Ghosteria Volume 2: The Novel: Zircons May Be Mistaken, Tanith Lee [classic fiction txt] 📗

was,I liked travelling anywhere. Especially with them, my pretty, elegant motherand handsome father who, though ‘something in the city’, looked more like anactor from the Old Vic, or (a later era still to come) Olivier’s theatre on theSouth Bank.

I don’t remember all of it, thehouse. I know I liked it back then.

It seemed, we were told, from the1600’s until Victorian times, the house had been owned by a single continuingfamily. Holland, I think, was their name.

We went round the big rooms withtheir recreated semi-souls, the occasional anachronisms, or other things notquite right – none of which, then, I took in or criticised; my father I suspectdid see and note them, but did not spoil the adventure by pontificating. My motherprobably did not notice anything amiss. Her yardstick would be Hollywoodmovie-sets. Brilliant pianist, but a bit of a soppy date, my mother, frankly.(And I only began to see that plainly in my twenties, though otherthings rather earlier.) There were too however, extraordinary moments at thehouse, of the ancient, even the eldritch. A portrait-hung corridor, forexample, (posed Holland on Holland), that began around 16-something, and thenwound down into the castle end, changing, galvanised, into pure blank stone,and a round room at the end, with arrow-slits filled by aquamarine shards ofsky. Below, the tumble of the far side of the hill. And woods beyond. From herethey had fired out the bladed shafts to kill and maim any enemy approaching.The room impressed me. Some memory seemed caught in it. Anger anddetermination... God knew. But there had been feuds and to spare in thecastle’s past.

Later, when we’d done the indoortour, we thought, before ‘doing’ the gardens, we’d have one of the cream teasin the tearooms – not to be missed – there was still post-war rationing, andreal local cream and jam would be a treat indeed.

My father went ahead and my motherand I stopped at a discreet ‘Ladies’ to one side, just off the main house hall.(Later, before I – came back, as it were – these buildings, loos and orangeryand café, were closed and turned into offices for the admin and recreation ofthe restored house.)

I wanted to comb my hair, whichI’d started to wear rather long. My mother, bored and thirsty, left me to it.When I came out, I paused a moment in the hall, and glanced up the great sturdyflex of the stairway. Oddly, or maybe not, no one else was there right then.And then, someone was.

She was standing about halfway upthe stair, and I noticed that where she stood, somehow, was a dark crimsonrunner or carpet, with ornate goldeny edges, which had not, and still was not,apparent anywhere else on the stair. But this sort of melted out, and thenthere was only the girl, standing, looking at me in a quietly bemused way.

I thought she was about my age –thirteen, fifteen, something like that. But she was dressed in the sort ofclothes I now know belonged some thirty years before. A deep blue costume, longstraight skirt just clear of her ankles, a little, waisted jacket and a whiteblouse. Her rich brown hair, unlike mine, was firmly pinned up on her head. Hergrey eyes were sober, and sad.

“Hello,” I said. But I was ratheruneasy. I thought there might be a party going on, fancy-dress, and therefore Iwas certainly out of bounds, and intruding. She didn’t answer. She shook herhead, very gently, as if to say, I’m sorry, but I don’t speak your language.And she turned, and went up the stair – or she began to. After I think threesteps, she vanished. It wasn’t like the carpet, that soft melt-away. One secondshe was visible, quite real, human. And then... nobody was there.

I was a bit quiet over our tea.And when we went out to see the gardens, I wasn’t concentrating entirely,though I remember the fruit trees, all pruned (hacked) back, as if they should neverbe allowed to properly produce blossom, or leaves, let alone fruit, again. (Ofcourse, they would. Some of them are still here, wild now, and very active.)

Next it began to rain again. Webeat it to the car, and drove off, only stopping once at a pub, (adults wereallowed to drink and drive then), for a couple of gins for my parents and somelemonade concoction for me.

It was in the evening, two orthree hours after we had got home. The night was turning chill, but the womanwho ‘helped out’ had laid a fire in the sitting room. My father had lit it, andmy mother had drunk a sherry on top of the two gins, and gone prettily to sleepon the sofa.

My father said to me, “Are you allright, Lizzie? You’ve been a bit quiet, haven’t you?”

I sat, and looked at him, andthen I said, “I think I saw a ghost.”

Unlike Mum, who would have, in friendlyamusement, mocked me and laughed, he only widened his beautiful dark eyes andsaid, “Really? You lucky girl. I suppose this was in the house?”

“Yes.” I told him, without adornment,or shyness, about the girl in the long blue skirt, the melting runner, thevanishment.

He listened, watching me closelyand attentively in a way he had, not – never – as if trying to fault or catchme out, but as if not to miss a single nuance of my emotion and reaction.

When I’d finished, he sighed, Helooked down at his hands, lying quietly together. “As I said, lucky. What awonderful thing to have seen – to have been able to see. Not everybody cansee ghosts, you know. I never have. I’m jealous – no, I’m not. I admire you.Well done, Lizbeth. You make me proud.”

Acouple of days I think after, I asked him what he thought a ghost reallywas. He said it might be a variety of things. Some were recordings on the air,a sort of photograph taken and sometimes stored, due to enormous passion, orhorror, or even love, on the lens of time, and kept for a long while, or evenforever perhaps, in that area where the powerful moment had occurred. But othertypes of ghosts truly did seem to be