The Ghost Writer

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? SHE THOUGHT AS SHE splashed her burning face. Despite their relative isolation, she had fended off the attentions of enough young men to think of herself as entirely level-headed in these matters. She had never met anyone so attractive, or so interesting, as Henry-no Harry Beauchamp; it was such a relief not to have to apologise for liking books and paintings, and the limp didn't matter at all, she wasn't so keen on dancing or tennis that she couldn't happily… You must stop this, you don't even know he likes you, she reproved herself. But her heart refused to listen, and she hastened back along the corridor, to find him examining an imposing black folio volume which he had evidently extracted from the materials heaped in the middle of the floor.

'I hope you don't mind,' he said, 'but this looked interesting. Have you ever opened it?'

'No, I didn't like to touch any of those things.'

'Well, as the trustees' representative,' he said, with a charming smile, 'I'm delighted to inform you that you can look at anything you like, whenever you like. There's nothing in the deed that says you can't.'

He had also unearthed a tall wooden stand, like a portable lectern, on which the folio was now resting. It was, she saw, no ordinary book, but a stack of boards or plates of some kind, sandwiched between thick hide covers and secured by a tarnished metal clasp. There was no lettering visible anywhere on the cover or the spine.

He tugged at the clasp, but it would not budge.

'I can't see any keyhole,' he said. 'Must be a trick to it… ah, that's got it… damn.'

The catch sprang open with a loud snap and he recoiled, with drops of blood forming across the fingers of his right hand.

'Shall I get you a bandage?' she asked, with concern.

'No, it's only a scratch.' He wrapped his handkerchief around the injury and picked up the book, which was evidently very heavy.

'Can we take it out on to the landing? I think we may need the room.'

He carried the book outside, and set it down on the floor. 'Here, let me,' she said. Heedless of dust, she knelt beside him, opened the cover, and lifted out something that looked like a blue frieze made up of interlinked panels. It had to be done very carefully, because the panels seemed to unfold from the bottom of the pile, so that she had to carry the whole gradually diminishing bundle across the landing, with Harry following as the work extended.

At first the panels seemed more or less identical: nothing but surging, blue-grey water, viewed from just above the surface of the ocean so that entire sections were filled by the slope of a single wave, streaked with foam, and occasional glimpses of a low, swirling sky. The sections themselves appeared to be made of very thin board covered in cloth, the hinges so carefully wrought that, as the work extended across the floor, the joints were scarcely visible. But as the scene unfolded, a lurking presence just below the surface began to reveal itself: a long, pale shape, distorted and sometimes hidden by the seething water, but becoming more palpable with each new opening.

Behind what appeared to be the final opening was another panel, secured by two small sliding clips. She released it and recoiled, stifling a cry of horror. The face of a drowned man, life-size, teeth bared, eyes wide open and staring, glared up at her. Water poured from his open mouth as a wave bore him upwards; his hair was thickly matted and choked with seaweed. The lurking shape beyond resolved itself into glimpses of naked torso, trailing limbs, and a dead-white hand, its outstretched fingers grasping at emptiness.

A young man's face: or so she thought at first. But when she moved to look more closely, the drowned mans expression altered. Not only his expression, but even the shape of his face, which seemed to age as she leaned further over the panel until it had mutated into that of an old man, gaunt and toothless and quite bald: the 'hair' was all seaweed; only the agony was the same. She leaned back again, and the transformation reversed itself.

'Remarkable feat of trompe-l'oeil,' said Harry, crouching awkwardly beside her, 'Something in the paint, I think; see the way it catches the light from different angles?' He moved back along the length of the frieze, examining it closely.

'Look at this.'

She saw that he had freed a blank page, like a flyleaf, which had evidently been sticking to the back cover. Inscribed on the endpaper beneath, in archaic black lettering, was 'The Drowned Man'.

'Interesting. You can't see it-or you'd be very unlikely to-until after you've seen the work itself?' he went on. 'And you know, this is the only thing I've seen so far with a title.'

'Do paintings have to have tides? I mean, is it a rule?'

'Well, not a rule, but its rare to see a whole collection without any. And-' he crouched down, moved awkwardly back along the length of the work, and began to fold up the panels, examining the back of each one as he did so-'apart from being the only one with a tide, it's the only thing so far without a signature. At least, I cant find one.'

He laid the frieze out for a second time.

'What do you think that means?' she asked.

'Well… it certainly looks like his work, speaking on a very brief acquaintance, of course. But the book itself, the whole thing, apart from the actual design, looks far too old. Eighteenth-century, I'd have said, though I've never seen anything quite like it. Could he have found it blank, I wonder? Painted his own design, added his tide… but then why didn't he sign it?'

He fell silent, staring at the drowned man's contorted features.

'And you're really sure you'd like me to come back, and try to find out some more about him?' he said at last, as if to the drowned man.

'Oh yes, absolutely.'

'I'm glad-No, please, let me.'

He began to fold the panels away again. When he had got them all together and secured the clasp, he bore the heavy volume back into the room, and replaced it reverently on the lectern. As if it were a prayer book, she thought, but her unease was swept aside by the warmth of his smile as he asked, 'And now, does your offer of tea still stand?'

'Of course. Would you like to look around for a little and then come downstairs?'

'No, do let me come and help-well, at least talk to you while you make it.'

The kitchen, unlike many of its kind, was bright and cheerful, its walls crowded with pots and pans and crockery. French windows opened onto a flagged courtyard, with an expanse of grass and shrubbery beyond. She made Harry sit at the scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the room, and took down an apron, thinking, he may as well get used to seeing me in it. The words passed through her mind so naturally that it took several seconds for the implication to surface.

'I say, this is very jolly,' said Harry, 'Er-do you do everything for yourselves?'

'We do all our own cooking, since Mrs Green died. She was our housekeeper for ever and ever, practically one of the family. Molly-a girl from the village-comes in to help with the washing and cleaning; and Mr Grimes does the garden.'

She answered his questions almost mechanically while she worked, shaken by the speed with which her emotions had run ahead of her. Yet it did no good to tell herself, But I hardly know him, or, We've only just met: already she felt as if they had been intimate for a long time. She carried the tray out to her favourite seat at the far edge of the lawn, where she learned that he had grown up in Plymouth and had one sister, who was now married and living in Canada. His father had died before the war; his mother five years ago; he had lived in London ever since, and was sharing rooms with a friend in Coptic Street, close by the Museum. He was just thirty years old, and-according to every indication she could divine-quite unattached. Her own history seemed to lead quite naturally into that of her grandmother, and so, while the shadows lengthened around them, she came to tell him almost everything she knew about Imogen de Vere and Henry St Clair and the evil that had overtaken them, and the strange story of the bequest, praying, every so often, that Uncle Theodore was giving Beatrice and Aunt Una dinner in town. Though it was after sunset before Harry Beauchamp said reluctantly that he supposed he really must be getting along, the air was still warm as she walked with him to the station, where they continued talking through the open window of his carriage until the train pulled away from the platform.