*This is actually the first chunk of my dissertation, there are three, more to come*

A Ghost in Shanklin

Chapter 1

Betty Haunt Lane

Won’t you tell me the story of Betty Haunt Lane?

A young woman rests there whose love was her bane

What else holds this Isle of the past’s refrain

…

I’ve never thought of myself as a storyteller, I’ve always loved to read stories, but telling them… I didn’t write the above, it’s part of a local ditty. Everyone knew and read my own story once, and my letters too, which they had no right to, but at least Mr Curtis-Bennett thought I could write well, he said: ‘Have you ever read […] more beautiful language of love? Such things have been very seldom put by pen upon paper.’  So perhaps I won’t make too bad a storyteller. He also said I was ‘extraordinary’ but perhaps that wasn’t as well-meaning.

‘Betty’ of Betty Haunt Lane frequented the local pub, The Blacksmith’s Arms. Some people called her ‘Buxom Betty’ which I think was rather vulgar of them so I just call her Betty.  

I haven’t met her, despite the road name but mostly because I don’t like to leave Shanklin too often. Betty is an alluring girl though, so occasionally I frequent The Blacksmith’s Arms too, as a respite from the many Shanklin pubs. It’s a bit of a journey but it must do me good to not always roam the same places.

When I do wander it is usually to Alum Bay, which involves walking nearly the length of the Island but as I told Freddy, ‘I could dare anything and bear everything’ for the sake of us and Alum Bay is one of our ‘places’ where our ‘two halves’ were ‘whole’ so I make sure to visit it, I owe it to my ‘darlingest boy’. It’s been ever so long since I saw him last but he was always sure we would ‘be together’ again so I am waiting and longing for my boy in hope.

I think Betty is a little like Dickens’ Nancy. That’s not to say I think she resembles Mr Cruikshank’s illustrations; I am sure she was prettier. Of course, I don’t know what she looked like, but I have an idea. I was roaming Freshwater once and I came across a house full of photographs and cameras, old cameras, older even than the one Newnie, my brother, used in the garden of 41 that day. If you go to this house, it is called Dimbola Lodge, you may see an 1872 photograph of a young woman called Alice Liddell, and I imagine Betty to have looked like her, although I imagine her to be dressed more like the photograph of May Prinsep, or ‘Christabel’, in darker colours.

While I have never met Betty, it is recorded in a book about the Island’s ghosts (there are many, many ghosts here, enough for several books) that a woman strolling the lane one night may have seen her, perhaps fleeing from her former companions, but I am in no position to verify this. Betty was murdered by smugglers because she gave them away.  Smuggling used to happen all over this little island, as often as there are ghosts.

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,

Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.

Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.

Like Nancy, Betty was born into her dishonest trade and loved the wrong person.  One day, she made a law-abiding decision, though unlike Nancy, Betty had no innocent life to save, and for it she was killed in revenge.

I was killed too. That’s what everyone says. I suppose it was in revenge in a way, in retribution. Murdered because I committed adultery. I had a husband, Percy, I didn’t love, I loved him once it’s true but by the time I met Freddy I’d stopped loving him. I loved Freddy ever so much, and he loved me. We were staying in Shanklin, Percy and me and Freddy came too, so did Avis, my sister. I miss her dearly. We were staying in Shanklin and I asked Freddy ‘What’s the matter?’ and he said, ‘You know what’s the matter, I love you’.

Chapter 2

Annabelle

I have another story, unfortunately another one of murder. This one is about Annabelle, Annabelle from Arreton. She can’t have been more than ten. She had an older brother, John, who was so wickedly desperate for his father’s money that he suffocated him with a pillow. Because Annabelle saw this, John killed her too. It’s an awful story, a story of murdered innocence. It’s also a very old story, several hundred years older than mine, from the 1500s.

I have met Annabelle, decades and decades ago, I wonder if she’d remember me? I was roaming Arreton Down in a rare adventuring further afield when I heard the tale. In truth, I wanted the company. I thought perhaps she would be older than I found her. She showed me the window she was thrown out of by her wicked brother. I told her I hoped he didn’t roam too; he mustn’t be allowed to torment her. She told me he doesn’t, but she had never seen her parents again either. She missed her mother. Were they ever reunited? I must go and see.

I told Annabelle I got caught up in a murder too, that I’d done nothing but they decided I had ‘incited’ Freddy, it was my ‘persuasion’ that led to the murder. I told her the story because she was curious. She asked if people could see me, because she was seen often by people who visited the house, at the time, there was a lovely old lady called Ivy who occasionally saw her, spoke to her too. I told her I had never been seen; I didn’t seem able to be seen. This is still the case so far as I can tell. Annabelle said Ivy would be able to see me, Ivy was kind and magic and would be able to see me. She was very sure about it. We couldn’t find Ivy so we went from a walk in the gardens instead.

Annabelle Leigh, the name seemed familiar, and I wondered if I had read of her when we visited and forgotten it, but then I remembered.

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

I don’t recall the whole poem, but I love ‘this kingdom by the sea’.

…In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

My darling Freddy and me—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted he and me.

Annabelle felt sorry for Freddy when I told her about him, said he wasn’t wicked like her brother had been. She asked if I would come back to visit her, and if I could bring Freddy too if I found him. I told her I would but I haven’t returned yet. I haven’t found Freddy yet. Perhaps he won’t come back here, he went to so many places.

Chapter 3

Lovers & Letters

I’ll tell you a story ‘of Romeo and Juliet proportions’, or so a local author called it. Dorothy Osborne loved William Temple. Osborne and Temple; we were Thompson and Bywaters. Their story has a happier ending than mine and Freddy’s though, and do you know the best part about it all? They wed on Christmas Day. My birthday. This Christmas I will be a hundred and twenty-nine. I was twenty-nine when I died. I like that her name was Osborne, like our little house in Shanklin. It’s like Fate.

I thought Freddy and me would have our ‘ultimate success’ through Fate, thought, when I considered it all, that Fate brought us to the seafront house in Shanklin that shared a name with the lovers from Carisbrooke; and together with each other. Freddy always put no stock in Fate and the longer I’ve been here – you have plenty of time to do ‘sitting and thinking’ when you’re dead – I think he was right. Fate was more than unkind to us. But Freddy did have faith that we would be together again, I know that now. You are right, dear, we will soon be together, and what was not to be on this sordid planet, the land of cowards and curs, will be in another world.

Darlingest boy, I keep reading the letter you wrote before the ‘event’, darlint it makes me want to cry and miss you ever so much. I have found that ‘another world’ now and I am waiting and hoping and hoping that you will too. I have many a ‘tumble-down nook’ now and I do so want you to share them with.

The May after we visited the Island, there was a man about my father’s age who shot himself. The paper said it was because of ‘love and money’. His lover was ill and he was so aggrieved over their circumstances that he shot himself outside her front door. They decided afterwards that he was ‘of unsound mind’.

Would they have said likewise about Freddy and me if we’d gone ahead like we said? I kept counting down the months and I can’t say honestly what I would have done had it come to it, thinking about it I had written to Freddy: ‘don’t let us darlint. I’d like to live and be happy – not for a little while but for all the while you still love me. Death seemed horrible last night – when you think about it darlint, it does seem a horrible thing to die, when you have never been happy really happy for one little minute.’

But it never came to a decision because of what Freddy did. Why did he do it? I shall have to ask him that when I see him, or would it be wrong to bring it up? I mustn’t drive us apart so soon. His mother wrote to me on his behalf from Pentonville. She said she forgave me, so I must absolutely forgive Freddy. It was an accident. Freddy had faith and so must I. Faith in him and our ‘tumble-down nook’.

I just want a tumble-down nook by the sea,
With someone that I can love,
And who loves me:
Then I shall be happy
As the winds are free
In my dear little tumble-down nook by the sea.

Chapter 4

Other Ghosts

The Island’s the best place for a ‘tumble-down nook’. Even Dickens stayed here, and in Shanklin too! He was staying at Norfolk House Hotel whilst he wrote the beginning to David Copperfield. I’ve read all his books, well, all the stories. We used to read them for school. I wrote a ‘highly commended’ essay on Daniel Quilp from Old Curiosity Shop. We would read them aloud in Wanstead Park. Perhaps Freddy is there, waiting for me as he did before. One day I might go back to London, but I like the Island best. So did Dickens, after visiting Shanklin, he spent some time in Bonchurch and wrote to his daughter: ‘I think it is the prettiest place I ever saw in my life, at home or abroad.’

I don’t think he has a ghost here, because surely everyone would talk about it. There are ‘Ghost Walks’ here in Shanklin, full of tourists. I go along sometimes. I never get a mention, but that’s because, apparently, I can’t be seen. I could give the tours if people could see me, that would be such fun, I never seem to have people to talk to here. Sometimes people come to Osborne House (there’s a much bigger Osborne House on the Island where Queen Victoria lived and I suppose that’s where our little house originally got its name, although it has a different name now, I will always call it Osborne) but people come to our little house too to stay. Some of the people who come to stay know about me and that’s always nice.

Someone sent the people who own our little house a book about me! Someone wrote a book about me; I have read it, I read it sitting on the stairs by the bookcase, a little bit every night I spend in the house, and it is a kind one. It even tells of how Virginia Woolf wrote about me. It is quite a thing to be written about by Virginia Woolf, even if it was only a reflective snippet of the morning of January 7^th, two days before: People seemed to be walking. Then a woman cried, as if in anguish, in the street, and I thought of Mrs Thompson waiting to be executed. The writer of the book believes absolutely that I was innocent.  According to the book, most people who know my story think I should not have been hanged, and that gives me peace in this time now. If people can look upon me with mercy, then Freddy must have been forgiven also, it seems so, the book was very kind to him too and wrote of how brave he was when the morning came.

He was always telling me to try to ‘pray God’ and ‘be brave’ but I just couldn’t stand it when it came to it, they gave me things to make me drift off, they say I was ‘practically unconscious’, as I can barely remember that morning, they must be correct. What morbid thoughts I am having. I must think of Freddy and our ‘one little hour’ we had here, that will cheer me and perhaps he will know of it and come to join me at last. I loved reading about our visit here in the book, it was such a happy time.

I went to Ilfracombe with Percy before we married, and the summer before it all happened, we went to Bournemouth. People there thought I was odd because I climbed trees and such. I was just having a bit of fun. They thought I ‘seemed a child’ and must be younger than I was. We also came back to the Island and saw the Ventnor pier. I go there sometimes. There used to be a pier here in Shanklin too, it was here when we visited and crowded always, but it was wrecked in a storm years ago. I came across to the beach from our little house, you can see the pier from the window of the room we stayed in, and it was all in pieces.

I say I have no one to talk to here, that isn’t quite true. It happened on the 27^th, I always remember the 27^th of the month because Freddy’s birthday was June 27^th. I was roaming where the pier used to be and I met another ghost, the ghost of a drowned woman. Once, at work I heard of a woman who had ‘lost three husbands in eleven years’, two of them had drowned. I thought to myself and wrote to Freddy that life is rather ‘unfair’. They liked that, that I said a thing like that, because when it was read in court it made me look guilty.

My new companion, her name is Marjorie, had been coming home from the theatre.

“We were too!”

“We?”

“My husband and I, from the Criterion in London. We’d been to see The Dippers. It’s a farce, do you know it?” She shook her head. “What had you been to see?”

“Actually, I was acting in it,” she said. I asked what the play had been? “Shakespeare.” I told her of my playing Portia and Hippolyta in school. I used to do amateur acting with Percy too, in happier days, at Stepney New Meeting House. We did Shakespeare too, and A School for Scandal and A Christmas Carol.

Chapter 5

Holloway

Something else I know about Dickens is that he sometimes burned his letters. I told them I did that but of course they didn’t care that I’d always done it, they only thought it suspicious. I understand how it must have looked but they can’t say it was uncommon. Besides, it wasn’t Freddy’s letters to me that got us into so much trouble. If Freddy had burned the ones I wrote to him, like the one about the ‘wrong porridge’ – that was something different but they found that out too of course – things might have remained in my favour.

It is because of those letters that I came to Holloway. I read a lot of books while there, including Our Mutual Friend (‘His home was in the Holloway region north of London, and then divided from it by fields and trees.’ … ‘’Ah me!’ said he, ‘what might have been is not what is!’’) There was very little else to do. The chaplain wanted me to confess, he tried to make me but I wouldn’t, because I had nothing to confess.

I wrote to people, friends and Dad and my aunt. I wrote to Freddy’s sister because she was visiting him. I wrote to my aunt that I thought life had brought me nothing but ‘ashes and dust and bitterness’, but ashes to ashes, dust to dust; I’m still here. I’m still here. I want Freddy to be here too. We weren’t allowed to write to each other from Pentonville and Holloway, that’s why Freddy’s mother wrote to me. I know that later, after the ‘event’, his mother wrote about how heart-wrenching it had been to have to carry out ‘almost the last request of my boy’ and my heart broke for her, as she had been so kind as to include in the letter her own belief in my innocence and her forgiveness.

I had to read this “online”, where words live on screens like in the pictures I used to see with Freddy. Somewhere online someone has put our book, all sorts of things to do with us in fact. Sometimes at night I borrow the owners’ computer and go to that part of “online” so I can read about us, there’s more there than in the book, I read Freddy’s letter about ‘another world’ “online”, I wish that had been in the book because it’s quite possibly my favourite of his letters, but I love the one he asked his mother to write too.

Freddy had asked her to, ‘Tell Edie that I still love her and that my love will last through eternity. I believe that we shall meet again, for all things will be understood, and our love will triumph in the end.’ I had received that message in Holloway but it was different to hear it as he had spoken it. If he believed it then it must be true. Are things ‘understood’ yet? Perhaps not. Will I have to wait ‘through eternity’ for him. I have already waited nearly a century. I want him so badly.

I hate the thought of him being there in Pentonville. Perhaps he is trapped there, because of what he did. Perhaps he has roamed London all these years looking for me? I don’t want to go back there, not yet. There was where it was going wrong, and then went horrendously wrong. I do often think of Percy. He said he was ‘like a cat with nine lives’, despite his hypochondria. He shouldn’t have died in Belgrave Road; Freddy shouldn’t have done it. I know he didn’t mean to but he shouldn’t have followed us home in the first place. I wish we could have stayed on the Island forever, then Percy might never have died, all three of us could have lived happily. On the Island everything seemed to be going right. I didn’t love Percy but Freddy and I loved each other and we knew we wanted to be together. We made our ‘compact’ in Shanklin. I was in our old room this evening. The owners’ dog has been barking at guests again. Whoever arrived tonight has taken my book upstairs.

Years ago, I read a book a guest had brought with them. It was narrated by a ghost called Birdie. She talked about losing something belonging to her father and how it had ‘slipped through the cracks of time and went to where the lost things are’. It reminded me of Freddy’s missing letters. Letters I wrote to him that he kept but they weren’t found with my other letters, the ones they read in court and said made me guilty, that they were evidence that I ‘gave the incitement’, Freddy said in court that he took them as ‘mere melodrama.’ I was just trying to ‘keep him’ by telling him stories. I didn’t actually want Percy dead, and I didn’t try to kill him with ‘poison’ or ‘glass’, they were just stories.

I hope someone finds the letters one day. I hope they are not lost. I hope Freddy isn’t lost; he mustn’t be.