She walked out into the light. The light, she would say, is where we come from, and it’s to the light we return. Through the hall ran small detonations of applause, which she acknowledged only with a sweep of her thick lashes. She walked, slowly, right to the front of the stage, to the taped line. Her head turned. Her eyes searched, against the dazzle. Then she spoke, in her special platform voice. “This young lady.” She was looking three rows back. “This lady here. Your name is—? Well, Leanne, I think I have a message for you.”
Colette released her breath from the tight space where she held it.
Alone, spotlit, perspiring slightly, Alison looked down at her audience. Her voice was low, sweet, and confident, and her aura was a perfectly adjusted aquamarine, flowing like a silk shawl about her shoulders and upper arms. “Now Lee, I want you to sit back in your seat, take a deep breath, and relax. And that goes for all of you. Put on your happy faces—you’re not going to see anything that will frighten you. I won’t be going into a trance, and you won’t be seeing spooks, or hearing spirit music.” She looked around, smiling, taking in the rows. “So why don’t you all sit back and enjoy the evening? All I do is, I just tune in, I just have to listen hard and decide who’s out there. Now, if I get a message for you, please raise your hand, shout up—because if you don’t, it’s very frustrating for the spirits trying to come through. Don’t be shy, you just shout up or give me a wave. Then my helpers will rush to you with the microphone—don’t be afraid of it when it comes to you, just hold it steady and speak up.”
They were all ages. The old had brought cushions for their bad backs; the young had bare midriffs and piercings. The young had stuffed their coats under their chairs, but their elders had rolled theirs and held them on their knees like swaddled babies. “Smile,” Al told them. “You’re here to enjoy yourselves, and so am I. Now, Lee my love, let me get back to you—where were we? There’s a lady here called Kathleen, who’s sending lots of love in your direction. Who would that be, Leanne?”
Leanne was a dud. She was a young lass of seventeen or so, hung about with unnecessary buttons and bows, her hair in twee little bunches, her face peaky. Kathleen, Al suggested, was her granny: but Leanne wouldn’t own it because she didn’t know her granny’s name.
“Think hard, darling,” Al coaxed. “She’s desperate for a word with you.”
But Lee shook her bunches. She said she didn’t think she had a granny; which made some of the audience snigger.
“Kathleen says she lives in a field, at a certain amount of money … bear with me … Penny. Penny Meadow, do you know that address? Up the hill from the market—such a pull, she says, when you’ve got a bag full of potatoes.” She smiled at the audience. “This seems to be before you could order your groceries online,” she said. “Honestly, when you think how they lived in those days—we forget to count our blessings, don’t we? Now Lee, what about Penny Meadow? What about Granny Kathleen walking uphill?”
Leanne indicated incredulity. She lived on Sandringham Court, she said.
“Yes, I know,” Al said. “I know where you live, sweetheart, but this isn’t anywhere around here, it’s a filthy old place, Lancashire, Yorkshire, I’m getting a smudge on my fingers, it’s grey, it’s ash, it’s something below the place you hang the washing—could it be Ashton-under-Lyne? Never mind,” Alison said. “Go home, Leanne, and ask your mum what Granny was called. Ask her where she lived. Then you’ll know, won’t you, that she was here for you tonight.”
There was a patter of applause. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t earned it. But they acknowledged that she’d tried; and Leanne’s silliness, deeper than average, had brought the audience over to her side. It was not uncommon to find family memory so short, in these towns where nobody comes from, these southeastern towns with their floating populations and their car parks where the centre should be. Nobody has roots here; and maybe they don’t want to acknowledge their roots or recall their grimy places of origin and their illiterate foremothers up north. These days, besides, the kids don’t remember back more than eighteen months—the drugs, she supposed.
She was sorry for Kathleen, panting and striving, her wheezy goodwill evaporating, unacknowledged; Penny Meadow and all the rows about seemed shrouded in a northern smog. Something about a cardigan, she was saying. A certain class of dead people was always talking about cardigans. The button off it, the pearl button, see if it’s dropped behind the dresser drawer, that little drawer, that top drawer, I found a threepenny bit there once, back of the drawer, it gets down between the you-know, slips down the whatsit, it’s wedged like—and so I took it, this threepence, and I bought me friend a cake with a walnut on top. Yes, yes, Al said, they’re lovely, those kind of cakes: but it’s time to go, pet. Lie down, Kathleen. You go and have a nice lie-down. I will, Kathleen said, but tell her I want her mum to look for that button. And by the way, if you ever see my friend Maureen Harrison, tell her I’ve been looking for her this thirty year.
Colette’s eyes darted around, looking for the next pickup. Her helpers were a boy of seventeen, in a sort of snooker player’s outfit, a shiny waistcoat and a skewed bow tie; and, would you believe it, the dozy little slapper from the bar. Colette thought, I’ll need to be everywhere. The first five minutes, thank God, are no guide to the evening to come.
Look, this is how you do it. Suppose it’s a slow night, no one in particular pushing your buttons; only the confused distant chitchat that comes from the world of the dead. So you’re looking around the hall and smiling, saying, “Look, I want to show you how I do what I do. I want to show you it’s nothing scary, it’s just, basically, abilities that we all have. Now can I ask, how many of you,” she pauses, looks around, “how many of you have sometimes felt you’re psychic?”
After that it’s according to, as Colette would say, the demographics. There are shy towns and towns where the hands shoot up, and of course as soon as you’re onstage you can sense the mood, even if you weren’t tipped off about it, even if you’ve never been in that particular place before. But a little word, a word of encouragement, a “don’t hold back on me,” and sooner or later the hands go up. You look around—there’s always that compromise between flattering stage lighting and the need to see their faces. Then you choose a woman near the front, not so young as Leanne but not so old she’s completely buggered up, and you get her to tell you her name.
“Gillian.”
Gillian. Right. Here goes.
“Gill, you’re the sort of woman—well”—she gives a little laugh and a shake of her head—“well, you’re a bit of a human dynamo, I mean that’s how your friends describe you, isn’t it? Always on the go, morning, noon, and night, you’re the sort of person, am I right, who can keep all the plates spinning? But if there’s one thing, if there’s one thing, you know, all your friends say, it’s that you don’t give enough time to yourself. I mean, you’re the one everybody depends on, you’re the one everybody comes to for advice, you’re the Rock of Gibraltar, aren’t you, but then you have to say to yourself, hang on, hang on a minute, who do I go to when I want advice? Who’s there for Gilly, when it comes to the crunch? The thing is you’re very supportive, of your friends, your family, it’s just give give give, and you do find yourself, just now and then, catching yourself up and saying, hang on now, who’s giving back to me? And the thing about you, Gillian—now stop me if you think I’m wrong—is that you’ve got so much to give, but the problem is you’re so busy running round picking up after other people and putting their lives to rights, that you haven’t hardly got any opportunity to develop your own—I mean your own talents, your own interests. When you think back, when you think back to what made you happy as a young girl, and all the things you wanted out of life—you see, you’ve been on what I call a Cycle of Caring, and it’s not given you, Gill, it’s not given you the opportunity to look within, to look beyond. You really are capable, now I’m not telling you this to flatter you, but you really are capable of the most extraordinary things if you put your mind to it, if you just give all those talents of yours a chance to breathe. Now am I right? Say if I’m not right. Yes, you’re nodding. Do you recognize yourself?”