Fifty-Minute Hour

by Wendy Perriam

  He nodded, seemed to know about John-Paul, started laying out a deck of cards on the dirty gingham tablecloth, arranging them in two long rows, face-down. ‘Take card,’ he said, pointing to the bottom row. She picked one, turned it up, flinching at its symbols: a jewel-eyed serpent wreathed around a pillar, a strange broken wheel above. She had no idea what cards these were. They seemed nothing like the ordinary pack Harry used for rummy, nor even like the tarot cards Oliver had borrowed once from an eccentric chum at school (and which James had later confiscated as being what he called both bogus and bad taste).

  The fortune-teller was staring at her card, one hand half-concealing it, the other twitching restless on the table. ‘He great man,’ he murmured.

  ‘Er … who?’

  ‘The man you love. He powerful man. He big.’

  Yes, big, she thought – he’s right – big in all the vital ways, colossal in his influence. Even here in Rome, John-Paul seemed to loom in every street; tower on every column in place of emperors and saints, controlling rampant stallions or brandishing a sword.

  ‘You waiting something, you and lover, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘We are.’ How amazing that he knew; had stumbled on her secret so precipitously, discerned the very reason she was there. No point sitting silent any longer. She must ask him that one question which obsessed her. Never mind the rest. She had no interest in the future beyond that huge concern – no wish to hear about legacies or journeys, chance encounters, strokes of fate. She shifted in her seat, aware of idle tourists strolling by, whispering to each other, or pointing at the cards. The candle had burned low and was guttering in its glass, making sudden frantic flurries, then wavering, half-dying, as if its time was nearly up. Her time was rationed, too. James would be annoyed by now, Lionel bullying Harry, the boys ruining their teeth with sugary snacks. ‘Look,’ she said, lowering her voice, and glancing down to avoid the vulgar stares. ‘I … I’m going to have a baby. His baby. You understand?’

  The man looked pained. ‘My Engleesh very good. This baby good as well. This baby very good.’

  Mary gripped her chair, astonished. ‘You know about the baby?’

  The man nodded, stroked his chin, where he was growing the first stubblings of a beard. ‘I see it in the cards. This baby very special. It grow up to be saviour.’

  ‘Saviour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stared at him, enchanted. He was confirming what she knew – knew from instinct, intuition, in the depths of her own heart. She leaned forward in her seat, hardly caring now whether anyone was watching, her voice hoarse from hope, from nerves. ‘There’s something I’ve just got to know – will it be a boy or girl?’

  There was a sudden nervous pause. She could hear the drone of traffic, the drag of passing feet, filling in the silence. Restless leaping shadows flickered up and down the columns from the last throes of the candle-flame. The man held her with his eyes again, one tiny muscle twitching in his cheek.

  ‘You want boy, or you want girl?’

  ‘I want girl.’ She was picking up his accent, transfixed by him, his presence, that strange light in his eyes, the silver salamander which seemed to wink and writhe, his dark and mobile face which registered each fleeting change of mood.

  ‘I’ve got three sons already,’ she confided in a whisper. ‘They’re marvellous boys, so clever and … But I always wanted a girl – yes, right from the beginning. I’ve never told my husband. It seemed disloyal, ungrateful. But this time …’ Her voice faltered to a halt. ‘I can’t explain it really. It’s just – you know – important.’

  The man said nothing, simply swept the first cards fiercely off the table and started flicking through a second pack, picking out a couple – one with one dot, one with two – and holding them both up to her. ‘This positive card,’ he explained, pointing to the single dot. ‘This negative – with two dots.’ He reshuffled the whole pack, then laid them out in two long rows again.

  ‘We ask question of the cards,’ he said. ‘ “Will child be girl?” Okay? And then you start pick card – one card, two card, many card – till you holding card with dots on. If one dot, yes – so girl. If two dots – no, so boy.’

  Mary sat half-paralysed, agog to know, yet dreading those two dots. She glanced up at the fortune-teller, who was still watching her intently, her tiny form reflected in the dark pupils of his eyes, as if he knew her now so well, he carried her inside him. She shivered suddenly. The night seemed colder, darker; the candle-flame burnt out, the moon behind a cloud, as if it, too, feared the answer. The fortune-teller prompted her, touched her cheek a moment, the gesture strangely intimate. ‘You ask question now, please.’

  ‘You mean ask it out aloud?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Important. Words important. Words have power.’

  She swallowed, cleared her throat, spoke as distinctly as she could. ‘Will my baby be a girl?’ she asked the cards. ‘Our baby. John-Paul’s child.’ There was a moment’s total silence, as if by speaking John-Paul’s name she had brought all Rome to a halt, somehow stopped the traffic, stilled the universe.

  ‘Take card,’ the mago whispered, seeming to catch her mood of breathless expectation. Mary’s hand moved confidently to the far end of the table, as if somebody were telling her which card she had to pick; some power beyond her own directing her tense fingers to that last one on the row. She paused a moment before turning it face-up. Could she be mistaken? Perhaps it was a picture-card with no dots on it at all. As the man had just explained, she might need to pick up several cards before she got her answer. She turned it over: one dot.

  ‘Positivo!’ cried the man, switching to Italian in excitement. ‘Ragazza! You have girl-child.’

  ‘Girl-child,’ she repeated, both hands round the card now, as if cradling it, embracing it. She kept staring at the tiny dot, watching it burgeon from an egg-cell to a perfect eight-pound baby. The man was half out of his seat, jabbing at the card with one thin excited finger, his whole face alive, elated.

  ‘Very special girl-child! She make happy everyone. She have gioia, providenza. She do big things, like father. Very special father. You leave him soon, but …’

  ‘Leave him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She knew it, had prepared for it, realised that once she stopped her sessions with John-Paul, she would not be simply leaving him, but would probably never see him in her life again. Yet it still hurt to hear the mago spell it out; hurt as fiercely, cruelly, as if she’d held her hand in the new and ardent candle-flame he’d just lit in its glass holder. She kept her eyes fixed on the flame, felt them prick with tears.

  ‘You not cry, dear lady. You strong, you very strong. You leave your lover, but him not leave you ever. He always there. He with you. He inside you.’

  She suddenly scrabbled for her purse, started pouring all her banknotes on the table, almost covering the two long rows of cards. ‘Thank you,’ she said wildly, kicking back her chair and reaching for her flowers. She deposited the huge bouquet in the fortune-teller’s arms. She had meant it for the children, to decorate their room, add a splash of scent and colour to the celebration meal. But she had to give this man some token, not mere humdrum money, some more personal offering to repay him for his words. She could hear him calling after her in English and Italian, the two tongues oddly mixed, but she had no more time to spare, was already darting back the way she’d come, crossing the piazza, squeezing through the crowds.

  She turned left, then right, then left again, miraculously remembering the streets she’d taken, the shops and bars she’d passed; found herself back beside the Pantheon. She stared up at its massy bulk, chequered in the moonlight. What had Oliver told her – that it had been built two thousand years ago as the temple of all pagan gods, then became a Christian church, re-dedicated to her namesake, Mary, and all the saints and martyrs? Her eldest son was intrigued by pagan deities, kept questioning the Christian one with arguments which flummoxed her; insisting he pre
ferred the idea of nature-gods and emperor-gods to a one-and-only abstract God which nobody could prove. The whole subject quite confused her, especially since she’d heard last month on Woman’s Hour that at least a thousand people in Britain today claimed to be gods themselves, and that this was still more common in the East, where gods could (and did) manifest themselves in the guise of ordinary men.

  She paused a moment by the stained but robust portico, touched the dank stone columns. Could John-Paul be a deity himself – not just a saint, a god? If there were so many different gods around – Egyptian ones and Roman ones, emperors, gurus, yogis, even common English bank-clerk gods, then why not John-Paul, too? It was no more inconceivable than Jesus being God – in fact, less surprising, really, since Jesus was a hippie-type who dressed in beard and sandals, and had sometimes sounded rude and quite unmannerly, whereas John-Paul was never anything but courteous, considerate, and impeccably turned out. And it would certainly explain the mago’s strange word ‘saviour’. After all, a god’s child would be special, destined for future greatness. She had seen statues of ten dozen gods in the museums they’d been visiting – river gods and sky gods, gods of wine or war. John-Paul should have his plinth as well, as he already had his cult, his obedient marvelling votaries – as God of Love, Libido.

  She heard a clock strike eight, jogged the last three hundred yards, panted to the Bar Navona where she had arranged to meet the menfolk at seven forty-five. She was twenty minutes late, yet she couldn’t see a sign of them; scanned the pavement tables, even checked inside, though the boys had all insisted on a table in the open, so they could see the fountains and the buskers, watch any early fireworks which might be let off in the square. They’d probably got distracted by the stalls, or Father Christmas, and if she tried to track them down they were bound to miss each other. Best for her to wait, sit tight, bag that last free table.

  She ordered herself a glass of sparkling wine, watched the press of people drinking, laughing, guzzling – well, all except the sullen group at the table right beside her, where a girl was actually in tears; their mood obviously quite different from the general festive merriment. The girl was tall and handsome, despite her tear-stained face, with fine bones, striking features – though with a strangely ragged haircut, as if she’d hacked it off herself. She was also dressed in man’s clothes, though the garb looked almost stylish, accentuated her slim but shapely figure. She was sitting with four men, who all seemed rough and brutish; none bothering to comfort her, but ignoring her completely as they smoked and downed their beer. She longed to lean across and say a word of sympathy, though the girl wouldn’t understand it – looked foreign, as the men did, dark and slightly exotic, as if several different countries had left their mark on her.

  She sipped her wine uneasily as she listened to the sobbing; hated anyone to cry, least of all today, when she herself had so much joy to share. Could the girl be pregnant, too, but perhaps not want her baby, and that surly man beside her be the unwilling angry father? She suddenly rummaged in her handbag, drew out her handkerchief. This girl was in distress, nose running into her mouth, tears soaking into her shirt, and with nothing but her sleeve to mop them up. She might not know the Italian word for hankie, but that needn’t stop her offering it.

  ‘Th … Thanks,’ the girl said, startled, as she scoured her nose and eyes, edged her chair round sideways, so it was almost touching Mary’s.

  ‘You’re English!’

  ‘Yes. And I never cry on principle, least of all in public.’ She was laughing now, as well as still half-crying; seemed extremely overwrought, her legs twisted round the chair-rungs, an ashtray full of mangled cigarette-ends beside her empty glass.

  ‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you. My name’s Mary Hampton.’

  ‘Nial.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘My name. Blame it on my father. In fact, you won’t go too far wrong if you blame everything on him.’

  ‘Cut it out, Nial, can’t you? The whole of Rome doesn’t want to hear your hang-ups.’

  The bad-tempered man beside her had risen to his feet, tossed Mary’s hankie back to her, yanked Nial up by the wrist. ‘It’s time to go, anyway. You ready?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The girl seemed subject to him, didn’t spare a look behind her, or even the briefest of goodbyes, as she shuffled out morosely, the three other men getting up as well.

  Mary watched them go, smoothing out the saturated hankie. That girl should see John-Paul, learn what she was doing to herself – how she’d probably chosen that uncouth and fractious boyfriend because she was trying to reproduce the situation with her father, force an unloving man to love her. She sighed and checked her watch, trying not to fret about the boys. At least the piazza offered great diversion, all her senses titillated by the sound of plashing water, the pulse of a rock band, the smells of roasting chestnuts, cloying candyfloss, the gaudy tinsel colours of the sweet-stalls. She kept her eyes scanned for her menfolk, though it was hard to distinguish anyone in the tangled crowds, the pools of murky shadow which alternated with swathes of light from the dramatic floodlit fountains. And she was continually distracted – by a poodle in a real fur coat, a lad in scarlet pantaloons juggling with six balls, a furtive man in a raincoat and a sunhat just skulking past her table, eyes fixed on the ground.

  ‘Bryan!’ she called, astonished. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you said you had to fly to Tokyo on business?’

  Bryan lurched towards her table, his face draining of all colour, seemed to stagger, reel. Mary caught his arm. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone quite pale. Sit down a moment, and I’ll order you a brandy.’

  He stared at her, unspeaking; looked haggard and unkempt, dark rings beneath his eyes, his raincoat buttoned wrongly, so that it hung lower on one side. He stroked his crumpled sleeve where her arm had touched his own, kept gazing at it wonderingly. ‘I’m dreaming,’ he said slowly. ‘This is just one last cruel deception. You’re not Mary Hampton, are you – the Mary of the class?’

  She laughed. ‘Of course I am. Look, do sit down and join me. I’m just waiting for my family. It would be nice for you to meet them.’

  He backed away immediately. ‘Oh, no. I’m … er … busy, very busy – preparing for a seminar.’

  ‘A seminar on New Year’s Eve? They must be awful slave-drivers. You can spare five minutes, surely?’

  He peered a moment at his watch, then glanced nervously around him. ‘It’s dangerous to be out at all, especially on your own. Father Campion warned us. It’s the most dangerous night of all the year in Rome. He said we might get killed or …’

  Mary pulled a chair out, patted it encouragingly. She could think of more exciting companions than poor perverted Bryan, but until James and co turned up themselves, she’d rather have a chaperone than sit here on her own and be subjected to rude leers. Anyway, tonight she craved for company, almost any company, longed to pour her news out, share it with the world. ‘We’re safe till ten, at least, Bryan. It’s only nearer midnight that things get really violent – or so our courier said.’

  He sagged down in the chair, as she ordered him a brandy, herself another wine. She already felt just slightly faint and fuzzy, but it surely wouldn’t hurt to get a trifle tipsy on this one night of the year, and when she’d received such marvellous news.

  ‘Isn’t Rome fantastic,’ she said, leaning forward to clink her glass to Bryan’s.

  ‘Yes,’ he mumbled tonelessly.

  ‘How long have you been here? And is it strictly business, or a holiday as well? And why Rome and not Japan?’

  He shook his head, as if he’d hardly grasped her questions; really did look ill. Perhaps he’d caught that ’flu bug which had been going round at Christmas time, and was still feeling weak and low. She must try to cheer him up, rummaged through her mind to dredge up Simon’s little jokes, or the priceless things that Jon had said about what he called the cattycombs. His face remained quite tragic, his posture slumped and stoop
ing. Recklessly, she ordered still more drinks, as much to lift his gloom as to calm her own anxiety about her husband and the boys. It was almost half past eight now and no sign of them at all. Had her precious Jon been injured by a firework, her precocious brilliant Oliver had a bed thrown at his brain?

  She drained her third Spumante, felt better instantly. Of course the boys were fine; everything was fine; and she was pregnant with a daughter, a rare and splendid girl-child who would lighten the dark world. ‘Bryan,’ she said, giggling rather nervously as she flirted with her beer-mat. ‘Can I trust you with a secret?’

  He suddenly leaned forward, as if at last she’d caught his interest, roused him from his torpor. She looked away, still nervous. ‘I shouldn’t tell you really. It’s something very private, and you might not understand, might think I’m – you know – loose.’

  ‘Mary, what are you trying to tell me?’ His hand was groping after hers, his face no longer pale, but flushed and almost galvanised.

  ‘Er, nothing. Look, forget it. It was just a … silly joke.’

  ‘No, Mary, not a joke. I know you’re serious.’

  ‘Well, yes, I am, but …’

  ‘You are? Oh, Mary! I never thought you’d say it, never thought you’d actually dare to …’

  ‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t really. I mean, I haven’t even mentioned it to James yet.’

  ‘You’re going to tell him?’ Bryan’s eyes were wild – fearful yet triumphant, the flush deepening on his cheeks, exulting down his neck.

  ‘Well, of course I am. I can’t keep it a secret any longer.’

  ‘Oh, Mary, I’m so happy!’

  ‘But I haven’t told you yet.’

  He shook his head, both hands seeking hers now. ‘You don’t need to spell it out. We don’t need boring words.’

  ‘You mean it shows, already?’ Mary moved her hands to the safety of her glass, glanced down at her stomach. She had known John-Paul for only fifteen weeks, but then fifteen weeks was just exactly long enough for a pregnancy to show: the first swelling of her belly, rounding of her breasts.