Dalmally Street, by Hamish Lorimer
An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.
Alec and Davie McLure had nothing against Norman Bain personally. It was simply that since Easter he had come to the house in Dalmally Street every Tuesday and Friday, sat in their father’s chair, eaten the last of the fruit loaf and talked to their sister Fiona about the Corporation Gas Department, where he was a clerk, in a voice like a slow puncture. Fiona, who was nineteen and had once been sensible, laughed at everything he said.
‘He has to be got rid of,’ said Alec, who was fourteen and read a great many detective stories. ‘Scientifically.’
The science, when it came, was a ghost. The tenement was old, and the press in the lobby, a deep cupboard behind the coats, backed onto the box room where the boys slept. Davie, being smaller, would sit in the press with a length of chain from the coal cellar and a pot lid. Alec would sit in the kitchen, and at the right moment he would mention, in a low voice, the tragic history of the house: a sea captain, a locked trunk, a death never explained.
On the Friday it went beautifully. Alec told the story of Captain Ure with real feeling. At the words ‘and they never found his other boot’, Davie rattled the chain and moaned through the keyhole until his throat hurt. Then he pushed the press door so that it creaked open by itself, which he had practised all week.
There was a silence in the kitchen. Then a chair scraped back.
‘Fiona,’ said Norman Bain, in a voice the boys had never heard him use, ‘where is your mother’s torch?’
He did not run for the door. He went to the press, knelt down among the boots and shone the torch into every corner, breathing hard, while Davie flattened himself behind their father’s overcoat and prayed. Then Norman took a small notebook from his inside pocket and began to write.
‘Temperature drop, noticeable,’ he murmured. ‘Metallic sounds. Low groaning, possibly male.’ He turned, and his pale eyes were shining. ‘Mrs McLure, I am the secretary of the West of Scotland Psychical Society. We have been waiting nine years for a case like this.’
It was the longest week of the boys’ lives. Norman stayed until midnight with the torch. He came back on Saturday with a thermometer, on Sunday with two gentlemen from the Society and a camera, and on Monday, which had never before been one of his evenings, with a camp bed. He now proposed, he said, to sleep in the lobby until the Captain showed himself again. Their mother made up the camp bed without a word. Their father, who was fond of his chair, began spending his evenings at the bowling club.
On the Wednesday Alec took Fiona aside in the back court. He had decided to confess. It seemed the only scientific course left.
‘Fiona, about the ghost…’
‘Oh, I know about the ghost,’ said Fiona. She was pegging out Norman’s shirts. ‘I heard you practising the door. So did Norman, the first Friday. He says the chain was very good but the groaning wants work.’ She took a peg out of her mouth. ‘He also says, since you are both so keen on the supernatural, he’d be glad of two assistants. Tuesdays and Fridays. Seven till ten.’
She went in with the empty basket. From the open window above, the boys could hear Norman in their kitchen, explaining the history of the gas mantle to their mother, slowly, from the very beginning.
“The ending of this extract shows that the boys get exactly what they deserve.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.