Al could reassure him on the point. In Spirit World, she said, people are healthy and in their prime. “They’ve got all their bits and whatsits. Whenever they were at their happiest, whenever they were at their healthiest, that’s how you’ll find them in Spirit World.”
The logic of this, as Colette had often pointed out, was that a wife could find herself paired with a preadolescent for a husband. Or your son could, in Spirit World, be older than you. “You’re quite right, of course,” Al would say blithely. Her view was, believe what you want, Colette: I’m not here to justify myself to you.
The old man didn’t sit down; he clung, as if he were at sea, to the back of the chair in the row ahead. He was hoping his dad would come through, he said, with a message.
Al smiled. “I wish I could get him for you, sir. But again it’s like the telephone, isn’t it? I can’t call them; they have to call me. They have to want to come through. And then again, I need a bit of help from my spirit guide.”
It was at this stage in the evening that it usually came out about the spirit guide. “He’s a little circus clown,” Al would say. “Morris is the name. Been with me since I was a child. I used to see him everywhere. He’s a darling little bloke, always laughing, tumbling, doing his tricks. It’s from Morris that I get my wicked sense of humour.”
Colette could only admire the radiant sincerity with which Al said this: year after year, night after bloody night. She blazed like a planet, the lucky opals her distant moons. For Morris always insisted, he insisted that she give him a good character, and if he wasn’t flattered and talked up, he’d get his revenge.
“But then,” Al said to the audience, “he’s got his serious side too. He certainly has. You’ve heard, haven’t you, of the tears of a clown?”
This led to the next, the obvious question: how old was she when she first knew about her extraordinary psychic gifts?
“Very small, very small indeed. In fact I remember being aware of presences before I could walk or talk. But of course it was the usual story with a Sensitive child—Sensitive is what we call it, when a person’s attuned to Spirit —you tell the grown-ups what you see, what you hear, but they don’t want to know, you’re just a kiddie, they think you’re fantasizing. I mean, I was often accused of being naughty when I was only passing on some comment that had come to me through Spirit. Not that I hold it against my mum, God bless her, I mean she’s had a lot of trouble in her life—and then along came me!” The trade chuckled en masse, indulgent.
Time to draw questions to a close, Alison said; because now I’m going to try to make some more contacts for you. There was applause. “Oh, you’re so lovely,” she said. “Such a lovely, warm and understanding audience! I can always count on a good time whenever I come in your direction. Now I want you to sit back, I want you to relax, I want you to smile, and I want you to send some lovely positive thoughts up here to me … and let’s see what we can get.”
Colette glanced down the hall. The manager seemed to have his eye on the ball, and the vague boy, after shambling about aimlessly for the first half, was now at least looking at the trade instead of up at the ceiling or down at his own feet. Time to slip backstage for a cigarette? It was smoking that kept her thin: smoking and running and worrying. Her heels clicked in the dim narrow passage, on the composition floor.
The dressing room door was closed. She hesitated in front of it. Afraid, always, that she’d see Morris. Al said there was a knack to seeing Spirit. It was to do with glancing sideways, not turning your head: extending, Al said, your field of peripheral vision.
Colette kept her eyes fixed in front of her; sometimes the rigidity she imposed seemed to make them ache in their sockets. She pushed the door open with her foot, and stood back. Nothing rushed out. On the threshold she took a breath. Sometimes she thought she could smell him; Al said he’d always smelled. Deliberately, she turned her head from side to side, checking the corners. Al’s scent lay sweetly on the air: there was an undernote of corrosion, damp, and drains. Nothing was visible. She glanced into the mirror, and her hand went up automatically to pat her hair.
She enjoyed her cigarette in the corridor, wafting the smoke away from her with a rigid palm; careful not to set off the fire alarm. She was back in the hall in time to witness the dramatic highlight—which was always, for her, some punter turning nasty.
Al had found a woman’s father, in Spirit World. “Your daddy’s still keeping an eye on you,” she cooed.
The woman jumped to her feet. She was a small aggressive blonde in a khaki vest, her cold bluish biceps pumped up at the gym. “Tell the old sod to bugger off,” she said. “Tell the old sod to stuff himself. Happiest day of my life when that fucker popped his clogs.” She knocked the mike aside. “I’m here for my boyfriend that was killed in a pileup on the sodding M25.”
Al said, “There’s often a lot of anger when someone passes. It’s natural.” “Natural?” the girl said. “There was nothing natural about that fucker. If I hear any more about my bastard dad I’ll see you outside and sort you out.”
The trade gasped, right across the hall. The manager was moving in, but anyone could see he didn’t fancy his chances. Al seemed quite cool. She started chatting, saying anything and nothing—now, after all, would have been a good time for a breakthrough ditty from Margaret Rose. It was the woman’s two friends who calmed her; they waved away the vague boy with the mike, dabbed at her cheeks with a screwed-up tissue, and persuaded her back into her seat, where she muttered and fumed.
Now Alison’s attention crossed the hall and rested on another woman, not young, who had a husband with her: a heavy man, ill at ease. “Yes, this lady. You have a child in Spirit World.”
The woman said politely, no, no children. She said it as if she had said it many times before; as if she were standing at a turnstile, buying admission tickets and refusing the half-price.
“I can see there are none earthside, but I’m talking about the little boy you lost. Well, I say little boy. Of course, he’s a man now. He’s telling me we have to go back to … back a good few years, we’re talking here thirty years and more. And it was hard for you, I know, because you were very young, darling, and you cried and cried, didn’t you? Yes, of course you did.”
In these situations, Al kept her nerve; she’d had practice. Even the people at the other side of the hall, craning for a view, knew something was up and fell quiet. The seconds stretched out. In time, the woman’s mouth moved.
“On the mike, darling. Talk to the mike. Speak up, speak out, don’t be afraid. There isn’t anybody here who isn’t sharing your pain.”
Am I, Colette asked herself. I’m not sure I am.
