English Correspondence (15 page)

‘Go back to bed, darling,' Eve used to say as Sylvie stood in the doorway. ‘We're not getting out again once we're in. And I shall turn the light off in a minute and that will be that. Quick, quick.' Mostly Sylvie ran back to her bedroom, swindled by magic thinking, not because she was afraid of the dark. That will be that. What was ‘that'? Once or twice she defied the instruction, she was that sort of child, and then she saw it happen. Her father, whose back was towards her, manoeuvring himself from a sitting to a lying position, displacing swathes of sheet, her mother leaving her side of the bed linen taut, slithering in. They snuggled under, only Eve's left arm perpendicular, shapely, reaching for the lamp switch. ‘Sylvie, I meant it.' Then darkness. The wonder of it, the trust of these grown people in giving themselves up to sleep, to the helplessness of it. She could hardly have been more astonished had they agreed to fall backwards from standing. Sometimes she would wake and hear them talking. The subdued up and
down notes of night time conversation. She envied them the companionship. She didn't know about lovemaking, but, if the outward forms had been boiled down, she would have understood the essence of it. She would have envied them that too.

Sylvie took her tea to bed with her. She half sat up, her knees bent, both hands warm round the mug. She let her mind drift. She didn't use the time for thinking. It was an abuse of thought to cram it into surplus hours of sleeplessness. She knew the process; the apparently provisional opening, falsely provisional, as there was no going back on it, the agitation that worked up to a crisis without resolution, the compulsion to begin again, having failed to reach it. Each sequence got shorter and more panicky. Nothing in the daytime corresponded to it. No, that wasn't true. Looking for things could be like that.

It was peaceful in the bedroom. Sylvie liked being alone and she liked the still shapes round her. The walls seemed notional; flimsy partitions between city dwellers, as vague as the half light. She didn't feel separate. She put her empty mug on the floor by the bed and got under the covers.

The next morning Sylvie blew the dust off the telephone directories and sat, before she got dressed, with the Yellow Pages on her bare knees. There was nothing between spin dryers and sports clubs. She wasn't surprised. She sipped her coffee and bit into one of George's digestive biscuits. What she was after had no substance. She was also relieved. The remains of Eve's upbringing made her wary of taking on anyone who hadn't been personally recommended. It was a practical problem, though, in other ways, spectral. She intended to be brisk about it. She waited until nine thirty, by which time she presumed he would have finished his breakfast, and then called Graham.

He pretended to remember her, having asked her to remind him of her connection with St John the Evangelist. She spoke of George's funeral and Don, and said she hoped his
Appeal was going well. He explained some of the successes so far, without being touched that she had bothered to mention it. She pressed on and said she would like help from a dependable spiritualist. Did he know of one in his Parish? She trusted his judgement. He spluttered a bit. Then said Ah, she was French, wasn't she, and although spiritual guidance wasn't really his forte, he would do his best for her. Bereavement was often a difficult time. She could pop round for ten minutes before the woman from English Heritage appeared. He hoped financial assistance would be forthcoming from that quarter. No, Sylvie said, she had meant spiritualist, a medium. She needed to consult one. He said he certainly knew of no such person and was alarmed that she should think he would do. Disappointed women who preyed on other disappointed women and told them what they wanted to hear. Not of course, that the male of the species, of whom he was one, was exonerated; they were, more often than not, the cause of the disappointment. She said she hadn't meant to offend him, she would ask at the dry cleaners. He paused, then he said he believed there was somewhere in Belgravia, The Spiritualist Society of Great Britain or some such. She said, so there is such a place, she knew they would be regulated. He said she must see it in the same way that she would see the regulation of quick-fix exhaust mechanics, laughed twice, and asked if she believed in Purgatory. Certainly not, she said. What came next would either be nothing or glorious. Rather the former, he said he assumed, but he'd asked because he thought that that particular doctrine, if you could call it that, had led to tinkering in the hinterland. That sounds like a Christmas pantomime, she said. Will you be here, he asked, we're always short of contraltos and Hesther who ran the choir might come up with a French carol. Sylvie thanked him nicely and retreated. They said goodbye to each other cordially, each pleased to have managed to get on with another person so different. Why had he thought she was contralto?

Joyce sat straight up on a piano stool and her eyes fixed on the space between them.

‘There are a lot of them coming, Sylvie. Might be a choir. Or a school. I think they're all boys, men. Do you have a family photo with a lot of men in?'

She glanced encouragingly at Sylvie and then re-focused on the space. It was as though she had two sets of eyes. Their ways of looking were so different. Her voice stayed the same in both modes: chatty.

‘Maybe.'

‘That's how I'm seeing it. Like a whole group of them clustering round. They're all happy to come. Some of them wearing waistcoats. Edmund, I think it's Edmund, he's coming forward. He's smiling and nodding. He's patting something. Could it be your head, Sylvie? He says he's very fond of you, keeping an eye. He's concerned about your eating. Your eating habits getting into winter; carbohydrates, he mentions, and bigger portions. Don't let the dinner get cold, he says, or you won't find it appetising. I wonder why he thinks you might do that? Salad. He's shaking his head about salad. Yes, definitely plates of food. Can you take that?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Does food mean something in your life?'

‘Yes, I suppose it does.'

‘He says he's looking out for you. Here's another one. This one's got a beard. He's walking slowly along a path. He keeps stopping to lean over. Flowers, it could be, by the path. He looks happy, he says he's happy around flowers. Do you have anyone, Sylvie, fond of gardening?'

‘I don't think so. No.'

‘He sees your gifts. I wondered if it might be your father or grandfather. An older man in your life. He thought they might be in horticulture, your gifts. He loves the summer. He says you love the summer too. He says next summer will be your time. It will all come together for you. There will be great benefits to your family when this happens. He feels you're upset about a dear one in your family. They're
all men, dear, keep coming, I don't know whether you're content with that. They keep smiling and stepping forward. This one's holding something. I think it's a glass. He's raising it to you. Did your father like a drink, Sylvie? He's saying it gets him by. Could that be him? His eyes are like yours, sad like yours, but he wants you to know he isn't sad where he is now. Just keep that. He's a cultivated man, your father. Pictures is it, or antiques? He's somewhere with pictures and he's showing one to a child. An Impressionist, I'd say it was. I think the little child could be one of yours. He's very attached to it. Very proud. I'm sure it's a grandchild. They're both looking at the scene and he's pointing at an animal in it. A cat or a dog. I wonder if one of your children likes pets? Or it could be your father likes pets.'

Sylvie thought, I'm listening to this because my husband said go and see a fucking medium then, without for a moment believing I would do.

The room was insipidly decorated and over heated, sealed against draughts and outside noises. For a woman's house it seemed impersonal; blank, not minimalist. There were two basketwork chairs and a television. The Aeolian chimes over the window and the beaded curtain that hid the kitchen were the only blandishments and no air currents stirred them. There was nothing else to coax the spirits and, although Joyce was on the piano stool, no piano. Sylvie glanced over her shoulder to see if it was behind her, but it wasn't.

Joyce's voice stopped.

‘Sorry?' Sylvie said.

‘Just give me your father's name, if you would.'

‘George de Mora.'

‘George,' said Joyce.

In the silence, Sylvie chose not to look at her. She remembered now why she had come here. It was nothing to do with Paul. The hassle of calling the Spiritualist society, getting hold of Joyce, finding her way on two buses, turning the A to Z upside down, to work out which way to go, in the pattern of small streets. It hadn't been spitefulness.

‘Is there anything you'd like to ask George since he's with us, Sylvie?'

‘You could ask him if he replied to my last letter.' She sounded serious and heard it in her own voice. She saw the change in Joyce's eyes, a more personal interest, but, when the woman started speaking again, she knew she'd get more of the same.

‘He's surrounded by books; quite a few shelves of them. He has a great love of books. I would say that they're lining the walls. Am I right in thinking he was a librarian in his working days? No? I feel that's what he would have wished, to work in a library. I just want to give you that. He's smiling, dear, but he's being very selective. I don't think he's going to answer that question.'

‘Fine,' said Sylvie.

She knew, as she half listened to Joyce, what had been missing from her letters to her father. The sleep and sleeplessness, the daydreams, absences of mind, gaps between thoughts, hourly annihilations. Were these some sort of preparation for what lasted so long? George had doggedly read what she'd written and written back, as if her life had substance. He'd sent it back thicker.

‘I'm looking to see who else is there. I can't at present locate any women, but we can hope for your mother. She has passed hasn't she? She's here somewhere.'

‘Please don't go to any more trouble.'

‘It isn't a trouble, Sylvie. Was she a good looker?'

‘It must be tiring though,' said Sylvie. ‘Yes, everyone thought she was beautiful. We could have a cup of tea.'

‘They're all at their best, dear. In their prime, one and all.'

Sylvie wanted to go, but she felt uneasy about leaving too quickly, shutting the front door with George and the unknown relations still inside the house. At the end of Joyce's working day, did they slip back; held in place by glass and a finite edge? Or were they shifting about, concerned for those they had left behind? All that advice and interference and love, unspent, kept in check.

‘It's up to you, Sylvie. I've set aside the time. We can always resume.' Joyce leant back and fumbled behind the piano stool. ‘I'll just switch off the cassette player. People like a tape to take home with them.'

The steady hum that Sylvie had assumed was the overstretched heating system stopped.

‘
SHE WAS DIFFERENT
away from the spirits. I enjoyed talking to her. She had been an elocution teacher and an artist's model.'

‘That's a quiet profession,' said Jerry.

They were back at the same table as the evening before. He looked at Sylvie, not beyond her at the water. They were both glad to see each other.

‘She seemed infected by their company. Like a child who picks up tricks of speech or bad language. She reproduced their banality. But why should they be banal?'

‘It's the condition. You can tell because it seeps into extreme old age. Like intimations of immortality only the other end on. My mother and her sister, Lou, have conversations of numbing deadliness. How many were there, says Aunt Lou, A good many, says Ma. Lou's asking about church and Ma hasn't even been there. They can carry on for hours.'

‘They're both senile?'

‘My mother isn't, but she gets into the swing of it and you can't tell the difference between them.'

‘Do they live with you?'

‘Christ, no. Though sometimes it feels like it. They're a presence.'

‘It's quieter here tonight,' she said.

‘Friday. People go away, or home, or somewhere. Thursday's their night out.'

‘You don't?'

‘Home? Yes. I sit in traffic with everyone else.'

He wasn't though. He was here.

‘I ought to go back. But I haven't done anything. None of the things I was supposed to do,' she said.

‘You've seen me and a medium.'

‘They weren't scheduled.'

‘And read your own letters.'

‘All but one, yes.'

‘Which was that?'

She could see it, at the bottom of the pile, folded identically.

‘The last one. I didn't get a reply to it.'

‘That's what you asked Joyce about?'

There was no logic to what she'd just told him. Not re-reading a letter because it hadn't got a response. He didn't point it out.

She said, ‘I wrote to my father and said I was leaving Paul and coming to London. Leaving for good, I mean.'

She would be able to remember what she'd written, if she let herself. But it wasn't immediately to hand. One of those memories like a thin, deep pit, which it is possible to skirt around. She knew Jerry wasn't going to be curious in the wrong sort of way. She continued.

‘I wasn't asking him anything. But once I'd written it, I got stuck. I waited. It hung there, this idea, without becoming anything. George didn't call me and he didn't reply, though I think he had time to. I told him I wouldn't actually leave until I heard from him. I don't know why I said that.'

He looked at her. ‘Then you couldn't leave.'

‘Not then,' she said.

It hadn't been a confession or a complaint, so he didn't commiserate. Neither did he offer advice. She felt as if she was relating a story of everyday life. Like one of Joyce's narrations, it seemed not to be attached to anything.