A Ghost in the Dark: a story

 

The darkness crept in around us like a predatory animal circling its prey. That would, indeed, have been something worth seeing on this February evening, as this would have been just the time for foxes to be on the prowl hunting for rabbits unwise enough to seek an evening meal before heading for the safety of their burrows.

We had been walking round Hickling Broad for more than an hour and should have been back at our hotel in Potter Heigham by now, especially as a mist was now adding to the gloom, but the distractions of short-eared owls swooping across the frozen water and the sounds of buntings calling from the reedbeds before settling down for the night had stopped us in our tracks. What we really wanted to hear was the boom of a bittern – we had been told that they were in the vicinity and neither of us had ever heard, let alone seen, one before. This was the right time and place, so staying out this late seemed to be a good idea.

Was that one now? There was definitely something there – but a boom? It sounded more like the rat-tat-tat of a drum! There it was again – no doubt about it – somebody was beating a drum from across the water.

This was very odd. Why would anyone be playing a drum at this time of day, and in the open air? It sounded like a military drum – the sort that you would hear at the Edinburgh Tattoo, for example – but there was only one of them, not a whole brigade of drummers. We wondered if it might be some young man who had been told to go outside and practice his paradiddles, or whatever they were called, where the family couldn’t hear him. But that was before we saw the drummer in person.

There he was! He was coming across the Broad in full sight of us, skating on the ice. But surely the ice was too thin to support a person, whether or not he was playing a drum? And it was plainly too dark and misty now for us to be able so see someone at that distance – we could barely see each other!

The figure we saw – and we definitely both saw the same thing – seemed to glow with a dull silvery sort of light, as though it was a canvas lantern with a candle inside it. It moved right across an arm of the Broad over to our right, drumming all the time, and then – when it reached the reedbeds – just vanished, and the drumming stopped as well.

To say we were astonished would have been a gross understatement. I stood there for several minutes with my jaw on the ground, unable to say a thing, and – judging by the silence beside me – I imagine that my partner was doing exactly the same. Eventually, though, we recovered our wits enough to make it back to the hotel.

When the receptionist saw us come into the lobby she took one look at our faces and said “You haven’t by any chance just been down at the Broad, have you?” Of course, we said that that was where exactly where we had been.

“I should have warned you earlier”, she said. “I take you’ve just seen our local ghost? I’m just going off duty – meet me in the bar in ten minutes’ time and I’ll tell you all about it”.

A stiff drink was exactly what we needed, so we were glad to take up her invitation. Marcia was a local lady, in her 50s, who had lived in the village all her life and knew all the legends associated with the place.

“He only appears at this time of the year, and only when there is ice on the Broad and a mist in the evening air”, she began, as we got outside a couple of double brandies.

“There was a young man from round here – over the other side of the Broad – who joined the Army as a drummer-boy not long before the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He fell in love with a girl from Potter Heigham, but her father did not approve – he wanted something better for his daughter than a mere drummer-boy.

“So the two could only meet in secret, which they did down by the Broad. Because of the hard winter that year he found that he could skate across the ice, and he did so every night. I’m not sure that the pair got up to too much mischief – a bit too chilly for anything of that sort, I would imagine - but they seemed to be happy enough with that arrangement.

“But one night in February the ice was only as thick as it probably is tonight, and the drummer-boy fell through the ice into the freezing cold water, couldn’t get out and was drowned. His ghost has skated across the Broad every February night ever since, as long as there is a mist and a thin film of ice on the water. And - of course – he always beats his drum as he does so.

“Not everyone I tell this story to believes me, unless – that is – they have seen the ghost for themselves.

“Right. I see that you’ve finished your drinks – ready to go through to the restaurant for supper?”

© John Welford

The Daisy Grave

 

Tom was busy on his father’s farm, repairing a stone wall, when a young lady on a horse rode by.

“That is very skillful work you are doing”, she said, “The way you make the stones fit so perfectly together.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice, Madam,” he said.

“Don’t call me that”, she said. “My name’s Emma. What’s yours?”

“Tom. Don’t I know you? Aren’t you Squire Ryland’s daughter?”

“That’s right, Tom”, she said, “I’m his only daughter, and I’m out riding today because I get so bored having nobody of my own age to talk to.”

“You’re a very good rider”, Tom said. “I’ve seen you out before, galloping across the fields.”

“Watch me”, she said, and she stuck her heels into the flanks of her mare and sent her charging off in a wide circle. When they came back to the wall Tom was working on, the horse and rider jumped over as high as if they were in a race at Cheltenham, then galloped round in another huge circle until they jumped back over the wall and came back to where Tom was waiting.

Emma dismounted and stood next to Tom.

“I’d really like it if we became friends”, she said.

“I’d like that too,” said Tom.

Things progressed from there as the weeks passed, and Tom and Emma fell deeply in love with each other.

“I wish we could get married”, Tom said one day, “but there is no way I could afford to support a wife. And besides, I don’t think your father would approve of me as a son-in-law.”

“That’s true enough”, said Emma, “But I love you and want to be your wife. And don’t worry about money – I have an income of my own that will be plenty for both of us.”

So they ran away from home and were married in secret, taking a small cottage in another county where nobody knew them. Tom got jobs with local farmers, his skill as a wall-builder ensuring that he was never short of work.

Emma stabled her horse with one of those farmers and enjoyed riding out every day. She had also taken much of her extensive book collection to the cottage and enjoyed reading them in the evenings. Tom’s education had not been as complete as hers, but he could read and write, and he was curious about the contents of Emma’s books. A number of them were collections of poems, which she sometimes read aloud to him. He wondered if he could compose a poem himself, and was surprised to find that he could indeed do so. Just as he enjoyed fitting stones together in the right places to form a bond, he also found that putting words in the right places was strangely satisfying, but something else was bothering him.

“One thing I have never done”, Tom said to Emma one day, “is buy you flowers. I never had the money to do so before, but now that I have a decent income from my wall-building, I want to fill the cottage with beautiful blooms that will always fill you with delight. What are your favourites? Dahlias? Chrysanthemums? Red roses?”

“Daisies”, she said.

“Daisies?”

“That’s right. Just daisies – exactly like the ones that were growing at the base of the wall on the first day I met you. I have always loved daisies, just as I will always love you.”

It was not very practical to gather daisies and decorate the cottage with them, so Tom made sure that the lawn in their small garden always had plenty of daisies growing there. He would remove any dandelions or other wildflowers that tried to gain a footing in the grass, but the daisies were always left well alone.

The time came when they decided they wanted to start a family, but that was also the time when Emma started to complain about feeling pains in the lower part of her body. These became steadily worse, so she went to the doctor’s surgery and came back with very bad news.

“The doctor says I must have an operation”, she said to Tom. “I’m sorry, but that means I can never have a baby”.

Tom was deeply disappointed by this news, but it did not mean that he loved Emma any the less.

“At least we will always have each other”, he said, “And that’s the most important thing.”

But that was not how things turned out. Emma started to get pains in other parts of her body, and was soon very ill indeed and confined to her bed. Tom did what he could he make her life as easy as possible, and that included reading poems to her just as she had done to him in the past. He propped her up in bed at these times, so that she could look out of the window and see the daisies on the lawn below.

The day came when it was clear that Emma would not recover, and she talked to him about what would happen when she died, which she knew would happen before long.

“I want daisies on my grave”, she said. “Can you manage to do that?”

So that is what happened. When she was buried in the churchyard, Tom cut some sods from their lawn and laid them on top of the earth mound, thus ensuring that her grave would always be covered in daisies.

Tom was distraught at Emma’s death, and turned to poetry as his way of coping with what had happened. He found he was inspired to write poem after poem, many of them about Emma and the life they had had together. He had no thoughts about anyone reading them apart from himself, but when a cousin of Emma paid him a visit a few months after she died, she found one of the poems and read it.

“This is a wonderful poem”, she told Tom. “Do you mind if I take it home with me when I leave?”

That is what she did. She showed it to her husband, who was a magazine editor, and he printed it in his next edition. The poem was widely admired by his readers, who demanded that he publish more poems by this new writer.

That was the start of Tom’s new career as a poet, which went from strength to strength. Every poem he wrote was published and appreciated, and he was soon able to have a collection of his poems published, the book being a roaring success. Many more would follow.

One of the poems that made a particularly strong impression was one in which he wrote about Emma’s love of daisies and how he fervently wished, when his time came, to be buried in the same grave as Emma, over which a carpet of daisies continued to grow and to bloom every summer.

Tom survived Emma by many years. His abiding love for her meant that he never thought about marrying anyone else – he was quite content to live on his memories and to continue to write his poems.

When his time did eventually come, though, his fame as a poet was so celebrated that there was talk of him being given a funeral in a big cathedral with a huge monument raised over his grave. However, the local people remembered his wish, which he had expressed many times, to be laid to rest with Emma in the daisy grave.

This was granted, but people in authority made it clear that such an important literary figure could not be remembered as humbly as that. They insisted that the grave be encased in a stone tomb with a suitable inscription carved on it, so that was what was done.

The tomb is there to this day. Tom’s name is prominently displayed, but there is no mention of Emma. And no daisies can grow through the grey stone.

© John Welford

To Zephyrus, The West Wind

 

Psyche you bore, not too heavy a load
Took her to Cupid, the Ancients did sing.
The best way to fly, for her just the thing,
Not your fault the pain that thenceforward flowed.
Pilgrims afoot on the old frog and toad,
Geoffrey heaped praise on you, herald of Spring.
Writers a-plenty have blessed what you bring -
Young Percy the poet wrote you an ode.
For some reason things do not seem the same
This western wind now’s an icy, cold blast
Why did it all go so horribly wrong?
That wretched jet stream is what we must blame.
Mild, gentle breezes – a thing of the past?
Poor Zephyrus – have you sung your last song?

© John Welford

Cleaning Day

 

One day a week the house gets clean
It’s called the Saturday routine.
We execute our careful plan
To get as close to spick and span
As can be done when short of time
For getting shot of filth and grime.
The problem is our canine beast
Who is no help, to say the least.
A joy in every other way
She simply must be kept at bay
When Mr Dyson’s fine machine
Is used in our attempt to clean
Domestic floors of dirt and dust.
You see, you simply cannot trust
That, spurred by its persistent drone,
She will not treat it like a bone
That must be grabbed, and, what is more,
She’ll even lift it off the floor.
When she’s around, a task like this
Will always be less hit than miss.
It takes an age, need I mention,
If the task has dog’s attention.
And that’s why Sue, my lovely wife,
Does what she can to make my life
Easier far, without more talk,
By taking doggy for a walk.
About two hours is what I need
To give due credit to the deed.
But on that day the rain was such
She simply couldn’t grant that much.
“This is not a passing shower,
We’ll be gone for just an hour”.
And off they went, a bit less keen
Than what is regularly seen –
The pair seemed equally averse,
Both seemed to fear it might get worse.
(The way we work this, by the by,
At least means my good self stays dry).
But now I had – it’s not much fun -
To get two hours’ work done in one.
The downstairs rooms are always first
Their muddy tiles, of course, are worst.
The furniture is moved aside
So no unwanted dirt can hide.
The Dyson sucks up what is loose
And then the steamer’s put to use.
When all is shifted once again,
The other half is treated, then
The room’s restored to how it was.
The work goes faster next, because
The other rooms have carpets, so
The task is nothing like as slow.
That day, ‘bout which this tale is told,
Was going well, I make so bold
To state I reckoned I could crack
The lot before dear dog came back.
Upstairs, not much was left to do,
Just bedrooms, office, bathroom, loo.
The final task would be the stairs
After which, no further cares.
A maxim you must never shirk
Is, when you have a lot of work,
Less speed results from excess haste,
But if you have no time to waste
Common sense through window flies
And deeds become more dumb than wise.
So that is why that morning, when
I went to clean my office den,
(I should have taken lots more care)
I roughly pushed aside my chair.
The table corner that it bumped
Was where I thoughtlessly had dumped
A ton of interesting stuff -
As if I did not have enough -
For which no shelf space could be found
Thus forming an unstable mound.
But gravity then took its course
(A somewhat overrated force).
I should have known, for ill or good,
The merest, slightest, knock just would
Precipitate an avalanche,
Depositing thereby a tranche,
A heap, exactly as it looks,
Of unread mags and unsold books.
I rushed the job, I must confess,
Resulting in a lot more mess.
I then did something just as naff –
A stupid time-consuming gaffe –
I took a photo of the scene,
The very one that’s on this screen,
I thought I’d have a tale to tell
That I could write, if all went well.
I quite forgot, was unawares,
I hadn’t finished with the stairs.
Instead, with office aids in sight,
I stopped the task, began to write,
And then the sound – I’m sure I swore –
Of someone opening our back door.
Oh dear – of course my hour was up
And back came Sue and former pup.
The latter, wet with muddy paws,
Was overjoyed to be indoors.
I ran downstairs to greet the pair
And hear whatever Sue might care
To tell of what the two had seen
While I was getting homestead clean.
But that was when I had a shock -
My efforts, racing ‘gainst the clock,
I saw were plainly up the spout
Of that there was no likely doubt.
Dog, as soon as she was able,
Gave us an Augean Stable.
The muck from up to three miles wide
Had been deposited inside.
Worse than prior to when I’d started,
Mud, not there before we parted,
Was coating every kitchen tile -
I found it hard to force a smile.
With further shakes of sodden hair
More globs of grime were plastered where
They joined, to make the scene complete,
The fall-off from her filthy feet.
Those paws were all it took to spoil
The fruits of muggins’s strain and toil.
You take a deep breath, count to ten -
In seven days’ time you try again.

© John Welford

Macbeth Demands a Recount

 

Macbeth, recently defeated and beheaded at the hands of Macduff, duly arrived on the bank of the River Styx to be rowed across to Hades by Charon the ferryman. However, he proved to be a reluctant passenger, not least because he saw no reason to give the infernal boatman his usual fee.

“No cash, no deal”, Charon said.

“Don’t you talk to me about deals”, Macbeth replied. “I know more about deals that you’ll ever know. I wrote the book about deals – or at least my ghostwriter did.”

“But if you don’t pay me you don’t get across”, said Charon. “You have to wander about for a hundred years before you get a free ride.”

“Don’t you talk to me about free rides …”

“And besides that”, Charon interrupted, “Your nearest and dearest should have left a coin on your tongue as my payment, so where is it?”

“I ran out of any nearest and dearest early in Act Five”, said Macbeth. “Besides which, somebody cut my head off, so any coin would probably have fallen out of the hole where my neck used to be.”

“Yes, I see that,” said Charon. “Incidentally, somebody did a terrible job trying to stitch it back on so you could get down here. Don’t nod too vigorously or it’ll be off again”.

“Of course, I shouldn’t be here at all”, said Macbeth. “When I get to see your boss I’m going to demand a recount.”

“A recount?”

“Sure thing. When everything is looked at properly, everyone will see that I won that battle by a landslide.”

“I don’t think so”, said Charon. “According to what I’ve been told, Macduff and Malcolm won it by a woodslide.”

“You mean that terrible ‘Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane’ trick? You just wait till I take that little number to your Supreme Court. My mate Bill Shakespeare has been packing the bench for years with loads of guys who’ll back me up – Othello, Lear, Julius Caesar, even Falstaff if they’ve managed to keep him off the booze.

“I’m telling you”, he continued. “It’s all a witch hunt. And talking of witches, I’ll bet they were all in it too.”

“In what?”

“The conspiracy. They all wanted me dead right from the start. I could tell just from what they were putting in that foul cauldron of theirs.”

“Such as?”

“Wool of bat for starters. They clearly wanted me to catch Covid-19. And ‘eye of newt’? I’m positive they slipped in a fake newt. Those crones made a whole heap of forecasts that they knew could not possibly happen, unless they fixed it, so what did they do?”

“Tell me.”

“Isn’t it obvious? They fixed it! All that ‘man who is not born of woman’ nonsense, and they reckoned that because Macduff’s mum had a Caesarian that meant that he wasn’t properly born. What codswallop. And these people get paid huge sums of money …”

“Do they?” Charon asked.

“Of course they do. All these mystical types get paid a fortune so they can swan around on jet-powered broomsticks and live the life of Riley. They take all-expenses-paid luxury holidays in England, you know.”

“Can’t say I did, to be honest.”

“That’s why I had that wall built, you know.”

“Wall?” Charon looked bemused.

“Between Scotland and England. To stop hordes of foreigners pouring in and witches pouring out – but I’d forgotten that it doesn’t work if you’re on a broomstick.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong”, said Charon, “but I thought it was Emperor Hadrian who built that wall?”

“More lies”, said Macbeth. “Nobody gives me the credit for everything I’ve done for this country. Nobody!”

“But you’re dead now”, said Charon, “so it doesn’t matter.”

“That reminds me”, said Macbeth, “Another thing about that conspiracy. There were dead people who were allowed to get in on the act. If you’re dead, you can’t be allowed to affect the outcome of any future power struggle, and yet there was Banquo, who I am absolutely positive was dead – due to the fact that I had him killed – turning up at one of my parties. There he was, bold as brass! I tell you, it’s just not right, and I demand a recount!”

“Just get in the boat”, said Charon. “I’m breaking the habit of a lifetime and giving you a free ride. If I charged you, I bet you’d only claim it as tax-deductible.”

© John Welford

1,6,3,1,4

Not him or her, don’t look too far
For pronoun perpendicular.
Ocular orb, a town near Diss,
You surely must be getting this.

 

I had it once but here’s the score
I do not have it anymore.
I wonder where it might be hid -
In haven to support its bid?

 

It is as plain as plain could be
The holy Deutsch divinity
It is exactly as you heard
You must omit the fourth or third.

 

Beef or mutton? Go one higher
It’s horsy food that you desire.
Played on banjo, flute or sung?
Three major sharps but minor none.

 

You only have the downstairs floor
Is the rope inside a drawer?
Mystery solved? No need to fuss
You simply leave off Homer’s cuss.

© John Welford

Cerberus Takes a Break

 

As old dogs go, there won’t be many – if any - who are older than me. The name’s Cerberus, and I’ve been the guard dog of Hades for eternity. I have my den on the bank of the River Styx, right next to where Charon the boatman lands the shades of the departed. I am well aware that there has been much speculation up top about exactly what I look like, namely how many heads I’ve got and whether or not I’ve got serpents coiled round my neck, but I know what I am and you lot can just carry on guessing – until such time as you meet me for real, that is.

I really enjoy my work, which is basically letting the departed know what they’re in for down here. If you’ve led a decent sort of life, you just get a growl or two, but the real nasties are in for a somewhat less pleasant experience. The word “shade” should not be taken too literally – when my jaws are fastened round your ankle the pain is far from imaginary! I just love hearing the screams when my teeth crunch on bone, and I’ve crunched some real beauties in my time.

Let me see, there was Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump – oh no, that last one’s not dead yet, is he? Don’t worry, I’ll be ready for him when he is. And the same goes for Nigel Farage.

I really love it when an American tele-evangelist comes my way. Do you know the type I mean? These are the guys who con vast numbers of people into parting with their cash so that the evangelist can live a life of luxury and buy a fleet of private jets, by promising their “flock” that they will have their diseases cured and take a short-cut to Heaven when they pop their clogs. You should see the expression on the face of the average tele-evangelist when Charon deposits one at my side of the River Styx – you might almost think they had other ideas about where they would end up.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this note is to tell you that I’m about to take my annual leave. Charon decided some time ago that letting me nip upstairs to your world every now and then was in his best interest. Although, as I said, I love my work, the diet of nasty people’s ankles is ever-so-slightly monotonous and I can get a touch crabby without a bit of variety. It was when he found me chewing a hole in his boat that he suggested I take a break every now and then. So this is fair warning that Cerberus, the dog from Hades, is about to get some fresh air.

I will confess that I tend to gorge myself when I’m on my hols. I apologise to the world’s foxes for the blame they get for raiding hen houses and slaughtering the inmates – half the time that’s me having an extended chicken supper.

And all that extra food produces masses of extremely sticky and smelly dog poo. I tend to perform wherever I can guarantee the presence of a human foot within the next half hour.

But my chief delight on being free to charge all over the place is to make the acquaintance of as many lady dogs as I can and leave them in the family way. I tend to choose partners that look a bit like me to start with, so my genetic material stands a good chance of producing pups with a similar attitude to mine. All those dogs that people describe as “hell hounds” are usually exactly that - their daddy was the original hound from hell.

Did you ever wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle got the idea for the Hound of the Baskervilles? One of my offspring gave him a nasty shock one night down a back alley in Edinburgh, that’s how!

I try not to make these trips into a busman’s holiday – scaring people to death is an occupational hazard, and I’m sorry to say that one look at me quite often has that effect. That is why I try to stay out of sight as much as possible, and I always prefer it if people get their first view of me when I’m on duty down below. On the other hand, I have been known to deliberately seek out the occasional tele-evangelist for the sole purpose of hastening the inevitable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a deputy in Hades, so my holiday absence means that the work tends to pile up and I have a really busy time of it when I get back. That is why these breaks, necessary though they are, have to be on the short side. No matter – there’s still plenty of life in the old dog, as many a lady rottweiler can testify!

 © John Welford