The Various Haunts of Men (36 page)

The blue suit, the brown-and-pink print two-piece, and a plain mauve jumper and tweed skirt were laid out on the bed, but she was no nearer deciding which would be right to wear, and then, suddenly, she saw the funny side of it. There had to be a funny side.

Here I am, Iris Chater thought, dithering about what clothes would be right, as if I were going out to a smart lunch when what
I’m going to is … but she could hardly bring herself to think the word. Still, it was funny; as if it mattered what anyone wore when they went to a group evening with a medium, as if people were going to judge her by her clothes, or even notice her at all.

She put the blue suit and the two-piece back in the wardrobe and kept out the jumper and skirt.

It had taken her a long time to decide. She
had left the idea alone, after she had visited Sheila Innis the first time, partly because it worried her, but mainly because she was still upset about Harry not having come to speak to her. All the rest had been too strange to sort out and the
suggestion of going to a group had taken some working through as well. In the end it was curiosity that had decided her. Now she had met the woman, and
not been frightened by sitting with her alone, hearing things about her own past she had all but forgotten, getting messages from people she hadn’t thought of for fifty years, she had known she would go to the seance eventually and then it had just been a case of waiting until what seemed like the right moment.

She was feeling brighter in herself and the lighter mornings and evenings helped,
and the fact that she could get out to do a bit in the garden. The end of the day was the worst. She missed Harry the most then and never seemed to be able to settle easily to anything. But in the day she went out more, even if it was only shopping, and once a week to the hairdresser and twice she and Pauline had gone on the bus into Bevham for the day, with lunch out. She saw plenty of Pauline but
not in the same dependent way. In the end, though, Iris had told her about the visit to the medium; it had been Pauline who had first suggested it after all, and secrets always came out in the end. She wasn’t ashamed. Pauline had been interested and very understanding and sympathetic about Harry’s silence.

All the same, something held her back from saying that she was going to a group seance.
Maybe she would talk about it eventually, maybe she wouldn’t.

She would get the bus part of the way there, then walk the last bit, and if it was very late finishing, she might get a taxi home. Harry had never been happy about her being out by herself after dark, and made her take taxis once he had stopped driving the car, so she always had the numbers with her. She couldn’t imagine
Mrs Innis
would mind her ringing for one. She had said to be there at seven. ‘There’ll be six others, Mrs Chater, and you’ll find everyone very friendly and the whole meeting quite informal and relaxed.’

She had gone on to ask Iris about herself, whether she was feeling more able to cope.

‘The only thing is, there are days when it doesn’t seem as if he’s in the house at all and he was always there, at
the beginning as soon as I walked in, I said, “Hello, Harry,” because I knew he was there.’

‘He’s still with you all the time, but you have been getting out more, spending less time thinking only about him, focusing on him.’

‘I still miss him, I do still think of him a lot of the time.’

‘We have to move forward. Our loved ones don’t want us to try and live in the past. But they’re never far
away.’

She’d felt better then.

When she left the house, the biting wind had dropped so that, although it was cold, it was pleasant to walk. As planned, she got off the bus a stop early, to calm her nerves.

All the stories her mother used to tell about table-turning and Ouija boards revolved round her head, all those spooky happenings behind drawn curtains. Everyone went to seances then, they
were an entertainment, but when she was young, she had hated to hear about them, hated the relish in her mother’s voice when she talked about whoever had ‘come through’ and what the medium had looked like in a trance, ‘all white-faced and peculiar’. She tried to keep the pleasant room in Sheila Innis’s house in mind, the comfortable chair and
the vases of flowers and nice curtains, the fat cat
Otto.

As she turned into the avenue, she heard footsteps behind her. An elderly man walked past and nodded ‘Good evening’, as he went on ahead.

A couple of minutes later, she saw him turn into the gate of the medium’s house, so that they stood together on the doorstep.

‘Same destination, then. I don’t think we’ve met here before, have we?’

‘No, this is my first time … well, I’ve seen Mrs Innis.’

‘But not been to a seance? You’ll find it very interesting, very. I’m Jim, Jim Williams.’

They were shaking hands as Sheila Innis opened the door.

This time it was a different room with a long table and chairs. The curtains were drawn and the lamps lit, so that when she walked in, Iris Chater felt quite comfortable, almost at home, and Jim Williams took the seat next to her after leaving his
coat. There were five others, four women all middle-aged to elderly and a younger man. He looked unhappy, Iris thought, ill at ease and downcast; he was pale, with a bad skin, and dark circles beneath his eyes, and when he showed his hands, she saw how bitten the nails were.

Sheila Innis came in. ‘How nice to see you all. Good evening, everyone.’

They all murmured except the young man, who seemed
to slip down in his chair as if hoping to disappear.

The medium took her place at the top of the table. She wore a cream blouse with a row of blue beads and a pale blue jacket. Smart, Iris thought, and wondered if she should have worn the two-piece after all.

‘We have to welcome just one new guest this evening.
Iris, if I may introduce you in that way. We don’t like to be too formal.’

They
all looked at her and smiled, and Iris felt welcome and as if she belonged with them. She wondered why she had been so nervous. Only the young man looked away. The medium hadn’t introduced him as new, so he must be familiar with it all. Iris wondered about him. A tragedy, she decided, a young wife? Something he’s never recovered from.

The lights dimmed, though no one had got up to touch a switch.
There must be a clever arrangement under the table. One standard lamp set behind Sheila Innis remained a little brighter, though it left her face shadowed. Everyone had gone very still.

‘Let us bow our heads and ask for a blessing on our circle tonight. Let us invite our spirit guides to join us and for our loved ones on the other side to come near. Let us at the same time warn any disturbed,
malicious or mischievous spirits to leave us and to seek guidance and peace in other realms.’

It was like praying, but not quite the same. Iris closed her eyes and folded her hands and imagined herself in church, saw the altar and the cross. Then, she tried to picture Harry but could not. She opened her eyes again quickly. Bent heads, hands folded on the table. The lamp shining on the medium.
The quietness in the room. Her heart began to beat too fast. She looked at Sheila Innis. Her face was stiff and without expression, her eyes closed, her head tipped slightly back. No one spoke. Nothing moved. Iris saw the leather binding on the cuff of Jim Williams’s sports jacket, out of the corner of her eye.

‘I have someone with me … a young woman, a very attractive young woman. She has an
unusual bangle on
her wrist … I can’t see it closely … come nearer, dear, show me the bangle … thank you, now she’s holding it up. It’s silver … and in the shape of a snake … the head and tip of the tail come together at her wrist but don’t quite meet. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Does anyone …?’

‘It’s Carol. My Carol had a bangle like that, she went on holiday to Bali and brought
it back, it wasn’t long before she was killed, it was her last holiday. Is she saying anything? Does she look all right?’

‘Can you speak louder …? Is it Carol? She’s nodding now and laughing and holding up the bangle. Now she’s drawing something in the air … still laughing … teasing us, I think … she’s drawing big circles with her arm. I don’t know what they’re meant to be … she’s saying you
… yes, that you took her to the fair. She went with Kerry –’

‘Kenny … her brother Kenny, my son. Oh, they did, we did, we all went to the fair and she went on the big wheel. It is Carol!’

Iris looked at the woman opposite. She was smiling and crying at the same time, and wiping her eyes on a tissue someone had handed her, so that her mascara smudged and smeared her cheeks.

The medium’s face
had not changed and now her voice had taken on a strange, expressionless tone, as if she was talking in her sleep. Iris wondered when Harry would come – if he would, among so many other people. He had been shy, he hadn’t liked groups of strangers. Maybe he would rather not get in touch here.

The person to Iris’s right clutched her hand suddenly, making her start. The woman was staring huge-eyed
at Sheila Innis but holding on to Iris. Something Iris would
never have imagined or believed was happening, something she did not understand, and could never have described or explained afterwards. She’d heard of it somewhere but dismissed it as a joke. Looking at the medium now, she saw that it was no joke.

Sheila Innis was not Sheila Innis any more. Her face was changing as they watched. Instead
of a pale middle-aged woman who looked as if she were asleep, the face was ageing and caving in at the mouth, the nose seemed larger, and the cheeks more sunken, the chin more prominent. The face was that of a very old woman, scowling and unpleasant, with a malevolent stare out of intense, pinprick dark eyes. Iris gripped her neighbour’s hand in return.

‘Someone did away with me. I was put away.
I was locked up. Someone didn’t want me to see the light of day. Was it you? Was it you? I know which one of you it was and you know, don’t you? You never thought I’d come back to accuse you, you thought you could get rid of me, out of sight out of mind, and take the money when I was dead. Well, you took the money and much good it did you. Your conscience can’t be clear, can it? Are you going
to speak to me. You know my name. You know who you are and I know who you are. Look at me, look at me, look, look …’

There was a slight movement. The younger man had bent his head but his face was a terrible yellow colour, waxen and sick. His hands were on the table and the fingers were locked together. He said nothing.

They went on staring at Sheila Innis who was no longer Sheila Innis, speechless
and horrified.

But what came next was almost worse, and it came so suddenly that Iris thought she might faint, her heart
seemed to freeze and then leap painfully in her chest; she could not breathe easily.

The old woman was fading from the medium’s face and for a second it seemed as if it was returning to the familiar pleasant face of Sheila Innis. Then out of her mouth came a series of yapping
barks, the noise made by some small ferocious dog defending its territory. The barks would not stop, they grew louder and more frantic until Iris wanted to put her hands to her ears, or run out of the room. The dog sounded as if it were trying to escape from somewhere, the barks became yelps, and then the yelps were painful, and mingled with whimpering and whining, then more strangulated barks.

Iris became conscious of Jim Williams at her side. He had pushed back his chair and when she looked at him, she saw that his face was flushed, his eyes wide open in horrified astonishment. He put his hand to his throat. The barking went on and on, the medium’s mouth was opening and shutting and her head was shaking, making her hair flop down over her eyes.

Jim stood up. ‘Skippy,’ he said pleadingly.
‘Skippy. Skippy. Where are you? What’s happening to you? Skippy …’

None of them knew what to do. Jim stood with his hand to his throat, his shoulders heaving.

The lights went up abruptly. Sheila Innis was sitting with her eyes open, looking as if she had been woken out of a deep sleep. Jim Williams slumped down into his chair.

A minute later the door opened and a man with a moustache and a
blue shirt and tie came in carrying a large tray of teacups and saucers, which he set on the table, smiling round as if, Iris thought, he’d happened
into a meeting of the WI instead of a seance that had become sinister and frightening.

People began to move and take the cups. The man left the room and then reappeared, with a second tray, of teapot, milk, sugar and biscuits.

Sheila Innis smiled.
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said.

Everything seemed normal, nothing might have happened. Jim Williams’s face was still flushed and distressed; when he reached for his cup his hand trembled.

‘Are you feeling all right? That upset you, didn’t it?’

He managed a gulp of tea, then quickly set it down again, fearful of spilling it in his agitation. ‘I lost the little dog,’ he said. His voice was husky.
‘Skippy. She sounded just like him. That was Skippy.’

‘It’s terrible losing a pet. People never realise. If they haven’t had one they think it can’t be much, not like losing a person, but it is for a while, it really is.’

‘He went. Just vanished. I blame myself, I should never have let him off the lead, Phyllis never did, never would have, I used to think she was making a fuss but she was right,
you see, I shouldn’t have let him off, and when I did, he vanished. And that barking was him. He’s dead then. It must mean that.’

‘Where did you lose him?’

‘On the Hill. He just vanished into the bushes. I called and called, I’ve been up there almost every day, until this police business.’

‘That poor girl?’

‘And the other. There was another went missing, you know, an older woman, before Christmas.
I saw her. I’ve told the police. I told them about Skippy as well but of course they weren’t really interested, well, you can’t blame them, if it’s people and a dog, well, there’s no contest, I
can see that. But I feel as if I’ve let Phyllis down. She trusted me with Skippy, you see. I’ve let her down.’