The Bachelors (4 page)

‘You
were right, Patrick,’ Marlene said, still gazing at his eyes intensely. ‘There
are naturally mixed feelings amongst us and she has been circulating rumours.
But I have — and I know I can speak for the members of the Interior Spiral if
not for the Wider Infinity at large — implicit faith in you. I’m only too
grateful that we were guided to delay disclosing to her the existence of the
Interior Spiral, that was fortunate. And had it not been for your powers as a
great medium, and the warnings, we should most probably have issued the
Communication to her last week. Oh — here she is.’

A dumpy
much-powdered woman of middle-age, wearing light-rimmed glasses, a grey felt
hat and a blue coat and skirt, had been ushered into the room by young Tim. She
smiled brightly at her acquaintances by the door and even the lenses of her
glasses seemed to glisten smilingly upon them. She had noticed Patrick, who had
resumed his tea-cup into which he was gazing with dignity. Marlene glided up to
the newcomer, took both her hands, bestowed upon her a customary soul-to-soul
gaze, kissed her upon the cheek, and said, ‘Freda, you’re just in time. I am
about to proclaim the Commencement.’

‘Tea,
Mrs. Flower?’ Tim said to Freda, with the cup and saucer in his hand.

‘The
Commencement is about to start, Tim,’ said Marlene, and as Tim hovered between
handing the tea to Freda and not handing it to her, Marlene said, ‘But of
course you must have a little tea first, Freda, you must have your tea first.’

Marlene
noticed, without truly observing, a large man with pink and white cheeks whom
she had not seen at previous meetings. He was standing massively half in, half
out of the room, and he had apparently arrived at the same time as Freda. But
Marlene did not take great notice of him, since there were few meetings at
which a newcomer was not present, having been brought along by someone or
other. The pink-and-white-cheeked man looked rather like, possibly, a friend
of Tim’s. Tim had yet to learn to be reliable.

Marlene
said to Freda, ‘I shan’t ring the bell till you’ve finished your tea. Don’t
hurry.’

Freda
gulped her tea, with her eyes wandering over the rim of the cup. Suddenly she
started at the sight of Patrick.

‘So
he’s
here,’ Freda said.

‘My
dear Freda, mustn’t we subordinate all our materialistic endeavours to those of
the spirit?’

‘It’s
most upsetting,’ Freda said, ‘and I’m surprised he has the nerve to show his
face in here again. He’s a fraud.’

Tim
gave out a gentle cultivated noise from the throat as if he really were
clearing it, and shifted himself gracefully to another group.

Marlene’s
earrings swung as she moved her head distastefully from Freda’s remarks. ‘The
word fraud,’ she said, ‘is of the World. Freda, I don’t think it should be
voiced here. But I do see — I do understand — how a type of behaviour which is
normal in our element may appear, shall we say, mysterious in yours.’ She
touched Mrs. Flower’s hand in absolution from all her dumpy limitations. ‘I
only hope,’ she said, ‘that nothing will happen to bring the Wider Infinity
into disrepute. For myself, I don’t care. I am thinking of — well, finish your
tea, Freda dear, it is time for the Commencement.’

She
moved away, and dark Ewart Thornton, who was one of the assembly, presently
took her place, declaring deeply in her ear, ‘I’m with you, Freda. A lot of us
here to-night are with you. I meant to write to say so to you, but I’ve got
such mounds of homework. The mid-term examinations….’

Freda’s
spectacles shone with gratitude. ‘Does Marlene know your mind on the subject?’
she said.

Ewart
placed a finger to his lips while Marlene at the other end of the room
proclaimed:

‘The
Circle will now enter the Sanctuary of Light.’

Tea cups were placed down
and a hush fell on the assembly. Marlene Cooper led the way, as she had done
regularly since the year after her husband died, and she had taken to thoughts
of the spirit. For how, she felt, could it be that Harry Cooper, who his worst
business enemies admitted was sheer dynamite, could come to nought in the end?
‘No,’ she said, ‘Harry is as alive as ever he was. He is communicating with me
and I am communicating with him.’ Certainly this was the case when he was
alive, since they had then indulged in frequent noisy rows in different parts
of the globe, she standing tensely clothed in her distinguished appearance,
clasping and unclasping her long fingers, and shrieking; he sitting usually in
an armchair answering her with short, loaded, meaningful words of power and
contempt. He had been buried three months when, convinced of his dynamic
survival, she had had him dug up and cremated, since this, it seemed vaguely to
her, was more in keeping with the life beyond. To see his ashes scattered in the
Garden of Remembrance was to conceive Harry more nearly as thin air, and since
she had come to believe so ardently in Harry the spirit, she simply could not
let him lie in the grave and rot.

Shortly
after the cremation Marlene joined the Wider Infinity, an independent
spiritualist group, proud of its independence from the great organised groups,
and operating from a room in the region of Victoria. During the period of her
initiation Marlene was impressed, the more and more especially when personal
messages began to come through from Harry on the other side.

Patrick
Seton was the first medium to get through to Harry.

‘I have
a message for our new sister, from Henry. Henry will not speak himself tonight
but he will speak on another occasion when Carl is in control of Patrick,’ said
Patrick. ‘But in the meantime Henry sends his affectionate regards and is
thinking of you in his happy abode. He particularly wants to say you have been
too generous and have stood by too long and let others take first place. You were
born to be a leader but you have not yet fulfilled yourself. Now is the time to
start living your true life.’ Patrick moaned. His mouth drooped, the lower lip
disappearing into his chin. He looked very ill by the dim green light, and even
when he had come round and the full lights were on, his complexion was more
grey and the lines on his face deeper than before he had gone under. He was
genuinely shaken.

‘Amazing,’
Marlene whispered after the séance. For Henry was Harry’s real name, and the
Carl who was going to act as control in the promised future might very
conceivably be that Carl, her boy friend that was, who had been killed in a
motor-race in 1938; and indeed Marlene had been moved to wonder as far as she
dared how Harry and Carl were making out together in the land of perpetual
summer. And it had been summer-time when Harry had found out about Carl. But
the possibility of Carl’s acting as the spirit control between Harry and the
medium seemed to make everything all right, and indeed there was an authentic
rightness in the idea, for although Harry’s had been the more dynamic
personality, there was no use pretending that Carl’s had not been the rarer.

And she
thought it very like Harry to urge her to push herself to the fore. It was
exactly what Harry would advise, being now incapacitated, or rather released
from materialistic endeavours. It was almost as if Harry were urging her to
take his place in life. It was so true that she had always let others take
place before her.

Marlene,
in order to be fair, went and attended a séance of another spiritualist group
on an island near Richmond. But this was a disappointment, for the people were
not quite the reasonable, respectable, sort one expected to find in the
spiritualist movement. One young man had hair waving down to his waist. One
middle-aged woman with a huge blotchy face wore a tight cotton dress although
it was early March. The place was not heated, and Marlene shivered. The woman
in the tight cotton dress told Marlene she was going to give clairvoyance. She
told Marlene nothing about Harry, only advised her to be careful of false
friends, and not to despair, she wouldn’t end her life alone.

‘I’m
not despairing,’ Marlene said.

The
other members looked at Marlene with hushed hostile warnings, since she was
interrupting the woman in her trance.

So
Marlene remained with the Wider Infinity at Victoria. Soon, however, inspired
by the dynamic spirit of Harry, she began to note this and that member who was
perhaps unworthy of its high purpose. She led a purgative faction.

‘We
must,’ she said to Ewart Thornton, that big sane grammar-school master, ‘rid
our Body of the cranks.’

‘I
quite agree,’ Ewart said. ‘They lower the tone.’

Two
clergymen who were unembarrassed by wives or livings were retained; several women
cashiers and book-keepers who did not mind the journey from Wembley, Osterley
and Camberwell on Monday and Thursday evenings; two middle-aged retired
spinsters who were interested in art; one or two of Marlene’s old friends who,
however, were erratic in their attendance; a childless married couple in their
early thirties; three widows; an Indian student who had been doing undefined
research at the British Museum for fifteen years; a retired policeman whose
wife, not a spiritualist, was a doctor’s receptionist; Ewart Thornton, the
schoolmaster; and Patrick Seton, who was, by common consent, the life and soul
of the Circle.

‘We
must have a cross-section of the community,’ Marlene declared. ‘A sane
cross-section. Why can’t we have a labourer, for instance?’

No
labourer who was worthy of his hire could be found. Ewart Thornton, however,
was the means of introducing to the group a number of single schoolmasters and
civil servants who, although interested in spiritualism, had never had
sufficient courage to attend a séance. Some of these bachelors became regular
members, others attended occasionally and compulsively when the desire to do so
overwhelmed them. ‘My bachelors,’ Marlene called them.

‘At
least,’ she said, ‘we are all respectable now; we have no cranks.’

‘I hate
cranks,’ Ewart said. ‘Insufferable people.’

By the
end of that year the Wider Infinity had moved its headquarters to Marlene’s
flat in Bayswater and Patrick and Ewart Thornton had so much become her closest
intimates that very often this trio held private séances which were kept secret
from the rest of the group. ‘Carl and Harry,’ Marlene said, ‘definitely
understand my nature now better than they did in the flesh. Carl of course was
always more evolved. Why does he call Harry by the name of Henry, I wonder?’

Patrick
said, ‘I’m only the medium,’ and his voice died away on the last syllable.

‘But
you’re a genius, Patrick — isn’t he, Ewart?’

‘Absolutely.
That was excellent advice that came through from Guide Gabi about my
headmaster. Had his character to a T. He expects me to do mounds of homework.
Well, I___’

‘Señor
Gabi is one of my best Guides,’ Patrick murmured. ‘But Henry is coming on.
Through the influence of Carl, he___’

‘Why
doesn’t Carl call him Harry?’ Marlene said. ‘He never called him Henry while in
the flesh, he always called him Harry.’

‘The
name Henry represents his primary and more noble personality,’ Patrick said
gently. ‘I’m sorry, Marlene, I’m only the medium, I can’t say Harry when I get
Henry.’

‘Patrick,
you’re wonderful. It only proves your honesty.’

She put
a great deal of money into the training of mediums, Patrick Seton being the
principal trainer; she liked most of all to have the more intelligent members,
or those rare few with university degrees, trained as mediums. It gave her a
thrill to see these knowledgeable novices going into, and coming round from,
their first and second feeble trances.

Eventually
she recruited her young nephew, Tim, whom she had discovered to have no
religion at all. Tim had not enjoined, but she, perceiving his mind, had
promised secrecy about this activity where the family was concerned.

Meantime
Patrick had made a tremendous advance in divining how matters stood between
Harry and Carl on the other side, and in instructing Marlene, through Harry, how
best to develop her personality.

At the
first séance to be held by the newly-constructed Circle in Marlene’s flat,
Patrick had gone under in style with a quivering of the lower lip and chin,
upturned eyes and convulsive whinnies. A few threads of ectoplasm, like white
tape in the dim light, proceeded from the corners of his mouth. Then, in a
voice hugely louder than his own he announced,

‘I am
now coming in touch with the control. This is control. Henry will speak through
Patrick under the control of Carl.’

Two or
three of the Circle, as they had sat hand in hand round Patrick, shuffled
slightly at this mention of Carl and Henry, for that particular combine was, in
the experience of the Circle, exclusively interested in the affairs of Marlene
and did not seem aware of the claims of the Wider Infinity as a whole.

‘Guide
Henry speaking: my dear wife, there are two on earth who mean a lot to you. You
can depend upon them and especially upon one who will never desert you unto
death. Do not be deceived by appearances. I am well and happy. Do you remember
the Loebl Pass where we stopped at an inn and ate a marvellous omelette?’