Page 114 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
Even through the gloom I could see Eddie’s white teeth as he smiled at me across the table with happy unconcern. Mrs Bream took my left hand in her cold, bird-boned claw.
‘Open your minds,’ whispered Madame Duval thrillingly. ‘Close your eyes, and let the Others make contact with us … Are you there? We hear you!’
There was a silence, duringwhich I for one was not thinking about lost wives, but about Dante, and about how we seemed to be strong for each other when we couldn’t be strong for ourselves, and of how I felt slightly affronted by the ghastly secret in my nightmare cupboard merely being Elvis.
I mean, how scary ishe? Even Jane made a more satisfiying monster.
‘There is a dark presence here, trying to bar our way … onewho seeks to stop us making contact with the Other Side,’ Madame hissed rather pointedly, and I heard Dante give an exasperated sigh.
‘But we are stronger – we will open the door to our loved ones!’ Mrs Bream declared. ‘I feel them close to us, waiting.’
After that it was all very peaceful for several minutes except for the crackling of the logs, until Mrs Bream’s hand jerked in mine and shegave a sudden snoring snort.
I jumped, and was just about to nudge her awake when she said in a deep voice totally unlike her normal mincingly precise one: ‘I am here. Who summons me?’
Leo Bream leaned forward and whispered: ‘She’s in a trance! That is her control, Two Bison, an Indian chief.’
‘Two Bison?’ I queried, feeling the hysterical laughterbubbling again, but then there was an intakeof breath from Madame’s direction, probably indignation due to being upstaged in the medium stakes.
But if so she managed to control it, saying clearly: ‘Welcome, Two Bison! Can you give us news of our loved ones, now passed to the other side?’
‘Some are here awaiting,’ said the deep voice. ‘Whom do you seek?’
‘My daughter. Emma, my daughter – is she there?’
There was a pause.
‘Mother …’whispered a thread of a voice that seemed to issue not so much from Mrs Bream but from thin air.
‘Emma? My Emma – at last you have come to me!’
‘Mother,’ sighed the voice. ‘Leave him be.’
There was a gasp: ‘Who – what do you mean? I—’
‘Leave him. The baby … not his. Leave him, leave Dante … alone.’
There was a muffled exclamation from Dante, and I pressed his hand in the darkness.
‘Emma…’ sobbed Madame Duval. ‘Emma …!’
‘Emma has gone,’ Two Bison said levelly. ‘Soon I too must go, but first Paul is here. Paul wishes me to say: Dan, my friend. Always my friend. Not your fault.’
Dante’s fingers clenched painfully over mine.
‘If you’re still there, Two Bison,’ I found myself saying to an entity that might, or might not, be real, ‘can I just ask you if Tanya is there? Can Tanyaspeak to us?’
There was the ghost of a laugh. ‘She is not here, but she is closer than you think,’ he said, and then there was nothing except the sound of harsh breathing and Madame Duval’s sobbing.
As you can imagine, that was pretty well the end of that, although Madame got even more hysterical and told Dantethat she’d known it wasn’t his baby all along, but it was all still his fault.
Then she sort of collapsed, and had to be escorted by Reg to her room.
Eddie, who seemed to have sailed through the experience with his mind on other things, went to help him, then came back and started rearranging the room.
Dante hadn’t said anything at all to Madame Duval, or indeed anyone else, just sat there looking somehow drained. I simply didn’t know what to think about the whole experience,except that Mrs Bream looked pretty well flaked out, and that seemed genuine enough.
‘She’s always like this afterwards,’ Leo explained, tenderly helping her to her feet. ‘And we didn’t expect the spirits to come through her tonight, but through Madame Duval, or she’d never have tried the pendulum for Jason first. She’s exhausted, and had better go to bed.’
