by Peter Straub
Julia glanced rapidly around the room, but saw nothing amiss; the living room looked drugged, impersonal, not hers; the McClintocks’ furniture lay like heavy beasts sleeping around a water hole. She walked through the moonlight to the dining room. These drapes too were open, and she could see out into the garden, eerie in the silvery light. There too nothing moved. Julia turned around to look into the corners of the room.
And then she saw what had made the noise. Lily’s flowers lay in a puddle on the carpet, the vase she had put them in shattered into four or five large irregular pieces. Julia stifled a scream rising in her throat, and put one hand to her mouth: someone had smashed the vase against the mahogany table and then thrown the flowers to the carpet. She ran to the windows and tugged at the handle; it moved smoothly down, and the window swung out into the garden, admitting a wave of cool night air. It was unlocked. Last night, outside, she had pushed at the handle, and it had not budged. Now she turned the key, locking the window again. Magnus must have entered somehow—had found his way in here—and after smashing the vase, had fled through the garden. The scene, in her imagination, had the same stench of moral failure, the same hopelessness, as .the moment on the rooftop in her dream—it was overwhelmingly despairing.
Julia bent to the soaking carpet and picked up the sections of the McClintocks5 vase. These she took into the kitchen and set on the counter. Later she would try to glue them together. When she returned to the dining room she gathered the foolish broken flowers, took them into the kitchen and pitched them into the small bin beneath the sink. She thought of Magnus reeling home, furious, talking to himself, staggering bearlike up Kensington High Street. She supposed that he would visit one of his women.
After she had blotted up some of the water with a dish towel, Julia went back upstairs to her bedroom. She felt flushed and restless and lay down in her bed to await morning. It would be impossible to sleep, she thought, but her eyes, heavy, began to close almost immediately. Just before she dozed, she imagined she heard far off laughter—an unfriendly, mocking noise. Heat settled on her in layers; in one of the broken dreams she had between intervals of wakefulness, she dreamed that she and Kate were birds, gliding birds, riding currents of warm air. Up there, they were free: no one would notice them. She desired anonymity, apartness, isolation. Perhaps, she thought, she really did want to go mad.
“Well, I told you I wanted to see your house,” said Lily. They were speaking on the telephone, shortly before noon. “And it would be a heaven-sent answer to our problem. Normally we meet at Mr. Piggot’s rooms in Shepherd’s Bush, but he’s been doing some painting and the flat simply reeks of it—extremely unsuitable, as you can imagine. Mrs. Fludd won’t come to Plane Tree House because she insists on working in a ground-floor room, and I don’t imagine we should occupy the lobby, do you? Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth live together in a bed-sitter in West Hampstead, but that too is on the second floor. Mr. Arkwright says his wife won’t hear of having our session at his house. So, my dear, you see our position. Might we meet at your house? I know it’s an intrusion, especially as it’s your first experience, but I’m at my wit’s end trying to invent a ground-floor room which simply does not exist.”
“No, it’s my pleasure, really,” said Julia, who was in fact dubious about having Mrs. Fludd and the rest of Lily’s circle in her house. Then she thought that if Magnus were hanging about outside, watching the house, it would serve him right to see a crowd of people drive up. She saw the house from his point of view, all its lights blazing, cars parked outside on both sides of the street: it would be an emblem of her independence from him. She said, “I’d be happy to help out. What time do you usually meet?”
“You angel” breathed Lily. “Nine o’clock. The others will be so gratified.”
“Should I have any refreshments? Anything to eat?”
“Coffee or tea. Some biscuits. We’re not a very particular set.”
For the rest of the morning Julia sat out in the sun in her garden, alternately reading Herzog and dozing; after lunch she went again into the garden, taking with her an iced glass of gin and bitter lemon. The drink, the hot sun, reminded her of summer afternoons in America, at home or at Smith, afternoons of Nat Cole on the radio, boys appearing to sprawl on the grass. In this mood of nostalgic, sun-drugged leisure, Julia passed the afternoon, reading steadily through Herzog.
At four, struck by an idea, she went into the house through the dining room and telephoned Mark.
“It’s probably totally crazy,” she said, feeling a little dishonest. “Lily practically insisted that I join her gang of devil-worshipers or whatever they are, and now that they’re meeting here I feel sort of swamped by them. Could you come over to hold my hand?”
“Lily won’t like that,” said Mark.
“Bugger Lily. I haven’t even mentioned to her that she broke her promise to me by telephoning Magnus. I know she couldn’t help it. Besides, I don’t know that she wouldn’t like it if you were here. Aren’t you two friends these days? I thought you and Lily were getting on?”
“She’s got some peculiar ideas about me,” Mark laughed. “I think Lily fancies herself my warden.”
“As mine too,” she said. “Please come. We’re all meeting at nine, but you could come over earlier.”
“Done. Do you want me to bring anything?”
“Bring yourself,” Julia said.
Lily and a squat, red-faced woman in a flowered dress covered by a shapeless, ancient gray tweed overcoat straining at one large button arrived at eight fifty. As a pair they were unavoidably comic: Lily like some aging, silky moth accompanied by this little bulldog of a woman who needed only a carthorse’s straw hat to complete her ensemble. And Julia could not keep from smiling at the two of them when she had opened her door. Of all the women who looked like Lily, she thought, only Lily would appear in public with this person. They looked like a vaudeville team—Lily would be the “aristocrat” who is doused with water and slapped with cream pies.
“Mrs. Fludd and I had a lovely walk through the last of the sun,” Lily said. “Julia Lofting, Mrs. Fludd.”
“How do you do?” Julia said. “Please come in. Did you walk through the park?”
“Holland Park is locked at sunset,” said Lily. “It’s tight as a drum. Mrs. Fludd wanted to see the neighborhood.”
“It ain’t half hot,” said Mrs. Fludd. “It’s tropical, I call it. Still, it’s nearer than Shepherd’s Bush. Not exactly cool in here either, is it?”
Julia apologized, explaining about the heaters.
“You want to go to a nice air-conditioned bingo,” said Mrs. Fludd.
She bumped to a halt following Lily into the living room. Mark rose from the couch, grinning. “Nice to see you again, Lily,” he said. “And you must be the wonderful Mrs. Fludd I’ve heard so much about.”
Lily glanced at him, and then at Julia; her disapproval clear, she turned to attend to Mrs. Fludd, who appeared to have become even redder and more squat in shock.
“There’s two new ones,” she complained. “You said one. You never said two new ones. I come all this way for nothing. Too much interference with two new ones.”
“This is my brother, Mark Berkeley,” Lily quickly said. “He’s a friend of Mrs. Lofting’s. Mrs, Fludd, please don’t say it’s impossible. All the others will be arriving soon. And I wanted Mrs. Lofting to witness our transcendences.”
“No transcendences with two new ones,” Mrs. Fludd said firmly. “No transformations, no interpenetrations, and no consummations neither. This one”—she pointed at Julia with a stubby finger—”is skeptic. All the vibrations will be muddled. Aren’t you skeptic, dear?”
Julia looked at Lily, not sure what to say. Lily was no help. She was still upset by Mark’s presence. “I suppose I am,” she finally said.
“Of course you are. Your aura’s dark—dark as pitch. Confusion and despair in the seventh plane. That’s the plane of domesticity. Right, dear?”
“Well
“
“Right, then. And there’s another cloudy aura,” nodding to Mark. “Dirty as an old pond. But that one’s open to things. He’s receptive. Maybe too open. Pretty men are like that. He needs special
care, he does,”
“Does that mean you won’t do it?” said Julia. She was charmed by Mrs. Fludd.
“Did I say I wouldn’t? I said, no transcendences, no transformations, no interpenetrations and no consummations. You couldn’t follow them proper anyhow, being skeptic. But he could—he’s open. He wants to be filled, like a bottle.”
Mark laughed delightedly and said, “Mrs. Fludd, you’re a genius. You’re worth twice your fee.”
“Don’t take money,” said Mrs. Fludd, unbuttoning the single button and permitting the front of the tweed overcoat to spring apart. “Money soils the gift. I take tea, though. PG Tips is my drink.” She moved unhesitatingly toward the couch. “Mr. Piggot makes a wonderful cup of tea.” She sat, exposing thick white calves and a pair of tight, black policeman’s boots, and looked expectantly at Julia^
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Julia said, “but I don’t have any tea, I bought coffee, thinking...” She looked again at Lily, who merely shrugged, still distressed by Mark’s presence. She had moved far across the room from him, and after her gesture to Julia, pretended to examine the garden through the long dining-room windows.
“Can’t drink that muck,” said Mrs. Fludd. “Sometimes I take a little Ribena. Smashing for the upper regions, Ribena is.”
“I don’t have any Ribena either,” Julia said, nearly wailing.
“Humph.”
“Sherry?”
Mrs. Fludd cocked her head and considered. “Well, as there’s to be no special tricks tonight, I could accept a tiny amount of sherry, yes. Next time, you want PG Tips, love. We all drink tea here. Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth dote on Mr. Piggot’s tea. Here’s my coat, love.”
When Julia was going toward the kitchen for the sherry the doorbell rang, and she asked Lily to open it for her. When she returned to the living room, a tall spindly man in his sixties with a severe long face and a little Hitler mustache was regarding Mark with an expression of grave disquiet. “Two will never do, Miss Lofting,” he was saying. The man had thrust his hands into the pockets of his long tan canvas coat—a coat like a park attendant’s or a movie IRA man’s—and showed no inclination to remove it or his large-brimmed hat of the same color. Mark, perfectly at ease, merely smiled back at the man.
“Now, Mr. Piggot,” Lily coaxed, “Mrs. Fludd is willing to go ahead, and so. , . .And here is Mrs. Lofting, our hostess. Mr. Piggot, Julia.”
Mr. Piggot glanced sharply at Julia, softened a bit, and removed his hat. His hair grew in a graying mousy fringe above his ears, leaving a high, mottled bald scalp which looked as fragile as an eggshell. “Well,” he said. “Looks like she makes a good cup of tea.”
“Have a nice glass of sherry, Mr. Piggot,” Julia said, trying desperately to win over the old scarecrow.
“Sherry, is it? We generally imbibe tea at these gatherings. PG Tips, I use. Mrs. Fludd fancies it, don’t you, Mrs. Fludd? But I won’t say no to a nice sherry, not from your hands. British, is it?”
“Uh, Spanish,” Julia said. “Manzanilla.”
Mr. Piggot’s face contracted. “Well, it’ll wet the whistle. I feel a bit dry after cycling over here from Shepherd’s Bush. We generally have these sessions at my place, you know. Expect your—aunt?—has told you that. But Mrs. Fludd won’t go into a place that’s been painted too recently. Distorts the reverberations.”
“Something horrible,” Mrs. Fludd cheerfully agreed, accepting her sherry. “Throws me whole system off.”
“There’s Mr. Arkwright,” said Mr. Piggot when the bell rang again. “Punctual as the Irish Guards is Mr. Arkwright.”
Julia said, “Will you let him in, Lily?” She took a third glass of sherry to Mark, who said something sardonic about filling up his bottle and moved over to sit beside Mrs. Fludd. Mr. Piggot still gazed at him with affronted blue eyes, spaced rather too closely together.
“Hullo, all.” A compact little gentleman in a frayed gray gabardine suit bounced into the room a few paces ahead of Lily. He too had a mustache and a bald head, but his mustache was larger than Mr. Piggot’s, and his cranium seemed almost aggressively solid. Julia noticed a medal pinned to his jacket before she saw that one of his sleeves was pinned up. “Am I the last?” He looked around briskly, paused at Mark, and then made for Julia. “See the West Hampstead ladies aren’t here yet. You must be Julia Lofting. Pleased to meet you. The name’s Arkwright. Nigel Arkwright. And you have sherry, how thoughtful. Lovely house you have here, eh? My cousin Penny Grimes-Bragg took a house in this neighborhood many years ago, over in Allen Street. Not far from here, is it?”
“No, not at all,” Julia said, wondering if Mr. Arkwright got out of the house much. But she had decided that he was an “ally” against the unpredictable Mrs. Fludd and the as yet unknown West Hampstead ladies.
“No more than a brisk walk,” he was saying. “Driving my old bus down here, I was just thinking of the old days when Penny and I—”
“Do join me, Mr. Arkwright,” Lily broke in. Her innate sociability had apparently overcome her resentment of her brother’s presence, for she smiled at Julia once Mr. Arkwright turned his back.
“With pleasure, Miss L.,” he chirped. “Ah, Mrs. Fludd, two new ones tonight. That’ll limit the old bag of tricks, won’t it?”
“Drink your sherry, Nigel,” said Mrs. Fludd amicably. She had moved some inches away from Mark, who was now slumped far down on the couch so that his bottom seemed in danger of slipping to the floor. He looked profoundly bored, but Julia sensed some area of tension—unreleased, concealed—in him. Mrs. Fludd too appeared to have been accumulating psychic power, for she glanced toward the door a second before the bell rang again.
Julia went into the hall and opened the door. Two women, both thin and elderly and dressed in long, threadbare black coats, stood on the doorstep. Behind them Julia glimpsed an ancient black bicycle propped against the curb, and an even older-looking, rusty Morris Minor behind it which must have been Mr. Arkwright’s “bus.” The West Hampstead ladies had presumably taken a combination of buses. If Magnus were lurking outside, watching the various arrivals, the effect would not be what she had intended. In fact, she saw, the effect would be the reverse of her intention: Magnus would suppose her to have slipped over the edge into total incompetence. Still, she found a smile for the two women.
“I’m Julia Lofting. You must be Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth.”
“Such a long way.”
“But not as far as Shepherd’s Bush.”
Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth entered Julia’s house, remarking upon its niceness. When they reached the living room, they darted in tandem across to Mrs. Fludd, spoke a few words to her, and then turned around to smile at the others of their group. When Miss Pinner finally saw Mark, her smile disappeared. Miss Tooth, however, cast him a glance full of vague benevolence.
“Who is this young man?” asked Miss Pinner.
“Now, Norah,” said Miss Tooth.
“Who is he?”
“Mrs. Lofting’s brother, Mark. Very dark in the aura, he is. Your aura’s very strong tonight, Miss Pinner. Bright orange, the color of powerful movements in the fourth house. Perhaps we shall have luck tonight.” Saying this, Mrs. Fludd looked about the room, her attention visibly distracted from Miss Pinner; she had grown, since Julia had last looked at her, slightly apprehensive.
“There will be no question of the higher states with two new ones,” said Miss Pinner.
Lily said from Mr. Arkwright’s side, “Mrs. Fludd has very graciously agreed to limit herself to the elementals.”
As Julia looked at the two old women their faces, which had seemed so similar at the doorway, separated. Miss Pinner bore a certain resemblance to Mr. Piggot, at that moment engaged in describing to Lily and Mr. Arkwright how he caught fish in H
yde Park by fixing bread to his fishhooks: both of them had long narrow faces and small bright-blue eyes like chips of sky. Miss Tooth looked rather dusty and faded, with her small, deeply-lined face the image of a retired governess. Miss Pinner could have been an ex-headmistress noted for her disciplinary acumen.
Julia took all the coats to the hall closet and returned with sherry for the two women. Miss Tooth glanced at Miss Pinner before accepting hers and, receiving a nod, took the glass in her small, trembling hand.
Mark gave Julia a despairing look and rose from the couch to join Lily, listening to Mr. Piggot describe his illicit fishing experiences. For these old people the spiritualist gatherings were social occasions; Mr. Arkwright kept punctuating Mr. Piggot’s adventures with loud bursts of soldierly laughter. His rush of talk hadn’t denoted any special sympathy for Julia, but demonstrated instead pleasure at his release from loneliness. Julia’s house was filled with people whose company she could not enjoy; even Mark was sullen. Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth were now examining Julia’s furniture. They were in an ecstasy of approval, everything being “so nice.” Julia wished she could leave and lock the door behind her; but she took a sip of her sherry and sat beside Mrs. Fludd on the couch.
“I shouldn’t stay here,” said Mrs. Fludd.
“No? Mrs. Fludd, I’d be so grateful if you could. Lily has been looking forward so much…” # “You needn’t be false to me, Mrs. Lofting, you’d be happy if the lot of us went home. But you don’t take my meaning. I shouldn’t stay here if I were you. Shouldn’t stay in this house.”
Julia looked at the woman’s red puggish face in surprise; she was further surprised to notice that Mrs. Fludd’s eyes were shrewd and perceptive, not at all vague. It was as though she had seen that Mrs. Fludd was actually a man, wearing that absurd clothing; the shock was as great as that. She had been seeing Mrs. Fludd as a “character,” someone not to be taken seriously, and this quick glance of recognition made her blush for her assumptions. If the others of Lily’s gang were lonely eccentrics, Mrs. Fludd’s cool, startling gaze revealed a person composed of flintier materials than the gibberish about transcendences and interpenetrations had suggested.
