The Time of the Ghost (28 page)

In the middle of the valley Imogen stopped to pick up a sopping piece of paper. It was Ned's drawing. Howard's tiepin was lying not far off, but Imogen missed seeing it. “What's this?” she said, and unfolded the wet paper.

Sally came boldly down beside Imogen and looked over her shoulder. She saw herself. It was unmistakable, even faint and spread by the wet. Ned's drawings were always so like the things they were meant to be that she knew it was herself. Now she knew why Ned was always so ready to sit drinking coffee with her. And she hoped Imogen would be able to cheat Monigan very thoroughly indeed.

“That was very careless of him,” Imogen said. “I must give it back to him.” She held the paper up in one hand and recited the invocation. She knew it almost as well as Cart. She only stumbled twice.

Monigan did not draw herself together in answer to Imogen. She was only going to do that if she was likely to lose something. She simply waited, greedy.

“Can you hear me, Monigan?” said Imogen. It was the special clear, quick voice she used when she was very much in earnest. “Listen. I'm going to give you something you're going to like very much. I'm going to give you the supreme sacrifice.” Monigan began to be interested. So did Sally. Imogen flourished the drawing and began walking up and down in the rain, making a speech. “The supreme sacrifice,” she said. “It's better than a life. I'm going to give you honor and glory, Monigan. You'll get cheers from the masses and the applause of huge audiences. You'll win prizes and have people writing your life story, with all sorts of glorious experiences for you and other people. I'm going to give you years of hard work, Monigan, and the prospect of my serene profile contemplating beauty and relaying it to others—”

Imogen paused dramatically, pointing Ned's picture to roughly where Monigan was. She was certainly doing some good hard advertising, Sally thought. But what did it matter? Imogen thought she was alone, and it was definitely the way to talk to Monigan. Monigan's greed filled the valley.

“The supreme sacrifice,” said Imogen. “The rise of my beauty into the limelight. I'm giving you my musical career, Monigan. Do you want it?”

Yes
, said Monigan, and moved in and took it.

Sally could have cheered. She wanted to hug Imogen. But Imogen had turned away, shivering again, looking thoroughly deflated. “I think Monigan might have the politeness to answer, at least,” she said. “And it was the supreme sacrifice, too!” With that she burst into tears and ran away up the side of the valley.

Sally longed to be able to go after Imogen and tell her that Monigan
had
answered, and had said
yes
into the bargain. But she was sure Imogen would not be able to hear her. And while Monigan's attention was still on this time, she had to speak to Monigan for herself at long last.

Monigan
, she said.
You can't take me. I'm not a perfect offering now. I'm all in bits. You'll have to make do with Imogen's career. That's perfect because it's all in her imagination still.

Monigan pushed her aside, peevishly wondering why those two leap year days had got in the way and prevented her having Sally already.

Sally was pushed, rejoicing, seven years on, into the hospital bed again. “You did it!” she said to Imogen. “You gave Monigan your musical career! And she took it!”

The relief on their faces astonished her. Imogen astonished her even more. Imogen flung back her head—losing the last few hairpins in the process—and laughed. “Oh, marvelous!” she said. “What a joke! She can have it. It's no good to me. I was never any good, anyway. I only took up the piano because Phyllis said I looked beautiful playing it. I hoped Monigan would take it. I took a chance and resigned from the music college just after I first saw you, but I was afraid it hadn't worked. Now I can go and do something I want to do!” She was looking like the Imogen Sally knew as a child. The drabness was gone. The keen and vivid light was back in her eyes. Sally knew, just from looking at her, that Imogen was truly capable of doing great things. She wondered what the great things would be.

Then she looked at Ned, wondering what had become of that rain-sodden drawing, and found that the change in Ned was almost as great. That worried her. “Are you sure it was worth it—all you've all done—just to rescue me?” she said.

“Oh, come off it, Sally!” all her three sisters said together. They sounded so bored that Sally gathered that this kind of self-doubt was as well known in her as grieving was in Imogen. Perhaps there was no need for either now. She, like Imogen, had taken a wrong turn—a very wrong one, in her case. Both of them had wanted something to cling to, and they had both clung to something which was no good to them. She could go and do what she wanted now, too.

And what did she want? Unlike Imogen, she wanted what she had always wanted: to paint, to paint well, to paint better and better. And she had seen so many things in her time as a ghost that were just itching to get painted: the Dream Landscape, Fenella waving the knife over the bowl of blood, Cart in her morning fury, Imogen dangling from the beam and later holding the fungoid candle, Himself like an eagle, and those queer times when the world had split into ribbons, to name just a few. She was so excited at the thought of all she could paint that a sort of flush ran through her, bringing a kind of easiness with it. And that easiness told her that she was going to get well.

The nice-looking nurse was back, this time determined to send all the visitors away. “It really is time—”

But someone else was trying to push past behind the nurse, saying in a tired, flurried way, “But I've driven all the way up from the country to see my daughter. Please let me just say hallo.”

Phyllis was there. Sally stared at her. Phyllis was a silver angel now, hollowed and lined like a silver tool from long, long years of heavenly battling. Here was another thing she must paint, Sally knew. But she was surprised that Phyllis's eyes should be full of tears.

“Five minutes then,” said the nurse, and she stood there to make sure.

“Hallo, everyone,” said Phyllis. “Sally, darling.” She bent and kissed Sally. It hurt rather. “I had to come,” Phyllis said. “It's almost the end of term, and I got the trunks packed, so I can stay in your flat till you're better.” The flat was going to be crowded, Sally thought. “And I brought this,” said Phyllis. “I know how you used to love it.”

She held out the Monigan doll. It was only a doll, dry, floppy, gray, and stitched, with very little face and badly knitted dress. A faint scent of long-ago mold breathed off it. Sally rather wished it was not there.

“Where did you get that?” she said.

“I've had it for years in the towel cupboard,” Phyllis said. “I found it in the School drive that day you were all sent to Granny's in disgrace.”

She turned away to tell Ned she remembered him very well. Sally found Fenella had been pushed by the crowd round to the other side of her bed. “What do you want done with that?” Fenella whispered, jerking her head to the doll.

“Burned,” said Sally.

“Shall do,” said Fenella, and then looked up, along with all the rest.

Mrs. Gill burst excitedly into the glass room, waving a newspaper. “Listen! I bought the evening paper,” said Mrs. Gill. “You'll forgive me a minute, dear,” she said to the nurse. “I'm just coming in to say good-bye.”

“I give up,” said the nurse.

“It says here,” said Mrs. Gill. “Oh, hallo, Mrs. Melford. Fancy seeing you here. Listen, everyone. That boyfriend of hers got himself killed. It says, ‘After a long car chase—' I won't read it all out, my eyes won't stand it, but he ended up almost next door to the school, up on Mangan Down. Went up that dead end and hit a post by that wood there. Crashed the car. He was dead when they got to him. Now what do you say to that!”

Nobody said anything. Monigan had got her life after all. She had cheated again. Perhaps she had meant to have Julian Addiman all along. He had been hers as much as Sally.

In the silence, while Mrs. Gill stood enjoying the impression she had made, the nurse pulled herself together and told them they must all be going now.

D
IANA
W
YNNE
J
ONES
wrote more than forty award-winning books of fantasy for young readers. For her body of work, she was awarded the British Fantasy Society's Karl Edward Wagner Award for having made a significant impact on fantasy and the World Fantasy Society Lifetime Achievement Award.
www.dianawynnejones.com.

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Book 2
: The Lives of Christopher Chant

Book 3
: The Magicians of Caprona

Book 4
: Witch Week

Mixed Magics:
Four Tales of Chrestomanci

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1

(Contains books 1 and 2)

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(Contains books 3 and 4)

THE DALEMARK QUARTET

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Book 3
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Book 4
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Cover art © 2012 by Paul O. Zelinsky
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc'h

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THE TIME OF THE GHOST
Copyright © 1981 by Diana Wynne Jones
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Diana Wynne.

The Time of the Ghost / by Diana Wynne Jones.—1st American ed.

p.   cm.

“Greenwillow Books.”

“First published in Great Britain in 1981 by Macmillan Children's Books” —T.p. verso.

Summary: A ghost, uncertain of her identity, watches the four Melford sisters hatch a plan to get their parents' attention and slowly becomes aware of the danger from a supernatural power unleashed by the girls and their friends from the boys' boarding school run by the Melfords.

ISBN 0-06-029887-1—ISBN 0-06-447354-6 (pbk.)

EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062200839

[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Supernatural—Fiction.] I. Title.

First Harper Trophy edition, 2002