When not haunting the flushing privy of The Squid and Teapot, Father Ignatius Stamage generally retires to the comfort of his hat. As I have mentioned before, for Father Stamage this is far more than the old and battered Capello Romano that we might see hanging incongruously in the bar of The Squid, smelling as it does of sweat, incense and cheap brilliantine. Once inside his hat, Father Stamage is transported to the Jesuit college Campion Hall, in Oxford, where he can wander the cool deserted corridors of his old alma mater at leisure. This, of course, is Campion Hall as he would wish it, devoid of the bustle of staff, students and other annoying intrusions.
……….
You will doubtless remember Tenzin, the young Buddhist monk who left Tibet under a yeti’s armpit, via one of Mr Squash’s mysterious portals. Since taking up residence in The Squid and Teapot he has always shown great willingness to help with any task that needs doing. However, having spent his formative years chanting, meditating and twirling prayer wheels, Tenzin proved himself to be supremely unqualified to be allowed anywhere near the daily running of an inn, even one on Hopeless, Maine. In view of this, Philomena decided that he would be far more useful looking after her adopted children, Caitlin and little Oswald. After all, she reasoned, he had been a child himself not so long ago, and apart from the aforementioned chanting, meditating and prayer wheel twirling, he ought to have a rough idea what might be required of him.
Tenzin thought hard how best he might entertain two infants aged four and three. His monastery, high in the Himalayas, was not known for its penchant for merriment (unless chanting, meditation and prayer wheel twirling happens to be your idea of fun). Then he spotted Father Stamage’s hat dangling from the coat stand in the corner of the bar. Youthful inspiration suddenly blossomed, and from then on it was only a matter of time before he invented the imaginatively named ‘Tossing the Hat Around Game’.
Father Stamage was admiring the Charles Mahoney painted panels in the Lady Chapel when he realised that something was not right. To begin with it was little more than a suggestion that the whole building seemed to be on the move, but as the hat was tossed back and forth, to a chorus of giggling as it wobbled through the air, things became decidedly uncomfortable. This only stopped when ‘Uncomfortable’ slid up the scale to ‘Really Alarming’, then swiftly progressed to ‘Really Alarmingly Awful”. This was akin to a ride on a rollercoaster devoid of brakes, or being flung around in an unheated tumble-dryer. Unfortunately Father Stamage had no knowledge of either of these examples to bring him any sort of comfort, and so he had to resort to stifling a scream, which was only right and proper behaviour in the Lady Chapel.
Of course Tenzin and the children were blissfully unaware that with each throw, the unseen spectre within the hat was being flung about like a particularly helpless leaf in a gale. Father Stamage found himself in an unprecedented state of distress. He was used to haunting, not being haunted – by inertia, by gravity, and by the terrible indignity of it all.
The children eventually tired, as children are wont to do, and much to the Jesuit’s relief the hat was put down. With his ectoplasm churned around like milk, Father Stamage’s ghost fell into a deep slumber.
That could have been the end of the story, but he was disturbed once more when Drury, the skeletal hound, burst onto the scene with his own, unique brand of aplomb. With unbounded enthusiasm Drury lunged, clamped his bony jaws into the hat, and tore off through the inn and out of the front door, his wagging tail rattling noisily behind him.
Drury, being Drury, had no particular destination in mind. He enjoyed the chase, and the rushing of the wind through the holes where his ears should have been. It was only after an hour or so, when he became distracted by a spoonwalker (which offered the possibility of providing far more fun than a smelly old hat) that he dropped it somewhere along the marshy outskirts of the island.
For the first time since his demise, Father Stamage found himself utterly alone. No walls. No privy. No warm, dimly lit bar. No Lady Margaret D’Avening to preach to. Just the open moors, the distant crash of waves, and a creeping sense of abandonment.
Then the wind picked up.
The hat, light as it was, lifted and tumbled, rolling over the ground like a cursed tumbleweed. Stamage, trapped within, could do nothing but endure the indignity of being carried aloft by an enthusiastic gust, only to land in a gorse bush. Spending days, weeks or months in a gorse bush was not a particularly thrilling prospect, even for a ghost, but this became meaningless when a particularly enterprising raven decided that the hat might function as a liner for her nest, and once more Father Stamage peered out to find himself airborne. Miserably he recalled that most of Hopeless’ raven population resided up on Chapel Rock. This was also home to the ghostly Mad Parson, Obadiah Hyde, a particularly unpleasant spirit who nursed a deep and abiding hatred of people generally, and of papists in particular.
I suppose, given the circumstances, the fact that the raven dropped the hat before reaching Chapel Rock could be considered fortunate. Any celebration was short lived, however, as it rolled into a bog where it spent an unpleasant few days soaking up the smell of decomposed vegetation.
……….
Reggie Upton liked to describe himself as something of a flâneur, an all-around devotee of leisurely perambulation. On such occasions he did not walk with urgency or purpose, but rather as an art form. One does not merely go somewhere; one arrives in a state of cultivated idleness.
It was in the midst of such aimless sauntering that he spotted the hat.
“By Jove,” he mused aloud. “A priest’s Capello Romano, and abandoned in the wild, I’ll be bound.”
He bent down, retrieved the sodden, slightly odorous hat, and gave it a shake.
“I say, steady on,” croaked Father Stamage, whose voice was, by now, hoarse from shrieking into the void.
Reggie blinked. “Stamage, old chap, is that you in there?”
“Of course it’s me, you ridiculous old fop!”, fumed Father Stamage! “I have been misplaced and require immediate conveyance back to The Squid and Teapot!”
Reggie considered this. “You’re certainly a long way from home. Would you say you have had an enlightening journey?”
The reply that came out of the hat was not what one might expect from a man of the cloth.
With great care (and a handkerchief to protect his fingers), Reggie picked up the hat and resumed his flânerie.
Upon arriving at the inn he presented the battered headwear to Philomena with a flourish.
“I found this on my walk. Father Stamage seems to have been rather lost.”
She took it, gave it a sniff, wrinkled her nose, and hung it back in its rightful place. Almost immediately, a faint, deeply weary sigh emanated from within.
Thus restored to his home, Father Stamage resumed his haunting, though now with a certain wariness. He took to muttering prayers whenever Drury passed by and grew deeply suspicious of playful children.
Meanwhile, undeterred, Tenzin invented a new pastime for Caitlin and little Oswald. It was called “Tossing the Chamber Pot Lid Around Game”.
Father Stamage, disappeared into the privy and shuddered.
One could never be too careful.
