To his horror, she shuddered. ‘I don’t know, Tom. Mama said it meant you would go mad and die.’
He stared at her, speechless with horror. ‘No, no, no. No, my darling, darling Fanny. I am not mad or dying! I am fit as a flea and I love you. I want you to be my wife.’
‘But you have no money.’
‘Does that matter? Really matter? I have my army pay. You yourself said that you would like to be married to a soldier.’
She gave a coy smile. ‘I did, didn’t I.’
‘And you must believe me. I am well and strong.’ He drew her to him.
She threw herself into his arms. ‘Yes, I believe you. You know I believe you.’
Their kiss was long and deep. A few yards away Abi, who had been studying a pair of ducks paddling up and down the river bank, turned and watched them with equal interest. They didn’t notice.
When finally they drew apart he held her two hands and studied her face. ‘Listen, my darling. I’ve had time to think what we should do. Everyone is trying to prevent us from marrying. My brother, the earl, has forbidden it, and as the head of the family I need his permission as long as I’m underage. You need your father’s permission. We are completely hamstrung. Either we wait until I’m twenty-one, or …’ he hesitated. He had dreamed of this so long he was afraid to say the words out loud. ‘We go to Gretna Green.’
She stared up at him, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘We run away together?’
He nodded.
‘And then we can be married in Scotland? Oh, Tom. Yes, please.’ She sobered. ‘But how will we manage it?’
‘We’ll need Abi’s help. She must somehow contrive to get you out of the house at night so we’ll have several hours’ start. Your mother might guess where we’re going, and she would have us pursued.’
‘She would.’ Frances was crestfallen. ‘And she would send for Papa at once and he would call the Watch. She would not forgive this. We would only have the one chance.’ She looked up at him very seriously. ‘To my mother, Jane and Cassandra and I are investments. She told me so. I don’t think my happiness is of any interest to her.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’ He looked troubled.
‘Oh, believe me it is.’ She set her mouth in a straight line. ‘Will you get into terrible trouble with your brother?’
‘He obviously would prefer it if I married a lady of means, but I will be twenty-one soon; then he will have no say over my life. I believe I will be in more trouble marrying without my commanding officer’s permission, but I will cross that bridge when we reach it. Once you are my wife they’re not going to undo our marriage.’
‘And the marriage will be a proper one?’ Judging by the sparkle in her eye, it did not bother her much.
‘It will be a proper marriage. Legal. Though not in church.’ He frowned. That thought troubled him. But surely with all Anne’s contacts they could find someone to bless their union.
His prospective bride seemed to have no such qualms. ‘When shall we go? Today?’
‘Tonight.’
To his relief, Abi was keen to help. ‘But what will happen to me?’ she asked at the last moment. ‘Mrs Moore is bound to suspect me. I’ll be sacked.’
‘You will come to London, to my sister’s house. Fanny will need a lady’s maid. As soon as we are back from Scotland we will meet you there. I will give you a letter for Anne and another for Mr Phillips, Lady Huntingdon’s butler, to give you lodgings until we return.’
His plan seemed simple. He would leave the inn, covering his trail, then double back and wait with the horse until Fanny arrived with Abi, and he would take his beloved up behind him. Casual enquiries in the taproom of the inn had given him easy instructions to follow as to the route. In High Wycombe he would hire a fast chaise to take them on the first stage of the journey towards Stokenchurch and on towards Oxford. Speed would be everything.
The question eating away at the back of his mind was, when it came to it, would Fanny have the courage to go with him?
35
Ruth had replayed her conversation with Malcolm Douglas in her head a dozen times and the more she thought about him, the angrier she became. ‘He was so patronising!’ she burst out when Finlay asked her what she thought of him. ‘Did you hear what he said about Harriet? “Competent!” And “adds a certain piquancy”. How dare he!’
‘It was an odd thing to say, I agree. Did you get the impression he knows her?’ Before she could answer, Finlay went on, ‘I have looked him up on Google. I’d understood from Max he was some sort of low-key psychic, but when he said he was an author as well I thought it would be worth finding out if he was there.’
‘And?’
‘And he’s a historian. He’s written four hefty tomes on the Georgian period. Bestsellers. He’s a serious player.’
‘No wonder he’s keen to downplay his psychic powers,’ she retorted tartly. ‘Oh God! The Georgian period, you said? Thomas’s period? Why didn’t he say? The name must have meant something to him.’
‘He did look quite keen, Ruthie.’
‘I thought that was because of the ghostly conundrum, not because he wanted to sign up Thomas for an interview.’ She was pacing the floor. ‘Shall we put him off? I don’t think I can cope with him, and I doubt very much that he’ll be any help.’
Half an hour later she was on the phone to Harriet.
‘So, you have heard of him?’
‘I’ve just told you. Naturally I’ve heard of him. He’s a brilliant biographer.’
‘Implying that you aren’t?’ Ruth was feeling defensive.
‘I’m not in his league, no,’ Harriet confirmed coldly. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’
‘Fin and I met him this morning.’ Ruth wondered if it had been a good idea to mention him but it was too late. ‘Do you know him?’
‘We’ve met.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. How did you hear about him?’
‘We were given his name by Fin’s agent. He’s an expert on psychic phenomena.’
Silence.
Ruth waited, then she heard the snort of laughter. ‘You’re joking!’
‘No. It’s an interest of his.’
‘Then it isn’t the same man.’
‘I think it is. Fin looked him up on Google and there’s a picture of him.’
The low whistle down the phone made her smile. ‘My God! He must keep very quiet about that particular interest. People would think he was bonkers. In fact, it would blow his street cred clean out of the window if that was generally known.’
‘So please keep it to yourself!’
‘I shall have to see about that.’ Harriet was crowing. ‘So, how did he handle himself as a psychic?’
‘Cautiously. He wants to come and see the house. I was scared by what’s been happening, Hattie, you know I was. I’ve got to talk to someone about it.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Nice enough.’
‘Nice?’ Harriet echoed derisively.
‘Yes.’
When she finished the call, Ruth realised she would have to go through with the meeting if only to satisfy Harriet’s curiosity.
When Malcolm arrived the next morning, Ruth gave him a tour of the house, visiting every room in turn. He had driven up in the old Defender, minus the dogs. ‘They get too excited, ghost hunting,’ he said with a smile in response to Ruth’s enquiry. ‘Don’t worry, they stay quite happily with my neighbour if I’m out for any length of time.’
‘It’s not the actual house that’s the problem, is it?’ Ruth felt tense and uncomfortable as they finished the tour in the sitting room.
‘I would say not, no.’ Malcolm went to stand in front of the wood burner. Ruth had lit the fire as an afterthought before he arrived, and it had not yet warmed up. The flames seemed unusually yellow and unreal.
She had finally looked Malcolm up herself, the night before, and found he was indeed a respected academic. Looking at t
he list of titles credited to his authorship, all given five-star ratings by reviewers, she felt embarrassed at not having recognised his name. There was no mention anywhere of his interest in the supernatural.
Malcolm headed towards the door. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen. Perhaps now is the time for that coffee you offered me when I arrived.’
As they sat opposite one another at the kitchen table the sun appeared briefly and shone across the floor, showing up the irregularities in the flagstones. The room was bright and warm. ‘Our walk round the house was revealing.’ Malcolm sipped his coffee. ‘It’s very clean. In my sense of the word. Strangely so, for an old building. I suspect it has something to do with being so near the river; there may be underground springs beneath the building which would keep it fresh, and it may have been spring-cleaned – again, in my sense of the word – by someone in the past. You say there is a little girl ghost here, but I have no sense of her.’
‘I think Finlay said she was in the garden.’
‘We’ll go out there later and see. Right now, I’m more interested in you.’ He was holding his mug in both hands, staring down into it. ‘I’m so sorry, Ruth, I can see you’re nervous. I can feel you warding me off and I don’t blame you. First let me put your mind at rest. I am not going to go all bell, book and candle on you. If you want that, you need a priest. And I am not going to produce crystals and smudge sticks and bells. But we do have one prop to discuss, so let’s talk about the garlic. I had a quick glance through Dion Fortune’s book again last night. It’s a long time since I read it.’ Having spotted it lying on the worktop, he went to bring it over to the table. ‘Did you notice the subtitle? A Study in Occult Pathology and Criminality? It gives one a strong clue as to how seriously she took this stuff. You could do a lot worse than study this book. She suggests garlic and onions because of their ability to absorb what she calls noxious emanations. People also use them, you know, when someone has a bad cold. They work with physical as well as psychic gunk. But in the same section of the book she says something very telling. I can quote it verbatim. I have used it over the years and I had forgotten where I got the phrase from. “What the imagination has made, the imagination can unmake.” She applies that to thought forms, things and beings that we or others have imagined so strongly that they have taken on an actual reality, however tenuous.’
‘How odd. Hattie remembered that quote too.’ Ruth gave a tentative smile. ‘So you think Thomas is a thought form?’
‘Dion certainly didn’t if she called him an ascended master. I will have to look all that up. For her he was a different league of being, but for you …’ He left the words hanging and took another sip from his mug, giving Ruth a moment to absorb the suggestion.
‘I don’t think I invented him, if that’s what you mean.’ Somewhat to her own surprise, her words came out as thoughtful rather than indignant. ‘And others have seen him. My father seems to have talked to him. His neighbour in Morningside heard them chatting to each other.’
‘His thought form, fuelled by guilt?’
Ruth scowled. ‘I suppose it’s possible. I admit I imagined Thomas quite deliberately, sitting on the edge of the table through there, talking to me,’ she glanced towards the dining room. ‘At least, I think I did. I must have imagined him,’ she repeated desperately. ‘I’d been reading so much about him and there was so much I wanted to ask him.’ She looked up at Malcolm. ‘I don’t suppose you ever do that when you are writing?’
‘We are not talking about me,’ he replied firmly. ‘So, how did he seem, your thought form? Friendly? Helpful? Resentful, trying to keep secrets back?’
‘Friendly. Reassuring. Slightly rueful about his past exploits.’
‘And did he refer to your unpleasant ghostly visitor?’
‘No.’
‘I sense there is a connection.’
Ruth frowned. ‘I didn’t pick up on it if there is. I assumed that it, he, the nasty ghost, was something in the house.’ She reached for her mug and then put it down again untouched. ‘So, my version of Thomas is not real. You’re saying I invented him so it’s up to me to disinvent him.’ She was astonished how disappointed she felt.
Malcolm smiled. He wondered if Ruth knew how transparent her face was. It can’t have been a help in her job as a teacher. ‘I’m saying nothing. I’m making suggestions at this stage and explaining some of the possible phenomena that might be at work here. It may be that Thomas is as real as you and I.’
‘Really real?’
‘It’s possible. To digress for a moment and fill in some background information: you told me your father had no faith and instilled that lack of belief in you. So, you would describe yourself as an atheist?’
‘I suppose I would, yes.’
‘As in, you don’t believe in God, but you can accept the other stuff? Spirits and angels and, yes, ghosts?’
‘Not angels!’
‘OK, so angels belong in the God department. But the rest?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the problem. If I did, perhaps I wouldn’t need you. Perhaps I should more honestly say I’m an agnostic, but that would really be a cop out, wouldn’t it.’ She tried to soften the words with an apologetic smile.
Malcolm laughed. ‘Fair enough. The situation means, though, that you’ve been left without a basic set of tools to work with. It’s not that you don’t know the stuff – prayers, blessings, charms, signs against the evil eye – it’s that you cannot bring yourself to use them. And you have nothing to replace them with. I suspect even the act of strewing garlic round the house embarrassed the rational, intelligent, educated, liberal, twenty-first-century woman that you are. You could not under any circumstances admit the possible efficacy of their use. Nature spirits, how do you rate them?’
She felt her resentment flare again at his assessment of her, accurate though it was. ‘Fairy tales,’ she snapped.
‘But as a student of English literature you have an interest in the origin of fairy tales?’
‘Of course.’ She was impatient now. ‘They contain legend, history, myth and morality lessons, we all know that, but they’re not real. The ogre in the castle is metaphor; whatever is lurking under the bridge is human threat, not a dryad or a troll; paedophiles not wicked gnomes.’
‘Do you cross your fingers when you tell a lie?’ Malcolm sprung the question on her.
Ruth looked shocked, then in spite of herself she smiled. ‘Not any more.’
‘Do you know the words of the Lord’s Prayer?’
‘I’m old enough to have been taught that at school. Besides, my grandfather was a vicar. Daddy might have dissed everything his father-in-law believed in, but he couldn’t quite wipe my memory banks. Why are you asking me all this?’
‘I am trying to get an idea of what we’re working with. You are, in my opinion, a very conflicted woman.’ He raised his hands in defence as Ruth opened her mouth to object. ‘You don’t need me to address your worries and hauntings and fears, you are completely capable of doing it yourself, but you have closed down deliberately and slammed the door on everything that you consider – what word would your father have used? – nonsense? Twaddle? Tosh? I’m sorry to say this, but you are intelligent and educated. That much you will concede?’ He did not wait for Ruth to acknowledge the words, rightly sensing her rising fury and indignation. He leaned forward and shook his finger in her face. ‘There is no point in resenting everything I say. If you want my help, you’ll have to put up with my vocabulary. We don’t have time to be subtle here. I’m not trying to sneak superstitious garbage past you. Your knowledge of the world is very specific, self-censored and academically based, so you have a deep-seated resistance to much that’s around you. When it comes to intuition, observation, instinct, you’ve switched off, or been switched off. You tell me you escaped from home, but you took all your father’s angst with you. I am not interested in where he got it from, probably his own father before him, but you have to wake up and acknowledge that there is more
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your narrow philosophy.’
Ruth stared at him, stunned at his sudden passion. ‘You’ve been talking to Finlay,’ she said at last.
‘I’d never met Finlay before yesterday.’
‘You have no right to say all this about me.’ She felt confused and angry.
‘OK. I’m sorry. May I remind you, you came to me for my help.’ Malcolm was trying to suppress his frustration. He stood up. ‘I can’t help you at the moment because there’s nothing here. Your unpleasant visitor seems to have left no traces in the house that I can pick up on. It’s you and your friend Harriet he attacked and for the time being he’s gone. I will go too now and give you time to think. If you want to contact me again, you know where I am.’
‘But aren’t you going to do anything?’ She wanted to kick herself for sounding so pathetic.
‘Not without your cooperation. Consider what I’ve said carefully, Ruth, please. You are a woman of great power. Potentially, that is. I felt it yesterday and I feel it today, but it’s all banked up like a reservoir behind a dam. I know you resent me. For that I’m sorry. I have obviously antagonised you and that is my fault. But talk to your father. He is hanging around. He will tell you he was wrong. He knows it now. Just be careful. There is so much energy swirling round you. I think you need me and I will be there if you call, but it must be your unqualified decision. And you can safely call on your however-many greats grandfather. He’s there for you too. Listen to him.’
Thomas
I had tried to reach Ruth and I thought I had succeeded but she did not truly believe in my existence. To her I was some fictional figure, drawn from the past. She did not feel the beat of our blood, the kinship that linked us. She is interested only in my story, so it is with my story that I must try and reach her.
Frances and Abi were late arriving at our rendezvous and I had died a thousand deaths, imagining that they would not come. But there they were, two small shadowy figures in the darkness, nervously creeping up the lane towards me. We fixed Frances’s small bag to my saddle and she came up behind me on the roan. There was no time for speech. We were all frightened and excited. She bade farewell to Abi and I, in my gratitude, did the same. I don’t think either of us looked back.