Poppy Day (24 page)

Sis was sobbing. ‘But Mom, why did she do that to ’er little babby?’

‘She weren’t ’erself. Sometimes it does summat to a woman’s mind ’aving a child. And our Dad was no help to ’er. Took no notice. I s’pose ’e daint know what was happening, what to do. No one else could understand it – t’ain’t a natural thing to do and that’s why they were so cruel. But she weren’t a wicked woman—’ Her voice caught as she spoke. ‘She were our Mom and we loved ’er. And she was your grandmother.’ She looked across at Polly whose eyes were fixed on Grace. The baby had finished feeding and was sleeping snuggled close to her, a tiny fist curled by her face.

‘I know what yer thinking,’ Olive said. ‘Clara would’ve been about that age. But yer grandmother needs yer sorrow, not you condemning ’er.’

‘That was what I was thinking, Mom,’ Polly said. ‘With Ernie gone, Grace is all I’ve got. I’d kill anyone to protect her, that I would. Someone should’ve helped our grandmother and taken that babby off ’er for a bit.’

‘They didn’t know she were that bad. Not ’til it were too late.’ Olive looked round at them. ‘So now yer know.’

‘You should’ve told us, Mom.’

‘I didn’t think it’d do yer no good.’

‘No, but it might’ve done you some.’

‘It might.’ Olive sat up and let out a long, tremulous sigh from the depths of her. ‘Ar, I think it might.’

‘I tell you what, Auntie,’ Jess said a few days later. ‘If you’ll look after Gracie, I’ll go with ’er and see what this Spiritualist business is all about.’

‘Can I go too?’ Sis asked.

‘No,’ Polly retorted. ‘You’ll only get the titters, I know you.’

Mrs Bullivant was not going tonight as she was visiting her son John, who had lost his legs on the Somme and was now in hospital in the city. Jess and Polly set off along the road in the smoky dusk. As they passed a bus stop on the Moseley Road a bus drew up alongside, letting a passenger off.

‘Yer getting on or what?’ the conductorette shouted.

‘What does it look like?’ Polly snapped at her. The bus chugged off in a cloud of fumes. ‘Think they’re the Lord God Almighty, some of ’em, once they’ve got a ticket machine over their shoulder.’

Jess laughed. ‘You sound more like yerself.’

Polly smiled faintly. ‘I’m up and down. Natural though, ain’t it?’

‘Auntie’s better in ’erself too.’ Over the fortnight since Olive had told them about Alice she had been emotional. Sometimes she’d start crying unexpectedly, and was bewildered and embarrassed by it, but she was more relaxed than Jess ever remembered her and somehow softer. It had been a release.

‘’Ow’s Ned?’

‘Awright, so far’s I know,’ Jess said carefully. She kept her feelings to herself, the worry that was constantly with her. All that year there had been little news but that of slaughter: the French at Verdun, now the Somme, day after day.

‘Come on—’ she changed the subject. ‘How much further to this barmy Mrs Black of yours?’

‘It’s no good thinking like that,’ Polly was on her high horse straight away. ‘Nothing’ll ever happen for yer if yer think that way about it.’

Jess nudged her. ‘I was only kidding.’

‘Remember what they said after Mons? There was that queer light in the sky, like an angel watching over them?’

Not the Angel of Mons again, Jess thought. ‘Yes, you ’ave mentioned it before – just a few dozen times.’

‘Anyway – ’er lives on Runcorn Road. Nearly there.’

Runcorn was a road of respectable terraces, intersected every half dozen houses with little avenues leading to houses behind, all bearing the names of trees.

‘I wouldn’t mind living here,’ Jess found herself talking in a slightly hushed voice, even though there was plenty of neighbourhood noise from children playing out in the avenues and on the pavement. They walked a good way down the road. As they passed under the railway bridge a train thundered over their heads. The loud sound brought Jess’s arms up in goose pimples.

‘Lilac, May, Myrtle . . .’ Polly read off the names. ‘’Ere we go.’ She knocked on the door of a house between Myrtle and Vine Avenues and it was opened immediately by an elderly man with a drinker’s complexion, who must have been standing just behind it.

There was no hall and they stepped straight into the front room, which was gloomy and sparsely furnished, with brown lino on the floor, and obviously used more as a passage than a room.

‘Evening, Mr Black,’ Polly said respectfully.

‘Oh – Polly, it’s you! ’Ow are you then? And who’s this you’ve brought with you?’

‘This is my cousin Jess.’

Jess shook Mr Black’s sinewy hand. He had a quaint, gentlemanly way, but it didn’t seem to come quite naturally, as if he’d trained himself in this rather starchy new way of behaviour.

‘Have you had a loss, my dear?’

‘Er . . . well, no,’ Jess said. ‘Least, not for some time.’

‘She’s just come along to keep me company,’ Polly said. She handed over the money and Mr Black stowed it in a jar which had once contained barley sugar.

‘Go inside,’ Mr Black pointed to the back room and returned to his post behind the door. ‘There’s a few waiting.’

Three rows of upright chairs had been fitted in at the nearest end of the room, and several of them were already occupied. Facing them was another more stately seat with arms, built solidly in oak. At the far end an upright piano stood against the window, but Jess’s eyes were immediately drawn to a strange, pavilion-like construction in the other corner. A wooden frame was draped in white sheeting, creating a shrouded oblong area which Jess realized must have covered the door to the stairs. On the long wall beside them was a painting depicting the afterlife. As well as lots of swirling cloud and what looked like a vivid blue lake in the middle, there were crowds of people in white, flowing clothes, and small, plump angels hovering above their heads.

Jess squeezed into the middle row between Polly and a middle-aged woman in black, who had apparently dozed off to sleep. Everyone else was very quiet and a rather resigned, gloomy atmosphere hung over the place which was stuffy and smelt overpoweringly of mothballs, although this didn’t overcome the stale odour coming from the lady on the other side of Jess. The woman behind them kept coughing. Jess felt self-conscious and not very trusting of what was going to happen. She nudged Polly, pointing at the sheets.

‘What’re they for?’ she whispered.

‘Mrs Black always comes out from there. I s’pect she’s upstairs getting ready.’

Jess jumped violently as the lady on the other side of her roused herself and laid a hand on her knee. She greeted Polly, then said to Jess,

‘My name’s Irene Crawford. ’Ave yer suffered a loss?’

‘No.’ She felt almost guilty at this admission. ‘I’ve just come with Polly.’

‘My ’usband and my son have passed on to the other side. Only me and my daughter left now. My son William was killed at Suvla Bay.’

‘Was your husband killed in the fighting too?’ Jess asked.

‘No, bab, ’e fell off of a roof on the ’agley Road. The two of ’em keep in touch though. Always were good to me, both of ’em.’

As they waited a few more people arrived, all – with one exception – women, who seemed to know each other at least by sight, and there was a low murmur of conversation.

At half past seven on the dot, Mr Black disappeared into the white, tent-like structure and they heard him calling up the stairs,

‘Yer ready now then, Dora?’

There came a muffled reply, then they heard what sounded like at least two pairs of feet on the stairs. Jess, in a slightly hysterical state, found herself picturing Mrs Black having four legs like a pantomime horse and had to force down the powerful urge to laugh which swelled up inside her.

Mr Black held the sheet aside, closing it behind his wife as she appeared. She was a small, neat woman, quite a bit younger than her husband by the look of her, dark-haired, with bold, shapely eyebrows. She was also dressed in black, and her hat was trimmed with black net. There was a stiff elegance about her movements.

‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said, looking round at them with composure.

‘Good evening,’ they all muttered.

‘We shall start with our hymn.’ She moved to the piano and began to play it rather well, but there were not many voices to make a swell of sound and their efforts at singing turned out as more of a mumbling,

‘Jesus lives! no longer now

Can thy terrors, death, appal us;

Jesus lives! by this we know

Thou, O grave, canst not enthrall us.

Alleluia!’

By the end of the first verse, Mrs Crawford and Polly were both crying and some of the others soon joined in. It was so sad it set Jess off crying too, thinking of Ernie’s sweet, friendly face and how happy he and Polly had looked together and now they’d never see him again. And it called to mind the day her mother died and she found she was crying for her too, and for her grandmother and baby Clara, until she was at least as upset as everyone in the room, and needed something to blow her nose on. She had to borrow Polly’s handkerchief.

They all sat down. The room was rather shadowy now, although there was still some silvery grey evening light coming from the window. Mr Black lit the three candles in a brass candelabra and placed it on the piano. For a moment they all sat quietly, except that Jess heard someone give a sniff and she frowned. It sounded as if it had come from in front of her, but that would mean someone who they couldn’t see was waiting behind the screen of sheets. The thought was rather spooky. She wondered at Polly coming here on her own: she must truly have been desperate.

Mrs Black sat down on the rather grand oak chair and took several deep breaths. Her little round tummy seemed constrained by her frock, and her full bustline looked fit to erupt out of it too. She closed her eyes.

‘I can feel the spirits are close to us tonight.’ She kept her voice low, intoning in a rather posh voice so it didn’t seem like natural speech. Despite her unease, Jess found she was reluctantly full of curiosity. If it was real it would be very nice to hear from Ernie again.

‘Who has grief pressing on them at this moment? Who shall I summon from the spirit world, the land of blessed light? Those on the other side are only gone before: they are watching over us, and they are still needful of our love and our communion with them.’

‘I . . .’ Polly sniffed. ‘I’d like to ’ear from Ernie . . .’

‘Ernie . . .’ Mrs Black said meditatively. Then opened her eyes and said in a normal voice, ‘You mean yer ’usband?’

Polly nodded. ‘Ernest Carter. Same as last week.’

‘Ernest Carter . . .?’ The eyes closed again. ‘Your wife would like to hear from you. Ernest, come to us: cross back from the other side to where your wife waits faithfully for you . . .’ Her tone turned incantational, like someone pretending to be a ghost.

‘I’m here,’ a voice said.

Jess nearly jumped out of her skin. She gripped Polly’s wrist.

‘Oh Ernie!’ Polly whispered.

‘I’ve come to see yer again . . . er, wife. I’m awright. It’s very nice over ’ere. Very comfortable and er, pleasant. Wish you could come and join me . . . well, when yer ready and that, I mean. I hope everything’s going along at home. Don’t worry about me. The wounds don’t hurt any more. Well – love for now then . . .’

The voice seemed muffled during the last sentence, in a way which sounded to Jess as if the person speaking was backing away up the stairs.

‘’E sounds different,’ she whispered to Polly.

‘Dying does that,’ Polly said tearfully. ‘Mrs Black told us that. They’ve gone to another place. They have astral bodies.’

Irene Crawford, next to Jess, was asking about her husband and son.

‘I’d ’specially like to ’ear from my son if you can manage it again. I know the Dardanelles is a long way.’

Mrs Crawford’s son William did want to speak to his mother and he seemed to be having a quite similar experience of the other side to Ernie. Jess found, after several encounters with the spirit world, that life over there didn’t seem to be any more varied or interesting than existence in this one and she began to lose interest. Until a thought struck her.

When there was a gap in the proceedings she said,

‘I’d like to call someone.’

Polly’s head whipped round. ‘Jess – what’re yer doing?’

‘I’d like to talk to my grandmother. She was called Alice Tamplin.’

She heard Polly gasp.

‘How long has she been gone from this world?’ Mrs Black asked in her strange, singsong voice.

‘Er . . .’ Jess looked uncertainly at Polly. ‘Oh, at least twenty years.’

‘I see.’ Mrs Black was sitting with her eyes closed, obviously concentrating. There was a long silence. Jess was torn between amusement and nervousness. This would be a tough one for the man behind the screen! But still she found she was tingling with a strange sensation. Everyone was silent. An atmosphere of intensity had come over the room.

She’ll have to give up on this, Jess thought. She’s not asked me anything about her. How’s he going to know what to say?

She was looking expectantly at the little sheeted box, when Mrs Black abruptly put her head back, her body went rigid and she gave a long, horrifying howl. Jess felt her limbs turn to water. The howl was followed by a high keening of grief and distress and Mrs Black’s body jerked about as if in pain. Then they heard the sound of a woman sobbing as if her heart would break. There was nothing going on from behind the screen: it was all coming from Mrs Black. Jess couldn’t see her moving: her lips and throat were still, the noises shrill and disembodied. She and Polly sat rigid, gripping hard on to each other’s hands.

The desolate weeping went on for a short time, then stopped abruptly. Mrs Black relaxed into the posture she had been in before.

‘She is not quiet.’ She spoke softly. ‘She is not at peace. She cannot speak to you.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jess whispered. She was shaking all over.

Both of them were sober and shocked on the way home. Polly tried to talk. ‘You see? Marvellous, ain’t she? It does me so much good to know I can hear from Ernie.’

Jess didn’t reply. Away from the confines of the Blacks’ dark house she was struggling to make sense of what had happened. She had felt frozen in there, although the night was not chill. All the grief and sorrow and desperate hope congregated together seemed to cast a cold pall over the atmosphere. But she didn’t really believe in all that sort of thing, hadn’t until tonight. She’d been certain they hadn’t really heard from Ernie. It was clear as anything that there was a man behind the sheet doing all the voices. Why could none of them see it? Was it because they needed so badly to believe what Mrs Black told them, because they were so bereft and lonely? And if that was the case, did it really matter that she was a fake if she brought comfort?