Occasional Scribbles

 My mother, father and I all have birthdays in a row, (very awkward for the rest of the family).  My mother said, ‘I’m not having her on my birthday’, my father said, ‘I’m not having her on my birthday either’ and so, being an oblidging sort of soul, I emerged the day immediately following theirs.

A few years ago, some of us had reached birthdays that had a nought in the number.  Urg!  Feeling a bit depresssed about this, my parents thought it would be a lovely idea to invite the whole family – my sister and her family of six and myself and the boys three, to celebrate/comiserate our birthdays by spending them on holiday in a French chateau.  I was really excited about this.  All my life I have wanted to live in a chateau and as a child, I was absolutely certain I would a marry a French Count.  Funny how life turns out.

We meet at the chateau one hot August afternoon and I can hardly contain my excitement as we make our way up the drive.   “Last night I dreamt I went to……(Manderley)”, I couldn’t help but think of the fabulous words of Daphne du Maurier as she begins her book, Rebecca, as we rounded a small bend in the drive.  “It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me”. And there it was, the most gorgeous house, everything I could have imagined and we were going to spend a whole week there.  We all tumbled out of cars, happy to be free from the hot journey.  As we look around at our new surroundings, there is a general consensus that the parent’s have done a great job in finding such a beautiful place and shouts of,  ‘Wow’, ‘amazing’, ‘look at the little tower’ and ‘wonder what it’s like inside’ attest to this.

We tour the inside starting at the very top floor and making decisions as to who will sleep where.  We put the elder two of the four boys in one room and the younger two in a room around the corner on the same floor that had a little door leading up a flight up of stairs into the attic turret of one wing of the house. This was a tactical arrangement to keep the noisier members far away from the rest of us. 

Most of the rooms were off a long landing, with further rooms at each end in each wing of the house, this repeated on the floor below which also had long elegant windows that let in lots of light.  As we looked into the other rooms, we came across one that was clearly for a child that had an adjoining larger room for adults.  I poked my head around the door, looking over my mother’s shoulder and was a little disappointed to say the least when she teasingly suggested that the child’s room (which was very plain), might suit me.  I made a sour face and we continued on and down a floor to look at the main rooms along this corridor which in layout echoed the one above.  All the rooms on this level were even more impressively grand than the ones above, done out in the style of the chateau that dated from the 18th century, (though it was built on the site of an earlier castle), with silk wall paper, antique beds and furniture. We found rooms for my sister and husband, their two girls, our parents and then looked for my room. I headed towards one at the end of the landing in one of the wings and my mother and sister followed me into a dark ante room/dressing room which led into a large ‘yellow’ room.  An enormous bed was set into an alcove with a huge religious statue of Jesus on the cross, fixed above and a canopy with hanging curtains tied back at the sides.  It was a very grand room indeed and much more fitting I thought to myself with relief, after nearly being allocated the child’s room upstairs.  Phew!

We had arranged for the house keeper to leave a light meal for us, knowing we would not have got around to shopping but when she showed us into the kitchen, we saw an enormous spread of all sorts of cold meats, salads, cheeseboard, deserts and fruit.  A huge long table in the dining room was laid out beautifully as if for a banquet complete with candles and so that evening we changed for dinner and met out on the terrace for an aperatif. It was a magical evening in a magical place and we all went off to bed happily content and looking forward to properly exploring our new surroundings the next day.

And that is when things started to seem a little strange.  The older two boys, having spent one night in their room on the top floor, complained that it was spooky and that they had heard noises in the night, the girls being older and kind, agreed to swap.  (They too found it spooky but kept quiet so as not to upset anyone) and all seemed to be happy again.  The younger boys arrived down to breakfast out on the large patio where we were to have most of our meals from then on, and began to talk about ‘Osgar’ which puzzled us.  They had casually slipped into the conversation that they had said goodnight to Osgar, much to my sister’s and my surprise.  We glanced across at each other as one of the boys told us that Osgar had appeared on the attic stairs.  ‘He came down the stairs and we chatted for a bit and said, goodnight Osgar, and he went’, my nephew told us helpfully.  They seemed completely nonchalant about it and we didn’t wish to scare them, tucking into croissante and jam as they were, we said no more for fear of encouraging them into embellishing a future story, if they sensed that it brought special attention.  Going upstairs later on to check that beds had been made and all was tidy, my sister and I peeped into their room.  The little door leading to the attic stood open which surprised us since it seemed it had been left open after we shut it the night before.  We decided to have a look and slipped through and up steep, dark cobwebby stairs into the roof above.  We found ouselves in a small square room where tiny oval windows, on three sides of the turret overlooked the gardens far below and the silvery slate rooftops and chimneys further along.  There was nothing but a few old lampshades and discarded bits and bobs and evidence that birds had got in.  A narrow, dark corridor in one corner led into other parts of the attics and my sister bravely squeezed herself in, turning sideways with her back against the brick chimney top, far too small and creepy for me to follow.  She decided against going too far and we made our way back down to the boy’s room.  We hastily shut the door and put a chair against it to distract the boys from exploring up there.

Later the next day we decided to put the washing machine on which was up on that floor in a small laundry room next to a large bathroom.  I let my sister and mother figure out how to work the machine and not long after they had gone, my sister leaned over the back stair banister and called down to me.  She told me there was an unbearable smell up there.  As I climbed the stairs I could smell the most disgusting, pungent smell like that of a dead animal left for a while to rot.  We looked around for the source, in the bathroom, the boys bedroom and the laundry room.  It seemed to be all around and we could find nothing to account for it at all.  The whole top landing was beginning to feel a bit nasty.  The little loo that we noticed had a horrid witch doll hanging from the old fashioned cistern, that my sister had hurriedly removed when we arrived, also smelled strange and yet it was not a drain smell.  We left the machine washing away and went down stairs puzzled but when we returned a short while later the air was clear and the smell had completely vanished.

The third day we were there, arriving back from an outing and setting up one of many fantastic bar-b-que’s that was the usual fare being rather a lot of us, while we stayed there, talk turned to the funny smell and we girls began to wonder whether the place was haunted.  I admitted that I felt a little uncomfortable in my room at night and my sister and mother both confessed that they too felt odd in parts of the house.  The men had absolutely no feeling of anything untoward at all and laughingly suggested we were imagining things though my brother in law could not resist teasing me as he launched into a tale.  ‘You know, I was talking to Monsieur. the housekeeper’s husband and he told me that there had been a tragedy here.  You know the house was rebuilt in the 18th century’?  he asked as I listened anxiously.  ‘Well it turns out that the old house burned down and the old granny living in the tower couldn’t get out and was burnt to death’.  I stared wide eyed, trying to guage if what he said was true.  Sensing my doubt, he went on, ‘your father and I found a picture in the library of the old house and underneath it has the story of the fire’  I’m about to get up and go and find the picture when he laughs and I know he’s having me on.  ‘Good story though wasn’t it, had you going for a bit didn’t I’?  I scowl.  

Later, when we had all retired to bed I tried not to think about ghosts or hauntings.  My room, that looked so lovely in the day time with the sun shining was a completely different affair at night.  The yellow patterned wallpaper darkened now with low lighting together with very sombre olive green curtains hanging from the canopy over the bed seemed distinctly lacking in cheer.  There was a tiny little bathroom off the main room with shower, basin and loo and I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of the shower turning on and off again.  Once roused, I sat up with sleepy terror and listened intently.  I dared not venture out of the relative safety of my bed.  As I listened, stock still, I heard the tinkling of the glass vanity jars on the dressing table and smelled a strong whiff of perfume that I knew was not my own. There was an old oval mirror on the dressing table and I dared not look at it.  I half expected to see an elegant lady, dressed in a long satin dress, combing her hair.  I sat absolutely stiff.  The perfume was fading but I could also sense the smell of something burning which was odd.   After some while, not wanting to wake anyone else, I dived under the covers, not daring to come out.

I spent a horrid night, drifting in and out of sleep, where I would find myself listening out again and hoping that I wouldn’t hear anything that I shouldn’t.  The next morning, looking pale and feeling tired, my mother and sister enquired after my night’s sleep.  Once out of earshot of the children I told them what had happened.  I was close to hysteria and tearful.  They immediately decided that I should move out of that room and came up to help me get my stuff.  As I sat on the bed, my sister made short work of packing up my stuff and I could see from her demeanor that she had no doubt that my room had a strangeness to it.  I noticed a look pass between them and the way they hurriedly collected my belongings and got me out  I knew that they also were uncomfortable.  Wondering where to put me now, I sheepishly asked if I could stay in the child’s room adjoining my parent’s on this floor.  The one similar to that which I had scorned the day we arrived. My mother couldn’t resist laughing at me and reminding me of my earlier dismissive attitude but I was willing to eat humble pie if I could please stay next to them.

A night or two later, I was snuggled up in my now tiny, narrow, little single bed, reading my book and feeling much safer, hearing the faint voices coming from my parent’s room, I drifted off to sleep.  Sometime in the night I awoke to a strange smell.  This time it was quite definitely the smell of burning hair and I realised that I had smelled it in my own room though it was much fainter.  I was a bit alarmed and got up to look out of the window as that seemed to be from where it was emanating but I saw no sign of any fire or anthing wrong.  It almost smelled like an old fashioned horse hair mattress being burned. 

The next morning, I hardly dared mention the strange smell.  I thought everyone would think I was being very foolish and imagining things. Over breakfast however, to my huge surprise, my father suddenly said, ‘funny thing, but in the night, I was sure I could smell something burning, like hair or something’.  ‘Oh my goodness’, I cried, ‘I smelled it too’.  No one else had, not even my mother which was strange.  After some more discussions about this odd event, we all agreed that there were some strange goings on. 

Later, relaxing with our customery evening aperatif, my sister nudged me quietly (not wishing to alert the children) and silently pointed at a book she had been looking through.  I picked it up at her direction and saw that it was a visitors book with many different people writing about their stay in the chateau.  A few pages in, I noticed some comments about the ghost.  It seemed that a few people had had strange experiences and one noted, that while the house was magnificent, you would have to not mind sharing it with ghosts, particularly in the end room in the far wing where the shower mysteriously went on and off and was definitely spooky.  My hair stood on end.  That end room was my own, before I had pathetically moved near to my parents.  I realised that if in future I was ever lucky enough to have a chateau of my own, I would have to get rid of any people from the past that might choose to appear out of nowhere and turn me into a jibbering shadow of my former self.  It was certainly a distracting way to spend our birthdays.

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