to be married soon.’
Clare looked up in surprise and asked how she knew that; the woman said she could see it in her palm.
‘It’s true! I am getting married!’ she enthused then.
‘Yes, I know,’ said the woman, ‘I said so.’
Delighted with this, Clare held out her hands again and demanded a fuller reading, which was complied with, and there ensued some talk of the seat of Jupiter and the girdle of Venus, and so many children, and a long life. Entirely thrilled with this revelation of futurity, Clare could not be content until she had heard everybody else’s fortune as well as her own, so she hurried Ravella forward. The woman hitched back her dreadlocks and peered into the palm.
‘You will be married,’ she pronounced, ‘twice.’
Ravella smiled.
‘No, no,’ hesitated the woman, ‘once.’
Ravella frowned.
‘No, no,’ she countered again, ‘I don’t think you’ll ever marry at all.’
Here Ravella laughed, and Clare tutted.
‘But Ravella’s married already,’ she corrected the bemused woman, ‘or was, she’s widowed now.’
‘Well, I can’t read that,’ pouted the woman.
Ravella laughed again. ‘Don’t be too severe, Clare. After all, she was reading the future, not the past. Anyway, perhaps your fiancé should show his hands? I’m sure you’ll find a deal of hate and resentment in his palms.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Clare, surprised.
Ravella smiled. ‘Well, he hates and resents to be drawn into any fun, doesn’t he?’
Trevick had turned away, but now rounded on her angrily. ‘I don’t like your kind of fun, Ravella, and I won’t be toyed with!’
Clare spoke a word of admonition for his outburst, but Ravella did not heed it at all.
‘It’s only a game, James,’ claimed the fiancée. ‘I wish you and Ravella wouldn’t snap at each other like this.’
The traveller woman now mentioned that, though hers was a limited talent, there was a fellow in the next caravan who would read the Tarot, if they wished to pay him. Clare immediately took this opportunity, and appealed to Ravella to join her, while the woman went in to arrange it.
‘What! I can’t go in!’ protested Ravella. ‘What if he reveals all your secrets, and I hear them?’
‘I don’t have any secrets,’ said the other, ‘and certainly not from you.’
‘Well I do,’ parried Ravella, laughing. ‘What if he reveals all mine?’
But Clare was too tempted to demur when she was summoned, and left her companions alone together.
At this moment, Trevick was suddenly caught with the panic of emergency, and without knowing it, started forward to catch Ravella’s arm. She slipped it free.
Gasping, he hissed through his teeth: ‘Listen! I have to speak to you!’ His heart beat painfully hard.
‘I remember I listened to you once before, and regretted it,’ she retorted, turning off. He caught at her again.
‘Listen to me! I must speak to you!’
‘No!’ she returned. ‘I won’t be told I’m hated and resented twice!’
‘You don’t understand,’ he urged, ‘I’m not the same as I used to be— I’m sick, I’ve— I’m mad—’
‘Well, I’ve no patience for your ravings,’ she told him. ‘There was a time when I’d have listened to you gladly— but you’ve ruined your chances with me.’
‘Do you hate me now, then?’ he charged her. ‘Or do you love me? Did you ever love me? Ravella, I love you— I did then, no matter what I said, and I do now.’
‘I know it all,’ she said sternly.
‘You know!’ He clutched her arm tight. ‘You know I love you? You know what I feel? You can’t know— you can’t guess at it, how unhappy I am, how I’m suffering. God, I’m wretched, I’m at the end of my tether, Ravella, I can’t bear it!’
‘Of course I know!’ she chided. ‘I’ve done it, haven’t I? Don’t you realise I’ve done it on purpose? If you think you’re mad now, you’ll be madder yet before I break you!’
‘You’re punishing me on purpose!’ he whispered, stunned.
‘And I’ll keep on punishing you, too.’
‘Why? You have me, you have my love— what more do you want?’
She frowned contemptuously. ‘You hate to love me,’ she said, ‘so it’s only fair that I should love to hate you.’
Trevick stood still with the shock of it. He had depended on this moment, this declaration, to release him from his purgatory, into Heaven or into Hell, he did not care which. He was quite prepared to encounter the consequences, as long as he could be liberated from the frenzied crux of love and hate that was warring in him. But now, what was his horror, his confusion, to realise that Ravella had no intention of freeing him whatsoever? That she had seen his anguish, and could have put him out of his distress at any time, but chose not to, chose to make him suffer! His logic was terminally confused and confounded by her: he concluded that she must love him in order to hate him so much, since that is how it worked with him; and yet his was all the pain, all the torment; she was wielding it, and so remained untouched by it herself.
Shaking with fury and bewilderment, he made to grab her firmly, but she eluded him.
‘Let me go, Ravella!’ he cried. ‘Let me go! I don’t want to love you, I don’t want to hate you— Ravella, end it, let me go— love me, hate me, do something!’ —and he tried to grasp her again, but failed.
Suddenly, Clare re-emerged from the caravan, and he stumbled a little, caught out in his distraction, wild-eyed and off-guard. He froze again, but she did not notice, for she seemed curiously subdued— she had not been told the fortune she wished to hear. The traveller woman hurried behind her, warning unhelpfully that the Tarot never lies, and Joseph would never hide anything he saw in the cards. But Clare ignored her, and, frowning, asked Trevick to have his fortune read too.
‘He told me something—’ she half explained, ‘and I want him to say whether your future agrees with mine.’
Trevick, still in a turmoil from his encounter with Ravella, did not really heed her, but complied anyway, to appease his fiancée and disguise his own distress. Clare led him into the caravan and paid the person who was sat at the table with his deck of cards.
The mystic Joseph was a rather ageless looking man with staring blue eyes that delved into everything they glanced upon with a piercing intrusion. He shuffled the pack solemnly, asked his customer to do the same, and began to set out the cards into an arcane pattern. Clare gazed on anxiously, though Trevick was in a world of his own, and the Hanged Man and Blasted Tower signified nothing to him.
Joseph studied the cards profoundly for some minutes, while Clare held her breath; then he tutted, swept the pack up again, and put them away. Clare gave a sort of scream and demanded to know what was the matter, what had he seen?
The visionary only shook his head impatiently and gestured to the absent Trevick. ‘This man isn’t interested,’ he complained, ‘he doesn’t want to know.’ Then, leaning forward, he jabbed Trevick out of his reverie with a poke to the shoulder. ‘But I’ll tell you this much for free,’ he said. ‘You will be blasted, and you will never recover.’ —with which he threw back the note he had been given in payment. Extremely startled, Trevick left at once.
Ravella endeavoured to cheer her friend on the returning walk, for Clare was now snatched by every doubt and anxiety about the future.
‘They say you make your own luck,’ she consoled, ‘so why not your own fortune, too? I’m sure I always try to make sure things turn out the way I plan.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ murmured the other. ‘And after all, that palmist woman got your reading wrong, didn’t she?’
‘Of course she did, Clare. Anyway, who’s to say what’s true and what isn’t? For example, I’m a widow, and not a widow at all, because you might say my husband’s still alive, even though he’s at the bottom of the sea. You could say, I keep hi
m alive in my heart.’
Clare smiled. ‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ she said, always taken with a romantic sentiment.
‘It’s true,’ replied Ravella, glancing away from Trevick. ‘You see, it’s just as easy to keep someone alive with love, as to kill them with it.’
With that she bid them goodbye and took another path. Clare set aside her worries and chatted all the way home, but Trevick was not listening to any but his own voices, ringing in his mind.
Henceforth he could do nothing to disguise his impatience and anger before Ravella. Clare complained of his severity, but he could not restrain it for her sake. He was already concealing such a flux of painful and polar emotions that they vanquished his peace, and he could no longer distinguish between his dreams and experiences. But this suppression only multiplied his imagined dilemmas, until he was entirely paralysed by concealment and confusion alike.
Now the fated wedding day drew near, and Clare’s excitement was infectious as she busied herself with the preparations for it. Though it was to be a small and intimate affair, she still found endless scope for industry and activity. Ravella matched her, thrill for thrill and smile for smile, writing invitations, booking tickets, ordering flowers and sweetening the vicar. All the while, however, she indulged herself secretly in a rage of conquest, for since Trevick’s declaration, she was reassured of her power over him, and now had no design in sight but to entirely ruin his happiness, and complete her own.
Mrs. Manderville, observing her fever of excitement, shook her head in wonderment.
‘I’m sure I can’t make you out at all,’ she told her. ‘You’ve made him miserable enough already, and we know he’s head over heels for you. Why do you want to let him go and marry that lass of his after all? I suppose it’ll make him even more miserable, but where does it leave you? Out in the cold, that’s where.’
‘He’ll marry me,’ said Ravella carelessly, hurrying to make up a room in the guesthouse.
‘Ah! So you do love him, then,’ concluded the landlady.
Ravella laughed and kissed her cheek. ‘How silly you are, Mrs. M! Love him, indeed! I didn’t love him when I arrived in Hurlevor, did I? But I said I’d marry him then, and I say so still.’
Mrs. Manderville shook her head again, but Ravella paid no attention as she put the finishing touches to the bedroom where Clare was to spend the eve of her wedding.
‘You’ve fitted it up wonderfully!’ she congratulated her. ‘I swear it’s the finest room in the county. You’ll be famous for it.’
‘Expensive, too, though,’ murmured Mrs. Manderville. ‘And what with the other rooms, the new kitchen, the new slate on the roof, the revolving door in the lobby, three en-suites and everything all on order, well, it comes to a fair packet!’
‘Investment, Mrs. Manderville!’
‘But I can’t hold my creditors off forever! I daren’t open the mail nowadays for all the threateners I get from the bank, and what with the loans and the mortgages and all, well, I was wondering whether— well, whether I might be able to borrow a bit— just until the season starts again?’
‘Oh dear! I was about to ask you the same myself! I seem to remember you owe me something already this month.’
‘Well, yes, there is that— but you know I’ve had all those brochures printed already and the printers are after me—’
Here Ravella drew a slip of paper from her pocket with an I.O.U written on it for her winnings in the previous evening’s game of Black Jack.
‘Oh yes, that,’ muttered the landlady when she saw it. ‘Yes, I was coming to that.’
Ravella smiled disarmingly before she could say any more. ‘My dear Mrs. M,’ she consoled, ‘what’s a little debt between friends? I’ll tell you what. I’ll forget all about this little I.O.U for the while and this week’s instalment of your loan. Now, how’s that for helping you out? And I’ll tell you what’s more— once I have my hands on Trevick’s money, I’ll gladly lend you what you like to fend off those rude printers. Really, if they knew what a goldmine this place is going to be, they wouldn’t be half so eager and difficult.’ —and with that she wandered off, leaving Mrs. Manderville like a fish out of water.
The eve of the wedding day arrived, and with it I myself arrived in Hurlevor, as I have described already, and all the scenes passed just as I have told. Clare decided to spend the night with Ravella in the village, and I spent the night at Hurlevor Point, while the storm swept in off the sea and threw all manner of driftwood, weed and shingle onto the shore and quay.
The women went upstairs early, and, sitting together in Clare’s room, the happy bride fizzed over with excitement and anticipation, infusing the evening with her spirits, while the heavy wind beat against the windowpanes. At last, fatigued with happiness, they resolved to go to bed, and Ravella got up to leave.
‘Oh, Ravella,’ breathed Clare, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for me— thank you for being such a good friend!’ She kissed her fondly. ‘I’m going to be married!’ she thrilled. ‘Wish me luck!’
Ravella smiled genuinely. ‘Good luck!’ she said, left the room, softly closed the door, locked it, threw the key out of the window, and promptly married James Trevick the next morning.
So it came about that I found myself, having missed everything, sat on a bollard on the quay outside the guesthouse, wondering on what had passed with great surprise and confusion.
Guy Laurence, who had told me about the curious ceremony, and now hoped to gain Clare’s hand for himself, had been invited surreptitiously by Ravella, and actually installed next door to the deluded bride, though unbeknownst to either. Now that he knew his beloved was free of matrimony, he concluded that she must still be packing her bags at Hurlevor Point, and raced there in his car to find her. I, meanwhile, remained where I was, noting that the night’s storm had not blown over altogether, but merely withdrawn awhile, for now the sky grew black as pitch again, and the sea danced choppy and white.
I noticed a general milling of people around the door of the guesthouse, who were, it seems, the wedding guests, aunts and cousins and assorted Belmont relatives, utterly bewildered and bemused by the proceedings of the day, and anxious where to enquire, and of whom, for some kind of explanation. Some had gone to the church, only to find the ceremony already over, and the groom gone; others had never left the village, confused that the bride was nowhere to be found. Ravella had taken charge of writing all the invitations in her best calligraphied hand, and each one bore a different time for the ceremony (and these false times all too late), so nobody knew what was going on. Between squabbling about this, and complaining how dreadful the guesthouse was, and how they would never stay in such a place twice, they made quite a hubbub. The first dark drops of rain began to scatter the pavement, and umbrellas went up to be blown out.
Suddenly the door flew open and Clare Belmont sprang out into the rain, much to the shock and consternation of her friends, for the cheated lady, still in her nightdress, hair flaming wide and wild, eyes staring and flooded with tears, seemed crazed with anger and frustration —and with good cause, too.
Mrs. Manderville followed close behind, attempting to console her, but it was too late. Clare had discovered all that had passed, and so burst into a fury at these hollow condolences.
‘How can you look at me?’ she screamed. ‘How can you dare to touch me after what you’ve done? All morning I’ve been trapped up there, alone, crying out for help, crying out for anybody at all to take pity on me and let me out— and where were you? You wouldn’t help me, even though you knew where I was, you knew what Ravella was doing— don’t touch me!’ She broke into a violent fit of tears at the thought of how she had been betrayed. ‘Ravella! Ravella and my James! How could they do it to me? How have I ever hurt them? Oh, James, James! I thought he loved me— I knew he loved me— today is my wedding day!’ She sobbed bitterly. ‘Why has he hurt me like this? How have I deserved it? Why has he done it to me?’
Here she was wholly overcome with her pain, and lost the next half hour in wretched tears and unhappy complaints against her jilting fiancé, until a concerned relative happened to mention that Ravella was equally to blame, which aroused her anger once more.
‘Ravella!’ she cried. ‘As if what James has done wasn’t enough! My best friend, I called her!’ —at which the entire crowd met in assailing the cruel persecutor with all manner of purple epithets relative to her crimes. As Clare seethed with wounded fury, everybody took up her cause; but since the villain of the piece was not immediately present to be attacked, attention fell to her accessory, Mrs. Manderville, who was loaded with recriminations for her unfeeling, savage, even criminal conduct in keeping the poor bride prisoner; but still nobody lost sight of who the wicked mastermind actually was.
Mrs. Manderville, seeing that the tide of opinion had turned against her erstwhile tenant, defended herself by adhering to the general resentment, and in so doing discovered her own injuries, or at least, noticed them for the first time in their proper light.
‘You think she’s caused you trouble!’ she protested to Clare. ‘What about me? She’s fleeced me for every penny I’ve got, or ever had! I’m in debt up to my ears thanks to her— wrecked, I tell you! And she’s made me spend everything, everything I was saving up for my retirement, little though it was, and thousands more besides! How will I ever go about getting it back?’ —and she burst into some noisy sobs.
‘You haven’t had your fiancé snatched from you!’ parried Clare. ‘You haven’t been stabbed in the back by your closest, kindest friend, the one you trusted, loved like a sister— I can’t bear to think of it! How could she be such a traitor?’
‘At least you’re not utterly ruined!’ wailed Mrs. Manderville. ‘At least you’re not in debt forever!’
‘At least you weren’t locked up on your wedding day, where nobody would help you, by your best friend, while she ran off with your fiancé! If it wasn’t for this man here letting me out, I’d be up there now, for all you did to help me!’
Clare gestured to a middle-aged fellow who was stood nearby, very much concerned with the entire business. This was Jack Elliott, once Ravella’s lover, who had received an invitation to the wedding also, doubtless so that she might revel in her success before the eyes of her old flame. Since being so cruelly ditched by the woman he loved, he had lost nearly a whole year in regrets and broken-heartedness, but still felt a glow of affection for Ravella that winced every day with lost love’s pang. Now, though, listening to the cacophony of misfortunes, he concluded that the fair deceiver had duped them all alike.
‘This is all one piece of work,’ he announced aloud, ‘and Ravella is to blame for it! I believed she loved me once, but it turns out she was only after my money in the end, and she
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