The Company She Kept by Marjorie Eccles

far, switching on a lamp and beginning to arrange the letters of the alphabet in a circle round the polished rosewood table.
    The dusk had closed in. A small breeze ruffled the water on the lake; drawn by the light, moths and other small insects flew in, recklessly immolating themselves against the lamp. Sophie was suddenly conscious of the adjoining room, with its red walls and its mementoes of ancient Carthage and hideous sacrificial rites. She sometimes thought the room was less of a workroom for Kitty than a shrine to Alfred. Angie hated all mention of it and Sophie herself was often uneasy with it, for less superstitious reasons. She gave a quick glance to see that the door was firmly closed and shivered, wondering for the first time whether they had embarked upon something they didn’t understand. But it had gone too far by now; they were all seated round the table, five fingertips already planted upon the base of the upturned glass. Angie was excited, her other hand fiddling with her hair, drawing the flick-up at the side further across the livid mark on her face, Madeleine was endeavouring not to look embarrassed at having condoned this, Felix still had that superciliously amused expression imprinted on his face; his pale, cold eyes looked glassy, almost colourless. He’d definitely had too much to drink – but perhaps they all had. Especially Irena.
    Her eyes, too, glittered, and the excitement had brought a flush to her swarthy cheeks. Wearing the barbaric jewellery Kitty had given her as a farewell gift, she looked more foreign to Sophie than ever. Of them all, she was the only one who was not either amused, embarrassed or half-scared, though none of them quite knew how to start.
    After a small silence Felix began by asking in a facetious, sepulchral tone if anyone was there.
    â€˜You should not laugh!’ Irena reprimanded him sharply. ‘Ask if there is message for anyone, Sophie.’
    Sophie cleared her throat and asked the question self-consciously. The glass began to move: I-R-E-N-A.
    â€˜That was predictable!’
    Felix’s laugh was unkind, but this time Irena ignored him and spoke excitedly. ‘Who is there?’
    D-I-D- The glass stopped. Irena’s gasp caught in her throat.
    â€˜Do you have message for us?’
    E-L-I-S- ...
    At that point the glass skidded madly and slid away, knocking several letters off the table. The nervous silence was fractured by Angie’s frightened gasp, followed by
    Irena’s guttural, accusing voice: ‘Elissa! She is wishink to spell Dido, then Elissa, but you, Felix, you push the glass!’
    Felix uttered a word not likely to be in Irena’s vocabulary, but she got the gist.
    â€˜Is not a joke!’ she shouted, turning on him. Her pronunciation and command of English was rapidly deteriorating into the accents of farce but Sophie saw that she was deadly earnest. ‘And you frighten Angie!’
    â€˜I – I’m not scared,’ Angie denied, white and trembling by now. Any reference to Carthage and the darker elements of its past was likely to upset her. Kitty, telling her ghoulish stories with relish, had brought the past too vividly into the present and Angie, who was impressionable, hated them; detested Kitty’s workroom, the red walls, the blue and red and gold mask of Tanit above the desk, and all the other reminders of fire and magic and evil, however long ago they had occurred. Felix knew this and it was quite possible he had mischievously pushed the glass in order to frighten her, but really it was Irena who was his target tonight. He began bickering with her again.
    â€˜Oh, for heaven’s sake, do be quiet, you’ll wake the old ladies!’ Madeleine ordered, even her patience wearing thin. It was unlikely that Jessie Crowther would be disturbed; she was growing deaf and in any case slept like a log, but if Kitty was awakened from her first sleep, she vowed that she never slept a wink for