Velvet (13 page)

‘We have all done things we are ashamed of,' Madame reminded him gently.

‘But some have done more than others,' Mr Grey responded.

George tapped on the door, came into the room and, after bowing and shaking hands with Mr Grey, sat down on a footstool ready to take notes.

‘I know you've already met George. It was at Ascot, I believe,' said Madame.

‘Indeed. We are both racing men. Racing, the sport of kings!' Mr Grey said expansively. He then frowned and looked at George. ‘But, if you'll pardon me for asking, young man, why doesn't someone like you, with such a job, win every time he goes racing? You surely know which horse is going to come in first?'

‘I'm afraid spiritualism doesn't quite work like that,' Madame said. ‘A medium is a mere vehicle through which important messages from those on the Other Side are conveyed. Who might or might not be going to win the two-fifteen on a certain day is of no concern to the spirits.'

‘Besides, a good medium does not operate for profit,' George put in. ‘It would be completely against everything Madame believes in.'

However, Mr Grey had moved on to more important things. ‘They call it the sport of kings,' he said, ‘but when I consider how I neglected my dear wife and child, and kept them in penury whilst I gambled everything I owned, it seems to me now that it is the sport of fools! Oh, I deserve to suffer for my past sins –'

‘My dear sir,' Madame interrupted, ‘you must look forward. And at least your interest in racing led to your marvellous win – and to your meeting George.'

Mr Grey shook his head reflectively. ‘A six-horse accumulator. So much money that it changed my life. Well, I say it changed my life, but it merely changed the way I live. There's a difference, you know.' He paused for Madame and George to nod. ‘Money can't change the past, can it? Money can't erase a lifetime of cruelty. Money, in all its –'

‘Mr Grey, I'm going to try and help you,' Madame said swiftly. ‘To do so, I'll have to concentrate on you, my especial client, and on you alone. I intend to put all my endeavours and strength into contacting your late wife.'

Mr Grey nodded eagerly. ‘I want to tell her how sorry I am, how desperately sorry for all the wicked, wicked things I did and . . .' He stopped here, convulsed by sobs.

‘Mr Grey, I beg you to pull yourself together,' George said, handing him a handkerchief. ‘Madame will do her very best to contact your wife, even if it means neglecting her other clients. If you wish, she will concentrate all her resources on you and your problems.'

‘Yes, that's what I want,' came the muffled reply.

‘It may prove extremely difficult and it may take some time because, if you're being truthful in your assessment of your past life and did indeed treat your wife badly, she may not want to return and speak to you. Madame will therefore need to use every ounce of her strength and ability to entice her back.'

‘Yes. Yes!' Mr Grey said. ‘I'll pay whatever it takes.' He suddenly reached forward and seized Madame's hand in his own. ‘I have been a cruel man – and not only to my wife. I had a beautiful daughter who should have been looking after me in my old age, but I treated her so badly that she deserted me.'

Madame extricated her hand, massaging it gently where Mr Grey's nails had dug into her palm. ‘I dare say you had a hard life, though, and found a wife and child too much to cope with.'

Mr Grey looked up at her, seemed about to agree with her sympathetic judgement, but then changed his mind. ‘Oh no, I was proper wicked, I was. My wife died too young; I drained all the life out of her. And my little girl, why, she found herself a dog once, made a pet of some little puppy she found wandering the streets . . .' He broke down here, and George began to speak but was interrupted with, ‘Oh, but I was a wicked beast! I told her the dog had fleas and couldn't come into the house. Do you know what happened then?'

Madame and George shook their heads.

‘It froze to death on the coldest night of the year. Found it dead on the doorstep, I did, stretched out next to the boot-scraper.'

Madame shook her head, removed herself from the reach of Mr Grey and closed her eyes. ‘I am now going into trance, Mr Grey.'

‘If you would be so kind as to remain silent until Madame speaks again,' said George.

‘And when she does speak again, will my wife be there with her?'

‘I very much doubt it will happen that quickly,' said George. ‘It may take several visits to the Other Side before your wife can be located. However, rest assured that Madame will achieve this in the end.'

‘I know I've got to be ready to take the stick when she does find her, but I'm prepared for that,' said Mr Grey. ‘I was Mr Magic, the children's entertainer, you know. You don't find many of us around, do you?'

George put his finger to his lips to silence Mr Grey, but not before he and Madame had exchanged a secret look of utter astonishment.

 

An hour later, Mr Grey's dead wife still had not been found and Madame confirmed that several more private sessions would be needed in the coming weeks in order to locate her. Mr Grey said that seeing as he had been most especially wicked in his past life, he quite understood and was prepared to pay whatever the price.

Chapter Nine

In Which Madame Materialises Sir Percy Malincourt

‘So, I had a raree-show, but what about
your
early days?’ George asked one morning when he and Velvet were in the kitchen, polishing glasses for that evening’s séance.

‘You know about me,’ Velvet said. ‘I worked in a steam laundry. Such hard work my back felt like it would break in two. It was so hot you could scarce draw breath and my hands were always red and sore.’ She stretched her arms in front of her and wriggled her fingers. ‘My hands are still as rough as sandpaper.’

‘Nonsense,’ George said, catching hold of one and examining it carefully. ‘Your hands are lovely. A
lady
’s hands. They look as if you’ve been doing nothing but embroidering flowers on pocket handkerchiefs all day.’

Velvet laughed, but George was looking at her so intently that she felt her cheeks warming. He turned her hand over so that the palm was uppermost and he traced his finger across the centre of it in a circular motion. Velvet held her breath, feeling her stomach fluttering. That such a tiny movement could have such an effect!

George gently tugged at her hand, moving his fingers up her arm so that she came towards him, closer and closer. Closer still, so that she felt his breath on her cheeks and then – at last – his lips were on hers and they were kissing and Velvet felt her head spinning with giddy wonder.

Oh, but it lasted only a moment before there was a commotion at the kitchen door and Mrs Lawson came in muttering and complaining, struggling to carry a large cardboard box containing white lilies and pink roses. ‘I was at the back, calling out!’ she said as Velvet and George sprang apart. ‘Didn’t anyone hear me?’

‘Mrs Lawson! I do apologise,’ said George. ‘Velvet and I were intent on talking about our lives before we came here.’

‘It looked like it,’ Mrs Lawson said with a sniff.

‘We honestly didn’t hear you,’ George said, getting up. ‘Let me take that heavy box from you, then you sit yourself down and I’ll put the kettle on the fire.’

‘Hmm’ was all Mrs Lawson said, but she allowed herself to be propelled towards the easy chair which stood by the window.

Velvet began to breathe again. Oh, thank goodness they had kissed at last! There had been so many other times when George had looked at her with a spark in his green eyes as if he were thinking certain things, certain naughty things, and intended to carry them out, and she’d thought
now
, now they would kiss and fall in love properly and her fate would be decided. Something had always interrupted the moment, though: an excited shout from the street that a motor car was coming past, the strident ring of the telephone (‘Quick! Answer it and save the electricity!’), or Madame’s footsteps on the stairs. Now it had actually happened, and Velvet was certain that he must like and admire her.

That day, however, there was to be no more time for daydreaming, for Madame was holding a special event for some of her wealthiest clients and was hoping to materialise at least one spirit during the second half of the evening.

Over the last weeks, the materialisation of spirits had become quite the thing. It seemed that the longer the public’s interest in spiritualism continued, the more complex the subject became. The whole business had started off some years ago in quite a simple way, George had told Velvet, with tapping on tables, then chairs and tables had started moving, then spirits had begun writing and drawing. After this had come the appearance and movement of objects, the playing of instruments that might or might not be visible, and direct messages from spirits. Now nearly every medium of note was either offering materialisation to her clients or was saying they would be able to do so quite soon.

George explained to Velvet that Madame had been honing her talents and sensitivity, not wanting to hurry things until she was sure she could cope with spirits in actual bodily form. He was certain, however, that anything Miss Cook and ‘those other poor imitators’, as he called them, could do, Madame would be able to do also, for he was of the opinion that the spirits acclaimed and respected her above all other mediums. Madame had asked him to assist in this new enterprise and they had spent several evenings shut away, quietly working together, trying to decide which method of operating would be the most conducive to the spirits. Velvet, too, had become involved, and had been summoned to these talks to impart every last detail she could remember about the evening at Miss Cook’s, whilst George and Madame listened avidly and questioned her on each point.

Greeting the guests that special evening, Velvet could pick out immediately those who were newly bereaved: the young lady, her face white and drawn, clutching a child’s lacy shawl around her; the tall man with blotchy, tearful eyes; the woman in early middle age who was dressed entirely in black and remained behind her veil for the whole evening. These three seemed somewhat removed from the rest of the gathering who were, perhaps, there for the purposes of entertainment. This part of the audience consisted of two opera singers, an actor, a poet, a sprinkling of titled ladies and Lillie Langtry, the beautiful actress who had not only been the new king’s long-term mistress, but (according to the newspapers) mistress to half the men in London. She was immensely rich, with a theatre and a stable of racehorses to her name.

‘Is she very beautiful at close viewing?’ Madame asked Velvet when she went to give her usual report on the newly arrived guests.

‘She is.’ Velvet nodded. ‘She has the most remarkable skin – she glows, almost.’

Madame, who had been reclining on her chaise longue, suddenly opened her eyes. ‘But she’s ageing now, of course. Ah! The portraits she inspired in her youth. Everyone who saw her fell in love with her, and every great artist in London wanted to paint her. Did she speak to you?’

‘Only to wish me good evening,’ Velvet said. ‘She was deep in conversation with a gentleman the whole time. She even waved away her glass of wine.’

‘
Champagne
,’ Madame reminded her with a smile. (Since Velvet’s visit to Miss Cook, Madame had decided that they, too, should serve this more sophisticated and costly drink.) ‘And everyone is quite composed?’

Velvet nodded again. ‘I think so,’ she said, ‘although it’s difficult to tell, of course, because last week Miss Formgate seemed completely at her ease . . .’

‘And then went quite wild when I managed to contact her fiancé.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Velvet, for it had turned out – unbeknown to anyone except Miss Formgate herself – that her fiancé, who had unfortunately died in a hotel fire, had been staying at the hotel with another woman. When the errant fiancé had come through from the Other Side, Miss Formgate had hurled herself towards Madame, demanding that she ask him what he’d been doing there with the woman, and seeming more upset about his infidelity than his death.

It had taken all George’s strength to hold Miss Formgate back from Madame, for it looked likely that, as she could not reach her fiancé, she would throttle Madame instead. (Velvet wondered afterwards at the wisdom of his turning up at all. Wouldn’t he have known that Miss Formgate was going to be fearfully angry with him? Surely it would have been better for him to have adopted a peaceful life on the Other Side and remained there?)

‘I did have a few words with the poor lady whose little girl died,’ Velvet resumed. ‘She’s wearing her child’s christening shawl.’

‘That would be Mrs Fortesque, I believe?’

‘Yes, she seems very low,’ Velvet said. ‘She told me that she’d visited another medium, a Mrs Russell.’

‘That charlatan!’ exclaimed Madame.

‘Mrs Russell had promised to materialise the baby so that Mrs Fortesque could actually hold her. This never happened, even though Mrs Fortesque had paid her a great deal of money beforehand.’

‘Scandalous!’ Madame said. There was a pause. ‘Did she tell you the name of the little girl?’