ALISON: Mm.
COLETTE: Never.
“So okay, okay,” Al said. “If you want to learn. What do you want to try first, cards or palms? Palms? Okay.”
But after five minutes, Colette said, “I can’t see the lines, Al. I think my eyes are going.” Al said nothing. “I might get contacts. I’m not having glasses.”
“You can use a magnifying glass, the punters don’t mind. In fact, they think they’re getting more for their money.”
They tried again. “Don’t try to tell my future,” Al said. “Leave that aside for now. Take my left hand. That’s where my character is written, the capacities I was born with. You can see all my potential, waiting to come out. Your job is to alert me to it.”
Colette held her hand tentatively, as if she found it disagreeable. She glanced down at it, and up at Alison again. “Come on,” Al said. “You know my character. Or you say you do. You’re always talking about my character. And you know about my potential. You’ve just made me a business plan.”
“I don’t know,” Colette said. “Even when I look through a magnifier I can’t make sense of it.”
“We’ll have a go with the cards then,” Al said. “As you know, there are seventy-eight to learn, plus all the meaningful combinations, so you’ll have a lot of homework. You know the basics, you must have picked that up by now. Clubs rule the fire signs—you know the signs, don’t you? Hearts rule water, diamonds earth.”
“Diamonds, earth,” Colette said, “that’s easy to remember. But why do spades rule air?”
“In the tarot, spades are swords,” Al said. “Think of them cutting through the air. Clubs are wands. Diamonds are pentacles. Hearts are cups.”
Colette’s hands were clumsy when she shuffled; pictures cascaded from the pack and she gave herself paper cuts, as if the cards were nipping her. Al taught her to lay out a consequences spread and a Celtic Cross. She turned the major arcana face up so she could learn them one by one. But Colette couldn’t get the idea. She was diligent and conscientious, but when she saw the cards she couldn’t see beyond the pictures on them. A crayfish is crawling out of a pond: why? A man in a silly hat stands on the brink of a precipice. He carries his possessions in a bundle and a dog is nipping at his thigh. Where is he going? Why doesn’t he feel the teeth? A woman is forcing open the jaws of a lion. She seems happy with life. There is a collusive buzz in the air.
Al said, “What does it convey to you? No, don’t look at me for an answer. Close your eyes. How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel anything,” Colette said. “How should I feel?”
“When I work with the tarot, I generally feel as if the top of my head has been taken off with a tin opener.”
Colette threw down the cards. I’ll stick to my side of the business, she said.
Al said, that would be very wise. She couldn’t explain to Colette how it felt to read for a client, even if it was just psychology. You start out, you start talking, you don’t even know what you’re going to say. You don’t even know your way to the end of the sentence. You don’t know anything. Then suddenly you do know. You have to walk blind. And you walk slap into the truth.
In the new millennium Colette intended to lever her away from low-rent venues, where there are recycling bins in the car parks, crisps ground into the carpet, strip lighting. She wanted to see her in big well-furbished auditoriums with proper sound-and-lighting crews. She detested the public nature of public halls, where tipsy comics played on Saturday night and gusts of dirty laughter hung in the air. She loathed the worn grubby chairs, stained with beer and worse; hated the thought of Al attuning to Spirit in some broom cupboard, very often with a tin bucket and a string mop for company. She said, I don’t like it down there by the Gymnastics Club, by the Snooker Centre. I don’t like the types you get. I want to get down to the south coast where they have some lovely restored theatres, gilt and red plush, where you can fill the stalls and the royal circle, fill the balcony right to the back.
At Admiral Drive the early bulbs pushed through, points of light in the lush grass. The brick of the Mountbatten and the Frobisher was still raw, the tiled roofs slicked by April rain. Al was right when she said that the people down the hill would have a problem with damp. Their turf squelched beneath their feet, and a swampish swelling and bubbling lifted their patios. At night the security lights flittered, as if all the neighbours were creeping from house to house, stealing each other’s game consoles and DVD players.
Gavin never called, though his monthly payment for his share of the flat in Whitton continued to arrive in her bank account. Then one day, when she and Al were shopping in Farnham, they ran straight into him; they were coming out of Elphicks department store, and he was going in.
“What are you doing in Farnham?” she said, shocked.
Gavin said, “It’s a free country.”
It was just the sort of inane reply he always used to make when you asked him why he was doing anything, or why he was wherever he was. It was the kind of reply that reminded her why she had been right to leave him. He couldn’t have done much better if he’d pre-meditated it for a week.
Al’s glance took him in. When Colette turned to introduce her, she was already backing away. “I’ll just be …” she said, and melted in the direction of cosmetics and perfume. Tactfully, she averted her eyes, and stood spraying herself with one scent and then another, to distract herself from tuning in to what they were saying.
“That her? Your friend? Gavin said. “Christ, she’s a size, isn’t she? That the best you could do?”
“She’s a remarkably sound businesswoman,” Colette said, “and a very kind and thoughtful employer.”
“And you live with her?”
“We have a lovely new house.”
“But why do you have to live in?”
“Because she needs me. She works twenty-four/seven.”
“Nobody does that.”
