The Happy-Unhappy Bridegroom: a ghost story Read online

outright at it; but still, it was a good space, and really the clearing would be the bulk of the work. I mentioned this as we picked our way down a sort of path through the thicket of brambles, which led to the bottom. Here, finally enshrouded entirely in gloom due to a dangerous old ash, I discovered a great circular ditch filled with stagnant water.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind keeping the pond, actually,’ said Lucille.

  ‘The pond! You’re generous to call it that.’

  I peered at the green water with a shudder at the idea of how deep it must be. It was certainly wide enough to suggest a good six feet at the worst. As I looked, I could see myself on the dull surface, and then something else beneath, and I said: ‘There’s something moving under the water.’

  She did not look, but replied: ‘It’s the weed, I expect, moving when the frogs stir it up. We used to call this the Frog Pond when we moved in.’

  ‘And what do you call it now?’

  ‘I call it the Dog Pond.’

  ‘Oh, why’s that?’

  ‘Brandon’s dog drowned in it.’

  ‘What?’ I turned, surprised. ‘I never heard of a dog drowning before.’

  I called to mind Brandon’s faithful retriever, always at his side to dote on him, and concluded that this was the late dog in question: a healthy, sporty thing.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ said Lucille. ‘I found it myself.’

  ‘Yes, but it didn’t drown, surely— dogs are very good swimmers, aren’t they? And Ralph, you know, used to swim in the sea, as I remember,’ (Ralph was this retriever) ‘so I can’t imagine him coming to any harm splashing around in here.’

  ‘The dog drowned,’ she insisted. ‘It happened while Brandon was away the first time for a whole month, during the merger. I buried it over there—.’ She nodded to a barren patch of earth.

  ‘So you had to drag him out of the water? Didn’t he sink to the bottom?’

  She looked at me very sternly and repeated: ‘I buried the dog and that’s that. You know, I think he loved that dog more than me, sometimes.’

  She made her way back up the path.

  I paused for a moment and thought, ‘That would never do for Lucille: she must have Brandon all to herself, affection and all.’ Then, as I trailed after her and cast a glance at the bare patch of grave, I pondered on the what ifs of Brandon not coming home to her one day, that is, not submitting to her will, or to her love. What would she do without her power? Surely she could not endure him to be independent of her— wouldn’t she have to kill him, or kill herself? But then, of course, I came to the other side of it: whatever would he do without her? Her tyranny submitted her to his will, and his love, equally. So I concluded that they could not possibly survive without each other.

  This examination into the dynamics of their marriage was much too morbid, but I could not help it. The ruined garden and general Victoriana cast such a pall over my imagination that by the time we were sat down to some dinner, I was quite ready to believe that Lucille’s jealous thrall over Brandon had driven her to murder poor Ralph the retriever —which of course was conjecture run mad; but love really is selfish (I mused) and perhaps he had exacted some love-revenge in return, or would do.

  We had arranged that I should stay the night, and you may well believe that the house afforded room enough for it. We sat up late drinking wine, chatting on this and that, and the evening proved to be very pleasant in spite of my grim ideas. At last it was bedtime, and we cheerfully ascended. I took a first floor room, on a short landing below the stair that led up to the master-bedrooms. I said goodnight, and Lucille carried on up to the marital chamber, and put the lights out.

  My window overlooked the garden, and through it shone bright moonlight, though with the quantity of trees outside I could not see the disc. Still, I reflected a while, looking out and listening, until, soothed at last by the dull noises of the city, I retired in expectation of a comfortable slumber.

  But that was not to be— a dream woke me up. I thought I was swimming in the dark, which was a very strange sensation, and the water was extremely cold and slick as I floated there. I could feel the strokings of weeds and sodden rubbish around my legs, though I could not reach the bottom. I realised that I was in the Dog-Frog Pond in the dark garden, which gave me a fright, because now, at every moment, I expected to feel around my toes another texture than the greasy weed— namely the waving fronds of underwater hair. Kicking slowly through the murky depths, I dreaded I would suddenly encounter the giving and dissolving flesh of the drowned dog, caught and suspended below. This idea, this anticipation, broke so awfully upon me that I made a determined effort, and leapt out of the pond altogether— to wake more tired than when I dropped asleep in the first place.

  I could not relax again, and went downstairs. Hearing some movements there, I found Lucille sat in darkness by a front window, looking out at the road. I shambled in and she started. I had disturbed her thoughts; but she did not mind it after a moment, and went about to light a candle or two, by way of illumination not too stressful for the hour.

  I mentioned my bad dream, and she said: ‘Yes, I often sleep badly too, when Brandon’s away, so I wander about the house like a ghost.’

  ‘Well, you’ve more than the ghosts for company tonight,’ I returned, sitting down.

  She smiled, putting a tea-light into a little pot on the windowsill. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts and hauntings really.’

  ‘No? I think I do.’

  ‘Why? Did you ever see one?’

  I nodded and explained that years ago I lived on a very busy road, which I had to cross every day. This was particularly difficult in the evening because the cars would speed up on their way home rather than slow down to let me get over to mine. However, one night, after quarter of an hour in the hail and gale waiting, a car appeared that very kindly flashed its lights and slowed down. I stepped off the pavement, but was almost instantly mauled by the oncoming traffic— as soon as I was on the road, the kind car vanished, and I found myself practically on the bonnet of a real car, which luckily swerved to avoid me. The kind car was a ghost that took pity on me for waiting there so long.

  Lucille laughed. ‘I think your kind ghost was rather cruel in fact, to lure you into the traffic by making you think it had stopped! But that has to be the silliest ghost story I ever heard.’

  ‘That’s only because you don’t believe in ghosts yourself,’ I countered. ‘But you shouldn’t laugh at what you don’t know— we’re all too often made to laugh on the other side of our faces.’

  She conceded that it was true enough, and added: ‘I can’t pretend I don’t know that there are “more things in Heaven and Earth”, as the saying goes.’ She glanced out of the window again, and looked distracted.

  I probed a little, wondering what she meant by ‘more things’.

  She smiled wistfully. ‘Although I don’t go so far as ghosts, I believe there must be forces at work in the world that nobody understands— forces that move, and can be moved.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay there are. After all, gravity was fairly making the world go round before anybody ever knew about it. And electricity was always there, though nobody harnessed it for years and years.’

  She looked at me, her face lit up by the candle flame. ‘I don’t know how—.’ She hesitated. ‘I couldn’t say how it’s done— but I can always bring him back.’

  ‘What do you mean? Brandon?’

  She spread her hands, studying them. ‘I’ve come to realise I can do it, over all the times he’s been away. Somehow, I can compel him to come back, at once— and no matter how long he’d planned to be gone, if I need him enough, he comes back.’

  ‘There’s nothing supernatural in that,’ I said. ‘I imagine you just ask him to come home when you speak to him.’

  She leaned forward eagerly, but catching herself, sat back again. ‘I don’t say anything,’ she told me. ‘I can’t be always ordering him to leave off his business trips, just
for my whims. But sometimes I’ve felt this pull inside me, and I’ve had to have him here, I’ve needed him too much, too much to endure, and something yanks on my heart —and on his, too, it seems, because within a day or two he turns up on the doorstep, saying he’s sorry, but he just had to come.’

  ‘That’s very romantic,’ I suggested, and she raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Of course, I have to tell him off for being so foolish.’

  ‘She can’t do without her power over him,’ I thought to myself, ‘there you see it.’ But I said aloud: ‘Still, I don’t go so far as to say it’s anything strange, altogether. I suppose that once you’ve decided you want him back, when you do speak to him, there are certain tones or ways about what you say that make him think he’d better get home pretty sharpish.’

  She returned her gaze to the window. ‘Maybe, maybe.’

  I looked out too, at the quiet, orange-lit street, and the house directly opposite, which mirrored this one. It was a little set back from the pavement, and shaded. My eye was passing from it, when a light appeared in the front bedroom window, suddenly, as though my looking had switched it on. Next, the light came through a little landing window as well, and glimmered through the front-door windows below. I was intrigued to see who was coming downstairs at such an hour of the morning. Now the hall light came on, so that the entire house was illuminated, and the front door opened. A