Starlight (30 page)

‘Doctors are fools.’ Pearson slowly wiped his eyes again. No shame, thought Mr Geddes. Foreigners …

‘Well, a psychiatrist, then.’

‘Doctors, psychiatrists, priests – all of you. Fools. But …’ he stopped, looking sullenly at him, ‘… she likes you.’

‘I liked her,’ Mr Geddes said at once, ‘a sweet woman, I thought.’ Instinct, conquering social habit, prompted him to say aloud what he would never have dreamt of saying to a less pitiable creature. Yes, the dreaded rackman was pitiable. He looked with new eyes at the plump, ravaged face.

‘And so …’ Pearson was hurrying on, ‘that’s why I came to you.
She
said, go to him. She said, perhaps he’ll pray … or do something like that … yes, she is sweet. I tell you,’ he leaned forward, fixing his moist eyes on Mr Geddes, ‘when I saw her first, in Venice, I believed that God had sent a
peri
– an angel – in a woman’s body to make up to me for what I’d been through. She wore a blue dress. She was eighteen. She was like a spring morning.’ He wiped his eyes again.

Mr Geddes looked down at the table. He knew these thoughts; they were his own, though he had never put them into words. He had known a girl of eighteen who had been like a spring morning. But the dress had been yellow.

‘When I was a boy,’ Pearson was saying excitedly, ‘my mother beat me. I stole because I was hungry, and she beat me. She sent me out to work for money when I was seven years old. I ran away when I was thirteen …’

‘Yes … yes …’ said Mr Geddes, ‘I’m sure you’ve suffered greatly. But what you and I have to do now is to help your wife.’

He paused. Pearson was staring at him, with an expression best described as suspended; his attention had been caught.

‘This …’ Mr Geddes was feeling his way, ‘… these attacks … you say they are as if …’

‘A thing gets into her,’ Pearson interrupted impatiently, ‘a … something. She goes away, and it comes instead. It isn’t
as if
. It happens. My wife goes away and this thing comes.’

‘And is she conscious of what’s happening?’

‘She knows there is something. Once she said: this thing is wandering about, and it wants a body.
It wants to live
.’

Silence fell. The pitch pine walls of the room looked solid and warm in the bright light, and all the Victorian furnishings – the heavy chairs, the clumsy cupboard where the choir surplices hung and the church’s records were kept, the old pieces of brass and china that had drifted, in the course of a century, into the deep window-sills, the massive table at which the two men sat – stood out coloured and shaped by the light and air of Earth. They seemed friendly; they were familiar, and the heart could rest on them.

When Mr Geddes next spoke he had to make an effort to keep his voice at its normal pitch; his instinct had been to lower it.

‘Do you believe this?’ he asked.

‘My God, my God,’ Pearson shouted at the top of his voice, springing up, ‘of course I believe it – I’ve seen it – I’ve seen the thing – its eyes, and heard it speak – can you imagine that, seeing and hearing it in your wife’s body, the body you … you …’ He sank slowly back again.

‘No.’ Mr Geddes shook his head. ‘I can’t, I haven’t much imagination. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want to help you and I will.’

‘You can help? You believe you can help us?’

‘Not I but Christ in me,’ said the priest, ‘I will try.’ It was said with an effort.

‘All that …’ Pearson said gloomily, ‘Christ, praying, all that – my mother believed. But, very soon, I didn’t. Would it be better –?’

His eyes had a calculating look, under his surprisingly delicate black eyebrows, as he fixed them on the other’s face.

‘Of course it would, it’s always better if people believe. But if you don’t – God is very merciful. You must just trust in that. And now …’

‘If He lets her die – or go away, and this thing gets hold of her body and comes instead – I’m going after her,’ Pearson said, almost casually. Then, as Mr Geddes, once more prevented from attempting to make plans, was betrayed through irritation into a contemptuous exclamation, he began to work himself up again.

He raised his voice. ‘I swear it. I shall go. I’ll kill myself. And then, I suppose’ – he bent forward, and brought out the words with an air in which there was something pettish, almost feminine – ‘your merciful God will keep me from her for ever?’

‘That I don’t
know
,’ Mr Geddes answered coolly, ‘but the evidence points to its being likely.’

‘I don’t care – I don’t care – I defy Him.’ And he shook both fists upwards at the ceiling. Mr Geddes uttered a short laugh.

‘Really, Mr Pearson. Sit down, there’s a good chap, and let’s see what we can work out.’

Once more, Pearson slowly resumed his seat. ‘That’s what I came to ask you, if He would keep me from her for ever.’

‘Well now I’ve told you. I don’t
know
, of course, but I think it’s quite likely. Only – it isn’t God Who will keep you from her. You’ll do that yourself, by committing suicide.’

‘So I can’t win,’ said Pearson, after a pause. ‘Or you say I can’t.’

‘No. I’m afraid you can’t – not in that sense. But look here, Mr Pearson. Your wife is still alive. These moods – fits of –’

‘It’s an evil spirit.’

‘Very well, evil spirit. This thing – as you call it – isn’t there all the time, is it?’ She has longish stretches when she’s all right; normal; she was when I saw her the other day. That means there’s hope.’

‘It’ll get her body in the end. Then I’m going after her.’ He was looking down as he spoke, and his tone was unemphatic. Mr Geddes felt more alarmed than he had done throughout the histrionics. He made a swift, very urgent silent prayer.

‘Yes, well, never mind that now. Put it out of your mind. I know it’s hard, but you must try to bear your troubles and look on the bright side.’

The platitude, apparently so helpless and smug in face of the situation, was suddenly immeasurably strengthened, for him, by a conviction that pierced through to him like a ray of dazzling starlight. There
was
a bright side – oh, bright beyond human dreaming. Its smugness and inadequacy did not matter; the little phrase faithfully reflected that unimaginable radiance.

‘How can I? You’ve got your God. You can hope. I was made to hate Him by my mother. You know what my mother did? Married an Armenian servant, and hated him, and took it out on me because I was his son. Even my mother,’ bitterly, ‘so clever, so strong, had her sex. She was at the time in a woman’s life when that goes away – you understand me?’

‘Of course I – Mr Pearson, we really
must
try and work out something practical. We may not have much time.’

‘Oh God – oh God, don’t I know it?’ He put his face in his hands, shaking his head in a sort of frenzy, ‘but what can we do? … I was telling you … this man, my father, was a servant in the house where she was governess, a noble Russian house – pigs, swine, bastards – and they were all shot. They were refugees, in their great palace, in Tashkent, and …’

‘
Mr Pearson
,’ Mr Geddes put his hand across the table and caught at his arm and shook it, ‘you
must
control yourself. Now. Be quiet. Think of how much you love your wife and want to help her, and be quiet.’

He kept his grip on the plump arm, waiting. In a moment, Pearson threw it off, looking at him almost with hatred.

‘I tell you, we can’t do anything. We’re both …’

‘We can at least try,’ Mr Geddes said curtly; he was tired. ‘Now. To begin with, I will pray for her; pray every day, and I will ask two or three others to do the same. Then I will visit her – every day, too, if you want me to (I think it should be every day). What I shall try to do –’

‘
You’ll
try to do! What can you do? What can either of us do? What help have we got?’

‘Christ is our help,’ Mr Geddes said.

After a silence, which seemed to him full of nothing but depression and nullity, he went on, with the irritation born of exhaustion. ‘And for pity’s sake can’t you do something to make her life a little more normal? Open the windows – I’m sure all that stuffiness is bad for her nervous system – and pack that German child off to an orphanage or somewhere (I mean somewhere suitable, of course) and let Miss Barnes look after her. Pay her, if necessary; she’s a splendid woman, Miss Barnes. A tonic in herself.’

‘Old fool,’ said Pearson sitting listlessly, with a hopeless expression, half-listening.

‘That doesn’t matter … she’s a good woman and a kind one.’

‘Nora is fond of her,’ Pearson said grudgingly.

‘Of course she is. They’re both nice women … what I shall try to do –’

‘She’s fond of Erika, too – the little bitch, she’s starting to go after boys – I’ve had to stop her.’

Mr Geddes made a gesture dismissing Erika and her boys. ‘What I shall try to do,’ he repeated with a kind of gritty patience, ‘is to fill your wife’s spirit with … things … that
this
… whatever it is – can’t bear. Holy things. Then it will go away.’

It gave him a curious sensation to speak of what was afflicting Mrs Pearson. He disliked it. It was as if, by doing so, he allowed it to edge over into his own mind. He had never had cause to think of Possession before; not with deliberation; not for any length of time.

Pearson startled him by a loud laugh. ‘And you think that’s going to drive it out? It doesn’t want her soul; you and your Christ can have that; it wants her body.’

‘Her soul lives in her body. There won’t be room in there for this thing and a soul filled with Christ. It will go away,’ Mr Geddes said stubbornly.

‘You think so? Open the windows, and drive this thing away with your fresh air – this thing that lives – only it doesn’t live – in a place where
it’s always misty and cold and the wind never stops blowing
? It wants to
come here
; I’ve heard it say so.’

‘You’ve –’ Mr Geddes could only stare. An irrepressible shudder snaked along his spine.

‘Oh yes,’ Pearson said, beginning to button his coat as if preparing to go, ‘when we were young, first married, we used to – play with it. It told the future for us, and when we had no money at all I brought people to the house and Nora told their fortunes.
We three were friends, in those days
. We played with it, as if it were our child. But later on … it began to want to come here. My daughter was born, and Nora only cared about her.’ He got up, and stood staring at Mr Geddes with sad, quenched eyes. ‘Perhaps it was jealous.’

‘Mr Pearson, you … you’ve let your imagination … I think you need praying for, as well,’ was all Mr Geddes could say, and as he spoke he was very aware of the stout old cupboard that contained the choir surplices. Its glossy bulk was comforting.

‘Perhaps we all do,’ Pearson sneered. ‘Well, I asked you the question and you told me.’ He lingered, showing those unmistakable signs of wanting to begin a discussion all over again after it has been satisfactorily ended. ‘Perhaps …’ he hesitated.

‘I’ll come and see Mrs Pearson again to-morrow. In the afternoon, if that’s convenient,’ Mr Geddes said decidedly. ‘Or my curate will. It will do her good to see as many people as possible.’

‘In those days, perhaps,
it
wasn’t like it is now … I don’t know. Or perhaps the one we played with was driven away by this one … I don’t know.’

‘Well I’m sure I don’t,’ Mr Geddes muttered. ‘About three, then.’

‘Nora says she told lies to people about their fortunes. Sometimes – she says – she lied.’

‘Mr Pearson, these small sins … we can’t really …’ Mr Geddes had opened the vestry’s thick little ogive door, and was standing beside it.

‘But Nora is always talking about it. It worries her,’ Pearson insisted. He seemed unwilling to go out into the restless night.

‘Yes … well, of course, any meddling with this kind of thing, unless it’s with the purest possible motives,
is
terribly dangerous. And people can deceive themselves. I’ve always thought and said so. Even when the motives
are
pure. I’m a hundred per cent with the more conservative members of the Church about that. It’s dreadfully, frighteningly dangerous. Does she – blame herself, then, do you think, for the present situation?’

But Pearson seemed to have gone back into his usual taciturn, faintly menacing self. He shrugged.

‘Nora is very gentle,’ he muttered, pulling his hat over his eyes, and made a vague gesture and turned away. The uneasy night, broken with the screech of brakes and throb of engines and the roar of pleasure-seeking traffic on its way into London, received him.

Mr Geddes stood for a moment among the dim elder bushes, looking up at the spire outlined against the stars; then went slowly into the house.

He was sitting with Gerald Corliss, taking half an hour from the crowded business of the following day to explain to him the situation at Mrs Pearson’s, and what they must try to do, when the telephone rang.

He snatched off the receiver and told Mrs Lysaght that he was busy.

‘Oh you’re always busy, Robert, surely you can spare five minutes for an old friend. I’ve got so much to tell you … life’s been really hectic lately …’