The Explosionist

by Jenny Davidson

  “How does it work?” Nan asked. She seemed to be trying hard to behave as though everything was all right.

  “It’s a technique called psychometry,” Sophie explained. “Every object retains impressions of the people who’ve handled it. They sometimes do it at séances—people put things like a pen or a watch into a tray, and the medium gives readings from them. It doesn’t have to be something of your own—people often get readings on an object belonging to someone they’re worried about.”

  She felt incredibly silly stating the obvious like this, but the things taught in the mandatory Spiritualist Instruction class were all airy-fairy nonsense and none of the others came from the kind of family that had Friday-night séances. It wasn’t a question of social class, more of different cultures: Great-aunt Tabitha’s civil-service-oriented and rather mandarin circles practiced spiritualism very regularly, while most other people felt that it was all very well but not the sort of thing one did in one’s own home.

  Priscilla and Jean stayed cross-legged at the foot of the bed, Nan at the head, while Sophie crouched on the floor beside them.

  “Put the candle on top of your locker,” she told Nan, “and then touch each of these things, saying your brother’s name every time.”

  The others watched Nan touch each relic in turn, her lips moving as she faintly sounded the name.

  Once Nan had finished her pass along the row of objects, Sophie let her own fingers brush over them, forcing her mind to become as receptive as possible. Sophie had met Sam a few times over the years, but her mental image of him as distinct from the other Harris brothers remained blurry. Best of all would have been something that had been on Sam’s body right at the moment he died, for his spirit would cling to it afterward. Most of the things here gave off a much clearer sense of Nan than her brother, and it was with some discouragement that Sophie made a second pass over them, this time letting her hand rest a little longer on each item.

  As she came to the pistol, the candle guttered and a breeze swept through the room.

  Jean yelped, Priscilla shushed her, and even Sophie (by now more or less hardened to the presence of the uncanny) almost lost her balance, stopped from toppling over only by Nan grabbing her shoulder and holding her upright.

  “It’s not really glowing,” Priscilla whispered as Sophie’s fingers closed over the pistol’s grip. “That’s just a reflection of the ambient light.”

  Nobody bothered to correct her.

  Sophie couldn’t imagine Nan hadn’t unloaded the pistol as a safety precaution, but she double-checked the cylinder to make sure the chambers were empty. Then she took hold of the gun and let her mind go blank.

  Next thing she knew, she found herself standing in the middle of the room, trapped between Jean and Priscilla, who were each holding one of her arms. All her muscles hurt, and her throat felt raspy and sore.

  “Be quiet!” Jean hissed. “You’ve been shouting loud enough to wake the dead!”

  “Surely that’s the point of the exercise?” Priscilla murmured, dragging Sophie back over to Nan’s side.

  “Nan, was it any good?” Sophie asked. She couldn’t remember a thing—a strange and frightening feeling.

  The others looked at one another.

  “I’m not sure if good’s the word,” said Nan, sliding over to make room for Sophie as the others resumed their places at the foot of the bed. Her face was very white, and she swallowed several times as if trying not to be sick. “It was too much of a jumble for us to make much sense of. Sophie, I’m sure it was Sam speaking through you. He speaks—used to speak—very quickly when he’s excited, not a stutter exactly but a sort of jerky pattern. The way you were talking just now was exactly like it.”

  “And what did I say?” Sophie asked.

  She hadn’t meant to give voice to Sam’s thoughts, just to receive a message she’d be able to pass on later to Nan, but clearly her control wasn’t as good as she imagined.

  The others exchanged glances.

  It was Priscilla who spoke.

  “It was pretty much what you’d expect,” she said, “from someone fighting hand to hand and knowing he’s about to die.”

  “Oh, Nan, I’m sorry,” Sophie said, tears springing to her eyes. She clasped Nan’s hand, and Nan flinched at the contact.

  “It’s not your fault, Sophie,” she said, detaching her hand from Sophie’s. “That’s war. We all know it can end like that. But Sophie, he really wasn’t himself. I think the pistol took things in the wrong direction. Too violent. Do you think you could try one more time? What I need is to say good-bye, and feel at least for myself that he hears it. I can see it’s horrible for you, Sophie, but it would mean the world to me if we could do it.”

  Sophie gave Nan a doubtful look, then sighed. What did she think she was saving herself for, anyway?

  “All right,” she said. “I’m going to try something different this time. I think there’s something I can do with the postcards. I only thought of it just now, but it should be better than the gun. That was a mistake.”

  She sat and thought for a minute, the others afraid to interrupt. Then she picked up the little sheaf of postcards and looked at them closely. She laid them out writing side up on the coverlet like a game of solitaire.

  “I need to get a few things from the other room,” she said. “Back in a minute.”

  She tiptoed across the room and into the study, where she found an exercise book and a plumbago pencil.

  “All right,” she said, back beside the others and amazed at the steadiness of her own voice. (It was a good thing she’d gone to so many of those wretched séances over the years.) “I need you all to work with me this time. We’re going to form a small sitter’s circle, the kind they use at real séances. You’ll all join hands, but I need to keep mine free, because I want to try letting Sam communicate with Nan in writing. That’s been the pattern of their contact over the last few years while he’s been abroad.”

  Priscilla took Jean’s hand and Jean took Nan’s. Sophie asked Priscilla to rest her right hand lightly on Sophie’s left forearm, Nan doing the same on Sophie’s other side. Then Sophie took up the pencil and let it rest on the exercise book, her left hand pressing the page flat to the surface of the bed.

  This time she spoke aloud. She didn’t think her concentration had been good enough the last time, perhaps because she’d had little conviction that Nan would benefit from hearing what her dead brother had to say. But she couldn’t protect the others, not really. They were living through bad times, and whatever happened, there would be many deaths.

  She raised her head and closed her eyes.

  “Sam,” she said. “This is Nan’s friend Sophie at school. Nan’s here with me right now, and so are two other girls we share a room with, Jean and Priscilla.”

  She stopped speaking and felt for some kind of a response—anything, really. She felt a little tug or a tweak, like a dog whistle pitched high above human hearing.

  “Sam, your sister’s right here and she wants to say good-bye,” Sophie said, tipping her head in Nan’s direction and hoping she’d have the sense to speak.

  “Sam?” Nan said. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was to miss you on that last leave. I’m so proud of you, and I love you. That’s all. I hope you’re at peace now.”

  The words would mean nothing in a storybook, but the sound of them being spoken by a real person she actually knew made Sophie want to cry. She heard some sniffling, and one of the others pulled up a clasped pair of hands to wipe eyes on a sleeve.

  Sophie forced herself to stop thinking so much and tried to make her mind blank. Then, suddenly and startlingly, something began to happen.

  Her left hand felt for the edges of the exercise book, gripping the upper right-hand corner of the page, her forearm pressing it down flat along the top. Meanwhile her writing hand adjusted itself into a different grip on the pencil and began to move in fits and starts over the paper.

  The feeling was al
together so strange that Sophie couldn’t help opening her eyes to look. She stared as the words took shape.

  Two, three, four lines of writing. Sophie hoped it would be enough.

  Just then she had a flash of him, the agonizing presence of whatever remained of Sam Harris, the shreds left over from the pain of his last moments (he’d died in fire, Sophie realized, gagging), his own self weakened by months of deprivation and the unrelenting hostility of the people he was meant to be protecting.

  Within the agony, though, she sensed the solid core of his self intact. Even without having seen what he’d written, Sophie knew that none of Sam’s agony or his ambivalence about the army’s so-called peacekeeping mission or his doubt as to whether the sacrifice of his own life had any meaning would feature in the message to his baby sister.

  Sophie found her lips moving, silently mouthing, “Please let him be at peace; oh, please be at peace, Sam,” repeating it over and over until the pencil fell still in her hands and she slumped forward onto the bed.

  She came to herself a moment later in a scene of quiet chaos: Priscilla in tears, Jean’s arm around Nan’s shoulders, Nan herself shaking with hysterical sobs as she read the words on the page.

  “Are you all right?” Priscilla asked Sophie.

  “Quite all right,” Sophie said. She couldn’t shake the memory of how Sam felt—the fear and the sorrow and the self-disgust and the awful sensation and smell of burning, and yet through it all something human and real that had to do with his love for his family and his old life in the world. “Does the message make any sense?”

  Nan thrust the exercise book in Sophie’s direction, then got up and staggered across the room to the basin, where she ran water to splash on her face.

  Sophie held the book under the small pool of candlelight and read the dim scrawl wandering up and down across the ruled lines.

  “My dearest little Nanny goat don’t spare me another thought. So proud of you. Confident you’ll find your heart’s desire in Women’s Auxiliaries but do be careful Nan it’ll be harder than it seems at home. Look out for Mum and Dad they’ll need you now and take care of your good self with all love for evermore from your loving brother Sam.”

  The gap between Sam’s message and the torrent of pain and anger she’d felt from him struck Sophie hard. What must it have cost him to send these loving words? They had none of the vagueness Sophie associated with the run-of-the-mill spirit message—the postcard template had helped him write something very much like what he would have inscribed in life.

  Sam telling Nan she’d thrive in the army, after his own experience and in full knowledge that she too might lose her life, showed a generosity and willingness to sacrifice that Sophie couldn’t begin to emulate.

  The loud tread of the teacher patrolling the corridor brought them all back to the real world. Sophie blew out the candle and practically leaped back into her own bed, while Jean and Priscilla scurried across the room. Only Nan remained out of bed and over by the sink, the tap still running.

  The steps paused outside for a moment. It was easy to imagine the teacher leaning down and checking the crack under the door to see if they had a light on, and then deciding not to bother the poor things.

  “Nan?” Sophie whispered, after five minutes had passed and it seemed reasonable to assume the corridor was clear.

  “I’ll come to bed soon,” Nan said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sophie said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “No! You can’t imagine what you’ve done; it’s all I hoped for. Thank you, Sophie. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

  Sophie felt wretched. This couldn’t be right. Wasn’t one supposed to judge an action by its fruits, and hadn’t the night’s work only brought Nan more pain?

  What if Nan asked Sophie to contact her brother again, wanting more messages? What if she became addicted to crossing the boundary between life and death?

  Sophie buried her face in the pillows. First thing in the morning, she’d swear the others to silence. She certainly had no intention of becoming the on-call psychic for the whole of the fifth form. She fell asleep to the background of Nan’s quiet sobs and a faint whispered conversation between the other two girls.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  WAKING MUCH EARLIER than usual, Sophie arrived at breakfast in time to bag one of the two much-coveted private tables, tables that seated only four instead of fourteen and were usually snapped up by groups of sixth-form girls who had no scruples about rousting out anyone who dared encroach on their territory. Several older girls loitered nearby with their trays, but Sophie glared at them until they went away.

  Nan got there next. She and Sophie ate their cereal in silence until they saw the other two girls at the head of the food line. Then Nan turned to Sophie.

  “I know you hate being thanked,” she said, “but it mattered to me to have that last word from my brother.”

  Sophie felt awkward and irritable.

  “I can’t ever do it again,” she warned, “and you mustn’t tell anybody else what I did, either.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because it’s too horrible, that’s why,” Sophie grumbled, mashing the Weetabix with her spoon.

  “How can you say that?”

  “It’s playing around with people’s emotions, and I really hate it.”

  Jean and Priscilla slid into the seats across from them.

  “You must swear never to tell a soul about what happened last night,” said Sophie, so loudly that one sixth-form girl looked over from the next table to see what was going on.

  “We swear,” said Priscilla, her face drawn and tired.

  “You two,” said Jean, “we’ve got important news.”

  Sophie looked more closely and saw that Jean looked as tired as Priscilla, but more at peace with herself than she had seemed for months.

  “We talked it all through last night,” Jean continued, “and Priscilla’s changed her mind. Assuming they’ll take us, we’re both going to join IRYLNS as soon as we’ve got our exam results.”

  “IRYLNS?” Sophie said stupidly.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Nan, mustering more enthusiasm than Sophie would have thought possible. “You two aren’t cut out for the army, and IRYLNS is the best other way of serving.”

  “Yes, and we have to thank you and Sophie for showing us the way,” Jean said, smiling at them. “The idea of service—it really makes sense of everything, doesn’t it? It did for your brother, Nan, and it does for you. And now it will for us as well.”

  Sophie was so horrified she couldn’t speak.

  “We’re going to see Miss Henchman straight after breakfast,” said Priscilla, “and tell her what we’ve decided.”

  “You can’t!” said Sophie, finding her voice at last. “You simply can’t!”

  She couldn’t believe that she’d contributed to this decision by her participation in the séance. She’d never forgive herself.

  “Why not?”

  “Because—because—”

  She couldn’t tell them about what she’d seen, could she? The strict prohibition of the Official Secrets Act closed up Sophie’s throat so that she could hardly breathe.

  But she had to tell. She simply had to. She fought to get control of her lungs and larynx and tongue so that she could speak the warning.

  “Because IRYLNS will destroy you,” she found herself saying. She hoped she didn’t look as wild-eyed as she felt. “They make girls into monsters—you mustn’t do it.”

  Meanwhile Priscilla regarded her suspiciously, then broke into a delighted chuckle. Even Nan was smiling a little.

  “Oh, Sophie, you can’t fool us,” Priscilla said. “It’s a good idea, to try and get back at me for teasing you about Mr. Petersen. But a tale about the gothic secrets of IRYLNS—we’re living in the twentieth century, after all!”

  Sophie stared at the others. This was worse even than she’d imagined. She’d thought of the possible consequences of te
lling, the chance that she might have to endure prison and even perhaps torture or death. But it had simply never occurred to her that she might not be believed. Whatever would she have to do to convince them?

  “Give it up, Sophie,” Nan said. “You know yourself it’s the best thing for these two.”

  “I’m sorry about all that teasing,” Priscilla added, sounding really remorseful. “I don’t know what gets into me. My father always says there’s a kind of devil inside me that thrives on tormenting others. But I’m determined to become a better person, Sophie, and you have to believe me when I say that IRYLNS will be the best way for me to do that.”

  Your teasing and Jean’s jealousy, they’re parts of you, Sophie desperately wanted to say. You can’t just wipe them out like mistakes in your calculus homework. You mustn’t—

  But there was no point saying it. It would only be her fate, Cassandra-like, not to be believed. What powerful additional security for the secret keepers at IRYLNS!

  “Aren’t you going to congratulate us?” Priscilla said.

  “I must go,” said Sophie, piling her breakfast things onto the tray. She had to work out a way to convince them, but nothing she said now would change a thing, and it would make Nan think she was a bad person if she kept on saying bad things about IRYLNS—and Nan’s good opinion mattered. She needed hard evidence. But how would she get it? “I’ve got a few things to do before class.”

  Then she stopped, inspired.

  “If I had to make an excuse to go and see a very eminent doctor,” she said, “what do you think I should say?”

  The other girls looked at one another as if Sophie had gone mad.

  “You don’t need an excuse,” Jean finally said. “You’ve always got your limp.”

  Sophie felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach.

  She almost always forgot that she had a limp.

  Did everyone think of Sophie as a person with a limp?

  Did Mikael?

  THIRTY-FIVE