The Dust That Falls From Dreams Read online

  ‘I barely recognised you,’ said Fairhead.

  ‘One has to dress up,’ replied Madame Valentine. ‘Butchers butcher better in their aprons, soldiers march more smartly in uniform, and no one takes policemen in plain clothes at all seriously. I see you have your dog collar on this time.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘No doubt you know what I mean.’

  ‘My fiancée says it’s just a normal collar put on backwards. It does seem to have an effect, though, not least on me.’

  Spedegue entered with a rickety wooden trolley covered with an embroidered cloth, upon which she had already spilled a few drops of tea. There was a plate of Shrewsbury biscuits which Fairhead soon discovered to be soft.

  He produced a small brown paper bag from the inside of his jacket, and took out a photograph, which he handed to Madame Valentine. It showed a young woman smiling and waving at the camera. ‘How did you do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘My little sister. She was killed in a Zeppelin raid.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it. What are you asking exactly?’

  ‘One of the ladies who came here with me had a camera in her bag. When she developed the film she found this picture. It is unmistakably my sister.’

  ‘Gracious,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘And what’s this? There’s something behind her that looks very like an obelisk.’

  ‘That,’ replied Fairhead ‘is, also unmistakably, the obelisk of a large and impressive grave a few yards from hers. Major Goodhorn, lawyer and Territorial Army officer.’

  ‘Gracious,’ said Madame Valentine again.

  ‘I am thinking of submitting it to the Society of Psychical Research. Would you cooperate if I did?’

  ‘Cooperate? In what way? I was quite unaware that anything like this had happened.’

  ‘Do think about it,’ said Fairhead. He paused. ‘But that isn’t the reason I’m here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I want to ask you about the afterlife.’

  ‘You’re the clergyman,’ replied Madame Valentine drily. ‘Surely you must be the expert?’

  ‘I suspect that things may be other than the average Christian supposes. I was at the front for several years. I saw many things. Heard many stories. I have for some time been in doubt. And the odd thing is, the Bible says practically nothing about it. The Jews thought you gibbered away in a place called Sheol, and the more reprehensible souls smouldered on a rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, called Gehenna. The Achaean Greeks apparently thought that you wandered about in a diminished state, with absolutely nothing to do.’

  ‘And you want to know what really happens? You want to know where your sister is?’

  ‘I do. And all the dead boys.’

  ‘All I can tell you is what I think. I have no proofs except circumstantial ones.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What I think is that we do survive death in some form, and that we remain almost exactly as we were. A man who smoked a pipe when he was here smokes a pipe in the next world. I don’t know how long the afterlife lasts, or if there are other deaths to die later or if any of our deaths are final.’

  ‘One assumes that the hereafter is eternal,’ said Fairhead.

  ‘There is no reason to,’ she replied. ‘People assume that one becomes omniscient as well, but I have never encountered a spirit who knew much more than when he was alive. Death doesn’t seem much of an improvement in most cases. I have encountered ones who were extraordinarily foul-mouthed. It doesn’t even make you polite.’

  ‘Heaven and Hell?’

  ‘Probably not. I think there are levels of existence that you can ascend or descend, like a ladder. Once someone goes a long way up, they can no longer communicate with us. It’s like trying to talk through thick glass. There are those who are very sad, and those who go on quite jauntily. And I often suspect that there are many kinds of entities one has to deal with, everything from mere scamps and scallywags right up to creatures as angelic as angels. It’s the scallywags who infest the drawing rooms of planchette players.’

  ‘And what about coming back again?’

  ‘Reincarnation? I have never come across it, but there are those who have, it seems. My opinion is that it is optional. A choice one can make.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s only an opinion.’

  Fairhead sat in silence and sipped his tea. It was tepid and oily, and Spedegue had obviously made it with hot water from the tap. He wondered again what the bond was between the two women.

  ‘She is a poor soul who needs caring for,’ said Madame Valentine suddenly. ‘Her mother was a complete brute who drove her father to suicide. Apprently she was exceptionally violent and he was too much of a gentleman to defend himself.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Spedegue. You asked me about her.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I was just thinking about her.’

  ‘Oh, I must have picked up on it,’ said Madame Valentine matter-of-factly. ‘She’s utterly hopeless as a servant.’

  ‘You’re telepathic, then?’

  ‘I can’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘You’re a most interesting woman,’ said Fairhead. ‘What do the dead say about the afterlife?’

  ‘Very little. It’s as if they’re not allowed to. They mainly want to say that they’re all right. Sometimes they want to tell you where to find something. Like a key. Or a will. I sometimes fear that the hereafter is extraordinarily banal. I did come across a spirit who said that she’d seen Jesus.’

  Fairhead perked up, reassured. ‘Really?’

  ‘But she might well have been mad or deluded,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘She was when she was alive.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fairhead, disappointed.

  ‘I fear I have not enlightened you very much,’ observed Madame Valentine.

  He shrugged. ‘One always asks too much.’

  ‘ “Seek and ye shall find,” ’ she said, ‘but more importantly, in your case, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” ’

  ‘That’s your advice?’

  ‘Oh yes, you really should go ahead and give it a try.’

  ‘You really are extraordinary,’ he said gratefully.

  ‘Do come and see me again,’ she said. ‘I think we have much to say to each other, and I do thank you for showing me the photograph. It helps to convince me that I am not a fraud. Sometimes I look down on myself and feel utter contempt, because one can’t help having one’s own suspicions. More often than not everything goes haywire. I do wish I didn’t bring on all that bashing and crashing and mad music when one only wants a quiet conversation. Evidence like this brings me great joy, believe me. And the strength to carry on.’

  ‘You really should,’ said Fairhead. ‘I am sure you are a very good thing.’

  She laughed and smiled sadly. ‘Not so long ago I would have been burned at the stake.’

  ‘Perhaps you were, in a previous life.’

  ‘Oh, don’t! This life is bad enough! I did have the most awful dreams about it for a time, though, not being able to close my eyes because the lids were burned off, and hearing my own blood hissing in the flames. Do you suppose that’s what used to happen? I always thought that the heat would dry one’s blood up.’

  At the door, Fairhead asked her, ‘All those spectacular occurrences…can you do them in daylight?’

  She was surprised. ‘I’ve never tried. I don’t do them on purpose anyway.’

  ‘Why don’t we come back and have a session with the lights on?’ suggested Fairhead.

  ‘It might be more peaceful,’ said Madame Valentine. ‘I wonder if I’ll be able to get into a trance, though?’

  ‘You could wear a mask over your eyes.’

  ‘Gracious, what a good idea. Do telephone. You have my number.’

  65

  The Curate

  Rosie stood in St John’s Church reading some of the memorial plaques that were left over from the
previous building, and the one to the two Pitt brothers. The new edifice had not existed long enough to have become sanctified by time. It had not settled into its foundations or soaked up the necessary centuries of prayer, although it had received a good start during the war. The church was empty now, but Rosie remembered how there had always been mothers and sisters praying here, and comforting each other.

  She knocked on the door of the parish office at the western end of the church, above which hung the royal coat of arms, a relic of the former building. She had been hoping to speak to the priest, but it was the curate who answered her knock.

  He was a nervous and slightly effeminate young man of the kind who has always been able to find refuge in the Church, and was much admired for his skill at skating on the Tarn when it froze over in winter. His flamboyance and panache were extraordinary, and Mr McCosh had often remarked that it was indeed a pity that one was quite unable to earn a living by it, because otherwise the curate would have been wealthy indeed. Off the ice, the young man reverted to his normal epicene self.

  ‘Ah, Miss McCosh,’ he said, upon seeing her, his discomfort quite visible. ‘Can I be of any service?’

  ‘I had been hoping to see…’ began Rosie, but then realised that he might take this as a slight. ‘I had been hoping to ask a question, a theological question. I wonder if you could help.’

  ‘I will if I can, of course. Shall we sit in the nave? And shall I make you a cup of tea? We have a small stove in the office.’

  Sensing his awkwardness at being alone with her, Rosie said, ‘It’s such a lovely day. Shall we sit outside?’

  They sat on a bench and watched the traffic go by.

  ‘It’s awfully noisy with all these motor vehicles,’ said the curate. ‘I do think it was much pleasanter when we just had horses.’

  ‘And the dog carts,’ said Rosie. ‘We used to buy fish from the dog carts. The dogs were simply enormous, do you remember?’

  ‘I do, I do,’ said the curate, mopping his forehead.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Rosie, ‘I do sometimes like the smell of the petroleum. It’s aromatic, isn’t it?’

  ‘It does indeed have an aromatic quality,’ said the curate hopelessly, ‘but I also very much like the smell of horses. What was it you wanted to ask me?’

  ‘I wanted to ask a clergyman about communicating with the dead,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Communicating with the dead? Spiritualism?’

  ‘Not necessarily spiritualism. You know, communicating with the dead in general. Planchette, Ouija, mediums, all of that.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it allowed? By the Bible? By the Church?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Some people don’t even think it’s possible, because strictly speaking the dead are supposed to be fast asleep until Judgement Day. For some reason, these days people assume that you go straight to Heaven or Hell, but it doesn’t really matter in this case because trying to communicate with dead people is strictly forbidden in the Bible. I’ll just go and fetch one.’

  He retreated into the church and returned shortly with his own Bible, a gift from his parents at confirmation, and flicked through it rapidly.

  ‘Deuteronomy 18, beginning at verse 10,’ he said. ‘ “There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.” Necromancy is getting in touch with the dead. And there’s another passage, let me see, Leviticus, I think. Ah yes, here we are, 19, verse 31. “Regard not them that hath familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them.” And then there’s 20, verse 27. “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones.” ’

  ‘Gracious,’ said Rosie, thinking of poor Madame Valentine subsiding to the ground plumply, with a series of little shrieks, whilst being stoned to death. ‘You must admit, the Old Testament is awfully extreme and peculiar in places. There’s a bit where it says that if you are cutting wood and the axehead flies off the handle and kills someone accidentally, you have to flee to the city, and that’s why there are three cities. Did Christ say anything about it? About communicating with the dead? I would really like to have a more up-to-date opinion than Leviticus and Deuteronomy.’

  ‘I don’t think Our Lord said anything about it. Not as far as I know. However, it is definitely forbidden, and always has been.’

  ‘But why? It’s such a comfort.’

  ‘I don’t really know why,’ admitted the curate, ‘but I have heard it said that it’s because there is no way of checking whether the communicating spirit is really the one that you hoped to speak to. What if they are demons, or mischievous spirits? You know…impostors.’

  ‘Surely there are ways of telling?’

  ‘Perhaps there are. I can only tell you what the teaching is. You may remember that in Faustus, Helen of Troy is really a devil doing an impersonation of her. That’s always been the worry.’

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’

  ‘No, Miss McCosh,’ lied the curate, who had been devastated by the loss of his younger brother, and had, coincidentally, also gone to see Madame Valentine. He forgave himself with the thought that he had to do the right thing by his congregation, whatever his own errors.

  From that time on Rosie gave up receiving messages from Ash, and the others persisted without her, bringing back the news of the séances, which Rosie doggedly tried to ignore.

  66

  The Proposal

  One evening not long after the episode of the dog at the Tarn, Rosie went into the morning room, to consult the family Bible, which lay open upon the Book of Romans. She read briefly that all is vanity, before closing it, and then closing her eyes.

  She opened the Bible again, put her finger on the page, and opened her eyes. She read the verse upon which her finger had settled. It was the verse that Fairhead had quoted: ‘For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.’

  She read it several times, and it seemed to her that it could not have been a coincidence that this particular passage had appeared so opportunely before her eyes, even though she knew perfectly well that a book tends to open naturally at a page where it has previously lain open. She reflected for a moment, and then returned to the drawing room, where Daniel was anxiously pacing up and down with his hands behind his back.

  ‘I will marry you,’ she said.

  Daniel had already asked her many times, almost to the point where she began to feel that she was being nagged, and on each occasion she had temporised and prevaricated. At this moment, however, because she believed in divine intervention rather than in chance, she felt herself absolved from her vows to Ash. It was, in its way, a liberation, and for a moment she enjoyed the relief of it. She had been contemplating a life of spinsterhood, not because so many of her marriageable contemporaries had been killed, but because she and Ash had made promises that were binding forever. She could hardly recall anything that Ash had said on the subject of what she should do in the event of his death, because in her own mind she had bound herself to him in perpetuity. She had told him so many times, and she had told herself the same thing for so long, with such vehemence, that it seemed inconceivable that she should ever be attached to another. In her own mind she was married to him, and always would be, but just now these words of St Paul had come to her at a pivotal moment. If she had read on she would have found that he was elaborating a metaphor about the marriage of Christians to Christ.

  As for Daniel, he was in love. He had a general feeling about the right time in life to do certain things, an urge to settle, to make something of himself, to relax into domesticity after all the excitement and
turbulence of war, to know the sweetness of the marital embrace and the pleasure of having children that one can love and of whom one can be proud. In truth, in that frame of mind he might have chosen any respectable and reasonably attractive young woman. He might have settled on one of the other sisters, and prospered if he had done so.

  He had not been able to stop thinking about Rosie, and he could not prevent himself from imagining vividly what it might be like to share a bed with her. Everything about her kept him awake. He lay in bed, sweating and turning, his brain whirling with all the things he wanted to say to her. His impulse upon seeing her was to clasp her to his breast and kiss her neck. In the daytime he would suddenly go into a dream and stop doing whatever it was that he was engaged in. The sky seemed bluer than before, the taste of water more metallic, the thrill of flying more thrilling. His friends remarked, ‘Got a spring in your step, old boy. Nice to see.’

  It is often given to people to believe that they are in love, and it is only later that they say, ‘Oh, I was obsessed…It was nothing really…I was fooling myself…I made a mistake…’ This is how nature deceives us into the higher vocation of caring for children. In the case of Daniel Pitt, it is true that some of his love for Rosie consisted of sympathy. There was something about her obvious sadness and persistent distress that made him want to protect and comfort her. He was the kind of man whose heart goes out to the wounded, who feels that the natural role of a man is to be a protector and consoler of women. His mother had brought him up with firm ideas about the sanctity of womanhood, but he had had no sisters, had been to boys’ boarding schools, and then spent his life in adventure. He had no great understanding of women, or of the ways in which they are different from each other. He knew that he loved them in general, that they were attracted to him, and that he wanted this one in particular to be his Beatrice.

  Rosie, on the other hand, had already known a very great love, a love that was not temporary, and it was not temporary because its object was no longer there to disillusion her. Her beloved had become an angel, perfect and pristine forever. Even as she said ‘I will marry you’ to Daniel, her little burst of happiness and relief had turned sour in her mouth, and when he had clasped her to his chest, muttering joyful endearments, she had inhaled his fragrance of tobacco and cologne, and remembered that Ash had been much stockier, and smelled only of cologne.