The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin

Author:Valerie Martin [Martin, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Retail
ISBN: 9780385533515
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

I didn’t tell Violet I was unwilling to help her, but I did point out the unlikelihood that I could. My employment, which she persisted in envying, was a hand-to-mouth affair, and as she had no commercial skills beyond the one that currently provided a comfortable, albeit restricted, existence, there was no definite track that I could set her upon. She had the childish notion that if only her efforts were brought to the attention of the public, she would make her way as a poet. I recommended a course in typing, as it was a skill always in demand. When I asked if she had told Jeremiah Babin, who was in the most likely position to assist her and appeared to have a keen interest in her welfare, of her ambition to find gainful employment, she laughed. “No,” she said. “And don’t you tell him. He would not be pleased to hear it.”

Our conversation, as I recall it, was amiable, but I could see that she was disappointed, that she had imagined I would be her deliverer. By morning, when she woke with a headache from the port, she would be ashamed of her declaration at the window and resentful of my part in the dissolution of her fantasies.

When we said good night, I promised to consider her situation and perhaps recommend a course, beyond typing—which clearly had no appeal to her whatsoever—that she might take toward self-sufficiency. As I crossed the hall and let myself in at the door of my room, I reflected that my own situation, which sometimes struck me as arduous, lonely, dull, and pointless, was actually far preferable to the lot of the various citizens whose doings I was, as Violet put it, “on assignment” to investigate. All that day my article about the Spiritualists had been taking shape in my mind, and I had that pleasant, ticklish sensation of mental busyness, as well as a burgeoning confidence that must result, very soon—I could feel it—in my taking up my pen and my notebook and setting out on the journey into print. In my room I paused, admiring the moonlight, like spilled milk, on the desk. The apple I kept at the ready for midnight munching floated in a dark blue pool of its own shadow. I crossed to the balcony and stepped out into the still, warm, pine-scented evening.

The Spiritualists believe their spirit friends are fond of flowers. Summerland, their dwelling on the other side, is a garden that needs no tending, and they fill their airy rooms with all manner of blooms. As wildflowers are abundant in the woods and fields bordering Lake Pleasant, the guests are in the habit of gathering bouquets and setting them out in vases, pitchers, baskets, or even buckets, at odd places around the camp.

These portable arrangements were constantly falling over, or they were picked up, refreshed, rearranged, and moved about by passing campers; it was a harmless, charming game they played, one of their more sympathetic practices.

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