Jessa would have wondered over that dreaminess had she not had other things on her mind, worrying things as to how one went about telling fortunes in the sand.
I must brown myself with bottled sun-tan, she planned—years in the sun had only ever achieved Jessa a scatter of freckles—and wear an hibiscus or an oleander in my hair, and of course, a floral lei, and bracelets, oodles of bracelets, and perhaps an anklet as well. What will I call myself? Sybil? The Oracle? The Island Sorceress? No, just Oleander, and I’ll decorate the tent with oleanders, and tell Ba to fetch over a few conchi shells and coloured coral.
For all her doubts as to her ability, the prospect became quite fascinating.
She was still planning little details as she and Margaret climbed the stairs to bed.
CHAPTER XVI
“FETE-FEVER” had taken possession of Lady Belinda.
It was a totally different fever, thought Jessa, from that of the Great Southern, where annually both women and men patients had thrown themselves into bazaar spirit with warm enthusiasm, eagerly competing against each other with beautifully fashioned wicker baskets, trays, dolls, felt animals, intricately embroidered cloths.
There it had seemed, in spite of the personal competition, more a united effort, here it was individual, staff individual, because Belinda’s patients, unlike G.S.’s, certainly could not lend a helping hand.
Nurse Gwen, for instance, planned exclusively for her Afternoon Tea Tent, Margaret worked, with Belinda eventually in mind, perhaps, but before Belinda her stall, or rather Well. And Jessa...
Jessa schemed from morning to night. Between feeding Calypso, bathing Brains Trust, diapering Deb. Number One, she planned for “Oleander, the Pacific Oracle. Come and trace your fortune in the sand.”
She had been lucky enough to find a helpful book in the hospital library. “Destinies, and how to foretell them,” obviously was a gift volume. Matron Martha would never have chosen it for inclusion in her library lists.
None of the enclosed destinies had been told through sand-reading, but Jessa learned by heart some of the patter—and also quite a few of the fates.
She estimated that she could recite six, at least, and when the six were up she could always start at the beginning again. It would be too bad if the same person patronized Oleander twice and received the same fortune. Or would it? It might only make the Pacific Oracle sound more genuine still.
“Certain affairs are about to take place that will alter your career,” Jessa conned, deepening her voice to a husky base and imbuing it, she hoped, with mysticism. “Your path is about to be crossed by a member of the medical profession.” (If that patron was a Belinda trainee it could not fail to eventuate). “You will travel to strange places.” (A sure winner, this one). “A long journey will end with much joy.”
In deference to Matron Martha she had decided against a grass skirt, but altered an old floral cotton to a modified sarong. It was longer than a native woman would have worn, she thought—at Crescent the native women only wore print dresses, neither grass skirts nor sarongs, so she was a little uncertain about correct length—but she knew a respectable sarong would please Matron, so she spared the hem.
She did not intend sparing the coral necklaces, however. She would pile them on. These, and a lei of flowers round her neck, and so many oleanders in her hair, heavily oiled, previously, to subdue its bright titian, and she should pass. Marquees, she had always found, seem to add atmosphere. She hoped she would create an atmosphere in the Pacific Oracle’s tent.
On the day before the Fete there was much coming and going in the grounds. The mood of festivity hung pleasantly in the air.
Striped canvas was erected, stalls, benches, anything to form a rough counter. The moment one was completed a nurse claimed it and began to decorate and adorn.
Electricians arrived to make weird noises through loudspeakers. Jessa was feeding Slapsie when she heard, “One, two, three, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, can you hear me, Bill?”
“Yes, I can hear, Tom.” She winked at Baby Gerald Quentin, son of Judge Quentin, and was answered by a cool infant stare.
“All right,” she told him back, “you may be a judge, too, some future time, but I can still have my bit of childish fun.”
On the day itself no one bothered much about hospital meals. All sorts of exciting things were being piled on the Fete counters, hot dogs, doughnuts, cakes of all descriptions, ice-cream, coconut ice, fudge, apples on sticks.
Jessa started early on her transformation and she performed it in the bathroom. Over a bath, she thought, would be the only safe place to empty that bottle of tan. To her annoyance she had that fair skin that goes with auburn colouring, and she knew she must take pains if she was to darken herself convincingly.
And she did do it convincingly. She emerged halfway between a brown gipsy and a bronzed goddess. Her hair, three shades darker than usual with oil, was circled with a wreath of white oleanders, and when she walked her necklaces tinkled against each other and her anklet made a jangling sound.
It was a lovely day, a fitting day for the last of spring and the first fair entry of the crown of the year...a perfect day for the Fete.
Jessa ran across to her tent, pleased at the crowd outside Belinda gates waiting eagerly for the stroke of two when admission would begin.
She barely had time to put a finishing touch to her small enclosure when she heard chatter, laughter, the jingling of coins—that would be Nurse Joan collecting the entrance money—then steps and voices.
She peered cautiously out, taking care not to disarray her wreath of oleanders, and saw that already a mass of people were beginning to mill around. Small children were wasting no time in buying balloons and blow-outs, their older brothers and sisters storming the ice-cream and lemonade stall. Mothers had made a beeline to the jumble bench, fathers to try their skill on the Aunt Sally.
Then she saw that two figures were making shyly towards “Oleander, the Pacific Oracle. Come and trace your fortune in the sand.” She risked a disarray of the flowers in her hair and peered closer. She knew those two. She should do. She had given the girl a personal Cook’s Tour of the wards; she had given the boy the Perfesser to hold and a bottle to feed him from. She had contrived something to happen to them while they were prisoner patients in the hospital following the accident that had landed them on the Belinda hedge. Jim and Jill Of course they would recognize her, but just in case there was too much stardust in their young eyes, she ran back to her sand-tray on the floor, squatted by it in the least illuminating position, then bent with seeming absorption over her supposed source of mysticism.
When they coughed hopefully outside the flap, she called throatily, “Come in,” then when they did so she waved them to low stools on the other side of the tray.
“The sands of time,” she intoned when they were settled, taking care not to raise her head, “await your tracing fingers. Come, mark your destiny, kind gentleman, fair lady, for sands too soon run out.”
She was not sure whether she made much sense, but it sounded all right as it echoed mysteriously in the greenish gloom of the little tent.
The kids must have felt its quality, too, for Jilly gave a nervous giggle and Jim blew his nose.
“Come,” Jessa said.
Obediently they traced, then Jessa shot out a brown finger—she had been careful to burnish her hands as well as her face, neck, shoulders and legs—and read their destiny.
“I see earth, not sand,” she told them as one making a great discovery. “Why, it’s a block of land.”
“The lot we looked at last week,” gasped Jill to Jim, who said, “Ssh.”
“It’s bare flow, this land, but presently there will be a house upon it, not a big house, but very pretty, very gay.”
Jilly said, “Oh.”
To please Jim, Jessa added, “I see also a car. In a garage by the house. Like the house, the car isn’t large.”
“Better petrol consumption,” mumbled Jim.
To please them both Jessa finished, believing they had had good return for their five shillings, “I see a perambulator ... I’m sorry I cannot tell you whether it’s a boy or girl.”
“It doesn’t matter,” beamed Jilly. “Either would do, and you’re still wonderful even though you can’t tell which.” Jim muttered, “I’ll say,” and they both scrambled up from the stools and went deliriously out.
“Stardust,” grinned Jessa. “They’re positively blinded, those two dear kids.”
The pair certainly had started something. From then on Jessa’s tent had a steady queue of fortune-seekers. For most of them she used the patter and the cribbed destinies, but now and then, as in the cases of Margaret and Sister Helen, her imagination broke through and she gave a very good five shillings worth.
Matron whipped in, but shook her head as Jessa waved her to a stool. “I may have suggested it, but that doesn’t mean I have to suffer it,” she smiled acidly. “I’ve come to tell you that I’ll stand by the tent while you have your afternoon tea. Here comes Nurse Gwen with it now. And, Nurse Jess, isn’t that Mother Hubbard a little brief?”
“It’s a sarong, not a Mother Hubbard, and it’s rather lengthy really.” Matron was not listening. She had gone to the flap to discipline the queue. Jessa heard her saying, “The Oracle will not be long, ladies and gentlemen, she is having a brief respite. Please be patient, because she is well worth your wait.”
Jessa smiled and stuck out her chest.
Nurse Gwen, meanwhile, was looking superciliously at the sand tray and superciliously at Jessa.
“At Carabelle Fete,” she informed her frostily, “we had a Doctor of Psychology giving psycho-analyses.”
“Has anyone complained at your tea-tables,” asked Jessa sweetly, “that your tea is stewed?”
The patrons were admitted again. Between their destinies Jessa had a peep and saw that the queue at last was dwindling.
About time, too, she thought, looking at her wrist-watch concealed under a grotto of leaves—an oracle should not need to consult a watch—and discovering that the Fete had only fifteen minutes to go. She tallied her takings and felt inordinately proud. She would not top the profit list, but she had done extremely well, considering hers was a one-woman show.
“I’m your last customer, Madame Oracle,” announced a voice, and Jessa looked up quickly, feeling more insignificant than she had ever felt beside the bulk that was Professor Gink. This was because she was squatted on the ground and he was standing, of course. To make matters a little more even she waved the Professor hurriedly to a stool
He sat down awkwardly, not knowing where to tuck his daddy-long-legs legs.
“Do I cross your palm or something?” he asked, taking off his owl glasses and blinking at her.
“You pay as you leave,” said Jessa in her ordinary voice, then in Oleander’s voice, “The sands of time await your tracing fingers. Come, mark your destiny, kind gentleman, for sands too soon turn out.”
“You mean doodle on the sand-tray?” blurted the Professor.
“Well, I don’t mean on the canvas,” said Jessa crossly, not liking his interruption of her mood. “You must have read the sign ‘Oleander, the Pacific Oracle. Come and trace your fortune in the sand.’ ”
The Professor looked apologetic and put out his long lean hand.
Jessa watched it. She watched the slender index finger trace a line. How often, she thought with a stab of emotion, had those clever fingers, that gentle hand, pulled a dying baby back to life?
She stared at the hand, fascinated. So thin yet so strong, the nails short, square and workmanlike in odd variance to the long pointer fingers.
“I’m waiting, Oracle,” the Professor said.
Jessa bent over the sand, thinking of the destinies she had conned. Which one? she thought... “Certain affairs are about to take place that will alter your career” ... “You will travel to strange places”... or ... or...
Then suddenly a voice was quietly intoning. She knew it was hers because her lips were moving, though she had no feeling of thinking of, or mouthing, the words, they simply seemed to come, to be there She knew also that what she said had been cribbed from no library book because she was relating what she was seeing, actually seeing, on the little square of sand.
... “Longer sands than this, sir... wide sands, white sands, and beyond them a reef, a moon coming up, a big yellow moon... you are walking the sands, and there is a girl...”
“Yes? Yes, Oracle?”
Jessa sat silent. The vision was still there... she could see it clearly... but how could you cry out to a man who could not possibly be interested in you, “And it’s not Margaret, it’s I, Jess, Jess”?
“Yes, Oleander?” The Professor’s voice was impatient. It snapped Jessa out of her trance.
“A long journey,” she said in a discouraging monotone, “will end with much joy.”
The Professor looked disappointed. He also looked a little piqued. “But—” he protested.
Jess stood up. “Five shillings, please,” she demanded, and began to remove the oleander wreath.
* * *
The Celebration Ball took place the following Saturday in neighbouring St. Hilda’s community hall.
During the week Margaret and Jessa were sent for by Matron Martha. Not a little nervously they descended the stairs. To Jessa it meant racking her brain to discover which of her many sins had been again found out. To Margaret it meant racking her brain as to what possibly she could have done.
“Report cars... signing on and off... punctual arrival ...” Meg pondered, but Jessa shrugged and dismissed, “Just Chid Number Seventy-seven for me, my pet.”
But it was neither Chid Number Seventy-seven for Jessa nor Chid Number One for Meg.
“It’s about the Celebration Ball,” said Matron Martha briskly. “I want you two girls to undertake the decorations and such. You are sufficiently advanced in your career now not to need that first important continuity of training, yet not sufficiently advanced at the same time to be a serious loss to the wards.”
“In other words, we’re expendable,” grinned Jessa.
Matron Martha gave her a severe look.
“You are excused Friday evening and Saturday morning,” she resumed. “Sister Helen will show you where we keep the decorations. They may be a trifle bedraggled, but don’t let that give you the idea that you may buy more. This function is to raise money, not spend it.
“Very well, nurses, that is all.”
The decorations, unearthed by Sister, certainly had seen better days.
Jessa looked disconsolately at Meg, but Meg looked happily back.
“I’ve got it.”
“What?”
“Barry.”
“We can’t decorate with him.”
“We can decorate with what he can fetch us from Crescent, Jess. Those umbrella tree fronds would look colossal, so would frangipani, and those red berries you throw in the crater. Perhaps, too, Vanda might lend some of her lanterns to us.”
“It’s a good idea,” agreed Jessa slowly, “but—”
“But what?”
“We’d have to ask Barry to the Ball if we did that.”
“But of course.” Meg flicked dust off a tattered festoon. “Weren’t you asking him?”
Jessa said, rather to her surprise, “Were you?”
Neither answered each other. They got on to the job of planning the adorning of St. Hilda’s community hall. Barry, contacted, agreed to fetch along all he could on his next trip, and to fetch himself along on the night.
“Good old Ba,” said Jessa.
Margaret said, “Yes.”
Between balloons, lanterns, paper streamers, festoons, masses of frangipani and hibiscus the girls made a fair effort of the hall, and found time as well to shop for new frocks.
Jessa had not thought of this until Margaret had announced her intention of buying the loveliest gown her money would permit. ,
“B
ut it’s only a hospital hop.”
“Not quite—Matron will be there, the doctors, a lot of V-I.P.’s, and—”
“And?”
Margaret hesitated. She looked at Jessa uncertainly—it could have also been shyly, thought Jess.
“And—well—Professor Gink,” she offered.
Just as Margaret had murmured when Jessa had commended, “Good old Ba,” Jessa murmured also, “Yes.”
They went shopping together. Margaret chose a lilac ballerina dress with silver ribbons. It was, thought Jessa with delight, Meg’s very colour and Meg’s very dress.
She found herself oddly rebellious when it came to her choice. Against her own better judgment, the advice of the saleswoman and the pleas of Meg, she decided on a flame-red, rather décolleté gown.
“But, Jessa—”
“If you will allow me to advise you, Madame—”
“I’ll take this one,” determined Jess.
She was sorry on the night, but it was too late then, as apart from winter skirts and jumpers she had only a small collection of casual cottons and the’ ballerina dress she had taken to Curry Bulla, not having fetched across her social wardrobe as yet. Both she and Meg had been far too busy and serious to think of including clothes for festive affairs.
She scurried all the way from Belinda to Hilda, envying Meg, who had wisely spent some of her money on a lacy-knit shawl so that she could proceed with Ba at a more graceful pace. The night, spitefully, had turned out quite chill, so in her décolleté gown Jess simply had to run to get warm.
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