A large fireball emerged from the wall above Madame Valentine’s head and hissed across the room, disappearing through the wall above the door through which sitters had entered, followed by several smaller ones that swerved wildly past their heads and forced them to duck.
A woman who had come in the hope of a message from her son, who had been dematerialised by a high explosive shell on the Italian Front, became hysterical with fear and began to wail and sob, at which point the manifestations abruptly ceased. Madame Valentine emerged from her trance, looked around as if in extreme confusion, and Spedegue re-entered the room and turned on the light. Sophie, never a woman to be unnecessarily inhibited by custom, put her arms around the unfortunate hysteric and cooed soft words of comfort into her ear.
‘Oh Lord, what happened?’ asked Madame Valentine, whereupon she was subjected to the excited babble of the company as everyone tried to tell her at once. She listened in dismay and said, ‘Oh dear, I am most terribly sorry. This is too awful.’
‘Too awful?’ said Christabel, who had been mightily impressed.
‘I had no intention…One has these powers, you know…sometimes it can’t be helped…I was hoping we would have a nice quiet time talking to the departed…and then this happens again.’
‘I fear my prayer was ineffective,’ said Fairhead a little drily.
‘I fear it was,’ agreed Madame Valentine. She got up and went to inspect the piano. ‘It’s very odd,’ she said. ‘It never gets damaged one little bit.’
‘Perhaps you should move it to another room,’ suggested Ottilie.
‘You still get the grand piano smash,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘That’s what I like to call it, “The Grand Piano Smash”. Even if you move it out, you still get the noise. I wonder if I can get the house exorcised, then I could make a fresh start.’
On the way out Fairhead had a brief private conversation with Madame Valentine, and left a half-crown on the plate even though he had received no messages. Rosie and her sisters left a florin each, and the woman who had been so frightened left a one-pound note, as if in apology for bringing about the termination of the séance.
The five walked towards Colliers Wood in a loose gaggle, Ottilie and Christabel arm in arm, Rosie at the front, and Fairhead and Sophie bringing up the rear.
‘What a terrific show!’ exclaimed Christabel. ‘What are we to think of it?
‘Lord knows,’ said Fairhead. ‘Do you really think it was just a show?’
Christabel stopped and turned, and everyone else stopped walking too. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No,’ said Fairhead. ‘The fact that it all went wrong and out of control indicates to me that she’s genuine. If everyone got a nice message about being all right and not to worry from a relative with an “e” in their name, you could be certain she was a run-of-the-mill fraud.’
‘If she could do all that in daylight, I’d be a lot more impressed,’ said Ottilie seriously.
‘It was horrid,’ said Rosie, her eyes shining with anger. ‘She’s an illusionist. She’s putting on shows and just taking advantage of people!’
‘You think she’s a charlatan?’
‘What else could she be?’
‘Why would she be upset, then?’ asked Sophie.
‘It’s all part of the deception, obviously.’
‘Silly me,’ said Sophie cheerfully, rolling her eyes.
‘I don’t think you really believe what you’re saying,’ said Ottilie to Rosie. ‘I remember Ash was always whistling or singing “Gilbert the Filbert”.’
Rosie did not reply, but addressed herself to Fairhead. ‘Why were you upset when you said the blessing? I’m sorry to ask. I just can’t help being curious.’
‘Oh, you noticed. Well, it’s just that I’ve said that blessing hundreds of times, at the final moments. It suddenly occurred to me that forever and forever that blessing will remind me of all those dying boys. I shall always be trying not to let it show.’
A week later the Reverend Captain Fairhead called by and the door was answered by Christabel. ‘How’s the new darkroom?’ he asked.
‘Up and running,’ she replied. ‘I have pictures drying on lines all over the attic. It’s murder trying to keep the kitten out. He seems to be able to be everywhere at once. I see you’ve arrived exactly at teatime.’
‘Purely a coincidence,’ he replied. ‘I do hope Cookie has made scones.’
‘Flapjacks,’ replied Christabel. ‘Bad luck.’
In the drawing room Mrs McCosh, Rosie and Ottilie were playing mah-jong, with Rosie being two players at once, and Sophie and her father were seated at a small table, playing spillikins, exclaiming every time that a stick moved or was successfully lifted. They were suffering terrible interference from the kitten, who was darting in and pouncing on the sticks the moment they moved. ‘Daddy, you’re such a gregarious cheat!’ Sophie exclaimed as Fairhead came into the room. The kitten chose that moment to hurtle up the curtains and perch on top of the pelmet.
‘Ha ha, I’ve got the masterstick!’ said Mr McCosh, brandishing it in the air.
After tea, Captain Fairhead said to Christabel, ‘I would very much like to see some of your photographs.’
‘She’s quite the professional these days,’ said Sophie. ‘She did a photographic portrait for the Fermoys, and they paid her squillions.’
‘All thanks to the Snapshot League,’ said Christabel. ‘Who would have thought? I’ll go and get the new ones, they should be dry by now.’
‘Do be careful how you go up that ladder into the attic,’ said Mrs McCosh.
‘I’ll make sure no one is standing underneath,’ said Christabel.
‘Ladies should not use ladders at all,’ said Mrs McCosh. ‘Who knows what might happen?’
‘The Queen of Serbia used a ladder recently,’ said Sophie. ‘She climbed up a ladder against a wall so that she could have a peek at Romania. I saw it in the papers.’
‘Did she?’ asked Mrs McCosh. ‘Well I never.’
‘It’s all right, she was wearing culottes.’
‘Culottes? Gracious!’
‘Oh, Mama, she’s teasing you,’ said Rosie. ‘I don’t think the Queen of Serbia is wearing rational dress.’
‘Rational dress!’ exclaimed Mr McCosh. ‘Have you seen the photographs? Thoroughly peculiar people wearing the most absurd things. Give me irrational dress or let me go naked.’
‘Hamilton!’ exclaimed his wife reprovingly, much to his satisfaction.
Christabel returned a few minutes later, and carefully laid out her pictures on the dining-room table. ‘There are one or two duds,’ she said apologetically. ‘There always are. I have absolutely no idea what this one is. I don’t even remember taking it.’
She indicated a blurred photograph in which a young woman in a wide hat was smiling shyly into the camera and waving with her right hand. ‘Whoever she is, she’s very sweet.’
Fairhead fell silent and started to tremble. He put his hand to his forehead and looked as though he were about to faint.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Rosie, looking at him with concern.
‘Did you take your camera to that séance?’ he asked.
‘My Box Brownie?’ said Christabel. ‘I take it everywhere in my bag, just in case something good comes up. Why?’
‘That’s my little sister,’ said Fairhead.
57
Daniel and Ottilie
Daniel found Ottilie alone in the middle of the drawing room. ‘My, this is strange, isn’t it?’ he said, waving his hand to indicate the absolute emptiness of the room.
‘It’s what we always do,’ said Ottilie. ‘It doesn’t matter how careful he is, the sweep always fills the room with horrid black dust and soot. Draping everything with sheets just doesn’t seem to be enough, so we always empty the rooms out completely. It’s funny what turns up sometimes. We found Papa’s magnifying glass under an armchair, and we have absolutely no idea how it got there all the way from his study.’
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Daniel went to the window and clasped his hands together behind his back. He remembered vaulting over the wall, and smiled. ‘Ottie?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you mind if I ask your advice?’
‘Advice? What advice could I possibly give you?’
‘Well, I find myself in a tricky spot.’
‘Do you? How irksome for you! But how can I help?’
‘It’s Rosie.’
‘Oh well, I suppose I might have known.’
‘Have I made it that obvious?’
‘It’s obvious to me and Christabel and Sophie. We’ve been gossiping about it for ages. You’ve been turning up just like Fairhead when he was after Sophie.’
They went into the conservatory, as if it gave them more privacy, and Daniel asked, ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘I think you should spend a very long time becoming friends with her before you even think of anything like a proposal. You should take her to the moving pictures, and smoking concerts, and art exhibitions, and if it’s freezing you must take her skating, and Mama taught her to play golf, so you might get her interested in that again. You have hours and hours to get to know each other whilst you’re looking for balls in the rough.’
‘Two months? Do you think that two months would be enough?’
‘No, Daniel. A year at least.’
‘Oh God. A year? It seems unbearable. I’m on such tenterhooks.’
‘You love her that much?’
‘Absolutely smitten.’
‘Daniel, my dear, you do know all about Ashbridge?’
‘Well, of course. We were all Pals, weren’t we?’
‘Rosie is the kind of woman who only ever has one grand passion.’
‘Hmm, that’s not what I wanted to hear, really.’
Ottilie came over and tucked her arm through his, squeezing it reassuringly. She smiled up at him, her dark eyes rich with conspiracy.
‘You know, Ottie,’ said Daniel, ‘you’re a real little darling. If I had any sense I’d have fallen for you.’
‘Well, you know me. I’m a dark horse. My great passion was Archie. I expect you remember.’
‘Of course I do. And he had eyes only for Rosie.’
‘Don’t you think he might be a little upset if you were to marry her?’
‘But he hasn’t seen her for years! I doubt if he thinks of her once a month.’
Ottilie thought, and said, ‘Daniel, I do believe that if I had any sense, I’d fall for you too.’
‘You can be my sister,’ said Daniel. ‘I never had one, and I really wish I did. Boys with sisters are so lucky, don’t you think? Will you be my honorary sister?’
Ottilie stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Of course I’ll be your sister. And hope to be your sister-in-law. And I’d love it so much if you could make me an aunt. Fingers crossed.’
She held up her right hand with forefinger and middle finger crossed.
‘Yes, fingers crossed,’ repeated Daniel. ‘You really think it’ll take a year?’
Just then there was a sudden crash as a long pane of glass shattered, throwing shards all over the conservatory, and a golf ball landed at Daniel’s feet.
‘Oh my goodness!’ exclaimed Ottilie, clutching her hand to her breast. ‘I’ve never had such a shock in my life!’
Daniel went to the window, and saw Mr McCosh striding up the lawn with a golf club in his hand. ‘I think we’ve found the culprit,’ he said.
Hamilton McCosh hurried up the steps of the conservatory. ‘Damn it!’ he said. ‘So sorry. Must have given you a wee surprise! Anyone hurt?’
‘Daddy, aren’t you supposed to shout “Fore!”? And what on earth do you think you’re doing whacking golf balls at the house?’
Hamilton McCosh was abashed. ‘It’s my new golf ball,’ he explained. ‘I realised there was a need for a decent ball you can use for practice in the garden. It would have to weigh the same as the real thing, behave the same in flight, and travel about a quarter as far. I think that this one travels a little too far.’
‘I think it does, Daddy. But why did you have to whack it in this direction?’
‘Well, lassie, I didna want to hit it over the fence, did I? Imagine losing your prototype! I’ve only got the one.’
‘Is this one of your projects with Professor Smithells?’
‘It is indeed.’ McCosh looked at Daniel, and explained. ‘He’s a professor at the Victoria University. We came up with a good gas mask once.’ He held up the ball. ‘We’re going to call it the Gardenrite.’
‘Well, at present, Daddy, it seems to be the Gardenwrong.’
McCosh waved his hand to indicate the shattered glass. ‘Don’t tell your mother. I’ll get on to Beasley straight away, and with any luck she’ll never find out.’
‘Scout’s honour,’ said Ottilie, and Daniel handed the offending golf ball over to Mr McCosh.
‘Ah, thank you, Daniel. Very kind. We’d better get Millicent to come and clear up the mess. Did I tell you I’ve come up with a new golf club? It’s made of a telescopic steel tube so that it compresses down to almost nothing, and the head is adjustable, on a ratchet, so you can make the loft anything you like. Hey presto, you only need one club! No more lugging round a bag of seven!’
‘It’s a brilliant idea,’ said Daniel cautiously. ‘But I rather like my bag of seven. Having lots of them is part of the fun. They each have their own character.’
McCosh’s face fell, and Daniel felt he should console him. ‘It would be marvellous for travel, though. And of course, I’m only a beginner. What are you going to call it?’
‘The McCosh Patent Universo.’
‘How it trips off the tongue,’ said Ottilie drily. Turning to Daniel, she said, ‘Daddy just invented a kind of bellows where you hold it in one hand and wind a handle with the other.’
‘Mmm,’ said Daniel. ‘Does it work better than the usual kind?’
‘Not at all,’ replied Mr McCosh, ‘but it looks very smart in dark green enamel, and you can fit the handle on either side, and the name is picked out in scarlet paint on the casing. People don’t buy things because they’re better, Daniel, they buy them for the novelty and because they look nice. Novelty’s the thing! Novelty and niceness!’
‘What are you going to call it?’
‘The McCosh Patent BlazoBrite Mechanical Bellows,’ said Ottilie, on her father’s behalf. ‘Another masterpiece of simplicity and economy. Bound to catch on.’
58
Christabel and Gaskell
Now that the Snapshot League had been dissolved, Christabel was wondering what to do with her time. As with her sisters, the years of strenuous activity during the war had given her a taste for doing something useful and creative, and she could not envisage herself sitting at home in the drawing room, embroidering and making conversation until the right man turned up. Accordingly she devoted much time to looking in the Situations Vacant pages of newspapers and magazines. It was in one of these magazines that she found that there was an exhibition of war paintings being put on at a small gallery in Dulwich, not far from the school. It was well reviewed, but, since she could not persuade anyone else to accompany her, she went to see it on her own.
There were ten paintings occupying the whole of one wall, and they were very striking indeed. One was of two soldiers, one German and the other British, each with a cigarette in his mouth and a bandage about his forehead, sitting side by side and arm in arm against a low wall at a casualty clearing station. They were grinning and waving as if it were a holiday snap. Another picture showed an expanse of glutinous mud with a few broken trees and a smashed limber. Christabel was convinced that the artist had pounded real mud into the oil paint. Another showed a French officer standing smartly to attention in his red-and-blue uniform. His head, however, was a skull, depicted in the most extraordinary detail. Christabel shuddered. There was another, very like the famous Singer Sargent painting, that showed soldiers w
ith bandages about their eyes, temporarily blinded by gas, each with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. These soldiers were of all nations, however. There was a very lovely painting of a rifle, propped casually in the corner of a room, and another of a nurse at a table improvised out of ammunition boxes, slumped in exhaustion over a half-drunk cup of tea.
Christabel became aware of someone standing next to her, looking at the same pictures. ‘What do you think?’ asked the stranger. Her voice was low and melodious, with a hint of an aristocratic drawl.
‘These are the best pictures in the whole exhibition,’ said Christabel. ‘They’ve got so much…’
‘Pathos?’
‘Well, I was thinking personality rather than pathos. Of course the pathos is very obvious. You’d have to be an idiot not to see that, but what I like is, well, they’re not at all conventional.’
‘The work of a truly individual artist?’
‘Absolutely. And technically they’re quite brilliant. Do you have any idea who it is?’ She leaned forward to read the signature. ‘Gaskell.’
‘I can introduce you if you like.’
‘Oh, would you? Is he here?’
The woman laughed, turned to face Christabel, and held out her hand. ‘Gaskell,’ she said.
Christabel looked at her in astonishment. She was extremely tall, with short black hair slicked back with pomade, and was dressed as a man in a tweed suit and brown brogues. In her left hand she carried a long holder with an unlit cigarette in it, and a monocle dangled on a cord from the buttonhole of her jacket.