by Mike Voyce
Chapter 22 – Goodbye
What do I say now? The events of this chapter brought my life almost to a total stop. I look back at my notes and for weeks there’s a complete blank. Nothing recorded. It’s a time I’d rather forget, yet this, too, is part of our story.
I heard a soul scream.
I sat in the bath, still shocked and unhappy, and just a little rueful. I was thinking it served me right for believing people think like me, when I heard a soul scream.
It was long, agonised and ear splitting in its soundless despair. I thought everyone in the World must have heard it. The soul that screamed was my own. As long as I live, I want to hear no other sound like it.
I was ever more vexed with Sarah’s failure, her refusal to explain her methods and do her groundwork. I should have allowed reason to convince me, she simply wasn’t capable. Yet, if Sarah would only follow my instructions, we’d have certain success. She’d been continuously unavailable, ever since that episode of the spurious reformer.
I tried everything to reach her. I put everything on hold, pleading illness to William Gregson and postponing our bid to E.S.R.C. to the next funding round. I asked Angharad to help, but Sarah wouldn’t even explain to her. Eventually I left an ultimatum with Sarah’s receptionist, what else could I do? Even then further time passed till finally there came a promise; Sarah would phone me at Angharad’s house that Sunday.
It was a day of high tension; there were all sorts of domestic pressures around Angharad herself. I felt in the way, that weekend, sitting there waiting for a phone call that might not even come; a call which could far more sensibly have been made to my office during the week.
We talked about Edward, of course, but Angharad really didn’t have time, today, for the implications of what we saw together in the last chapter. She didn’t have the time, either, for the scenes I’d not yet told her of Bishop Morton pouring poison into Duke Henry’s ear. Reality came crashing in on the wake of these images. They were momentous, quite apart from the Grail and the Marbles; you see most people, believe Richard III killed the Princes because Duke Henry believed it. They didn’t see the tissue of lies Morton so skilfully weaved around him.
Today Edward was pushed to the back of my mind. Somehow Sarah had created a real sense of drama around herself and I was left to work out what she was playing at. She wanted to do the work, it would make a major difference to her career, and all she had to do was put in writing to the funding council how she’d do it. What was the problem!
I phoned her. I phoned both her surgery and her home, even Angharad tried. Sarah had a friend with her, we were told, she was undergoing some sort of crisis, she couldn’t come to the phone to speak to either of us, and this friend wouldn’t say what the crisis might be about.
I think Angharad was quite concerned.
Sundays are always busy at Angharad’s house and there was my daughter to consider. There had to be an end to this eternal mucking about.
When the call eventually came, from Sarah herself, what she said was simple enough, she withdrew from the project. She might have done it in a way which left doors open. Most of all she might have offered some sort of explanation.
“She always was a drama queen.”
Angharad was angry, and upset for me.
You may think I over-dramatise; as it happens I did look for a replacement, without any success.
I’ve told you pretty fully about my images of Edward. Now I must tell you there’s another aspect to this business.
You remember I went to see Mary, the medium. In fact I went to see her twice. The second time her boyfriend was there, also a medium. They got me to do a meditation with them. This was no good to me, despite my images of Edward. Unless I put something in my head it stays empty, and so it did on this occasion.
Mary told me she met my ‘spirit guide’. She gave it all the trappings of a ‘table turning’ mystic and you may think it all very fanciful; actually Mary was painfully honest and down to Earth.
There are those who hold we all have a spirit guide, perhaps several; the trick is to learn how to communicate. Angharad told me Sarah used to speak quite freely to her ‘guides’. Anyway, I started trying to get in touch with my guide as Mary told me to do. She gave me a name, unpronounceable and unspellable though it was. It turns out I have an ancient Greek guide, what else?
My powers of visualisation, judging from Edward, are quite good. My power to summon up spirit guides turned out to be pretty poor. My greatest difficulty was distinguishing my guide from myself; I don’t know if this is a common problem, I expect it is. As a result it’s actually easier to contact other spirits, say somebody else’s spirit guide. I found myself, really without meaning to, in the company of an American Indian (what else!). He was, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, one of Sarah’s spirit guides.
One night I lay in bed, quiet but not asleep. I became aware of a presence. It came and stood before me. There was no material shape, but its personality had the clearest form and so also did its opinion. This American Indian didn’t approve of me. The censure was as strong as the whole thing was unexpected. Frances, asleep at my side, never stirred.
Afterwards, I asked Angharad, she made no secret of it; it was Sarah’s spirit guide. It was somehow embarrassing to have Sarah’s guide come and inspect me and my girlfriend, is there no privacy?
Thereafter, by fancy if you will, in meditation or some form of imagining, I could contact this spirit. We held conversations. I say fancy partly because all this sounds fanciful and partly because this Indian fellow hasn’t stood good to his word. Maybe I’m wrong, it’s certainly more charitable to think I deceived myself than that a real spirit misled me.
I believe there was a conflict between what this spirit thought was good for Sarah and what I thought was good for her. Our disagreement left us pulling in different directions.
I remember a debate between us. It was a very strange affair and it happened over two days, in front an audience of other spirits. It was related to Edward and Eadie and to ‘life plans’; I very much wanted to get the basis of our discussion agreed. If I needed any confirmation of their relationship, I was given it in that debate, Sarah did stand in the shoes of Eadie. The debate itself was mostly about the purity of motive, which seems to be of the very greatest importance and explanations of cause and effect. It was as if there was a wager; the prize for that debate, if the spirit won, was that I should drop my project, on the other hand, if I won, I would receive the co-operation I needed.
It’s big headed of me, but it seemed I won the argument.
I confidently expected, as a result, this Red Indian would remove a block to Sarah’s co-operation. It wasn’t clear what this block was, something to do with plans or destiny, but nobody properly explained it to me.
This all happened just a few days before Sarah withdrew from the project, undeniably, in the concrete, real World.
Things weren’t as I’d have them.
I lost all of that slight contact I had with spirit guides, my own or Sarah’s.
It was clear my project was lost and with it the great deal of good Sarah and I could have done.
I was convinced the cause of this Native American’s objections was to do with Edward Stafford; I, too, felt he owed Eadie a debt, and how should that be paid now?
I was convinced what I’ve described in this book was shown to me for good reason, a reason I’d defeated by my handling of Sarah.
There was nothing Angharad could do, for all she knew the story and knew Sarah so very well.
There was no one I could turn to.
All the relationships I thought I’d found with people close to Edward, people who had very close correspondences with those I know today, all went for nothing. It was just as I told you.
I had a sense of having invited a great many people to a party and when we got there finding the door slammed in all our faces. It was a very real and concrete image and very embarrassing. I could see no oth
er point in us all being here, so close was I to Edward and my project.
With each moment that passed my feelings knotted themselves further. There was no way passed these thoughts.
My soul screamed.
What remained of that Sunday was a parade of empty events. With all the enthusiasm left to me, I took my darling daughter to a garden centre. She’s in love with all growing things and with fish, of which they had many, spectacular and varied.
My daughter held a correspondence to someone in Edward’s story, I could neither hide nor reveal this to her. Surely I’d failed her also.
“It would be better for the World if you didn’t exist.”
“At the end of this life you will no longer exist.”
This was the first message I received from my spirit guide when, after much effort, I managed to make contact again. I went white with the shock of it, from he who was supposed to love me.
I set my mind to dealing with even this extreme circumstance. I’d been given no reasons. With some sort of contact once more with these spirit guides what should I do but seek guidance? What caused this awful problem, why did Sarah back out, what could I do about it?
My resolve to take further thought painted me as some sort of Orpheus in the Under World and I entered Hades sitting comfortably on a large settee, in my office in Peterborough.
I found myself ushered into a large, impressive office, through heavy double doors, leading from an equally impressive anti-chamber. I remember the polished wooden floors, the beautiful Regency furniture, the high ceilings and white, Georgian plasterwork of both rooms. It reminded me of nothing more than the Whitehall offices of someone very important.
I found myself standing before a large oval table. I was on one side of it and five, seated, middle-aged and sober suited individuals ranged round the other side. The usher at the door assured me of their very great importance, after all, I required people with the necessary authority. These had that avuncular, urbane, almost soft manner you find in powerful people with nothing to prove, as you find in army generals and High Court judges.
“My dear boy, do sit down.
You wanted to see us?”
I sat, as indicated, in an elegant rosewood carver.
“May I smoke?”
They assured me I should be at my ease.
And so it was, sitting in my office in Peterborough, I lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and, in that other office, launched into an explanation of what I thought had happened. I told these spirits why I thought it necessary, in the general good, that the block on Sarah and on myself be lifted, why changes should be made, and quickly, and why it was dreadfully wrong for things to stop as they were now.
Try smoking and at the same time advocating an appeal to discarnate spirits in another place! You have to be on two levels of consciousness; it was like a juggling act. I was quite proud of my dexterity. Funnily enough I enjoyed it.
The spirits were ‘the Board’, whether a board of judgement I don’t know but I treated them as I expected to find them, as a tribunal.
When I finished, the spirits, the members of the Board, seemed to confer, though not a word passed between them. I was asked a few questions but I don’t remember, now, what they were. The Board seemed satisfied. I was almost disappointed, it had been so easy. The chairman rose and came round to me, he ushered me out through those same doors as in I came, leading me cordially by the hand, and he assured me everything would be all right; it would finish where I wished it to be. The chairman warned me some time would be needed to set matters right.
It was so easily done. Had I missed something? The Board had seemed to find in my favour. I’m certain they tested the truth of my motives and arguments. Would they not have told me if I’d overlooked something important? It was such an anti-climax to walk out through that anti-chamber.
I expected a reversal of the state of affairs with Sarah, in just a few days. I waited in patience and in vain, it most definitely did not happen. In fact quite a long time passed before anything happened. I can tell you now; I wouldn’t want what I wanted then! I’ve come to fear the thought of letting Sarah loose amongst so many potential psychopaths, in her determination to cure them rather than assess their danger.
I haven’t spoken to Sarah in all the time since this happened, though sometimes I think of her and wonder what she’s doing. The pain of my lost hopes slid towards its proper place, yet how can I forget that vibrant link between Sarah and Eadie? the lost hopes of my project and that poor young man, the client I told you about in The Beginning; still in prison for a crime he didn’t commit? Most of all, how shall I forget the sound of that soul as it screamed its pain to the World?
It hasn’t occurred to me to do anything more about the Board or their decision. I haven’t meditated about it or talked to Angharad. If that Board was merely fantasy then nothing will come of it, if it was true then changes will come in their own way.
Still, it would be nice to peep into things once more. The members of the Board were such charming, reassuring people.
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