No 33 - The Girl in the Garden

                                                                    Photo ….John Inglis 

The Girl in the Garden

It was winter time and cold outside. I, Tamsin and Rebecca were seeking warmth in the Rickmansworth Folk Club above the fish and chip shop in the High Street. I looked across at Tamsin who was in conversation with Nathan. He was the lead guitarist in the resident group called The Sheriff’s Men. They were previously known as The Melody Five, actually there were only four of them; you might remember the banjo player left. Anyway Nathan was the only guitar player so I guess that makes him the lead guitarist.

They replaced the banjo player with a saxophone player. So the new line-up of the Rickmansworth Folk Group, The Sheriff’s Men is an accordion, a mandolin, oh yes, the banjo player left and was replaced with a saxophonist and Nathan, the guitarist.

As I mentioned earlier Nathan had the hots for Tamsin. This feeling was not reciprocated by Tamsin. They were both on completely different frequencies. Rebecca said she overheard Nathan telling Grant; er somebody or other, that Tamsin his girlfriend goes to a ‘posh’ college named Denham hall, sometimes known as the Rickmansworth Young Ladies College and that she can speak Latin, French and some Italian and that her parents live in a Presbytery in Loch Awe, Scotland which is untrue because Tamsin is not his girlfriend.

Nathan had asked Tamsin how her studies were going. I heard her tell him they had carpentry classes for the final lesson of the day. She was setting him up again as we did not have carpentry classes… EVER. Tamsin was about to tell porkies. She was forever teasing Nathan.

I heard her say ’Yes Nathan I made a replica Steinway Grand Piano in carpentry classes today’.

Nathans eyes widened “Really?”

She said “Yes, well I would be the first to admit it was not as good as an original one”.

I groaned. She continued “Yes Nathan you can ask my woodwork teacher and next week I am going to make a Space Shuttle”.

I really feel sorry for Nathan. I really do ………well sometimes.

Those boarders leaving the college of an evening sign an ‘off-campus’ sheet when leaving the college and the caretaker checks them in as they begin to arrive back around 9.45pm. No boarder has been lost yet.

Once or twice a month I headed home to Inveraray Castle. Mother said I was quite welcome to bring a friend or two. But this weekend Tamsin’s parents had invited Phaedra and I to stay with her family at Loch Awe.

Tamsin’s parents lived in an old restored Presbytery on the opposite side of the train station overlooking Loch Awe. Her father had just retired. He had been a Northern Irish Minister.

In the afternoon Tamsin and I strolled down to the station with the Lacey family’s dalmatian over the iron railway bridge to the old steamer pier at the edge of the loch in front of the Loch Awe Railway Hotel, now known as the Loch Awe Castle Hotel. Standing behind us was a railway carriage converted to holiday accommodation. Although there was only been a dusting of snow it was still very cold but quite sunny. We stopped while Tamsin took pictures to send to her Facebook friends.

Loch Awe is not the largest railway station in Scotland by any stretch of the imagination. It only has one platform whether one is going north or south, and one train per day, possibly the same train that went south and was due back later in the day but heading north - if that makes any sense. But I am not absolutely sure about my railway times.

On our return to the Presbytery, Phaedra said despite the cold weather she saw a girl wearing a full-length flimsy dress with long golden hair sitting on the garden seat. When Phaedra approached the girl she raised her arm not to wave but to acknowledge her. What unsettled Phaedra was she noticed, as she stood up to walk away she left no footprints.

So as not to confuse my gentle readers it was the girl that left no footprints, not Phaedra. Phaedra asked Tamsin if she knew who she was.

Phaedra also said she noticed when she left, she could just make out the faint carving of a heart entwining two sets of initials that had been carved into the back of the garden seat.

Later I asked Mrs Lacey if anyone had died at the Presbytery or if the Presbytery had a history of ghosts, apparitions and the like.

She replied they had not been living in the Presbytery very long and she had not seen any apparitions but she did say there was a story in the records of St Conan’s Kirk at Loch Awe, incidentally built by my father’s great grandfather, a Campbell, of a young girl who was a parishioner there hundreds of years ago.

She was about to get married but her admirer died of the plague. She had heard stories of the appearance of the young girl but had never seen her and the previous owners had never mentioned her.

Tamsin’s mother said it should not be too difficult to find out whose initials they were and if one of them is the initials of the girl in question. St Conan’s Kirk records will confirm this.

Such was the young girl’s grief she never married. She may have been the girl Phaedra saw in the garden looking for her lost love who once lived in the Presbytery. Who knows? It is all guesswork.

Lady Delilah, my mother, pointed out Inveraray Castle is also the home to a number of resident ghosts. There’s the Harpist, the Bagpipe Player and there have also been sightings of a female ghost haunting the castle. It has been said this female ghost is thought to have been killed by a Jacobite soldier.

I believe there is another ghost who, although unseen, has been heard laughing uncontrollably in the kitchen. The castle has its own resident poltergeist.

A valid point that Tamsin pointed out was the intense pressure the kitchen would be under if the entire ghost ensemble of Inveraray wanted to sit down for dinner at the same time. I marvel at Tamsin’s reasoning powers.

I asked Phaedra what happened to the girl in the garden. Where did she go? She said she did not go anywhere. While walking away she just disappeared slowly as if going out of focus as one might see when disappearing into a shimmering heat haze. Tamsin said perhaps she is travelling inter-dimensionally.

Good point: she added it makes sense if she ever hoped to meet her beau again the Presbytery would be the obvious place to frequent, although, as I told Mrs Lacey, I personally would have waited for the warmer months.

Tamsin’s mother was not as scatter-brained as my mother and I blame that on Mrs Dalrymple. Mother and Mrs Dalrymple are more interested in the afterlife and of the well-being of ‘our dear departed’ than those in their present life. Father; well he is blessed with a lot of patience.

Mother once said if she or Mrs Dalrymple made contact with one apparition, ghost, wraith, poltergeist or with any of our ‘dear departed’ ones during the séances then death, as we understand it, does not signal the end of our journey but possibly the beginning of a new one.