Predictions
Every Sunday morning my wife, Lucy-Jane, staggers down the stairs in her long pink nightie carrying a basket of laundry. She shoves the washing into the machine and switches it on, makes herself a cup of tea and a slice of toast, and sits opposite me at the kitchen table.
“So, what’s in store for me this week?” She asks.
Lucy-Jane is a Capricorn. You’d think that would mean she was capricious–given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour–but in fact Lucy-Jane is cautious, suspicious and a little neurotic. I reluctantly turn from the sports page of my newspaper to the horoscopes in the centre.
“Things that have been bad start to get good again,” I read. “You’re feeling alive with the fresh possibilities before you, and it’s time to give serious thought to tackling things you’ve been putting off. This week Saturn moves into a new sign and the weight of challenge on your shoulders starts to lift.”
Lucy-Jane sighs with deep relief and butters her toast with something close to enthusiasm. “In that case,” she declares, “I’m finally going to sort out the garage this week.”
“Really?” I try not to frown. There’s a broken wardrobe in there and it’s full of stuff we really need to get rid of but can’t fit into the car to take to the tip.
“I’ll order a skip,” she says, and waves aside the protest I was about to make. “Your horoscope last week promised financial security for the coming month, so we can afford it.”
It’s at times like this that I wonder why I ever married Lucy-Jane. Not that she doesn’t have many endearing qualities too, but her faith in the ridiculous predictions of Sarah Starr baffle me. Not only that, but I’m an Aries, and apparently Aries and Capricorn don’t make a good match. They probably butt heads.
It sounds a little thing, but when she asks me, morning after morning, to abandon my study of the sports pages and turn laboriously through those big inky pages to the horoscopes, I resent it. I really do. I mean, for one thing she’s home for at least an hour longer than me so why can’t she pick up the paper after I’ve left for work and read her own bloody horoscope? And for another, it’s all complete tosh anyway. My suspicion is that she thinks my reading out her horoscope each morning is somehow romantic, some cute little couple tradition of ours. Whereas actually it’s something that irritates her husband and highlights the most frustrating aspects of her personality.
So the next day I cheat.
I’m in the middle of reading a report on a surprise win following a team forgoing a transfer due to financial problems when Lucy-Jane asks me for her horoscope. But this time I don’t flip backwards through the newspaper. I improvise.
“Despite a recent setback when someone you hoped was going to be on your side failed to be there for you, and your ongoing money worries, you’re winning right now and everything seems to be going your way.” The report suggests that the team is actually stronger than it has ever been and will continue to play well. “You don’t need anyone else. Carry on, and remember that you are strongest just as you are at the moment.”
Lucy-Jane stares at me, mouth open, and for a moment I think she is going to comment on my failure to turn the pages.
“That’s so right! I was really annoyed when Ellie didn’t want to back me up on that business with the art class, but actually I’m doing better now than I ever would have done with her there. ”
The smug glow lasts for much of the day. And the next day when I read about a team which has drawn the last five of its matches and is looking for a new manager, I try my luck again. “You feel as though you’re stagnating,” I tell my eager Capricorn. “Try as you might, everything just ends in deadlock and stalemate. A new broom is what’s required if you’re to move ahead.”
Once again, Lucy-Jane nods knowingly. “It’s right. My weight-loss has plateaued. I’ve tried so many things. But I think the time has come to join a slimming club. It’s five quid a week, can we afford that?”
Apparently we can, because in the next day’s paper United has signed a new sponsorship deal and are making a killing on merchandising. Which translates into an unexpected windfall for my wife.
I’m rather enjoying not having to turn away from the sports pages, but of course it can’t last. All the same, it’s three weeks before Lucy-Jane asks, “Are they printing the horoscopes in the back, now?”
“Yes,” I mumble, checking results. Unexpected losses or wins always make my predictions for Lucy-Jane a little more interesting.
Suddenly there she is behind me, wanting to see this curious editing practice which puts the horoscopes just below the football results. And when they are not there I’m caught red-handed and have to explain that I have been the source of her horoscope predictions, basing them entirely on the fortunes of my favourite football teams.
She says very little, which is uncharacteristic of Lucy-Jane, and I’m feeling somewhat nervous. Like a dying man I see the four years of my marriage flash before my eyes, and I’m half-convinced that this is the end. I’ve lied to her, I’ve mocked something she thinks is important.
“Football results?” She says again, frowning. I nod contritely.
“For the last three weeks? Since they started being really uncannily accurate?”
I have no idea how accurate her horoscope was before, but I nod anyway. It seems the best course of action.
She sits beside me, beaming, eyes glowing. “It’s amazing!” she declares with pride. “Who’d have thought my own husband could discover such a brilliant way of forecasting the future? This could be bigger than tea leaves!”
CinderNeila
“How long is it going to take?” Prince Fred grumbled, drumming his fingernails on the jewel encrusted arm of his silver throne. He had better things to do than traipse around the kingdom for weeks looking at girls’ feet. Mostly those better things were just sitting on his throne, admittedly, but at least here it was warm and dry and much less smelly.
“Eight-hundred beautiful maidens attended the ball, your majesty,” said Neil, his footman, in a tone loaded with sarcasm. He wasn’t much fond of beautiful maidens. “Allowing for ten a day, with weekends off, our task would take sixteen weeks, or a little under four months. That’s unless we find her before then. Obviously once the slipper is fitted onto a foot our search is over.”
Prince Fred ignored his optimism. “I can’t wait four months to get married!”
Neil resisted the urge to remind his master that he had had no interest in getting married at all just a week ago. Neil had, truth be told, been content for it to remain that way. He didn’t see what Fred could possibly want some fawning girl for when he already had all his needs provided for by his trusty footman. But the blonde woman had appeared suddenly at the ball–more than fashionably late–and Fred seemed to have decided that she would be the one to appease his demanding father.
“Might I make a suggestion, your highness?” Neil ventured, and waited for permission before he continued, “Why not have several copies made of the shoe? That way your highness’s servants could travel the length and breadth of the land with a shoe each and the task might take mere days.”
“An inspired idea!” the Prince declared, and Neil knew that he would, within minutes, be attributing it to himself. “Neil, take this shoe to the royal craftsmen and have exact copies of it made. Then charge my servants with the duty of travelling through my kingdom seeking every maiden that is of age, that she might try on this shoe. Let it be known that whomever this shoe fits I shall marry that same day!”
“Anyone, your highness?”
“Anyone!”
“Very well, your highness,” and Neil bowed out.
The royal craftsmen were based in a workshop in the south tower of the palace. Neil didn’t know them well, having had little occasion in the past to visit them. But he found the cobbler, a friendly chap called Colin, and presented him with the elegant little glass slipper.
“Interesting,” Colin said, turning it over in his hands
to examine it from all angles. “See here, it has clearly been made for a particular foot. There is a slightly wider section here to accommodate the young lady’s bunion, and she seems to have had a dropped arch and wonky toes.”
Neil bit back the bile. “Can you make exact copies of it?”
“Easily, in leather, but in plaster or glass you would need to ask my fellow artisans.”
He toyed with the idea of asking the craftsmen to make the glass slippers in a whole range of different sizes. But actually, he couldn’t bear the thought of any jumped-up little madam muscling in on the beautiful suite of apartments he managed and maintained for his prince.
“Could they make one which would exactly fit my foot?”
Bad Trip
The inherent awkwardness of seeing a professional therapist for the first time is such that it is quite commonplace for new patients to spend much of the first hour’s session looking around the room, feigning interest in the paintings or scholarly books, taking in the view through the window.
Martin Jensen had been referred by Colleen Edgar, a determined woman who had a consulting room in north east London. Dr. West knew Colleen Edgar, and had seen her consulting room. It was small, minimalist, yet tasteful. Very little for Jensen to look at there. His own luxious office, with its leather sofas and framed certificates presented a far more interesting environment for his nervous patient.
“You’re some sort of specialist, I believe?” Jensen said, sitting on his hands.
“Yes,” West confirmed. “As much as it’s possible to be, at least, given it’s such a rare problem.”
“So what are they calling my – disorder?”
“It doesn’t really have a name yet.”
“Do they know what causes it?”
I’ll ask the questions, West though, irritated but far too professional to show it.
“Why don’t you tell me about your experience with Illyria?” he asked. Jensen clenched his teeth and took a deep breath through his nose. Fear, his psychologist noted. “Maybe start from the beginning. What made you decide to go?”
Jensen, more comfortable, shrugged. “I was working too hard. I’m an actuary. The wife wanted us to have a holiday somewhere I couldn’t be contacted. And it’s cheap.”
“And then?”
“We went to that weird station place, and we had the talk they give you about what to expect with the-the wormhole. Pretty boring really, I thought. I was quite into it at that stage, I just wanted to get there and start relaxing under two suns around one of five hundred pools.”
“So what happened?” West urged.
Jensen visibly shuddered, and hesitated. He didn’t like talking about it, understandably. West had been told that he had tried to cover it up for weeks, afraid that he’d be labelled mentally ill. He’d tried to forget it. But sooner or later the truth had to come out.
Jensen hadn’t yet answered. That was fine; West was trained to be comfortable with silence.
“Apparently I had a great holiday,” Jensen said at last, looking earnestly through the window. “Read two books by my favourite author, went on a scuba diving course, tried some new foods. I loved the hotel room and wanted to decorate our bedroom at home to match it. Something about coral and lime green being relaxing colours.”
“Apparently?”
The crux. “I don’t remember any of it.”
West nodded sagely and composed his paraphrase. “So you’ve been told that you did indeed enjoy yourself on Illyria, but you have no memory of your holiday?”
Jensen nodded.
“So what do you remember?”
Jensen took in a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Trauma, the psychiatrist observed. “Not much. Snatches, really. Being held flat, something pinning me down. Strange noises. Bright lights, but they were just red because I couldn’t open my eyes. A whirring noise by my head that just didn’t stop. I think I wasn’t conscious very often. Sometimes I tried to scream.”
West allowed a dignified pause. “And then?”
“And then I was back at the station with my suitcase in my hand, a light tan, a new hat, and the wife waxing lyrical about the fruit and the attentive waiters and demanding to go back next year.”
West made a note in the pad he always used. He had tried to give up the notebook, knowing that it was really little more than a symbol of his professional standing which might be intimidating to his patients. But he had found that he needed it. He didn’t feel comfortable without it. It was a tangible barrier between him and them.
“You didn’t tell her right away.”
Jensen shook his head. “I thought I was going mad. I still think I’m going mad. I mean, all the signs are that I had a great holiday. I gained six pounds, for goodness’ sake. “
West nodded sympathetically. “I’ll be working with you over the next few sessions to try to get your memory back, but first indications from the few cases we’ve seen is that some people’s physiology just isn’t compatible with the wormhole. It seems the process can foul up memory engrams, implant false memories based on the journey itself. We just don’t know much about the causes yet. But that’s why it’s so good that you’ve come forward now. You can be part of the process of finding the cause, and the cure. You can help make sure that no one else loses their memories of happy times on Illyria.”
That’s the key, West thought. Blind them with science, then encourage them with the thought of all the good they could do by undergoing treatment. And indeed Martin Jensen was almost smiling. Almost resolved. Ready, now, for the therapist to work his magic.
When the session was over West shook his hand and gave his most reassuring smile, then watched as poor Martin Jensen, a man with some strange psychological disorder which meant he couldn’t remember anything of his idyllic holiday on the paradise planet of Illyria, left the Harley Street suite.
Get the Minister on the phone,” he barked at his longsuffering secretary. “That’s the fifth one this week. Those incompetent alien scientists need to get their act together or the whole project’ll come crashing down on us.”
Fugitive
A sharp left turn, and then the narrow road undulated slowly up the mountainside, passing rows of tightly-pressed grey terraced houses with slate roofs. Matthew thought them quaint and imagined they must be very cosy. He wondered briefly whether he might just find an empty one, maybe one which served as a holiday home in the summer but was all shut up now for the winter months, and hide out there for a while. He must have come far enough by now, he had been travelling for days and this was the most isolated and remote spot he could imagine. But in all the houses lights blazed behind the curtains, so he drove on, higher and higher up the mountain. He would have to stick to his original plan. It was probably safer, anyway.
He pulled over in a passing-place to check the road. It wasn’t safe to use the net, but he had a dog-eared and weather-stained map which he had managed to pick up in a second-hand bookshop. It was several decades out-of-date, but hopefully things hadn’t changed much. He ran a dirty finger along the narrow yellow line he was now following. He was so close now.
Two miles further and his car crested the mountain offering stunning views across patchwork fields edged with ancient stone walls which ran all the way down to the gleaming sea below. Matthew didn’t have time to admire the scenery; he was too busy scanning the higgledy-piggledy houses seeking out the village’s solitary shop. There were four large chapels here, and he managed to smile at their names: Bethesda, Zion, Ceserea and Horeb. This was a simpler place. The churches where he was from were called Rock of Our Redeemer, Temple of Truth, and Second Street Church of Living Bread.
He found the shop on the left, just before what must have been his turning, pulled up outside it and switched off the engine. The shop displayed the usual array of cards in the window as well as the ubiquitous neon cross and a notice telling customers that milk was delivered once a week, on Tuesdays. Today was Saturday so there would be none lef
t. Matthew sighed. He would have liked some for his cornflakes, at least for the next few days until he couldn’t get milk any more at all.
“Blessings,” the shopkeeper greeted him as he looked up.
“This is the day,” Matthew responded with forced cheeriness, doing his best to return the shopkeeper’s smile.
“I’ve not seen you round here before,” the shopkeeper said. There was a wary edge to his voice.
Matthew’s excuses were well-practised. His claim to be an early-season tourist had raised suspicion two stops ago, so he adopted a new excuse. “I’m visiting family a few miles on,” he was careful to give no clue as to the direction, “for a special family occasion.”
“What occasion would that be?” the shopkeeper asked. Matthew had to bite his tongue to avoid telling him to mind his own business. People here took a brotherly interest in each other’s affairs, he suspected.
“My niece’s baptism.” he improvised.
“Rejoice!” The shopkeeper sighed warmly and stared off into the middle distance. Matthew imagined he was fondly remembering his own baptism day. He forced away similar memories which made him shudder; memories of feeling wet, bitterly cold and achingly empty while adults he trusted insisted that he felt warm and happy, and the first seeds of forbidden doubt crept into his ten-year-old mind.
“I was thinking,” Matthew began the line he had rehearsed, “That with it being the Sabbath tomorrow, and me being away from home, I really should stock up as much as possible.” He was already scanning the shelves. Tins and packets of dried food were his priority, anything which would keep for a long time.
“Good idea,” the shopkeeper said. “Especially since word is there’s a backslider on the run in these parts. You may want to tell your family to stay home while he’s rounded up. Could take some time too. These atheists,” he spat the word in disgust, “are slippery customers.”
Matthew knew that the colour was draining from his face. He felt his heart thumping.
“A backslider?”
The shopkeeper evidently attributed his pallor and the sheen of sweat beading on his brow to terror of this sinner roaming free. He adopted a comforting look. “Don’t worry son, with the Lord’s help they’ll catch him and show him the error of his ways. Just … stay home for a while and pray for protection.”
Matthew nodded and started loading tins of food into his basket, reflecting that at least he had provided himself with the perfect reason to buy even more provisions than a looming Sabbath might require. As much as he tried to concentrate on the tins of beans, soup and ravioli he picked from the shelves it was hard not to remember what showing him the error of his ways really meant. He shuddered again as he remembered Jenny, the bright young woman he had been on the verge of falling in love with before she had asked one question too many.
“How will you know if you see the backslider?” he felt suddenly compelled to ask. He mentally checked his disguise. The cross he wore stitched to his lapel was still in place. His car sported a fish badge. There was nothing to identify him as a sinner on the run. But what if… what if they could tell somehow?
“Through the spirit of discernment, of course,” the shopkeeper replied confidently. “God, in His grace, will tell me.”
Matthew nodded politely, unsure of whether to feel relieved or not.
His grandfather had once told him of a time, long ago, when atheists outnumbered believers. That was before the Undeniable, and then the Revival. Now they were hunted, labelled mentally deficient, and subjected to years of programming until they capitulated, declared themselves reborn, and accepted a lifetime of pretence and conformity.
But not Matthew. He had seen too much, been through too much. Clinging to the words of his grandfather, and those of his mother when she had threatened to send her disobedient small son to live in the legendary colony of atheists and sinners, he had chosen to flee rather than be forced to repentance.
He paid for his purchases, and wished, for a moment, that he might take longer to talk to this shopkeeper. It might be his last human contact.
“I hope the baptism is a blessed and wonderful occasion,” the man said.
“Yes, I’m sure it will be,” Matthew replied. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, brother.”
He had no idea where or even whether there were others like him as his mother’s scare stories had suggested; he knew only that there was an isolated and deserted village near here accessible only by sea or down a steep mountain path, which he would destroy behind him. A place where he could live out his days in freedom, plant and grow his own food, and spend the rest of his life alone, but free. The car had struggled up the mountain carrying its huge load of food and camping equipment to last a lifetime, and it was almost out of petrol. But that didn’t matter. Matthew identified the narrow turning onto the potholed and forgotten road, and started the descent.