‘I’m anti-Catholic,’ said Marlene.
Ronald was used to hearing his hostesses over the years come out with this statement, and had devised various ways of coping with it, according to his mood and to his idea of the hostess’s intentions. If the intelligence seemed to be high and Ronald was in a suitable mood, he replied ‘I’m anti-Protestant’ —which he was not; but it sometimes served to shock them into a sense of their indiscretion. On one occasion where the woman was a real bitch, he had walked out. Sometimes he said ‘Oh, are you? How peculiar.’ Sometimes he allowed that the woman was merely trying to start up a religious argument, and he would then attempt to explain where he stood with his religion. Or again, he might say, ‘Then you’ve received Catholic instruction?’ and, on hearing that this was not so, would comment, ‘Then how can you be anti something you don’t know about? ‘Which annoyed them; so that Ronald felt uncharitable.
There were always women who confronted him with ‘I’m anti-Catholic,’ as if inviting a rape. Men didn’t do this. Mostly, Ronald coped with the statement as he did on this present occasion, when he said to Marlene, ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re not really.’
‘Yes really,’ Marlene said, as most of them did, ‘I am.’
‘Well, well,’ said Ronald.
‘But I don’t mean I’m anti you,’ said Marlene. ‘You’re sweet.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
‘There’s a distinction,’ Tim pointed out, bright with tact, ‘between the person and their religion.’
‘I see.’ Ronald attended closely to his potatoes.
‘But you don’t like us,’ said Marlene. ‘In fact, you detest us.’
‘Detest you?’ said Ronald. ‘Why, I think you’re charming.’
‘Now, now. You’re avoiding the question. The fact is, you’re not allowed—’
‘Ronald’s awfully interested in spiritualism,’ Tim said.
‘He doesn’t believe in it,’ Marlene said. ‘He thinks it’s all baloney. He’s one of those___’
‘I’m sure it’s possible to get in touch with the spirits of the dead,’ Ronald said.
‘Are you?’ said Tim. ‘Now that’s interest—’
‘Catholics aren’t allowed to do it,’ Marlene said.
‘We invoke the saints and so on,’ Ronald said, ‘and they are dead.’
‘A very different thing,’ Marlene said. ‘That’s idolatry. In Spain, for instance — well, perhaps I shouldn’t say. I once had an Irish maid, she was most difficult. But anyhow, you don’t get through to the saints, do you? They don’t send you messages. Have you heard the actual voice of any one of your saints?’
‘No,’ said Ronald. ‘You’ve got a point there.’
‘I have indeed,’ Marlene said. ‘I’ve heard my husband’s actual voice. Haven’t I, Tim? I’ve heard Harry. His own dynamic voice.
‘Uncle Harry was always very dynamic,’ Tim murmured.
‘Have a bit more lamb,’ Marlene said. ‘It’s got to be eaten up. You boys aren’t eating anything.’
‘Thank you, I will,’ said Ronald.
‘Thanks,’ said Tim.
‘Tim,’ said Marlene, ‘fill Ronald’s glass and your own, for goodness’ sake. What do you do for a living, Ronald?’
‘I work in a museum devoted to graphology.’
‘Handwriting,’ said Tim.
‘Throughout the ages,’ Ronald said.
‘Can you read handwriting?’
‘I read it all day long.’
‘Can you judge a person’s character from their handwriting?’
‘No,’ Ronald said.
‘That’s exactly what I expected you to say,’ Marlene said. ‘I think you’re killing.’
‘Ronald,’ said Tim, ‘is sometimes consulted by the police on questions of forgery.’
‘No!’ said Marlene.
‘Yes,’ said Tim, ‘he is.’
‘How thrilling!’ said Marlene. ‘I do love to see a genuine fraud exposed.’
‘Well, now,’ Tim said, ‘since you mention it, I did feel that last night’
‘Oh, Patrick completely exposed him,’ Marlene said, turning to explain to Ronald. ‘This fraud-clairvoyant Dr. Mike Garland who entered our midst during our séance last night was completely outwitted by our leading medium whose name is Patrick Seton.’
‘No!’ Ronald said.
‘Yes,’ said Marlene. ‘Garland created a great disturbance, being in the pay of one of our members — one of our former members — Mrs. Freda Flower, but Patrick gained the ascendancy. He was unshakeable — wasn’t he, Tim?’
‘I was obliged to leave,’ said Tim, ‘before the end.’
‘Another time you must go and lie down on a bed, Tim. It was too bad of you to leave me with Freda Flower in hysterics. Did you notice the absurd pose that Dr. Garland — doctor so-called — adopted during the séance when he was giving clairvoyance? I knew he was a fraud the moment he raised up his head to give utterance. Did you notice, Tim, how he raised his head without relaxing in his chair? He didn’t lean back in his chair, you see, he didn’t lean back. And I knew right away he was fully conscious of all he was saying. I’m making further investigations about Garland. He ought to be exposed.’
Tim’s eyes glanced briefly at the hatch. Marlene noticed it and realised she had betrayed her peep-hole.
Tim’s eyes returned to his soufflé and he said, ‘This is delicious, Marlene.’
‘I am rather clairvoyant myself,’ Marlene said specifically to Ronald, with a tiny swing of her ear-rings, ‘and this enables me to see through a fraud immediately. They can’t get away with anything from me.’
‘When is Patrick’s case coming up?’ Tim said.
‘Freda will not proceed with the case,’ Marlene said, ‘if I know anything of Freda. She has too much faith in Patrick, although she won’t admit it, to ignore the warnings which he transmitted to her last night from the other side. However, I have told Freda Flower that she is no longer welcome in our midst.’ She looked at Tim who was still looking elsewhere. ‘I feel bound, Tim,’ she said, ‘to keep an eye on things.’
‘Oh, quite,’ Tim said, wiping his glasses with his white handkerchief.
‘It’s all very well for you to stand in judgment, ‘she said.
‘Who, me?’ Tim said.
‘But you are a comparative newcomer to the Circle. You know nothing of the inner workings. That was evident last night. Your seating arrangements…’
She rose and bade them come and see the Sanctuary. Glancing back she noticed Ronald taking his pills and washing them down with water.
‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ she said.
‘Ronald suffers from indigestion,’ Tim said.
‘My dear boy, was my cooking so frightful?’
Ronald could not reply. He stood gripping the back of his chair. His eyes were open and, for a moment, quite absent.
But his attack passed and he regained control of himself while Tim and his aunt were still staring at him, Tim fearing the worst and Marlene fascinated.
‘Are you psychic?’ she said.
‘I don’t know.’
He followed Tim into the Sanctuary, on the threshold of which Marlene took Ronald’s arm.
‘I do believe,’ she said, ‘that you are sensitive to the atmosphere of this flat. For a moment, just now, I thought you were going into a trance. I am psychic, you know. I’m certain you would make an excellent medium, if properly trained.’
On the way home, before they parted, Tim said to Ronald,
‘I adore her, really.’
‘A good-looking woman,’ Ronald said.
‘She was a beauty in her day. Of course, she’s a bit crackers. There is something, you know, in her spiritualism, but she hasn’t a clue how to cope with it. She cheats like anything herself — thinks it’s justified.’
‘It’s a difficult thing to cope with, I should think.’
‘I can’t cope with it,’ Tim said. ‘The awkward thing is, how am I g
oing to get out of it?’
‘You’ll find a way.’
‘Oh, I’ll find a way. Only I don’t want to fall out with Marlene, you know. What did you honestly think of her, quite honestly?’
‘Rather charming,’ Ronald said, quite honestly.
Nevertheless, when Martin Bowles rang him up later in the evening and said ‘Come along to Isobel’s for supper: she wants you for supper,’ Ronald replied that he was engaged. One auntie, he thought, is enough for one Sunday. Enough is always enough.
‘God save me,’ said Matthew Finch, London correspondent of the Irish Echo, ‘and help me in my weakness.’ He was peeling an onion. Tears still brimmed over his eyelashes when the telephone rang. ‘Let it not be an occasion of sin,’ he said to himself or to God as he went over to answer it.
‘Hallo,’ he said, apprehensively, although he knew, really, who would speak.
‘Elsie speaking,’ said Elsie Forrest.
‘Oh yes, Elsie. Hallo, Elsie.’
‘You expecting me, Matthew? You said Sunday, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, Elsie, I want you to come. Will you find your way? A tube to South Kensington, then a 30 bus, and you get off at Drayton Gardens. I’ll meet you at the bus stop. You’ll be there by quarter to six.’
‘Well, I was thinking of getting the Underground to—’
‘No, no, the bus from South Kensington is better. I’ll wait from quarter to six.’
‘All right, Matthew.’
Elsie had not come to his flat before. He had really preferred the other girl in the coffee-bar, Alice Dawes, but she was tied up to a man. On the whole, he had been glad to discover Elsie. Not that he needed to have taken up with either of them. But, yes, he did want to know a girl again, since his previous girl had gone to America and he felt lonely in London without one. Alice Dawes with her black piled-up hair was the handsomer of the two, but Elsie Forrest was the more accessible.
‘God help me with my weakness,’ said Matthew as he went back to his onion. For he was weak with girls and had a great conscience about sex. It had been easier in Dublin where the bachelors protected their human nature by staying long hours in the public houses. He was not sure what he would do with Elsie. He had to prepare some supper, but she would do the cooking. He was not sure what to do with the onion, and he weighed up what the force of Elsie’s attraction was likely to be, and how the evening would turn out. It was for this that he had prepared the onion. For he had found that the smell of onion in the breath invariably put the girls off, and so provided a mighty fortress against the devil and a means of avoiding an occasion of sin. Matthew was not sure, however, that Elsie called for the onion altogether. She was not very pretty. But you never knew when a girl might show the charm she had within her. And again, the onion might be useful for the supper, to mix with the mince-meat. There wasn’t another onion left in the box.
Was there not another onion left in the box? Matthew decided that this would be the testing point: if there was a miraculous onion in the vegetable box which could be used in the supper he would, before he went to fetch Elsie from the bus, eat the raw onion he had peeled upon the table; if there was no onion in the box he would risk having Elsie to the flat with a clean breath. He looked in the box. A small shrivelled onion nestled in the earthy corner among the remaining potatoes. He lifted this poor thing, looked at it, pondered whether it was big enough for the supper. He thought perhaps he should peel and eat this little onion and leave the larger one for the cooking.
But then he recalled his previous lapses from grace, and the exact terms of the vow he had made before looking into the box. He thought lustfully of Elsie who would soon be coming back with him to the flat. He seized the peeled onion off the table, ate it rapidly like a man, dabbed his eyes and his brow with his handkerchief, and set off to wait for Elsie at the bus stop.
As if forewarning her, he gave her a breathy kiss when she alighted. She drew back only a little; in fact she took it very well.
He let her go first up the stairs to his flat and was filled with delight as he followed her small hips, which moved at his eye-level.
‘Nice room,’ she said. ‘Is that your mother over there?’
‘Yes, and this is my elder brother and that’s my sister with her husband on their honeymoon. I’ll put on the light, wait and you’ll see them better. My sister’s got three children. My younger brother is married, too, but my elder brother isn’t.’ He passed the photographs one by one. ‘This is the National University of Ireland, Galway, where I was till 1950,’ said Matthew, and then he poured out the gin. ‘That’s my cousin that was killed in the war, fighting for Great Britain.’
‘Would you have anything in the gin?’ Matthew said. ‘There’s orange juice or water.’
‘I’ll have it neat,’ Elsie said, ‘and by God I need it.’ She placed the photographs aside. ‘Alice was ill last night and I was on alone at the coffee bar till twelve. Why didn’t you come in?’
‘I was on duty,’ Matthew said. ‘I’m always on duty on Saturday nights.’
‘Well, before I left the shop I rang up Alice to see how she felt and she was in such a state I had to go round and see her. Patrick didn’t come home.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Matthew said.
‘She’s expecting a baby. She’s got diabetes. And the man she’s living with’s no good.’
‘Can’t something be done about the diabetes? ‘Matthew said.
‘She has to take injections every day. The man wants her to get rid of the baby.’
‘She shouldn’t do that.’
‘She won’t do it.’
‘Yes, she looks a nice girl,’ Matthew said. ‘Who’s the man?’
‘Patrick Seton — he’s the medium.’
Matthew thought she meant go-between, so he said, ‘But who’s the man?’
‘He’s the man — Patrick Seton, he’s a medium.’
‘Oh, a spiritualist?’
‘Yes, he’s a wonderful medium. But he’s no good to Alice. Weak as water. He’s supposed to be getting a divorce from his wife and then he’ll marry Alice. But I don’t believe he’s getting a divorce. I don’t believe there’s any wife. And there’s a case coming up against him on Tuesday for embezzlement or something like that. He’s been up before the magistrates once already, but the police didn’t have their evidence ready. Suppose he gets a sentence?’
‘What a terrible fellow,’ Matthew said. ‘Alice should leave him, a lovely girl like that.’
‘She’s completely under his power. In love with him.’
‘A terrible thing,’ Matthew said. ‘A girl like that taking up with a spiritualist. Aren’t they a lot of mad fellows, spiritualists?’ He was thinking of Ewart Thornton with whom he frequently had loud arguments on the Irish question. ‘I know a spiritualist,’ Matthew said, ‘who’s a schoolmaster, we both belong to a drinking club out at Hampstead. But he won’t talk about spiritualism to me because he knows I’m Irish. He talks politics. He’s mad.’
‘Are the Irish against spiritualism?’
‘Well, the Catholics, it’s the same thing.’
‘There’s a lot in spiritualism,’ Elsie said. ‘I’m not a spiritualist myself exactly. At least, I’ve never joined a Circle. But Alice is a member. And I believe in it.’
‘Do you really?’ Matthew was interested with an eager mental curiosity in direct proportion as he was put off her sexually by the thought of her being a spiritualist. A deep inherited and unarguable urge made him move his chair a little bit away from her, whereas he had previously been moving it nearer; and he reflected, then, that he need not have eaten the onion. A spiritualist girl might dematerialise in the act, if it came to the act. But his mind was alert for knowledge. ‘How do they summon up the spirits of the dead?’ Matthew said. ‘Would you have some more gin?’
She said, ‘I need it, after a sleepless night.’
‘There’s some mince-meat and onion and potatoes and there’s some custard and fruit. O
r you could have bacon and eggs,’ Matthew said. ‘You just say when you’re hungry. How do they call up the dead from their repose?’ He poured the gin and gave it to her while she described the thrilling process of the medium’s getting through to the other side.
‘I had a friend called Colin that was killed,’ she said, ‘and Patrick Seton got through to him and he gave me a message, it was quite incredible because nobody could have known except Colin and me about this thing that he mentioned, it was a secret between Colin and me.’
‘Can’t you tell it to me?’ Matthew said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s rather personal.’ She looked at Matthew rather meaningly. Matthew felt himself slightly endangered and was grateful, after all, for the strong onion in his breath.
She drank down her gin. Matthew filled her glass, and moved his chair towards her again. ‘Are you feeling like supper?’ he said. ‘Perhaps we’ll just fry a couple of rashers and eggs. Or you’ld perhaps prefer to come out, that would be simpler.’
She looked at him with quite a glow, and her face, haggard as it was, showed its youth. ‘I’ll just have my drink,’ she said. ‘I’m enjoying this rest and opening my heart to somebody.’
She came over and sat on the arm of this chair. She began to finger his black curls. He turned and breathed hard upon her.
‘You remind me of Colin,’ she said, ‘in a certain respect. He used to be fond of onions and I minded at first, but I got used to it. So I don’t mind your onion-breath very much.’
Matthew clasped her desperately round the waist, and sighed upon her as if to save his soul. But she too sighed and shivered with excitement as she subsided upon him.
At ten o’clock they went out to eat. Elsie then telephoned to see how Alice was getting on and returned to report that Patrick had still not come home and Alice was upset. And so Elsie took Matthew to the room in Ebury Street where Alice sat up in bed with her long black hair let loose, and her beautiful distress; and Matthew fell altogether in love with her.
After he had gone, Alice said, looking at Elsie in a special way,