Mean Spirit

‘I’m telling you, there’s no place been laid for a Callard. Just this … Oh, blimey … same name as the old Prime Minister. Douglas-Home?’

‘Dunglas-Home?’ Cindy stared at her. ‘Daniel Dunglas- Home? Vera, he’s been dead since 1886.’

‘Well, all I know is, they’ve made him a little sign thing for his place at the dinner table.’

‘Damn.’

This meant, of course, an actor was playing the part of Dunglas-Home. It meant the whole thing was a fake. An illusion. Undisguised trickery.

So what on earth was Persephone Callard’s part in this? Wasn’t going to be in the audience, that was for sure.

An explicit dread seized Cindy.

Of course.

There would be two seances tonight. One a sideshow, a costume drama, a parody.

The other — with Seward and Miss Callard — would be the business.

‘Vera …’ When Cindy arose, his legs felt weak. ‘One more thing. Would you happen to know which room Persephone Callard is occupying?’

‘That’s easy,’ Vera said. ‘Room Three. First landing, turn left.’

‘Thank you.’

XLVIII

‘No,’ Grayle said, ‘Don’t put the light on.’

‘Hey … you can’t be embarrassed, surely. Nobody’s embarrassed any more. You’re from New York, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I just don’t like artificial light, is all.’

On account of, in the light, we can see into each other’s eyes, and I don’t like what I understand you can do with yours. I don’t wanna wake up, if you don’t mind, to a snap of the fingers and semen running down my inner thighs.

She sat on the edge of the four-poster bed with her glass of champagne. So far, only her raincoat had come off. Not the jeans, not the baseball sweater.

‘Kurt, can we talk?’

‘I don’t …’ He gave this kind of exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t want to talk. I didn’t come up all those stairs for a fucking light conversation. Alice, I thought you were up for this.’

Grayle looked at the stiff shadow and laughed. ‘You big stars, you’re so goddamn presumptuous.’

Kurt laughed too, softly. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘Alice, I wanted you from the moment you came into my hotel suite last night. You’re not the consolation prize, you’re my very special present and I would very much like to … unwrap you …’ His hands were on her shoulders now, lips close to her ear. ‘Snip the string, peel off the giftwrap, slip my fingers through the tissue-paper …’

‘Uh-huh.’ She stood up, at the same time picking up the champagne bottle.

‘Christ, Alice, come on … what’s the matter with you?’

‘I have another question.’

‘What?’ Angry.

OK, here we go …

‘Down in the banqueting hall just now, when you were talking about Anthony Abblow and Dunglas-Home, you said how people could be hypnotized to see or not see a ghost, right?’

‘You want to discuss fucking ghosts?’

‘Did you ever do that?’

Grayle moved slowly round the bed. Up from the festival site, way below, floated the windy rhythms of an Andean-type band. Through the window you could see lights coming on, on the fringe of the site.

Kurt said, ‘Alice, what are you talking about?’

Her foot touched Kurt’s pants, on the floor where he’d tossed them. She bent down slowly, keeping the champagne bottle from clinking on the boards.

‘Did you ever hypnotize somebody to see a ghost?’

Feeling for the pocket where he’d put the key. A key that size, it should be …

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.’

‘Well, like …’ she was being real quiet, in case a bunch of coins or something spilled out ‘… like you could say to someone — under hypnosis — you could plant some kind of auto-suggestion thing, so that every time they came into certain circumstances, like they entered a particular room or something, it would be there, this ghost. And it’d keep happening to them. Scaring the shit out of them. Until you hypnotized them again and took it away.’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Kurt said. ‘You can’t make someone do something that would be repugnant to them or see something terrifying they wouldn’t normally believe in.’

‘But suppose they were the kind of person who …’ scrabbling at the pants. Got to be in a pocket. Got to ‘… who would not be that scared. Who would not think it was so weird …’

‘Like a medium,’ Kurt said.

‘I guess.’

‘You guess.’

The light blinded her. She dropped the pants.

Kurt Campbell was sitting up on the bed. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t erect. When she was through blinking she saw that the long key lay on the coverlet between his legs.

‘Uh … right.’ She breathed quickly in and out. ‘OK, Kurt, here’s what’s gonna happen. You … are gonna toss me that key. You’re gonna stay right there on that bed. And I’m gonna unlock the door.’

‘Really.’

‘Uh huh. In return for this consideration and in light of me perhaps failing to make it sufficiently clear that you were not gonna get laid, I will formally undertake not to write about any of this in the New York Courier or any other publication. Or indeed my diary. Hell, Kurt, I will forget about it.’

‘You really don’t need me, do you?’

‘Kurt, in other circumstances, who can say-’

‘Because you’ve just fucked yourself very nicely, haven’t you, Grayle?’

Silence. The Andean band had stopped. There was no audible applause, just the wind whipping the window.

‘What … what did you call me?’

Kurt said, ‘Gary recognized you at once.’

‘What … whaddaya mean?’ She backed up against the door. ‘Who’s Gary? I don’t know any Gary.’

‘He and a friend were visiting Seffi at Mysleton Lodge one night. You apparently became quite hysterical. Overreacted.’

Oh no. She saw the eyes through the holes in the hood, heard the cold voice, You … are dead. A numbness began to eat in. Oh, please God, no.

‘Naturally, he made a point of finding out who you were. But as he didn’t get any further than your name and the fact that you were American, it was quite a stroke of luck you turning up here.’

‘Oh …’ Felt like she was going to vomit. ‘Oh, dear God.’

‘Gary was going to have a chat with you earlier on, but I said, “Gary, the woman’s been driving me potty. I’ve just … I’ve really got to shag her, you know?” Gary was fine about that. He says, “OK, you’ve got two hours.”’

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t think.

‘You could’ve been so much less tense by now, you silly bitch. Afterwards, I’d have relaxed you. It could all