I am not responsible.
Someone put ideas in my head, at some point, about The Family at The Hall, and the various tragedies that had befallen people there over the centuries.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it was that white-bearded man who collared me once for a forty-minute lecture about the estate, the city, and, of course, his extensive self-published writings on both subjects. (Amateur historians, like vegans and certain vigorous Christians, unfailingly steer conversation around to these ennobling and preoccupying aspects of their character.)
My point is, someone put the idea in my head, and whoever it was, they’re to blame, not me.
Not me.
—
After a difficult start to the year, by the summer I was forcing myself to go out every day — albeit unshowered, unshaven, in yesterday’s clothes or the day before’s or the day before that’s — for a walk around the private park, with a BLT from M&S I would buy but never eat — a routine I’d established to try to feel some control, at a time when life felt so desperately out of control.
I hated the park at weekends — too many kids, little Tarquins and Japonicas running riot while their parents lounged on rugs drinking Prosecco with no concern for whose peace or picnics got ruined by all the running-about and screaming. Weekdays were better — apart from home schoolers getting some “outdoor learning time”, the presence of children was much less intrusive, usually.
The lake was home to carp, some of considerable size. I’d seen them being hauled out with great indignity by men who related more readily to fish than to their wives, men who spent small fortunes on maggots, tins of Spam and fresh sardines because they “knew it’s what the fish liked.”
That particular Wednesday, the bubbler was not working; the oxygen was not being replenished and the whole pool was slowly warming, stagnating, turning to syrup in the sun. I could see the carp swirling about in the almost viscous water, sedate as crocodiles, gulping at the surface with a thuck-thuck-thuck from their fleshy lips. No-one was fishing; too hot, presumably. Most of the pegs were out in the open; only one, Peg Nine, at the northernmost tip of the lake, was still overshadowed by leafy branches at this season.
There, the grass had been trampled away and had never had chance to recover. Lime-green moss had started to in-fill the letters of the dedication to a loved one carved into the backrest of the bench. This detail feels significant. Flowers and cards were often sellotaped or cable-tied to it; soft toys as well, sometimes. These details also feel significant.
That day, when I was passing Peg Nine, sweating, mind not settled, a flick of a tail in the shallows made me turn in time to see the vast body of a gigantic carp, muddy gold across the back, gleaming across the belly, as it gasped at the warm air and collapsed down with a splash. When the ripples subsided, I noticed something else below the water, wobbling edges which coalesced into a face, a child’s face, a boy of perhaps five or six, blond hair waggling like weeds churned up in the fish’s wake. A little bubble, just one, emerged from his nostril and popped at the surface. His eyes were wide open, looking up, up and out, at me.
I’d never seriously believed in ghosts, but I also used to like podcasts where painfully ordinary people insisted their lives had been touched by the paranormal, and those programmes where unqualified investigators brandished machines which interpret any random sound as the voice of an unquiet spirit, before a self-styled demonologist performed a so-called exorcism, and everyone on both sides of the astral plane could move on.
I know these things have very little to do with the objective presence of supernatural beings and much more to do with the psychology, the suggestibility, and if I’m honest, the vulnerability of the person encountering them. We make our own ghosts. I’m sure someone famous said that. If they didn’t, I’m saying it now.
So I was less disturbed by the sight of that boy underwater than you might have expected. I certainly don’t recall being frightened. The day was too hot, too bright, for fear. He looked up at me and I looked down at him. The water had calmed enough for me to see him clearly, his irises of periwinkle blue, the bridge of his nose dotted with freckles, his pale blond hair darkening near his scalp to the colour of straw.
There was no particular expression on his face; you could have read anything you wanted into it — amusement, curiosity, friendliness, invitation. His mouth was slightly open, enough to reveal one missing lower front tooth; gone to the fairies for a good price, I hoped. A carp, smaller than the one I’d seen before, sculled closer and reached towards the boy with its flexible lips, puckering and palpating across his ear, his cheek, his chin, before twitching a pectoral fin and sharking away. His hair swished in gentle agitation at its departure, but otherwise the boy made no response.
A sound pulled my attention to the left, onto a man who had dressed more wisely for the weather than me. He nodded and mumbled “Morning” and was about to carry on past, when I blurted something feeble about how massive the carp was that I’d just seen come up for air.
“They start suffocating, this time of year,” he said, taking a few steps towards me. “Somebody needs to mend the aerator, else we’ll come one day and find them all floating, belly-up.”
“It was right there,” I burbled, pointing to the patch of water from beneath which the boy still looked up at me with that almost-smile. Reflexively, the man’s eyes moved — straight to the spot I was gesturing towards, straight to the boy, I was sure. I kept my hand held out in order to focus his gaze where I wanted it, and I waited.
“They like the shade under here,” the man said, nodding. “Makes them easier to catch, though. Lesser of two evils, maybe.”
His failure to acknowledge the boy’s presence embarrassed me. I lowered my arm with a kind of defeat and was trying to think what else I could do, when both of our attentions were drawn by the scampering-over of an excitable brown-and-white spaniel, proudly clutching a chewed-up ball which it deposited at my feet.
“No! Oscar — no,” the man said in a sharp but not uncaring tone. “Sorry, mate. He’s a rescue, and he’s really needy. He can’t leave strangers alone.”
Oscar looked up at me, down at the ball, up at me again, making sure I understood what he wanted.
“We’re trying to train it out of him,” the man went on. “Just ignore him.”
I disobeyed the man’s instruction and nudged the ball with my foot so that it rolled down into the water. I’d have thought the arrival of a dog would excite and distract any small child, even a ghostly one, but the boy continued to look up at me, only at me. Oscar sped to retrieve his ball, head ducking under the water with the sheer force of his own exuberance, and I think I actually gasped at the prospect of him coming muzzle-to-face with the boy — but when he re-emerged with his prize between his teeth, he simply trotted past me, straight back to Daddy.
“Come on, Osc,” the man said, nodding at me again, and off he went, his wet-fronted dog cantering behind him, hopeful for a really big throw next time.
The water quickly resettled itself and the boy clarified into view once more, blond hair still waving, periwinkle eyes still looking. It was obvious now that he was present for me and me alone. Obvious enough, too, that he was merely a by-product of some half-listened-to story I’d politely smiled through long ago, some little nugget of local history that had lodged itself in my brain and which was, for some reason, being recalled to mind on this particular day.
That question of timing was what really mattered — why I was seeing him precisely now, what unresolved need in me he represented now, what lingering pain in me had conjured him up now. None of that was readily apparent, and would call for careful self-reflection. I remember thinking that I must tell my therapist about the boy, but knew full well I never would.
I had been forced to start fending for myself of late, to not be so dependent on others for validation, and I felt sure this was some kind of test of how well, or not well, I was doing with that. Since I had summoned the boy into being, I must be the one to dispel him. I, and I alone.
I squatted down, right at the edge of the pool, so that we were no more than a metre apart, and I put out a hand, intending to reach down and touch his face, or more accurately, to not touch his face, my fingers making contact with nothing at all, thus confirming that the boy was not really there. Once repudiated, he would vanish, and whatever ambiguous trauma or shortcoming in me he symbolised would be driven down into the depths of the lake with him.
That is what was supposed to happen. Instead, just as I dipped my free hand beneath the surface and gasped at the surprising chill, a golden shape lurched up and launched itself at the contents of my other hand. I cried out in alarm and fell backward, the triangular box landing on the water with a soft slap. The giant carp barged and mouthed at the softening cardboard before being joined by another smaller one, and another, and still more, all champing and gobbling in desperation rather than hunger. When at last the box gave way and the sandwich was released, the fish were all too exhausted even to nibble at it, the clumps of soaked bread simply left to float off, to disintegrate in midwater.
As the carp began to disperse, they seemed to usher the boy away with them, escorting him from beneath the shade of the low canopy, buffeting him with gentle nudges of their heads or slow sweeps of their tails. Surrounded by his flotilla of gilded companions, he drifted serenely out towards the centre of the lake, where I finally lost sight of him beneath the opaque reflection of the harsh sun glinting on the surface.
By now I was uncomfortably hot, my head was swirling and deep down in my stomach, something did not feel right. I picked myself up, brushed the dirt off my hands onto my trousers, and I walked away from Peg Nine as quickly as I could, retracing my steps, refusing to glance across the water in case he might still be out there, staring back.
When I got home, I went straight to bed, lay down without getting undressed, and slept right through to the next day. I did not dream then, about lakes or fish or boys. Those dreams only came later, and now they never leave me, asleep or awake.
Almost on auto-pilot, I got up and went out that following morning, and after buying yet another BLT that was destined to go to waste, I went back in the direction of the park, bristling with curious conflicting thrills, wanting to see the boy again, and also not wanting to — only to find that the main entrance was closed off behind a cordon of blue-and-white police tape. One woman outside the estate agent’s was telling another that the two side gates were shut up the same way. Distressed at this enforced interruption of my routine, I stumbled back home, curled up on the settee and stayed there.
I ventured out for a fresh BLT as usual next day, but never even made it to the self-checkout. Shoppers in every aisle were gossiping about the tragedy in the park, about the little boy who had wandered off and tumbled into the pool, and how awful it was that no-one had spotted him in time to save him.
Back when Ethan left me in the spring (for good, this time — and writing this, eight months down the line, it’s clear he really did mean it), he took our cat and all our houseplants with him. He said I was “irredeemably selfish” — his exact words — and I’d proved I couldn’t be trusted to think about anyone or anything outside myself. I disagreed with him at the time, out of anger, out of instinct, refusing to let him be right, to admit that he could possibly be right. But I did wonder then, and I’ve often wondered since.
I returned my key fob and cancelled my subscription to the park. I shan’t ever set foot in there again. Winter is here, and now, when I head out for my walks with a consolatory Greggs, I go to Cannon Hill instead. I’m very careful to steer clear of the edge of the water there, and if any dog deposits a toy at my feet and invites me to play, I just keep walking and I do not look back.
