The Time of the Ghost Page 4

  Sally paid no attention because she was so astonished by the number of pictures. There were pen-and-ink sketches, pencil drawings, crayoned scenes, watercolors, poster paintings, stencils, prints—bad and wobbly, obviously done with potatoes—and even one or two oil paintings. The oil paints and the canvases, Sally knew guiltily, had been stolen from the school art room. Most of the rest were on typing paper pinched from the school office. But there were one or two paintings on good cartridge paper. That brought a dim memory to her of the row there had been about the typing paper and the oil paints. She remembered Himself roaring, “I shall have to pay for every hair of every paintbrush you little bitches have thieved!” Then afterward came a memory of Phyllis, desperately tired and terribly sensible, saying, “Look, I shall give you a pound between you to buy some paper.” A pound did not seem to buy much paper, by the look of it.

  This was supposed to be an exhibition. Sally discovered, round the bathroom corner, first a bell push, labeled “FOR EMERGENCY ONLY,” and then a notice, “THIS WAY TO THE EXHIBITION.” The notice was signed “Sally.” But Sally had not the slightest recollection of writing it. Why was that? After staring at it in perturbation for a minute, she thought that it must have been written very recently, perhaps just after the end of term, and it was always the things in the past few days she seemed to have the greatest difficulty in remembering.

  She followed her own arrows round the walls, drifting through beds and a chair in order to look closely at the pictures. Cart had signed all hers with a flourishing “Charlotte.” Imogen had signed some of hers neatly “I. Melford,” but not all. Sally could not tell which of the rest were Imogen’s or which were her own—if any. Then there were three signed “WH,” including one of the oil paintings, and several labeled simply “N.” N’s pictures leaped off the page at you, even though N could not draw. There was a drawing of Oliver N had done, which was a bad drawing of a bad drawing. But it was Oliver to the life, in spite of it.

  I simply don’t remember any of these! Sally said. A view of the shop cottage, unsigned. The dead elms, with blodgy rooks, also unsigned. A splendidly dismal dream landscape by Cart. Cart went in for funereal fantasies: a coffin carried past a ruined castle in a black storm, cowled monks burying treasure, and a horrendous one of a gray, bulky maggotlike thing rising out of mist in a meadow. That one made Sally shudder and pass on quickly. Imogen, on the other hand, seemed to paint more strictly from life: flower studies, fields of wheat, and a careful drawing of the kitchen sink, piled full of thick crockery. That seemed very like Imogen. She could hear Imogen at that moment: “But I must face facts, Cart. It doesn’t matter how unpleasant they are. I can’t turn my back on reality.”

  “Why can’t you?” Cart demanded. “It seems to me that enough facts come up out of life and hit you without you going and facing all the other ones. Why can’t you turn your back on a few?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s a matter of Truth and Art!” Imogen declared. The strong note of hysteria was in her voice.

  Sally sighed and turned to the next picture in the row. And laughed. Oliver seemed to hear her. He rumbled hard from the bottom of the stairs. Sally was laughing too much to care. The picture was signed “And Fenella did just this one awful one.” The picture was a terrible wicked jumble of everyone else’s. N’s badly drawn Oliver snuffled at Cart’s cowled monk, who fled for protection past WH’s spaceship to Imogen’s sink piled with crockery, where—Sally found she remembered this one all right. It was a large, simpering mother figure, stretching out both arms toward the sink.

  She made tracings, the little beast! Sally said.

  The mother was the next painting. She was stretching out her arms, not to a sink but to a fat, simpering baby. Sally could remember painting this. And it was awful. It embarrassed her, it was so bad. The faces simpered, the colors were weak and bad, and the shapes were floppy and pointless. The mother was like an aimless maggot with a pretty face on top. Sally could even remember the row she and Cart had had over it. “Oh, leave it out, for goodness’ sake!” Cart had yelled. “It’s fat and squishy! It’s absolutely yuck!”

  And Sally had yelled back, “You’re the one who’s yuck! You don’t know a tender emotion when you see one. You’re afraid of feelings, that’s your trouble!” That was true in a way, about Cart. Cart’s body may have been large and blurred, but she tried to keep her mind like a small walled garden. She would let no wild things in—though she was ready enough to let them out if it suited her. Sally’s talk of tender emotions drove Cart wild at once.

  “Don’t give me that sentimental drivel!” she roared, and she had chased Sally round the bedroom, waving a coat hanger.

  Cart was saying much the same at the moment to the sobbing Imogen, though she said it in a kinder way. “Imogen, really, I do think you’re working all this up out of nothing.”

  “No, I’m not! What good would a letter do? A letter, when my whole personality is at stake!” Imogen rang out dramatically.

  Oh! said Sally. She had quite forgotten she was looking for a letter. It was awful the way her mind seemed to point to only one thing at once. It was like the narrow beam of a torch.

  The obvious place to look was in the old bureau wedged in the corner. Its top had been cleared for the exhibition, and pictures propped on top of it. But it had four drawers below, one for each of them. Sally, of course, could not open the drawers, but that was not exactly a problem in her condition. She lowered herself at the bureau and pushed her face into the top drawer.

  This drawer was Cart’s. It was dark in there, but light came in through the keyhole—and through Sally—so that she could see. There was nothing to see. Cart had cleared the drawer out along with the top of the bureau. Sally remembered her doing it now. Cart had said, “I shall put away childish things.”

  “Pompous ass,” said Fenella.

  Nevertheless, Cart had thrown everything away—stamp collection, raffia, modeling clay, old drawings, the maps and lists of kings from her imaginary country, and the rude rhymes about her teachers—and had kept only schoolbooks. “I do O levels next year,” she told the others. They felt the importance of that.

  One exercise book of a childish nature had survived, however. That, when Sally moved her face down into the next drawer, was lying on top of the jumble of her own things. It was pale green and labeled “The Book of the Worship of Monigan.” It was there because Sally must have begged it off Cart. Sally wished vaguely that she remembered what was in it, but she could not, and there was no way she could think of to get it open. As for the rest of the things, Sally found herself exclaiming, What on earth do I keep all this junk for? If it had been possible, she would have done as Cart had and thrown the lot away. Pencils, pens, and scissors she could see the use of, but why had she kept six broken necklaces and half a cardboard Easter egg? What was the pink seaside rock doing, stuck to somebody’s old sock? Whose was the button carefully wrapped in tinfoil? And who wanted a collection of old hen’s feathers?

  Among all this there was no sign of a letter. The only paper was a drawing she had done when she was six, now covered all over with the scores of a card game. A, N, J, and S had played. J had won every game.

  Sally sank lower still to push her face into Imogen’s drawer. It was full of piano music, stuffed so full that Sally had trouble seeing more than the first layer. The lower she sank, the darker it became. But it was clear that this drawer was devoted to Imogen’s career.

  “My career,” Imogen said at that moment, “is in ruins!”

  “If that’s what you call looking facts in the face,” said Cart, “I’m going away.”

  “I don’t think you believe in Truth,” Imogen said reproachfully. At least she had stopped crying now.

  “Rather hard not to, don’t you think?” said Cart.

  Typical of both of them, Sally thought. Cart, walling herself in, buttoning up, making a joke of things, refusing to let Imogen have feelings—though there was a case for it over Imogen, Sally
had to admit. Imogen’s feelings were vast and continuous.

  Fenella’s drawer was full of dolls, packed in a dirty jumble, and the remains of several dolls’ tea sets. Sally was a little touched. Fenella had, in a way, put away childish things, too. She no longer played with dolls, even if she could not bear to throw them away. There was a piece of paper on top. “Poem,” it said, “by Fenella Melford.”

  I have three ugly sisters

  They really should be misters

  They shout and scream and play the piano

  I can never do anything I want.

  The poem had been written at school. The teacher had written underneath, “A poem should be about your deeper feelings, Fenella.” And Fenella had written under that: “This is.”

  Nothing here, Sally said. She came out of the bureau and floated facedown at floor level, staring at the wornout pattern of the rug. It looked like Oliver’s tufty coat, except that the pattern was in orange triangles. Imogen hated that rug. She said it offended her. Fenella called it the Rude Rug after that. There must be a letter. Sally was now quite sure there had been. She began floating to more her usual height, and stopped, with her torchbeam attention fixed on the wastepaper basket beside the bureau. It was stuffed and mounded with papers.

  Ah! said Sally.

  She dived toward it like a swimmer in her eagerness. And there, sticking sideways out of the top, was a sheet of blue writing paper with round, ragged writing on it which could well be hers.

  “Dear Parents,” she read. “When you find this, I shall be far away from here.”

  There was no more, nothing but a doodled drawing of a face. Sally guessed she must have drawn it while she was thinking of what else to say. Then, of course, she could not use that paper. The real letter must be elsewhere.

  But where was I going? What was I doing? she wondered frantically.

  Desperately she pressed her face down among the other papers. Thank goodness! Here was another, on paper decorated with roses this time.

  “Dear Parents, This is to inform you that I have taken…” Taken what? Sally wondered: the family jewels, a short holiday, leave of her senses? She had no idea. But here was more rosy paper.

  “Dear Parents, Let me break this to you gently. I have decided, after much thought, that life here has little to offer me. I have…”

  I think I was going to run away from home, Sally said. But I don’t think I had anywhere to go. Both grannies would send me back at once. Why didn’t I say more? Oh, here’s another one.

  “Dear Parents, My life is in ruins and also in danger. I must warn…”

  Shaken, Sally withdrew her face from the basket and hovered like a swimmer treading water, staring at the papers. So there had been danger. That matched her feeling of an accident, though not her feeling that something had gone wrong. But what danger, and where from? And now she came to look, the whole top of the wastebasket was packed with the same rosy writing paper. She must have used the whole packet, trying to explain whatever it was to Phyllis and Himself. Perhaps if she read every single one, together they would tell her what had happened. She plunged her face among the papers again.

  But it was impossible; they were packed in so tightly, some sideways and some upside down, some rolled into balls, some torn in half, and all so mixed up with old drawings and things Cart had thrown out, that Sally’s bodiless eyes could pick out hardly any of it. The ones she did see were only variations on the first four. And it got darker—too dark to read—more than four packed layers down. It was the merest luck that when Sally was about to emerge from the basket and give up, her sight came up against a larger paper wedged upright against the side of the basket. At the top was her own writing—the now-familiar “Dear Parents”—but the next line was, to Sally’s wonder, in writing that had to be Cart’s. Cart’s writing was neat and unmistakable.

  “We think Sally has come to a sticky end.”

  Underneath that the spiny writing with the angrily crossed T’s was surely Imogen’s. Sally brought her face up, backed away, and drove in again, right through the basket and the papers, so that her noneyes were right up against the paper. It was dim yellowish gloom, nearly too dark to see.

  “Her bed has not been slept in, and we have not seen her since—” Imogen had written. It was too dark to see any more. All Sally could gather was that Cart’s writing and Imogen’s alternated, line by line, all down the page, from yellowish brown gloom to night black. Horribly frustrated, Sally backed out and hovered.

  I am going to see that letter!

  There was a deal of noise downstairs. Imogen had seemed calmed by Cart, but in the irritating way it had, her grieving now sprang up again like a forest fire, loud and wild, in a new place.

  “But don’t you see, I may be using these difficulties as an excuse to hide the truth from myself! I’m hiding away behind them! I know I am!”

  “Now, Imogen,” Cart said soothingly, “I think that’s just tormenting yourself.”

  Oh, shut up! Sally called out. Imogen enjoys grieving. She doesn’t need sympathy; she needs shaking. It’s me that needs the sympathy!

  Furiously she threw herself at the heaped wastepaper basket. She went right through and found herself looking at the wallpaper beyond. But she was so determined that she backed away and threw herself forward again, and again, and again. She still went right through, but ever so slightly the basket rocked. The papers rattled and crunkled. Oh, good! said Sally. She threw herself at it once more. There was such a rustling that Oliver started to growl again. But Sally knew she was making some impression. If I try hard, she said. Trying does it. I am made of something after all. I’m not quite nothing. I’m probably made of the life stuff that was all round the boys. I shall think of myself like that. Bash, slide, crunkle. Sally thought of herself as strong, crackling, flexible, forceful, and bashed forward again. Bash, crunkle, crunkle.

  She had done it. Instead of going into the basket, she was bounced off from it. The basket, already swaying, swung sideways, tipped, and fell heavily, sending a slither of paper out across the Rude Rug. Oliver’s growls rose to sound like a small motorbike.

  Imogen’s voice, bloated and throaty with crying, said, “What was that?”

  “There must be a mouse in the bedroom again,” said Cart.

  “Ugh!” said Imogen. “Send Oliver up.”

  “He won’t go,” said Cart. “Besides, he just makes friends with mice.”

  Sally was hovering, hovering, over the scattered papers. She had done it wrong. The vital letter was still in the basket, packed in by other papers, lying against the floor. And now she found she could not get in to read it. She had made herself so forceful that she kept bouncing off. She could get no farther than the letter on top. Wait a minute! This top letter was in Fenella’s writing.

  “Dear Parents, We have killed Sally and desposed of the boddy. We thouhgt you ouhgt to know. You are neckst of kin. Love, Fenella.”

  What! said Sally. They haven’t. They didn’t. They can’t. So I did come back for revenge!

  Downstairs Fenella herself had come in. “Oh, is Imogen still grieving? I nicked four buns for tea.”

  “You needn’t have nicked one for Sally,” said Cart.

  No, you needn’t, need you! Sally yelled out, unheard.

  “I didn’t. I need two myself,” said Fenella. “Why is Oliver growling up the stairs like that?”

  “There’s a mouse up there,” Imogen said, still throaty.

  “I’ll go up and catch it, then,” said Fenella.

  Sally could not face this. Ever since she read the letter, anger and panic had been swelling in her. Now these feelings swept her away, dissolved her through the wall, then over the field, turning and twisting and hardly knowing where she went.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The next hour or so was more like an unpleasant dream than ever. Sally found herself now here, now there, with very little knowledge of how she got to places or what happened in between. From the fact
that everywhere she noticed was filled with the ringing mutter of boys, she thought she was mostly in school. First, she was among the smallest boys queueing up somewhere, each with a brown, sticky bun in his hand. Next, she was in a dismal room, with gray, ringing distances, in which two or three gray, dismal boys sat writing. Detention. Himself was there, gray as granite. He was sitting marking exercise books. Sally hovered round him, wondering if he was hating detention as much as the boys did. He looked very grim. The way his hair bunched, iron gray, at the back of his head, put her in mind of the ruffled crest of an iron gray eagle, brooding on a perch, with a chain on its leg.

  “Please, sir,” said a dismal, distant boy.

  Himself said, without looking up, “What is it now, Perkins?” His hand, holding a red ballpoint pen, swiftly crossed out, and out. Wrote “See me” in the margin.

  “I need to pee, sir,” said the boy.

  “You went five minutes ago.” Himself slapped that book shut. Slapped another in front of him. Slapped it open.

  “I know, sir. I have a weak bladder, sir.”

  Himself crossed out, crossed out. Made a tick. “Very well.” His eagle face lifted and caught the boy half standing up. “You may be excused, Perkins, on the strict understanding that for every minute you spend out of this room, you spend half an hour in it. Off you go.”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy hesitated and sat down again. He would have to go down two long corridors and then come back up them, not counting the time in between. That was three hours more in detention, even if he ran. He looked annoyed.

  Himself lowered his beak and made three swift ticks. A slight moving under the iron skin of his face showed his satisfaction. He was enjoying himself. He loved detecting a try-on. Sally realized it, and realized she did not dare try to attract his attention just then.