The Bachelors (7 page)

‘Throughout
the ages,’ Ronald said.

‘Can
you read handwriting?’

‘I read
it all day long.’

‘Can
you judge a person’s character from their handwriting?’

‘No,’
Ronald said.

‘That’s
exactly what I expected you to say,’ Marlene said. ‘I think you’re killing.’

‘Ronald,’
said Tim, ‘is sometimes consulted by the police on questions of forgery.’

‘No!’
said Marlene.

‘Yes,’
said Tim, ‘he is.’

‘How thrilling!’
said Marlene. ‘I do love to see a genuine fraud exposed.’

‘Well,
now,’ Tim said, ‘since you mention it, I did feel that last night’

‘Oh,
Patrick completely exposed him,’ Marlene said, turning to explain to Ronald. ‘This
fraud-clairvoyant Dr. Mike Garland who entered our midst during our séance last
night was completely outwitted by our leading medium whose name is Patrick
Seton.’

‘No!’
Ronald said.

‘Yes,’
said Marlene. ‘Garland created a great disturbance, being in the pay of one of
our members — one of our
former
members — Mrs. Freda Flower, but Patrick
gained the ascendancy. He was unshakeable — wasn’t he, Tim?’

‘I was
obliged to leave,’ said Tim, ‘before the end.’

‘Another
time you must go and lie down on a bed, Tim. It was too bad of you to leave me
with Freda Flower in hysterics. Did you notice the absurd pose that Dr. Garland
— doctor so-called — adopted during the séance when he was giving clairvoyance?
I
knew
he was a fraud the moment he raised up his head to give
utterance. Did you notice, Tim, how he raised his head without relaxing in his
chair? He didn’t lean back in his chair, you see, he didn’t lean back. And I
knew right away he was fully conscious of all he was saying. I’m making further
investigations about Garland. He ought to be exposed.’

Tim’s
eyes glanced briefly at the hatch. Marlene noticed it and realised she had
betrayed her peep-hole.

Tim’s
eyes returned to his soufflé and he said, ‘This is delicious, Marlene.’

‘I am
rather clairvoyant myself,’ Marlene said specifically to Ronald, with a tiny
swing of her ear-rings, ‘and this enables me to see through a fraud
immediately. They can’t get away with anything from me.’

‘When
is Patrick’s case coming up?’ Tim said.

‘Freda
will not proceed with the case,’ Marlene said, ‘if I know anything of Freda.
She has too much faith in Patrick, although she won’t admit it, to ignore the
warnings which he transmitted to her last night from the other side. However, I
have told Freda Flower that she is no longer welcome in our midst.’ She looked
at Tim who was still looking elsewhere. ‘I feel bound, Tim,’ she said, ‘to
keep
an eye
on things.’

‘Oh,
quite,’ Tim said, wiping his glasses with his white handkerchief.

‘It’s
all very well for you to stand in judgment, ‘she said.

‘Who,
me?’ Tim said.

‘But
you are a comparative newcomer to the Circle. You know nothing of the inner
workings. That was evident last night. Your seating arrangements…’

She
rose and bade them come and see the Sanctuary. Glancing back she noticed Ronald
taking his pills and washing them down with water.

‘Aren’t
you feeling well?’ she said.

‘Ronald
suffers from indigestion,’ Tim said.

‘My
dear boy, was my cooking so frightful?’

Ronald
could not reply. He stood gripping the back of his chair. His eyes were open
and, for a moment, quite absent.

But his
attack passed and he regained control of himself while Tim and his aunt were
still staring at him, Tim fearing the worst and Marlene fascinated.

‘Are
you psychic?’ she said.

‘I don’t
know.’

He
followed Tim into the Sanctuary, on the threshold of which Marlene took Ronald’s
arm.

‘I do
believe,’ she said, ‘that you are sensitive to the atmosphere of this flat. For
a moment, just now, I thought you were going into a trance. I am psychic, you
know. I’m certain you would make an excellent medium, if properly trained.’

On the
way home, before they parted, Tim said to Ronald,

‘I
adore her, really.’

‘A
good-looking woman,’ Ronald said.

‘She
was a beauty in her day. Of course, she’s a bit crackers. There is
some
thing,
you know, in her spiritualism, but she hasn’t a clue how to cope with it. She
cheats like anything herself — thinks it’s justified.’

‘It’s a
difficult thing to cope with, I should think.’

‘I can’t
cope with it,’ Tim said. ‘The awkward thing is, how am I going to get out of it?’

‘You’ll
find a way.’

‘Oh, I’ll
find a way. Only I don’t want to fall out with Marlene, you know. What did you
honestly think of her, quite honestly?’

‘Rather
charming,’ Ronald said, quite honestly.

Nevertheless,
when Martin Bowles rang him up later in the evening and said ‘Come along to
Isobel’s for supper: she wants you for supper,’ Ronald replied that he was
engaged. One auntie, he thought, is enough for one Sunday. Enough is always
enough.

‘God save me,’ said
Matthew Finch, London correspondent of the
Irish Echo,
‘and help me in
my weakness.’ He was peeling an onion. Tears still brimmed over his eyelashes
when the telephone rang. ‘Let it not be an occasion of sin,’ he said to himself
or to God as he went over to answer it.

‘Hallo,’
he said, apprehensively, although he knew, really, who would speak.

‘Elsie
speaking,’ said Elsie Forrest.

‘Oh
yes, Elsie. Hallo, Elsie.’

‘You
expecting me, Matthew? You said Sunday, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,
Elsie, I want you to come. Will you find your way? A tube to South Kensington,
then a 30 bus, and you get off at Drayton Gardens. I’ll meet you at the bus
stop. You’ll be there by quarter to six.’

‘Well,
I was thinking of getting the Underground to—’

‘No,
no, the bus from South Kensington is better. I’ll wait from quarter to six.’

‘All
right, Matthew.’

Elsie
had not come to his flat before. He had really preferred the other girl in the
coffee-bar, Alice Dawes, but she was tied up to a man. On the whole, he had
been glad to discover Elsie. Not that he needed to have taken up with either of
them. But, yes, he did want to know a girl again, since his previous girl had
gone to America and he felt lonely in London without one. Alice Dawes with her
black piled-up hair was the handsomer of the two, but Elsie Forrest was the
more accessible.

‘God
help me with my weakness,’ said Matthew as he went back to his onion. For he
was weak with girls and had a great conscience about sex. It had been easier in
Dublin where the bachelors protected their human nature by staying long hours
in the public houses. He was not sure what he would do with Elsie. He had to
prepare some supper, but she would do the cooking. He was not sure what to do with
the onion, and he weighed up what the force of Elsie’s attraction was likely to
be, and how the evening would turn out. It was for this that he had prepared
the onion. For he had found that the smell of onion in the breath invariably
put the girls off, and so provided a mighty fortress against the devil and a
means of avoiding an occasion of sin. Matthew was not sure, however, that Elsie
called for the onion altogether. She was not very pretty. But you never knew
when a girl might show the charm she had within her. And again, the onion might
be useful for the supper, to mix with the mince-meat. There wasn’t another
onion left in the box.

Was
there not another onion left in the box? Matthew decided that this would be the
testing point: if there was a miraculous onion in the vegetable box which could
be used in the supper he would, before he went to fetch Elsie from the bus, eat
the raw onion he had peeled upon the table; if there was no onion in the box he
would risk having Elsie to the flat with a clean breath. He looked in the box.
A small shrivelled onion nestled in the earthy corner among the remaining
potatoes. He lifted this poor thing, looked at it, pondered whether it was big
enough for the supper. He thought perhaps he should peel and eat this little
onion and leave the larger one for the cooking.

But
then he recalled his previous lapses from grace, and the exact terms of the vow
he had made before looking into the box. He thought lustfully of Elsie who
would soon be coming back with him to the flat. He seized the peeled onion off
the table, ate it rapidly like a man, dabbed his eyes and his brow with his
handkerchief, and set off to wait for Elsie at the bus stop.

As if
forewarning her, he gave her a breathy kiss when she alighted. She drew back
only a little; in fact she took it very well.

He let
her go first up the stairs to his flat and was filled with delight as he
followed her small hips, which moved at his eye-level.

‘Nice
room,’ she said. ‘Is that your mother over there?’

‘Yes,
and this is my elder brother and that’s my sister with her husband on their
honeymoon. I’ll put on the light, wait and you’ll see them better. My sister’s
got three children. My younger brother is married, too, but my elder brother
isn’t.’ He passed the photographs one by one. ‘This is the National University
of Ireland, Galway, where I was till 1950,’ said Matthew, and then he poured
out the gin. ‘That’s my cousin that was killed in the war, fighting for Great
Britain.’

‘Would
you have anything in the gin?’ Matthew said. ‘There’s orange juice or water.’

‘I’ll
have it neat,’ Elsie said, ‘and by God I need it.’ She placed the photographs
aside. ‘Alice was ill last night and I was on alone at the coffee bar till
twelve. Why didn’t you come in?’

‘I was
on duty,’ Matthew said. ‘I’m always on duty on Saturday nights.’

‘Well,
before I left the shop I rang up Alice to see how she felt and she was in such
a state I had to go round and see her. Patrick didn’t come home.’

‘What’s
wrong with her?’ Matthew said.

‘She’s
expecting a baby. She’s got diabetes. And the man she’s living with’s no good.’

‘Can’t
something be done about the diabetes? ‘Matthew said.

‘She
has to take injections every day. The man wants her to get rid of the baby.’

‘She
shouldn’t do that.’

‘She
won’t do it.’

‘Yes, she
looks a nice girl,’ Matthew said. ‘Who’s the man?’

‘Patrick
Seton — he’s the medium.’

Matthew
thought she meant go-between, so he said, ‘But who’s the man?’

‘He’s
the man — Patrick Seton, he’s a medium.’

‘Oh, a
spiritualist?’

‘Yes,
he’s a wonderful medium. But he’s no good to Alice. Weak as water. He’s
supposed to be getting a divorce from his wife and then he’ll marry Alice. But
I don’t believe he’s getting a divorce. I don’t believe there’s any wife. And
there’s a case coming up against him on Tuesday for embezzlement or something
like that. He’s been up before the magistrates once already, but the police
didn’t have their evidence ready. Suppose he gets a sentence?’

‘What a
terrible fellow,’ Matthew said. ‘Alice should leave him, a lovely girl like that.’

‘She’s
completely under his power. In love with him.’

‘A
terrible thing,’ Matthew said. ‘A girl like that taking up with a spiritualist.
Aren’t they a lot of mad fellows, spiritualists?’ He was thinking of Ewart
Thornton with whom he frequently had loud arguments on the Irish question. ‘I
know a spiritualist,’ Matthew said, ‘who’s a schoolmaster, we both belong to a
drinking club out at Hampstead. But he won’t talk about spiritualism to me
because he knows I’m Irish. He talks politics. He’s mad.’

‘Are
the Irish against spiritualism?’

‘Well,
the Catholics, it’s the same thing.’

‘There’s
a lot in spiritualism,’ Elsie said. ‘I’m not a spiritualist myself exactly. At
least, I’ve never joined a Circle. But Alice is a member. And I believe in it.’

‘Do you
really?’ Matthew was interested with an eager mental curiosity in direct
proportion as he was put off her sexually by the thought of her being a
spiritualist. A deep inherited and unarguable urge made him move his chair a
little bit away from her, whereas he had previously been moving it nearer; and
he reflected, then, that he need not have eaten the onion. A spiritualist girl
might dematerialise in the act, if it came to the act. But his mind was alert
for knowledge. ‘How do they summon up the spirits of the dead?’ Matthew said. ‘Would
you have some more gin?’

She
said, ‘I need it, after a sleepless night.’

‘There’s
some mince-meat and onion and potatoes and there’s some custard and fruit. Or
you could have bacon and eggs,’ Matthew said. ‘You just say when you’re hungry.
How do they call up the dead from their repose?’ He poured the gin and gave it
to her while she described the thrilling process of the medium’s getting
through to the other side.