Authors: Neil Spring
‘I don’t want shorthand. Can you type?’
It so happened that I could type, rather well in fact, and I told him so. During the school holidays my father had occasionally taken me with him to his chambers on Fleet Street and instructed some of his lovely secretaries to sit with me and teach me.
‘Very well, then it’s settled!’ he said confidently.
‘But Mr Price – you know nothing about me!’
‘No.’
‘I could be anyone.’
‘Yes.’ His hand brushed mine. ‘But are you the sort of woman who likes to take risks?’
What was I doing? This peculiar stranger, this loner, was asking me to follow him into something I knew nothing about. And what about Mother? Now she knew Price was a sceptic, she would hate the idea of me working for him, surely?
‘I need to go,’ I said abruptly, stepping back from the heat of his gaze.
He took a slight step towards me and immediately I felt a warmth rising in my throat and an uncomfortable feeling of self-consciousness came upon me. I glanced at his left hand. No wedding ring.
‘Leaving? So soon?’ He looked so surprised that I had an immediate impression that ‘no’ wasn’t a word he often heard. ‘But you didn’t say what you thought of my lecture.’
‘That’s because you interrupted me!’
He gave me a smile which seemed to say ‘touché’ before looking away thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps just as well,’ he sighed. ‘I require total loyalty from anyone who works with me.’ His stern eyes flicked back up at me. ‘Total and unconditional loyalty, Miss Grey.’
I was about to tell him that I was not the sort of woman who takes orders blindly, when Mr Radley burst into the room.
‘Mr Price, here you are! It’s time, I’m afraid. Our guests are leaving. You really should be thanking them for coming.’
In the corridor behind him, a swell of other visitors was advancing towards the sweeping stairwell. ‘Excuse me,’ I said politely, stepping out of the room, ‘but I must go.’
Suddenly, out of the throng of guests, my mother appeared at
my side. ‘Sarah, where have you been?’ She sent a furtive glance towards a tall gentleman in a long black coat who was approaching from down the corridor. Then, as she raised her left wrist, I saw that her favourite piece of jewellery was missing. ‘I must have lost it on the tour.’
‘Then we must search for it,’ I insisted. She loved that bracelet. It had belonged to my grandmother.
‘No, no,’ said Mother, giving another flustered glance to the man who was coming our way. ‘We must leave. Now, please.’
It had been almost a week since I met Harry Price. His job offer had hijacked my thoughts.
‘Sarah, you’re not going to say yes – are you?’
‘I’m thinking about it.’
I was strolling past the statue of Peter Pan in Hyde Park with my best friend Amy, whom I had known since we met as girls in Sunday School. I wanted to enjoy the splendour of that crisp afternoon, but my mind wouldn’t allow it. Images of Harry Price – cool gaze, mechanic’s hands – raced through my head.
‘Well, stop thinking about it!’ Amy insisted. Her yellow hair fell forward as she turned her soft round face towards me. She had bright, adventurous eyes and a lightness of spirit that never failed to relax me. ‘Anyway, there are more exciting matters to attend to now, and I’m not going to manage without your full attention.’ She meant her wedding, which was to take place the following year – 1927. All afternoon we had traipsed the streets of Mayfair to find a suitable printer for her wedding invitations, but I didn’t mind. Although I adored Amy, our shopping trips
did sometimes feel like entering a competition I couldn’t win. Her family was incredibly wealthy.
‘The wage will be handsome. Perhaps I should say yes.’
Amy looked at me with something close to shock. ‘Have you lost your senses? Working for someone so divisive – a spook-ologist?’ She laughed at the phrase. ‘You’ll be about as fashionable as a horse and buggy!’
She was being sarcastic. Most of our friends would prefer a motor car as a mode of transport if they could afford one. Amy obviously could.
She asked me another question.
‘Do you really want to work in a place like that?’ Her tone and the expression on her face told me she didn’t think this was a good idea. I, however, thought it might be exciting to meet new and interesting people, whatever their class. I imagined myself greeting these men of the scientific age, working alongside them. This was my chance for a proper career, more fulfilling than modelling, a chance to develop myself. What good was an education if I couldn’t put it to some use?
‘It is a worthy position,’ I said.
‘Don’t you think office jobs are generally more suited to the man of the house?’
But this wasn’t ‘just an office job’, was it? And I wondered how to explain to a dear friend who would never need to work, a girl whose biggest concern was her wedding seating plans, that I already felt like ‘the man of the house’.
‘What was he like anyway – Harry Price?’
‘Intense,’ I said, remembering the way his gaze had held mine, how he had made me feel as though I was the most important person in the world. ‘And his passion was … electric.’ I pondered the matter. ‘I suppose I believe in what he stands for – justice, truth.’
‘Oh Sarah, he’s obviously a crank. Keep your distance. You’ve a family name to uphold. And you need to consider how a job like this will reflect on you, too.’
I saw she had a point. I could get a respectable job – take a position in a children’s charity perhaps, or with the Women’s Institute. Mother would like that. Or apply to one of the new film companies that were establishing offices in Soho. I had an eye for visual representation. The photographers in Paris had said so.
‘Here’s an idea, Sarah!’ said Amy suddenly. ‘Come out with me tomorrow night. There’s a party at the Café de Paris. Jazz and men and cocktails!’
‘I’d love that!’ I exclaimed. Then with sudden disappointment I remembered that Mother had asked me to accompany her to a dinner party hosted by one of the neighbours.
‘How is Frances?’ asked Amy.
‘Not good. She was at it again last night, rummaging through the wardrobe at two in the morning.’
‘I’m sorry, Sarah. Do you know what’s she looking for?’
‘I wish I did.’
‘Sarah, forget about the dinner party – your mother can do without you for one night. And forget about all this darkness, for heaven’s sake! Otherwise you’ll only drag yourself down. Tell you what,’ she continued, ‘go and see Mr Price now. Tell him, thank you, but no thank you. All right?’
I hesitated.
‘Sarah, Sam Merrifield is single again.’ She dangled the comment as an incentive. I was familiar with the mischievous gleam in her eye; I remembered it from when she had first mentioned her now-fiancé, Andrew Hampshire, over fourteen months earlier. She had known from the outset then he would belong to her, and now it seemed that she wanted Sam Merri-field for me.
‘All right,’ I replied. ‘Yes, all right.’ Immediately I felt lighter in spirit.
‘Tomorrow night then?’
I felt a smile spreading across my face as I pictured myself laughing and dancing with Amy and other bright young things.
‘Tomorrow night,’ I agreed.
As I hugged her goodbye I thought:
This is what good friends are for: they take us out of ourselves
.
But it was to be many months before I saw Amy again.
*
‘I wasn’t expecting an answer so soon,’ said Harry Price, throwing an anxious glance back over his shoulder into the depths of number 16, Queensberry Place. ‘Yes, yes, I’ll be back in a moment!’ His eyes flipped back at me, flustered. ‘My apologies. We were in the middle of an experiment. Not going exactly according to plan.’
‘An experiment?’ I chanced a discreet peek over his shoulder, into the darkened hallway, but saw nothing past the great staircase but an eerie glowing light.
‘Miss Grey?’ Price focused on my face again. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘Um … yes.’ Now it was my turn to be flustered.
Try to concentrate
, I told myself. ‘I wanted to give you an answer in person.’
‘Well, of course.’
‘And I don’t want you to think me ungrateful …’ I hesitated.
‘But … ?’ He arched an eyebrow.
‘But the position you offered me, it’s just not for me, I’m sorry. But thank you.’
Suddenly, from somewhere within the house, a woman screamed. ‘What on earth is going on in there?’ I demanded, trying to see past Price, but his sturdy frame blocked the doorway.
‘Have you made your final decision, Miss Grey?’
‘Yes … yes, I think so—’
‘You
think
so?’ His eyes were sharp in their scrutiny as he studied me. ‘And there was me thinking you were a woman who knew what she wanted.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I should have known.’
‘How dare you!’ I exclaimed, feeling my temper flare. ‘I’ll have you know, Mr Price, that women helped pick this country up when it was on its knees. And they didn’t just do their bit, they carried us over the finishing line. Women like my mother were remarkable and brilliant and brave, and they showed everyone what we can do!’
I hesitated, caught my tongue. I had made my point.
‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling suddenly. I thought he would be angry, but a strange look of satisfaction had come over his face, as if he had intended to rile me. ‘Good day to you, Miss Grey.’
‘Wait! My mother lost a—’
The huge door slammed shut and for a moment, stranded there, shivering on the doorstep in the gathering darkness, I had no idea what to do. Would he come back? Yes, of course he would. A person didn’t just slam a door in your face without intending the gesture as a joke, did they? And I wanted to ask him if he had found the bracelet. So I waited. One, two, perhaps three minutes. Nothing. Something inside me snapped.
‘Well, it was nice to meet you too!’ I bellowed sarcastically at the door, turning on my heel.
*
It was shortly before eight o’clock when I arrived home, welcomed by the crackling wireless announcing that the first woman was planning to swim the English Channel. Mother was in the drawing room, reading. The fire had burned low and there were no fresh logs. No sign of any supper either. It made
complete sense to me, then, to try lifting her spirits by telling her that I had declined Price’s job offer. I knew she would be relieved. Since Price had shocked her on the opening night of his Laboratory she hadn’t had a good thing to say about him, and of course the loss of her bracelet hardly helped matters. The only problem was, I didn’t feel able to tell her what I was thinking: had I made the wrong decision?
A sensation of guilt began taking me over, and that was silly. No one had high expectations of me, but perhaps that was the point. Perhaps I wanted them to believe that I could succeed. That I wasn’t content just to sew and stitch or be an object of admiration. My mind was alive with images of Price’s modern equipment – cameras and X-ray machines – which automatically made me think of other impressive new types of technology: television sets, radio and the hand-held hairdryer. The world was striding forwards in so many wonderful and interesting ways and yet I felt cut adrift.
It occurred to me then that if I let this opportunity pass I’d never know where it might have led, and I’d always look back and ask myself what I might have learned. The idea was somehow alarming.
And that was how it happened. That was how a young woman who didn’t believe in table-levitators, healers and prophets returned to a place nicknamed ‘the ghost factory’ and looked into the eyes of its owner.
Determined, this time, to say yes.
‘What on earth—?’
A terrifying woman lunged at me as she stumbled out of the doorway of number 16 Queensberry Place. My goodness, what a sight she was! Short and stout, with hard features and limp brown hair hanging in curtains around her face, she was dressed in a flowing black gown.
Worst of all, a sticky white substance, which smelt revolting, was bubbling out of her mouth and dripping onto her chest.
She stared straight at me, her bloodshot eyes wide and ferocious. I felt helpless, wanting both to help her and to run away, but before I could do either an urgent voice from inside the hallway beyond called out, ‘Helen, come back here!’
Pushing me aside, she hurtled into the road, screaming, retching and spitting that disgusting substance from her mouth.
‘Come back, I say!’
Two men were emerging from the doorway, the first a stranger to me. This was the man who had shouted and he seemed so genuinely concerned for the woman that I assumed he was her husband. The other man I recognised instantly. It was Harry Price.
He saw me at once. ‘Ah, Miss Grey,’ he said, beaming. ‘We’ll deal with this!’ he added, ordering me to stay exactly where I was.
As he bolted into the road, his white lab coat flying out behind him, he looked very much as if he were enjoying himself, but it took both men to tackle the medium and drag her to safety, their feet sliding as she kicked wildly, punching and shrieking into the wind. Her cries echoed up the street: ‘Let me go, I say! Let me GO!’
‘Please, my dear, just allow Mr Price to X-ray you,’ her husband insisted as he struggled to contain her. ‘Then we can go!’
‘No!’ she bellowed, promptly dealing him an almighty blow to the side of his head.
I watched in shock as Price stood back and observed the couple’s squabble with a look of great consternation. When they had eventually calmed themselves, he said quietly, ‘I think we’re done here for today, Mrs Tyler. I was hoping to inspect the contents of your stomach via my equipment,’ he frowned, ‘but I see now that won’t be possible.’
To my disgust, the formidable woman drew her head back and spat on to Price’s black leather shoes, covering them with the disgusting white mess. The repellence in his face showed so clearly I thought he was about to fly into an uncontrollable rage, but instead he merely stared, curling his lip before turning his back on the woman.
‘All this is fiercely disappointing,’ he said to her husband. ‘However, I must thank you, Mr Tyler, for behaving with some modicum of dignity. I see no point in carrying on here. In any event, I have little doubt that an X-ray would reveal little else than cheesecloth.’