The Ghost Writer Read Online Free PDF Page A

Saturdays, for the advertisements. They took no interest in politics, or news beyond the boundaries of Mawson. Occasionally, my mother would listen to classical music on the radio. But mostly she and I just read, in silence.
    Which was exactly how Alice spent her days, when she wasn't having lessons or out in the garden: reading, and gazing out of her window. Even at fourteen, she seemed to have outgrown all the usual teenage interests, whereas I hadn't even started on them. Just before we met—the word she always preferred—I had been trying to develop an interest in rock music. But as soon as I learned that Alice didn't like any kind of pop music—she said anything with a beat made her feel as if she'd drunk too much coffee—I gave up the pretence. I stopped trying to fit in with anyone. Instead of trailing miserably round the schoolyard, trying to avoid being beaten up, I stayed in the library every lunch hour, doing my homework, so that I could spend the evenings in my room writing to Alice. Gradually, I became aware that I wasn't being picked on nearly as often; and despite the amount of time I spent writing to, and dreaming about, Alice, my grades actually improved.
    My outdoor life was almost as constrained as hers, bounded by my mother's pathological dread of what would happen to me if I strayed from the narrow path that led from home to school (and post office) and back. But now that I had Alice, I no longer felt confined: gazing out of my own window, I would find myself staring through, rather than at, the rusty metal cladding of Mr Drukowicz's massive shed, to the woods and meadows of—as I would often catch myself imagining—Staplefield.

    B UT OF COURSE I BEGAN TO WANT MORE, MUCH MORE: TO see Alice, to hear her voice, to hold her. I told her that I prayed every day (even though I didn't think I really believed in God) that her spine would heal or that the doctors would find a cure. 'I'm glad you do,' she replied, 'but I mustn't think about it. They told me I'll never walk again, and I've accepted that.' So I went on praying, and didn't mention it again. I would happily have spent my life savings on one short phone call, but she wouldn't allow that either. She didn't—at first—encourage any endearments or professions of love from me beyond 'Dear Alice' and 'Love, Gerard', and yet she told me, in almost every letter, that I was the closest, most important person in her life.
    She did, however, keep her promise to answer honestly anything I asked about her appearance, even though she said it embarrassed her and she was very much afraid I'd think her vain. She admitted that her hair was long, and curly (she called it frizzy), and thick, and 'a sort of reddy-chestnut-brown colour', that she had very pale skin, dark brown eyes, and 'a nose that's really straight but looks as if it's just a little bit turned-up'. And though I'd been too shy to ask, she volunteered, 'just to get it over with', that her legs were quite long—and her waist quite small, 'and otherwise I suppose people would say I was quite well-developed for my age, and now I've embarrassed myself quite enough for one letter, my face is burning and I'm not saying any more'.
    In other words, she looked like a goddess. A goddess who mostly wore jeans and T-shirts but sometimes, just for a change, put on one of her long dresses, 'like the one I'm wearing today, which is white and musliny and gathered at the waist, with small purple flowers embroidered over the bodice'. Apart from the obvious fact that she was stunningly beautiful, I learned, from her letters, the impossibility of capturing an individual face in words alone. My imagination of her remained both painfully vivid and tantalisingly blurred.
    Then one lunch hour in the school library I found a book of paintings, mostly black and white but with a section of colour plates in the middle. They'd only just catalogued it, so the women in the pictures hadn't yet been equipped with beards,