Weekend by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online

decided, Harry Beck was just responding to their general questions about writing.
    ‘I don’t think you teach anyone to write, really. You might give them something useful to react against, right enough. That’s healthy. But what we do here is still valuable, I believe. You can let people see their mania is shared. They’re not alone in the padded cell. And, at the very least, it’s going to make you a more appreciative reader.’
    ‘I can only speak for myself. Writing a book feels for me like trying to ride a bucking bronco. And trying to go somewhere at the same time.’
    ‘How can you know there’s actually a book there when you start out? I don’t see how you can. I can’t anyway. It’s like a mirage. Sometimes you think you can see it. Sometimes you suspect there’s nothing there. You’re deluding yourself. But you have to keep going. And even once you’ve arrived. I suppose only other people sharing your belief that you’ve arrived somewhere real can confirm it for you. And then, these days, often the people publicly confirming your book’s reality aren’t very real themselves. I think you have to leave it to the individual lay reader. The dread of mirage remains.’
    ‘Posterity? Who says you can trust posterity? Think about it. This is posterity for all the writers who are dead. And look how undervalued some great writers are today. And how overvalued some chancers are. Nah. You’re on your own. No guarantees. Place your bet.’
    She would be taking her notes with her and hoped she would be adding to them and finding out about more people.
     
     
     
     
    ‘Mickey Deans is going,’ Kate said.
    ‘I’ll leave him to you,’ Jacqui said. ‘I don’t rob cradles.’
    Kate thought she might not mind. At least he might be more accessible than the men at the bar.
    ‘Does that mean Donnie Davidson’s going too?’ Alison said.
    Jacqui touched both nostrils and sniffed, as if her nose were running.
    ‘With a truckload of pharmaceuticals.’
    Kate realised that Jacqui had just spoken as if she would be going. It was necessary to encourage her with something more.
    ‘And it’s supposed to be haunted.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Willowvale. It’s supposed to be haunted.’
    ‘Ooh,’ Jacqui said. ‘There’s an idea. Maybe I could lay the ghost. That would be a first.’
     
     
     
     
    Andrew enjoyed telling his students about the ghost of Willowvale. A recuperating soldier was first to claim he had seen it in 1919. Having turned a corner in the house at dusk, he saw a woman in a floor-length black dress at the end of a long corridor. She had a fierce white face and she appeared to be gliding towards him threateningly – perhaps, Andrew thought, because her dress concealed her feet. The soldier apparently didn’t wait for her to introduce herself.
    Having been brought to the public’s attention through an article in a local newspaper and become a tourist attraction after Willowvale was a hotel, the black woman decided to make many more visits. For a time she was something of a fashion. Perhaps people felt they weren’t getting their money’s worth if she didn’t appear for them, rather as if they had gone on a safari holiday and not seen an elephant.
    Andrew told his students that she might well be Elspeth Muldoon, the disgruntled wife, come back to express her unexorcised distaste for Muldoon’s folly and to make sure that no jumped-up tourist would be entirely at ease in the place she seems to have hated. Or perhaps she was looking for her dead son, Edward. It wasn’t that Andrew believed in her. His credulity had certainly not been encouraged by the discovery that the soldier who had first seen her had ended up in an asylum. It was just that he thought a ghost might be another inducement to going away for a weekend to talk about books. It wasn’t exactly an indoor swimming-pool but it might help. Considering the diminishing numbers on these trips, he needed all the help he could get.
    Also,