Chapter One
There was something about Naomi Long’s face – the wide-open black eyes, the hewn look of her nose and cheeks – that resembled a ship’s figurehead. Even her hair had an old tar quality, fastened in a pig-tail stiff with grease. At sixty-four she could boast not one grey strand amongst the matted brown.
On a September evening as the sun sank over The Isle of Wight and silhouetted the cliffs against a glare of gold she set off in her Morris Minor for what she called her ‘spiritualist session’.
Down wooded lanes that shut out the sky, past villages in hollows and churches on hills, along the road that skirted The Solent with the towers of Portsmouth like a mirage on the far shore she drove to the town of Ryde. Here she parked in a back street of shabby Victorian houses and knocked at the door of the shabbiest of the lot. It was opened by a little hunch-backed man.
‘Good evening, Miss Long.’
‘Evening, Mr MacArthur. I’m one of the last, I suppose?’
‘Yes, my sister’s nearly ready for you. Straight up at the top of the stairs, as usual.’
With an agility belying her age, Naomi galloped up several flights of dusty staircase till she came to what had once been a bedroom. It was now the Spiritualist Chapel of the Anointed.
Apart from a wooden cross on the mantelpiece, it didn’t look much like a chapel. With its pink velvet curtains and cabbage rose wallpaper it could have become a bedroom again at a moment’s notice. And unlike more conventional places of worship, it was packed with people, row after row of mostly elderly, mostly female faces.
Naomi glanced round until she spotted the fat face of Dougie Benson. He ran the newsagent’s shop in her village and along with an extensive choice of pornography offered a sideline of fairy weathervanes which he made in his garden shed. But it wasn’t the thought of these, or even the pornography, that made Naomi hot.
‘Saw your wife and her boyfriend slinking down to the beach last night,’ she whispered as she squeezed herself in beside him. ‘A bit chilly for dropping your knickers but she did it in a trice. Mind you, the ends of her tits were puckered and that’s often a sign of feeling cold, isn’t it? Standing right out, they were, like a stalk on the end of a marrow.’
Though Dougie was flabby, he had namby-pamby hands and Naomi knew he’d heard her when they twitched. Itching to get hold of his wife, no doubt. She relished the thought of the beating he’d give that wife tonight. She hoped she’d be awake for it. She was planning how she’d open her bedroom window to hear better, when the tap of a walking stick in the corridor made her sit up and look as big-eyed and blameless as could be: the medium, Emily MacArthur, was coming.
Naomi waved to her as she hobbled in and beamed encouragement as the old thing tottered to her seat. But she got a fit of the giggles when without warning Emily shot up as if she’d sat on a drawing pin and snapped, ‘Who’s Brenda?’
Naomi had to suck in her cheeks.
‘Come on, speak up now, dears. I’ve a Brenda, or is it a Glenda, with me? In the spirit. Used to complain of a pain here.’ She clutched her head and beat it with her fingertips.
‘It’s my sister,’ said a woman. ‘Our Glenda. She died of a brain tumour.’
‘Careful of the steps, she says. Danger. Are there stairs where you live now? No? Then it’s the house that’s to come. Watch those stairs, Glenda says, and go in peace. Who’s Jeff? In the spirit…liked doing jigsaw puzzles.’
Other people’s messages bored Naomi to tears. To pass the time she was staring at Dougie and smirking every time he twitched, when the sound of crying made her peer between the heads in front of her. It was that snooty ballet teacher, Vera Shaw.
‘You recognise the Ellen I have with me in the spirit?’
‘Yes,’ cried Vera Shaw. ‘It’s Mummy. Mummy.’
‘She passed over very recently, didn’t she?’
‘Three months ago.’
‘She wants you to know she’s happy. Were you on the stage? Yes, it made her proud. Never do wrong, she says. Do you understand? Speak up, if you will, pet.’
‘Yes. I understand.’
‘Talk to her. When you find yourself losing strength, talk to her and she will guide you. No more weakness. Go in peace.’
Naomi found this very weird. She worked in the post office at Newport and only last Thursday Vera Shaw had been in to cash her mother’s pension. Yet tonight she claimed her mother had been dead for three months. Naomi thought about it. She thought so hard she almost missed her own message.
‘Don’t go to town? Don‘t go to Down? Are you planning a trip to Ireland?’
Annoyed at the distraction, Naomi said she wasn’t.
‘Yes, Down. It’s definitely Down. They want you to avoid the place. Not alone, they say. Goodness, they’re most clamorous about it. Never go to Down alone. Respect the spirit world’s wisdom and go in peace.’
Bollocks, thought Naomi. County Down, of all places, full of IRA dickheads. She had no intention of setting foot in it in her entire life. But she intended without delay to delve into the affairs of Vera Shaw. At the end of the service she got up, managed as she did so to thump the back of Dougie’s neck with her bag, and forced her way through the chairs to the front row.
‘Vera, petal.’ She bent down and brought her face so close that Vera drew back. ‘Are you all right, sugar plum? I’ve got my car here. Would you like a lift home, sweetheart?’
Vera looked at her over her hanky then blew her nose like a trumpet. ‘It’s, er, Ruth, isn’t it? Oh, no - Naomi - that’s right. It’s very kind of you, but I live in Carisbrooke. Too far out of your way. Please don’t worry, I’m used to the bus journey.’
‘Rubbish.’ Naomi grasped hold of her arm and half-pulled her from her chair. ‘I enjoy driving at night. Are you ready? Shall we get going?’
Vera glanced round as if for a means of escape. ‘Actually, I was hoping to have a few words with that wonderful woman. Thank her, you know.’
‘What wonderful woman? Emily, you mean? Too late for that, cherub. She’s out of it, look. Be out of it for hours. Come on.’
Flapping her hands, she chivvied Vera to the door and chased her downstairs like a collie herding sheep – a collie in hob-nailed boots from the racket of her feet. Her voice spilled into the street and evaporated into the night. At last there was quiet, except when the old house creaked.
* * * * *
A rattle of teacups came up from the kitchen. A kettle whistled and was silenced. Mr MacArthur put his head round the chapel door.
‘Supper’s ready, Emily.’
Emily opened her eyes and blinked. She fumbled for her stick and forced herself to her feet. Then, as if listening for something, she stood still.
‘Those two women who’ve just gone, Bert - were they the last to leave?’
‘Naomi and her pretty friend, you mean?’ Mr MacArthur straightened the chairs Naomi had pushed awry. ‘Yes, they were the last.’
‘Are you certain? You saw no one behind them?’
‘No one, my dear. All the others had gone.’
‘Then it’s as I thought. Death’s travelling with them. I didn’t recognise him at first. I saw him catch them up at the head of the stairs.’
‘Oh, Death, yes.’ Mr MacArthur switched off the lights. ‘He was in quite a hurry. I had to stand aside and let him pass.’