Mischief

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘All that.’

  What, a few ghostly sightings, a spasm of telepathy, a spurt of telekinesis, a blossoming of poltergeists, all no doubt exaggerated in the telling, in transit from me to Ted, to Cynara, to Robbie, a few leapings and fallings of my lit-up pineal gland, and I was placed in honour before these, the powers that be. Me, with my mitochondrial insufficiency, bearer of twins, with my over-active epiphysis cerebri: a medium amongst mediums? Hardly. Look in the small ads of Psychic News and you’d find a dozen better qualified.

  ‘Yes, Phyllis – all that,’ said the panel member sitting on the right of the Chairman, evidently the second in command. ‘We’ve been watching you for some time. We know each other, though you may not remember. But I do, and very clearly. We were both fifteen and young Theosophists. My father had just died; you summoned him back from the other side. In front of witnesses he spoke to me with words of wisdom I’ve not forgotten, that have led me on the road to where I am today. Fame and fortune, as you predicted, came to me.’

  I remembered the incident vaguely. But I’d been making it all up: he’d been the pimply lad whose father had just died. The Theosophists were such gullible, amiable idiots, always looking for a miracle. It had seemed a simple kindness to him to provide one: his father with a message from the other side.

  ‘Since those early days,’ he said, ‘you have gone from strength to strength; the lovely young seer becomes the shaman. The shaman becomes the Goddess.’

  ‘Thank you for your witness, brother,’ said the Chairman, briskly, as if the delegate was about to be overcome by emotion. ‘Mrs Whitman, the committee has asked me to offer their condolences upon the loss of your previous husband. It was most regrettable, and of course not by our design. A case of human error and greatly to be deplored, but lessons have been learned. This tragedy is one of the reasons we are here today. But we want to assure you, and others like you who have sacrificed so much in the fight for the ultimate perfection of humanity, that the loss of one is felt as deeply by us as is the loss of many. On your return home, Phyllis – I may call you Phyllis? – you will find compensation has been made, a redress. It is the least we can do. Acceptance of this sum will be in full and final settlement of the whole sorry business. In the battle for human understanding, in the war against ignorance, the fight against old age and even death itself, there will always be casualties on the way, but the greater good is nearly here – the day when the doors of perception will fall open.’

  There was enthusiastic applause from the audience, and muted clapping from the dais. The lights there had gone up again, and yes – it was Ted there on the platform. I had never heard a more self-serving speech, and nor I imagined had he. I knew it was Ted because he was wearing his favourite shoes, the ones he wore when he was meeting important clients, his rather fancy John Lobbs. Yet earlier I had noticed his mediaeval-style buckled shoes. He was not yet fully adjusted to his new circumstances: still settling. But he was taller, straighter than I remembered him: his hood was pushed back and he had a wodge of thick hair. It was Ted in his youth; in is mid-twenties, not in his early forties: more like my son than my lover, more like the twin’s brother than their father. Not like the young-old on the platform, with their blood changes, their 3D printed spare parts and their stem-cell jabs and their blood transfusion and spinach- nourished telomeres. This was not the Ted of the forest clearing, Ted was truly young again.

  The Chairman was still speaking. ‘Phyllis – this committee, with its due oversight of the affairs of mankind as it goes forward into the new digital future, stands at a crossroads. We need your testimony to point the way. You are the voice of the humble multitude; through you Everyman, Everywoman, speaks.’

  There was a short burst of organ music. The light on me intensified so I was utterly blinded. I was the woman from Revelations, 6, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Only now there were thirteen. Ted was with them, the new apostle, the casting vote, and it was no-one’s fault but their own. They should not have interfered, not have taken my minor slippages into other dimensions and encouraged, recorded and enhanced them, and in their monstrous questing appetite for algorithms made the preposterous come true.

  ‘So do we open the doors of perception, Phyllis, or shall we keep them firmly closed?’ The voice from the throne was loud and clear in my poor befuddled ears.

  I hesitated. I was duly impressed. I thought of Robbie and his good job and my comfortable life; I thought of Doxies and sexual pleasure and Juves and freedom of expression, of Ritalin and its fitful acuity, of Red Beard’s bearish hug, of Cynara and her thriving gallery, of the twins’ river-view apartment, and I understood that what I said would change everything for everyone. ‘They’ had pushed open the doors of perception a crack, and Ted had slipped through and that now Ted had found the way others would follow; the dead would be upon us. Did I want this? Did I really want my lost, dead loved ones about me – my sweet mother, perhaps, but my murderous father, Ted’s parents, my drony adopted father…? Never. ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed,’ William Blake had said, ‘every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.’ And just as well, I thought, we were safer in our cavern.

  I spoke up.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘The thing you need to understand about the paranormal is that everything it touches becomes second-rate, useless. I train an eraser to jump into my hand and all it does is rub out the map I’m working on: the spoons that Uri Geller bends can no longer be used to eat your soup or pudding; the keys he twists no longer fit the lock; his stopped watches no longer tell the time. So much for bending the laws of physics. Even if you can, where’s the point? When a clairvoyant channels Mozart or Beethoven from the Other Side the music they compose is poor pastiche. Mediums end up with shapeless bodies and bad breath. Occult energy degrades all it passes through. If the dead tell you something they’re bound to be lying: information becomes disinformation. Open the doors of perception and God knows what will come through. Go where the laws of nature no longer apply, and water flows upwards, trees grow upside down, and yesterday becomes tomorrow. The abyss stares back at you. My advice to you is slam the bloody doors of perception shut, if it’s not too late, and keep them fucking closed.’

  It was quite a speech but it didn’t go down at all well. I shouldn’t have sworn, but it wasn’t just that. The spotlight left me. Faces all around had fallen. I was the wet blanket of wet blankets. Phyllis Whitman, medium, now public enemy number one, telling a truth no-one present wanted to hear.

  The Chairman’s voice was tremulous. One can get one’s vocal chords tightened like guitar strings so one speaks with a younger voice. Maybe he hadn’t got round to it yet.

  ‘Thank you, Phyllis, you may stand down. Your remarks have been noted.’

  I stood down. I was escorted out.

  I was shivery. Red Beard lent me his leather jacket. We left the building in quite a hurry. I suggested to Robbie before we left that we take as many Doxies and Juves home as possible while we could, and perhaps some Ritalin, but Robbie said Security were already in the pharmacy cleaning up the place. Two of the Portal Inc pharmacists had been taken away in handcuffs. It was alleged that they’d been trading illicitly.

  ‘But you two weren’t trading?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Robbie, indignantly. He and Red Beard had been acting under instruction; their attempts to break through to the other side had been properly sanctioned, but political power was shifting at the top. Hence the arrest of the pharmacists that morning. The Ethics Committee would be disappointed by my testimony but would report it back at the AGM that evening when the vote was taken.

  They asked a little anxiously whether anything had ‘happened’ during my stint with the MRI machine, and I said no, and I think they were relieved. I didn’t mention Ted’s stepping out of the apparatus over t
he sill. Some residual loyalty to him remained, like a mother’s to a son, but thank God without the tormented agitation of sexual jealousy and possessiveness which had overlaid our earlier relationship. If his was to be the casting vote I thought he would vote to keep the doors of perception closed: to bar more investigation of the other side, other alternative universes. He would be like so many immigrants; he had got through but would not want others to follow and queer his pitch.

  I stayed quiet and Robbie said I was not to reproach myself. There’d been no time to prepare or brief me, and I was only a five. Nevertheless the dissolution of Portal Inc was possible if the vote went against the ADF tonight and funding was withdrawn. Robbie and Red Beard might well find themselves made redundant. They did not seem unduly distressed. There were other jobs waiting, though in places where access to the new generation pharms could be difficult.

  I hope I showed proper sympathy. It seemed Red Beard was already planning a sideways step into Godix Inc, sister institution to Portal Inc, where work was being done on the ergodic nature of the multiverse: the mathematical approach. Robbie hoped to join him there. Psycho-pharms had been fun, but fun must have a stop. We were all grownups again now.

  And Ted is walking amongst us, I thought, but did not say.

  8

  Robbie and I went to bed that night with my best Chinese rug from the living room covering up the carpet where the perchlorate sapling had rooted. We slept holding each other with great affection but without feeling the need for sex. So much for life without Doxies. It wasn’t heaven but it would do.

  That night I dreamt of the forest again. Sunlight streamed into the clearing. There was birdsong. Trails of white clematis hung from high trees. Even the net of saplings underfoot looked benign.

  And Ted was not to be seen. Of course not. I had set him free. I hadn’t prayed for his release from Purgatory but I’d done the next best thing. I had forgiven him and not forgotten him. Ted was satisfied. I suspected that it was the last Ted dream I’d ever have. I was right. My third eye, after its final excitation, had been irretrievably dimmed, and just as well. I was no longer the heroine of the metadata, no goddess, no medium, just an ordinary working wife and mother of twins.

  I had made my bed with Robbie and now must lie upon it, with as much content as it provided. It was hardly Robbie’s fault that he had acted as he had. He was a six, and like many a six was Aspergery: but what he lacked in empathy he made up for in a generalised goodwill. Ted would be around to divert Cynara’s attention from him. The twins had grown up, left home and had each other and the NSA. Working in the world of Security would suit them very well. They were judgemental by nature, and if they joined some LFL harem it was none of my business. One could only hope 3D computer-printed spare body parts were properly rewarding.

  For myself I resolved to rebuild the Q&A&Co business and keep myself busy. I would keep off pills of all kinds. We might be living in a pharmocracy, but it was up to individuals to resist. I might even start a movement.

  In the morning the phone rang. It was the Ethics Committee chairman. He thanked me for my contribution to yesterday’s proceedings and said that as a result of last night’s vote Portal Inc was being wound down: the project ‘had not shown sufficient intelligence benefit or financial dividend to justify its continuance’. It had been a close vote, carried by one. He personally regretted the decision but could see it was prudent. Then, he asked, and I knew he was angling for confirmation of some kind:

  ‘I hope you had a quiet night, Phyllis? You must have had quite an exhausting day yesterday.’

  ‘Perfectly quiet, thank you. Poor Ted was still there in his forest,’ I lied, ‘stumbling round as ever. He’s in some kind of mental loop, I suppose. But as a dream it no longer bothers me.’

  ‘Well, we could keep in touch, Phyllis,’ he said, as he rang off. ‘We must have lunch one day. Such a pleasure to meet you.’

  I thought he sounded rather relieved. As indeed was I – to find that the Juves had finally worn off and I could tell lies so easily. When Robbie asked me the same question as the chairman I replied in the same way: no change in the Ted dreams, and with any luck, I said, if Robbie refrained from taking Doxies, no doubt the dreams would taper off.

  I had no wish to set more hares running. The future would have to look after itself. Ted was not likely to bother me again, though he might well have found a path others could still follow, shaking little sapling seeds or even more malignant things from their clothing as they went. I could see that Ted might well have unfinished business with Jill Woodward – she had murdered him, if only inadvertently. But if he haunted anyone, it would be Cynara, whom he had screwed and – I could finally admit it – loved. Well, she’d have to deal with it. Perhaps even now he was sitting in her gallery telling her what to do and how to do it.

  A couple of days later an envelope turned up in the post. It contained a lottery ticket – although I never play the lottery – and when Robbie checked on the Internet he told me I was one of three winners: I had all six numbers, plus the bonus. He reckoned we had won something in the region of four million dollars, for it was just over two and a half million pounds. Robbie clasped me to him. The illuminati of the Ethics Committee had been true to their word and seen me right. Even with house prices as they were, we could afford to move out of Dinton Close and leave Ted behind us for ever. It was just as well; I had tried to vacuum really thoroughly that morning, only to find tiny green saplings growing all over the place and the dust bag clogged with little leaves.

  ~

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  In the dying days of Victoria’s reign, the events of a single turbulent morning herald bankruptcy and ruin for the Earl of Dilberne. His wife, the Countess Isobel, believes the solution is to marry off their handsome, wilful son to a rich and pretty heiress from the Chicago stockyards. It’s a clash of cultures and principles that rocks the household from parlour to pantry.

  Gold mines fail, bankers plot, bad girls flourish, the London fog descends, Royalty intervenes and unlikely lovers triumph. Habits of the House, the first book in the Love & Inheritance trilogy, is a ravishing portrait of the fin de siècle from one of our best-loved British authors.

  The House Awakes

  6.58 a.m. Tuesday, 24th October 1899

  In late October of the year 1899 a tall, thin, nervy young man ran up the broad stone steps that led to No. 17 Belgrave Square. He seemed agitated. He was without hat or cane, breathless, unattended by staff of any kind, wore office dress – other than that his waistcoat was bright yellow above smart striped stove-pipe trousers – and his moustache had lost its curl in the damp air of the early morning. He seemed both too well-dressed for the tradesman’s entrance at the back of the house, yet not quite fit to mount the front steps, leave alone at a run, and especially at such an early hour.

  The grand front doors of Belgrave Square belonged to ministers of the Crown, ambassadors of foreign countries, and a sprinkling of titled families. By seven in the morning the back doors would be busy enough with deliveries and the coming and going of kitchen and stable staff, but few approached the great front doors before ten, let alone on foot, informally and without appointment. The visitor pulled the bell handle too long and too hard, and worse, again and again.

  The jangling of the bell disturbed the household, waking the gentry, startling such servants who were already up but still sleepy, and disconcerting the upper servants, who were not yet properly dressed for front door work.

  Grace, her
Ladyship’s maid, peered out from her attic window to see what was going on. She used a mirror contraption rigged up for her by Reginald the footman, the better to keep an eye on comings and goings on the steps below. Seeing that it was only Eric Baum, his Lordship’s new financial advisor and lawyer, Grace decided it was scarcely her business to answer the door. She saw to her Ladyship’s comfort and no one else’s. Baum was too young, too excitable and too foreign-looking to be worthy of much exertion, and her Ladyship had been none too pleased when her husband had moved their business affairs into new hands.

  Grace continued dressing at her leisure: plain, serviceable, black twill dress – a heavy weave, but it was cold up here in the unheated attics – white newly laundered apron, and a pleated white cap under which she coiled her long fair hair. She liked this simple severity of appearance: she felt it suited her, just as the Countess of Dilberne’s colourful silks and satins suited her. Her Ladyship would not need to be woken until nine. Meanwhile Grace would not waste time and energy running up and down stairs to open the front door to the likes of Mr Baum. A sensible man would have gone round to the servants’ entrance.

  ‘Bugger!’ said Elsie the under housemaid, so startled by the unexpected noise that she spilled most of a pan of ash on to the polished marquetry floor. She was cleaning the grate in the upstairs breakfast room. Grey powder puffed everywhere, clouding a dozen mahogany surfaces. More dusting. She was short of time as it was. She had yet to set the coals, and the wind being from the north the fire would not draw well and likely as not smoke the room out.

  This was the trouble with the new London houses – the Grosvenor estate architects, famous as they might be, seemed to have no idea as to where a chimney should best be placed. At Dilberne Court down in the Hampshire hills, built for the first Earl of Dilberne in the reign of Henry VIII, the chimneys always drew. No. 17 Belgrave Square was a mere rental, albeit on a five-year lease. The servants felt this was not quite the thing; most of the best families liked to own and not rent. But the best families were also the landed families; and land was no longer necessarily the source of wealth that it had always been since the Norman Conquest.