Carrie didn’t have the luxury of choice. She knew what she had experienced on four separate occasions and what she’d heard emanate from Oona’s throat. As if all that were not enough, she had also heard Oona, in her sleep, summon up the memory of an old friend of hers, Franny Hagstrom. And it had taken Carrie a while to understand just how eerie that was.
None of these things could be explained away or ignored. It was evidence, it was real, and what it all amounted to was a form of unknown truth that had to be faced. The alternative, Oliver’s attitude, seemed to be wilful ignorance.
Carrie tried to be alert to everything around her, while not giving in to paranoia. She drove back to Manhattan on the Sunday afternoon and went to work as usual on Monday morning. She took care, but went about her business. Nothing happened. Oliver got back from Europe on Thursday, was out for a while on Friday evening but otherwise busied himself at home. All fairly normal, and yet somehow different. Both of them were different.
She didn’t call Oona during the week. There was no need to consult her, and Carrie felt somewhat confused about her personal relationship with the girl. That Sunday morning Oona had woken up slowly, clinging to her. She was groggy, her limbs loose and floppy, almost like a narcoleptic. At times she would put her hands on Carrie’s breasts or around her hips, and would plant tiny kisses on her throat. There was something undeniably sexual about this, and there were a few brief moments when, against her wishes, Carrie felt aroused by it. But it had happened largely in Oona’s sleep, and it also seemed in some way to be essentially babyish, innocent in nature. Oona clung to her and touched her as an infant does its mother, seeking the protection of her embrace and the deep warmth of her body. Whatever sexual dimension there was to it seemed incidental and beside the point.
Mam. Oona had murmured and mumbled it again many times that night. It took a while for Carrie to understand it, but when she finally grasped its true significance it explained a lot. She’d thought that Oona was saying Ma’am, which seemed oddly formal and unnecessary, but then it dawned on Carrie: the word was Mam.
She knew from her years in England that it was common usage in the north and in Scotland for Mom or Mum – for Mother. Then she realized that Oona was clinging to her only as an infant did to its mother. Carrie felt relieved at first, but also troubled and deeply saddened for Oona.
Hadn’t Roz warned her?
It was difficult to know what to do. Carrie admired Oona as a person with miraculous abilities, and looked to her for crucial help and guidance. How could she, at the same time, treat her as a forlorn child in need of love and mothering? In any event, she simply couldn’t play the mother. It wasn’t possible. She had a life in New York, a husband and a career.
Fortunately, Oona appeared to know that there was a natural limit to the situation. When she finally had awakened that morning she was friendly and as girlish as she’d been the night before, but ever so slightly distant. She was re-establishing the proper balance and space between them.
Carrie felt relieved, but also freer to show her affection. She gave Oona a big hug and a kiss on the cheek as she was about to return to New York. The good feeling stayed with her through the week.
Until Oliver arrived home, at which point a sense of nervous anticipation began to take hold. By Saturday the mounting unease had reached the point where Carrie felt she had to do something. Tomorrow was Sunday, and she still wasn’t sure if Oliver intended to accompany her to New Haven for the second session. He’d only promised to go once.
Things unspoken, things still undone – Carrie realized that they hadn’t made love since before his trip, and suddenly she had a rush of desire, a need for her husband. She wanted to put her arms around him, to feel safe within his embrace, and to have him fill her with his strength. She wanted to know that there was no distance between them, that everything was all right.
Carrie put on her navy-blue Wakefield pyjama top. It was a size too large, loose and rather boxy, but it hung beautifully on her and she knew that Oliver liked it (if the number of times she had to resew buttons on it was any indication). They settled in on the couch with drinks and a movie – La Femme Nikita. It held no surprises any more, since it was one of Oliver’s old favourites, but Carrie didn’t really mind seeing it yet again.
By the time the film ended they were into some heavy petting and deep kissing, but it didn’t last long. Oliver wriggled out of his pants as he rolled her onto her back, slid between her legs and then into her, and it was all over a minute later. She felt disappointed, not so much because the sex was unsatisfying but because she had wanted the intimacy to be prolonged, to form a cosy cocoon around the two of them that would last for the rest of the night.
But Oliver had a cigarette lit and was channel-hopping with the remote while she was still catching her breath and struggling to sit up. Face it, you just got fucked. To be fair, it seldom happened like that.
‘Oliver.’
‘Mmn?’
‘Are you going to New Haven with me tomorrow?’
‘Oh, shit.’ Annoyed, but not angry.
‘You don’t have to if—’
‘Never mind. I’ll go.’
‘I don’t want you to if you’re going to resent it.’
‘I don’t resent it,’ Oliver said, unconvincingly. ‘But I do think it’s a waste of time.’
‘After what we heard the last time?’
‘Thought we heard,’ he corrected.
‘I know what I heard,’ Carrie insisted quietly.
‘Well, we differ on that point.’
Carrie frowned. Nothing would be resolved, they would argue politely and then just set it aside. She hated that. But Carrie hated even more the thought of going to sleep with unhappiness or anger lingering actively between them.
‘If you don’t believe any of it, why bother?’
‘For you,’ he said. ‘Because I love you.’
But then Oliver stayed up, drinking single malt and smoking, flicking aimlessly from one channel to another, while Carrie went to bed. She felt cold. She got up to put on the pyjama bottoms, but they didn’t help. She felt cold and empty and alone.
18
Dunsany was right, the world was a very queer place. But it was no comfort to think that there were other levels or realms of existence beyond the one we currently inhabit. It filled Charley with dread. The idea of life after death troubled him.
‘I mean,’ he said aloud, ‘what’s the point?’
‘What?’ Heather asked. ‘The point of what?’
‘Going through all this, day after day, night after night, weeks, months, great bloody years of it. What’s the point if, at the end of it all, you have to start mucking about all over again on some other plane of being? Act Two, life goes on, but without the humble pleasures of your poor old body.’
‘Ah, Charley.’
‘It’s enough to give you the willies.’
He slammed his empty glass down on the table, and then went to the bar. They were in Gene’s Tap, and had been for two hours now. Never mind, there was still light in the sky outside, which meant it was still quite early. Charley felt all right, whatever dark considerations nagged at him, but the drink was beginning to show in Heather, who had consumed three absurdly pastel daiquiris that had no place in a place like Gene’s. Charley glowered at George, the barman, who smirked as he served a fresh round.
‘I don’t think I want another one,’ Heather said foggily, as he parked the vile concoction in front of her.
‘Just nibble at it around the edges, then.’
‘Charley, I don’t like sitting around and drinking like this in the middle of the day.’
‘It’s almost night,’ he pointed out.
‘I mean it. You don’t take me seriously.’
‘I certainly do, love. I depend on you.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that my life is in your hands,’ he told her. ‘You keep me sane. I live on the edge, and—’<
br />
‘What’s that mean?’ she cut in. ‘You live on the edge. You told me that the first time we met, and I still don’t understand what it means. The edge of what?’
Everybody was so damned literal these days. ‘Heather, it’s just an expression. The emotion is what counts.’
‘I don’t feel happy. I ought to be happy when I’m with you. But I’m not happy.’
Oh dear, this was serious. He had another six months in New Haven and it would be a shame to lose Heather this soon. Perhaps he ought to take her out to dinner – for a change.
‘Darling, I—’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Well, of course.’ Even better: home to bed.
But back at Heather’s apartment, she wasn’t having anything of the sort. Charley was affectionate and attentive, to the best of his ability in that direction. He listened dutifully to some of her favourite racket, which he could not quite bring himself to consider music. He spoke fondly of Heather’s many virtues and qualities, while taking care not to mention her breasts. She was in no mood to be reminded that naughty sex was at the centre of their relationship.
But Heather ignored his soothing words. She sat planted in an old armchair, knees locked together tellingly and feet splayed apart. Charley recognized that pose from his high-school years. It was a position adopted by good young ladies at a certain time of life. It meant: access denied.
‘Charley, I just want to go to bed. Alone.’
‘Ah, Heather…’
‘I mean it. I’m tired and I want to be alone.’
‘After I send you wafting off happily to dreamland on clouds of bliss and tingly little wavelets of joy.’
Heather screamed.
‘What is it, love?’ he asked, with concern.
‘Alone.’ She gave him a hard stare.
Apparently Heather wasn’t having any. Perhaps the time had come to pull out all the stops and tell her about Fiona. That would surely dampen her eyes – those wayward orbs currently frosted with a rosy shade of pink that somehow suggested certain laboratory animals. If necessary, he could even mention Oona and all that recent misery – though Charley was trying hard not to think about Oona.
‘Heather, I never told you this but—’
‘Alone. Now.’
* * *
Sex isn’t everything, Charley thought morosely as he re-entered Gene’s Tap and made his way to the bar. George soon caught sight of him, and sauntered along with an excessive look of sympathy on his face – but amusement in his eyes.
‘Back already, Professor?’
‘I forgot something.’
‘And what would that be?’
‘A pint of plain.’
‘And for the young lady?’
‘Fuck off.’
The Saturday-evening crowd had claimed all the tables so he had to perch himself on a stool at the end of the bar, next to an ancient jar of pickled eggs and a hanging piece of cardboard that held brown strips of dead fish embalmed in Cellophane.
Charley puffed on a Connecticut Valley cigar that suited the lugubrious drift of his present mood. The trouble with drinking alone is that you end up thinking about what you want to forget. The worst part is, it begins to feel good.
Charley believed in Oona now. What he believed was far from clear, however. That she was one of those crazy women out of old folklore, women who could see and hear and know things that other human beings couldn’t? Women possessed of a touch of madness and magic – at one time they were regarded as more or less the same. That much, yes; Charley would have to concede that. There was no other explanation for the fact that Oona had uttered a few things known only to himself. Such as the exchange with the shopkeeper, the warning he had consciously discounted later.
A little packet of woe you have to carry around with you for the rest of your foolish life.
Well, guilt was a fine thing in its own nasty way. There’s nothing you can do about it, either. Once the little bugger moves into your house, it’s there to stay.
But Fiona? Charley still resisted the notion that his dead child was somehow back in the everyday world. Oona might be able to read the deepest recesses of his mind, or she might see events that had happened long ago and far away – but that didn’t mean a dead soul was on the loose and out for blood.
The idea somehow offended him. What was he supposed to make of it? That his daughter was a free-floating spirit currently in the vicinity, hovering over New Haven? Where was she at this very minute? How did she occupy herself when she wasn’t speaking through Oona or appearing in Jan’s dreams?
Charley resented the way that he had reacted. Oona had been in great distress, no doubt about it. Her act was real, and when he had finally grasped that, he had responded instinctively, reaching out and taking the poor girl into his arms, trying to comfort her until the terrible moment passed.
He didn’t regret what he had done for her, but he did resent the way he had been manipulated into such an emotional state of mind. You silly eejit! If you ever read Dickens you’d probably break down and cry buckets when you got to the part where Little Nell died. Theatrics, is what it was.
Oddly enough, that he had come to accept Oona as a legitimate medium had had a kind of liberating effect on him. There was no longer any need to argue with himself about that point, so he could focus on the larger question: what did all of it mean? What did it say to him about his life? And Jan’s.
But here, as before, Charley ran into a blank wall. He had not learned anything new. He saw no lesson. There was no dazzling revelation. The message from Fiona – if, indeed, you believed that Fiona had been there – amounted to nothing more than a suggestion of her presence. No doubt there were some people who would find spiritual comfort in that kind of message, but Charley wasn’t one of them.
If there was an afterlife, a higher plane of being, then why would anyone who crossed over to it ever bother returning to this earthly realm and fretting about their past life?
Bugger the spiritual. Whether it was there or not, Charley couldn’t deal with it. He found it easier and much more sensible to put his trust in science. Oona was genuine? Okay, fine. The human brain was a marvellous and mysterious organ, one that still defied anything like full understanding. So, let us say that the brain is capable of rare and remarkable feats, such as those Oona had apparently demonstrated. We don’t understand how or why, but the answer must lie in the brain, still waiting to be discovered. It could have something to do with the electro-chemical nature of messages within the brain, low-frequency radio waves, or the way that matter and energy could be interchanged. Stuff like that. And it might have something to do with the nature of information itself: who was to say that the entire history of human life wasn’t floating around permanently in the ether, tiny packets of data that could be accessed by human brains that had developed or been malformed in some peculiar way?
That made sense. The only trouble was, Charley couldn’t be entirely sure about any one part of this business, and that was what so distressed him. He couldn’t bear the thought that Fiona really might be in some state of unrest, in need of their help, or trying simply to communicate with them. If the spiritualists were right, what then? What could he do?
Play out the game with Oona, see where it led. But that was a depressing thought. Lonely, desperate people sitting around in a room in Westville, depending on every obscure word that emerged from the mouth of a bizarre prodigy. Deciphering whatever seemed to relate and discarding the rest.
Sir Walter Scott, for Chrissake.
It was hopeless, all hopeless.
* * *
Charley walked home, navigating Chapel, the Old Campus and the Green. He hadn’t noticed how humid it was that night until he arrived back at the apartment and started to peel off his outer clothing. It was wet. He was drenched with sweat. It was far worse inside. They didn’t own an air-conditioner and the windows were all closed so the sticky heat and humidity had simply accumulated, hour by hour, wit
hin the walls.
Couldn’t count on Jan for anything any more. Charley opened all the windows. The night air was getting cooler, and it would clear out the apartment by morning.
He leaned close to Jan in the bedroom – she was asleep, and a low-grade snore emanated from her. Typical. She’d wake up in the morning with a headache and clogged sinuses if he didn’t let in the air, and you couldn’t tell her it was her own fault.
Charley padded around in his bare feet and underwear, going into the kitchen to grab a cold beer for a nightcap and then into his study to drink it within the protective shield of literature. His sacred womb-tomb of books. Yes, and so what? There are some people who can’t even get to sleep unless they have a gun handy. Books were infinitely superior, the best refuge, and you couldn’t accidentally blow your wife’s head off with, say, the poetry of Derek Mahon. Though it might be interesting to try.
The beer was sufficient to ease him over the edge. Charley felt his body begin to swim as he finished it. He would find his way to sleep in no time, if he could find his way to bed – or even if he couldn’t. Intoxication was too glorified a term. The grog had merely hammered his fraying consciousness into submission for a few hours. That was the point.
When he awoke, Charley realized a couple of things before he opened his eyes. He was in his own bed, with his body nestled in well-worn pockets and moulded around landmark bulges. At least he hadn’t passed out on the narrow couch in his study or the sofa in the living room. And it was light outside, for light penetrated his eyelids – which felt as if they were bonded shut.
He knew it was still early because there were no sounds of traffic outside. So it was much too early to wake up on a Sunday morning. He didn’t move, hoping to drift off again. But then he became aware of a small, persistent noise.
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