The Collected Short Fiction Part 52

Indeed, at first she stared at Millie for a perceptibly long time without uttering a word.

'Well, come in,' she said at last, as if there had been some demur.

They were in the rheumatism lady's small sitting room, though already it looked much more run down. The rheumatism lady's little water-colours had been replaced by wall cards bearing emblems of the zodiac; somewhat stained, and by no means a complete set. There was a round black table in the centre of things, with two black composition chairs opposite one another.

'Sit down,' said Thelma Modelle, still a little petulantly, 'and call me Thelma.'

Millie sat, as one does at such times; but Thelma continued to stand. She was observing Millie.

'Would you prefer to smoke?'

'I've given it up. My husband made me stop it.'

'Then why are you carrying a packet of Players in your handbag?'

Millie felt that she had turned pale and puce at the same time.

'It's an unopened packet. I suppose you can see that too.'

'One thing I can't see is why you're here. What are you looking for?'

'Your leaflet came through my door. Just this moment, in fact. So will you please read my palm, or whatever it is you do?' Millie extended her hand across the table.

'That's the wrong one,' said Thelma. 'But never mind. It would be no good with you in any case. I'll see what the cards have to say.'

She picked up a working pack from the mantel behind her. Millie would have supposed there would be shuffling, perhaps cutting, certainly a careful and symmetrical laying out. But all Thelma did was chuck six or seven apparently random cards across the surface of the table.

'You're in trouble right enough,' said Thelma.

'What sort of trouble?' asked Millie steadily.

'You'll know the details best.'

'What's going to happen about it?'

'It's going to get worse.'

'Yes, I suppose it's bound to do that.'

'I should try running away, if I were you. Hide. Change your name. Change your appearance. Change everything.'

'Join the raggle-taggle gypsies, in fact?' After all, one must at times seek some proportion in things.

'Please!' exclaimed Thelma. 'I am a gypsy.'

'I'm so sorry.' But that was wrong too. 'I wasn't meaning to be rude.'

'The gypsies wouldn't have you.'

'Why ever not?' But Millie was by now hardly surprised, hardly capable of surprise.

'You're marked.'

'In what way? How am I marked? You don't mean that lacrosse accident?'

'No. Not that.'

Millie reflected silently for a moment. If Thelma Modelle would sit down, as consultants normally do, it could be that much easier.

Millie spoke again. 'Please tell me more.'

'The cards won't go any further.'

'Well, something else then.' After all, there was a crystal on the mantel too, though Millie had never seen one in her life before (it was smaller than she had supposed); and some sort of large, shapeless thing leaning against the wall.

'If you want to know more, it will have to be s.e.x.'

Millie had heard at Oxford of 's.e.x magic' and its alleged dangers.

'I don't think I want that,' she said.

'That's quite all right,' said Thelma rather nastily. 'I shouldn't advise you to find out more anyway.'

'Why ever not? Is it really as terrible as all that?'

'It might make you mad.'

The familiar Shakespearian phrase was really too much. Millie rose to her feet.

'How much do I owe you?'

Thelma's expression had become very odd.

'No money. Just look in again. While you still have time of your own.'

'You've made a mistake there,' said Millie. 'The boys aren't going back. They've been expelled.'

'I've never claimed to be right every time.'

Millie managed to smile a little. 'Please take some money. I have profited by your frankness.'

'Not from you,' said Thelma. 'I've told you what you can do.'

'I'll think about it,' said Millie.

'You can come and live here if you've nowhere else to go.'

'I can go to my Uncle Stephen. Actually he's pressing me.'

'You can do whatever you like,' said Thelma.

There was a scuffing up the stairs, and another client appeared. It was Dawn Mulcaster, mature, frustrated, and twittery as ever. She and Millie exchanged very faint smiles but no words. Millie sped downwards.

The curious thing was that, though nothing could have been more depressing and foreboding than Thelma's insights, yet Millie felt noticeably more buoyant than on her outward journey. As in the matter she had last night dreamed of, the burden was at the same time a release, or a faint hope of release. She was even able to muse smilingly upon a fortune-teller's obvious need of a receptionist; and upon the positively comical discrepancy between this particular fortune-teller's publicity and her performance. Perhaps the discrepancy was mainly in tone. All the same, surely the interview had been 'spooky' in the extreme? Dawn Mulcaster would certainly be finding it so. Millie felt that she had done better than Dawn was likely to be doing. In fairness to Thelma Modelle's publicity person, Millie had to acknowledge that she did not feel in the least 'embarra.s.sed'.

She stopped in the street for a moment. A more precise thought had struck her. Her cut finger was completely healed. Somehow she had even parted with the unpleasant bandage. She smiled, and continued homewards.

The boys stormed back, wolfed their food without a word to Millie, and stormed out again.

Millie washed up after the three of them; circulated round The Parade and The Avenue, shopping, meditating; put together two totally different evening meals; and then went upstairs to lie on her bed, in order to prepare for another confrontation with Phineas. She must keep up the pressure or go mad, as Thelma Modelle had predicted.

Indeed, when Millie fell asleep, she found she was dreaming of Thelma's establishment, where she, Millie, now appeared to have a job of some kind, as she was seated at the toilet table in what had been the rheumatism lady's bathroom, and sorting through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of invoices in the desperate hope of finding her own. The invoices were on paper of different sizes and textures, and in many different handwritings, mostly illegible. Millie was amazed by the mental processes that must lie behind the ways in which many of the bills were laid out. Only those which had been drafted by Uncle Stephen were fully orderly. When Millie awoke, it occurred to her to wonder whether Thelma herself could write at all, or whether she relied mainly on bluff, as did Rodney and Angus though no one ever dared to mention it.

There was the noise of creeping about downstairs. Then Phineas's voice floated up the stairwell: 'Millie!' She shrivelled. 'Millie, where are you?'

It was far, far too early for his return. Could he have lost his job? That might be yet another burden which was not a burden entirely, but very faintly a forerunner.

Millie threw off the eiderdown, pulled on a jacket, and sauntered downstairs.

Phineas was positively prancing from room to room. It was impossible that he could have been promoted, because, in his position, there was no real promotion. His step seemed light and gay, as with the man in the ballad.

'I've been adopted!' cried Phineas, unable to contain himself until she had reached the ground floor, terra firma.

'Whatever for?'

'As Liberal candidate, of course. At North Zero.'

'Where's that?'

'It's in Cornwall and Andrew MacAndrew says I should have every chance.'

She had been perfectly well aware that Phineas was frequenting the local Liberal a.s.sociation and bringing their literature home. It was one of various activities of his that resulted in her being so often alone with the boys.

'Does the Party find the money for your deposit, or do you have to do it?'

'I haven't the slightest idea. I haven't thought about it.'

'Perhaps the boys can go down and canva.s.s for you?'

'They're too young, as you can perfectly well imagine for yourself. I'm afraid I shall have to sacrifice much of my family life, and leave the boys more in the hands of their mother. I notice that you haven't congratulated me, Millie.'

'If it's what you want, I'm pleased for you, Phineas. Provided, that is, that you find a new school for the boys before you set out.'

'I haven't been able to think much about that, as you can imagine. I feel it is something their mother can perfectly well do for them, if the necessity should arise.'

'I can and shall do nothing of the kind, Phineas. Finding a school for boys like that is the father's job. I mean it, Phineas.'

She was almost glowing with resolution. She realised that to display moral qualities demands practice, just as much as intellectual and manual qualities. She had never really attended when, down the years, such truths had been hammered into her. But she also knew that much of her relied upon the boys being out of the house.

'I had hoped you might be pleased for me,' said Phineas, entering the sitting room, and draping himself. 'Could I have my lactose, please?'

'It's too early. It's only just past teatime.' Phineas eschewed tea, because of the tannin, which affected both his colon and his autonomic structure.

'I'm going to get myself a cup of tea,' said Millie. 'And then I want to go on talking seriously.'

In her heart, she was not in the least surprised to find, when she returned, that Phineas had taken himself off. Perhaps he had gone out to look for the boys. He liked to delude himself that he could 'join in' their play, though Millie knew better, knew that he was accepted on the very thinnest of sufferance, for short periods only, and only for ulterior reasons. In the boys' eyes, there was very little to choose between Phineas's status and hers. She knew that, even if he did not.

Millie took her little tray upstairs, locked the bedroom door, took off her jacket once more, and wriggled beneath the eiderdown. She had brought up the Family Size packet of Playmate biscuits, really meant for the boys.

But, contrary to expectation, Phineas drifted back in no time. Elation at the thought of the new and more fulfilling life that lay before him had probably made him restless. Soon, he was tapping at their bedroom door.

'Let me in, please.'

'I'm having a rest. I'll come out when it's time for your supper.'

'Where are the boys?'

'In the wood with the dogs, as far as I know.'

'It might be better if they were encouraged to stay more in their own home.'

'That's their father's job.'

'Millie, what are you doing in there?'

'I'm lying down, and now I'm going back to sleep.' She knew that by now there was not a hope of it, though she had spoken as positively as she could.

So positively, indeed, that there was quite a pause. Then Phineas said, 'I might as well have my lactose now. I've had a lot to think about today.'

Grumpily, Millie emerged. Rest and peace had gone, as well as slumber.

'Let me carry the tray,' said Phineas. 'It's right that I should do these things when I'm here.'

He was not at all used to the work, and had to descend the stairs very slowly, like a stick-insect.

'What is going to happen to your job?' asked Millie, as soon as the tray was on the sink-surround, more or less in safety.

'That must come second. In life, one has to make such decisions.'

'Meanwhile, what pays the boys' school fees? They won't have them at the ordinary local school. You know that.'

'I shall have my Parliamentary salary in the end, and shall of course make you an allowance for things of that kind. Could I please have my lactose?'

'So you propose quite calmly to live entirely on me. On my little income from Daddy's estate?'

'Not if you do not wish it. You and the boys can do that, if necessary; and lucky we are that it should be so. I myself can apply for a maintenance grant.'

'Do you mean the dole?'