Andrew Taylor - The Anatomy Of Ghosts

Richardson walked quickly away. Mulgrave had followed them downstairs. He stared after the tutor, and the weal on his face buckled as he smiled.

‘Well, boy,’ Mulgrave said.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘You must be in want of a position?’

Augustus nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Oh yes, sir.’

‘I could make use of a sharp boy. If you don’t mind hard work, you could be a gyp yourself one day.’ He took a half-guinea from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. ‘Well? Shall we shake hands on it?’

Augustus stared at the little gold coin. ‘But sir – the money?’

Mulgrave smiled again, and the weal changed shape. ‘You do right by me, and I’ll do right by you. Come – give me your hand.’

On his way back from Turpin’s Coffee House, Holdsworth took shelter from a heavy shower of rain in King’s College Chapel. High above his head, the fan-vaulted ceiling was dusky with shadows. It seemed an ill omen indeed, that a midsummer day should be so gloomy at noon.

He was not alone, for others came and went and talked among themselves. A beggar was discreetly plying his trade among them, but he sheered away when Holdsworth scowled at him.

Rain, rain, damnable rain.

It had been raining for several days before Georgie drowned at Goat Stairs. One evening, the boy said that rain was God’s tears, and that God must be sad indeed to be weeping so hard. Holdsworth had told his son that such foolish thoughts were better ignored and that rain was nothing more than the precipitated vapours of watery clouds. Georgie had laughed at him. He did not believe his father. Maria said Georgie should not play outside, for the rain had made the Bankside cobbles greasy and dangerous.

‘Pooh,’ Holdsworth had said. ‘We must not mollycoddle the lad.’

The chapel was full of noises – footsteps, meaningless words and unattached echoes. He walked up and down, careless of other people and brushing against those who did not get out of his way.

Had he sunk to this? Even Georgie, even Maria, had become distractions from the terrible intelligence that Soresby had brought him. He thrust clenched hands into his coat pockets, pushing at the lining. His right hand touched the corner of a folded paper, the unread letter from Lady Anne.

The letter was no longer important. Soresby’s information overshadowed everything else. It lay festering in Holdsworth’s mind. It was an infection. A poison. But he had it in his power to suppress it, for Soresby did not understand its full significance. Besides, the sizar was vulnerable, which made him malleable if Holdsworth chose to dismiss what he said as a malicious attempt to curry favour with a slanderous fabrication.

But would that be enough, for surely he could never suppress it from his own memory? Such a course would merely make everything worse in the long run – for him, undoubtedly, and perhaps even for Elinor. There was only one certainty about the whole black business: that whatever use he made of Soresby’s information, the result would be unhappiness.

His head throbbed. It seemed to him that the light was oozing out of the chapel, leaving a grey mist behind. He was quite alone. He could not see his way. He was filled with a terrible presentiment of his eternal helplessness.

So, he thought, this is what it comes down to in the end: a man’s future haunts him as well as his past.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Elinor said, hoping her face did not betray her feelings. ‘My husband is no better, but at least he is no worse. Most of the time he sleeps, or the next best thing to it. When he awakes, though, he is unquiet in his mind.’

‘That’s not to be wondered at,’ Holdsworth said.

‘Yes – but why should he want to see Mr Soresby, and so urgently? It may be the opium, of course. It can encourage strange fancies, can it not?’

‘No doubt that has something to do with it.’

She looked sharply at him, catching in his tone something she did not quite understand. ‘I am glad you are come – there is something I wish to tell you.’

But there was a knock on the door and Susan entered with the tea things.

‘Are you sure I am not intruding, ma’am?’ Holdsworth asked.

‘Not at all, sir.’ She smiled at him and instantly felt guilty, not so much for the smile as for the quite inexcusable happiness that had prompted it. He did not return the smile, and her happiness vanished as swiftly as it had come. But the guilt remained. ‘Dr Carbury’s asleep,’ she went on in a colder voice. ‘I had already ordered tea for myself. It is merely a matter of setting a second cup on the tray.’

Neither of them spoke until the maid had left them alone. Elinor busied herself with making the tea. Holdsworth stood up and went to the sitting-room window. It was raining steadily from a sky like smudged ink. The gardens below were sodden and forlorn. The great plane tree blotted out half the sky. She was about to break this awkward silence, to tell him about the ghost, when he turned to face her.

‘I am come to say farewell,’ he said.

‘Ah – you have heard from her ladyship. So have I.’ Her hand shook as she tried to insert the key into the lock of the tea caddy. ‘She has summoned you back to London – it was only to be expected. Her will overrides us all, does it not? When do you and Mr Frank leave?’

‘As early as we can tomorrow.’

‘She said she hoped you would leave today.’

‘We could not hire a chaise at such short notice and, besides, Mr Oldershaw had already invited several of his intimate friends to another little supper party this evening. He was loath to put them off.’

Elinor poured the tea. ‘He is such a hospitable young man.’

‘Do you have any commissions we may execute for you in town? Should you like us to take a letter to her ladyship?’

‘Thank you – I shall write to her directly and send Ben to you with the letter.’ After what had happened last night, she could not understand the alteration in Holdsworth’s manner, now so stiff and formal. ‘And you, sir – what will you do?’

‘That must depend in part on her ladyship. She may send me back here to continue work on the library. The survey is hardly begun. Otherwise I shall stay in London and perhaps she will set me to work on the bishop’s library in Golden Square.’

‘Then we are both condemned to live with uncertainty. It is not pleasant, is it?’

She handed him his tea. Cup in hand, he returned to stand by the window. Silence settled on the room. She had hoped her last remark would lead to some word of comfort, to the merest hint that after her husband’s death there might be some other possibility than at best her becoming dependent on Lady Anne’s capricious generosity. However, as so often, when Holdsworth spoke he took her completely by surprise.

‘I saw Mr Soresby this morning.’

‘What! Is he here?’

‘No,’ Holdsworth said. ‘He is too scared to return with this charge hanging over him.’

‘But where is he? I must tell my husband. It will relieve his mind of -’

‘No, madam. I do not think that would be wise.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Mr Soresby’s room in college is at the top of Yarmouth Hall.’

‘And pray what’s the significance of that?’

‘Because one night last February, he felt ill and in need of fresh air. Despite the cold, he opened the window.’

She said nothing.

‘His room is the only one in the building that looks to the south,’ he went on, speaking rapidly in a hard, monotonous voice. ‘It’s the garret above the service yard at the back of the Master’s Lodge. One can even see a little of the Master’s Garden from the window.’

‘Not at night, surely?’ she said sharply. ‘Unless it was clear and there was a moon, of course.’