This is the story of an encounter with a ghost in a small English market town
They thought the circus had arrived every time old Jack Bannister rolled into town.
His wagon creaked like bones and his black dog was the devil. Kids chased his wagon, one tried to hitch a ride on the stargate but stumbled, the dog reacted like a crocodile and the kids scattered like beetles.
The sky was losing its red, rain was starting to fall. He knew the wagon would become unmanageable if the horse didn’t make it to the brow quickly. She pulled along gracelessly like an old farmer’s wife.
Sometimes something happens in a town like Newport on the Staffordshire and Shropshire border. Prejudice and superstition can spread like blood across the sidewalks. Old Jack, who would spend a whole day rolling his way towards town to collect his monthly supplies and then making his way back home again, had this affect on them. They didn’t like him because he was a travelling man, a “ducker”.
The wagon waved like a sailing ship as the bowels of the sky rumbled and opened. Jack took a tighter grip on the reins. The black walls of a St Nicholas’s loomed in the rain, there were alleys and ginnels, doorways and stairwells, a Church of Scientology, liturgically bright, a Co-op offered dividends. Jack reckoned they played by their own rules round here.
There were certain elements of this town he related to though. Nothing to do with the people, but to do with the ramshackle. A memory, a yearning, a ghostly thing, something only honest shaman, duckers and wild animals are privileged to be able to recognise.
He liked the ramshackle. He recognised that this town was medieval, but only the shape of the roofs were left, the frontages were new biliously coloured bricks. As he looked up at the medieval rooftops he could hear all the people who’d spent their lives under them. He could hear ghosts and distant memories.
There was a workyard off to the left, he could see it as he came round the edge of the church wall. Workyards, ramshackle, dark and dirty. There was DNA underneath these roofs. Whole worlds had changed, come and gone, cataclysmic times had faded unnoticed, great gashes blown into the universe, dying tribes and shipwrecks, ancient histories ignored, even the seas had changed colour.
The church bell began to toll midday. Somehow it didn’t sound right though, too mechanical, hollow, too precise, the chimes of a battery operated clock.
There was a whoooshing noise above, drowning out the bells. He looked up and saw a wedding couple pointing at him from a balloon, she was in crinolines and he was holding on to his top hat, they were laughing and losing their balance in the basket oblivious to the roaring flames over their heads or the closeness of the ground.
****
That afternoon I was propping up the bar of the old Fox and Duck on the outskirts of town, buying Jack beers. That was my job, you see, when he rolled into town, he was never had any money. It was 1989 and Jack knew I was a writer with a growing interest in the unexplained, so I’d buy him beer and he’d tell me stories, stories about being on the road.
And stories about ghosts. “You know that cake shop, Wycherleys, in the centre of that Godforsaken hole you call town? You should take a look in there, son…”
I pushed another amber glass across to him: “Why?”
“I saw summat there today as I pulled up the hill.”
“Like what?”
He got cryptic like he always did, playing the part of the ducker: “Something in the corner of my eye… you know, how you learn to spot a comet ..?”
I knew that was as far as he would go. He didn’t talk much and anyway he was only here for the free beer. That information was payment for the last amber glass, now half consumed, in front of him.
****
Later I sat in the ivy-ridden walled garden at Wycherleys, once a perfumery and now a delicatessens. There are the remnants of a vegetable patch behind a ‘half moon’ wooden gate. I sipped my coffee, it was a bit chilly out here, too chilly in fact for most people. I was alone.
It’s a beautiful ancient building which it is rumoured was partly designed by that old rogue of wistful architecture and design William Morris. You can sense history in every brick of this wonderfully tall and thin building with its winding rickety stairs and low-slung ceilings.
Newport is a strange place, once famous for its leather, wool and fish.
I don’t know what I was expecting as I sipped my coffee, but in this garden by myself the last thing I felt was alone. It was like there were faces in the mullioned windows, faces of the dead, aimless shrouds of sadness, churning memories, shock at a life gone past.
I felt like I knew their names, their crimes and penalties right back to the days of laudanum and ether. For a second I could feel their anguish and their pain. It hurt inside me. Each of their stories began to play before my eyes, separate reels and confused soundtracks, all the stories flickering and flashing, wafting in a different world like ribbons …
I began to feel cold in the sunlight and wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. I knew other things were in there, other ghosts – not belonging to the history of the house – but other ghosts that had gathered there. And they had a darkness to them, like the darkness inside the darkest coat …
… “There are a lot of people here …” I felt a voice whisper. I definitely didn’t hear it but I felt it. Something brushed against my elbow making me turn. Nothing there. The garden was still empty but there was this incredible smell of roses and herbs, spices. The faces in the window stirred as if they were trying to see something moving below them.
And that’s when I saw her too, a tall – very tall – dark figure standing without a flicker of movement. She held a basket over her arm filled with petals, herbs and spices. She was facing the wall and, like something coming at you from inside a mist, I could make out the outline of a door. Everywhere filled with the chokingly sweet smell of flowers and meadows. Despite this there was nothing particularly friendly about this woman, she was unnerving.
Unexpectedly she turned to look at me and the faces in the windows gasped. Then she was gone.
And so, I suppose, I began what was my very first ghost hunt. I went in to the shop, it was quiet as the grave in there apart from the lady serving behind the counter which was full of cheeses and hams and pickles and spices.
I asked her if she knew about the door in the wall which I’d just watched manifest itself. This frumpy middle-aged woman dressed in vintage pinafore and bonnet smiled at me and said: “Ah, you’ve seen Mary then have you?”
I must have looked embarrassed because she said: “Oh don’t be worried, we’ve all seen her. And heard her too. Did you know, she can make your watch stop – and the clocks – if she feels like it. Check yours …(I did but it was still ticking away) Sometimes she’ll come in a room unnoticed and turn it to ice. Mary doesn’t like warmth …”
“Do you see her a lot?”
“Sometimes you can see her every day, other times it’s as if she never existed. Most of the time she just appears to be getting along with her business … the whole building can fill with this beautiful smell of perfume… but once I swear she turned to look at me.”
****
I followed the top of this accommodating shop assistant’s bonnet down the uneven stairs into the cellar. It was filled with all the usual detritus you’d expect in a shop’s storeroom, discarded shelving, promotional banners and signs, an old counter, cardboard boxes stuffed inelegantly inside cardboard boxes.
My guide’s hips were sadly on the large side and she had a bit of difficulty negotiating the narrow corridor between all of these things but finally we reached our destination. She had taken me to the darkest part of the cellar, we could hear traffic noise above our heads.
It was there that she pointed out in the dismal light a smooth granite slab which still had the aroma of centuries of the flowers, herbs, spices, berries and bark which had been melded on it. There was a slight but shadowy indentation where this magical perfumer’s hand had rested …
… we both heard a whisper like an echo from walls … “three parts frankincense, half part thyme and one part myrrh…”
Then it was gone and we were alone again with this pungent smell of the past.
I stepped out of Wycherleys onto the medieval street and out of the corner of my eye I caught the stargate of Jack Bannister’s wagon making its way back down the hill.
I’d just experienced my first ghosts and I began to feel dreadfully alone.
#ghosts #wycherleys #newportshropshire
