I eyed him for a while, because it was a good question.
‘Somewhere in-between,’ I said. ‘It’s excitement. A sense of…’
‘What?’ said Blundy, and he wasn’t going to let me off the hook.
‘Infinite possibility.’
‘Well, that must be a good thing,’ said Blundy.
‘Yeah,’ I said, nodding slowly. ‘It’s a bit daunting that’s all.’ He was watching me, because he could see there was more to come. ‘It’s to do with time not mattering. I mean, you might have wasted 25 years of your life, but you realise that’s nothing really. Time is sort of… incidental, overrated.’
Blundy put his hand up, and a waitress came immediately.
‘Bottle of champagne and two glasses,’ he said; then, to me, ‘Changed my mind about the tea at the last minute.’
He didn’t ask if I minded, but then again, I didn’t.
‘You’re a sceptic,’ I said. ‘Why did you take on the trust? What’s in it for you?’
He frowned at me.
‘Fiduciary duty,’ he said. ‘The duty of the trustee.’
‘I know what it means,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t have asked my old man that, would you?
Your old man didn’t put his umbrella up when it was raining.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He was old school.’
A light rain was falling beyond the window; a sparkling, Christmassy rain whirling under the soft street lights.
‘I’ve heard the recording of the séance in ’76,’ said Morley. ‘Your footsteps… You really legged it out of there, didn’t you?’
‘Can you blame me?’ I said. ‘I mean you’ll have heard the boy’s voice on the recording, and… Were there photographs?’
He shook his head, pouring champagne into my glass. ‘None that came out right. The recording’s indistinct as well. But my dad was there – it was the first time he’d gone to a séance, the first time he really had to face what the trust was about – and he was sure he’d experienced something. I mean he was sure to the point of a nervous breakdown. I wasn’t there, and so I have to rely on second hand accounts… which do vary.’ He was pouring champagne into his own glass, as he continued: ‘It strikes me that there are three possibilities. No, four. Number one: Chadwick was a genuine medium and he raised the ghost of the boy. Two: Chadwick was a fraud, and it was all trickery. Three: You are a genuine psychic and the boy came for you.’
‘Hence “Open the door”,’ I said, drinking champagne.
‘Some people do say that was said, or something like it. Yes.’
‘What’s number four?’
‘It’s all subjective. Mass hallucination.’
I sat back. It had never occurred to me that Chadwick had been a fraud. I suppose I’d begun to think that the boy had come in for me and him, that it had been a sort of joint effort. But it struck me now that this is what Nelly had been about to say outside the Danish Kitchen – that it had all been down to me.
‘But how could Chadwick be a fraud?’
Blundy poured more champagne.
‘Saul Chadwick was the hot young medium of his day. John Morley was convinced he’d brought back the boy at a seance, so he established the trust in his favour. But Chadwick might have been motivated to cheat. That first trust guaranteed him a good lifestyle and income, but he was also eligible for certain…you might say performance-related monies from the philosophical society – from the second trust.’
‘What’s the full name of that organisation?’ I cut in.
‘Can’t remember,’ said Bundy. ‘It’s too long. They were – are – the intellectual overseers of the whole project, but maybe Chadwick and his assistants are too clever for them. Those tape recorders of his, for example. Are they recording sound or emitting it?’ He drank champagne, before continuing, ‘Then again he apparently seemed surprised by what turned up on that night in seventy-six, and he never matched it in any other session.’
Blundy was eyeing me. The bottle of champagne was empty. We’d motored that down all right.
‘Fancy another?’ said Blundy.
I nodded, and asked whether the séances were only ever held in The River House. He shook his head: ‘Other locations associated with the kid as well. But always in York, of course.’
He raised his hand for the waitress. He began speaking about how the philosophical society could make a large amount of money available to any medium they considered able to contact the boy; how the surviving descendants of John Morley continued to be fascinated by Little Jack; how they might create another trust with a sole beneficiary; how they were in effect searching for the next Chadwick. As he did so, I shifted my focus from him to the window behind his back, and St Helen’s Square beyond. It seems to me that the York citizenry behave better in the rain: they don’t dawdle, shout or make mobile phone calls in the street. I saw two men going fast past the window wearing plain macs, and hats which I believed to be fedoras. One took something out of his inside pocket as he walked, and it was a long wallet, not a mobile phone.
The rain out there was floating down in a very friendly sort of way, illuminated by the blurred glow of the shops in the Square. It stood in very nicely for Christmas snow, and went well with ‘Once In Royal David’s City’, which was now being cranked out by the man in fancy dress at the York Chimer. The second champagne had come and Blundy was pouring, but I hardly noticed this because I was watching the wisps of smoke that were now floating through St Helen’s Square. Blundy was telling me something:
‘There are certain facts known to very few people about Little Jack. People think they know but they don’t. What did he like look like?’
The rain had increased somewhat, and I noticed that a boy had come up to the window of Betty’s. He wore a raincoat with a wide belt around his middle; there may have been school books under his arm. He had dark hair that was combed straight back and held down by hair cream. His face was completely symmetrical, like a cat’s or perhaps a bat’s; he was very pale and his eyes were violet. He was inspecting the diners in Betty’s Tea Rooms, scrutinising every person, searching for something.
‘Well, I’ll tell you this,’ I heard myself saying to Blundy, ‘He didn’t look anything like the kid on the sweet tins. They were named after him, but he wasn’t shown on them. His face would have frightened off the punters.’
I was distantly aware of Blundy, three feet in front of me, nodding his head, looking thoughtful and saying, in a new tone, ‘You know, you’re right, you’re absolutely spot on. And why do you think he jumped? His father had a theory about this, but what do you think?’
The boy had finished his search; he was staring directly at me, and, as I spoke, he started to smile.
‘He jumped in order to come back,’ I said.
THE END
Copyright
First published in 2009
by Short Books
3A Exmouth House
Pine Street
London EC1R 0JH
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Andrew Martin
The right of Andrew Martin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–907595-974
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