The Jewel Box (20 page)

The humming had lasted three or four minutes now. The audience as a whole was still and rapt, but Grace shifted on her seat and tried to stifle a yawn. When her stomach gurgled, O’Connell turned and raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t help it,” Grace whispered. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“What happened to lunch? Are you on some crazy diet that doesn’t allow you to eat during daylight hours?”

“I had a deadline. But you wouldn’t understand the prosaic necessities of my working life, would you? The meat and vegetables of it all.” Heads were turning. They were like naughty children at the back of a classroom with their whispers and their giggles. “Where shall we go when this pantomime is over?”

“I think we’d better go someplace that’ll give me a better understanding of the meat and vegetables of your working life. Since I obviously want to understand you completely and utterly, my darling.” This was delivered with a squeeze of the hand.

“What are you up to?”

“Shh.” O’Connell placed a finger on his lips. “You’re disturbing the ‘ether.’”

“Well, we certainly don’t want that.” Grace peered again at the humming woman, and then at the crowd around her. “There’ll need to be a lot of spirits in that ether if everyone here’s to get their money’s worth!”

The humming grew louder and climbed a note or two up the octave. The woman sitting to Grace’s right clutched at the jet beads around her neck with gnarled hands.

“Imagine how many shillings have changed hands here tonight,” whispered Grace. “What sort of person makes a living out of other people’s deaths?”

“An undertaker? A florist, a stonemason, a grave digger, a doctor, a lawyer…I imagine Mrs. McKellar would say she has a God-given gift and a vocation to help the needy, but that she also has costs to cover and mouths to feed.”

“Yes, I expect she would.”

“Quiet at the back!” The woman’s green eyes were open
and directing a ferocious glare at Grace. “Keep your trap shut or sling your hook.”

“Very spiritual,” Grace muttered as Mrs McKellar’s eyes slid closed again and the humming was resumed. From all around the room, people were staring at Grace. They should by rights have been a bunch of elderly people, this audience. This ought not to have been an appealing evening excursion for men and women in their thirties and twenties; for boys and girls barely over the age of consent.

Everyone in this room has been floored by grief, thought Grace. None of them is free of it yet.

“Ah, Edwin, there you are. And about time, too.” Mrs. McKellar rose to her feet, the yellow gown hanging in voluminous folds as she swayed gently, one hand clutched to her forehead. She had already explained to the audience that her “spirit guide” was a boy by the name of Edwin who’d died in the influenza epidemic after the war. It was Edwin who would communicate with the spirits on her behalf. “Who is he, Edwin? Tell us his name.” She paused then, cupped her hand to her ear. “Did you say Archie?” Her eyes were open again now. “Or Alfie?” At this last name there was a sharp intake of breath from a woman near the front. “Alfie,” Mrs McKellar confirmed. “What do you have to say, Alfie? Something about the children?”

Grace could just about see the woman who’d gasped, between heads. She had to be forty or so. At the word “children,” her shoulders slumped. Grace wondered what her facial expression showed.

“Alfie is very sorry,” said Mrs. McKellar to the woman, “that he didn’t give you any children”—and then, after a searching pause during which the woman tilted her head slightly to one side—“who survived.”

There was a choking sound. The woman had started to cry.

“Anything you’d like to say to him, dear?”

“Only that I’ll always love him.” The woman’s voice was cracking.

“He says he loves you, too. He’s watching over you from the other side.”

“This is obscene,” Grace whispered.

“He says you should look after the box,” added Mrs. McKellar.

“The box?” The woman appeared to sit up straighter at this. Her voice became sharp. “
Where
is the box?”

But Mrs. McKellar was done with Alfie. There was a little girl trying to get through now. A girl in a white nightie with a rag doll. This physical detail alerted two sets of grieving parents among the audience, who delivered up their dead daughters’ names. A moment later Mrs. McKellar was able to confirm the child was Edith, not Mary, and offered up the usual vague reassurances of eternal love from the other side.

“There’s not even any skill in this,” whispered Grace. “It might as well be me up there. She’s a vulture, and they’re too desperate to see it.”

“What about Alfie’s box?” said O’Connell. “Where did she get that from?”

“Oh, everyone keeps something valuable in a box. It was a racing certainty.”

“There’s a soldier here,” announced Mrs. McKellar. And Grace saw that awful hope on the faces of almost everyone around her. “An officer. Can’t quite spot the rank or regiment. He’s tall, with reddish hair.”

O’Connell elbowed her in the ribs. “Listen up, Gracie. This could be your moment.” His face wore that devilish
gleam. Was this why they were here? So he could watch her reaction when this charlatan started spouting about dead soldiers? Not for the first time, she felt like a specimen being taken up between his thumb and forefinger and placed under a microscope.

“What’s your name, sonny?” said the woman.

A deep breath and another glance at O’Connell. He was just joking with her, that was all. He’d touched a sore point, probably without even knowing he’d done it. They’d spotted the poster together, a couple of days ago, and had come here for a giggle. They hadn’t guessed that it would be like this. They hadn’t thought it through properly.

“What was that, Edwin?” Mrs. McKellar had her hand on her forehead, and was making as though she was struggling to hear something. “A ‘W,’ did you say?”

Wilkins.

The word was there in her head, and her heart gave a thud, even as she tried to get a hold of herself.

“There are two soldiers here,” said Mrs. McKellar. “Brothers. They look so much alike.”

O’Connell gripped her arm, hard. She kept her eyes on Mrs. McKellar, not wanting to look at him. Not wanting to look at anyone around her either—to see her own tension and excitement reflected in their faces. She was not one of them.

“Is it a ‘W,’ Edwin?” The clairvoyant’s voice grew louder. “Edwin, I need names.”

Grace closed her eyes, longing for this hideous, suspenseful moment to be over. Behind her eyelids, George and Steven were sitting at the Rutherfords’ kitchen table, playing cards.

“Oh, so it’s an ‘M’ now?” Mrs. McKellar sounded irritated. “Edwin, you really need to learn your letters better.”

No “W” then. No Wilkins.

“Grace.” O’Connell’s hand was still on her arm. “Are you all right?”

“Pardon, Edwin? Did you say Michael? Matthew?”

The woman beside Grace sniffed loudly and clawed at the jet beads.

“Do you want to leave, darling?” His voice was full of concern. And perhaps something that was more than just concern. Grace allowed herself to turn and look at him.

“She’s falling!” The psychic staggered and grabbed at her chair. “It’s such a long way down! Poor girl, lying there on the ground with her necklace broken and her neck, too. Pearls scattered all around her.”

“Let’s get out of here.” O’Connell got to his feet, reaching for Grace’s hand. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

It was late—about 3.00 a.m. From outside the office window, the streetlights had joined forces with the moon to cast a silvery glow across the entirely empty surface of the long, oak desk. The floor was scattered with pencils, a pen, an ink blotter, a framed photograph of a woman with elaborate hair, two foolscap files, some loose sheets of paper and a telephone; the receiver of which lay as far distant as the cord would allow, in wild telephonic abandon.

Grace and O’Connell were sitting side by side on the dusty carpet, their backs against the wall, sharing a cigarette, tapping their ash into a china teacup. Her hair was tousled and her legs were bare. Her clothes were strewn somewhere among the desk debris. His tie was undone and his shirt open. He’d already retrieved his trousers from the mess and put them on again. Grace rather liked the fact that the bold, blasé O’Connell was too nervous to be here without his pants for more than a few minutes.

“What’s his name, the guy who sits in this office?” O’Connell tugged on the bottle of white wine he’d smuggled out from Ciro’s under his jacket, and passed it across to her.

“Aubrey Pearson. He’s one of the two brothers who own the company. He’s repellent.”

“What does he think of you?”

“He thinks I’m a disruptive influence. He’d like to give me my marching orders.”

O’Connell leaned over to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I guess we’ve just given him good reason to do it. If he ever finds out.”

Grace shivered and took a long swig from the wine. Sobriety and common sense were returning swiftly and she didn’t want them to. She wanted to stay in that deliciously perilous moment.

“So, have you gained a better understanding of the meat and vegetables of my working life, then?”

O’Connell took back the wine bottle. “No, but I do know how good it feels to have you on your boss’s desk. What’s next? I wonder.”

What indeed? It was something that was starting to nag at her, just a little, at the back of it all. How long could this go on—this pushing at the limits, this breaking of boundaries? Every act seemed more sensational, more outrageous than the last. Surely the day would come soon when they’d run out of unfulfilled fantasies and unspoken desires. There’d be nothing left for them to discover but the sorts of utterly ludicrous or horrible acts that you simply wouldn’t want to engage in. What then?

“Devil…” She still called him by that nickname sometimes—usually at times like this, these more intimate moments. “What happens when the party’s over? I wonder if we
can ever just be our plain and simple selves with each other. I wonder if that would be enough.”

O’Connell dragged on the cigarette. A long column of ash was balanced precariously on its end. “Why worry about it? The party’s still on, isn’t it? Stay in the present, Grace. Enjoy what we have now. That’s what I’m doing.”

He passed the cigarette across and the ash dropped off onto the carpet. She found she was thinking of Eva. He’d once said Eva lived only in the present. She wasn’t destined to settle down, that’s what he’d said. It was impossible to imagine her growing old…

They’d eaten, that evening, at a shoddy little restaurant around the corner from Marylebone Library. The tablecloths were stained and sticky. The rabbit stew was an awful mistake. The wine they’d washed it all down with was vinegary but they drank it anyway, and giggled together about the séance.

“What on earth made that woman think she could wear yellow?”

“The only spirit she communes with is straight out of a gin bottle. I swear I could smell her breath from the back of the room.”

After dinner, it was on to Ciro’s for more drinks and dancing and yet more drinks—and now here they were. And here, in their aftermath, and in the quiet of Aubrey Pearson’s office, as Grace blew her perfect smoke rings and O’Connell tried to copy her (“No, not like that. You need to put your lips just like this—like
this
, Devil”), she thought of Mrs. McKellar, earlier that evening, shouting about a falling girl, and about the expression on O’Connell’s face as he got up to leave.

“I can’t live only in the present,” said Grace. “I’m not like Eva. I want a long, happy life and I care about the future. Meat and vegetables and all. I don’t see that there’s anything wrong
in that. If you do, then I don’t think
we
have one. A future, that is.”

“Wow.” O’Connell dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. “I don’t know about the future, but right now I love you, Grace.”

“Do you?” She was so surprised that it came out as a sort of squeak.

“Why else would I want to see you night after night? I don’t know how it’s going to end up between us, but I can say this much for certain: You make me thirsty.”

“I make you
thirsty
?”

“You quench my thirst but it comes back stronger and I need you to quench it all over again.”

This, of course, was her worry. That what they had was a kind of compulsion. Driven by restless energy which would surely exhaust itself sooner or later. She blew another smoke ring to give herself a chance to work out what to say.

“You once said to me that you thought what I want is to be known. Really
known
. Remember?”

“Sounds plausible.”

“Well, you were right. That’s what I want. That’s what love is, to me. A deep-down understanding between two people.”

“Do you think we have that? You and me?”

“I know that I
want
us to have it. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone about. Something you need to know about if you’re ever going to really
know
me. And then I want you to tell me something back.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

“I don’t want us to have secrets from each other.”

He nodded and took a gulp of wine.

“I had an affair with my sister’s husband. It was more than an affair, actually. It went on for years. I ended it when she fell
pregnant with her first child. I suppose the pregnancy brought home to me the seriousness of the situation; of what I was interfering with; of the fact that he was hers, not mine. And that unless I wanted to risk losing her forever, he always would be.”

She turned to look at him. The playfulness was gone from his face. He was listening seriously to her.

“Nancy has no idea,” she continued. “And now I can’t tell her, even if I wanted to. He’s dead and I’m responsible for her and the children. I can’t do or say anything that might damage the family. It’s in the past, and there’s nothing to do but put it all behind me. But it’s hard not to let the past blight the present.”

Nothing but the ticktock of Mr. Aubrey’s wall clock. The zheeesh of a passing motorcar and the office lit up momentarily by its headlights.