Eight Ghosts by Jeanette Winterson

Author:Jeanette Winterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910463741
Publisher: September Publishing

The town of Falmouth . . . is no great ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body except an enemy . . . The town contains many Quakers and salt fish – the oysters have a taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country – the women . . . are flogged at the cart’s tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor. (Lord Byron, Falmouth, 1809)

I put down the book to visit the bathroom.

I was alone that night. For the three nights of our wedding party, Tamara and I had decided to follow the custom of sleeping separately until the night of the wedding. It was her idea – to create a space where we longed to be, and then to find it.

I’d been drinking with our friends. I’d gone to bed late. I couldn’t sleep, so I was sitting propped up on my pillows, reading about the history of the place.

As I opened the heavy square-panelled door to the bathroom, I heard a voice say, ‘Go through and don’t come back.’

I turned on the bathroom light. Stood still. No sound.

It was an old-fashioned bathroom with a tall sash window pushed up a little at the bottom. I pushed it up further, feeling its weight, and leaned out into the night. The night was blustery and restless. The wind like a conversation you can’t hear. No stars. A little way off, towards the castle itself, I saw a wavering light, dim and unsteady.

I smiled – it must have been a couple of our guests zigzagging home from drinking. I must have heard them through the window. It’s so quiet here. That’s why the voice seemed so close, even though the light seems far away.

But the sea and the night make things mysterious, don’t they?

My wife was born in Falmouth. That is why we chose to marry at Pendennis Castle. The castle and its pair at St Mawes face each other across the mouth of the River Fal, like stone giants guarding a hoard.

Henry VIII built a blockhouse either side of the estuary to cross-fire any enemy ships slinking through the water. Henry worried about the war-ish Spanish and his daughter Elizabeth saw off the Armada, but it was Bonaparte, with his eyes on the prize of a coastal landing, who galvanised the British into building up their bullish garrison here, the booming guns aiming their cannonballs at history. The seafloor of the bay is thick-deep with them. Pendennis was defended by twenty-two 24-pounders and fourteen 18-pounders.

‘It’s a castle not a burger-chain.’

‘Tamara, that’s what they call them – pounders.’

‘I like to think of all those tin soldiers eating mayo and fries with their 24-pounders.’

‘Are you making fun of history or making fun of me?’

‘You. That’s why we’re getting married – so that I can laugh at you for the rest of my life.

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