The Seance (3 page)

I had always liked Mrs Greaves, but so long as I had Annie to speak for me I had been too shy to say more than ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘thank you’. And for a long time after Annie had left us, I missed her too much to want to make advances to anyone else. But as the months dragged by I was drawn to the light and warmth of the kitchen, especially on Saturdays, when Violet had her day off. At first I simply sat on a stool and watched; little by little I began to help, until I became quite proficient at peeling potatoes, rolling pastry and kneading dough. Sometimes I was even allowed to polish the silver, which I thought a great treat; all in all, it seemed to me that the life of a servant was far preferable to that of a lady.

‘I think I should like to be a cook when I grow up,’ I said to Mrs Greaves one winter’s afternoon. It had been raining steadily all day, and through the soft rumble of the stove I could hear water gurgling down the area drain.

‘I can see where you might think that,’ she replied, ‘but it ain’t like this, most places. There’s many a poor skivvy shiverin’ in the dark, when she’s not wearin’ her fingers to the bone, because her mistress grudges her an inch of candle or a few coals, never mind gas like we have in here. Besides, you’re going to be a lady, with a house and servants of your own, and a husband and children to look after; you won’t want to be peeling spuds then, believe you me.’

‘I shall never have children,’ I said passionately, ‘for one of them might die, and then I should be like Mama, and never be happy again.’

Mrs Greaves regarded me sadly; I had never spoken so directly of my mother’s affliction before.

‘The country people in Ireland, miss, would say your mother was “away”.’

I looked at her expectantly.

‘Well – ’tis only their fancy, mind – they say that when someone is – like that – it’s because the fairies have carried her off, and left one of their own in her place.’

‘And do the fairies ever bring them back?’

‘Yes, my child ... I lost two sons, as you know, and thought my heart would break; I miss them still, but I know they’re safe above. And I had others to think of . . .’ She paused uncomfortably.

‘
How
do you know,’ I asked, ‘that they are safe in heaven? I mean, that there is a heaven? Because the Bible tells us so?’

‘Well yes, miss, that of course, and ... because
they
tell me so.’

‘But
how
can they tell you? Do their ghosts speak to you?’

‘Not ghosts, miss; their spirits. Through Mrs Chivers – she’s what they call a spirit medium. Do you know what that is?’

I told her I did not, and she explained, somewhat hesitantly at first, about spiritualism, and how she belonged to a society, which met twice a week in a room in Southampton Row, and all about séances, and how the spirits of the departed could visit us from heaven, which some people called ‘Summerland’, to speak through a medium to those they loved.

‘Then I must tell Mama about Mrs Chivers,’ I said, ‘so she can talk to Alma’s spirit, and be happy again.’

‘No miss, you mustn’t; leastways, you mustn’t let on I told you, or I might lose my place. Your Pa don’t hold with spiritualists, so I’ve heard. And ladies don’t go to Mrs Chivers, only cooks and skivvies like me and Violet.’

‘Are ladies not allowed to be spiritualists, then?’

‘It’s not that, miss, but they have their own meetings, them that believe. I’ve heard there’s a society for ladies and gentlemen in Lamb’s Conduit Street, but remember, it wasn’t me that told you.’

I meant to tell Mama that very evening, but the impulse died as usual in the face of her leaden indifference, and I was afraid, besides, of getting Mrs Greaves into trouble. And so at breakfast the next morning I asked Papa what spiritualism was, saying I had heard someone mention it at school. I was now considered old enough to breakfast in the dining-room, provided I did not speak while Papa was reading
The Times
; Mama had not been joining us since Dr Warburton prescribed her a stronger sleeping-draught.

‘Primitive superstition in modern dress,’ he replied, and opened his newspaper with a disapproving rattle; it was the nearest I had come to seeing him angry. I had already begun to suspect that Papa did not believe in God. He had made no objection when I ceased to attend church after Annie left us, and soon after this I discovered that the book he had been writing for so long was called
Rational Foundations of Morality
. Its purpose, so far as I could gather from the snippets he let fall, was to prove that you ought to be good even if you did not believe that you would burn in torment for ever if you were bad; I often wondered why something so obvious needed a book to prove it, but never dared say so. And when next I tried to question Mrs Greaves about spiritualism, she changed the subject, much as Annie had done with the foundlings. But the idea that the spirits of the dead were all around us, separated only by the thinnest of veils, became part of my private mythology, along with the gods and goddesses of the Underworld.

I remained at Miss Hale’s school until I was almost sixteen, growing up in a kind of limbo state in which I was free to read whatever I wished, and walk wherever I wanted, whilst at the same time feeling that nobody would care if I vanished from the face of the earth. My freedom set me apart from the other girls, and since I could not invite any of them to our house I was seldom invited to theirs. Mama’s spirits did not improve;
if anything she became more desolate and lethargic as the years passed, dragging herself around the house – which she no longer left at all, even to visit Alma’s grave – as if she were being slowly crushed beneath an invisible weight.

Violet gave notice at last, a few months before I left Miss Hale’s, and was replaced, on Mrs Greaves’s recommendation, by Lettie, a quick, intelligent girl not much older than myself. Lettie’s mother had died when she was twelve and she had been in service ever since. Though she spoke like a London girl, she had Irish and Spanish blood on her father’s side and her skin was quite dark, as were her eyes, which were large and heavy-lidded, with long curling lashes. Her long fingers were roughened and calloused by years of scrubbing, though she rubbed them with pumice every day. I liked her from the first, and would often help her with the dusting and polishing, simply for an excuse to talk. On Saturday afternoons she would join her friends – mostly servants like herself from houses around Holborn and Clerkenwell – in St George’s Gardens and they would go on excursions together; I often wished that I could accompany them.

My life continued in this desultory fashion until one morning at breakfast, without the slightest warning, my father announced that he was leaving us. ‘It is high time you left school,’ he said to me, or rather to his plate, for he avoided my eyes while speaking. ‘You are old enough now to keep house for your mother, and I must have peace and quiet until I have finished my book. So I am going to my sister in Cambridge. I have arranged for you to draw an allowance from the bank, sufficient to maintain this house as at present and also to provide you with a subscription to Mudie’s, though many of my books will remain, and you may have the use of them; I am taking only my working library.’

I knew from this that he was never coming back; I had several times begged for a subscription, only to be told that we could not afford it.

‘But Papa,’ I said, ‘I already keep house for you’ – he had been giving me the housekeeping money every Thursday morning for a year or more
– ‘and how could your life be any more peaceful in Cambridge than here?’

Light flashed from the lenses of his pince-nez. ‘I am sure you know what I mean,’ he replied, ‘and I do not think anything is to be gained from further discussion. I have let you have your way in many things, Constance, and you will kindly oblige me in this. I have informed Miss Hale that you will be leaving at the end of this term; she will speak to you about it today.’

He folded his paper neatly, rose to his feet, and was gone before I could ask him whether he had told Mama.

The day passed in a kind of stupor; I remember Miss Hale – who was very small and stout, so that she resembled a medicine ball on legs – summoning me to her room, but I cannot recall a word of what she said to me. It was only when I came home that afternoon, and heard, on my way upstairs, the muffled sound of sobbing from Mama’s room, that the full horror of my situation struck me. I stood for a small eternity upon the landing, willing the sobs to cease, before I crept on up to my own room.

I had given very little thought to the future, beyond daydreams in which, at the end of my time at school, I would marry an intrepid explorer and travel the world with him, while Mama and Papa went on as they had always done. Now I saw that my father had planned this all along; I would be imprisoned here for the term of my mother’s life, unless I could harden my heart enough to abandon her as he was doing. And even that I could not do until I was twenty-one and able to seek a situation on my own behalf.

Lettie and Mrs Greaves, though full of sympathy for me, were not nearly as shocked at Papa’s desertion as I would have liked. Mrs Greaves said it was a miracle he had stayed so long, and Lettie remarked that at least he hadn’t thrown us all into the street, as her own father had done. And perhaps, said Mrs Greaves, I could persuade my mother to join the Holborn Spiritualist Society once my father was safely out of the house; it might be just what she needed to cheer her up. Lettie and I exchanged
glances at this; Lettie had told me privately that Mrs Veasey, who sometimes presided at the séances in Lamb’s Conduit Street, was given to pumping servants for information about her sitters.

At last I summoned the courage to go upstairs again and knock at my mother’s door. I found her crouched on a little low chair that she kept just inside the entrance to Alma’s room. Her eyes were swollen from weeping, and she looked so old and shrunken that my conscience smote me. I knelt and put my arm around her stiff, unresponsive shoulders.

‘Your father has told you, then?’ she said in a low, desolate monotone.

‘Yes, Mama.’

‘It is my punishment.’

‘For what, Mama?’

‘For letting Alma die.’

‘But Mama, you could not have saved her. And Alma is in heaven now; you will be with her again one day.’

‘If only I could be
sure
,’ she whispered.

‘Mama, how can you doubt it? She was an innocent child; how could she not go straight to heaven?’

‘I meant, that there
is
a heaven.’

The idea came to me with the echo of my own question to Mrs Greaves: instead of trying to persuade Mama to join the Society, I would summon Alma’s spirit myself.

The following morning I avoided my father by breakfasting in the kitchen, and when I came home from school, he was gone. Lettie told me that he had not gone to the Museum that day; two men with a cartload of boxes had arrived at half-past nine to pack at my father’s direction, and by two he was on his way to St Pancras. Dr Warburton had called half an hour later. My father had left me a letter on the hall table; it consisted entirely of instructions except for the final sentence, which read, ‘You need not write to me except in an emergency. Your affect father, Theo. Langton.’

I do not remember feeling anything at all; I went numbly up to my room and began to rehearse for my séance, watching myself in the mirror
through half-closed eyes and trying to recall how Alma used to sound. All that would come was a vague impression of her chanting nonsense words to the tunes of hymns; and I could not tell whether it was a true memory, or something Mama had told me, or a confused recollection of something I had done myself.