Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

Mrs Wilder sat down. With both hands on her stick, she stared fixedly at Lord Ridget, as though expecting something to happen. Daniel heard her mutter something that sounded like, ‘Come on, you imbecile, think.’

Lord Ridget was sitting up, and a pained expression came over his face as he tried to get his brain to work. Finally he spoke. ‘Er, who was that letter from, did you say?’

‘William Markham, my lord.’

‘Markham? One of the Markhams of Futtering Burnside?’

‘That’s correct. The family seat is at Burnside, and their land marches with yours, I believe.’

‘Yes, yes, of course it does. But… that must be Lugsy Markham. Good grief! He fagged for me at school. Huge ears, stuck out like soup plates… Well, well, dear me, that’s a different kettle of fish. Tradition… Heritage… Oh dear…’

And the inquiry was over.

In the early morning after Kylie’s boils exercise, Ron and Iphigenia had a row. They were on the whole a very happy couple, perhaps because they were so different, but even the happiest couples sometimes get themselves into a tangle.

As they were preparing to snuggle down and disappear for the day, Ron said casually, ‘Fine head of hair on that sprite, I must say.’

Iphigenia was silent for a while. She might not have been a young enchantress with a dimple in her cheek, but at least she wasn’t completely empty; and as far as hair was concerned, well, a very famous painter called Mr Rossetti had seen her perform at the theatre once, and afterwards he had come round to her dressing room and said that he wanted to paint her wonderful copper-coloured hair. She had almost agreed, until she realized that he wanted to paint the rest of her too, in a bath with no clothes on.

‘I have heard that gentlemen prefer blondes, Ronald,’ said Iphigenia. This told Ron all he needed to know — he had put his foot in it, and then some. She had called him Ronald, and her voice reminded him of the mummified pharaoh whom they had chatted with once on a trip to the British Museum.

‘Oh no, m’dear, that’s absurd, I didn’t mean… I was only…’

But of course it was too late.

‘You don’t have to defend yourself, Ronald. You have a perfect right to express an opinion.’

Then Ron, as husbands always do, began to feel hurt and misunderstood.

‘Now, Iffy, you know very well what I meant. Nothing at all.’

‘Nothing? I saw you staring at her. I suppose you thought she gave a wonderful performance.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. But it was pretty good, er, wasn’t it…?’ he finished lamely.

‘It was childish and the work of a rank amateur. We aren’t supposed to be playing charades here.’

‘But…’

Iphigenia turned away. ‘Percy, my darling,’ she called, ‘Come here, sweetest. There is a lovely sonnet about daffodils that I want you to hear before bed.’

But now Ron, glaring at Iphigenia from his skinless face, shouted, ‘Percy, me lad, let’s try that handspring again; you nearly got it last time.’

Percy appeared between his two parents. He looked up at his mother, then at his father.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ he said, and faded from view.

Percy had been having rather a boring time at Mountwood. He sat in on most of the classes, but nobody paid him much attention, and everybody thought he was too young to do any serious haunting. Young ghosts — murdered children and suchlike — can be very frightening if the atmosphere is right, but there is not much one can do to develop skills. They are just dead children. But then Percy had found Samson, and that cheered him up a bit.

Samson had been abandoned by his mother, and when Percy first met him he was standing uncertainly in front of a cornered rat in the byre. His back was arched, his tortoiseshell tail was stiff as a bottle-brush, but although he was very hungry he couldn’t quite summon up the courage for the final spring. The rat was bigger than he was, and was standing up baring its yellow teeth at him and chattering unpleasantly. When Percy appeared, the rat saw its chance and scuttled off. After that Percy and Samson got to know each other. It was nice having a cat because, cats being what they are, it didn’t matter whether Percy was visible or not, and that was peaceful. Cats have a sixth sense as well as nine lives.

So it was to the byre that Percy fled from his rowing parents.

‘It’s all my fault. I’m just Pathetic Percy,’ he said to Samson, when he had found him curled up in the straw. ‘I’ll never make them pleased with me, I’ll never have proper friends and I’ll never be frightful.’

Percy knew that he would be a young child forever. He would never grow up. Ghosts don’t do that; they are what they are. But couldn’t he change inside himself? Become different? What kind of different though?

His father wanted him to be manly, and he did try to do press-ups, but it wasn’t easy in a nightdress and although Ron didn’t say that he was disappointed, and was always very cheerful, Percy could feel it.

His mother wanted him to love poetry and remember long and difficult things. At this very moment he should have been practising something that started ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind…’ He could do the beginning bit, and the end, which went ‘… As friend remembered not.’ But the middle just would not stick in his mind.

Percy missed Daniel and Charlotte. They weren’t remembered not, they were remembered. For more than a century he hadn’t had any other children to talk to, dead or alive, so meeting the two of them had been very special. He almost wished he hadn’t been so weak and sorry for himself when he missed the bus. If he hadn’t made such a fuss, then they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to find Mountwood and take him home. Could he have been braver? He just didn’t know, and Samson didn’t care one way or the other, because he was a cat, and cats aren’t in the least bit interested in becoming better or braver or cleverer. They are interested in mice and birds and keeping clean and watching out for dogs.

So as the sun climbed higher in the sky, and Iphigenia and Ronald vanished into separate corners of the mouldy boot room that they occupied in the castle, Percy curled up beside Samson in the straw of the byre and sadly dematerialized.

In the city the morning traffic clogged the main thoroughfares. The honking of horns and the wailing of a siren floated up to the top floor of the Department of Planning, where Jack Bluffit was waiting impatiently for his visitor. At last there was a timid tapping on the door and Snyder oozed into the room.

‘Lord Ridget has arrived.’

‘Well, get him in here.’

Snyder disappeared, to be replaced by the gangling figure of Lord Ridget. His eyes stuck out even more than usual and worried lines furrowed his brow.

‘Right,’ said Jack. ‘Time’s up. I need a result.’

‘It’s most frightfully difficult, I’ve been thinking about it all weekend, lost some sleep over it. Tossing and turning.’

‘Poor you.’

‘I really don’t see how I can let this go through, you know. Lugsy’s letter shook me up. I mean, he’s right, isn’t he? Everything is just getting bulldozed away, all the old houses and the way things used to be. There was a burn not far from Markham Park that I fished when I was a little chap. Just tiddlers, of course, roach mostly; you know, a float and a little bit of bacon rind, but they said there were bream, although I never saw one…’

‘What’s this got to do with anything?’ growled Bluffit impatiently. Surely this dolt wasn’t about to mess things up for him?

‘Well, I mean, it’s gone, vanished. You can’t find the burn anywhere. It runs underneath the city bypass. It’s part of the sewage system! Imagine the poor fish trying to swim in sewage!’