Edith, page 17
Poor Flurry, denounced as a horse thief by an underbred fortune-hunter who got his clutches into Cousin Lottie’s trust fund.
Later, stung though she is, Edith decides Shaw gave his honest opinion – one professional to another. She’ll write at once, explaining the play was meant to be humorous and not one of his social satires, thank him for his kindness in reading her work and trouble him no further.
Then what?
Edith butters a scone, adds a dab of Mrs O’Shea’s blackberry jam and finds she’s no longer hungry. She pushes aside her plate. Martin’s advice is needed – she’ll arrange a seance with Jem Barlow.The last time they did it, a materialization was almost achieved.
—
Despite the short notice, Miss J.E.M. Barlow, known as Jem, consents to a seance that evening. Edith has been saving some early blooming African violets, grown in one of the glasshouses. She snips them now, arranging them in a cut-glass bowl in the library. They’ll wilt before morning but their sacrifice is necessary. Violets will help to lubricate the channel of communication because of their association with Violet Martin.
Edith taps her lower lip. Objects associated with the person on the other side of the great divide are useful. A brainwave sends her to her studio, known as the purlieu in her mother’s time, where she riffles through a storm of papers until she tracks down the original manuscript for An Irish Cousin. It was their first book together, that shilling shocker whose success changed their lives. The manuscript, handwritten in dark-blue ink, is a fair copy executed by Edith because Martin’s script was evil (to quote Nannie Martin, her mamma), but here and there an amendment has been scribbled by Martin.The pages are yellowing, their edges foxed, and a doubled length of green tape holds the stack together. A faint scent of violets drifts from them.
‘Darling old thing.’ Edith strokes the manuscript.
In solitary splendour beneath portraits of her ancestors, she eats a light meal of scrambled eggs on toast, intending to offer Miss Barlow supper after her exertions. A seance takes its toll on the medium. Philomena’s disapproval was visible in every line of her body when she served the eggs, but Edith refused to discuss it with her.
‘By all means take it up with Father Lambe, but you can’t be allowed to dictate to me, Philomena. Now, please see to it that the library fire is lit and everything left ready, as per my instructions.’
She’s waiting in the library when Philomena shows Miss Barlow into the room with a moody crash of the door, not troubling to knock or introduce her.
Edith ignores Philomena’s display of temper. ‘Punctual as ever, my dear Miss Barlow. I do appreciate your surrendering your evening to me at such short notice.’
She shakes hands with a ladylike person in a feathered hat and silver fox-fur stole, somewhat younger than Edith. They are similar in height and frame, but when Jem Barlow fixes the pale-blue light of her eyes on someone, she seems capable of seeing right through to their spinal cord.
‘All that’s surrendered is a rubber of bridge, Miss Somerville. And I always lose.You’ve saved me half a crown, at least.’
‘In that case, may we get started, Miss Barlow? I thought it might be a good idea if we turned out the lamps and used candles. I have some here.’
‘Excellent idea. More atmospheric.’
‘Out you go, Loulou.’ Edith turns the door knob and points.
Loulou stands her ground, tongue hanging out. She is stared down, knows it and shuffles to the door.
Miss Barlow scans the room, sits at a small table in an alcove and removes her hat and gloves. Edith takes the seat opposite. The manuscript lies between them. Edith counts back. It’s almost forty years since she and Martin worked on that novel together, back when the earth was flat.
‘Our dear departed will stretch out their hands to us if at all possible, Miss Somerville. To see them, we must look with our inner eye.’ The medium reaches out and takes a firm hold of Edith’s hands. Next, she lowers her eyelids and breathes rhythmically, face tranquil.
She could be cogitating on the next day’s menu to be agreed with her cook, thinks Edith. Instead, she is a daring explorer in that mysterious country where Martin now lives.
Edith tries to look with her inner eye, but is distracted by the heat from Jem Barlow’s hands. She waits, aware of complementary sounds in the room, which grow louder as the seconds tick by on the mantelpiece clock. Miss Barlow’s even breaths, the fire crackling, a beam shifting in the ceiling. Outside the window, a bird gives a drowsy series of chirps.
All of a sudden, the grip on her hands tightens. ‘Are you there, Miss Martin? Are you able to make contact? One who loves you on the earthward side of the veil is anxious to speak with you.’ Her eyes spring open. They are glassy, the pupils reduced to pinpricks. ‘Miss Martin? Can you make your way to us? Please try. We’re waiting for you, Miss Martin. Waiting and hoping.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Call her by name, Miss Somerville.’
‘Martin!’ cries Edith. ‘I need you. Do try to come to us, my dear. It would mean so much to see you.’
Still holding Edith’s hands, Miss Barlow inhales abruptly.‘She is here! I sense it!’
Edith feels some shift in the atmosphere.
‘She is with us! A materialization!’ exclaims Miss Barlow.
Edith’s heart skips a beat. The flickering candlelight causes the shadows in the room to bend and waver. Perhaps she does feel some tremor, like the vibrations left after a hand has drifted across harp strings.
Is it her imagination or is there a stronger scent of violets?
Miss Barlow cocks her head. ‘You’d recommend it?’ She is all attention. ‘Naturally we’ll be advised by you. Yes, I’ll tell the sitter. Miss Somerville, my spirit guide, Melville, says you may pose questions through him and he will convey your requests to Miss Martin. She can show herself to us but may not speak directly. I fear the obstacles are too great for her to communicate with her own voice tonight. But she is near. Very near.’
Edith’s eyes circumnavigate the room, but detect nothing. Yet how to explain that prickle on the back of her neck? Her gaze latches onto an armchair beside the window where Martin used to curl up and read. Perhaps the air is thickening there. Has it shaped into a woman’s contours?
‘Miss Somerville, do you have a question you wish to put to Miss Martin?’
Edith’s blood drums in her ears. Her throat is parched. She swallows. ‘Martin, what should I do about our play? I’ve had a setback. Should I abandon it – or persist?’
‘She is communicating her answer now through Melville,’ intones Miss Barlow. ‘She says go to London, use your contacts there.You’re too remote from the centre of things here.’
‘So the play will be staged? It will be a success?’
Miss Barlow listens intently to Melville, nodding and pursing her lips. Edith’s eyes remain fixed on the armchair where that dense shadow has appeared. Is it Martin? Along Edith’s spine, the skin feels stretched too taut.
‘You must believe in yourself,’ says Miss Barlow. ‘Your new work will stir interest and comment. Believe in yourself.’
‘I’m riddled by doubt,’ says Edith.
The medium’s shoulders hunch in concentration. She squeezes Edith’s hands. ‘Miss Martin says people become like horses refusing a jump. Uncertainty is their enemy, not inability. You must not surrender to uncertainty.You have achieved great things in life, and are destined for further triumphs.’
Edith becomes conscious of a friendly presence. It’s as if an invisible hand is resting lightly on the small of her back, in a gesture of encouragement. A patch of warmth heats her skin there. ‘Dare I believe, dearest Martin?’
‘You must.What is there but belief to sustain us?’
Other messages follow, inconsequential but heartening. Their gist is that she is to seek the help of well-wishers with influence. In answer to a question from Edith, Martin says she has never wanted to be back in her body again.
‘I feel no sense of separation,’ she says.
‘Oh, Martin, I confess that sometimes I do!’
Jem Barlow heaves out a lengthy sigh, and lays Edith’s hands on the table. She opens her eyes, blinks twice, stretches her back. Her pupils are normal. The trance has passed. ‘How did it go, Miss Somerville?’
‘Very well, thank you.We communicated beautifully.’
‘There was a materialization?’
‘Perhaps. I … I’m not certain.’
‘But the psychic energy crackles still! Can’t you sense it?’
‘I may have seen something …’
‘My dear, there’s been an indisputable force in this room tonight. There can be no doubt of a breakthrough. I confess, I feel positively drained – always a sure sign.’
‘Allow me to offer you some refreshments, Miss Barlow.’ Edith rings the bell for Philomena. ‘Will you take some sherry while supper is fetched?’
Miss Barlow consents to a glass. Edith pours some dry sherry into two Waterford crystal glasses, and while the medium drinks hers Edith quizzes her on the dream state she entered.
‘I have no recollection of details. It’s a kind of semi-sleeping condition, yet I feel more illuminated by knowledge than in my waking state. That said, the part I play is passive. I know my role is simply to listen and convey messages from those who have gone before us to another plane.’
‘Passive, but essential,’ protests Edith.
‘I do what I can, Miss Somerville.’
‘It gives me such comfort. I miss her dreadfully.’
Miss Barlow clasps her hands together, a topaz ring winking in the candlelight. ‘My dear Miss Somerville, you should never doubt Miss Martin’s friendship. It remains as true as ever. I feel her affection for you in this room. It is flame-bright.’
‘Do you suppose you could materialize her again? I – I think I could make out her form. But it was really only a dim outline.’
‘No wonder it was dim. Her energy has to travel here from such a long distance.’
‘If I could only see her face again.’
‘Believe, Miss Somerville. Believe and it will happen.’
‘I do. Oh, indeed I do.’
But she can’t help feeling a little deflated. Her dearest Martin. So close and yet so far. There but not there. Her words but not her voice. Her shadow but not her face.Within touching distance – but she couldn’t touch her.
—
The letter from Charlotte Shaw is dated the night of the seance. Edith refuses to regard it as a coincidence. She reads it over breakfast.
My dear Edith,
A thousand apologies on behalf of my insensitive husband. I hadn’t an inkling GBS was going to send you such a letter. He told me only that he’d read your play and was intending to give you some advice. Naturally I presumed he meant constructive advice. But alarm bells rang when your own impeccably courteous letter arrived, thanking him for his candour, and I asked to see his rough copy of what he’d written. I was aghast! This is not a concert review for one of those London rags you used to scribble for, I told him.This is one of my Castletownshend cousins. You’ve dined at Drishane!
He concedes that he may have been a little hasty in his ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’ analysis. There is much wit and joie de vivre in ‘Flurry’s Wedding’ and I feel certain that it can be salvaged, with a little judicious pruning and re-ordering. GBS agrees with me. Won’t you come and stay with us for a few days, Edith, and the two of you can discuss how to make progress with your play? He can be tactless and somewhat flippant, but he does understand the theatre world and undoubtedly you would benefit from his expertise.The stage is a different storytelling milieu and some guidance might not go amiss.
Do say you’ll come to Ayot St Lawrence. It’s just a country cottage, really, and we don’t go about much when we’re here. The seclusion is agreeable compared with London’s hurly-burly and GBS finds it conducive to work. Come for my sake if not his. I am in agony with neuralgia at the moment and your visit would be a welcome distraction. Besides which, a visitor from Ireland is the next best thing to being there.With things so unsettled these past few years, I haven’t been able to visit as I’d like to do, although we have high hopes the Treaty will hold, and men of good sense on both sides will see this thing through.Wire us your plans. I have your play put by safely. Strike while the iron is hot!
Fondest love,
Lottie
—
‘I’ll need a mackintosh, Philomena. It’ll be foggy in London. It generally is. Lamps have to be lit all day, sometimes.’
Edith is supervising while Philomena packs her trunk. On her itinerary are a weekend in Ayot St Lawrence, a few days in Ethel Smyth’s Hook Heath house and a longer stay with her brother Boyle and his wife Mabel in London. She also intends calling on Mr Pinker, and has written suggesting a meeting on February the fourth. It’s time for her to part company with her literary agent. She hopes there isn’t a row. But she’s determined, like Hamlet, to ‘drink hot blood, and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on’.
‘What’s London like, Miss Edith?’
‘London is like the ocean, Philomena: vast, bottomless and it refuses no one.’
‘I’d love to see Big Ben, so I would. Is it true there isn’t a corner of London where you can’t hear it?’
‘Not quite. But its bongs do carry.’
A sudden swirl of dust near the door makes Philomena cross herself.
‘Why did you do that, Philomena?’
‘That dust’s a sign. One of the good folk is on the move. You will come back, won’t you, Miss Edith? I’d hate to think of the Somervilles up-and-leaving Castletownshend altogether, the way some of the gentry does be packin’ up and goin’ to the North or England.’
‘You can bank on me coming back. There’ll be Somervilles in CT as long as there’s a CT. Tell you what, I’ll send you a postcard of Big Ben.’
A loud sniff. ‘God is good and so are you, Miss Edith. I’ll stick it in my scrapbook. Best send Mrs O’Shea one, as well, if it’s not too much trouble. She’d take it amiss to be overlooked.’
‘We couldn’t have that. Now, don’t pack my walking shoes because I’ll need them for the crossing. I may have to leave my cabin and go on deck if the sea is choppy.The air’s like wrapping yourself in a damp sheet. But needs must. Less chance of queasiness outdoors.’
‘Will I pack your black hat with pheasant feathers in the hatband? You’d never know when you might have a funeral to go to, and you with so many family and friends over there.’
‘I wish my family were all here in Ireland, Philomena. But my brothers had to make their way in the world.Yes, pack the hat.’
‘They’ll find their way home, please God.’
Edith thinks about her tribe of brothers: Cameron, Aylmer, Boyle, Jack and baby Hugh, born when she was fifteen. All of them joined either the army or navy and travelled the world. How many will find their way back to Castletownshend? Boyle, for sure, at least. He loves this cranny of Ireland.
‘Miss Edith? Will you be needin’ your painting things?’
Philomena’s voice yanks her back to Drishane.
‘Just a sketchpad and some pencils but I’ll take care of them myself.’ As she leaves the room, she touches Philomena’s work-roughened hand.
Philomena stops folding and smoothing clothes.
‘Am I doing the right thing, leaving Drishane? You haven’t heard anything that worries you in the village, Philomena?’
‘Nobody will lay a finger on this place while I have breath in me body, Miss Edith.We’ll keep everything as safe as if it was in God’s own pocket.’
—
There are no foot-warmers on the Dublin-bound train and the cushions feel crusty. An inexplicable halt on the line occurs in the middle of nowhere – Edith guesses Kildare from the flat landscape. For a time, she watches a small boy starfish his hand against the window, making mooing noises at cattle in the fields. ‘Moo-cow, Mama, moo-cow,’ he tells his mother, until she puts aside her magazine and moos along with him.
At the waiting room in Amiens Street, where Edith is passing time until she can board the Kingstown train to connect with the ship, the air is blue with tobacco smoke. Why does the fire in every station waiting room smoke, but not burn, she thinks fretfully. She leaves her bags with the young mother, whose son is now sleeping on her lap, and steps outside onto the street. The smell of unwashed human bodies attacks her nostrils. It’s the same in Cork city, of course, but she objects more to the odour in Dublin. Perhaps, as a Cork woman, she’s inclined to make allowances.
She looks in the direction of the Liffey. Beyond it, across the rooftops, lies St Stephen’s Green. Once, she’d have broken her journey with a stay there, in her aunt Louisa Greene’s house. Aunt Louisa is gone now, too. Another name crossed out in her address book. A man with a sandwich board roped to him shuffles past, advertising Little Red Riding Hood at the Gate Theatre. A woman stops a constable, in the distinctive, steel-spiked helmets of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and asks for directions to Jammett’s. Someone is going to dine well on French cuisine, thinks Edith, as the constable points the way to Nassau Street. Barefoot newsboys with marzipan-coloured skin scurry about, shouting the headlines. ‘Latest Treaty news! Dev snubbed! Overseas Irishmen support the deal!’
Edith fumbles out a coin to buy one. Before she can reach a newsboy, she is intercepted.
‘A penny for the babby. She needs milk.’ A woman with a child wrapped inside her shawl holds out an upturned hand.
Edith considers her. It’s a Madonna-like tableau, one to which she has always been susceptible – in art and in life. The woman is tidy, with a knob of hair on top of her head, but scrawny, as though she hasn’t seen a solid meal in months. She can well believe such a woman isn’t able to produce enough milk for her child. She gives her the shilling she’s holding, and adds another shilling to it.
‘May your soul fly straight to heaven, ma’am.’
Edith buys a copy of The Irish Times. ‘Last Days of Robert’s Sale’ is trumpeted across the front, but she flicks past lists of hemstitched tray cloths and embroidered duchess sets at knockdown prices to arrive at the news section inside.
