“What?”
“She speaks so faintly. I fear a sickness that took her from this world. She says something I do not understand. A name, perhaps? She says ‘Trelawney’…yes, ‘Trelawney’…It’s Kather—–”
“—–Stop it!”
The legs of my chair skidded noisily across the floor as I rose from the table. Pulling my hands from Reverend Winn and Mrs. Rawlins’, I suddenly felt quite bilious and was forced to bear down heavily on the table-top just to support myself.
“Stop it now…”
“The circle is broken!” decried Mrs. Rawlins.
As she said this, a look of disorientation suddenly crossed Beasant’s face and he collapsed back into his chair, breathless and exhausted. I stood there for some moments, regarding him fiercely, my nerves jangled and a sick feeling rising through my stomach.
“Do you see now?” demanded Doyle from across the table, his cold blue eyes fixing on me.
“I see nothing,” I countered. “Other than that, for your own ends, you have done this…”
Doyle’s face clouded and he glowered at me.
“What does it mean?” asked Prendergast. “What is this ‘tree-lawn’-thing?”
“My name,” I replied. “A fact that is apparently well-known around this table.”
“Your name?” said Mrs. Rawlins. “What precisely do you mean, young man?”
“I’ve had enough of this!”
Without further word, I swerved away from the table and stalked back to the hallway. However, my departure from the building was curtailed, when—upon opening the front-door and feeling the evening’s chill air against my face—I suddenly remembered my hat and coat. Turning about, I saw the young maid, silently approaching me with my outdoor apparel.
“Ah, there you are…” I said, taking my coat from her. “I suppose you’re in on all this as well, are you?”
The girl said nothing, but shot me a look suggestive of the fact that I had offended her dignity.
As I snatched my hat from her, Arthur Doyle appeared at the sitting-room doorway and looked imploringly at me.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going to get a drink.”
“Aye…” he said tersely. “That sounds about right!”
“Don’t you dare, Doyle! You get me all the way down here so that you do that.”
“Mr. Hart,” Doyle said sharply, “I had nothing to do with what happened here to-night. For God’s sake, how could I have, man? I didn’t even know you were going to be here myself!”
My hand wavered from the buttons of my sack-coat for a moment, as it suddenly occurred to me that Doyle was quite correct. As far as he was aware, I was not supposed be attending the séance at all.
“But,” I said, rubbing at my forehead. “Then, I don’t….”
“Don’t you see, Mr. Hart?” Doyle said in a staid tone. “You do understand—you just haven’t opened your mind to the possibilities yet…
“Go and have your drink. I will call on you to-morrow.”
I nodded distractedly, and fumbling with the lock on Beasant’s front door, I edged it back open and stepped out into the night air.
“I shall see you in the morning,” Doyle called, as I crossed the garden path. “And then in the afternoon we will witness Mr. Beasant perform a miracle together!”
I did not respond to Doyle, for it took all my concentration just to keep on my way. My knees were so pitifully weak that I felt certain my legs would give way at any moment. As Doyle pulled Beasant’s front door to, I came to a halt on the cinder path and threw out my arm, steadying myself on the central bar of the fence. Then, stooping over, I vomited onto a patch of nettles.
I carried on, stumbling down the steps to the main road and taking refuge beneath a street-lantern. Pausing there, I blinked rapidly—tears falling from my eyes as I stared up at the diffused light coming from the lamp. A heavy mist was clinging to the air and the light’s shimmering pattern seemed to be reaching out and skittering away.
“Katherine…”
Closing my eyes, I tried to evade my unexpected grief and lend focus to my brain, when it suddenly occurred to me that my nerves might just as easily be steadied with alcohol as with self-control—and, so, with a sharp intake of breath, I loosened my grip on the street-lamp, and headed back to the hotel.
CHAPTER VIII
Lost Souls
BILLY WAS LYING on the floor of my hotel room with his back to the door; eyes half-closed; still clutching the bottle of Heerings that he had fetched from his room. Swinging a leg from the bed, I nudged at his heel. He blinked suddenly, regarding me dimly.
“What was I saying?”
Billy yawned into the back of his hand and rubbed his eyes. Motioning for him to pass me the bottle, he sloped forward and pushed it into my hand.
“You were talking about your wife.”
“Oh,” I said quietly. “Very likely. Sometimes I can’t help it. It’s like her memory rushes at me.
“I was only nineteen when I met her. Having been the product of a considerably sheltered upbringing, Katherine was one of the first females I ever met. I suppose it is not surprising I was completely captivated by her.
“Back then, I was little more than a curiosity to the people I met—like something out of a sideshow. People would enter my rooms and—under my father’s direction—bark complicated mathematical problems at me or set me conundrums designed to test my powers of logical deduction. When Katherine spoke it was different.”
“What’d she say?”
“Not much. She just asked ‘how I was’. Apart from a doctor—no one had done that before.
“Of course, not understanding that the remark was intended as a social nicety, I went on to provide her with a lengthy description of my bronchial problems.
“Her father and my father were friends, having fought together on the Sudan Campaign.” Pressing the bottle to my lips, I took a hit. The liquid jolted into my mouth, causing fresh tears to spring from my eyes. “In his company, Katherine would often visit our house. We became friends and then started to exchange letters. Later, we would meet whenever we could—always in secret.
“When she was twenty-one—despite actually being of age—she decided we should elope. I don’t know why, I suppose she just liked the romance of it. We were married in a little chapel just off the Euston Road.
“Although she had no money and was in danger of being disowned by her family, the death of a great-aunt had left me with some small provision, enough for us to start a life together anyway…
“Due to the impromptu arrangement of the wedding, there was nothing like a honeymoon organised, so we purchased tickets for the Underground and travelled to Waterloo, boarding the first train we met there. An hour or so later, we left the train at Basingstoke—a small market town in Hampshire, just before Winchester. I don’t know why we chose that place particularly…” I paused, taking another mouthful of brandy. “I seem to recall that there was a very old, ruined church by the train station that Katherine was quite taken with—perhaps that was the reason.
“We stayed in an ugly, rundown little inn next door to a livery stable for just over a week. And I can’t remember being happier. And, now…” I said, glancing about the dark, impersonal hotel room. “Here we are again. Except she’s not here…
“Now grief fills up my room. Puts on her pretty looks, repeats her words, and remembers me all of her gracious parts.”
There was a long pause. My voice had become strained. Rubbing my shirt sleeve across my eyes, I blinked across at Billy, who was looking very intently at me. Finally, he broke the silence in the room and, in an anxious tone, uttered:
“You had your honeymoon en Basingstoke?”
“Tell me about your
wife, Billy,” I said, handing back the brandy.
Accepting the bottle, Billy’s eyes fell to the carpet.
“Please,” I urged. “I’d like to hear about her.”
“I don’t like to speak about ’er,” Billy stated in a low voice. “I like to keep her en ’ere.”
Reaching up to his forehead, Billy tapped lightly at his temple.
“Perhaps you’re right,” I responded. “Perhaps it doesn’t do any of us much good to look back at things.”
“Maybe, by to-morrow,” Billy said suddenly. “When you’re over the shock of et all, you’ll see to-day as a good day, en fact.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if what you said downstairs, about the séance, is true, then per’aps there is some hope of you seeing your wife again some day. Y’know, when the time is right. Per’aps we both shall?”
As Billy spoke, I observed that his demeanour had softened. Though he was looking in my direction, there was a moony, faraway look upon his face—a sort of peculiar, almost-serene expression that had not crossed his features before. I knew then that he had taken comfort from being told of my experience at the séance.
“Hold fast to it, Billy!”
He nodded slowly, handing me back the brandy bottle.
“You believe in the afterlife?”
“Of course,” Billy responded sharply. “Otherwise, what’s the point of et all?”
I offered no more response than a smile.
“You haven’t mentioned my name to anyone, have you, Billy? You know, my real name.”
Billy shook his head: “The only people I’ve spoken to other ’en you, are the barman downstairs and Mr. Beasant. And you were with me. Both times. You still think et’s all a trick, then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t work out how Beasant could know my name. Let alone my wife’s. No one knew I was coming here. Only you, Doyle and Doyle’s man know who I am. I suppose I did introduce myself to that barmaid in Pegwell…”
“Jenny wouldn’t be involved en none of this.”
“Well then, where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said with a shrug, which he followed with an exaggerated yawn. “But I might go to bed, if that’s all right?”
“Of course.”
I watched as Billy shuffled unsteadily to his feet and gripped onto the door-handle.
“Thanks for the drinks.”
“Good-night.”
When Billy had left the room, I got up, undressed and put the lamp out. Pulling back the sheets, I got into bed and stared across the room at the moonlight streaming through the gap between the curtains. Listening to the howling wind, I wondered if the storm would blow itself out by morning.
An hour later, I was still awake. Though I was extremely fatigued, my mind was restless. I could not stop myself from re-visiting the events of the séance.
Beasant’s words repeated in my head. Over and again, I recalled his apparent dismay at hearing my name, and the way he called to Katherine, urging her to come forward. Though I knew it to be nonsense, I could not help myself from wishing I had stayed longer at the séance. Some small part of me longed to hear what Katherine’s message was.
Finally, I sat back up in bed and grabbed the bottle of Heerings from the bedside table. Pushing the bottle to my mouth, I forced back several mouthfuls of the filthy brew. And, soon after, I felt a familiar, warm, buzzing sensation flood across my body, and my eyelids grew heavy…
I awoke from that mean and restless daze some time later, stirred by the sound of a baby crying in the next room. The thin walls of the hotel made the infant’s wailing seem unnaturally close, as though it were actually in the room with me.
Pushing the pillow onto my ear, I rocked forward and back on the mattress, humming the chorus of Castling and Murphy’s Let’s All Go Down the Strand in an effort to block out the noise, but it was not to be. Over the course of the next half-hour the baby’s relentless howling actually seemed to intensify, as though it was pushing on to some unbroken crescendo…
Admitting defeat, I wearily threw back the bedcovers and planted my feet to the floor. Picking up my cigarettes from the bedside table, I pushed one between my lips and struck a Lucifer. Inhaling deeply, I hoped to steady my nerves—but, far from relaxing me, the smoke caught in my throat, inducing a coughing fit.
For some minutes I sat on the edge of the mattress, completely incapacitated by a seizure of hacking, workhouse coughs. When it finally subsided it left me so completely exhausted that I could do nothing more than sit upon the edge of the bed, hunched up, with my eyes streaming, listening miserably to the unrelenting noise coming from the next room.
The child’s cries unsettled me to such a degree that, despite my fatigue, I forced myself from the bed and pushed across to the window. Throwing back the curtains, I saw that, though it was growing light outside, a few faint stars were still pricking through the overcast sky. I opened the window and pushed my head out. The wind boxed at my ears—and it was very heaven to hear something other than that screaming infant.
Surveying the sky, I suddenly realised that what I had first thought to be a dense and oddly distended cloud-shape high in the winter firmament was in actual fact a German Zeppelin, heading back across the channel. Lost beyond the morning mare’s tails, the airship was so high up that it hardly seemed to move at all; its progress was slow and silent—like a whale lounging in the depths of the ocean.
Over the course of the war, a number of newspaper editors, presumably in collusion with some enterprising Grub Street hack, had effectively re-named the Zeppelin in the minds of the British people. The sobriquet they had chosen had proved an enduring one. Now, in Manor houses and bed-sitting rooms alike, up and down the country, Zeppelins were commonly referred to as ‘baby-killers’.
Pulling my head back inside the window, I was instantly hit by the aggressive bawling of my neighbour’s child once again, and—in the course of a rather sharp moment—felt a sudden misplaced empathy for the Zeppelin.
For a minute I restlessly padded about, before pulling my shirt and trousers back on. Picking up my key from the bedside table, I took a last hit from the brandy bottle to steel myself and left the room.
After successive knocks, the door to the next room was opened by a slight, red-headed man of about five-and-thirty years. He was dressed in his shirt sleeves and had a scab of fresh child’s vomit adorning his left breast.
“Hello?” the man said cagily.
“I’m from the next room. Can you please make that noise stop?”
The man turned and looked anxiously across the room to a large perambulator situated in front of the hearth. Standing at the helm of which—and attempting to stare me down—was the red, tear-streaked face of my tormentor. My arrival at the door caused a momentary lapse in the infant’s assault. But then, even as we watched, the eyes closed and the mouth fell open, and the obstreperous mewling resumed.
“Ah well,” that man responded sadly, with a pronounced Irish lilt. “You see, sir, I can’t—no.”
“Please,” I responded, fighting to be heard over the appalling noise. “It’s driving me out of my mind.”
The man looked wearily back at me and sighed.
“I know tha’ feeling, honestly, sir,” he returned ruefully. “But what can I do? I don’t suppose you wanna come in and rock him yerself?”
“Rock him?” I managed. “Only if you have a very big rock!”
“Genie mac!” declared the Irishman, his cheeks flushing. “Now, sir, I’ll have to take issue there. Thomas may have a good set of lungs on him, but—–”
Pausing mid-sentence, the Irishman seemed to falter; his expression suddenly transforming into one of concern.
“Sir?” he said suddenly. “D’you know your nose and lips
are very blue?”
“You know—–” I said, pushing an arm out and steadying myself on the doorframe. “I’m actually not feeling very—–”
Taking a deep breath, I attempted to speak again but was unable. Moving my hand from the door, I pushed it up to my forehead and stepped backwards. I think I recall registering a feeling of some surprise as the Irishman swept impulsively forward—but, by that time, I had already hit the floor…
The fall smacked the breath from me. Sprawled out on the carpet, I flailed about—my mouth slack, gasping for air.
My neighbour continued to hover above me; eyes bulging and a hand clamped anxiously to the side of his face. I clawed at the bottom of his trouser legs, urging him to get help—but, though I attempted to speak, I had no breath and, consequently, no words formed. In growing panic, I tried to position my arms by my side and lever myself from the floor, but I had become too weak. Though my limbs refused to move, my shoulders shook uncontrollably.
A pain erupted in my chest and I felt so constricted that it was as though someone had wound a corset about my chest—and was continually pulling on the lacing. Over and again I attempted to crane my neck from the floor, but I was too exhausted. Finally, my vision began to blur and my head must have dropped to the side, for my final impression was of the dusty, threadbare carpet stretched out before me like a landscape.
When I came to, I was back in my hotel room lying on the bed. Arthur Doyle was standing over me, clutching my wrist.
“Well, of course, he does nothing to help himself. Much of his condition is a consequence of his lifestyle, I’m sure. And his diet—or, rather, lack of it.” His washed-out blue eyes suddenly fixed on mine: “Ah, you’re back with us, Mr. Hart?
“Woodie,” Doyle said, turning his back to me. “There’s a dispensary on the High-street.” Reaching into his jacket, Doyle took out a note-book with detachable leaves and a pencil. He opened the book on the bedside table. Carefully tearing a page out, he began to write: “See if you can get stramonium, lobelia and some nitre paper. If they don’t have the nitre paper, get some blotting paper and strong solution of saltpetre.”
Conversations with Spirits Page 15