The Brontes Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson

faced me in the sheep-track we were following, single file.
    ‘It’s . . . funny, isn’t it, that we haven’t the right even . . . to send him flowers!’
    ‘Or ring up the girls . . . ’
    Part of our life was over. We both knew that Saffy might come back to us, or might not. He might have to, for Sheil’s sake.
    ‘How many years is it, now?’
    I stopped again, to reckon.
    ‘Over ten.’
    A singular thought struck me.
    ‘And Sheil’s never even seen him. Only photographs.’
    At the end of a fortnight Miss Martin joined us. She was, in her contained way, unsettled. The place, of course, didn’t help her out, and her version of it was that it was ‘very wild.’ Her rendering of wrack was ‘quite weird,’ and as she became more de-Cheltenhamised, she also grew in unhappiness. She joined us on our walks, her neat feet and picked ankles decently navigating the scrambles, but she really preferred a trot up and down the high road in front of the Inn, while Sheil, swaddled in wraps, sniffed and coughed at her side.
    After supper, Katrine said, ‘Let’s table-turn.’ She said it, I know, out of contempt for the whole place, and the forced inaction and the one post a day, and no bath, telephone, geyser or Sunday papers. For we all regard table-turning as the kitchenmaid of the psychic world. It’s too easy, too slavish to all of us, and tells far-fetched and clumsy lies, and altogether it’s like twanging the banjo when you might be playing a viola.
    Mother, always a little self-conscious with Miss Martin, asked her had she ever done any table-turning? And Miss Martin looked hesitant and bright, and was evidently being torn between her duties to her Maker and her employer, plus an illogical conviction that the whole thing was ‘great’ rubbish. I very nearly said it all for her. Inevitably, rubbish and employers won, and we sat in a rough circle.
    ‘ Agatha .’
    ‘Why, that’s me,’ squeaked Miss Martin.
    ‘Don’t take your hands off, Miss Martin. It means it wants you to ask it questions.’
    ‘Oh . . . dear.’ Miss Martin fluttered and tittered. ‘What – what do you want?’
    ‘ Where have you been ?’
    ‘Chah-Cheltenham.’
    And then, in the maddeningly inconsequent way they always do, the table rapped out ‘ red hair .’
    ‘No, oh no. Mine is brown.’ Katrine kicked me under the table and I said, ‘You’ll have to dye it, Miss Martin,’ and mother said, ‘S’sh.’
    ‘ Crellie and Keeper. Not pleased .’
    ‘Crellie and – there isn’t a keeper here. Lor! I hope he hasn’t run a sheep,’ said Katrine.
    ‘ Crellie bit Keeper .’
    ‘I bet he didn’t, did you, my fattest?’ I protested, slapping the sleeping Crellie’s stout stomach. Then, suddenly, ‘ Sheil come .’
    ‘She can’t. She’s in bed,’ explained mother.
    ‘ Go back .’
    ‘Where to?’
    ‘ Go back .’
    ‘Please explain,’ mother asked, with that matter-ofcourse courtesy which she would play impartially upon servants or demons.
    ‘ Remember Maria .’
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘ Remember Maria . Remember Elizabeth .’
    ‘Is it “Maria” or “Elizabeth” speaking?’
    Pause. ‘ No .’
    ‘ And remember Anne .’
    ‘Dear! . . . all the queens of England!’ chirruped Miss Martin. ‘Where is “Anne?”’
    ‘ Not here. You would say dead. Not here. Further. Sea .’
    ‘Which sea?’ I asked, for Miss Martin was, like Doctor Watson, ‘a little nettled at this want of confidence.’
    Pause. ‘ North .’
    ‘ “Anne dead in the North Sea,” ’ I commented.
    ‘ Not in. By .’
    ‘This is rather slow,’ complained Katrine. But the table was at it again.
    ‘ We will come .’
    ‘What, all of you?’ smiled mother.
    ‘ The two who came before .’
    ‘That means Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth,’ said Miss Martin. ‘Anne was so much later.’
    ‘ Not Queens. C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E and A-N-N-E .’
    ‘When will you come?’ enquired mother hastily.
    ‘ Not yet. Not free. Shall we see you