by Adams, Guy
The flyer was cheaply produced, a childish drawing of stars interspersed with squiggles that John eventually deciphered as astrological symbols. In the midst of this scattershot attempt at artistry was a chunk of text in comic sans font: ‘Death is Not the End’ it insisted. ‘Let Aida “Granny” Golding Show You!’
‘Got it from one of the students,’ said Ray.
‘Not an English major, I hope, not with that many capitals.’
‘No, the student didn’t make it,’ explained Ray, ‘he just passed it on. That guy that thinks he’s attending Woodstock.’
‘That could be the entire student body.’
‘No, you know him, long hair, all beiges and browns, stinks of pot and poor taste.’
John knew immediately who Ray meant. ‘Shaun Vedder.’
‘Shaun Vedder. He picked it up when he was doing interviews for some coursework. One of those pitiful wastes of time you old fools like to set them. Anything to get them out from under your feet.’
‘That’s it exactly. We care not one jot for their education.’ John looked at the flyer again. ‘And why are you giving it to me?’
‘Because I know you’re interested in that sort of thing and, by all accounts, she’s good at what she does.’
‘Talking to the dead?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but according to young Vedder people make a fuss over her. She’s an open secret, the real thing, not like all these showy gits on cable telly, a proper medium working out of North London. So whatever it is she’s doing she’s doing it right.’
‘You can tell by the quality of her advertising.’
‘All part of it though, ain’t it? She’s paranormal retro chic!’
‘She’s a dab hand with a pack of crayons, for sure.’
And with that he shoved the piece of paper away in his pocket where it would have stayed were it not for the fact that he couldn’t stop dreaming about Jane. And not just dreaming …
‘He got it from one of the students,’ he said to Michael, aware that his mind had been wandering. ‘They picked it up as part of the parapsychology coursework.’
‘They do parapsychology?’
‘It’s best to get it out of their systems early on. Once we have thoroughly denied the existence of spooks we can move on to why people like to believe otherwise.’
‘And have you moved on?’
John smiled and finished his tea.
‘How’s Laura?’ John asked as they made their way out into the rain. Enquiring after his son’s girlfriend was the surest way he knew to get the conversation back on track.
‘She’s fine. In fact, we’re thinking of getting a place together.’
‘Oh yes?’ This was good news, something happy to focus on as they made their way along the pavement. The rain had filled the irregular surface, forcing them to step over puddles like children playing hopscotch. One, two, buckle my shoe, rattled around John’s head as he listened to his son list the benefits of cohabiting with the woman he loved.
‘Of course,’ said Michael, ‘there’s a part of Laura that would prefer to remain where she is. I mean, she knows her house. You should see her move around it, you’d never know …’
You’d never know she was blind, John thought, silently finishing his son’s sentence. Michael didn’t like to describe Laura in potentially negative terms, didn’t like to put anything into words that might define her as being different from anyone else. Partly this was down to Laura herself, blind since very young she refused either sympathy or concession.
‘I can’t imagine Laura being afraid to learn her way around somewhere new,’ John said, ‘in fact I can’t imagine her being afraid of anything much.’
Michael smiled. ‘True enough.’
They came to a junction and ahead of them, bathed in the sickly orange of a large security light, was the Queen’s Road Community Centre.
‘And lo, the Albert Hall,’ said Michael, wiping water from his face as they waited for a break in the traffic so they could cross.
A lorry cut its way through the semi-flooded road, an emission-blackened teddy bear strapped to its radiator like soggy road kill. Father and son had to step back to avoid a soaking. The lorry had no more knowledge of them as it sailed away into the dark than a whale might in an ocean of little fish.
‘Much more of this,’ John said, ‘and I’ll need a medium to talk to you let alone …’ The joke soured in his mouth, bravado turned to painful awkwardness.
‘Let alone Mum,’ said Michael. ‘Yeah … Let’s not discuss that, all right?’
‘I miss her just as much as you do,’ out loud it sounded like one-upmanship, and he hadn’t meant it to. Michael knew how much he had loved Jane.
They caught their break in the traffic and ran across the wet road, kicking up great splashes as they landed on the waterlogged safety of the other pavement. Neither of them stopped running, taking outrageous leaps across the puddles in the community centre car park until they finally found the shelter of the covered porch.
‘No need to run,’ said an old man smoking in the doorway, ‘the dead aren’t going anywhere.’ He sliced off the hot tip of his roll-up using a long and yellow thumbnail and put the remains in the pocket of his jacket to finish off later. Giving himself a nod of pride at a job well done he shuffled inside the hall, leaving a trail of muddy footprints, like dance instructions, in his wake.
‘Two is it?’ asked a young man sat behind a fold-out table. He flexed a book of pink raffle tickets in his hands as if warming them up.
‘Yes please.’ John had his wallet ready, the least he could do was cover the price of Michael’s ticket, then at least it need cost him only his time.
‘That’ll be twenty pounds please,’ said the young man, rather defensively as if anticipating an argument over price. Perhaps it was the disapproving look on Michael’s face, he wasn’t one to hide his feelings and he sighed as his father paid. He gets that from his mother, John thought, she was never shy about showing displeasure either. Many was the rude waiter or belligerent telemarketer that had discovered that for themselves over the years.
‘Sit wherever you like,’ said the young man, giving his raffle tickets another vicious throttling. ‘But stick to the cardboard.’
John wondered what the man was talking about but as they passed into the main hall it soon became obvious: flattened cardboard boxes had been laid out as impromptu matting to soak up the wet from people’s feet. There was also a leaking roof to contend with. Dotted throughout were chains of water droplets, dripping musically into strategically placed saucepans. The effect was that of an enthusiastic, if tone deaf, orchestra of children with toy drums.
‘Charming,’ said Michael as they filed along a row of plastic chairs near the back. They sat down and waited for the evening’s demonstration to begin.
The hall was half full, with more and more coming in as the start time approached. One by one they ambled in, shaking off the rainwater and then making their way to a seat, taking stretched steps from one patch of cardboard to the next, reminding John of children playing pirates.
‘Have you seen her before, dear?’ asked an elderly lady to John’s right. She had that flatulent smugness that ladies of a certain age were prone to, inflating her face and nodding at every opportunity for proving herself right in conversation.
‘No,’ John admitted, ‘though I hear she’s good.’
‘None better, if you ask me.’ She gestured vaguely around the hall. ‘Most of this lot follow her around, seeing most of the demonstrations. Never been here before. Mind you,’ she glanced at a nearby saucepan of rainwater, ‘I dare say I won’t come again either.’
‘The weather is particularly bad, there’s flooding in some parts of the country according to the news.’
‘That’s as maybe but you’ve got to have some standards. We like it when she does Islington, they have a better class of hall in Islington.’
‘We?’
‘My dear Henry
,’ she waved at the air as if to disengage a cobweb from her cheek. ‘He doesn’t just turn up at any old venue, don’t imagine he’ll lower himself to attending this place.’
It took John a moment to realise Henry was dead. ‘He was your …?’
‘Husband,’ she replied with some force perhaps to rebuke the suggestion that their relationship might have been lacking in any Christian formality. ‘Passed these four years now. Not that I have had a chance to miss him. I speak to him more now than I did when he was alive. You needed a loudhailer and a sharp stick to get him to the dinner table before the cancer had him; I barely get a moment’s peace these days. Rattling the door handles, setting the light fittings swinging … then there’s Islington, of course, Henry does love the hall at Islington.’
John risked a glance towards his son but Michael was either ignoring the conversation or distracted by his own thoughts, staring at the stage and tapping at his lower lip with his forefinger.
‘There’s another one,’ said Henry’s widow, regaining John’s attention.
‘Another one?’
She nodded towards a young woman sitting down two rows in front of them. ‘Always turns up,’ she explained, ‘cot death.’
John couldn’t think what he would want to say to that, but the elderly woman was happy to fill the silence. ‘Always gets a message too,’ she continued, puffing up her cheeks as if holding in her words, but there was no such luck. ‘I’m at a loss as to how. I mean, it was only a baby. She should get on with her life. Girls today are far too sensitive. Mind you, this lot laps it up.’
The fact that she considered herself somehow apart from the rest of the audience hardly surprised John, her kind never felt any other way.
‘I’m sure she appreciates the comfort,’ he said, watching as the young girl tugged at her cheap skirt and tried to get comfortable on the flat plastic seat. He realised he was staring when his elderly companion spoke again. ‘I suppose the men like her too,’ she said, giving him a look of disapproval, ‘she’s that type.’
John couldn’t help but wonder what type that was supposed to be. Attractive? She was certainly that but his attention had been drawn by something else. She reminded him of his wife. It wasn’t anything so simple as looks. True, they were both blond but otherwise there could be little to compare them. Jane had been tall, perpetually thin – though never so horrifyingly skin and bone as she appeared to him now, whenever he imagined catching sight of her, as if the tumour had continued to do its worst even into the afterlife. This girl was of an average height and slightly chubby. He couldn’t call her fat – even had he been insensitive enough to do so – but she had the sort of overall thickness that some people are born with, as if their whole body is wrapped in an extra layer. The similarities were in her mannerisms more than her appearance, he decided, the way she shifted in her seat, constantly looking around. A slightly childish impatience. Jane had never been able to bear waiting for things, to the point where she had always been late for appointments rather than endure it. That quirk had driven him up the wall when she had been alive but seemed charming now she was gone. We forgive the dead everything. There was something else too, he decided, something so elusive as to be beyond him. Like a face in a crowd that triggers recognition. Something about this girl was all too familiar.
The lights were turned off to a gentle discomfited murmur from the audience. John supposed this was intended to replicate the dimming of theatre lights. As it was, from the snatches of conversation around him, most people seemed convinced the rain had blown the fuse. A single spotlight proved them wrong, pointing at the centre of the small stage where the young man who had been selling tickets could just be seen escaping after having placed a chair there.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the young man announced into a radio mic, ‘please welcome the incomparable abilities of Mrs Aida Golding.’
There was warm applause and out of the corner of his eye John saw Michael shake his head.
‘Like bad theatre,’ the young man mumbled and John found he couldn’t disagree. Events like this would always fall victim to their practitioners’ innate inability to play things ‘straight’. Any hint of the theatrical and the verisimilitude took a pounding. At least the medium herself was a step in the right direction. She was the very epitome of the homely grandmother, wrapped up in an old-fashioned combination of tweed skirt and woollen pullover that made her look about ten years older than she probably was.
‘Good evening, my loves,’ she said, her voice as twee as her costume, ‘thank you for coming out on this inhospitable night. Over the next hour or so let’s see if we can’t banish the weather with the warmth of our hearts.’
John didn’t have to check whether his son squirmed at that sentiment, he knew him well enough.
‘We don’t need to worry what the skies throw at us,’ she continued, ‘we’re strong enough to face the worst of it, aren’t we?’
There was a general murmur of assent, nothing as solid or confident as words. John had the absurd sensation of being adrift in a crowd of animals. No doubt this was a variation on her usual spiel, a little team-building to get her audience onside before she proceeded to ‘part the veil’.
The buttering-up continued. ‘There’s a wonderful energy tonight,’ she said, ‘you bless me with your thoughts.’
‘And your twenty quid,’ Michael whispered.
John could have mentioned that the money had been his to spend but he chose to listen to Aida Golding.
‘I can sense many familiar souls with us this evening, both in this world and the next. There are also some new faces, for which I say: welcome, it is wonderful to be able to spread the word. Tonight you will learn the most important lesson of your lives: death is not the end. All of those we have ever known, all we have loved, are still here. They watch over us. They stand alongside us. Life goes on.’
To some that may actually have felt like a comfort but in that moment John couldn’t think of anything worse. He found himself imagining that the heavy breathing of the widow in the seat next to him was that of Jane. The fact that this was a familiar terror made it no less powerful. He realised that he wasn’t attending in the hope of having Aida Golding’s promise proven correct: he was only too convinced his wife was still with him, he wanted someone to prove otherwise.
‘The dead do not leave us,’ Aida Golding continued, ‘they just move on to another level of existence.’
Much consolation that was. John had a sudden urge to get up and leave, his curiosity (and, yes, desperation) had brought him to an experience he was no longer sure he could endure. He was half-risen, enough for Michael to glance over, when Aida Golding cut off all possibility of a sheepish retreat.
‘They are here!’ she shouted, the sudden increase in volume making many of the audience jump and John drop back in his seat.
‘Should have gone before you came,’ said his son. John glanced over at him and just made out the ghost of a smile in the darkness.
‘Too late,’ he said, ‘she shouldn’t have made me jump.’
This momentary childishness was enough to lessen the panic that had been building up in his chest. He wasn’t comfortable but he could, at least, endure.
‘They all want to speak,’ said Aida Golding, ‘they all want you to know they’re here.’ She took a sudden breath, and clicked her fingers repeatedly. ‘Is there a Jonah here, or Jonas …?’
John would take far more convincing before he would get involved, but a namesake on the front row was not so reluctant.
‘Jonathan?’ said the man, half getting to his feet. ‘Could it be Jonathan?’
‘Or Joanie?’ asked a voice from further back, ‘our Arthur always called me Joanie.’
‘It is Joanie,’ confirmed the medium, ‘the voice is becoming clearer. Sometimes it’s very hard to hear and you must bear with me, my loves, try and remember I’m not holding a conversation with someone who is right here, rather we are talking across the gap between realities.�
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John had to admit this was something of a departure from her earlier assertion but wasn’t inclined to dwell on the fact.
‘Joanie?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need your voice, Joanie. Can you stand up for me, my darling? When I ask you a question always reply for me, loud and clear. You can do that, can’t you, Joanie?’
‘Yes, of course …’
Aida Golding broke out of her ‘trance’ for a few moments, to address the audience directly. ‘As those who have joined me before will know I’m a clairaudient and it’s very important for me to form a strong link between the spirit and the person they want to speak to. Imagine it’s like a telephone line, but there’s a lot of interference and the signal is weak. Your answers, Joanie – and this goes for everyone here tonight, of course – are what keep that link strong. If you’re quiet or slow to respond, the link gets weak and may break entirely. So don’t be shy, shout out! Be strong and positive! Don’t block this natural gift with silence and negativity, let your loved ones be heard!’
Again, there was much in this that John recognised as standard fare. Putting the onus on the audience, making them responsible for the success or failure of the night’s events, instilling in them a suggestion to always reply in the affirmative. The more he heard the less he felt involved. Perhaps tonight would be exactly the cold dose of reality he had hoped for?
‘It’s a man’s voice, Joanie. He says … his name, is it Arthur?’
‘Yes! That’s him!’
John couldn’t fail to notice how much this impressed the gathered audience as several people drew in breath. He couldn’t claim to be as impressed as he remembered Joanie mentioning the name herself.
‘Is this your husband, Joanie?’ the medium asked.
There was a slight pause at that and even in the darkness the silhouette of her body language showed discomfort. John wasn’t the only one to notice.
‘Only it doesn’t feel like it,’ the medium continued, withdrawing another gasp from her willing crowd, ‘it feels more like …’