Country life
Ghoulies and ghosties
Leanda de Lisle
My husband claims he can smell tobacco outside the library and insists it belongs to the late Sir Thomas Cope. As Peter smokes like a chimney, it is much more likely that the smell is coming off his own tweed jacket. 'No, no, I can sense him,' he assures me. I fear it is wishful thinking. Country houses should have ghosts, but we don't. No burning babies or screaming skulls — not even a common-or- garden grey nun.
What to do? A malignant atmosphere is beyond price and tricky to fake. If you haven't inherited any Van Dycks you can bid for some at Sotheby's, or nail little plaques on the walls claiming they are on loan to the National Portrait Gallery. If the house doesn't have a certain chill in the air, you can't buy it at a National Trust sou- venir shop. And it's pointless to pretend that 'the baby in the west wing crouching by the grate was walled up in the east wing in 1498'.
I fear that Peter feels he has come down in the world. His parents' house may not have a ghoulish baby like the stately homes Noel Coward sang about, but it did have a poltergeist when he was a boy. Unfortu- nately, the housekeeper got fed up with it throwing things around, and my in-laws had to have the place exorcised. That was the end of the poltergeist.
Still, it's comforting to know that the labradors continue to refuse to go up to the third floor where poor Mrs Ashby bled to death in the 17th century. This unfortunate woman was stabbed by her husband after he caught her in flagrante with a neighbour. Legend has it that you can still see her lover galloping away across the park. An outside ghost like this is ideal if you have nervous staff. There is another one in the grounds of our local hotel. It's the daughter of an 18th-century gent who was caught in one of her father's man-traps on her way to meet a groom from our stable block. A woodsman found her in the morning, half alive and took her home to die. It's really just sheer bad luck that her boyfriend didn't find her and bring her here.
As it is, we have had to make the best of some perfectly ordinary deaths. They used to lay out people's bodies in one of the guest bedrooms, so we revived its old name, the funeral room. One or two people refuse to sleep in it which is immensely satisfying.
We have a friend in Suffolk who has a requiem room with a black carpet, black hangings and a black ceiling painted with silver stars. A human skull sits on the bed- side table, but of course it doesn't scream. I suppose that is why he has decided to store his coffin in the room as well.
We have not felt the need to go that far, although I admit I did try to acquire one of Sir Thomas Cope's stuffed bats. Several people outbid me, but happily I've since discovered that we have plenty of real bats. Great, big water bats and tiny little pip- istrelle bats. The former stay by the lake with the toads, but the pipistrelles invade the house every summer. They breed near the roof line and the young bats pop in through gaps in the woodwork, chasing moths until they are quite lost in the depths of the house. Then they zip around like battery-powered helicopters, buzzing us until they find their way out through an open window.
I find the only disadvantage of having bats in the house is that they leave mouse- like droppings on the window sills, although I'm told they can carry rabies as well. I sup- pose if my friends stop putting water in their whisky I'll have to assume that they are hydrophobic and quarantine them behind a wall in the east wing. It would be sad, but, looking on the bright side, we might filially get a ghost of our own.
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