‘I am so pleased to see you all,’ she said, and we all bowed. ‘You must be…’ she began with the Wests, and continued through the group until she had identified each, and then, capably and with much practice in evidence, formally ensured that everyone was introduced to everyone else.
‘There are two more guests to come—there is our very dear Viscount, and Mrs Courtney. She is your sister-in-law, is she not, Mrs Hadley?’ I murmured that she was. ‘—And they are quite my regulars.’
Madame Drew took breath for what was evidently an oft-
repeated lecture for the sceptical, or for timorous clients who still harboured doubts. ‘So it remains for me to observe to you, as I do for all my guests, and quote the very wise Mr Rymer in his wonderful
pamphlet, who said these words: “Many of the truths of this day, however familiar they may be to you, were the ridiculed but of yesterday. Three centuries have scarcely rolled away since the man who dared to say the world went round, was adjudged by the scientific and the learned to be impious and profane…”’
‘Such a wise man,’ Madame Drew said. She looked from one to the other in the assembled group, a comfortable smile upon her face as of some wise aunt of elevated stature. ‘And so it is this I would ask all to keep in mind, for a thing can be most wonderful and true at the same time. And wonderful things do happen in my parlour.’
There was a short pause here. Madame looked expectant of a response, and so Mr Broadford obliged by saying, ‘Indeed, indeed. I have heard many reports of the wonderful things that happen here.’ He tipped his head to one side. ‘It is, of course, what has brought me. The seeking of answers.’
Suddenly, there was a knocking at the door, and Mr Broadford brought his hand to his smiling mouth as Madame Drew turned toward the sound. Sobriety and I heard a busy rustling through the open curtain leading to the vestibule, and a familiar ‘Oh,’ and Madame Drew excused herself—hurriedly, it felt, after her composure of a moment ago—to greet Edith Courtney as she entered.
Sobriety turned to the inspector and murmured, ‘Really, Mr Broadford, you test us all!’ But I was intent instead on the rapid conversation taking place past the curtained doorway, where Madame Drew’s words were muffled and could not be discerned. Edith, on the other hand, could be heard in reply, ‘No, no, my dear, you know that I will see you through…’
Oh, no no no.
I must have made some sign of my reaction, for Miss West glanced at me. I looked away—deeply annoyed, I found to my surprise, and examined this feeling. My annoyance was only partly due to the notice I had drawn from Miss West, I decided. In the few minutes before Madame Drew was to come back into the room, with Edith and the faithful if stony-faced Mary, I discerned in myself exasperation, chiefly with Edith, of course. I recognised the prickling of a kind of angry helplessness at this woman who would never, never listen long to a sensible word, but would drag all about her into danger where all her friends must be responsible for her as she leapt into…Lord knew what.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I had to admit that, as far as I knew, I myself was the only one now under obligation to be responsible for Edith, save Mary, whose remonstration had been rejected so often, by Edith’s own report. I wondered if this knowledge helped my feelings, which I continued to examine.
It is, I was surprised to note, that Edith depends so utterly on me, did she but know it, while calling up worshipful visions of George, who cared not a jot for her, or for me either… And none can tell her that. One must compress one’s lips around this knowledge. Which is utterly vexing. I breathed out.
Ridiculous woman, I thought, and then felt myself foolish with Edith’s own failing—that of being a woman alone. This is to come, this is to come. The time was coming when I would take my place in that crowd of ridiculous, ageing women seeking meaning for their lives, in lives whose meaning had been withdrawn. A prey to all those who would feed my fear for their own benefit.
I opened my eyes. Madame Drew was entering, her arm through Edith’s. She placed a kiss on Edith’s cheek and patted her hand. Mary was obliged to stand to one side. She had her lips pressed very firmly together, I thought.
‘We have some folk here tonight with whom you are acquainted.’ The two women bowed their heads at Sobriety and me. ‘And some with whom you are not yet. Allow me…’
As the introductions were made, a knock came again from the front door, and in a moment was ushered through a small man, deeply unhappy, by the look of the colour of his face and the heavy pouches beneath his eyes. He was very thin. His collar, though it topped a fashionable and well-cut assemblage of jacket and waistcoat whose tailor knew what he was about, gaped from his neck, and his jaw was a sharp line beneath the loose, hanging flesh of his face.
He was introduced as the Viscount Balder, and the party was complete. Madame’s maid entered a moment to put out the candles, except for one upon the mantel, and to light the lamp upon the larger table. She then withdrew noiselessly, pulling the curtaining to behind her. The fire in the hearth was sinking so low now as to cast almost no light.
It was gloomy, nearly entirely dark in all the corners of the room. All sound seemed swallowed, all faces deeply shadowed. It was unearthly.
Chapter Thirty-seven
We all sat around the larger table, with Madame before the much-draped wall, not quite opposite me, and—a thing that made me too shy to look in that direction—Mr West sat upon my right. The Viscount sat at my left, a small man made smaller again by his very evident misery. He seemed made of saggings, from the flesh on his face to the clothes upon his person, within which covering he appeared to shrink.
The room had a heavy, waiting air about it and the only illumination was very little: the small oil lamp upon the table, with a curious dark-blue glass body to it, and one thin candle, with no covering and glowing very faint, upon the mantel across the room.
There was a silence when we were all seated. Averse to staring at Madame Drew and the others and at the extraordinary appointments of this room, or what I could see of them, I tried to keep my eyes on the dim lace of the over-cloth on the table, while a prickling began between my shoulders as if a crowd of wraiths whispered there. I took a breath and straightened, whereupon Edith, whose perch at Madame Drew’s right hand seemed to indicate a certain possessiveness of the spiritualist, caught my eye and smiled kindly, as if to reassure a younger woman made nervous in the presence of the otherworld. Next to her, Mary sat with face tilted away in what some might take to be haughtiness, but what I knew to be a deep disapproval.
Suddenly annoyed once more, I looked away to where Miss West, very straight and shadowy at Madame’s left, sat watchful and apparently expressionless.
‘Are we ready? Are we composed?’ Madame Drew asked. ‘I will call now on my spirit companion, whom Mrs Courtney and the dear Viscount have already met,’ she said, and these two murmured in reply as if they made the responses at a service. ‘My spirit companion passed to his spirit world many hundreds of years ago, but here on earth he was the leader of a great tribe that roamed the plains of the United States of America.’ She breathed deeply. Mr Broadford and Sobriety, the one at the head and the other at the foot of the table, set eyes upon each other a moment.
It is as if they already presided over dinners of their own.
‘Please, we must all clasp the hands of our neighbours.’
There were hesitations around the table as each glanced at the faces of those on either side, or at least at their hands. I myself glanced to Mr West’s hand, elegant and absolutely composed, as I thought, lying there a few inches from my own. I was bound by embarrassment and reluctance—and something else that regarded the well-buffed glow of his fingernails and the faint, pink flush beneath them—knowing that I must hold his hand and that it was usual at séances to do so, when of a sudden my other was taken by the Viscount. His hold was as limp as his demeanour, and his hand d
ry and so thin that the skin seemed barely attached to the skeleton beneath, and I was for the moment distracted, and in no position to object.
‘May I?’ Mr West then murmured on my right side, having turned his hand over so that it lay slightly cupped and awaiting my own to rest in it.
‘Oh…yes,’ I said, and my face burned as I placed my hand in his. My thoughts were a jangle and I closed my eyes briefly in an effort to quieten myself.
Nothing has happened. Nothing…and yet disturbances clash against each other both without and within this place…yet again, see how the others sit calmly, if I could only do as they do…
The candle on the mantel blew out.
‘Running Warrior is here,’ Mrs Courtney whispered.
My heart pulsed, and cold washed through my body.
The table rose. There were gasps; everyone save Madame Drew reared back just a little, as their arms and hands rose with the surface. The table twisted a little this way, and then that, and sank to the floor.
‘Are you there, my friend?’ Madame Drew breathed. There was nothing but silence and stillness. The room in all its abundance of brocade and velvet seemed to wrap around me from head to foot. I felt I could barely breathe.
Madame Drew appeared to sigh, then subsided to the table with even her arms dangling down. It took a moment or two for Sobriety to ask, with some hesitation, ‘Is she all right? Is this part of —?’
Edith replied, with a placid expression of patronage, ‘Oh, yes. The spirit enters her, that is all.’
See how she draws confidence from this. From being a part, she believes, of its secrets. An initiate. Oh, Edith. How are you different from those who fancied themselves in Mr Farquharson’s inner circle, even as he emptied their pockets?
Madame then moaned, sat up slowly and took back into her own the hands on either side. She spoke. ‘Are you there?’
Of a sudden, there was a thump behind us all, which made everyone start. Heads turned to see, but nothing stirred there in the thick shadows. Madame’s breathing could be heard, deep and long.
I thought I could hear something else then, a shuffling perhaps, although it was not loud enough for that…when there was a creeping, a flapping at my left, and a gloved hand, it seemed, reached over the edge of the table. I could not help but shriek, just a little, and the hand withdrew.
‘Outrageous,’ whispered Mr West, and squeezed my fingers lightly.
‘’Tis nothing, I am all right,’ I said to them all—for several had exclaimed both at the appearance of the hand and at my reaction. I felt my voice was both breathy and childishly high; my heart beat as if it laboured to escape.
‘It means that he is here,’ Madame murmured, and sat very still a long moment so that everyone was obliged to do likewise. My heartbeat slowed and settled, though I was conscious of a continuing tremor in my own hands as they rested in those of my neighbours.
‘There is a soul here,’ Madame Drew finally spoke, but in a guttural, jerking sort of way and very much lower than her normal tones. Running Warrior, I suppose. ‘There is a soul here who calls for another
—’ Madame breathed so rapidly she almost panted. ‘She calls for Bernard…Bernard, she cries…’
The Viscount of a sudden jerked his head upright. ‘Winifred!’
‘Yes. Winifred says, “Bernard, you must not weep. Weep no more, Bernard…”’
‘Winifred!’
‘“Bernard, you make yourself ill. You must take care…”’
‘But Winifred, there is no life without you!’
I shifted a little on my seat and sank my head, embarrassed at the man’s exhibition. How can he display himself so? I felt overly warm. Mr Broadford cleared his throat nearby, as if he too were in need of distraction from the Viscount’s very public declarations.
‘Winifred says it is not your time, Bernard, and you must not make it so. She says that others have need of you, and they expect you to do your best.’
‘Winifred, that is cruel, I cannot…’ The Viscount’s head sank. ‘I…’ he began, and at several places around the table there were audible sighs. It is like being present at a domestic dispute!
‘Winifred says you must take care.’ Madame Drew’s tone took on a finality at this, and there followed another silence, during which the Viscount sniffed several times. I looked at the man’s profile, sunk now with his chin almost at his chest.
The man lives on misery. I corrected myself. Madame Drew lives on his misery.
After a few moments, Madame’s breathing once more became rapid, was like a light panting.
‘There is another, but he is not quite of this realm. And yet—’
Something like a breeze blew across the room, while yet it was too dark to say from whence it came. ‘And yet—’ Madame, or her spirit companion, began again. ‘And yet he yearns to contact a loved one, even while he hovers between one state and the next…’
At this point I caught the flicker of something from the corner of my eye. Slowly, I began to turn my head, the skin upon my face now damp and become very cold, my breath shallow (Foolish! There is nothing there! Of course there is not!), when all of a sudden I beheld a glowing, gauzy apparition of a man—clearly a man from the shape of his whiskers, which were snowy white, as was his face. He held white hands before himself, perhaps in supplication—indeed, he did seem to be suffering some emotional perturbation—and came swooping up to me (Nay! Not me! Why does he come to me?), whereupon he moaned, ‘My dear!’ and passed his face close to my cheek, so that I felt a puff of breath, or it may have been a kiss.
Immediately, he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Where he had gone for the moment nobody stopped to ask, for all were distracted by my very evident distress. I could say nothing for several seconds but, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’, wiping roughly at the spot on my cheek that the apparition had kissed.
Others, too, seemed unable to finish their sentences. ‘The devil! What…?’ cried Mr Broadford, and ‘Mrs Hadley! How…!’ repeated Sobriety. Mr West veered between ‘Appalling!’ and ‘Water!’
The Viscount sat huddled with his head bent and his hands clasped in his lap.
Eventually, Miss West herself took up the appeal for water to Madame Drew, to steady my nerves, and it was fetched, while Edith rustled around the table, past Mary and the inspector, to me, and pressed my hand. She kissed me, and murmured to me, ‘See, did I not tell you? George has been waiting to show his love.’
I, who had been sipping at my water and taking shaky breaths that were now steadying, looked up at this and glared at Edith Courtney. I closed my eyes a moment (lest I do something to be regretted), before turning to the others.
It is not her fault. We must finish this properly. Remember why we are here.
‘Thank you, all of you, for your concern.’ I tried to smile, but it was a very feeble one and made the muscles in my cheek twitch, so I gave it up. To be…used, yes, used thus! It is beyond… ‘It is nothing, really. I was merely taken by such surprise. I would not like to think we had had to stop the…séance…because of it.’
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Thoughts muttered across my mind at each other: For a moment there…but if it had been, oh! The gall! How, how appalling…but yet, of course, it was not…I was faintly nauseated, I realised, and closed my eyes a moment over a sense of being soiled, and…of the presumption here, the very presumption by that woman (I took another deep breath) about Mr Hadley (who would never, in any case!) and myself. But most of all, I was shaken by a fury on my own behalf.
She presumes very wrongly about me.
I sat up and set the glass down.
Very wrongly.
‘This is too important, I think, to everybody here. We had best continue, had we not?’ I looked at Mr Broadford, who sat back in his chair, the dim light giving his face great intensity
.
The inspector and Sobriety, regarding me from each end of the table, both had such looks of unsmiling acuteness, with such
tension about their shadowed eyes, as to appear quite similar. Through nerves quivering still from shock, I felt another anger that was almost vindictive, that made me frown so that my brows momentarily pinched together.
‘If you are certain, ma’am?’
The moment faded. See how I summon anger to supplant confusion. I breathed. ‘Oh, yes.’
The rest, though there was an air of hesitation still, sat down once more, one by one, where they had been. Slowly, they took up each other’s hands again, and Mr West bent toward me to murmur, ‘Absolutely certain?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘May I say what a very plucky lady you are?’
I was able to bow a little and give a small, but steady, smile at this, when the Viscount spoke.
‘It may be, it may be Winifred may likewise come to me. Running Warrior…’
Madame Drew replied, but she was testy. ‘Running Warrior waits for us to quieten and call on him, sir. And if Winifred wishes to come to you today, we cannot know.’
‘It would only be fair—’
‘She cannot be obliged. Perhaps she may be ready to come to you next time.’ Madame’s speech was quite clipped now. ‘Yes, yes, I am certain she will be prepared to come to us next time. In the meantime…’ She looked at the Viscount, whose chin hung a little closer to his collar in acceptance of his delayed conversation with the dead. ‘There are several here who wait to hear news from beyond. But now we must steady ourselves. Please.’ Madame Drew’s face wore exasperation, and it seemed in her brusqueness that she forgot for an instance the skills of gracious host and conjuror. ‘I must have quiet.’
There was silence again. I glanced around the darkened room, sensitive now to any movement. But there was none, and I looked instead at the others, and then at Madame Drew.
The spiritualist sat with her eyes closed. At least, they seemed, in the near-dark, to be closed.
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