look at the cards.
‘I do write, actually. I’ve just started.’ I muttered.
‘Good, good. Yes I can see you on TV.’
‘TV? Really? Not radio?’
In my mind I’d thought that one day I’d like to go on radio and chat about my new research into angels and the afterlife, but I’d never thought I would go on television.
‘Yes, radio too but TV, lots of TV. You’re going to be well known.’
‘I am? Cool!’
I was thrilled. Was I giving something away in my body language? But why was I pleased about going on television. Am I shallow? Did it matter?
‘You’ll have published your first book within eighteen months, they’re telling me. Then there’ll be others … lots more.’
As it happened, that book took a little longer, about two years actually, before it finally hit the shops, but whether the event was pre-ordained or I’d been encouraged to succeed by the message I’ll never know.
I was desperate to know more but she asked me to pick up the cards and pass them to my sister. It was her turn now and I scribbled furiously until her turn ended, way too soon. I could see how people became addicted to this stuff! Perhaps it’s the ego hearing what it wants, taking what it wants from the message. But she’d already started talking again.
‘I have another lady here, on your mother’s side,’ she began. ‘She’s with someone, her husband I think, and they are showing me a horse and cart. He’s making deliveries door to door.’
We both nodded again. Could this be granddad? He used to be a milkman.
‘Now I’m seeing a bakery. It’s connected to the lady. She’s making cakes and things.’
We weren’t sure but later Mum reminded us that our Nan worked for years in a bakery called ‘The Home Made’. How could we have forgotten this piece of family history?
‘You don’t know? That’s okay. Write it down, she says, and ask your Mum later. She’ll tell you. The lady is showing herself surrounded by children, loads of them, and she’s wearing a uniform.’ She continued.
This was brilliant stuff. How could she have known? Our nan had worked in an orphanage for years and years. There were pictures at our parents’ house of Nan in her uniform with her starched white apron, surrounded by forty or fifty children!
There were other relatives who came with messages that night. Brief appearances were made by friends and relatives from both sides of the family. I remember looking at my watch again. We had already been at her home for two hours and I wondered if it was time to go. Was she going to ask us to leave now?
‘Do you want to have a go on the table?’ she asked.
Debbie shrugged and smiled.
She beckoned us to stand up and behind her armchair was a low glass table. Stuck on the table were the letters of the alphabet spread out in a big sweep all around the edge. The table was set up to look like a ouija board, or a ‘talking board’. She reached over and picked up one of the glasses from the mantel and I suddenly realized what the painted glasses were for! They hadn’t just been left in the room. When I looked closer they were quite pretty. Maybe someone had made them for her as a gift? The glasses were to be our pointers, to move around the table to spell out words – messages from the other side?
Momentarily, I was nervous. Weren’t these things dangerous? I had a flashback, memories of one day as a teenager. Sitting in my parents’ old house, my sisters and a couple of friends and I had laid out our own felt-tip letters in a variation of what kids all over the world call ‘ask the glass’. We taped the letters onto the back of an old drinks tray and ceremoniously selected one of the best sherry glasses out of the cabinet before placing our fingers on the glass to ask our first question.
As someone called out, ‘Is anybody there?’ the glass began to move at once and we all ran in different directions.
‘Did you push that?’
‘No! Of course not, you know I wouldn’t do that. Swear it wasn’t you! Go on, swear.’
‘I didn’t move it, it wasn’t me. Oh my God, oh my God, do you think it was a spirit?’
‘It wasn’t me, really it wasn’t. Swear it wasn’t you!’
Someone was crying. We were all so scared that we never really got started. I remember someone suggesting that we burned the letters so that the spirits wouldn’t get us. I think we probably flushed them down the toilet or something but that was the first and the last time I had done anything like that … until now.
The medium was explaining what to do and had already muttered some words of protection before placing her finger on the glass and indicating that we do the same. The four of us sat around the table and the medium began to ask questions.
What on earth were we doing? I felt like a naughty schoolgirl but of course we were not naughty – we were adults and we were doing this on purpose. I tried to calm myself down; after all, ‘the medium is in charge and she must know what she is doing’, I rationalized!
The glass spun over to the letter ‘V’and then the letter ‘I’. What was that? I felt disappointed. The medium began chatting in a very normal tone as if a neighbour had popped in to say hello.
‘Is that you, Vi?’
The glass moved over to the word ‘yes’.
I felt annoyed again. ‘We are paying for this and she is chatting to her friends’, I thought crossly, but unreasonably. I felt like a real cow. A spirit friend had crossed the dimensions to communicate and I was quibbling about who it was. Maybe this Vi would be able to hear my thoughts? She would know what I was thinking, she would know that I was a cow.
‘Sorry, Vi love, I’m with clients tonight. It’s lovely of you to pop in for a visit. Could you come again another night?’
The glass went back to the word ‘yes’ again and the medium explained about her old friend and then apologized. I figured it was not really her fault, after all. Did it even matter? What was wrong with me? Why was I thinking like this tonight? I immediately felt guilty again. Perhaps it was nerves.
‘Would anyone else like to come for a chat?’ she asked randomly.
The glass went to the letter ‘E’, then ‘R’, ‘I’and ‘C’. Debbie and I looked at each other and I noticed the tears prick her eyes.
‘Eric?’
‘Who’s Eric, love?’
‘My Dad’s brother.’
Debbie was sobbing quietly now.
‘Is everything okay? Are you happy to talk to Eric?’
‘Yes, we’re fine. Yes, yes everything is okay, she’s just very happy. We both are.’
A single
