Death and Faxes

by Julie Howlin

  Dr Brooke was frightening - tall and thin with a long, red throat. A couple of white hairs his shaver had missed sprouted from his pronounced Adam’s apple, and I could not take my eyes off them as they bobbed up and down whenever he spoke.

  He tried to put me at ease by giving me a boiled sweet from a jar that he kept on his desk. I unwrapped it slowly and popped it in my mouth. The tart sweetness of it swirled around my tongue.

  Suddenly, I saw my grandfather's ghost standing in the corner. He winked at me and held a finger to his lips. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said. ‘Your mother and Dr Brooke can’t see me - so don’t talk to me out loud, just listen. I'll tell you what to say.’

  ‘Sit still, Tabitha,’ my mother hissed at me. I was fidgeting on the chair because my thighs were sticking to the leather.

  ‘Your mother tells me you see people in your room at night,’ said Dr Brooke. ‘Would you like to tell me about them?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, anxious to tell someone who would understand, but my grandfather shook his head. ‘Don’t tell him about us,’ he said. ‘He’s only pretending he understands. Tell him no.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Tabitha!’ My mother cried. ‘Where are your manners? Tell the doctor what you tell me.’

  I looked at the doctor, and he nodded encouragingly. I looked at Grandfather, who was shaking his head. I felt confused.

  ‘Listen, Tabitha, I know this is going to sound like a bad thing to do,’ Grandfather said, ‘but I want you to say that you don’t see anything.’

  He was asking me to lie. I’d always been taught that lying was wrong.

  ‘Don’t just sit there gaping into space,’ said my mother. ‘Speak to the doctor.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a lie,’ said Grandfather. ‘But it’s what is known as a white lie. One that you tell for a good reason - to protect someone, or to protect yourself. Tell him you don’t see anything.’

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ I said again, in a very small voice.

  ‘You don’t see anything,’ the doctor repeated with an edge of annoyance in his voice, and I knew then that I couldn’t trust him with my secrets.

  I glanced at Grandfather. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now say you made us up because you wanted your mum to talk to you instead of Caroline.’

  I repeated his words, hardly daring to look at either the doctor or my mother.

  ‘You made them up? Tabitha...’

  It was Dr Brooke who saved me from a scolding. ‘If that’s true, Mrs Drake, you have a very imaginative, intelligent and insightful little girl there,’ he said. ‘What I’d like to do is carry out a few tests, just to make sure.’

  The psychiatrist pronounced me perfectly normal after four or five appointments. My mother, relieved that I wasn’t crazy like Gran, bought me an ice cream. Strawberry flavour.

  **

  All the houses down the long, long road where my grandmother lived looked exactly the same. Yet I always knew when we’d reached her house. I could feel the warmth of her welcome from the street. When the front gate closed behind us, the sound it made was almost musical. Rose bushes flanked the gravel pathway and in summer I would be almost intoxicated by the scent and dazzled by the array of colours.

  The front door was a rich, deep red with frosted glass panels on either side. On the left was a card with her name on it - so her clients would know they had reached the right house. I would press the bell and hear a deep, resonant chime. Before long I would see movement through the glass as my grandmother came to let me in.

  As I stepped inside, I would smell what Gran had been baking - sometimes it was fruitcake, sometimes cookies, sometimes bread. Gran would give me a warm hug and a kiss and say, ‘How’s my special little girl today, then?’

  On my left as I stepped inside, was a huge mirror with a mahogany frame, which took up most of the wall. When I was little, I had to stand on tiptoe to see my face in it, but as an adult, I could just glance at myself as I passed. The oak sideboard had a cut glass bowl and two vases placed on doilies standing on it. On my right, a staircase - in later years equipped with an electronic stair lift, the only concession Gran ever made to growing older. At the bottom of the stairs stood an old-fashioned telephone on a small table, beside a pile of junk mail and fliers, which Gran had decided, rightly, as it had turned out, that life was too short to read.

  As a child, by the time we got there I was invariably desperate to visit the small room under the stairs. It had no windows and the light was dim. There would always be lavender scented soap in a dish, and on the floor behind the door stood a doll with blonde curls and a toilet roll under a knitted cover for a skirt. As a child, I felt quite sorry for her, shut up in the dark all day. I’d often consider smuggling her out and taking her home to join the family of toys in my room, but I knew I’d get a telling off from Mum and Gran if I did.

  When I was done, and my hands smelled dutifully of lavender, I would be ushered into the back room, which had a small TV and a worn, faded sofa. Gran would offer me a drink and something to eat - my earliest memory is of orange squash and cookies; as I got older, it would be a cup of tea and some cake. Later still it was sherry and cake. I would sit on the sofa while the refreshments were prepared. There was a tiny hole in the upholstery about the size of my finger and I could never resist poking my finger through it. If my mother or Caroline were with me, I would be scolded for that.

  The back room had another sideboard in it. This one was crowded with framed photographs. There was one of Gran on her wedding day, looking up adoringly at the grandfather I had never met, or not while he was alive, anyway. My mother, looking defiant, and terribly like my older sister, on her wedding day, clinging to my father’s arm. He looked dashing and full of happiness and energy which having a mortgage and three daughters seemed to have leeched out of him. I wished I’d known him then.

  There was a picture of Caroline as a baby and one of me as a baby. Later there was a baby picture of Amber as well. Then there were the latest school photos of each of us. Caroline always looked neat and immaculate, her fair hair in a tight plait and her school tie perfectly straight. I always looked as if I wasn’t related to her at all - my hair was black and my plait would always be coming undone and my tie would be askew. Later on, our graduation photos took up residence. I’m sure all our weddings would have been there, too, if she’d lived long enough to see any of us marry.

  On the coffee table was a pile of magazines like the ones in the doctor’s. I asked her once why they were there. ‘They’re for my customers to read while they’re waiting,’ she’d said.

  Gran's waiting list for psychic readings was a year long. I was the only one of her female descendants to inherit her gift, so I was the only one ever admitted to the holy of holies, her consulting room. I loved the sickly sweet smell of the room, which I now know was incense. In the bay window was a round table covered with a purple velvet cloth. On it stood my grandmother’s crystal ball, one of the most beautiful objects I had ever seen.

  I wasn’t supposed to touch it, but when Gran wasn’t looking, I often ran my hand over its cool, smooth surface. Next to it, a deck of well-thumbed Tarot cards was neatly stacked with a smooth pink pebble on top, that I now know was rose quartz. Gran would sometimes get me to look into the crystal ball to see if I could see anything. I never did, only my own reflection.

  The shelves in the alcoves were full of old books by authors with exotic sounding names like Aleister Crowley and Madame Helena Blavatsky. As a child, I was not allowed to touch them, but as I grew up I was allowed to borrow them, along with the more modern paperbacks by people with more ordinary names like Doris Stokes and Sylvia Browne.

  There were also all sorts of fascinating objects - the room was like Aladdin’s cave, full of treasures - an amethyst diode, a native American dream catcher, Tibetan singing bowls, figurines of angels, incense burners, a crystal pendulum and crystals of all shapes and colours. Each item had a story attached to it.
I loved to hear about where each item had come from and what it was used for.

  Often the phone would ring and she would arrange an appointment with someone, writing it down in a battered diary in her copperplate hand. Sometimes, when she answered the phone, Gran would say, ‘Hello, Inspector,’ and then take the cordless phone into another room. I never knew what she talked about in any of those calls.

  My mother was Gran's only child, and a great disappointment to her. My mother is about as psychic as a slab of concrete and as a child was equally frustrated because she could never see, hear, or feel the things that Gran did, and eventually decided Gran was probably barmy. She left home at eighteen to marry my father. She chose him because he was down-to-earth and practical and not the least bit interested in the spirit world.

  It wasn’t long before my sister Caroline was born. She is Aries with Virgo rising, and one of the trials of my young life as a dreamy Pisces was to be forced to share a room with her. Fanatically tidy and bossy, she hated my collections of pretty stones from the garden, feathers, shells, my craft projects, and the fact that folding or hanging up my clothes after I took them off was alien to me.

  I, in turn, hated the way she would line up her pens and later, her make-up, in precise order. I would frequently move them out of synch when she was out of the room, purely to annoy her. It always worked. As you can imagine, we fought. Sometimes bitterly. I still have a tiny scar on my chin where she scratched me once.

  I could hardly wait for her to go away to university to study economics. It meant I would have the room to myself, and peace and quiet. And be able to make as much mess as I wanted without getting earache. I envied only children, like my friend Jessica - and with Caroline gone, I would virtually be an only child, too.

  Except in the run up to my A levels, our parents shattered my dream. We were going to have a new brother or sister. For once, Caroline and I agreed about something. The very thought of our parents doing what was necessary to produce a baby at their age was utterly disgusting. If they must, it should certainly not be advertised, and to have slipped up with their precautions was unforgivable.

  Mum had a difficult pregnancy and it took Amber three tense and anguished days to be born. Caroline was at university by then, but I was still at home, and although I could live with the chaos I made myself, the chaos of life with a small baby and stressed out parents was too much for me. I was glad to be old enough to take myself off to Gran’s whenever things got too much.

  I remember one day arriving just as she was seeing a customer out. A dapper man in a grey suit, carrying a brief case. He wore wire-framed glasses and had grey hair. My general impression was grey, boring, until I got closer and saw that he was wearing a tie that was a riot of colour.

  ‘This is my granddaughter, Tabitha,’ Gran said. ‘Tabitha, this is Inspector Fleming.’

  He smiled at me. ‘Lovely to meet you,’ he said, as he got into his car.

  ‘Is he a policeman?’ I asked, as he drove off.

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘What was he seeing you for?’

  ‘I'm helping him with a murder case.’

  My eyes went wide as dinner plates. ‘Is it a famous one?’

  Gran put her finger to her lips. ‘It's hush hush. I can't tell you anything. In fact, the police aren't really supposed to use psychics, so we have to pretend he was never here.’

  I was disappointed that I wasn't going to hear about any juicy murders, but was soon distracted by tea and cake.

  I’m sure if it wasn’t for Gran, my psychic abilities would have faded right away. That happens. Children lose their abilities because adults keep saying that they are being silly, or they are crazy, and eventually they start to believe it. I wasn’t often left alone with Gran. She and Mum did not really get on, and I think Mum was afraid Gran would be a bad influence on me in particular as I had been showing signs of being just as bonkers.

  Thank goodness for chicken pox. Caroline got it first. My mother had to take time off from her job in the supermarket to look after her. As for me, I stayed stubbornly healthy. I envied Caroline, being allowed to stay home and do colouring in bed while I had to go to school. Mum checked me each morning for spots - she was hoping I would catch it, better now than when I was an adult, better to get it over with. Nothing. It wasn’t until Caroline was better, two weeks later, that the itchy rash appeared on me.

  Mum's boss was not sympathetic. Having another two weeks off for another sick child was out of the question. So my mother had no choice but to ship me off to Gran’s for a couple of weeks. To me, that was even better than being allowed to colour in bed. I got Gran all to myself. She took me up to her spare room, tucked me up in a bed with crisp cotton sheets and an eiderdown, which is quite a novelty when all you've ever known is a continental quilt. She brought me a tray with chicken soup, sat on the side of my bed, and said, ‘Now, Tabitha, I hear you've been seeing things your mum can't see. I'd really like to hear about it.’

  I hesitated. ‘I promise I won’t tell your mum or make you see that doctor again,’ she said. ‘It will be our little secret.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked.

  ‘Really. I believe you. Tell me.’

  So I did. It all poured out of me. I told her about the old gentleman and the Native American and all the others I'd seen in my room. Gran sat and listened, nodding sagely. When I finally stopped talking, the soup had gone cold.

  ‘You're not mad, Tabitha,’ she said. ‘You're psychic. Just like me. The people you see are spirits - they're your friends; you don't have to be afraid of them.’

  So my psychic education began. Whenever I visited after that, Gran would take me into the kitchen with her as she prepared the tea and cake for Mum and Caroline. Out of their hearing range, she would ask me to tell her what I had seen, and get me to practice holding things and tell her the impressions I got from them. At first, it was a game, but as I got older, it got more serious. Gran taught me about meditation and psychic protection, and even let me read for a few of her clients.

  Gran was a hard taskmaster at times. If I didn’t concentrate, or if I got the giggles, I would be scolded, sometimes even sent home in disgrace, and told, ‘Don’t come back until you’re ready to take this seriously, my girl.’

  More often, though, she would praise my efforts and encourage me and I began to realise how useful I could be - on my good days.

  ‘Always trust your dreams and visions,’ Gran would say. ‘They don't always make sense immediately and sometimes they need some interpretation, but they are never wrong.’

  I believed her - until I had a dream that was totally wrong.

  I was standing at the bottom of a sheer cliff, looking up at some people who were making their slow and careful way up. It made me giddy to look at them. I heard a movement behind me and turned to see a tall, thin man with a thick, sandy-coloured moustache. I knew straight away he was a spirit.

  ‘My name is George,’ he said, ‘and I'm here to give you a message for my niece.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Her name's Becky. She's just booked a reading with your grandma tomorrow, because she's undecided about two different holidays she has the chance to take. She can't do both, so it's a dilemma for her. Does she go on the beach holiday with the man she just met and is rather keen on, or does she go on the climbing holiday with a group of friends, one of whom is bringing along a new boyfriend who is a literary agent who might just be interested in hearing about the book she wants to write.’

  ‘And the message?’

  ‘It has to be the climbing holiday. That's why we're here at the bottom of this cliff. It's very important that she goes climbing, not to the beach.’

  I promised I would pass the message on and then woke up. Perhaps I was going to be instrumental in making Becky a successful author!

  Gran didn't usually invite me over when she had a booking, but when I arrived at her house that day, she was busy tidying her front room. ‘I've got a clie
nt coming,’ she said. ‘Last minute booking.’

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you don't have to go, just wait upstairs until we're done.’

  ‘What's the client's name?’ I asked.

  ‘I can't remember without looking at my book. Rebecca something, I believe.’

  ‘I have to tell you something, then,’ I said. ‘I dreamed about her last night, or at any rate, about a spirit called George who had a niece called Becky. He told me it was very important that she goes on the climbing holiday and not the beach holiday.’

  Gran raised her eyebrows slightly, and then nodded. ‘Uncle George, you say? Climbing not beach? I've got that. Thank you, Tabitha. Oh, that must be her now. Off you go upstairs and I'll let you know if that comes up.’

  I couldn't resist lingering on the landing to catch a glimpse of the client. She was about my age, tanned with short brown hair. She wore a rugby shirt, jeans and expensive but well-worn trainers. As she followed Gran into the front room, our eyes met and she smiled at me.

  When Becky had gone, Gran confirmed everything about my dream. ‘She was indeed choosing between two holidays. She didn't want to miss out on meeting the agent but was afraid that if she turned down the young man she'd lose him. She did have an Uncle George who passed a couple of years ago, so you were spot on.’

  I felt rather pleased with myself.

  ‘She's off next weekend. She said she'd let me know how she got on with the agent,’ Gran said.

  Two weeks later, I arrived at Gran's, anxious for news. Had Becky spoken to the agent? Did she have a book deal yet? Gran let me in, and I noticed she was pale and trembling. ‘What's wrong, Gran, are you ill?’

  ‘You'd better come in and sit down, my dear. I've had a rather disturbing letter in the post. You remember Becky from the other week?’