The Fortune Teller

by Diane Nicholls

Mrs B casts an old-fashioned look at the fortune teller. The woman has all the usual accoutrements, the whole she-bang as it were. A turban strung with beads, several shawls tied about her person at odd angles, and a ring for every blooming finger. Mrs B smooths her grey gaberdine skirt over her knees and fiddles with her wedding ring. The Great Palmist Mrs Presticott — Your Future Fore Told — is at that moment in a state of high flux. She appears to be having an episode. Her kohl-rimmed eyes roll up as she grips the edge of the table in the centre of the small, dimly lit drawing room. Mrs B takes a quick squizzy at the furniture. Shabby, but not in the poorhouse yet, she thinks. Come on, get on with it. 

Mrs Presticott’s head drops forward and rests on her chest. Mrs B leans in, listening for signs of life. At that moment, the fortune teller’s head snaps up with a crack that makes Mrs B flinch. “Cripes, you scared the gee whillakers out of me,” she says. “You all right, duck?”

“I see your future,” the fortune teller intones, ignoring Mrs B’s concerned expression. 

“Don’t you want to look at me hand first?” Mrs B proffers her right hand, palm up on the table, which she notes is slightly sticky.

“There are many ways to forecast. I do not choose the method, madam.” She frowns at Mrs B, flicking her fingers to shoo the intruding palm away. “The method comes via the spirit guides. I am but their vessel.”

“Oh, sorry, duck.” Mrs B slips her hand under the table and wipes it on her skirt. “Carry on then. Let’s get it over with. What do you see in me future?”

Mrs Presticott sucks a lungful into her breast, sending a shimmer across the room as the late afternoon light catches on a gaudy brooch. “I see a time of endings.”

“Sounds ominous,” says Mrs B.

“There is a man. He has been making promises to you. Promises of love.”

Well, isn’t that the way of things, thinks Mrs B, remembering when her second eldest daughter took up with that bludger from down south and gave her a belting.

“This man is no good. You must not believe him and his false promises. He will take your money and leave you with nothing. He will not marry you and give you the child you desire.”

Mrs B clasps her hands to her bosom. “Really?” She thinks of her husband, Bob, who at this very moment will be sat in the pub with his cobbers finishing up before the six o’clock swill. She thinks of their babies, all seven of them treasures, and the angel babies who went early. This woman is full of poppycock. “But he told me he would look after me,” she says.

“You must turn him out, madam. And return to your husband.”

Ah, so she hedges her bets, thinks Mrs B. Well, I’ll play along. “Oh, Mrs Presticott, what must you think of me?”

“No need for blushes, my dear. Many a married lady seeks to reveal the true intentions of her beau. You would hardly be the first. But you need not fear. Your husband will soon pass, leaving you a widow.”

Mrs B sits up. What’s this? 

“And then you will be free to seek another. I see a man with golden hair in your future. He will be of a sunny disposition. He will bring you much joy.”

“Goodness,” says Mrs B. “So you want me to leave me beau and go back to me husband so I can wait till he’s kicked the bucket? Then this golden-haired fella comes along timely like. You ask a great deal, Mrs Presticott. How sure are you of these predictions?”

“The spirit guides never lie.”

That may be, thinks Mrs B. But what about you, Mrs Presticott? 

Dusk draws the dank odours of the river up the street. Mrs B tamps her pipe and lights the tobacco. She sees May hurrying towards her, hugging her coat across her chest. There’s a chill in the air. May is named for her grandmother. Bob always says, “She’s a good lass, our Mary May.” And he’s right. Mrs B joins her eldest daughter as they walk towards the centre of town. Outside the Queen Street Police Station is an electric street lamp not yet aglow, but the miracle of it, in Mrs B’s view, is a sign that Brisbane is on the up. The low set, red brick station squats between the Lennox Hotel and Westchester’s Haberdashers of Distinction. Not a one of the buildings is happy with the arrangement. May trudges up the steps and holds the door for her mother. “Get in, mum. It’s warm in here.”

“Evening, ladies,” says the young officer, dwarfed by an enormous reception counter. He flops a large book open on the countertop. “Signing in?”

“We just come in to speak to Sergeant Powers,” says Mrs B. She stows the pipe in her purse. “We’re the agents on the clairvoyant crackdown.” She slides the purse back to her elbow and straightens her coat front. May sits on a bench against the wall. 

The officer pokes his head around a door in the back of the reception room, then returns. He keeps glancing at May while he fusses with things unseen behind the counter. Mrs B smiles.

“You a police agent, then?” He directs this towards the top of May’s bent head. She looks at him like he’s a dingbat and nods slowly. Her eyebrows plucked thin as a starlet, raised to meet her fringe. 

That’s my girl, thinks Mrs B. May, makes a loud tsk and grins at her mother as the poor copper finds a reason to duck out of sight. It’s good to see that smile. A rare sight since she and Jack lost their wee baby. Mrs B rubs her tummy. She hasn’t told May yet. Nor Bob neither, for that matter. It’s too soon. Up the duff again at her age, forty-bloody-two!

Sergeant Powers charges through the door. He fills the small room with his moustache and uniform. He smells of damp wool and tobacco. “What have you got for me, Mrs B?” he says, pushing his thumbs into his belt. “How’d you get on with our clairvoyant?”

“We got on just dandy, Sergeant Powers. She charged us 2s 6p each for our readings.” 

“You documented and witnessed according to protocol?” He takes the notebook she offers him.

“Too bloody right we did; didn’t we, May?”

“Course,” says May. “Mum knows what to do.”

“That woman talked all sorts of tripe about the future. Told me I’d have a new man to take care of me. All me problems blown away. Told me I’d be a widow ‘fore the year was out.” Mrs B says nothing about babies.

“Mum!” says May. “That’s awful. What a piece of work she is.”

“What she tell you, May?”

“Just some rubbish about suffering and clearing out the house to be ready for a surprise.” May shakes her head. Her short hair dancing around her face. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

Sergeant Powers says, “Good work, ladies. We’ll be calling on Mrs Presticott tomorrow with charges.” He stands for an awkward moment, his right hand twitching as though unsure if he should shake hands. Mrs B grips his hand and pumps it up, down. He looks a little baffled, but she has watched Bob shake hands with his mates and is certain she got it spot on. “Ah, yes. Much obliged. I’ll be in touch when the next operation begins.”

“And our payment?” Mrs B rubs her fingers together. “Don’t work for free, you know.”

May is quiet as they wander towards the Valley. They pass Chin’s Market. Mrs Chin giving a stern nod as she closes the doors for the night. The evening air resounds with the clatter of barrows being wheeled indoors, the chatter of children waiting on their tea and the wavering song of a lonely dog. “Tell me what she really said, my dove,” says Mrs B. “I know you like me own hand. What did the fortune teller say?”

“Oh, mum. She did the whole lunatic performance. You know how that gives me the grues. Then she says.” May pauses, a hitch in her breath. “She says I won’t have another baby until our house is cleansed.”

“Good grief, what rot. That woman is an education.” 

“I know, Mum. It’s just… she acted like she knew. About the baby, and me, and Jack. Cleansed by fire, she said. When I asked her what that meant, she was all innocence. She couldn’t say. The spirit guides.” May circles her fingers around her temples. They laugh, but Mrs B can see May is troubled. 

“Go on home, love. Think no more on it. Jack will be in soon, wanting his dinner.” She sighs. “I’ve got to do for Pop Watford before I go home to your Da and the children.”

“Good luck with that,” says May.

Pop’s house is on West Terrace, one block down from Mrs B’s. She cooks for her father three times a week. This gets him through if you add in a roast feed from the Commercial Hotel on the corner and the cold collation the youngsters deliver to him every other day. He does all right, cunning devil. When she enters, she hangs her coat on a hook next to Pop Watford’s old farm coat. Lord, it must be about to crumble. It is still redolent of cow shit. A smell she finds both comforting and revolting. Pop sits beneath a cloud of smoke in the only armchair in the sitting room. Mrs B plants a wee kiss on his head, saying, “How are you today, you old bugger?” 

Pop wheezes and coughs. “You’re bloody late, woman. I’m starving, that’s how I am.”

Mrs B walks to the kitchen. “Couldn’t be arsed to get out of your chair and prepare something for yourself, as usual.” She lights the gas stove and fills a pot with water for the potatoes. She finds a nice piece of liver in the icebox and looks for an onion. 

“That’s a woman’s work. Your mother would never have left me go hungry. It’s a disgrace.”

“You worked her into an early grave, Pop. Poor Mum.”

“Poor bloody nothing. Your mum was a bonza worker. She could round up cattle better’n any dog I had.”

God help us, thinks Mrs B. No better than a dog. She let her mind drift as he prattles. Now she and May are police agents, she can set them up as lady detectives proper. Film flam merchants, straying husbands… and wives, missing relatives. They can handle it all. Bob’ll be able to rest his bad back. Hell, he can mind the new baby when it comes. 

“She ran up the race behind that heifer. Run Edie! I said, run Edie. Then she fell face first into the shit.” Pop Watford’s cackle degenerates into more coughing. 

Christ, sometimes she hates him. Mrs B opens a drawer to grab a knife. She considers taking it into the sitting room and sticking it into her father. At this moment, it doesn’t seem wrong. Then, as if God has been listening, the entire wall of the kitchen heaves inward, throwing Mrs B across the room. Bricks tumble from the chimney. There is a shuddering, thunderous roar. The Devil, she thinks, crawling under the table. The house sways around her. Jars of jam and pickled onions fall and shatter. Oh, the stink of it. Mrs B curls into a ball and waits to die. 

And then it is over.

Something very heavy has crushed the little table, but Mrs B is still alive. She wriggles out, tearing the sleeve of her blouse. West Terrace is an endless expanse of corrugated tin and shards of timber. It takes a moment to remember that homes existed beneath those sheets of tin. It looks like the work of an angry giant. Jesus and Mary! Pop.

Mrs B climbs over the tin roof and calls for help. Others have escaped their homes and gather on the street calling for their people. “Earthquake,” they say and she thinks, oh. Then another cry. “Fire.” Smoke trickles from beneath the tin and flames follow. Mrs B is running. She is leaving Pop to fend for his-bloody-self. She is running home.

The house is gone. Just like Pop’s. The whole block flattened. Fire engulfs the wreckage, sucking on the broken gas lines. The heat freezes her. Then someone has her arm. They tug her from her dead and she fights that. “Come on away, Mrs,” says a voice. A boy’s dusty face blinking in the light of the flames. “Everybody’s at the Commercial.”

Mrs B sees the Commercial upright on the corner. The side of the Pub has crumbled, revealing a doll’s house view of the bar, a bedroom, a bathtub. A swarm of children are crying and hugging her. Are they all here? She tries to count them, her blessings. “Where’s your Da?”

“He went for May and Jack,” they say.

“Holy Mary, you lot are a sight.”

The aftershocks scare the bejesus out of her. Rows of white tents line the Showgrounds. They remind her of the carnie stalls when the Royal Exhibition comes to town. She leaves the children sleeping inside a tent as dawn stains the horizon blood red. The whole city is on fire. The water pressure vanished as soon as they turned on the hoses. A firefighter sits and weeps outside the hospital tent. Inside it is a house of horrors. 

To the left, bodies are laid out in lines. A dormitory of the dead. Doctors and nurses focus on the living. Treating limbs burned and broken. Treating smoked lungs and shock. Mrs B is looking for Bob. For May and Jack. And Pop. 

She finds the fortune teller. 

Mrs Presticott is lying in a tangle of blackened fabric. She is not burned up like many of the faces Mrs B has peered into. Sometimes crouching to be sure. No, her face is clean, but the blackened skirts trouble Mrs B. She touches the material and recognises the stiffness of dried blood. She thinks of the warning. A widow. A house cleansed by fire. How much did she know? Not enough to save her own skin, poor sod. Still. The brooch, a cheap piece, she sees that now, is dusty. Mrs B uses her sleeve to wipe it clean. “Sorry, duck,” she says. 

Back at the tent, the little ones are waking. A shout reaches her and before she knows what is going on, she is swung off her feet. There is a chaos of kids. Two rough hands clasp her face. “Bob Baker. You bugger.” Mrs B is weeping. And there’s May and Jack with tears streaking their dear faces. 

“God, you lot. Keep it down to a dull roar, can’t you.” Bob laughs.

“You hurt, Bob?” She sees he is hobbling.

“Still in the land of the living, love,” he says. “The house is gone, Elsie. We’ve lost everything.”

“We got the kids, and we got each other.”

“That we do.”

Mrs B puts her arm around him. “Let’s get you fixed up, good as new. I got some news that’ll cheer you up.”