The second part of the show was a vigil. The team were busy setting up thermometers and motion sensors to add the illusion of science but it was Martha that added the something special to the mix.
“Don’t forget,” Pippa would say, face tight into the lens, “Martha, our psychic, doesn’t know our destination. She’ll be brought here and do a reading, blind.”
Martha stamped her feet to expel the cold. Pippa was busy with her preparations. Vocal exercises. Shaking her limbs. If Martha channelled spirits, then Pippa channelled the audience. With the cameras on, Pippa (like Martha) became a true believer. Her range spanned from nervous to hysterical. Her tears of fear turned her heavy eye makeup to muddy pools. Her performance heightened suggestibility and atmosphere.
“Have you destroyed them?” Greg sidled up to Martha. He was talking about the copy of his research notes that he always gave her.
“Don’t treat me like I’m an amateur. You know I learn them and then burn them.”
These were hot readings, as they were called within the trade, when a medium was already primed. Martha would reveal the memorised histories of suicidal serving girls, murdered travellers and Victorian serial killers.
Martha’s key was subtlety. She was frugal with the facts. Too direct and the show would be a pantomime. Too detailed and she’d be reciting by rote. And what couldn’t be confirmed couldn’t be denied, which was useful when the truth wasn’t juicy enough to appeal. All Martha needed was a name, a date, a hard fact around which to embroider her yarns. Greg, who also played on-screen researcher, would fake surprise with widened eyes, saying such as, “Yes, Martha, there was a third son here by the name of Walter, but we can’t corroborate there was a maid by the name Elaine whom he killed on Midsummer’s Day.”
“New coat?” Greg’s fingers stroked her collar.
“Keep your paws off.”
“Watch it. Pippa will think we’re paying you too much.”
Greg was clumsy where Pippa’s angling had been more oblique. Martha had chosen to ignore her jibes and hints, having stuck to the deal made when they were all green and keen. She’d not allow Greg to change the terms.
“You’re not and I’m worth every penny.”
Worth a better time slot and channel. Worth another series.
“How many personal clients do you have now? How much for your last tour?”
A lot. The world was ripe. She’d weighed it in her palm.
“None of your business.”
Martha was brisk. Even with her clients she was sharp. She’d not pander to their fantasies that mediums were soft and ethereal.
“Take care. We built you up and we can pull you down.”
Her laughter echoed around the empty cellar. Pip turned and stared at them.
“You won’t. You can’t.”
To reveal Martha as a fraud was to expose them all. The true believers would be incensed. Most viewers though were sceptics, they would already suspect, but the fun lay in the possibility of doubt. The chance that Martha might be real. So, not perjury, not a lie to shatter worlds, but was it one to shatter careers?
“We can find someone new. You’d be easy to replace.”
“Don’t threaten me. I’ll send you all to hell.”
“Keep it down,” Pippa stalked over. “Do you want everyone to hear? We’ll talk about this later. Do you understand, Martha? There are things to be addressed. Now get ready, it’s time to start the show.”
Martha had learnt from watching Iris and Suki. Both had reigned at Lamp Street, lumpish in their muddy coloured cardigans, giving readings to anyone who called. Muttering thanks to spirit guides. Turning tatty Tarot cards.
Martha had no claim to special gifts. She learnt to read the hands and face, the gestures that betrayed need and greed. The skill of deciphering a tic, interpreting a pause. Martha studied hard and learnt how to put on a show.
“Yes, David. Thanks.”
Made-up-David helped Martha to the other side. A fictional spirit guide to help usher in an imaginary spectral presence or fake demonic possession. David was a friar. Shaman. Priest. Rabbi. Denomination was irrelevant. People seemed to find religious men more comforting in the afterlife than in the flesh. David was based on an engraving that Iris kept by her bed. A monk with his hands folded in prayer.
“What do you make of it?” Pippa asked, now in character.
“It’s a big place.” Martha sniffed. “It smells bad. Like something’s rotted down here.”
The low ceiling pressed down on them, while the walls stretched out into shadow. Martha rubbed her temples, where pain had started to gather. She walked to the opposite wall, as if in search of something. It was her trick. The camera was forced to follow and the others had to orbit her to stay in shot.
“Brother David, help me.” Martha gained momentum. She covered her ears with flat hands. “Make them stop. They’re deafening me.”
“What is it?”
“Clanging. Fit to wake the dead. The sound of banging metal.” She winced as if uncomfortable. Tonight had to be special. She had a point to prove. “It’s claustrophobic. Too many souls in too small a space. A strong sense of punishment.”
Pippa made a display of her excitement, trying to reclaim screen time for her and Greg. “Greg, can you tell us more?”
“It’s a fascinating place. A gruesome history. It was a prison in the eighteenth century.”
His eyes shone in the viewfinder.
“What about the clanging?” Pippa asked. More professional than Greg, she’d not prove a point at the show’s expense.
“An inmate, Samuel Greenwood, was questioned by the prison board. One of them, shocked, recorded the interview in his diary. The main gates were locked but down here the doors were all open. New arrivals were greeted by the banging of the cell doors.” He mimed a man clutching bars and rattling them. “An unholy din by all accounts.”
Martha took off her gloves and trailed her fingers along the crumbling mortar of the wall, talking continually to David as she went. Her eyes closed in concentration. The camera loved the gesture.
“Of course. I see it now.” She stopped and the spotlight overshot her. “There’s so much misery here. Pain. Searing. Physical.”
The cameraman tripped up on an empty crate. The world was upended as an explosion of panicked feathers went off in his face. Too stunned to scream, Pippa did it for him. The bird, in its eagerness to escape incarceration in the upturned crate, sprang up and hit the ceiling. It landed with a dull thud upon the floor. It jerked and flapped, a reflex of the fleshly dead, until finally it came to rest. Martha knelt and picked it up. It was a scrawny thing, its feet deformed, head lolling on its broken neck.
Pippa had stopped screaming, looking over Martha’s shoulder.
“I wonder how it got down here. And how long ago.”
Martha laid the carcass back on the crate. She shook her head in disbelief. Sickened by this small, crushed life, her headache was suddenly much worse. She’d never experienced a full-blown migraine but recognised the signs. Lights danced at the periphery of her vision. Strange patterns hovered in the air. It interfered with coherent thought. She tried to reassert herself.
“This is no ordinary prison, is it, Greg? All these voices cry out but no-one comes. No-one keeps the peace.”
“Samuel Greenwood said the inmates ran the place. The authorities didn’t get in their way.”
Martha tasted bile rising in her throat. I’ll not be sick. I’ll not be sick. Not a mantra but a command. She’d last vomited in childhood. Its associations were too painful to encounter. Not like this. Not here. Martha fought it back.
“There’s uncontrolled rage within these walls. Frenzy. Violation.” She turned on Greg as if he were to blame. “Men, women, children, all mixed in together.”