By Robert Bland
Madam Louise sat at the head of a long table. She was colourfully dressed in a bright red and yellow shimmering gown, and a purple turban added to the exotic, and somewhat intimidating splendour. Her pale face and bright red lips sparkled in the candlelight. Ayleen wondered if she and the others in the group assembled around the table were devotees or an audience. Her recently deceased husband, Brian, had been a regular and committed member of the weekly séance, and he spoke passionately of the spiritual powers of Madam Louise. He was certainly a devotee. He would come home from the meetings glowing, enraptured, and enlivened. “She has the gift!” he asserted. “She can channel the spirits from the other world. She is amazing!” Ayleen considered his devotion harmless enough, but seeing the medium decked out so outrageously and speaking so confidently, she could understand a little of the attraction she had for Brian.
She had not told Madam Louise that she was Brian’s widow, merely that she had a desperate need for information from a recently departed family member. Madam Louise suggested that she should make a small donation and attend the next séance. Ayleen did not consider the requested sum of $500 a small donation and had negotiated a more modest fee of $200, plus a bottle of cream sherry, as full payment. In return Madam Louise would certainly channel whatever spirits were needed to solve Ayleen’s problem.
So it started. Ayleen was not expecting the acknowledgement of the original custodians of the lands on which they met, but Madam Louise explained that she wanted to keep the peace with whatever indigenous spirits were around. “They have a powerful spirituality!” After an appropriate long silence, Madam Louise called on Ayleen. “What do you want to know sister?”
“I have lost a valuable ring” said Ayleen. “It was a gift from my husband who bought it for me with money he won betting on the races two years ago. He paid $5000 for it but I believe it is worth much more. I’m sure my husband would know where it is.”
“Let us make a circle with our hands and call on your husband. What is his name?”
Madam Louise took Ayleen’s hand and in the candlelight Ayleen saw the ring sparkling on the medium’s finger – three large emeralds surrounded by diamonds. Ayleen’s ring.
“What is his name? Let us call him into the circle!”
In that moment Ayleen saw with devastating clarity the treachery of her husband and this exotic charlatan. Her mind racing, Ayleen seized the medium’s hand and slipped the ring from the finger and dropped it into her handbag. “You Jezebel! You thief! You took my husband, and you took my ring. Well you can have him, in this world or the next. I will have my ring!” Then, with the energy and rage of a woman scorned she attacked the medium with the handbag landing a few well-placed blows and knocking off the turban.
Ayleen left in righteous triumph. She smiled to herself “Perhaps I missed an encounter with Brian, but it is a missed connection with a happy outcome.” She retrieved the ring from her handbag and admired its sparkle in the late afternoon sunshine.
Carindale Writers Group 