A Lost Weekend

“Your turn Harry!” He’d been dreading those words since being told on his arrival that he and three others had been drawn by lots to tell a ghost story after dinner.

Alex and Mary never held simple dinner parties, there was always a theme. Harry and his wife, Margaret, had been Bonny and Clyde last time. Tonight, since it was Halloween, it had to be a ghost story. He consoled himself with the thought that at least they hadn’t been asked to dress in weird costumes for the occasion. He nodded his acceptance, re-lit his cigar and rose from the elegant table at which they had all just enjoyed a magnificent meal.

“Well.” He began. “The difference between my story and those that have gone before, is that mine is true and the person to whom it happened is here in this room.” He stopped and looked down at his wife. “Margaret will confirm everything I say.” Eleven pairs of eyes left him for a moment and fixed on her. She, knowing the story he was about to tell, just nodded. The eyes reverted to Harry and he continued. “You all know my company sponsored the Three Peaks Race some time ago, some of you came to the launch party in London. Well, the prize-giving event was held later that year in Barham, Wales, I was delegated to represent the company and present the prizes to the winners. We decided to take the children and make a weekend of it.”

“We couldn’t stay at a hotel in the town, they had been fully booked for months. The booking agent arranged for us to stay at a recently opened hotel just outside. You can imagine the journey to Wales, I’m sure.” He said, noting the knowing nods around the table. “We were running a bit late, the children were getting irritable, so I stopped at a pub to ask the way to our hotel. I assumed the odd look from the barman was reserved just for strangers, but after a second or two he told me “I couldn’t miss it, it was just off the main road” between Barham and a village with an unpronounceable name.” Harry spread his hands expressively and with a rueful look said, “I did miss it. Actually, I missed it several times, but eventually I found the hotel.”

He described how magnificent it looked in the gathering dusk of the autumn evening. A renovated original Tudor building, set in beautiful gardens with lights shining out through the leaded windows promising warmth and comfort.

Inside was just as impressive. Oak panelling, wood block flooring, period furniture set tastefully around a spacious lounge. A beautiful display of flowers sat in the centre of an old oak table. A blazing fire in a great inglenook fireplace was warming two dogs, a Great Dane and a brindle Staffy. It looked like a film set. They all loved it on sight and agreed the agents were right, this was a superb place to enjoy a quiet weekend.

Harry’s description of The Presentation Dinner raised some knowing smiles, reminding them how well the yachting fraternity enjoyed itself on such occasions. “We arrived back at the hotel at about a quarter past mid-night and, after checking to see that the children were OK, crashed into bed absolutely exhausted.” Again the smiles around the table showed him they had all been there.
Harry paused, looked around him, noted the attentive looks and continued. “I was jolted awake by a fierce dig in the ribs and a hissed question from Margaret. Did you see that? I struggled to focus on what she was saying. Eh….what?…. I said. Did you see that? She repeated the question and sounded irritated. You can imagine how I felt…still half asleep. Over there you must have seen it! This time it was a statement not a question and she pointed over my shoulder towards the window. I shook my head dumbly. Well you must have heard it! There was now a note in her voice I hadn’t heard before. I tried to calm things down a bit. See what? I said; I was sound asleep! How could I have seen or heard anything?….I wasn’t getting away with it as easily as that. She sat bolt upright in bed now wide awake. There was a girl! They were chasing her! I was awake alright now….I could see she was deadly serious so I asked her who was chasing the girl. More to gain time to think than anything else.”

Harry’s hand went to his forehead and gently rubbed it as he recalled how he had desperately tried to get his mind into some sort of order. “I got out of bed, switched on the light, and noticed it was one thirty. I said the first thing that came into my head. Was it a bad dream love?” He saw his male friends nod sympathetically, agreeing it couldn’t have been anything else.

Following a long deep draw on his cigar and through a cloud of fragrant smoke, he told them that his wife hadn’t found his suggestion at all helpful. Her reply had been sharp and clear. She couldn’t have had a bad dream because her side of the bed was so uncomfortable she hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Her attitude now as she sat at the table showed them all that her feelings hadn’t changed.

After another puff at his cigar, Harry paused a second, then looking intently at his friends said “I want you all to really think about this, imagine yourselves in that room, at that time of night, no booze involved though I wish there had been! At least that would have provided some sort of explanation. I put the question to you. What would you have done?”

Without waiting for an answer Harry continued. “I asked Margaret to tell me again, in detail, what had happened. She glared at me and told me I never listened to her properly. It was obvious to me even in my half-asleep state that something very frightening had shaken her, and I was concerned for her, so I didn’t rise to the remark, instead I asked her to tell me again…please. I asked as gently as could and took hold of her hand. She told me that she knew it sounded weird but she was convinced she had seen a troop of Roundhead Soldiers chasing a young woman dressed in white. They had come through one wall and vanished through another. She pointed to the walls on my side of the room.”

Having walked slowly from his seat to stand behind his wife he sais with absolute sincerity. “If it had been anyone else telling me this story,” he said quietly. “I would either have laughed or called a doctor, but this was Margaret, the one person in the world whose reliability is, for me, beyond question and she was still clearly very frightened. I tried to reassure her by walking around the room and banging my hand, rather theatrically on the walls she mentioned. There was only one door…it was on her side of the room.”

Returning to his former position he continued. “We talked about it for quite a while, but whatever I suggested could possibly be the reason for her ‘dream’ (I insisted on calling it a dream) she remained adamant about what she had seen. We agreed to exchange sides of the bed in the hope that whatever had troubled her would not do so again. It didn’t but the following morning she said that her bed had felt as if she had been lying on Brighton Beach.”

He had hoped that the day they had planned would drive the memory of the bad night’s sleep from her mind. No chance! He took up the story again. “The children were already up and ready and joined me as I passed their room. The grandfather clock in the hall told me it was just seven o’clock. There was no one about not even the dogs. We went out into the gardens. They were quite simply beautiful, obviously laid out and maintained by someone who loved gardening. Needless to say breakfast was up to the same standard as everything else.”

“While the others went back to the rooms to finish packing I went to pay the bill. The cashier was serving a scholarly looking, elderly American man. I heard them chatting as she took his American Express card. The cashier asked if he had found what he was looking for. He shook his head and told her, Nope, I guess I was misinformed, I’ll go back and check my sources. I’ll probably be back though, great place to relax this. Clearly whatever disappointment he had suffered, he had enjoyed his stay. At the front door he stopped and turned. You did say it happened in the front of the house….here…..? He pointed with his free hand to the right side of the door.
That’s right sir. Her lilting Welsh voice assured him. Just to the right, by the stone fountain.”

“He went out, turned right and walked along the path to the fountain. She turned her charm onto me. Such a nice man she said as she took my Gold Card. He’s a ghost hunter you know. …………..I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. A ghost hunter? I sounded like an echo, frankly I felt like one. She told me the American had come to study ghosts in old British houses. He was unlucky here though he didn’t see them. Margaret had heard the tail end of the conversation. She leaned over the counter and said tersely. I did! The cashier was desperate to know the details and the Welsh accent became even stronger. Reeally? What did you see?"

“Margaret told her in graphic detail what she had seen, with heavy emphasis on my obvious disbelief in the whole thing. Oooh how exciting." The Welsh intonation was improving every time he tried it. “No one has seen them for quite some time, you were very lucky! She assured us. Margaret wasn’t convinced and told her that she hadn’t felt very lucky at the time. You can imagine the tone…..I tried to support Margaret’s story. Just a second, I said, are we to believe that a troop of Roundhead soldiers chased a young woman through two solid brick walls in the middle of the night and just vanished?” Harry smiled ruefully at the memory of the reactions of the Welsh Cashier.
“No! No! No! That is not it. Not at all!” He tried again to imitate the lilt of The Welsh tone but added a harder timbre. “You see, during the English Civil War there was a round up of all Roman Catholics in this area. They were told to swear allegiance to Cromwell and the Protestant Faith or be put to death. Some swore others didn’t. The young girl was one of those that didn’t. She lived in this house and having escaped returned here pursued by a troop of Roundhead soldiers. They chased her along a corridor that used to run along the front of the house, through where your bedroom is now. She ran down the back stairs and out into the garden. They caught up with her near the stone fountain. It’s still there, you may have seen it this morning when you went out for a walk in the garden. (I said that I had seen it.)”

To get as much effect as he could he paused for a second and again looked around the table, noting with some satisfaction the rapt attention on the faces all looking his way. Then he told them what happened by the fountain. “They caught her and executed her on the spot. Just chopped her head off with their swords.” He had said it quietly but he couldn’t have had a greater effect if he had shouted at the top of his voice.

There was more, he told them that the Cashier had just smiled when he asked her why the ‘Ghosts’ didn’t affect the dogs. Here Harry adopted a conspiratorial look and glanced at all the men. “You chaps will all know the sort of smile I mean It’s the sort of smile that when you see it on a woman’s face, you know you’ve just lost an argument.” Encouraged by the understanding nods he received and beginning to enjoy the Welsh accent bit, he pressed on. “Oh! The dogs, they don’t sleep here, she told me sweetly, nor would I, nor my family, that’s why we don’t sleep here, we all sleep in our house in the village!” From the shocked looks around the table Henry knew he held their full attention and began to extract every drop of tension from the moment that he could.
“I can’t describe the uncomfortable feeling that came over me as the import of her words sank in,” he told them quietly and added. “I Just paid the bill and we left.”

The cigar Harry had enjoyed so much went cold, as if anticipating the end of the story. He placed it carefully in the ash-tray. “You may think this was the end of the matter, I did, or rather hoped. But it wasn’t.” He put his hand back onto Margaret’s shoulder. “We have discussed this weekend so many times since that we decided recently to re-examine the whole thing. I always kept copious notes in my diary entries about all sorts of events and occasions I had been involved with, so I just needed to remind myself of the dates, places, names etc, find the name of the hotel, find it on the map and go there. Straightforward enough!”

His glance around the silent table assured him that his audience was still wrapped up in his story, He gave a somewhat theatrical shrug of his shoulders and continued. “That’s not how it worked out. To start with I was surprised to find there was no entry in my diary for that weekend, it was just blank! But I couldn’t possibly have forgotten to make an entry and a brief report on an event of that importance, surely? We couldn’t find the hotel, the road leading to it or even the village on the Ordnance Survey map. All we could find at the end of what was clearly a cart track was a sign indicating the position of an ancient monument! OK then I thought I’d ring the travel agents; I did and found they had gone out of business long ago. The trail was dead. I can’t offer any explanation for all this; I still find it difficult to believe myself. So perhaps you would like to ask Margaret if I have accurately reported the story of what has become known in our family as The Lost Weekend.”

As he returned to his seat he exchanged a smile with Margaret. If there were to be any questions he knew he could rely on her to tell the truth.

----THE END-----