Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

will remember all that has occurred but you will be relaxed and happy. Do you understand me?’ For a moment he thought she had not heard him, but after a pause her hands dropped and she ceased struggling. He watched her face, waiting for the slight nod which came after a long perplexed silence.

      ‘Good girl,’ he said softly. ‘Now … one – two – three.’

      He waited only a moment more, to be certain, then he leaned back in his chair and took off his glasses.

      Jo lay still, staring from Bennet to his secretary and back. For a moment none of them spoke then, as Jo raised her hand and ran her fingers through her hair, Bennet stood up. ‘I think we could all do with some coffee,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Would you, Sarah, please?’

      He walked across to the table and switched off the tape recorder with a sharp click. He took a deep breath. ‘Well, how do you feel, Jo?’ he asked. His tone was light and conversational. His spectacles polished to his satisfaction at last, he put them back on his nose. Then he turned to look at her.

      ‘I don’t know.’ Jo pushed herself up against the cushions. ‘Oh God, I’m so cold. My feet are freezing.’ She leaned forward and rubbed them. ‘And my fingers are hurting – Oh Christ, I don’t believe it! Tell me it didn’t happen!’ She buried her face in her hands.

      Bennet glanced at the open door through which came the sound of rattling cups from the kitchen.

      ‘Do you remember everything?’ he asked cautiously. Removing the reel from the recorder he held it lightly between finger and thumb.

      ‘Oh yes, I remember. How could I forget!’ Jo raised her face and stared at him. He recognised the same blind anguish he had seen as she acted out the role under hypnosis. ‘All that blood,’ she whispered. ‘To see those men die. To smell it! Did you know blood smelled? And fear? The stink of fear!’ She stood up unsteadily and crossed to stare out of the window. ‘That boy, doctor. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He watched his father die and then –’ Her voice cracked to a husky whisper and she fell silent, pressing her forehead against the window-pane as a tear trickled down her cheek.

      Quietly Sarah reappeared and put the tray on the desk. Bennet raised his fingers to his lips. He was watching Jo intently. Outside there was a flurry of angry hooting in the narrow street but none of them noticed it.

      Jo turned back towards the room. Her face was white and strained. ‘Did you record everything I said?’

      He nodded. Her own small tape recorder still sat on the floor beside the couch, the microphone lying where it had fallen on the rug.

      ‘Come, have coffee now,’ he said quietly. ‘We can listen later.’

      ‘I still don’t believe it,’ she said as she sat down and took the cup from him. It rattled slightly on the saucer as she tightened her grip. ‘You’ve set me up somehow. No, not intentionally, but somehow. There is no way all that was real, and yet I couldn’t have dreamed that – that obscenity – that boy’s death.’ She found herself blinking hard and she steadied herself with an effort. There was a long silence.

      She sipped the coffee slowly, then she looked up, forcing a smile. ‘So, tell me what you thought. How did I do as a subject?’

      Bennet had taken his own cup back to his chair and Sarah, sitting at the side-table, her own hands still shaking, turned to look at him. She had recognised his barely suppressed excitement.

      He chewed his upper lip for a moment. ‘I think I can say in all honesty that you are the best subject I have ever worked with,’ he said at last. ‘As I told you, people’s sensitivities vary enormously and it often takes several sessions before a deep enough trance is reached for any meaningful contact to be made with another personality.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘But this Matilda. She was so clear, so vivid.’ He stood up again. ‘And so powerful. Do you realise I lost control of you? That has never happened to me before in all my years of experience. I tried to break the trance and I couldn’t!’

      Jo stared at him. ‘I thought I had read that that couldn’t happen.’

      He shrugged. ‘It was only temporary. There was nothing to be afraid of. But it was fascinating! Do you feel ready to discuss what you remember now? He reached down to where a pile of notebooks lay beside his chair and selected one.

      Jo frowned. Then slowly she shook her head, concentrating all her attention on the steaming black liquid in her cup, still fighting the unfamiliar emotions which overwhelmed her. ‘In a minute. I’m sorry, Dr Bennet, but I feel rather odd.’

      He was watching her carefully. With a glance at Sarah he went over to collect the coffee pot from the desk in front of her and poured some more into Jo’s cup. ‘I doubt if you have ever witnessed a massacre before, my dear,’ he said dryly. ‘It would be surprising if you were not upset.’

      ‘Upset! But I feel as though I had really lived through it, for God’s sake!’

      ‘You have. For you, every part of that experience was real.’

      ‘And not only for you,’ Sarah added softly behind him.

      ‘It was an hallucination, some sort of dream.’ Slowly Jo put down her cup. ‘You must have put it all into my head. You are not trying to tell me that I am a reincarnation of that woman –’

      ‘I am not trying to tell you anything,’ said Bennet with a sigh. ‘We are only just beginning to grope our way towards an explanation for this kind of phenomenon. All we can do is record what happens with meticulous accuracy and consider the various hypotheses. I happen to believe in reincarnation, but, as you say, it may well be some kind of dream sequence, and it may come from nowhere but your own unconscious. The interest lies in trying to verify whether or not the events you appeared to live through really happened, and in recording every detail which you can remember.’ He took his glasses off again with a weary smile. ‘There is one thing I can assure you of, though. I did not put the idea into your head, telepathically or verbally. The tapes will bear me out on the latter and also my great ignorance of Welsh history. We did not study Wales, I regret to say, in Vienna before the war.’ He smiled. ‘We won’t discuss anything further now, though, if you’d rather not. You are tired and we both need to evaluate what has occurred. But whatever the explanation, the fact remains that you are an amazingly responsive subject. You reached the deepest levels of trance and next time –’

      ‘Next time?’ Jo interrupted him. ‘Oh no, not again. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t take it. I have enough material here to write my article and that is all I want.’

      For a moment he stared at her in dismay. Then he shrugged and resumed his seat. ‘Of course, I cannot compel you to return, but I do most ardently hope you will. Not only for your researches, but to help me with mine. This Matilda, she seems a remarkable girl. I should like to know more about her.’

      Jo hesitated. Then she stood up. ‘No, I’m sorry. It is interesting, I agree, but I don’t like it. I was so much in your power, in your control. You could be levitating me next, or making me go stiff as a board, whatever you call it, for all I know.’ She shuddered.

      ‘Cataleptic.’ He smiled again. ‘You were in a far deeper state of trance than is needed to induce catalepsis, my dear.’

      She had begun collecting her notebook from the table but at his words she swung to face him. ‘You mean you could have done that to me?’

      ‘Of course.’

      ‘You didn’t, though.’

      ‘No, although it is still used by some practitioners as a method of gauging the depth of trance reached. I prefer to use a pin.’ His eyes twinkled behind his glasses.

      ‘A pin?’

      ‘Oh yes. You’ll hear it on the tape. I stuck a pin into the palm of your hand. Had you not been in a sufficiently deep trance you would have shrieked at me, and bled of course.’

      Jo stared at both her hands in disbelief. ‘And