Mr Corbett's Ghost (2 page)

‘But there's thieves and footpads and murderers—'

‘Pooh!' declared the apothecary generously. ‘What will such fellows want with a lad in a patched coat? Safe as a coach and four, Master Partridge! Believe me, poor clothes give better protection than chain mail.'

‘But there's gibbets and corpses and, most likely, ghosts—'

‘Then take you this extra jar, Master Partridge,' beamed
the apothecary, handing him just such an item, ‘and if you should be lucky enough to meet with a spectre, phantom or ghost, then snip off a piece of it and bottle it quick. Then you and I will examine it shrewdly—and send it off to Apothecaries' Hall! Ha-ha!'

‘But . . . but—' stammered Benjamin, despairing of anything else to move his master. For some strange reason, he could not come out with what troubled and disturbed him almost as much as his loss of New Year's Eve.

‘But . . . but—' he struggled, and still could not say what was creeping coldly round his heart. The old man: the uncanny customer in black, who repelled him in the queerest way.

Thieves and gibbets and murderers were one thing. The dusty old man who had smelled of the grave was quite another. For when he'd come, there had passed once more, like a cloud across the moon, a darkness and a chill over Benjamin's heart. He shivered in his cracked boots.

‘But . . . but what if I lose my way, sir?' he came out with at length.

‘What's this?' cried the apothecary angrily, for he'd lost patience, standing out in the cold. ‘Did you think
I'd
go, then? Or did you think I'd send Mrs Corbett or one of my own children? Is
that
what's been fermenting in your unwilling mind, Master Partridge?'

Wretchedly, Benjamin shook his head.

‘Won't you . . . take pity on me, sir? On this night of all nights?'

Harshly, the apothecary stared down at his white-faced apprentice. Maybe too much chemistry had turned him to iron.

‘Pity, Master Partridge? What's pity when there's work to be done? Be off with you! And if you should weary on the way, remember—it
may
be a matter of life and death. Run fast, Master Partridge. Run as if—as if
my
life depended on it!'

‘
SO I'M TO
run as if
your
life depended on it, am I, Mister Corbett? Well . . . well, watch me, then!

You just watch me as I nip up this hill.

‘Lord, Mister Corbett! Was that a snail that passed me by? For shame! Who'd have thought a snail would have beaten an apprentice running as if his master's life depended on it?'

Benjamin Partridge shook his head as if surprised to discover how leadenly he was mounting up dark Highgate Hill.

‘Dreadful thing! Imagine old Mister Corbett perishing in Gospel Oak. Breathing his last.

‘But here comes Benjamin, a-pounding through the winter's night! See that bush ahead? If I reach it before I can count to ten, Mister Corbett'll be saved! Hurry . . . hurry!

‘
Eleven!
Just too late. And after I tried! Heart and soul, Mister Corbett. Just as you'd have liked . . .'

Benjamin Partridge, now near the top of Highgate Hill, fixed his young face into a crooked smile. He'd a strong imagination and saw—in his mind's eye—the apothecary corpsed and coffined in his neat back parlour (the holy place!) with a wreath at his feet inscribed:

  
FROM BENJAMIN PARTRIDGE. IN RESPECTFUL MEMORY.

Then, from a distance, a clock struck ten and the apprentice listened in dismay. Such chance as he'd had of reaching his home before New Year was now almost gone.

He wavered. Looked behind him—then ahead. A curious frown flickered across his face, and he began to
hurry—even to run; yet not without mumbling into his wretchedly thin coat that he was making no haste on Mister Corbett's account and that he'd sooner yield up his heart and soul to the Devil than leave them in pawn in Gospel Oak.

A coachman turning into the Gatehouse Tavern out of the creaking night, was much struck by the hurrying boy's face—which passed him patchily and then was gone on, into the cheerless dark.

‘Such a mixture of anger and dismay as had no business hanging about chops so tender and young. But God send him a happy New Year, and spare him from some of this bitter wind!'

The night was now grown wilder and the wind banged and roared about the air like an invisible tiger, madly fancying his stripes to be bars. (Pray to God he don't get out!)

‘Rot you, Mister Corbett! May this wind blow you to Kingdom Come! May it whistle through your skin and play its tunes on your mean old bones!'

On and on he ran (but not for Mister Corbett's sake!), now stumbling, now turning this way and that to avoid the wild passion of the night. It seemed to be striving to pluck him off the world by his coat tails, did that queer and even extraordinary wind that blew mainly from Islington, Wapping, and Tower Hill.

Seven churches with open belfries stood direct in the wind's path from Wapping: St Bride's, St Jude's, St Mary's, St Peter's, St Michael's and St Michael-on-the-Hill's. Through each of them it flew, making the black bells shift and shudder and sound unnatural hours. The very ghosts of chimes and the phantoms of departed hours. Twenty-eight o'clock gone and never to return. What a knell for the dying year!

Benjamin Partridge put his head down into his skimpy collar and hastened on faster yet. (But not as Mister
Corbett would have had him hasten. There was a darkness on his spirit quite out of the apothecary's chemistry.)

His right-hand pocket was bulky with the bottle for the queer old customer, and his left hand banged against his knee, reminding him of Mister Corbett's little joke—the empty jar for ‘the piece of a ghost'.

‘A piece of you, Mister Corbett—that's what I'd like in your jar! And I'd set it on me mantelshelf at home, as neatly labelled as you'd like. Apothecary's heart. Very small. Very hard. Very difficult to find.'

Now the wind came wilder yet, and it seemed—to the buffeted boy—to have a strange smell upon its breath. It smelled fishy and riverish (as became its Wapping origins) and sweetish in a penetrating kind of way.

The Lord knew where it had been or what unsavoury heads it had blown through! Heads of chained pirates drowned under three tides at Shadwell Stair, full of water fury; heads of smiling traitors, spiked on the Tower, full of double hate; heads of lurking murderers in Lamb's Conduit Fields, heads of lying attorneys, false witnesses, straw friends, iron enemies, foxes, spies, and adders . . .

A sudden screaming from Caen Wood caused Benjamin Partridge to clap his hands to his ears and fairly fly. What had it been? A committee of owls over a dead starling? Most likely . . . most likely . . .

Ahead lay a little nest of lights winkling out the dark. The Spaniards' Inn. Sounds of singing and laughter came faintly from within. A cheerful company, drinking out the dying year.

The turnpike keeper in his tiny house hard by saw the boy pause and stare towards the inn with miserable longing on his face.

Poor devil! he thought. To be out on such a night!

Then he saw the boy shake his head violently and mouth the word ‘No!' several times before hurrying on into the cheerless dark.

‘God send you a happy New Year!' he murmured. ‘And spare you from some of this bitter wind.'

Benjamin Partridge's head had suddenly been filled with dreams of another, more cheerful company, made up of his friends and his mother: candle-lit and fire-warmed faces to the window, waiting on his coming.

Then the wind had blown out these dreams and left nothing but darkness within him.

There seemed to come over his hastening form a curious difference. His running was grown more purposeful. At times, he seemed to outpace the wind itself—bending low and rushing with an oddly formidable air. His coat tails flapped blackly, like the wings of a bird of ill omen.

‘Coming for you, Mister Corbett. Coming for you!'

Already he could see the top of Hampstead Hill. On either side of him the trees bent and pointed, and high upstairs the tattered clouds flew all in the same direction. The dark wind was going to Hampstead, too, and it was in the devil of a hurry.

At last, he could see Jack Straw's Castle: a square-built, glum and lonely inn scarce half a mile ahead. Doubtless, the queer customer was sat by the parlour fire, snuffling for his mixture. Then let him snuffle till the cows came mooing home! Benjamin Partridge was on a different errand now.

He continued for maybe another thirty yards. Then he stopped. To his left lay a path, leading down into the dark of the Heath.

A curious darkness. Earlier, there had been rain and certain roots and growths had caught a phosphorescence; spots of light glimmered in the bushy nothingness.

Before, these uneasy glintings might have frightened the boy, for they were very like eyes—and malignant ones at that. But now he scarcely saw them: the dreadful wind had blown out of his head all thoughts but hatred for the mean and pale apothecary who'd sent him forth.

He began to descend the path. The earth was wet and sobbed under his feet.

‘May you sob likewise, Mister Corbett—when I'm done with you!'

For the first part of its length the path dropped pretty sharply, and soon Benjamin was out of the worst of the wind. But in its place was a wretched dampness that crept and clung about him. Likewise, there was a continual breathing rustling that seemed to inhabit the various darknesses that lay about the path.

Several times he paused, as if debating whether or not to abandon his purpose and fly back to the high road and on to the inn. This path was disquieting, and it was growing worse. But each time he seemed to see Mister Corbett's face before him, mouthing, ‘Heart and soul, Master Partridge. I want 'em.' And Benjamin
Partridge went on: for hatred, though it may harden the heart, softens the brain, renders it insensible to danger, and leads it in the way of darkness, madness, and evil . . . At the end of this terrible path, there stood a terrible house.

It was a tall, even a genteel house, often glimpsed from the high road from where it looked like a huge undertaker, discreetly waiting among the trees.

What was then so terrible about it that even the whispering darkness, the crooked trees, and the crooked sky were small things beside it? The visitors it had.

Old gentlemen with ulcers of the soul for which there was no remedy but—revenge! Ruined gamblers, discredited attorneys, deceivers and leavers, treacherous soldiers, discharged hangmen, venomous servants, murderous constables . . . coming chiefly at dusk, furtively grinning for—revenge. In this grim regiment Benjamin Partridge now numbered himself.

The path grew level. One by one the glinting eyes winked shut as scrubs obscured them.

‘And so may your eyes shut, Mister Corbett: just like that! Ah!'

Benjamin Partridge stopped. Before him stood the house. Three pairs of windows it had, but they were dark. An iron lantern swung in the porch making queer grunting sounds as it swung against its hook.
Ugh . . . ugh . . . ugh
 . . . But the three candles within burned untroubled.

There was a lion's head knocker on the door. A good brass knocker such as might have cost five pounds in the shop by Aldgate Forge. (Or had it been cast in a deeper forge than Aldgate, even?)

The boy shivered . . . most likely from the damp. He knocked on the door. A harsh and desolate sound. Came a flap of footsteps: very quick. Then they stopped.

The boy made as if to draw back—maybe to make off, even at this late stage?
No.
He knocked again.

‘Nails in your coffin, Mister Corbett.'

The door opened. The boy cried out. Candle in hand, peering out with unnaturally bright eyes, was the queer customer! He said: ‘I thought you'd call here first—'

IT WAS SAID
there was a room at the top of the house where certain transactions took place. The windows of this room were sometimes pointed out, for they could be seen from the high road, staring coldly through the trees.

It was rumoured that this room, ordinary enough in all its furnishings, held an item so disagreeable that it chilled the soul. Visitors had been known to stare at it, lose their tongues, fidget, then leave in haste never to return.

Benjamin peered past the old man into the dark of the house. His eyes glanced upward. Catching this look, the old man dropped his gaze in an oddly embarrassed fashion.

‘Are you—are you sure, young man?'

(Was there truly such a room? Or was it all a tale told by apprentices at dead of night?)

The old man sniffed.

‘Forgive me, young man—but are you sure? I must know. We don't want to waste our time do we? You've considered? You've thought? If you change your mind now, I won't be offended. Far from it! In a way, I'll be pleased. There, young man! I see you bite your lip. So why not turn about and forget it all? I'll not say anything. All will be forgot. We've never met! Come, young man—that's what you really want, ain't it? It was all a foolish idea—the black thought of a black moment. So say no more and be gone!'