Read Online Ghosts by John Banville - Free Book Online

shoulder, like another version of him in miniature in a far-off mirror, the man on the donkey in the picture grinned at her gloatingly.
    ‘Will you be my slave, then, and do my bidding?’ he said with soft playfulness. He lifted a hand and gently cupped her breast, hefting its soft weight. ‘Will you, Flora?’ His darkeyes held her, lit with merriment and malice. It was as if he were looking down at her from a little spyhole, looking down at her and laughing. He had not said her name before. She nodded in silence, with parted lips. ‘Good, good,’ he murmured. He touched his mouth to hers. She caught again his used-up, musty smell. Then, as if he had tested something and was satisfied, he released her hand and stood up briskly and moved to the door. There he paused. ‘Of course,’ he said gaily, ‘where there is giving there is also taking, yes?’
    He winked and was gone.
    She looked at her hand where he had left it lying on the blanket. Her breast still felt the ghost of his touch. She shivered, as if a cold breeze had blown across her back, her shoulder-blades flinching like folded wings. The day around her felt like night. Yes, that was it: a kind of luminous night. And I am dreaming. She smiled to herself, a thin smile like his, and pulled back the covers and laid herself down gently in the bed and closed her eyes.
    When Professor Kreutznaer came down to the kitchen at last the stove was going and Licht was frying sausages on a blackened pan. The Professor stopped in the doorway. The blonde woman sat with her black jacket thrown over her shoulders and an elbow on the table and her head on her hand, regarding him absently, her camera on the table before her. A cloud of fat-smoke tumbled slowly in mid-air. The smaller of the boys was gnawing a crust of bread, the little girl sat red-eyed with her hands in her lap. And that ancient character in the candy-striped coat, what was he? What were they all? A travelling circus? Felix had outdone himself this time. Licht was saying something to him but he took no notice and advanced into the room and sat down frowningly at a corner of the table. The one in the striped blazer cleared his throat and half rose from his chair.
    ‘Croke’s the name,’ he said heartily, then faltered. ‘We …’ He looked at Sophie for support. ‘Damn boat ran aground,’ he said. ‘That captain, so-called.’
    The Professor considered the raised whorls of grain in the table and nodded. The silence whirred.
    ‘We were in a boat,’ Sophie said loudly, as if she thought the Professor might be deaf. ‘It got stuck on something in the harbour and nearly capsized.’ She pointed to their shoes on the stove. ‘We had to walk through the water.’
    The Professor nodded again without looking at her. He appeared to be thinking of something else.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The tides hereabouts are treacherous.’
    ‘Yes.’ She caught Croke’s eye and they looked away from each other quickly so as not to laugh.
    Licht brought the pan from the stove and forked the charred sausages on to their plates, smiling nervously and nodding all around and making as much clatter as he could. He did not look at the Professor. There was a smell of boiled tea.
    Felix came bustling in, rubbing his hands and smiling, and sat down beside Pound and picked up a sausage from the boy’s plate and bit a piece off it and put it back again.
    ‘Yum yum,’ he said, chewing. ‘Good.’
    Something tilted wildly for a second. All waited, looking from Felix to the Professor and back again, feeling the air tighten between them across the table. The Professor, frowning, did not lift his eyes. Pound regarded his bitten sausage with sullen indignation.
    ‘Well,’ Sophie said to break the silence, ‘how is Beauty?’
    Felix looked blank for a moment and then nodded seriously.
    ‘She is not well,’ he said. ‘She has an upset head. A certain dizziness, you know.’
    Croke nudged Sophie under the table and whispered hoarsely