Read The Ghost Who Fed Them Bones for Free Online

afternoon, and are showered and sashaying by 9:30 to 10:00, tanked up, rested and shower-fresh for a bubbling encounter or two, and maybe an overnight catch.
    Strangely, at Freyrargues we hardly talk to each other at al . We are like cats prowling alone through the social undergrowth, weary of speeding cars and other cats. Recently I have spent a reasonable amount of time with Natalie, who has become a regular, but before that, and into the future, I prefer to spend time on my own, watching the party-goers from an isolated rock or from between sheltering trees.
    “Hi, Paul. What are you doing skulking here?”
    (Oh great, it’s Peter. Curb my enthusiasm).
    “Hi, Peter. Nothing. Clearing some space.”
    “Yeah, we could al do with some of that. It’s a carnival around here, a twenty-four hour relentless circus.”
    “You seem to enjoy it enough.”
    “I am meant to. It’s my job. It’s why I am al owed back. The star-bil ing camp fol ower, so to speak. We must al recognise our roles and play up to our part. What are you?”
    “The moody poet.”
    “Do you write poetry?”
    “Not yet.”
    “What makes you think that you are a poet, then?”
    “I don’t. That is what they probably think.”
    “But is it enough? Don’t you think you wil have to perform sometime? We al have to perform.”
    “No, I’m not planning on performing.”
    “Mind you, if you are real y a clairvoyant, there is a party trick within there somewhere, especial y with Inspector John on the go. We are al betting on what wil turn up next. Top money is on a shin bone, and the most ambitious wager so far is for the head. Personal y, I think that the head wil turn up last, otherwise it wil give the game away too early. We need a few more teaser-parts first, just to keep the conversation stoked, otherwise we wil be back to horse-racing or water-sports.”
    “Not golf then?”
    “Good God, no - far too bourgeois. Nobody in these circles plays golf. Who wants to bump into bank managers and gun-toting corporate execs? We are talking class here you know, Paul. None of your expat Belgian society.”
    “Yes, there is a lot of golf in Belgium.”
    “Do you play? Have I insulted you?” Paul has this tense, drawn, muscular face with closed-circuit twinkly eyes that many gay men have which becomes particularly noticeable, both endearing and threatening, when he is being playful.
    “No,” I reply. “I don’t do golf.”
    “What do you do?”
    “Nothing in particular.”
    “The girls. I bet you do lots of girls.”
    “Yes, Mike and I go out into Montpel ier a lot, and party in the streets. We also spend days on end at home in Valflaunès which is about forty kilometres away from here, just north of St. Mathieu-de-Trévier, if you know it.”
    “No.”
    “Twenty kilometres due north of Montpel ier.”
    “Gotcha. And when you are in Belgium …. ?”
    “I’m a student at Leuven University.”
    “Don’t know it.”
    “It is sort of the Oxford or Cambridge of Belgium.”
    “What’s it like?”
    “Great.”
    “What are you studying?”
    “As little as possible.”
    “Girls again, eh?”
    “Something like that. Beyond that, I do turn up for applied science and robotics lectures occasional y, not enough for my professor, though. You are meant to turn up for work in Belgium.”
    “I told you it was a middle-class sort of place.”
    “You are right, it is,” I concede, “a country of suburbs and farms that are tended like lawns.”
    “The only thing I know about it is the Mannequin Pis, and the story that the local brethren suck chocolate off it once a year.”
    “I hadn’t heard that, but it makes sense I suppose. People dress him up in different costumes throughout the year.”
    “Does he ever piss beer?”
    “According to the locals, that may be where Maes comes from – a pissy Dutch beer, if you have never heard of it.
    Juppiler, the Belgian equivalent, comes from Leuven. I pass the factory most days.”
    “I did dance in