NOTES ON IRONGROVE LODGE

JONATHAN OLIVER

 

 

I HAVE LOST everything but the desire to find Irongrove Lodge. I suppose my recent circumstances have given me renewed impetus to find the house, for I am now without a home. I am writing this in a hostel; they have let us in early tonight because it is so cold. This will be the worst winter in decades, they say. Many will die.

I try to keep myself separate from the other residents, but still they insist on engaging me in conversation, indulging their own sense of the camaraderie of the streets. It’s ridiculous; many of these indigents would as soon stab me for a packet of cigarettes or a bottle as help me out.

“I hear you’re interested in ghost stories,” one said, his drink-ruined face thrust disconcertingly close to mine.

“I’m not sure where you heard that,” I told him, but he was not to be dissuaded.

He told me that when he was a child, his bedroom was haunted. On the most silent, most starless nights, she would appear – the white lady. She would say nothing, merely stand before him, staring, pinning him to the bed with her terrible gaze, before climbing in beside him. He remembers that she was warm, not cold as ghosts are supposed to be. Even so, he was frozen with fear, and could do nothing as the white lady climbed atop him, the only thing separating her face from his a stained and stinking veil. Each time, he would pass out and when he came to, the ghost would be gone, though her smell would linger.

Of course, I recognised the signs of the Night Hag straight away. A common enough complaint, especially in childhood – sleep paralysis. Even so, I allowed the man to finish his story, and he seemed happier for having done so, unburdened.

I had set a precedent, because his was not the only ghost story. Most of the men who frequented the hostel had one to share. Once I objected – convinced that the ghosts were phantoms of the bottle or spirits summoned by chemicals – and the story-teller became irate; violence was threatened. And so I endured their tales.

One man stopped part way through his story. To be honest, I hadn’t been listening, instead concentrating on my notes. I only realised that the story had come to a premature halt when a beery breath wafted into my face.

“Does that say ‘Irongrove Lodge’?”

“Yes,” I said. “Have you heard the name before?”

“Tom used to mention it from time to time.”

“Tom?”

“He’s like us, only he refuses to sleep indoors now.”

“Where would I find him?”

“Most nights he kips down by the Civic Centre. They keep moving him on, but he keeps coming back. Like he’s haunting the place.”

 

 

I FOUND TOM on a bench overlooking the great grey edifice of the council offices. He was wrapped head-to-toe in a sleeping bag, and looked more like a massive grub than a man. I hadn’t come empty-handed; I made my offering, holding out a can as I sat beside him.

“James at the hostel sent me.”

I didn’t press him, instead happy to sit in silence while I waited for the alcohol to do its work.

“He said you mentioned Irongrove Lodge, once or twice.”

Tom belched and held out his hand. “You better give me another one of those.”

I handed him a fresh can and opened one for myself; solidarity in super strength lager.

It took a couple more drinks, but eventually Tom told his story.

He had been on the streets for years, thought he knew all the highways and byways of the city, but one evening he found himself on a road he had never walked before. The houses were far too grand, far too well appointed for Tom to feel comfortable, and he was thinking of moving on when he spotted the blackened shell of a house. Once it must once have been as grand as its neighbours: at least five storeys high, sitting in extensive grounds. Fire had gutted it, and not at all recently to judge by the state of the ruins. The only thing that had been left untouched was a brass plaque fastened beside the empty, blackened doorway. The brass looked like it had been polished recently, and on it were the words Irongrove Lodge.

For all that the neighbourhood felt inimical to one of his character, Tom decided that it would be here that he would sleep. He didn’t enter the house itself; the shell of the structure looked far too fragile and he didn’t want to fall through a rotted floor or be brained by a falling beam. Instead, he chose the garden. It was a warm night and the overgrown grass would hide him from the rest of the street.

When he awoke it was mid-afternoon and the house had been restored. The garden was no longer a jungle, but instead an immaculately landscaped idyll, its flowerbeds a dazzling spray of colour and its trees heavy with fruit.

Tom was half convinced that he had died, and that this was the afterlife he had been promised but never believed in.

The door of Irongrove Lodge was open.

“I stepped inside,” Tom began, before becoming overcome with emotion. I opened another can and handed it to him.

“And is that why you now refuse to sleep indoors? Because of what you saw?”

“No,” Tom said, and drew back the hood of his sleeping bag. His cheeks were wet with tears. “What I saw within Irongrove Lodge was... wonderful. But I knew that it could never, ever, be mine.”