Chapter 2: This Fair Defect of Nature

Blackthorn House stood square on its plot, with peeling paint and a sagging roof. In summer, its shabbiness was windswept and romantic, but now the flower beds gaped bare and the birch by the door quivered naked in the air off the harbor.

“Servants’ entrance, if you please,” said Laura. She had a latchkey. She let herself into the kitchen, and Wendell followed. He laid the box by the hearth, and hesitated. He wasn’t much older than she was. They’d been in school together, years ago. He’d a daughter, as well as his boy. “Iven—” he said. “Laura.”

“Lord,” she said. “Such a long face. I’ll be along in a day or two, to see to Billy. Don’t let him eat too many candies. Think of his teeth. And thank you. For the lift and for the box.”

“I—” He caught her eye, swallowed, and went. The door closed behind him, and in the silence, Laura, standing still, was suddenly aware of every sound: the way the house groaned and settled in the chill, the whisper of the slow-burning fire. The box was indeed postmarked from Flanders. Addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Iven.

Freddie was twenty-one. He wrote wretched poems and drew quite good pictures. He played football. He spent all his spare dimes on ice cream. She hadn’t heard from him since she’d left Flanders on a hospital train. No letters had followed her to Étaples, or onto the ship, or across the ocean, but at first she’d been too ill to wonder much. And then she’d crawled off her sickbed in Halifax and the ship blew up.

They sent soldiers’ effects if they died in hospital. But Laura hadn’t had a death notice. This box could be anything. Freddie was somewhere on rest, drinking or playing cards or chasing the lice through the seams of his shirts.

Laura stared at the box and didn’t move.

Then a woman cried out, somewhere in the house. Laura, half-relieved at the interruption, wrenched her gaze round and hurried out into the hall. Found herself in darkness, with amber light and a babble of sound pouring from beneath the parlor door. The heavy Aubusson dragged at her feet. A stentorian voice rose above the clamor. “Mr. Shaw!” it said. “James Shaw, if you are on the other side, if you are there, speak to us!”

Laura stopped. Another séance. The Parkeys amused themselves by giving séances. Séances were a growth industry, in 1918. The war was in its fourth year. People liked to point out that if mankind had learned to fly, and see bullets inside living skin, and sail underwater, then it stood to reason that they could talk to the dead. Séance money paid Laura’s wages. The Parkeys had kept on paying her wages even though most of her time, after the explosion, had been spent in the YMCA hospital. Laura was grateful to the Parkeys.

Now the cries died away. The hall fell silent. Mr. Shaw, Laura thought, did not seem to be present. The commanding voice went up again. It sounded like Agatha, the eldest Miss Parkey. “Spirits! If any one of you knows a Mr. Shaw, knows the fate of Mr. Shaw, Mr. James Shaw, speak now.”

Silence.

Laura took a step backward. The Parkeys could manage their séances without her.

“Wait,” said a new voice, shrill and breathless. “I hear him, I hear footsteps. Jimmy.” A creak, and a crash, and a small, slender person shot into the hall and straight into Laura. With two good legs, Laura might have dodged. As it was, she hadn’t a prayer. She went down in a heap, heard a soft “Oh” of dismay. Then small, ineffectual hands descended, trying to pull her to her feet. “I’m so sorry, I’m…”

“It’s all right, ma’am,” Laura said, trying to escape the helpful hands. Starbursts of pain exploded up her calf.

The stranger, surprisingly, stepped back. “I’m making it worse, aren’t I? I do that.”

The tone of wry regret was disarming. Laura said, “You are, rather.” She flexed her ankle, rolled to her knees, and put up a hand. “All right. Pull in one direction?” Laura was hauled to her feet. She found herself standing before a finely dressed, old-fashioned person, half a head shorter than her, perhaps ten years older, and enchantingly beautiful. Outlandish hair, the color of fool’s gold, framed neat cheekbones and a mouth like a rosebud. She was wearing black.

Laura got her balance and collected her wits. “Thank you, ma’am. Such a soft carpet. I’m glad I had the occasion to learn it firsthand.”

“Oh, don’t thank me,” said the woman. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, when I heard footsteps, I just— I was in there, and Miss Parkey was— Oh, I felt such a thrill, as though she was really speaking to the beyond, and then you were walking, so I had to run out and see. I am clumsy. I’m so sorry. I just— I thought it might be Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?”

“My son. James. He’s missing—I mean I haven’t had news of him. Or— Well, he was in a battle. Near a place called— Oh, I can’t pronounce it. Something with a P. Pass—”

“Passchendaele,” supplied Laura, voice going a little flat. She’d gone home wounded in the midst of that ill-starred push. She refused to think of Freddie.

The stranger was still talking. “Oh, yes, of course—I never— Oh, those foreign words, you know— I hoped—that is—that the Parkeys could tell me where he is now. Because he’s missing. I’m Penelope Shaw.”

“Laura Iven,” said Laura.

Mrs. Shaw smiled: an impish expression that crinkled her nose but didn’t reach her worried eyes. “My aunt did always call me a heedless elephant of a girl. I’m really— Well, I usually do look where I’m going, but I— Oh, am I talking too much? I do that when I’m nervous, and—”

Three heads had popped out of the parlor: the Parkeys, neat as birds. Stout Lucretia, motherly Clotilde, vengeful Agatha. Agatha was blind. Her eyes, milky with cataracts, swiveled round the hallway in a parody of seeing.

“Not a ghost, Miss Parkey,” Laura said to Agatha. “Only your elusive lodger. Good evening to you all.”

“That’s Laura,” announced Agatha. “Could never mistake Laura.”

Clotilde looked solemn. “The spirits have sent you, dear.”

“Have they, Miss Parkey?”

“You are the link,” intoned Lucretia. “Come in, dear, come in, we will hold hands and commune with the spirits once more.”

That was what she got for escaping the kitchen. Tackled flat, then hauled into a séance. And yet…Mrs. Shaw had brightened with renewed hope, and the only thing waiting for Laura was that box.

She followed Mrs. Shaw and the Parkeys into the parlor. They had turned down the oil lamps—the Parkeys abhorred electric light—but the last of the daylight filtered in. A meager coal fire shone red in the grate. The Parkeys’ wooden Ouija board was laid out on the green tablecloth. Mrs. Shaw’s golden hair caught the lamplight.

“Come,” said Agatha. “Quickly, quickly, while the spirits are with us. The hour is fortuitous, the hour is propitious.”

She hissed her sibilants. Mrs. Shaw shuddered. Laura, used to comforting people, gave her a reassuring look. Agatha put the planchette on H. Laura put her fingers on the planchette. She wished she were sitting down to supper.

“Come, dear,” said Agatha Parkey. “Let us begin.”

Mrs. Shaw gasped when she saw Laura’s hands. Her finger-joints were knotted, stiff with scar tissue, palms latticed red and white. “Oh, dear. What happened?”

Flanders happened. “I shook hands with a fine gentleman in a top hat,” Laura said. “A mistake; they told me later he was Lord Beelzebub. You really meet all kinds of people at parties abroad.”

But Mrs. Shaw didn’t seem to register Laura’s reply; she was obviously putting together Laura’s limp and her hands, her uniform and the lines that stress had carved round her mouth. In a moment she was going to start asking questions. As though Laura, who had nursed in a war zone, was the closest thing in the room to Jimmy Shaw’s ghost.

The last of the day was gone and the shadows lay thick in that room.

Laura, exasperated, shook her head across the table. Blessedly, Mrs. Shaw bit her pink lip and was silent.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Agatha, to the room at large. “The Departed love us. They want to be near us.”

Mrs. Shaw looked down at the planchette.

“Now,” said Agatha. “We fix our minds on the spirit we wish to summon, and we close our eyes.” The little wavering gas flame gilded their hands. Agatha’s blind eyes were fixed on the board. “We are in search of one who was in life called James Shaw, son of Penelope Shaw.”

Silence in answer, and stillness.

Agatha lifted her head, eyes closed now, and addressed the darkness. “James?” she said. “James Shaw? Will you speak to us?”

The floor creaked. A hush lay like a hand over Blackthorn House, and in the silence, almost imperceptibly, the planchette crept toward yes. Laura hadn’t felt them manipulate it, but that was unsurprising. The Parkeys were professionals. Mrs. Shaw had gone white.

“Who is here?” demanded Agatha.

J-I-M

“Jimmy!” cried Mrs. Shaw. “Jimmy! Where are you? Are you— Have you passed on, dear?” She had begun to shake. Laura felt it through the table.

The planchette drifted to yes. Then it kept going. L-I-S-T, said the planchette. Mrs. Shaw’s gaze was locked on the moving arrow.

“Listen,” gasped Lucretia. “But listen to what?” The world outside was utterly still.

B-E-W-R, said the planchette.

“Beware?” echoed Clotilde, sharp.

Mrs. Shaw said, “No, but— Jimmy? Darling? Are you all right?”

BWR MSIC MROR, said the planchette. HIM.

This was strange even for the Parkeys. MROR? Mirror? The detritus of Laura’s brain offered her a vague association with the Lady of Shalott, Freddie declaiming the verses from Tennyson while she pored over an anatomy textbook: The mirror crack’d from side to side, “The curse is come upon me,” cried…

“No, but—” Now Mrs. Shaw was searching the empty air with frantic eyes. “Jimmy? Is it really you?”

DED, said the Ouija board. BUT HES ALIV.

Mrs. Shaw didn’t speak.

“Who’s alive?” demanded Clotilde.

FRED, said the planchette. FREDI FRED FR FIN FIND FIND. And if there was any more, Laura didn’t see it because she’d wrenched back her chair, awkward on the carpet, turned away, and left the room.