Kehua! (19 page)
Because really if Gerry the heartless is to sit amid gravestones (which he is) and mourn the loss of the wife he seemed to
take so
lightly, Cynara the powerhouse of moral authority is to be in thrall to Dyke Dora, the pretty little mountain climber, and
Louis is to want to write a novel – where indeed will it end? Things are getting out of control, and I suspect it’s because
these creatures of my invention are tapping into the energies that already reside in these stone walls. Two sets of ghosts
might yet combine to make one wandering dybbuk, to waylay me on the way to the supermarket. I am trying to be light and facetious
but it is difficult. I am spooked, spooked, spooked.
I am going to move upstairs to my regular office. That’s not really giving in. It is common sense. Things happened, and not
just Jackson and the vampires, which led me to conclude that garlic alone was not enough. I even tried burning sage and circling
my desk with the ash, but Vi came and vacuumed it up.
What I suffered was a hallucination that was, finally, visual as well as auditory. The face which appeared in the wallpaper
was, I am sure, only damp. True, I had been working hard and I was tired, and too much coffee to keep one awake may make one
over-prone to imagine things. It was a Sunday and over the road in All Saints’ Church (I am talking the reality of here and
now), Evensong was in full swing. The only trouble, on reflection, is that the church here and now across the road is deconsecrated
and no services are held there, yet I had heard the church bells clearly enough and paid them no attention, and strains of
organ music likewise. So the staff were all over the road attending to their souls, and only Mavis was left behind. The fire
had been playing up and needed relighting and Mavis had been delegated to be the one to do it. And I could actually see Mavis
for once, with her beskirted little bum in the air as she bent over to feed paper spills and kindling into its reluctant heart.
Then I watched as Mr Bennett came down into the basement,
and as he brushed by me the breath of his violent passing actually ruffled the papers on my desk. That was too much overlapping
for comfort. He was breathing heavily – and I realised I had heard that sound quite often. He was a big man, dark and flushed,
very handsome in a portly kind of way, with a moustache, and a beard that ran from his ears to under his chin, which was clean
shaven. Quite fancy for a small-town country solicitor. I knew it was Mr Bennett and I knew he was angry with Mrs Bennett,
who wouldn’t let him into her bed since she had three children already and had no intention of having any more; he was a man
in his mid-fifties who was accustomed to getting what he wanted whenever he wanted it. The rest of the Bennett family had
gone out to tea in the gig, so Mr Bennett was down here, naturally enough, to see if Mavis would oblige. I don’t know how
I knew this any more than I knew how Jackson came to be in
Vampire Rising
all those years back, or forwards, depending on your perspective.
Mavis didn’t hear him coming, and when his long strong fingers pinched her rump she uttered a little gasping squeal of surprise
which would really have turned him on, so when she wheeled to see who it was and he pulled her to him and pressed her small
body to him she’d have felt the hard determined lump beneath the skin-tight trousers. I’d heard that little gasp many a time
but not known until now what it was about. Mavis being pinched. I’m not saying it really happened, just that I remembered
it happening, in much the same way as I remembered Briony using the blade of a knife to even off the measured tablespoon of
coffee, or indeed Rex this Sunday suppertime, checking over mussels for the
moules marinière
, making sure all the shells were safely closed, so we weren’t poisoned.
‘Mr Bennett, sir, you should be ashamed of yourself,’ I heard her say. ‘Poor Mrs Bennett being out and all.’
‘Don’t be hard on me, Mavis,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you double.’
I caught a glimpse of Mavis’ face, pale but pretty, with brown button eyes and a naughty mouth, and then the pair of them
faded out, and a sound-only background track started again; Mr Bennett’s heavy breathing as he lunged downstairs, Mavis’s
little squeal: but no words, no pictures. The GCGITS was editing the tape as it looped, messing around; he will sometimes
allow a glimpse, no more. Well, I could cope with that. Nothing terrible was happening. Mavis was obviously in command of
the situation. Little girls can be quite competent when it comes to dealing with big men. I felt quite privileged to be allowed
this vision of the past; it was like having one’s screenplay performed, one’s own invention, until now confined to words on
paper, coming to life as actors seize the words and voice them. There is nothing more gratifying.
But then something more disturbing happened. Janice looked in on her way back from the Rosicrucian course in Salisbury. The
doorbell rang and I saved the text, and went upstairs to answer it. Rex usually does but it was a Thursday and I knew he was
out at the market. Janice looked even odder than she had on the outward journey: her eyes even more poppy and her hair flatter
and straighter and thinner, as if all of her was being consumed from within, leaving her even less substantial amongst her
voluminous hand-crafted garments. The passage of the spirits through the body as you channel them from one world to the next
can quite wear one away, it seems. (Not so, alas, with fictional characters, or perhaps I just take care to pad myself well
with flesh to stop it happening; though come to think of it writing in the basement had mysteriously left me thinner, though
I eat as well as usual.) Janice wouldn’t take tea or coffee or fruit juice, but only hot water. Rex came back from the market
and put the fish in the fridge, and then excused
himself and fled upstairs to the attic. Janice’s spiritual absurdities disturb him; he is a good Christian, as am I. Faux
religions tend to bring the real ones into disrepute and it distresses him to witness it.
I asked Janice politely if it had been a successful course, and she said yes, it had, it had sharpened her channelling powers.
Humanity was learning a great lesson at this time.
‘We must learn to realise our Godhood, that we are intertwined with the Prime Creator and all that exists,’ she said. ‘Over
the weekend that understanding became part of me.’
I said I was glad for her. She said her over-self was stronger than ever; her connections with superior alien intelligences
firmer; this was a crucial transition time in helping earth bring in an era of peace. The old ones were with us to guide us
to the light. She had been especially chosen to play her part.
I asked if she had met anyone interesting and she smiled and looked almost pretty and said a Master had come amongst them,
a superior being, who had chosen her to share an intimate encounter. Well, I was pleased for her, though the encounter didn’t
seem to have returned her to sanity; on the contrary. The ‘good shag’ that men so often believe is ‘all she needs’ can be
counter-productive. Mind you, one didn’t know how good or otherwise it had actually been, and ‘Master’ sounded a bit exploitative.
But I didn’t delve any further.
She had a proposition to put to me, she said, which was really why she had come by. The vibes in my house had been so strong
she wanted to bring round a party of ghost hunters from Glastonbury to stay in the house overnight. She would charge £100
per person; she could probably get a group of twenty people and we would share the profit. I said no, my home and its past
were not up for commercial exploitation and anyway Rex would never hear of such a
thing. Husbands, like mothers, are very useful for citing as reasons why one cannot do as one is asked.
She said it was a pity and hoped I would change my mind. She was sure I would. I was something of a medium myself, she told
me, though I was in denial. She had been to a very enlightening session on the development of psychic powers and could now
see my white aura, which meant spirits were part of me. The automatic writing was part of it all, surely I realised that?
It was often used by spirits to communicate; did I astral travel? Sometimes she felt when she read my work that I had been
in my dreams to these places I wrote about. I was pleased to hear that she read my work, though she probably didn’t buy –
she was not the sort – she’d use the library.
Janice asked if she could go down into the cellar and just sit a while, and having disappointed her about the ghost hunters
I said yes and she disappeared down the worn stone steps. I trusted she wouldn’t meet Mr Bennett on the way. I left her to
it. I realised too late she would see the garlic and would now never let me alone. Within five minutes she was upstairs again.
She was fluttering her hands and looked upset, though it was always a bit difficult to tell what was upset in Janice, and
what was enthusiasm. It turned out to be enthusiasm.
She asked me who Alice was. She had met such a nice woman down there, with a high forehead, called Alice – who was singing
hymns and praying for someone. I asked her what she was singing. Janice replied, ‘A hymn.
Glad that I Live am I
. And what a beautiful, golden, positive hymn it was. I had no need to be frightened. The spirits in the basement were plentiful
but all were well intentioned: I could get rid of the garlic, it didn’t work anyway.
The trouble with the mad is that they often sound so convincingly sane one can begin to think as they do. I did not want to
believe that she had picked up on my Alice, who was pretty much a subsidiary character anyway. Perhaps the Bennetts’ cook
had been called Alice? Though a nice woman praying did sound rather more like my Alice up in the North than the basement cook
in the past, from whom I had mostly got rather irritated and possibly drunken vibes. It was no use asking Janice what Alice
looked like because I did not know either. I had not turned my attention to a description because she hadn’t actually appeared
on the scene, just been someone in the background who disapproved of gays sufficiently not to come to her own daughter’s wedding
in case she was marrying one. So I asked her who this Alice had been praying for, which was rather brave of me, considering.
Janice said she couldn’t be sure, someone whose name started with a C: Clara? Cynara?
And that did it. I moved my laptop back up to my regular office on the first floor, where I have a pleasant view of the Pugin
church and pink roses growing up the old rowan tree. My mother-in-law, aged ninety-three, died in this room – it was once
the master bedroom, where the Bennetts would have slept or tried to sleep, but it was peaceful and bright, and sunlight chased
away ghosts and fancies. And I am in the real rational world again, and ready to carry on.
I am now going to move to Part Two, where I will give an account of Beverley’s growing up and the various adventures which
brought her to Robinsdale. Just remember to keep in mind the story so far, please, while I get on with the
mater familias
.
Remember that Scarlet is about to meet Jackson at Costa’s.
Jackson is on his way back from visiting his ex-wife Briony.
Gerry is on his way to rescue Beverley, who by virtue of Scarlet’s good deed has been set free, released from kehua, Furies,
grateful dead, kelpies, whatever, or however the dysfunctional genes which
plague this family are registered.
Lola is on her mission to seduce her uncle Louis, who, reluctant to save Scarlet from herself, is calling up his lost love
Samantha.
Cynara is heaving D’Dora’s possessions about and feeling guilty about Lola.
And Alice, one can only suppose on Janice’s evidence, is praying for Cynara.
It is possible for you to simply move on to Part Three and get back to how the family resolved their problems, by one simple
murder, and be done with Beverley. It depends on how interested you are in how life experience, over time, makes one what
one is. But if you’ve got this far, you might as well just read on.
The ‘one simple murder’, by the way, was spur of the moment, but I’ll try and make it work.
By the age of seven Beverley regarded both her parents as crass usurpers, and had decided with her friend Evelyn that she
too had been switched at birth and was a princess by rights. But by twelve she had quite fallen in love with the man she knew
as her father, and was proud to claim him as her own. He had, she thought, the looks of Leslie Howard in
The Scarlet Pimpernel
, screened at the Coromandel Town Hall in 1942, to that small town’s great excitement. Dr Arthur Audley was well fitted to
play romantic leads. He was long-nosed, high-browed, short-jawed and sensitive, with haunted and haunting eyes and full, sensuous
lips. His women patients adored him, though by now he was noticeably ageing and his hair was receding, making his tall brow
taller still. Rita had grown tougher and more gauntly horse-like as the years went by; she was kind, busy and practical, but
lacked eroticism. Beverley liked her but dismissed her as of no account, disparaging her as she grew into her disdainful teenage
years with just a raised eyebrow here, a quizzical eyebrow there. It drove Rita mad.
‘Do you think she knows?’ she asked Arthur once.
‘There’s nothing for her to know,’ Arthur said. ‘She was too small.’
‘We’ll have to tell her one day,’ said Rita. ‘Supposing someone from Amberley comes up here and puts two and two together
and she finds out?’
‘We’ll tell her when she’s seventeen,’ said Arthur. ‘She’s growing up to be quite a looker. She’ll be more than old enough
by then to know who she wants as a father and who she doesn’t.’
Which Rita thought was a slightly odd way of putting it, but didn’t say so. She was glad enough that Arthur had agreed that
Beverley needed to be told eventually. A lot of families thought family secrets should be just that. Arthur went on to talk
about incest and how rare it was in the Maori tribes and how common amongst the white pakeha in isolated areas, and the conversation
moved on, to Rita’s relief.