He wiped Marlene’s dishes and put them away carefully and proudly. He was encouraged by her dejection and satisfied, now, he had taken the only course.
His hips were wide for a man. He smoothed the apron while waiting, cloth in hand, for the next plate. Marlene did a vexed scouring of a saucepan. Ewart made neat the bow which tied the apron strings behind him.
‘Is that the lot?’ he said.
‘Will you be here tomorrow night?’ she said, ‘for the Interior Spiral.’
‘I’m afraid not, my dear.’ He was prepared to be charming.
‘I can’t understand you,’ she said. She took off her apron. He untied his and held it out to her. She cast the aprons, with graceful carelessness, over the back of a chair.
He touched her arm consolingly as a man of integrity a woman who could not be expected to understand integrity.
‘You will come to the séance on Wednesday? ‘He looked reproachful. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. Marlene must be made to understand that simply because he refused to support her favourite he was not therefore a lapsed spiritualist.
‘Good,’ she said sadly, ‘I’m glad, Ewart. I’m grateful for that.’
She went over to that serving-aperture in the wall which divided the kitchen from the séance room and flicked a straying fold in the short curtain.
‘Patrick will take the chair on Wednesday,’ she said.
‘It may be his last appearance,’ Ewart said.
‘Not if I know it,’ she said and moved past him out of the kitchen.
He put on his hat, scarf and coat in the hall.
‘Thank you for a pleasant evening,’ he said.
‘I am disappointed, Ewart.’
‘You will be grateful one day, Marlene.’
He kissed her on both cheeks and departed to his rooms at Campden Hill where, from the depths of his leather arm-chair, he telephoned to Freda Flower.
‘I have definitely made a stand, Freda, as regards Patrick Seton. It had to come, Freda. Now, Freda, don’t be silly. That is sheer superstition. Patrick can do you no further harm. I believe you’ve still got a weak spot for Patrick, Freda, but believe me… And if I were you, my dear, I’d keep away from Mike Garland. Yes, keep him away from you. Yes, keep away from… We’ll clean up the whole organisation between us, you and I together. And Marlene will come to heel…’
His hips expanded in the chair, and his chin went into extra folds as his face sank into the skull. A smile of comfortable womanliness spread far into his cheeks as he spoke and his eyes were avid, as if they had never moved dispassionately over an examination paper. ‘Yes, Freda my dear, I made no bones about it and I just said to her, I said…’
Meanwhile the Rev. T. W. Socket said to Mike Garland who had at that moment arrived at his flat, ‘Mrs. Flower is resolved to go ahead with the case.’
‘She has no alternative. It’s in the hands of the police.’
‘But will she be a willing witness? That’s what they need.’
‘I’ve done my best with her,’ said Mike Garland.
‘I hope you didn’t have to de-Flower her,’ said the Reverend Socket who then closed his eyes and shook with mirth.
Mike Garland smiled unpleasantly.
‘I don’t trust Mrs. Flower,’ he said. ‘I don’t know for certain, but I think she may have been discussing me with the police. A plain-clothes man called last night. Somebody’s been talking to the police.’
‘What did he want? What did he ask?’
‘About my clairvoyant activities. Where did I operate? What did I charge for a horoscope? I told him. I showed him the card index. All postal commissions, I said.’
‘I’m glad I suggested that card index,’ said Socket. ‘There is nothing like having a card index in the house. You can always produce a card index. It puts them off their stroke.’
‘I invited the man to look through it, but he didn’t trouble.’
‘Who has tipped them off, I wonder?’
‘He mentioned Freda Flower.’
‘Really, in what connection?’
‘He asked me if I knew her. I said yes, she was a friend.’
‘How many girls have you got staying with Freda Flower at the moment?’
‘Only three.’
‘Transfer them to Ramsgate right away,’ said Father Socket. ‘I blame Marlene Cooper for this. You made an enemy of her the other night, I’m afraid. It was ill-considered of you to challenge Patrick Seton at an open séance.’
‘I can’t transfer the girls to Ramsgate right away.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Freda Flower will be suspicious if they all leave at once. She thinks they work in the all-night kitchen at Lyons’ Corner House. I can’t trust Freda Flower.’
‘Whom can we trust?’ said Father Socket.
‘Someone has tipped the police,’ said Mike Garland.
‘Could it be Elsie? Surely it couldn’t be Elsie.’
‘She stole that letter—she’s capable of anything.’
‘I told you, didn’t I?’ said Father Socket, ‘that you should have been more discreet when Elsie called yesterday.’
‘Having stolen a letter which was Crown property I doubt if she would go the police. Besides, what could she say? That I was wearing my green-striped dressing-gown?’ Mike Garland smiled with full lips pressed together.
‘This is grave,’ said Father Socket. He was inserting a roll of tape into a recording machine. He switched it on. It was his own voice rendering Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. He stood listening to it, with critical attention, while Mike leant back with eyes closed.
When it was finished Father Socket said, ‘I should have taken “Drive my dead thoughts…” more slowly. They are all monosyllabic words, each word should be spoken with equal stress. Drive — my —dead — thoughts … like that.’
‘It gives one a frisson,’ said Mike.
‘All troubles are passing,’ said Father Socket. ‘My son, the fever of life will soon be over and gone. We will take this police enquiry in our stride. Do not be disturbed, Mike. Patrick Seton will be brought to trial, the Wider Infinity will be brought to disrepute, the Temple will be cleansed and we shall then take over the affairs of the Circle ourselves.’
‘We’ll take over the whole shooting-match,’ said Mike. ‘How you soothe me, Father.’
‘Some will have to go,’ said the Rev. Socket. ‘Marlene, of course, will no longer be in control. We shall not meet at Marlene’s flat, we shall meet here. Ewart Thornton will have to go. Freda Flower — she is suspect, and to say the least, has been a troublemaker — she will have to go. It makes one’s eyes narrow. We may retain Tim Raymond, a biddable youth. We shall—’
‘But I didn’t like that plain-clothes policeman calling on me last night,’ Mike whispered. ‘I didn’t like it at all.’
‘Do nothing for two weeks,’ said Father Socket. ‘My son, go nowhere, do nothing.’
‘But the girls—’
‘I shall myself convey the girls to Ramsgate,’ said Father Socket, ‘one by one.’
Mike Garland took comfort from his elder partner whom he had revered for eight years, since that summer evening at Ramsgate when he had just heard Father Socket preach. This was in a private house, before the séance had commenced. Mike, newly released from Maidstone prison, where he had served a sentence for soliciting, was deeply moved when he heard Father Socket say, ‘There are those amongst us who are not of the human race, but are aliens, and nevertheless must walk in the midst of mankind disguised as members of the human race. He who hath ears let him hear.’ Mike told Father Socket after the séance, ‘I was deeply moved by what you said to-night.’ Father Socket adopted him. Mike was then forty. He had a job as a waiter in a huge hotel. For the winter he had intended to return to London and take up private service as a manservant, for he had made a good butler in his time, with many profitable sidelines. Father Socket had changed all that. He had bestowed larger thoughts on Mike, who began to experience
a late flowering in his soul. Father Socket cited the classics and André Gide, and although Mike did not actually read them, he understood, for the first time in his life, that the world contained scriptures to support his homosexuality .which, till now, had been shifty and creedless. Mike gave up his job as a waiter and went into training as a clairvoyant. His appearance assisted him, he flowered. Father Socket instructed him in the theory and practice of clairvoyance, and Mike’s late overflowing of the soul actually did evoke pronounced psychic talents. Father Socket’s villa at Ramsgate was filled twice weekly with residential widows and retired military men — for it was widows and retired colonels who were the chief clients — come to receive clairvoyance from Mike.
‘There are certain aids to perception which it is unwise — nay, lacking in humility — for the clairvoyant to ignore,’ Father Socket told Mike, and he taught him how to observe his subjects and how, in the daylight hours, to gain useful information as to their private lives. Mike’s previous career in the catering and domestic worlds assisted him, for he knew his way about the back stairs of hotels and boarding houses, he knew a friendly waiter when he saw one.
‘But we must not neglect the little things of life,’ said Father Socket. ‘The gas bill must be paid.’ Mike knew a street photographer. He knew which wealthy men were taking the air on the front with their friends during illicit week-ends. The couples were photographed, the man handed a ticket, and the ticket was thrown away. Mike acquired these photographs at a higher price than the nominal three for seven-and-sixpence. But he did not lose on the deal and, even though certain members of hotel staffs had to be paid out of his earnings, still Father Socket’s gas bills were paid.
‘Never touch a woman,’ said Father Socket, ‘for a woman cannot enter the Kingdom. Have dealings with a woman and the virtue departs from you. You should read the Ancients on the subject.’
Mike felt secure with Father Socket in all his summer and all his winter activities. He was no longer an aimless chancer sliding in and out of illegal avenues, feeling resentful all the while. Mike now was at rights with the world, he was somebody. He had a religion and a Way of Life, set forth by Father Socket. Mike, tall, straight, with his pink and white cheeks, did not appear to be an adoring type; nevertheless he adored Father Socket and was jealous of any other potential acolytes who might put in a tentative appearance, and would not stand for them.
Now, after eight prosperous years, Mike could not believe that a mere visit from a plain-clothes policeman could shake the benign rock which translated Horace, recited Shelley, knew the writings of the Early Fathers, and studied the Cabbala. This winter’s venture, a continuation of last summer’s venture, was a private cinema show lasting half an hour. It comprised two films, entitled, respectively, The Truth about Nudism and Nature’s Way. The three girls, who appeared on the stage in person afterwards, were more or less thrown in with the price of the ticket. Mike had thought the employment of these girls unnecessary. ‘Suppose the place is raided, it is easier to destroy the film than to conceal the girls.’
‘The show would lose its attraction,’ said Father Socket, ‘without a peppering of real flesh and blood. I prefer, myself, the more artistic exclusiveness of the film, but we must allow for the cruder tastes of the Many.’
They lodged the girls with unsuspecting Freda Flower, who was known to Father Socket as a spiritualist and a widow and who touchingly gave him fifty cigarettes every Christmas and a spray of carnations on the birthday of the late Sir Oliver Lodge.
‘Freda will take the girls,’ said Father Socket. ‘Now that Patrick Seton has let her down so badly over her savings, the good woman will need the money.’
Mike had not been happy about Freda taking the girls to lodge. ‘Never have to do with a woman… they draw the virtue out of you.’
A slight disturbance in Mike’s mind had recently occurred to make him wonder if perhaps Father Socket was not more interested in women as such than he claimed to be. There was a certain Elsie, who did his typing. He was furiously jealous of Elsie. And these girls. But Mike, shivering as from a flash of clairvoyance, cast the thought from him.
But when Father Socket said, ‘I shall myself convey the girls to Ramsgate. One by one. You must lie low. I confess I don’t like the sound of this policeman who visited you. Are you sure he was a policeman? Did you ask for his credentials? You should always demand their credentials.’ — When Father Socket spoke like this, Mike recalled his first hesitation in dealing with Freda Flower, he remembered his flash of doubt, whether Father Socket was reaching an age — sixty-two — when he might become weak. In a fever of clairvoyance and apprehension he looked at his patron and everlasting lean-upon, and said, ‘Never have dealings with women, Father. They are denied the Kingdom. They suck the virtue___’
‘Well, my son,’ said Father Socket, ‘don’t be fearful.’ He patted Mike’s shoulder. ‘After all, you are now forty-eight and you must endure whatever may betide.’
‘Things look unlucky,’ said Mike, rising tall above Father Socket. ‘We had bad luck with Elsie Forrest yesterday, and that was a start. We should have got that letter out of her. Perhaps our good luck is turning.’
‘I told you not to put in an appearance in that dressing-gown with that stuff on your face,’ Father Socket said. ‘I told you she was not a true spirit. Whatever must the girl have thought?’
Alice Dawes sat up in bed combing her long black hair on that Sunday evening. A syringe lay on the table beside her.
‘Some time next week, I imagine,’ said Patrick, in his murmur.
‘And the divorce — now how about the divorce case?’
‘Oh yes, I meant to tell you. The divorce has been held up. Something technical — but never mind that, I’ve got our honeymoon all arranged.’
‘Held up? How can we have a honeymoon if we can’t get married?’
‘A holiday, dear. We shall be married eventually.’
‘I wish you’d tell me more about your divorce.’
‘You trust me,’ said Patrick softly, ‘don’t you? ‘He put out his hand and stroked her arm.
‘Of course,’ she said, and after a space she said, ‘Are you sure the case will come up next month?’
‘The divorce will—’
‘No, not the divorce. The case, the charge of fraud.’
‘It may not come to anything after all. The police may decide they haven’t good enough evidence.’
‘I should like to give that Freda Flower a piece of my mind. Saying you forged the letter. Have you seen anything of Elsie?’
‘No, I wish she hadn’t touched the letter. It puts me in an awkward position. The police think I’m behind the theft.’ He placed his head on one side with pathos.
‘Do they know? Who told them?’
‘The man who lost it, I suppose.’
‘That’s Ronald Bridges,’ Alice said. ‘He takes fits. What’s in the letter?’
‘Not very much. It came with the cheque Freda sent me and it says, “Please use this money to further your psychic and spiritualistic work. I leave it entirely in your hands” — something like that. An unprincipled woman. I should never have taken the money.’
Alice moved in a desperate access of temper against Freda Flower and her own doubts; she sat up violently and began to throw back the covers and reach for her clothes at the same time. ‘I’ll go and see that woman right away. I’ll frighten the wits out of her—’
‘No, no,’ Patrick said.
‘I’ll tell her it won’t be you who’s going to gaol, it will be her that’s going to Holloway if she stands up before the magistrate and says you forged that letter. I’ll tell her, and she can see for herself, that I’m pregnant, and I’ll say, “What right have you,” I’ll say, “to come between me and the man I love with a court case? You should have thought it over,” I’ll say,” before you sent him that cheque “‘
‘No, no, keep calm,’ Patrick said.
‘I’ll say, “You should have thoug
ht it over, and no doubt you thought he would marry you when he got his divorce, you ridiculous old bag,” I’ll say, “now he’s devoted the money to a cause and distributed it among the spiritualist students, now you say you didn’t give it to him,” I’ll say. And I’ll say, “Mrs. Flower,” I’ll say, “you know the police are prejudiced and everyone’s prejudiced against spiritualism, and they will swear it’s a forgery and pay their men to swear to it. Now, Mrs. Flower,” I’ll say, “where will that get you, Mrs. Flower? It will get you to Holloway, that’s where. You think you’re going to come between Patrick and me? No, Mrs. Flower,” I’ll say. “Oh no, Mrs. Flower.”‘ Alice curled up and wept noisily.
Patrick sat in his calm, watching her, and he experienced that murmuring of his mind which was his memory. He could not recall where he had seen a similar sight before, but he felt he had. His memory was impressionistic, formed of a few distinguishable sensations among a mass of cloudy matter generally forming his past. He remembered most of all his childhood, and could possibly have brought to mind the latent image of being taken with his class round an art gallery by his art teacher, a woman. She is endeavouring to explain impressionist art by bidding them look at the palm of their hands for a moment, and nowhere else. ‘All round your hand you are aware of objects — you see them, but not distinctly. What you see round the palm of your hand is an impression.’ Patrick’s memory had become this type of impression and if he focused his attention for long upon the things of the past it was mainly of his childhood that he thought, a happy childhood, and his lifelong justification for all his subsequent actions. It had bewildered him when the prison psychoanalysts had put it to him as a matter of course that something had been wrong with his childhood. That is not the case at all: something has been wrong, from time to time, ever since. Life has been full of unfortunate occurrences, and the dream of childhood still remains in his mind as that from which everything else deviates. He is a dreamy child: a dreamer of dreams, they say with pride, as he wanders back from walks in the botanical gardens, or looks up from his book Mary Rose by J. M. Barrie is Patrick’s favourite, and he is taken to the theatre to see it acted, and is sharply shocked by the sight of the real actresses and actors with painted faces performing outwardly on the open platform this tender romance about the girl who was stolen by the fairies on a Hebridean island. As a young man he memorises the early poems of W. B. Yeats and will never forget them. Now, on his first enchanted visit to the Western Isles he first encounters an unfortunate occurrence, having sat up reciting to an American lady far into the night and the next morning being accused of having taken money from her purse. He is thinking of her, in his poetic innocence, as a kindred soul to whom money does not matter, but now she carries on as if money mattered. A little while, and he learns from a man that the early Christians shared all their worldly possessions one with the other, and Patrick memorises this lesson and repeats it to all. Another little while, and he has sex relations with a woman, and is upset by all the disgusting details and is eventually carried away into transports. There is a lot of nasty stuff in life which comes breaking up our ecstasy, our inheritance. I think, said Patrick, people should read more poetry and dream their dreams, and I do not recognise man-made laws and dogmas. There is always a fuss about some petty cash, or punctuality. ‘Tread softly,’ he recites to the young girls he meets, ‘because you tread on my dreams.’ The girls are usually enchanted. ‘I have spread my dreams under your feet,’ he says, ‘tread softly…’ Even older ladies are enchanted. His wispy father fully accepts the position of Patrick, and dies. The widowed mother cannot understand how he is not getting on in life, with such fine stuff in him. She protests, at last, that she is penniless, and when she dies, and turns out not to have been quite penniless, Patrick is amazed. He had not thought her to be a materialist at heart. There is a girl at the time going to have a baby, and that is her business. He removes to London, then, away from these unfortunate occurrences and finds his feet as a spiritualist and becomes a remarkable medium, which he always was, without knowing it, all along. There are ups and downs and he always does his best to help Mr. Fergusson with information. Patrick trembles with fear and relief when he thinks of Mr. Fergusson who first put him on a charge; and that was the first meeting.