The Complete Short Stories Part 15

'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 chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau. 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 att.i.tudes as she had for different people, when one alone would serve for all. She was, of course, a follower of Lenin who was cla.s.s-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 embarra.s.sing 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 chateau 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 Sevres ornaments and plates behind gla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed, 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. Circ.u.mstances 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?

Again I see Mme Dessain in the friendly library of her house leaning over the table, those many years ago, with her husband by her side as I began to tell her cards.

While she was shuffling I saw that she was extremely punctilious about the performance. While I dealt and discarded according to my secret method she watched me with an intensity that meant, to me, a decided confidence in my powers. Her wish was evidently of critical importance. She seemed absorbed by the cards that fell to const.i.tute her fortune, but I advised her light-heartedly not to give weight to them herself, to concentrate hard on the wish, and to leave the interpretation in due time to me.

'There are many spades,' observed Mme Dessain. 'And there is an ace of spades, Madame.' I was puzzled as to why she insisted on addressing me as 'Madame' when I was plainly 'Mademoiselle'. I was dealing the third cycle. In my conjuring out of the meaning of cards I never go by the tradition. It is true that no one is delighted by the ace of spades but it does not necessarily mean a personal death. It might mean the death of a hope, or the end of a fear. Everything depends on the combination. Anyway, I was dealing the third cycle. I said, 'Leave it to me,' and finished.

Now I gathered up Mme Dessain's cards.

'Will the rain never stop?' said Mme Dessain, her eyes wandering to the enormous french windows. She was putting this on, this absent air as if she didn't care in the least about her fortune.

'Concentrate on your wish, Madame,' I said.

'Oh, I am concentrating. The rain is a tourist attraction if they like the flooded fields, very beautiful.' So she laughed off her fortune-telling, but I could see she was eager, even a little agitated. Her husband, too, watched with care. I wanted to remind them it was only a game, but I refrained; I didn't want to bring their nervousness to light.

I dealt the cards under their seven headings, which naturally I didn't p.r.o.nounce. Thirteen cards had emerged from the process of selection. I noticed the high proportion of court cards in Mme Dessain's set.

Now, in the first round to her secret self, came up the eight of spades, to her known self the six of spades.

'Spades in my wish!' said Mme Dessain immediately.

'Have patience,' I said, still setting forth the cards. It was obvious to me now that she was trying to penetrate my method for when I put down the king of hearts she said, 'a fair, handsome lover.' But I gave no sign, although I felt annoyed at the interruption.

Her cards finally came out as follows: Secret self: eight of spades and six of clubs Known self: six of spades and nine of diamonds Things hoped for: king of hearts and ace of spades Self-ignorance: five of hearts and king of clubs Present destination: queen of hearts and three of hearts Affairs of the heart: queen of clubs and three of diamonds The wish: knave of hearts.

Mme Dessain was really perplexed. She saw all seven sets of cards placed out before her, but she had no way of guessing the private headings I had placed them under. Her eyes were bright upon the cards as if she were telling my fortune, not me hers.

'You have got your wish,' I said at once, seeing that she had come in for one card only, the knave of hearts, under that heading, and there was no opposition. 'However, it is a wish that you should not have made.'

'Which cards represent my wish?' she asked, almost in a panic, strange for such a grand lady.

I wouldn't tell her. I smiled at her and said, 'This is only a game, after all.'

She put on an air that she was pacified, pulled together. But I could see that she was not.

Altogether, from this moment what her cards told me was one thing and what I told her was another. I had reason to be cautious. As I looked at the whole picture that was formed by the seven groups of cards it was at first a coloured ma.s.s, changing into a tableau of patterns until one idea protruded larger and more brilliantly than the others. And so, it appeared to me all in a quick moment that Mme Dessain was herself a natural clairvoyant; she was able to read my mind perhaps better than I was able to read her cards. What had been to me a laughing matter, a game, seemed now to veer rather dangerously towards myself, and I knew that her wish had been in some way connected with me. I say connected with me, not directed at me, because there was something indirect about it; at the same time it was distinctly malevolent.

I braved out the performance. I told her a certain amount of nonsense, but as I spoke I could see she discerned that I wasn't as frank as I might have been. More specifically than before I could now see under the heading of the secret self that she was clairvoyant.

Now, for instance, I looked at the known self in a special way. I felt that her very attractive, haggard and aristocratic appeal was by no means as artless as it had seemed when she was working around the outhouses or busy with the vast baronial pans in the great stone kitchen. She looked airily up at the beautiful windows, now, those tall windows with leaded corners. I was aware of her husband's attention upon her and thought he seemed jealous, wondering what had been her wish and looking for her reaction to everything I said.

I continued to say many sweet things with a grain of what seemed probable. 'You are hoping,' I said, 'for a visit from a tall bearded man, I should imagine an Englishman, who has an interest in gardening -'Indeed I received from Mme Dessain's cards a very strong premonition concerning the garden.

'That's Camillo, our odd-job man,' said the anxious husband. 'He's been away for five days, and he's overdue. But he's Italian.'

'Alain!' rebuked Mme Dessain. 'Let Mme Lucy continue.'

I continued. It did seem to me very plainly that Mme Dessain had set her heart on a visitor. He would be about her age, probably an American or an Englishman (he could have been a German but for the fact it was extremely unlikely that a woman of Mme Dessain's age and ethos would have a German lover). She was, however, moving towards this love affair full tilt. I was sure he had been a guest at the chateau, certainly married then, if not now, and decidedly rich. It was a disastrous enough attachment for her house and family.

All this I saw, and Mme Dessain knew that I saw it. What she was unaware of, or was bound by her infatuation to ignore, was the vast amount of bother and anxiety this course was leading her to. Her husband, though not in the least faithful to her, would make nothing but bitterness of the affair.

'You may be unaware that certain benefits will come to the house as a result of your visitor's appearance,' I said. And I told her the visitor would be poor, and warned her against unforeseen expenditure. The husband rejoiced to hear these words, and I wound up, 'Tomorrow you will receive a very important family letter,' - one of the few honest comments on Mme Dessain's cards that I chose to make. Indeed, I thought it was harmless, for the husband said, 'That will be from our son, Charles,' and Mme Dessain once more cried out 'Alain! You interrupt.'

I said, 'I've finished.'

Mme Dessain was looking beyond me. 'Here comes Madame's husband,' she said ambiguously; anyway, I looked round and saw Raymond approaching. I guessed he had quarrelled with Sylvia who, leaving the room, looked round smiling with that deplorable angry leer of hers, which quite ruined her appearance.

I left next day. The tense atmosphere between my married friends was not to be borne by me. When I went to pay my bill Mme Dessain sent a maid to take the money and with the message that she was occupied.

But Raymond came running after me as my luggage went into the taxi. His face was fairly frantic. It struck me that he would have been rather handsome without his beard.

'Lucy,' he said. 'Lucy.'

'I'm sorry, Raymond. But I have to go.

He was really inarticulate and I thought it quite civil of him to feel for me and my embarra.s.sment at being on the scene of a messed-up marriage.

'Lucy.'

'My apologies to Sylvia,' I said. 'She'll understand.'

That was the last I saw of Raymond, watching my taxi depart, as he did.

Everything but the physical memory of the lovely chateau went far away to the back of my mind in the general nuisance of changing my holiday plans. The next week I returned to London and took up my life. Mme Dessain and the telling of her cards slept latent for year after year, but with each detail regularly arranged in case it should ever be needed, as is the way with memory.

Some time over the following year I heard that Sylvia and Raymond had finally separated; I was told that Sylvia was married again, to a social worker much younger than herself, and that after the divorce Raymond had given up his good job and gone to live abroad. Abroad is a big place and the rumours were equally too large and amorphous for me to take any account of, so busy with my own life as I was. When occasionally I thought of that holiday I shared with them I thought of the beautiful chateau, but a cloud came over my thoughts when I remembered how uncomfortable I felt as the third party. I didn't know till much later that they stayed on at the chateau for another week.

Not long ago I came across M. Dessain. I didn't recognize him at first. I was aware only of a little wizened man walking out of the Black Forest at Baden-Baden. I should say that it isn't unusual for anything whatsoever to walk out of the Black Forest, so I took no particular notice. Moreover he was dressed in beige, and I might say that every visitor to Baden-Baden wears beige, both men and women. Their clothes and their shoes are beige and their faces are beige; in which respect they are quite lovable.

But I noticed him again that day seated alone at a lunch table in the dining room of my hotel. Even then, I failed to see anything familiar about him; I only noticed that he looked at me once or twice, briefly, but in a decidedly curious way.

That evening I was sitting in the public room of the hotel playing with my cards. I was alone, waiting for a friend to join me there the next day. I shuffled my cards and dealt them out in my own style which seems so haphazard; I don't ever tell my own fortune, but I can't keep away from the cards. I shuffle and deal and see what comes up, and in the meantime my ideas take form as if the cards were a sort of sacrament, 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,' as the traditional definition goes.

Up to me at my table came the wizened guest, him of the Black Forest. He sat down on the edge of a sofa, watching me. I felt he was sad, and I was about to ask him if he would like me to tell his fortune.

'Mlle Lucy,' he said.

Then I recognized him, the once chubby little husband of Mme Dessain, and I saw how the years had withered him. In all its formal detail of ten years ago or more, I remembered the features of the room in the chateau where I told Mme Dessain's fortune while she, intense and distressed, perceived in her clairvoyance all that I was about. I remembered the two chess players sitting quietly apart, the tall shapes of Sylvia and Raymond moving away impatiently from the scene, the worn floral fabric on the chairs. I wondered if Mme Dessain's lover had materialized, and I recalled vaguely some of my light-hearted predictions which hadn't fooled Mme Dessain one bit. 'You are hoping for a visit from a tall, bearded Englishman, interested in the garden.' And my own sincere prediction, 'You will have a family letter.'

I looked at M. Dessain and said, 'What a long time ago. Are you on holiday?'

'I am here for my health.'

'How is Mme Dessain?' I said.

'She does very well. As you predicted, the letter came next day.'

'Oh, dear. I hope it was a good letter.'

'Yes. It came from her cousin Claude. It announced his engagement. I was delighted, because Claude was my wife's lover.'

'Oh,' I said. 'Well, that must have solved a problem for you, M. Dessain.'

'It was a good thing for Claude,' he said. 'And a good thing for you, Mlle Lucy.'

'For me?'

'My wife changed your destiny,' said the said and withered man. He repeated, 'Your destiny, Mlle Lucy. She saw that you were destined to marry your friend Raymond, and she intervened.'

'Marry Raymond? I never thought of such a thing. There was nothing at all between us. He was on bad terms with his wife but that had nothing to do with me.

'Nevertheless, my wife foresaw the outcome. You would have married Raymond, but after your departure, before the week was out she had him for her new lover. He is still at the chateau. She forestalled your destiny.'

'Not my destiny, then,' I said, 'only my destination.' And seeing that he looked so sad and so beige, I asked, 'Would you like me to tell your fortune, M. Dessain?'

He didn't answer the question. He only said, 'Raymond is very good in the garden and in the grounds.'

The Fathers' Daughters.

She left the old man in his deck-chair on the front, having first adjusted the umbrella awning with her own hand, and, with her own hand, put his panama hat at a comfortable angle. The beach attendant had been sulky, but she didn't see why one should lay out tips only for adjusting an umbrella and a panama hat. Since the introduction of the new franc it was impossible to tip less than a franc. There seemed to be a conspiracy all along the coast to hide the lesser coins from the visitors, and one could only find franc pieces in one's purse, and one had to be careful not to embarra.s.s Father, and one ...

She hurried along the Rue Paradis, keeping in the hot shade, among all the old, old smells of Nice, not only garlic wafting from the cafes, and of the hot invisible air itself, but the smells from her memory, from thirty-five summers at Nice in apartments of long ago, Father's summer salon, Father's friends' children, Father's friends, writers, young artists dating back five years at Nice, six, nine years; and then, before the war, twenty years ago - when we were at Nice, do you remember, Father? Do you remember the pension on the Boulevard Victor Hugo when we were rather poor? Do you remember the Americans at the Negresco in 1937 - how changed, how demure they are now! Do you remember, Father, how in the old days we disliked the thick carpets - at least, you disliked them, and what you dislike, I dislike, isn't it so, Father?

Yes, Dora, we don't care for luxury. Comfort, yes, but luxury, no.

I doubt if we can afford to stay at an hotel on the front this year, Father.