Anyone who knows this town will have encountered those terrible river mists that creep through the streets. Sometimes the mist is accompanied by an evil little breeze that does not disperse the damp air but twists and spirals so that it somehow always blows into your face, no matter which way you turn. Down an alley-way comes the breeze, bringing gusts of foetid cabbagy air from the gratings over college kitchens along with its weight of moist droplets and spray. If you think to get out of its path, if you take a short-cut down a side passage or go out of your way along a sheltering wall, it will turn and find you, and blow once again, maliciously, straight into your eyes.

The breeze is at its most tormenting near the river, and the river-bank is shunned on days of fog and mist: the tow-path is churned mud, the cold creeps under your coat, the moisture rising from the water clings to your scarf and your bones begin to fear the aches and pains of winter. My late husband used to study Antony à Wood, the sixteenth-century Oxford chronicler. He recounts the story of the landlord of the Lamb and Flag Public House, who believed that evil river sprites were responsible for agues. He would row afflicted customers down the river at night; shipping oars in the dark and silent mist, they would wait, shivering, in the hope that the sprite might take the ague back.

This is the dark and shadowy side of Oxford, its raw and wretched self, where the poor creep along to cold and miserable beds, or cardboard boxes in the shelter of a canal bridge. You will know by now that I am not talking about the Oxford of the silver bells and golden stones, of Betjeman and lilac blossom, of teddies and meadows, the city famed in a hundred autobiographies by important people. That city does exist, but my life is no longer there; it is in this other city, the other Oxford, Oxford's Doppelgänger, the freezing muddy town, haunted by the dark side of the past.

I have said that the river-bank is shunned in foul weather. That is so, shunned by all those who can keep away from it. I, alas, am not one of them.

I live on a island, a canal on one side, the river on the other, looping out to cut off a little triangle of land. The house is reached by an iron bridge over the river, whose waters rush beneath towards a weir further downstream. There is one reason for which the fog that creeps off the water is to be welcomed: it muffles the echo of my footsteps on the iron-work, a sound which always disturbs me.

Why do I, a timid, middle-aged woman, live here? A good question, indeed. Money. That's the answer. I cannot afford anywhere else.

The house belonged to my late husband. I tried not to show him how afraid I was of the house and the island, but he guessed. He guessed, as a pig scents truffles, as a dog sniffs out a fragrant bone, as a cat scents a trapped bird. He scented and hunted and cherished the fear of others: it was a prize, a delight, for him. The whiff of fear made him raise his head and smile, with his mouth open and his nostrils snuffing the air. His students hated him.

I should, of course, have left him and found a room in town, got some training, built a life for myself, taken all the sensible advice. But I didn't. He balanced things just to perfection. Too much, and he might have driven me away altogether, so that he would no longer have the fun of watching my fears grow, grow and flourish on that bridge, crossing the river, living on the island. Every episode of leaving me alone unexpectedly, of failing to mend the light-fuses, of wandering through the scrubby trees at night, was followed by another of infinite care and kindness, of reasonably pointing out that we could not afford to leave such a house, that we would never get another with the same acreage of garden - and I did love the garden, didn't I? Besides, it was all so beautiful in summer - how could I forget the birdsong early in the mornings? Was it his fault we were unable to keep a dog? - they all wandered off, somehow, even the ones that seemed affectionate. Once, the rising waters, swollen after a storm, trapped and drowned a new puppy that I had thought safely shut in an upstairs room. How could it have got downstairs? How could I blame my husband for such an accident? Was I really fit to look after a dog?

You can imagine all the answers.

So, your next question. Why did I continue to live in the house after his death?

Again, money. I did not inherit the house: he left it to me for my life-time only. I could not sell it, nor even let it. The house must go after my days to his heir, the daughter by his first marriage. How he must have enjoyed devising this careful balance between us - this perpetual ensurance of mutual hatred!

I have never met her. She married an Australian student and went to live in a suburb of Melbourne. So I am in this ridiculous position, humiliating, degrading. I have to live in a house I hate, so that someone I don't know can benefit from my life-time of misery

Soon after my husband died, I asked the solicitor to write and see if she would agree to the sale of the house. Back came the letter: she would not. She wanted the terms of the will enforced.

I think she had been well advised by a property agency, for at the time the housing market in the south of England was going through a prolonged slump, and every year the sale could be postponed would stave off selling at a reduced price. Ultimately, when the slump finally ended, as it was bound to do, the value of her inheritance will increase. So just by staying here, by acting as a kind of watchman, I am safe-guarding her investment: I perform her a service by merely existing. You can imagine how bitter that makes me.

But there are compensations. In the summer, I really am quite happy here. It is not isolated then, for there are holidaying families in long-boats and cabin-cruisers who moor alongside the island and the river is full of boats and punts. Students' voices drift across the water in the evenings. Canoeists and oarsmen are pulling at their work early in the mornings, and the nights are short and light and my garden full of tangled plants and flowers. I can no longer do much pruning and clipping, but I have come to prefer my blown and free-running garden of uncut roses and hedge-plants to a methodical and orderly patch where flowers are gardened almost out of existence.

But the winter is a different matter. I hate the winter here. Timid as I am, I am not so broken that I cannot try to do something about it, for I know the alternative to improving my situation is to be utterly destroyed by it. One more winter here, one more November of tap-tapping home across that iron bridge, one more December of dirty grey ice washing round the muddy banks, and I will be finished. Any creature, even a dog, has the instinct to save itself if it can.

Even a dog. Even the puppy that drowned in the flood - it must have struggled, have tried to save itself from the freezing water that killed it slowly.

I am sure she will be unable to stay away. Everything I know of her, everything that he used to read me from her letters, all suggests that she cannot resist the thought of money. Her Australian, at the time a young man with a promising career as a politician ahead of him, was involved in some business scandal in Melbourne that damaged him as a serious political prospect, and I saw a few snippets from time to time in the British papers. The last one suggested that alcohol had finished off his career for good.

She will come. I know it. When the whole plan came into my mind and I felt proud of myself for the first time for years. I got back some self-confidence just by thinking up my idea, working it out, feeling that I was doing something for myself at last.

It was quite easy to make some headed paper just by xeroxing the Cancer Research Unit heading at the top of the page. It was just a routine letter about a check-up - perfectly harmless, as it happens. But I cut off the heading and stuck it on a clean sheet and then xeroxed it all neatly, and it looked just like their printed official paper. Then, beneath it, I wrote to her, saying they were keeping me in for tests, but that the worst might be to come. I didn't spell anything out - I didn't know the medical jargon - but then, I didn't need to. No-one asks to know the details where cancer is concerned. It's a bogeyman we hide from in the corners of our minds.

So I'm pretty sure she's on her way. The letter said that I had things I wanted to discuss with her, hinted that I had some property of my own and no family to leave it to, that I wanted to end my days at peace with everyone, that we two should try to become friends ... I didn't have any trouble writing it. Every time I hesitated, a great tide of feeling rushed up and gave me indigestion and new ideas, all at once. So I have worked it all out: it will be quite easy in the winter, in the dark nights with the river-water rising. You have no idea what pleasure the thought of revenge brings with it. Revenge warms me on my cold walk along the muddy tow-path. It sends me off to sleep on wintry nights. All those years of suffering, all those times when he played with me like a cat with a mouse, and soon I shall destroy the only thing for which he had any affection in this world.

I'm so proud of myself, the way I'm standing up after all these years - that's why I'm setting all this down. I get the pleasure of it twice over. I sit up in this house at night warming myself with the pleasure and writing away, scratch, scratch, with my old pen. I read and re-read what I have written: my plans for the future, my past sufferings. I am like an old dog with its teeth in the flesh - nothing will make me give up now. I cannot be driven off. Come what may, I will deal with her.

Oct. 22, 1958

Dear Eddie,

Won't be long now. I suppose the old bitch thought she could soften me up and I might agree to some deal about the house. Well, that is definitely OUT! The trouble is, Eddie, I don't think we can wait, can we? For her to die slowly of the big C, I mean. I suppose they're doing their best to keep her going at that Cancer Unit or whatever it was where she was being treated. She must have shown some improvement, because she wrote and said she was back at the house now and "would be waiting to welcome me!"

Well, welcome dear Alice with ninety-times-nine! Put out the flags, get out the "WELCOME" mat for the front door, toast the crumpets - do whatever you like. It won't last long.

I haven't met her yet. Got here yesterday and moved straight into this crummy hotel, where they serve bangers and mash downstairs. The smell of stale food drifts around the narrow corridors. The wind rattles the windows of my room, which is too small to swing a cat. Too small to hold me - to hold my hatred at the old bitch - I shouldn't be surprised if it gets imprinted on the walls here, like the time you threw that bottle of lager and the stain stayed on the wall where it smashed. I'm sitting on the bed to write this - wish we were doing something here and now, Eddie! There's no-one like you - when you're sober enough! Sober enough for what? he says. You know what I mean.

I really don't want to go back to that house. I remember it from when I was a child, long before my dad met her. It's very isolated, quite cut off by water, and there's little stumpy woods trees and bushes all round it, and the only way to get it is to cross the river by an old iron bridge. I bet everything is falling to bits - he never spent any money if he could help it. Well, all the more for little old me, I say.

Anyway, she's bound to be a bit frail after her treatment, and she doesn't sound as though she's got much spirit in her. I guess he broke her spirit - he really was a mean old bastard - worse than you when you've had a skin-full. I've picked up some horrible slang out in Oz!

I'm going out to the house this afternoon, before it gets dark, in case I lose my way, and I'm going to stay the night there. She's invited me - I expect she's got the best bedroom all ready! It's a foul day here, all grey and misty, with a cruel little wind that chills you to the bone. There's going to be a real storm tonight, according to the weather forecast. I think I can hear the wind getting up as I write. Perfect conditions for what we have in mind!

Yours, with slobbering kisses you-know-where and one of my specials! God, how I hate that old biddy! See you soon, and then we'll be rolling over and over in the bank-notes!

Trude.

Sept. 15th, 1996

Dear Adele,

We have finally decided to give up this house. We have struggled against it for six months now, and I'm sure it will not get any better. It may, perhaps, ease off a little in the summer, as you suggested, but I cannot face another winter here. The idea of being bound to come back every evening to this house, of returning along the river-bank on dark winter evenings and crossing the little bridge to Path Reach - all this cannot be borne.

It was such a pretty house, although terribly dilapidated when we first saw it. I don't think anything had been done to it for thirty years or more; the woodwork was stripped almost bare of paint, just a few cracked and blistered streaks on the front door and the pretty lace-carved eaves all rotting. The first time we came here, we had to get to it by boat, because the foot-bridge across the river had collapsed. The bridge was the first thing we had to have re-built - the old one had been Victorian wrought iron-work, very graceful in its day; we had one built of high-tensile steel.

When we landed on the island that first day, we could see just how bad things were. The tiles were falling off the roof, and in all the rooms the plaster was hanging in great shreds. Well, of course, we got the house cheaply, but we did have to spend a fortune on it, modernising it, restoring it, treating all the damp and rot (and believe you me, the damp is very hard to cure, for we have the river on one side and a canal on the other, and from October to March, even when it isn't raining, a fog drifts off the river and over our island.)

But I had thought we could begin to enjoy the house after the first couple of months' hard work. It was beginning to look as it must once have been - an Edwardian riverside villa, a perfect backdrop for children in frilly petticoats, with Ratty and Mole on the river-bank, and golden picnic hampers on August afternoons. That was my dream. But, as winter drew on, and as September turned into the unforgiving grey of an Oxford October, and the city began to seethe with the University going about its business, so began the events which destroyed that dream.

I saw her first when I was in the garden - you remember I told you how overgrown it was, packed with thick-stemmed old roses, and stock, and lilac and buddleia, that gave out rich scents on a warm September evening.

By October, the first frost had carried the flowers off. But we had one unexpected warm day, an Indian summer, in mid-October. I was standing near an old lilac bush. From there, I could just see the bridge spanning the river. I was aware - I would not say I saw anything - at this stage I would put it no higher than to say I was aware, out of the corner of my eye, of something small and white, hovering about five feet from the ground, on the bank opposite. I had never experienced the sensation people describe as having "the hair on the back of their neck rising", but I felt it as I glimpsed the white thing at the extreme edge of my vision, along with a feeling of deep fear that somehow urged me to shrink back and away from the shape, trying foolishly to hide myself from it behind a low branch of the old tree.

Then, the sensations vanished and it was once more an ordinary autumn evening, the nights drawing in towards winter.

What I could not get out of my mind, rationalise as I would, was a strong impression, no more, that I could identify what I had seen. The white thing was a human face.

A few days later, I was certain. This time, again in early evening, as I was trying to decide what to prune first, I saw her again, for this time I could distinguish that it was a woman, standing this time a little nearer, with her foot set on the bridge, but looking towards the house. The dark shape beneath the white oval of the face resolving itself into the outline of some dress with an unfashionable skirt. And I got the strong idea that she was peering at someone or something, her head jutting forward, her neck bowed, her shoulders hunched intently forward. There was something very malevolent about her attitude, as though she hated what she saw, and was putting her whole soul into her hatred, into the way her chin thrust out and her neck was tense and she stared, stared, towards the house. I imagined that stare as a physical force moving towards my house, like the mist from the river, and it terrified me. But after moments, the shape vanished and only the sensation of fear, to be precise, of being attacked, under siege, of being positively besieged by hatred, remained.

But things got worse than this; much, much worse. That horrible pale face of the woman poised to set foot on the bridge, ready to cross over to our house - that was quite enough, but the real horror was still to come.

I cannot tell you my appalling shock when I realised one evening that there were two of them! With their pale faces turned towards each other, one woman was standing on the opposite bank, and the other on our side of the river. They seemed paralysed, unable to advance. It came to me that it was a kind of dreadful balancing-act, almost like an evil joke. The women were held in some obscene spiritual weighing-scales, like a parody of those children's toys that have two dolls exactly counterpoised on a see-saw. They were set on either side of that bridge, locked into a dreadful mutual hatred. It was my impression that one was older than the other, but, thank God, I saw them only for a few moments.

I told Arthur about it, of course, and he was at first incredulous, then concerned about me as I began to lose weight and pass sleepless nights. He suggested I should get a dog for company during the day, but every time I thought of a puppy I somehow felt fearful. My mind could conjure up only pictures of wet and rotting fur, nauseating to think of.

Then, one evening, Arthur came in, white-faced, and stood in the sitting-room, staring at me. It was just dusk.

I knew what had happened. "You saw them."

It was an affirmation rather than a question.

I don't know what things are usually said in such circumstances, since my experience of such a situation had been non-existent till the move to Path Reach. We tried to talk about it like sensible, rational people, playing our roles. Arthur and I talked about the possibility of hallucination, of collective imagination, of exorcism. What seemed odd was that we both had an intense impression, not so much of their physical being, as of the hatred that lay in the air between them.

The November storms began, and now we were aware of how isolated the house was in winter. Arthur had to go to Manchester to give a talk, and I would not stay in the house by myself. I went to see a cousin in London, and passed the first unbroken night for a month or more in her cheerful guest-room with yellow blinds that drove away the chill.

At this stage, we had not begun to think of giving up the house altogether. I knew, deep down, that I could not survive much more of this, but we were still hoping - that the hallucinations would stop - almost, at times, we laughed. But all laughter stopped as evening drew on. Sometimes I thought I heard an echo of footsteps clanging on the iron of the bridge. I dared not look out of the window.

Once, Arthur said "Do you think it has anything to do with...?"

"No, of course not", I said, too quickly. "How could it?"

But I, too, had been tormented that day with thinking about it. "It", of course, being the reason why we had got the house so cheaply, since the Australian executor wanted a quick sale, and there had been no other offers. For there had been a double tragedy here. The woman who lived here, a widow, and her step-daughter, who had come all the way from Australia to visit her, had both been drowned when the original iron foot-bridge had been swept away in the swollen flood-water after a storm of tremendous proportions. The bridge was a private one, and should have been maintained by the owner of Path Reach, but nothing had been spent on its upkeep. Fishermen, delivery-boys, local inhabitants, all came forward at the double inquest to say that the bridge had great patches of rust, that it was totally neglected. The Post Office had finally refused to deliver mail there, being quite rightly unwilling to risk the lives of its staff on this flimsy old bridge. The local Council had served several repair orders, but none had been obeyed, and, at the time of the tragedy, they were trying to ascertain who was legally responsible, since the woman who lived in the house did not own it. It seemed the house had been tied up in a trust by her late husband. So, when it was finally put on the market by the Trustees, we thought we had a bargain that just needed a lot of repair work, including building a new bridge.

I do feel I have to get clear of the house, with Arthur planning to be away for the lecture tour in Germany. I have tried everything I know to rid myself of this terrible illusion - for such, I am sure it is, but I feel that the women have an anger which somehow eats away through all barriers of time and space, as though it is some acid which cannot be safely contained in anything known to man, as though it would cling to anything and anyone it touched or splashed. I fancy their hatred gave off poisonous fumes which outlasted their substance and may choke me if I stay in this house. We'll put it up for sale, but I'm not going to stay here on my own in the meantime; I'm going to shut up the house and stay somewhere else - where there's a bit of vitality and plenty of people around me.

Adele, you will think your old friend has gone quite mad. I do need help, I know. Please get in touch - Arthur leaves for Germany tomorrow, and I have booked a room at a small hotel in town; it will be such a relief to be out of this house and away from that evil creature. The address is Cathcart's Hotel, St. Giles, Oxford. If you want to 'phone, please ask to be put through to Room 22.

Your affectionate friend,

Barbara

© Jane Jakeman

This story first appeared in All Hallows, the magazine of the Ghost Story Society, 18, 1998. If you enjoy it, why not check out their web-site.

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