The Time of the Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

among the trees, where hundreds of little pointed green apples lurked under the broad leaves, Sally tried to recall all the things she had been shown. Somewhere, surely, she must have been given a clue to what had made her like this—an inkling of what had happened at least. Well, she knew she lived in a school. She had three horrible sisters, who thought she was horrible, too—or two of them did. Here Sally broke off to argue passionately with the air.
    I’m not like that! I’m not hysterical, and I don’t go on about my career. I’m not like Imogen. They’re just seeing their own faults in me! And I don’t grumble and criticize. I’m ever so meek and lowly really—sort of gentle and dazed and puzzled about life. It’s just that I’ve got standards. And I do think Mother and Himself are perfect. I just know they are. So there!
    But before all that started, hadn’t Cart shown that she and Imogen knew where Sally was supposed to be? They had. Cart had envied Sally— envied ! That was rich! They were certainly not worried about her—but that proved nothing. Sally could not see either of those two worrying about anyone but themselves. But if Cart envied her, why should Sally have this feeling that there had been an accident? A mistake—something had gone wrong—there had been an accident—
    Before Sally was aware, the balloon of panic had blown itself up inside her again. She whirled away on it, tumbling and rolling.
    When at last it subsided, she found herself drifting along the paths of a slightly unkempt kitchen garden. She gave a shiver of guilt. This, too, was a forbidden place. There was, she remembered, a perfectly beastly gardener called Mr. McLaggan, who hit you unpleasantly hard if he caught you and shouted a lot whether he caught you or not. All the same, as she drifted past a hedge of gooseberry bushes, Sally had a firm impression that she and the others often came here, in spite of Mr. McLaggan. Those same bushes, where a big red gooseberry or so still lingered among the white spines, had been raided when the gooseberries were apple green and not much larger than peas. And they had picked raspberries, too, in a raid with the boys.
    Sally saw Mr. McLaggan down the end of a path, hoeing fiercely, and prudently drifted away through a brick wall. There was a wide green playing field on the other side of the wall. Very distantly, small white figures were engaged in the ceremony of cricket.
    I think , Sally said uncertainly, I think I like watching cricket.
    But it made you very shy, she remembered, being one girl out in the middle of a field full of boys. They stared and said to one another, “That’s Slimy Semolina, that girl.” Some said it to your face. And being boys, they were, of course, quite unable to tell you and your sisters apart and called all four of you Slimy Semolina impartially. But now, when she was in the ideal state for not being noticed, Sally somehow could not face all that wide green space. She was afraid she would dissolve to nothing in it. There was little enough of her left as it was. She kept along beside the wall and the buildings, past an open cycle shed, across a square of asphalt with nets for basketball at either end, and—quickly—beside a row of tennis courts. Here the balls sleepily went phut-phut. The ones in white, playing tennis, were all from the top of the school, who looked and spoke exactly like men. It was unnatural, somehow, that they should be schoolboys when you could not tell them from masters. They alarmed Sally, too, when they suddenly broke into bellows of deep laughter. She always thought they were laughing at her. This time when they did it, she imagined them saying, “Look at that girl—got nothing on—not even her body! Ha-ha-ha! Oh-ha!”
    Ha-ha to you! Sally said angrily, speeding past. I can’t help it!
    Of course, she thought—it was as if embarrassment