Voices in an Empty Room (7 page)

In the drawing room, Lionel lolled back in the chair opposite to Henry's at the table, his legs thrust out, as on the previous day, and one hand deep in his trouser pocket while the other picked at a spot on his chin. Time he started to shave, Henry thought fastidiously, noticing the fuzz of hair above his upper lip and along the line of his upper jaw, as it caught the late evening sunlight streaming through the window.

‘All right?' Hugo called.

Henry looked across at Lionel who, still preoccupied by the spot on his chin, nodded perfunctorily.

‘All right,' Henry called back.

‘Are you ready?' Hugo asked Cyril. Cyril, who had begun to tremble slightly, whispered, ‘Yes, sir. Ready.' Hugo felt an impulse to put an arm round his shoulder and say, ‘Don't worry, don't fret yourself, it's not all that important,' even though it was, of course it was, important.

‘OK. Let's have the first.'

Henry turned over the first of the cards – he and Hugo had put together the ace, king, queen, jack and ten from four packs to make up twenty cards in all – and placed it on the table in front of Lionel. Lionel gave it a glance and then, to Henry's surprise, looked away from it to gaze out of the window into the street beyond. Could the boys have some confederate out there? But the street was empty. In any case, how could a confederate in the street make contact with Cyril, since the hall had no window other than a fanlight? Lionel showed no strain or even deepening of concentration.

Beside Hugo, Cyril's whole body had tensed. The sheen on his forehead had now changed, as though under a magnifying glass, to large drops of sweat. All at once, Hugo was aware of an odour which, from then on, he was always to associate with the boy: not unpleasant but somehow not human and therefore disturbing. Hugo could never really define it to himself but it was akin to the smell of grass recently mown and lying out in the summer sun.

The boy burped, quietly as before, and, as before, put the tips of those heavily beringed fingers to his lips, with a demure ‘ Excuse me'. Then, ‘Jack,' he whispered.

Hugo wrote the number 3 on the sheet of paper on the hall table beside him. He did not know what number Henry had written on a similar sheet of paper in the other room and therefore did not know whether this, the first of the twenty attempts at transmissions, had been successful or not.

‘Ten … queen … queen … king … ten …' The boy was now shivering uncontrollably, his face grey-green under the light filtering down from the cobwebby fanlight. In the other room, legs thrust out, a hand still deep in his pocket and an expression of boredom, even irritation on his face, Lionel glanced for a moment at each card laid down in turn before him and then stared out at the street once again. It was as though all he wanted was to get out there, among the din of cars and the bustle of people, instead of being cooped up in this frowsty, overcrowded room with this decrepit old geezer.

‘Right. That's it. Twenty.' Hugo picked up the sheet of paper beside him. He saw Cyril totter and then lean forward, both hands on the hall table, as though about to vomit. ‘Are you all right?' He put an arm round the delicate shoulders. ‘Steady on!'

‘I had a sudden turn. Sometimes it affects me like this.' Cyril straightened, put a hand to his chest. ‘ I'm all right now, thank you, sir.' The ‘sir', used for the first time, surprised Hugo. The adult tone surprised him even more.

Henry, Lionel and Mrs Lockit appeared. Mrs Lockit, her eyes darting hither and thither and her mouth working, came over to Hugo and peered over his shoulder at the sheet in his hand, her breath fanning his ear. He felt a spasm of irritation; he wanted to shout at her ‘ Oh go away woman!' But he restrained himself, knowing that if there were to be any future with these two subjects, then she would have to share in it.

‘He's got most of them right!' she exclaimed. Clearly, she had already examined Henry's sheet.

Henry and Hugo conferred, Mrs Lockit beside them, while Cyril, still exhausted, sat on the hall chair, his head in his hands, and Lionel wandered about, whistling irritatingly under his breath.

‘Remarkable!' Hugo said at last.

‘Fourteen hits out of the twenty trials.' Henry bared his chipped, yellow teeth in a rare smile. ‘Well, boys, that's far, far better than we'd ever dared to hope. You failed with the first four but after that …'

‘They have to get into the mood of it,' Mrs Lockit said. Then she went on triumphantly, ‘Well, now, didn't I tell you they had this amazing gift? But I don't think you and Mr Crawfurd really believed me. Did you now? Be honest, admit it.' Hugo wondered as often in the past, why Henry submitted so meekly to such familiarity. With his staff in the embassy, he had been by turns distant, peremptory and waspish.

‘Shall we have another run?' Henry proposed.

‘Oh, no,' Mrs Lockit said. ‘You can see how this one–' she indicated Cyril, who still sat, head in hands, on the hall chair ‘–has been affected. It drains him.' She put a hand on the boy's shoulder. ‘Doesn't it, love?'

Cyril looked up. The bruise-like shadows under his eyes seemed to have darkened from greenish-violet to dark grey. ‘I feel done in,' he said. ‘I'd like to oblige but I couldn't, just couldn't.'

‘Of course not,' Hugo reassured him. ‘We've plenty of time ahead of us. If a subject is exhausted, then his performance always diminishes. No point in pressing you.'

‘Thank you, sir.' The boy looked up at him gratefully as he whispered the words.

‘I'll take them down to my flat to give them a cup of tea and some cake. They're always hungry after a performance. Aren't you, boys?'

Lionel spoke for the first time since they had all come together in the hall. ‘I could do with a fag.'

‘I'm afraid neither of us smokes,' Henry said coldly. ‘And I never keep the fragrant weed – which, I'm afraid, I also regard as the pernicious weed – on the premises. Sorry.'

‘The idea!' exclaimed Mrs Lockit, in an unconvincing performance of being scandalized. ‘You know your mother never allows you to smoke. What sort of impression will Sir Henry and Mr Crawfurd get of you? You should be ashamed.'

Lionel stumped down the stairs to the basement without a goodbye. Cyril huskily muttered, ‘ Thank you' to Henry and then, ‘Thank you, sir,' to Hugo, before he followed. Mrs Lockit went last. Before the door shut on her flat, the two men heard Lionel ask in a loud, aggressive voice, ‘What about the dough then?' and his aunt tell him, ‘Sh! Wait, wait!'

‘The dough,' mused Henry, padding back into the drawing room, ahead of Hugo. ‘Ah, yes, the dough.' He sank into the sofa and then used his right hand to lift first one leg and then the other on to it, as though they were inanimate objects.

‘Well, we knew about that.'

‘Yes, but what we don't yet know is how much.'

‘We'll have to rely on Mrs Lockit for that,' Hugo replied, though he was disinclined to rely on her for anything.

‘Yes, the invaluable Mrs Lockit! But how odd it is that she should have kept these two nephews and their powers secret from me for so long. I can't understand it.'

Had there been any trickery? The two men discussed this possibility, more because, as scientific researchers, they were obliged to do so, than because they experienced any scepticism. Signals? Henry went and stood where Cyril had stood, trembling and sweating, in the hall and Hugo sat where Lionel had sat. They could see nothing of each other reflected on any surface – picture-glass, lincrusta, electric-light bulb. Neither boy had spoken. Henry was sure that Lionel had made no sound of tapping with his feet, much less of clicking with his hands, which had been in his pockets. His breathing had been even.

‘Of course, we shall eventually have to examine them under even more rigid conditions, with other people present,' Hugo said.

‘Of course.'

They heard footsteps in the hall and then Mrs Lockit saying in her loud, nasal voice, ‘ Now get straight home, boys! No loitering! I don't want your mother to be anxious.

‘What about the dough then?'

Mrs Lockit's voice, though it sank to a whisper, was still audible. ‘Now that's enough of that. I've already told you. I'll have a word with the two gentlemen. You'll get it next time I see you.'

The front door closed.

‘Ah, Mrs Lockit!' Henry brought the palms of his hands together and bowed, as though in an Eastern greeting. ‘How grateful we are to you. A truly remarkable exhibition.'

‘Yes, indeed,' Hugo said. Lionel's mention of the dough for the second time, at the front door, had already made him draw his wallet out of his inner breast pocket, so that he was holding it in his hands. Now he opened it and, Mrs Lockit's wild, dark eyes intently fixed on him, plucked out a five-pound note. Generous, he thought. Overgenerous, thought Henry, who scowled at him and gave his head a little shake.

‘Would this be acceptable?' Hugo asked, holding out the note.

Mrs Lockit took it reluctantly, as though it were something soiled, between forefinger and thumb. She dangled it, as she exclaimed, in a troubled voice, ‘Oh, Mr Crawfurd!' Hugo thought that, decent soul, that she was, she was overcome by such munificence. But then she drew closer to him, her elbow tilted upwards, as though she were about to give him a nudge. ‘I don't know how the boys …' She took the note in both her hands and stared down at it, as though examining it for forgery. ‘They could earn more than this helping Mr Petrie.'

‘Mr Petrie?' For a moment, Hugo supposed that this must be some rival psychical researcher.

‘He has the canoes. They lend him a hand from time to time. Two quid an hour – and no travelling, of course.'

‘Yes, I see.' Hugo opened the wallet again.

‘As I explained,' Mrs Lockit went on, ‘it's just a party trick to the boys. It takes a lot out of Cyril, as you could see with your own eyes, now couldn't you? And Lionel, well, he's just bored by it all. So, unless it's worth their while, really worth their while, they just won't turn up again, you mark my words. You can't blame them, that's how it is.'

Hugo sighed. What had been a revelatory, encouraging and exhilarating experience was now becoming squalid. At any moment this gypsy of a woman would be thrusting her palm under his nose and threatening him with ill luck unless he forked out. Ah, well. Common clay, common clay. He drew another five-pound note out of his wallet. Seeing it, Mrs Lockit gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. That was more like it, the sigh clearly said.

‘Does that meet with your satisfaction?' Henry asked acidly, as the note changed hands.

‘I'm sure the boys will be most grateful. It's not every day that they come to a house like this and meet gentlemen like yourselves and earn some money to give their poor mother.'

Hugo now spent few weekends in Oxfordshire.
‘Sorry to have to abandon you and the girls yet again,' he told
Audrey one Friday. ‘But these developments are so important. We're
getting interest not only from people already in the field but from
others drawn into it by all the press publicity. There's talk of a
television programme and tomorrow I have to show off the boys
to a member of the American Society for Psychical Research.' As
soon as he had spoken, he wished that he had not used that phrase
‘show off'. He was morbidly conscious that, despite all the payments
of ten, fifteen or even twenty pounds at a time, he might be guilty
of exploitation.

‘I had hoped you'd take Minnie to the bull for me. She's just come into season. I'd take her myself but I think that Mr Burton, old-fashioned dear that he is, would be rather shocked. I'll have to ask one of his boys to come and fetch her, even if it does mean a tip of a quid or two.' Audrey knew nothing of the far larger tips that were being handed out to the other boys in Brighton.

‘You're sure you don't mind?'

Audrey nodded, biting on her lower lip. Then she said wistfully, ‘But it would be nice to have you home for just one weekend – particularly when the weather is so lovely. The girls see so little of you. They're usually about to go to bed when you get home from College.'

‘Yes, I know, I know. What is one to do?'

Hugo also had to make guilty apologies to Sybil. Her school was a mere half-hour's run from the farm and, over weekends, one of them had always made the journey to the other, in order that they could confer about the letters. ‘You've become so evasive,' Sybil chided Hugo, when he had once again telephoned to tell her that he had posted to her ‘a whole stack of material', since he would not be seeing her. ‘What are you up to?'

‘You know very well what I'm up to.'

‘Those Creane boys.'

‘Yes. Those Creane boys.'

‘When am I going to be allowed to see them perform?'

‘You can come to their demonstration next month at the Institute.'

Sybil was not satisfied. She felt, obscurely, that Hugo was keeping the boys from her. ‘Couldn't I come with you to Brighton?' she had asked early on in the experiments, to receive the answer, ‘Oh, you know what Henry's like.'

‘I've always got on very well with Henry.'

‘Well, yes … But he's getting increasingly misanthropic.' He had all but said ‘increasingly misogynistic'. Lamely he went on, ‘ It's become a business for him to have even one guest.'

‘I thought he had a housekeeper. I seem to remember a baleful woman in a large hat.'

‘Yes, Mrs Lockit. Aunt of the boys. It's not a question of providing for a visitor. He just seems not to want to have them.'

‘He has you.'

‘Well, yes, but that's different, isn't it? I mean we're such old friends and, in a sense, we're in this investigation together as partners.' Partners? Hugo recalled, bitterly, that to date Henry had made no contribution to the mounting expenses.