Death Trance

'Do you want a drink?' I asked him, as if he hadn't said anything at all.

'Is that Chivas Regal you're drinking?' he asked. 'Sure. I'll have one of those, with a little water.'

'Constance,' I said, 'would you care for a glass of wine?'

'Thank you, but I don't drink before six or after eleven.'

After I had fixed Walter's whisky, we all sat down around the fire and looked at each other. The rain sprinkled against the windows again, and upstairs I could hear that loose shutter banging. Constance tugged down the hem of her dress, and said impatiently, 'Aren't we supposed to do something? Like hold hands, or close our eyes, and think of Jane?'

'This isn't a séance, Constance,' I said. 'In a séance, you call the spirits and with any luck they answer. If Jane's going to appear here tonight, she's going to do it whether we want her to or not.'

'But don't you think she's more likely to appear if she knows her mother is here?' asked Constance, earnestly.

I looked at Walter. I could have said that I didn't believe for one moment that Constance's presence was going to make the slightest difference. But the truth isn't always necessary; and the last thing I wanted was an argument. I was very tired after my aqualung diving experience, and all I really wanted to do was go to bed, and sleep. I was so tired, in fact, that I was almost glad that I wasn't with Gilly tonight.

'I expect that your being here will increase our chances of seeing Jane quite a lot,' I said to Constance, and smiled as benignly as I could manage.

'A girl always goes to her mother in times of trouble,' said Constance. 'She may have been a father's girl when she was little, but whenever it came to anything serious… she always came to me.'

I nodded, and kept on smiling.

Walter checked his watch. 'Almost midnight,' he said. 'Do you think she'll appear?'

'I don't know, Walter. I don't have any control over it at all. I don't even know why she appears, or what she wants.'

'Does she look well?’ asked Constance.

I stared at her. 'Constance, she's dead. How can she look well, when she's dead?'

'I don't have to be reminded that my daughter's been taken away from me,' Constance retorted. 'I don't have to be reminded how it happened, either.'

'Good. Because that was the last thing I was going to talk about.'

'Oh,' said Constance. 'I suppose you accept no responsibility at all.'

'What particular responsibility do you want me to accept?' I asked her.

'Come on, now,' put in Walter. 'Let's not start digging over old graves.' He was immediately sorry that he had chosen that particular metaphor, and sat back in his chair, and blushed.

'Jane was pregnant,' insisted Constance. 'And the whole idea of allowing a pregnant woman to drive all that way in a snowstorm… all alone, unprotected, while you sat at home and watched some juvenile football game… As far as I'm concerned, it amounts to criminal negligence. Manslaughter.'

'Constance,' said Walter, 'forget the recriminations, will you? It's over and done with.'

'He murdered them, or as good as,' said Constance. 'And I'm not supposed to feel bitter about it? My only daughter; my only remaining child. My only chance of a grandson. All wiped out, because of a football game, and a husband who was too lazy and too careless to look after the people who were under his care.'

'Constance,' I said, 'get out of my house. Walter, take her home.'

'What?' said Walter, as if he hadn't quite heard me.

'I said take Constance home. And don't bother to bring her back. Ever. She's been here five minutes and already she's started. When is she going to realize that there was no snowstorm blowing when Jane went out to see you; that if anybody's at fault it's you, for letting her drive home when the weather was so bad. And when is she ever going to realize that I lost far more than either of you did. I lost my wife, the girl who was going to be my companion for the rest of my life; and I lost my son. So goodnight, okay? I'm sorry you had a wasted journey, but I'm not going to sit here and listen to Constance slandering me, and that's all.'

'Listen,' said Walter, 'we're just on edge.'

'Walter, I am not on edge,' I told him. 'I just want Constance out of here before I do something enjoyable, like pushing her teeth down her throat.'

'How dare you speak about me like that!' snapped Constance, and stood up. Walter stood up too, and then half sat down, and then stood up again. 'Constance,' he appealed to her, but Constance was too irritated and too tense to be mollified by anything, or anybody.

'Even her spirit isn't safe in your custody!' she snapped at me, wagging her long-clawed finger. 'Even when she's dead, you can't take care of her!'

She stalked to the door, Walter turned to me, and gave me a resigned look which, if I knew anything about Walter, meant partly that he blamed Constance for being so volatile, and partly that he blamed me for setting her off again.

I didn't even bother to get out of my chair. I might have guessed the evening was going to develop into another row. I reached for the Chivas Regal bottle and refilled my glass, almost to the top. 'I drink,' I said to myself, in my best barfly slur, 'to forget.'

'What do you want to forget?' I asked myself.

'I forget,' I slurred.

It was then that I heard a furious rattling at the front door; and Walter came back into the living-room again. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'The front, door's jammed. I can't open it.'

'Don't apologize, Walter, just tell him to open the door!' Constance demanded.

Wearily, I got up, and walked into the hallway. Constance was standing there with her hands planted furiously on her hips, but the first thing I noticed wasn't Constance. It was the cold. The strange, sudden cold. 'Walter,' I said, 'it's colder.'

'Colder?' he frowned.

'Can't you feel it? The temperature's dropping.'

'Will you please open this door,' barked Constance. But I raised my hand to silence her.

'Listen, do you hear something?'

'What's he talking about, Walter? For God's sake, make him open the door. I'm upset and I want to go home. I don't want to stay in this horrible dilapidated cottage a moment longer.'

Walter said, softly, 'I hear whispering.'

I nodded. 'That's what I hear. Where would you say it's coming from?'

'Upstairs, maybe,' said Walter. His eyes were bright now, and he had completely forgotten about Constance. 'Is this what happens? Is this the way it starts?'

'Yes,' I told him. 'Whispering, cold, and then the apparitions.'

'If you don't open this front door at once, you son-of-a-bitch,' screeched Constance, 'then by God I'm going to-'

'Constance, shut your mouth!' roared Walter.

Constance stared at him with her mouth wide open. I don't suppose he'd dared to speak to her like that more than once in 35 years of marriage. I looked at her and gave her a sour little smile which meant that she had better keep it shut, too, if she knew what was good for her. She said, 'Oh,' in utter frustration, and then 'Oh!'

The whispering grew no louder, but seemed to circle around us so that sometimes the voices seemed to be coming from upstairs, and sometimes from the library, and sometimes they sounded as if they were right behind us, only a few paces away. All of us strained to make out the words, but it was useless: it was a long, persistent, discursive conversation, in what language we couldn't make out. And yet there was something unmistakably obscene about it; a feeling that the whisperers were relishing some filthy sexual act or some unspeakably sadistic torture, and discussing it in relentless detail.

The temperature kept on dropping, too, until our breath was smoking. Constance tugged her rnink jacket around herself, and stared at me as if this was all some kind of barbaric hoax. I think she had come to the cottage in the genuine and excited belief that she was going to encounter Jane, but I don't think that Walter had done what I had told him to do, and warned her what it was going to be like; that it could be frightening, and unpleasant, and even potentially dangerous. Constance had probably walked through the door with the expectation that Jane would be sitting in front of the fire in the pink and natural flesh, knitting baby-bootees, no more harmed by death than if she had spent a month in Miami.