Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Pick them up.’

‘Me?’

Angela nodded. She was not what Jane had been expecting: no headscarf, no big brass earrings. Jane saw a long oval face and mid-length ash-blonde hair. She wore a pale linen suit which seemed no more suited to this event than Rowenna’s cashmere. Jane reached out for the cards.

‘And shuffle them.’

They were quite big cards and Jane was clumsy. Cards kept sliding out as she tried to mix them up. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right, you’re doing fine. Now cut the pack.’

Angela’s voice was the most unexpected thing. It was warm and surprisingly cultured.

Jane cut the cards and left them in two piles.

‘What I want you to understand,’ Angela said, ‘is that the cards are merely an aid. They form a psychic link between us.’ She put the pack together and then lifted her hand sharply as though it had given her an electric shock.

‘Oh!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh, Jane…’

Christ, what’s she seen ?

Jane said nervously, ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I’m psychic.’ Angela laughed lightly. ‘No, your friend told me, of course.’

‘What else did she tell you?’

‘Well, she certainly didn’t tell me how powerful you were. Has no one told you that before?’ Angela began to lay out the cards, one on top of another.

‘Not that I recall.’ Ah. Right. She was beginning to get the picture now.

‘They will,’ Angela said with calm certainty.

Oh, sure. I wonder how many other people you said that to today . Jane nodded and said nothing. Now she knew it was a scam, she was no longer worried. Did Rowenna realize it was a scam? Of course she did. When she came out she’d just been taking the piss, picking up on Jane’s manifest trepidation.

Angela had the cards laid out in a neat semicircle. They were beautifully coloured, and Jane started looking for the ones she’d seen pictures of on the covers of mystery novels: Death , The Devil , The Hanged Man , The Last Judgement . But none of these was obvious in the dim light; all the designs were unfamiliar.

Angela placed one card face-down below the others, contemplated it for a moment and then turned it over to reveal a faintly smiling woman in a long white robe, sitting on some sort of throne with mystical symbols and artefacts all around her. There were lights on in the pub, but somehow they didn’t penetrate into this alcove, or at least not as far as Angela.

‘Tell me something, Jane. What do you know of your ancestors?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, are you aware of – how can I put this? – wise women, in your family?’

‘I guess that depends on what you mean by wise.’

‘I’m picking up a… I suppose you would say a tradition. I feel… I believe you have much to inherit. Whether it’s immediate ancestry or something further back, it’s hard to say, but it’s there. It came up immediately, no mistaking it at all. So I double-checked and the cards are reinforcing it. There’s a very strong tradition here.’

Mum? Does she mean Mum ? Jane found herself holding her breath.

‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘Well… maybe.’ Mum had sometimes talked of experiences she’d had in churches, visions of a cosmic benevolence in blue and gold, the feeling that she really had to—

Don’t tell her what Mum is!

Astonishingly, Angela held up a hand. ‘No, you don’t have to explain – as long as you understand.’

‘Yeah.’ Jane breathed out. Jesus Christ .

Angela was gazing intently at the cards, her attention locked on the layout. She was absolutely still, as though she and the cards were encased in glass. Eventually, without looking up, she said, ‘It’s a big, big responsibility.’

‘Oh.’

‘It needs to be nurtured.’ Angela turned over two more cards which seemed to be in conjunction. ‘Ah, now… there’s been a gap in your life, I think. Someone missing. Would you…? Do you perhaps have just the one parent?’

‘Yes,’ Jane said awed. ‘How did you…?’

‘I don’t think that’s been such a big handicap for you as it might have been for others. You have reserves of emotional and psychic energy which have been sustaining you. But now that reservoir of psychic energy ought to be plumbed, or it may overflow. That can cause problems.’

‘How do you mean?’ Jane felt a slow excitement burning somewhere down in her abdomen. She looked at Angela’s halfshadowed face and saw intelligence there. And beauty too – fine bones. Angela must be over fifty but Jane thought men would find her awfully sexy.

‘Jane, I don’t want to alarm you, but if one is given a talent and one fails to develop it, or allows powerful energy to go its own way, it can become misdirected and cause all sorts of problems, physical and mental – chronic ailments, nervous trouble. Quite a lot of people in hospitals and mental institutions are simply people who have failed to recognize and channel certain energies.’

Angela looked up suddenly. Jane saw her eyes clearly for the first time; they were like chips of flint. She was serious about this. She was dead serious.

She said faintly, ‘What does that mean?’

Angela reached over and touched her fingers. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t worry. Sometimes I’m concentrating so hard I say the first things that come into my head. It’s just so rare that I get anything as clear and specific as this… I’m probably getting carried away.’

‘No, please go on.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Angela swept all the cards together. ‘I’ve been overloading you with my own impressions, and that’s not a good thing to do. Let’s relax a moment and I’ll tell you about some less far-reaching aspects of your life.’

She asked Jane to shuffle and cut the pack again, then did a couple of smaller layouts and told Jane a few things about herself and her future which were more in line with the stuff you expected to hear. Well, a bit more intimate perhaps… like that she was a virgin but wouldn’t be for long. That she would have more than one serious lover before she was twenty.

Jane smiled. At one time she’d have been fairly excited about that, not to say relieved, but right now it didn’t seem as vital.

Angela told her that she was extremely intelligent and could have her pick of careers, but she might feel herself drawn towards communications or even performance art.

Cool.

But her main choices – Angela sighed, like she’d tried to get away from this but couldn’t – would be in the spiritual realm. Other levels of existence were already becoming accessible to her.

‘Other planes,’ Angela said, ‘other spheres. Someone who has gone before has opened the way. Does that make any sense to you?’

Jane thought at once of her old friend, the late Miss Lucy Devenish, writer of children’s stories and proprietor of the magical giftshop called Ledwardine Lore, who had introduced her to rural mysteries and the mystical poetry of Thomas Traherne. And showed her that spirituality was a shining crystal, of which Christianity was only one face.

‘What…?’ Jane found it hard to speak, her mouth was so dry. ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Don’t know. It’s not for me to say. This is a very personal issue.’

‘You can’t just leave it like that. I mean, I could buy books and things, but I already do that.’

Angela gathered up the cards. ‘Have you had any personal experiences which have mystified you?’

‘Maybe. Like, there was this time I kind of fell asleep in a field, and when I awoke I felt as though I’d been someone else. It’s like really hard to explain, but—’