Alice Hartley‘s Happiness

‘Cat!’ Alice called peremptorily. The cat looked up at her and went trustingly towards her. Alice stepped out of Michael’s line of sight into the garden, the cat close behind her. There was a yowl of anger and dismay which was suddenly cut abruptly short. Alice came back into the kitchen with her wide-hipped swaying pace. She was trailing the limp cat by the tail, as lesser women trail mink coats. There was a dustbin by the door; she slung the cat into it and clanged the lid, then came back to sit down at the table.

‘I knew his Life Force was weak,’ she said conversationally to Michael.

Michael, dumbstruck, nodded; gulped his tea. His teeth clattered a little on the rim of his cup. They sat in the silence of satisfied lovers for a little while.

‘So what will you do with this house?’ Alice asked again.

Michael took a deep breath. ‘I wonder if I could live here while I finish my degree,’ he said. ‘I’ve never liked living in Hall. I could live here and rent some of the rooms.’

Alice looked down into the bottom of her cup.

‘May I tell you what I see?’ she asked.

Michael nodded.

‘I can see a place of growth here, of regeneration, of rebirth.’ She took his cup from his nerveless hands and clasped them in her own. ‘We could live here, you and I,’ she said, her voice husky with power. ‘We could run it as a growth centre, for people to try alternative medicine, alternative lifestyles.’ Her tongue flicked swiftly across her lips. ‘Therapies,’ she said. ‘Water therapy, mud therapy…sexual therapy, Michael.’

She glanced at him. ‘It’s a perfect place,’ she said. ‘Privacy, large rooms, an air of convincing elegance. We could do it. We could do it together, Michael.’

Michael gasped. He had been caught up by the soothing repetition of her voice into thinking she was telling his fortune. But it was more than that! It was an offer, a partnership. Him and Mrs Hartley! Together forever!

Gosh!

‘I don’t know anything about alternative lifestyles,’ he said. He sounded feeble, even to himself. Especially to himself.

Alice shrugged. ‘You could go on courses,’ she said. ‘You could go on retreats. I would teach you everything I know. You are sensitive, Michael. You know Yourself. The moment I saw your aura I knew you were one of those who Know. One of those who don’t have to learn everything from simplistic textbooks, who don’t have to have everything taught and written down.

‘Little bits of paper and examinations,’ she said bitterly, thinking of Miranda Bloomfeather and her A-minus. ‘Libraries of bits of paper, mountains of useless facts. You either instinctively know something or you do not. All the rest is just bureaucracy.’

Michael heaved a great sigh of longing. He was, after all, a student approaching the final examinations of a three-year course upon which the success of the rest of his life would depend. It is a time when everyone feels a natural repugnance for academic information, and the appeal of an instinctive knowledge which can be learned without effort is particularly high.

‘Do you think we could do it?’ he asked longingly.

‘I Feel we could do it,’ she replied, condemning thought to bureaucracy as well. ‘I Know we could do it. I See it!’

‘Yes! Oh Yes!’ cried Michael. Blinkie, as if wakened from a doze by their raised voices, lifted his head. Michael got up as well and took Alice by the hand. He thought if he was very, very quick, and thought very hard all the time about Henry James’s literary technique in – say – The Turn of the Screw – No! not that word! Not that! in say – The Ambassadors – he might be able to get Alice’s kaftan up and his jeans down before Alice’s clever hands went down and drew his essences into her cupped palms instead of the place where he would really much rather they went.

‘Yes!’ he cried, nearing his goal as Alice obligingly sank to the stone floor. He captured both her hands and held them above her head. Alice, though mourning the loss of male essence for the tension areas of her epidermis, could not help but writhe in delight at being held with such dominance. And on a cold stone floor too! It really was too At One for words when…

SUDDENLY THERE WAS A DREADFUL HAMMERING

NOISE ON THE CEILING!

‘My God what’s that!’ cried Michael, leaping to his feet. Blinkie dived back inside his trousers like a seal off a rock in stormy weather.

Alice scrambled to her feet and gazed wildly around her. The noise came from upstairs where there was nothing, could be nothing, but the stiffening mortal remains of Aunty Sarah.

‘Daisy!’ A sharp old voice, sharp as a cracked bell, echoed down through the empty house. ‘Daisy! Where’s my brandy and egg-nog? Daisy! You lazy bitch! Bring it up at once!’

Michael was blanched white with superstitious terror.

‘That’s Aunty Sarah’s voice,’ he quavered, reaching instinctively for Alice. She brushed past him and went to fetch her rucksack from the hall. She poured out the contents in an avalanche of alternatives on to the wide kitchen table.

‘She’s coming through from the Other Side,’ she muttered. ‘It would be the essences which drew her, my sensitivity and your essences. If I can create the right ambience…’ One little jar after another she drew towards her, selecting, rejecting, then she spread out her kaftan like a peasant girl’s apron and loaded them in.

‘Upstairs!’ she hissed to Michael, her dark eyes blazing with excitement. ‘Upstairs! With a manifestation this strong we may even see her! The dear old lady!’

Michael lagged unwillingly behind as Alice ran light-footed up the stairs, her bottles clinking in her kaftan. She strode into the bedroom and fell back, in shock.

Aunty Sarah was sitting up in bed, hammering on the floor with a silver-handled ebony stick. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded as Alice abruptly halted on the threshold. ‘Where’s my morning tea? Where’s my newspaper? Where’s my brandy and egg-nog? And why isn’t Daisy here? If you’re a temporary you can just go straight back to Lithuania or wherever you’ve come from. I won’t have au pairs and they all know it!’

‘Aunty Sarah,’ Michael popped his head around Alice, ‘Aunty Sarah, do you know me?’

Her bright gaze swept him pityingly. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘You’re my nephew, that idiot Michael Coulter.’

‘Oh good,’ said Michael weakly. ‘And Aunty,’ he said tentatively, ‘are you feeling quite all right?’

‘Of course I am!’ she snapped. ‘I’m half dead of hunger and thirst, but I’m all right! Where is Daisy with my tea? Fetch her at once!’

‘Did you say half dead, Aunty?’ Michael asked cunningly, trying to lure Aunty Sarah on to some common ground. ‘Did you say half dead?’

‘God give me peace,’ she exclaimed to the ceiling. ‘I’d rather be half dead than halfwitted. Michael! Go downstairs at once, and tell Daisy to come up here and bring me my tea and my brandy. Take this awful woman with you. She’s obviously one of those au pairs from the agency who can’t speak a word of English. Here!’ This was directly to Alice who still stood, frozen, her kaftan loaded with herbs and oils which were to aid communication with the other world, her head still full of dreams of an alternative lifestyle and a young lover. ‘Here! Heidi! Go away! Gotterdammerung! or whatever. Skit! Skedaddle! And send up Daisy to me.’

Michael stepped backwards, he laid hold of one of Alice’s floating scarves and tweaked it gently. Without a word she let him reverse her from the room which they had entered so blithely with such high hopes of astral communication.

All gone.

All gone.

And nothing left but a bad-tempered old lady who looked, as Michael had so rightly said earlier, as if she would live, occupying this perfect alternative therapy centre, forever.

They slumped side by side at the kitchen table. Alice listlessly took up one of her jars of herbs.

There was another abrupt banging on the ceiling.

‘And bring up Thomas my cat!’ yelled Aunty Sarah. ‘Where is he? I want Thomas!’

Alice and Michael exchanged one appalled look and then found their eyes drawn irresistibly towards the dustbin. Neither of them would have been in the least surprised if the lid had risen and Thomas also had returned miraculously to this material plane.

They waited a few moments.

Nothing happened.

Michael, exercising some manly courage, went across the kitchen floor, which was still puddled with Thomas’s final act, lifted the bin lid and looked in.

At least the cat was still dead.

‘What will you do?’ Alice murmured dully.