The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“I was in such a hurry; there never was any time. When you have to get dressed in such a hell of a hurry any extra thing is just one thing more. And the room at the times I’m talking about used to be full of daylight – sunset. It had two french windows, and they were on a level with the tops of may trees out in the square. The may was in flower that month, and it was pink. In that sticky sunshine you have in the evenings the may looked sort of theatrical. It used to be part of my feeling of going out.” She paused, then said, “That was the month of my life.”

“What month?”

“The month we were in that house. I told you, it was a furnished house that we took. With rents the way they are now, it cost less than a flat. They say a house is more trouble, but this was no trouble, because we treated it like a flat, you see. I mean, we were practically never in. I didn’t try for a servant because I know there aren’t any. When Neville got up in the mornings he percolated the coffee; a char came in to do cleaning when I’d left for the depot, and we fixed with the caretaker next door to look after the boiler, so the baths were hot. And the beds were comfortable, too. The people who really lived there did themselves well.”

“You never met them?”

“No, never – why should we? We’d fixed everything through an agent, the way one does. I’ve an idea the man was soldiering somewhere, and she’d gone off to be near him somewhere in the country. They can’t have had any children, any more than we have -it was one of those small houses, just for two.”

“Pretty?”

“Y-yes,” she said. “It was chintzy. It was one of those oldish houses made over new inside. But you know how it is about other people’s belongings – you can’t ever quite use them, and they seem to watch you the whole time. Not that there was any question of settling down – how could we, when we were both out all day? And at the beginning of June we moved out again.”

“Because of the . . .?”

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Not that reason, at all.” She lighted a cigarette, took two puffs and appeared to deliberate. “But what I’m telling you now is about the ghost.”

“Go on.”

“I was going on. As I say, it used to be funny, dressing away at top speed at the top of an empty house, with the sunset blazing away outside. It seems to me that all those evenings were fine. I used to take taxis back from the depot: you must pay money these days if you want time, and a bath and a change from the skin up was essential -you don’t know how one feels after packing parcels all day! I couldn’t do like some of the girls I worked with and go straight from the depot on to a date. I can’t go and meet someone unless I’m feeling special. So I used to hare home. Neville was never in.”

“I’d been going to say . . .”

“No, Neville worked till all hours, or at least he had to hang round in case something else should come in. So he used to dine at his club on the way back. Most of the food would be off by the time he got there. It was partly that made him nervy, I dare say.”

“But you weren’t nervy?”

“I tell you,” she said, “I was happy. Madly happy – perhaps in rather a nervy way. Whatever you are these days, you are rather more so. That’s one thing I’ve discovered about this war.”

“You were happy . . .”

“I had my reasons – which don’t come into the story.”

After two or three minutes of rapid smoking she leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. “Where was I?” she said, in a different tone.

“Dressing . . .”

“Well, first thing when I got in I always went across and opened my bedroom windows, because it seemed to me the room smelled of the char. So I always did that before I turned on my bath. The glare on the trees used to make me blink, and the thick sort of throaty smell of the may came in. I was never certain if I liked it or not, but it somehow made me feel like after a drink. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ve got tonight. You know the feeling? Then I turned on my bath. The bathroom was the other room on that floor, and a door led through to it from one side of the bed. I used to have my bath with that door ajar, to let light in. The bathroom black-out took so long to undo.

“While the bath ran in I used to potter about and begin to put out what I meant to wear, and cold-cream off my old make-up, and so on. I say ‘potter’ because you cannot hurry a bath. I also don’t mind telling you that I whistled. Well, what’s the harm in somebody’s being happy? Simply thinking things over won’t win this war. Looking back at that month, I whistled most of the time. The way they used to look at me, at the depot! The queer thing is, though, I remember whistling but I can’t remember when I happened to stop. But I must have stopped, because it was then I heard.”

“Heard?”