All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  I walked into the wood, feeling my way carefully with an arm held before me till I came out on the other side. Raynes Abbey lay before me.

  I had always associated the beautiful ruin with summer days with the sun warming the old stones of the graceful arches, the chatter of voices, children playing on the cropped turf; but this was 2.30 a.m. in an empty world and the cold breath of the coming winter on my face. I felt suddenly alone.

  In the cold glare everything was uncannily distinct. But there was a look of unreality about the silent rows of columns reaching into the dark sky and throwing their long pale shadows over the grass. Away at the far end I could see the monks’ cells—gloomy black caverns deep in shadow—and as I looked an owl hooted, accentuating the heavy, blanketing silence.

  A prickling apprehension began to creep over me, a feeling that my living person had no place here among these brooding relics of dead centuries. I turned quickly and began to hurry through the wood, bumping into the trees, tripping over roots and bushes, and when I reached my car I was trembling and more out of breath than I should have been. It was good to slam the door, turn the ignition and hear the familiar roar of the engine.

  I was home within ten minutes and trotted up the stairs, looking forward to catching up on my lost sleep. Opening my bedroom door I flicked on the switch and felt a momentary surprise when the room remained in darkness. Then I stood frozen in the doorway.

  By the window, where the moonlight flooded in, making a pool of silver in the gloom, a monk was standing. A monk in a brown habit, motionless, arms folded, head bowed. His face was turned from the light towards me but I could see nothing under the drooping cowl but a horrid abyss of darkness.

  I thought I would choke. My mouth opened but no sound came. And in my racing mind one thought pounded above the others;—there were such things as ghosts after all.

  Again my mouth opened and a hoarse shriek emerged.

  “Who in the name of God is that?”

  The reply came back immediately in a sepulchral bass.

  “Tristan.”

  I don’t think I actually swooned, but I did collapse limply across my bed and lay there gasping, the blood thundering in my ears. I was dimly aware of the monk standing on a chair and screwing in the light bulb, giggling helplessly the while. Then he flicked on the switch and sat on my bed. With his cowl pushed back on his shoulders he lit a Woodbine and looked down at me, still shaking with laughter.

  “Oh God, Jim, that was marvellous—even better than I expected.”

  I stared up at him and managed a whisper. “But you’re in Edinburgh…”

  “Not me, old lad. There wasn’t much doing so I concluded my business and hitched straight back, I’d just got in when I saw you coming up the garden. Barely had time to get the bulb out and climb into my outfit—I couldn’t miss the opportunity.”

  “Feel my heart,” I murmured.

  Tristan rested his hand on my ribs for a moment and as he felt the fierce hammering a fleeting concern crossed his face.

  “Hell, I’m sorry, Jim.” Then he patted my shoulder reassuringly. “But don’t worry. If it was going to be fatal you’d have dropped down dead on the spot. And anyway, a good fright is very beneficial—acts like a tonic. You won’t need a holiday this year.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks very much.”

  “I wish you could have heard yourself.” He began to laugh again. “That scream of terror…oh dear, oh dear!”

  I hoisted myself slowly into a sitting position, pulled out the pillow, propped it against the bed head and leaned back against it. I still felt very weak.

  I eyed him coldly. “So you’re the Raynes ghost.”

  Tristan grinned in reply but didn’t speak.

  “You young devil! I should have known. But tell me, why do you do it? What do you get out of it?”

  “Oh I don’t know.” The young man gazed dreamily at the ceiling through the cigarette smoke. “I suppose it’s just getting the timing right so that the drivers aren’t quite sure whether they’ve seen me or not. And then I get a hell of a kick out of hearing them revving up like mad and roaring off for home. None of them ever slows down.”

  “Well, somebody once told me your sense of humour was over-developed,” I said. “And I’m telling you it’ll land you in the cart one of these days.”

  “Not a chance. I keep my bike behind a hedge about a hundred yards down the road so that I can make a quick getaway if necessary. There’s no problem.”

  “Well, please yourself.” I got off the bed and made shakily for the door. “I’m going downstairs for a tot of whisky, and just remember this.” I turned and glared at him. “If you try that trick on me again I’ll strangle you.”

  A few days later at about eight o’clock in the evening I was sitting reading by the fireside in the big room at Skeldale House when the door burst open and Siegfried burst into the room.

  “James,” he rapped out. “Old Horace Dawson’s cow has split its teat. Sounds like a stitching job. The old chap won’t be able to hold the cow and he has no near neighbours to help him so I wonder if you’d come and give me a hand.”

  “Sure, glad to.” I marked the place in my book, stretched and yawned then got up from the chair. I noticed Siegfried’s foot tapping on the carpet and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the only thing that would satisfy him would be some kind of ejector seat on my chair which would hurl me straight through the door and into action on the word of command. I was being as quick as I could but I had the feeling as always—when I was writing something for him or operating under his eyes—that I wasn’t going nearly fast enough. There were elements of tension in the knowledge that the mere fact of watching me rise from the chair and replace my book in the fireside alcove was an almost unbearable strain for him.

  By the time I was half way across the carpet he had disappeared into the passage. I followed at a trot and just made it into the street as he was starting the car. Grabbing the door I made a dive for the interior and felt the road whip away from under my foot as we took off into the darkness.

  Fifteen minutes later we screeched to a halt in the yard behind a little smallholding standing on its own across a couple of fields. The engine had barely stopped before my colleague was out of the car and striding briskly towards the cow house. He called to me over his shoulder as he went.

  “Bring the suture materials, James, will you…and the local and syringe…and that bottle of wound lotion…”

  I heard the brief murmur of conversation from within then Siegfried’s voice again, raised this time in an impatient shout.

  “James! What are you doing out there? Can’t you find those things?”

  I had hardly got the boot open and I rummaged frantically among the rows of tins and bottles. I found what he required, galloped across the yard and almost collided with him as he came out or the building.

  He was in mid shout. “James! What the hell’s keeping you…oh, you’re there. Right, let’s have that stuff…what have you been doing all this time?”

  He had been right about Horace Dawson, a tiny frail man of about eighty who couldn’t be expected to do any strong-arm stuff. Despite his age he had stubbornly refused to give up milking the two fat shorthorn cows which stood in the little cobbled byre.

  Our patient had badly damaged a teat; either she or her neighbour must have stood on it because there was a long tear running almost full length with the milk running from it.

  “It’s a bad one, Horace,” Siegfried said. “You can see it goes right into the milk channel. But we’ll do what we can for her—it’ll need a good few stitches in there.”

  He bathed and disinfected the teat then filled a syringe with local anaesthetic.

  “Grab her nose, James,” he said, then spoke gently to the farmer. “Horace, will you please hold her tail for me. Just catch it by the very end, that’s the way…lovely.”

  The little man squared his shoulders. “Aye, ah can do that fine, Mr. Far