Fogging Over (6 page)

That was too much for Georgie. Without warning he bolted into a side street. Outside a tumbledown tenement, two kids, brother and sister, were crouching in the gutter. They looked blue with cold. Drunken shouts drifted from an upstairs window.

But Georgie kept on running and just five minutes’ walk away from that hideous street everything was calm and peaceful. I could hear a little winter bird tweeting, and the sound of someone busily scrubbing something with a brush.

Georgie turned into somewhere called Milkwell Yard. The houses were small and narrow but well cared for. Outside Number 7, a maid was polishing a brass knocker.

“Hello, Ivy,” said Georgie.

She beamed at him. “Why it’s Georgie Porgie! Haven’t seen you for days. Too busy kissing the girls, I suppose!”

“You suppose wrong,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got business to attend to.”

Ivy laughed. ‘“Ark at you! You sound just like a gent on the Stock Exchange! Go round the back, lovie, but keep your voice down. The mistress had another bad night.” She gave him a grin. “If you ask me, the spirits are getting their revenge!”

I assumed this was another reference to gin, but then I saw the name on the brass plate. Miss Minerva Temple, Medium.

I nudged Lollie. “Is that cool or what!”

She looked uneasy. “Don’t mediums talk to the dead?”

“Yeah, Victorians were really into it. We are going to get SO many brownie points for this. Mr Allbright is going to love us forever!”

We followed Georgie down some steps.

A fair-haired girl rushed to open the door.

“Georgie! Where have you been? I was worried something had happened to you.”

Georgie’s sister was so pale, you could practically see daylight through her, except for her cheeks which were a hectic pink. In her lavender gown and button boots, she looked like a little china doll. She dropped her voice. “We’ll have to be quiet,” she whispered. “Miss Temple is feeling rather fragile this morning.”

“She still treats you well I hope, Charlotte?”

Hello! I thought. Georgie had suddenly changed his way of talking. He sounded almost posh.

“Oh, no, she’s really kind,” his sister reassured him. “She’s extremely satisfied with my work. She says my face is ‘wonderfully ethereal’!” Charlotte’s giggles turned into a long coughing fit.

“I’m afraid you are getting ill again, Charlie,” said Georgie anxiously.

She shook her head. “Don’t be silly! I just catch my breath sometimes.”

As the children chatted, I noted down useful facts for Mr Allbright. Georgie and Charlotte were orphans. Their mother had died only a couple of years ago. Until recently, both kids were surviving on the streets, by selling matches and bootlaces. It was

Georgie who had found his sister her unusual post as a medium’s assistant. Georgie was the youngest, yet he was fiercely protective of his sister, wanting to know if Miss Temple was working her too hard.

Charlotte said the hardest part was trying not to laugh when Miss Temple pretended the spirit guides were speaking through her. “She sounds exactly like a bullfrog!” She broke off to cough, and this time she couldn’t seem to stop. It sounded like rusty machinery rattling inside her chest.

“The poor kid’s got TB,” Brice said in a low voice.

“Don’t be stupid!” I hissed. “Charlotte’s fine. Look at her pink rosy cheeks.”

“That’s what TB looks like in the early stages,” he said grimly. “Until they start coughing blood.”

I forced myself to count to ten. He wanted to make me look bad in front of Lola. If I lost my temper I’d just be giving him what he wanted.

“Victorians didn’t all have TB,” I pointed out, trying to make my voice calm and reasonable.

“No, some of them died of diphtheria and typhus and cholera. Also polio and scarlet fever and pernicious anaemia—”

That was too much. “Will you give it a
rest
!” I snapped.

“Hey,” Lola said. “Brice has been here before, remember. He knows what he’s talking about.”

Yeah, but did he have to keep ramming it down my throat?

Georgie ran to fetch his sister a glass of water and she gulped it down. He sat down beside her and they leaned their foreheads together like two babes in the wood.

Georgie suddenly seemed to reach a decision. “Your cough’s not getting any better. I’m going to see our uncle.”

Charlotte looked panic-stricken. “Georgie, don’t, not after last time.”

“I don’t care,” he said fiercely. “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”

She threw her arms round his neck. “Oh, Georgie, I wish we had someone to turn to!”

“We have, we’ve got Uncle Noel,” he reminded her. “It wasn’t him who tried to have us sent to the workhouse. He was horrified when he heard what Aunt Agnes had been up to. He’s a good man, Charlotte, and he has suffered a great deal.”

“Has he?” said Charlotte doubtfully. “He seems extremely fortunate to me. He is a very successful lawyer, and they have that fine house.”

“He has done well for himself,” Georgie agreed. “But it must have been terrible when he was growing up, having to pretend his mama was a respectable widow, when she wasn’t even married. Then Grandfather refused to acknowledge him as his son and heir. My uncle has had nothing but bad treatment from our family, Charlie, yet he feels responsible for us. He said he would have us to live with him at Portman Square, if Aunt Agnes wasn’t such a witch.”

His sister laughed. “He didn’t call her a witch!”

“No, she’s more like his gaoler!” said Georgie. “He can’t spend a farthing without having to account to her. It must torture him seeing us living from hand to mouth, when he has the means to help us. I’m sure that’s why he sends me on all these strange errands to Newgate. It’s just an excuse to give me a few pence.”

“How is Mr Godbolt?” said Charlotte.

“He seemed frailer last time I was there, but then he must be quite old by now.”

“Did our uncle ever tell you what Mr Godbolt did to get put in prison?” Charlotte asked.

“He just said, ‘Edwin Godbolt made one fatal mistake. But he was a faithful employee for many years and though the law has found him guilty, I will not abandon him.’ You see what a fine man he is, Charlie?”

A clock began to strike somewhere in the house. Charlotte jumped up. “I must go! Miss Temple is holding a
seance
in a few minutes.”

“This we have to see,” I said to Lola.

She looked uneasy. “I don’t know if I want to see someone pretending to talk to the dead.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be educational!”

Her lips curved into a wicked smile. “OK,” she agreed. “So long as we don’t have fun.”

We left Georgie in the kitchen drinking cocoa with Ivy and followed Charlotte into the back parlour. She immediately started peering under tables and into light fittings.

The room was crammed with so much dark heavy furniture it was hard to breathe. “This house needs some serious Feng Shui!” I told Lola.

“What’s Feng Shui?” she asked.

“It’s basically Chinese for chucking out your clutter,” I explained.

I have never seen so much stuff in one tiny room. I don’t know how Charlotte managed to move around without knocking anything over.

Like, the table was covered with a fringy chenille cloth. The sideboard had lacy doodads on it, and there was another bigger lacy doodad draped over the back of an armchair. There was a bowl of artificial fruit under a glass dome, plus there were real ferns inside a big glass bottle. And I haven’t even got round to the footstools or the embroidered fire screen, the ornamental photograph frames or the potted aspidistras!

Having checked that her spirit FX equipment was in working order, Charlotte carefully dragged the heavy curtains across the window, plunging the parlour into artificial twilight. A few minutes later Ivy showed a middle-aged couple into the parlour. I noticed that Charlotte greeted them in a hushed tone quite unlike her normal voice. “Mr and Mrs Bennet, please do take a seat. Miss Temple will be with you shortly.”

“Hope she doesn’t cough,” Brice said under his breath. “A coughing medium’s assistant wouldn’t be nearly so ethereal.”

I’d expected Minerva Temple to be got up like a fortune teller with tinkling beads, but when she came in she was dressed extremely tastefully in a plain black gown and a pretty lace cap trimmed with ribbons. Her voice was low and thrilling. She’d have made an excellent stage hypnotist, which I suppose she kind of was in a way.

Minerva quickly set about lulling her victims into a receptive state, reassuring the couple that their daughter was now happy in the fields of Eternal Summer. Mrs Bennet gasped but her husband just fiddled with his collar, looking extremely uncomfortable.

Everyone held hands around the table and Minerva went into a trance. At least she did some bizarre writhing and heavy breathing, which apparently meant the spirits were trying to get through.

Minerva had obviously coached Charlotte to produce ‘psychic phenomena’ on cue. So when her employer cried dramatically, “The veil between the worlds is growing thin!” Georgie’s sister pulled a secret handle, releasing a blast of cold air from the cellar, to give the impression that spirits were wafting in from the next world.

Of course, typical Melanie - when I suggested gatecrashing these people’s seance, I hadn’t actually thought it through. I just wanted to tell my mates I’d been to a bona fide Victorian seance. But I began to feel terribly sorry for those grieving parents. The woman was clearly desperate for reassurance that her daughter still survived, even if it was on the wrong side of the ‘veil’, and I think the husband only came because of his wife.

The worst moment was when this like, glowing green gloop started oozing out of Minerva. It flowed out of her mouth and nose, even her ears, and collected in a puddle on the table.

The husband instantly reached out to touch it.

“Don’t!” Charlotte said at once in a warning voice. “Ectoplasm is harmful to the living. The spirits send it only to reassure you of their existence.”

“It’s actually cheesecloth and luminous paint,” Brice told us in a stage whisper. “She’ll make it disappear again in a sec. That way no-one can examine it too closely.”

I was still queasy from the ectoplasm when I realised we were not alone. I’m serious - some real ghosts had turned up to Minerva’s seance!! They were kind of sepia-coloured and flickery, like figures in old movies. A few of the livelier spirits hovered over the table. The rest just hung around in the background looking depressed.

I gave them a little wave. “Oh, hiya!” Then, “How come they’re here?” I hissed to Brice.

“Who did you expect to come to a seance?” he muttered. “Living people?”

It’s not just embarrassing watching someone conduct a phony seance with disapproving real-life spirits looking on, it’s totally
excruciating
. Also Mr Bennet was looking increasingly fidgety. Eventually he couldn’t contain himself, and cut right across Minerva’s gushy description of their daughter’s sunny personality. “You could be describing any young girl!” he objected.

Minerva’s otherworldly expression made it clear she was above such petty remarks, but after a while she began to jerk around in her chair going, “The spirits are saying there’s a doubter in our midst.”

Under cover of darkness, Charlotte activated another device, and the table started to jump around as though the offended spirits were having a tantrum. At this the real live spirits looked more depressed than ever.

Brice hooted with laughter. “Oh rock’n’roll! This woman is outrageous.”

I thought I saw Minerva’s eyelids quiver then, but next minute she was going on about someone with the initial A, so I decided I’d imagined it.

I think everyone was relieved when that seance was over, including the spirits. Charlotte hurried back to her brother and they talked for a while. Then Georgie said he had to go.

“You will remember to come tomorrow?” Charlotte said anxiously.

Georgie’s face suddenly went all pinched. “You needn’t keep on. I said I would, didn’t I?”

It was the first time he’d sounded like a whingey little kid, and I wondered what had upset him.

Outside, veils of yellowish-green fog swirled through the dusk, reminding me unpleasantly of Minerva Temple’s ectoplasm.

Lola sighed. “I felt so sorry for that Mrs Bennet.”

“I kept thinking of my mum. I hate to think what a medium would say about me,” I said gloomily.

Lollie squeezed my hand. “She’d say, ‘I’ve got this cute hip hop chick here in a vintage top and she wants you to know she’s totally,
totally
fine’!”

I felt a rush of affection for my lovely friend.

I wanted to tell her how I was kicking myself for insisting on coming to a time that was mainly notorious for a pervy killer. But most of all I wanted to say how crazy it felt to be missing her like this, when she was actually right here beside me.

Unfortunately, Brice was there too, mooching along with his hands in his pockets, so I swallowed down my feelings and my words went unsaid.

Chapter Five

I
could hear the rattle of late-night sewing machines coming from an upstairs sweatshop just off Brick Lane. It was eight o’clock in the evening, but for these Londoners, the working day still wasn’t over.