were the pipes of the organ and the wooden cabin of the organ loft, clinging like a growth to one bay of the choir aisle.
I don’t remember much about the services except that they seemed to go on for ever and that I seriously thought I might faint or even die from hunger. It must have been hell for poor Faraday to see the choir processing through the chancel gates, filing in two by two, and peeling off into their stalls in the choir.
Hampson Minor led them in, with the head boy’s medal resting on his surplice. He looked larger and pinker than before, as if his promotion had inflated him a little further than nature had done already. His eyes darted about the chancel. I guessed he was looking for Faraday. As he turned to lead his file into the choir stalls, he found us. For a fraction of a second he paused. Beside me, Faraday stiffened like a threatened animal.
The moment was gone. The choir flowed smoothly into the stalls and the service began.
I had attended many services in the Cathedral – the school used it as its chapel – but I had never been there on Christmas Day. The Bishop was there enthroned, a gaudy, overstuffed doll with his mitre and crozier. Each seat was full.
I concentrated on not fainting from starvation; on standing, sitting and kneeling; on mouthing the hymns in a soundless but visually convincing way, a skill I had perfected in my first term; and, most of all, on thinking about what Mrs Veal might provide for our Christmas dinner.
But I did notice when the choir sang the anthem, the ‘Jubilate Deo’. The first part was sung by Hampson Minor alone: I could see him, his mouth an O of surprise, his face pinker than ever with the effort. Then, one by one, the rest of the choir joined in, and then the organ thundered into life and they all made a dreadful racket until it was time for us to kneel down and pray again.
Faraday leaned towards me undercover of shuffling as the entire congregation was sinking to its knees.
‘He muffed it, the silly ass,’ he muttered. ‘The end of bar sixteen. He couldn’t hold the E flat.’
For the first time, I saw Faraday smile.
Mrs Veal had bought us Christmas cards, and I felt guilty that we had not thought to do the same for our hosts. Mr Veal carved the beef and the ham. We ate late – Mr Veal had plenty to keep him busy after a service – but Mrs Veal took pity on us and gave us a preliminary helping of Yorkshire pudding and gravy.
In his capacity as head verger, Mr Veal was a figure who inspired fear and mockery in equal parts. Now, however, Faraday and I saw the domestic Veal, his dignity put aside with his verger’s gown. In private, with a good meal inside him, a glass of port in one hand and his pipe in the other, he revealed himself as almost genial. I remember he told us a story about one canon who grew so fat that it was only with difficulty that he could squeeze into his stall; in the end they had to make a special chair for him. He laughed so hard that his face became purple.
The Christmas dinner was the only time that I saw Faraday looking really happy. The Veals were kindly people: they gave us food, warmth and a welcome. Perhaps there was a little Christmas magic after all.
‘A lot of queer stories about the Cathedral,’ said Mr Veal on his third glass of port. ‘And I could tell you a few, if I had a mind to. Have you heard about the bells?’
‘But there aren’t any,’ Faraday said. ‘Not in the Cathedral. Only the clock chimes.’
‘Ah. Not now. But there were bells, once upon a time.’
‘Get along with you, George,’ said Mrs Veal. ‘Save it for later. I need to clear the table and these boys need to get back or Mr Ratcliffe will be wondering where they are.’
‘He knows about it, all right,’ Mr Veal says.
‘Who does, dear?’
‘Mr Ratcliffe. He knows about the stories.’
In the evening of Christmas Day, we made mugs of cocoa together and sat around the fire in the sitting room at the Sacrist’s Lodging. Like Mr Veal, Mr Ratcliffe had drunk a few glasses of wine with his dinner and was unusually expansive.
Mordred condescended to join us. He sat on the chair nearest the fire, head erect, with his back to us. It was Mordred who started Mr Ratcliffe on ghosts.
‘I am afraid he’s a little stand-offish today. You wouldn’t think it, but he doesn’t like being left alone in the house. We abandoned him for most of the day and now he’s sulking.’
‘He doesn’t look as if he’d notice if he was alone or not.’ My scratches still rankled. ‘I don’t think he likes people.’
‘You may be right,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, patting his pockets for his oilskin tobacco pouch. ‘But he finds us convenient, and not just for food and warmth. Perhaps we help to ward off the ghosts.’
‘Ghosts?’ Faraday said. ‘What ghosts?’ In those three words his voice modulated from a rumble to a squeak.
‘Do you know any stories about them, sir?’ I said. ‘Will you tell us one?’
‘Mordred used to see the ghost next door,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, nodding towards the party wall that divided this part of the Sacrist’s Lodging from the other. ‘He was just a kitten then, and he didn’t know what to make of it. In fact, that’s why he lives with me. He kept coming over here to get away from the ghost, and in the end the Precentor said I might as well keep him.’
‘Have you seen it, sir?’ I asked. By this stage of my life I had my doubts about the existence of God but I was more than willing to keep an open mind about ghosts.
‘Yes, several times over the years.’ Mr Ratcliffe had given up on his pockets. Still talking, he rose from his chair and eventually discovered the pouch wedged between the seat and the arm. ‘Of course I didn’t realize it was a ghost at first.’
‘What did it look like?’ Faraday said.
‘Like a cat.’
‘A cat?’
‘Yes, a little grey cat. One used to see it in the corner of the big room upstairs occasionally. Quite harmless. It’s probably still there, for all I know. It comes and goes.’
‘What did it do?’ I said.
‘Nothing very much. It just sat there. Sometimes you saw it moving across the room. You always glimpsed it out of the corner of your eye, if you know what I mean. But Mordred was different – he saw it directly. He behaved as if it was another cat, arching his back and so on. But then it simply terrified him, and he wouldn’t stay in the same house. So he moved here, next door. But it was odd, really – the grey cat never seemed to notice his existence at all.’
‘Perhaps it thought Mordred was the ghost,’ Faraday suggested with a giggle. ‘Perhaps he was trying to pretend Mordred wasn’t there.’
Mr Ratcliffe struck a match and paused, considering the remark, the flame flickering over the bowl of the pipe.
‘Anything is possible, I suppose,’ he said at last, and sucked the flame deep into the pipe. ‘We may haunt ghosts as much as the other way round.’
‘Or they may not even know we’re there,’ I put in, feeling that Faraday was having too much of the limelight.
‘Some of the time they certainly know we’re there.’ The light was dim and Mr Ratcliffe’s features disintegrated in a cloud of smoke. ‘Or some of them do. That was undoubtedly the case with the blue lady. She always behaved very cordially to me. On the other hand, one should not generalize from the particular.’ He must have seen our expressions, for he added hastily, ‘I mean that one ghost who behaves like that does not necessarily mean that they all do.’
‘Please, sir,’ Faraday said, sounding like a little