Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

Tom regretted that Helen was sitting between him and Mr Smight. But she put out her right hand willingly enough for the medium to take while she slipped her left into Tom’s, who gave it a squeeze. With his own left he clasped Mrs Miles’s right hand and wished it had been the dark-haired Rosalind’s. Mrs Miles’s hand was cool and dry. They all sat like that, in a hand-in-hand ring round the oval table. Ernest bowed his head for a few seconds. Then he looked up in the direction of his sister.

‘I require vibrations. Give me a verse please.’

His sister stood, edged her way round the room to the little upright piano, drew out a stool, sat down again and plinked out a few bars. The piano needed tuning. Tom thought he recognized the opening of Jesu, Thou art all our Hope. As the music started to play, Ernest nodded as if to show he was receiving the vibrations he wanted. The music stopped abruptly. Ethel sat back on the piano stool. There was another prolonged pause.

Tom was starting to wonder what, if anything, was due to happen next when his ear was caught by a chinking sound. It was coming from the surface of the table. In the very centre had been positioned the tambourine. Tom couldn’t be sure but the simple instrument seemed to be regularly rising and falling a few inches up and down above the baize cloth, giving itself a brisk shake each time it did so. He couldn’t be sure because the light in the room had grown even dimmer and his eyes seemed to be watering. Yet the tambourine was surely moving a few inches, now up, now down. Then it was time for a contribution from the handbell which made a few dinging noises although without moving.

All this while they sat hand in hand round the table. As the tambourine moved and the bell sounded, Tom felt Helen’s hand tighten in his own sweating grasp. Mrs Miles’s by contrast stayed cool and unmoving. She’d probably seen it all before. Holding hands was a guarantee that no one could be manipulating the objects on the table — yet the trick might be done with devices involving wires or extending tongs. And where was Ethel Smight? What was she doing? Still at the piano? Tom thought so but the room now seemed so hazy that it was hard to make out.

The noises stopped. Ernest Smight, who had been sitting with his chin sunk on his chest, suddenly looked up in the direction of Mrs Miles. When he spoke, his voice was different, not so resonant, more familiar.

‘There is a spirit appearing behind you, dear. A short gentleman with a tanned complexion. He is young but with lines on his face as if he was accustomed to spending a long time in the open.’

Mrs Miles shook her head in a sign that she didn’t recognize the description.

‘And his clothes are wet,’ continued Ernest. ‘He is holding something in his hand which I cannot quite discern. A piece of rock, perhaps.’

‘He is my brother, Robert,’ said the dark-haired Rosalind, speaking for the first time.

‘Ah, I see how he moves towards you now,’ said the medium. ‘He has visited us before. I did not remember him at first. There are so many spirits pressing in on me.’

‘Robert died three years ago in an accident in California,’ said Rosalind, partly to herself, partly to the others round the table. ‘He was prospecting for gold. He suffered an accident with a hydraulic sluice. Has he a message for me?’

She spoke in a matter-of-fact way as if she was describing a trip her brother had made to the shops. Tom noticed that she didn’t turn round to look behind her. He could see nothing there. Nevertheless he felt a tightness in his chest.

‘Yes, your brother Robert has a message for you,’ said Ernest. ‘He says that you are to follow your heart. Does that make sense? To follow your heart.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Rosalind with more animation now. She didn’t elaborate.

‘He is smiling and nodding with pleasure. He is pleased that you understand. Now he can depart.’

Mr Smight nodded with satisfaction himself. He let go of the hands on either side of him, Helen’s and Mrs Briggs’s, and rubbed his temples. Then he glanced round the table. His eyes fixed on Tom for an instant before darting behind the lawyer’s shoulder.

‘I can sense a presence behind you, sir.’

‘Me?’

Tom’s instinct was to turn round but he managed to conquer it. All the same, he felt cold air on the back of his neck as if someone were blowing on it.

‘Another young man, of about your own age I should say. And he is a soldier, to judge by his uniform.’

‘A soldier?’ said Tom, his voice sounding strained to his own ears. ‘But I don’t know any solders.’

‘This gentleman is wearing a blue uniform. He is smiling fondly down at you. This time I am not mistaken. It is you he is looking at.’

‘Oh God,’ said Tom. His head and body were rigid with struggle. Half of him wanted to turn round, the other half wanted to stay staring frontwards. As if sensing his discomfort, the medium said, ‘Keep still, sir. You would not be able to detect anyone. But from your response I take it that you know to whom I am referring.’

‘Possibly. I am not sure. Can you say more about… what you can see?’

‘It is a peculiar coincidence but this gentleman also is wet, as if he had been immersed in water. Yet his blue uniform is fresh and shining for all that. Are you acquainted with anyone who has drowned, my friend?’

‘No,’ said Tom. He was reluctant to say more but suddenly the words tumbled out of him. ‘I don’t know anyone who drowned. But my father was buried at sea many years ago. I hardly knew him. He was on his way to fight in the Russian War. He died on board ship before he could arrive and was buried near the Dardanelles. I was quite young.’

To Tom it seemed as if someone else was speaking these words, yet he recognized the voice for his own. He had heard the details of the death and sea-burial only recently from a former comrade of his father.

‘He has a message for you,’ said Ernest.

‘I did not know him,’ said Tom.

‘But he knew you, sir, and he continues to know you — from the other side of the veil which separates all that is mortal and perishable from that which endures for ever. Your father is proud of you and what you have accomplished. He has a warning though. His message is that you are to be careful. He sees danger ahead for you and your good lady.’

Tom had almost forgotten Helen’s presence beside him. Her hand still rested in his.

‘There is danger by some woods, danger near a stretch of water. That is why he has come in this guise, soaking wet in his blue uniform. There is danger, too, from an individual who is not what he seems to be.’

‘I can’t make sense of this,’ said Tom.

‘I am merely the conduit, the medium of the spirit world,’ said Ernest Smight. ‘I do not claim to understand all. Now he fades away, his blue uniform absorbed into the shadows.’

There was a pause. Tom realized he was soaked in sweat. What had he just witnessed? Was it real? Not really real, but really the spirit of his father?

If Tom had turned round in his chair, could he have seen the man he had last glimpsed when he was a child? No, he would not have been able to detect anyone. Only Ernest Smight could do that. If, indeed, the medium was being truthful. Part of Tom wanted to believe but the other part, the larger one perhaps, was highly sceptical.

Meanwhile attention had shifted round the table to the couple on the side opposite from Tom and Helen. Arthur Seldon, the individual with sharp features, had placed a coin on the table. It was a half-sovereign, its gold gleaming dully in the gloom. Ernest seemed to start back from it but Tom observed how his eyes fastened on the money. Seldon added a second half-sovereign. The medium’s hand hovered then stretched out to shift the coins closer to him.