‘When did you realize that Cousin Howard was… not quite like us?’ Aunt Emily asked the children.
‘Oh, quite soon,’ said Madlyn. ‘After a few days — only we didn’t like to say anything.’
But now seemed to be a good time to mention their plans for the next Open Day and to ask their great-aunt and great-uncle whether they minded if a few of Cousin Howard’s acquaintances came to help bring in more visitors.
‘What do you think, dear?’ Aunt Emily asked her brother.
Sir George was worrying about some loose stones he had found in the wall of the park and not really listening very hard.
‘I suppose it can’t do any harm. As long as they’re proper ghosts. No cheating.’
‘Oh, they’re proper ghosts all right, Uncle George,’ said Rollo. ‘You can’t get more proper ghosts than these!’
CHAPTER TEN
With only three days to go till Open Day the children started rehearsals for the haunting straight away — and it was very hard work.
Brenda made it clear that she didn’t just want to drip blood on to people — she wanted to strangle them and put her icy hands round their throats and tighten them till they choked.
‘Round men’s throats,’ she said firmly.
Mr Smith was still in a muddle about his size.
‘I can’t fit in there,’ he said, when Madlyn suggested that he might like to lie in the oak chest in the Great Hall because it was the nearest thing they had to a coffin.
‘But, Mr Smith, you’re a skeleton,’ said Madlyn. ‘You can’t be thinner than that.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot.’
When you have been as fat as Mr Smith had been, it is difficult to realize how much you have changed.
Most skeletons are not interesting to talk to because they can’t use proper words; they just rattle their bones and grind their teeth. But Mr Smith, like all the ghosts that Cousin Howard had found, was special, and had kept the deep and matey voice he had had when he was a taxi driver.
Ranulf spent a lot of time buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt.
‘I could open it suddenly, with a flourish,’ he said, ‘so that the rat, so to speak, exploded in people’s faces.’
But when they said yes, that would be good, he thought that maybe unbuttoning it slowly might be better. ‘So that that the tail appeared first,’ he said, ‘and then the legs’…
Because she had worked in a circus, Sunita had a real feeling for special effects. What the children loved particularly was the little sigh she gave just before she separated herself into two halves; it made the whole thing very moving and beautiful.
Which left The Feet. No one knew quite what to do with them and they were standing about rather wearily when the kitchen door opened and a blast of sound from Mrs Grove’s radio came out towards them.
It was a Scottish reel. A special one. The reel of the 51st Highlanders played on the bagpipes.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the left toes began to tap, followed by the toes on the right… and The Feet began to dance. The toes rose and fell, they curled and uncurled. The heels thumped on the floor, the ankle stumps crossed and uncrossed… and all in perfect time to the music.
All Highland reels need to be practised if one is to do them well, but the reel of the 51st Highlanders is the most difficult of all. And here were these ancient hairy feet, with their corns and their calluses, dancing as if to the manner born.
Clearly these were Scottish feet — feet from over the border. Having feet like these at Clawstone could only be an honour, and they decided to bring up Ned’s CD player and let The Feet do what they felt like on the day.
Rehearsing a show too much can be as bad as rehearsing one too little.
The ghosts which Cousin Howard had found had one thing in common: all of them were homeless.
Ranulf’s dungeon had been blown up and a shoe factory built on the site. Brenda, who had liked to haunt the graveyard behind the church where she’d been shot, left it when a motorway was driven through it. Mr Smith’s flat near the taxi rank was bought by a couple who started doing what they called ‘improvements’, which meant knocking down perfectly good walls, putting up partitions and painting the woodwork in colours which made his skull ache. And Sunita’s family had washed their hands of her when she went to work in a circus.
So the first thing the children did was to try and make the ghosts feel comfortable in the castle and give them a place they could call their own.
They offered them the dungeon and the armoury and the banqueting hall — but the ghosts chose the old nursery at the very top of the house. There was a day nursery with a Wendy house and a dappled rocking horse and a tinny piano, and a night nursery with three small beds and a sagging sofa and a row of china chamber pots. There was also a pantry and a scullery where the children’s nannies had prepared their food and washed their nappies.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Madlyn asked, because the rooms, though dusty and full of cobwebs, were light and cheerful. ‘You wouldn’t rather have somewhere damp and dark?’
But the ghosts liked the white-painted rooms, which had belonged to the Percival children long ago. It reminded them of the times before they had grown up, and suffered, and become phantoms. Ranulf spent much of the time on the dappled horse — he said that the rocking movement quietened the rat — and Brenda was pleased with the big sink where she could soak her veil and dab at the spots on her dress. She had told them that she had been a war bride and married at a time when clothes were rationed and one had to save up for them not only with money but with coupons.
‘Thirty-three coupons, this dress cost me,’ she said — and of course that made it understandable that she should be so cross about the blood.
As the big day approached everything seemed to be going really well. The ghosts kept thinking of new and interesting ways of frightening people. Ned had printed leaflets warning people to beware as some terrifying spectres had been found in Clawstone and anyone with heart problems should take care. There was even a small piece in the paper.
And then on the last evening disaster struck.
The children had gone up to the nursery to wish everybody luck — and found that the rooms were empty.
‘Are you there?’ they called.
But already they were alarmed. Ghosts do not usually become invisible when they are staying with friends.
At first nothing happened. Then, very slowly, the ghosts appeared. They were huddled together on the sagging sofa and they looked terrible.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ asked Madlyn.
Brenda cleared her throat. ‘We don’t think we can do it,’ she said ‘It’s too difficult. It’s not what we’ve been used to.’
‘We’ll never get it right,’ said Mr Smith.
‘Do what? What can’t you do?’
‘Haunt like you want us to,’ said Ranulf. ‘Give a proper performance. Scare people.’
The children looked at each other in dismay. They knew what they were dealing with and that it was serious.
Stage fright. The terror that can come out of the blue and attack actors and musicians before a show. Sometimes it passes, but it can be so bad that nothing on earth can make the person go on and perform. The careers of brilliant artists have been completely blighted by stage fright — and no doctor has yet found a cure.
‘We don’t feel we can stay,’ said Ranulf, ‘not if we cannot do what you ask of us.’