Mountwood School for Ghosts Read online

  ‘What’s an upmarket outlet?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘A place where a handbag costs more than a nurse earns in a year,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘Is it made of gold and diamonds?’

  ‘No, it’s made out of the skins of endangered animals, by children your age who get paid nothing at all,’ said Charlotte crossly.

  She was very unhappy. She knew that Daniel was as miserable as she was about having to move, and she wished she hadn’t lost her rag yesterday. He was probably right. Nothing ever seemed to stop the demolishing and polluting and destruction of the city, or of the planet, if it came to that. She went up to her room and shut the door behind her. She was reading a book called Slavery and Child Labour in Global Society and it was doing nothing at all to cheer her up.

  Daniel hadn’t even got up that morning. It was a Saturday, so no school, and there didn’t seem to be any point in getting out of bed. But as he lay there looking out of his window he felt something happening inside him.

  He had woken with a sick feeling of despair, but it seemed to be fading away and being replaced by something else. Anger. Not just anger. Rage.

  ‘What else is there to do?’ That was what Charlotte had shouted at him.

  He thought about the doctors and nurses who operated in tents, trying to save the lives of children whose arms and legs had been blown off by bombs. They knew that there would be more bleeding children tomorrow, and the day after that. But what else was there to do? Then he remembered a girl he had read about who had been shot in the head just because she tried to go to school. It was in a country where some people thought girls shouldn’t learn anything except how to cook and look after babies. She survived, and went on fighting for the rights of girls to go to school. What else was there to do?

  Charlotte was wrong to think they had a chance. He was sure about that. But she was absolutely right that if you had to choose between fighting or lying down to be trampled on – well, it was a no-brainer.

  Daniel got dressed and ran down the stairs. In the hall he bumped into Great-Aunt Joyce, who was coming out of the kitchen.

  ‘Really, Daniel, you are so thoughtless. I must say . . .’ Her voice trailed off. She had seen a look on his face that she had never seen before.

  Daniel ran out of the house and across to number nine. He rang the bell. George opened the door.

  ‘Hello, George. Is Charlotte in?’

  ‘She’s in her room. But I’m not allowed in. She’s grumpy.’

  ‘I’ll risk it.’

  Charlotte’s door was firmly shut.

  ‘Charlie, it’s me. We have to talk.’

  In her room Charlotte looked up from her book with a nice feeling in her stomach. If Daniel called her Charlie that was a good sign. A very good sign.

  ‘Come in.’

  Daniel started in as soon as he was in the room.

  ‘I’ve been thinking. About Hector.’

  ‘Hector?’

  ‘Well, not only Hector, but he came into my mind when I was coming over here. Do you remember when we were doing the Greeks and the Trojans and Helen of Troy? Well, Hector is going out to fight Achilles, and his wife weeps and cries and says that he will surely die, and Hector knows that he will die and he points at his little son and says, “When he walks down the street, people will say, There goes the son of Hector the warrior.” That’s what mattered to him. Not winning. Winning doesn’t matter.’

  Charlotte smiled. She looked at him standing there solidly, with his mop of uncombed hair and his hazel eyes glaring at her. She should have known better. Daniel was a slow starter. He needed time to think. But once he had decided, he was like a badger. He bit hard, and he didn’t let go until he heard bones crack.

  ‘All right. If you are going to be Hector, who shall I be?’

  They thought about that for a while. Charlotte considered Joan of Arc, but she was burned at the stake, and that was just too much. They decided on Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, who faced down the might of the Roman legions, and lost.

  When that was settled, Charlotte said, ‘The first thing is to talk to everyone on the street. We have to make sure there are objections, and as many people as possible must register a protest.’

  Thirteen

  Lord Ridget

  Jack Bluffit was in a frightful temper. His temper was partly caused by the ache in his backside. Every time he sat down he yelped and had to stand up again. And to make matters worse, there was going to be an inquiry. He took some deep breaths. Just more work to do.

  ‘Snyder!’

  Frederick oiled his way into the office. ‘Did you call, Mr Bluffit?’

  He knew very well that Jack had called. Everyone on the top floor had heard him.

  ‘There shouldn’t be any serious problems with this blasted inquiry. As far as I can see, there’s only a bunch of old biddies and arty-farty types and benefit scroungers to deal with.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Frederick, ‘perhaps to be on the safe side . . . to avoid unnecessary risks . . . it might be possible . . .’

  ‘What? Spit it out, Snyder.’

  ‘Some information about the condition of the street might be of use.’

  ‘Right, I get it. Get me Health and Safety, Fire Department, Department of Works, the lot. I want to see them today.’

  ‘They are on their way, sir.’

  ‘Are they?’ Bluffit stared at Fredrick. Sometimes he thought the man was so sharp he might cut himself.

  Snyder slithered out.

  The most important thing was to get the right person to hold the inquiry. Someone who wouldn’t let him down. Jack knew just the man. He reached for the telephone and dialled.

  The voice at the other end was very well-bred.

  ‘Lord Ridget speaking.’

  ‘It’s Bluffit.’

  ‘Yes, oh, hello, how are you feeling? Shame about that little tumble the other weekend. The old mare’s usually very docile. Bit hard in the mouth perhaps. And of course, not used to being kicked and hit. We don’t usually go for that kind of thing.’

  ‘That nag would be at the knacker’s yard by now if I had my way.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean that. Long and faithful service, you know. Out to pasture . . .’

  ‘Out to pasture my foot. I don’t have time for all this nonsense, Ridget. I know why you invited me to your place. It wasn’t for my pretty face. You thought you could soft-soap me into stopping the plans for building on your land. Well, I can tell you that the affordable-housing scheme is going ahead anyway. Lots of poor people, you know, and some asylum seekers – they have to live somewhere.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. You cannot imagine how terrible it is for us. All that hard work reconstituting the bed, and planting the banks, and I had four rods on it last year, and probably six this year. They said I couldn’t do it, but I jolly well showed ’em, I said they’d come back, and they did.’

  ‘Who came back?’

  ‘The salmon, of course. After forty years. Your beastly scheme will spoil everything. Houses right on the riverbank. There might be litter louts or even – what d’you call ’ems? – chivs.’

  ‘Chavs.’

  ‘That’s it. Is it really not possible to build somewhere else? It is such a lovely spot. The Laird of Rothmull came down last year, and even he was impressed. He showed me his flies.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He had a lovely Black-Green Highlander that he swore by.’

  ‘I bet he did. Look, Ridget, stop talking gobbledegook and listen. There is a small chance you might be off the hook. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but . . .’

  ‘What? What shouldn’t you be telling me?’

  ‘Can you keep your mouth shut?’

  ‘Of course, my dear man. Mum’s the word. Soul of discretion, lips sealed and all that.’

  ‘Well, it looks as if the council might have overstretched themselves a bit. Money’s short. There’s a big redevelopment planned, dead pricey, and it’s just
been approved. If they actually build it, they’ll have to abandon your scheme. Of course, with a great big redevelopment like that, there are objections. There’s going to be an inquiry; who knows what will happen?’

  ‘Goodness gracious! I shall have to cross my fingers like mad.’

  ‘You might be able to do more than that,’ said Jack.

  They talked for a few more minutes. Then Jack hung up.

  ‘Daft old git,’ he muttered.

  Daniel and Charlotte had worked very hard. They had visited every house on the street, making sure that as many people as possible wrote in good time to dispute the Compulsory Purchase Order, so there had to be an inquiry. But getting an inquiry is just the beginning. You have to win your case. It’s not enough to say that you like your house and don’t want to move. You have to be able to prove that the new motorway will be a terrible disturbance and destroy the environment, or that the new shopping centre will be built right on top of the place where the only pair of web-footed hoopy-birds left in the British Isles make their nest. Or else you have to show that the street is of great historical importance, with a Roman fort or a famous battlefield just under the pavement; or that the houses are very important examples of nineteenth-century urban development, designed by a very important architect.

  None of this was particularly easy, because Markham Street, although the houses were pretty old, was just a street, and the park was just a park. Nobody had ever heard of there being anything in particular under it, and in the park there were mostly just pigeons and starlings, and the town was already so noisy and full of cars that some more noise was hardly going to make much difference. But people did their best.

  Mrs Wilder, who was writing another detective story, put her work aside and spent days looking through old historical documents about the city, to try to find something important that had happened just on the site of Markham Street. Even Daniel’s new neighbours, the Bosse-Lynches, although they were just as stuck-up and snooty as Daniel had expected, did their bit.

  Mr Bosse-Lynch wrote long letters to the newspapers, complaining about commercial interests lowering the value of a residential area, and the rise in crime, and the country generally going to the dogs, and the pitifully small compensation he had been offered. Daylight robbery, he called it. Free Englishmen were being mugged by the council, he wrote. He also wrote that the chairman of the council was a crypto-Stalinist, but that bit didn’t get printed, because the newspaper was afraid they would be sued for libel.

  One person who gave them some real hope was Jim Dawson, who lived with his partner Peter Richards at number three. He worked in the zoology department at the university.

  ‘Birds are all very well,’ he said to Charlotte and Daniel one day, when they met on the street, ‘but there’s not much chance of finding anything of note in the park. Something small, that’s your best bet. Doesn’t even have to be an insect or a worm. Lichens, mosses, moulds. Nobody has much idea about what has evolved in these old half-polluted city biotopes. Something genuinely unique of that kind might make them think twice.’

  So now the children of Markham Street and the streets nearby had something useful to do after school. They all crawled all over the park with tins and jam jars, collecting bugs and beetles and worms and woodlice and spiders. They scraped moss and mildew from stones and green algae from benches and from the bark of expiring trees.

  Charlotte’s small brothers were in seventh heaven. Every day, covered in dirt from the day’s exertions, they waited outside number three for Jim to come home, so that they could show him the day’s harvest, and he always looked carefully and said, ‘Mmm, that’s interesting,’ or, ‘Oh, what have we here?’ But he never got really excited.

  In spite of all their efforts, the Markham Street residents weren’t getting very far. And there was something else. One day when Daniel came home from school there was a van parked outside the house. On the side were the words ‘County Surveyor’. In the hall Great-Aunt Joyce was talking to a young man in a suit. He had lots of pens in his top pocket and a clipboard, and a piece of apparatus in his other hand that looked like some kind of meter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Great-Aunt Joyce was saying in her moany voice, ‘terrible, really not hygienic at all. It should certainly be looked at. I shouldn’t be surprised if there are nasty bacteria. One can catch things; I have a very sensitive immune system. That boy, I don’t think he washes his hands properly after, you know . . .’

  ‘What boy?’ asked Daniel, dropping his bag on the hall floor.

  ‘Oh, Daniel, I didn’t see you. You must not creep up on people like that. This gentleman is from the surveyor’s office. They are surveying the street.’

  ‘Yes, hello,’ said the man, ‘but we are only doing a structural survey. Foundations, walls, that kind of thing. As I said, the state of the bathroom isn’t our business.’ He was embarrassed. ‘Anyway, I’m all done here, so I’ll be off next door.’

  ‘Bring a cup of tea to my room, Daniel,’ said Great-Aunt Joyce, turning to go upstairs. ‘I don’t know where your mother has got to. She really shouldn’t expect me to answer the door. She is fully aware of my legs.’

  Mr Jaros got a visit too. Not from the surveyors but from the health-and-safety inspectors. After they had gone he sat by the stove and worried.

  The two ladies who had come to visit him had seemed very friendly, and he had offered them a biscuit and a cup of coffee. But they had left a list that was two pages long of things that were wrong with his workshop. Fire hazard, commercial premises, emergency exit, risk assessment, extractor fan . . . The words jumbled and jostled in his head. It just went on and on. He liked the smell of glue and resin and turpentine, and those fans sounded like jet engines. How could he listen to Smetana and Dvořák with a fan roaring away? But the worst bit came at the end of the list. Something about domestic animals in high-risk industrial environments. He guessed that the domestic animal must be Jessie, and the high-risk industrial environment must be his workbench. But she had lain beside it for almost thirteen years.

  ‘Ah, Jess,’ he said, and she opened one eye and thumped her tail, ‘What is all this about?’ Jessie didn’t know. Or if she did, she wasn’t saying.

  ‘The inquiry is to be led by Lord Ridget,’ said Jim Dawson that evening, as he and Peter were making supper in their kitchen.

  ‘That old goat? I thought he just hunted and fished and wrote letters to the newspapers about people going for walks across his grouse moors and disturbing the birds he’s going to kill.’

  ‘He does now, but he used to be a judge before he retired. He was in the news once; he was trying a man for mugging someone and stealing his trainers. Ridget said, “What on earth are trainers?” And the barrister replied, “I think you might know them as plimsolls, m’lud.” They called him Rip van Ridget.’

  ‘Why dig him up suddenly? There must be a reason.’

  ‘There is. I rang Sam Norton on the local paper this morning. He always knows what’s going on behind the scenes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he smelled a rat. He said that Ridget is in Jack Bluffit’s pocket; he’ll do anything he wants. Bluffit knows what he’s doing. He’s counting on Ridget to make sure the inquiry goes his way.’

  ‘So what are our chances, Jim?’

  ‘Very thin indeed, I’d say.’

  Fourteen

  The Dark of the Moon

  Fredegonda was rounding off the evening’s lecture, the fourth in her series ‘Spectral Theory and Human Psychology’.

  ‘So, to summarize our conclusions,’ she said, ‘first – the vast majority of humans are surprisingly squeamish about suppurating excrescences, that is to say pustules, abscesses, ulcers, blisters, pimples, spots, carbuncles and the like. Also, putrefying or maggoty flesh, especially when still connected to a living body, usually arouses a satisfyingly negative response. Secondly, do not forget our little motto: “More is better.” A single infected abscess on the nose or cheek might even ar
ouse sympathy, and we don’t want that, do we? But a face and body entirely covered with an infestation of pussy boils can hardly fail to have the desired effect. Finally, I would like to leave you with a little tip – hospital waste. Tissues, organs, amputated body parts, blood and bodily fluids can be great sources of inspiration.’

  She glanced out of the window set high in the wall, where a few stars glittered.

  ‘Time for a break. Please be here again in an hour for your practical work with Miss Goneril.’

  When she had left the hall the ghosts relaxed and chatted to each other for a while.

  The Phantom Welder said, ‘I didn’t get much of that. What’s an excrescence when it’s at home?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the Druid?’ said Iphigenia. ‘He knows any amount of words.’

  She knew that the Druid was still smarting from his experience the other night and had been avoiding the Welder. So the Welder glided over to the Druid, who went a bit transparent when he approached, and would have gone pale if he could have been any paler.

  ‘I need some help here, mate,’ said the Welder.’ I’m all over the place.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the Druid. ‘All your parts appear to be connected at the moment.’

  ‘I mean I don’t get what that Miss Fredegonda’s on about. Look,’ he went on, for he knew very well why the Druid was avoiding him, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just me and my big mouth.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Druid, ‘how can I help?’

  The ice was broken, and the Druid took the Welder aside and explained at length about suppuration and infestation and other long words that Fredegonda had used.

  Meanwhile Ron Peabody had drifted outside to do some deep breathing and a few stomach curls. He wanted to shine in the practical class – it was his strong suit, after all. His wife always smiled gently and told him that true haunting was an art, not a science, and no doubt she was right about that. She was much cleverer than him. But there was something to be said for a really fit ghost of the old school. Just go straight at ’em and scare ’em stiff. No fancy stuff, that was the thing. Like Lord Nelson at Trafalgar.