All the Sweet Promises. Elizabeth Elgin
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briefly. ‘What’s this message, then?’ Her gaze had returned to the circular table, and she was uneasy.
‘The message?’ Lilith closed the door and slid back the wedge. ‘You must try to understand that it isn’t a message, as such. It just came to me and I knew it must be for one of you.’
‘Came to you?’ Now Lucinda had noticed the table. She had seen one like it before – well, almost like it. Letters and numbers set at random around its perimeter and an upended wine glass in the centre. A planchette, they had called it at school. It had started as a game but had taken over their lives, almost. They’d been in terrible trouble when Matron discovered their secret, and each of them had promised never to do anything so wicked again.
‘Came to me,’ Lilith asserted calmly. ‘I get messages all the time.’
‘From the planchette?’ Lucinda’s eyes were fixed on the glass.
‘That’s not what it’s called and the message has nothing to do with – that.’
‘It’s a ouija board, innit?’ Vi had heard about such things. Mention a ouija board at Confession and it would be three Hail Marys and an extra Mass from Father O’Flaherty, soon as look at you it would.
‘It’s nothing to do with ouija, either. That,’ Lilith nodded towards the table, ‘is my own thing. If you believe, it will tell you what you want to know. It’s a part of my religion, of the old religion.’
‘It flamin’ isn’t, and I should know,’ Vi countered. ‘I’m a Catholic.’
‘The old religion, Vi, has been with us as long as time and has nothing to do with the Church of Rome. My mentor is the earth mother and my conscience is ruled by karma.’
‘And what’s karma, when it’s at home?’ demanded Vi, who knew that consciences were ruled by parish priests.
‘It’s a Buddhist belief,’ Lucinda whispered. ‘Sort of take what you want – and pay. I’m right, aren’t I, Lilith?’
‘Vaguely. But karma isn’t entirely Buddhist dogma. Everyone pays, or is rewarded eventually, usually in another life on earth.’
‘Sorry.’ Vi had heard enough. ‘We’ve changed our minds.’ She was having nothing more to do with such heathen talk, message or no message. ‘Come on, you two.’ Pushing away the wedge she opened the door with a flourish and, part relieved, part disappointed, Jane and Lucinda followed her. ‘Sorry,’ Vi said again over her shoulder.
‘So am I,’ Lilith spoke quietly. ‘Because I was just about to wish you a happy birthday.’
‘You what?’ Vi flung round to face her. ‘Who said it was my birthday? Who told you?’
‘The message told me, Vi. I had a feeling it was for you.’
‘Message my foot! You’ve seen my record sheet, haven’t you?’ It was the only way she could have known, unless Mary had phoned. But Mary wouldn’t know where to phone until tomorrow when she got the letter. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘All record sheets are confidential, kept locked in Patsy Pill’s office; you should know that. No one sees them but her and Ma’am.’
‘Then how did you find out?’
‘I don’t know. I never ask. He just said, “Happy twenty-sixth birthday, girl.”’
‘He said?’
‘It seemed like a message from a man.’
‘Girl, did he say? You’re sure it was girl?’
‘Quite sure. Does it mean something?’
‘It means nothin’. Nothin’ at all.’ Vi tilted her head defiantly. ‘Come on, you two. We’re not soddin’ about no more with rubbish like that!’
She closed the door with a firmness she did not feel then sank gratefully on to her bed, dry-mouthed and suddenly cold.
‘Vi!’ Jane gasped. ‘You’re as white as a sheet and you’re shaking. Get her some water, Lucinda.’
‘I’m all right, honest I am.’
‘No you’re not.’ Lucinda offered the glass. ‘And it is your birthday, isn’t it?’
‘What if it is? There’s dozens of ways she could have known.’
‘There aren’t, Vi.’
‘She guessed, then.’
‘I don’t think she did, but happy birthday all the same. Are you really twenty-six? Did she get it right?’ Jane smiled.
‘I suppose so.’
‘And have you any idea who sent the message?’
‘No, queen.’ Vi honestly had not. It could only have come from Gerry, and Gerry was dead. ‘That Lilith’s a good guesser and we’re goin’ to keep away from her and her funny religion, aren’t we?’
They said they were, though they knew it was not true. They would be drawn back to that table and its shining glass, nothing was more certain. Vi knew it too, for how she could prevent it she was too shaken, at the moment, even to contemplate.
‘Load of old nonsense, that’s what. Forget Lilith Penrose, eh? Even her name’s funny, innit?’
‘Lilith?’ Lucinda shrugged. ‘It was the first name in creation, some say.’
Vi gathered her forehead into a frown. ‘Who says?’ Everybody knew that Eve was the first woman. It said so in the Bible, plain as the nose on your face.
‘I-I don’t know. Someone must have said it, I suppose – that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, I mean.’
‘Well, that someone was wrong,’ Vi said grimly. ‘Just you forget such things, Lucinda. Like I said, we’d all better keep away from cabin 10 and all that carrying on. She’s been nosing around in the regulating office, bet you anything you like she has, and she doesn’t fool me!’
The smile was back on Vi’s lips again. Leading Wren Lilith Penrose would have to get up very early in the morning to catch Vi McKeown on the hop.
‘An’ it’s still me birthday, innit, and if we’re not too late for the transport into Craigiebur, I’ve got a spare ten bob I feel like spendin’. My treat. Anybody interested?’
Jane fidgeted with the signal pads on her desk, plucked a thread from the sleeve of her jacket then stared blankly at the chewed end of her Admiralty-issue pencil. What was this phenomenon? Why did everyone sit, breath indrawn, like figures in a tableau? Why this silence, a silence so unexpected and inexplicable that it screamed ‘Listen to me!’ Through the half-open door of the coding office she could see Lofty’s back; beside him Lucinda sat unmoving, her left hand relaxed on a dial.
‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ The sudden dense hush was so uncanny that Jane felt compelled to whisper. ‘Has the war stopped, or something?’
‘It happens.’ Jock shrugged. ‘Sometimes, it’s as if it takes a breathing space.’ Sometimes, he said, no hand depressed a Morse key or lifted a telephone or received a signal, and even the teleprinters, tired of their own unending chack-chacking, switched themselves off. It was only minutes, the duration of that fleeting armistice, but such a stillness was so unaccustomed, embraced a silence so complete that it was always noticed, and wondered at. Such moments happened mostly during the ungodly first hours of a new day, those breathless hours when a soul sighs away from a dying body. They were to be expected in that, the middle watch, when eyes were gritty with tiredness and the air stale and limbs cold, but it was less usual in a busy