Mean Spirit (45 page)

‘So that’s why you’re in hiding, is it? I ain’t too bright, but I can’t believe that.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Cindy looked frankly into Vera’s plump, olive-skinned face; an intelligent woman cast into the lowliest of employment
situations on some miserable pittance, for the crime of being widowed. ‘I didn’t want to compromise your position here.’

‘Position?
Don’t make me laugh.’

‘Vera, how much do you know about your employers?’

‘I never even seen my employers. I hear about this festival coming off, walk into that conservatory place where all the admin people are getting it together. I says, you got any jobs going, and this woman grabs hold of me, brung me down the kitchens – looks like a flaming bombsite – and she says, Here, can you do anything with that? So I rolls up me sleeves, works me knees off, fourteen hours non-stop, and I got me a job. That’s how you always got jobs in my day.’

‘You came all the way from London?’

‘I’m not
that
daft. Nah, lived up here for years now. My late husband, he was a Brummie.’

‘So you know nothing about the people running this show.’

Cindy was aware that he’d slipped back, near enough, into his normal voice. The shock of being rumbled, he supposed.

‘No, dear.’ Vera shook her head, opened the scullery door a crack, peered through at the bustle of the caterers preparing a sumptuous, Victorian banquet for the Mayor of Malvern, the MP for Worcester and so on. Closed the door quietly. ‘But it sounds like you do. So if you want any more out of me, Miss Bacton, you better come clean, you had.’

‘Clean?’ Cindy slumped in an unsteady farmhouse chair. The dog, Malcolm, sat as still as a bollard on the flagged floor. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Consider me an investigative journalist. Consider the
Vision
stall as something of a front, a cover. And your employers … consider them under investigation.’

‘What for?’

‘Let’s call it fraud. Misrepresentation. Vera, would you perhaps be amenable to assisting me a little tonight? My movements appear to be a trifle restricted at present. I could make it worth your while … in due course.’

‘Worth me while? What do you think I am, a prostitute?’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘All right, listen. I’m not daft, and yeah, I do keep my eyes open. I been making breakfasts for people the past two days, been seeing who’s who around here. I seen that geezer always smiling, doing his
little laugh and I’m thinking, where’ve I seen
him
before? On the telly? Played a gangster, some’ing like that? And then I realize …’

‘Ah.’

‘Ain’t life strange,’ Vera said. ‘When I was fifteen I worked in the biscuit factory at Bow, and I had a mate called Paula what went out with a boy called Gary Seward.’

‘It’s a small world.’

‘Not that small. He was putting it about all over east London. She only went out with him twice, mind. Took her to the pictures and when they wouldn’t let him in for nothing, he slashed two full rows of seats on the way out.’

‘Could not tolerate it,’ Cindy mused.

‘But that wasn’t the reason she didn’t go out with him again. It was just she found out he was only thirteen.’

‘Heavens.’

‘See, his mother died. They’d moved up from the country when he was little. And then his ma got killed in an accident when he was twelve, and he went wild after that, apparently. Nobody could control him.’

‘And what is his position here, Vera?’

‘Boss man, ain’t he? Wouldn’t do nothing without he was the boss, would he? They’re all terrified of him, for all he’s supposed to be straight these days. Course, when he first heard my accent – this is Gary – he made me sit down, gives me a glass of champagne.
Very
friendly. Old East Enders together. I didn’t say nothing about Paula, mind.’

‘And did he tell you why he was here?’

‘He
said’,
Vera smiled, more than a trifle cynically, ‘that he was Tired of Earthly Concerns.’

‘There’s spiritual.’

‘Tell
that
to the bleeding troops,’ said Vera. ‘I tell you, Cindy … it
is
Cindy, isn’t it?’

Cindy smiled weakly.

‘Yeah, I thought so. It was the voice done it. I never bought a Lottery ticket in me life, but I always watch the show. Very amusing, you and that bird.’ Vera paused meaningfully. ‘It’s you and him, ain’t it? Kurt Campbell. We all saw that bust up you had on the box. Made him look an idiot and he didn’t like that. Has he got back at you in some way and now you’re getting back at him?’

‘I’m really not in a great position to get back at anybody, am I?’

‘Seems not. They’re all after you now.’

‘So I imagine.’

‘In hiding, eh? I reckon some papers would pay a fair bit to know where you are.’

‘A price on my head, is it? I feel like Butch Cassidy. Except, possibly, for the butch part. So …. what do you propose to do about this opportunity, Vera?’

‘Puts me in a funny position, don’t it?’

Outside, the snow had stopped, but the fingers of dusk were feeling through the wooded hill behind Overcross. It would be dark in under half an hour.

‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ Cindy said. ‘I’m told I can command a substantial sum for my … story. Far far more than anyone could expect for shopping me. Split it with you, I will. Whatever it amounts to. Fetch me pen and paper and I will put that in writing.’

Vera looked at him for a moment and then laughed hugely, clapping her hands to her apron. ‘I don’t want your money. I’ll have a kiss from that bloody Kelvyn Kite. You tell me what I can do to help.’

‘I won’t forget this, Vera.’

‘Go on! Get on with it!’

‘Well, to begin with, I should be most interested to know what happened to the furniture brought here from Cheltenham.’

‘Can’t help you there. Never seen no furniture. I could try and find out.’

‘If you could.’

‘Anything else?’

‘If I … have to go away for a while … would you look after my dog?’

‘Blimey. Sounds like you think you might not be coming back.’

Cindy laughed.

‘I got to work later on,’ Vera said. ‘Bloody waitressing. One of the girls fell down six stairs, twisted her ankle. Muggins got volunteered. If I shut the dog in here with some water and scraps, will he be all right?’

‘He has a stoical temperament.’ Cindy had taken off the wig concealing the mauve hair, unbuttoned the tweed jacket to reveal the purple woolly.

‘There you are, see,’ Vera said. ‘You were underneath all along. That furniture you’re looking for, where would it most likely be? Not something you could easily miss, is it?’

‘What about the room where the seance is to take place?’

‘No way, dear. Just the big dinner tables, lots of chairs. They won’t get nothing else in there now and they’ll be starting dinner in an hour.’

‘Mr Seward is not on the guest list, then.’

‘No way.’

‘But definitely Miss Callard.’

‘This is the coloured lady?’

‘The medium. The one who is to conduct the seance.’

‘Nah, you’re wrong,’ Vera said. ‘It’s some geezer.’

‘I don’t think so, Vera.’

‘I’m telling you, there’s no place been laid for a Callard. Just this … Oh, blimey … same name as the old Prime Minister. Douglas-Home?’

‘Dunglas
-Home?’ Cindy stared at her.
‘Daniel
Dunglas-Home? Vera, he’s been dead since 1886.’

‘Well, all I know is, they’ve made him a little sign thing for his place at the dinner table.’

‘Damn.’

This meant, of course, an actor was playing the part of Dunglas-Home. It meant the
whole
thing was a fake. An illusion. Undisguised trickery.

So what on earth was Persephone Callard’s part in this? Wasn’t going to be in the audience, that was for sure.

An explicit dread seized Cindy.

Of
course.

There would be two seances tonight. One a sideshow, a costume drama, a parody.

The other – with Seward and Miss Callard – would be the business.

‘Vera …’ When Cindy arose, his legs felt weak. ‘One more thing. Would you happen to know which room Persephone Callard is occupying?’

‘That’s easy,’ Vera said. ‘Room Three. First landing, turn left.’

‘Thank you.’

XLVIII

‘NO,’ GRAYLE SAID, ‘DON’T PUT THE LIGHT ON.’

‘Hey … you can’t be embarrassed, surely. Nobody’s embarrassed any more. You’re from
New York,
for Christ’s sake.’

‘I just don’t like artificial light, is all.’

On account of, in the light, we can see into each other’s eyes, and I don’t like what I understand you can do with yours. I don’t wanna wake up, if you don’t mind, to a snap of the fingers and semen running down my inner thighs.

She sat on the edge of the four-poster bed with her glass of champagne. So far, only her raincoat had come off. Not the jeans, not the baseball sweater.

‘Kurt, can we talk?’

‘I don’t …’ He gave this kind of exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t want to talk. I didn’t come up all those stairs for a fucking
light conversation.
Alice, I thought you were
up
for this.’

Grayle looked at the stiff shadow and laughed. ‘You big stars, you’re so goddamn
presumptuous.’

Kurt laughed too, softly. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘Alice, I wanted you from the moment you came into my hotel suite last night. You’re not the consolation prize, you’re my very special present and I would very much like to … unwrap you …’ His hands were on her shoulders now, lips close to her ear. ‘Snip the string, peel off the giftwrap, slip my fingers through the tissue-paper …’

‘Uh-huh.’ She stood up, at the same time picking up the champagne bottle.

‘Christ, Alice, come
on …
what’s the matter with you?’

‘I have another question.’

‘What?’ Angry.

OK, here we go
…

‘Down in the banqueting hall just now, when you were talking about Anthony Abblow and Dunglas-Home, you said how people could be hypnotized to see or not see a ghost, right?’

‘You want to discuss fucking
ghosts
?’

‘Did you ever do that?’

Grayle moved slowly round the bed. Up from the festival site, way below, floated the windy rhythms of an Andean-type band. Through the window you could see lights coming on, on the fringe of the site.

Kurt said, ‘Alice, what are you talking about?’

Her foot touched Kurt’s pants, on the floor where he’d tossed them. She bent down slowly, keeping the champagne bottle from clinking on the boards.

‘Did you ever hypnotize somebody to see a ghost?’

Feeling for the pocket where he’d put the key. A key that size, it should be …

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Alice.’

‘Well, like …’ she was being real quiet, in case a bunch of coins or something spilled out ‘… like you could say to someone – under hypnosis – you could plant some kind of auto-suggestion thing, so that every time they came into certain circumstances, like they entered a particular room or something, it would be there, this ghost. And it’d keep happening to them. Scaring the shit out of them. Until you hypnotized them again and took it away.’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Kurt said. ‘You can’t make someone do something that would be repugnant to them or see something terrifying they wouldn’t normally believe in.’

‘But suppose they were the kind of person who …’ scrabbling at the pants. Got to be in a pocket.
Got
to ‘… who would not be that scared. Who would not think it was so weird …’

‘Like a medium,’ Kurt said.

‘I guess.’

‘You guess.’

The light blinded her. She dropped the pants.

Kurt Campbell was sitting up on the bed. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t erect. When she was through blinking she saw that the long key lay on the coverlet between his legs.

‘Uh … right.’ She breathed quickly in and out. ‘OK, Kurt, here’s what’s gonna happen. You … are gonna toss me that key. You’re gonna stay right there on that bed. And I’m gonna unlock the door.’

‘Really.’

‘Uh huh. In return for this consideration and in light of me perhaps failing to make it sufficiently clear that you were not gonna get laid, I will formally undertake not to write about any of this in the
New York Courier
or any other publication. Or indeed my diary. Hell, Kurt, I will forget about it.’

‘You really don’t need me, do you?’

‘Kurt, in other circumstances, who can say—’

‘Because you’ve just fucked yourself very nicely, haven’t you, Grayle?’

Silence. The Andean band had stopped. There was no audible applause, just the wind whipping the window.

‘What … what did you call me?’

Kurt said, ‘Gary recognized you at once.’

‘What … whaddaya mean?’ She backed up against the door. ‘Who’s Gary? I don’t know any Gary.’

‘He and a friend were visiting Seffi at Mysleton Lodge one night. You apparently became quite hysterical. Overreacted.’

Oh no.
She saw the eyes through the holes in the hood, heard the cold voice,
You … are dead.
A numbness began to eat in.
Oh, please God, no.

‘Naturally, he made a point of finding out who you were. But as he didn’t get any further than your name and the fact that you were American, it was quite a stroke of luck you turning up here.’

‘Oh …’ Felt like she was going to vomit. ‘Oh, dear God.’

‘Gary was going to have a chat with you earlier on, but I said, “Gary, the woman’s been driving me potty. I’ve just … I’ve really got to shag her, you know?” Gary was fine about that. He says, “OK, you’ve got two hours.”’

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t think.

‘You could’ve been so much less tense by now, you silly bitch. Afterwards, I’d have relaxed you. It could all have been so much easier for you.’

Grayle found that she was still holding the champagne bottle. She lifted it, hefted it like an axe.

‘OK. Either you give me that key …’ her hand was trembling; the bottle was almost full, champagne glugging out, splashing on the floor. ‘Or I hurl this through the window.’