‘Very observant of you,’ said Tom.
‘It is not only a question of letters and paint and luggage. Do not take what I say amiss but there is a kind of bloom on the both of you,’ the man persisted. ‘The bloom of the freshly married when the voyage of life lies all before you.’
‘Yes, we have lately cast off into the sea of marital life,’ said Helen, ‘marital life with its many shoals and shallows, its storms and its sunny days.’
‘My dear lady,’ said the man, his voice taking on a quality that was positively flowing and syrupy. ‘My dear young lady, you can certainly take a metaphor and stretch it. But to move from metaphor to actuality, are you travelling far today?’
‘To Durham,’ said Helen.
‘What about you?’ cut in Tom. ‘You cannot be going any distance since you’re travelling light.’
‘Durham is also my destination. A city on a hill.’
‘Going there on business?’ said Tom, giving the stranger a taste of his own inquisitiveness.
‘I reside there for the moment,’ said the man. ‘But I am always about my business. It never ceases.’
By now they were approaching the outskirts of the city. The green of the countryside was blotched with heaps of slag and skeletal pitheads and pinched lines of housing. Even the sheep in the fields seemed to have been dipped in a sooty dye. Helen looked as eagerly out of the window as she would have at an attractive prospect. Then the train ran across a gently curving viaduct and they had their first sight of the castle and the cathedral. The afternoon sun gave the stone a warm glow but the buildings were still massive and imposing.
‘Here we are!’ said the man, waving his hand as if he’d conjured up the scene himself. ‘The city on a hill.’
The train had scarcely begun to draw up alongside the platform when the tall gentleman leaped from his seat and took his valise from the rack in a single movement. He had the door unfastened before the train was fully stopped. He paused for an instant and made a kind of mock-bow towards Tom and Helen.
‘ Au revoir, Mr and Mrs A.’
And with that he stepped out on to the platform. By the time Helen and Tom had gathered their own luggage and got down, there was no sign of him. A few other people got off the train at the station, which was so new that the stonework had only just started to take on a darker, grimy colour. Among the alighting passengers was a tall, shabbily dressed man who stared at the retreating backs of Tom and Helen.
The Ansells took a battered old hansom from the railway station. Helen gave the driver an address in the old part of town called the South Bailey. As they were being driven downhill past terraces of new housing, Helen said, ‘I wonder if the man on the train is typical of the inhabitants of the city? I thought it would be full of miners.’
They drove across a bridge that straddled a river so dark in patches that it might have been running with liquid coal. Tom thought it was the River Wear. He had studied a town map before leaving London and recalled how the river looped round and back on itself so that the older part of Durham was isolated like a peninsula. Some loungers in artisan clothes turned from gazing into the black waters to look at the cab go by. To the right, high up on the bluff overlooking the river, were the castle remains and the twin towers at the western end of the cathedral. The carriage ascended slowly into this fortress-like area by a roundabout route, passing through a wide marketplace and then up cobbled streets that were lined with tearooms and confectioners and dress shops.
The road began to level out and they passed beneath the cathedral on its eastern side. Helen had never seen her aunt’s house before and had only the name to go by: Colt House, named for the mine-owner who had once lived there. Tom stuck his head through the trapdoor in the hansom roof and repeated the name to the driver who shook his head. Tom added that it was the residence of Miss Julia Howlett. The driver’s seamed face registered some kind of recognition at the name. Within a few moments they had drawn up before a broad-fronted house with a handsome pillared portico.
The Ansells got down. The driver produced their cases. Before Tom had finished paying him and while Helen was still studying the facade of Colt House, the front door flew open. A small woman came out at a run and nearly collided with Helen.
‘Helen, is it really you?’
She held Helen by the elbows and looked up at her face. She was tiny, bird-like.
‘Aunt Julia!’ said Helen. ‘You have not changed.’
‘But you have, my dear. Last time I saw you, you were so high – or so low, I should say. And this must be your husband Thomas.’
Tom shook hands with Miss Howlett. She had a darting eye, and he felt assessed within seconds. He wondered whether Helen felt the same twinge of discomfort. They weren’t exactly innocent visitors. They had come to persuade this woman to do what she probably had no wish to do.
Colt House
As they were talking in the hall, a stout and quite elderly man entered. He was carrying a bundle of papers under his right arm. White hair straggled from beneath his hat. He looked at Tom and Helen with curiosity.
‘Septimus!’ cried Aunt Julia. ‘You must meet my niece and her husband.’
The gentleman came forward. He awkwardly shifted the papers to his other arm and shook hands with the Ansells.
‘I have heard a deal about you,’ he said. ‘Miss Howlett has been greatly looking forward to your visit.’
‘Mr Sheridan – Septimus – is a lodger in Colt House,’ said Julia. ‘He has been here for so long that I may say he is almost part of the furniture!’
Far from being insulted, Septimus Sheridan smiled gently and bowed his head. He said to Helen, ‘You aunt is very good to me, Mrs Ansell.’
‘Now then, you two must be tired after your long journey. You will need to wash and change before dinner. We will be dining early because I have invited a few friends and neighbours for this evening.’
‘Not on our account, I hope,’ said Helen.
‘My dear, do not be so modest. But no, I had arranged this, ah, event before I knew you were coming. Even so your arrival is very timely. You see, I have asked a good friend of mine to provide us with a manifestation tonight.’
‘A manifestation, Miss Howlett?’ said Tom. He had an uneasy feeling he knew what was coming.
‘Oh do not call me Miss Howlett, Tom. If I am an aunt to Helen, I shall be one to you also. But, yes, we are having a manifestation. A gentleman by the name of Eustace Flask is to show us his powers. He will communicate with the other side, he will bring us messages from beyond the grave. I am sure your mother has mentioned Mr Flask, Helen? I have been filling my letters with him. He is a remarkable individual.’
‘She did mention someone of that name,’ said Helen, glancing at Tom. Her look gave nothing away. Well, thought Tom, this has come sooner than expected. But it was good to have an early opportunity to get the measure of their opponent.
Aunt Julia talked with enthusiasm on the subject of spiritualism while they ate their early dinner. But her enthusiasm was oddly impersonal. She wasn’t attempting to make contact with the ‘other side’ for herself or to soothe some recent grief. Rather, she was genuinely eager to further the work of those ‘brave and pioneering’ individuals who, in the face of misunderstanding and even persecution, were attempting to ‘pierce the veil between the mortal and the eternal.’
Tom caught Helen’s eye while she was coming out with all this. Yes, their task was going to be a difficult one. It did not seem to him, either, that Aunt Julia was physically weak or mentally failing and about to give away her worldly wealth, as Helen’s mother had implied. Perhaps that had just been Mrs Scott’s way of getting them to go on their mission to Durham.
It was difficult to work out Septimus Sheridan’s exact position in the household. From some comments he let slip during the meal, Tom understood that he spent most of his time in the cathedral library engaged on some scholarly work or other, which explained the bundle of papers he brought to the house. Certainly, he had the dry and dusty look of one who most enjoys old libraries. Even his hair was the whitish-yellow tint of old parchment. But every so often he’d glance at Julia Howlett in a way that was half admiring, half timorous. Whenever she was speaking he listened with particular attention and he was quick to agree with her, whatever the subject. She, for her part, treated Septimus with a weary familiarity. He called her ‘Miss Howlett’ while she called him by his first name.