Jenny Telfer Chaplin

by Hopes

  There she saw a tall figure clothed in what Ivy took to be a long, evening cape such as was favoured by well-to-do Victorian gentlemen. However, as the features became clearer they were certainly those of a North American Indian.

  But, Ivy thought, Indians don’t wear such cloaks. Not in any film I’ve ever seen.

  The clear and detailed image persisted. It was almost as if the apparition was determined to impress its features and apparel on Ivy’s mind for all time.

  Later that evening, with no hint of surprise on his part at hearing the details of what had been a mind shattering revelation for Ivy, Bill agreed. Yes, he was quite sure she had seem the full figure spirit form of a Red Indian.

  At Ivy’s objection regarding the dress, Bill smiled.

  “Ivy, I take it you’ve never seen paintings of Mohican or Mohawk Indians from the 1600s?”

  Ivy shook her head.

  “In the 17th and early 18th centuries Red Indians dressed rather differently,” Bill said, then without another word rose and left the room.

  When he returned he had a print showing the very type of Indian she had seen. A man dressed in a toga-style tunic with a rich, elegant, red cloak draped over his shoulder. Bill told her that their visitor of the evening had been none other than an Indian spirit guide, already known to Bill and other seekers after enlightenment, called Gentle Breeze.

  It all made sense to Ivy now. Never again would she be ‘sitting on the fence’ regarding the concept of the supernatural. Having been privileged to see this figure she would indeed go with the flow of life and accept the concept that everything in life is always the way it is meant to be.

  Chapter Ten

  On one weekend Ivy persuaded a young reporter from Largs to come to Ardfyne with a group of ladies from his home town for a paranormal conference. They saw spiritual healing in action, discussed various aspects of spiritual enlightenment and, of course, sat in on a number of trancing sessions. During one trance one of the ladies turned to Ivy and said: “I don’t believe it, that was John Lennon I just saw.”

  There was a murmur of agreement then everyone gasped in surprise. A clear vision appeared and the young reporter said: “That’s the Queen Mum!”

  Without a doubt everyone saw her and in a roomful of people it would be difficult to argue that they had not all seen the same image. Ivy was as thrilled as the rest sitting across from the Queen Mum looking her usual regal, smiling self.

  There had been other media people staying at Ardfyne before and in the past, by the end of their stay, they would deny any and every sighting with the usual: “I thought I saw ... but now I realise it was my imagination.”

  Yes, Ivy thought, it’s the old story. Exactly what Hunter warned me about years ago when I was a young reporter. As a journalist it is essential to keep your integrity.

  However, braver by far than many media personnel who ‘chickened out’ with the ‘morning after’ syndrome, the young reporter risked his job and future career as an investigative journalist by publishing an honest and accurate account of his weekend.

  Callum stated clearly and categorically that together with a party of ladies from Largs he too had seen the image of the departed Queen Mother. The article caused a sensation and sold many extra copies of the local paper.

  Far from damaging his career it seemed to advance it, although Callum found for some time when he walked into his local pub the regulars who knew him would start humming the theme tune from The Twilight Zone. He was also constantly quizzed about the possibility that, ‘It was all done by mirrors, lights, and such stage effects.’

  Some months after Callum’s visit and article, Bill turned to Ivy and said: “I don’t really want to tell you this, Ivy, but I feel obliged to pass on a message from spirit to you. I know very little of your life outside this hotel and the communication means nothing to me, but it may well be of some significance to you. Spirit are telling me that they see you surrounded by illness on all side.”

  Ivy was startled by this. Not so much by the cryptic transmission as by the fact that Bill seemed to foretelling the future – something he normally steadfastly refused to do.

  In Ivy’s early days at Ardfyne a group of young women obviously desperate to hear if they would meet and marry the man of their dreams and live happily ever after, kept pestering Bill to give them a ‘reading’. Despite Bill’s constant refusals they simply would not take, no, for an answer. Eventually he did let them come as a group to Ardfyne to witness a trancing session. The girls, all of a flutter, duly arrived and were shown into the candle-lit drawing room. Bill quickly went into trance and the usual host of faces from the past appeared superimposed on Bill’s face

  From the gasps of amazement and exclamations of recognition, Ivy felt relieved and thought that perhaps the evening had gone off better that Bill had anticipated. However, when the trancing finished and there was still no whisper about a glowing rose-tinted future for any one of them, one of the bolder girls voiced the thoughts and bitter disappointment of the group.

  “I didn’t come all the way up here tonight just to see a lot of mouldy old dead people.”

  When the girls had left, Bill said: “I will not ever predict anyone’s future. Apart from anything else it can destroy a person’s free will and choice to make their own decisions as to future events. What I will do is, if at any time I get a message, no matter how cryptic, relating to a person, that I will tell them. It could well mean something to the individual for whom the communication is intended.”

  In recalling this incident Ivy realised Bill was not fortune-telling he was simply passing on what spirit had told him.

  Well, Ivy thought, presumably all will become clear in due course. No point in my worrying about it now.

  So, unfazed by the first spirit message she had ever received, Ivy carried on as usual. There were the normal hectic preparations leading up to the festive season at the hotel and, those over, Ivy accepted an invitation to spend a few days with her parents in Glasgow.

  One day, relaxing in the Jacuzzi her mother has just recently persuaded Ivy’s father, the doctor, to have installed, her mother said: I couldn’t help noticing, Ivy, but you’ve got a very curious mark in the middle of your back. I really think you should let your father have a look at it.”

  At her mother’s insistence Ivy reluctantly let her father look at her back. He made the usual non-committal noises doctors frequently do, and arranged to have her seen by a specialist.

  All of her immediate circle, including her father, were astonished how calmly Ivy took the news that she had malignant melanoma and would require immediate surgery. Ivy was sure that what helped her through the initial days of acceptance was the cryptic spirit message – it had said she would be surrounded by sickness, and to be surrounded she would have to be alive.

  Yes, everything is the way it is meant to be, Ivy thought.

  Following successful surgery to remove the tumour from her back Ivy refused to accept chemo- or radio-therapy and any medication. She would, she said, rely on the skill of the surgeon, regular check-ups at the hospital, positive thought, prayer, and the wonder and power of spiritual healing.

  When she first mentioned her ‘plan of action’ to her surgeon in the presence of an attendant young nurse, Ivy thought the poor girl was about to pass out in horror at the audacity of any patient thus addressing a senior consultant.

  The oncologist listened politely, made a few notes in her file and said: “Let’s just get you recuperated fully from the operation first, and then we’ll see later.”

  Back at Ardfyne, Ivy stuck to her guns and refused all treatment. Bill laid hands on her shoulders and spirit doctors did the rest. Ivy had travelled far on her journey of spiritual enlightenment and self awareness. Her notes and research on the paranormal now filled several large folders but her world-shaking best-seller was still no nearer completion.

  Nearly three years later, after another clean bill of health, Ivy asked the specialist if there was
anything else she should or should not be doing.

  He glanced through her case-notes again, smiled and said: “I don’t know precisely what it is that you are currently doing, but my considered advice is, don’t change a winning team. And, no sunbathing!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Her holiday interlude with David Wood, although doubtless he had had several live-in lovers in the intervening years, still flickered from time to time. They still wrote to each other and with each letter from him Ivy thought: Maybe, one day, I might try to relight our romance. But for the moment it’s good to know that at least we’re still friends.

  One day, as Ivy sat at her table pen in hand but mind elsewhere, Bill walked in.

  “Not interrupting am I?”

  Ivy shook her head. “No, I was just sitting daydreaming.”

  “You love this house, don’t you, Ivy? Spirit are telling me this is your time to be here at Ardfyne – to enjoy it. Hold fast to every minute. Nothing lasts forever. Remember that.”

  Another Cowal Games had come and passed. The frenetic hustle and bustle of Games Week was over for another year. Gradually the hotel had emptied and only two holiday makers, booked in for the weekend, remained.

  Some repairs were needed for the flat roof over the restaurant and Bill had authorised a start to them. After dinner, Ivy was sitting in the drawing room enjoying a chat with the two guests, and Bill was relaxing in his ‘granny’ chair preparatory to going into trance. The lights flickered, then went out altogether leaving them in darkness. Bill and Ivy went to the hallway intending to get the storm lantern which was always kept on the hall table. The moment they opened the door from the drawing room they were engulfed in smoke. Then flames were visible reaching down from the ceiling of the corridor of the upper floor.

  Quick thinking on Bill’s part ensured that they all got out safely. The fire-brigade was alerted and while they waited for their arrival there was nothing could be done but watch with mounting horror and a feeling of utter helplessness the destructions of the once lovely building.

  Friends rallied round as word quickly reached the rest of the town. Mrs Muir arranged essential temporary accommodation.

  Next morning, Ivy stood with others in the yard in front of the hotel discussing the possibility of repairs and restoration. Ivy glanced up at the roof and yelled: “Oh, no! It has started burning again.”

  By the time the brigade had dowsed the flames again Bill and his friends were left to view the charred remains of the house now beyond repair.

  “The blessing is that no one was injured,” Bill said. “We all got out safely even if shaken.”

  Ivy frowned. “What I cannot understand is this: why couldn’t spirit have given you a message – a warning – of what was about to happen?”

  “Spirit never tell me anything for myself, Ivy. You already know enough of spiritual teachings to realise that everything is always the way it is meant to be.”

  “Even so, it’s a very hard concept to come to terms with, especially at a terrible time like this.”

  Bill patted Ivy’s shoulder.

  “Something else you’ve already learned, Ivy. They never make our life’s journey easy. You know that. Look at your battle with cancer. And your rows with your father on his opposite views on healing. No. It’s never an easy road they set us on. But the important thing is how we react, indeed what we learn from such challenges.”

  Ivy nodded. “I suppose so.”

  “You reacted by fighting your illness. You made up with your parents and you were all the best of friends before they retired and went off to Cyprus, weren’t you?”

  “True, I must have learnt something of spiritual teachings, and it’s all thanks to you, Bill.”

  “No, Ivy, thanks to spirit you mean.”

  “Remember a couple of years ago right out of the blue you said I should savour the experience for that was my time to be at Ardfyne. Nothing lasts forever, you said. I remember every word of that conversation. Was that by way of being a prediction?”

  “Spirit alone could tell you the answer to that. But I repeat: everything is the way it is supposed to be. Hold fast to that. Whatever the tragedy, keep that thought and not only will you win through whatever trauma it is, but you will emerge a stronger, more spiritual person and thus better able to help others in their time of trial.”

  “You really think so, Bill?”

  “I know so. Wherever you go, whatever you decide to do from now on, always be kind. Remember everyone is fighting a hard battle – the battle of life.”

  Ivy looked up at him through her tears.

  “I’ll never forget you, Bill. You’ve been more than kind to me and you’ve taught me so much. What are you going to do now?”

  “Ivy, you know I never make plans. I’ll just see what evolves. Assuredly something good will emerge for something bad. That I most certainly do believe. Where do you go from here?”

  Ivy managed a smile.

  “Thanks to all the spiritual teaching and my now greater self-awareness, like you, my mentor, I never make plans. But I do realise I have options. I could relocate to Glasgow; I could join my parents in Cyprus, they keep inviting me; I could contact Dave Wood in Birmingham, last I heard he was between relationships. Perhaps, at long last, I could finally write my novel on the paranormal – purely fiction, of course – but with the ring of truth. That’s it! I’ll write my novel.”

  If you enjoyed reading Hopes and Sorrow you may be interested in reading Love and Sorrow by Jenny Telfer Chaplin, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Love and Sorrow by Jenny Telfer Chaplin

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  1 July 1899

  The early morning light filtered through the threadbare curtains at the window of the tenement flat but for all the joy it brought the three young women in the room at the dawning of a summer’s day, it might as well have been the dark of mid-winter. Engaged as they were in this most secret of tasks, the darkness was already in their souls. As one tear-stained, matted-haired woman writhed in agony on the bed, the second with her untrained, so-called midwifery skills, struggled to bring into the world a reluctant baby, and the third member of their conspiracy sat continuously chewing her fingernails to the quick as if already doubting the wisdom of their actions.

  As they all knew the pregnant woman had been in the throes of her tortuous labour for what seemed to them an endless age but which was in reality a little more than ten hours. Despite the midwife’s well-meaning but feeble efforts the baby was no nearer to making his or her way into the waiting world. The constant urging to keep pushing but to do so quietly lest her screams be heard by the bairns across the landing in the neighbour’s flat did even less to comfort the patient than the regular mopping of her brow with a vinegar-soaked rag.

  With the light gaining strength the appointments of the room gradually became clearer – the black steel sink under the window; the goose-necked cold water tap; the wax-cloth-covered table; the mantelpiece with its regulation pair of wally dugs, brass candlesticks, tea caddy, and overhanging gas mantle; the crammed to capacity pulley with its array of vests, towels, nappies, and knickers; the home-made wee creepie stool; the rather decrepit armchair into which the ‘Heid o’ the Hoose’ would slump when home between stints as an ocean going deckhand.

  Just as the rays of the sun reached the recess bed and the pain-wracked face of the young woman, with a final scream and arching of her body, she finally expelled the burden she had carried with her for nine long, weary months. What a hated burden it had been for both her and her sister. For the final months and weeks of her pregnancy Meg had ventured out only at night enveloped in an enormous, moth-eaten shawl, while her sister, Nellie, had waddled round the streets of Bridgeton and her already child-filled tenement home with a cushion tied to her waist creating the supposed bump of a growing baby in her belly.

  The self-styled midwife cleaned up the baby, wrapped it in a crocheted shawl, and held out
the latest bundle of humanity.

  “There she is then, a bonnie wee baby.”

  When there was no reply, nor even as much as answering smiles from her audience, Hannah persisted. “Weel, if naethin else, surely between the pair o ye wi aw the fine planning ye’ve done, surely tae God ye’ve at least thought up a name for the puir wee bastard.”

  As the harshness and bitter reality of this hated word sounded in the stillness of the early morning somehow its echoes seemed to hang in the air between them. Finally Nellie got slowly to her feet and glaring at Hannah said in a voice low with menace: “Bastard? Naethin o the kind. Don’t you iver again use that hideous word referring to that poor wee mite.”

  Hannah nodded and opened her mouth as if to speak, but Nellie hadn’t finished with her tirade.

  “See her? See that wee scrap o humanity – you can call her any first name ye like, but Ah’m tellin ye this: as far as her surname goes … she’ll bear ma husband’s name, jist like aw the rest of ma ither bairns. Dae ye understand?” Hannah nodded. “Jist in case ye don’t get the picture, frae this minute on ye keep your silence – silent as the grave would jist aboot dae it.”

  Hannah locked glances with the red-faced Mrs Nellie Bryden then slowly and deliberately rolled down her sleeves.

  “Oh aye! That’s one thing sure … Ah’ll no be saying a word tae naebody. Apart frae onythin else – and maybe ye dinnae ken this, Mrs Know-it-all, but see the very minute ye gie false details aboot an illegitimate bairn on any official document, like it or lump it, ye will be breaking the law o the land, so ye will.”