6.
Ghost Walk
A dozen people are standing on the pavement outside the Theatre Royal in St Leonard's Place. The group includes
- a courting couple whispering sweet nothings in each others' ears and giggling stupidly behind each others' fatly mittened hands,
- a family of four, the elder boy a fat fourteen, the younger boy a twiggy twelve, a worn-out washed-up mother and a pompously pedantic father,
- five Japanese girls with very long, very black hair aged between eighteen and twenty-two who take many photographs on their smart-phones and frequently consult Facepod and iTube on their handheld Raspberries,
- and a tall, cadaverous man in his mid-forties dressed in a tall top-hat, black tailcoat and black cape. His sunken cheeks are palely sallow and his eyes are underscored with pencilled black liner. He is the Ghost Walker, and he walks with ghosts.
He had greeted his group at 8 p.m. outside the Minster and led them solemnly through Minster Yard to the Treasurer's House where, in 1953, Harry Martindale the plumber had seen the Lost Ninth Legion marching off behind Lucius Duccius Rufinus to oblivion somewhere in Northumbria. This story was too familiar to shock the locals but outside St William's College where, 400 years ago, two brothers had murdered a priest, there had been a flicker of interest when he had told them the younger brother had hanged himself and the spirit of the older one was still fretfully pacing the upper rooms to this day.
''Huh,'' says the Chubster to the Twiglet, ''If you hung yourself, I'd have a party.''
''Hush,'' snaps the mother. ''Don't say such dreadful things.''
The Twiglet punches his brother hard in the arm. The Chubmeister sniffles.
''Don't hit your brother,'' says the weary, washed-out woman.
''He started it,'' the Twiglet protests, ''The great tubby TWAT.''
The Ghost Walker digs his fingernails into his palms and counts to ten.
''Got any stories about dead children?'' mutters the mother.
''Funnily enough,'' the Ghost Walker says, ''In that house over there was a tragedy involving a child.'' This house is close to the Minster and is several centuries old. ''Over the years, the people who lived here often heard but never saw a child crying. One night the daughter said to her mother, 'Don't let the little girl in the white dress sit on my bed tonight. I don't like her crying all the time'. The children were moved to another room and that small room overlooking the Minster,'' He points up at it, ''Was used for guests. But nobody ever got a good night's sleep. They were constantly disturbed by the sound of crying and running feet.''
The Ghost Walker pauses. The Japanese students are holding their breath. The young couple are holding hands. The pedantic father is holding his tongue - ''How do you know? Were you there?'' he is bursting to say, but he knows his wife will not hold hers if he does.
''Finally,'' the Ghost Walker resumes, ''The family became so concerned that they arranged a séance. The spirit told them she was a little girl who had starved to death in the mid-seventeenth century. When the Plague swept through the city, the Minster area was sealed off and quarantined. Three thousand, five hundred and twelve people died including the little girl's mother and father. The servants thought the girl had died as well so they left the house and locked it behind them. However, miraculously, the little girl recovered.'' The Ghost Walker looks at his audience. ''Imagine her horror,'' he says in a hushed voice, ''When she woke up and found herself locked in a room with the dead, plague-ridden bodies of her parents. Not only that, and the trauma of that, she had nothing to eat! She starved slowly to death,'' he said with relish, ''With only her plague-perished parents for company. No wonder she ran mad. No wonder she cried. No wonder she looked to the present tenants for comfort.''
The Japanese students wipe tears from their eyes and check something on the World-Wide Web.
''Should've eaten her parents,'' the Chublet chunters. ''I would've.'' Twiggy and his father laugh loudly.
''You, sir, would've eaten a farmyard of cattle and still had room for dessert, you great tub of lard,'' mutters the Ghost Walker under his breath.
And so to Bootham Bar and the Theatre Royal, which, Miyumi tells her friends, was built in 1744 and rebuilt in 1765 under the lesseeship of Tate Wilkinson. Sheridan, Shakespeare, opera and oratoria were performed and famous actors such as Mrs Siddons and John Philip Kemble graced York with their skills. When W. A. Waddington took over in 1876…
''Excuse me, Miyumi.'' This is Suki. ''So Missr Wirkison lan teater loyal for one hundled yiss …''
Miyumi consults her Bilberry. She can go nowhere and do nothing without the aid of technology, as her boyfriend, after several sudden and unpleasant electric shocks, is only too painfully aware. ''Yes, Suki. No-one - is named - between - Missr Wirkison - and - Missr Wadington, - so - Missr Wirkinson muss be manajah one hundled yiss.''
The Ghost Walker glowers at the students. He barely understands their accents yet they are in the Upper Intermediate class of their year-round language school. This is for two reasons. Firstly they have pots of money. Secondly their year-round language school employs teachers with less than three weeks' experience who know nothing about placing students in the correct level or indeed teaching English but are very, very cheap and have no union or employment rights.
''Ah so, Miyumi,'' says Suki,. ''Missr Waddington was resee for thirty …'' She consults her notepad. ''Five yiss, till nineteen dirty tree.''
Chubs and Twigs snigger. ''She said dirty tree,'' they giggle.
The Ghost Walker is getting angry but there are five Japanese students in the group who don't know as much as the natives about tipping so he swallows his irritation, settles his top hat and tells them the story of the Grey Lady of the Theatre Royal.
''The theatre was built,'' the Ghost Walker says, ''On land given by William Rufus and later King Stephen some nine hundred years ago to build St Leonard's Hospital.''
''Ah so,'' says Miyumi, ''Wirriam Lufas had led hair.''
''That's right,'' says the Ghost Walker. ''And at some point in its long history, there was a dark tragedy at the hospital when a young nun was walled up alive in the crypt. No-one knows her name, but it is believed she had an illicit liaison. [dramatic pause] With a man!''
There are no gasps of astonishment. This is a worldly audience. However the courting couple giggle, the ugly, spoon-faced boyfriend whispers something in the stupid, pig-tailed girlfriend's ear which makes her giggle again as she bats at him playfully with a limp, knitted mitten.
''If no-one knows anything about her life,'' begins Mister Pedant, ''Why is it believed she was having an affair? What evidence supports your scurrilous rumour? You're as bad as the tabloid press. A Catholic nun. Must be something dodgy about her. Must be all cucumbers by the fireside, huh? Candles in the chapel, eh? Eh?''
''Please,'' says the Ghost Walker as Mister Pedant's sons piggishly snigger and the worn wife wearily sighs.
The nun had been walled up in the bricks of the dressing room behind the dress circle. Actresses over the centuries have commented on feelings of being watched whilst they are changing (though this could be connected with idle stagehands peering through key holes) and others have remarked on a strange chill inside the room. One night, the wife of Sir Frank Benson sat up in the dressing room praying for peace to come to the little nun and the haunting stopped. Or did it? During a rehearsal of a show called Dear Octopus, the company spotted a strange, foggy figure in the dress circle watching with great interest. The Grey Lady had returned.
''Every theatre has its ghost,'' the Ghost Walker concludes, ''But the Grey Lady of the Theatre Royal is the friendliest and most supportive of them all. Her appearance on opening night heralds a successful production, so she is always welcome here.''
The Japanese girls capture the theatre on their phones as the Ghost Walker waves at the elegant De Grey Rooms just up the road.
''This fine building, with its beautiful white stonework, its elegantly arched windows and it
s long iron-railed balcony, was built by G. T. Andrews as an officers' mess in 1841. It was used for concerts and public meetings, but, within this building, a horrifying story of murder and savagery unfolded in the late nineteenth century when Captain Clive, a pedantic old bore, and his two young sons were battered to death. Clive owed a young ensign a sum of money but instead of paying up, Clive insulted the ensign in front of his sons who followed his lead and treated the ensign with scornful contempt. The ensign marched into the captain's chambers and dashed out his brains with a poker. They say that brain matter spattered all over the tiled fireplace and appears in ghostly clusters when the captain's ghost is stalking the rooms.''
The Ghost Walker is gratified to see the children turn green. The Japanese students are just pleased their lessons on lexis have stopped at the useful, high-frequency vocabulary of 'expressing opinions' - 'I couldn't agree more' - rather than 'porridgy lumps of tissue and brain'.
''Then the ensign turned on the sons,'' the Ghost Walker continues. ''The first, a fat, moon-faced bully aged about fourteen, had his throat slit like a pig on a ship.'' Leering at the Fatster, he slowly draws a finger under his jaw. ''The blood, they say, formed a puddle four inches deep and one foot wide, and that flies feasted as it glazed over.'' Someone retches. The Ghost Walker grins. ''The younger son, a scrawny, skinny lad of around twelve, watching the blood drain into the carpet, seeing the life seep out of his brother, rushed to the balcony and hurled himself off. He was smashed into jam right there on the pavement.'' He points to the door of what used to be the Tourist Information Office. ''It is said that dogs came from those bushes,'' He indicates the shrubs in the King's Manor garden, ''To lick at the pulp and gnaw on his bones several minutes before he died.'' The Ghost Walker gives a dry, malicious laugh. ''When the mother saw what had happened, she hanged herself from a balcony rail. On very dark, moonless nights, you can still see the body swaying to and fro in the evening breeze, and hear, if you listen carefully, the thuds and cries inside the room. Mysterious blood puddles appear on the tiles and every full moon a small boy materialises on the balcony, his head smashed in so passing tourists can see what is left of his brain matter exposed like the inside of a coconut.…''
They have retreated into a respectful reverie. The tip of the Ghost Walker's tongue glides over his grinning lips as Mister Pedant mutters to his wife about suing for the emotional damage done to his delicate children, the Japanese chatter enthusiastically about smashed-in skulls and seeping blood and the courting couple eye each other coyly from under their lashes. They don't seem to have heard a word of the story.
Suddenly
in a pant-peeingly scary moment
Miyumi screams
AAAAAHHH!
Everyone follows her pointing finger to
a figure on the balcony of
De Grey's Rooms
the figure
of
a
boy
and everyone screams together
AAAAAAAHHHHH!
''Good evening,'' says Yo-yo.
''He appeared out of nowhere.'' Miyumi is shaking. ''Out of thin air.''
''Yes,'' says Yo-yo, ''I'm sorry if I startled you. Can you help me down from here? It's unnervingly high.''
''It's .... it's .... the m....m... murdered b...b...boy,'' stammers Suki.
''OK, I'll tell him,'' says Yo-yo to nothing, ''If you get me down from here.'' He appears to vanish. The courting couple flee, screaming and crying.
''How the hell did you do that?'' says Fatmeister admiringly, but the Ghost Walker has wet his pants. Ghosts are not supposed to appear on the Ghost Walk. They're not Equity members after all. And this is his pitch, for Heaven's sake. There'll be words afterwards when the Ghostwalkers gather in The Old Star and Garter (serving John Smith's).
Yo-yo rematerializes outside Tourist Information and crosses St Leonard's Place towards the Ghost Walker's party. ''Hi, I'm Yo-yo.'' He holds out his hand. ''An' I'm not a ghost. I'm a boy. I just know a lot of stuff.'' The group is uncertain how to react to this apparition. ''The Grey Lady's called Teresa,'' he says. ''She was a nun in St Leonard's Hospital, as you say, but she was locked in her room not because she had an affair with a man but because she told the other nuns she'd seen angels in the chapel at Mass. The nuns said she had a black and lying tongue, whipped her soundly and then locked her away. A priest held a ceremony in which the grey lady was given absolution so she rests in peace but she misses company and enjoys a good play so she sometimes pops into the theatre see what's going on.'' He inclines his head, as though listening. ''Yes. The girl who starved to death is Ellen. She was six at the time.''
The Ghost Walker pulls his top hat down over his head and gibbers quietly.
''Yeah,'' says Yo-yo, ''I agree.'' He listens intently to nothing. ''I don't know.'' He turns to the Ghost Walker. ''Ellen wants to know why her parents don't haunt the old house, why it's just her. She's not the only one who died horribly there. And Teresa wants to know why people think she was having it off with a fella when she died a virgin. She says it's misrepresentation and she'd like to sue.''
The Ghost Walker yells and runs away.
Yo-yo blinks. ''What's eating him?''
''You appeared out of thin air,'' explains Mister Pedantic. ''I expect you surprised him.''
''Oh,'' says Yo-yo. ''Well, as I said, I'm not a ghost…'' He cocks his head again and grins. ''Though I know a few who are.''
''Listen, buster,'' says Mister Pedantic, ''I don't know who you are or where you came from but your ridiculous stunt has ruined our evening. Our Ghost Walker's gone and we've only had half the tour. I expect you to continue the tour or refund at least half our money.''
Yo-yo smiles. ''Take my picture.''
''What?''
''Go on, take my picture.'' Yo-yo poses with his fist on his hip.
Miyumi, shaking, holds out her phone. The others see quite clearly, behind Yo-yo's shoulder, the faint trace of a woman swinging from a rope in front of the old Tourist Information Office and the shadow of a nun at Yo-yo's side.
Cameras and mobiles bounce off the cobbles. The washed-out woman wobbles and flops in a heap. Twigster turns to run and collides with a bus stop. Podgemeister quivers, his three bellies quaking. Mister Pedantic bluffs ''How did you do that?''
Yo-yo smiles. ''They're here every day. You just never see them.''
The hanging woman grins, looks at the tourists and raises one skinny, shroud-buried arm, her skeletal hand reaching out, out, out and down….
Mister Pedantic's bravado buckles. He leaps over a wall and lands in a small, vicious shrub which scratches his shins, carves up his calves and pricks at his ...
''Help!'' he cries, ''Get me out!'' His legs flail like an upturned cockroach's.
But his sons are too busy, one picking Perspex out of his nose, the other trying to keep down fourteen pies and ten plates of chips as a puddle of piddle pools round his shoes. Their mother rocks manically backwards and forwards hugging her knees. Meanwhile, most of the Japanese students have run away quicker than a Yorkshireman runs away from standing a round in the pub. Blueberries and Nobias lie strewn on the pavement, Youtouch and Tubeface playing to no-one. Except for Miyumi. She is waving at the nun, who is waving back.
Yo-yo smiles. He thinks they'll become the best of friends. He waves to them both then sets off for Drake's, where he is due to meet his uncle and aunt for a traditional slap-up fish and chip supper with mushy peas and sliced white bread.
Yum.