The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Pink May

Elizabeth Bowen

Location: Aldershot, Hampshire.

Time: May, 1942.

Eyewitness Description: “She was there. And she aimed at encircling me. I think maybe she had a poltergeist that she brought along with her. The little things that happened to my belongings . . .”

Author: Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) was born in Dublin but spent much of her younger life in England where she began to write novels and short stories in the late twenties. The success of The Last September (1928) marked her out as a sensuous, visual writer destined to enjoy great popularity. The outbreak of the Second World War challenged Elizabeth Bowen’s skill and also revealed her interest in the supernatural. Indeed, in the next five years she wrote a unique series of ghostly tales depicting men and women in London during the Blitz and elsewhere in the country, all enduring the stresses and strains of war. Notable among these are “The Demon Lover”, “Green Holly”, “The Mysterious Kor” and “Pink May” which is set in a garrison town where the war is both far away and very close to home. Bowen’s most successful novel, The Heat of the Day (1949), also about the capital during the war, is reputed to have sold over 45,000 copies in a few weeks after publication. Writing about her wartime ghost stories, Elizabeth Bowen said in 1965, “I do not make use of the supernatural as a get out -it is inseparable, whether or not it comes to the surface – from my sense of life.” Few tales better demonstrate her conviction than this one.

“Yes, it was funny,” she said, “about the ghost. It used to come into my bedroom when I was dressing for dinner – when I was dressing to go out.”

“You were frightened?”

“I was in such a hurry; there never was any time. When you have to get dressed in such a hell of a hurry any extra thing is just one thing more. And the room at the times I’m talking about used to be full of daylight – sunset. It had two french windows, and they were on a level with the tops of may trees out in the square. The may was in flower that month, and it was pink. In that sticky sunshine you have in the evenings the may looked sort of theatrical. It used to be part of my feeling of going out.” She paused, then said, “That was the month of my life.”

“What month?”

“The month we were in that house. I told you, it was a furnished house that we took. With rents the way they are now, it cost less than a flat. They say a house is more trouble, but this was no trouble, because we treated it like a flat, you see. I mean, we were practically never in. I didn’t try for a servant because I know there aren’t any. When Neville got up in the mornings he percolated the coffee; a char came in to do cleaning when I’d left for the depot, and we fixed with the caretaker next door to look after the boiler, so the baths were hot. And the beds were comfortable, too. The people who really lived there did themselves well.”

“You never met them?”

“No, never – why should we? We’d fixed everything through an agent, the way one does. I’ve an idea the man was soldiering somewhere, and she’d gone off to be near him somewhere in the country. They can’t have had any children, any more than we have -it was one of those small houses, just for two.”

“Pretty?”

“Y-yes,” she said. “It was chintzy. It was one of those oldish houses made over new inside. But you know how it is about other people’s belongings – you can’t ever quite use them, and they seem to watch you the whole time. Not that there was any question of settling down – how could we, when we were both out all day? And at the beginning of June we moved out again.”

“Because of the . . .?”

“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Not that reason, at all.” She lighted a cigarette, took two puffs and appeared to deliberate. “But what I’m telling you now is about the ghost.”

“Go on.”

“I was going on. As I say, it used to be funny, dressing away at top speed at the top of an empty house, with the sunset blazing away outside. It seems to me that all those evenings were fine. I used to take taxis back from the depot: you must pay money these days if you want time, and a bath and a change from the skin up was essential -you don’t know how one feels after packing parcels all day! I couldn’t do like some of the girls I worked with and go straight from the depot on to a date. I can’t go and meet someone unless I’m feeling special. So I used to hare home. Neville was never in.”

“I’d been going to say . . .”

“No, Neville worked till all hours, or at least he had to hang round in case something else should come in. So he used to dine at his club on the way back. Most of the food would be off by the time he got there. It was partly that made him nervy, I dare say.”

“But you weren’t nervy?”

“I tell you,” she said, “I was happy. Madly happy – perhaps in rather a nervy way. Whatever you are these days, you are rather more so. That’s one thing I’ve discovered about this war.”

“You were happy . . .”

“I had my reasons – which don’t come into the story.”

After two or three minutes of rapid smoking she leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. “Where was I?” she said, in a different tone.

“Dressing . . .”

“Well, first thing when I got in I always went across and opened my bedroom windows, because it seemed to me the room smelled of the char. So I always did that before I turned on my bath. The glare on the trees used to make me blink, and the thick sort of throaty smell of the may came in. I was never certain if I liked it or not, but it somehow made me feel like after a drink. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ve got tonight. You know the feeling? Then I turned on my bath. The bathroom was the other room on that floor, and a door led through to it from one side of the bed. I used to have my bath with that door ajar, to let light in. The bathroom black-out took so long to undo.

“While the bath ran in I used to potter about and begin to put out what I meant to wear, and cold-cream off my old make-up, and so on. I say ‘potter’ because you cannot hurry a bath. I also don’t mind telling you that I whistled. Well, what’s the harm in somebody’s being happy? Simply thinking things over won’t win this war. Looking back at that month, I whistled most of the time. The way they used to look at me, at the depot! The queer thing is, though, I remember whistling but I can’t remember when I happened to stop. But I must have stopped, because it was then I heard.”

“Heard?”

She lit up again, with a slight frown. “What was it I heard first, that first time? I suppose, the silence. So I must have stopped whistling, mustn’t I? I was lying there in my bath, with the door open behind me, when the silence suddenly made me sit right up. Then I said to myself, ‘My girl, there’s nothing queer about that. What else would you expect to hear, in an empty house?’ All the same, it made me heave the other way round in my bath, in order to keep one eye on the door. After a minute I heard what wasn’t a silence – which immediately made me think that Neville had come in early, and I don’t mind telling you I said ‘Damn’.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a bore being asked where one is going, though it’s no bother to say where one has been. If Neville was in he’d be certain to search the house, so I put a good face on things and yelled ‘Hoi’. But he didn’t answer, because it wasn’t him.”

“No?”

“No, it wasn’t. And whatever was in my bedroom must have been in my bedroom for some time. I thought, ‘A wind has come up and got into that damned chintz!’ Any draught always fidgets me; somehow it gets me down. So I got out of my bath and wrapped the big towel round me and went through to shut the windows in my room. But I was surprised when I caught sight of the may trees – all their branches were standing perfectly still. That seemed queer. At the same time, the door I’d come through from the bathroom blew shut, and the lid fell off one of my jars of face cream on to the dressing-table, which had a glass top.

“No, I didn’t see what it was. The point was, whatever it was saw me.

“That first time, the whole thing was so slight. If it had been only that one evening, I dare say I shouldn’t have thought of it again. Things only get a hold on you when they go on happening. But I always have been funny in one way – I especially don’t like being watched. You might not think so from my demeanour, but I don’t really like being criticized. I don’t think I get my knife into other people: why should they get their knife into me? I don’t like it when my ear begins to burn.

“I went to put the lid back on the jar of cream and switch the lights on into the mirror, which being between the two windows never got the sort of light you would want. I thought I looked odd in the mirror – rattled. I said to myself, ‘Now what have I done to someone?’ but except for Neville I literally couldn’t think. Anyway, there was no time – when I picked up my wrist-watch I said, ‘God!’ So I flew round, dressing. Or rather, I flew round as much as one could with something or somebody getting in the way. That’s all I remember about that first time, I think. Oh yes, I did notice that the veil on my white hat wasn’t all that it ought to be. When I had put that hat out before my bath the whole affair had looked as crisp as a marguerite – a marguerite that has only opened today.

“You know how it is when a good deal hangs on an evening – you simply can’t afford to be not in form. So I gave myself a good shake on the way downstairs. ‘Snap out of that!’ I said. ‘You’ve got personality. You can carry a speck or two on the veil.’

“Once I got to the restaurant – once I’d met him – the whole thing went out of my mind. I was in twice as good form as I’d ever been. And the turn events took . . .

“It was about a week later that I had to face it. I was up against something. The more the rest of my life got better and better, the more that one time of each evening got worse and worse. Or rather, it wanted to. But I wasn’t going to let it. With everything else quite perfect – well, would you have? There’s something exciting, I mean, some sort of a challenge about knowing someone’s trying to get you down. And when that someone’s another woman you soon get a line on her technique. She was jealous, that was what was the matter with her.

“Because, at all other times the room was simply a room. There wasn’t any objection to me and Neville. When I used to slip home he was always asleep. I could switch all the lights on and kick my shoes off and open and shut the cupboards – he lay like the dead. He was abnormally done in, I suppose. And the room was simply a room in somebody else’s house. And the mornings, when he used to roll out of bed and slip-slop down to make the coffee, without speaking, exactly like someone walking in his sleep, the room was no more than a room in which you’ve just woken up. The may outside looked pink-pearl in the early sunshine, and there were some regular birds who sang. Nice. While I waited for Neville to bring the coffee I used to like to lie there and think my thoughts.

“If he was awake at all before he had left the house, he and I exchanged a few perfectly friendly words. I had no feeling of anything blowing up. If I let him form the impression that I’d been spending the evenings at movies with girl friends I’d begun to make at the depot, then going back to their flats to mix Ovaltine – well, that seemed to me the considerate thing to do. If he’d even been more interested in my life – but he wasn’t interested in anything but his work. I never picked on him about that – I must say, I do know when a war’s a war. Only, men are so different. You see, this other man worked just as hard but was interested in me. He said he found me so restful. Neville never said that. In fact, all the month we were in that house, I can’t remember anything Neville said at all.

“No, what she couldn’t bear was my going out, like I did. She was either a puritan, with some chip on her shoulder, or else she’d once taken a knock. I incline to that last idea – though I can’t say why.

“No, I can’t say why. I have never at all been a subtle person. I don’t know whether that’s a pity or not. I must say I don’t care for subtle people – my instinct would be to give a person like that a miss. And on the whole I should say I’d succeeded in doing so. But that, you see, was where her advantage came in. You can’t give a . . . well, I couldn’t give her a miss. She was there. And she aimed at encircling me.

“I think maybe she had a poltergeist that she brought along with her. The little things that happened to my belongings . . . Each evening I dressed in that room I lost five minutes – I mean, each evening it took me five minutes longer to dress. But all that was really below her plane. That was just one start at getting me down before she opened up with her real technique. The really subtle thing was the way her attitude changed. That first time (as I’ve told you) I felt her disliking me – well, really ‘dislike’ was to put it mildly. But after an evening or two she was through with that. She conveyed the impression that she had got me taped and was simply so damned sorry for me. She was sorry about every garment I put on, and my hats were more than she was able to bear. She was sorry about the way I did up my face – she used to be right at my elbow when I got out my make-up, absolutely silent with despair. She was sorry I should never again see thirty, and sorry I should kid myself about that . . . I mean to say, she started pitying me.

“Do you see what I mean when I say her attitude could have been quite infectious?

“And that wasn’t all she was sorry for me about. I mean, there are certain things that a woman who’s being happy keeps putting out of her mind. (I mean, when she’s being happy about a man.) And other things you keep putting out of your mind if your husband is not the man you are being happy about. There’s a certain amount you don’t ask yourself, and a certain amount that you might as well not remember. Now those were exactly the things she kept bringing up. She liked to bring those up better than anything.

“What I don’t know is, and what I still don’t know – why do all that to a person who’s being happy? To a person who’s living the top month of her life, with the may in flower and everything? What had I ever done to her? She was dead – I suppose? . . . Yes, I see now, she must have taken a knock.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I know now how a knock feels.”

“Oh . . .?”

“Don’t look at me such a funny way. I haven’t changed, have I? You wouldn’t have noticed anything? . . . I expect it’s simply this time of year: August’s rather a tiring month. And things end without warning, before you know where you are. I hope the war will be over by next spring; I do want to be abroad, if I’m able to. Somewhere where there’s nothing but pines or palms. I don’t want to see London pink may in flower again – ever.”

“Won’t Neville . . .?”

“Neville? Oh, didn’t you really realize? Didn’t I. . .? He, I, we’ve – I mean, we’re living apart.” She rose and took the full, fuming ashtray across to another table, and hesitated, then brought an empty tray back. “Since we left that house,” she said. “I told you we left that house. That was why. We broke up.

“It was the other thing that went wrong,” she said. “If I’d still kept my head with Neville, he and I needn’t ever – I mean, one’s marriage is something. . . . I’d thought I’d always be married, whatever else happened. I ought to have realized Neville was in a nervy state. Like a fool I spilled over to Neville; I lost my head. But by that time I hadn’t any control left. When the one thing you’ve lived for has crashed to bits . . .

“Crashed was the word. And yet I see now, really, that things had been weakening for some time. At the time I didn’t see, any more than I noticed the may was fading out in the square – till one morning the weather changed and I noticed the may was brown. All the happiness stopped like my stopping whistling – but at what particular moment I’m never sure.

“The beginnings of the end of it were so small. Like my being a bit more unpunctual every evening we met. That made us keep losing our table at restaurants – you know how the restaurants are these days. Then I somehow got the idea that none of my clothes were becoming; I began to think he was eyeing my hats unkindly, and that made me fidget and look my worst. Then I got an idiot thing about any girl that he spoke of – I didn’t like anyone being younger than me. Then, at what had once been our most perfect moments, I began to ask myself if I was really happy, till I said to him – which was fatal – ‘Is there so much in this?’ . . . I should have seen more red lights -when, for instance, he said, ‘You know, you’re getting nervy.’ And he quite often used to say ‘Tired?’ in rather a tired way. I used to say, it was just getting dressed in a rush. But the fact is, a man hates the idea of a woman rushing. One night I know I did crack: I said, ‘Hell, I’ve got a ghost in my room!’ He put me straight into a taxi and sent me – not took me – home.

“I did see him several times after that. So his letter – his letter was a complete surprise. . . . The joke was, I really had been out with a girl that evening I came in, late, to find his letter.

“If Neville had not been there when I got the letter, Neville and I might still – I suppose – be married. On the other hand – there are always two ways to see things – if Neville had not been there I should have gone mad . . . So now,” she said, with a change of tone, “I’m living in an hotel. Till I see how things turn out. Till the war is over, or something. It isn’t really so bad, and I’m out all day. Look, I’ll give you my address and telephone number. It’s been wonderful seeing you, darling. You promise we’ll meet again? I do really need to keep in touch with my friends. And you don’t so often meet someone who’s seen a ghost!”

“But look, did you ever see it?”

“Well, not exactly. No, I can’t say I saw it.”

“You mean, you simply heard it?”

“Well, not exactly that . . .”

“You saw things move?”

“Well, I never turned round in time. I . . .

“If you don’t understand – I’m sorry I ever told you the story! Not a ghost – when it ruined my whole life! Don’t you see, can’t you see there must have been something? Left to oneself, one doesn’t ruin one’s life!”