Mr Podmore gave me an unfriendly look over the top of his blue spectacles. ‘Are you a resourceful, stop-at-nothing newshawk or an incompetent feeble-brained nymphet?’
‘Oh, the former, certainly,’ I lied.
‘Good. Now hop it.’
I hopped. In a dream I sat at my desk and fiddled with the lever that wound up the page on my typewriter, wondering how I was going to fulfil my brief. I could not imagine myself wandering up to people’s front doors demanding to become intimate with their domestic poltergeists. And how was I to discover suitably spectre-ridden dwellings? Could there be a guidebook of such things? But quite quickly I fell to glorying in the increased contribution I could make to the family kitty and to thinking how pleased with me Rupert would be.
Some time passed before I became aware that silence had fallen. The atmosphere was usually peaceful for, unless Mr Podmore’s door was open, Muriel and Eileen typed like idly pecking birds already stuffed with crumbs, and their tea intervals were lengthy and numerous. But there was always a steady mutter of conversation, a rasping of emery boards, a rattling of the toffee tin, or a rustling of magazines. Now the silence was complete. I looked up.
Muriel and Eileen shifted their gazes from my face as soon as I did so and Muriel made a curious motion with her head and neck like an ostrich swallowing a cricket ball. ‘Some people have a nerve, you’ve got to hand it to them. My sainted mother would turn in her grave if she knew the sort of riffraff I’m obliged to associate with.’ I stared at her in astonishment. ‘Oh, yes!’ Muriel spoke more fiercely as though angered by my incomprehension. ‘I’ve read all about it in the Daily Banner. Not only murdering in the family but prostitution, thievery and goodness knows what else! But that doesn’t seem to matter to some people! No! They come flaunting themselves among people who’ve never even had a library book overdue, bold as brass, as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Disgusting I call it.’
‘Yes.’ Eileen had flushed a dark red. ‘You’d think those what are intimately acquainted with convicts would be ashamed to go about.’
I couldn’t think what to say. Cheap though the taunts were, yet I was wounded. I didn’t care what they thought about me but the idea that these silly, small-minded women despised my family cut me to the heart. They must have seen this for they looked at each other and smiled spitefully.
‘Did I tell you, Muriel dear,’ said Eileen in a low voice, ‘about the time my auntie was stopped in the street and this man with a microphone asked her if she could tell Stork from butter? It was ever so exciting.’
An hour later I was close to tears. It had nothing to do with Muriel and Eileen, for I had entirely forgotten their unkindness in the struggle to get the expenses to make anything like sense. I was supposed to lose the cost of Mr Podmore’s holiday in Morocco in things like pints of beer with ex-mistresses of alcoholic footballers, lunches with renegade MPs, B&Bs in Manchester, Biros and staples. But the hotel bill had been so large that Mr Podmore would have had to have lunched at Wilton’s seven days a week for at least a year to get anywhere near the total.
‘Byng.’ Mr Podmore stood in the doorway. ‘Haven’t you finished those accounts yet?’
‘Sorry. I don’t seem to be very good at, um, adjusting –’
‘Give them to Eileen. I want you in my office. Now.’
He slammed the door.
‘Well!’ said Eileen, ceasing to storm at the keys as I handed her the untidy sheaf of papers, much scribbled on. ‘And they say crime doesn’t pay.’
‘Sit down,’ said Mr Podmore. I did as I was told. Mr Podmore strolled about the room, smoking a cigarette, an armpit smell much in evidence. ‘It will surprise you to know that I have for some years been writing a book about psychical exploration.’ I was not particularly surprised. Knowing absolutely nothing about Mr Podmore I had formed no ideas about what he did for fun. ‘I’m aware,’ he went on, ‘that an interest in such things might seem at odds with a substantial intellect. However, it’s the case.’ I continued to look solemnly at him as befitted an employee, regardless of the ass her boss might be. ‘I’m interested in your claim to have psychic powers.’ I smiled modestly. ‘I don’t say I believe in the existence of such any such thing,’ Mr Podmore continued. ‘My mind’s entirely open. I’ve never seen anything of a supernatural nature myself that could begin to convince me. But as I say, probably an active, sceptical intelligence is a barrier. I want you to attend a séance tomorrow afternoon. Four o’clock.’
‘Will I get paid? I’ll have to do overtime.’
Mr Podmore looked pained. ‘There are other gods besides money, you know. I’ll show my gratitude in other ways.’ Mr Podmore’s gratitude was something I was quite prepared to live without. ‘All right, five pounds.’
‘Done. Where will the séance be?’
‘At the house of Madame Eusapia, the well-known medium.’ Our social circles evidently did not overlap. ‘Be punctual. Madame Eusapia is highly sensitive to any disruption of her mental preparations –’
There was a knock at the door and a head appeared around it. ‘Hello, Sidney,’ it said, blinking its bleary eyes as though the light in the office was too bright. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late. I’ve been ill – flu, I think it was.’ He coughed pathetically to illustrate the point and a blast of beery air filled the office. Luckily Mr Podmore had already stubbed out his cigarette.
‘You can’t have flu and recover in twenty-four hours,’ snarled Mr Podmore. ‘You’ve been drinking again.’
The rest of the body followed the head. I looked at the visitor, aghast.
‘You always were inclined to think the worst of a fellow,’ he whined. ‘It’s not enough that I’ve dragged myself from my bed to bring you that piece on that gangster funeral you were so insistent on having. And with a fever on me so I could hardly see straight. I had a nasty accident. I should think my kneecap’s dislocated from falling into the gr – a ruddy great hole.’
‘You needn’t have bothered.’ Mr Podmore remained unsympathetic. ‘This young woman’s done your work for you.’ He looked at me. ‘This is Slim Brewer, our chief reporter. When he’s sober – which isn’t often.’
A scowl appeared on Slim’s pallid countenance. His flabby mouth drooped and a skinny hand pushed back a thread of black hair scraped across his shining white skull. I made a resolve on the spot that absolutely nothing, not money, expediency, common honesty nor bamboo shoots under the fingernails, would make me confess to having mistaken the chief reporter of the Brixton Mercury for Vildo’s incorporeal shade.
FOURTEEN
‘Come in, young ladies.’ The woman who opened the door had a good deal of caked rouge in her wrinkles and lipstick on her teeth. A curious odour drifted out from the hall of number 74 Philadelphia Avenue. I detected disinfectant mixed with damp, overlaid by the rank smell of flowers that have been too long in their vases.
‘Thanks very much.’ Portia moved ahead of me. ‘I’m Portia Byng and this is my sister Harriet.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ She smiled, in a tried sort of way. ‘We weren’t expecting two girls. Mr Podmore said only one.’
Though Portia’s ability to smile had been curtailed by the broken tooth, she could still be charming when she chose. ‘When Harriet told me about you I begged her to let me come too. I’ve always longed to attend a séance. It’s so thrilling to meet someone who’s actually talked to dead people. You must be awfully clever.’
What Portia had actually said was, ‘A séance? What a hoot! If you don’t let me come with you I’ll never, ever forgive you.’
As it was the first time for ages that she had sounded remotely enthusiastic about anything, I had decided to risk Madame Eusapia’s displeasure and bring her with me.
‘Oh, I’m not Madame Eusapia. I’m Miss Judd. I help Madame Eusapia on her séance days. The spirits are very troublesome often, quite nasty and spiteful. She’s fit for nothing after.’ The woman looked despondent. ‘Madame Eusapia says I haven’t any psychometric gifts so I
’m an ideal assistant.’
The narrow hall was further constricted by a mound of carrier bags spilling over with clothes, with a note pinned to one of them, which said ‘Vicar, 4.30’, and an old-fashioned lady’s bicycle. An ancient fur coat reeking of mothballs hung from a row of hooks and on the telephone table stood a cut-glass vase of dying bronze chrysanthemums. We followed Miss Judd into the sitting room. The curtains were drawn to exclude every scrap of daylight. An oil lamp burned smokily at the centre of a circular table draped with a black cloth. Four people sat round it.
‘Hello,’ said Portia. ‘This is my sister Harriet and –’
There was a chorus of ‘Sh-h-h!’ A man with a bald head and a little black beard pointed to an empty chair. Miss Judd drew up another next to it. We sat obediently and surreptitiously examined our fellow seekers after truth.
The two women were grey-headed, one with a tight perm, the other with an uncompromising pudding-basin haircut. They wore sensible woollen garments and I could imagine them being very efficient librarians or perhaps devoted secretaries. After a cursory glance at us they had returned their eyes to the lamp, at which they gazed with fierce eyes as though hoping to stare it out of countenance. The second man was small with a fringe brushed forward over his eyes like a thatched roof. He was staring slack-jawed at Portia. The moment she returned his look, he dropped his eyes to the lamp. I stole a glance at the bearded man on my right. He sat with folded arms, chewing his lower lip with a disgruntled expression, eyes closed. He smelled very strongly of whisky.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I noticed a Victorian chiffonier with curtained doors and an upright piano with fabric-backed fretwork, both very useful for hiding tape recorders. I had bought a book about spiritualism called Behind the Veil from a second-hand bookshop and had discovered, greatly to my disappointment, that mediums are almost invariably fraudulent. But there had been many interesting little snippets of information. I had enjoyed the story about Arthur Conan Doyle, a staunch believer, who was furious because his spirit control insisted on calling him Sir Sherlock Holmes. I suppose he thought that ignorance should not persist beyond the grave.
As I learned more about it, it became clear that there must be a lot of money involved. One medium went so far as to have her vagina made larger so that she could hide large quantities of butter muslin in it, supposed to be ectoplasm. The novelist, Thomas Mann, said that spiritualism was a Sunday afternoon diversion for the servants’ hall. But this had not stopped him experimenting frequently with it – in a patrician manner for the purpose of determining scientific truths, naturally. Perhaps, like me, he yearned to see or hear something that would sweep aside dull reason and boring old common sense. Probably we would all like proof that death will not snuff us out entirely.
As we sat shrouded in mystic gloom, listening to the ticking of the clock and each other’s breathing, I told myself firmly that despite a tendency to be easily persuaded – to the point, said my family, of hopeless gullibility – on this occasion I would not allow myself be duped.
The chair nearest the door remained empty. A coal fire was sending out a great heat and the atmosphere of the parlour was frowsy. The bearded man’s feet were beginning to make their presence known.
‘It’s very hot in here, isn’t it?’ said Portia, in her normal voice. The beard turned glinting eyeballs in her direction.
‘This isn’t a tea-party,’ he whispered. ‘Try to get yourself into a receptive state. Make your mind a void.’
After another minute’s silence Portia said, ‘I’ve tried. It’s impossible. I keep wondering what that peculiar smell is.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ said the man with the thatch. ‘You’ve broken my thread of concentration completely. Now I shall have to begin all over again.’
‘Would you kindly cease talking!’ whispered the pudding-basin haircut. ‘It makes me feel positively unwell to be disturbed when I am floating on the aerial tide.’
‘I do beg your pardon,’ the thatch replied with bitter insincerity. ‘It may interest you to know that you’re not the only one. Though some people are all self.’
Portia giggled and they both turned to glare at her.
‘It’s just this kind of thing that upsets the spirits,’ began the perm indignantly. ‘It’s ever so hard for them to come back into the world and we ought to give them proper respect –’
‘Stop yammering, woman,’ hissed the beard. ‘Here she is!’
Miss Judd threw open the door with an air of ceremony and Madame Eusapia came in. I was disappointed. I had expected someone exotic and mysterious, perhaps inspiring. Her face was round and pudgy with a snub nose, and her figure was dumpy. She wore a gaudy robe, with jingling bracelets on her arms and a crooked turban of knotted scarves on her head. Could this unpromising material really be the conduit for communication with departed souls across the Great Divide? She made me think of Widow Twankey in a provincial pantomime.
‘I hope it’s all right me coming too, Madame Eusapia,’ said Portia.
‘Hush, dearie.’ The medium held up her hand and her bracelets clattered down to her elbow. ‘Just you sit quiet and try not to get in the way of the business.’ Then she looked at me. ‘This is the girlie with the gift.’
‘Well, not really,’ I said, feeling uncomfortable. ‘I’m afraid – perhaps I imagined –’
Madame Eusapia waved away my modesty with a plump hand. ‘I know these things. You’ve got it. I can see a light hovering about your shoulders. Blue and sparkly, like a necklace. It’ll be a blessing and a burden to you, dearie, but I hope you’ll always try to do good with it.’ I lowered my eyes, my face burning from the heat of the fire and feelings of shame at my own duplicity. ‘That’ll be three pounds each, before we start.’
Miss Judd travelled fast round the table, pocketing notes discreetly, and stopped at my elbow.
I took out my purse. I had ten pence besides the five pounds that Mr Podmore had given me, out of which I had intended to buy some of Pa’s favourite garlic-stuffed olives and two cigars, as well as some ink for myself. And there was the tube fare to get home. Portia had seventy-five pence.
‘Five pounds, then, for you two girls,’ said Madame Eusapia, ‘A special discount, seeing as one of you’s got astral influences.’ I put the note into Miss Judd’s outstretched palm, not without a sense of grievance. ‘All right, Judd.’ Madame Eusapia sat down, massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers and then spread her hands on the table, palm up. ‘I’m ready to begin.’
Beard placed his large paw over my right one and Portia held my left. Miss Judd drew a curtain across the door and turned down the wick in the lamp to a crimson glow. There was an unpleasant smell of oil vying for ascendancy with socks and whisky. For what seemed like ages we sat in silence. I could hear Beard’s breath whistling in his nostrils.
My stomach began to rumble. Always troublesome, it had got much worse since my father’s arrest, and these days only a slight increase in nervous tension was needed to get it going. I tightened my abdominal muscles but that seemed to make it worse.
‘Ah-h-h!’ sighed Madame Eusapia in unison with a particularly loud rumble on my part. Portia snorted. ‘There is an intelligence present. Please make yourself known to us. One rap for yes, two for no.’ Portia made another explosive sound, which she disguised as a cough. She must have frightened off whoever was attempting to penetrate the malodorous murk of Philadelphia Avenue, for Madame Eusapia again fell silent. My arm and thigh were growing uncomfortably warm from the heat from the fire, and Beard’s hand was sticky. I tried to distance myself from the idea that he was giving mine sly little squeezes. A tinkling sound, like harness bells, from somewhere in the blackness overhead, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something light and soft drifted across my face, like blowing cobwebs.
‘I can hear you,’ cooed Madame Eusapia. ‘Come and join us and don’t be shy. I’ve got a name coming through. Jack?’ Silence, all round. ‘Not Jack? Peter
?’ Another spell of silence. ‘Harry, is it?’
‘Harry?’ gasped Pudding-basin haircut. ‘My husband?’
‘Hello, Harry. I can hear you. Come in, dear.’
There was a sudden sharp rap that made my heart patter with alarm. It appeared to come from beneath the table.
‘Are you Harold Leadbetter?’ asked Madame Eusapia.
Another rap.
‘He was Henry when I was married to him.’
‘Yes, Henry, to be sure. I can’t always hear perfectly. Sometimes there’s a lot of interference. Other spirits trying to get through.’
‘Can you see him?’ asked Mrs Leadbetter. ‘How’s he looking?’
‘He’s floating just behind the young lady with the psychic gift.’ I shrank my head down into my shoulders, not daring to turn round. ‘He doesn’t want anyone else to see him but me,’ continued Madame Eusapia. ‘He’s fading in and out a lot. But he’s looking very well. A nice fresh colour.’
‘Is he in uniform?’ asked Mrs Leadbetter.
‘Let me see. RAF, I think. Or is it army? One of our brave boys, anyway. I can hear music. It’s a march. Listen, can anyone hear that?’
It was faint and slightly scratchy but I distinctly heard the sound of a brass band from somewhere above my head. Madame Eusapia began to trill, ‘“Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules …”’
‘He wasn’t in the forces,’ interrupted Mrs Leadbetter. ‘He was a commissionaire at the Green Park Hotel.’
Portia stifled laughter, not very successfully. I was too embarrassed by this hopeless ineptitude to find it funny.
‘Well!’ said Madame Eusapia. ‘All that braid and the cap, I quite thought … Never mind. Have you a message, Harry, for your dear wife?’
Something brushed my knee. I stretched out my foot, half expecting to encounter Miss Judd crawling under the table. It came into contact with something that at once returned the pressure with unpleasant insistence. Beard’s nostrils were whistling like a high wind. I shifted in my chair towards Portia.
Clouds among the Stars Page 20
