The Explosionist

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by Jenny Davidson


  Sophie blinked. It had to be a trick of the light. The mottled surface of the mirror often distorted Sophie’s image in unexpected ways.

  But blinking did nothing to clear her vision, and as she looked more closely, the smiling eyes in the mirror actually met her own, and the woman reached her hand out toward Sophie as if to caress her hair. She looked very much like a photograph Sophie had of her mother, but the hair and dress bespoke a far distant time and place.

  Sophie shut her eyes, counted to ten, and stamped her foot. To her great relief, when she opened her eyes and looked in the mirror, it showed her nothing more unusual than her own face, red lines still printed across her cheek by the folds of the duvet, a scratch on her forehead just beneath the hair-line.

  She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and picked up the brush. Ghosts were stupid; only foolish people believed in them. If only the woman hadn’t looked so real! Sophie could almost feel the soft touch of her hand on her own cheek. She attacked her hair with savage vigor, pressing the prickly bristles of the brush deep into her scalp.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Sophie found the housekeeper Peggy, her faded reddish hair waved in the rigid curls of her Friday morning wash-and-set, an effect made comical by her stout figure and the beads of sweat that stood out on her bright red face as she stirred the saucepan.

  Sophie went over to kiss her, trying not to breathe the fumes from the pan. Peggy was friendly and funny and the closest thing Sophie had to a mother, but she had a sort of negative instinct for cookery, a lack of ability amounting to a perverse genius. Her poached eggs were like golf balls, her fried potatoes soggy and undercooked, the nut cutlets which Great-aunt Tabitha (a strict vegetarian) insisted on having instead of meat as tough and tasteless as the soles of Sophie’s school shoes.

  “Well, now, Sophie, I didn’t even hear you come in,” said Peggy, continuing to stir the sauce as Sophie tucked her feet up under one of the rush-backed chairs at the table.

  Sophie opened her mouth to explain and then realized she couldn’t face the questions that would follow the admission she’d been home much earlier. She always tried to give confession a chance, but concealment was a practice of long standing.

  “Your great-aunt wants you to join herself and the other ladies for supper,” Peggy continued. “They’re invited at half past seven for eight o’clock, and she says you’re to go to that séance after.”

  Peggy said “that séance” as she might have said “that nasty mess the dog made on the floor.” Peggy thought poorly of the spirit world; she believed in spirits, of course, but that didn’t mean she had to like them. Sophie herself found supernatural things intriguing and worrisome in roughly equal measure.

  “Do you think I might have something to eat first, Peggy?” Sophie asked. “I don’t think I can wait until supper.”

  “The poor bairn, famished-like! The dinners at that school aren’t fit for pigs,” Peggy muttered grandly, slamming around a pan to show partisan resentment. Considering herself in contention with the Edinburgh Institution for Young Ladies over Sophie’s heart and stomach, Peggy was liable to single out the school’s food for special condemnation. “Shall I fry you up a nice bit of fish, then?”

  “No, I don’t want to put you out,” Sophie said hastily. “You must have plenty to do before supper, with all those ladies coming,” she added, aware of perhaps not having sounded very polite.

  “Aye, that’s so,” Peggy said, though Sophie could see she had already peeled the huge vat of potatoes. “Those old witches eat like there’s a famine on. You go on into the larder, then, and help yourself. Just mind you don’t touch the gooseberry fool; that’s for pudding this evening.”

  Sophie averted her eyes from the bowl of fool, which looked like something a cat might have sicked up. She hacked a hunk of cheddar off the half wheel on the shelf and put it on a small blue-and-white plate, along with an apple that she cut into quarters. Then she helped herself to two gingersnaps and asked Peggy if she minded whether Sophie ate in the kitchen. Peggy liked to have her there, on the whole, but it was best to acknowledge her sovereignty by asking permission.

  As Sophie finished her tea, the sitting-room bell rang on the board above the sink. Peggy cast her eyes up to the heavens and began very, very slowly to take off her apron. The bell went again, and Peggy plodded up the basement stairs, mumbling under her breath as she went.

  Within minutes she was back.

  “Herself wants you in the sitting room,” she said.

  “Did she say what for?” Sophie asked, hating herself for being such a coward.

  “Those that don’t ask won’t be told no lies,” said Peggy, clamping her lips shut, though Sophie guessed her to be just as much in the dark as Sophie herself.

  Sophie rinsed her plate off under the cold-water tap in the pantry, the only running water in the house, and wiped it dry. She folded and refolded the tea towel before bracing herself, walking up the stairs to the hall, and knocking at the sitting-room door.

  “Come in,” a voice called out.

  Inside Sophie found her great-aunt standing by the mantel with the mauve-and-gold Louis XVI carriage clock in her hands.

  “Clock’s stopped again,” she said to Sophie.

  Great-aunt Tabitha barely topped five feet, but Sophie had once seen her overpower two enormous Alsatians by the force of her glance alone. She still dressed in the style she and her friends had adopted as forward-looking female undergraduates in the 1890s, and today she wore the usual long serge skirt and crisply ironed white cotton shirt of masculine cut, its sleeves rather inky. She had a beaky nose that Sophie was glad not to have inherited and a disorganized wispy bun of hair whose color had reached the shade known as salt-and-pepper (a suitable phrase, Sophie always thought, for someone so very peppery herself).

  “Stop gawping like a dullard,” said Great-aunt Tabitha. “Really, Sophie, with your mouth hanging open like that, you look almost subnormal.”

  Sophie shut her mouth and went to have a look at the clock, a prized family possession bestowed by the second Marquess of Bute on Sophie’s great-great-grandfather to mark his thirtieth year of service on the estate. As soon as her hand made contact with its casing, Sophie felt a kind of hiccup, like an electric shock. Her hand jerked back, and the clock began ticking.

  “Well!” said Great-aunt Tabitha, looking at Sophie with surprise. “If worse comes to worst, you can always apprentice yourself to a clock maker.”

  She led Sophie over to the uncomfortable straight-backed chairs by the window, chairs Sophie had hated for as long as she could remember.

  “One of these days,” she said to Sophie, “you and I must have a serious talk about your future.”

  “I suppose nothing can be decided until after I sit my exams in August,” Sophie ventured. The exams loomed over the fifth-form girls; Jean had actually been sick the other night, she was so worried about calculus.

  “Sophie, you must work hard and perform to the utmost of your abilities on those exams,” her great-aunt said, looking straight into Sophie’s eyes. “If your marks aren’t high enough, we won’t be able to keep you at school for your final year, let alone send you to university.”

  Sophie did not need to be told to work. She loved all things academic; the science subjects were her favorites.

  “I’ll do everything I can,” she promised, feeling an ache in her stomach.

  “Yes, you’re a good girl, Sophie, and I know you will. But given the present situation, it’s difficult to persuade the authorities to spare even a handful of girls for university education, what with the need for Land Girls, Women’s Auxiliaries, and nurses, not to mention girls for IRYLNS.”

  The acronym—pronounced “irons”—had loomed large over Sophie’s childhood. The mission of this elite government-sponsored training scheme—in full, the Institute for the Recruitment of Young Ladies for National Security—was to supply Scotland’s leaders (members of Parliament, captains of industry
, doctors, ministers, and so on) with the highly competent assistants they needed. Great-aunt Tabitha was one of its founders, along with several of her university friends, and it had come to represent almost the most prestigious choice a girl could make of career, assuming she wanted one; most of the best Edinburgh families gave up a daughter or two to IRYLNS, rather in the spirit of their long-ago ancestors’ willingness to dedicate a son to the ministry.

  Sophie desperately wanted to study at university, but hardly any women were accepted to St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and in the last few years, most of the academic types at Sophie’s school had chosen to go straight to the training program at IRYLNS (Miss Henchman was on the board of governors).

  “I’ll go to IRYLNS instead, if it’s more important,” she said, wanting to show Great-aunt Tabitha that she was considering not simply her own selfish desires but also the National Good, a phrase heard frequently in Heriot Row. IRYLNS wouldn’t be too bad, not so long as she could assist a team of scientists or engineers or something like that.

  “Sophie, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” her great-aunt snapped.

  Sophie was taken aback. Though they hadn’t talked about it before, she had always imagined her great-aunt would be pleased to find Sophie willing to consider this alternative to a university degree. IRYLNS was her pet project—why would Great-aunt Tabitha jump down Sophie’s throat for suggesting it? Did she not think Sophie good enough?

  “So long as I have any say in the matter—and it may not be for much longer, not if war’s declared—you’ll go into IRYLNS over my dead body,” pronounced her great-aunt.

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” Great-aunt Tabitha said.

  It was one of her favorite phrases.

  Sophie felt mortified and hurt, but there was nothing she could do about it. How she hated being talked to like a child!

  At that moment the doorbell rang.

  “That’ll be Janet,” said Great-aunt Tabitha.

  Miss Janet Gillespie was a large, untidy woman, Great-aunt Tabitha’s most loyal lieutenant. She idolized Sophie’s guardian and had a nasty habit of looking at Sophie and shaking her head, as if to say how fortunate Sophie was to have a relation who didn’t scruple to sacrifice her own comfort and peace of mind for the sake of a poor wretched orphan.

  “Sophie, I expect you to join the ladies for supper—Peggy’s cleared off the dining-room table and laid places for ten—as well as the séance afterward. Miss Hodge telephoned this morning to say she couldn’t be here, so you are needed as a sitter.”

  Dismissed, Sophie slipped upstairs just in time to avoid the inevitable awkward encounter with Miss Gillespie in the hall.

  FOUR

  AT HALF PAST SEVEN, Sophie changed into a faded pink cotton frock and a soft gray cardigan she had reclaimed from the rubbish after Peggy pronounced a verdict of moth. Sophie hated séances, hated everything about them, but if she had to go to one, she might as well be comfortable.

  Downstairs, the sitting room had filled up with ladies of different shapes and sizes. None of them noticed Sophie come in, and she stood by the door and surveyed them in peace. Her eyes kept drifting to a large woman who wore a black dress with jet beading and sat by herself in the corner, holding her heavy body upright like someone not sure of her welcome.

  As the mantel clock struck eight and Great-aunt Tabitha began to round up the guests and herd them into the dining room, the stranger’s eyes met Sophie’s own. Sophie smiled and gave an awkward half nod—she didn’t want to; she didn’t like the look of the woman at all—but the woman simply stared at her, not turning away until Sophie’s great-aunt arrived at her side to escort her in to supper in the next room (oh, this must be the medium, to prompt such solicitude).

  For pudding, there was a choice between gooseberry fool or stewed fruit. Sophie asked for the plums, which were bland and inoffensive. She decided not to take a sponge finger from the biscuit barrel when it came around. Sophie’s great-aunt insisted on Peggy making them at home rather than buying the packets of ready-made ones at the shop, which she said were low-class.

  As the maid came in to clear the table, Great-aunt Tabitha stood and announced the order of affairs for the rest of the evening. Sophie’s great-aunt would examine the medium in private, in the presence of two members of the Caledonian Guild of Spiritualist Inspectors, who had spent the whole of supper silently munching their food at the foot of the table like a malevolent pair of crows. Meanwhile Miss Gillespie would organize the others into a sitters’ circle in the conservatory at the back of the house.

  Sophie had already got up from her chair and folded her napkin when her great-aunt appeared beside her.

  “Sophie, this is somewhat irregular,” she said irritably, “but our guest has asked for you to join us upstairs for the examination.”

  Sophie couldn’t imagine why the woman wanted her there. Something about the whole business gave her a bad feeling. She looked over at the medium. Arms folded, expression impassive, the woman’s eyes rested directly on Sophie.

  She followed the others up the stairs, Great-aunt Tabitha leading the procession, like a brisk but demented mother duck, to the little-used bedroom directly opposite from Sophie’s on the top floor. It was wretchedly cold and damp; Sophie pulled the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands and then clasped them in her armpits until Great-aunt Tabitha glared at her, at which point she let them drop back to her sides.

  Though she had read about this kind of inspection, Sophie had a nasty suspicion it would prove quite different to see one in person. What happened next was absolutely awful. Under Great-aunt Tabitha’s penetrating gaze, the two inspectors stripped the medium completely naked. One woman searched her—Sophie blushed and looked away when the medium was asked to bend over so that her body cavities could be checked for the concealed lengths of muslin used to fake ectoplasm—while the second inspector carefully examined each item of clothing.

  Sophie had never seen a grown-up person without any clothes on. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the vast expanse of flesh: the enormous breasts, yellow and goose-pimpled in the cold, the folds of fat over the woman’s hips and abdomen, the imbalance between her bulky thighs and skinny calves. Worst were the raw red marks where the woman’s steel-boned corset had imprinted her body. In places the chafing had actually broken the skin.

  Sophie dared not look at the woman’s face until the inspectors had given her back her undergarments and a cloak to cover herself. The rest of the medium’s clothes would be kept from her until afterward, so that she couldn’t use them to conceal the accessories of fraudulence. When Sophie did look, the woman’s expression puzzled her. Instead of the humiliation and anger one might have expected, the medium wore a look of calm satisfaction. As Sophie’s eyes met hers, the woman’s face broke into a disturbing smile. Why should she look like someone gloating over a private victory?

  Sophie’s unease deepened as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. In the conservatory, the medium’s wrists were tied with cloth tape, the knots sealed with wax, and the ends of the tape tied to the chairs on either side of her. Ten chairs had been arranged in a circle around a black-and-gold lacquered table of vaguely Japanese provenance.

  As the guests took their seats, Sophie chose one as far from the medium as possible. The maid dimmed the lamps.

  “Join hands,” Great-aunt Tabitha intoned, “to promote the energy flow among the sitters. Spirits of the Great Beyond, we are gathered this evening in the company of your servant Mrs. Euphemia Tansy in the hope that we will be honored by some sign of your presence. We will hear anything you wish to impart about life on the Other Side. We await your instructions.”

  Most of the women had closed their eyes, but Sophie kept hers open just a crack, enough to sneak a look around the table. She found séances less frightening when she could see what was happening. (But she hoped Great-aunt Tabitha wouldn’t start inviting her ofte
n—one every six weeks or so already seemed more than enough.) The sitters’ hands were clasped together, each pair of hands resting on the table in front of them. The medium was absolutely motionless, her glassy eyes staring off into the middle distance.

  When the voice came, Sophie jumped and almost lost her grip on the hands on either side of her.

  “Who calls me here?”

  It was a man’s voice, lightly Scandinavian-accented and seeming to emanate from a point in midair several feet above the medium’s head.

  “I do,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, her voice not faltering at all.

  “I cannot tell of life on the other side,” said the voice, “for I speak to you from limbo. Though my body has long since fallen to dust, my soul is not yet able to leave its shell. I answer your call for another reason. I am here to speak to the youngest one among you, one whose help I require to release me from my mortal coil.”

  Sophie looked quickly around her, but there was no doubt about it: she was certainly by many years the youngest person at the table.

  Meanwhile the table rocked slightly beneath their hands, and several women gasped.

  To Sophie’s utter dismay, she felt a slight breeze and the sensation of a hand touching her face. This was too awful, it couldn’t really be happening—oh god, could this have anything to do with what she’d seen in the mirror upstairs? Only half aware of what she was doing, Sophie started shaking her head. A small moan escaped from her mouth and she suddenly had a new appreciation for the cliché paralyzed by fear. Go away, she said in her head. Leave me alone.

 

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