Mean Spirit

There, in the background, goes that tape-loop laugh again.

‘Miss Callard-’

‘Sir Richard, people think it’s going to be a game. It never is. I was never a cabaret act.’

‘We know it isn’t a game.’ She can sense a desperation in him, fear — but not of the supernatural, this is fear of the known. ‘We want you to stay. We want you to carry on.’

‘Who does?’

‘… I do. Miss Callard … please.’ Barber signalled to a young guy in a maritime white jacket, and the lights begin to go again, one by one. ‘I … we … need you to stay.’

Well, of course she should get out of there right now if she’s got any sense. But what if poor bloody Coral’s husband is outside? What if he’s out there waiting for the black bitch?

Quite often you get a rush of them coming at you like primary school kids when the doors are opened to the playground. Most mediums are happy to employ an outside filter, known as a spirit guide, but Seffi’s been through all that and finds it unsatisfactory: hand-holding, patronizing. She doesn’t need any of those old cliche props. Nor even a feed-line — although this is expected and everyone has a variation on the traditional Is there anybody there? Like, Do we have company? Or the cringe-making Are there spirit friends amongst us?

She lowers her eyelids, focuses on a point three feet in front of her, so that the opulent room becomes a soft blur and none of the guests exists as individuals.

Letting the music flow into her, slowing her breathing. Hands on knees, long neck extended, she yawns luxuriously and gathers herself into trance.

There’s quite a space around her, like the space left by spectators standing back from a road accident or a street fight. As though the earlier exchange has caused a shock on that side too. Only Kieran remaining for a moment, a more nebulous presence than before — confused, unsure how to proceed. There should be someone there for him; he needs only to become aware of this.

Look around, she says to him, gently. See who’s there.

Waiting now for him to react, for the confusion to evaporate. It’s at moments like this when you realize you almost always are stronger than they are.

And then Kieran is gone. On the edge of her vision, the candle flame becomes a tiny planet of light.

‘The lines’, she announces softly, ‘are open.’

Later -

when it’s cold … when the music, with a busying of woodwind, gains power and the voices come in, the first swelling cry of Debussy’s night nymphs … when women are pulling cardigans and evening shawls around their shoulders, expressions of vague distaste puckering several faces … when Coral’s chair is no longer empty … when exploratory hands are dry and fibrous on Seffi’s skin.

— how she wishes she could claw back those words.

Part One

From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy’s Book,

by GARY SEWARD

Listen, you have a kid hits you with a stick, you hit him back and you do it good and hard and you do it fast. And, most important, you do it with the jagged side of half a brick.

As a country boy in the East End, I had to learn this quickly. I was six years old when my old man done a runner and me and my mum come to live with my Aunt Min in Saxton Gate. I was the only one in our street ever seen a cow and I had this funny hayseed accent and so the other boys naturally took the piss, and you cannot tolerate this, can you?

The first one I done, his name was Clarence Judge and when I done him with the brick I didn’t realize he was the hardest kid in the street. This was a piece of real good fortune because me and Clarence, when his scars healed, we become the best of mates and we still are.

I

The truth of it was, Grayle didn’t much like spiritualist mediums any more — was now prepared to admit never having encountered one who seemed wholly genuine. All this, I have a tall, grey-haired gentleman here, he says to tell Martha hello and he wants her to know he doesn’t get the migraines now.

Hey, screw the migraines, you wanted to scream … what’s it like over there? What does God look like?

Plus, they were usually creepy people. They had soft voices and wise little smiles. You looked at them and you thought of funeral flowers and the pink satin lining of grandma’s casket.

Of course, as an accredited New Age writer, Grayle was supposed to relish creepy, was supposed to embrace creepy.

Uh-huh. Shaking her head, driving nervously towards the next traffic island. Couldn’t handle that stuff the same any more, since Ersula. If this woman started giving her little personal messages from across the great divide, she was out of there.

Pink satin lining. No-one would ever know what kind of lining was in the special casket she had to obtain to take home what remained of Ersula. Closed for ever. Vacuum sealed.

Grayle shuddered at the wheel. She wished it was a brighter day, but this was mid-March — March still at its most unspringlike, blustering over Gloucester, a grey place every time she’d been here, which was maybe twice. Stay out of the city, that was the rule. Each time you meet with a junction, aim for the hills.

She swung hard right in front of a truck, which was not enormous by US standards but big enough to crush the Mini like a little red bug. The driver was leaning on the horn from way up there, glaring down at Grayle, who was gripping the wheel with both hands, cowering. OK, I blew it again, I switched lanes without a signal. But you’re a big rig in a tiny country. You should make allowances. Asshole.

In England even rural roads were now so crowded that driving had become small-scale and intricate, like macrame. OK, no comparison with New York, but in New York Grayle took cabs.

Places like Oxford were on the signs now. But what about Stroud? Was this OK for Stroud? There were hills ahead, at least. Not big hills, but in England the further east you went, the more they lowered the minimum height for hill status.

From behind, another horn was blasting her out. In her driver’s mirror she saw a guy in a dark blue van gesturing, moving his hand up and down like a conductor telling an orchestra to soften it up. OK, what did I do now?

It was three miles further on — Gloucester safely behind her, the blue van gone — when Grayle found out. This was when the clanking began, like she’d just gotten married and someone had attached a string of tin cans to the fender.

All too soon after this delightful image came to her the noise became more ominous, this awful grinding and then the car was sounding like a very ancient mowing machine.

Grayle pulled over, climbed out.

There was a dead metal python in the road with an extended lump in the middle, like it just dined on a dachsund. She realized what the van driver’s up-and-down hand movements had been about.

This was wonderful. This was just terrific.