Ferguson grimaced at the ridiculousness of his wife’s demand. Yet he knew she meant it and there would be good reason for it.
“If I must” he said with heavy heart.
“You really must,” she answered.
“Are you okay for me to leave you here? There’s a phone-box at the end of the street.”
Carmel nodded and struggled with her breathing like an asthmatic although she wasn’t one.
“I’m okay to be left. Go and phone Mr Archer.”
Archer was inconvenienced by the call and said there was no chance he could come over before lunch.
“Mr Archer, my wife asked me to call you urgently. She says there are things you need to know about your house. You may or may not believe in her powers, but I have never known her to be wrong about these things.”
In the end, it was agreed that Archer would come straight after lunch. Ferguson returned to his wife and they decided to repair to the Cock and Feathers rather than remain in the holiday home.
“Your lady doesn’t look too well,” George Hamshaw observed as Ferguson ordered a couple of strong coffees at the bar.
“She’s had a bit of a fright. We’re staying at the holiday cottage – River View,” Ferguson told him within his wife’s hearing.
“It has a bit of a history does that old railway cottage,” Hamshaw said.
“Why do you call it a railway cottage?” Carmel asked with a sharpness in her voice.
“People round here have always called it that,” the landlord said, “I suppose it looks like one.”
“Well, it’s not one,” Carmel informed him, “That house used to be a church.”
At that, Hamshaw burst out laughing. “You what, missus? I’ve lived round these parts all my life and there’s never been a church there. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t in my parents’ day neither.”
“There wasn’t,” Carmel rapped back, “the church was brought to the place. That house is constructed from an old church.”
That was said with such conviction it stopped the landlord in his tracks. “How would you know that, lady?”
Ferguson chipped in. “Don’t ask her that, mister. She never knows how she knows, but honestly, she knows.”
There was a permanent frostiness in the Cock and Feathers air. Locals hate to be told that knowledge learned at the knee is incorrect at the best of times; to be told by an ‘incomer’ is nothing less than insulting. For her part, when her powers were at their strongest, Carmel Ferguson had no place for tact or diplomacy.
The Fergusons left the pub after a sandwich lunch and George Hamshaw flashed the V sign after them as they exited the lounge.
Over the years, a turning circle and small parking area had been established by the weir of the river next to Archer’s property. The advent of the motor car and Archer’s business acumen had played no small part in this development.
“Hello, Mr and Mrs Ferguson,” said Archer as they returned to River View. Archer wore his standard ‘Hail fellow well met’ countenance; all part of the successful businessman. His overstated smile was not returned by the Fergusons.
“Now what can I do for you good people? I trust there’s nothing wrong with the accommodation?”
“Oh, but there is, Mr Archer,” Carmel responded, “there is something very wrong,” whereupon Archer’s smile slipped down to his feet.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Archer said. “The important thing is what can we do about it?”
But Carmel ignored this and took control. “Mr Archer, what do you know about this cottage you own? Have you lived in it yourself?”
“Yes, I have lived in it. I know it used to be a railway cottage. Where is this taking us, Mrs Ferguson?”
All she said was “Will you follow me inside?”
Once inside, she asked all three of them to sit at a small table that she had placed by the casement windows. She ignored all of Archer’s protestations. In truth they were old mild; his curiosity was getting the better of him.
“Mr Archer, I do not believe this is a railway cottage at all,” she said. “I know this house was built from a church…”
“How can you know that? How can you know that?” Archer rattled out, “You don’t come from these parts…”
It was Robert Ferguson who replied. “Mr Archer, my wife has a gift. She is never wrong about these things. If she says this was a church, then that will be the truth.”
Archer said nothing, but stared at Carmel with hostility. Carmel, for her part, pointed to the casement windows.
“What do you know about those windows? Even you can see that they are not in the style of a railway house.”
Archer remembered the startling reaction of Lincoln to being left in this room, close to these windows. On the other hand, there was little room in his life for uncomfortable truths.
“They are casement windows and I dare say the builder put them there as an add-on when the rest had been built.”
“Mr Archer, they are no ‘add-on’,” Carmel told him, “they were part of the church that made up this building. I know enough about architecture to say that.”
Archer felt belittled and uncomfortable in his own holiday cottage. He felt hot under the collar and was tired from being pestered by Mrs Archer for an increase in his agreed alimony sum.
“So what is it you want me to do?”
Ferguson took up the thread for his wife. To some extent they worked as a team; they were more powerful that way.
“Carmel wants us to sit round a table in this room, holding hands. She feels that this is the important room. If the living hold hands and become as one, then the departed will feel able to speak through her.”
“And we are the living?” said Archer, with a trace of sarcasm in his voice, but also needled at the prospect of holding hands with two strangers.
With breathtaking speed, Carmel grabbed hold of the hands of both men and commenced a deep groaning sound that Archer found profoundly disturbing. Yet he dare not let go her hand.
Within seconds she looked up to the ceiling in sheer terror. Her voice, when it came out was a man’s voice, “Fenby, Fenby,” it screamed, “for God’s sake, take it off him.”
She let go of both men’s hands and fell to the floor, groaning and clutching the top of her head. Archer got up from his chair and started forward in a bid to help Carmel.
“Don’t do that, Mr Archer,” Ferguson said, restraining Archer by blocking his path.
Slowly, but with dignity, Carmel climbed back into her chair and this time placed her hands over her eyes. I knew what was happening. She had become a part of the house herself. It was as though she was at once inside the very walls and a part of them.
I had never met a person with such powers. We were as one, Carmel and I. There was no past time with her now. All time was of one dimension.
Archer was humbled. In a croaky voice, he felt he could not address Carmel directly, only through her husband.
“Please ask her about the windows. Can you do that? I want to know about the windows.”
Ferguson knelt forward so as to make no noise. “Carmel, who are you now?”
She sat up tight and looked directly at the casement window. “Ashcroft. I am Ashcroft. Fenby did not protect me.”
“So what happened?”
“Lincoln killed me. Oh, the blood,” she said and traced an imaginary flow of blood down her face.
Tension took hold of Archer at the mention of Lincoln. He said nothing, but knew now that Carmel Ferguson was no trickster.
“Please ask Mrs Ferguson about the windows.”
Ferguson looked at him with incomprehension and then turned towards his wife.
“Ashcroft, tell us about the windows.”
“Oh they are fine, fine windows. I told the boys to carry them with care.”
“Where? Where did they carry them from?”
“Part of St Mary’s church, in the valley. The best part. Beautiful, don’t you think?”
“They are fine windows, Ashcroft. What makes them special?”
Carmel began to shape change at an alarming rate. Archer had never seen anything like it. Her body seemed to have another presence within that was pushing at the flesh in different places. Even the skull distorted at times. She stood up, she sat down. She lay on the floor and rolled over like two people fighting. Then there was calm and she returned to her seat.
“Who are you now?” Ferguson demanded.
“I am the reverend.”
“The reverend who?”
“The reverend of St Mary’s; the reverend Godfrey Merryweather.”
“What year is it, Reverend Merryweather?”
“Sixteen sixty-eight.
“I want to know about the windows, Godfrey.”
“I am sorry, who are you? A villager. A commoner. To you I am the Reverend Merryweather. Only in God’s eyes am I Godfrey.”
But Ferguson held firm. “Mr Archer and I wondered about your windows, the casement windows.”
“Ah, it’s a shame we must use them in such a way, but at least those within are safe from the devil.”
“In what way are you using them, Reverend?”
“They allow light in the side room where the dead are held. No crypt was ever dug out for this church.”
“Why are the bodies being held there? Why do you not bury them?”
“Because, you fool, they are dying faster than I can bury them. I am consoler of the dead, grave-digger and minister at funerals for the living. Tis an impossible task for just one man.”
“It is a plague year, yes?”
“It is indeed. The greatest fear is that we bury the living among the dead. I am many things, but not a physician. I am many things. I am many…I am the Reverend Godfrey Merry…”
And with this fading speech Carmel Ferguson stuttered to a halt. She sat bolt upright in her chair, neither moving nor speaking.
“Shouldn’t you bring her round, wake her up?” Archer asked.
“Oh no. The spirits will leave her body in their own time and Carmel will return,” Ferguson said, “to do otherwise will endanger Carmel.”
“May we talk?” Archer asked, “Will it disturb her?”
Ferguson shook his head. Archer continued.
“So she – your wife - became another person?”
“She became two people, Mr Archer. She is well capable of that.”
“Am I correct in saying that the casement windows guarded a section of the church where those dead and dying from the plague were laid out?”
“Yes. This was a church without a crypt.”
And, dear reader, he was right. Hundreds of years may have passed but my fabric echoes with the horror of those times. The dying were laid amongst the dead and there they moaned all night long and into the following day. Constantly they turned for help, only to be confronted by a desperate rictus, a grim cadaver that was beyond help or giving help.
The only source of sustenance or light was on those evenings that the moonlight pierced the heavy foliage and penetrated those casement windows.
Archer stood and looked about the room as if he was seeing it for the first time.
“I’m not sure that I can keep this on as a holiday property,” Archer said, “there is too much past contained within its walls.”
“So what would you do – demolish it?” Ferguson asked him.
Archer simply shook his head non-committally. For all his thrusting commercial ways, he cut a sad figure at that moment. He realised that without an understanding of how the past feeds into the present, he was an empty vessel. He saw that his own failures with son and wife resonated within my building as much as every other human tragedy that had taken place.
Doctor Singh
Throughout the day the pain in my back had increased. It had gone from ‘slight’ to ‘unbearable’ and my state of mind from annoyed to very worried. In late afternoon I took the dog a walk and thought at one point that I would not make it home. By an effort of sheer will I made the front door and begged my wife to get a doctor.
Living as we did out in the country, the doctor call service was not available. We were instructed to drive to the nearest hospital and meet the on-call doctor there.
At the hospital we were directed to a reception area to await the doctor’s arrival. By now the pain was such that I could not sit down. Instead, I paced up and down the floor, palms pressed against my lower back.
“Here’s Doctor Singh now,” the receptionist told my wife when she asked why the doctor was not present. Wearing a neat brown suit and carrying a well-worn briefcase, Doctor Singh entered the room wearing a troubled expression.
To be honest, I was so preoccupied by my pain that I was unable to gather other than the briefest of first impressions.
Dr Singh was, of course, a Sikh but he wore none of the Sikh attire that afternoon. It was his eyebrows I was drawn to. They curled upwards in a way that made him look satanic. Underneath them his dark brown eyes darted around like a match in a high wind. The small mouth with its thin drawn pursed lips looked like it might have been sewed shut. I could not see his teeth. His face was shaped like a long triangle, with prominent cheekbones and a pallor that spoke of ill health. I could not bear to look at the man for, doctor or no doctor, he reminded me of the Grim Reaper. All he lacked was a hooded cloak and a scythe. Maybe the truth was that he no more resembled the Reaper than I did myself, but the illusion was strengthened by his callous attitude and an air of malevolence.
From this point on, I had to depend upon my wife for an account of events as I was focused on the sheer agony that reigned in my abdomen.
Doctor Singh put down his bag while the receptionist made him a cup of tea which he cradled in his hands for the benefit of the warmth. Then he took some papers from his bag and turned his back on the waiting room so that he could make some facsimiles on the photocopier.
Time passed. I felt my consciousness fading and sat on an uncomfortable chair in order to lessen the anticipated collapse.
“Excuse me,” my distraught wife demanded of Singh, “when are you going to examine my husband – we’ve been waiting for 15 minutes?”
His response was to ill-temperedly pick up his papers from the photocopier, return them to his briefcase and storm without speaking towards his surgery door. At the last second he turned and addressed Rosie:
“I am taking my tea-break. I have papers I must attend to.”
Rosie was so nonplussed by this answer that she asked: “Should I get someone from Accident and Emergency?”
“Yes, it might be for the best,” was Dr Singh’s increasingly bizarre response.
She ran for help and three nurses and a porter rushed along the corridor and heaved my prostrate form on to a trolley. By now it was almost 30 minutes since I had arrived at the hospital and, at last, I was being properly attended to, even though I was unconscious.
Rosie realised that things were looking bleak when the Canadian consultant on duty said I would need surgery ‘pretty damned quick’. I had suffered what is known as a triple A; my aortic artery had ruptured and the blood was pouring down into my abdomen. A slow drip was fast becoming a torrent.
Medical opinion is that 40 minutes is the maximum a patient with a triple A can hold on after rupturing without surgery. The nearest hospital that could carry out the surgery I required was 60 miles away. Although the ambulance carrying me and Rosie flashed lights and sounded sirens, the drive had to be smooth so as not to worsen the rupture. It took 100 minutes, during which I drifted in and out of consciousness, and experienced the most pain a human could bear.
As the ambulance sped through the gates of the receiving hospital, Rosie said “Hold on, love, we’re there.”
I remember that bit best of all. Suddenly the excruciating pain lifted and I felt very sleepy. Absence of pain was bliss, but I knew deep down that the ultimate surrender was close.
“I’m sorry, darling, it’s too late,” I said, “I’m going, I’m going.”
With that I fell into a deep coma from which I would not emerge for several weeks.
Unfortunately, it was not as simple as mending a substantial rupture. First, I developed septicaemia and then a fungal lung infection that demanded a tracheotomy. In many ways, it was even worse for my wife and daughter. The specialists refused to give soothing words or false prognoses. My chances of surviving, they said, were distinctly less than average.
Totally absorbed in my opiate-fuelled dreams, I knew none of this. The summer months of May and June passed and I lived in a fantasy world, dwelling in woodland retreats and deserted cottages with only the strange and unreliable for company. Sometimes my view of the world would be from the sky, looking down on a remarkable patchwork quilt of meadow and forest. The visionary world I inhabited did not seem fleeting nor transparent, but as concrete and realistic as the keyboard upon which I am pouring out these memories. That dream world was technicolour vivid and although the background to it was always changing, there was one constant: lurking in foreground and background was Doctor Singh. Clearly, the traumatic events in that hospital waiting room before my collapse had imprinted his image on my mind.
Sometimes he would be dressed in a frock coat, then a smart tweed suit. Once he wore a bowler hat and a city gent’s overcoat. But the real point of focus was on those curled up eyebrows and the eyes that darted ceaselessly about, searching for an unnamed fulfilment. Oh, I got to know Devinder Singh much better in those comatose days. I both hated and feared him. Many of those dreams involved me making a frantic escape from Singh; as though I harboured a dark knowledge that should he catch me I was a dead man.
May drifted into June then suddenly the world was in July and I became a part of it again. No longer did Singh plague my dreams and he all but disappeared from my conscious thoughts. Incredibly, I was alive. Most people die of a Triple A even before they reach hospital; of the minority that do, more than half die on the operating table.
“How have I managed to survive?” I remember asking Mr Thomas, my consultant.
“You’re a miracle patient,” he said, “I thought you were a lost cause the moment I saw the damage in your abdomen. We got to know from your family that you were a fit person though, lots of running and walking. That must have been the difference.”
Upon my emergence from the coma, one of the nurses started idly chatting to me one unbearably hot July afternoon. She began quizzing me about the history of my illness. How had it started? Where was I when I collapsed?
I explained about going to the hospital out of hours’ service; the antics of Dr Singh and how I had been abandoned by him on the waiting room floor while he took his tea break. She involved a group of nurses who were working nearby. They were outraged at Singh’s behaviour on behalf of their own professional etiquette. How could a person whose work was helping the sick and suffering so blatantly ignore his calling?
“You need to make a complaint about him,” said Fay, the nurse who had attended me since my first arrival in Intensive Care.
“What would be the point of that?” I asked her.
“So that he never does it to anyone else,” she said, “he deserves to be struck off.”
The more I thought about her words, the more animated I got. Yes, she was right. Singh deserved to have the book thrown at him as soon as I was strong enough to lift it. My resolve frightened me somewhat; Singh’s stature had grown significantly in my mind over the time of my hospitalisation. Taking him on would be no picnic. After all, it felt like I was attempting to professionally reap the Grim Reaper himself.
I waited until I had been discharged from hospital and was comfortably ensconced at home. The first problem was finding to whom I should address my complaint. Devinder Singh might have become the Grim Reaper in my mind, but if I was to unseat him then it must be his earthly base that I targeted, not anything as ethereal as Hades.
I wrote and re-wrote that letter many times. I wanted to write rather than type because it seemed like the physical effort of wielding a pen made things more personal. This is the letter I wrote:
On May 2nd I attended the out of hours’ doctor service for an appointment with Dr Devinder Singh.
Although Dr Singh arrived shortly after I did, he had still made no effort to examine me within the 30 minutes that followed. Instead he spent time working on the photocopier, conve