by Rosie Thomas
The man had called on her twice before. On the first occasion she had been out at Faith’s and on the second she had told Peggy to say she was not at home. When he turned up for the third time she realised that he would go on knocking at her front door day after day until she did agree to see him, so she had let him in. Lawrence Feather was not a welcome guest, but now he was here she would at least show him that she ran a proper household.
Feather was not the man to be deflected from his purpose by tea or sponge cake. As soon as he could he put his cup aside and leaned forward.
‘I need your help,’ he said.
She inclined her head. ‘Really? In what way?’
‘I think you don’t believe in psychism, Mrs Wix?’
She frowned. ‘I have seen plenty of stage cheats and music-hall fakery. Clutching icy hands, floating mists, bells clanging when there is no one to ring them, that sort of thing. There is no real harm in it, as entertainment for those who are so inclined. But there has never been a so-called manifestation that couldn’t be explained away by hidden wires, a yard or two of fine muslin, a human arm in a black sleeve. All in a darkened room, naturally. Possibly I am too coarse to be susceptible to the real thing, Mr Feather.’
He did not flinch. He just looked at her, his eyes glowing like coals in their hollow sockets.
‘I don’t believe you are in the least coarse, Mrs Wix. Let me put it to you in a different way. Are you quite certain that there are no senses on the fringe of human consciousness, nothing whatsoever beyond the range of what is accepted as normal or physical?’
Eliza hesitated.
‘I think none of us can be quite certain of that. I was talking about those cheap stage performances I have seen with my own eyes and know to be fraudulent. You are speaking of different matters, perhaps.’
‘I am.’
The man probably conveyed all sorts of damaging nonsense to the lost and bereaved who made up his audiences. She was suspicious of him and his motives.
He lifted his hand. ‘You know, of course, that I lost my sister Helena, and my dear brother-in-law, when the steamer sank. We spoke of it when we met at Lord’s.’
‘Yes. You have my sympathy.’
‘Thank you. You and your family suffered your own loss. However, Mrs Wix, I am not married. Helena was all I had. I loved her dearly. Perhaps even too dearly.’
There was a shiver of a pause. Feather’s tongue moistened his lips before he smoothly continued, ‘Our parents passed years ago and we have no other siblings. She was my lieutenant in my work, and she knew everything about my efforts to open a conduit from this world to the regions beyond.’
He anticipated the obvious question.
‘You are wondering, since this is my claimed expertise, if I am able to speak to her now, or if she has in any way reached out to me?’
‘Yes.’
His voice sank to a whisper. He seemed on the brink of tears.
‘I have tried. I have tried with all my heart, and every fibre of my capacity. There is a tumult of voices out there, crying and calling, clamouring for me to open their channels, but there is no Helena.’
Eliza could not help feeling sympathy, even for a charlatan.
‘Only once, on the night she passed, did I hear anything. I stood on the beach in front of the hotel and I wanted to die from grief. I hoped I would die, God forgive me. Then Helena spoke suddenly to me out of the silence. She said, “I am here.”’
‘Was that a comfort to you?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. Oh yes, it was the greatest comfort. But that was all she said, even though I stood for hours in the same place, waiting and hoping. Since that night there has been nothing. No word and no sign – except for one significant thing.’
The calculating glance he gave her was at odds with his grieving demeanour and her sympathy faded.
‘What is that?’
‘I was invited at the last moment to attend the Schools Match by my godson, the child of an old friend, a young man thoughtful in his efforts to lift me out of my sorrow. I almost didn’t go, but I didn’t want to reject a kindness.’
‘You introduced us.’ Eliza recalled the plump boy’s merriment.
‘I did. And there at Lord’s I saw your daughter again. Mrs Wix, I could only interpret such a coincidence as no coincidence at all, but a sign from Helena.’
‘My daughter?’
‘Yes. You know that Nancy has unusual psychic powers?’
This must stop immediately, Eliza thought. She stood up, stretching to her full height.
‘To encounter people by chance at a public-school cricket match is not a sign of any kind. My daughter is thirteen years old. She has no powers. I don’t want you to speak of her in relation to your beliefs. I would like you to leave my house now, and never to come here again.’
A spasm of pain darted from the small of her back and travelled down her thighs and into her calves, making her gasp. She held on to the back of her chair for support. Lawrence Feather gazed into her face as if he knew and understood what she felt.
He murmured, ‘Thirteen is a crucial age for a young girl. The senses are newly awakened, and the powers are as sharp and subtle as they ever will be. Nancy is a clairvoyant and precognisant, I knew it the instant I saw her in the saloon of the hotel.’
Eliza straightened as the pain released her.
‘What tripe.’
‘No, Mrs Wix. Truth. I am certain that Helena intends Nancy to be our channel. I have come here to ask you – to beg you – to let me be your daughter’s control. She could be a great medium some day.’
‘This is impertinent nonsense. Please go now or I shall have to call for help.’
‘You won’t allow me to consult Nancy herself?’
‘Most definitely I will not.’
Downstairs the front door slammed.
Cornelius was at his new place of work, Devil was at the theatre and Arthur was spending the day with a friend. The arrival could only be Nancy herself. Eliza had sent her to the draper’s shop at the far end of the Essex Road to buy a length of tweed for a new winter coat. Eliza had given her some other commissions to attend to on the way back, and she had only let Lawrence Feather into the house in the expectation that he would be long gone by the time Nancy returned.
‘Stay here,’ she ordered, hoping to intercept her daughter and send her straight to her room. But she was too late. Pink-cheeked from the brisk walk, Nancy appeared in the doorway carrying a brown paper parcel tied with string.
‘I have the tweed but Ransom’s is closed today for family reasons, the notice in the window says. Oh.’
‘Good afternoon, Nancy,’ Lawrence Feather said.
Nancy’s stricken expression convinced Eliza that something significant had already taken place between her daughter and the medium. Unwelcome speculations raced through her mind. Nancy’s childhood had been sheltered and – by her parents’ standards – privileged, and she was as innocent as a much younger girl. That was what Eliza and Devil had intended for her, and they had schemed and struggled to make it happen.
Eliza thought quickly. If she dismissed the man now, he would not give up. She imagined him lying in wait for Nancy, watching her movements from a niche across the canal and springing out to seize her by the arm in some deserted street. In her own youth she had suffered a similar attack and the memory of it would never leave her.
It would be better to confront this business. She wished Devil were here, but then Devil’s response would certainly be aggressive and Lawrence Feather might be better handled with greater cunning. Eliza took her seat again. She seemed to consider and then reach a decision.
‘Please join us, Nancy. Mr Feather and I were talking about his sad loss and then a little about his psychic theories.’
She spoke neutrally, as if the theories related to nothing more controversial than gardening or dog breeding.
Nancy obediently sat behind the shelter of the tea table. She glanced from her mother to the vis
itor.
Feather didn’t hesitate.
‘You will recall what happened on that terrible morning, Nancy, when I found you on the beach?’
Nancy pressed her lips between her teeth. ‘Yes.’
‘I was explaining to your mother that I had already recognised you as one of our number. It is one of my best-developed skills, and a source of particular satisfaction to me, to adopt and encourage new practitioners in the psychic arts.’
Eliza almost smiled. The man was preeningly vain, and his absurdity immediately made him seem less alarming. Nancy was young, but she would surely see that he was ridiculous.
‘That morning we shared a psychic experience, did we not? I told you that you are a seer, and you should not be afraid of your gift.’
‘Is this what happened, Nancy?’
Nancy gave the smallest possible nod. She felt as if she were being goaded into an awkward place between the rock of her mother’s hostility and the chasm of Mr Feather’s horrible powers. Then it came to her, with a surge of rebellion, that neither of them could really know about the Uncanny. Mr Feather might have tipped her deeper into it, with his heavy hand on her head, but he didn’t see inside her. He hadn’t glimpsed the mud and the trees and the shattered men, nor had her mother.
The Uncanny was hers alone. The privacy of it seemed suddenly to be her strength as much as a weakness. At the Lord’s match, she had even established some control over it. She didn’t know what the gift really was or why it had been granted to her, but maybe the man was right. There would be a use for it.
‘What else?’ Eliza asked.
Nancy slowly shook her head.
‘Nothing.’
‘I know you will tell me the truth, Nancy.’
Eliza expected nothing less than absolute candour.
‘There is nothing, Mama.’
Feather put in, ‘Mrs Wix, this is not the place to discuss such matters but I assure you …’
Eliza held up her hand.
‘The psychic arts.’ Her tone was wintry, with mockery in it keen as a blade. ‘Mr Feather has a theory, Nancy. He believes that there are voices from beyond the grave, and it is his work, or profession – he tells me that he is a professional medium – to channel them, as he calls it. It’s in relation to this work that Mr Feather has called today to ask a favour of you.’
‘Of me?’
Eliza was confident now. She had all the ammunition she needed.
‘He believes that you can help him to speak to Mrs Clare.’
Nancy’s dry lips cracked and made her wince. ‘But Mrs Clare is dead. And Phyllis and Mr Clare and the little girl.’
‘Yes, very sadly that is true. Unfortunately, Mr Feather can’t reach his late sister on the other side or hear her messages himself, despite his skills. He believes that you will be able to do this for him. Under his control, that is.’
There was a silence. Lawrence Feather’s eyes implored Nancy. She sank lower in her chair.
Eliza asked, ‘Do you think you can do this, Nancy?’
‘No.’
The monosyllable dropped into stillness. With a stage artist’s timing Eliza let the silence gather and deepen. At last she said, ‘There you are. You asked to be allowed to consult my daughter, and against my preference you have been able to do so. You have your answer, Mr Feather.’
He started forwards in his chair. ‘Nancy, please listen to me. You and I both know …’
Eliza cut him short. She stood again, ignoring the pains in her back. Her demeanour was so forbidding that the medium fell silent.
‘There’s nothing more to be discussed.’
She crossed to the door and held it open.
Only when she had seen him out of the house and watched him walking to the tram stop did she return to Nancy. The girl was hunched in her chair, her arms wrapped around herself. Eliza believed the child was telling the truth – she was too obedient to do otherwise – but the afternoon’s events were still troubling.
‘What nonsense. The poor man must be unbalanced by grief.’
Nancy raised her head. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.
Her gaze seemed clouded, no longer quite that of an innocent child.
‘I ask you one more time, Nancy. Are you quite sure that nothing untoward happened with that man? Did he touch or even speak to you in any way that was improper?’
Nancy’s face flooded with colour.
‘No, not at all.’
‘Then why does his presence trouble you? It’s obvious that it does.’
‘I’m not denying it, Mama. He is strange, and to see him makes me think of the steamer and Phyllis.’
It was an oblique version of the truth and Nancy reddened at even slightly misrepresenting herself to her mother.
Eliza considered. Nancy wasn’t an actress, she couldn’t feign distress so convincingly. The Queen Mab had been a shocking experience for all three children, and it was natural for Nancy to be upset by the reminder. She put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
‘I understand.’
Eliza and Devil had decided that they should not dwell on the circumstances of the tragedy. In their own experience the best way to deal with shocking events was to leave them in the past. She hugged Nancy briefly and then released her.
‘You will not have to meet that man again.’
‘Mama?’
‘What is it?’
‘Is there such a thing as psychism? Can the dead speak to us?’
Eliza hesitated. It was a long time since she had been able to command the reverie. Long ago, by emptying her mind on an exhaled breath, she had been able to slip into a peaceful dimension of intense colours. She had been a rebellious child, and she had used the ability as a shield against adult wrath and a refuge from tedium. Later when she had taken employment as an artists’ model, she had made professional use of the reverie to hold her pose in the life-drawing class.
The power had gradually deserted her at about the time she fell in love with Devil, and she supposed now that the condition had been connected with the physical and emotional changes of young womanhood. She had never heard voices from the other side, and she was sure that her innocent reverie was no channel to the supernatural.
Devil had been the one who claimed that he saw ghosts. But then Devil had suffered such hardships and horrors during his childhood it was hardly surprising his imagination had turned macabre. Yet he too had grown out of his susceptibility. He had not spoken of his ghosts for many years now.
Eliza considered herself to be a rational woman with modern ideas. Her scepticism was founded in years of exposure to the tricks and devices of stage illusionists.
‘No, the dead do not speak to us,’ she answered at length. ‘But as you already know there are some people who claim they do.’
‘Why do they do that?’
She patted Nancy’s hand. The naivety of the question reassured her. It was time to finish this conversation and move on to healthier topics.
‘For money, or perhaps for public attention,’ she smiled. ‘Now, look at the time. You should go and dress, or we will be late at Aunt Faith’s.’
Nancy went upstairs. Across the landing, in the larger front bedroom shared by Cornelius and Arthur, Arthur’s school trunk and boxes were packed and corded ready for the carrier. Tomorrow, Devil and Eliza would drive their son to Harrow School in the De Dion-Bouton. The motor car had been polished to a state of glittering perfection by old Gibb, the chauffeur-mechanic Devil had employed to look after it.
In contrast to his brother’s success, Cornelius had recently become a clerk in a shipping office. Every day he carried sandwiches packed in a tin box to his place of work and he had described to Nancy how he sat on a bench in a nearby graveyard to eat them.
‘I like it. It’s peaceful.’
He dismissed all questions about his colleagues or the actual work he performed, but this surprised no one. Cornelius was never communicative.
Nancy leaned on the win
dowsill, as Lizzie had done when she smoked the startling cigarette. From here she could look straight down into the basement area where the mangle stood under its tin roof. A little iron bridge led from the dining room across to the garden where Eliza liked to grow flowers for their fragrance. The strong perfume of night-scented jasmine was already drifting upwards.
She hadn’t confided in her mother. She had the not altogether unpleasant sense of having cut her moorings.
She had said No to Mr Feather because it was true in the broad sense. She didn’t think she could speak to Mrs Clare.
Yet she did know that there had been an unnatural relationship between Mr Feather and his sister. Helena Clare had been afraid of him; Nancy had clearly seen it in her face. Instead of the garden lying below her she saw a boathouse and a moored boat with cushioned seats. Outside, shafts of greenish light struck across lake water and in the shadowy interior two bodies grappled and then locked together. The rowing boat violently rocked. She was witnessing something horrible and wrong, and she was disgusted as well as afraid.
It was a mild evening, still early, but the hairs on Nancy’s forearms rose.
She drew her head inside and slammed the window on the Uncanny. An unexpected glint of light on metal caught her eye and she crossed to her dressing table to see what it was. Lying next to her hairbrush was a silver locket she had never seen before. The chain was neatly folded but it was tarnished, as was the locket itself. She picked it up and cupped it in the hollow of her hand. There was a faint design of engraved leaves on the front and traces of dirt caught in the filigree. Unwillingly, she turned the piece over.
The initials engraved on the reverse were HMF.
Her hand shook but she slipped her thumbnail into the crease between the halves of the locket and prised it open. Within lay two locks of hair, twisted to form a ring and bound with scarlet thread. The tiny circlet was damp and earth was matted in it.
She closed the locket and dropped it on the dressing table. She knew whose initials these must be, and whose heads the two locks of hair had come from.
Arthur raced up the stairs, his boots skidding on the linoleum. He drummed on Nancy’s door.