by Ruth Rendell
“You have to pass them round,” Miss Finlay said. “You have to check there’s nothing concealed in them in case of fraud.”
Very painstakingly she pulled the tights inside out and stuck her fingers into the toes of the slippers before passing them on to Dolly. The frog-faced woman got up and closed all the windows and the room seemed immediately to become stuffy. She pulled down the thick dark green blinds and switched on the central light. The black garments went round from hand to hand, and when they reached the back row, Mrs. Collins came on to the stage with a tall slight woman she introduced as Mrs. Fitter. She said she wanted three ladies to come forward and watch Mrs. Fitter dress herself. Dolly would never have put herself forward so far as to volunteer but Mrs. Collins didn’t wait for volunteers; she summoned Dolly and Miss Finlay and a Mrs. Bullen.
In the room behind the stage, Roberta Fitter said not a word as she stripped off her clothes. She was too important and her business too serious for idle chatter. Dolly thought how wonderful it would be if Pup could someday be revered like that. Mrs. Fitter had a thin, brown, wrinkled body with breasts like pigskin purses and gray pubic hair. While they were waiting, Miss Finlay had told Dolly that at a recent seance someone in the audience had shouted at Mrs. Fitter that she was a fraud and as a result the ectoplasm had rushed back into her body so rapidly that it had left a burn mark where it went in by way of her chest. Dolly, holding her hair instinctively across her own face, looked for the burn scar on Mrs. Fitter’s chest but she could see nothing except beads of sweat and a sprinkling of hairs.
When Mrs. Fitter had dressed herself in the black clothes, she walked across in front of the audience and sat on the chair behind the open curtains. There was a red light on now from a table lamp on a plant pot stand about a yard to the right of the cabinet. Someone switched off the overhead light so that only the red one remained and this was very dim. It was just light enough to see that Mrs. Fitter had gone into a trance. The curtains operated on cords and these Mrs. Leebridge now drew to conceal Mrs. Fitter from view.
Myra tiptoed in a reverent sort of way across the hall and into the living room. She had an idea she ought not to be in the flat, that she was perhaps breaking the law and that if a policeman or a solicitor were to see her she would be in grave trouble. This made her look uneasily about her, it made her keep on looking over her shoulder. A rolltop desk that had been her father’s was her quarry. It wasn’t locked. Myra opened it, lifted out a stack of yellow packets of holiday snaps and there underneath them, still blank, still untouched, lay the will form. Myra expelled her breath and momentarily closed her eyes. Then she went through the rest of the papers which Mrs. Brewer had kept in an orderly way, found National Savings to the value of 3,000 pounds and a bank deposit book showing an accumulation of nearly 2,000 pounds.
How long would she have to wait before she came into possession? Some months, she feared, remembering that when her father died intestate, letters of administration had had to be applied for. In that case, she might as well take her mother’s fur coat with her, a very good ranch mink it was and only two years old. It would be a pity not to have the benefit of that next spring.
Harold was in the breakfast room. He had been doing a lot of serious reading lately—James Pope Hennessy’s Queen Mary, no less, and a book called The File on the Tsar—so for light relief he had turned to an historical novel about the twin sons its author said Mary Queen of Scots had secretly borne to the Earl of Bothwell. He had just reached the point where one of the twins was about to rescue his father from the dungeons of Elsinore, when Myra came in wearing a fur coat. Harold stuck a finger in his book, half shut the covers, and looked at her because it had been a very hot day and the temperature was still over seventy.
Myra took the coat off and threw it over the back of a chair.
“Well, Hal, I think you and I can count on being thirty-five thousand pounds to the good by next year. How does that grab you?
“The old dear never made a will, then?”
“Of course she didn’t. I knew that. It was all talk. Why bother when it’d naturally go to her only daughter? I think we ought to celebrate, we ought to have a bottle of champagne. It’s not every day you come into money like that, we ought to have a real celebration.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Harold. “I don’t fancy the idea of celebrating your mother’s death.”
“We’re not celebrating her death, don’t be ridiculous, we’re celebrating coming into money. It’s not the same thing, surely you can see that?”
“Go down The Woman in White, then, shall we?”
“I’m not going there. Let people see me in a pub with Mother not even cremated yet! What a thing to suggest. Celebrate at home is what I meant, like civilized people do.”
Harold said nothing. He returned to the windswept ramparts of Elsinore. Myra looked in the cupboard in the dining room and found about a quarter of a bottle of sherry left over from her party and half that quantity of Dubonnet. While she was thinking what to do, she drank up the sherry direct from the bottle. It was a Friday, pay day, but because she had not been to work, her pay was still at the dental surgery. She had about forty-five pence in her purse.
“You could go to the wineshop and get us a bottle of sparkling white,” she said to Harold.
Harold laughed in an absent way without looking up. “Good job you didn’t take me up on my offer. I’m skint.” He pulled out his trouser pocket. “Not a sausage.”
By this time Myra wanted a celebration very much indeed. An excited restless feeling had come over her. She was in that euphoric state in which one wants to dance about and sing, and as people do, she wanted a companion whose mood would match hers and who would dance about and sing with her. Harold Yearman was not ideally cast in this role but he was all she had. These days Myra seldom thought of the married man but she thought of him now, of how he had liked to enjoy himself and how wild he could be.
She stood in the hall, which she was halfway through papering and which smelt of wallpaper adhesive, and she wondered if, considering the state of her current account, she dared give a check to the man in the wineshop. Even if she did dare, the shop closed at 8:00 and it was five to now. Myra looked up the stairwell. Doreen wouldn’t miss a couple of bottles from that hoard of hers, probably didn’t even know what she had there, and in any case Myra could replace them on Monday when she had been paid. Hal, she felt intuitively, wouldn’t like the idea, so she wouldn’t tell him. She went upstairs.
There were locks on some of the doors but none was locked. Myra opened the door into the living room and went in. The first cupboard she went to, in a shallow alcove beneath some shelves, was full of bottles of wine and she helped herself to two of Asti spumante. Turning round, she nearly dropped them out of her arms. Four dolls were looking at her from the mantelpiece, two little girls with yellow plaits, an Indian boy, and—herself. Though it was not flattering, though it was very nearly grotesque, she recognized it at once as herself from the hair, the bosom, the colors, the gold chains. Myra felt angry and a little afraid. She was glad she had taken the wine now, she didn’t feel a bit guilty or apprehensive, she was glad she had thought of it.
Harold took it for granted that his wife had been the 200 yards or so down the road to buy the wine. He would not have involved himself in an argument over it or consented to the licensee of The Woman in White cashing a check or anything of that sort, but since she had got the wine and there was, after all, something worth celebrating, he put a bookmark into Twins of Destiny and followed Myra into the dining room.
The French windows were open. The garden was green and leafy and full of shadows but glanced, too, with dark golden beams of sunshine. It was peaceful and still and very warm and a pigeon was cooing in the pear tree. Myra thought about the doll, pushed the thought fiercely away, and poured the wine.
“To us! We’re in business, Hal.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Harold. “There’s many a slip b
etween the cup and the lip.”
“How can there be when she never made a will? We can go to Cyprus for a fortnight now. First thing we’ll do when we get the money is—buy a car!”
“You’ll have to drive it then.”
“And have the kitchenette all done with pine units. And fitted carpet in our bedroom, a sort of amber color would be nice.
They talked for a while about what they would do with the money. The warmth of the evening and the wine spread through Harold, a delicious, languid calm. He answered Myra amiably while reflecting on the dismal fate of Mary Stuart. Presently Myra got up to close the windows.
“Or we’ll have gnats in. There’s one bitten me already.” She rubbed her thigh.
Harold said facetiously, “Let’s have a look.”
She had drunk the sherry before they had started and now she staggered a bit, lifting up her skirt to show him. Harold got hold of her and pulled her down on his knee. Her face was brightly flushed, that damask rose skin of hers, and he wondered why he had ever thought she looked like Edith; there was no resemblance. Plumped on Harold’s lap, Myra was face to face with herself in the mirror on top of the sideboard. With the married man, she had sometimes looked at her own reflection in a narcissistic way and she did this now, suddenly seeing how beautiful she was, how young and voluptuous with her smooth skin and big round breasts, her mane of chestnut hair and her long legs in black spotted tights. For the first time she thought how lucky Harold was to have her for a wife, a beautiful young wife and he such a meager little gray scrap of a man. Thinking of them like that, of her having so much to give and him unworthy but greedy to receive it, excited her. She put his hands on her breasts. She reached for her wineglass.
“D’you feel like a bit?” said Harold.
Normally she would have reproached him for his vulgarity.
But she was sluggish, feeling sexier than she had done for nearly a year. “Of course I do.”
“Better go upstairs then,” said Harold.
In Mount Pleasant Hall there was for a moment no human sound and it was dark but for the feeble red glow beyond the cabinet. You could make out the shapes of the persons sitting next to you and in front but no more. It was about as dark as it is in a theater when the lights have gone down and the curtain not yet risen.
Mrs. Collins, from her seat at the end of the front row, suggested they should all sing something. Hassan’s favorite song was alleged to be “Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar” but no one knew the words, so they sang “The Volga Boatmen” instead.
At the third repetition of “Heave, my brothers,” the curtains parted a little and a figure in a turban appeared between them. You could just make out the shape of the turban and a long white robe.
Miss Finlay whispered to Dolly, “That’s Hassan.”
“Sssh,” said Mrs. Leebridge.
The figure spoke in a voice like that of the man who kept the Tandoori takeaway shop in the Seven Sisters Road. “Good evening, friends.”
There were murmurs from the audience and Mrs. Leebridge said, “Good evening, Hassan,” in a loud schoolmistressy way. “Are you going to show us any spirit friends tonight?”
Hassan made no reply but disappeared between the curtains. A moment or two later his voice said:
“I have a lady here who passed on with a wound to her head, a car accident or something of that kind.”
There was silence. Dolly heard someone whispering behind her. Then a man from the row behind said rather hoarsely:
“Is it for me?”
Hassan said, “That’s the voice,” and the curtains parted to disclose another draped white figure, bulkier this time and with what looked like a bandage tied round its head. From behind Dolly came a sound as of indrawn breath. The figure spoke in a subdued girlish voice.
“It wasn’t my fault, Michael.”
The man behind said, “Let me see you close to.”
There was a mumbled something that sounded like “too soon” and the figure glided back between the curtains. Dolly heard the man say, “Oh, dear God,” in a voice tremulous with emotion.
“His wife was killed last year,” said Miss Finlay. “She drove her car out into the road in front of a lorry. They lived next door to Mrs. Bullen. Listen, Hassan’s speaking again.”
“Is there anyone who has lost a gentleman who was in the forces perhaps? Anyway who wore a uniform?”
A girl from a row behind called out, “Is it you, Dad?”
“That’s the voice.”
From between the curtains came another white-robed shape. Mrs. Leebridge said, “Look, you can see his peaked cap.”
“Sssh,” said Miss Finlay.
Pup could see no peaked cap, only someone tall and thin, wrapped up in a sheet. The figure stood to attention and saluted.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Mrs. Leebridge. “And you can see Mrs. Fitter in the cabinet there lying in a deep trance all the time.
Nothing in the cabinet was visible to Pup. It was too dark. He had looked carefully, though, as one taking a professional interest in something not too distant from his own line of country. The back of the hall, however, was a little less dark owing to one of the blinds having ridden up a fraction and let in a shaft of twilight. This was sufficient to show him the owner of the voice who had been claimed as his daughter by the figure in the peaked cap. It must be her, for everyone else (in Pup’s own phrase) was as old as the hills. He saw the profile of a round youthful face, the plump curve of a cheek, an upturned nose, and a mass of dark curly hair, and he was trying to see more when Mrs. Leebridge got up and tugged down the blind.
The curtains closed quickly. Hassan’s voice asked if there was anyone who had lost a four-footed companion. There were several replies to this, so it remained uncertain whose pet was the flickering white something that appeared briefly between the curtain hems or even what kind of animal it was. A bird materialized after that, or Mrs. Collins said it was a bird, she said she saw it come out between the curtains and perch on the red table lamp. Dolly didn’t see it but she was certain she felt its wings brush her face as it flew down the center of the hall. A woman sitting next to the man called Michael claimed it as her dead parakeet.
No more animals materialized but several more white figures came out, their robes reddened by the lamplight. The body of the hall was now totally dark because it had grown dark outside. There was a stillness and a quiet and then a fidgeting and whispering among the audience so that Dolly began to think the seance must be over. Hassan’s voice made her jump.
“Are there a brother and sister sitting together in the front row?
Dolly could not speak. It was Pup who answered.
“That’s the voice!”
Dolly began to tremble and Pup took her hand and held it tight. A strong lemony scent drifted from the stage and pervaded the hall.
10
The figure was tall and thin, faceless, a swaddled pillar of white sheet. The lamplight laid a red glaze on it, as on a cloth that has been used to wipe away blood. It swayed a little as it walked with mincing tread across the stage towards them.
“Is it you, Mother?” Dolly’s voice was unsteady.
Hoarsely, as if its throat were constricted, it spoke. “It makes me happy to see you two together.”
Dolly gasped. She reached out a hand yearningly. Then Pup too put out his hand and the apparition, swaying over them, clasped both in hers. Dolly felt thin bony fingers and a palm slippery with a clammy dew. In the darkness she tried to make out a feature, to recognize some defined angle of shoulder or hip, to sense the essence of her mother. The smell of lemons was overpowering. Pup raised himself up to look more closely, but immediately he did so, their hands were relinquished and the shape retreated. It glided away from them into the bloodstaining light, into the red air, and for a moment, before it disappeared between the curtains, its robes looked crimson. The curtains quivered and fell closed. Dolly gave a heavy sigh that made Pup turn and look anxiously a
t her, but she looked tranquil, she looked happy.
There were no more materializations. Hassan came out and said the medium had used up all her supply of ectoplasm and was in any case exhausted, that was enough for tonight, friends, and thank you very much. Dolly closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She felt as if her mother were still with her, still present in the hall. The central light was switched on and she blinked and sighed.
“Wonderful, isn’t she?” said Mrs. Leebridge. “You’ve never seen anything like that before, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Collins said it amounted to genius.
“There’s not a doubt about that.” Mrs. Leebridge went up to the cabinet and drew back the curtains and gave Mrs. Fitter a cigarette.
There was a scraping of chairs as people got up. The blinds were raised and you could see the dark blue night, a sliver of moon made dim by the shine from street lights.
Dolly said in a vague dreamy voice, “Mrs. Collins’s daughter is going to give us a lift home in her car.”
They filed out along the passage. The double doors were sheltered from the street by a porch with a gable and just inside the porch, beside the notice board, was standing the girl whose father had come out and saluted. In the quite bright electric light, Pup could see that she was a very pretty girl indeed. In fact she was not at all the sort of girl likely to be found in this company of the drab elderly, being about twenty and dressed in a very short navy blue dress with white coin spots, white tights and high-heeled red sandals. When she saw Pup she gave a nervous giggle.
“I know I’m a fool but I’m scared stiff to go out there in the dark.”
Mrs. Collins was indignant. “It makes me cross, that sort of thing. As if there was anything to be frightened of in our friends from the Other Side desiring a glimpse of their loved ones.”
“I can’t help it, I’m scared.”
Pup made a decision. She was looking at him, her soft red lips slightly parted. There was no doubt in his mind what was happening. Like Coward’s Amanda, his heart had always been jagged with sophistication, inexperienced though he was. The strange thing was that he hardly knew whether he was yielding to temptation or resisting it. All that was clear was that the time had come.