The Various Haunts of Men (8 page)

And I was swung up on to the beefy shoulders of a stranger. The rough cloth of his jacket scratched the inside of my legs, but I could see over the tops of
the heads now, as the sour light strengthened slowly, see the iron gates and the tower and the bone-white clock with its black fingers. As I looked the second hand jerked one point closer to eight and from behind and all around me there was a soft murmur like the sea, spreading, then dying away again.

I was afraid. I still could not imagine what was going to happen, but I was sure that they were
going to bring Arthur Needham out on to the prison tower and hang him there before us all. I couldn’t see how the whole crowd could go inside the prison itself to watch, as I had watched down the viewing tube at the peep show on the pier. I didn’t know if I wanted to see the hanging or not. It was the condemned cell that I thought about. I wanted to see that, to be there inside it with Arthur
Needham.

The clock hand jerked forward again. Then, from somewhere behind us, someone began to sing, and gradually, the crowd took it up, until everyone was singing, but quietly. The soft low swell of the hymn made me shiver.

Abide with me

Fast falls the eventide.

The darkness deepens

Lord with me abide.

They sang another verse and then the singing stopped quite suddenly, as if there had
been a conductor somewhere who had given the signal. And after that there was the greatest silence I had ever known.

The clock hands were at eight. The man carrying me on his shoulders gripped my legs tightly. I stared and stared at the tower. Everyone in the crowd seemed to have stopped breathing and the sky was grey and faintly shining behind the dark prison.

Nothing happened. No one came
on to the tower. I screwed my eyes up in case I was not seeing properly, but still there was nothing, nothing at all, for
quite a long time, and still the strange and dreadful silence went on.

And then I saw a man in uniform walking across the prison yard towards the gates, holding a white piece of paper in his hand. There was a murmur at the front of the crowd, and a whisper took off and spread
like a flame. The man came out of a small gate set within the great one, and pinned the piece of paper on to a board. The murmur grew. People were telling one another and passing it on, passing it on, and then the man swung me abruptly down from his shoulders, so that I felt giddy and sick.

‘Say thank you,’ Aunt Elsie said.

I did not know what I was to thank him for. I had seen nothing. Nothing
had happened. I told my aunt.

‘A wicked evil man has been hanged to death and you were here, you witnessed it, you saw justice done. Never forget it.’

Iris Chater had told Dr Deerbon that she was tired but she had not been able to find the words to convey just how tired. Every day since Harry’s death had been a struggle, with an exhaustion that muddled her mind and seemed to fill her limbs with warm wet sand. When she went to the shops – and she always chose those nearby now, she had not been into the centre of Lafferton for weeks – she
could have got down on the pavement and slept there.

Now, she lay on the sofa in the front room. It was the middle of December. The tiredness was worse, even though she had just slept for over two hours. The fire sputtered and the curtains were half drawn. The birds were quiet under their cover.

She could see that it had turned dark outside. That was one of the harder things about being alone
at this back end of the year, the dark early and late, making the days so short and the nights never-ending.

But for the moment, warm under a rug, she felt comfortable, and oddly happy. The room seemed to hold her
in a glowing embrace and the warmth eased the arthritis in her knees. Best of all, she had the feeling, which came and went so unpredictably, that Harry was in the room with her. After
a moment, she spoke his name aloud, quietly, tentatively, startled by the sound of her own voice.

‘Harry?’

She heard nothing but she knew he had answered her. She put out her hand.

‘Oh, Harry love, it is hard, it’s very hard. I know you’re happy and not in pain any more and I’m glad about that, of course I am, only I do miss you so much. I never dreamed I’d find it so hard. You won’t go right
away from me, will you? So long as I know you’re here with me like this, I can manage.’

She willed him to be sitting in the chair opposite, to be able to see him, not only sense his presence, to have him show her he was all right, and not changed.

‘I want to see you, Harry.’

The gas fire flared suddenly, and the flame went blue for a second. She held her breath, willing and praying.

He was
there.

‘I want to see you,’ she wailed aloud, and the sudden cold certainty that she would not, and the disappointment of it, were as bitter and sharp as at the beginning.

The tap on the back door made her start, until she heard Pauline Moss calling and struggled to get up from the sofa.

‘I’m all right, I’m in here.’

Pauline was a good neighbour, a good friend, only just sometimes less than
welcome. There were days when Iris thought she would prefer never to see or speak to another living soul again.

‘I’ve made some drop scones. Shall I put the kettle on?’

Iris Chater wiped her eyes and replaced her spectacles, switched on the lamps. Well, I’m very lucky, she told herself. What about those who have no neighbour to keep an eye on them and share a cup of tea?

‘Hello, my dear – oh,
did I wake you? I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, I was just lying having a think. Time I pulled myself out of it.’ She followed Pauline back into the kitchen. ‘You are good.’

The tray was laid, the plate of warm drop scones stood on the stove under a plate.

‘I’m not, I’m selfish. I wanted drop scones that badly and you gave me the excuse. I’ll never get that weight off now with Christmas coming up. I got
the tins for my cake out while I was at it. Do you fancy coming up the market on Saturday while I buy the fruit?’

Christmas. Iris stared at the embroidered lupins on the tray cloth. Christmas. The word meant nothing. She couldn’t imagine it, didn’t want to try.

Pauline picked up the tray. ‘Could you bring the pot in?’

She stood up and the pain like white-hot skewers shot through her knees so
that she had to hold on to the table edge, catching her breath. Pauline glanced at her sharply but said nothing until they were sitting beside the fire, the drop scones had been eaten and they were on their second cups of tea.

‘I put a pinch of bicarbonate of soda in drop scones … my mother always did and I don’t know why but it does make them tastier, don’t you think?’

Iris Chater looked affectionately
across at her friend. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past
few weeks. And all the time Harry was ill. I wish there was something I could do for you, Pauline.’

‘There is.’

‘You’ve only to ask. You know that much, I should hope.’

‘Right. I want you to take those knees of yours back to the doctor, and don’t start saying they’re not so bad because I know they are.’

‘No, I meant
do something for
you
, Pauline.’

‘I know you did. Now, what did Dr Deerbon say last time?’

‘Oh, the old story, waiting list for an operation, only apparently knees aren’t as successful as hips, she said. And tablets for the pain.’

Iris was not going to admit that her arthritic knees had not been mentioned to the doctor. Where was the point? They were a lot worse, the pain was sharper and always
there, but what she had told Pauline was true, it would be a question of a waiting list for goodness knows how long and the strong painkillers that upset her stomach. She could buy aspirin for herself.

‘Go back then. Tell her you’re not satisfied, ask her to get you on to the urgent list.’

‘There are plenty worse than me.’

‘Hm.’

Iris reached forward to pour a last half-cup of tea from the
pot.

‘Harry’s still here, you know,’ she said.

Pauline smiled. ‘Well, of course he is … he’s looking after you, always will.’

‘I mean here, in this room. It startles me sometimes. Only I want to … see him, I want to hear him … not just feel it. Am I going daft?’

‘You?’

‘It’s such a comfort, Pauline. I don’t want it to fade away.’

The room was warm. The lamplight caught a row of brass monkeys
on the shelf, and made them glow.

‘Have you ever, you know, thought of going to see someone?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘One of those spiritualists? A medium.’

Hearing Pauline speak aloud the idea that had been in her own mind made her flush and her heart jump.

‘A lot of people do, a lot say they’re really … well, that they do have a gift.’

‘Have you ever been to one?’

‘Never had occasion really.
Anyway, it was only a thought.’

‘I’d be afraid.’

‘What of?’

‘Just … it would upset me.’ She looked down at her cup. ‘My grandmother used to read the tea leaves.’

‘Oh, so did mine. They all did then, didn’t they? Load of rubbish.’

‘Oh yes.’

Yet when Grandma Bixby had described the man Iris was to marry, before she’d ever set eyes on Harry Chater, she’d got him just right, everything about
him, looks, manners, line of work, family, everything. She’d got it right that they’d have no children, years before they’d had to give up hope.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘how would I go about finding one? I’d want to be careful.’

‘There’s that spiritualist church in Passage Street. They might have a noticeboard.’

‘I never like the look of that place, it’s a bit of a Nissen hut.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t
want to go to one of those that come round the hotels … the Deer Park sometimes has them. They put a board out … “An Evening of Clairvoyance and Psychic Fair” and all that. Madame Rosita, all gold earrings. They’re just a joke.’

‘They take people’s money though.’

Pauline started putting the tea things on to the tray. ‘I suppose it’s like anything else … you need someone to recommend, don’t you?
I’ll ask about a bit. Now, do you want to come in later and watch
The Weakest Link
?’

‘I won’t tonight, Pauline, I’ve a few bits to do.’

‘Well, if you change your mind.’

‘I know. You’re a good friend.’

For a long time after Pauline had gone, she sat turning the idea of going to a medium over in her mind, wondering if it was wrong, whether it would be expensive, or a trick to make unhappy people
better? Most of all, she found the idea frightening. But why would that be? It was either a lot of baloney, or some of them had a gift, and if she found one, they could put her in touch with Harry, and what was there to be afraid of in that? But how was it done? What exactly would happen? Would she really be able to speak to him and have him answer her so that she could actually hear his voice?
And could a psychic person prove it all by telling you things only you knew, private things? Grandma Bixby had read tea leaves, her aunt had told cards. But, as Pauline said, women did then, it made a bit of entertainment, a laugh, a break in the dreary days when you had to do your washing all by hand. Sometimes it might give you a
shiver, but that was not what she wanted now. She wanted nothing
except to know that Harry was really there and to talk to him.

The hot little front room seemed empty tonight, as if he had withdrawn. Maybe he wasn’t happy about what she had been thinking.

In the end, to stop her brain from going round, she went next door to watch Pauline’s television after all.

But no quiz programme, no comedy, no thriller, no television or any other diversion, could keep
her from missing Harry and now from thinking about having the chance to be in touch with him, if only she could summon up the courage. She worried about it all evening, and woke twice in the night, to worry again.

In Lafferton, the shops were in a frenzy of Christmas. On the third Saturday in December, Iris Chater wandered hopelessly in and out of them, confused by the glut of things, things,
things and anxious that she ought to be buying food and presents. But there was scarcely any need. She was invited to Pauline’s for Christmas Day and intended to go for lunch, but Pauline’s two sons and their families would be there, all crammed into the little rooms. She didn’t want to outstay her welcome. She wanted Christmas over this year, the quicker the better.

On the Sunday morning, after
a bad night, she did what she had not done for years and went to a service at the cathedral, but she felt out of place among the young couples with babies and small children, singing hymns she did not recognise to unfamiliar modern tunes. The family service was not the right setting in which she could pray about Harry and whether she would be wrong to visit a medium. She sat and stood and knelt
and listened to the chatter and babble around her and felt as if she had landed by accident on some quite friendly but alien planet.

As she walked home her knees gave her such pain that she was almost in tears. The rest of Sunday ran away ahead of her like a ribbon of unending road.

Pauline was at her window watching out, and when she saw her, held up a cup.

The hot sweet coffee and chocolate
biscuit were comforting.

‘I’ve got a name for you,’ Pauline said.

The walls seemed to bend in and out like rubber.

‘I said I’d ask around and then I remembered a girl I used to work with at Pedders telling me her mother-in-law had gone to see a medium.’

She reached behind the clock on the shelf for a folded piece of paper.

If I take it, Iris Chater thought, if I touch it at all, something
will happen. She looked down at it. Once taken, she felt there could be no going back. You’re a stupid woman, she thought. But the feeling was overpowering.

‘I’d always come with you, you know, if you were nervous … just wait for you, I mean, of course, not come in the room. Well, there you are anyway.’