I performed this story on the evening of Sunday 2 March '08 in the Cloisters of my old School (founded 1556). The Cloisters are at ground level and are paved with large slabs of stone; one side used to be open to the elements. On this evening this long dark space, that looks out upon a churchyard, was illuminated only by candles with the audience sitting at tables. I stood in a dark doorway and I wore a long black coat and a wide brimmed black hat. Around my neck there was wound a white scarf that had within it a string of small white bulbs powered by batteries; in my pocket there was a switch. When I started my face could be seen only by candlelight.
Good evening.
I’m very pleased to see you here.
Can you all see me clearly?
That’s good. That’s a blessing.
Can you hear me?
People don’t always hear me.
I thought I’d just pop in to see you all and say Hello. And tell you a story. It’s no trouble. I didn’t have far to come and the story … well, it’s just a story.
I was at school here, you know. A long time ago. My feet used to tread these well-worn flagstones as I rushed here and there, shirt tail flying, books spilling out of my satchel. Tempus was always fugiting, as we lads used to say. Latin was very big in those days. Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Dative, Ablative. You see, I can still do it. There was a joke the Latin master showed us. He wrote on the board:
Caesar adsum jam forte
Brutus aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at!
Now the letter 'j' could be used instead of 'i' when writing Latin and was pronounced as a sort of 'yuh' sound. The joke only works if the 'j' is used. The verse has no meaning. The joke only emerges when you say it in English. Do you see? Caesar had some jam for tea. Brutus had a rat. Caesar was sick in an omnibus. Brutus was sick in a hat. Very droll. Oh, we laughed several times at that.
In the winter these cloisters used to be very cold. There was no glass where now there is glass. See! Imagine it without glass on a cold, windy day. Brrr!
But in the Summer it was delightful.
Are you familiar with the walnut trees outside? There’s a couple just behind you and there’s another over there at the front of the school – but you can’t see it from here. They have been here for such a long time. In amongst the gravestones. I loved those trees in the Summer. In the cloisters, running around, you were always aware of those beautiful trees and sometimes, when there was a breeze, you could hear them.
Sometimes in the Summer I would take a book, a good interesting book, perhaps an adventure book, and I’d sit at the base of that one. I’d go round to the church side so I couldn’t be seen from the school. School life did seem to consist largely of places where one couldn’t go and things one couldn’t do. I’d sit under the canopy of bright, shiny, leaves of such a green! I’d lean back against the tree trunk and with half-closed eyes I’d drift off to Treasure Island or some such place. Then the church clock would bring me back to this world. Tempus was fugiting again.
At the beginning of the Michaelmas Term when we returned to school the walnut trees were waiting and bearing gifts. The green walnuts hung up there, as shiny as the leaves. They had no intention of dropping until they were good and ready and that was when their green jackets had started to moulder and crack open - and that was much later in the term. When the time was ripe the nuts would fall onto the grass. Sometimes they would hit a gravestone and break but most commonly they would be lying there in the morning, on the grass, scattered among the gravestones just waiting to be picked up by an eager schoolboy.
And yet, strangely, they weren’t picked up by anyone but me. I would stuff my satchel with them and put them on my bedroom window sill to dry and then I would have midnight feasts with bread and cheese and my walnuts. If my gleaning had been successful I might have enough of my secret hoard to last me to Christmas. And yet, strangely, they weren’t picked up by anyone but me.
I left my school and went off to find a living for myself. In those days young men were expected to give the colonies a whirl. Countries where young men, young English men, could find a position in tea, or coffee, or coir, or that blanket term, ‘import and export’. Any country where other men, usually of colour, would accept very little for doing a great deal of hard work so that young English men could behave as though the accumulation of wealth was their divine right. I chose India and did fairly well but India took its revenge and ruined my health. A dying man I returned home and occupied the house recently vacated by my parents who had had the good sense to die before they could see the wreck that their son had become. I spent the last few months of my life very near to this my old school and this graveyard and these beloved walnut trees.
I would walk, or rather hobble, with my ivory inlaid ebony walking stick to help me, along that path beside these cloisters. Sadly I could not take up my favoured spot beside the walnut tree. Well, I could have done this but I should never have been able to rise again. I would rest on various benches placed by kind people beside the paths of the churchyard and occasionally take a little nap in the porch of this lovely church.
And then I died you know. People do.*
It was then another life began for me. With my corporeal remains tucked away sub terra so that they might return to the dust from whence they came I was, in a strange way, reborn. I was admittedly … insubstantial. But I was visible. When I started to address you this evening I asked you if you could see me clearly and you all said ‘Yes’, didn’t you?
The word that is flitting in and out of your minds … the word that you cannot quite allow to form itself in those minds of yours … is Ghost. Wooo oo wooo!
I prefer the word Shade. It is the word we used when I was … alive. I find it more dignified. But if you are more comfortable with Ghost then so be it.
The remarkable thing is that having achieved this Spirit status I found that I was not alone in myself. Now that’s mysterious, isn’t it? … Not alone in myself.
Returning to the matter of the walnuts and the walnut trees. I was only ever aware of their trunks, their boughs, their leaves and … their fruit … those crisp crunchy nuts that when cracked open reveal their strange kernels that look for all the world like miniature human brains.
I never gave a moment’s thought to what was beneath the trees. Think of those probing roots working their way through the soil seeking moisture and sustenance to nourish everything above. Think of those graves. Think of coffins. Think of their contents. Think of the slow absorption of everything that had constituted those human beings. Year by year finding its way into the trees and into their fruit.
Those crisp crunchy nuts that I, and only I, feasted on season by season.
My dear Mother, when encouraging me to eat good food, used to say ‘You are what you eat’.
How true. How very true.
So I am more than what you see. I am the composite of many. Today you see the man whose story has been told but I am also a builder who died in 1789 and could barely string two words together. I am also a child of twelve who died of cholera in 1830. I’m a nice spinster lady who did good works. I’m a loving husband and wife who died within a few weeks of each other. Men, women, children whose bodies were laid to rest within reach of those determined roots. Forty or fifty of ‘em. Just over there, beyond the glass, beneath the grass.
I am indeed a man of many parts, am I not?
What is my name? Well, I cannot offer you the name that appears on my headstone over my grave just over there because I am - we are - so much more than that. Let me borrow from the Gospel according to St Mark: ‘my name is Legion for we are many’ – although we are definitely not evil spirits and the Gadarene swine will not be needed, thank you very much.
You may see us in any one of our forms around this church. Usually after dark when we are most comfortable. But you will be more likely to see me. I am more gregarious. Try not to be afraid. I promise that none of us will try to frighten you. We just like this place and we like the trees – for they are part of us, are they not?
One final word. Please, I beg you, do not raise with your charming vicar the matter of exorcism. That would be Oh, so very cruel. If driven out, where would we go? Where would we go?
* At this point in the narrative I switched on the lights hidden in my scarf so that my face was softly lit from below. I think the effect was eery but I'm not sure
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