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I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
— When Death Comes by Mary Oliver
“Mike!”
The paper garland Alison had been attempting to pin above the fireplace for half an hour fluttered to the ground, unattended. She ignored it in favour of her phone, a shining light in the midst of a sea of loose Christmas decorations.
The rest of the Coopers weren’t coming until New Year, this time around, but that didn’t mean they could hold back on the festivities. Fanny would find a way to die, again, just to inconvenience Alison for such a betrayal of the sacred traditions of Button House.
Mike stuck his head through the garden door, arms weighed down with about six miles of fairy lights. “Wife?”
Alison rolled her eyes. “We’ve got a weird email.” She scrolled back up with her thumb and read the subject line again. It had a lot of punctuation. “Two old ladies want to come to the grounds to scatter their uncle’s ashes. Apparently he requested it in his will.”
“Oh. How long’ve they been at that then?”
Alison squinted at her phone. “Uh, says he died… Jesus Christ, Mike, he died sixty years ago.”
“Jeez. I didn’t even know they’d invented cremation back then.”
Robin grunted. “What cremation?”
“When your body gets incinerated after death,” said Julian, apparently unconcerned that Mary was standing barely a foot to his left, hands going through the motions of knitting a garter stitch. Alison had been to a few of the ghost’s Hobby Club meetings now, mostly to hold things up at the right moments; sometimes it was educational.
Unsurprisingly, she wailed and ran through the door to the drawing room in a cloud of smoke and tears. Kitty followed, dutifully, just as the Captain stepped through from the other side.
“Maybe I should start propping the doors open,” said Alison thoughtfully. Kitty and the Captain both rubbed at their foreheads; the Captain seemed to be trying to conceal the fact of it behind his other hand.
“Might be an idea,” said Pat, sotto voce. “Can’t really get concussed, being dead, but we can definitely feel pain!”
He said this in a way which Alison found, quite frankly, unsettlingly cheerful. “Oh,” she said, mostly to fill the silence. “That’s, er, interesting.”
“Yeah,” he continued, a distant look in his eyes. “Sometimes I catch me arrow on the doorway. Really smarts, that does.”
Alison shuddered.
Mike cleared his throat. “Um, getting back on track for a minute. We do need to respond to the weirdos, right?”
“Yeah, probably,” said Alison. She sighed. “This is actually the fourth time they’ve emailed, it’s just that the last three cut off mid sentence before they got to the point. They’re clearly not that tech savvy.”
“Classic granny behaviour,” said Mike, sagely. “Well, it can’t do any harm, can it? Might fertilise the lawn or whatever.”
“Not sure the grass needs any encouragement,” Alison muttered. They’d shelled out a good chunk of their last wedding payment for a landscaper to come and kiss his teeth over the state of the gardens. “But I s’pose you’re right. If nothing else you can give them a business card or something.”
The business card stockpile situation was getting dire.
From: [email protected]
Ms & Ms Ludgate,
We would be happy for you to visit and scatter your uncle’s ashes in the grounds. Sounds like he’s been cooped up long enough!
Please let us know when you’ll be visiting so we can put the kettle on :)
From
Alison Cooper
--------------------------
>>>> Dear Mrs Cooper,
Please forgive me for my presumption, but our discovery that ownership of Button House had changed hands required immediate action!!
You see, after my uncle’s death in 1960...
[Show Whole Message]
Mike did end up giving Harriet a business card. She took it politely and, with barely a glance, slid it into one of the seemingly infinite number of dividers in her purse, never to be seen again.
Alison was sure Mike counted that as a win. Someday she’ll be cleaning out her purse, and then she’ll realise she just needs to hold a tasteful event at a charmingly rustic country house, Ali. She smiled, imagining how excited he’d get if they ever did receive just such a request.
She, meanwhile, was busy trying not to gape at the ghost which was following closely behind the Mses Ludgate, apparently dragged along by some unknown force.
He was wearing blue and white striped pyjamas and a put-upon expression, as if this day trip was merely another indignity in a long and unfulfilling afterlife.
Alison trained her eyes on a spot in the middle distance and said, “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
The sky was indeed clear and blue, but the biting cold of late December was not exactly Alison’s dream scenario for an ash scattering. She sent up a quick prayer to anyone listening asking to keep any breezes far away from her for the morning. The last thing she needed was a mouthful of human remains.
Ms Ludgate the first, a stout octogenarian with a blue rinse and more wrinkles than a satsuma, nodded pleasantly. “I think he would appreciate it,” she said. “Mother always said he was quite outdoorsy.”
“Did you know him that well?” asked Alison.
She shook her head, looking sad. Her face grew, somehow, even more wrinkled when she frowned. “He died when I was still at school, and my father didn’t like him much. But we wrote to one another quite a lot, before then — I think he was a bit lonely, after the war.”
The ghost opened his mouth, as if to interject, then shut it again. Alison wondered how many times he’d done that in the past sixty-odd years.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. She waved at the cardboard box in the arms of the other Ms Ludgate, a much less stout woman with tightly curled hair. “I’m not sure how these things go normally, but you’re welcome to do the honours whenever you’re ready.”
Maybe then your uncle can get sucked off, she thought, and glanced over at the ghost before she could catch herself. He was frowning into the distance, thankfully unaware of Alison's attention — at least for the time being.
Her own head was a terrible place to be sometimes. Ms Ludgate the elder carefully removed the lid from the box she'd been carrying. The ghost went to stand at her shoulder, a solemn expression on his face.
She wandered off towards the house, hoping to give the old women some privacy for their goodbyes.
Mike came to find her in the forecourt and offered her a cup of tea. The mug was one of her favourites, old and chipped with a fading print of Jolly Tall on the side. Mum used to make her hot chocolate in it whenever she was home ill from school.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the mug with both hands and relishing the sting as circulation returned to her fingertips. “The Ludgates are almost done, I think. Thought I should give them a minute to, y’know, do the deed.”
Mike nodded a few times. “Nice, nice. Did they mention anything about the business card, y’know, ask for more details…?” He trailed off hopefully.
Alison shook her head. “No, Mike. They’re saying goodbye to a family member. Might not be the time for the hard sell.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” said Mike. He sighed. “If only the uncle was hanging about. You could ask him to do some ghost mojo.”
“Ghost mojo?” Alison sputtered, spilling tea over her hand. “Ow, shit.”
The ensuing fuss over her hand — Mike dragged her into the kitchen to run it under the cold tap, then spent five minutes wrestling with their ancient ice tray until it yielded enough cubes for an ice pack — took long enough that Alison almost forgot the most pressing issue of the morning.
“I’ve just remembered,” she said, as Mike gingerly rested a tea towel full of ice on her wrist for the third time — it kept slipping off. “The uncle was hanging about. Following the nieces around looking like a wet weekend, the poor guy.”
Mike hummed thoughtfully. “Didn’t know ghosts could do that. Our lot are stuck in the grounds of the house, right?”
It warmed Alison’s heart a bit to hear Mike referring to them as ‘their’ ghosts, rather than just hers. Then she sternly told herself to stop being such a wimp, at least until her hand stopped hurting and she could give Mike a proper cuddle about it.
“Yeah,” she said, chewing on her lip. “I guess it’s not exactly a science, is it? I mean, a lot of the ghosts I see out and about are sort of… uncommunicative. Maybe there’s lots of different types of them.”
“Like Pokemon,” said Mike.
Alison raised her eyebrows.
“Alright,” Mike said, a bit sad. “Maybe not that much like Pokemon.”
She gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then stood up. The tea towel slithered to the floor, littering ice cubes across the flagstones.
“Back into the breach?” Mike asked.
“Better make sure they leave before some of the stonework falls on them,” she replied. That hadn’t happened in a while, but the anxious anticipation remained.
As it turned out, by the time she got back to the forecourt the Ludgates’ car had already vanished. The gravel had been churned up by the wheels; Mike would need to get out with a rake before the mud underneath froze again.
The uncle’s ghost, however, remained. He stood a few metres from the front entrance, hands braced behind his back, head tilted up to look at the façade.
Alison weighed up her options for a moment before wandering over to stand beside him.
“Hello,” she offered.
The ghost actually jumped, then turned to look at her with wide eyes. His hair was just beginning to grey, his eyes heavy at the corners. He couldn’t have been much more than fifty when he died, stuck in the moderately well-preserved state of a man of modest habits. He didn’t have a visibly mortal wound, or a face that drooped to one side.
“You can… see me?” He asked, voice full of a kind of tentative hope. He sounded posh, but not quite as posh as Fanny did. Probably went to public school, but (hopefully) not another Eton graduate. Julian had grown on Alison like mould, but that didn't mean she wanted another one around.
“Yeah,” said Alison. She smiled gently. “I’m guessing I’m the first person who’s been able to? I mean, since…”
She trailed off. It wasn’t easy to acknowledge the dead elephant in the room, as it turned out.
The ghost gave her a deeply mournful look. "I've been in the garage since eighty-four." He gestured at himself, from his slightly messy hair to bed-socked feet. “And before then I was in my sister’s attic.”
His hands naturally returned to their position behind his back. It was oddly familiar, scratching at something in the back of Alison’s mind.
“So, yes. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in… quite some time.” He cleared his throat, then glanced down at his feet. “Or at least, the first person who’s known I was speaking to them."
Alison glanced up at the front of the house, half expecting a gaggle of ghosts to be spectating, and was surprised to find none in evidence. She checked her watch, then remembered it would be Impressions Club for another half an hour.
Perfect.
“Pleased to meet you, in that case,” she said. She waved. “I’d shake your hand, but…”
The ghost shuddered. “Yes, I think that might be best.” He paused, then looked back at the house. His eyes seemed drawn to it, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “It looks just the same,” he said, quietly enough that Alison didn’t think it was meant for her ears.
“I’m Alison,” she said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to continue. “Me and my husband own the house now. Big, complicated inheritance thing. Honestly I still don’t really understand it.”
“William,” said the ghost. His hand twitched, as if reaching for a hat to doff. “I haven’t bought a house since nineteen-fifty, but I imagine it’s still out there somewhere.”
The scratch at the back of her mind grew claws.
“I’ll give you the grand tour, if you like,” she offered. “Then I can introduce you to the others.”
He looked at her sharply. “Others?”
“What,” she said, feeling weirdly amused. “You thought you were the only ghost at Button House?”
William apparently hadn’t realised that he could walk through doors until Alison accidentally let one swing closed behind her. He braced himself for impact, then looked baffled when nothing happened.
“Not much opportunity to test things out in a garage, I s’pose,” she said, as he brushed down his pyjamas and frowned back at the door.
“No, not as such,” he replied. He glanced at his hands again. “I must say, I appreciate the attention you’re paying to the renovations.”
She hadn’t meant to ramble about subfloor reinforcement and plastering while showing William around the house, but he’d nodded encouragingly enough times that she’d completely lost the self-conscious feeling she usually got when talking to someone new.
“Thank you,” she said. “We’re doing our best, really. We had a couple of nightmare projects back when we first moved in, so we’ve been much more careful now we’re starting to fix more rooms.”
The east wing Fanny had been so concerned with was their current focus. While they’d abandoned the hotel pipedream years ago, Alison still hoped they’d be able to convert some of the spare rooms into a hostel of some kind. They’d contacted Shelter about it and received an enthusiastic reply, but it would be a while before the renovations progressed far enough for anything official.
“Well, it wasn’t a great deal more intact when I was last here,” said William, running a hand over a crack in the panelling. His fingers dipped into the wall slightly, down to the first knuckle. “We were just told to stick to the parts the army deemed safe and leave the rest to the family.”
Alison froze, her left foot hovering over the threshold to the music room (not actually used for music anymore, but Fanny insisted on the name).
“The army?”
Several puzzle pieces fell into place in her head.
William nodded. “I was posted here during the war,” he replied. “Is there… some problem?”
“No, no, god. Not at all. I mean, maybe if you were in the army now, but, y’know, fighting the Nazis, all good in my book.” She waved her hands about a bit, trying not to freak out. “Um, I was just, er, surprised. Since you’ve got the pyjamas on, and everything. Didn’t really expect the military connection.”
“I’ll have you know these pyjamas are standard issue,” said William, with a slight smile.
“Of course,” said Alison. She checked her watch again, then bit her lip. Impressions Club would be finishing in a minute — it would be the best time to catch everyone together, rather than make introductions piecemeal.
But then again — maybe it would be best if she could catch one particular ghost on his own?
William tilted his head, as if trying to read her mind. Alison tried not to look guilty, then remembered that ghosts, for all their impossibility, were not actually telepathic.
Then she worried that maybe William was, and she was going to have to cope with a whole new set of ghost-specific problems.
“I think you said something about other… ghosts?” He seemed unsure about the term, his tone slightly inquisitive.
“Yes! Yes, sorry. And ghosts is the word we all use, at least so far. If anyone changes their mind I’m sure we’ll all get used to it quickly enough, though.” She opened the door to the drawing room a crack.
The sound of Julian’s abysmal American accent drifted through the doorway.
"I am not a crook!"
“He got that off the telly,” said Alison, with a sigh. William nodded, eyes politely blank.
“It’s a thing Richard Nixon— no, you know what? Never mind.” She pushed the door fully open, interrupting Julian’s flow, and cleared her throat.
Kitty clapped her hands in delight. “Alison! Have you come to do your Julia Child impression again?”
“No, Kitty,” said Alison. “And that wasn’t an impression, I just had a cold.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I, uh, actually wanted to talk to everyone. While you’re here, I mean.”
Thomas gasped, hands clasped over his heart. “You’re with child?”
“No! Christ, Thomas, can you stop saying that every time I want to talk to you?”
He flopped back into the chair, sulkily, and crossed his arms. “One day I’ll be right.”
She opened her mouth to continue.
“Are the woodworm men coming backs?” asked Mary, with a quavering gasp. “I dids the wardings against them, but I cans feel something approaching…”
“Not that either, Mary,” said Alison. She glanced around the room. Thomas was on the sofa with Kitty and Humphrey’s body, Humphrey’s head was in Robin’s lap, Mary was in the rocking chair (which refused to rock for her), Julian was leaning on the piano, Pat was in the overstuffed loveseat by the window — almost everyone was accounted for. Fanny rarely attended Impressions Club, claiming it was beneath a lady of her stature, which only left… “Hang on. Where’s the Captain?”
“Said he weren’t in the mood for impressions today,” whispered Pat, as if this were a sign of the end times.
Thomas shook his head. “Stole my good brooding spot, the blackguard.”
"He get like this round Christmas," said Robin. He made a face, only marginally different to his usual expression of mild interest. "Last year was bit different, lot of people. Maybe he catch up on moping now."
“Right,” said Alison. She sighed. “Well, I have news anyway. Exciting news!” She glanced back at the doorway, where just the tip of one of William’s toes was visible. “You all know we had some visitors this morning, right?”
“Yeah,” said Robin. The mild interest was back. “Old women come to throw uncle dust on grass. Bit weird, but sweet.”
“Well,” Alison said. “It turns out the uncle is a ghost! And he’s, um, he’s here now. Probably for good?”
Thomas looked liable to kick Humphrey's head through the ceiling, again. The rest of the ghosts didn't fare much better; the volume climbed sharply enough that even Julian's cries of Order! went unheard beneath the din.
Alison slipped back out of the door and beckoned William over from the window. He’d been staring out of it, apparently transfixed on some point in the distance.
“Are you… alright?” She wanted, suddenly and desperately, to give him a hug. He looked like he could do with one, frankly, as he turned to look back at her, picking at a loose thread on his shirt which must have been bothering him for decades.
William huffed a laugh, then shook his head. “I’m better than I’ve been in some time, actually.” He glanced out of the window again, just for a moment.
“Do you… want to come in? I know it sounds like a riot in there, but I promise they’re just excited.” She gestured to the door. “They haven’t had a new ghost in thirty years.”
He smiled again, the small one he’d worn to admire the front of the house. “Well, I’d hate to disappoint them.”
She led him through the door, checking just once to make sure he followed. Everyone fell silent.
The whole scenario struck Alison as being a lot like a kid getting introduced to a new class in primary school. She resisted the urge to put her hands in the vicinity of William’s shoulders and say, 'Now we’re all going to show William how lovely and welcoming we can be, aren’t we?'
“This is William,” she said, glancing sideways to watch him take in the room full of ghosts. “He was here during the war, apparently, so you might recognise him?”
Kitty frowned thoughtfully, then smiled in recognition. “Do you know, you do seem familiar! I always remember a kind face,” she said, brightly. “And yours does seem extremely kind.”
“Thank you,” said William. He took a step toward the group, hands once again clasped behind his back. “I’m very sorry to say I don’t remember any of you.” He smiled.
Julian guffawed. “Oh, he jokes! Thank god for that.”
Once again, Alison considered the logistics of punching Julian in the arm. Luckily, Pat sorted that out for her by elbowing him in the ribs. God, she loved Pat.
“Sorry about Julian. Just try not to go up the stairs behind him and you’ll be alright.” Pat grinned. “Nice to meet you, William!”
“Pleasure,” said William. Pat patted the seat beside him. William frowned thoughtfully at the chair for a moment, then sat down. He looked pleasantly surprised when he stayed put.
“I don’t really understand that either,” said Humphrey from a few feet away. Alison jumped slightly; she'd forgotten he was still under the piano. “Where's the logic in walking on the floorboards but going straight through doors? Beggars belief!”
There was a general hum of agreement.
“Been a ghost long, then?” asked Pat.
“Since I died, I think,” said William, after a moment. “I have to admit, it all becomes a bit of a blur after a decade or so stuck in the loft insulation.”
Alison closed her eyes and tried not to feel the overwhelming existential despair implied by that statement. Then her stomach rumbled and she remembered that, unlike most of the residents of the house, she actually had to eat at lunchtime.
She risked one last glance at the group before she went in search of a sandwich. William, apparently deep in conversation with Pat about his time in the garage — “I’d be sticking me head in the engine, getting a good look at those spark plugs,” — looked like he’d fit in fine.
Walking to the kitchen from the drawing room normally took Alison a few minutes, half that if she was in a hurry. On this occasion she took her time, her thoughts in a tangle.
She made her sandwich — cheese and marmite — and ate it while chewing over a few things in her mind.
Mike’s Ghost Board got updated with new pictures every so often, but Alison could still easily see the photo of the Captain she’d pinned up. She’d found it online, on an ancient website clearly maintained by the children of someone who’d been in the Captain’s unit for officer training. It hadn’t listed him by name — and she wouldn’t have known it even if he was, she supposed — but his face was easy to recognise.
She didn’t know all that much about what he’d done in the war, really. She knew he’d been stationed at Button House, and he'd told her once he hadn't gone overseas until nineteen forty-two. She knew he’d had a lieutenant, last name Havers. first name not-shared. She knew that he was definitely lying about the name of Operation William. Honestly, he must not have heard many of the actual secret operation names to come up with a lie like that.
What she didn’t know for sure was why he’d lied about it in the first place. She had a pretty good guess, though.
She scraped her crusts into the food bin and pulled on her jacket. No time to waste; she had a brooding spot to locate.
It didn’t take long, all told. Thomas drowned himself in the lake at least once a month, and it wasn’t exactly a big lake.
It was covered in mist that floated above the water, obscuring the view of the ducks valiantly digging for worms on the far bank. The Captain sat with his feet in the shallows and his chin in one hand, swagger stick abandoned in the mud beside his elbow.
“Hi, Captain,” said Alison.
“Haarghh,” he said, startled. His elbow slid off his thigh and into the mud. He put his hands on his knees, clearly thinking about pushing himself to his feet, then stopped. “Hello, Alison.”
“I thought I should talk to you,” she said. She crouched down beside him, careful not to overbalance. “There’s been a development at the house.”
“Hmm,” he said.
Alison waited for a few moments. Usually the Captain would leap on something like that, taking the opportunity to take charge on some problem and try to strategise the perfect solution.
He wasn’t always the best at it — clearly he was still used to military problems — but she appreciated that he tried.
This time though, he just seemed tired.
“Are you alright?” She badly wanted, for the second time that day, to hug a ghost. It was becoming something of a problem.
The Captain pushed himself upwards abruptly, visibly holding back a groan of complaint as his back straightened. His swagger stick was still in the mud. “Yes, of course. Never better.”
Alison raised her eyebrows. “Well, whenever your perfectly fine self feels like coming back to the house, there’s someone you should meet.”
Again, she added privately.
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive
— Sabbaths VIII by Wendell Berry
William didn’t know how to have conversations anymore.
This was not, strictly speaking, a pressing issue. Pat spoke enough for four people easily, and William was quite happy simply to sit back and listen to him pontificate about the eighty-one Scouts’ trip to Stonehenge, with accompanying interruptions by Robin on the subject of Neolithic religious practice. It was not how William used to be, though, and it unsettled him to realise that, even in death, he could still change.
“And then Jim realised his woggle was back on the coach!” Pat’s laugh was infectious even if William had no idea why the punchline was supposed to be funny. He was still laughing softly when Alison skidded back into the room, shoes coated in mud.
A string of tinsel drifted to the floor behind her, one end still clinging to the door jamb for dear life.
It was, William thought, already clear how fortunate he was to have found himself in the company of Alison. She could be absent minded, as had become obvious during their tour around the house, but she made up for it with a determined, deliberate kindness William felt slightly overwhelmed by.
The other residents of the house had already noted that they'd never met another living adult who could see them; it seemed almost miraculous that he would end up at the one house in the country where a living advocate resided.
“Alison!!!” Kitty bounced out of her seat in delight. “Oh, it’s so lovely to have a new friend!!!! I’m so excited I could just—”
Everyone in the room leaned away from her, for some reason William couldn’t fathom. She collected herself after a moment in which she seemed to be gagging, and smiled prettily. “Sorry everyone!!! Everything’s staying inside me for now.”
“That’s great, Kitty, thank you,” said Alison. She smiled at the other woman with the sort of gentle fondness William still felt for Harriet and Ethel, even after forty years of solitude. “I was just coming in to ask about, er, Film Club. I think it’s Mary’s turn to choose?”
“Oooh, I do be excited for that,” said Mary. William wasn’t quite sure what to make of her yet, but the smell of burning had given him enough clues to realise he wouldn’t need to ask how she’d died. “I like the little picture of the potato man… can we watch him? I want to know his secrets…”
Alison nodded. “ET’s a cracking film,” she said. “Really horrifying implications. Did you ever get a chance to see it, Pat?”
“I did, yeah,” said Pat. “Came out the same week as that one with the bloke whose head turned into a spider… made me feel a bit funny, that did. Spielberg was always a bit more, er, normal.”
“Oh, it be a Spielberg?” Mary asked. “He do be a good hand at the little pictures. I likes his way with the framings.”
William tried to remember the last time he’d been to the pictures. He was fairly sure Marilyn Monroe had been in it — his brother-in-law had been a fan of hers, in a way which William had always found somewhat distasteful. She seemed like a smart woman, anyway. And she’d been very good in the film, as far as he could recall.
He hadn’t been lying when he said the years had started to blur together, stuck in the attic and then in the garage without anyone to talk to. Seeing people occasionally coming into the garage almost made it worse than being completely alone up in the rafters.
The cushions below him hadn’t shifted when he sat down. He curled his fingernails into his palm on the armrest and wondered why they regrew when he bit them to the quick.
At least he’d died wearing something comfortable. He eyed Thomas for a moment, blood staining the front of his waistcoat. He much preferred his slightly worn pyjamas, for all that he knew the threadbare patches of it by heart after so long with only that for entertainment.
Occasionally he regretted not keeping a book in one of his pockets. Something by Sayers, maybe.
He picked at a loose thread on his cuff — he’d unravelled that same thread hundreds of times. Every time he did, it would restore itself between one blink and the next.
Alison cleared her throat.
“Oh,” he said, looking up from his wrist. “Hello, Alison.”
“Hello,” she replied. She seemed stressed, although William wasn’t sure why. “I just wanted to, er, warn you, that there’s still a few people for you to meet.”
He blinked. “Oh,” he repeated. “I — there are quite a lot of us, aren’t there?”
“Yeah,” she said, voice filled with sympathy. “Just two more, actually. And — I think one of them might be at least familiar.”
William had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Not unless —
He looked up at the doorway. Some small sound had drawn his attention, an intake of breath.
Three surprised blinks in a row might have been a personal record. He rubbed at one eye, squeezed shut, until fireworks sparked on the inside of his eyelid.
The Captain was still in the doorway when he opened his eyes, even with the sparks dancing across his vision.
William stood up. Some unconscious part of himself was still trained to stand when a superior officer entered the room, although the Captain had never made him do so on ceremony.
“Captain,” he said, feeling very out of place in his pyjamas. His hands itched for his Sam Browne. He clasped them behind his back instead, fingernails digging soft indents into his wrists.
“Ah,” said Alison, somewhere in another universe. “Yeah, I thought so.”
He heard her start to chivvy the other ghosts out of the room. Julian protested loudly. William got the feeling Julian spent most of his time doing that — he seemed well practised at it.
“Havers,” said the Captain. His voice scratched its way out of his throat. He stepped over the threshold.
His footsteps made no noise on the floorboards. William looked at his own feet, self-conscious of his lack of shoes.
The Captain came to a stop less than a yard away, one foot slightly behind the other. Not quite parade rest, then.
William looked up. The Captain looked back. He could remember the last time he’d seen that face, far away through the window of Button House.
He’d died in his uniform. William ought to have expected that. He’d heard about the Captain’s death. He hadn’t been able to go to the funeral, stuck recuperating from a long illness. He’d sent flowers.
It hurt to think about. Somehow, it hurt more when the Captain was in front of him than it had when he’d been in hospital looking at the thank you note from his family.
“It’s been a long time, sir,” he said, eventually. He tilted his head, feeling a smile rise despite the tightness in his chest.
“Yes,” said the Captain. “It has.” He paused again, apparently lost for words. His left hand twitched at his side.
“I’m afraid I might be a little underdressed,” William offered. “But I didn’t know we would meet like this.”
“That’s quite alright, Havers.” He paused. His hand twitched again, then lifted just far enough to brush his fingers against William’s sleeve. “I can’t say either of us could have anticipated this.”
“No, sir,” he replied. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”
When they’d been stationed at Button House together, the unit had made much of the Captain’s taciturn nature. He was a good commanding officer, if a little nervous, and they’d worked well together on the limpet mine project, but William had to admit that he, too, had often found the Captain hard to read. It was difficult to tell whether he was making too much of non-verbal cues, when most of what was being said was kept strictly professional.
The moments he’d clung to over the intervening decades were the moments things began to blur. When the Captain passed him in the corridors at night, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and top button undone, heading for the washroom. Evenings in the library spent reading quietly together, surreptitiously watching the Captain’s lips twitch in amusement at the Wodehouse he was working through, book by book. Cricket in the grounds, all wearing the equipment over their uniforms, watching the Captain cheer after William hit a six on the last over.
He’d thought about them enough that the memories were growing blurry and indistinct. The cricket matches ran together until he couldn’t quite remember which game he’d broken the lemonade bottle with a wide bowl, and which had been the Captain’s first century. He could remember the Captain’s smile at Bertie Wooster’s antics but he couldn’t recall the title of any of the books he’d supposedly read alongside him.
There had been one evening, only a few weeks into their posting, when the line had blurred far enough that it was almost invisible.
The Captain had been unusually dressed-down that evening, divested of his uniform jacket and hat in deference to the roaring fire in the grate, his swagger stick nowhere to be seen. It had been near Christmas then, William remembered, with a variety of homemade decorations pinned above the mantle. His mother had sent him a knitted stocking for the end of his bed, apparently ignorant of the fact that he was nearing forty years old and Father Christmas had ceased his visits some decades before.
The other lads had laughed when they saw it, and he’d had a feeling he was going to end up with a tangerine or two stuffed into the toe on Christmas morning. No home leave for the Button House contingent, sadly.
He’d gone to the Captain’s office with the intention of delivering a report on the progress of his own munitions research. His knock on the door had been answered with an offer of a drink, and before he was quite sure how it happened he’d loosened his tie and sat down with the Captain for a nightcap.
Then he’d looked across at his superior officer in a rare moment of relaxation and thought, he looks rather handsome in the firelight. And, in William’s defense, he had. The shadows had flickered pleasingly along his jaw, his mouth softened from its usual hard line.
A passing fancy, if it hadn’t been for the thought that had followed it: I could kiss him. He could imagine pressing his fingers into the rough skin beneath the Captain’s chin.
Needless to say, he hadn’t gone through with it. He’d felt himself flush scarlet, blamed the brandy, and excused himself with a murmur about checking in with the household staff about catering for the upcoming Christmas party.
It took him a long time to be comfortable with that feeling. He’d pushed it down deep inside himself, at the time. He didn’t let himself even think about it again until long after he woke up to see his own body being loaded into an ambulance.
He met the Captain’s eyes, the familiar grey a balm to his nerves. “You’ve been… well, I hope?”
“Oh, yes, yes, well enough, thank you,” said the Captain. “I mean, besides the obvious.” He waved his hand to encompass the house, himself, and presumably the concept of the afterlife itself.
William laughed, despite himself. The Captain’s eyes widened just a fraction. “The same for me, I’m afraid. Although it’s good to have some company, at last.”
“Yes, I can imagine it would be,” he replied, then cleared his throat. “I, ah. It’s good to see you, Havers.”
“You too, sir,” said William. “As we said, it’s been some time.”
He wasn’t sure how to move past that conversational hurdle.
Luckily, they were interrupted before he could embarrass himself.
“And who is this underdressed interloper?” An old-fashioned matron in a cream ruffled dress swept through the closed door, chin held high in the air. William, nonplussed, turned away from the Captain just as an expression of deep irritation spread across his face.
“Hello,” he said, attempting to exude confidence.
“Oh,” said the woman. She turned to the Captain. “Has someone passed away on the premises? And I was not informed??”
“No, Fanny,” said the Captain. He clamped his swagger stick between his upper arm and his chest, a motion so familiar to William he felt oddly moved at its return. “This is, ah, Lieutenant Havers.”
“Former lieutenant, I’m afraid,” he interjected, offering his right hand to shake. “I was demobbed just after VE Day.”
“Oh,” said the Captain. He sounded… not pleased, exactly, but not as horrified as William might have expected.
Fanny delicately took his hand. He realised, after a long moment, that she had probably expected him to kiss the back of hers. The moment passed, thankfully, and he let his hand fall back to his side. “A pleasure, I’m sure,” she said. She gave him a long look, head to toe. “I suppose dying in your sleep is preferable to being pushed out of a window.”
William frowned in confusion. He didn’t think that it would be much of a contest. “I… yes?”
“Don’t overwhelm him, Fanny,” said the Captain. He’d stepped closer, William realised, close enough that he could almost feel the brush of his uniform against his shoulder. He wanted to lean into the feeling, despite the risk.
Fanny huffed in indignation. “I will whelm whoever I like, thank you very much!” She swept out of the room, muttering to herself, as Pat came through the opposite door.
Pat gave William an enthusiastic wave. “Wotcher!”
“Never a moment’s peace in this house,” said the Captain, apparently to himself. Then he braced up and turned to William, his expression heart-warmingly familiar.
It was one William liked to think of as his Eureka face. He usually wore it when he’d had a minor breakthrough on some aspect of the eternal minutiae that came with managing a military base, even one as irregular as Button House had been. He was very good at organising things.
“I think Alison mentioned she’s been planning to decorate some of the bedrooms for the season, this afternoon.”
William nodded. The tinsel he'd glimpsed on being freed from the garage and the frost on the grass of Harriet’s front garden had let him know it was getting close to Christmas. He hadn’t had much occasion to celebrate it since his death, but the lights decorating houses up and down the road had at least been visible from the small window in the garage.
Some years, he’d wake up long enough to sing along to the music drifting in from Harriet’s kitchen. She liked to listen to the radio while she cooked.
Alison was just where the Captain had predicted she’d be, halfway up a ladder hanging a string of lights from the ceiling of one of the spare rooms. In the tour she’d given him she’d passed over them fairly quickly, apparently because they were still being tidied up ready for a New Year's visit by her husband’s family.
Now that he could get a closer look, William realised that the room the Captain was leading him to was the same one he’d been assigned back in the war. He would recognise the crack in the wainscot anywhere.
He sat on the bed, for lack of anywhere else to do it, and listened to the Captain’s discussion with Alison about the box of tinsel she had balanced on the chest of drawers. He realised, looking down at his knees, that he’d worn these exact pyjamas while he’d been assigned here, right down to the hole he’d darned at the back of his left knee. He'd done all his darning in the officer's common room, where the Captain could cast a discerning eye over the result.
The bed socks, at least, had been a gift.
“I was thinking I’d try winding some around the curtain rail,” she offered, gesturing at the wooden rail above the window. “I didn’t get round to it last year, but my mum always did it that way.”
“Hmm,” said the Captain. He narrowed his eyes up at the curtain rail, the same way he once had at the monthly reports Havers collated for him. It made William’s heart skip a little to see it again. “Gold, I think. It would match the wallpaper.”
“Not silver?” Alison asked. For some reason, William got the feeling she was asking a question to which she already knew the answer.
“No, no, not at all,” said the Captain, enthused. “Silver would completely wash out the curtains themselves, you see, whereas gold allows the richer tones to become more evident. Much more, er, Christmassy that way.”
Alison nodded in agreement. “I see. Thanks, Captain! Wish you could hang it for me, though.” She grinned down at him from her higher vantage point.
“Hmmmm,” said the Captain, again. He glanced around the room, then turned back to William. He looked a little startled at finding him still there, as if he’d expected him to vanish.
Then again, William hadn’t exactly let the Captain out of his sight, either.
“You have a good eye for this sort of thing, sir,” he offered. It was a talent the Captain had employed to great effect during the one Christmas they’d both been present at Button House, although he hadn’t made any comment on the relative richness of tone in William’s hearing back then. It was good to see him in his element, nonetheless, enthused about something.
The Captain coughed. His voice was still rough when he replied, “Ah, thank you, Havers.”
“He was a life saver during our first wedding booking,” said Alison. She’d come down the ladder, now, and was rummaging through a box of ornaments. A series of animals wearing red and white hats emerged, placed carefully on a nearby side table. “I couldn’t get my head round some of the seating arrangements.”
“Yes, well, campaigning does prepare you for nearly anything,” said the Captain. He seemed oddly uncomfortable, darting glances at William when he thought he wasn’t looking.
William, as it happened, was always looking at the Captain.
“It was a lovely ceremony,” Alison said, addressing William directly. She had a penguin in one hand and a reindeer in the other. “It snowed, so we had to have it here on short notice.”
The Captain had wandered over to the box of ornaments and was inspecting it critically, his expression very much like the one he’d once had during morning inspection. He’d been exacting in his standards, but since William had come upon him darning his socks more than once he at least knew that he held himself up to the same level.
“A white wedding in more ways than one, then,” he said. It was a nice thought. “Did the couple mind not being in church?”
“Oh, well,” said Alison. She put the penguin on the mantle, looked at it critically for a moment, then picked it up again. “It had to be a civil ceremony. The law’s changed a bit, but there’s still some holdouts in the CofE.”
William frowned. “Was one of them a divorcé?” That was the only reason he could think of for the church being hesitant. It had certainly been a sticking point for his elder sister.
“Oh, no,” said Alison. She glanced at the Captain, who began studying the contents of the ornaments box with even more intensity. She looked back at William. “No, it was. Um. Sam and Claire, the couple, were both women. So. Um. They couldn’t get married in church, just. Just civilly.”
He blinked. “Oh.”
Alison put a hand… somewhere in the vicinity of William’s shoulder, eyes full of sympathy. “I imagine that news didn’t reach you in the garage, right?”
“No,” he said. “No, it didn’t.”
Married. Two women, married to one another. And Alison spoke about it so casually, as if it was normal.
Maybe it was, now. It had been a long time since he died. And the Wolfenden Report had been promising, he supposed.
He wished Alison’s hand could actually make contact with his arm. It would be nice to have something to remind him he wasn’t dreaming.
Alison set down her remaining festive animal and stood. “Cap, I’m going to go get another box of stuff out of the loft. You think you can hold down the fort here?”
The Captain, startled, turned to face them both. “Haueurugh, er, yes. Yes, that’ll be fine.” He sat on the bedside table beside William, collapsing like a marionette with cut strings.
The door shut behind Alison with a soft click. William stared at the solid wood for a moment, eyes drawn to a dent near the bottom. He could remember making that dent one evening, after a few drinks too many, hopping on one foot to tug off his boots.
It was odd, seeing all the small ways he’d managed to leave his mark on the place. When he’d put down Button House on his will he’d imagined at least some of himself might sink into the ground, and in that way a small part of him would remain in the last place he’d felt truly content.
As it turned out, rather more of himself would remain at Button House than he could possibly have expected.
“The wedding really was marvellous,” said the Captain, into the silence. He held his swagger stick in both hands, his knuckles white. “Very tasteful decorations, and Alison tells me the food at the reception reheated very well.”
William smiled. He’d known Alison for a scant few hours, and he was already very clear on her priorities.
He didn’t get a chance to respond before the Captain continued. “And Sam and Claire, the brides, they were — well, that was marvellous too. Er, Alison gives me to understand that — that it’s quite usual, nowadays. For that to happen.”
“Time marches on,” said William. He tilted his head, watching the Captain closely. His mouth was beginning to tremble with some suppressed feeling. “I’m very much in favour, to tell the truth.”
His mouth felt dry. The Captain’s eyes were heavy when they met his own, but he found he couldn’t make himself look away.
“I must say, Havers… I didn’t know what you would think of it.” He paused. “I found it difficult, at first. Accepting that so much could have changed, while the house and everyone in it stayed the same.”
“Well, sir,” said William. He paused. His hands itched, suddenly, and before he could second guess himself he reached out to cover the Captain’s left hand, still wrapped tightly around the swagger stick. It felt warm, for reasons William couldn’t begin to understand. His heart didn’t really beat, but he still could’ve sworn it skipped one. “I’ve had a lot of time to… come to terms, with certain things. About myself, as well as the world.”
“Ah,” said the Captain. He looked down at their hands, his own slowly unfurling beneath William’s. He let the stick drop to the floor between them. “I see.”
“Yes,” he continued. His breath caught in his chest. It was, he thought, quite fortunate he didn’t actually need to breathe. “I thought you might, sir. I’m afraid you were quite heavily involved.”
The Captain laughed, a rusty sort of sound. William had never heard it before, but he liked it very much. “The same for me, unfortunately. ”
It felt as if the moment ought to be bigger than it was, now it had arrived. William had, in a number of desperate, private moments in the garage, imagined what it might be like to kiss another man. It wasn’t something he’d been able to do before he died; it had been an aneurysm, according to the eulogy at his funeral.
He’d never felt brave enough to try any of the things that got written up in the papers, or visit anywhere that could be raided by the police. He’d led a quiet, unremarkable life, and came home after long working days to have quiet, unremarkable fantasies about the vague shadow of a family his mother still occasionally badgered him to find.
The thoughts about his superior officer had been much more vivid and more remarkable, although the quiet remained. The sort of thoughts a man was entitled to have, late at night and in the privacy of his own home, which would of course never come to pass.
Not least because the man you were dreaming of had been dead for a decade.
The reality of it, as it turned out, was somewhat different.
Firstly, the Captain glanced up at the ceiling, and said, “Good lord,” with a sort of muffled surprise. Then William followed his gaze, and spotted the mistletoe hanging from the lampshade above them.
He hadn’t the time to comment on it before the Captain had moved one hand, hesitant, to rest at the junction between William’s shoulder and his neck. He looked almost amazed at his own initiative.
They stared at each other for a long moment. William glanced down at the Captain’s mouth, feeling deeply self-conscious.
“Tis the season,” he offered, when it seemed the Captain’s courage had dried up. “You’re welcome to it, sir.”
The Captain smiled at that, just a twitch at the side of his mouth. His moustache would tickle, William imagined, but he didn’t mind that very much.
“Havers,” he said, eventually. His hand was still on the side of William’s neck, his thumb pressing into the space behind his ear. “I don’t want you to feel.. pressured, in any way. Just say the word and we can go our separate ways. Well, within reason. I’m afraid the club meetings are non-negotiable.”
What a typical thing for him to say, William thought. He’d always been selfless to the point of idiocy.
“I’m quite alright where we are, sir,” he said. His mouth was still terribly dry. “And I’d appreciate it, just between us, sir, if you’d hurry it up a bit.”
“Oh,” said the Captain. His lips parted. “Alright then.”
And then he kissed him, just a swift press of his mouth against William’s, and sat back. His lips were still parted, just slightly. He licked them, the tip of his tongue darting out.
William put a hand to his chest, where his heart should have been pounding. His head felt heavy.
He had a feeling kissing was supposed to involve a little more activity than that. If just a close mouthed peck had left him feeling like this, he supposed it was a good thing the aneurysm had burst naturally. He had to imagine keeling over after a first kiss with another man would’ve been embarrassing in the extreme.
Now, he thought, he had time to practice. He had a feeling the Captain would be a willing partner, if the similarly punch-drunk expression on his face was anything to go by.
“Hmmm,” said the Captain. He ducked his head. “Mmm.”
“I quite agree, sir,” said William. He swallowed; the Captain’s hand was still set against his neck.
He glanced up at the mistletoe once more. They’d hung a sprig in the kitchens during December of thirty-nine, but none had managed to migrate into the main body of the house. There was an understanding that that sort of thing was not to be mentioned, even as a mockery.
It was a jolly enough little plant, although his mother had taught him enough about horticulture that he knew appearances could be deceiving on that front.
His left hand rose of its own accord to trace the medals on the Captain’s jacket, then across to sweep down the opposite lapel. The Captain, interrupted in whatever train of thought he’d begun travelling down, covered William’s hand with his own. He was touching William with both hands. It sent a shiver down his spine like an electric current.
William threw caution to the wind and kissed him again, twisting the fingers of his right hand through the Captain’s epaulette. The rank insignia pressed indentations into his palm.
The Captain seemed to have gained some confidence in the past minute or so, but he clearly hadn’t anticipated an ambush. William pressed his advantage, letting his mouth slide open just slightly; he felt the Captain’s surprised gasp ghost across his cheek.
He wasn’t sure where the impulse to open his mouth had come from, but he decided instantly that it had been a fantastic idea. The Captain, apparently in agreement, followed suit.
His heart ought to have been hammering in his ears, but as it was he had to settle for the sense memory of it. The moustache did tickle, as it turned out. Beyond that, he found it rather difficult to form thoughts of more than one syllable.
It was a long time before they broke apart, both breathing heavily. A floorboard creaked on the other side of the door.
If he’d still had a heart, William knew it would have stopped. As it was, his breath caught in his chest again and he had to wrestle down the urge to stand up and away from the bed.
He ran a hand through his hair, tugging lightly. It was longer than he liked to keep it, just beginning to curl at the ends. He’d died a few days before an appointment with his barber; post-mortem, he’d minded much more about the inconvenience of overlong hair brushing his collar than he had about the inconvenience of being dead. He supposed, with the benefit of hindsight, that one of those problems had seemed much more manageable at the time.
“Old habits,” said the Captain. He looked similarly tense; it made William realise just how relaxed he’d been before, to see him sat straight-backed with his shoulders drawn up.
“Well,” said William. He set a hand on the Captain’s forearm, and smiled when he felt his muscles start to unwind. The Captain smiled back, the small one that curled just one side of his mouth. “I suppose we’ll have to work on breaking them, then.”
The door opened a fraction; Alison poked her head through the gap. “Kitty was just wondering if you were coming down for Film Night.” Then she paused, taking in their relative positions on the bed and, William presumed, the fact that the Captain had put a hand quite a distance up William’s thigh. “Thoughts?”
“Er, yes,” said the Captain. He glanced at William, apparently seeking an opinion. He nodded, mostly because he was curious about Mary’s potato man. “I — we’ll be down soon, I should think.”
“Awesome,” said Alison. “Take your time. There’s no rush!” She actually winked as she left, the door still ajar. Moments later, the floorboard creaked again.
“I seem to remember a comment about further decorations,” William noted, once she was out of earshot.
“Yes, that does ring a bell,” said the Captain. He laughed softly. “A tactical retreat, I suppose.”
“Not very subtle,” said William. “Although,” he continued, nudging the Captain with his elbow. “It did work, so I can’t really complain.”
“Indeed not,” the Captain replied, his voice hearth-warm. “Indeed not.”
Then he leaned in closer, bold, and kissed William again. This time there were no spine-chilling interruptions.
They were late for the film, in the end. Neither of them minded very much.
Ooooo, ooo, oooooo, oooo,
Ooooooooo, oooo, ooo, ooo,
Ooo, oo, oo, ooo, oo.
— ghost choir by Louie Zong
“So,” said Mike, when Alison finally hopped her way into her pyjama bottoms and slid under the covers. “Ghost update?”
“Mmm,” she said, cuddling up close beside him. Her arm snaked around his waist and clung tight. “Ghost uncle turned out to be the Captain's long-lost boyfriend.”
“Oh,” he said, after a second of processing time. “The Captain’s—?”
“Boyfriend, yeah. Or, well. He didn’t really say, but it was pretty clear from how they started necking in the spare room.” She kissed him on the shoulder, absent-mindedly, and tugged the duvet up a little further over them both.
It was a cold night, and the lack of double glazing made it much colder. Mike was wearing two pairs of socks and still couldn’t feel his toes.
“Nice,” said Mike. He yawned, expansively. “Love is love.”
“Mmmm,” said Alison. She yawned too, jaw cracking. “Ah, fuck off, now you’ve got me doing it.”
“Hang on,” he said, suddenly struck by a terrible thought. “Can ghosts get off with each other? Like, have they been canoodling all over the afterlife this whole time?”
“I mean, yeah,” said Alison. As the little spoon, it fell to Mike to turn his face towards her and display his visible disbelief. “Did I not tell you about Fanny and Humphrey’s body?”
“NO,” Mike whispered. He was very good at shouting in a whisper.
“Well, they split up pretty quick once his head tried to get involved,” Alison offered, as if this was not a completely insane thing to say. “Hopefully Cap and William don’t go that direction. They were very sweet during the film, honestly. Held hands for the scary bits.”
Mike did find that cute, actually. Alison had explained about the pyjamas situation already, so the mental image of that next to the Captain in full uniform was extremely incongruous. Like an instagram post of a goth girl and her absurdly normal boyfriend.
He resolutely did not think about how many of his teen relationships fell under that exact umbrella.
“I’m rooting for those crazy kids, then,” he said. His eyes slid shut, just in time for Alison to whisper something to the air at her side of the bed. “Night, Kitty,” he called, and received a relayed good night Michael!!! from Alison in return.
Somewhere nearby, he could hear the turntable playing something old and slow. Just as he began to drift off, visions of sugar plums not yet behind his eyes, a soft echoing sound drifted through the house, quiet footsteps rising and falling with the music. He thought of a waltz, oddly, and slept.