MURIEL SPARK
71
the ghost continued to unfurl its five feet and to give Ben advice like
"psychoanalyze your crazy pavements."
"The ghost is a terrible snob," Ben wrote. "He makes me feel great
and terrible-"
In
fact, Ben changed his patronizing attitude towards the girl only
after Genevieve borrowed his sun-hat, his jeans, and one of his shirts to
make up one of her scarecrows. She painted a turnip in the likeness of
Ben's face. When she had set up this scarecrow in a field everyone knew
that it was modeled on Ben. Everyone smiled. The terrible snob ghost
came to report this to Ben, adding that a cow's milk had already been
turned by the sca recrow.
On the previous day Ben had won twenty-four pounds on a horse,
quite on his own hunch. So he skipped his usual visit to the job center
and took a bus out of town to the field where Genevieve's handiwork
was flapping. Two cars had drawn up by the side of the road, and the
occupants were admiring the work of art, as one of them called it. "It's
the image of a young builder's mate who once worked on my property,"
she said.
So instead of taking the effigy amiss Ben was
full
of admiration for
Genevieve. He rang her up and made her fix a date for their marriage,
never mind that he was at present out of work.
The ghost unfurled himself again that night, but when he heard of
Ben's proposal to Genevieve, he returned to the top drawer from whence
he came, curled up and disappeared. "This quenching of the ghost," Ben
wrote, "is to me the secret of life." He sa id "q uench ing" for be felt the
ghost had been thirsty for his soul, and had in fact drunk his fill.
Ben never again won on the horses, although he became a master–
bricklayer, a prosperous man, specializing in crazy-paving.
