Season of Storms

  viii

  WE worked through the second act just after lunch the next day, and Edwina, at Rupert’s request, came to give us a lesson on how to converse with the dead.

  Poppy was there as well, all of us having given our consent to let her sit in on rehearsals, for Madeleine’s sake, although in Nicholas’s case that consent hadn’t come without grumbling. “She’ll throw me off,” he’d warned.

  “You won’t even know that she’s there,” had been Madeleine’s promise.

  And in actual fact, the girl was quiet as a mouse. She was sitting now at the table next to Den, who appeared to have made her his unofficial assistant, giving her paper and pen and introducing her to the basics of running a rehearsal.

  Not that he was really running anything, this afternoon. Edwina, from the moment she arrived, assumed control.

  “Young man,” she told Nicholas, “kindly do not blow that smoke in my face when I’m trying to speak. Thank you.” Taking a chair between Madeleine and me at the small round table that formed the centrepiece of our set, she said, “Now then, Celia, what was it you told me was giving you difficulties? The placement of hands, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “We’ve tried holding hands, like this.” I reached out for Madeleine’s hands, to demonstrate. “But it’s awkward with the table, and there only being two of us.”

  “I see, yes. Your play is set when?”

  “Sometime during World War I.”

  “Certainly hand-holding would have been popular then—table-rapping was still a common form of communicating with the spirit world, and holding hands kept people honest; let you know the person sitting next to you wasn’t doing the rapping himself, as a trick. But I sat for a time in the home circle of a man who would have been around in those days, and he always made us lay our hands this way, palms down, on top of the table. Is that easier?”

  “Heaps,” I said.

  Rupert agreed it looked better from where he was sitting. “Would you like the room darker?”

  “Yes, please, if you can,” said Edwina. “They would certainly have dimmed the lights—gaslights, it would have been then, I’d imagine. But again, you’d want to see the members of your circle, to make certain they weren’t cheating, so you wouldn’t have the room in total darkness.”

  Rupert looked at Den, who obligingly threw the switches for two of the three chandeliers. As the room’s walls and corners were swallowed by shadows I felt a childish tingle of anticipation, as though we were preparing to do this for real and not making believe.

  “So,” said Madeleine, “how do we begin?”

  “You’re playing the medium, yes? Ordinarily you’d start by inviting any spirits who are present to come forward. Although in this case, if you’re after one particular spirit, you might simply ask for him by name.”

  Nicholas, standing behind us, gave a snort of derision that Madeleine tried to cover by saying, “Well, good, that’s just what my character does in the play. And then what?”

  “Then we wait.”

  Drily, and to no one in particular, Nicholas remarked, “That ought to be especially thrilling for the audience.”

  Half-turning with the air of someone bothered by an insect, Edwina sent him the same sort of look that in my years with Rupert and Bryan had meant I was one step away from being sent to my room. “Of course when you’re playing the scene you may take a certain amount of dramatic licence, but there still should be a pause,” she went on, turning back to Madeleine. “The spirits rarely manage an immediate response.”

  There was an obliging pause. Poppy looked around the room a little nervously, I thought, and asked, “How can you tell when the spirits are here? Do you see them?”

  “Some people do, but not me,” said Edwina. “I’m not a clairvoyant, my dear, I’m clairaudient. I only hear their voices.” Getting back to the business at hand, she instructed Madeleine, “Now, let’s assume that you’ve asked this young man to come forward, this soldier. He may not be the first one who appears, there may be others more determined to be heard.”

  “Oh, heaven help us,” muttered Nicholas, moving a few paces off in search of an ashtray.

  “For instance,” Edwina went on, “Mr. Rutherford’s mother might want to cut in to remind him of manners. Or somebody else’s relations or friends who’ve passed over may want to send greetings, you never can tell. But eventually, if you’re in luck, the person whom you wish to speak to finally does turn up. And then you start to ask him questions.”

  “So at this point, I’d be in a trance?” asked Madeleine.

  “Oh, no. You can’t ask questions if you’re truly in a trance. When you’re in a trance the spirit speaks through you, you understand, uses your body. Your consciousness goes somewhere else entirely. It’s up to the others in your circle to ask questions of the spirit, then, because you’re essentially not there, and when the séance ends and you come out of your trance you haven’t a clue what’s gone on.”

  “Ah.” Madeleine frowned. “Because the script, as it’s written, demands that I be in a trance, and I can’t seem to make that feel comfortable. It feels too . . . well, melodramatic.”

  Edwina assured her it needn’t be. “Generally people in trances just look like they’re sleeping.”

  “It’s the voice I have problems with,” Madeleine said.

  Rupert, patient in the shadows, interjected. “Perhaps, Celia love, if you’d read a few lines from the scene, from the part where you’re trying to make certain that it really is your husband talking, then Edwina could show Madeleine the proper way to answer in a trance. Would that suit everyone?”

  Madeleine thought it a wonderful idea. Passing her book to Edwina, she pointed out the page on which to start, and the lines she should read.

  “All right,” said Edwina, positioning the open book between her hands, still flat upon the table, as she straightened her shoulders and bent her head forwards. “I’m ready.”

  Finding the page, I began with the series of questions my character asked of the spirit, to prove that he actually was her dead lover. “Won’t you tell me your name?”

  “Don’t you know it?” Edwina’s voice came very calmly, relaxed, almost drifting, as though she were speaking from out of a dream.

  “Why must you play games? I do want to believe, but—”

  “Then ask me. . .” She paused, and her head angled slightly as though she’d heard something just off to the side. Then she slowly went on, “. . . ask me something more personal, something that matters. My name will prove nothing.”

  “All right then, your mother’s name. What was that?”

  “Rose.”

  “And your father’s?”

  Again the pause. “Edward.”

  “And where did you live as a child?”

  “By the sea, in a house with a beautiful . . . beautiful . . .”

  She’s lost her place, I thought, and tried to help her with a prompt. “Beautiful garden.”

  “The garden—oh, yes, I can still smell the roses. They seemed to be always in bloom.” She was improvising now, creating lines that weren’t in the script, but I didn’t react. After all, Edwina wasn’t young, and the script’s type was small—she likely found it difficult to make out the words.

  “Where was this house?”

  “Sussex.”

  It was definitely her eyesight, I decided. The proper word was Surrey but again I let it pass. “Tell me, how did you die?”

  “I was murdered.”

  That one I had to correct, I thought, smiling, or else the rest of the reading would be nonsensical. “No, Edwina, that’s wrong, you’re supposed to—”

  “She did it; she wanted me dead.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly I stopped, and leaned closer to look at her face. Her eyes were closed, her features relaxed and quite free of emotion. She carried on speaking: “She said she would tell him that I’d run away, but I didn’t. I’m here. I’m still here . . .”

  I tried p
rompting her again. “Edwina?”

  Poppy’s voice, out of the darkness, said anxiously, “Mummy . . .”

  “It’s all right, dear,” Madeleine said. “Don’t be frightened. It’s only a play.”

  But it wasn’t the play anymore. Edwina slowly turned her head towards me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling she could see me through her still-closed eyelids. Whispering, she told me, “Do be careful. There is evil in this house.”

  I felt a slow chill on my spine. “Edwina . . .”

  “Celia,” she replied, and in my slightly rattled state I half-believed she wasn’t calling me by name so much as telling me her own.

  Only Madeleine was close enough to hear. For a moment the hush held, and we exchanged glances.

  And then Edwina stirred between us, opening her eyes. “Oh, I am sorry,” she said, seeing us staring. “Did I fall asleep? The curse of age, you know—this room’s so very warm. Well, shall we try that bit again?” she asked us, picking up her book. “From the beginning?”

  ix

  I couldn’t sleep. Above my bed the portrait of Celia the First gazed down with newly haunted eyes, and every creaking timber of the old house had a voice. Evil, breathed the walls around me . . . evil in this house. And then a whisper, even fainter: I was murdered . . .

  In childhood I’d have only had to call out for Rupert or Bryan and one of them would have been there at my side in an instant, turning the light on, dispelling my fears, even sitting as sentinel close by my bedside to hold all the monsters at bay till I’d fallen asleep. But I wasn’t a child anymore.

  Which left me uncomfortably tossing and trying to be brave. To this end I reminded myself that Edwina’s performance, her séance, was all of a piece with Sally’s much-consulted tarot cards—a simple entertainment, rather eerily close to the mark at times, maybe, but not to be taken too seriously.

  Not that I thought for a minute that Edwina had deliberately tried to lead us down the garden path; but people who believed in things could sometimes fool themselves, could shape reality to suit their expectations. Just as the faithful might swear they saw tears in the eyes of a marble church statue, I thought, Edwina heard the voices of spirits. And being convinced of their realness, repeated their words without ever once doubting that she was relaying not thoughts that had sprung from her subconscious mind, but the words of the dead.

  But she didn’t intend to deceive. And she had been surprised to learn what she had said while she was ‘napping’ at rehearsal. “Extraordinary,” she’d pronounced it, eyebrows raised. “I haven’t gone into a trance for some years.”

  Madeleine, eager, had asked, “Could you do it again?”

  But Edwina had turned her attention to Poppy, who sat very straight and waiting, eyes intense. As though she’d realized she was frightening the child, Edwina had said, “I’m afraid not. The spirit is no longer with us. She’s gone.”

  Round my bed now the walls changed their whisper. I’m here . . . I’m still here . . .

  Rolling over, I deliberately drowned out the voices with Alex’s calm one, recalling what he’d said to me that evening before dinner. He’d come looking for me, purposely, with Max and Nero padding at his side as soft as shadows. They’d found me alone in the long empty room overlooking the terrace, across from our rehearsal room—the room through which Madeleine had ushered me the morning of that first appalling read-through, when she’d taken me outside to have a chat.

  We couldn’t have stood on the terrace this evening. The rain had returned with a vengeance, transforming the wide stretch of stone to a mournfully grey and abandoned place, lost in a landscape of mist.

  I’d been watching the scatter of raindrops on puddles when Alex had suddenly spoken behind me. “You haven’t had very good weather,” he’d said, in a tone of apology.

  Wheeling, I had willed my startled heartbeat to return to normal, gathering my thoughts. “I didn’t hear you,” I’d explained, as an excuse for my reaction.

  “No? I’m sorry.” Stepping forwards, he’d drawn something from a pocket, held it out. “You’ve had another e-mail.”

  “Oh.” I took it from him. “Thank you.” Unfolding the single page I scanned it and smiled. Just a small bit of nonsense from Bryan—a joke he had heard at the office, that’s all—but it helped to restore my lost balance and grounded me after the day’s goings-on as surely as if Bryan himself had been standing there telling it to me.

  “I thought you might want to reply,” Alex said.

  “Now?” I glanced at my watch. “But it’s nearly dinner . . .”

  “There is time.”

  “All right,” I said, deciding that as master of the house he wasn’t likely to be punished if he turned up late for dinner, and by being in his company I could expect a similar immunity. Truth be told, I liked being in his company. He wasn’t one of ‘us’; didn’t belong to the world of the theatre, a highly charged world in which places like Il Piacere seemed wholly at home. No, Alex, like Bryan, was solid and real, and in his presence things seemed very plain and reassuring. Mountains were mountains and molehills were molehills. It was too bad, I thought, he was already taken.

  I walked with him through the long corridors, letting my eyes roam a few of the portraits and paintings that lined the walls as thickly and as randomly as posters pasted on a hoarding. In the quiet space beside me Alex coughed as if to clear his throat. “I heard about what happened in rehearsal.” I felt his gaze slant briefly down at me, and away again. “I feel responsible. I’m sorry. I should perhaps have warned you of my grandmother’s . . . eccentricities.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” I told him. “And besides, I’m the one who sort of egged her on to do it in the first place—hold the séance for us, I mean. There’s a séance in the play, you see . . .”

  “I know, I’ve read it,” he said, reminding me that this entire project was his brainchild, after all; that he was not simply the descendant of the playwright and our host, but our producer, and as such was probably at least as familiar with the material as any of us.

  “Yes, well,” I covered my embarrassment, “we’ve been having a problem with blocking that scene, and it sometimes helps to have an expert show you.”

  “Expert.” The word came out softly, between speech and laughter. “She would like to hear you call her that, I’m sure.”

  “Well, what I mean is, she’s a Spiritualist, and she knows what a séance should look like.”

  “You might have asked me,” he replied, and the trace of amusement still left in his voice was surprising to me, unexpected. “I sat in on enough of the damned things when I was a boy, I could have told you exactly what they looked like.”

  We turned a corner in the corridor. Encouraged by his open mood, I asked, “And what were you doing sitting in on séances?”

  “Part of my penance. I went to school in England—part of my mother’s dying wish, I’m told, that I should know her homeland. And it suited Father well enough. He didn’t have the time to take care of me, so most half-terms and holidays I was sent to my grandmother’s. She has a very draughty house,” he said, “in Norfolk. With a forest out the back. And ducks,” he added, as though it stood to reason that a woman like Edwina would keep ducks. “She had a group of friends who met on Saturdays—they probably still do—and she insisted I sit in,” he said, “to broaden my horizons.”

  “And did it?”

  “Most times it put me to sleep.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m only saying,” he went on, “that you shouldn’t take it seriously, all the things my grandmother believes.”

  “I don’t.” And to prove it I told him about Sally and her white-witchcraft. “It’s the same sort of thing, though Edwina’s not so flaky.” I didn’t tell him Sally, too, had talked about an evil in this house—I was trying my best to ignore that part, actually.

  “My grandmother,” he said in full agreement, “is a woman of intelligence.”

  “Was your mother
very like her?” I asked, tentatively treading on this new uncertain ground.

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was very young. I’m told she was an affectionate woman,” he said. And then, after a pause, “My grandmother’s not overly affectionate, but she notices. She noticed me.” He smiled a tight, self-conscious smile. “She bought me models, model ships, because I liked to build things.” And then, as if he’d felt he had revealed too much, he’d almost visibly withdrawn inside himself, his shoulders straightening, his tone of voice more formal. “That’s why I asked her to bring Madeleine’s daughter down here, on the train. I knew she’d look after the girl.”

  I personally hadn’t thought Poppy Hedrick needed much looking after, and had said so. “She seems quite a clever young lady, and very mature for her age.”

  At least, that’s what I’d thought then, in that hour before dinner, when I’d walked and talked with Alex.

  Only now, as I lay huddled in my bed, my racing thoughts were interrupted by a sudden wild commotion on the landing—a pounding and sounds of a childish sobbing that showed me my opinion had been wrong. Poppy wasn’t as poised and mature as she tried to appear. She was twelve, and in need of her mother.

  “Mummy!” More pounding. Her voice rose in panic. “Mummy, please!”

  When the sobbing went on, without any apparent response from Madeleine, I rose and shrugged into the sleeves of my dressing-gown, belting it tightly around me as I went through to the sitting-room and opened the door to the landing a crack—only enough to see by, not enough to intrude.

  Poppy, her pale face streaked with tears, had plastered herself to the door of her mother’s room, as if by sheer will she could force her body through the solid wood. Arms outstretched, small fists pounding, she seemed to be nearing a state of hysteria. “Mummy!”

  I pushed my door all the way open. “Poppy?” I said, hesitantly. “Poppy, what’s the matter?”

  I was completely unprepared for her response. No longer the self-controlled almost-adult, she rushed headlong towards me and clung like a child being chased by a legion of bogeymen. Taken by surprise and oddly touched, I wrapped my arms around her narrow shoulders, holding her more closely as she cried. I asked, more gently, “What’s the matter?”