The Explosionist (4 page)

A
T HALF PAST SEVEN
, Sophie changed into a faded pink cotton frock and a soft gray cardigan she had reclaimed from the rubbish after Peggy pronounced a verdict of moth. Sophie hated séances, hated everything about them, but if she had to go to one, she might as well be comfortable.

Downstairs, the sitting room had filled up with ladies of different shapes and sizes. None of them noticed Sophie come in, and she stood by the door and surveyed them in peace. Her eyes kept drifting to a large woman who wore a black dress with jet beading and sat by herself in the corner, holding her heavy body upright like someone not sure of her welcome.

As the mantel clock struck eight and Great-aunt Tabitha
began to round up the guests and herd them into the dining room, the stranger’s eyes met Sophie’s own. Sophie smiled and gave an awkward half nod—she didn’t want to; she didn’t like the look of the woman at all—but the woman simply stared at her, not turning away until Sophie’s great-aunt arrived at her side to escort her in to supper in the next room (oh, this must be the medium, to prompt such solicitude).

For pudding, there was a choice between gooseberry fool or stewed fruit. Sophie asked for the plums, which were bland and inoffensive. She decided not to take a sponge finger from the biscuit barrel when it came around. Sophie’s great-aunt insisted on Peggy making them at home rather than buying the packets of ready-made ones at the shop, which she said were low-class.

As the maid came in to clear the table, Great-aunt Tabitha stood and announced the order of affairs for the rest of the evening. Sophie’s great-aunt would examine the medium in private, in the presence of two members of the Caledonian Guild of Spiritualist Inspectors, who had spent the whole of supper silently munching their food at the foot of the table like a malevolent pair of crows. Meanwhile Miss Gillespie would organize the others into a sitters’ circle in the conservatory at the back of the house.

Sophie had already got up from her chair and folded her napkin when her great-aunt appeared beside her.

“Sophie, this is somewhat irregular,” she said irritably, “but our guest has asked for you to join us upstairs for the examination.”

Sophie couldn’t imagine why the woman wanted her there. Something about the whole business gave her a bad feeling. She looked over at the medium. Arms folded, expression impassive, the woman’s eyes rested directly on Sophie.

She followed the others up the stairs, Great-aunt Tabitha leading the procession, like a brisk but demented mother duck, to the little-used bedroom directly opposite from Sophie’s on the top floor. It was wretchedly cold and damp; Sophie pulled the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands and then clasped them in her armpits until Great-aunt Tabitha glared at her, at which point she let them drop back to her sides.

Though she had read about this kind of inspection, Sophie had a nasty suspicion it would prove quite different to see one in person. What happened next was absolutely awful. Under Great-aunt Tabitha’s penetrating gaze, the two inspectors stripped the medium completely naked. One woman searched her—Sophie blushed and looked away when the medium was asked to bend over so that her body cavities could be checked for the concealed lengths of muslin used to fake ectoplasm—while the second inspector carefully examined each item of clothing.

Sophie had never seen a grown-up person without any clothes on. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the vast expanse of flesh: the enormous breasts, yellow and goose-pimpled in the cold, the folds of fat over the woman’s hips and abdomen, the imbalance between her bulky thighs and skinny calves. Worst were the raw red marks where the woman’s steel-boned corset had imprinted her body. In places the chafing had actually broken the skin.

Sophie dared not look at the woman’s face until the inspectors had given her back her undergarments and a cloak to cover herself. The rest of the medium’s clothes would be kept from her until afterward, so that she couldn’t use them to conceal the accessories of fraudulence. When Sophie did look, the woman’s expression puzzled her. Instead of the humiliation and anger one might have expected, the medium wore a look of calm satisfaction. As Sophie’s eyes met hers, the woman’s face broke into a disturbing smile. Why should she look like someone gloating over a private victory?

Sophie’s unease deepened as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. In the conservatory, the medium’s wrists were tied with cloth tape, the knots sealed with wax, and the ends of the tape tied to the chairs on either side of her. Ten chairs had been arranged in a circle around a black-and-gold lacquered table of vaguely Japanese provenance.

As the guests took their seats, Sophie chose one as far
from the medium as possible. The maid dimmed the lamps.

“Join hands,” Great-aunt Tabitha intoned, “to promote the energy flow among the sitters. Spirits of the Great Beyond, we are gathered this evening in the company of your servant Mrs. Euphemia Tansy in the hope that we will be honored by some sign of your presence. We will hear anything you wish to impart about life on the Other Side. We await your instructions.”

Most of the women had closed their eyes, but Sophie kept hers open just a crack, enough to sneak a look around the table. She found séances less frightening when she could see what was happening. (But she hoped Great-aunt Tabitha wouldn’t start inviting her often—one every six weeks or so already seemed more than enough.) The sitters’ hands were clasped together, each pair of hands resting on the table in front of them. The medium was absolutely motionless, her glassy eyes staring off into the middle distance.

When the voice came, Sophie jumped and almost lost her grip on the hands on either side of her.

“Who calls me here?”

It was a man’s voice, lightly Scandinavian-accented and seeming to emanate from a point in midair several feet above the medium’s head.

“I do,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, her voice not faltering at all.

“I cannot tell of life on the other side,” said the voice, “for I speak to you from limbo. Though my body has long since fallen to dust, my soul is not yet able to leave its shell. I answer your call for another reason. I am here to speak to the youngest one among you, one whose help I require to release me from my mortal coil.”

Sophie looked quickly around her, but there was no doubt about it: she was certainly by many years the youngest person at the table.

Meanwhile the table rocked slightly beneath their hands, and several women gasped.

To Sophie’s utter dismay, she felt a slight breeze and the sensation of a hand touching her face. This was too awful, it couldn’t really be happening—oh god, could this have anything to do with what she’d seen in the mirror upstairs? Only half aware of what she was doing, Sophie started shaking her head. A small moan escaped from her mouth and she suddenly had a new appreciation for the cliché
paralyzed by fear
. Go away, she said in her head. Leave me alone.

“Sophie, dear child,” said the voice, “do not be afraid. I come to warn you of great danger, and to bid you follow the one your heart inclines to. Keep your own counsel, and expect a journey over water before the summer’s end.”

The hand brushed through her hair and then left in a
whoosh
, like air rushing into a jam jar when the lid is first
popped open. Sophie wanted to jeer—she didn’t even
believe
in spiritualism, not really, not like Great-aunt Tabitha and her friends. The spirit’s words sounded awfully like the hoary predictions of a fairground fortune-teller. Nonetheless Sophie’s pulse was racing so fast she thought she might faint.

She clutched the hands of the women on either side of her and felt a welcome squeeze back from one of them. Most of the women had opened their eyes now, though the dim light made it difficult to see much.

The medium groaned. Then her face convulsed into a rictus so horrible it reminded Sophie of a gruesome illustration in a book she’d once seen, a police photograph of a dead woman lying on the floor of a grand Paris apartment with her throat cut. The shadow cast by the fastening on the medium’s cloak exactly mimicked the gaping hole of that wound.

Another voice began to speak, but this time Sophie thought she could see a very faint movement of the medium’s facial muscles. When the new visitor identified herself as Pocahontas and offered to serve as the spirit control for the evening, Sophie breathed deeply and tried to un-hunch her shoulders. It was awful but true to say that clear-cut fraudulence was vastly preferable to something that felt a bit too much like the real thing. “Pocahontas” transmitted various messages to the sitters from their dear departed: Miss Gillespie’s father was glad she had decided to renew her mem
bership at the golf club, Miss Allison’s mother was no longer in pain now that she’d Crossed Over, Miss McGregor’s fiancé still cherished her memory as a Precious Jewel of his Former Life (tiny shriveled-up Miss McGregor actually cried when she heard the message from her lost love).

Sophie had a terrible itch on her nose, but releasing her neighbor’s hand prematurely would mean trouble later on with Great-aunt Tabitha. It was a great relief when “Pocahontas” departed and the medium came back to herself.

“Lights, please,” Great-aunt Tabitha ordered, the excitement fizzing in her voice.

All around the table, women were flexing their hands and turning to their neighbors, their voices rising as they began to dissect what they had just heard.

Peggy brought in a tray and began to hand around tea and coffee. She served Sophie first, giving her three lumps of sugar with the tongs and making a funny face that gave Sophie comfort.

“Coffee, cream, and two sugars,” the medium said hoarsely when Peggy came around to her. She was shivering, though the room was no colder than usual, and had drawn the cloak closer around her broad shoulders.

“Mrs. Tansy,” said Great-aunt Tabitha warmly, “you were simply magnificent. Can Peggy get you anything else to eat or drink?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a wee dram of port,” the medium said, licking her dry lips and warming her hands on the sides of the coffee cup.

Great-aunt Tabitha visibly recoiled. Spiritualism, vegetarianism, pacifism, and temperance: these were Sophie’s great-aunt’s gods, and all forms of alcohol were banned from the house except for a rather dusty decanter of whisky kept in honor of Great-aunt Tabitha’s long-deceased father.

Several other ladies crowded around Mrs. Tansy, wanting additional details and personal reassurances, but Great-aunt Tabitha brushed them all away.

“Can’t you see the poor woman’s done in?” she said. “Peggy will show you out when you’re finished with your coffee (Peggy, will you bring a glass of lemonade for Mrs. Tansy?), and Mrs. Tansy has thoughtfully provided cards for anyone who may wish to retain her services on a private basis. You’ll forgive me if I whisk her away just now for a breath of fresh air.”

She helped the medium to the door, jerking her head at Sophie to join them. Sophie followed them to the small study on the half landing, a room her great-aunt rarely used.

Great-aunt Tabitha put the medium into a heavy upholstered armchair (its ancient springs made it less comfortable than it looked; nobody ever sat in it twice) and took the chair behind the desk for herself. Sophie found a seat on the
stepladder used for fetching down books from the top shelves.

“Mrs. Tansy, you have greatly exceeded my expectations this evening,” said Great-aunt Tabitha once the medium had settled herself and taken a sip of the lemonade. “I had heard very good things about you and your friend Pocahontas, and I was not disappointed. Pocahontas brought wonderful news, and I hope she will pay our little circle many more visits before she passes further on into the Realms of Light.”

The spiritualist cosmology, an article of faith with Great-aunt Tabitha, made Sophie cringe. Her terror had gone; she felt tired and crotchety, but also intensely curious as to what had really happened just now. Surely the whole thing had been faked, but what motive could the medium have had for involving Sophie?

“I’m very pleased to hear it, ma’am,” said the medium, her voice still hoarse. “I am never aware of anything that passes while I am in the trance state, so I did not know until you mentioned it that Pocahontas had come.”

A lie, Sophie thought. The corner of the woman’s mouth had turned up just a little, giving her a look of smug contempt. She must think Great-aunt Tabitha a complete fool.

“You earned your fee and more,” said Great-aunt Tabitha, pulling out several drawers in search of a clean envelope. She gave a happy grunt when she found one and opened the large handbag sitting on the desk.

The medium colored as Great-aunt Tabitha counted out a small stack of pound notes. The memory of the woman’s raw scabbed flesh flooded into Sophie’s mind, and she suddenly felt horribly complicit in the nastiness of the night’s work. Aside from everything else, it seemed terribly thoughtless of Great-aunt Tabitha not to have let Mrs. Tansy put on her real clothes again.

“I said nothing to you before, so as not to disturb you,” Sophie’s great-aunt continued, oblivious to the medium’s evident embarrassment, “but the conservatory is equipped with highly sensitive equipment designed to detect the electromagnetic disruptions that attend spirit visitors. A device attached to my seat allows me to monitor the proceedings.”

“If I’d known,” said the medium, in a stolid way, “I’m sure I’d have asked you to turn off the devilish contraption. It might have stopped the spirits from coming at all!”

“On the contrary, my dear Mrs. Tansy,” cried Great-aunt Tabitha, throwing her hands in the air, “the readings went off the charts! Particularly during the first part of the conversation, the one with the well-spoken European gentleman who wanted a word with Sophie.”

Mrs. Tansy looked really surprised.

“I’m sure I don’t know anything about that, ma’am,” she said.

Sophie thought she might be telling the truth this time;
she sounded genuinely unsettled.

“Of course you’ll have no memory of the words he spoke, or of his very refined aura,” said Great-aunt Tabitha in a manner that reminded Sophie of a cobra poised to strike. “But I’d like to know why you asked for Sophie to come and watch you be searched. It struck me at the time as an odd request, and it was impossible not to wonder afterward about the connection between that and the most particular attention the visitor paid to the girl.”