The Comforters

Caroline. You’re haunted by spirits, aren’t you? And you know who’s behind it, don’t you?’

The performance was becoming more and more corny. Caroline tried to revert to their earlier farce about the band and their Cambridge friends.

‘But she’s haunted,’ said Eleanor, still gazing at Caroline.

Caroline had never felt less haunted. She was almost shocked to find how she seemed to derive composure from the evidence of her friend’s dissolution.

‘I’ve never felt less haunted,’ Caroline said.

‘I’m haunted,’ said Ernest, ‘by the fact that we’re nearly bankrupt, and Eleanor has abandoned our only form of security.’

‘Willi can’t withdraw financially. But he’ll ruin us all another way. I know it. I feel it. He’s working a tremendous power against us, Eleanor drivelled.

‘What was your husband’s name?’ Laurence asked her.

‘You are haunted, my dear girl,’ Eleanor insisted, still gazing upon Caroline’s face.

‘Hogarth.’ It was Ernest who supplied the name, smiling like a conjurer who has produced the rabbit.

‘Mervyn,’ said Eleanor belatedly.

‘I believe I’ve met him. Does he live at Ladle Sands in Sussex by any chance?’

‘Yes,’ said Eleanor. ‘Don’t remind me please. He ought to be in prison. I’ve had a tragic life, Laurence. Ernest, haven’t I had a tragic life?’

‘Desperately,’ said Ernest.

‘And the tragedy of that poor cripple boy,’ said Eleanor. ‘Caroline, I’ve never told you about my marriage. What a mess. He had a son by a former marriage, quite helpless. What could I do? These tragedies occur everywhere through influences of evil spirits, that I do believe. You ye given me sheer lemonade, Ernest, don’t be mean with the gin.’

‘You’re getting tight,’ said Ernest.

‘Can you blame me? Caroline, do you realize the sheer potency of the Black Mass? It’s going on all the time.’

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s only an infantile orgy. It can’t do much harm.’

‘Have you ever been to a Black Mass?’

‘No. It takes me all my time to keep up with the white Mass on Sundays.’

‘What’s the white Mass? Ernest, tell me what’s the white Mass?’

‘She means the Mass, dear. The ordinary Catholic Mass,’ Ernest said.

‘Oh, but this is different. The Black Mass has tremendous power. It can actually make objects move. Nobody touches them. They move. I’ve read heaps about it. There are naked girls, and they say everything backward. And obscenity. Ernest, you don’t take me seriously, but you just go to a Black Mass, and see. I challenge you. I wouldn’t dare go. I’d die.’

Caroline and Laurence spoke simultaneously, ‘Catholics can’t go to Black Masses.’

‘Not allowed,’ Ernest explained.

‘They treat you like kids,’ said Eleanor, ‘don’t they, Laurence?’ she said, for she knew he had lapsed from religion.

‘That’s right,’ he said agreeably.

‘Why is the Black Mass forbidden, if there isn’t some tremendous evil in it?’ she persisted, her hand on Caroline ‘s.

‘I don’t say there isn’t great evil in it,’ Caroline replied, ‘I only say it’s a lot of tomfoolery.’

‘I wouldn’t dismiss it so lightly as that,’ Ernest argued.

‘It depends on how you regard evil,’ Caroline said. ‘I mean, as compared with the power of goodness. The effectuality of the Black Mass, for instance, must be trivial so long as we have the real Mass.’

‘I wouldn’t dismiss the power of evil lightly,’ Ernest insisted. ‘It does exist, obviously.’

‘I thought,’ said Eleanor, ‘that Catholics all believed the same thing. But I can see you don’t.’

‘Caroline is being mystical,’ Ernest said.

‘Caroline is a mystic,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ve always said so. She’s a mystic, isn’t she, Laurence?’

‘Every time,’ said Laurence, very pleasantly.

‘And the trouble with these mystics, they theorise on the basis of other people’s sufferings, and in the end they belittle suffering. Caroline, if you’d suffered as much as I’ve suffered, you wouldn’t be talking like something out of this world.’

‘I won’t compete with you on the question of suffering,’ Caroline spoke acidly, for, after all, she rather fancied herself as a sufferer.

‘Poor girl, you are haunted by the evil ones,’ Eleanor said, which was maddening just at that moment.

‘I shouldn’t have much to do with Willi,’ Eleanor continued. ‘Take my advice and keep clear.’