This House is Haunted (2 page)

Gathered next to the volumes describing the life cycles of queen termites, the intestinal tracts of longhorn beetles and the mating habits of strepsiptera, was a series of dossiers that gathered his correspondence over the years with Mr. William Kirby, his particular mentor, who had offered him his first paid employment in 1832, when Father had just acquired his majority, as an assistant at a new museum in Norwich. Subsequent to this, Mr. Kirby had taken Father with him to London to help with the establishment of the Entomological Society, a role which would in time lead to his becoming curator of insects at the British Museum, a position he loved. I shared no such passion. Insects rather repelled me.

Mr. Kirby had died some sixteen years earlier but Father still enjoyed re-reading their letters and notes, taking pleasure in following the progress of acquisition which had led the society, and ultimately the museum, to be in possession of such a fine collection.

All of these, “the insect books” as I facetiously referred to them, were shelved carefully, with a curious order that only Father truly understood, on the wall next to his desk. Gathered together on the opposite wall, however, next to a window and a reading chair where the light was much better, was a much smaller collection of books, all novels, and the most dominant author on those shelves was of course Mr. Dickens, who had no peer in Father’s mind.

“If only he would write a novel about a cicada or a grasshopper instead of an orphan,” I remarked once. “Why, you would be in heaven then, I think.”

“My dear, you are forgetting
The Cricket on the Hearth
,” replied Father, whose knowledge of the novelist’s work was
second to none. “Not to mention that little family of spiders who set up home in Miss Havisham’s uneaten wedding cake. Or Bitzer’s lashes in
Hard Times
. How does he describe them?
Like the antennae of busy insects
, if memory serves. No, insects appear regularly throughout Dickens” work. It is only a matter of time before he devotes a more substantial volume to them. He is a true entomologist, I believe.”

Having read most of these novels myself, I am not so certain that this is true, but it was not for the insects that Father read Dickens, it was for the stories. Indeed, the first time I remember Father smiling again after Mother’s passing, in the wake of my return from my aunts’ home in Cornwall, was when he was re-reading
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
, whose protagonist could always reduce him to tears of laughter.

“Eliza, you must read this,” he said to me in my fourteenth year, thrusting a copy of
Bleak House
into my hands. “It is a work of extraordinary merit and much more attuned to the times than those penny fancies you favour.” I opened the volume with a heavy heart which would grow heavier still as I tried to discern the meaning and intent of the lawsuit of Jarndyce
vs
. Jarndyce, but of course he was quite right, for once I had battled through those opening chapters the story opened itself up to me and I became deeply sympathetic to the experiences of Esther Summerson, not to mention utterly captivated by the romance pursued between her and Dr. Woodcourt, an honest man who loves her despite her unfortunate physical appearance. (In this, I could relate quite well to Esther, although she had of course lost her looks to the smallpox while I had never found mine in the first place.)

Prior to his bout of ill health, Father had always been a vigorous man. Regardless of the weather, he walked to and from the
museum every morning and evening, discounting the omnibus that would have taken him almost directly from our front door to the museum entrance. When, for a brief few years, we had the care of a mongrel dog named Bull’s Eye, a far kinder and more temperate creature than Bill Sikes’ mistreated companion, he would take further exercise twice daily, taking the dog into Hyde Park for a constitutional, throwing a stick for him in Kensington Gardens or allowing him to run free along the banks of the Serpentine where, on one occasion, he claimed to have spotted the Princess Helena seated by the waterside weeping. (Why? I do not know. He approached her, enquiring after her health, but she waved him away.) He was never late to bed and slept soundly through the night. He ate carefully, did not drink to excess, and was neither too thin nor too fat. There was no reason to believe that he would not live to a good age. And yet he did not.

Perhaps I should have been more forceful in attempting to dissuade him from attending Mr. Dickens’ talk but in my heart I knew that, although he liked to give the impression that he deferred to me on domestic matters, there was nothing I could say that would prevent him from making the journey across the park to Knightsbridge. Despite his ardour as a reader, he had never yet had the pleasure of hearing the great author speak in public and it was well known that the performances the novelist gave on stage were the equal, if not the superior, of anything which might have been found in the playing houses of Drury Lane or Shaftesbury Avenue. And so I said nothing, I submitted to his authority, and agreed that we might go.

“Don’t fuss, Eliza,” he said as we left the house that Friday evening when I suggested that, at the very least, he should wear a second muffler for it was shockingly cold out and, although
the rain had held off all day, the skies were turning to grey. But Father did not like being mollycoddled and chose to ignore my advice.

We made our way, arm in arm, towards Lancaster Gate, passing the Italian Gardens on our left as we bisected Hyde Park through the central path. Emerging some twenty minutes later from the Queen’s Gate, I thought I saw a familiar face appearing through the fog and, when I narrowed my eyes to make out the visage, I gasped, for was this not the same countenance that I had seen in the mirror the previous morning, the reflection of my own late mother? I pulled Father closer to me, stopping on the street in disbelief, and he turned to look at me in surprise just as the lady in question appeared from the miasma and nodded a greeting in my direction. It was not Mother of course—how could it have been?—but a lady who might have been her sister, or a cousin, for the resemblance around the eyes and brow was uncanny.

The rain began almost immediately then, falling heavily, great drops tumbling on our heads and coats as people ran for shelter. I shivered; a ghost walked over my grave. A large oak tree a little further along the pavement offered shelter and I pointed towards it but Father shook his head, tapping his index finger against his pocket-watch.

“We’ll be there in five minutes if we hurry,” he said, marching along the street faster now. “We might miss it entirely if we seek refuge.”

I cursed myself for having forgotten my umbrella, which I had left by the front door during the business about the muffler, and so we ran through the forming puddles towards our destination unprotected and when we arrived, we were soaked through. I shivered in the vestibule, peeling my sodden gloves
from my hands, and longed to be back in front of the fireplace in our comfortable home. Beside me, Father began a fit of coughing that seemed to build from the very depths of his soul and I despised those other entrants who glanced at him contemptuously as they passed. It took a few minutes for him to recover and I was for hailing a hansom cab to take us home again but he would hear none of this and marched ahead of me into the hall, and what, in the circumstances, could I do but follow?

Inside, perhaps a thousand people were gathered together, equally damp and uncomfortable, a stench of wet wool and perspiration pervading the atmosphere. I looked around, hoping to find a quieter part of the room for us to sit, but almost every chair was taken by now and we had no choice but to choose two empty seats in the centre of a row, surrounded by shivering, sneezing audience members. Fortunately we did not need to wait long, for within a few minutes Mr. Dickens himself appeared to tumultuous applause and we stood to receive him, cheering loudly to his evident delight, for he stretched his arms wide as if to take us all into his embrace, acknowledging the wild reception as if it was entirely his due.

He showed no sign of wanting the ovation to subside and it was perhaps five minutes more before he finally moved to the front of the stage, waving his hands to indicate that we might suspend our admiration for a few moments, and permitted us to take our seats once again. He wore a sallow expression and his hair and beard were rather dishevelled but his suit and waistcoat were of such a rich fabric that I felt a curious urge to feel the texture beneath my fingers. I wondered about his life. Was it true that he moved as easily in the back alleys of London’s East End as he did in the privileged corridors of Balmoral Castle, where the Queen in her mourning
had reputedly invited him to perform? Was he as comfortable in the company of thieves, pickpockets and prostitutes as he was in the society of bishops, cabinet ministers and leaders of industry? In my innocence, I could not imagine what it would be to be such a worldly man, famous on two sides of the ocean, beloved by all.

He stared out at us now with a hint of a smile on his face.

“There are ladies present tonight,” he began, his voice echoing across the chamber. “Naturally I am delighted by this but also distressed for I hope that none of you are of the sensitive disposition that is peculiar to your sex. For, my dear readers, my friends, my
literati
, I do not propose to entertain you this evening with some of the more preposterous utterances of that delightful creature Sam Weller. Nor do I plan on uplifting your spirits through the bravery of my beloved boy Master Copperfield. Neither shall I seek to stir your emotions through a retelling of the last days of that unfortunate angel Little Nell Trent, may God have mercy on her soul.” He hesitated, allowing our anticipation to build, and we watched him, already captivated by his presence. “Instead,” he continued after a long pause, his voice growing deep and mellifluous now, the words emerging slowly, “I intend to read a ghost story that I have only recently completed, one which is scheduled to appear in the Christmas number of
All the Year Round
. It is a most terrifying tale, ladies and gentlemen, designed to stir the blood and unsettle the senses. It speaks of the paranormal, of the undead, of those pitiful creatures who wander the afterlife in search of eternal reconciliation. It contains a character who is neither alive nor deceased, neither sentient nor spirit. I wrote it to chill the blood of my readers and despatch ghouls into the beating heart of their dreams.”

As he said this a cry went up from halfway down the hall and I turned my head, as did most of those in attendance, to see a young woman of about my own age, twenty-one, throwing her hands in the air and running down the aisle in fright. I sighed and secretly despised her for disgracing her sex.

“Should any other ladies wish to leave,” said Mr. Dickens, who appeared to be delighted by this interruption, “might I urge you to do so now? I would not like to interrupt the flow of the story and the time has come for me to begin.”

At these words, a small boy appeared from the side of the stage, approached the novelist and offered a low bow, before thrusting a sheaf of pages into Mr. Dickens’ hand. The boy ran off, the writer glanced at what he held, looked about him with a wild expression on his face and began to read.

“Halloa! Below there!” he shouted in such an extraordinary and unexpected roar that I could not help but jump in my seat. A lady behind me uttered an oath and a gentleman on the aisle dropped his spectacles. Apparently enjoying the reaction that his cry had caused, Mr. Dickens paused for a few moments before continuing, whereupon I quickly found myself entranced by his tale. A single spotlight illuminated his pale face and his tone fluctuated between characters, describing fear, confusion and distress with only a slight change of modulation to his tone. His sense of timing was impeccable as he said one thing that made us laugh, then another that made us feel unsettled and then a third that made us leap in fright. He portrayed the two characters at the centre of the story—a signalman who worked by a railway tunnel and a visitor to that place—with such gusto that one almost believed that there were two actors on stage performing either role. The tale itself was, as he had suggested in his introduction,
a disconcerting one, centring on the signalman’s belief that a spectre was informing him of calamities to come. The ghost had appeared once and a terrible crash had ensued; he had appeared a second time and a lady had died in the railway carriage as it passed. It had appeared a third time more recently, gesticulating wildly, urging the signalman to get out of the way, but as yet no misfortune had occurred and the nervous fellow was distressed at the thought of what horror might lie ahead. I considered Mr. Dickens rather devilish in the manner in which he took pleasure in stirring the emotions of his audience. When he knew that we were scared, he would incite us further, building on the threat and menace he had laid out for us and then, when we were certain that a terrible thing was about to happen, he would let us down, peace would be restored and we who had been holding our collective breaths in anticipation of some fresh terror were free to exhale and sigh and feel that all was well in the world once again, which was when he took us by surprise with a single sentence, making us scream when we thought we could relax, terrifying us into the depths of our very souls and allowing himself a brief smile at how easily he could manipulate our emotions.

As he read, I began to fear that I might not sleep that night, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the spirits of those who had left their corporeal form behind but had not yet been admitted through the gates of heaven and so were left to trawl through the world, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment wherever they went, uncertain when they would be released to the peace of the afterlife and the quiet promise of eternal rest.

When Mr. Dickens finished speaking, he bowed his head and there was silence from the audience for perhaps ten seconds
before we burst as one into applause, leaping to our feet, crying out for more. I turned to look at Father who, rather than appearing as thrilled as I had anticipated, wore a pale expression, a sheen of perspiration gleaming on his face, as he inhaled and exhaled in laboured gasps, staring at the floor beneath him, his fists clenched in a mixture of determination to recover his breath and a fear that he might never do so.