The Old Knowledge Read online

  Graham remains dubious, but came round a bit when Fay pointed out that they don’t charge, but ask instead that satisfied clients make a contribution to ‘esoteric studies’.

  ‘And anyway,’ she said, ‘what have we got to lose?’

  Fay and Simon are the most keen on the idea and set about drafting an email explaining what has been happening. In the end we opened a couple of bottles of father’s small store of claret and all had some input into the document. It was almost fun. But after the email had been sent, we realised that the time difference means that we will probably have to wait until the morning for a reply.

  The rest of the day has dragged by. Fay went to the Spar and says that the shelves are half empty. She brought back bacon, eggs and sliced bread, so we had bacon sandwiches for lunch, fried egg sandwiches for supper. Graham has found a pile of coal in the outbuilding so we should be able to eke out the fuel for another few days, if we have to.

  Graham and Simon played dominoes all afternoon. Fay did her knitting and I read my book. Going to bed early is fast becoming a habit.

  January 27th

  It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The groceries were strewn over the kitchen floor and the fridge door left open, a token effort compared to the last couple of nights. After breakfast Simon booted up the computer and collected his emails, amongst them one from Spirit Solutions:

  The answer is in your hands. There is an unquiet one among you, and the spirit feeds on it. The spirit will not rest until you have found the one and soothed away its energies or expunged it from your hearth. Only you will know the solution. Seek and ye shall find. Be careful. We see danger.

  Graham snorted. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘So they’re saying that it’s one of us?’ said Fay, looking puzzled.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I explained, ‘They’re saying that the poltergeist takes its energy from one of us.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Simon. ‘How are we supposed to find out who it is? “Seek and ye shall find.” Isn’t very specific, is it?’

  Graham stood up. ‘You really are a bunch of gullible fools.’

  ‘So how do you explain what’s been happening then, Graham?’

  It has stopped snowing, but there is no sign of a thaw. I have seen neither cars nor people crossing the bottom of the drive: the birds seem to have deserted the garden and even the Spar is closed. A leaden sky hangs over everything, threatening more snow later. I am so cold my bones ache.

  Simon asked, ‘Do you think we should email them again? Ask them for more specific advice?’

  Fay frowned. ‘But they seem to be saying that it is really down to us. “The answer is in your hands.” We’ve got to work it out ourselves. Or we already know.’

  ‘Already know? What on earth do you mean? Christ almighty!’ Graham almost shouted. ‘Don’t tell me you’re actually going to pay lip service to that rubbish. Anyone could have come up with one vague paragraph.’

  ‘Well,’ said Fay ‘I see only one angry person in the room.’

  ‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ Graham got up and stormed out of the kitchen. I could just hear the thud of his bedroom door slamming overhead.

  Fay looked at me and Simon. ‘Well, he is the angry one, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s only sulking,’ I said.

  We spent half an hour or so searching through all the kitchen cupboards and the larder for food, with very little to show for our efforts. Father catered only for his own tastes and all we could come up with was two tins of pilchards in tomato sauce, a bag of macaroni, a packet of rich tea biscuits and some withered, sprouting potatoes. These we added to our own supplies of sliced bread, cheese, eggs and orange juice. Fay and I were discussing possible meals when the door opened and Graham came back in.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. This is all a bit … ghastly, isn’t it. Can we start again? I’ll try not to be such an idiot.’

  ‘Well,’ said Simon, ‘let’s apply some logic to this. Work as a team. What we want is for it to stop, so what can we do to make that happen? If one of us is causing it, then how can we neutralise it?’

  ‘Daddy would be proud of your reasoning skills, Simon,’ said Fay. ‘He taught you well. You always were his favourite.’

  Simon looked at his feet. ‘Oh shut up, Fay.’

  I said, ‘Maybe we should stay up tonight and see if we can be in the room with it when it’s happening.’

  And that, after some discussion, is what we have agreed to do.

  7.30pm

  We have washed up and cleared away after our supper of pilchards and macaroni, and Graham has opened a bottle of wine. The electricity supply failed about an hour ago, so we lit the candles we found in the larder. The Rayburn is burning low—we are trying to save fuel—and I am wearing my coat. Late this afternoon, with the laptop switched on for only a few minutes to conserve the battery, we collected another email from Spirit Solutions:

  Sleep is the enemy of unreason, but you will not rest again until the act is done. The spirit will come in its own time and way—be ready, for you will need all your wits about you. Remember, the past is the key, the present the door. Who will know the future?

  The night stretches out in front of us, and, as we can’t predict in which room our poltergeist will manifest itself, we will, at some point, have to take the candles and tour the rest of the house. Fay looks wan and tired over her knitting, which she seems to be able to do by touch in the semi-darkness of her corner, her needles clicking a staccato tune—it is too dark to read for long, almost too dark to write this. Graham and Simon are playing dominoes at the table, their shadows flickering on the wall in the guttering candlelight. I am shivering in my coat. Waiting, waiting—is this the boredom before the battle?

  9.10pm

  It was hard to keep the candles alight in the cold draughts, so we processed at a slow walk, taking it in turns to enter each room. We listened at the door of father’s study—no one would go in. The music room was icy, the varnished wood of the piano glistening like wet seal skin in the candlelight, the music stands arranged in a spindly quartet.

  Fay shuddered. ‘I haven’t played a note since I left home.’

  We could see through the French windows that it’s snowing again, the flakes falling in thick clumps, further muffling the already frozen ground. Upstairs, the draughts are worse, the candle flames dipped and danced and we had to shield them with our hands.

  The bedrooms are as we had left them—Graham’s bed unmade, Fay’s bed socks and nightdress neatly folded. Simon collected his laptop from his room and back in the kitchen he checked again for emails. There was another one from Spirit Solutions:

  It is time. You are in control and cannot fail. All strength flows from the four to the one. Have courage and it will end well for you.

  10.15pm

  I had forgotten how quickly candles burn. We found another box of them beneath the sink, but they may not last all night. After some discussion we have decided that we should patrol the house every hour or so. Time creeps by while we wait.

  Simon said, ‘When this is over I am going to book a holiday.’

  ‘Somewhere warm.’ I shivered.

  We began upstairs, and this time decided to leave all the doors open, except the one to father’s study. All is quiet; there is nothing to report, except for the cat, a comfort, at least to me. It was scratching at the back door when we returned to the kitchen. Graham unlocked it and the cat stalked in, a plump grey tabby. It trotted, tail up, to the Rayburn and curled itself around a corner of its warmth.

  ‘It looks quite at home,’ said Fay. ‘It must have been in here before.’

  ‘Can you imagine father letting it in?’ snorted Graham.

  It is licking its chest, the slight rasp of its tongue riffling the silence. A few minutes ago I crouched down beside it and gently stroked it’s head, which it tolerated, staring over my shoulder with its yellow eyes. We have nothing to feed it, but it doesn’t seem hungry.


  Instant coffee is keeping us awake and we are refuelling on cheese sandwiches.

  11.25pm

  I think the coffee must be making us jittery. This time around, outside father’s study, we could hear a faint, repetitive scratching, somehow familiar.

  Fay gasped. ‘It’s father’s fountain pen,’ she whispered.

  We looked at each other, eyes wide in horror.

  ‘What is it writing?’ She began her awful dry sobbing.

  ‘No—No,’ said Simon. It’s the apple tree. A twig is tapping at the window, that’s all. The wind is picking up.’

  Listening again you could hear that he was probably right.

  The cat is sitting on the table washing its paws. It has stopped snowing at last and the strengthening wind will be sculpting the laid snow into drifts. Graham has opened the second last bottle of claret.

  Perhaps it will not come tonight. Have we conjured it away?

  12.10am

  The cat is asleep by the Rayburn, and I can’t bring myself to wake it, although I long for the solace that stroking it would bring. Graham is drinking the wine—the rest of us do not have the stomach for it. No one feels like talking.

  The wind is buffeting against the back of the house, making the ill-fitting sash windows rattle in their frames. We should have conducted our twelve o’clock tour by now, but inertia has overcome us. I am beginning to feel sleepy, but cannot face any more coffee. Simon is dozing in the corner chair; Fay is in a dream, wiping the draining board; Graham slumped over his wine at the table. Shall I rouse them, or shall I let them rest for now?

  I will give them five minutes more and then we will go.

  12.30am

  The door to the music room was closed. It may have slammed shut in the draught. The cat followed us and rubbed around our legs as we stopped outside each room, and when Simon opened the music room door it rushed inside. Through the French windows I could see some of the pale wintry garden, father’s shrubs a row of smooth white mounds, the trees tousled in the wind. The cat has hidden itself somewhere and won’t respond to my attempts to call it out, so I have propped the door open with the piano stool. I am sure it will find its way back to the relative warmth of the kitchen when it is ready.

  ‘We may as well go to bed if nothing is going to happen,’ said Graham.

  Back in the kitchen, Graham has returned from a trip to the lavatory and is opening the last bottle of wine. Simon is feeding the Rayburn with a shovelful of coal. Fay has just asked me if I would like another cheese sandwich. It’s like a Sunday afternoon.

  1:05am

  I cannot think straight. Is she right? Is it over now?

  We heard the cat meowing. I assumed it was still in the music room and walked down the hall to bring it back. But when I reached the door it was obvious that it wasn’t in there, and following the sound of its sad little cries, I found myself outside the door of father’s study. There is no doubt about it, the cat is inside. I couldn’t bring myself to open the door.

  ‘So how did the bloody thing get in there?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Poor thing,’ corrected Fay. ‘Did you put it in there when you went to the loo, Graham?’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ said Graham. ‘I almost wish I had done, it would be far less peculiar.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Look, someone has got to open the door and let it out.’

  ‘If it were up to me, I’d leave it in there,’ said Simon. ‘That would teach it to go creeping about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t leave anyone in that room, let alone a cat,’ said Fay. ‘Come on, I’ll do it, if you’ll come with me.’

  So we filed down the hall, candles aloft, Fay taking the lead. The cat kept up its mournful cries as she turned the door-knob and went inside, shutting the door behind her. After a minute or so the meowing stopped, and we could hear the scraping of heavy objects being moved. Then silence. The door-knob twisted and Fay emerged.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s over now.’

  Graham spluttered. ‘What do you mean? Where’s the cat.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh don’t worry about the cat. It’s sorted. We can sell the house. I don’t mind.’

  ‘But Fay …’

  ‘He can’t hurt us anymore. I’m going to bed, and I suggest you do the same.’

  She turned away and headed for the stairs.

  It’s cold in the kitchen now; the Rayburn has gone out. Overhead the heavy footsteps clump up and down the landing. Whispering and faint piano music fill the air. Simon has booted up his computer and the new message from Spirit Solutions is on the screen:

  She is sleeping. Let her rest now, for she will need her strength. But you must stay awake—to face what is to come …

  In the Garden

  It really is a lovely day.

  I’m not used to sitting in the garden, basking in the pleasant weather and enjoying the fruits of my labour. I spend most of my time here weeding and pruning, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to laze around for a change, watching the flower heads bob gently in the soft breeze, listening to the drowsy hum of the bees as they gorge on the comfrey blossoms.

  You’ll have noticed that where we’re sitting, beneath the high wall, is concealed from view. None of the surrounding houses overlook us. We can lounge in perfect peace while we chat—and I’m in a chatty mood today. An afternoon of rest after all my work. Yesterday’s showers mean that even the vegetable plot doesn’t need watering.

  It never ceases to amaze me how the garden, cold and as good as dead just a few months ago, has burgeoned into lush green life. And is it only two years since I hacked back the old lilac tree behind you there?—and look at it now! Tall enough to peep over the wall, its vigour restored by the judicious elimination of unproductive wood.

  You’re not a gardener, are you? So perhaps you don’t know that once a garden is established, much of good gardening is about removal rather than planting, honing what you have to produce a pleasing effect, sacrificing the particular for the good of the whole. Gardening is a creative pastime, but the result is always a work in progress; unlike a painting or a piece of music, a garden is never fixed in time.

  I couldn’t see the attraction when I was a child. My mother would sometimes ask me to help weed our extensive vegetable beds, and it seemed a thankless task to me. I didn’t understand or appreciate the work that went into it, just the end result, which I viewed as entirely natural and given. Perhaps that’s how you see it now? As an adult I have learned to appreciate the satisfaction of managing nature, but as a child the garden was simply my world, the arena of my imagination, the setting for my elaborate games.

  In those games I would order existence to suit myself. One day I’d be head of an animal capture company, exploring the rainforest in search of wildlife to sell to zoos; the next, the tamer of a wild bronco stallion, galloping on my hobby horse round and round the corral until the animal became tired and more responsive to my commands. My favourite game involved my brother as my trusted chimpanzee servant as I ruled, queen-like, over a large household. I expect many children have played similar games in gardens over the centuries, rehearsing unrealistic expectations of their adult lives. The green shoots of our imagination are soon blighted by the late frosts of adolescence.

  Before we moved here I’d never owned a garden larger than a postage stamp, and at first I was daunted by it. I tinkered around the edges, snipping a twig here, pulling a weed there. But gradually I’ve become more confident, and now, I feel, I have ordered it how I want it, within the limits of the time available and the amount of money I’ve had to spend. I think you’ll agree that it pleases the eye—is well designed, both ornamental and practical. The oriental poppies are over now, and I have tidied them away, but they are one of my additions, along with the ferns and hostas in the shade of the southern wall. I removed the rowan tree that overshadowed the goldfish pond, and dug the vegetable beds over by the pear tree. The chairs we are sitting on I found in an architectural salvag
e yard. Despite the occasional attack of aphids and the despoliations of the wind that blows down this valley, I have charmed—and coerced—nature into doing my bidding.

  Stephan doesn’t spend much time working in the garden; he regards it as my domain, which suits me. As you know, he prefers to tinker around with car engines. Each to their own. In the summer he comes out here to eat his meals in the sun, and he feeds the goldfish every day. I think he appreciates the garden, although he’s been so busy recently he’s not spent much time at home. We have achieved a hard-won symbiosis, he and I, which is as satisfying to me as it is, I have always thought, to him. We rub along well together, which is more than you can say for most couples. You’re probably too young to understand.

  I wouldn’t want you to think that I am totally obsessed by my garden. I do have other interests: reading, for one, and my voluntary work. But gardening is the way I unwind; it soothes away the cares of the day and keeps me fit. I’ve never been one for the gym—by the look of you, I expect you go regularly. When you get to my age you have to allow for a bit of running to seed—middle-aged spread—as you know, we don’t have any children to chase around after—although I must say that Stephan somehow manages to keep himself trim.

  We did try to have children, but it wasn’t to be. I’m not one for test tubes and hormones and what have you. I think it’s best to accept the hand you’re dealt on that score. I thought about adoption or fostering, but Stephan wasn’t keen. He said, ‘I don’t want to look after someone else’s kids’, which is, I suppose, an entirely natural response. This would’ve been a good garden for children to play in, though, wouldn’t it? With all its nooks and crannies. There are plenty of places to hide and you could play cricket on the lawn.

  I love columbines—don’t you? So willowy and delicate-looking. And so easy to grow; they sow themselves everywhere. In fact I spend quite a lot of time digging up the seedlings so that they don’t completely take over. For such a fragile looking plant it’s very invasive.

  Some plants are like that; you have to take them in hand. Others—that delphinium over there for instance—need nurturing and protecting—from slugs and the wind —otherwise they’d never flower at all. And the lilies, so showy and fragrant, so worth the wait! I have even had some success with roses, although blackspot is a perennial problem. Each flower in the garden has its season—its time and its place—and the picture changes from week to week—day to day, even—so you never get bored. Well I don’t, anyway. I feel I am here to nurture each plant and encourage it to perform to the best of its ability.