Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

‘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.’

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.

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.