Incarnate (28 page)

Doreen seemed glad to leave. The indeterminate animals at the gate looked as if they were hatching from the snow. Prostitutes and a snowman stood in a square near King’s Cross—prostitutes looking after people’s bodies while they had them, Freda thought, until they were ready for the Spiritualists. Doreen squeezed Freda’s arm. “I can’t believe how much better I feel, and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Now you know that isn’t true, Doreen. You were the one who had to face up to things.”

“I couldn’t have without you. I can see how sad those people are now. I couldn’t when I was one of them. Poor Mrs. Scatchard, who was making the sandwiches, do you know she’s been waiting since November? And people try to say it’s all fake. Her husband would have been in touch by now if it was, wouldn’t he?”

It might not be fake but Freda agreed it was sad, this eagerness for any message, whole relationships reduced to the level of a greetings telegram. “Thank God I’ve finished with all that. Thank
you,”
Doreen said. “The best thing you ever did for me was give Sage my address.” Freda hoped Doreen’s faith was justified, that Sage could give her more than the Spiritualists had.

Of course he already had. Just his presence made the house no longer feel lacking. Every time Freda passed the middle landing it reassured her to know that the nearest left-hand door was his. The neighbors who’d come in for sherry on Christmas morning had seemed to think it was having a man in the house that had restored Doreen to herself, but Freda knew it was the unspoken promise that he brought with him. Or perhaps it had been spoken— Freda didn’t know what he might have said after midnight Mass, when she had left them unobtrusively and slept more deeply than she had for years.

Above the bridge on Caledonian Road, the sky was more open. Clouds floated like melting ice in the canal. Freda bought a tin of yellow paint and as soon as they reached Doreen’s she found a paintbrush in the outhouse Harry had turned into a toolshed and set about painting the front door.

Freda had almost finished the first coat when Doreen appeared at the dining-room window with a mug of coffee. “He says it can be tonight,” she whispered.

The overcast was brightening when Freda stepped back, waving her yellow hands for balance. Except for the knocker, nobody would recognize the door. She scrubbed her hands at the sink in her room and changed into her best black dress, and went downstairs when she heard the gong. The middle floor still felt as if Sage were in his room, but he was at the dining table. “Now we are all here,” he said.

The sight of his smooth, untroubled, almost hairless face, his black-clad body, his long still hands on the table, affected her so strongly that she could say only, “Good evening.” Doreen wheeled in the serving trolley. Sage smiled at the cold cuts and vegetables and baked potatoes, then at Doreen. “That looks just right,” he said.

She was clearly awed by him. On Christmas Day she’d even asked if he would rather dine in his room. She looked almost afraid to join them at the end of the table for eight that was laid for three, the far end from Harry’s empty chair. She gazed fascinated at his long fingers as he lifted the dishes off the trolley and piled food on Freda’s plate, she cried, “Not so much for me,” and looked away, frowning at her rudeness. It was halfway through the meal before she dared to speak to him again. “Have you always been psychic?” she blurted.

“Not the term I would use, but always, yes. Ever since I came to be.”

“As long as that!” Doreen shook her head for wonder. “What would you call it, then?”

He shrugged and gave a faint calm smile. “Nothing.”

“You’re in touch with the other world though, aren’t you?”

“There is no other world.” He brushed away her anxiety with a gentle movement of his hand. “There is only part of this one that too many are denying.”

“That’s true. Too many people with closed minds. They’re the ones I’m sorry for.”

“Closed, no. Not closed.” There was an odd look in his eyes. “You cannot close a mind. Cutting oneself off from part of it is not the same at all. One may live in a single room of one’s house, but something else will live in the other rooms. Something else will grow there.”

“You mean,” Doreen said excitedly, “everyone is what I’d call psychic?”

“Not exactly.” The odd look made Freda think of a secret smile. “Something simpler. In time you will understand.”

Though she trusted him completely, Freda found the trend of the conversation a little disturbing. She thought how enigmatic he was with his ageless face that seemed related to no country, his faintly foreign use of language, English heard in a dream. “Sage, where do you come from?” she said.

Somehow she knew at once what he would say, and was smiling wryly before he said. “Everywhere.”

“Are you satisfied doing what you do?” She was thinking of the backstreet room in Blackpool, all that he had to offer reduced to a seedy tourist attraction.

“For the moment, yes.”

“Were you in Blackpool?”

“Assuredly. I met you.”

She smiled as if that might stop her blushing, and thought of Timothy, who had once said that to her, though she couldn’t now recall what she had asked.

“But don’t you want more people to know about you?” Doreen said. “Don’t you want everyone to be able to see what you see?”

“Perhaps they will. I am only one.”

“You mean there are others like you?”

“You could put it that way.”

Doreen was growing a little impatient with so many enigmas. “Doing what?”

“Why, what you would call opening minds. Opening them so gently that those concerned may not realize.” He glanced at Freda. “You know what I mean,” he said, and for a moment she experienced that panicky feeling of being blind and afraid to see. “Many are cut off from their night side, but that only makes it stronger. It cannot be denied now. The doors are opening.”

Had she dreamed something once about doors? She could no longer follow what he was saying. But Doreen said, “You mean religion, don’t you? Religion or actually being able to see the next world. People are turning back to religion because they were missing so much.”

“The next world! I like that phrase. Not the other world, the next, except that it is already here.” He was gazing at Freda as if he expected her to understand, but his smile said that it really didn’t matter whether she did. “Your plate is almost empty. Shall I serve?”

“Gosh, no. I don’t know how I ate so much.”

“From need. Well then, I think we are almost ready.”

Doreen cleared away so quickly that she almost dropped plate. “Have I time to wash up?”

“Of course. Take time.”

Freda followed her, both to help and to make herself move: she felt laden with all the food she’d eaten—thank heaven Doreen was too nervous to suggest Christmas pudding, which was steaming in a pan.

“Oh, Freda, watch me to make sure I don’t break anything,” Doreen whispered. “I mustn’t expect too much, tell me I mustn’t. Whatever he does will be all right, I know it will.”

“That’s the attitude.” They left the last of the plates to drain and went back to the dining room.

Sage had turned off all the lights but one and was sitting, eyes closed, at the table, his upturned hands in front of the chairs on either side of him. Now his hands rose and indicated the chairs. The women sat down, and Doreen reached for his right hand as it settled on the table. “That isn’t necessary,” he said without looking.

It wasn’t clear what was. His face had lifted now, toward Harry’s empty place. Doreen turned her head in that direction as if Harry might appear, and Freda stared along the table too. The dim light made her think of Spiritualist meetings in pink-lit rooms, the desperate bereaved singing hymns and waiting for whoever would stumble round the circle touching shoulders, bearing messages for everyone. The dimness and the ticking of the clock made her feel sleepy. The meal seemed to be weighing her down until she couldn’t move. If Sage could close his eyes so could she, just for a moment. There was no chance of her dozing so long as she could hear the clock.

She closed her eyes and made a wish for Doreen. It didn’t matter if she saw Harry this time, so long as Doreen did. She thought of seeing Timothy and flinched from the idea of seeing him as he had died. Perhaps she would see him when she was dead—surely that was soon enough. The clock ticked, she was sinking through her own massive peaceful weight that seemed to be confined to her stomach and her eyelids. She remembered that when her parents were near death, they’d sometimes claimed to see dead friends and relatives with them in the room. That seemed reassuring, then and now, and so she wasn’t dismayed to see her mother and father beckoning her into the woods. It was only a vision, she could still hear the clock in the midst of the birdsong. and she followed her parents into the green woods, not really her parents but a vision of them. She was running through the calm green summer light to catch them up, and now the birds were all she could hear. She was running too fast to slow down when she noticed that every leaf on every tree was exactly the same shape. Even her sudden shuddering panic couldn’t stop her, not even the knowledge that the figures that had halted to wait for her in the depths of the woods weren’t her parents or a vision of them after all, but something else entirely. The wood was growing dark and still she couldn’t stop, the wood was all at once entirely lightless and yet the birds were singing, if anything more loudly. She might have cried out, but in the midst of all that song it was impossible to hear. It seemed forever before she struggled awake.

She wasn’t sure what wakened her: not the dream. The sound of Doreen’s bedroom door across the hall must have been part of the dream, for Doreen and Sage were still at the table. They watched as she blinked at the clock, which had somehow gained half an hour. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she cried, and then she saw their faces: Sage was smiling peacefully, Doreen looked dazed but fulfilled. “Is it over?” Freda said.

“Yes,” Sage said. Doreen squeezed Freda’s hand as if she were unable to express her gratitude. When she made for the hall, she seemed barely able to see where she was going. Freda heard the bedroom door close and reminded herself she had only dreamed that a few minutes ago.

“Thank you,” she said to Sage.

“Thank
you.”
He took her elbow as she stood up, and she was glad of his assistance, for all at once she felt weak and frail, feathery, light-headed. “I feel dizzy,” she mumbled.

“That can happen on these occasions. Let me help.” He supported her upstairs—she had to close her eyes, though that made her feel she was climbing too many flights—and seemed ready to put her to bed if she would let him. “I’ll be all right,” she said, more firmly than she felt, and listened at her door until she heard him go down to his room. Now the house was still as a snowscape, and so she was able to hear, faintly but unmistakably, the sound of Doreen’s voice on the ground floor.

Sage had given her what she yearned for, that was all that mattered. Freda got ready for bed. She had never been so glad to climb between the sheets. She hoped it wouldn’t take her long to fall asleep. Perhaps Sage wasn’t so different from the Spiritualists after all, perhaps he offered the same faith. If that made Doreen happy, who was Freda to object? Nevertheless she pulled up the covers to shut out Doreen’s murmuring, for though she couldn’t distinguish a word, the tone was unmistakable. Doreen was murmuring words of love.

26

“
W
ELL
, look who we have here,” the Customs officer said with the faintest and thinnest of smiles. His blue eyes had brightened, he was fingering his almost invisible blond moustache. “Back to cause more mischief, sir, are we?”

Martin was too weary to argue. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said.

“They never do, sir. Will you open your case.”

He nodded to an older colleague, who strolled along behind the counter and gazed at Martin’s eyes. “Are you prescribed any kind of medication, sir?”

“No,” Martin said, and realized too late where they were heading.

The older man came round the counter while the other scrutinized the contents of the case. “Will you come with me. please.”

They took Martin into a small bare room and made him strip naked. The older man searched his clothes as if he were looking for fleas, while the younger, a thin strip of tongue squeezed white between his teeth, tugged Martin’s hair, peered breathily into his ears, recoiled from his armpits as if they stank of fear, and squatted for a while in front of Martin’s penis before he picked it up and let it drop. “You couldn’t hide much under there,” he said, and Martin told himself that he mustn’t let them get to him, his rage in Chapel Hill had been destructive enough. The young officer was pulling on aplastic glove. “Bend over,” he said.

Martin touched his toes and clenched his teeth while the young officer peered with a flashlight. When the gloved finger started probing, Martin began to curse him silently and fluently. He farted just as the finger withdrew, a long full-throated growl he was delighted to be unable to control. “Is he clean?” the older man said.

The other stood back in disgust. “He’s got nothing on him, if that’s what you mean.”

“Next time we may see if we can be more thorough. With your reputation,” the older man said, leaving Martin’s clothes piled on the floor, “you must expect special treatment.”

Planes that looked brittle as bone stood beneath the grubby yellow sky. The sky and the snowy fields beyond the tarmac seemed to be emitting the same yellowish glow. If it weren’t for Molly he might have caught the first plane back, except that he was faced with trouble on both sides of the Atlantic. He left the unnatural light of the snowscape for the unnatural light of the Underground, and thought she might prove to be his only reason to have come back.

The Kensington flat made him feel less like a tenant than a visitor to a roped-off suite in a grand house, four-poster bed and all. He phoned Molly at once, and felt better as soon as he heard her voice.

“Martin! You sound close.”