Gillian has of course been nodding since the first time Al paused for breath. In Alison’s experience there’s not a woman alive who, once past her youth, doesn’t recognize this as a true and fair assessment of her character and potential. Or there may be such a woman, out in some jungle or desert, but these blighted exceptions are not likely to be visiting Alison’s Evening of Psychic Arts.
She is now established as a mind reader; and if she can tell Gillian something about herself, her family, so much the better. But she’s really done enough—Gillian’s brimming with gratification—so even if nobody comes through from Spirit, she can just move right on to whoever is her next target. But long before this point Alison has become conscious of a background mutter (at times rising to a roar) situated not there in the hall but towards the back of her skull, behind her ears, resonating privately in the bone. And on this evening, like every other, she fights down the panic we would all feel, trapped with a crowd of dead strangers whose intentions towards us we can’t know. She takes a breath, she smiles, and she starts her peculiar form of listening. It is a silent sensory ascent; it is like listening from a stepladder, poised on the top rung; she listens at the ends of her nerves, at the limit of her capacities. When you’re doing platform work, it’s rare that the dead need coaxing. The skill is in isolating the voices, picking out one and letting the others recede—making them recede, forcing them back if need be, because there are some big egos in the next world. Then taking that voice, the dead voice you’ve chosen, and fitting it to the living body, to the ears that are ready to hear.
So: time to work the room. Colette tensed, forward on her toes, ready to sprint with the mike. “This lady. I feel some connection with the law here. Do you have to see a solicitor?”
“Constantly,” the woman said. “I’m married to one.”
There was a yell of laughter. Al joined it. Colette smirked. She won’t lose them now, she thought. Of course she wanted Al to succeed; of course I do, she told herself. They had a joint mortgage, after all; financially they were tied together. And if I quit working for her, she thought, how would I get another job? When it comes to YOUR LAST POSITION, what would I put on my CV?
“Who’s got indigestion at the back?” Al’s forehead was damp, the skin at the nape of her neck was clammy. She liked to have clothes with pockets so she could carry a folded cologne tissue, ready for a surreptitious dab, but you don’t usually get pockets in women’s clothes, and it looks stupid taking a handbag out on stage. “This lady,” she said. She pointed; the lucky opals winked. “This is the one I’m speaking to. You’re the one with the heartburn, I can feel it. I have someone here for you who’s very happy in Spirit World, a Margo, Marje, can you accept that? A petite woman wearing a turquoise blouse, she was very fond of it, wasn’t she? She says you’ll remember.”
“I do remember, I do,” the woman said. She took the mike gingerly and held it as if it might detonate. “Marje was my aunt. She was fond of turquoise and also lilac.”
“Yes,”—and now Al softened her voice—“and she was like a mother to you, wasn’t she? She’s still looking out for you, in Spirit World. Now tell me, have you seen your GP about that indigestion?”
“No,” the woman said. “Well, they’re so busy.”
“They’re well paid to look after you, my love.”
“Coughs and colds all around you,” the woman said. “You come out worse than you went in—and you never see the same doctor twice.”
There was an audible smirk from the audience, a wash of fellow feeling. But the woman herself looked fretful. She wanted to hear from Marje: the dyspepsia she lived with every day.
“Stop making excuses.” Al almost stamped her foot. “Marje says, why are you putting it off? Call the surgery tomorrow morning and book yourself in. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
Isn’t there? Relief dawned on the woman’s face; or an emotion that would be relief, when it clarified; for the moment she was tremulous, a hand on her ribs, folded in on herself as if to protect the space of the pain. It would take her some time to give up thinking it was cancer.
Now it’s the glasses ploy. Look for a woman in middle age who isn’t wearing glasses and say, have you had your eyes tested recently? Then the whole world of optometry is at your command. If she had an eye test last week, she’ll say, yes, as a matter of fact I have. They’ll applaud. If she says no, not recently, she’ll be thinking, but I know I ought to … and you say, get it checked, I’ve a feeling you need a new prescription. As for the woman who says she wears no glasses ever: oh, my love, those headaches of yours! Why don’t you just pop along to Boots? I can see you, a month from now, in some really pretty squarish frames.
You could ask them if they need to see the dentist, since everybody does, all the time; but you don’t want to see them flinch. You’re giving them a gentle nudge, not a pinch. It’s about impressing them without scaring them, softening the edges of their fright and disbelief.
“This lady—I see a broken wedding ring—did you lose your husband? He passed quite recently? And very recently you planted a rosebush in his memory.”
“Not exactly,” the woman said. “I placed some—in fact it was carnations—”
“Carnations in his memory,” said Al, “because they were his favourite, weren’t they?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the woman. Her voice slid off the mike; she was too worried to keep her head still.
“You know, aren’t men funny?” Al threw it out to the audience. “They just don’t like talking about these things; they think it means they’re oversensitive or something—as if we’d mind. But I can assure you, he’s telling me now, carnations were his favourite.”
“But where is he?” the woman said, still off the mike. She wasn’t going to quarrel about the flowers; she was pressed against the back of her seat, almost hostile, on the verge of tears.
Sometimes they waited for you afterwards, the punters, at the back exit, when you were running head down for the car park. In the ghastly lights behind the venue, in the drizzle and the rain, they’d say, when you gave me the message I didn’t know, I didn’t understand, I couldn’t take it in. “I know it’s difficult,” Al would say, trying to soothe them, trying to help them, but trying, for God’s sake, to get them off her back; she would be sweating, shaking, desperate to get into the car and off. But now, thank God, she had Colette to manage the situation; Colette would smoothly pass over their business card, and say, “When you feel ready, you might like to come for a private reading.”