Free The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill Page A

mind.’
    ‘I know. You’re a good friend.’
    For a long time after Pauline had gone, she sat turning the idea of going to a medium over in her mind, wondering if it was wrong, whether it would be expensive, or a trick to make unhappy peoplebetter? Most of all, she found the idea frightening. But why would that be? It was either a lot of baloney, or some of them had a gift, and if she found one, they could put her in touch with Harry, and what was there to be afraid of in that? But how was it done? What exactly would happen? Would she really be able to speak to him and have him answer her so that she could actually hear his voice?And could a psychic person prove it all by telling you things only you knew, private things? Grandma Bixby had read tea leaves, her aunt had told cards. But, as Pauline said, women did then, it made a bit of entertainment, a laugh, a break in the dreary days when you had to do your washing all by hand. Sometimes it might give you ashiver, but that was not what she wanted now. She wanted nothingexcept to know that Harry was really there and to talk to him.
    The hot little front room seemed empty tonight, as if he had withdrawn. Maybe he wasn’t happy about what she had been thinking.
    In the end, to stop her brain from going round, she went next door to watch Pauline’s television after all.
    But no quiz programme, no comedy, no thriller, no television or any other diversion, could keepher from missing Harry and now from thinking about having the chance to be in touch with him, if only she could summon up the courage. She worried about it all evening, and woke twice in the night, to worry again.
    In Lafferton, the shops were in a frenzy of Christmas. On the third Saturday in December, Iris Chater wandered hopelessly in and out of them, confused by the glut of things, things,things and anxious that she ought to be buying food and presents. But there was scarcely any need. She was invited to Pauline’s for Christmas Day and intended to go for lunch, but Pauline’s two sons and their families would be there, all crammed into the little rooms. She didn’t want to outstay her welcome. She wanted Christmas over this year, the quicker the better.
    On the Sunday morning, aftera bad night, she did what she had not done for years and went to a service at the cathedral, but she felt out of place among the young couples with babies and small children, singing hymns she did not recognise to unfamiliar modern tunes. The family service was not the right setting in which she could pray about Harry and whether she would be wrong to visit a medium. She sat and stood and kneltand listened to the chatter and babble around her and felt as if she had landed by accident on some quite friendly but alien planet.
    As she walked home her knees gave her such pain that she was almost in tears. The rest of Sunday ran away ahead of her like a ribbon of unending road.
    Pauline was at her window watching out, and when she saw her, held up a cup.
    The hot sweet coffee and chocolatebiscuit were comforting.
    ‘I’ve got a name for you,’ Pauline said.
    The walls seemed to bend in and out like rubber.
    ‘I said I’d ask around and then I remembered a girl I used to work with at Pedders telling me her mother-in-law had gone to see a medium.’
    She reached behind the clock on the shelf for a folded piece of paper.
    If I take it, Iris Chater thought, if I touch it at all, somethingwill happen. She looked down at it. Once taken, she felt there could be no going back. You’re a stupid woman, she thought. But the feeling was overpowering.
    ‘I’d always come with you, you know, if you were nervous … just wait for you, I mean, of course, not come in the room. Well, there you are anyway.’
    Pauline put the paper down on the table between them.
    ‘Have another cup.’
    She did so, andsipped it slowly, talked about the shops, Christmas, the cost of everything, the funny new hymns, spinning the time out. Because when she left