rabid frenzy; absolutely desperate to do his shift. The mental decline of such a pillar of
society would be devastating in any community, and in the closed environment within the
story the effects on both the audience and characters are severe. Commitment is a fine thing,
but natural boundaries between duty and insanity are stampeded on here.
Against this decidedly sinister background enters Megg and Geoff Charlesworth,
two shining beacons of good grace, with all the innocence of children at Christmas. For
anyone remotely familiar with modern horror films their role could not be more transparent;
the potential victims of an unknown evil which lurks outside. With them they bring warmth
and light to the office, making it an oasis in the sea of swirling snow and gusting winds; the
same kind of warmth that Rosamond radiates throughout the lonely Manor as she ‘played
and pranced hither and thither’.
The first mention of anything unusual occurring within the Manor Estate is when
Hester hears some whaling music being played at night, which she understandably puts
down to the towering instrument in the main hall. Had the long-time servants James and
Dorothy not denied that such sounds where ever heard Hester might never have discovered
the story of the old Lord’s nightly exploits; a phenomenon which had petrified the serving
folk for so long. Gaston Leroux, another scare-mongering author of the same period, also
used organ music for dramatic effect in his most famous tale, The Phantom of the Opera,
although his music was not issued from an instrument in such a sorry state. Un-playable, in
fact. The discovery that the music has a meteorological preference for ghastly biting wind, a
crude example of pathetic fallacy, serves to heighten the discerning reader’s sense of
impending doom. The sinister and inexplicably broken organ scares Hester into returning to
more friendly surroundings, a fact significant only in that it cannot be explained away by
logical observations.
The Charlesworth’s first encounter with the supernatural has less dramatic
manifestations. Just another phone call; another desperate individual who’s life has boiled
down to one telephone conversation with a complete stranger. Other than the timing of the
call, midnight having some mystical significance for the overly dramatical, the circumstances
reveal nothing about the situation of the caller. The exceedingly bad line would usually signify
distance, but in this context it has more ethereal implications. To a normal person the line
‘He’s going to kill me. I know he’s going to kill me.’ would precipitate sheer panic but,
being the trained professional Samaritan, Meg progresses straight into a state of cold
desperation. The voice on the other end possessed non of the qualities of a human
threatened with death. Instead the female voice possesses the mannerisms of an actor
reading a script; a cold certainty which dispels all hope of a happy ending. She continues,
oblivious to Meg’s questions, to thrust her ‘lonely hell’ on a kind ear. The language she uses
is clipped and stiff, implying that this is just another performance of a well-rehearsed piece.
Her tale disturbs Meg, causing her carefully rehearsed helper-spiel to break down into a
stuttering stream of caustic syllables. When the mystery caller ring off Meg feels physically
cold, despite the roaring gas fire.
Rosamond’s disappearance into the sub-arctic blizzard outside highlights the intense
feelings Hester has for her infant charge. The nature of her return has some disturbingly
biblical (disturbing in that the Bible is riddled with tales of mortality and demise)
characteristics that wring close to William Blake’s collection of poems ‘The Songs of
Innocence’; the shepherd wading through knee-deep snow to return a lost ‘lamb’.
Rosamond’s description of the little girl in the snow holds just enough credibility to make the
reader uneasy, but Hester disclaims the story just as easily as Tom Brett disclaims the death-
laden phone call.
Tom Brett, the re-assuring and experienced fountain of knowledge, has all the facts
to completely and utterly disqualify Geoff and Meg’s misgivings about their morbid client.
His arguments make sense, but then he wasn’t there to hear the cold certainty or feel the
chill down his spine. Yet we could have been reassured if Geoff had not come out with
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s immortal quote ‘Ours is not to reason why but to do and die’, a
piece of prose much quoted by the disheartened troops on both sides of the American Civil
War.
The second phone call has a much more profound effect on Meg. Whatever it is,
and by now we can be sure it’s not human, has gained a foothold in her psyche. It’s words
transform a colourful and cheery character into a ‘grey, frozen, horrified’ individual in one
conversation; faster even than Dr. Henry Jekyll’s evil concoction ever worked. And like the
good doctor Meg becomes savage. That savagery is directed towards Geoff, her beloved
husband and life partner; ‘She gave him a look that withered him’.
When Tom Brett refuses to be convinced of the caller’s plight by a second phone
call Geoff begins to doubt it’s reliability. Tom goes as far as to virtually forbid Geoff from
bothering him with the issue again. Now Geoff finds himself in another horror film dilemma;
in a difficult situation with no-one to turn to for help, exactly where a Samaritan doesn’t want
to be. The third call is exactly what he didn’t need. The same cold and dreary tones
commentating on it’s own demise, holding Meg in an icy grip. Geoff’s self-control snaps
when he sees what ghastly effects these crackled pleas are having on his beloved. He takes
the phone, and the mystery caller rings off.
The reappearance of Rosamond’s phantom child drives the little girl into a frenzy
much akin to Harry Lancaster’s violent outburst, the dramatic effect of which
is enhanced by the thunderous clap of organ music. Hester’s maternal instincts override
her panicked confusion and she rushes Rosamond out of harms way, and into the security of
the warm kitchen. The sinister little ghost child obviously has the same stranglehold on
Rosamond as the mystery caller has on Meg, for it causes her to forget all those years of
loving companionship and berate Hester as she would a childhood nemesis. The ghost child
scares the wits from Dorothy the servant, and that blind terror demands an explanation.
When pressed hard she relates a dastardly account of such love, intrigue, betrayal and
murder that Mills & Boon probably own the copyright. The tale tells of two haughty
beauties, torn apart by mutual love for an amorous musician, and the repulsive acts of a
classically proud yet critically unhinged Lord when he discovers there is a bastard in the
family. Such actions by the aristocracy of the time would be socially unacceptable to
preserve the name of an honourable family. He pronounces death on his daughter when he
casts herself and her beaten child, Rosamond’s phantom child, out into the snow-covered
Fells. The little child’s appearance also affects Miss. Furnivall, who we discover is to blame
for the child’s death. Hester mentions the hopeless look of someone going down to the pit,
which could be the mask of despair of those condemned to Dante’s Pit, but is most likely a
reference to desperate men who worked, lived and died horrible deaths down coal pits, an
invention of the Industrial Revolution.
Like a modern-day Ivanhoe Geoff rides out in his four wheeled charger in the hope
of saving some poor soul from themselves, leaving Meg to hold the fort. He does so on
Meg’s insistence, but by leaving her alone in the office he goes against Samaritan rules.
Instead of discovering an individual in need of his help Geoff finds an affable retired couple
in the safety of their warm residence, a safe haven from the dank and perfidious presence of
the River Ouse. The old woman has a faint memory about a lock-keeper and his lame wife,
a piece of information which half-confirms the caller’s story, and which makes Geoff feel a
little more uneasy. That uneasiness is evident in his pell-mell drive back to the office.
The third call from the tormenting caller drives Meg deeper into the paranoid world
of suffering she is forced to inhabit. The hypnotic spectral tones freeze Meg; she doesn’t
respond at all to Geoff’s concerned questions. Geoff once again interrupts the call, to the
outrage of his unstable spouse. The syntax of her next few lines is disturbingly shambolic, an
audible side-effect of the torment that now permeates her soul, and when she does recover
it is only to direct some baleful and stinging sentiments towards her husband. She is
desperate to rush to the aid of her confidant, but Geoff doesn’t yield. When desperation
doesn’t work she tries the ‘it’s OK, I’m fine’ act and, because of shear relief, Geoff falls for
it. Whilst Geoff goes off to get a brew on, Meg escapes in his car. It’s a token of how
powerful the caller’s influence is that it can drive a loving wife to such depths of deception.
The turning of a long winter used to be considered a blessing by country folk; the
long winter had finally broke, as I’d hoped’, and it is an unexpectedly cheery line for an
episode in the story so packed with high drama. The whaling screams of no logical origin
and the schizophrenic mumbling of Rosamond bring the level of tension for the scene to
breaking point. The old Lord’s organ music returns with increased fervour, and because of
this Hester refuses to leave Rosamond alone lest the little girl came back to claim her life
once again, another example of her strong maternal bonds. Hester mentions hardening her
heart against the two old crones, and from what we know about her mentality this appears
an uncharacteristically cold-hearted thing to state; some signal that the family history has
affected her deeper than she lets on. Miss Furnivall, who’s contribution to present events
could not be clearer, shows what mental scars she carries when she screams aloud ‘I hear
terrible screams- I hear my father’s voice!’. The swirling voices and screams, whaling louder
even than the raging winds are heard by all in the room. Something then seems to awaken in
Miss. Furnivall and she makes straight for the main hall, the apparent source of these
ethereal disturbances, followed by the ever-present Mrs Stark. The tormented screams
came not from the main hall, but from east wing; the former residence of the deceased Miss.
Maude. Again the strange phenomenon, whereupon roaring flames fail to give any warmth,
prevails and instils an unnatural terror upon the carbon-based inhabitants of the hall. Against
the melee of whaling wilds and howls Rosamond screams out her pathetic plies, desperate
to the point of frenzy to help her spectral counterpart. But Hester, like the lone guardian at
the gates of Athens, refuses to let go. She fights for Rosamond, for she knows that the child
would perish if she was release to her own devices.
With a thundering crash the doors part, driven in by a force greater that that of any
mortal, and the grizzly re-enactment begins. Driving his victims before him like lambs to the
slaughter the old Lord enters, the abhorrence he feel for his daughter clear on his face.
Rosamond struggles desperately in and effort to help, but flinches from the savage cut to the
unprotected head of the phantom child. The events of the past cannot be altered, but still
Miss Furnivall tries. She issues a pitiful cry for mercy, but her cries fall of dead ears.
Exhausted by her exertions she collapses, like the brave Joan of Arc, never to rise again.
Her final quote is one laden with sorrowful repentance and morning, of regretted actions and
part mistakes; ‘Alas! what is done in age cannot be undone in age!’.
Meg’s flight fills Geoff with terror, the kind of terror one feels when a loved one’s
life is threatened. Despite his earlier instructions Tom Brett sees the danger in the situation
and comes rushing to help. Tom obviously knows at least part of what’s going on, because
his normally unflappable aura becomes visibly jaded, but for the moment he doesn’t let on.
The shortcut they take seems to reach out with thorny arms; to tempt them from the right
path and into the darkness. The dynamic duo may have fallen into Agnes’ mind altering mesh
for an instant; pronouncing that there was ‘No danger’ in this situation is ludicrous. Geoff,
maybe because of a broken mental state that is evident in his slightly stunted sentences, feels
the pull of the river as he rushes on. Just one little step off the edge.... But they find Meg,
safe and sound and in the company of a limping figure. What they can’t see is the trance-like
state Meg is in; the control the figure is so complete that Meg turns to follow her, in a
tranquil sleepwalk, out onto the black waters of the Ouse.
The phrasing Westall uses for Meg’s rescue speaks volumes about how desperately
she needed help. ‘Caught her on the brink’ could quiet easily be applied to a prevented
suicide attempt, almost as if Meg wanted to drown herself, and influences just how deep the
ghost’s influence reached. Deeper, in fact, than the little child’s grasp over Rosamond.
Agnes Todd’s story is as tragic as it is reflective of modern culture, and the
anomalies in the story are straightened out in it’s telling. It becomes clear why Harry always
took the Christmas Eve slot; to take the full weight of Agnes’ influence on his capable
shoulders but, as the late and great Ernest Hemmingway once said; ‘Even the tallest tree
must fall’. Harry fell with dramatic style, hence the raving and throthing at the mouth. With
Harry’s death the Samaritans lost a great advocate, but they also lost Agnes, for she never
returned again to prey on more innocent souls.
Both of these two stories demonstrate good and evil in their extremes; evil in the
baleful grasp that the dead hold over the living and the dastardly ways in which they manifest
themselves, and good in the protective instincts that love inspires in the living. Neither Geoff
or Hester ever bowed in the face of their respective nemeses and the adversity that was
thrust before them. There are differences within these two groups as well. The ghost child’s
efforts to draw Rosamond to an icy death are no doubt evil, but there is a innocence behind
that evil; the innocence of a lonely child seeking companionship to face the awful
victimisation they suffered. The old Lord and Agnes Todd, however, represent unhinged
individuals with whom life has toyed mercilessly. Neither of these two evils could overcome
the iron bonds of love and companionship that the living share, and the good in both stories
prevailed.
The two tales both draw on deep cultural backgrounds, both in literal influences and
the social atmosphere at the time. Gaskell’s piece is deeper in subtle meanings and artistic
licence, owing to a more classical education and lack of media desensitisation. Robert
Westall, who became famous for his tale of a child’s war, The Machine Gunners, has
brought to his story all the ideals of modern horror and suspense, but his piece reflect non of
the silent meaning and climactic phrases that Elizabeth Gaskell fits into her work. He fails to
communicate his visions of good and evil, leaving doubt in the reader’s mind about the true
meaning of his words. The modern culture of death and gore which fill our screens nightly
under the false veil of ‘horror’ films leave little market for more subdued, and yet even so
much more engrossing, plot lines that Elizabeth Gaskell produced. It is Gaskell, I feel, that
wins this literary bout.