DO YOU think ghosts move from house to house on a whim like those ambitious young executives?
You know, read the property papers over toast and marmalade on sticky-lipped Saturdays and suddenly decide that they need a house in the country, not too far from the town – with a sunbeam patio, a four-car garage, an all seasons’ swimming pool, an entertaining hall for parties and en-suite bedrooms for guests, overlooking a neighbour’s mock timbers and Elizabethan beams.
In the big house, under whose slates I first rubbed my eyes, memories were pickled on green shelves during the cold whistles of night. Cobwebs gathered in damp, brown corners like spinsters’ hairnets.
Here, the old spirits felt at home, entering rooms without so much as a knock or a “by your leave”, to breathe into my fresh dreams. If you peeped over the bedspread, they winked at each other, while stretching prayerful fingers over the slow-sighing coals of the hearth, behind the rug, on which lay a wary dog, her eyelids hung low and red, her gaze never failing.
Could they smell the Vicks vapour-rub, which cleared the wheezes in my own washboard of a chest? Then the foghorns hooted on the river and they were gone, leaving no trace of their being, though they were still smiling, behind my eyelids.
I have always believed in ghosts. But they haunt people, not houses.
On this particular weekend, our 12-year-old son had gone on a coach trip to France with the school and the house seemed very quiet and empty without him – re-enacting great battles on his computer, spreading his homework across the kitchen table, laughing again and again at The Simpsons and the old videos of Fawlty Towers and Dad’s Army.
He is already leaving memories behind and, with the passing of time, the stronger ones will mature into ghosts. We all do this, leaving bits of ourselves behind to reappear in the memory. Sometimes, when I am out walking in a familiar place, I see a vaguely familiar figure stepping gingerly through the mist. We greet each other. He smiles. I squint my eyes. Oh no, it is me!
“Go easy on the old booze, old bean,” I say to him, staring at his pale face, like the wise older man. “It’ll ruin your health.”
But he just shrugs. Ah, the arrogance of youth. Then he wanders off, some newspaper story buzzing in his head. We’ll meet again soon. Hauntings are photographs of the mind.
Such thoughts were settling warmly over me on the Saturday when my wife breezed into the lounge, looking younger than ever and carrying a mug of coffee.
“I’ve made an appointment at the vet’s. Hurry or you’ll miss it,” she announced.
I blanched. Was I to be immunised against distemper, muzzled, clipped, or dipped in a flea-repellent?
“Not you,” she said, on spotting the alarmed expression on my face. “The appointment’s for Milly and Molly.”
It was our rabbits’ annual check-up. “Molly has been piling on the pounds of late,” said my wife. “I hope the vet doesn’t think she is clinically obese. She would be very hurt if he told her that. She has such delicate feelings, you know.”
“Indeed, yes,” I concurred.
But ghosts were being made in the waiting room at the veterinary surgery. For we are haunted by pets as well, each one finding a special place in our memories. The old people, sitting in rows with their little cats and dogs, patiently waiting their turns, were pictures of anxious devotion.
The bell sounded on the counter. “Next, Scamp and Mrs Butterworth, please.”
Milly and Molly were given a clean bill of health and we returned home. That night we went for a grand meal in a restaurant and spoke and laughed about the old days. A parade of people appeared before us – as they were then, not as they are now.
And Sunday dawned, cold and wet. I decided to tidy the garage, where for years we have stored almost forgotten bits of our lives – cups, saucers, pots, pans, chairs, a couch, tables, books, family games, a Christmas tree, a bicycle, a pogo stick, a scooter, coat-hangers, wellies, Lonnie Donegan records, friction-drive toys..
Some hours later, when I went back to the house, it was vibrant again, full of true life.
“Mum, where are my shin pads?” called our son.
“Where you left them.”
“Where’s that?”
“Under the bed with your socks and pyjamas.”
Why do I believe in ghosts? Well, I like to keep the memories alive. They’re all we have. Pictures of the past, call them whatever you like. But they are there.
* LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk
