The Complete Short Stories (20 page)

Gwen arrived presently,
and made herself plainly at home by going straight into the kitchen to prepare
a salad. Mrs Seeton carved slices of cold meat while Trudy stood and watched
them both, listening to a conversation between them which indicated a long
intimacy. Richard’s mother seemed anxious to please Gwen.

‘Expecting Grace
tonight?’ Gwen said.

‘No, darling, I thought
perhaps
not tonight.
Was I right?’

‘Oh, of course, yes.
Expecting Joanna?’

‘Well, as it’s Trudy’s
first visit, I thought perhaps not —’Would you,’ Gwen said to Trudy, ‘lay the
table, my dear. Here are the knives and forks.’

Trudy bore these knives
and forks into the dining-room with a sense of having been got rid of with a
view to being talked about.

At supper, Mrs Seeton
said, ‘It seems a bit odd, there only being the three of us. We usually have
such jolly Sunday suppers. Next week, Trudy, you must come and meet the whole
crowd — mustn’t she, Gwen?’

‘Oh yes,’ Gwen said, ‘Trudy
must do that.’

Towards half past ten
Richard’s mother said, ‘I doubt if Richard will be back in time to run you
home. Naughty boy, I daren’t think what he gets up to.’

On the way to the bus
stop Gwen said, ‘Are you happy now that you’ve met Lucy?’

‘Yes, I think so. But I
think Richard might have stayed. It would have been nice. I dare say he wanted
me to get to know his mother by myself. But in fact I felt the need of his
support.

‘Didn’t you have a talk
with Lucy?’

‘Well yes, but not much
really. Richard probably didn’t realize you were coming to supper. Richard
probably thought his mother and I could have a heart-to-heart —’

‘I usually go to Lucy’s
on Sunday,’ Gwen said.

‘Why?’

‘Well, she’s a friend of
mine. I know her ways. She amuses me.’

During the week Trudy
saw Richard only once, for a quick drink.

‘Exams,’ he said. ‘I’m
rather busy, darling.’

‘Exams in November? I
thought they started in December.’

‘Preparation for exams,’
he said. ‘Preliminaries. Lots of work.’ He took her home, kissed her on the
cheek and drove off.

She looked after the
car, and for a moment hated his moustache. But she pulled herself together and,
recalling her youthfulness, decided she was too young really to judge the fine
shades and moods of a man like Richard.

He picked her up at four
o’clock on Sunday.

‘Mother’s looking
forward to seeing you,’ he said. ‘She hopes you will stay for supper.’

‘You won’t have to go
out, will you, Richard?’

‘Not tonight, no.

But he did have to go
out to keep an appointment of which his mother reminded him immediately after
tea. He had smiled at his mother and said, ‘Thanks.’

Trudy saw the photograph
album, then she heard how Mrs Seeton had met Richard’s father in Switzerland,
and what Mrs Seeton had been wearing at the time.

At half-past six the
supper party arrived. These were three women, including Gwen. The one called
Grace was quite pretty, with a bewildered air. The one called Iris was well
over forty and rather loud in her manner.

‘Where’s Richard
tonight, the old cad?’ said Iris.

‘How do I know?’ said
his mother. ‘Who am I to ask?’

‘Well, at least he’s a
hard worker during the week. A brilliant teacher, said doe-eyed Grace.

‘Middling as a
schoolmaster,’ Gwen said.

‘Oh, Gwen! Look how long
he’s held down the job,’ his mother said. ‘I should think,’ Grace said, ‘he’s
wonderful with the boys.’

‘Those Shakespearian
productions at the end of the summer term are really magnificent,’ Iris bawled.
‘I’ll hand him that, the old devil.’

‘Magnificent,’ said his
mother. ‘You must admit, Gwen —’

‘Very middling performances,’
Gwen said.

‘I suppose you are
right, but, after all, they are only schoolboys. You can’t do much with
untrained actors, Gwen,’ said Mrs Seeton very sadly.

‘I adore Richard,’ Iris
said, ‘when he’s in his busy, occupied mood. He’s so —’

‘Oh yes,’ Grace said, ‘Richard
is wonderful when he’s got a lot on his mind.’

‘I know,’ said his
mother. ‘There was one time when Richard had just started teaching — I must
tell you this story — he …’

Before they left Mrs
Seeton said to Trudy, ‘You will come with Gwen next week, won’t you? I want you
to regard yourself as one of us. There are two other friends of Richard’s I do
want you to meet. Old friends.’

On the way to the bus
Trudy said to Gwen, ‘Don’t you find it dull going to Mrs Seeton’s every Sunday?’

‘Well, yes, my dear
young thing, and no. From time to time one sees a fresh face, and then it’s
quite amusing.’

‘Doesn’t Richard ever
stay at home on a Sunday evening?’

‘No, I can’t say he
does. In fact, he’s very often away for the whole weekend. As you know.

‘Who are these women?’
Trudy said, stopping in the street.

‘Oh, just old friends of
Richard’s.’

‘Do they see him often?’

‘Not now. They’ve become
members of the family.’

The Fortune-Teller

The château lay among woodlands in a wide
valley in the heart of the old Troubadour country of France. It was about ten
years ago at the end of summer.

We were a party of
three, Raymond, his wife Sylvia, and me, Lucy. The marriage between Raymond and
Sylvia was already going bad, which made me very uncomfortable. I had already
decided after the third day of our travels that I would never again go on
holiday alone with a married couple, and I never have since.

I had begun to wonder
why they had asked me to join them and I fairly guessed that they were trying
to prove, by the evidence of my single state, that they were truly a couple. We
arrived at the château after a week in France, by which time I was on the point
of getting on a train to the nearest airport and so back to London.

But I changed my mind
precisely at the château. Sylvia asked for rooms. Mme Dessain, thin, tall,
work-worn and elegant, who had come round the side of the house with a bucket
of pigswill in her hand to greet us, declined to answer Sylvia. She addressed
me, saying very politely that yes, she had a double room for me and my husband
and a small room for Mlle on the maids’ floor at the top of the house. Raymond
intervened to explain the relationships aright. She gave the sort of smile by
which it was plain she had understood perfectly well. I supposed that Sylvia,
who spoke French better than I did, had nevertheless lacked the required
respect; she had taken Mme Dessain for one of the hired hands, and had selected
her tone accordingly. This was a habit of Sylvia’s; I always marvelled at the
trouble she must have put into harbouring such a range of initial attitudes as
she had for different people, when one alone would serve for all. She was, of
course, a follower of Lenin who was class-conscious by profession. Raymond was
fairly neutral about the incident. He was big and bearded, a television
producer; and he was intelligent. But he was vain enough, and perhaps
sufficiently at the point of exasperation with his marriage to show himself
pleased with the proprietor’s mistake, if mistake it was. Madame did not
apologize; she merely told us the price of the rooms and asked if we wanted demi-pension.
Sylvia, when angry, had a leer. Her teeth protruded and for some reason she
dyed her hair bright red. In spite of this she had a handsome look. But,
leering, she looked, to me, morally low, very low, and stupid although in fact
she was a rodent-biologist of some distinction.

Mme Dessain put down the
bucket and again addressed me. She asked me if I would like to see the rooms.
Plainly, she was not too grand to be catty and she had taken against Sylvia.

‘Have we decided to
stay?’ Sylvia said to Raymond. ‘Do you like the place?’

‘It looks lovely,’ he
said, ‘I would like to see the room anyway, because I would like to stay.

Mme Dessain led the way
upstairs. I followed with my two clever friends behind me. The rooms were fine
and we all decided to stay. Strangely enough I wasn’t put in a maid’s room
upstairs, but in a large room on the same floor as my friends. Madame — it
turned out that she was in fact a marquise — ran down to get on with her jobs,
leaving us to cope with our luggage. I thought she looked well over fifty when
I had first seen her but watching her trip so easily downstairs I could see she
was younger, not much over forty. She had obviously taken a dislike to Sylvia,
but I didn’t care. Already I felt free of the embarrassing couple. In a curious
way Mme Dessain had released me. She had held out a straw. I clutched it and
miraculously it held me up. It struck me she was highly intuitive, as indeed
are so many in the hotel business.

I was delighted with my
room. It had windows on two sides. The furniture was French Provincial, plainly
belonging to the eighteenth-century château and by no means brought in for
hotel guests. It was much the same all over the house. There were two
drawing-rooms, the yellow one and the green, and these were by no means rustic,
but in the great high style of eighteenth-century France. There was an Oriental
room with a Chinese part and an Egyptian part, full of those furnishings and
treasures brought back from the travels of nineteenth century ancestors, which
are too good for the use of ordinary tourists yet not too rare for everyday
accommodation. It was a satisfaction to feel we had been taken in as guests,
since plainly Mme Dessain had to be discriminate.

Few of the guests used
the Oriental room, or the other priceless-seeming rooms with their Sèvres
ornaments and plates behind glass cabinets. There was a more serviceable
library in general use, with a television set, tables, and plenty of worn,
cretonne-covered sofas and chairs.

It was there that a few
evenings later I offered to tell Mme Dessain’s fortune by cards. People were
grouped around, after dinner, some just talking, others playing various card
games and a couple in a far corner were playing chess. Outside it was pelting
with heavy thick rain; it had been raining all day. A small, stout, elderly man
was Mme Dessain’s husband; a surprising couple. He sat by her side while I told
her fortune. Sylvia and Raymond, bored with my fortune-telling, had moved away.

I must explain that when I find myself in a
country or seaside establishment of the residential sort on any of my many
travels, if I see someone lonely or ill at ease, and obviously not enjoying
their stay, I always offer to tell their fortune by my cards. I’ve never been
refused. On the contrary, it tends to have a hypnotic effect on the other
guests, and candidates for my fortune-telling are never wanting; they even come
up to me and ask me what I charge, and when I explain that I do it for free,
they are slightly embarrassed, but want their fortune just the same, and
politely accept being put off when I’ve had too much or for some good reason
don’t want to do it.

My peculiar method of
fortune-telling follows no tradition of occult sciences; I follow rules, but
they are my own secret ones, varying quite a lot in their application to each
individual. They are my own secret rules but they arise from deep conviction.
They cannot be formulated, they are as sincere and indescribable as are the
primary colours; they are not of a science but of an art. Very often I make a
mistake, but I know it; at such moments I’m thinking my way, talking through a
dense fog, shining the torch of my intuition here and there until it hits on
some object which may or may not prove to be what I say it is. Sometimes my
predictions are wildly astray as they pertain to the present time and
environment, but I have known them to become surprisingly true much later in
life, in a different place, and presume that this may happen, too, in some of
the cases where I lose sight of the person whose fortune I have told.

For the actual selection
of the cards I have a precise system. I should never reveal it in detail, except
to say that it is based on sevens and fives. Sevens and fives; and if you
should ask me any more about this initial stage of the proceedings I should
tell you a falsehood; indeed the whole of the process is most precious-fragile
to me, and I wouldn’t give it away lest I should lose my powers. I mean what
Yeats meant:

I
have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because
you tread on my dreams.

To tell the cards I
begin by asking my client to shuffle them. Then I deal according to my seven
and five system; a varying number of cards which emerge from this process are
set apart and I ask my client to shuffle again. Again I deal and set apart, and
a third time, three cycles in all. The client then shuffles the cards which
have been set aside; these are the cards of his fortune. At the same time the
client is asked to make a silent wish, and mightily concentrate upon it.

Now, I take these cards
and again deal them. You mustn’t think that because I take my gifts seriously,
I take them solemnly. It is all an airy dream of mine, unsinkable because it is
light. I don’t play the eerie fortune-teller at all; I don’t play anything when
I tell the cards; I am simply myself.

Well, I take the cards
that have fallen to my client’s lot and deal them under the following headings:
(1) the secret self; (2) the known self (by which I mean, the more limited
aspect of the person as he is observable by others); (3) the client’s hopes;
(4) the client’s degree of self-ignorance; (5) his present destination (I don’t
say his ‘destiny’ for this reason, that any destiny I might take from the cards
would be prematurely conceived and would fail to allow for a client’s probable
divergence from his present destination. Circumstances change. There can be a
change of heart. Human nature is essentially unpredictable in the long run. But
‘destination’ none the less often answers for destiny. No clairvoyant, believe
me, can say more); (6) affairs of the heart, which means the prevailing love;
that is, of any object, including, from time to time, that of money;
(7)
the
wish — will it or won’t it come true?