The Ghost Writer

by John Harwood

  Here, however, a difficulty presented itself. He had assumed that the address would be inscribed upon the receipt which he had folded, without a glance, into his pocket-book. But on inspection it proved to be a crudely printed docket, devoid of any particulars save "Received for: 'Seraphina'; The sum of: Twelve guineas"-to which was appended an entirely illegible signature. Lord Edmund's journey proved altogether fruitless, despite the expenditure of more gold than had been laid out upon the picture itself, the enlistment of, as it seemed to him, half the population of Lambeth in the search, and the cabman's express willingness to drive all night, and investigate every cul-de-sac in the district, if it would please his lordship. But as night wore on the futility of proceeding impressed itself more and more firmly upon his lordship until, thinking himself wearier than the long-suffering cab-horse, he instructed his driver to turn for home.

  SOME TWO MONTHS LATER, AT A LITTLE BEFORE TWELVE on a mild midsummer's night, Lord Edmund might have been observed slipping quietly away from a palatial residence in Hyde Park, having made his excuses on the ground of headache and general indisposition. All too visibly true, but utterly inadequate to the haggard and ghastly countenance illuminated by the street lamp, the fixed, sunken glare of the eyes, the frame from which all flesh appeared to have been stripped. Seraphina still awaited him in his gallery, poised for the hundredth, or was it the thousandth time, to ravish his senses until he could not but believe she lived, could not but take the fatal forward step, like a man drawn by vertigo to the very brink of a precipice and over, betrayed once more by those indecipherable whorls and ripples of pigment. Again and again he would find himself drawn into this dance of torment, and yet no matter how often he was compelled to perform its steps, he remained wholly in thrall to the conviction that this time he would at last take possession of warm, breathing flesh, feel the pressure of those perfect lips upon his own; and so his senses were wrought to a pitch of raging deprivation that Tantalus himself could scarcely have endured.

  Lord Edmund was not, of course, quite in the position of a man dying of thirst in a desert, but he might as well have been, for beside Seraphina, all other women had become hateful to him; at the mere recollection of some of his former conquests, he would shudder like a man racked by poison. And when at last he could tear his gaze from hers, and flee from his denuded gallery out into the Embankment, he would instantly be seized by the contrary conviction: that the radiant vision he had just quitted was a mere painted shadow of the flesh and blood Seraphina who was surely, certainly, to be found somewhere close by. Never again, in waking life, had he so much as glimpsed the sinuous figure with the flame-coloured hair whom he had so long ago-as it now seemed to him-pursued. Instead he had become a figure of ridicule, the butt of jests and the subject of wagers, on every thoroughfare in Lambeth. He could fairly claim to have quartered every inch of ground, questioned every stallholder, visited every pawnbroking establishment in the district and far beyond, in vain; as vainly he had scoured his memory in the effort to recall the route he had taken on that fatal afternoon. Only in dreams could he retrace his steps, and then always, at the very doorway in the dim and silent alley, he would sense her presence at his back, and turning as she vanished, resume the chase, until his cries of "Seraphina" called him back into the waking world-and to his gallery.

  Even so, he could not hate her, for she was too entirely beautiful to hate; but the force of his desire was equalled only by his detestation of the crudely pigmented surface he had so often and so fruitlessly examined. It seemed to grow uglier and cruder by the day; to become ever more completely the antithesis of the radiant perfection it concealed. More than once, Lord Edmund had caught himself in the attitude of a beast coiling itself to spring, with fingers bowed like talons eager to rend and tear the canvas. Only the terror of losing her for ever restrained him, for all the extremity of his torment, but he knew that he must very soon go mad, or die.

  ON THE MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT ON WHICH WE REJOIN him, some residual instinct of self-preservation had goaded him into fulfilling an engagement to dine, as he had not done for many weeks. In any ordinary sense, the evening had proved disastrous: he had felt himself to be the object of universal and horrified concern, even repulsion, and could scarce summon so much as a phrase on his own account; his head had begun to ache from the moment of his arrival, and by the end was pounding as if a band of steel had been clamped around it. Nevertheless, the occasion had so heightened his awareness of his plight as to spur him to a desperate resolution: he would go directly home, enter his darkened gallery and destroy the picture, for no matter what torments might follow, they could not, surely, be worse than those that now assailed him.

  He had intended to take a cab, but the prospect of confinement proved intolerable to him, and so he set off on foot. The night was at first overcast, but as he turned into Royal Hospital Road the moon broke through the clouds, and by the time he reached the Embankment it was shining full upon the tranquil surface of the river. His headache had not so much diminished as changed character, as though the steel band clamped about his temples had been drawn into a red-hot wire, strung through a point just above his right eye and tautened until the inside of his head rang with a high, shrilling note. As he reached his front door, it rose to an intolerable pitch. Seizing an antique dagger from a rack in the entrance hall, he stumbled towards his gallery and, shielding his eyes with one upraised arm, pushed open the great double doors.

  He had imagined that the gallery would be entirely dark, but beneath the shielding arm he could see moonlight gleaming on the marble floor. His knees trembled as he approached the dais set before the painting; knowing that one glimpse of Seraphina would be his undoing, yet more appalled with every step by the enormity of what he was about to do. No, he could not; one last glimpse he must have; he lowered his arm.

  By moonlight, the conviction that he gazed upon a living woman was more instantly compelling than ever. He saw the slight rise and fall of her breast, the subtle change in her expression as she caught sight of him; he knew her outstretched arms were opening to embrace him. The waters parted at her waist; the dagger slid from his hand and clattered upon the marble floor; he stepped forward. As he did so the moon passed behind a cloud, or so it seemed to him; at any rate the light momentarily failed. Something caught his foot; he fell; scrambling on all fours, he threw himself, as he prayed, towards her. But yes, at last, he was through; the miracle had happened; there she was arising like Venus from the water, with no intervening frame between them, though further off than he could have imagined from the other side. Unable to take his eyes from her, he missed his footing and plunged down a rocky slope. No matter; she was still there, closer now; he could see moonlight rippling on the water all around her. The shrilling in his head had softened into a high, sweet note, like that of a violin perfectly sustained, exquisitely drawn out. Her smile had never been more entrancing. Ascending to the very peak of passion, he reached the edge of the pool and leapt, unhesitating, into her embrace. But what was this choking taste of mud, and why could he not breathe? He tried to ask her to release his arms, but cold black water filled his lungs, and drew him down into the waiting dark.

  ***

  AT THE INQUEST, A CABMAN TOLD THE CORONER THAT he had seen a gentleman racing, hatless, across Battersea Bridge, from which, about half-way over, he had vaulted into the river. The tide was running strongly, and by the time the witness had reached the edge of the embankment, there w^s nothing to be seen. The body was washed ashore several hundred yards downstream, entangled in a piece of netting. In deference to Lord Edmund's high position in society, the jury, despite some contrary evidence, accepted the argument that his lordship might have been deceived by moonlight into thinking he had seen some person in need of rescue, and returned a verdict of accidental death.

  It only remains to add that, when his lordship's executors were ushered into his private gallery, they were quite bewildered as to why its late owner should have banished so many fin
e works in favour of a single canvas of no visible merit whatsoever. Certainly its title gave no clue as to its subject; indeed, it proved impossible even to determine what the artist had sought to depict. One member of the party ventured that it had been meant for clouds; his colleague said it put him in mind of a dense fog; the youngest and most suggestible of the trio thought that he could just discern, in the upper half of the canvas, the impression of a woman's features, with perhaps the faintest of smiles playing across her lips, but agreed that he could easily have been mistaken.

  I READ THE STORY IN AN INTENSE, NERVOUS RUSH, crouched beside the open drawer, and went straight back to my room, as soon as The Chameleon was safely locked away again, to tell Alice about my discovery. But somehow the letter never got sent. Seraphina's resemblance to Alice as she had appeared in my dream was so disturbing that no matter what I wrote, it sounded as if I were subtly accusing her of something-I didn't quite know what-and the longer I left it the more difficult it became to explain why I hadn't mentioned the story before.

  The morning after the dream, I had woken early and told Alice everything I could remember (except its sticky aftermath), and that I loved and adored her and could not live without the hope of seeing her as soon as I could earn the airfare and persuade my parents to let me go. And when, a fortnight later, I tore open the waiting envelope and saw 'Dearest Gerard' for the first time, I thought for a moment I had won.

  Dearest Gerard,

  Your dream of me was wonderful, I'm so glad you told me and there's more I want to say about how happy your letter made me and how much it means to me. And before anything else: yes, I love you too, I really do. And think about you, and dream of you-in fact I had a dream of you, like yours of me, only a little while ago, but I was too shy to tell you. Now I will, but first

  This always happens when I come to a difficult bit, I've been staring out the window for ages, at the last of last week's snow melting where the field slopes up towards our hill, the one where the pavilion would be if this really were Staplefield. From inside my warm room it looks wonderfully inviting this morning, blue sky and bright sunlight, you can see very fine mist floating just above the wet grass, and I can hear cows lowing-mooing always sounds so-I don't know-too dumb and farmyardy, I think cows have such expressive eyes

  Gerard you're forgetting I'll never be able to walk. I don't ever doubt your love for me but

  there's a girl riding a horse along the footpath, wearing really smart riding clothes, beautifully cut, all fawns and tans and creams, she's really good-looking which sort of leads in to what I have to say

  Sooner or later you're going to meet, I mean fall in love with a girl who can walk and run and swim and dance with you-and not just one, maybe lots of girls. I know you don't think so, you believe you'll always love me, but we have to be sensible, realistic. All those hateful words…

  If I were braver I'd try to pretend to feel less, to make it easier for you. But I'm not that brave. I do love you, Gerard, and I know I'll be jealous when you fall in love with someone else. In fact I'd rather you didn't tell me when it happens-see, I'm already preparing myself-because I don't want us to stop writing whatever happens, and if I knew you were in love with another girl I might stop writing out of jealousy. Now it sounds as if I'm telling you to lie to me, which isn't what I wanted to say

  I'll try again. If you could see me, you'd see the girl in the wheelchair, the paraplegic, the disabled person. All the labels. I don't think that's how you think of me now, but if you saw me you wouldn't be able to help it. It's not really sympathy I'm most afraid of. It's your disappointment. Us meeting and then breaking up. I couldn't bear that.

  Do you know what happens to the Lady of Shalott, in the poem? She lives alone in her tower, quite content, weaving her magic web of colours. But she has a magic mirror that shows her the road to Camelot, knights and ladies and young lovers coming and going, and one day she sees Lancelot riding by, the handsomest of all the knights, and falls in love with him. The magic mirror cracks, the web breaks, she lies down in her boat and floats along the river to Camelot, singing until she dies.

  Maybe my window is my magic mirror. I just think if we can be content with what we have, we might keep it for ever. You'll say-anyway you'll think-I'm a coward and maybe I am. But please try to understand, and go on loving me as we are.

  Now I'll tell you my dream. It was after lunch, I was really tired, so I lay down on my bed and went to sleep. Then I dreamed I woke up and could move my legs-I often can, in dreams-and you were lying beside me, looking so beautiful-that's the only word that feels right-and so overjoyed to see me. Then we started kissing, and suddenly I realised that neither of us had any clothes on. This is why I was too shy to tell you before, but in the dream I wasn't shy at all, it just felt absolutely right. It felt wonderful, to be honest, so wonderful I-well anyway, then I woke up and cried for ages because you weren't there any more.

  I do hope you'll understand. I'll always be, with all my heart,

  Your invisible lover,

  Alice.

  P.S. My dream might even have been the same day as yours, only mine was in the afternoon and yours was at night. Wouldn't that be amazing?

  And a fortnight later:

  …How silly I forgot to say, I was so worried about the other part of that letter. Yes it was, it was Tuesday the 3rd of March when I had my dream-our dream-and of course you're right about the time being different, three o'clock in the afternoon for me was about half-past one the next morning for you. That's just so magical. I truly am, with all my heart

  your invisible lover

  Alice

  At first I thought she was only waiting for me to persuade her. How could the wheelchair make any difference once we were lying together as we'd been in the dream? She must know how utterly I adored her. Gently, lovingly, she met every entreaty with the same reply. As things were, our love for each other was free, equal, and absolute, but if I were to meet the girl in the wheelchair it could never be truly equal; and if I ever fell out of love with her, I might stay, out of duty. And so on.

  But in my daydreams and fantasies, Alice refused to stay in her wheelchair. It might begin at the door of her room; or I might come in through the formal garden, along the gravel path, up the front steps, between two great wooden doors standing open. There was never anyone else around: the house was always shrouded in tense, expectant silence. Along the echoing hall, up flight after flight of stairs until I reached her door, which like the front entrance was always open when I arrived. There I would see her sitting at her desk, which I knew was old and made of glowing red cedar, very like the colour of her hair, with a soft green leather top on which her typewriter sat. She would be gazing out of her window, a tall bay window with the desk in the centre of the alcove, wearing her long white dress with the embroidered purple flowers, her chin resting on the palm of her left hand, so absorbed that for a moment she wouldn't notice me standing quietly in the open doorway. And then she would push her wheelchair back from the desk, turn towards me with that enchanting smile I had struggled so often and so vainly to recall, and rise gracefully, effortlessly to her feet… and very soon, if I was safely alone in my room, we would be lying in each other's arms on the snowy white counterpane of her bed, her long legs entwined with mine in transports of bliss, and on to the inevitable solitary conclusion.

  I tried everything, even blackmail. Didn't she long to see me and hold me and kiss me as much as I longed for her, to be lovers physically instead of only in dreams? Yes of course she did, but then we'd no longer be free, equal… and besides, she added, subtly turning the tables, did I really feel that we'd 'only' been together in dreams, when for her it was utter, blissful, ecstasy? Didn't I feel the same?

  By the time I was seventeen she had taught herself a technique called 'directed dreaming': you started by learning to visualise your hands in dreams, and to do simple things like clasping them and touching your face, and gradually you developed the ability to move aroun
d consciously in your dreams, and eventually to fly wherever you wanted to go. It was like astral travelling, she said, only you didn't have to believe in silver cords or astral bodies or anything like that, you just practised the mental exercises whenever you were going to sleep until you could do them while you were actually dreaming. Soon she and I were making rapturous love in her dreams-in which she was always healed, moving with complete freedom – whereas I practised and practised and got nowhere at all.

  With the dreaming, that is. Instead, I was using her dreams to script my sexual fantasies about the composite Pre-Raphaelite goddess I imagined as Alice-I had never been able to recall her as she had appeared to me that one magical night-meanwhile pretending that I'd learned to dream as she did. Not knowing what else to do, I modelled my letters on hers, which were never physically explicit, but tenderly, ecstatically, erotic. I dared not confess my abject failure at directed dreaming; I knew the words they used at school, and felt myself sinking into the coarse, fallen world of shame and guilt and bestial obscenities on lavatory walls, whilst Alice soared higher and higher into the golden light of heaven, in pure, innocent, orgasmic bliss.

  Which she believed we shared. The thought of losing her trust was unbearable, yet I knew I no longer deserved it. Until then, my letters had flowed as effortlessly as speech: whenever I felt I hadn't said what I really meant, I'd just keep on writing until I had. Now I began to labour over them, re-reading anxiously, tearing up whole pages as I had never done before, my mind more and more frequently as blank as the sheet in front of me. And all too soon, she noticed.