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have to bear the burden of those; no help could come from the other side.
They made their way up to the top of the stairs. As they ascended, a man came down, a man in a brown felt hat. He nodded to Grace as he passed them on the stairs and she returned the greeting.
“He lived all his life with his mother,” Grace whispered, once the man was out of earshot. “She crossed over a few months ago, and now he’s trying to get information from her about some bank accounts. He doesn’t know where the bank accounts were kept.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what this is meant to be about.
We’re not meant to get that sort of information. People on the other side are above all that. They give us messages about how to live our lives—useful things like that.”
Isabel was about to say that she thought that it would be very useful to know where bank accounts were, but stopped herself. She said instead, “He must be lonely.”
“He is,” said Grace.
They came to an open door on the top landing and went into the hall beyond. It had been an ordinary flat, Isabel thought—a house with the ordinary family rooms, not built as a place of pilgrimage or seeking, but now just that to the handful of people she could see seated in the meeting room beyond.
Grace pointed through another doorway which gave off the hall. “The library,” she said. “One of the best collections of books on the subject in the whole country.”
Isabel glanced at the wall of books. These were books about those things that could not be seen or touched, but in that respect they were probably no different from books about pure mathematics. She made an appreciative but noncommittal sound.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Grace now led the way into the meeting room, a large room with, at one end, a fireplace in front of which a platform and podium stood. Beside the podium was an easy chair and a table with an arrangement of flowers. A rather angular-looking woman, of about Isabel’s age, was sitting in the easy chair, her hands resting on her lap. She was gazing up at the ceiling, although as Grace and Isabel entered, her glance rested briefly, appraisingly, upon them. In the body of the room, rows of chairs had been set out in ranks. Grace pointed to seats near the back.
“The best place to see what’s going on,” she said.
Once seated, Isabel looked about her, discreetly. There was always a certain awkwardness, she felt, in the witnessing of the religious—or spiritual—rituals of others. It was rather like being an outsider at a family party, a Protestant in St. Peter’s Basilica, a Gentile at the Wailing Wall. One might sense the mystery, and understand its value for others, but one could not share it. Each of us is born into our own mysteries, thought Isabel, gazing at the flowers and then at the impassive face of the medium, but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!
A man entered the room and took a seat immediately behind them. He leant forward and whispered something to Grace, who smiled and said something in reply that Isabel did not hear. Isabel noticed his coat, which he had not taken off and which was an expensive one. She saw his regular profile and his head of thick hair. He looked to all intents and purposes like . . .
like what? she wondered. An accountant or bank manager?
Somebody with a certain assurance about him.
She noticed that the medium had transferred her gaze from F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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the ceiling and was looking at the man seated behind them. It was not a stare, but a gaze which moved on to somebody else, and then came back to him.
A man in a dark suit walked up the aisle between the rows of chairs and mounted the platform. He nodded to the medium and turned to face the thirty or so people who were now seated in the room. “My friends,” he began, “you are welcome. Whether you are a stranger or a member of this body, you are welcome.”
Isabel listened closely. The accent was Hebridean, she thought; a lilting voice from the islands. She noticed his suit, which was one of those black ill-fitting suits that Scottish crofters wore on Sundays, and she remembered, suddenly, how once as a young woman she had been on the island of Skye—was it with John Liamor? yes, it was— and they had driven past a croft house, low and white-painted, surrounded by fields and with a line of hills in the distance, and had seen a suit like that, freshly washed, hanging out to dry on the clothesline before the house. And the wind had been in the arms and legs of the suit and had given it life.
A few announcements were made, and then the man introduced the medium. He did not give a surname; she was just Anna. And then he stepped down from the podium and sat down in the front row.
The medium stood up. She looked at the people in the room and smiled. Her hands were clasped loosely in front of her, and now she opened them in a gesture of supplication. She closed her eyes, her head lifted up. “Let us each dwell on our thoughts,”
she said. “Let us open our hearts to the world of spirit.”
They sat in silence for ten minutes, or more. Eventually the medium spoke again.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“I have somebody here,” she said, so quietly that Isabel had to strain to hear the words. “I have somebody here. There is a child coming through.”
Isabel saw a woman in front of her stiffen, and she knew from this the nature of her loss. Such pain.
The medium opened her eyes. “Yes, there is a child coming through and she is saying something to me . . .”