Julia (9 page)

“I’m Julia Lofting. You must be Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth.”

“Such a long way.”

“But not as far as Shepherd’s Bush.”

Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth entered Julia’s house, remarking upon its niceness. When they reached the living room, they darted in tandem across to Mrs. Fludd, spoke a few words to her, and then turned around to smile at the others of their group. When Miss Pinner finally saw Mark, her smile disappeared. Miss Tooth, however, cast him a glance full of vague benevolence.

“Who is this young man?” asked Miss Pinner.

“Now, Norah,” said Miss Tooth.

“Who is he?”

“Mrs. Lofting’s brother, Mark. Very dark in the aura, he is.
Your
aura’s very strong tonight, Miss Pinner. Bright orange, the color of powerful movements in the fourth house. Perhaps we shall have luck tonight.” Saying this, Mrs. Fludd looked about the room, her attention visibly distracted from Miss Pinner; she had grown, since Julia had last looked at her, slightly apprehensive.

“There will be no question of the higher states with two new ones,” said Miss Pinner.

Lily said from Mr. Arkwright’s side, “Mrs. Fludd has very graciously agreed to limit herself to the elementals.”

As Julia looked at the two old women their faces, which had seemed so similar at the doorway, separated. Miss Pinner bore a certain resemblance to Mr. Piggot, at that moment engaged in describing to Lily and Mr. Arkwright how he caught fish in Hyde Park by fixing bread to his fishhooks: both of them had long narrow faces and small bright-blue eyes like chips of sky. Miss Tooth looked rather dusty and faded, with her small, deeply-lined face the image of a retired governess. Miss Pinner could have been an ex-headmistress noted for her disciplinary acumen. Julia took all the coats to the hall closet and returned with sherry for the two women. Miss Tooth glanced at Miss Pinner before accepting hers and, receiving a nod, took the glass in her small, trembling hand.

Mark gave Julia a despairing look and rose from the couch to join Lily, listening to Mr. Piggot describe his illicit fishing experiences. For these old people the spiritualist gatherings were social occasions; Mr. Arkwright kept punctuating Mr. Piggot’s adventures with loud bursts of soldierly laughter.
His rush of talk hadn’t denoted any special sympathy for Julia, but demonstrated instead pleasure at his release from loneliness. Julia’s house was filled with people whose company she could not enjoy; even Mark was sullen. Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth were now examining Julia’s furniture. They were in an ecstasy of approval, everything being “so nice.” Julia wished she could leave and lock the door behind her; but she took a sip of her sherry and sat beside Mrs. Fludd on the couch.

“I shouldn’t stay here,” said Mrs. Fludd.

“No? Mrs. Fludd, I’d be so grateful if you could. Lily has been looking forward so much.…”

“You needn’t be false to me, Mrs. Lofting, you’d be happy if the lot of us went home. But you don’t take my meaning. I shouldn’t stay here if I were you. Shouldn’t stay in this house.”

Julia looked at the woman’s red puggish face in surprise; she was further surprised to notice that Mrs. Fludd’s eyes were shrewd and perceptive, not at all vague. It was as though she had seen that Mrs. Fludd was actually a man, wearing that absurd clothing; the shock was as great as that. She had been seeing Mrs. Fludd as a “character,” someone not to be taken seriously, and this quick glance of recognition made her blush for her assumptions. If the others of Lily’s gang were lonely eccentrics, Mrs. Fludd’s cool, startling gaze revealed a person composed of flintier materials than the gibberish about transcendences and interpenetrations had suggested.

“Something’s funny in this house,” she said.

“You think I should leave?” said Julia, transfixed.

“Do you see anything? Hear any noises? Has anything unexplained occurred?” Even her diction had altered.

“I don’t know,” Julia confessed. “Sometimes I think I hear things—”

“Yes.” Mrs. Fludd nodded sharply.

Remembering something Mark had said, Julia asked, “What are poltergeists, exactly? I feel sort of foolish, asking you, but is it possible that there might be one here?”

“Never any harm in a poltergeist,” replied Mrs. Fludd. “They move things, sometimes break a mirror or a vase—mischievous creatures. You’d be in danger only if you were very receptive, like your pretty friend across the room. Or if you were dominated by some strong destructive emotion. Hate. Envy. Then, if the spirit wished revenge, it might influence you. That’s rare, but it does happen, if the spirit is particularly malefic. Or if some coincidence links you to it. In Wapping, a thief dead for fifty years set fire to a house containing a burglar’s family. Killed them all.”

“But how do you know?” asked Julia.

“I felt it. I knew.”

Such monolithic assurance always influenced Julia. In any case, it permitted no argument. “You feel something here?” she asked.

Mrs. Fludd nodded. “Something. Can’t pin it down yet. But I don’t like this house, Mrs. Lofting. Who lived here before you?”

“A couple named McClintock. He made carpets. I bought this furniture from them.”

“Any deaths in their family? Any tragedies?”

“I don’t know. They were childless people.”

“But you’ve seen something. Things in this house.”

“Well, I’m afraid it might be my husband,” Julia said, and laughed.

Mrs. Fludd immediately closed up, separating herself from Julia; then, relenting, she took Julia’s hand. “Ring me if you ever want advice,” she said. From her bag she extracted
a white card which read
Rosa Fludd, Interpreter and Parapsychologist
. Printed at the bottom was a telephone number.

Mr. Piggot approached the couch, followed by the perky Mr. Arkwright. “It
is
time?” said Mr. Piggot. “I’m eager to investigate some theories I had at the shop since our last meeting.”

“Of course, love,” said Mrs. Fludd, firmly back in her former role. She clapped her hands together twice and conversation in the room ceased. Miss Pinner and Miss Tooth turned their white faces raptly to the couch.

“Time,”
breathed Miss Tooth.

At opposite ends of the room, Lily and Mark also turned to face Mrs. Fludd; Lily with an expression combining eagerness with satisfaction, Mark wearily. Julia had time to wonder what was wrong with Mark before Lily asked her to turn off the lights.

She jumped up and went quickly to the light switch. Glowing gray light entered the room from the big windows; in this soft diffused semidarkness, Julia could see the fixed, rapt expressions on the faces of the “group.” She and Mark were outsiders here, and she moved to his side.

“Have you a candle or small lamp, Mrs. Lofting?”

Julia went into the dining room and turned on a little ceramic lamp in the shape of a toby jug.

“Move it further away, please,” commanded Mrs. Fludd. “I must ask you all to join hands at the beginning. Look at the light behind me. Cleanse your minds.”

The little lamp cast only a feeble light into the living room. Julia, joining the group, found herself being gripped by Mark on her right; he was holding her hand tight enough to hurt her. On her left Mr. Piggot’s hand was surprisingly soft and damp. His wafery skull shone palely in the twilight.

The group members, once they had joined hands, moved to sit on the floor, awkwardly, pulling Julia and Mark down with them. Only little Miss Tooth accomplished the move from standing to sitting with grace, seemingly floating to a cross-legged position; Miss Pinner moved with a machinelike efficiency. Julia, covertly watching her, thought she could smell oil and gears.

Once on the floor, the group members looked past Mrs. Fludd’s head to the soft light emanating from the toby jug lamp. Mark, brooding, had set his face into a mask of weary tolerance. Both apprehensive and skeptical, Julia, too, looked at the lamp. After a bit her eyes began to burn. When she glanced at the others, she saw that the group members had closed their eyes; their faces hung in the air like death masks. Mrs. Fludd sat in a perfectly ordinary position on the couch before them, her hands folded in her lap. In the pane of the tall back window, her head and the lamp glowed against the darker glass. Whitish clouds scudded above the flamelike, dissolving orb of the lamp.

“Close your eyes,” said Mrs. Fludd, her voice very slow and quiet. Mr. Piggot, to Julia’s left, sighed and slumped backward, tugging her hand. “You may open them later if you wish.”

She closed her eyes. About her she heard breathing. Mark gripped her right hand harder, and she shook her hand in his, signaling him to loosen; he pinned her hand yet more tightly.

“One of us is having trouble,” said Mrs. Fludd. “Who is it?”

Mark said, “I’m getting out of this.” He broke contact with Julia and stood up.

“Close the group,” said Mrs. Fludd. “Mr. Berkeley, you will sit quietly outside the group and observe.”

Julia hitched sideways and grasped Lily’s cool hand. It lay passively in hers. Lily had not opened her eyes when Mark
had spoken, though all the others had. Mark now sat behind them, still facing Mrs. Fludd.

“I need your help, Mrs. Lofting,” said Mrs. Fludd softly. “Make your mind empty, completely empty and white. Let nothing enter it.” Her voice was slowing and becoming deeper in timbre. Julia opened one eye and saw, looking up toward the couch, Mrs. Fludd’s heavy jowls outlined by the soft light behind her. Her hair was a white gauze. She seemed to have become heavier and older. Julia closed her eyes again and thought of a white saucer.

Miss Tooth, at the left end of the seated line, began to breathe stertorously. Lily’s hand still lay utterly passively in Julia’s. After a bit, Julia felt an ache in her thighs. Her eyes closed, she began to see flashes of scenes, people’s faces or landscapes appearing momentarily before her and then melting into other scenes. Moses Herzog, his face that of an elderly English professor at Smith, metamorphosed into Blake’s flea. The hideous features of the flea in turn were transformed into Magnus’s face. By an effort of will, Julia dismissed this last vision—she thought of clouds covering that big, powerful face, obscuring it. When the clouds blew off, they revealed one of the lounging, shabby men who had been in her dream. Now the man was her father, and he examined her with an expression of exhausted pity. She could see herself standing on the black tarpaper of the rooftop, Kate dead in her arms. Both of her thighs ached; the right was on the verge of cramp. Julia lurched to one side and twisted her legs out before her. Mr. Piggot twitched at her hand in rebuke.

Opening her eyes, Julia again saw Mrs. Fludd, who now sat slumped in the chair as if she had fallen asleep. Her mouth was open, black and toothless in the fleshy mass of her face surrounded by the penumbra of her hair. The woman’s squat
body was as if compressed—“slumped” was the wrong word, for she appeared to be under gathering tension.

“Close eyes,” she said in a gravelly voice. Julia, startled, immediately pressed her eyes shut. She heard Mrs. Fludd’s heavy boots scuffing on the carpet. She was again on the rooftop, now alone with the men. Her father, who had died one summer while she and Magnus were in Perigord, turned his face from her. Internally, she began to speak to him, as she frequently did when moved by guilt.
You were a decent man, but too forceful. I can see that now. I married Magnus because he had your power, he could dominate like you, and then I saw what a weapon your power was. But Daddy, I loved you. I would have gone to your funeral if I had known, I want you to forgive me for being away, I loved you always, please forgive me, grant me that.…
 As the words became rote, the vision dissolved. She was alone on the roof, oppressed by the comprehensive atmosphere of moral loss. All was grimy, all was inferior and flawed. She bent her head. The scene turned to opaque blackness through which she fell: Julia was dizzied, and seemed actually to be slowly falling. The room seemed to have turned about; surely she was now facing the front window instead of Mrs. Fludd? She resisted the temptation to open her eyes. Again, she imagined the white saucer—cool, without blemish, entirely surface—and filled her mind with it.

For a time the only noises in the room were Miss Tooth’s strained breathing and the hushing noise of Mrs. Fludd’s boot scuffing the carpet. Julia grew calmer and wondered what Mark, behind them, was doing and thinking in the darkness. He had begun to be uneasy after he had crossed the room to sit beside Mrs. Fludd. She must have said something to him—as she had to Julia. And now how did they look to him, seated on the carpet like fools before the massive image of
Mrs. Fludd? She could scarcely restrain the impulse to turn her head to look for him. Mr. Piggot’s boneless hand, stirring momentarily in hers, returned her to her context.

“Agh. Agh.”
The soft choking noise came, Julia thought, from Miss Tooth. Then she heard a wail which was unmistakably Miss Tooth’s and realized that the insistent choking noise was made in Mr. Arkwright’s throat. Lily, too, was making a noise; the most mothlike, ladylike of noises, an exhalation of breath carrying the slightest coloration of voice. This was astonishingly sexual. Julia’s hands were tugged forward and back, and soon she, too, began to rock. Her legs had once more begun to ache, but she could not think of interrupting the resistless rocking motion to swivel them back under her. Daringly, she slitted her eyes and saw, as in a haze, the dark heads on either side bobbing forward and back. Each was making some low noise, rhythmical and insistent. Miss Pinner was growling like a cat. Before them sat Mrs. Fludd, her feet now still, her face distorted. Mr. Piggot’s hand had grown very sweaty. Julia closed her eyes and resumed rocking back and forth. Not wishing to remember the image of Mrs. Fludd’s face, she made her mind utterly void of thought. She thought of the thought of nothing. Soon she was a rocking particle of nothing.

Then she saw Kate—Kate with her back turned to her.

A deep croaking voice stopped them all.
“Aah, stop.”
Jolted back to herself, shaken by the vision of Kate, Julia withdrew her hand from Mr. Piggot’s while still clinging to Lily’s. She opened her eyes. Mrs. Fludd was pressed back against the cushions of the couch, her face nearly purple. She had none of the repose Julia associated with the notion of mediumistic trance: her eyes bulged, her mouth worked.
“Stop. Stop.”