“Let’s get out.” Megan sounded a bit bored. It took more than a crowd of semi-savage children to frighten her. She opened the door and stepped over a couple of children wrestling on the pavement.
Then Hetty and I got out.
As soon as Hetty put foot outside the car a wiry, skinny little girl with the face of a thirty-five-year-old cardsharp began tugging at her coat. “Hey, me and my friend’ll guard your car,” she promised.
Her friend, who was even more skinny, nodded silently.
“Thank you,” said Hetty, her face a picture of horror, trying to shake the little girl off.
“We’ll make sure that nothing happens to it,” said the wizened little girl, a bit more threateningly, still holding on to Hetty’s coat tightly.
“Give them some money,” suggested Megan in exasperation. “That’s what she’s really saying.”
“Excuse me!” said Hetty, outraged. “I will not. That’s blackmail.”
“Do you want the wheels to be on your car when you get back or don’t you?” Megan demanded.
The little girl and her friend patiently watched the exchange with folded arms. Now that a sensible streetwise woman like Megan was on the case, they knew that the outcome would be to their liking.
“Here,” I said, giving the thirty-five-year-old little girl a pound.
She accepted it with a grim nod.
“Now can we please go and have our fortunes told?” asked Megan impatiently.
Meredia, the big wimp, had cowered in the car during the entire exchange with the Children from Hell. She waited for them to drift away before levering herself out.
But the minute they saw her emerging from the car they returned at high speed. It wasn’t often that they got a two-hundred-pound woman dressed head to toe in crimson crushed velvet, with matching hair, in their neighbourhood. But when they did, they knew how to make the most of it. The screeches of laughter that emerged from the children were blood curdling.
Poor Meredia, her face as crimson as the rest of her, lumbered the short distance to Mrs. Nolan’s front door like the Pied Piper, with swarms of horrible brats running and dancing after her, laughing and shouting insults. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, as though the circus had come to town, while Hetty, Megan and I jostled protectively around Meredia, making half-hearted attempts to shoo the children away.
Then we saw Mrs. Nolan’s house. You couldn’t miss it.
It had double-glazed windows and a little glass porch stuck onto its front. All its windows had scalloped, lacy net curtains and elaborately looped Austrian blinds. The windowsills were crammed to capacity with ornaments, china horses and glass dogs and brass jugs and little furry things on little wooden rocking chairs. Evident signs of prosperity that set it apart from all the other houses around it. Mrs. Nolan was obviously a bit of a superstar among tarot readers.
“Ring the bell,” Hetty told Meredia.
“No, you do it,” said Meredia.
“But you’ve been here before,” said Hetty.
“I’ll do it,” I sighed, reached over and pressed the button.
When the first couple of verses of “Greensleeves” began chiming in the hall, Megan and I both started to snigger.
Meredia turned and glared.
“Shut up,” she hissed. “Have some respect. This woman is the best. She’s the master.”
“She’s coming. Oh my God. She’s coming,” whispered Hetty in hoarse excitement as a shadowy shape moved behind the frosted glass of the porch.
The door opened and instead of an exotic, dusky, psychic-looking woman, an unfriendly-looking young man stood there. A small child with a dirty face peeped out from between his legs.
“Yes?” he said, looking us over. His eyes widened with mild shock as he registered Meredia in all her crimsonness.
None of us spoke. Hetty gently nudged Meredia and Meredia elbowed Megan and Megan elbowed me.
“Say something,” hissed Hetty.
“No, you,” muttered Meredia.
“Well?” enquired the creepy looking man again, none too civilly.
“Is Mrs. Nolan here?” I asked.
He eyed me suspiciously, then apparently decided that I could be trusted.
“She’s busy,” he muttered.
“Doing what?” demanded Megan impatiently.
“She’s having her tea,” he said.
“Well, can we come in and wait?” I asked.
“She’s expecting us,” volunteered Meredia.
“We’ve come a long way,” explained Hetty.
“We were led by a star from the East,” sniggered Megan from the back.
All three of us turned and frowned at her.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
The young man looked mortally offended at the disrespect shown to his mother or granny—or whatever Mrs. Nolan was to him—and began to close the door.
“No, please don’t,” pleaded Hetty. “She’s sorry.”
“I am,” called Megan cheerfully, not sounding a bit of it.
“All right then,” he said grudgingly and let us into a tiny hall.
There was barely space for the four of us.
“Wait here,” he ordered and went into another room. It must have been the kitchen, judging by the smoke and the clinking of teacups and the smell of fried eggs that emerged when he opened the door and disappeared when he shut it again.
There was hardly an inch of wall space in the hall that wasn’t covered with pictures or barometers or tapestries or horseshoes. Meredia moved slightly and knocked a photograph of a very large family off the wall. She bent down to pick it up and brushed against ten other pictures that went tumbling to the floor.
We loitered in the hall, totally ignored, while sounds of talk and laughter came from behind the closed door. The minutes ticked by.
“I’m starving,” said Megan.
“Me too,” I agreed. “I wonder what they’re having for tea.”
“This is stupid,” said Megan. “Let’s go.”
“Please wait,” said Meredia. “She’s wonderful. She really is.”
Eventually Mrs. Nolan finished her tea. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when I saw her—she looked so ordinary. There wasn’t a red head scarf or a gold hoop earring in sight.
She had glasses and a short perm and was wearing a beige sweater and sweat pants and, worst of all, slippers. And she was minute! I wasn’t very tall myself but she barely came up to my waist.
“Right girls,” she said, brisk and businesslike, in a Dublin accent. “Who’s first?”
Meredia went first. Then Hetty. Then me. Megan wanted to wait until last to see if the rest of us thought it was worth the money.
Chapter 3
When it was my turn I went into what was obviously the family “good room.” I barely got past the door because the room was so crammed with furniture and stuff. An embroidered fireguard stood next to a huge mahogany sideboard, which groaned under the weight of yet more ornaments. There were footstools and nests of tables everywhere you looked and a sofa and chairs in brown velvet. They still had their plastic covers.
Mrs. Nolan was sitting on one of the plastic-covered chairs and she gestured to me to sit on the other.
As I fought through the furniture to get to the seat, I
began to feel nervous and excited. Although Mrs. Nolan looked like she would be more at home on her knees scrubbing Hetty’s kitchen floor, she had obviously earned her wonderful reputation as a fortune-teller, somehow. What would she tell me? I wondered. What was in store for me? “Sit down, me dear,” she said.
I sat, balanced on the edge of the plastic-covered chair.
She looked at me. Shrewdly? Wisely?
She spoke. Prophetically? Portentously?
“You have come a long way, me dear,” she said.
I gave a little jump. So accurate! Yes, indeed I had come a long way from my working class childhood. “Yes,” I agreed tentatively, quite shaken by her perception.
/> “Was the traffic bad, me dear?”
“What? The what? Er…oh…the traffic? No, not really,” I managed to reply.
Oh I see. She had only been making conversation. The reading hadn’t started yet. How disappointing. Well, never mind. “Yes, me dear,” she sighed. “If they ever finish that bloody bypass it’ll be a miracle.”
“Er, yes.” I nodded.
But then it was straight down to business. “Ball or cards?” she shot at me.
“S…sorry?” I asked politely.
“Ball or cards? Crystal ball or tarot cards?”
“Oh! Well, let’s see. What’s the difference?”
“Five pounds.”
“No, I meant…never mind. The tarot cards please.”
“Right,” said Mrs. Nolan and with that she started shuffling the deck with the finesse of a riverboat poker player.
“Shuffle them, me dear,” she said, handing me the
cards. “And whatever you do, don’t drop them on the floor.”
It must be bad luck to drop them on the floor. I nodded knowingly.
“I have a bad back,” she explained. “The doctor said no bending.”
“Now, ask yourself a question, me dear,” she advised. “A question that the cards will answer for you, me dear. Don’t tell it to me, me dear. I don’t need to know it”—a little pause, meaningful eye contact—“me dear.”
I could have chosen one of several questions. Like, would there be an end to world hunger? Would they find a cure for AIDS? Would there be peace on earth? Will they manage to fix the hole in the ozone layer? But interestingly enough, the question that I wanted to ask was the “Will I ever meet a nice man?” one. Funny.
“Have you decided on the question, me dear?” she asked, taking the deck back from me.
I nodded. She started flinging cards on the table at high speed. I didn’t know what any of the pictures meant, but I thought that they didn’t look very promising. There seemed to be a lot of them with swords, and surely that couldn’t be good? “Your question concerns a man, me dear?” she said.
Even I wasn’t impressed with that.
I mean, I was a young woman. I had few concerns in my life. Well, actually, I had plenty. But the average young woman would only seek guidance from a fortune-teller for two reasons—her career and her love life. And if she was having problems with her career, she would probably do something constructive about it herself.
Like sleep with her boss.
So that just left the love life option. “Yes,” I answered wearily. “It concerns a man.”
“You have been unlucky in love, me dear,” she said sympathetically.
Once again, I refused to be impressed.
Yes, I had been unlucky in love. But show me a woman who hasn’t.
“There is a fair-haired man in your past, me dear,” she said.
I suppose she meant Steven. But I mean, who hadn’t got a fair-haired man in their past? “He was not the one for you, me dear,” she continued.
“Thanks,” I said, a bit annoyed, because I’d already figured that out myself.
“But waste no tears on him, me dear,” she advised.
“Don’t worry.”
“For there is another man, me dear,” she said, giving me a big smile.
“Really?” I asked, delighted, leaning closer to her, the plastic covers squeaking against my thighs. “Now you’re talking.”
“Yes,” she said, studying the cards. “I see a marriage.”
“Do you really?” I demanded. “Whose? Mine?”
“Yes, me dear,” she said. “Yours.”
“Really?” I said. “When?”
“Before the leaves have fallen on the ground for the second time, me dear.”
“Sorry?”
“Before the four seasons have rolled by a time and half a time again,” she said.
“Sorry, I’m still not sure what you mean,” I apologized.
“In about a year,” she snapped, sounding a bit annoyed.
I was slightly disappointed. In about a year, it would still be winter, and I’d always seen myself getting married
in the spring. On the rare occasions that I could see myself getting married at all, that is. “You couldn’t make it a bit longer than a year, could you?” I asked.
“Me dear,” she said sharply. “I do not ordain these things. I am simply the messenger.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Well,” she said, in a nicer tone, “let’s say up to eighteen months just to be on the safe side.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking that was very decent of her. So I was getting married, I thought. Momentous stuff. I would just have settled for a boyfriend.
“I wonder who he is?”
“You must be careful, me dear,” she warned me. “At first you may not recognize him for who he truly is.”
“You mean I’ll meet him at a costume party?”
“No,” she said ominously. “At first he may not be who he appears to be.”
“Oh, you mean he’s going to lie to me,” I said, understanding. “Well, fair enough then. Why should this one be any different?”
I laughed.
Mrs. Nolan looked annoyed.
“No, me dear,” she said irritably. “I mean that you must take care not to wear cupid’s blinkers. You may have to seek this man out and look at him with clear and fearless eyes. He may not have money, but you must not humble him. He may not have looks, but you must not humble him.”
Oh great, I thought. I might have known! A deformed pauper.
“I see,” I said. “So he’s going to be poor and ugly.”
“No, me dear,” said Mrs. Nolan, in exasperation and dropping her mystical language. “I just mean that he mightn’t be your usual type.”
“I see!” I said.
If only she’d said that to begin with. Clear and fearless eyes, indeed! “So,” I continued, “when Jason, the seventeen-year-old with all the pimples and those awful baggy clothes, meets me at the photocopier and asks me out, I shouldn’t laugh in his face and tell him that I’ll see him ice-skating in hell?”
“That’s the idea, me dear,” said Mrs. Nolan, sounding pleased. “For the flower of love may flourish in the most unexpected of places, and you must be ready to pluck it.”
“I understand,” I nodded.
All the same, I’d want to be pretty desperate before Jason would have any kind of chance. But there was no need to tell Mrs. Nolan that.
Anyway, if she was worth her salt, she already knew. She started pointing briskly at cards and barking out staccato sentences, thus indicating that the audience was nearing its end. “You will have three children, two girls and a boy, me dear,” and “You will never have money, but you will have happiness, me dear,” and “You have an enemy at work, me dear. She is jealous of your success.” I had to laugh—slightly bitterly—at that one. She would have laughed too if she knew how menial and awful my job was.
Then she paused.
She looked at the cards, then she looked at me. Something like concern was on her face.
“There has been a cloud over you, me dear,” she said slowly. “A darkness, a sadness.”
Suddenly, to my horror, I had a lump in my throat. A dark cloud was exactly how I described the bouts of depression that I sometimes got. Not the usual “I wish I owned that suede skirt” type of depression—although I suffered from that kind of depression too. But since I had been seventeen, I had had bouts of actual clinical depression.
I nodded, almost unable to speak.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“For many years you have carried this,” she said quietly, looking at me with great sympathy and understanding.
“Yes,” I whispered again, feeling my eyes fill with tears.
“You have carried it almost entirely alone,” she said gently.
“Yes,” I nodded, feeling a tear make its way slowly down my cheek. Oh my God! It was awful! I thought that we had c
ome for a laugh. But instead this woman, who was almost a complete stranger, had seen through to the essence of me, had touched me in a place where few human beings had ever been.
“Sorry,” I sniffed, wiping my face with my hand.
“Don’t worry, me dear,” she said, handing me a tissue from a box that was obviously there for this very reason. “This happens a lot.”
She waited for a few moments while I recovered my composure and then she began to speak again.
“Okay, me dear?”
“Yes.” Sniff. “Thanks.”
“This can get better, me dear. But you must not hide from people who wish to help you. How can they help you if you won’t let them?”
“I don’t really know what you mean,” I mumbled.
“Maybe you don’t, me dear,” she agreed kindly. “But I hope that you will learn.”
“Thanks,” I sniffed. “You’ve been very nice. And thanks, you know, for the guy and me getting married and all that. It was nice to hear.”
“Not at all, me dear,” she said pleasantly. “Now that’ll be thirty pounds, please.”
I paid her and launched myself out of the crackling plastic.
“Good luck, me dear,” she said. “And will you send the next young lady in?”
“Who’s next?” I wondered. “Oh it’s Megan, isn’t it?”
“Megan!” exclaimed Mrs. Nolan. “Isn’t that a lovely name? She must be Welsh.”
“Australian, actually,” I smiled. “Thanks again. Bye now.”
“Bye, me dear,” she nodded, smiling. I went back out into the tiny hall, where the other three fell on me with urgent questions. “Well?” and “What did she say?” Megan asked, “Was it worth the money?”
“Yes,” I told her. “You should go.”
“I’ll only go if you all promise not to tell anything until I’m back out and we’re all together,” said Megan sulkily. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
Chapter 4
When Megan emerged smiling about twenty minutes later, it was time to go back out into the cold night to see what Satan’s children had done to the car.
“The car will be all right, won’t it?” asked poor Hetty anxiously, as she broke into a run.
“I sincerely hope so,” I answered, walking briskly after