‘The Central Office of Information,’ said Tim, ‘is all right, thank you.’ He cleaned his glasses with a white handkerchief as he followed Patrick upstairs to a modernly decorated flat. From the open door of a room came the sociable sound of voices. On the door of another room was hung a card on which were printed in blue Gothic letters the words
The Wider Infinity
‘In my Father’s house are many mansions…’
(John 14, 2).
Tim passed by this room on a frivolous tip-toe to conceal whatever awe he might feel towards it, and led the way to the room where the company was assembled. Patrick stood a moment in the doorway, looking round swiftly to see who was present. At his entrance the chatter ceased for two seconds, then started again. Several people tentatively greeted Patrick while Tim, with the restrained gestures of one who is not above playing the well-trained footman, fetched Patrick a cup of China tea from a side table.
A distinguished-looking woman with white hair and a lined face, the features of which were absolutely symmetrical, appeared. Patrick respectfully put down his tea and took his hostess’s hand in silence except for the word ‘Marlene.’
‘Patrick,’ she replied merely; and she rested her eyes on his, setting her head at a slight angle so that her long earrings swung as in a breeze.
Patrick’s lower lip thinly began to tremble as he said in his almost inaudible voice, ‘I nearly didn’t come in view of the unfortunate occurrence. But I felt it was my duty to do so.’
‘You were right, Patrick,’ Marlene said, still gazing at his eyes intensely. ‘There are naturally mixed feelings amongst us and she has been circulating rumours. But I have — and I know I can speak for the members of the Interior Spiral if not for the Wider Infinity at large — implicit faith in you. I’m only too grateful that we were guided to delay disclosing to her the existence of the Interior Spiral, that was fortunate. And had it not been for your powers as a great medium, and the warnings, we should most probably have issued the Communication to her last week. Oh — here she is.’
A dumpy much-powdered woman of middle-age, wearing light-rimmed glasses, a grey felt hat and a blue coat and skirt, had been ushered into the room by young Tim. She smiled brightly at her acquaintances by the door and even the lenses of her glasses seemed to glisten smilingly upon them. She had noticed Patrick, who had resumed his tea-cup into which he was gazing with dignity. Marlene glided up to the newcomer, took both her hands, bestowed upon her a customary soul-to-soul gaze, kissed her upon the cheek, and said, ‘Freda, you’re just in time. I am about to proclaim the Commencement.’
‘Tea, Mrs. Flower?’ Tim said to Freda, with the cup and saucer in his hand.
‘The Commencement is about to start, Tim,’ said Marlene, and as Tim hovered between handing the tea to Freda and not handing it to her, Marlene said, ‘But of course you must have a little tea first, Freda, you must have your tea first.’
Marlene noticed, without truly observing, a large man with pink and white cheeks whom she had not seen at previous meetings. He was standing massively half in, half out of the room, and he had apparently arrived at the same time as Freda. But Marlene did not take great notice of him, since there were few meetings at which a newcomer was not present, having been brought along by someone or other. The pink-and-white-cheeked man looked rather like, possibly, a friend of Tim’s. Tim had yet to learn to be reliable.
Marlene said to Freda, ‘I shan’t ring the bell till you’ve finished your tea. Don’t hurry.’
Freda gulped her tea, with her eyes wandering over the rim of the cup. Suddenly she started at the sight of Patrick.
‘So he’s here,’ Freda said.
‘My dear Freda, mustn’t we subordinate all our materialistic endeavours to those of the spirit?’
‘It’s most upsetting,’ Freda said, ‘and I’m surprised he has the nerve to show his face in here again. He’s a fraud.’
Tim gave out a gentle cultivated noise from the throat as if he really were clearing it, and shifted himself gracefully to another group.
Marlene’s earrings swung as she moved her head distastefully from Freda’s remarks. ‘The word fraud,’ she said, ‘is of the World. Freda, I don’t think it should be voiced here. But I do see — I do understand — how a type of behaviour which is normal in our element may appear, shall we say, mysterious in yours.’ She touched Mrs. Flower’s hand in absolution from all her dumpy limitations. ‘I only hope,’ she said, ‘that nothing will happen to bring the Wider Infinity into disrepute. For myself, I don’t care. I am thinking of — well, finish your tea, Freda dear, it is time for the Commencement.’
She moved away, and dark Ewart Thornton, who was one of the assembly, presently took her place, declaring deeply in her ear, ‘I’m with you, Freda. A lot of us here to-night are with you. I meant to write to say so to you, but I’ve got such mounds of homework. The mid-term examinations….’
Freda’s spectacles shone with gratitude. ‘Does Marlene know your mind on the subject?’ she said.
Ewart placed a finger to his lips while Marlene at the other end of the room proclaimed:
‘The Circle will now enter the Sanctuary of Light.’
Tea cups were placed down and a hush fell on the assembly. Marlene Cooper led the way, as she had done regularly since the year after her husband died, and she had taken to thoughts of the spirit. For how, she felt, could it be that Harry Cooper, who his worst business enemies admitted was sheer dynamite, could come to nought in the end? ‘No,’ she said, ‘Harry is as alive as ever he was. He is communicating with me and I am communicating with him.’ Certainly this was the case when he was alive, since they had then indulged in frequent noisy rows in different parts of the globe, she standing tensely clothed in her distinguished appearance, clasping and unclasping her long fingers, and shrieking; he sitting usually in an armchair answering her with short, loaded, meaningful words of power and contempt. He had been buried three months when, convinced of his dynamic survival, she had had him dug up and cremated, since this, it seemed vaguely to her, was more in keeping with the life beyond. To see his ashes scattered in the Garden of Remembrance was to conceive Harry more nearly as thin air, and since she had come to believe so ardently in Harry the spirit, she simply could not let him lie in the grave and rot.
Shortly after the cremation Marlene joined the Wider Infinity, an independent spiritualist group, proud of its independence from the great organised groups, and operating from a room in the region of Victoria. During the period of her initiation Marlene was impressed, the more and more especially when personal messages began to come through from Harry on the other side.
Patrick Seton was the first medium to get through to Harry.
‘I have a message for our new sister, from Henry. Henry will not speak himself tonight but he will speak on another occasion when Carl is in control of Patrick,’ said Patrick. ‘But in the meantime Henry sends his affectionate regards and is thinking of you in his happy abode. He particularly wants to say you have been too generous and have stood by too long and let others take first place. You were born to be a leader but you have not yet fulfilled yourself. Now is the time to start living your true life.’ Patrick moaned. His mouth drooped, the lower lip disappearing into his chin. He looked very ill by the dim green light, and even when he had come round and the full lights were on, his complexion was more grey and the lines on his face deeper than before he had gone under. He was genuinely shaken.
‘Amazing,’ Marlene whispered after the séance. For Henry was Harry’s real name, and the Carl who was going to act as control in the promised future might very conceivably be that Carl, her boy friend that was, who had been killed in a motor-race in 1938; and indeed Marlene had been moved to wonder as far as she dared how Harry and Carl were making out together in the land of perpetual summer. And it had been summer-time when Harry had found out about Carl. But the possibility of Carl’s acting as the spirit control between Harry and the medium seemed to make every
thing all right, and indeed there was an authentic rightness in the idea, for although Harry’s had been the more dynamic personality, there was no use pretending that Carl’s had not been the rarer.
And she thought it very like Harry to urge her to push herself to the fore. It was exactly what Harry would advise, being now incapacitated, or rather released from materialistic endeavours. It was almost as if Harry were urging her to take his place in life. It was so true that she had always let others take place before her.
Marlene, in order to be fair, went and attended a séance of another spiritualist group on an island near Richmond. But this was a disappointment, for the people were not quite the reasonable, respectable, sort one expected to find in the spiritualist movement. One young man had hair waving down to his waist. One middle-aged woman with a huge blotchy face wore a tight cotton dress although it was early March. The place was not heated, and Marlene shivered. The woman in the tight cotton dress told Marlene she was going to give clairvoyance. She told Marlene nothing about Harry, only advised her to be careful of false friends, and not to despair, she wouldn’t end her life alone.
‘I’m not despairing,’ Marlene said.
The other members looked at Marlene with hushed hostile warnings, since she was interrupting the woman in her trance.
So Marlene remained with the Wider Infinity at Victoria. Soon, however, inspired by the dynamic spirit of Harry, she began to note this and that member who was perhaps unworthy of its high purpose. She led a purgative faction.
‘We must,’ she said to Ewart Thornton, that big sane grammar-school master, ‘rid our Body of the cranks.’
‘I quite agree,’ Ewart said. ‘They lower the tone.’
Two clergymen who were unembarrassed by wives or livings were retained; several women cashiers and book-keepers who did not mind the journey from Wembley, Osterley and Camberwell on Monday and Thursday evenings; two middle-aged retired spinsters who were interested in art; one or two of Marlene’s old friends who, however, were erratic in their attendance; a childless married couple in their early thirties; three widows; an Indian student who had been doing undefined research at the British Museum for fifteen years; a retired policeman whose wife, not a spiritualist, was a doctor’s receptionist; Ewart Thornton, the schoolmaster; and Patrick Seton, who was, by common consent, the life and soul of the Circle.
‘We must have a cross-section of the community,’ Marlene declared. ‘A sane cross-section. Why can’t we have a labourer, for instance?’
No labourer who was worthy of his hire could be found. Ewart Thornton, however, was the means of introducing to the group a number of single schoolmasters and civil servants who, although interested in spiritualism, had never had sufficient courage to attend a séance. Some of these bachelors became regular members, others attended occasionally and compulsively when the desire to do so overwhelmed them. ‘My bachelors,’ Marlene called them.
‘At least,’ she said, ‘we are all respectable now; we have no cranks.’
‘I hate cranks,’ Ewart said. ‘Insufferable people.’
By the end of that year the Wider Infinity had moved its headquarters to Marlene’s flat in Bayswater and Patrick and Ewart Thornton had so much become her closest intimates that very often this trio held private séances which were kept secret from the rest of the group. ‘Carl and Harry,’ Marlene said, ‘definitely understand my nature now better than they did in the flesh. Carl of course was always more evolved. Why does he call Harry by the name of Henry, I wonder?’
Patrick said, ‘I’m only the medium,’ and his voice died away on the last syllable.
‘But you’re a genius, Patrick — isn’t he, Ewart?’
‘Absolutely. That was excellent advice that came through from Guide Gabi about my headmaster. Had his character to a T. He expects me to do mounds of homework. Well, I___’
‘Señor Gabi is one of my best Guides,’ Patrick murmured. ‘But Henry is coming on. Through the influence of Carl, he___’
‘Why doesn’t Carl call him Harry?’ Marlene said. ‘He never called him Henry while in the flesh, he always called him Harry.’
‘The name Henry represents his primary and more noble personality,’ Patrick said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Marlene, I’m only the medium, I can’t say Harry when I get Henry.’
‘Patrick, you’re wonderful. It only proves your honesty.’
She put a great deal of money into the training of mediums, Patrick Seton being the principal trainer; she liked most of all to have the more intelligent members, or those rare few with university degrees, trained as mediums. It gave her a thrill to see these knowledgeable novices going into, and coming round from, their first and second feeble trances.
Eventually she recruited her young nephew, Tim, whom she had discovered to have no religion at all. Tim had not enjoined, but she, perceiving his mind, had promised secrecy about this activity where the family was concerned.
Meantime Patrick had made a tremendous advance in divining how matters stood between Harry and Carl on the other side, and in instructing Marlene, through Harry, how best to develop her personality.
At the first séance to be held by the newly-constructed Circle in Marlene’s flat, Patrick had gone under in style with a quivering of the lower lip and chin, upturned eyes and convulsive whinnies. A few threads of ectoplasm, like white tape in the dim light, proceeded from the corners of his mouth. Then, in a voice hugely louder than his own he announced,
‘I am now coming in touch with the control. This is control. Henry will speak through Patrick under the control of Carl.’
Two or three of the Circle, as they had sat hand in hand round Patrick, shuffled slightly at this mention of Carl and Henry, for that particular combine was, in the experience of the Circle, exclusively interested in the affairs of Marlene and did not seem aware of the claims of the Wider Infinity as a whole.
‘Guide Henry speaking: my dear wife, there are two on earth who mean a lot to you. You can depend upon them and especially upon one who will never desert you unto death. Do not be deceived by appearances. I am well and happy. Do you remember the Loebl Pass where we stopped at an inn and ate a marvellous omelette?’
‘Oh,’ Marlene said.
‘Control lifting,’ Patrick said. ‘Guide Henry is wearing leather shorts and an open-neck shirt.’
‘Oh, how it takes me back!’ said Marlene when the lights had gone up. ‘Honestly,’ she said to the newer members of the Circle, ‘I have a photograph of Harry on that holiday wearing his leather shorts and—’
Later she said to Ewart and Patrick, ‘I wish they wouldn’t concentrate so much on me from the other side. I think some of the less evolved members may feel I’m getting more than my fair share.’
Ewart said, ‘You are the most dominant personality in the room, Marlene. It stands to reason.’
‘Stands to reason,’ Patrick said, ‘Marlene.’
‘Well, I’ll stay outside at our next séance. I definitely felt a hostile aura after Patrick returned to us during our last session. These people feel: you pay your money — pittance that it is — and you take your choice.’
‘Not everyone feels that way,’ Ewart said.
‘Whom can we trust and respect?’
Ewart mentioned a few of the more docile and regular attenders, Marlene eliminated half of them, and it was thus that the Interior Spiral, their secret group, came to be formed within the Wider Infinity.
‘We must keep the ramifications pure,’ Marlene stated, ‘we must exert a concealed influence on the less evolved brethren and the crackpots and snobs who keep creeping in.’
On the Saturday night before Patrick’s appearance before the magistrates was anticipated, when Freda Flower had put down her cup, the company trod reverently into the Sanctuary of Light. Patrick ignored the widow, Freda Flower, exaltedly, as enemies do in church; but she glanced at him nervously. Marlene did not herself join them; this was now her habit on most evenings, since her presence so invariably
attracted all the spiritual attentions available to the company.
Tim led the way and acted as usher, placing about twenty people with the conviction of extreme tact, the results of which, however, did not satisfy all. Some, who were placed so that they had an imperfect view of the medium’s chair were restive, but nothing like a scene occurred in this velvet-hung dark sanctuary of light.
This room had previously been a dining room in one wall of which was a service recess opening to the kitchen. The curtains that covered this recess were arranged to part imperceptibly at a point which admitted of Marlene’s watching the proceedings from the kitchen, which she felt was only her due. And there she stood, in the dark, watching Tim’s arrangements in the dim green-lit séance room.
She was furious when she saw Tim, as it were with the height of aplomb, place Freda Flower, the beastly widow who had gone to the police about Patrick, in the place of honour directly facing the medium.
All were seated except Tim who, before sitting down in the humblest position from the visual point of view, took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them slowly and, with an elegant lightning sweep of the same handkerchief, dusted the chair on which he was to sit, at the same time replacing his handkerchief in his pocket. He then sat, joining tentative hands with his neighbour, as the others had done. Marlene, from her place behind the recess, watched her nephew closely and by an access of intuition despaired of Tim’s becoming even teachable as to the seriousness of the Circle, far less a member of the Interior Spiral.
It was then she noticed once more the newcomer, seated in his massive bulk, beside Freda Flower, and in fact he was whispering something to Freda Flower. Marlene realised it was Freda who had brought him to the Circle and felt deeply apprehensive.
All hands were joined. The green light shone dimly. Ewart said, ‘We will now have two minutes’ silent prayer.’
Heads were bowed. Before Marlene had taken over the Circle this silence had been followed by a hymn to the tune of ‘She’ll be coming down the mountain’ and which went as follows,