Ghost Wall

by Sarah Moss

maybe as if he couldn’t imagine that there were circumstances in which qualities other than being posh and having read a lot might put a person in charge of everyone else.

Louise was a friend of the Prof, a semi-retired lecturer in textile arts who now spent her days making things by hand, the hard way, for the amusement of people bored by safe drinking water, modern medicine and dry feet.

Who are the ghosts again, us or our dead? Maybe they imagined us first, maybe we were conjured out of the deep past by other minds.

one of the things you learn in my line of work is that there’s no steady increase in rationalism over the centuries, it’s a mistake to think that they had primitive minds and we don’t.

No poetry in your soul, said Dan, that’s the problem with girls, they’re always thinking about where to pee.

The day was bright again, as if England had forgotten how to rain.

I’ve sometimes wondered about that, if all the five-year-olds in England were still playing at bombing Germany in the late ’70s or if other towns had moved on. The boys used to run around the playground with their arms wide, making bomb noises. Yeah, she said, we did that too, it is weird, do you think American kids had moved on to Vietnam? No, I said, from what I gather they mostly have real artillery and just shoot each other properly.

Children’s bodies were not their own, we were all used to uncles who liked to cop a feel given half a chance and mums who showed love in smacked legs.