The Dark

by Claire Mulligan

  By the time Maggie leaves she is certain at last of what she has always suspected.

  A week later, Maggie staggers to the railing of the steamer Italy. Trot trot to Brandy. Trot trot to Gin. Better watch out or you might fall in. She chuckles at her clever rewording. She might be a toddler herself, so unsteady are her steps and so scattered are her thoughts. But she is not going to gin. Nope. She is going to New York, and for revenge.

  Voices behind her: “Tsk-tsk.” “Oh, my, my.” “Disgraceful.”

  “What of it?” she yells, but at the seagull that bobs in the air before her, as if on a child’s string. “The damned letter has been sent.”

  The seagull caws in agreement. Does Leah have seagulls in her aviary? No, a seagull would be a painful mirror, what with its greed and opportunism, its scavenging ways and, oh, its ability to escape. But Leah won’t escape much longer. Maggie and Katie might well go down with her into infamy, but that can’t be helped. “We’re trussed together, we three!” Maggie yells at the seagull. “Like so much cordwood, that’s what Leah said once. All we need is a raging fire.”

  Maggie’s letter might even now be set to type for the Herald newspaper of New York: I read in your edition of Saturday May 5 an account of the misfortune that has befallen my dear sister Mrs. Katie Fox Jencken. The sad news nearly killed me. My sister’s two beautiful boys are her idols. Spiritualism is a curse. God had set his shield against it. I call it a curse, for it is used by heartless persons and vilest miscreants as a cloak for evil doings. And so forth.

  Maggie trembles. She has set in motion something terrible and momentous that cannot be stopped nor slowed. “Have you, now? Really, Maggie Fox, you should be damn accustomed to that sort of thing by now.”

  She looks around to see who has spoken, then understands that it was her own self.

  Before Maggie sent that letter to the Herald, she sent a letter to Katie detailing her plans to publicly confess, and asking if Katie agreed. For with Maggie not yet in New York, Katie will have to face the consequences alone. She will have nowhere to hide. In private there will be Leah’s wrath. In public there will be a maelstrom. And that is only the beginning of the end. New York’s Academy of Music is booked. Maggie will soon be onstage. Will soon be proving to the world, once and for ever-all, that the dead do not return.

  Katie’s telegram in reply to Maggie’s letter read only: DO WHAT IS BEST.

  “Damn me, damn me now,” Maggie mumbles. Tastes what might be salt spray, or tears. She looks up. The deck is deserted. A flag snaps on a pole. A forgotten book claps its pages. Grey sky and grey deck. And now a man walks briskly towards her.

  “Tuttie, pet! Where is the diamond bracelet I gave you? Where are the Honiton undersleeves? And your hair is in a dreadful arrangement. No matter. Christ, but it’s cold in that other place. I never cared you were a fraud, you know, for I was much the same.”

  He is so close Maggie can see the boy-blue of his eyes. Then he is gone. She looks frantic over the rail, as if the deep is where he dwells. “Come back, please, Elisha. You tell them first. You tell them we were wed. Tell them you loved me, Maggie. Say my name, you damned prat. You cad.”

  He doesn’t answer. She peers farther over the rail at the waving waves. Calls his name again. The gulls call back as if in mockery. She hikes her petticoats. One leg over. She flinches as the cold metal bites the bare skin between her stockings and pantaloons. He touched her there once. And farther on and farther on. It has been such a long time since she clambered over fences, railings. Was the orchard the last time? Just before she and Katie met the peddler. Yes, back when the world was good. Back when she and Katie were good. How did that encounter lead to millions of people joining hands and asking the dead to rise and speak? It makes no earthly sense.

  Both Maggie’s legs are over now. She is on the other side of the rail, on the thin ledge over the leaping sea. She clings to the rail behind. A finger slips. Another.

  “Ma’am! What in hell!” A thick forearm clamps her waist. A meaty hand grapples at her neck. “Quick now!” “I got her, sir!”

  And then a medley of voices as the living rush to claim her.

  CHAPTER 43.

  “Here you are, Maggie-duck, a small gift.”

  My patient took it with delight. It was Godfrey’s Narrative of the Last Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin 1853–4–5, by W.M.C. Godfrey, One of The Survivors.

  “I sought it out, after your tale of yesterday, the ship, the sea and you seeing Elisha while you were in the grip of alcohol visions.” This mention of alcohol reminded me of my gin allotment which, according to my bracelet watch, was as of this instance. The allotment, I allow, had been growing by the day.

  “Elisha was as real as you,” she said, peeved. The book fell on her lap. She was growing weaker by the hour, I should add.

  “Mayhap, but do the dead return just to nag us? It seems unlikely, even for your Elisha, by which I mean it is high-time you laid the man to rest.”

  “She patted Godfrey’s Narrative. “And this will help?”

  “What? Are you afraid of disobeying your shilly-shally man?”

  “Elisha did order me not to read it.” She smiled faint. “But then I did return to spirit rapping against his wishes, and this cannot be a worse offense. Go on then, be my dear reader, Alvah June.”

  The first page showed an etching of the handsome, strong-jawed Godfrey himself. I read aloud to my patient of Elisha’s growing paranoia in the long Arctic dark. Of how Godfrey and some others left the ice-locked ship during the first winter and struck for the south. Of their failure and return. Of Elisha’s unreasonable hatred for Godfrey. Of how he accused Godfrey of deserting on the occasion when Godfrey was out hunting for them all. How Elisha tried to shoot Godfrey, both men moving at a shuffle because of the cold and scurvy. Godfrey over the ice. Elisha to the gun-stand on the brig. How the shots sludged about Godfrey until he shuffled out of range, and then shuffled another eighty miles more to the Esquimaux settlement and safety. Later Elisha apologized and asked Godfrey to return to The Advance and make the journey home with them. Godfrey did so, only to have his reputation destroyed.

  “Can you just imagine, duck, trying to run as bullets plume about, but being unable to because of the cold, the scurvy? To be forced to just shuffle, shuffle to safety?”

  “Oh, I can imagine that easy as cake.”

  “As can I, easy as pie.” We both thought this no end of amusing.

  We came to the book’s final page: “She was a young lady of small stature, rather full of face, brilliant black eyes and eyes of a corresponding hue, and while Dr. Kane looked with mortification and self-blame on his own wavering, it seemed almost equally impossible to take or to renounce the hand of Margaret.”

  “Your name writ out at last,” I said.

  My patient’s smile then was of a different mettle than before, not mischievous, not sly, relieved perhaps. And I admit to pride at offering this succour.

  “A shame you did not seek out this Godfrey and make a match of him. The two of you seemed of a piece.”

  “Other lives as bubbles in a tin tub,” she murmured. These were Elisha’s words, but her voice, I should mention, was wholly her own.

  THERE ARE RUFFLES of applause as Maggie walks slowly onto the stage of New York’s Academy of Music this October evening of 1888. A sheaf of papers is in her hand, a red-faced manager at her side. She is not downplaying her fifty-four years. She wears her greying hair drawn severely back, spectacles and an austere dress in her favourite bishop’s blue.

  The crowd mutters at this unentertaining sight. A man yells, “Where’s them lovely girl ghosts, all gauzy draped? That’s what we want exposed!” This is such a knee-slapper that the crowd—which is mostly men—takes a while to settle.

  Maggie searches out Katie, who, attended by Ferdie, watches from an upper box close on to the stage. Maggie wishes back the supremacy of candles, for in the lime and arc lights Katie’s skin appears wax-
white, her arched nose a shadowy blade, her eyes puddle-grey. And candlelight would be kinder, also, to the red velvet swagging, which in the lime light appears a noxious, mottled orange.

  Katie nods and puts her hand to her heart. Maggie faintly smiles, then adjusts her spectacles and holds the papers before her. Her voice is wooden and she does not look at the crowd as she reads her confession, even when she can barely be heard over the hisses and catcalls from Spiritualism’s believers. The cheers from its detractors.

  “… It was forty years ago and we were very mischievous children and we wanted to terrify our dear mother, who was a good woman and easily frightened. At night when we went to bed, we would tie an apple on a string and cause the apple to bump on the floor so that it sounded as steps. Mother did not think us capable of a trick because we were so young. Children, mark me, will always find means to accomplish mischief.”

  Maggie tells of Leah arriving and taking them off to Rochester. “She knew straightaway. She’s always known. Her daughter, Lizzie, helped us at first but then she was wisely quit of the whole thing, as I wish to God Katie and I had been. One has to learn the rapping when one is young—that’s why Mr. Chauncey Burr years ago could never make his exposé plausible. And certainly my sister Leah, Mrs. Underhill, could never manage it as we did. And this, among other things, made her jealous and bitter. In time she exhibited us to a lot of spiritual fanatics. She would give us signals to tell us how to answer. She had confederates seek out knowledge of the sitters and she could read a face like a book. In time we could too. In this way she made as much as one hundred fifty dollars a night. She gave us a measly stipend, and she pocketed the main of our earnings. It was us who began the practice of sitting in the dark around a table, holding hands so that the sitters could not know what went on about them. We called them ‘spirit circles’ or ‘promiscuous circles’ because both men and women were there, but everyone calls them séances now.”

  Then the crowd is treated to the sight of Maggie’s knobby, naked feet. She puts them on a low table and waggles them like a child playing in the sand. The manager calls for quiet. There is a rap on the upper proscenium, then on the stage itself, then knocks in the aisle, on the far doors. A number of worthy doctors are called up. They hold Maggie’s feet. Declare they can feel the pulsations.

  Boos and hisses. Cheers and applause. The crowd seems quite evenly divided. Some people are walking out in a huff. Some are laughing. Some are already exchanging wagered money.

  “She’s a lying bitch, that one,” a man yells.

  Maggie staggers back. She knows a moment of utter terror. She visions the crowd transforming into a mob and tearing her to pieces. She visions tarring and feathering, red-hot pokers, the usual lot.

  Maggie shudders and brushes at her dress. She gathers her courage, then stalks to the outmost edge of the stage. Her red-faced manager reaches for her, mightily worried. The crowd quiets. Something is not going according to plan. The excitement is palpable.

  Maggie drops her papers and glowers at the crowd. Her voice is clear and loud. She no longer speaks as if by rote. “Hear me! All of you! I am the widow of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, and I swear I would call him to me if it were possible, but there is no such thing as the departed returning to this life. I’ve tried to do so in every form, and know it cannot be done. I visited a graveyard at the midnight hour. I stood over each grave and called upon the dead to give me some token of their presence. All were silent.”

  The manager grips her elbow. He mouths apologies to the audience and tries to steer Maggie offstage. She shakes him loose and points at the crowd: “Mark me! The dead do not see us, nor hear us, nor interfere in our worldly affairs. It matters not how we entreat. It matters not how we pray. Our words all fall into the pit. For the dead do not return. Not any that go up to Heaven! Nor any that go down into Hell!”

  She looks to Katie. Katie nods.

  Silence from the audience. Cravats are straightened. Hats adjusted. There is a moment of fearful unease. For the living, Maggie well knows, might be terrified of ghosts, ghouls, banshees, doppelgangers; they might be terrified of the rotting dead tottering out of their graves. But that terror is nothing compared to the terror of knowing that the dead dwell across some endless void. Indeed, that the dead might not exist at all.

  Katie grips Ferdie tight as he and the red-faced theatre manager force a path through the heckling crowd, Maggie and Katie close behind. Ferdie holds protectively on to them both. The cab waits in a vat of gaslight. They are being jostled on all sides. Maggie is tight-lipped with fear. Her bravado has vanished.

  Maggie and Katie stumble against him at the same instant—a small, elderly man in a swank Chesterfield coat. Maggie glimpses a sleek grey beard, a mouth twisted in outrage, a cane topped with a gleaming hound’s head.

  “I’m sorry, I am,” Maggie cries. “We were so young and stupid.”

  “I’m sorry too. Really, really,” Katie echoes.

  “Please forgive us!” they say in unison, and clamber into the cab with the manager’s blundering assist. When Maggie dares a look behind, she sees this elderly man fronting the crowd. He smiles a contorted smile. Takes two limping steps, and then the cab rattles him from sight.

  CHAPTER 44.

  “I see that you’re all-disgruntled, Alvah,” my patient murmured.

  I was amazed she could see a dust-mote in her deteriorating condition and told her this fact.

  “Allow my guess. You’ve dropped a stitch. Or no, your bracelet watch has stopped again.”

  I was knitting away, fast as I could (I had nipped at some of her laudanum so my hands were steady enough), and had not dropped a solitary stitch. And the bracelet watch was set as firmly on my wrist as ever.

  “Aren’t you the fine fisherwoman,” I said, then set down the cover-all. “The Medico Society is displeased with me, if you must know. To be more than frank, they are ready to give me the heave-ho and relieve me of my duties, to boot. They say I spend too much time with you. That I am failing in my duties and my reports have been muddled.”

  “Relieved? Of your duties? I didn’t think your sort could be.”

  “Everyone’s game is up and ended, sooner or later.”

  “Should I tell you how Leah’s game ended?”

  I picked up the cover-all again, determined now to finish. “Now that I would very much like to hear.”

  LEAH POLISHES THE SILVER BUTTER PICKS, the ice-cream hatchet, the silver sugar chipper, her thoughts spinning, fiery as a Catherine wheel.

  Her new-hired housekeeper—a heavy-faced, insolent creature—tosses the latest editions of the newspapers on the sideboard. The newspapers just miss Leah’s bona fide French toile vase, the one that had been her father’s. Leah acquired it after he died, and now it sits centred on the sideboard.

  The housekeeper trundles off. Leah hesitates, then takes up the newspapers. The reports are gleeful, even savage. There is Margaretta taking the stage at the renowned Academy of Music, waggling her big toes for all to see, cracking and snapping those obscene digits. The dead do not return? Who is Margaretta Fox to say that? Who is she to say that Heaven and Hell are inescapable?

  Leah hurls the butter picks and ice-cream hatchet, then any other silverware that comes to hand—the salt throne, the silver fish-knives. Their thudding on the oriental rug sounds alike muffled, staggered steps.

  “Mrs. Underhill.” Daniel has appeared in the dining room. His face, though calm, is edged with a look Leah has never seen before, nor does she wish to again.

  She presses her hand to her chest. Daniel is holding the lily box. He lifts the thick lid, then takes out her supportive letters, her commendations and medallions, and sets them aside with the professional detachment of a banker with a strongbox. Into the silence the birds in Leah’s aviary begin their racketing songs, not a comfort this day, only a further enragement because, really, how dare the birds sing when such disaster has befallen her?

  “Daniel, dearest. The
curio cabinet. The key. It was my private—”

  “Oh, I would never dare use your key.”

  “Then how—”

  “I broke the glass,” Daniel says. “With a hammer.” He pressures the top of the lid, just so, then shows the underside. The interior hatch has opened to reveal the hidden compartment. He does not take out her father’s letter, which is jammed in there. At this, at least, Leah is relieved.

  “The magic of phosphorous, appearing in a closed box of dirt,” Daniel announces. “Should I attain one hundred ten years, I will ponder how I could have allowed myself to be fooled by this simple device.”

  “Mr. Underhill, I shall explain …” She rushes to him. She is cumbersome these days what with her flounced skirt trains, what with her girth, and thus she stumbles to her knees. She looks up, and with the same wronged-damsel expression as when she raised her burned hands from the garden dirt, back when Daniel first fell in love with her. Surely he will believe in her now. The man believes in ghosts, for heaven’s sake. Why not her avowed words?

  “Daniel, it was my father’s idea. Truly. Oh, he acted the reformed roustabout, but his heart was never changed, nor reformed nor … and he made that box for me, yes, but then, then he tampered with it and insisted I use it for the phosphorous test. He could not bear for my good name to be destroyed … Mr. Underhill!”

  But Daniel has turned away. Has left Leah to struggle upright on her own. “I have been a good wife to you. I have. Spirits-have-mercy, I know you would have liked a bit of this and that. Shall I try on occasion? Would that help? Would that please you? Daniel? Danny? Come back here this instant.”

  He pauses but does not turn. “I suggest you visit with your people in Arcadia for a number of weeks, Leah, until this unfortunate business abates.” And then he is gone.

  Leah presses her hands to her temples. The staccato-beat there threatens to topple her, but it steadies. She steadies. She sweeps up the newspapers. If only she could toss them forthwith into a fire, but the dining room hearth is cold, as are all the hearths—the heat chugs invisibly up through the radiators instead. Candles? Oil lamps? All are stored away. Her electric lights shine bright, too bright, and seem lifeless of a sudden without the burn of flame.