Читать книгу Alice Hartley‘s Happiness - Philippa Gregory - Страница 5

They did not sleep well. The bed was too small for two to rest in comfort, especially when one of the pair was a statuesque and beautiful woman long neglected, and the other was a shrimpy and sexually-frustrated youth. By the time that Michael’s window had lightened with the early sunlight of summer they were mutually satisfied, and mutually exhausted. They both believed themselves to be deeply in love.

There was an abrupt loud knocking on the door. Michael clutched at Alice wide-eyed.

‘Could that be your husband, Mrs Hartley?’ he asked in a frightened whisper.

Alice beamed with satisfaction at the thought. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You answer it, I’ll hide by the sink.’

The sink in Michael’s room was recessed in the wall. If Alice stood very still and breathed in and did not breathe out, she could not be seen in a casual inspection of the room from the door.

Michael nodded, bundled as many of the scarves as he could grab under the bed, and opened the door.

‘Urgent message,’ said the porter. ‘You Michael Coulter?’

‘Yes,’ said Michael.

‘Urgent message from the Dean’s secretary,’ said the porter. ‘Thought I’d bring it straight over.’

‘Thank you,’ Michael said. He took the envelope and came back into the room, closing the door behind him.

Alice was red-cheeked and gasping.

Michael turned the envelope over and over in his hands.

‘I suppose I’d better open it,’ he said.

She took it from him with a quick authoritative movement and passed her broad hand first one side of the envelope, and then the other.

‘There is nothing in here which will distress you,’ she said certainly. ‘Objects have auras just as people do. There is nothing in here which will cause you any pain. This has a healthy aura. It will be news of a development for you, for growth. Nothing bad.’

Michael was deeply impressed. He opened the envelope with new confidence. It read:

REGRET TO INFORM YOU,

AUNTY SARAH NEAR DEATH.

COME AT ONCE.

It was signed ‘Simmonds’ with the letters ‘GP’ afterwards.

Michael looked blankly at Alice.

‘Were you very close to your Aunty Sarah?’ she asked.

Michael shook his head. ‘I hardly know her,’ he said. ‘She is much older than my father, a funny old biddy who lives out in the old vicarage at Rithering. I’ve only been over once since I’ve been here. I should have gone more often I suppose.’

‘There you are then!’ Alice said triumphantly. ‘The auras are never wrong. I said it was a healthy aura.’

‘Not very healthy for Aunty Sarah,’ Michael said reflectively.

Alice paused. ‘She is just moving to another plane,’ she said. ‘Will you go and see her at once?’

‘Will you come?’ Michael asked quickly and then blushed. ‘I mean’, he said, ‘I suppose you’ve got loads of other things to do, moving house and all that.’

Alice looked surprised, she had forgotten the furniture. She had, in any case, nowhere to go.

‘That can wait,’ she said. ‘We do not yet know each other well, Michael, but I can promise you that I would never waste my time on trivial housewife details.’ She hissed the word housewife through clenched teeth. She had not forgotten Charles’s slight on her carrot cakes. ‘Not when there are elemental forces at work. The great chasms of death and birth are around us all the time. We must be ready for them. I will come with you.’

Michael threw his arms around her naked waist and pressed his face into her neck. He felt a sudden stirring as if his deepest essences were ready for plunging again, but Alice gently disengaged herself.

‘Not now,’ she said softly. ‘We must go to your Aunt. The old lady will be waiting for you, she may want your help to move her into a fresh astral plane. You must centre yourself, root yourself in the earthly elements. I will help you.’

Michael nodded obediently, put both feet into one trouser leg and fell to the floor.

Alice regarded him with affection. ‘Get dressed,’ she said. ‘I have to go to the health centre and see someone. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

She threw her gown over her head and tied half a dozen scarves about her person, three on her head, one on each wrist, one at her waist, and slipped from the room.

Outside, the campus was quiet with the early-morning stillness of centres of great learning. Students were not yet awake and those faculty members who had survived the most recent wave of redundancies and were still clinging to salaries and offices were writing their novels, their guides to Provence, and malicious letters to specialist journals. Alice glided easily across the dew-soaked grass with her wide dancing stride and ran lightly up the steps to the university medical centre and into the counselling room.

Professor Hartley was at the window, he had been watching her. Sitting in his shadow was a small elderly woman in grey. She wore pale grey shoes, stone-grey tights under a buff-grey skirt. Her shirt was grey silk, her cardigan was shapeless-grey. Her hair was natural grey. Her smile was professionally serene.

‘Welcome, Alice,’ she said kindly.

Alice tossed her an angry look. Her husband she totally ignored.

There was a short silence. Professor Hartley seethed in silence like a small culture of poisonous yeast.

‘Shall I start?’ the counsellor asked.

Alice, who had been gazing sulkily at her red varnished toes peeping through her golden sandals, glanced up and shrugged her broad shoulders. The Professor nodded.

‘I notice you have arrived separately this morning,’ the counsellor said, her voice carefully neutral. ‘Would you tell me, Alice, why that is?’

Alice glowered at her. ‘I imagine you know perfectly well.’

The counsellor’s raised eyebrows and innocent look expressed total bafflement. ‘What do you mean, Alice?’ she asked with playgroup patience. ‘Remember our rule here: no ambiguous statements!’

Alice jerked her head at Professor Hartley who was standing with his back to the window, blocking the light. ‘I imagine Charles has told you that I have left him!’ Alice said defiantly.

The counsellor put her head on one side like a small grey canary. ‘And if he had told me, and please notice, Alice, that I do not say he has told me, what do you imagine that Charles would say about you?’ she asked.

Alice laughed shortly. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Not again. I have wasted years trying to work out what Charles thinks. I have wasted a lifetime trying to please him.’ She pointed an accusing finger at the counsellor. ‘You have wasted hours and hours trying to work out what Charles wants. I am here today to say only one thing: that I am not coming into this dreary room to have you two ganging-up on me any more.’

Charles Hartley pushed himself up off the window-sill, pulled a chair towards him, and sat down leaning forward earnestly, his hands clasped, as if he were praying for Alice’s redemption. ‘I don’t know why you are so angry with Mrs Bland, Alice,’ he said, in his special marital-counselling voice. ‘It makes me wonder what it is that you are so angry about in yourself?’

‘Oh no,’ Alice said again. ‘Not that one. I am not angry with myself. I am angry with you, Charles. You are pompous, you are a liar, and I will not be ditched by you for some stupid undergraduate.’ Alice swung around on Mrs Bland. ‘And you,’ she said. ‘You are One of Them!’

The counsellor’s placid smile did not waver. Her eyes flicked to Professor Hartley as if seeking expert opinion. He nodded at her. ‘Delusional Paranoia,’ he said softly.

The counsellor’s face grew yet more serene. ‘Why are you abusing your husband, Alice?’ she asked. She gave a little humble smile. ‘And why are you insulting me?’

Alice choked on her anger. ‘I don’t trust either of you!’ she said, stammering. ‘You know! You both know! You both know what I am angry about!’

‘And what is that?’ asked Mrs Bland. She looked to Charles. His face was a portrait of hurt bafflement.

‘What do we both know?’ he asked gently.

‘You both know that Charles is having sex with Miranda Bloomfeather. You both know that he wants a divorce. You both know that I left him last night. And you both should know that I am never, never going back!’ Alice proclaimed.

Mrs Bland put in a wonderful performance of utter mystification. ‘I think you had better explain this to me, Alice,’ she said. ‘I can assure you I know nothing of this!’

Alice hammered the arms of her chair with her fists. ‘You do! You do!’ she said, her voice rising with her frustration. ‘I don’t believe that Charles hasn’t told you. Half the university knows about him and Miranda. Even I know!’

‘Oh, I see now what is happening here,’ Mrs Bland said gently. Alice glanced at her, momentarily hopeful.

‘You have forgotten our little rule,’ she said, smiling and holding up one finger. ‘D’you remember which one I mean?’

Alice shook her head.

‘Do you know which one I mean, Professor Hartley?’ Mrs Bland asked him, smiling.

Charles smiled back, like a big child in a nursery class who is prepared to play nicely to help the little ones learn. ‘Would it be the one about not bringing gossip into our counselling sessions?’ he asked.

Mrs Bland clasped her hands together as if struggling not to applaud. ‘That’s the one!’ she said gaily. ‘And anything which needs to be said, is to be said here and now.’

She turned to Alice. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Do you want to ask Professor Hartley about his relationship with his students?’

Alice was twisting a dark lock of hair around her finger, her face black. ‘Yes,’ she said sulkily.

Mrs Bland nodded. ‘Go on then, Alice,’ she said. ‘Ask the Professor whatever it is you wish.’

Alice tugged on the lock of hair, and then looked directly at Charles. He leaned towards her, his face a picture of kindly concern.

‘Do you want to divorce me?’ she asked. ‘Are you having an affair with Miranda Bloomfeather?’

‘No, and No!’ he said triumphantly. ‘Alice, how could you even think such a thing? Miranda is one of my brighter students, but a mere girl. And you and I have been married for sixteen years! It is obvious that I am committed to the success of our marriage, Alice! Why! Just look at my commitment to the success of our marital counselling! Who was here first today? And who was late, Alice? And who was rude to Mrs Bland?’

Alice goggled at him. ‘But you said last night…’ she started.

Charles sat back in his chair and glanced at Mrs Bland. Promptly she held up one admonitory finger. ‘Stay in the Here and Now, Alice,’ she said sweetly. ‘How do you feel about what Professor Hartley has said to you now?’

‘You’re lying!’ Alice said flatly. ‘I know you are having sex with Miranda. And I know you want to end the marriage.’

Charles smiled at her pityingly and shook his head. ‘Alice, Alice, Alice,’ he said softly. ‘It makes me so sad when I see your jealousy drive you out of control like this. You have delusions, Alice. All this is the product of your jealous imagination.’

Alice glared blankly at him and then at Mrs Bland.

She nodded. ‘Your husband is right, Alice,’ she said. ‘You have to work on trusting him. I want you both to come to me for an extra session this week and we will do some exercises around trust. Would Friday morning at this time be possible, Professor?’

Charles reached for his briefcase and made a great play of checking his diary. Neither of them asked if Alice was free. Alice was always free.

‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘And I think, Mrs Bland, that we should seriously consider whether Alice should have separate therapy sessions to help her cope with her paranoia.’

Mrs Bland nodded, looking thoughtfully at Alice.

‘Perhaps even medication,’ Charles said softly. ‘Perhaps even a period of hospitalization…’

Mrs Bland nodded, thoughtful again. Alice, her world whirling around her, listened to her husband making the first moves to have her put away, and could not find the power to protest.

Charles glanced at his watch, and snapped his briefcase shut. ‘Before we close I want to ask Alice for an agreement,’ he said in a bright, businesslike voice. ‘I want my furniture back in my house by the time I come home this evening – and not a scratch or a dent or a chip on anything.’

Alice got up slowly and walked towards the window. From where she stood she could see the blue roof of Michael’s pantechnicon. It was like a rebel flag. Her spirits suddenly soared. There lay her freedom, there was the open road away from this claustrophobic room and these two experts. Charles could plan what he wished, Alice was Born Free. With new courage Alice swung around and opened her mouth to claim her freedom, to deny Charles’s power, to shriek her defiance.

‘Time’s up,’ said Mrs Bland blandly. No one was ever allowed to prolong the session.

Mrs Bland picked up her pale grey suede music case, shot a quick look at Alice and a longer smile at Charles, and slid unstoppably from the room.

Charles stood up. His smile at Alice was triumphant. ‘See you at home tonight, darling,’ he said loudly enough for Mrs Bland to hear from the next room where she tidied her paperwork. ‘Don’t forget our agreement about the furniture.’

He went from the room without another glance at her. Alice stood by the window and watched him go. As he entered the tower block of the Psychology Department she saw Miranda Bloomfeather in a white miniskirt and high white boots lounge towards him and fall into step beside him.

Alice clutched her skirts in her hands and whirled out of the counselling room, down the stairs and across the lawns to Michael as if she were running for her life.

He was waiting for her in the cab of the van with the engine idling. Alice scuttled across the grass, gathered up her skirts, leaped up into the cab and slammed the door.

‘Drive!’ Alice yelled. ‘Drive, Michael! Let’s get outta here!’

Startled, Michael pressed the accelerator and for once did not stall. The engine roared under his inexpert handling, and he swung the wheel around. They drove noisily around the perimeter road of the campus and then turned out of the campus on to the dual carriageway and headed east along the coast.

‘All right?’ Michael asked over the noise of a driver braking sharply behind them as they wove from slow lane to fast lane and back again.

Alice wound down the window and let the wind ruffle her hair. ‘All right now,’ she said. ‘I have just had a most unpleasant forty minutes.’

Michael glanced at her, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought anyone could be unpleasant to you,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you would have been a match for anyone!’

Alice smiled at him and then turned her head and watched the hedges flicker past. A car overtook on the inside, sounding its horn. The driver waved and shouted something. Alice waved pleasantly back.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s odd. I suppose it was an old bad habit.’ She paused. ‘I think I’ll give it up,’ she said.

She lay back and closed her eyes, reviewing her marriage as an old bad habit which it was time to give up. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal. The image of Mrs Bland’s conspiracy with Professor Hartley was left behind them. Alice was driving away from the bastion of the Professor’s power: his work, the institution of the university, his authority over his students, his control over Alice. Alice could feel the bonds of a lifetime stretching and breaking. She threw back her head and started to hum in the long pulsing column of her white throat.

Michael smiled at her pleasure and changed gear from second to third, the engine screaming for release. A motorcyclist cut in front of them and then felt terror surge as the van leaped forward and chased him from lane to lane across the road as Michael glanced at Alice and swerved to the left, and then turned his attention back to the road and swerved to the right.

It was a pleasant drive in the early-morning sunshine. Grass-like stuff, which Michael vaguely assumed to be wheat, was growing green in the fields. White birds which were probably seagulls were circling behind a lone tractor. On the hills of the Downs the little blobs of white were sheep and the tiny blobs beside them were either very small sheep – perhaps lambs – or dumped copies of the European.

Alice wound down the window and the sweet smell of fresh-cut hay blew into the cab. Michael sneezed; Alice inhaled deeply, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her face was shining with her joy while her heart still pounded with the throb of adrenalin. Every now and then she exclaimed ‘And another thing…’ and then fell silent. Her hair crackled with static electricity as if it were charged with Alice’s newly freed energy.

They drove along the main road, and then turned right down the narrow road to Rithering village. Small birds sang loudly in the hedgerows, the uncut grass of the verges was speckled with flowers which Michael recognized unerringly as daisies of various different shapes, sizes and colours. The hawthorn buds were thick and white in the hedges, apple blossom and cherry blossom snowed petals down on to the lane. Michael thought that the eglantine was probably blowing. He tooted his horn at a particularly sharp corner and waved with the casual friendliness of country folk at the driver coming in the opposite direction who was forced to brake and swerve and run into the ditch.

‘Nearly there,’ he commented.

Alice opened her eyes and leaned forward to rummage in a large black rucksack at her feet which was lumpy with bottles of medicine and packages of herbs and seeds.

‘What have you got in there?’ Michael asked curiously.

Alice veiled her eyes with her eyelashes and smiled. ‘Nature’s cures,’ she said. ‘I have been a herbalist and a natural healer for many years. If your Aunt is not ready to leave this earthly plane it may be that I have something which might cure her. If she is wanting to make an easy transition to the next plane then I have some herbal teas which will help her on her way.’

‘Oh good,’ Michael nodded. Then he said suddenly ‘What?’ and the van swooped perilously close to the bank at the far side of the road as the meaning of her words hit him. ‘Help her on her way?’ he yelped. ‘What d’you mean?’

Alice smiled again, that special smile which denoted that she was in touch with deep elemental forces. It gave Professor Hartley the creeps, but Michael was new to it and it thrilled him down to his toes. His big right toe, less controlled than the others, gave an excited little twitch and the pantechnicon leaped forward.

‘Don’t worry,’ Alice said. And Michael could do nothing but smile back at her.

He had a bit of trouble turning the van into the narrow gateway which was marked with a lopsided sign – Rithering Manor. The furniture clanked and shifted ominously as the van bumped up the potholed gravel drive. Low hanging boughs of slowly falling trees banged on the roof of the van and roses run to briar scratched at the windows and the paint-work. The house itself was dark; it looked uninhabited, standing alone among tall trees on the outskirts of the village, the high gable ends pointing at a sky which had grown suddenly cloudy.

Michael stopped the van in front of the house and went up the shallow steps to the large double wooden doors, dusty with peeling paint. He pulled at the bell-knob. It came off in his hand with the promptness which normally only happens when these things are arranged by a good special effects department. He looked back towards the van for help from Alice.

She shouldered her rucksack and, wrapping an extra scarf or two around her head, came up the steps.

‘Try the door,’ she advised.

It yielded at once to his touch. Feeling for Alice’s hand, Michael stepped over the threshold into the darkness of the hall.

‘Who’s that?’ came a voice. A strong and hearty male voice from the front room on their left.

‘It’s Michael!’ squeaked Michael. He got a firm grip of himself and tightened his hold on Alice’s hand. ‘Michael Coulter,’ he said. This time he had gone too far in the other direction. He sounded as if he were auditioning for the bass part in Figaro. ‘I’ve come to see my Aunt,’ he said in a pitch midway between the squeak and basso profundo. ‘My Aunt, Miss Sarah Coulter.’

‘You’ve left it a bit late,’ came the reply. The door opened and a thick-set, grey-haired man stood in the doorway looking them over. ‘She’s dead. Are you the lad from the university?’

‘I am her nephew, Michael,’ said Michael, trying for a little dignity.

‘And you must be Mrs Coulter?’

Alice flushed scarlet with pleasure at being mistaken for Michael’s wife. Michael’s grip on her hand tightened. It was a tender moment for them both.

‘I didn’t know you were staying with your son or I’d have contacted you direct, Mrs Coulter,’ the man said.

Alice’s flush went redder but she abruptly lost her smile. ‘I am a friend of Michael’s,’ she said icily. ‘I came over with him today to keep him company.’

‘Oh aye,’ the man nodded. ‘Well I’m Doctor Simmonds, I sent the message to you. I’m afraid you’re too late. She’s dead.’

‘Oh,’ Michael said blankly. ‘Oh dear.’

Alice put the rucksack sulkily down on the tiled hall floor. A large green-eyed, thick-coated black cat came out of the shadows and sniffed at it.

‘I’ve just written out the death certificate,’ the doctor said cheerfully. ‘Natural causes of course. She was eighty-eight. I think it was the Beaujolais Nouveau, I warned her not to drink it after Christmas but she was always stubborn.

‘I’ll send the undertakers around later. But they won’t be able to fit her in for at least a couple of days. She’ll be all right here as long as it doesn’t get too hot.’

Michael gulped, his face went greenish in the shadowy hall.

‘You’re the only heir, you know,’ the doctor said chattily. He came out of the sitting-room with his black bag, waving the death certificate to dry the ink. ‘I see you brought your things to move in at once. Bit precipitate of you I would have thought; but young people today have very little sense of etiquette.’

Alice’s grip on Michael’s hand tightened.

‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to unload,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t block up the hall with anything till they’ve got the coffin out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’ll be neighbours,’ he said without much pleasure. ‘It’s a quiet village this; expensive. We like it like that.’ He looked hard at Michael’s young gormless face and then glanced at Alice’s flowing bright gown and coloured scarves. ‘Nothing that brings down property prices will be tolerated in this village,’ he said abruptly. ‘No hippies here thank you. G’day!’

His confident footsteps echoed on the loose tiles of the hall. Alice and Michael stood in silence, still hand-clasped. The big black cat backed up to Alice’s bag of herbal remedies and shot a spray of yellow urine directly and accurately all over it.

There was a long silence. Not even the hissing noise of the peeing cat distracted Michael and Alice from their thoughts.

‘Should we see her?’ Michael asked in a hushed tone.

Alice nodded. She went towards the uncarpeted stairs and led the way, one hand trailing along the sticky banister, the treads of the stairs creaking beneath each step. The stairs swept around a half-landing beneath a cobwebby high window and then arrived at the main landing. To left and right were doors closed on empty bedrooms, the door to the master bedroom was straight ahead. It stood open. Alice crossed the threshold and then paused.

The old lady was dressed in a perfectly white nightgown with a nightcap tied neatly around her white head. She was propped high on clean white pillows trimmed with lace. She looked like everyone’s idea of a sweetly dead old lady. She looked like Whistler’s Mother; only supine. On her bedside table were two empty bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, and on the coverlet of her bed were price lists from wine merchants and yesterday’s Sporting Life.

Alice started to hum, a deep rhythmic buzz of sound from the back of her throat like a massive, tuneful bee. She went over to the sash window and flung it up to welcome the sunshine into the shaded room. Michael, who dimly remembered seeing Alice hurling furniture from the spare bedroom window the night before, shot an anxious look at her as if she might be planning to toss Aunty Sarah out into the rose beds. But Alice was communing with the forces of Nature and freeing Aunty Sarah’s aura and essence and incorporeal body to mingle with the warm sunshine and be transported to a higher plane.

‘Hummm…’ she droned.

Michael dipped his head in an awkward little bow to the still figure in the bed and stepped softly out of the room. From his previous visit he thought he remembered that the kitchen was at the back of the house. He had not eaten since yesterday afternoon, and last night had been the most active of his life. He badly wanted a cup of coffee. He was also thinking that he should telephone his parents at once and tell them of Aunty Sarah’s death and his rich inheritance. Michael’s brain, under-fed and over-excited, spun with dreams and hopes.

The kitchen was as immaculate as Aunty Sarah’s bedroom. Michael filled the kettle and put it on to boil, noting that Aunty Sarah’s cleaner had let the rest of the house accumulate dust as long as the kitchen, Aunty Sarah’s room and the bathroom were as perfect as they had been in the roaring twenties when Aunty Sarah’s exacting standards had been set.

Just as the kettle was boiling, Alice came in.

She was wearing her dreamy look which sent a shiver of anticipation down Michael’s spine.

‘Tea, if there is any,’ she said with flute-like sweetness. ‘Coffee is a poison, you know, Michael.’

Michael nodded obediently, and looked for the canister of tea instead.

‘So you are the heir?’ she asked.

Michael nodded. ‘I always knew I would be,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t really think about it. She was one of those old ladies who look like they will live forever, you know.’

He warmed the pot and made the tea. There was fresh milk in the fridge. Alice frowned as he put the bottle on the table. Michael looked for a milk jug and poured it in, but that seemed to make it no better.

‘Milk is a poison, you know, Michael,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ Michael had not known this. He had drunk milk seldom after leaving primary school where he had to finish up one of those little bottles every break-time before he was allowed out to play. He had not liked the stuff much then, and he had a squeamish loathing for the skin on custard or hot chocolate; but he would not have called it poison exactly. However, he was unlikely to oppose Alice on this matter, or any other. He drank his tea black and sugarless. He did not think it was worth trying for the sugar bowl.

‘What will you do?’ Alice asked. She finished her tea and was peering into the depths of her cup. ‘What do you plan to do with this house?’

Michael gazed longingly at her. Blinkie, unseen in Michael’s baggy trousers, reared up and gazed longingly at her too.

‘I don’t know,’ Michael said weakly. ‘It depends, I suppose.’

Alice’s eyes when she looked up from her cup were so misty that he was afraid she had scalded them with the steam. ‘Depends on what?’ she asked, her voice silky.

Michael opened his mouth. All that came out was a pathetic squeak, wordless.

Alice rose to her feet; she was humming as she had done in Aunty Sarah’s bedroom but this time the noise was more insistent, like the distant purr of a lawn-mower in an enthusiast’s garden. Slowly but surely she unwound one of the scarves at her throat and held it across her face. Above the gauzy top her dark eyes stared hypnotically at Michael.

Her feet traced strange patterns on the flagstones of the kitchen floor. Michael crossed his legs in an effort to keep Blinkie aligned with at least some part of his body. She danced around in a little circle then she stood still and shivered her body in a sinuous snake-like tremble which set all the little beads and bells and discs on her scarves trembling and ringing.

This was unfortunate. The cat, mistaking the noise for the welcome clatter of the tin-opener, came running into the kitchen and seeing there was nothing in his bowl let out a contemptuous bawl of disapproval. Alice ignored him completely and took one small step towards Michael.

Michael pushed his chair back. He knew he was grinning in a village-idiotish sort of way but he could not manage his facial muscles at the same time as keeping everything else still.

Alice shimmered with more energy, her rounded breasts vibrating freely behind the kaftan. Michael, who had a vivid recollection from last night of lying beneath Alice and heading first one perfect globe and then another like a wet-dreaming soccer star, gave his familiar wail of despair, collapsed head first on the kitchen table and gave up his essence once more – before Alice had dropped more than one scarf.

Alice rested her face against his heaving shoulders and inhaled deeply. Though the essences slapped lightly into the tension areas of neck and around the eyes is best of all, the aura of yin is deeply restorative too. And, on a lower but none the less significant plane, it was a long time since anyone had shown much interest before veil number twelve.

As they embraced thus, in silent communion, the tom cat came a little closer and sniffed at Alice’s bare feet. She looked down at him with her dark eyes.

The cat looked back.

Alice knew herself to be in touch with Nature and the Life Force in all its manifestations; she sensed the cat responding to that Force in her.

The cat’s green eyes gazed inscrutably into Alice’s black ones. Anyone watching them would almost have believed that they were speaking to each other. Alice felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she sensed the cat willing her to understand something. Her fingertips prickled as their auras brushed, overlapped, mingled.

The cat dropped its eyes first, turned from Alice, and then hesitated. Alice waited, unmoving, for whatever gesture the cat might make. Slowly and solemnly, the cat backed up and with its usual accuracy pissed all over the hem of Alice’s kaftan, her bare right leg, and her right sandal with the little bells on the straps.

Alice gasped for a moment with shock and irritation but then exhaled deeply to bring herself under control. She released Michael and stepped away from him, saying nothing, though her right foot was warm and wet. Michael, still slightly shaky, sat up and poured himself another cup of sour tea.

‘That cat is blocking my Life Force,’ Alice said. Her voice was mellow and strong. ‘He has a negative presence. Can you feel it?’

Michael shook his head, the round lenses of his glasses fixed trustingly on Alice’s face.

‘His aura is dark,’ Alice said certainly. ‘His magnetic field is distorted.’

Michael looked at the cat, which was now sitting in a patch of sunlight washing his private parts with his back leg casually hitched over his shoulder and the air of a good job well done.

‘He may have fleas,’ Michael offered. ‘Aunty Sarah said he had when I was last here.’

Alice nodded. ‘She would have sensed that he was flawed,’ she said. ‘His Life Force is very weak.’

Alice went to the back door of the kitchen and opened it. Sunlight flooded on to the kitchen floor, illuminating Alice’s one wet footprint dot-and-carrying across the flagstones. Michael looked at it without curiosity.

‘Cat!’ Alice called peremptorily. The cat looked up at her and went trustingly towards her. Alice stepped out of Michael’s line of sight into the garden, the cat close behind her. There was a yowl of anger and dismay which was suddenly cut abruptly short. Alice came back into the kitchen with her wide-hipped swaying pace. She was trailing the limp cat by the tail, as lesser women trail mink coats. There was a dustbin by the door; she slung the cat into it and clanged the lid, then came back to sit down at the table.

‘I knew his Life Force was weak,’ she said conversationally to Michael.

Michael, dumbstruck, nodded; gulped his tea. His teeth clattered a little on the rim of his cup. They sat in the silence of satisfied lovers for a little while.

‘So what will you do with this house?’ Alice asked again.

Michael took a deep breath. ‘I wonder if I could live here while I finish my degree,’ he said. ‘I’ve never liked living in Hall. I could live here and rent some of the rooms.’

Alice looked down into the bottom of her cup.

‘May I tell you what I see?’ she asked.

Michael nodded.

‘I can see a place of growth here, of regeneration, of rebirth.’ She took his cup from his nerveless hands and clasped them in her own. ‘We could live here, you and I,’ she said, her voice husky with power. ‘We could run it as a growth centre, for people to try alternative medicine, alternative lifestyles.’ Her tongue flicked swiftly across her lips. ‘Therapies,’ she said. ‘Water therapy, mud therapy…sexual therapy, Michael.’

She glanced at him. ‘It’s a perfect place,’ she said. ‘Privacy, large rooms, an air of convincing elegance. We could do it. We could do it together, Michael.’

Michael gasped. He had been caught up by the soothing repetition of her voice into thinking she was telling his fortune. But it was more than that! It was an offer, a partnership. Him and Mrs Hartley! Together forever!

Gosh!

‘I don’t know anything about alternative lifestyles,’ he said. He sounded feeble, even to himself. Especially to himself.

Alice shrugged. ‘You could go on courses,’ she said. ‘You could go on retreats. I would teach you everything I know. You are sensitive, Michael. You know Yourself. The moment I saw your aura I knew you were one of those who Know. One of those who don’t have to learn everything from simplistic textbooks, who don’t have to have everything taught and written down.

‘Little bits of paper and examinations,’ she said bitterly, thinking of Miranda Bloomfeather and her A-minus. ‘Libraries of bits of paper, mountains of useless facts. You either instinctively know something or you do not. All the rest is just bureaucracy.’

Michael heaved a great sigh of longing. He was, after all, a student approaching the final examinations of a three-year course upon which the success of the rest of his life would depend. It is a time when everyone feels a natural repugnance for academic information, and the appeal of an instinctive knowledge which can be learned without effort is particularly high.

‘Do you think we could do it?’ he asked longingly.

‘I Feel we could do it,’ she replied, condemning thought to bureaucracy as well. ‘I Know we could do it. I See it!’

‘Yes! Oh Yes!’ cried Michael. Blinkie, as if wakened from a doze by their raised voices, lifted his head. Michael got up as well and took Alice by the hand. He thought if he was very, very quick, and thought very hard all the time about Henry James’s literary technique in – say – The Turn of the Screw – No! not that word! Not that! in say – The Ambassadors – he might be able to get Alice’s kaftan up and his jeans down before Alice’s clever hands went down and drew his essences into her cupped palms instead of the place where he would really much rather they went.

‘Yes!’ he cried, nearing his goal as Alice obligingly sank to the stone floor. He captured both her hands and held them above her head. Alice, though mourning the loss of male essence for the tension areas of her epidermis, could not help but writhe in delight at being held with such dominance. And on a cold stone floor too! It really was too At One for words when…

SUDDENLY THERE WAS A DREADFUL HAMMERING

NOISE ON THE CEILING!

‘My God what’s that!’ cried Michael, leaping to his feet. Blinkie dived back inside his trousers like a seal off a rock in stormy weather.

Alice scrambled to her feet and gazed wildly around her. The noise came from upstairs where there was nothing, could be nothing, but the stiffening mortal remains of Aunty Sarah.

‘Daisy!’ A sharp old voice, sharp as a cracked bell, echoed down through the empty house. ‘Daisy! Where’s my brandy and egg-nog? Daisy! You lazy bitch! Bring it up at once!’

Michael was blanched white with superstitious terror.

‘That’s Aunty Sarah’s voice,’ he quavered, reaching instinctively for Alice. She brushed past him and went to fetch her rucksack from the hall. She poured out the contents in an avalanche of alternatives on to the wide kitchen table.

‘She’s coming through from the Other Side,’ she muttered. ‘It would be the essences which drew her, my sensitivity and your essences. If I can create the right ambience…’ One little jar after another she drew towards her, selecting, rejecting, then she spread out her kaftan like a peasant girl’s apron and loaded them in.

‘Upstairs!’ she hissed to Michael, her dark eyes blazing with excitement. ‘Upstairs! With a manifestation this strong we may even see her! The dear old lady!’

Michael lagged unwillingly behind as Alice ran light-footed up the stairs, her bottles clinking in her kaftan. She strode into the bedroom and fell back, in shock.

Aunty Sarah was sitting up in bed, hammering on the floor with a silver-handled ebony stick. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded as Alice abruptly halted on the threshold. ‘Where’s my morning tea? Where’s my newspaper? Where’s my brandy and egg-nog? And why isn’t Daisy here? If you’re a temporary you can just go straight back to Lithuania or wherever you’ve come from. I won’t have au pairs and they all know it!’

‘Aunty Sarah,’ Michael popped his head around Alice, ‘Aunty Sarah, do you know me?’

Her bright gaze swept him pityingly. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘You’re my nephew, that idiot Michael Coulter.’

‘Oh good,’ said Michael weakly. ‘And Aunty,’ he said tentatively, ‘are you feeling quite all right?’

‘Of course I am!’ she snapped. ‘I’m half dead of hunger and thirst, but I’m all right! Where is Daisy with my tea? Fetch her at once!’

‘Did you say half dead, Aunty?’ Michael asked cunningly, trying to lure Aunty Sarah on to some common ground. ‘Did you say half dead?’

‘God give me peace,’ she exclaimed to the ceiling. ‘I’d rather be half dead than halfwitted. Michael! Go downstairs at once, and tell Daisy to come up here and bring me my tea and my brandy. Take this awful woman with you. She’s obviously one of those au pairs from the agency who can’t speak a word of English. Here!’ This was directly to Alice who still stood, frozen, her kaftan loaded with herbs and oils which were to aid communication with the other world, her head still full of dreams of an alternative lifestyle and a young lover. ‘Here! Heidi! Go away! Gotterdammerung! or whatever. Skit! Skedaddle! And send up Daisy to me.’

Michael stepped backwards, he laid hold of one of Alice’s floating scarves and tweaked it gently. Without a word she let him reverse her from the room which they had entered so blithely with such high hopes of astral communication.

All gone.

All gone.

And nothing left but a bad-tempered old lady who looked, as Michael had so rightly said earlier, as if she would live, occupying this perfect alternative therapy centre, forever.

They slumped side by side at the kitchen table. Alice listlessly took up one of her jars of herbs.

There was another abrupt banging on the ceiling.

‘And bring up Thomas my cat!’ yelled Aunty Sarah. ‘Where is he? I want Thomas!’

Alice and Michael exchanged one appalled look and then found their eyes drawn irresistibly towards the dustbin. Neither of them would have been in the least surprised if the lid had risen and Thomas also had returned miraculously to this material plane.

They waited a few moments.

Nothing happened.

Michael, exercising some manly courage, went across the kitchen floor, which was still puddled with Thomas’s final act, lifted the bin lid and looked in.

At least the cat was still dead.

‘What will you do?’ Alice murmured dully.

Michael shrugged his shoulders. ‘I suppose I shall go and find Doctor Simmonds,’ he said. ‘He’ll have to come back and see her. He’ll know where Daisy lives. She’s in one of the houses in the village but I don’t know which one. I’ll ring up my Dad and tell him Aunty Sarah’s been ill. I’ll drive us back to campus. The van’s got to be back at midday. Where shall I take your furniture?’

Alice looked at him blankly. The alternative therapy centre was fading so fast that Michael had almost forgotten it already. All there was for her in the future might be an occasional share of his narrow bed in the little room, and the nightly wheezes of her husband as his fevered imagination placed him and Miranda Bloomfeather in more and more exotic locations and in foreign countries too. There would be the grisly support and sympathy of her women friends. There would be interminable counselling sessions in which Alice would be made to feel obscurely to blame and clearly in the wrong. There would be a long, hopeless seeking through esoteric and unlikely therapy, for such scant legal fun is available to a forty-year-old woman whose husband despises her. Alice knew that without regular sex and lots of essence her neck would go crepey. She did not need a spiritual guide or a tarot reading to recognize the chance of a lifetime when it came on a plate.

She rose to her feet.

There was another banging on the ceiling. ‘If Daisy is not up here in five minutes with my tea and my brandy and my cat I shall dock ten shillings off her wages,’ came the ringing voice.

Alice’s eyes hardened. Her mouth was set. ‘Your Aunty Sarah is a negative Life Force,’ she said firmly.

Michael’s eyes goggled behind the round lenses.

‘She has a bad aura,’ Alice said. ‘Her magnetic field is distorted. She is trying to fight her destiny. She has a weak Life Force. She is ready to Go Over.’

Michael tried to speak but found his voice had gone. ‘What d’you mean?’ he whispered.

Alice had turned her back on him. She was switching on the kettle and fetching a clean cup and saucer from the Welsh dresser.

‘She has a negative Life Force,’ she said quietly. ‘She needs help to be At One with her destiny – her move to another plane.’

The kettle boiled. Alice picked up the tea caddy and spooned tea into the pot. She added boiling water. She put the teapot on the tray with the milk jug and the sugar bowl. Then she took a slim dark bottle and measured four precise drops of a clear odourless liquid into the teapot.

‘I’m giving her a nice herbal tea,’ she said.

Michael leaped to his feet but became entangled with the table leg. By the time he was free of the furniture Alice was carrying the tray upstairs, her face Madonna-like in its serenity.

‘Please don’t, Mrs Hartley!’ he cried. ‘Please don’t give her a herbal tea, Mrs Hartley. It’s much better not! Please not a herbal tea, Mrs Hartley!’

Aunty Sarah was sitting up in bed scowling at a handsome gold hunter watch when Alice and Michael tumbled into the room, Alice holding the tray and looking determined, Michael with a frightened grip on one of her trailing shawls.

‘Thought I’d told you to get lost,’ the old lady said acerbically. ‘What’s that?’ she demanded, pointing to the tray. ‘And where’s Daisy?’

‘Daisy’s not here today,’ Alice said in a confident tone. She put down the tray on the bedside table and nodded pleasantly at Aunty Sarah. ‘I’m a friend of Michael’s,’ she said. ‘Your doctor sent a message to say you weren’t well so we both came over to see you. I shall look after you until Daisy arrives.’

‘Oh,’ the old lady said, unconvinced. She shot a look at Alice’s flowing kaftan and the scarves with the glittery coins. ‘Not one of them Harry Krishners, are you?’

‘No,’ Alice said levelly. She reached over and poured the tea into the cup. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘No sugar,’ the old lady said, irritated at the suggestion. ‘Not one of the Mormons? Seventh Day Adventists? Quakers? Anarchists? Socialists?’

‘I have no god but the Great Earth Mother,’ Alice said calmly. ‘Drink your tea, Aunty Sarah.’

‘Miss Coulter to you,’ she replied instantly and with malice. She dipped her puckered old face towards the teacup. Michael held his breath, about to cry out, about to dash the cup from her hand.

She paused. ‘Not from the Welfare?’ she asked sharply. ‘Housing? Social Services? Not one of those little-Miss-Nosey-Parker-social-workers come to see if I’m dying in my bed, are you?’

‘No,’ Alice said steadily. ‘Just a friend of Michael’s from the university.’

‘Don’t drink the tea,’ Michael said in a whisper too soft to be heard by anyone but his own quivering ears and feeble conscience.

Aunty Sarah puckered up her dry pale lips, readying herself to drink. ‘Not a neighbourhood watch scheme?’ she said with sudden suspicion. ‘Not come to befriend me? Not Friends of the Aged? Not want to understand me?’

‘No,’ Alice said, her voice no less patient.

‘Senile Dementia Support Group!’ Aunty Sarah screeched. She pointed a quivering bony finger accusingly. ‘You’ve come to talk through my confusions with me!’

‘Not at all,’ Alice said. She gleamed at the old lady. ‘I’ve come to poison you with herbal tea so that Michael can inherit this house and he and I can live here forever.’

‘Noommmiiimmmmpppp!’ Michael moaned.

Aunty Sarah cackled like an old witch. ‘That’s good!’ she said delightedly. ‘I love a good joke. I like you!’ She took a deep swig of tea. ‘I like you, Heidi! You’ve got spirit!’ She gulped swiftly.

‘DON’T DRINK THE TEA!’ Michael said clearly. He stepped into the centre of the room, from behind Alice’s cascade of skirts. He snatched the cup from Aunty Sarah’s hands with all the power of a young man who has found the deep secret source of potency inside himself. Michael had read D. H. Lawrence and he recognized the feeling welling up inside him. He was as male and as powerful as a bull in a meadow. He was strong like the dark primeval soil. He was thrusting like an oak tree reaching towards light. He was free of the pathetic chains of bourgeois society, his face glowed, he breathed deeply into his pouter-pigeon chest. He was a man who has faced a very great temptation and managed to spurn it. Hearing Alice speak of murder and hearing poor old Aunty Sarah laugh so trustingly had broken Michael’s reserve. His innocence had gone. In its place was strength.