that took away my lands, and my farms and estates – even the jewels from my fingers. Yet I blame
myself as much as the King, for there was more pride in my head than wisdom; and right it was it should be struck off, for I had grievously mismanaged my affairs through a mistaken belief in my own invincibility, a belief that led not to riches but to the death of my son, my dear Wat. He was a rebellious boy and argued much, but I loved him nonetheless. And 'twas I who caused his death.' And he turned his head away from me to wipe his eyes.

‘What d'you mean?' I asked.

‘They let me out of the Tower only because I said I knew of a gold mine in Guiana that would fill the King's coffers.'

‘That's what the Beefeater said in the Tower,' I said, but he did not seem to hear me.

‘I knew where the gold mine was, but by the time we reached Guiana I was too ill to lead the expedition. So I sent Wat in my place, and the Spaniards were waiting for him in the forests. They were informed, I tell you, cousin, and by no less a person than the king himself. I know it to be so. They ambushed my men and so came my son to his death, our expedition to its failure and my life to its miserable end on the scaffold.' He shook his head and sighed deeply. ‘Dear God, I can
scarcely bear to think on it even now. So you see, cousin, where vain ambition leads. I should have stayed on the farm where I belonged. But look!'

He put his hand on my arm. A heron circled above us and came in to land at the water's edge not a stone's throw away. As he watched him stalking stiffly through the shallows, a kingfisher flashed past us and was gone again upstream. ‘Such wonders as these I had almost forgotten,' he whispered, and the heron lifted off and lumbered into the air.

And it was not only in the wild creatures of the farm that he found such joy. He made a collection of many of the plants and herbs and flowers he found about the farm, though at the time I did not know why. In the warm summer evenings he would walk with me through the fields of humming clover amongst the sheep and the cattle and recall his own days as a boy on the farm. The fields were bigger now, he said, and there were fewer trees, and he could wish the river was clearer again and the meadows full with wild flowers as they had been once. But that apart, it was much as he remembered it. I showed him how I liked to follow butterflies and he loved it as much as I did. We followed one Red Admiral for a whole afternoon once
before it joined up with a dozen others on a bank of nettles. After that we couldn't be sure which was ours and we lost it.