Polly entered the dimly lit fortune teller's room, taking a seat at the circular table facing the door and folding her hands in her lap. She was having troubling dreams again. The last time was when she dreamt of Anna before discovering that her daughter had died. Granted, she had reconnected with Michael, but the dreams were omens of something evil that was about to occur or had already occurred without her knowledge. She looked around the table. The medium, a woman around forty years old wearing gaudy baubles of fake precious stones and a musty-smelling taffeta gown, was trying her best to look mysterious and intriguing. There was another woman wearing tattered clothes with a haggard face who jumped at the slightest creak of the table or chairs, and an old man sitting beside her with no teeth who seemed to have a perpetual smile plastered across his face.
Such excellent company.
Polly glanced at the grandfather clock across the room and saw that she had arrived just in time as the meeting was scheduled to begin in less than two minutes according to the flyer she had seen posted on the door. She had been searching half the day for any sort of medium who could tell her what to make of these dreams, that she hadn't already been to. She shifted her position in her seat, waiting.
Just as the meeting was about to begin, a tall broad shouldered man walked through the door. The room shook when he lumbered in, massive, bearlike, but he was not clumsy.
Powerful. That was the word Polly thought of, as she watched him enter the room. Polly believed you could tell a lot about a person by the way they entered a room. You could be confident and powerful, timid like the frightened woman with the tattered clothes, a buffoon like the grinning gaping toothless man who had tripped over his feet on the doorstep, or quiet like Tommy.
Or me.
The man cast his black top hat and coat onto an available seat before taking the seat himself and moving close to the table. The medium cleared her throat and looked away from the man.
"Good evening. Let us begin. Who would like to…"
Polly leaned forward, wanting to be the first to speak. The sooner she spoke, the sooner she might possibly get answers and the sooner she could leave Camden Town, before her nephews started asking questions as to her whereabouts.
"I'll go," the last man to enter said. He laced his fingers together and planted his hands heavily down on the table, making it shake.
He paused a moment before speaking, squinting his blue eyes and running a hand across his beard in thought, a motion, which looked calculated to Polly. She saw a crafty intelligence in this man's seemingly open and honest face.
Or maybe I read too deeply into everything. Maybe her interest stemmed from the fact that this man had an intriguing aura about him, and was maybe more than the average level of attractiveness of a Birmingham man. She might be getting on in years, but she wasn't blind.
"You see, I've got myself a quandary. There's this little fellow," the man began, "about yay high" he added, raising his hand to the level of the table in a gross over exaggeration that made a Polly's lips pull into a partial smirk.
"And this little man, he's at the back of my mind, picking at me, putting me in a difficult business situation because he's so bloody popular. I don't hate him per se, but he wronged me and I need to know if I should forgive him or not and how to go about doing that."
The medium looked confused. This musty little room was a place for spirits, not confessions and questions about morality.
"If you're asking me advice about your confession, I think a church…"
"DO I LOOK LIKE A BLOODY CATHOLIC TO YOU?!"
The woman in the tattered clothes beside him cringed as he raised his voice. The gap toothed man stiffened in alarm. Polly realized it was calculated and remained still with her arms folded.
Why does he try so hard to appear unbalanced?
The man raised his hand.
"Sorry, sorry, long day at work, nothing personal."
"What exactly are you asking of me and the spirits?" the woman asked, trying to sound airy and ethereal instead of a slightly confused, and intimidated con-artist.
An intent expression crossed the man's face and he leaned forwards towards the medium, who Polly saw made a great effort not to lean back in her seat.
"I'd like to know if there's some king of spirit or what not, that can inspire me to some glorious act of unselfish forgiveness, eh?"
"Well.. Part of being able to forgive comes from within."
"Right right, but I need a sign, something extra, insurance or peace of mind."
Polly's attention was caught by the word insurance. Maybe assurance, but not something so… practical.
" Is this man close to you, family or…."
"Business rival, partner of sorts. I run a bakery and this chap knows how to do business. He's good at business, but he might be too good if you know what I'm saying." He gave the medium a conspiratorial wink.
She doesn't know. The medium was clearly at a loss as to what this man was talking about.
Baker my eye.
This intimidating, fierce looking man, was no baker and what he was saying was that he wanted justification for "something to happen" to this man who he was clearly in competition with.
The baker sighed.
"Guessing this is not your area of expertise, right then…. I met this woman, good looking woman outside my bakery. Can you tell me if I've got a shot with her? Read my palms or something?
"Hold out your hands,"" the woman said and Polly watched as the baker extended his large calloused hands. The woman took them and turned his palms so they were facing upwards.
"I call on the spirits of love and grace. Give me your wisdom as to this man's future."
The woman's a sham. She wasn't sure of herself, like the one from home, the one who had told her about Anna and the one she could never return to again.
That woman knows who I am.
"The spirits say you and this woman will cross paths again and kindle a more intimate relationship."
The man raised a hand and rubbed it across his beard,contemplating the woman's completely useless answer.
That looks a little more genuine.
Then he shrugged and looked down at his hands.
"Guess that's not too difficult to believe. Probably'll see her buying groceries again with the little chap." His eyes snapped up when he realized he was musing aloud to a group of strangers.
"Carry on," he said, waving a hand and Polly decided to speak her mind, more as a way to unburden herself than to get actual answers.
"I'm having dreams, dreams about a… burning building."
The Garrison.
In the dream, she had walked up to the pub to see flames dancing inside the building.
The pub door had been rigged with explosives in the past, but Polly didn't think this was mere memory playing a trick on her as she slept.
"Like the burning bush," the baker interjected. "God's speaking to you, plain and simple."
"There was blood on the windows," Polly went on, acting as if the man hadn't spoken. In all honesty he was beginning to irritate her.
"The front windows were shattered and there was blood on the glass."
The medium, as Polly expected, was at a loss. Silence fell over them. The ragged looking woman shifted uncomfortably in her seat, clearly uneasy. The toothless man stopped grinning.
The baker cleared his throat.
"If I may mam, sounds to me like you're thinking about sacrifice of some kind. Blood, broken windows, a burning building," he rattled off, as if all of those variables were supposed to mean something collectively. Maybe… you've got to let something important go, let it burn to the ground, shed a little blood to see the bigger picture."
Polly stared at him, convinced he was not a baker.
"If you want to get metaphorical," the baker added quickly.
"And I heard screaming," she went on. "Male screams, and…. A child's." That child's screams troubled her the most. She wasn't afraid of fire or a little blood, but the child's screams was what had made her wake up in a cold sweat.
"Are you a mother?" the medium asked before the baker could make any more interpretations.
"Yes," Polly said immediately.
"How did you feel when you saw these sights?"
"I was terrified."
How else would I feel?
It was embarrassing how terrible this so called medium was. Polly predicted she would not be in business for long.
The baker slapped a hand against the table, making the haggard woman jump in her seat again.
"Personal Armageddon, plain as day. You're expecting something terrible, you're seeing blood and fire. Case closed. Adjourned, what have you. Good night to you all, Peace be with you," he said, pushing the chair back, scraping the wooden floor, grabbing his hat and coat, and striding out the door in a whirlwind that left the rest of them partially stunned in their seats.
Polly looked at the remaining guests and the medium and concluded that staying would waste even more of her precious time, so she paid, and left. She caught a glimpse of the man rounding a corner in the fading light. Darkness was falling quickly tonight. She scanned her surroundings as she walked briskly to her car. She knew she had wasted time, but she never ignored the dreams when they started occurring. They were always important. They had revealed her daughter's death to her and reunited her with her son. The problem was finding someone who could interpret them for her.
Maybe you've got to let something important go.
Surprisingly, there was wisdom in those words. Her dreams could be interpreted as losses, with the exception of Michael. There was the loss of her daughter, the loss of the Garrison, the potential loss of something precious to her….
She shoved those thoughts from her mind and directed her thoughts to events occurring in the present. She thought about Tommy getting married at the Justice of the Peace. Who was he marrying and why was he in such a rush? The last woman Tommy had been smitten by was Grace, who had broken his heart. She thought about Michael, enthusiastically working for Tommy. She thought of Arthur and John, and Finn, and Ada. She made a mental note to visit her niece and Karl.
Polly unlocked the door to her car and climbed inside. She turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb, lost in thought.