The Banker's Niece 1: The tarot reading

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Jane stands outside the Old Market studying the board propped up on the pavement, her stomach knotted. Wishy-washy music and sickly-sweet incense waft from the hall, clashing with the roar and stench of the traffic behind her.

    What in God’s name is she doing here? Why did she even look at the flyer when it dropped through her letterbox? She hates large gatherings and she's far too old to be dabbling in such nonsense. What would her friends say? What would they say at work? She’s a living cliché: ageing spinster in dire straits turns to the occult.

    A pair of fake bay-trees in metal pots flank the hall’s green double doors. For Jane, they do nothing to make the place more welcoming.

    Clenching her fists, she walks in.

A babble of voices assaults her like a foul wind. Movements and shapes zig-zag across her vision. Battalions of middle-aged women in flat shoes and no make-up shoulder through tight rows of stalls. A sprinkling of bearded men slalom around the women apologetically.

    Her head tightens as it does before a migraine. A weight settles on her. Is this her world now? Is this all she can expect?

    She hurries into a side aisle, hoping to find somewhere less upsetting, but the stallholders watch her as she goes by and she has to keep moving in case they try to talk to her and interest her in their wares. For the umpteenth time she regrets her height. Why did she have to end up a 5-foot 10-inch freak? She can never be inconspicuous.

    She leans against a stone pillar. It’s cool and smooth with a musty smell that reminds her of church. To her horror, tears threaten.

    For the first year after her father’s death she felt nothing but relief. She was almost euphoric. Then last year something changed. She became a stranger to herself. She said goodbye to the disciplined book editor, the predictable 59-year-old. She’s been like a teenager again. Angry. Restless. She can’t concentrate. She paces the streets. She screams into her pillow.

    And she doesn’t know what to do to make herself feel better.

    ‘Can I help you?’ says a soft voice.

    She jumps.

    ‘Have a seat,’ says the voice and something bumps into the back of her legs.

    She turns. A young woman is pushing a chair at her. She has a heart-shaped face and dyed blond hair with dark roots showing.

    ‘I, er, I’m in a bit of a hurry actually,’ mumbles Jane, wiping her eyes with the back of a hand. ‘I’m, er, looking for someone.’

    Ironically, that’s the truth she realises, almost with relief. She is looking for someone – anyone – who can help her. That’s why she’s here.

    But she doesn’t think this woman is that person. She’s not impressive enough. If she hadn’t spoken, Jane would never have noticed her.

    ‘Sit,’ says the woman.

    Jane sits with a bump.

    The woman takes a chair the other side of a small table and fans a pack of outsize cards face down on to it. The card-backs are black with geometric designs in turquoise-blue. They look slightly evil.

    ‘Pick a card,’ says the woman.

    ‘Sorry,’ says Jane. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you do.’

    She needs to assert herself quickly, before she gets drawn in.

    ‘I’m Sharon,’ said the woman, ‘and I’m offering you a tarot reading. A free taster session. I thought that was what you wanted. I thought that was why you came here today.’

    Jane feels a prickle of fear. The woman is right. Something like a tarot reading, some sort of guidance about her future, is exactly what she wants, even if she hadn’t formulated it as such. Not only is the woman a mind-reader, but she knows more about Jane than Jane does herself. What else will Sharon say and does Jane really want to know? She’s not sure about this at all.

    ‘Go on,’ says Sharon. ‘Take a deep breath.’

    Jane’s head tightens again. She’s not a child. She doesn’t have to be coaxed. She’s here of her own free will and will do exactly as she wants.

    Trying to look unconcerned, she waves a hand over the fan and points at one of the cards.

    Sharon takes it and places it in front of herself, still face down.

    ‘Two more,’ she says.

    Jane obeys.

    Sharon flips over the first card. It shows a man standing on one leg. Swords lie on the ground in a circle, their points towards the toes he’s standing on. Jane reads the card’s name upside-down: Six of Swords

    ‘You have to move,’ says Sharon, index finger on the card.

    ‘What!’ says Jane. ‘How can I move? I’ve lived in London for thirty-five years. I have a beautiful flat, a good job, friends, family.’

    She notices that she hasn’t asked the obvious question. How does Sharon know this from a card?

    Sharon shrugs. ‘I just say what I see. You don’t have to believe me.’

    She flips over card number two.

    Jane shivers. The card has an ominous name: The Tower. It shows a tower on fire and people hurtling to their death. She’s almost there, in the picture, hearing the crackles and the screams.

    ‘Listen to me.’ says Sharon, looking Jane in the face. ‘You have to do something. The longer you leave it, the worse it will be.’

    Jane pretends to snort.

    ‘I mean it,’ says Sharon.

    She flips over the third card. ‘Ah,’ she smiles as if the card has confirmed her suspicions.

    The card is called Prince of Wands. It shows a young man with long wavy brown hair, a dimpled chin, a generous mouth and serious eyes.

    Jane’s breathing becomes shallow.

    Sharon taps the card with a forefinger. ‘And he’s behind it all. He’s an artist of some kind. Fiery, creative.’

    Jane stares at her.

    ‘D’you know who I’m talking about?’ asks Sharon impatiently.
    Jane dips her head a fraction of an inch.

   Click here for Chapter 2

Sometimes I imagine . . .

Sometimes I imagine myself as a famous writer on a chat show being asked why I write, and each time I give a different answer. Today’s answer is – because it empowers me.

Recently I’ve been feeling disempowered. This is, I think, for lots of reasons, the main one being building work, the debris from which taken over the entire house and half the garden.

The conservatory

The front door

The kitchen

The spare bedroom

Outside the back door

The garden (with raindrops on the lens)

I have nowhere to go. I can’t even hide in my ‘den’ as the door to the loft, where pipes and electricity cables are being worked on, is right behind my desk.

My desk and the door to the loft

It’s not the builders’ fault (the debris is ours) and they are embarrassed to be intruding, and for that reason I want to keep out of the way. I don’t want to embarrass them. I slink around like a ghost, a non-person.

    Frog, who is helping the builders, doesn’t want me around either. He doesn’t want me getting in a tizz about the mess or schedules or whether the work’s being done as we would want. He wants me to leave all the worry to him. But that’s disempowering too.

Being a writer (Phew! Can I say that?), I take everything to extremes. I imagine what it would be like to be truly disempowered, as women used to be – without money, education, jobs, control over their fertility and their sex life, a vote, respect. How did they survive? Why did they not just curl up in a corner and die?

Which brings me back to writing. That is my secret outlet, my way of proving to myself that I exist. Even if it’s only an inadequate blog post, like this one.

The new bathroom, the tidiest room in the house

SEVEN DAYS IN NORWAY List of posts

1  Landing at Kristiansand and driving to the Strand Hotel Fevik 

2  A gargantuan breakfast, two walks and a swim

3/1  Migraine and shopping in Arendal

3/2  The party

4/1  Alpine scenery and islands

4/2  The dinner

5/1  Exploring the interior

5/2  A city built on rock and water

6/1  Movik fort

6/2  A wild and beautiful country and a benevolent system

7   Saying goodbye

Epilogue

SEVEN DAYS IN NORWAY Epilogue

Because there have been too many words and not enough pictures in this series of posts, here are three pictures to finish with.

Back home, Frog models his vimpel (the pennant version of the Norwegian flag).

Now all we need is a flagpole.

And finally here are copies of two Norwegian prints which I have. They are much faded and my scanner has cut their edges off, and my aunt would probably call them sentimental, but to me they epitomise the country: wild beautiful nature, outdoor living, twilight, fairy tales come to life.

The creatures are I think friendly trolls, and those of you who’ve been paying attention to these posts will notice some of the food I’ve mentioned - rips (redcurrants), fish, Norwegian cheese (Jarlsberg), rye bread.

Click here for the list of posts in this series

SEVEN DAYS IN NORWAY: DAY 7 Saying goodbye

It was another perfect day. At breakfast we watched battalions of swifts swim across the sky. After breakfast Frog and my aunt went to a DIY store to buy an Allen key so that Frog could mend a light. I finished my packing and then went to the summerhouse.

The summerhouse was a miniature version of the main house, hidden in trees at the top of the garden and used as a writer’s retreat and spare bedroom. I sat on the squishy white sofa and studied the bookshelves, the woodburner, the blue and white china.
     As a child I’d found Norway tough.
    Even though at home we lived in the country and spent most of our spare time outdoors, the Norwegian children were tougher than us, both mentally and physically. They would leap off rocks into deep ice-cold water without a qualm. They skied as soon as they could walk, up steep hills and down precipitous slopes.
    None of the houses we stayed in had flush loos. Some didn’t even have running water. Food was limited and often strange to our English palate.
    As a teenager I’d found the boys boorish. I preferred the romantic Mediterraneans.

    Now either things had changed or I had, or both. I’d fallen in love with this beautiful country - that was a quarter of my heritage.

I’d said we had to leave at 2pm, even though I knew it was much too early. I didn’t want to outstay our welcome. I wanted to allow my aunt time to have her afternoon rest. So after a sumptuous lunch on the verandah of the summerhouse (yet another place for eating out) – smoked salmon, smoked mackerel and the remains of the cake my aunt had made for the birthday party the night before (blurtcarker – a Norwegian speciality consisting of sponge, fresh fruit and cream) - we loaded our hire car and climbed in.

    I could see my aunt was trying not cry, just as my mother always did when I took my leave, so at the last minute I jumped out and said, ‘I feel more at home here than I do in England.’

    ‘So do I,’ answered my aunt. ‘That’s why I live here.’

The journey to the airport took half an hour, returning the hire car ten minutes, check-in two minutes. We had three hours to wait for our plane.

Ours was the next flight and no one else had arrived as early as us, so the airport was deserted. We whisked round the one shop without buying anything then found a seat next to the window and rummaged for our books. The other side of the glass the sky was clear blue as it had been all week and the line of trees beyond the runway a deep rich green. I wanted to be out there.

Eventually people began to arrive and go through to the gate waiting area so we followed them. The waiting area was a strange silent place, watched over by humanoid granite statues. Nearly everyone was plugged into a computer.

The gate waiting area at Kristiansand airport

Frog and I shared his emergency rations - a smoked salmon and cucumber sandwich he’d made after lunch – and then I texted my aunt to tell her what stage we were at. (She’d refused to let me strip our bed, in case we had to return. I wanted to reassure her that we nearly on the plane.) We felt embarrassed to be showing such signs of life.

This way round we had only a two-hour stopover at Amsterdam's Schipol. We were old hands at the airport so didn’t need to explore and Frog had a bad foot (as he sometimes does) so we sat quietly by a window again and tried to read.

At 11pm I stood in Bristol Airport carpark in the dark with the luggage, waiting for Frog to find the car. A chill wind whipped round the corner of the building from which we’d picked up our key and I rummaged in my bag for the fleece and quilted gilet that I hadn’t touched all week.

    We’d made to Norway and we’d made it back. Now I had to work out what it all meant.

Click here for the Epilogue