Midwinter of the Spirit (20 page)

Lol brought two lagers from the fridge, as Denny spelled it out. Dick, it seemed, had resorted to bribery: if the boy James swallowed his cool for just a day, Dick would finance a professionally produced CD by James and his rock band.

Lol winced. ‘What are they called?’

‘Tuneless Little Twats with Fender Strats. Fuck knows, does it matter? I told him you’d do it, Lol.’

‘Me?’

‘Produce them. You’ll get paid, of course.’

‘Sod off.’

‘Laurence, we’re talking EP-length, that’s all. Four tracks – two days’ work, max. A hundred copies, which is where I make
my
profit. It’s common enough these days – how I keep the studio up and running. I said you’d do it. James
knows
your stuff. James even
likes
your stuff.’

‘Suppose I hate
his
stuff?’

‘Good boy,’ said Denny, ‘I appreciate this. I said we’d give their material a listen tomorrow afternoon, OK? Good. And I’m glad about Kathy and you. I am really
glad
. God knows, I would do anything,
give
anything to get her away from there. Meanwhile, if she’s not alone, that’s the best thing I could hope for under the circumstances.’

Lol went still. ‘What has she said?’

‘I’m her brother,’ Denny said. ‘She doesn’t have to say anything to me.’

Later, after Denny had gone, it started to snow a little.

Lol stood by the window in the dark, looking down into lamplit Church Street/Capuchin Lane, the centuries seeping away along with the colours of the day. It was snowing briskly, all the shops had closed, most of the people had gone. If he leaned into the top corner of the window he could see the blackening tower of the Cathedral. Below him, a young guy guided a young woman gently into a shallow doorway and they embraced.

Lol thought of Moon in her dusty white nightdress.

‘
If she’s not alone
…’

‘Fucking hell, I didn’t expect that.’ Rowenna had gone in first, and when she came out she raised her eyebrows, pulled Jane over to the door.

‘She was good?’

‘She
was
, actually.’

‘How much?’

‘Twenty. I paid for you as well.’

‘There was no need for that. I’m not—’

‘Forget it. Go on, don’t keep her waiting. She might hang a curse on you.’

‘Shit,’ said Jane.

‘That was a joke.’

‘Sure.’

She didn’t, to be honest, like fortune-tellers one bit, and for the very reasons Rowenna had put to her earlier. Suppose the woman told her she was going to die soon? Or that Mum was? Not that they ever did; they just looked at you sadly from under their headscarves and said:
Take your money back, dearie. All of a sudden I’m not feeling too well
… And that was when you knew they were genuine and your card was marked.

‘Go on,’ Rowenna hissed.

The booth was just an alcove in the public bar with a wicker screen set up to hide it.

ANGELA. TAROT READINGS.

Rowenna had opted for her because, like she’d said, she herself knew a bit about the tarot, so would be able to tell if Angela was the real McCoy.

Oh, shit
. Another thing Jane didn’t like was the way you were kind of putting yourself and your future in someone else’s hands. Whatever they wanted to tell you, it would stay with you, colour your dreams, frame your nightmares.
Not
Jane’s idea of New Age, which was about self-exploration – wasn’t it?

‘Jane…’

‘Yeah, OK.’

No alternative, no way out. Jane squeezed behind the partition.

17

Wise Women

A
NGELA SMILED
.

‘You look worried,’ she said. ‘Why is that?’

‘I’m not worried.’

‘There’s no need to be. Have you consulted the tarot before?’

‘Once or twice,’ Jane lied.

Angela smiled. She was sitting at a long pub table of scratched mahogany with wrought-iron legs. Behind her was a narrow window of frosted glass; the light it shed was cold and grey. It was going rapidly dark out there.

Angela’s hands were already in motion, spreading the cards and then gathering them together. Her hands were slender and supple; there were no rings. Suddenly she pushed the full pack in front of Jane.

‘Pick them up.’

‘Me?’

Angela nodded. She was not what Jane had been expecting: no headscarf, no big brass earrings. Jane saw a long oval face and mid-length ash-blonde hair. She wore a pale linen suit which seemed no more suited to this event than Rowenna’s cashmere. Jane reached out for the cards.

‘And shuffle them.’

They were quite big cards and Jane was clumsy. Cards kept sliding out as she tried to mix them up. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right, you’re doing fine. Now cut the pack.’

Angela’s voice was the most unexpected thing. It was warm and surprisingly cultured.

Jane cut the cards and left them in two piles.

‘What I want you to understand,’ Angela said, ‘is that the cards are merely an aid. They form a psychic link between us.’ She put the pack together and then lifted her hand sharply as though it had given her an electric shock.

‘Oh!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, Jane…’

Christ, what’s she seen
?

Jane said nervously, ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I’m psychic.’ Angela laughed lightly. ‘No, your friend told me, of course.’

‘What else did she tell you?’

‘Well, she certainly didn’t tell me how powerful you were. Has no one told you that before?’ Angela began to lay out the cards, one on top of another.

‘Not that I recall.’ Ah. Right. She was beginning to get the picture now.

‘They will,’ Angela said with calm certainty.

Oh, sure. I wonder how many other people you said that to today
. Jane nodded and said nothing. Now she knew it was a scam, she was no longer worried. Did Rowenna realize it was a scam? Of course she did. When she came out she’d just been taking the piss, picking up on Jane’s manifest trepidation.

Angela had the cards laid out in a neat semicircle. They were beautifully coloured, and Jane started looking for the ones she’d seen pictures of on the covers of mystery novels:
Death
,
The Devil
,
The Hanged Man
,
The Last Judgement
. But none of these was obvious in the dim light; all the designs were unfamiliar.

Angela placed one card face-down below the others, contemplated it for a moment and then turned it over to reveal a faintly smiling woman in a long white robe, sitting on some sort of throne with mystical symbols and artefacts all around her. There were lights on in the pub, but somehow they didn’t penetrate into this alcove, or at least not as far as Angela.

‘Tell me something, Jane. What do you know of your ancestors?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, are you aware of – how can I put this? – wise women, in your family?’

‘I guess that depends on what you mean by wise.’

‘I’m picking up a… I suppose you would say a tradition. I feel… I believe you have much to inherit. Whether it’s immediate ancestry or something further back, it’s hard to say, but it’s there. It came up immediately, no mistaking it at all. So I double-checked and the cards are reinforcing it. There’s a very strong tradition here.’

Mum? Does she mean Mum
? Jane found herself holding her breath.

‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘Well… maybe.’ Mum had sometimes talked of experiences she’d had in churches, visions of a cosmic benevolence in blue and gold, the feeling that she really had to—

Don’t tell her what Mum is!

Astonishingly, Angela held up a hand. ‘No, you don’t have to explain – as long as you understand.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane breathed out.
Jesus Christ
.

Angela was gazing intently at the cards, her attention locked on the layout. She was absolutely still, as though she and the cards were encased in glass. Eventually, without looking up, she said, ‘It’s a big, big responsibility.’

‘Oh.’

‘It needs to be nurtured.’ Angela turned over two more cards which seemed to be in conjunction. ‘Ah, now… there’s been a gap in your life, I think. Someone missing. Would you…? Do you perhaps have just the one parent?’

‘Yes,’ Jane said awed. ‘How did you…?’

‘I don’t think that’s been such a big handicap for you as it might have been for others. You have reserves of emotional and psychic energy which have been sustaining you. But now that reservoir of psychic energy ought to be plumbed, or it may overflow. That can cause problems.’

‘How do you mean?’ Jane felt a slow excitement burning somewhere down in her abdomen. She looked at Angela’s halfshadowed face and saw intelligence there. And beauty too – fine bones. Angela must be over fifty but Jane thought men would find her awfully sexy.

‘Jane, I don’t want to alarm you, but if one is given a talent and one fails to develop it, or allows powerful energy to go its own way, it can become misdirected and cause all sorts of problems, physical and mental – chronic ailments, nervous trouble. Quite a lot of people in hospitals and mental institutions are simply people who have failed to recognize and channel certain energies.’

Angela looked up suddenly. Jane saw her eyes clearly for the first time; they were like chips of flint. She was serious about this. She was dead serious.

She said faintly, ‘What does that mean?’

Angela reached over and touched her fingers. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t worry. Sometimes I’m concentrating so hard I say the first things that come into my head. It’s just so rare that I get anything as clear and specific as this… I’m probably getting carried away.’

‘No, please go on.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Angela swept all the cards together. ‘I’ve been overloading you with my own impressions, and that’s not a good thing to do. Let’s relax a moment and I’ll tell you about some less far-reaching aspects of your life.’

She asked Jane to shuffle and cut the pack again, then did a couple of smaller layouts and told Jane a few things about herself and her future which were more in line with the stuff you expected to hear. Well, a bit more
intimate
perhaps… like that she was a virgin but wouldn’t be for long. That she would have more than one serious lover before she was twenty.

Jane smiled. At one time she’d have been fairly excited about that, not to say relieved, but right now it didn’t seem as vital.

Angela told her that she was extremely intelligent and could have her pick of careers, but she might feel herself drawn towards communications or even performance art.

Cool.

But her main choices – Angela sighed, like she’d tried to get away from this but couldn’t – would be in the spiritual realm. Other levels of existence were already becoming accessible to her.

‘Other planes,’ Angela said, ‘other spheres. Someone who has gone before has opened the way. Does that make any sense to you?’

Jane thought at once of her old friend, the late Miss Lucy Devenish, writer of children’s stories and proprietor of the magical giftshop called Ledwardine Lore, who had introduced her to rural mysteries and the mystical poetry of Thomas Traherne. And showed her that spirituality was a shining crystal, of which Christianity was only one face.

‘What…?’ Jane found it hard to speak, her mouth was so dry. ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Don’t know. It’s not for me to say. This is a very personal issue.’

‘You can’t just leave it like that. I mean, I could buy books and things, but I already do that.’

Angela gathered up the cards. ‘Have you had any personal experiences which have mystified you?’

‘Maybe. Like, there was this time I kind of fell asleep in a field, and when I awoke I felt as though I’d been someone else. It’s like really hard to explain, but—’

‘Don’t tell me. These are messages for you alone. Look, Jane, what I’m going to do is give you a telephone number. Not mine, because I don’t think you should be entirely influenced by one person or feel that you’re being pressed from one direction.’

Angela reached down to a handbag on the floor and pulled out a notepad and a pen. Jane felt a welling excitement and also a small, fizzing trepidation as Angela wrote.

‘This is the number of a young woman called Sorrel, not far from here. You’ll like her. She’s very down-to-earth.’

‘Who… is she?’

‘Just another person with a questing spirit. She runs a healthfood restaurant in Hereford and holds meetings there for people of a like mind: to share experiences and consider methods of developing their skills.’

‘Sounds a bit… I mean, I’d feel a bit…’

‘If you did decide to go, you could always take your friend… Rosemary, was it?’

‘Rowenna.’ Jane felt
much
better. ‘Yeah, that’d be cool. Er… develop skills? What sort of skills do you think I might have?’

‘Healing? Clairvoyance? It’s not for me to say. Perhaps you can find out.’ Angela tore the top page out of her notebook and placed it in front of Jane. ‘It’s entirely up to you now.’

‘Right,’ Jane said. ‘Right.’

When she stood up, her legs felt cold and trembly.

Moon was pulling down the old-fashioned rollerblind over the
CLOSED
sign on the door.

All the lights were out except for a brown-shaded one on the counter, so that the air in the shop had a deep-shadowed sepia density. The unsaleable balalaika hung forlornly on the wall behind the till. The low-level music from the speakers each end of the single seventeenth-century beam was by Radiohead at their most suicidal: the one about escaping lest you choked.

Lol swallowed. Moon said to him, as though he’d been here for some time, ‘I asked Denny to come over for supper. He said he’d really love to but he was too busy. I knew he’d say that.’

‘Well, he probably is. Work’s piling up in the studio.’

Moon shook her head. ‘It’s his wife. Maggie thinks I’m still doing dope – and I’m poison in all sorts of other ways. Plus, he just doesn’t want to come to the barn.’