Fifty-Minute Hour (54 page)

She stepped into the street again, treading the red carpet which many of the smarter shops laid outside their stretch of pavement for Christmas and New Year – or had it been laid down in her honour? The whole city seemed to know about her pregnancy, and be celebrating, revelling – fairy lights in all the shops, wreaths of fertile evergreens hung on doors and windows; the moon itself so brilliant it seemed to have been lacquered just to please her, reflect her buoyant mood.

She stopped to buy oranges from a stall heaped high with gold – tangerines and Clementines, fat and fragrant melons – golden flowers to match: huge shaggy bronze chrysanthemums, the first frail daffodils. A beggarwoman clutched at her, dragging one thin leg. James complained Rome's beggars all dissembled, inventing gammy limbs or hacking coughs, wrapping blooming babies in pathetic dirty rags. No matter. She was still more fortunate than they were; the most blessed happy woman in all the world today. She gave the crone her oranges, then crossed the road to dodge her. She needed all her cash today, must keep it for the
maghi
.

She rolled the word around her tongue, shivering with excitement. Magi back in England meant three kings. Here it meant magicians. She'd first spotted them herself in the Piazza Colonna, setting up their little makeshift tables just behind the colonnade; had learnt their name from the man at the hotel, whose English was impressive and who always smiled and flirted with her each time she left the room-keys. He had told her the magicians were really basic fortune-tellers, but not just meddling amateurs; some of them true psychics who could see into the future, had access to a depth of knowledge unplumbed by normal reason. She was already quite aware, from the Church, and from John-Paul, how reason never took you very far; how you had to leap beyond it to faith or intuition, had to trust to instinct, or explore the seething id, plunge deep into the coils of the unconsciousness; could learn things on a level quite apart from proof or logic, learn through dreams, through prayer. John-Paul had made her clever, expanded her whole outlook, taught her there were other things besides GCEs, diplomas.

She checked her watch anxiously as she dithered at the crossroads, unsure which way to go. It was difficult to walk now through the dawdling jostling crowds, especially with her cake-box, her bulky sheaf of flowers. ‘Sorry,' she kept saying to the people who bumped into her, reflecting on a word they probably didn't understand. Of course she wasn't sorry – not about the baby, felt no shred of guilt, not even towards James. He would accept it as his own, and it might even come to bond them, become the focus of a new stage in their marriage, a more tranquil fruitful stage.

She stopped in shock as she turned into a square, recognised the column in its centre. The little street she'd taken more by chance than by geography had led her straight into the Piazza Colonna. She had found it with no mishap, without once getting lost. That itself was magic, could mean she was being guided to her fate. She crossed the square, slipped between the solid grey-stone pillars of the colonnade, found the three magicians sitting in their shadow, each at a small table with a lighted candle on it. She glanced from the three tiny flames to the radiant moon above. It seemed larger and much closer, as if it had moved down the sky to eavesdrop. She hovered by a column, trying to choose between the
maghi
. The tallest, most exotic one wore a full-length coat with a dramatic fox-fur collar and a black topper on his head. The youngest looked a gypsy, with his swarthy skin, his one gold dangly earring, and his casual grubby clothes. She was attracted by the third – a dark and wiry man with long artistic fingers, intensely serious eyes, a silver salamander pinned to his lapel. All three were occupied, clients tête-à-tête with them – people like herself who had come to learn their fates, had placed their happiness, their future, in these fortune-tellers' hands.

The third man was just finishing, accepting two crisp banknotes from an ecstatic-looking girl, thanking her and smiling, his silver brooch glinting in the candlelight. ‘ENGLISH SPOKE,' read a roughly crayoned notice propped up on his table. Wasn't that an omen – the fact they could communicate, the fact his chair was empty now, as if it were urging her, inviting her, to sit in it herself? She was sure this man was right for her, trusted him instinctively, was drawn by his resemblance to John-Paul – not so much his looks, though both were dark and slender – but his air of passionate solemnity, his sharp-boned sensitive face. She edged towards him shyly, sat down at his table, still clutching all her packages.

‘You Engleesh?' he asked softly.

She nodded, shrinking at his scrutiny, the way he was gazing right into her face as if to drag her soul out; his black eyes so expressive she felt he was speaking with them, through them; pouring out predictions, revelations, though as yet he'd said only two brief words. He gestured to her to put her shopping down, then placed both her hands palms-up on the table, started examining the left one, brow creased in concentration as he traced its curving lines, his own hands bony-cold. Still he said no word, appeared to be picking up her character, her basic fears and feelings, not through any confab, but as if he had antennae. That, too, was like John-Paul.

At last, he spoke, his eyes returning to her face again, and seeming to pierce through flesh and bone. ‘You good lady – very good.'

‘Oh, no,' she said, embarrassed. ‘I'm not good at all, honestly I'm not. In fact, I've been neglecting things just recently – back at home, I mean – haven't really bothered with the cooking or the …'

‘You good, I say. You strong. But many other person drag your strength.'

‘Drag it? What d' you mean?'

‘Peoples take your time, always – how you say? – pulling you and fretting you, so you gives your strength away.'

Mary's mind tracked back to last night. She had been up with Harry once again, from one a. m. till three. He'd been complaining of a buzzing in his ears, which he feared might be tinnitus, or even an early warning-sign of Alzheimer's disease – until she realised she could hear it, too, and it was actually an extractor-fan, set high up on the roof above his window. ‘Well, I suppose Harry
is
a trial just at the moment, but then he's always had trouble with his digestion, and it wasn't fair to bring him, I suppose. But we couldn't really …'

‘Harry is your lover?'

‘Oh, no! He's almost eighty.'

‘You have other lover – yes?'

‘Er, yes.' Her cheeks were flaming, as scarlet as the woollen scarf flung casually round his neck above the thin black jacket, the grubby once-white shirt, open to the chest, and revealing coarse black hair.

He nodded, seemed to know about John-Paul, started laying out a deck of cards on the dirty gingham tablecloth, arranging them in two long rows, face-down. ‘Take card,' he said, pointing to the bottom row. She picked one, turned it up, flinching at its symbols: a jewel-eyed serpent wreathed around a pillar, a strange broken wheel above. She had no idea what cards these were. They seemed nothing like the ordinary pack Harry used for rummy, nor even like the tarot cards Oliver had borrowed once from an eccentric chum at school (and which James had later confiscated as being what he called both bogus and bad taste).

The fortune-teller was staring at her card, one hand half-concealing it, the other twitching restless on the table. ‘He great man,' he murmured.

‘Er … who?'

‘The man you love. He powerful man. He big.'

Yes, big, she thought – he's right – big in all the vital ways, colossal in his influence. Even here in Rome, John-Paul seemed to loom in every street; tower on every column in place of emperors and saints, controlling rampant stallions or brandishing a sword.

‘You waiting something, you and lover, yes?'

‘Yes,' she breathed. ‘We are.' How amazing that he knew; had stumbled on her secret so precipitously, discerned the very reason she was there. No point sitting silent any longer. She must ask him that one question which obsessed her. Never mind the rest. She had no interest in the future beyond that huge concern – no wish to hear about legacies or journeys, chance encounters, strokes of fate. She shifted in her seat, aware of idle tourists strolling by, whispering to each other, or pointing at the cards. The candle had burned low and was guttering in its glass, making sudden frantic flurries, then wavering, half-dying, as if its time was nearly up. Her time was rationed, too. James would be annoyed by now, Lionel bullying Harry, the boys ruining their teeth with sugary snacks. ‘Look,' she said, lowering her voice, and glancing down to avoid the vulgar stares. ‘I … I'm going to have a baby.
His
baby. You understand?'

The man looked pained. ‘My Engleesh very good. This baby good as well. This baby very good.'

Mary gripped her chair, astonished. ‘You
know
about the baby?'

The man nodded, stroked his chin, where he was growing the first stubblings of a beard. ‘I see it in the cards. This baby very special. It grow up to be saviour.'

‘
Saviour
?'

‘Yes.'

She stared at him, enchanted. He was confirming what she knew – knew from instinct, intuition, in the depths of her own heart. She leaned forward in her seat, hardly caring now whether anyone was watching, her voice hoarse from hope, from nerves. ‘There's something I've just got to know – will it be a boy or girl?'

There was a sudden nervous pause. She could hear the drone of traffic, the drag of passing feet, filling in the silence. Restless leaping shadows flickered up and down the columns from the last throes of the candle-flame. The man held her with his eyes again, one tiny muscle twitching in his cheek.

‘You want boy, or you want girl?'

‘I want girl.' She was picking up his accent, transfixed by him, his presence, that strange light in his eyes, the silver salamander which seemed to wink and writhe, his dark and mobile face which registered each fleeting change of mood.

‘I've got three sons already,' she confided in a whisper. ‘They're marvellous boys, so clever and … But I always wanted a girl – yes, right from the beginning. I've never told my husband. It seemed disloyal, ungrateful. But this time …' Her voice faltered to a halt. ‘I can't explain it really. It's just – you know – important.'

The man said nothing, simply swept the first cards fiercely off the table and started flicking through a second pack, picking out a couple – one with one dot, one with two – and holding them both up to her. ‘This positive card,' he explained, pointing to the single dot. ‘This negative – with two dots.' He reshuffled the whole pack, then laid them out in two long rows again.

‘We ask question of the cards,' he said. ‘ “Will child be girl?” Okay? And then you start pick card – one card, two card, many card – till you holding card with dots on. If one dot,
yes
– so girl. If two dots –
no
, so boy.'

Mary sat half-paralysed, agog to know, yet dreading those two dots. She glanced up at the fortune-teller, who was still watching her intently, her tiny form reflected in the dark pupils of his eyes, as if he knew her now so well, he carried her inside him. She shivered suddenly. The night seemed colder, darker; the candle-flame burnt out, the moon behind a cloud, as if it, too, feared the answer. The fortune-teller prompted her, touched her cheek a moment, the gesture strangely intimate. ‘You ask question now, please.'

‘You mean ask it out aloud?'

He nodded. ‘Yes. Important. Words important. Words have power.'

She swallowed, cleared her throat, spoke as distinctly as she could. ‘Will my baby be a girl?' she asked the cards. ‘
Our
baby. John-Paul's child.' There was a moment's total silence, as if by speaking John-Paul's name she had brought all Rome to a halt, somehow stopped the traffic, stilled the universe.

‘Take card,' the
mago
whispered, seeming to catch her mood of breathless expectation. Mary's hand moved confidently to the far end of the table, as if somebody were telling her which card she had to pick; some power beyond her own directing her tense fingers to that last one on the row. She paused a moment before turning it face-up. Could she be mistaken? Perhaps it was a picture-card with no dots on it at all. As the man had just explained, she might need to pick up several cards before she got her answer. She turned it over: one dot.

‘
Positivo
!' cried the man, switching to Italian in excitement. ‘
Ragazza
! You have girl-child.'

‘Girl-child,' she repeated, both hands round the card now, as if cradling it, embracing it. She kept staring at the tiny dot, watching it burgeon from an egg-cell to a perfect eight-pound baby. The man was half out of his seat, jabbing at the card with one thin excited finger, his whole face alive, elated.

‘Very special girl-child! She make happy everyone. She have
gioia, providenza
. She do big things, like father. Very special father. You leave him soon, but …'

‘Leave him?'

‘Yes.'

She knew it, had prepared for it, realised that once she stopped her sessions with John-Paul, she would not be simply leaving him, but would probably never see him in her life again. Yet it still hurt to hear the
mago
spell it out; hurt as fiercely, cruelly, as if she'd held her hand in the new and ardent candle-flame he'd just lit in its glass holder. She kept her eyes fixed on the flame, felt them prick with tears.

‘You not cry, dear lady. You strong, you very strong. You leave your lover, but him not leave you ever. He always there. He with you. He inside you.'

She suddenly scrabbled for her purse, started pouring all her banknotes on the table, almost covering the two long rows of cards. ‘Thank you,' she said wildly, kicking back her chair and reaching for her flowers. She deposited the huge bouquet in the fortune-teller's arms. She had meant it for the children, to decorate their room, add a splash of scent and colour to the celebration meal. But she had to give this man some token, not mere humdrum money, some more personal offering to repay him for his words. She could hear him calling after her in English and Italian, the two tongues oddly mixed, but she had no more time to spare, was already darting back the way she'd come, crossing the piazza, squeezing through the crowds.