by Frances Vick
‘No.’
‘Oh well, you’re young yet.’ Sylvia’s voice was warm in the dark. ‘It will happen.’
I’m not that young, Kirsty thought.
Soon they were driving over unpaved land, a spur of packed earth which petered out into scrubland.
‘Here.’ Sylvia pointed at some rusted cars, scattered like forgotten toys. ‘Stop here. It’s a mess, isn’t it? Mervyn – my late brother – he ran his business from here. Scrap metal, he had a repair shop, but to be honest, he just collected more than he sold, bless him. He was one of those people that can’t let things go, you know the type. Everything had a use, he thought. Here it is.’ The woman pointed at a long, low sprawling structure a good twenty yards away. A dim light showed pinkly through curtains.
‘It looks like there’s someone in?’
‘No,’ the woman said. ‘I leave the light on all the time. It’s silly, but it makes me feel a bit safer. Since I’ve been alone, you know. And it’s more cheerful.’
‘Right, well let me make sure you get in safely.’
‘No! No, I’ll be fine, you’ve done enough.’ She was unbuckling her seatbelt, opening the door.
‘Please, let me get you inside at least!’ Kirsty held out one stiff arm out for support.
The woman almost recoiled. ‘I’ve not Hoovered for a few days,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit of a muddle.’
This sudden, prickly character shift was something Kirsty had seen a lot of since working with the elderly. It was as if they suddenly ran out of trust, but it always came down to fear. Told by the TV for so many years that Strangers Couldn’t Be Trusted, that they would rob you, humiliate you, murder you, older women were caught in a trap of loneliness – desperate for human contact, garrulous, clingy, yet also, suddenly, cautious. Kirsty saw all this and her heart cleaved with empathy. She responded, as always, with self-deprecation.
‘Well, it can’t be worse than my place. But if you’d prefer me not to come in, then I understand.’
After a moment, the woman put out one hand, allowed herself to be helped out of the car. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘You weren’t rude!’ Kirsty said warmly. Sylvia was so slight, cupping her elbow was like handling a hummingbird. ‘I’d be the same. Stranger danger.’
‘Oh, you’re not a stranger! I already feel like we’re fast friends. It’s just that it gets… hard, that’s all. To keep things shipshape. When you’re getting on a bit. And Mervyn left things in such a mess. I’ve made a start sorting things out, but…’
‘Please don’t worry. Let’s just get you inside.’ Inwardly, Kirsty prepared herself for the worst: dozens of cats, piles of newspapers, overflowing toilets and reeking adult nappies, but when the door was opened, she saw none of that. The kitchen was… lovely, like something from a fairy tale, low-ceilinged, cosy and warm. The faded linoleum tiles on the floor, the mellow gold of the kitchen table glowed. Kirsty breathed in the mingled smell of furniture polish, of baking, of the beautiful bunch of fresh pink roses placed proudly in a cut-glass vase. Mrs McKnight seemed to take strength from the atmosphere too; as soon as the door was closed, she stood straighter, her movements were quicker, more assured. She insisted that Kirsty stay for a cup of tea, steered her to one of the two chairs at the kitchen table, next to the roses. They still had the card attached:
While on the path of knowledge, God provides us with teachers, I give thanks for Angels on Earth – Angels like you, Sylvia!
‘Beautiful flowers,’ Kirsty murmured.
‘Aren’t they though? And it was so kind.’ The woman gazed at the card. ‘Lovely. Now, tea. Do you take sugar?’
‘No, thanks. Is this a… client?’ Was that the right word? It sounded faintly sex worker-ish…
Sylvia McKnight smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t have clients. That sounds very organised and professional. I just have people I try to help.’
‘Sorry, I meant people who pay for readings? Is that what they’re called, readings?’
‘Oh, I don’t charge.’ Sylvia handed her a mug of tea. ‘I have no business charging money for what I do. That’d be wrong. And anyway,’ her smile now was sad, ‘if you bring money into something it changes things, doesn’t it? It stops being a favour and becomes a service and if it’s a service and they don’t hear what they want to hear, well, before you know it things can get nasty. Judging and gossip and…’
‘I know what you mean,’ Kirsty replied after a pause.
‘I thought you might.’ Mrs McKnight laid a curious emphasis on the words.
‘So what kind of things do you advise on then?’
‘Oh lord! Problems don’t change, it always boils down to loneliness… people are lonely at work, in their marriages or because they’re not married. People are lonely because they’re trapped, or they have no anchors, or they’re shy and give too much, or they’re shy and are too scared to give. It’s the one thing we all have in common, isn’t it, loneliness? What I do is tap into the cause. It’s hard, isn’t it, to admit that something’s lacking in your life? But when you do, you can do something about it.’
‘I suppose so.’ Kirsty felt something inside her stiffen, raise its head in instinctive alarm. ‘Anyway, I’d better get going.’
‘Of course.’ Mrs McKnight left a pregnant pause. ‘I’ve embarrassed you.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
The woman held up one palm, a strong, pale square of authority. ‘I have. And I’m sorry for that. I know how it seems… oh lord, there’s a lot of awful people out there, I suppose, who use things like the cards to… take advantage of people. They find the most vulnerable of people and…’ She shuddered. ‘It’s too awful to think about. It happened in my day, and now with the internet and all those TV channels, it’s probably even worse.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s why I don’t generally tell people. I can’t bear the idea of being lumped in with… charlatans. To me, it’s never seemed right to take money for a gift. And it is a gift, I really believe that.’
‘What about your daughter?’ Kirsty said after a pause. ‘She makes money from it, doesn’t she?’ She looked up, expecting – wanting – to see the woman unsettled. Why?
‘She does,’ Sylvia said after a pause. ‘And… that’s her business. In both senses of the word.’
‘But how does that sit with you?’ It felt strange to ask questions, incisive questions. Kirsty normally never did unless they were in a work context and then she made sure to bookend them with prevarications and apologies. Why did she feel able to do this with Sylvia McKnight? She didn’t even try to back-pedal out of it, she just waited for a reply… something about Sylvia allowed her to do this, to be curious and unafraid of that curiosity. She felt something inside her loosen, something start to break free.
Sylvia pursed her lips and frowned. ‘I… wouldn’t do that myself.’ She paused, looked at her intertwined hands on the table top. ‘But I’m her mother, not her keeper. And after all, I may be wrong, it’s only my opinion after all, and opinions aren’t holy writ. And she’s doing so well – lovely homes, lovely holidays…’
If Angela Bright had lovely homes (plural), why was her mother living on this piece of wind-blasted land just outside Beacon Hill? Something about this was… wrong. Sylvia read the thought on her face, looked at her shrewdly.
‘Mothers and daughters don’t have to be alike, I suppose. We’re led to think that they should be, but like so many things, it’s not true. When I had Marie – sorry, Angela – I was in my late thirties. In those days that was old, too old to have children, everyone said. And I wanted a child so badly! I’d tried for years and years but… it never happened. Every month was like a little death.’
The shock of that phrase, so like her own, unvoiced thought, almost made Kirsty cry. She held her mug tight, drank deep until the steam would account for her pinkened eyes.
‘And then, when she arrived it was like a miracle.’ Sylvia’s voice was musing. ‘I tell you, Kirsty, it was a miracle. I believed
it then and I believe it now. And the thing is, when you’ve wanted a child for that long, when you’ve begged the universe for a child for that long, and then it happens, and you’re happy, well… you’ll do just about anything to…’
‘Make it stay.’
‘Yes. Make it stay. Exactly.’
‘So…’
‘So I… I haven’t been the most challenging of parents. I saw that she had the gift, and she does, you have to believe me, and I didn’t train her as I should, maybe. And she grew up poor, too poor. Mervyn was always trying one scheme or another to get rich, but they only made us poorer. And then she was isolated, out here with an old fogey like me. And she wasn’t like other children. She had… problems.’
‘What problems?’
‘Problems I’d caused, I think,’ Sylvia mused. ‘Me and Mervyn both. He was such a hoarder; these two rooms are almost the only liveable space here. The rest of the house – it’s clean, but cluttered. Marie couldn’t really have friends over, even if… anyway.’ Her tone changed abruptly. ‘That’s all water under the bridge now, isn’t it? She’s done very well for herself and the older you get, the more you realise that your values are just that, your values, and they may be wrong. Or outdated. Marie, sorry, Angela, has made a better stab at her life than I did at mine, so maybe it’s me in the wrong, not her. She’s helped more people in her career than I have, after all. Not that I had a career, I was a full-time mother, but still… And if she gets paid for it, well, the money’s good, isn’t it? I know that now.’ She gave a little laugh, halfway between self-deprecation and woeful humour.
‘I’m prying,’ Kirsty said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
Sylvia reached out one hand, patted Kirsty’s arm. ‘You aren’t! I’m just rattling on. I seem to have lost the knack of talking normally to people! No small talk.’ She twinkled at Kirsty. ‘I was never very good at small talk!’
‘Me neither.’
‘Rubbish! I saw you at that party! You were quite the belle of the ball, chatting away very comfortably with everyone!’
Kirsty frowned. ‘I doubt it.’
‘No, you were, you were or I wouldn’t say it! You know just what to say to people to put them at their ease, I watched you. And you’re lovely with kiddies, a real natural. The baby, Milo? He adores you!’
Kirsty thought of Milo’s red little face, alternately red with rage or blank as an unstruck coin. ‘Really?’
‘Really. And then you were so kind to me. Helping me down the stairs like that, so sweet, so attentive.’
‘And then I made a bit of a fool of myself. Crying like that,’ Kirsty muttered, thinking about Angela Bright’s sudden clutch, her large, blue eyes, the sudden sense that they were no longer in this over-decorated show home, but instead outside, by the canal, in the mist. ‘I embarrassed Vic. I must have embarrassed Angela too.’
‘Angela’s bombproof,’ Sylvia said flatly and her face was closed up tight. ‘Don’t worry about her.’
‘And then we – me and Lee, my husband – we just left. That was rude too. Don’t you think so? Lee just wanted to get out of there, he was upset…’ Kirsty didn’t know why she was saying this, but as she did she looked at Sylvia, hungry for approval.
Sylvia hesitated. ‘Your husband… he was protecting you, maybe? Obviously you were in pain. And so he defended you. Maybe he was a little aggressive about it…’
‘D’you think he was aggressive?’
‘No. No, I used the wrong word.’ Sylvia, her face lowered, seemed to be grimacing. ‘Maybe I should have said “forceful”. He… he did what he thought was right.’
‘He was worried about me. He can be a bit overprotective, I suppose.’
‘Well, you know, we all need protection, don’t we?’ Sylvia said kindly. ‘Especially when you’re lost, you’re not appreciated. Especially when you give and give and give when you should hold back a bit.’ She picked up her mug with both hands, raising it to her mouth like a child. Her eyes were now suddenly very tired. ‘I know something about that.’ There was a pause.
‘I should let you get some rest.’ Kirsty got up from her chair. The kitchen felt very still now, pregnant, like the air before a storm. ‘Can I get you anything before I leave?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine.’ The woman’s smile was slow, weary, complicated. ‘You take care of yourself.’
‘I can’t really help with Peg – I mean, I don’t think Peg would be able to stay here, lovely though the offer is. She’ll have mobility issues and things that—’
‘Oh no, don’t worry. Now I think about it more it was a silly idea. I just…’ Sylvia spread her hands on the table top, ‘…wanted to help. But sometimes you can’t, can you? But thanks for humouring me. And for getting this old crock back home in one piece!’
Kirsty realised that she didn’t want to leave without… without what? Making amends? Learning more? No; without a route back. She took out her card.
‘In the meantime, take this and maybe I’ll see you at the hospital – visiting Peg, I mean.’
‘Yes, that would be lovely. Not that I get there often. I prefer to visit when the family aren’t all there. They’re a bit much, aren’t they?’
‘They are a bit. Can I…?’ Kirsty shook her head bashfully. ‘Never mind.’
‘No, what?’
‘Can I maybe come over for a visit again? Just to see how you’re doing and—’
‘I’d love that.’ Sylvia’s voice trembled and bloomed with warmth. She got up slowly and walked over. ‘And do you mind if I give you a hug?’ Despite her small frame, Sylvia’s arms were strong. ‘You’re a lovely woman, Kirsty,’ she whispered into her hair.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’
‘Well, I do.’ She gave one more, almost painful squeeze, stepped back. ‘And every time you doubt yourself, just think about how you helped this silly old bat get home in one piece and give yourself a pat on the back. Whenever you think you’re a bad person, remember what I said, promise?’
‘Promise.’
Sylvia stayed in the bright slit of the doorway while she got back into the car, and as she drove back towards Beacon Hill, Kirsty watched her waving, waving in the rear-view mirror, until she was only a splinter of light in the dark, obscured but not extinguished. All throughout the drive home, Kirsty felt all the usual complex, contradictory emotions roiling and fighting in her mind for precedence, but something had changed: the fear, the guilt, the sadness crashed like waves, dissipating into harmless foam, against something new, a solid, implacable sea wall of calm. For the first time in years, there was something new, fresh, at last.
Seventeen
Kirsty got into the habit of popping in to see Sylvia once or twice a week after work. She was always alone, and there was never a hint that Angela had been to visit.
‘I’m worried I’m keeping you from your husband,’ Sylvia told her after a few visits. They were sitting, as usual, in the kitchen. Sylvia had made a ginger cake, warm and dense with spice. ‘Let me give you some of this to take back for him.’
‘We… we live apart at the moment,’ Kirsty told her.
‘Oh!’ Sylvia looked pained. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry! I thought there were problems, but—’
‘No, not like that!’ Kirsty said hastily. ‘It’s just timing – I started the job before he could finish his jobs. He’ll move up here soon, and then we’ll buy. This is just temporary.’
Sylvia nodded seriously. ‘Good. It’s not good to be alone.’
‘It’s not… but what did you mean, problems?’
‘What? Oh nothing. Nothing. I must have just been picking up on, well, you feeling a bit lonely, that’s all. I mean, why else would you waste your time coming to see an old bat like me?’
‘I like you, that’s why. And it’s nice to meet someone good. Coming back here wasn’t easy.’
‘So why did you come back?’ Sylvia’s eyes were sharp through the tea steam.
‘Well, Vic? Milo… I wanted to help
out there. And then I got my job of course.’
‘Do you see a lot of your sister?’
‘N-no. Not as much. She’s busy, you know, with the baby and the house.’
‘And the job, it must be a promotion or something? To leave London and move back here, I mean?’
‘N-no. More of a sideways move, I’d say.’ There was a pause. Outside, the sunflowers in Sylvia’s front yard shifted in the wind, rattled like snakes. ‘I’m not entirely sure why I came back, to tell the truth,’ she admitted, with a self-conscious laugh.
Sylvia opened her mouth as if to speak, shut it, opened it again. ‘I can read your cards? If you think it might help?’
* * *
Kirsty had never had her cards read before. All she knew about it were the horror stories, the obvious scams and cold reading. But Sylvia noticed, smiled, patted her hand.
‘Don’t worry. You don’t have to believe in it or follow the advice or anything like that. See it more as a way of concentrating your mind on the things that really matter at the moment.’
‘Do I have to ask a question?’
‘You can if you want, but if you do just ask it in your head. I don’t need to know it. Want to get started? Yes? Just hold the deck. Don’t shuffle them or worry about anything. Just think of your question, if you have one. It shouldn’t be a question with a “Yes” or “No” answer – more an “If I do this, what might happen” question, or a “What is influencing me at the moment that I haven’t understood yet” type question. OK?’
‘Will it tell me anything really bad?’ Kirsty asked.
‘No, it’s not like that. It might tell you bad things that have happened or tell you that if you carry on the way you’re going bad things might happen, but that’s why we do the cards – to forestall events or encourage us on. It’s just a bit of a cheat sheet into the future, that’s all. I’ll talk you through it, don’t worry.’
Sylvia gestured for the cards back, closed her eyes for a moment, and began laying them out.
