The Trials of Radclyffe Hall, Diana Souhami [best sales books of all time .TXT] 📗

well, too. She had a nice home: a stone house with French windows, wide entrance hall, heavy furniture, coloured cushions, a garden with ‘heaps and heaps of flowers’ and a horse with a soft mouth and ‘naughty little ears’. The ground was springy for horseriding; ‘You will love it when you come.’

She looked pretty, cheeky and bright and about thirty years old. She kept up her singing and guitar playing. She assured John that she had not suffered when she died. It had only been a little blood clot on the brain. All her disabilities were gone: no high blood pressure or arterial sclerosis. She was not lonely on plane three and thought it the best one for John because of all the dogs and horses. She did a bit of voluntary work in the day among the ‘poor souls who had just left their physical bodies’, then she went home, took off her clothes and had a lie down.

John found the reassurance, relief and absolution that she wanted. Ladye was alive and well and blooming in a better world. Questions to Feda yielded replies that rendered irrelevant guilt or grief. Ladye forgave her any carelessness or neglect before that fateful brain haemorrhage; nothing could interfere with their eternal life together. In a few years they would be reunited ‘like a needle to a magnet’. (Una butted in that she wanted to die too if John was to ‘go over’ soon.)

Una was now marginalized and punished daily. If Ladye had endured jealousy because of Una’s constant presence, Una, in the nature of triangles and nemesis, was to have her measure of it meted out. She became witness and scribe to a relationship of incomparable consummation. Earthbound, Ladye had seemed wheezy, pleasant, indolent. Now she was infallible and still in love with John, or ‘Twonnie’ as Feda called her.

‘Hold your face to one side Twonnie, she wants to kiss you’, Feda said to John. Ladye caressed Twonnie, advised, admonished and expressed concern and undying love. She worried about her haemorrhoids, her nose going red in the cold, acidity in her stomach and the disgraceful way she swore. And she could see Una’s fibroids and told her to get them sorted out. Una wrote it all down. If she was slow with her note-taking, John was sharp and told her to abbreviate more.

Sometimes Una got waspish. She asked how she could be expected to take sensible notes with Feda grabbing on to her arm so hard. She was less than respectful when Feda’s writhings caused Mrs Leonard’s hairpiece to singe on the electric fire. And she admitted to ‘an unpleasant little shock’ when Feda’s vocabulary reflected Mrs Leonard’s social position not Mabel’s. The ethereal Ladye now said ‘of-ten’ pronouncing the t. In her Kensington days Ladye, of course, said ‘orphan’. Feda referred to corsets where Ladye wore stays and to ‘back premises’, a term unknown to her class. ‘Twonnie’ irritated Una, too. ‘Feda I must tell you it’s Johnnie, not Twonnie’, she said. ‘Ladye wants you to call her by the right name.’ But Mrs Leonard’s psychic tolerance had its limits: ‘Johnnie is a boy’s name. Twonnie is very much nicer’, she replied.

The sessions were for John not Una. She paid to fabricate life. It was as if Ladye had sneaked off on a world cruise and now John had tracked her down. ‘I expect you’re much happier on your side than we are here’, John said. She feared Ladye could not understand her own ‘awful earth grief’, her agitation and sleepless nights. Why had she left in a way that was such an awful shock to her? ‘Doesn’t she know I want to join her?’ she asked Feda. Did she receive her prayers? Didn’t she know that she loved her more intensely than was bearable? ‘Does she love me more than anyone else?’ she enquired.

‘Silly question’, Feda replied. ‘There is more in our love than has ever been between two women before.’ Ladye would rejoice were Twonnie to join her. Meanwhile she suggested she go to a friend of Mrs Leonard’s, a Mr Humely, for relaxation and breathing exercises. His charges were reasonable. She gratefully received Twonnie’s prayers, which went first to the seventh plane then came down to her. She had ‘passed over’ both because ‘the sands had run out’ and for the sake of Twonnie’s evolution and spiritual development. She had left ‘the core of herself’ with her. She did not want Twonnie to go over that fateful stroke again and again. She should live for the present and have a good time with Una.

This became a recurring theme. Mrs Leonard knew her trade. Ladye, it seemed, now more than commended John’s relationship with Una. She thought the three of them made a ‘wonderful combination’. Una must carry the torch and look after Twonnie. Ladye was more than occupied on plane three, what with horseriding, gardening and day trips to Jesus. She told John and Una to go off on holiday together, that it gave her a fillip if they had a good time.

It had not been quite like that in the Vernon Court Hotel. ‘Lunched and dined alone and slept badly’, was Ladye’s lament then. Nor was it quite what John wanted to hear. Did Ladye not realize that she was living the rest of her life in memory of her, that life had no meaning without her? Yes, Ladye knew that. Ladye knew everything.

Una wanted to know if Ladye was glad that she too was ‘so fond of Twonnie’? Yes, Feda replied, but she must not show her fondness slavishly. And when someone whose name perhaps began with T was around, she should try to conceal fond feelings.

Una:  Tell my Ladye she’s got to help me to take care of Twonnie.

Feda:  She says yes she wants that. She puts her in your charge.

Una:  Tell her I am honoured and will do my best.

Feda:  She says she’s afraid you hardly appreciate the magnitude of your task. It will be perfectly awful sometimes.