Some Old Lover's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

nursery and the morning room and the garden, but without term-time to break up the tedium. Her outings were to church and to her cousin Kit, in the steward’s house. The days seemed very long. She kept her faith, though: she knew that he’d come. Two years after she had left school, Jossy de Paveley still waited for the Gentleman.
    I sat back from the word processor. I felt exhausted but exhilarated. Four pages. I had driven home from Oxfordshire and, not even bothering to take off my coat, I had written four pages. And it had been easy. I felt as though someone had slackened the rope around my neck, the rope that had been choking me for months.
    It was odd, though, that I had written it as a story. Rebecca Bennett usually wrote dispassionately, objectively, sifting thefacts. Yet one can never be sure of the past, it twists and turns like the coloured facets of the crystal chandelier in Tilda Franklin’s garden room.
    Afterwards I went out to meet Charles Lightman. Over risotto and a bottle of Pinot Grigio, he talked about his latest idea.
    ‘Changing patterns of work – the death of the industrial revolution, darling. Showing how similar the lives of contemporary teleworkers are to their pre-industrial forebears.’ Charles gestured with his fork. ‘Craftsmen – they had spinner’s elbow or something, and hardly ever travelled more than a few miles from their homes.’ The fork stabbed the air again. ‘And now people have RSI and can only go anywhere if they can afford to run a car. Neat, eh, Rebecca?’
    I said, ‘What about the public schools? I thought you were going to—’
    ‘A bit tired , don’t you think, darling?’ Charles shrugged dismissively. ‘This would be so much more relevant.’
    I told him my news, and he frowned, placing Tilda’s name.
    ‘Saviour of widows and orphans—’
    ‘Just orphans.’
    ‘Is there enough meat in it for you?’
    The waiter poured coffee. I frowned. ‘I think so. Though it all seems so long ago …’
    ‘Well … Ellen Wilkinson …’ Charles added, rather pompously, ‘The task of the biographer is to make his subject relevant to the present day.’
    ‘Her subject,’ I said automatically. I remembered the urgency with which I had written Jossy’s story, how the words had flowed from fingertip to keyboard, but now my relief was tinged with anxiety. Perhaps my recovery was only temporary. Perhaps the next time I tried to write, the paralysis would return.
    ‘And …?’ Charles coaxed me.
    ‘And I’ve never written about a living person before. Ellen Wilkinson died in 1947.’
    He shrugged. ‘Some of the women in Sisters of the Moon were still alive.’
    ‘Yes.’ I spiralled cream into my coffee. ‘It’s also that she’s good.’
    Writing the life story of such a pillar of the community would be time-consuming, and it would also be frustrating. Tilda herself had admitted her fondness for privacy – from what avenues of her life would she shut me off? She had been old and fragile, yet I had sensed the strength beneath the brittle exterior. She had travelled from the workhouse to that weathered, beautiful building that I had visited today. A weak person could not have done that. Her strength both fascinated me and intimidated me.
    ‘The dullness of saints.’ Charles’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Why Satan’s the most interesting character in Paradise Lost.’
    ‘All those rescued orphans … all the blobby little scrawls she’s framed and put on her walls … they cut her off from me. How could I ever get through to her, Charles?’
    I thought that Tilda’s goodness and beauty was like an armour. It diminished me, and made her untouchable. I’d look at her, and her armour would shine back, and I’d doubt my own reflection.
    ‘Perhaps,’ said Charles lazily, ‘you’ll discover something juicy. A gorgeously clanking skeleton in the cupboard. Wouldn’t that be something?’
    I spent the weekend with Jane. On Sunday we wrapped the boys