The Seance Read Free Page B

became part of my private mythology, along with the gods and goddesses of the Underworld.

    I remained at Miss Hale’s school until I was almost sixteen, growing up in a kind of limbo state in which I was free to read whatever I wished, and walk wherever I wanted, whilst at the same time feeling that nobody would care if I vanished from the face of the earth. My freedom set me apart from the other girls, and since I could not invite any of them to our house I was seldom invited to theirs. Mama’s spirits did not improve;if anything she became more desolate and lethargic as the years passed, dragging herself around the house – which she no longer left at all, even to visit Alma’s grave – as if she were being slowly crushed beneath an invisible weight.
    Violet gave notice at last, a few months before I left Miss Hale’s, and was replaced, on Mrs Greaves’s recommendation, by Lettie, a quick, intelligent girl not much older than myself. Lettie’s mother had died when she was twelve and she had been in service ever since. Though she spoke like a London girl, she had Irish and Spanish blood on her father’s side and her skin was quite dark, as were her eyes, which were large and heavy-lidded, with long curling lashes. Her long fingers were roughened and calloused by years of scrubbing, though she rubbed them with pumice every day. I liked her from the first, and would often help her with the dusting and polishing, simply for an excuse to talk. On Saturday afternoons she would join her friends – mostly servants like herself from houses around Holborn and Clerkenwell – in St George’s Gardens and they would go on excursions together; I often wished that I could accompany them.
    My life continued in this desultory fashion until one morning at breakfast, without the slightest warning, my father announced that he was leaving us. ‘It is high time you left school,’ he said to me, or rather to his plate, for he avoided my eyes while speaking. ‘You are old enough now to keep house for your mother, and I must have peace and quiet until I have finished my book. So I am going to my sister in Cambridge. I have arranged for you to draw an allowance from the bank, sufficient to maintain this house as at present and also to provide you with a subscription to Mudie’s, though many of my books will remain, and you may have the use of them; I am taking only my working library.’
    I knew from this that he was never coming back; I had several times begged for a subscription, only to be told that we could not afford it.
    ‘But Papa,’ I said, ‘I already keep house for you’ – he had been giving me the housekeeping money every Thursday morning for a year or more– ‘and how could your life be any more peaceful in Cambridge than here?’
    Light flashed from the lenses of his pince-nez. ‘I am sure you know what I mean,’ he replied, ‘and I do not think anything is to be gained from further discussion. I have let you have your way in many things, Constance, and you will kindly oblige me in this. I have informed Miss Hale that you will be leaving at the end of this term; she will speak to you about it today.’
    He folded his paper neatly, rose to his feet, and was gone before I could ask him whether he had told Mama.
    The day passed in a kind of stupor; I remember Miss Hale – who was very small and stout, so that she resembled a medicine ball on legs – summoning me to her room, but I cannot recall a word of what she said to me. It was only when I came home that afternoon, and heard, on my way upstairs, the muffled sound of sobbing from Mama’s room, that the full horror of my situation struck me. I stood for a small eternity upon the landing, willing the sobs to cease, before I crept on up to my own room.
    I had given very little thought to the future, beyond daydreams in which, at the end of my time at school, I would marry an intrepid explorer and travel the world with him, while Mama and Papa went on as they